Death on the Lizard

by Robin Paige

  “Thank you,” Jenna said. She shut her eyes for a moment. “You’ll never know what that means to me, Kate.”

  Kate cleared her throat. “Would you like me to talk to Alice, Jenna, and see what I can learn? I offered to lend her a book I saw on your shelf—Alice in Wonderland. If you don’t mind, I could take it to her, try to draw her out.”

  “Mind? Of course not.” Jenna turned to her. “You’ve already met her, and I . . . well, I’m not sure I’m up to it, actually.” A faint pink came into her pale cheeks and she looked away. “Come to it, you see, I’m not even sure I want to know. Oh, I say I do, but—”

  “You must want to know,” Kate said gently. “You’ve agreed to the séance tonight.”

  Jenna smiled thinly. “Maybe I don’t have any faith in automatic writing.” She looked up. “Here comes Patsy with her camera and an armful of flowers.”

  “Oh, don’t get up,” Patsy called, coming up the hill. “I’ve brought flowers for you to hold whilst I take your picture.”

  The photographic session over, the three women made their way back down the hill to the waiting horse and gig. As they went, Jenna told Patsy about the plan for the evening. Patsy, her usual curious self, eagerly agreed to participate.

  “Oh, what fun!” she cried. “Of course I’ll be there!”

  But in spite of Patsy’s and Beryl’s enthusiasm for the idea, Kate herself was not so sure. As she picked her way down the hill, between the mounds of gorse and the piles of ancient rock, Kate could feel the stern, brooding presence of the menhir, their stone gazes darkly fixed on her retreating back. She did not know what they would think (if they could) of tonight’s séance, and of automatic writing, and of efforts to contact the spirit world. It might seem to them to be an invasion of their own sacred prerogative: the power to embrace the unseen, the unknown; the power to commune with the dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The equipping of ocean greyhounds with the Marconi system has taken away part of the dread and mystery of the sea. . . . In April, 1899, the Goodwin Sands lightship off the English coast was struck in a collision, and with her Marconi apparatus was able to send for assistance across twelve miles of ocean. Life-saving stations along the coast of England have received warning . . . that vessels were drifting ashore through the fog, or were threatened by fire on board.

  “Commercial Wireless Telegraphy,”

  The World’s Work, 1903

  Lawrence Perry

  About the time that Kate, Patsy, and Jenna had set off for their day on the downs, Charles and Marconi were driving a hired rig south along the road from Mullion to Lizard Village. The sun was bright and cheerful and the narrow lane led over the windswept moor, open and empty except for scattered flocks of sheep and small herds of cattle. The silence was broken only by the wind and the birds’ musical calls, and Charles understood why this vast tranquility was so highly prized by the people of the moor.

  Charles and Marconi did not experience the easy friendliness which Kate, Patsy, and Jenna enjoyed. The two men had been acquainted for five or six years, but while they shared an interest in wireless and a respect for one another’s scientific abilities, they had never been especially close. In fact, Charles doubted that Marconi had many personal friends—except, perhaps, for the ladies he courted, and since his romantic relationships never seemed to last very long, perhaps even these did not count. He was not a cordial man; he spoke with an aloof, almost chilly reserve. He did not usually initiate conversation, and he answered questions with a measured caution, as if he suspected his questioner of having an ulterior motive.

  Just now, for instance. Charles could not dismiss the possibility of a connection between Gerard’s electrocution at the Poldhu station and Jack Gordon’s fall from the cliff near the Lizard station some two weeks before. He needed to know more about the connection between the two wireless stations, and he hoped that Marconi would speak frankly. Getting information out of the man was a little like fishing olives out of a bottle, but after repeated questioning, he was finally able to learn something.

  The Lizard station had been built some three years previously. The first of eight Marconi stations along the coast, it was located on the high cliff at Bass Point, near the southernmost tip of the Lizard Peninsula, where converging sea lanes funneled the shipping into the Channel. The station was designed to provide ship-to-shore service for the maritime traffic passing Lizard Point, as well as to monitor transmissions to and from the transmitter at Poldhu. And, Marconi reluctantly added, in response to several probing questions, the station was also used to test newly devised receivers, to see if the more powerful Poldhu signal could be tuned out.

  “Newly devised receivers,” Charles said thoughtfully. “That would be something like the tuner Gerard was working on, would it not?”

  “Yes, it would,” Marconi said, looking straight ahead. “But the work is very secret, and cannot be discussed with anyone outside the company.” He turned, his eyes narrowed. “I am sure you understand, Sheridan.”

  “Indeed,” Charles said. “But you must understand, too, Marconi. I cannot help you unless you are willing to take me into your confidence—not about the workings of the tuner itself, but about the procedures by which it was designed and tested, and who might want it. If I don’t know that, at the very least, I’m not likely to be of much use to you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Marconi heaved a weary, beleaguered sigh. “It’s just that I have had to hold my cards close to the chest, as the Americans say, for a very long time. Too many people will do anything they can to get ahead of us. The Americans, for instance. The De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company has put out a five million dollar stock offering. Five million dollars, Sheridan! That kind of money can buy anything.”

  “Even a stolen tuner?” Charles asked.

  Marconi’s eyes widened. “You don’t think—”

  “I think it’s a possibility,” Charles said. “Go on. Who else?”

  “Well, the cable companies are still poking around, causing trouble. And there’s Maskelyne, of course, with his dirty tricks. And Oliver Lodge, with that patent business.” Gloomily, he added, “Even inside my own company, there are disagreements and competition. It isn’t easy to . . .” His voice trailed away.

  “Inside the company?”

  “I’ve been battling the directors since the company was first established,” Marconi said thinly. “I had to fight like the very devil to get the money for Poldhu, because the board thought transatlantic transmission was a waste of time—and some still do. I have to fight for every dollar which goes into new stations and new equipment.” As he spoke, his voice took on power, as if he had been bottling up his anger and expressing it at last made him feel the strength of it. “The directors worry endlessly about stock prices, and making a profit. As if money were the only reason we’re in business!” he added with sudden vehemence.

  Charles thought about Bradford. No doubt the hope of a profit was his chief reason for investing in the Marconi Company. If the other directors were like him, no wonder Marconi was feeling the pressure.

  “The problem is that they don’t really want to spend money on development,” Marconi went on darkly. “The kind of thing Gerard was doing, for instance. I keep telling them that development is what we desperately need. It’s the only thing that will keep us ahead of the pack.” His voice became despairing. “Sometimes I feel I am battling the directors as much as I am battling my competitors. And now that Gerard is dead and the tuner is gone—” He broke off. “It’s almost too much to bear,” he muttered.

  Charles nodded sympathetically. Having a technology as hugely important as wireless in his hands, Marconi must feel as if he himself had to defend it against the whole world. But there were things Charles had to know. “If the Lizard station was used to try out new equipment,” he asked, “is it possible that Gerard might have sent the tuner there for testing?”

  “He would not have sent it,” Marconi replied. “He would
have taken it. Gerard would not have entrusted the testing to anyone else but himself.” And with that, they pulled up in front of the station on Bass Point, and the conversation was suspended.

  The station was little more than a two-room hut, with a hundred-foot mast and aerial alongside. As Charles and Marconi entered, the operator was preoccupied with a flurry of crackling transmissions, punctuated by brief pauses. As Charles’s ear adjusted to the stream of Morse dots and dashes and he began to decode the messages, he realized that there were two signals coming in, one strong, the other much weaker.

  HANG ON OLD MAN HELP COMING LIFE BOAT STATIONS STANDING BY. That was the stronger signal.

  A moment later, the weaker signal came in. FIRE IN MAIN COAL BUNKER IF FLOODING DOES NOT WORK WILL HAVE TO ABANDON SHIP.

  The operator began to pound his key, repeating the weaker message, relaying it up the line. When it was sent, he turned and glimpsed Marconi and Charles for the first time. “Oh, it’s you, sir,” he said to Marconi. “Sorry, I didn’t see you come in.”

  “You were doing your job,” Marconi said with the first genuine smile Charles had seen on his face, and introduced Charles and the operator, whose name was Edward Worster. “What’s going on here, Worster?”

  The operator, small and wiry, with a heavy dark mustache and thinning hair, took off his black Marconi cap and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “French tramp steamer La Belle Marie twelve miles due south, sir. Fire below deck, spreading to her coal bunker. Marie can receive Falmouth all right—Falmouth handles rescue dispatches, y’see, sir—but her signal is too weak for Falmouth to pick her up. I’ve been relaying messages. It’s a bit of a problem,” he added in an explanatory tone, “because Falmouth drowns Marie’s signal when they send at the same time.”

  “Is rescue on the way?” Charles asked. “And what was that about the coastal life guards?”

  “The stations have been alerted to stand by,” Worster replied, “but Marie is too far out for the lifeboats to be of much use. Falmouth dispatched a rescue ship, but it’s going to be a close run thing.”

  As they waited tensely, the receiver once more came to life with Marie’s message: SHIP SOUTHWEST OF US HEADING OUR DIRECTION MUST SEE OUR SMOKE.

  Worster dropped into his chair and began to hammer his key: CQD CQD UNKNOWN SHIP SSW LIZARD HEADING NE FRENCH SHIP LA BELLE MARIE ON FIRE 49 48 N 5 20 W CAN YOU ASSIST.

  The receiver remained silent. “Damn,” Worster muttered. “She must not have a wireless.”

  “Or perhaps not a Marconi wireless,” Marconi said, as Worster bent over his key and repeated the message. He glanced at Charles. “CQD is the Marconi code for a ship in distress. Ships subscribing to other systems are not supposed to use it.”

  Charles frowned, seeing the difficulty created by competing proprietary systems. When it came to desperate situations, such as a ship in distress, competitiveness ought to be set aside. But an instant latter, the telegraph clattered into life, and the doubt was erased.

  HMS HOPEWELL RESPONDING CQD SMOKE SIGHTED ESTIMATE ARRIVAL 20 MINUTES.

  “A British warship!” Worster exclaimed eagerly. “Jolly good, I’d say! She’ll have fire-fighting equipment on board. And if all else fails, she can take the crew off.” He shook his head. “It would have saved a deal of time if Falmouth could have picked up her first CQD directly, and if we didn’t have the interference problem.” He glanced up at Marconi. “Not to be critical, sir,” he said apologetically.

  Marconi patted Worster’s shoulder, beaming, his earlier anxiety seemingly forgotten in the excitement of the transmission. “No apologies, Worster. A splendid effort. Splendid!”

  “Thank you, sir,” Worster said. He took a deep breath. “If you wouldn’t mind watching the key for a few minutes, I’d very much like to go out for a smoke. This sort of work is . . . well, you know.”

  “I know,” Marconi said, pulling out the chair. “Have your smoke, old chap, and take your time. I’ll keep an ear out for more messages.”

  Charles had the idea that Marconi was more than happy to sit with the key for a little while—something he might not get to do very often these days. He followed Worster out of the station.

  “Mind if I join you?” he asked, as the operator took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. Worster shook his head with a grin, and Charles took out his pipe. “Gets a bit tense in there,” he remarked, filling it with tobacco and tamping it down.

  “I’d say, sir,” Worster replied emphatically. “Some days, it’s very tense. Some days, there’s nothing but urgent messages, CQDs, problems with the equipment or the transmissions. Personnel problems, too. Some days, I’d rather be doing something else.” He grinned slightly. “Wouldn’t want Mr. Marconi to hear that, of course.”

  “Of course,” Charles said. “There’s a lot to running a station like this one.” He paused. “Actually, I’m here to look into some of the problems you mentioned. The recent deaths, for instance.”

  “Ah,” said Worster, and let out his breath in a long sigh. “Jack Gorden, eh?”

  “And Daniel Gerard.”

  Worster looked away. “Can’t tell you anything about Gerard, I’m afraid. I was on duty here at the time it happened. Didn’t learn about it until they sent somebody down here to tell me why Poldhu wasn’t transmitting.” He pulled on his cigarette.

  “What about Gordon?” Charles asked. “What kind of a man was he? Given to drink?”

  “Drink? Not really. Oh, he’d have his pint or two, like the rest of us. But not to the point where he might just walk off a cliff.” Worster narrowed his eyes. “They asked me that at the inquest, y’know. And that’s what I said. Of course, nobody knows what happened that night. Nobody saw.”

  “I wonder,” Charles said, “whether he had many friends. Here at the station, for instance?”

  “Well, there was only the three of us: Gordon, me, and John Hunt, who came just a week before Gordon died.” Worster hesitated, chewing on a his mustache. “Jack didn’t know John, and I wouldn’t say the two of us—Jack and me, that is—was friends, exactly. We both worked in the same place, o’course, but not at the same time.” His grin was crooked. “Marconi operators, we’re loners, we are. Rather work by ourselves than with people, by and large.”

  Charles nodded. Wireless operators must enjoy the solitary life, for the job was known to involve long hours alone in a wireless shack, often at some remote spot along the coast. “Is there anything else?” he asked. “His behavior, for instance? Anything out of the ordinary there?”

  Worster screwed up his mouth, thinking. “The weeks before he died, he could’ve seemed . . . well, preoccupied, you might say. Like he had something on his mind he was trying to work out. And there was a time or two when he asked me to swap shifts with him. Day for night.”

  “He wanted to work your night shift? Did you find that a bit unusual?”

  “Right.” Worster answered slowly, as if these thoughts were just occurring to him. “Unusual? Well, now that you ask, I do wonder. I didn’t mind, o’course. I like a good night’s sleep as well as the next man.” He shrugged. “To each his own, though. Jack prob’ly had a good reason. It’s a pity it happened when it did, is all I got to say. He was looking forward to his holiday.”

  “Ah,” Charles said. “And where was he going?”

  “Back to Bavaria. His mother’s fam’ly was there, y’see. He loved the Old Country, and . . .” His voice trailed off and his glance slid away.

  “Right,” Charles said, as a new thought crossed his mind. “Jack was German, then, was he?”

  “Well, not to say German, exactly,” Worster replied defensively. “He was born here, same as me. A man can’t help where his mother was born, or where his people come from, can he?” He threw his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. “Worked hard, showed up on time, Jack did. Too bad, that’s what it was. Poor chap didn’t get his holiday.”

  Charles changed the subject. “Mr. Marconi tells me Gerard brought that n
ew tuner of his down here for testing.”

  “Right. Two, three times. Maybe more. I don’t know anything about it, though.”

  “Did he ever leave it here?”

  Worster gave a short laugh. “Leave it? Never even let it out of his sight. Afraid somebody was going to steal the secret, I s’pose. He was working on the interference problem, you see. Same trouble as we were having this morning. He was trying to come up with an apparatus which would tune Poldhu out.” He paused, then restated his thought. “Which would tune for any specific station.”

  “A challenge, as I understand it.” Charles puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. “Did he succeed?”

  Worster shrugged. “Not as far as I could tell. ’Course, I wasn’t here every time he brought the tuner here. He may have made it work other times, or in other situations.” He grinned crookedly. “I was hoping he’d come up with something, him or Marconi. Guess now it’ll have to be Marconi, although he doesn’t seem to have a lot of time these days for inventing. But at least he’s got Gerard’s work, and all he has to do is finish it.”

  Charles regarded Worster, wondering if he should tell him that the tuner had been stolen. But instead, he said, “This holiday Jack was planning to take. He was coming back, wasn’t he?”

  Worster regarded him for a moment, narrow-eyed. “How’d you know?”

  “Just a guess. He wasn’t, then?”

  Worster shook his head slowly. “Said he’d had enough of telegraph work. Thought he’d do something different.” Inside, the key began to clatter. “Time for me to get back to work.”

  “If you think of anything having to do with either Gerard or Gordon, you’ll let me know, will you?” Charles asked. “I’m staying at the Poldhu Hotel.”