The Colonel’s downfall is all the more shocking as his service record is filled with battle honours. His earliest post was with the high-altitude scouts, who spend many hours aloft in tethered balloons to report enemy troop movements. These daring aeronauts were constantly at risk from enemy snipers and vagaries of weather, with only a canvas canopy to slow their descent should their balloon be ruptured. Muster earned three valorous medals aloft before returning to the Airship Services’ Marine Corps for many further years of honourable service.
Muster’s absence from his usual haunts went unremarked for some days, until this reporter sought him out for reaction to the disappearance of his friend, Baron Bodmin. Fellow club-men disagree whether he was ejected before or after Bodmin’s airship was found adrift. Some hope he is living modestly on substantial winnings from Sir Ambrose Peacock, while others suggest he followed a long tradition for disgraced military men, i.e. an honourable suicide by service revolver.
It was true then. Colonel Muster was discredited, and nowhere was Maddie credited, even indirectly, for sending reporters to find him. If he was dead, and the baron was in or near England—either dead or alive—then the story’s Egyptian roots were dead too, at least as far as earning Maddie a byline.
Now what?
There was still the mysterious widow who had usurped Maddie’s identity and possibly many others. Fifty years on from the publication of that novel about conniving Becky Sharp, English readers remained fascinated by beautiful schemers. But no story could be attempted until Madame sent word of investigative results in Venice. What if she could not justify using her family’s spies for Maddie’s very minor (to a worldwide corporation) problem?
With drooping ruffles, Maddie went into luncheon, prepared on principle to keep her ears open about the colonel, the baron, and the widow, while her eyes recorded the cuffs, collars, ascots, and waistcoats worn by those illustrious guests who had not yet fled the heat of Egypt for the moderate climes of Italy or France.
Chapter Six
THE CHATTER AT luncheon interspersed people’s previously suppressed suspicions about the colonel with which liner each party had booked on for the return to Europe. As Lady HH put it in her brook-no-argument way, “No lady of breeding wishes to be caught in Cairo when the heat makes public perspiration unavoidable.”
Maddie was struck by the realization that her source of fashion columns was fleeing the desert and taking her income with it. Would CJ reassign her or consider their association at an end? Or worse: expect her to eke out an existence in Cairo until next winter’s call for foreign fashions. Waiting around had never been her strongest suit. She would ask outright for a reassignment to a European city, and she knew just which one. As luncheon and gossip wound down and the residents dispersed for postprandial naps or brandies, she dropped her napkin onto her plate and stood.
Clarice rose too. “Miss Hatter, may I accompany you upstairs? I feel quite in need of a rest today.” They’d barely left the dining room before the girl brought up Sir Ambrose Peacock. “Is he still coming? Have you heard anything? We are booked to leave in two days! If I were to miss him here! I shall feign illness if I must, to delay our departure.”
“I’ve heard nothing of his impending arrival,” Maddie said. “All the aeronauts I’ve interviewed say his uncle is most likely to be found in England or France. He may well have seen fit to remain in that region.”
The girl drooped. “Thank you,” she said, and listlessly wandered off toward the ascender.
Maddie went straight to the message desk and printed out a fast telegraph form for CJ: Rqst immdt reassg 2 Vnc Itly. She handed it over and asked with some trepidation about incoming messages. There were none. The heavy hand of paternal ire had not fallen today, and would not, she hoped, until she could show Father evidence of the imposter and possibly a way to track the woman down.
She collected a British newspaper from a newly-printed stack on her way upstairs, on the scant chance that she had been credited for something, somewhere, on the many pages she had skimmed past at the brass monkey’s vest. Twenty minutes later, she crumpled the newspaper with both hands, threw it to the carpet, and stamped on it. TD’s little head tilted sideways to peer down at the sheet. The frowning face of a middle-aged woman glared up. Maddie stamped on it once more, but the screaming headline could not be eclipsed:
AMERICAN HEIRESS BADGERED
FOR BATTY BARON’S BILLS
Following the discovery of Baron Bodmin’s abandoned airship, the Jules Verne, his American investor is being urgently billed by London merchants who supplied the missing adventurer’s expedition. The total owed is estimated in the thousands of guineas. On being informed the baron had not paid his bills before departing England, the lady used a word unprintable and fled the reporters.
The only surviving child of the sole owner of the White Sky Line of trans-oceanic airships, Mrs. Midas-White is presently residing at Claridge’s Hotel, London. Merchants’ bailiffs are encamped on the street outside, with more arriving hourly. Foreign creditors are expected to join the throng. Merchants in Cairo claim the Midas-White name was pledged in Egypt for luxurious lodgings and lavish parties as well as outfitting the Jules Verne for desert travel.
How much the heiress had already advanced in support of Bodmin’s latest dream is unknown. A few inquiries would have shown the venturesome baron’s previous investors were long since soured by his unfruitful quests for legendary treasures.
“They only found Mrs. Midas-White because I told them who to seek,” Maddie seethed. “Merchants in Cairo indeed. I could be a brass monkey for all the advancement my investigations have wrought.” She stomped across the room and back, and jabbed a finger toward the crushed paper on the carpet. “It serves them right if she refuses to speak to any male reporters. For all her tight-gloved reputation, I bet the baron charmed her into parting with money, and she is crushed by this evidence of his betrayal. She might tell a sympathetic woman reporter a sad and cautionary tale. Oh, if I were in London today! I could get that interview.”
She was not in London, nor likely to be. CJ might approve her relocation to Venice but working in London, where the risk of being recognized as Lord Main-Bearing’s missing daughter was exceedingly high, was never in her future. No, she was in Cairo another few days at least, and had stories to file.
She spent the afternoon composing a week’s worth of articles centered on Lady HH’s new Easter bonnet. This immense edifice of wire, linen, and lilies was worthy of a cathedral, and would be seen in one on Easter Sunday in London. Maddie had been granted an early viewing as a means of advertising where the nieces might be soonest seen. The London Season kicked off at Easter, and advance publicity for suitable girls might lead to early offers of marriage.
Poor Clarice. Her heart was spoken for, but her hand would go to the party deemed most satisfactory to her family. Perhaps Maddie would be invited to cover the wedding. She could wear a hat with a veil, dress in half-mourning as a disguise, and pass unremarked beneath the very noses of her parents’ friends. It would only be a violation of Father’s decree if she were recognized.
The next morning brought one message, not from Father, for which she was grateful, but from CJ. “No.”
Maddie crushed the flimsy paper in her fist, heedless of the purple ink smearing her last pair of spotless net gloves. She looked for the nearest ashtray, intent on condemning the missive as well as CJ to perdition by the fastest route. Before she could ask the elderly major seated there for a match, he started up out of his chair and hurried away talking to himself.
“My word, my word. I say, wot! That baron feller is dead after all. Must tell Neddy.” Maddie slid into a chair uncomfortably warm from his rotund rear and found the news on his open brass monkey:
The Cornwall Cog and Goggles
BODMIN’S BODY FOUND—
MYSTERY DEEPENS
The mortal remains of Baron Bodmin have washed ashore in Cornwall, only a few miles from isolated Bodmin M
anor. The remains, much diminished by the action of waves and sea creatures, were lashed to a small, but weighty, White Sky Line trunk.
Those who discovered the body immediately opened the trunk, hoping to be the first to see the fabled Nubian treasure the baron sought in Africa, but were disappointed to find only books and papers, some of them damaged by water seepage.
Coast Guard officials say the trunk could not have floated and was probably dragged inshore by the tide over a number of days. The cork belt and escape canopy missing from the adrift airship were not located with the body, and it is unknown whether he had lost or traded them earlier on his expedition rather than using them to escape from what he must have deemed a foundering airship.
Why Bodmin should have elected to abandon ship with a heavy trunk is unknown. Local sea-goers say he might have bailed out at low altitude over shallow water and hoped to drag the trunk ashore safely. Whether the tide set against him or the wind was offshore cannot be known unless the time of his entering the sea can be determined by other means.
As Obie had predicted, Baron Bodmin was dead, and in England. There was no story at all left in Cairo, and the sooner Maddie left the better. She returned to the hotel’s long marble reception counter and told the clerk, “Have my steamer trunk sent to my chamber.”
Chapter Seven
IT WAS NOT easy to get passage out of Cairo at the pinnacle of the English departures. First the hotel’s travel concierge declined to book her a stateroom, saying sternly that most guests had booked weeks ago. Then, after delay while he pretended to adjust the magnification of his brass monoculus, he eventually wrote out the address of the nearest respectable airship booking office.
It was quite a walk on a hot morning, through streets alive with beggars, hawkers, business people striding along, and women, unseen under veils or enveloping chadors, gliding with baskets on their heads or loads on their backs. Horse-drawn carriages competed with piled-high donkeys and self-propelling drays, while occasional camels sneered at them all. Everywhere children darted, calling for baksheesh and occasionally picking the pockets of distracted shoppers.
The clerk at the booking office was firm: the only available space this week was a First Class parlour-stateroom (with balcony) on a White Sky liner leaving for Venice tomorrow morning. The money was available from unspent quarterly allowances, but it would cost Maddie more than she had earned during her entire Cairo stay. She shook her head.
“What about the following week?”
By then, the clerk informed her, the spaces were mostly booked for archaeological staff. Except, of course, for a First Class parlour stateroom . . .
Maddie walked out, convinced the clerk was getting a fat commission on First Class parlour-staterooms (with balconies). How was she to get back to Europe without beggaring herself?
A hawk’s cry overhead gave her a possible answer. She hurried back to Shepheard’s Hotel, ignored a wave from Clarice as she crossed the vast lobby, and took the stairs to her room. As the safragi came along, tapping at doors to warn of the imminence of luncheon, she summoned TD down from his perch on the armoire.
“TD, listen to me. To Oberon O’Reilly via Tweetle-C. Obie, I’ve got to get out of Cairo. Can you get me a job on your airship by tomorrow? I don’t care what.” Heedless for once of anyone seeing—after all, she would be gone soon, one way or another—she sent the little bird out the window, up to the rooftop in a flash of brass wings, to await the first messenger-hawk that passed. She tidied her hair, tucked her pink sequined notebook into her handbag, and went down to lunch.
When she came upstairs, with a few brief notes on end-of-season fashions that might make just one more Foreign Fashionista column, her steamer trunk stood in the middle of the room. She occupied the rest of the afternoon sorting her clothing, discarding those too light for spring in Europe and reluctantly parting with two of her five hats. The first chambermaid who came along would doubtless snatch her leavings but that was no matter when Maddie was determined to be in Venice within a week to start tracking down her imposter. With that chore out of the way, she sat in one of the hard, straight chairs and watched the sun-baked strip of blue sky above. TD had returned, his message transferred, but there was yet no sign of a hawk carrying a return message from Obie.
The sky darkened. Those pedestrians below who had not already gone home for a nap fled to the nearest arched arcades. Maddie stuck her head out the window and looked up, just in time for a whirling dust devil to pepper her with upswept grit. She sputtered and pulled back as the first fat raindrops pelted down. The window banged on its hinges. A wet gust billowed the curtain and the bed’s mosquito netting. She grabbed the window and forced it closed. No hawks would fly in this. How could she go calmly down to dinner with her whole future in the air somewhere between the hotel and the aerodrome?
She climbed into her only unpacked dinner dress, a simply-cut, pale green silk with matching cording around the neck and in two widening lines down her front. It was one she had worn as a debutante, thus two years out of date and readily identifiable as such by the miniscule puff in the cap sleeves. Downstairs she went, slowly, seeing for perhaps the last time the lobby lit for evening, with its gas wall sconces flaring and its brass floor lamps giving off their steady, steam-generated, electrical glow. The lights picked out every message-disc that crawled along the walls, and shone upon the monocles and oculii of the gentlemen as much as on the ladies’ jewels. Up in the highest windows, those barely more than vents for the day’s heat, small glimmers showed the window-automatons, already crawling along with their brushes scrubbing away any dust and streaks left by the storm. She hoped none had been hit by lightning; the ones that came off her father’s manor in storms died sparking and writhing, their bright metal blackened and warped by the powerful currents.
Contemplating the deaths of automatons, she didn’t notice Clarice and the blue niece—Nancy—waiting at the bottom of the stairs. They stepped forward as she reached the lobby floor.
“Miss Hatter?”
Her first impulse was to brush them and their silly, girlish preoccupations away, but the worry in their faces stopped her. “What is the matter?”
Chapter Eight
MADDIE LEFT CAIRO in the morning, not in a servants’ stacked and airless berth, but in the full comfort of a First Class parlour-stateroom (with balcony) for which she had not paid one slim farthing, and where Obie himself might at some point be required to serve her tea as part of his normal duties. All those column inches devoted to Lady HH’s hats and nieces over the winter had produced this miracle. On the very eve of that lady’s scheduled departure, she had come down with an illness too intestinally disturbing to allow her to travel, and she urgently required a genteel female companion to escort her nieces as far as Venice.
“In Venice,” had said Clarice earnestly, so worried that her usual pinkness was the merest shimmer on her fair cheeks, “our cousin will be waiting for us, straight from England, with her seamstress and the fabrics for our presentation gowns. We’re to be fitted and the gowns made during the journey, for our presentation at Court is the very first Drawing Room after Easter.”
“So you see,” Nancy added, “we really must leave Cairo on the morrow, or we shall miss our only meeting with the Royal Princesses. A snub of that magnitude would disgrace us forever.”
Clarice was watching Maddie with the concentration of a hawk after a pigeon, and misinterpreted the terror that washed over her at the thought of being trapped afloat with exactly the type of people she had promised her father to avoid.
“You needn’t fear you will be stuck with us if Lucy is delayed; she married a Steamlord’s son, and they, you know, are never afflicted with delays because they travel in their own air yachts.”
“Hers is quite large enough for several more people,” Nancy offered, “if you would like to come with us all the way to England.”
As the nieces alternated in cajoling and explaining, Maddie caught her breath and faced her
terror squarely. She had passed the winter unremarked amidst that very class of English traveler, and many of the people here now would be fellow passengers. They would assuredly not look further than the ink-daubed fingers and sequined notebook of the lady journalist. The only risk was the moment of meeting the Steamlord’s new daughter-in-law, and she might be a complete unknown.
“I’ll consider it,” she said, cutting off the girls in mid-flow. “Take me to your aunt.”
They had, and, all arrangements being satisfactory, here she was, floating above the Nile in a blue velvet chair with gold cording, her gaze alternating between the view and a cunning Sphinx-shaped fountain that burbled in the corner. An iced-coffee service stood at her elbow. She stretched, delighted at the temporary return to that world from which she had exiled herself. The nieces shared a smaller bedchamber that opened off her parlour, under her eye and underfoot for the entire passage. Their maid, a dour person of uncertain age, was doubtless accommodated in one of the airless, viewless, cramped berths that might have been Maddie’s lot had the hawk with Obie’s message not been delayed by yesterday’s storm.
The only point of risk was the handover in Venice, but that should prove no real problem. Cousin Lucy had married into an Artificer family, a full generation newer and one rung lower than the Main-Bearings. Father would not be intimate with any family that carried a taint of Spanish in its bloodline, as the Aquatiempe did. In any case, the marriage of the third son had occurred after Maddie’s unorthodox exit from London Society, and Lucy herself was an Old Nobility baronet’s daughter three years younger. Their paths would never have crossed.
Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond Page 5