Murder on the Titania and Other Steam-Powered Adventures

by Alex Acks

  Clarkson gave them a few moments to marvel at the automaton adjusting the wheel a little bit here and there, though it seemed rather anticlimactic. The inventor cleared his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Murray and crew, I have been assured our illustrious hostess in absentia has outdone herself. Let us away to dinner!”

  “Captain and crew, you said?” one of the gentleman in the group asked, adjusting his spectacles.

  Clarkson smiled slyly. “Of course, that’s part of the proof! No crew is needed, not with the automaton to monitor all of the ship’s functions and navigate on its own. To prove this to you, the crew will be joining us at dinner and even for dancing, with the door to the bridge securely locked so that you can be certain no one will interfere. It shall be a charming experience for all involved.”

  “Are you certain that’s entirely safe?” the gentleman asked. For someone who had cheered enthusiastically mere moments before, he seemed reticent now.

  “Not to worry, sir,” Captain Murray said. “At my request, there’s been an alarm installed.”

  “A completely unnecessary alarm,” Clarkson hastened to add. “I would have thought it an insult, but I know it is difficult for some to trust the leading edge of technology.”

  Captain Murray smiled as if slightly pained. “Yes, yes. But at any rate, I assure you the alarm shall sound if our heading deviates at all.”

  The gentleman nodded. “I see. Very well then. Dinner, you said?”

  Marta and Simms were among the last out, and they paused to watch the rather theatrical locking of the bridge doors with an almost comically large padlock and a length of thick chain. Clarkson held up the key with a flourish and presented it to Captain Murray with a bow that was just a shade short of mocking. Captain Murray and the crewmen standing around weren’t ignorant to this subtle dig. Quite a few dark looks were exchanged as the captain tucked the key away in his waistcoat pocket. The strain to the jolly atmosphere wasn’t helped in the slightest by a few of the wealthy passengers chuckling quietly at the show.

  Only an idiot alienated his potential allies, particularly in favor of anyone who smelled so strongly of money. No one turned faster on a stumbling social climber than an aristocrat; Marta had used this fact to her advantage in the past. Many an inventor had put together an interesting engine and then hamstrung himself in full view of the benefactors he wanted desperately to impress. Ultimately, she was here to investigate Clarkson’s difference engine, and now the inventor had helpfully decided to leave it completely unattended.

  “Clarkson!” Ah, and there was the hatchet-like fellow in orange from the reception, waving one finger rather demandingly in the air. She took a quick glance back at Clarkson, and he looked an interesting combination of startled, frightened, and angry, which made his expression a muddle.

  Then he pasted the rictus of a grin onto his lips. “Ah, sir. I’m so sorry you couldn’t be on the tour, but the doors are now locked.”

  “Clarkson, this damn well isn’t—”

  “Of course!” he interrupted, waving frantically at the guards. Was this an expected altercation? One of them stepped forward to take the man’s arm. “Please, sir, we will have this conversation at a more appropriate time. There are ladies present.”

  Well, lady. After a split second of consideration, Marta pursed her lips in disapproval. While she’d like to hear what the argument was about, it really didn’t fit the part she was playing at the moment. She would have to do a bit of nosing around later.

  The narrow-faced man had the good grace to look abashed. “Madam, my apologies. But—” Oh, was that a Teutonic accent to his English? And it seemed to grow worse the more flustered he became.

  “No buts,” Clarkson said. “I promise, I shall find you after dinner. Please, you have my word.”

  Marta doubted it was Clarkson’s word so much as the increasingly firm hold the guard had on the man’s arm that got him to move away silently, though glaring balefully all the while. Interesting, indeed. However, Clarkson’s personal spats weren’t her first priority. His supposed mechanical genius was of far more interest.

  “My apologies, gentlemen. Lady. The trials of even such local fame as I might claim to be mine. I hope that unfortunate little fracas hasn’t soured your stomachs for our evening repast.” Clarkson laughed nervously.

  “Of course not!” One of the other passengers patted his belly jovially. “Come, it’s high time we ate. You can tell us more about your work then.”

  Marta spared a glance at the padlock as the group walked away and mentally calculated how long it would take her to pick it. The resulting number was ten seconds, plus or minus five. She wasn’t particularly impressed.

  “I don’t trust it,” Captain Ramos said.

  They were in the cabin they ostensibly shared as Lord and Lady Parnell-Muttar, Simms having excused them from the after-dinner dancing, claiming his dear wife was quite exhausted. Really, it was a desire for self-preservation that had prompted his thoughtfulness. He wasn’t much of a dancer at the best of times, and the captain took a perverse pleasure in dragging him around any available dance floor as if torturing him and making him smile while she did so would remedy his lack of rhythm and grace.

  “You’ve often told me you don’t trust anything,” Simms replied, fumbling at his tie. He’d had to go with a different knot than his usual, one more popular with the upper class, and was having a hell of a time unraveling it. He glanced over his shoulder at the Captain, who was currently stripping off her shirt, and hastily looked away. “I really wish you’d warn me when you do that.”

  “Pish, Simms. Pish. I haven’t the time nor patience for silly social mores.”

  Simms sighed. It wasn’t that he really cared particularly. He’d seen Captain Ramos in nearly every state in which a person could exist. He just found the idea of talking to anyone as they stripped off their clothing intensely awkward.

  “What is it precisely you find so untrustworthy?”

  “The entire setup of the device seems wrong.”

  “I thought it was a rather sharp looking automaton,” Simms offered. “If you like that sort of thing.”

  Perhaps it was the influence of Captain Ramos, but he had developed a certain appreciation for a nice piece of machinery so long as it actually worked. And he did find the idea of automatons fascinating. Imagine, workhouses and dangerous factories a thing of the past, the work done by machines! Though his ever-present pessimism then hastened to remind him that such automatons were still in the realm of fiction, and if they were ever made they would probably be quite expensive. He had little doubt that the lives of lower class humans would be considered worth far less.

  “It doesn’t matter how nice the automaton looks. Any idiot can build a pretty piece of clockwork so long as it needn’t think. If all of the ship’s inputs are run through the difference engine, why is an automaton even necessary?”

  “Well, it is an expensive ship filled with rich people,” Simms pointed out. “Perhaps they feel better knowing there’s something at least vaguely man-shaped at the helm. People who aren’t you get funny about that sort of thing.”

  “You may have a point,” the captain admitted grudgingly. “You can stop covering your eyes now, Simms. I’m as dressed as you could wish.”

  By which she apparently meant costumed as one of the many maids employed by the Titania. “Feeling moved to do a bit of cleaning?”

  “Hardly. Plausibility of place, Simms.” She began to carefully scrub her face with a rag, removing all traces of Lady Parnell-Muttar. “Clarkson is likely to still be at the party. I thought I’d pop ’round to his cabin and have a look through his papers, since I’d rather like to know what he’s doing with all that space.”

  “Not going to just pry open the machine itself first? Cut to the heart of the matter? Er…the difference engine of the matter?”

  “Tempting. And the difference engine and I will have a date soon enough, make no mistake. But I wish to be acquainted
with his design first so I won’t have to waste time puzzling over the mess I shall no doubt find in that cabinet.” She smiled thinly.

  Simms nodded, finally stripping off his jacket and waistcoat. He glanced at the fully stocked liquor cabinet in one corner of the room. Suddenly, he disliked their ruse as first class all the more, for putting him the room with that much temptation. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue at all, but spending a long period of time pretending to be someone else set his nerves jittering in a way that wouldn’t deal well with being left to his own devices. He knew himself well enough to understand that.

  And Captain Ramos, he thought, knew him just as thoroughly. She glanced over her shoulder, all the while carefully adding new shadows and lines to her face with a bit of makeup.

  “Why don’t you go to the cargo hold and check on our…shipment. If you smudge your face up a bit with the charcoal in my makeup kit and wear your normal clothes, you’ll pass well enough as one of the stokers.”

  Simms nodded, feeling more than a little grateful. “I’ll do that, then. Do you know where the crates are?”

  Captain Ramos laughed. “I haven’t the foggiest notion. And thus, you really ought to rectify that situation. Hopefully they’ve put them all in the same area at least. But it might be best to rearrange things a bit so that our things are nearest the loading area.”

  She was right. He knew the necessity of a speedy escape. But he also knew how damn heavy those crates were because he was the one who had moved them into place for loading to begin with, his face hidden by a thoroughly disreputable hat and a scarf that had smelled disturbingly of slightly off cream. His back twinged warningly at the mere thought.

  “That’s a lot of weight to shift.”

  “I have faith in you, Simms. Between brute strength and the winch they ought to have lurking in the depths of the hold, I think you’ll do marvelously.”

  With that, she took herself from the room, her entire posture changing as she crossed the threshold. Simms gave her a few seconds to get down the hall before locking the door behind her and seeing to his own state of dress. With a task at hand, he was far too busy worrying about all of the horrific things that could go wrong between the cabin and his destination, let alone in the cargo hold itself, to let more self-destructive thoughts get a word in edgewise.

  Much to his relief, no one stopped him on his way to the cargo hold, and he did pass by quite a few passengers on after dinner strolls, enjoying the view of sunset reflected upon a sea of clouds and distant water. As he was no longer in his fancy costume, they had the good grace to pointedly ignore him, which was really the ideal situation as far he was concerned. Rich people made him nervous.

  The cavernous cargo bay was filled with the howl of wind, even though the great doors were closed. There was no need to make the bay air tight like the rest of the ship; it didn’t need to be pressurized. Cruising along at an altitude somewhere north of 16,000 feet, Simms found the air quite thin. A bit of dizziness wouldn’t bother him if he was just planning on poking around, but if he was to be rearranging the cargo for the sake of the captain’s convenience, more air would be a requirement.

  A row of breathing masks hung next to the door, lit by the steady yellow glow of an electrical lamp. He helped himself to one and slipped it over the lower half of his face, tightening straps and grimacing at the smell of stale breath and garlic. A tube ran from the mask down to a little brass bellows box hung on a leather belt, which he looped around his waist. Whomever his foul-breathed friend had been, at least he’d had the courtesy to wind up the box beforehand. Gears clicked and air flowed into the mask at the flip of the switch.

  Thus fortified, Simms located the main switch for the entire hold—it was night and quite dark—and turned it on. More yellow light flared, almost blinding before setting down to a steady, rather unnatural glow that revealed cargo stowed in row upon row. Simms moved into the neatly stacked rows of crates, trying to locate the three large and exceedingly heavy ones that belonged to the captain. Thankfully, the cruise was a short one, set between two relatively close duchies. The neat rows plotted out on the floor with tie-downs and railings were barely filled, with crates stacked only three high at the most. It was enough to make parts of the hold a bit maze-like, but there was plenty of clearance at the ceiling to make use of the winch. Simms breathed a sigh of relief into the dank mask and began hunting through the rows.

  The three crates each bore different freight marks and destinations, thanks to Captain Ramos’s—sometimes justified—paranoia. Each did have a board on the side with a subtle pattern of dots hammered into it, something the captain expounded upon as the progression from some mathematical theorem or another, but Simms recognized them as a series of triangles and squares.

  But, of course, the crates he wanted were scattered through the rows, and, of course, they were in the least convenient places possible and would all need to be moved. Grumbling to himself and idly picking at a splinter he’d acquired on a nasty board, Simms went to the far end of the hold and set to figuring out the controls for the winch. It was simple enough, gears and chains and a claw with straps for lifting crates, but it wasn’t really intended for use by a man on his own.

  Well, he thought grimly, at least it meant he wasn’t alone in a room with a full liquor cabinet. That had always been a bad combination in the past, and the only ways he’d ever found to fight the temptation involved either Captain Ramos staring at him or the presence of his daughter, Dolly. He had far too many hazy memories of the bad years of the past when Dolly had looked at him with large sad eyes and asked to know why he smelled funny, followed immediately by a request if she could finally have a kitten now.

  Thankfully, he was certain he’d be too tired to do anything but sleep by the time he’d rearranged the hold to his satisfaction. He took another walk down the rows of crates, mapping out the best escape route, and deciding which crates he’d be moving so that it would take the least effort. It all sounded excellent in theory, and he felt dangerously close to pleased with himself as he went to fetch the winch and get started.

  Marta kept her eyes properly downcast as she made her way through the airship’s halls. The first order of business was a trip down several flights of stairs to the windowless belly of the gondola, where the servants and minor officers were quartered. It wasn’t the first time she’d made this particular trip, though perhaps thankfully, on this occasion, there was no corpse sprawling at the bottom of the stairs, as there had been during her last trip. Though really, that had been a fun enough diversion, and she wasn’t about to complain.

  This foray was necessary because she hadn’t been able to get her hands on the passenger manifest before this trip and required the master lists kept by the chief steward. While poking her head into every cabin in second class might be informative as to the disposition of that slice of humanity and a chance to practice her lock picking skills, she knew quite enough backstabbing social climbers and her skills as a picklock were already without peer. Not that she needed even to pick the locks, as she’d had the good fortune to acquire a copy of the ship’s master key during her previous voyage, and it seemed no one had bothered to change the locks. Something about Captain Murray perhaps not wanting to admit he’d let the key out of his possession in the first place.

  Most of the servants were still engaged with cleaning up after dinner and seeing to the guests as they danced. The chief steward’s office was dark, the door firmly shut. She unlocked the door with the master key and left the door open enough of a crack that she’d be able navigate the room. The list was simply pinned to a cork board on the wall, so she gave it a quick read, memorizing the number of Clarkson’s cabin and committing to memory a few others who might be worth burglarizing if she ended up with a bit of spare time on her hands. Back on the passenger floor, Marta made herself as small and beneath notice as possible, rounding her back and keeping her hands clasped demurely in front of her. The uniform would do most of the work anyway.
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  Second class was quite empty, the passengers probably still enjoying their almost-as-good dinner and the dancing and drinks that followed. She headed for Clarkson’s cabin and had reached to take the door handle when a man called out loudly behind her, his voice heavy with a German accent, “You! Is he in there?”

  Marta’s dismayed squeak was pure artifice, part of the character she’d decided to inhabit for this role. She covered her mouth with one hand and turned to face the man. “Begging your pardon, but who, sir?”

  Ah, it was the narrow-shouldered man in the orange waistcoat again. Every time she saw him, he seemed determined to become even more interesting. Tatty engineers stuffed with burning resentment and jealousy were a fixture at events like these, and all that made this one remarkable at a glance was his rather slight build. Coupled with his unfortunately wedge-like haircut and his sharp features, he ended up looking like someone had drawn bloodshot, slightly googly eyes on a fire ax and dressed it up in borrowed orange finery. Because yes, it obviously was borrowed, everything was too big for him and held in at the seams with pins.

  Perhaps she should have paid better attention because he was in something of a state. While before he’d been notable for his intensely sour expression among an otherwise merry crowd, she had put it down to annoyance at not being able to get past Clarkson’s crowd of fawning pseudo-inventors. Now, looking at his red face and overly bright eyes, she began to think the issue one of more than simple annoyance. The scent of his hideous cologne had now been almost completely overpowered by the vinegary pong of alcoholic sweat, and it was a marked improvement on the atmosphere despite his thunderous expression.

  A bad mood wasn’t enough to make someone interesting, however. If that were the case, Simms would have been one of the most fascinating people on the planet. No, it was the streaks of grime she noted on his coat, rendered almost invisible by its dark color, the fuzz of pulled threads along one shoulder, and the thin angry red scratch across the back of his hand.