A Study in Ashes (52 page)

“My mother wishes to speak to you,” Poppy said very correctly. “She is in the small dining room.” There was no need to tell Bucky where that was. As Tobias’s school friend, he’d
stayed at Hilliard House many a holiday, especially since his own family lived all the way up in Yorkshire.

“Thank you, Poppy.” Bucky bowed again, letting a little of the formality drop. “How are you?”

“Well, thank you,” she said in a not-very-convincing tone. “And you?”

“I’ve learned to fly small dirigibles,” he said. “It’s bound to come in useful, if only for scaring pigeons.”

She bit her lip. “Do you know Tobias is gone?”

“I know he left, yes.” His expression grew serious.

Bucky was Tobias’s best friend and was utterly trustworthy. The next words tumbled out before Poppy could stop them. “I miss him. He didn’t even say good-bye and that worries me. I think something horrible happened.”

Bucky leaned very close, speaking softly into her ear. “He’s safe. He’s at the toy factory.
Don’t tell anyone
. His life may depend on it.”

Poppy caught her breath, relieved and surprised, but she was getting used to knowing life-and-death secrets and she gathered herself quickly. She gave a solemn nod. “Thank you.”

Bucky’s mouth quirked, almost smiling. “I’ll go find your mother,” he said with a final squeeze of her hand.

As he left, Poppy peered around the corner of her father’s doorway. Lord Bancroft was bent over his desk, his head in one hand, reading a piece of correspondence. He didn’t look happy about it.

Poppy waited while he finished reading the page, glancing up at the stuffed tiger’s head above his desk. The tiger and her father had a certain resemblance—down one fang, but still feisty enough to put on a good snarl. Her father stuffed the page into a file folder. She noticed an unusual decoration on the page that looked like dragons. “Yes?” he snapped. “Whatever it is, Poppy, it will have to wait.”

“The meal is almost ready,” she said quickly, and then made herself scarce before he could snap at her. She ran back up the stairs to her bedroom to tidy up before she had to present herself in the dining room.

But of course, the moment she pulled the card out of her
pocket, she had to have another look at Mr. Holmes’s letter, which meant opening the monograph to the page on this kind of cipher, which meant pulling out some notepaper to work on and spreading it all out on her bed so that she could look at it all properly. Poppy flopped onto her stomach, chewing the end of her pencil and not even noticing how badly she was crushing the skirts of her dress. Even with the key, the puzzle of the cipher was intriguing—it made her brain tingle like something minty was being poured through the top of her head. It was far, far better than any of the stupid problems her schoolteachers had made her do.

She barely noticed when Dora, the upstairs maid, began pounding on the door. “I’ll be down in a moment,” she called through the door, figuring out the last three letters of the message.

Then she bounced off the bed, hardly believing what she was reading. She gathered up the papers, burst out of her room, and ran down the hall to Imogen’s bedchamber.

As she had hoped, Bucky was there, one of the other maids sitting quietly in the corner for the sake of propriety. Even so, it was unusual for a man to visit the sickroom of any female who was not a close relation, but Bucky was an old friend of the family and he had been her fiancé.

The sight of him sitting by the bed with his head bowed stopped Poppy in her tracks. His hat dangled from one hand, and the other held Imogen’s as tenderly as if they were sitting on a park bench watching the swans. But the look on his face was weary and sad. Poppy turned away, certain she was intruding on a private moment. It suddenly struck her that she wanted a Bucky of her own someday—not exactly the same, but one who would love her this much.

“Poppy?” Bucky looked up, his earlier manners pared down by grief.

She nodded to the maid, who left them. Poppy pushed the door as far closed as she could without
technically
being in a closed room with an unmarried man.

“What is it?” Bucky asked, looking suspicious and not in the mood for pranks.

“I need to tell you something,” she began, unsure how to
proceed. “I’m going to give you some bare facts and I swear these are absolutely true.”

“Very well,” Bucky said, frowning.

“Did you know the clock on the landing was made by Dr. Magnus?”

“Yes, Tobias told me that.”

She was starting to grow nervous, certain he wouldn’t believe her. Bucky had a good imagination, but what she had to tell him was hardly credible, unless you knew everything. “Do you also know that it prints cards in a cipher?”

“Y-e-e-e-s,” he said, drawing out the word. “I’ve seen them many times. I used to all but live here during school holidays, if you remember.”

“Mr. Holmes gave me the key to the cipher,” she said, her words speeding up as she rushed to the end, “and I worked out the message of the card the clock printed when you were in the study with Father.”

Bucky waited. When she didn’t speak—her tongue was momentarily frozen—he made an impatient circle with his hand. “What did it say?”

She fussed a moment with the corner of Imogen’s blanket, then laid everything out across the foot of the bed. “Here is the card, and Mr. Holmes’s letter with the key, and his book, and the answer. Check my work if you must. I’m not making this up.”

Bucky rose slowly, leaving his hat behind on the chair. The room was silent but for Imogen’s soft breathing and the distant bellow of Lord Bancroft calling Poppy to the table. She ignored her father. This was more important.

Bucky’s hand went to his mouth as he read, and then he picked up the paper with Poppy’s answer. As she had anticipated, he looked utterly poleaxed. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s all there. I can do a dance for you, try and convince you what I think, but you’ll assume I’m just playing a game. Then you’ll either grow angry or indulgent, and neither one of those helps us at all. So, you need to decide what this means for yourself.”

He walked closer to the head of the bed, his eyes on Imogen’s face as he spoke to Poppy. “Do you mind very much if
I take the cipher and the card away and work through the message? Just to be sure?”

“No,” Poppy said. “I expected you would.”

“Thank you.” He shot her a glance, his eyes kind. “But tell me what you think this means. I promise not to judge what you say.”

She fidgeted, not wanting to choose the wrong words. For all the times Bucky had come to see Imogen, she’d never talked to him this way. She knew she was on delicate ground. “How much do you know about the night of the air battle?”

He looked at Imogen’s still face, and Poppy felt the full weight of his distress. His features barely shifted, but the set of his eyes and mouth were all at once a dozen years older. “I was at the theater with Evelina and Holmes.”

“Did Tobias ever tell you what happened aboard the
Helios
?”

He nodded. “Yes, and he told me her last words. Your brother believes she meant Anna.”

She couldn’t tell from his voice what he thought of that. “Do you think he’s right?”

“Before the battle, Imogen was having very bad nightmares.” He looked down at his hands, as if not sure how much he should say.

“I remember,” Poppy said, not sure what to think. “A lot of them were about the Whitechapel murders.”

It took him a while to reply, as if he was choosing his words with care. “She thought there was something not quite normal going on. She thought she knew things about the cases she shouldn’t have.”

Intriguing
. “Did you believe her?”

He sighed. “Who am I to say? Just because I don’t understand magic doesn’t mean it’s not there. Dr. Magnus was a sorcerer, for pity’s sake.”

“Someone talented in that way paid a visit to look at Imogen,” she ventured.

“Who?” Bucky asked a little sharply. “You know that could be dangerous. They might not be honest, or you might be caught. Then what would happen?”

“What this person said was that Imogen’s soul was lost and couldn’t get home. I think that’s what happened when she fainted. Something pulled her soul away, and maybe it was Anna.”

Poppy heard the emotion in her own voice and made herself sit back and take a long breath. Nothing good would happen if she got so agitated she slipped back into the role of the strange little sister.

Bucky rose to stand by Imogen, his hand resting on the edge of the pillow. “Dear God.”

To her horror, Poppy was starting to cry.
Oh, no, this is going to make me sound hysterical!
But she was already too far in to quit now, and there was only one more thing she had left to say. She took a ragged breath and finished. “She’s in trouble, Bucky. You fought a duel for her. You can do this.” Then Poppy tensed, waiting for him to stomp from the room as he called her a disturbed little girl.

Instead, he furrowed his brow. “How would I even get to her?” His hands began to shake, and Poppy understood the conversation was finally penetrating his practiced calm. He was a man of logic—the type who could master dirigibles and weapons—but he was also a toy maker filled with imagination. He was starting to believe, and it was breaking him apart.

She swallowed hard, not sure if she was helping her sister or simply causing him pain. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not my role to know. The message wasn’t for me, anyway.”

It read:
Bucky help me Imogen
.

MEMBERSHIP OF THE STEAM COUNCIL, OCTOBER 1889
L
ISTED IN ORDER OF SIZE AND IMPORTANCE OF TERRITORY:
M
R
. J
ASPER
K
EATING
,
K
EATING
U
TILITIES
, G
OLD
D
ISTRICT
M
R
. R
OBERT
“K
ING
C
OAL”
B
LOUNT
,
O
LD
B
LUE
G
AS AND
R
AIL
, B
LUE
D
ISTRICT
M
RS
. J
ANE
S
PICER
, S
PICER
I
NDUSTRIES
, G
REEN
D
ISTRICT
M
R
. W
ILLIAM
R
EADING
,
R
EADING AND
B
ARTELSMAN
, S
CARLET
D
ISTRICT
M
RS
. V
ALERIE
C
UTTER
,
C
UTTER AND
L
AMB
C
OMPANY
, V
IOLET
D
ISTRICT

A
LSO:
S
ILENCE
G
ASWORKS
,
B
LACK
K
INGDOM, SIZE AND REPRESENTATION UNKNOWN

London, October 8, 1889
STEAM MAKERS’ GUILD HALL
2:40 p.m. Tuesday

JASPER KEATING PAUSED JUST BEFORE THE SPOT WHERE THE
Scarlet King had bled all over his office carpet. The body had been removed, the carpet changed, but still he could not help that hitch in his step.
Bloody fool got what he deserved
. And yet …

His foot hung in midair a moment, but he forced it to step down and thus resumed his course through the office. A little
squeamishness was understandable; not even Keating could deny the gruesomeness of finding his reception room splattered with brains. But this superstitious dread of crossing his own floor had to end. Being so off balance wasn’t like him at all.

Frowning, he picked up his jacket from the back of his chair and pushed his arms into the sleeves. Everything hinged on which story he told the world about Scarlet’s death. How much should he say about Roth’s involvement? Was it worth his while to keep his maker’s name out of the press? Should he take the credit himself? Or was blaming a man who was about to be dead anyway the cleanest solution?
Timing is everything
.

Timing and an eye for opportunity. Alice was about to be a young, pretty, rich widow with a titled son and another alliance to make. Keating could use that, and a dose of mourning would force her to remember who was in charge. He was more than a little annoyed with his daughter. She had become far too attached to Roth when Keating required her loyalty for himself, and this premature change of cast would put her in her place.

Of course, Alice didn’t know about the poison yet. Roth had hoped to spare her, and Keating had agreed. He couldn’t afford hysterics right now, although he would miss the touch of drama.
Damnation
.

As Keating finished buttoning his jacket, his gaze fell on a wooden box the size of a carpet slipper. It sat on the shelf behind his desk, right at elbow height. Irritation made him tug at his cuffs, straightening them with a decisive snap. There was only one thing worse than finding out your maker shot his poisoner all over your office carpet, and that was discovering that same maker was a turncoat. Both Roth and the Cooper girl had vanished.