“Oh! I’m overwhelmed.” Alice got to her feet, and Norbert leapt to his. Mrs. Leeds finished a row and unwound more yarn. “And I really must go.”
“Do I get a good-bye kiss?” he asked, moving around the table.
“My goodness, I suppose you do. Darling.”
Her first kiss. Norbert cupped her face gently in both hands and leaned in. Alice waited, not knowing what to expect. She had read a number of romantic novels, of course, and she had long come to suspect that, lurid descriptions to the contrary, real kissing couldn’t possibly transport either party to the gates of ecstasy and back. Still, she found herself hoping, even through the soft click of Mrs. Leeds’s knitting needles. Norbert’s lips softly brushed hers
— and then he pulled away. “Thank you, darling. Let me know what the solicitor says, would you?”
The horse and carriage delivered Alice and Click to the offices of Stoneworthy, Marvins, and Lott, a tastefully small brownstone with an equally small sign hanging near the door. As Alice alighted, a flicker of motion caught the tail of her eye, and she glanced upward. On the roof one building over from the law office was a familiar figure. It wore a long brown coat, and a white skull mask covered the upper half of its face. The figure grinned its wide, dreadful grin and waved at Alice. A cold finger slid down Alice’s spine. She cast about, but no one else on the street seemed to notice the figure, and no policemen were in sight. Before Alice could react further, the figure threw a small package into the air over the street. Alice shouted a warning, but it was lost in a loud boom as the package exploded. Horses reared in harnesses. People screamed and covered their ears or ran for cover. Alice ducked into the doorway of the law office with Click hiding beneath her skirts as a shower of little papers fell like snowflakes. She caught one.
Written on one side was a musical staff with a single interval: a C and an F-sharp. On the back were the words I REMEMBER.
Alice gasped and looked up at the rooftop, but the figure was gone. Heart pounding, Alice hurried into the law office, where a clerk who seemed oblivious to the goings-on outside immediately showed her and Click into Mr. Stoneworthy’s private sanctuary, an office laid with carpet and lined with books. The desk was piled so high with papers that Alice could barely see the round figure of Mr. Stoneworthy on the other side.
“So good of you to come so quickly, Miss Michaels,” he said in a surprisingly flutelike voice. Someone so rotund and white-haired should have a deep voice. “Are you quite all right? I heard some sort of commotion outdoors.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “It was nothing.” But she couldn’t help wondering what the figure-the clockworker who had controlled the zombies-meant by I remember. A warning? A simple greeting? If he had wanted to harm her, he had every opportunity while she was walking obliviously past. And how had he known where she would be? Perhaps he had been following her or spying on her in some other way. The thought turned her stomach.
“You’re looking positively peaked, Miss Michaels,” said Mr. Stoneworthy. “Would you like some refreshment?”
“I’ve just come off lunch, but thank you,” Alice said, pushing thoughts of the clockworker away, which only allowed the reason for her visit to catch up with her. A call for an emergency visit to Aunt Edwina’s solicitor could only mean dreadful news, and although Alice hadn’t seen Aunt Edwina in more than a dozen years, she still felt a certain fondness for the woman, strange and estranged though she was. Nausea gave way to dread. Click sat next to her chair, his tail curled nonchalantly about his legs.
“Then I won’t keep you in suspense,” Mr. Stoneworthy said. He coughed into a handkerchief, belying the promise he had just made. “Pardon. I’m afraid it is my duty to inform you that you are the sole heir to the estate of your aunt Edwina.”
The chair rocked beneath Alice’s body, and she gripped the arms tightly. Tears welled in her eyes, and her throat thickened. Surprised at the strength of her reaction, she could only murmur, “Good heavens.”
Mr. Stoneworthy looked supremely uncomfortable. “Yes. Perhaps you would like some brandy?” Without waiting for an answer, he raised his voice. “Dickerson! Some brandy for Miss Michaels!”
A glass was pushed into her hand, and Alice drank without thinking. The brandy, her first, burned all the way down and pushed away the tears. She felt more able to speak. “How did she… pass away? And when? And why wasn’t my father notified?”
“She hasn’t died, exactly,” Mr. Stoneworthy said. “She’s missing.”
“Missing? I don’t understand.”
Mr. Stoneworthy coughed into his handkerchief again, and this time Alice caught him peeking at the contents. She hoped he didn’t have consumption, or worse, the clockwork plague. “You’re probably aware that your aunt was a bit… eccentric, yes?”
“She has her ways,” Alice said, feeling suddenly defensive.
“One of those ways was to send a letter to this office every month. I was instructed that if the letter should fail to arrive for twelve consecutive months, I was to execute her will. It names you as the sole heir to her estate.”
“So she’s definitely not dead?” Alice demanded. Click made a mechanical mew at her feet.
“I frankly don’t know,” Mr. Stoneworthy replied blandly. “I’m merely following her instructions.”
“But I’m… I can’t inherit her estate!”
He put on a pair of reading glasses that made him look like Father Christmas and examined a long piece of paper. “You are Miss Alice Michaels, daughter of Arthur, Baron Michaels, of London?”
“Yes.”
“You have reached the age of majority?”
Was that his way of asking if she were a spinster? Slightly affronted, she said, “Yes.”
“And you are unmarried.”
“Now see here-”
“Meaning,” Mr. Stoneworthy said, “you have no husband who would take over the property in your place?”
Her thoughts went to Norbert, but he wasn’t her husband yet. “That’s right. But my father-”
“Is specifically banned from having any part of this,” Mr. Stoneworthy finished for her with another cough into the handkerchief. “That part took some legal work, but it’s all arranged. The house and grounds are yours. Unfortunately, there is no monetary portion to the estate, but once the final legal hurdles are cleared, you could sell.”
“How long will that take?” Alice asked faintly.
“Four or five months, if no one contests the will, but you can take possession now, if you like. Here are the keys and a card with the address. Have you ever visited the house?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Do I need to sign anything?”
“Indeed. Dickerson!”
Alice signed a number of papers she didn’t quite understand, though she did read them to make sure she wasn’t accidentally signing over her firstborn child, and later found herself outside the law offices with a ring of keys in her handbag. Norbert’s carriage was nowhere in sight-apparently it had some sort of command that called it home-so she hailed a cab and let Click jump in ahead of her.
With a nervous glance up and down the street for the grinning figure, Alice handed the address card to the driver and sat back to think. In the space of a few hours, she had received a marriage proposal (of sorts), intercepted a strange message from a rogue clockworker, learned that her aunt Edwina had been missing for months and had managed to declare herself dead, and inherited a large house she had never actually visited. It was all a bit much. And oh yes-she had discovered that Click could talk, after a fashion.
“When did you visit Mr. Stoneworthy’s office so he could give you that message?” she demanded of the clockwork cat. “I quite forgot to ask him. And how long have you been able to reproduce a human voice?”
Click looked out the cab window with phosphorescent nonchalance. Alice made an exasperated sound as the cab rolled over the stony streets. Exasperation was easier to deal with than fear, uncertainty, or sadness. Aunt Edwina w
as dead. Actually, she was merely missing. Actually, she had failed to alert Mr. Stoneworthy’s office in a prescribed way for one year. Perhaps she wasn’t dead or truly missing at all. Perhaps she had forgotten or grown tired of the arrangement.
After twelve months? she thought. Unlikely.
The ride took more than an hour, and it was nearing dusk by the time the cab arrived at a high stone wall well outside of town, in a place where houses and factories gave way to trees and meadows. The wall ran nearly a hundred yards down the road before curving away and out of sight. Presumably it surrounded Aunt Edwina’s house, of which only the top half was visible. Alice couldn’t see much of it except the roof, or roofs. Several of them poked upward in odd places and directions. A large gate of wrought iron guarded a long driveway, and a smaller entry gate stood beside it. Coming up the road toward them was a barefoot girl of twelve leading a pony. The driver halted near the gate and helped Alice down from the cab with Click jumping down beside her. It occurred to Alice that she had no way of getting home.
“Can you please wait, driver?” she asked, paying him from her meager supply of coins. “I had no idea it would take so long to get here.”
“Not unless you’ll only be a moment, mum,” he said. “I have to put the ’orse up for the night.”
Flummoxed, Alice stared at the set of gates. She would have to go back right now. A long ride for nothing.
“Mum?” The girl leading the pony had approached. “There’s a train station, mum. Less than half a mile up the road. Trains run at night, too.”
“Why, thank you.” Alice gave the girl a farthing from her handbag. “What’s your name?”
“Gwendolyn, mum. My dad calls me Gwenny.”
“Do you live nearby, Gwenny?” Alice asked.
The girl remembered herself and curtsied. “All my life, mum.”
“What do you know about this house, then?”
“I’ll just be going, then, mum,” said the driver, who had climbed back onto the hack.
“Yes, thank you,” Alice said. “If you could just-”
At that moment, beautiful violin music floated by. It pushed the air ahead of itself, floated and rippled, shivered and sighed. All three people listened, entranced. The tune was even lovelier than the music Alice had heard in the mists of Hyde Park. After a moment, Alice realized her heart was beating quickly and her mouth was dry. Click touched noses with the pony, which whickered.
“Where is that wonderful song coming from?” Alice asked.
“The house, mum,” said Gwenny. “Strange lights used to flash in the windows, and we heard odd noises when I was little, but those stopped a year gone. The music is new, something like two weeks old. I don’t like it. It’s ghosts.”
“Don’t be silly,” Alice said. “It’s a person. Or an automaton.”
“The house is empty, mum. No one lives there.”
The music continued, soft and insistent. The driver clicked at the horse and the hack jerked into motion, temporarily ruining the violin. Alice was seized with a desire to slap the man for interrupting the instrument’s perfection.
“What about the lady Edwina?” Alice said. “The woman who lived here?”
“The strange lady, mum? I only heard about her. She never kept no servants, and we always stayed away.”
“Hm. Would you consider coming inside with me? I might have a coin or two for you.”
“Me, mum?” The girl backed away. “I’m sorry, mum, but I couldn’t. Not ever.” And she fled, taking the pony with her and leaving Alice alone on the road.
The sweet strings continued to play. Alice couldn’t think where she’d heard anything more perfect for a spring evening in the country, odd and unexplained though it was. If no people were in the house, it must be an automaton or perhaps a reproduction. Click had come from this house, and he had recently shown an ability to reproduce a human voice. It stood to reason that whoever had created him could do the same with music.
Alice drew the key ring from her handbag and sorted through the cold bits of iron until she found one that would open the little entry gate next to the large main one. When she tried to use the key, however, she discovered the entry gate’s lock twisted and broken, the gate itself slightly ajar. Mystified and a little nervous, she pushed through with Click at her heels and followed the crunching gravel driveway toward the manor.
The house was a rambling affair, clearly put together and added to over at least a hundred years. A stone building squatted in the center with wooden additions piled all about it. Several outbuildings dotted the overgrown gardens, and an attached tower rose up behind. The cool evening air smelled of damp grass intermingled with decaying flowers. The violin music continued, but Alice couldn’t pinpoint the source. She climbed the uneven front steps to the main doors and found them ajar as well. What on earth? Hesitantly, she pushed them open and entered the darkness beyond.
The moment she crossed the threshold, lights blazed to life, revealing a huge room three stories tall. It was filled with machinery that swooped to life with a great, grinding hum. Giant gears whirled; pendulums swung; huge pistons dipped and soared. Spidery automatons far more complex than the ones Alice had at home skittered everywhere on mysterious errands. In the corner, a giant arm swung back and forth with a loud, steady ticking sound. It was like standing inside a three-story clock. Alice glanced down at Click, who was watching the intricate metal dance with twitching tail and glowing eyes. Only one sort of person could have built all this.
“Aunt Edwina was a clockworker,” Alice breathed. “But how?”
That was when she saw the pool of blood.
Chapter Six
Alice supposed she should scream or faint or flee, but Areally, what was the point? Blood couldn’t hurt her, unless she slipped in it and fell. Besides, it was long since dry. Red-brown smears of it smudged the floorboards nearby.
“Good heavens, Click,” she said. “What happened?”
She stepped forward to get a better look, but Click abruptly threw himself in front of her shins, nearly tripping her. “Click! What in the world are you-”
The door slammed shut behind her, and a pair of pistons leapt out of opposite walls. Their blunt ends smashed together at head height directly in front of Alice, right over the blood pool. The crash nearly knocked Alice off her feet, and she dropped her handbag. The pistons sucked themselves back into the walls again, leaving behind nothing but a waft of stale air.
“Oh,” Alice murmured. “Oh.”
That explained the blood. Now that she knew what to look for, she could make out the faint outline of a square cut into the floor directly in front of her-a section that was no doubt sensitive to pressure. Click looked up at her reproachfully.
“Yes,” Alice said. “I do need to be more careful. Thank you, Click.”
Satisfied, Click sat down while Alice studied the room and the noisy clockwork machinery. Did the blood belong to Aunt Edwina? Somehow she doubted it. Aunt Edwina had built the trap, and while it was possible she had been caught in it herself, it seemed unlikely. Of course, that left open the question of whose blood it was and what had happened to the body.
She tried the door. Locked, and from a drop bar on the other side, if she were any judge. Nothing she could open with the materials in her handbag. And all the windows were high off the floor. In any case, fleeing the house would leave many mysteries unsolved, including what had happened to Aunt Edwina, why she had left her house to Alice under such odd circumstances, and who was playing that amazing violin. No doubt everything was intertwined.
Alice retrieved her handbag and continued to study the room. Clockworkers were known for their paranoia, and where there was one trap, there would be others. The trouble was, such traps could be small or large, obvious or subtle. It might appear impossible that any one person could build so much, but clockworkers had two advantages over normal humans. One was that they needed little sleep. The plague that focused their minds also served to keep them awak
e, which, some theorized, contributed to their instability. The other advantage came in the form of progressive automatons. A clockworker might build an automaton, which might then tirelessly assist with the building of another automaton, and then another and another, each one exponentially adding to the amount of work that the clockworker could accomplish until the clockworker finally burnt out. Alice was looking at several years’ worth of work.
This brought up another question-Aunt Edwina’s continued survival. No clockworker Alice had ever heard of lived very long. Charles Babbage, the most famous clockworker in history, caught the clockwork plague in 1837 and died only two years later, just after he created the analytic engines that made modern automatons possible. The great composer Wolfgang Mozart, one of the first recorded clockworkers, wrote stunning operas and piano concertos in the final year of his life before the clockwork plague claimed him in 1791, only six months after he caught it. Many wondered what both men might have created had the plague allowed them to live longer. Aunt Edwina, on the other hand, had sent Alice her first automaton for her sixteenth birthday-five years ago. Could Aunt Edwina have been infected with clockwork plague all this time? It would certainly explain the interior of the house, though it wouldn’t explain how she had survived the plague for so long.
Alice continued to think. If Aunt Edwina had wanted Alice to have the house, she wouldn’t have created it in such a way that Alice wouldn’t be able take possession of it. There had to be a way to circumvent the traps, or shut them down. On the other hand, clockworkers didn’t think the way normal people did, and what made sense to one of them appeared mad to everyone else. A clockworker might think it perfectly sensible to help someone by killing him.
Machinery parts large and small continued to swing, drop, turn, and clank in the clockwork mansion, but the violin music filtered through the noise. Alice was finally able to pinpoint a direction-the back of the building. Very well, then, that was where she would go.
A pair of automatons rushed past her, creating a slight breeze with the speed of their passing. Three spiders clicked forward, paused, clicked forward, paused. A man-sized gear rolled along its track while pistons popped up and down out of the floor behind it. Alice pursed her lips and studied the system carefully. Even assuming there were no more traps laid-and she wasn’t ready to assume that-the clockwork machinery took up quite a lot of the floor space, and it was always moving. Any bit of it could easily crush her. But the more she studied the place, the more she began to see a regularity, a pattern. A series of deep grooves was cut into the floor, and the automatons moved through the grooves in specific ways. Even the ones that flew followed the floor grooves. And the fact that the automatons moved throughout the room without harm told her she could, too.
The Doomsday Vault ce-1 Page 10