The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts (18 page)

Fellowes looked panicked: “Yes, Ma’am.”

Mrs Frasier chortled: “Ma’am! Capital, capital.”

Georgina seethed inside, but tried to remain the good hostess. On her right, Earnestine was staring straight ahead, her lips disappearing such was her silence. Charlotte – silly girl – was entranced by all the talk of the future, which seemed to be full of toys and trinkets, gadgets and gearing, contrivances and contraptions.

While Fellowes brought in brandy with the cheese and biscuits, Mrs Frasier lit a thin cigar, inhaling deeply.

“Would you like one, Colonel?” Mrs Frasier said offering them to the Colonel, who shook his head. She then indicated Earnestine.

“I don’t smoke,” said Earnestine.

Mrs Frasier corrected her: “You don’t smoke yet.”

As she took another long drag on her cigar, the tip glowed brighter than the candles.

“Should the ladies retire?” the Colonel asked, confused.

“We won’t leave you on your own,” Mrs Frasier said. She poured herself a generous glass of Armagnac. She swirled it around expertly.

“And then came the Great War,” she continued.

Charlotte was confused: “Do you mean the Napoleonic War?”

“The Greater War then.”

Knives scraped across cream crackers. The hall clock chimed the half–hour. No–one dared speak. The chill in the air had nothing to do with ice and bellows this time.

“You’ve had wars in which thousands died. In this war, millions died. It almost never ended. We were in blood stepped in so far that should we wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er. Whole landscapes became indistinguishable from the mires of Dartmoor. The dead envied the living. And it all began here!”

Mrs Fraser struck the table with her fist. Ash fell from her cigar leaving black marks on the tablecloth.

“These people must be held accountable. They will be held accountable.”

She pointed now, stabbing forward.

“We arrest them. We give them a fair trial and then… we change history.”

She took up her brandy again, swirled it and caused the light from the candle to flicker around her haughty features.

“We mould it, shape it, make it our own.”

She knocked her glass back, draining it.

“But Uncle Jeremiah?” Georgina said.

“And Mister Boothroyd?” said Earnestine. The first words she’d spoken since they’d started.

“And the man in the bordello?” Charlotte added.

Georgina was aghast: “Bordello!?”

Mrs Frasier laughed: “Oh yes, the bordello…”

“They’ve not done anything,” said Earnestine.

Mrs Frasier corrected her once again: “Not done anything
yet!”

The woman stood suddenly.

Colonel Fitzwilliam was taken completely by surprise and struggled to get out of his chair.

“We should get some sleep,” said Mrs Frasier. She stubbed out her cigar on her plate. “We’ve a long journey tomorrow. I’ll take the guest room.”

“I’ll show you the way,” Georgina said, dropping her napkin on the tablecloth.

“I know the way,” Mrs Frasier replied sharply. “I have an advantage, you see.”

“You have these thugs to do your bidding,” said Earnestine.

“More than that… I know what happens next.”

“How?”

“Gina wrote it down,” said Mrs Frasier, “but just not yet.”

Mrs Frasier chuckled as she climbed the stairs and unerringly turned towards the East Wing. In her wake, everyone fussed and prepared until accommodation was found for everyone. Fellowes found bedding for the Peelers, who slept on the floor in the library and guarded the hallway. Georgina found another bedroom for Earnestine and Charlotte to share.

And then – “good night” – and Georgina was suddenly alone in her own room.

She changed for bed and then, as was her new habit, she picked up Arthur’s journal and took out the fountain pen. So much to write, she thought, and she needed to do so now, while it was fresh in her memory, but when she tried to make sense of it all, she realised it was all a jumble, events falling over each other in the wrong order in her mind. Arrests before the crimes? It was as if she were reading a story with all the pages in the wrong order.

Moreover, as the pen touched the page, she remembered what Mrs Frasier had said: ‘Gina wrote it down, but just not yet.’

With a numbing shock, she realised that the woman had meant after dinner. Now! This was the very moment that had been predicted.

These blank pages would be where she’d write about the séance, her sisters’ sudden appearance, the flight through the night to the George and Dragon, Uncle Jeremiah’s arrest and Mrs Frasier claiming the guest room.

But what if she didn’t write it down, and instead left it blank? What if, this instant, she dashed the book into the fire? What if? If?

But had events already gone too far: in the blood so deep it’s best go on wading through the mire? Mrs Frasier had said that, hadn’t she? Something like that anyway.

And she’d said that history could be moulded, changed and shaped. Did Georgina herself have that power in this moment? She could write anything, make something up, phrase it such that Mrs Frasier spent the night in the library. Would Mrs Frasier then read the journal years hence, and therefore know, without a shadow of a doubt, that she’d slept in the library, and therefore choose that room instead?

What else could Georgina change?

Could she cross out Arthur going to see Major Dan? Would they then never meet? Have met? But that had happened: cause followed by effect.

Except now, it didn’t.

This wasn’t the fakery of séance and mysticism, easily swept aside by turning up a gas light: this was science and engineering with its chronological mechanisms and time apparatuses. Even so, one of the basic tenets of science, cause followed by effect, had been overturned. They’d not stepped back to a Dark Age, but forward… into what?

Such was the pressure of her hand on the pen that the ink blotched on the page making a mark and recording for all time her indecision.

Miss Charlotte

Charlotte had not slept well: Earnestine snored.

The London they returned to, after a long carriage trip and an uneventful train journey, seemed on edge and very different from the one they had left. People went about their business much the same, the bustle at Paddington was as busy as ever, but it was subdued. Soldiers from another train fell into neat columns to march along the platform, but they were all in khaki rather than their proper dress uniforms. The newspaper hawkers no longer shouted their headlines, but merely held up a sign saying ‘more arrests’ or ‘Lord Farthing to address the House’.

The sisters arrived back at 12b Zebediah Row exhausted and defeated. They had failed to protect one of their own and the fate of Uncle Jeremiah was a mystery.

“We could break into their secret base,” Charlotte suggested, “steal a time machine and voyage to whenever and rescue Uncle.”

Neither Earnestine nor Georgina had the energy to object. Cook made them tea and brought cake, but by the time they’d finished it, they couldn’t remember what sort of cake it had been.

Their unpacking was lacklustre too. Luggage was simply put down rather than everyone’s belongings being returned to their rightful place. The picture of them all by the theatre, which Georgina had removed, remained in her bag and so the blank space on the drawing room wall remained.

Outside, a fog descended.

“Will you be going to work?” Georgina asked.

“I suppose I must,” Earnestine said. “Mister Boothroyd was arrested, but the work still needs to be done.”

“Booth?” Charlotte said.

“Boothroyd,” Earnestine corrected. “And to you, it’s Mister Boothroyd.”

“It was the last thing Uncle Jeremiah said to us: ‘booth’ and before that ‘Saint George’. It’s a clue.”

“Not now, Charlotte.”

“It’s inventions, isn’t it?” Georgina asked Earnestine.

“That’s right, although perhaps it’ll just become a museum for tourists from the future.”

That got Charlotte’s attention: “Will there be ice cream?”

“Charlotte!”

They had a simple meal of bread and cheese with ham from a tin, and then Charlotte was sent to bed.

“This is all jolly unfair!” she shouted from the stairs before she ‘climbed the wooden hill’ completely. They were both being so moody. No–one had even mentioned when she was going to get her personal Zeppelin.

Tomorrow, she thought, would be another day.

Chapter XI

Miss Deering-Dolittle

When Earnestine rose and came downstairs early the morning after next, a Monday, there was a card and a gentleman waiting in the drawing room: it was Captain Caruthers, DSO & bar, MC.

She knocked and entered.

He was standing in uniform looking out of the window, clearly ready for action.

“Captain Caruthers?”

“Ah, Miss Deering–Dolittle, we’re wanted.”

“Jolly good.”

Earnestine let Cook know she was going to be out, grabbed her bag and then joined the impatient Captain on the path to the road. There was a hansom waiting.

As they jostled out into the traffic, Earnestine had to ask: “Can you tell me what this is about?”

“Ah, thing is… I don’t know.”

“I see.”

“Major Dan sent a telegram. Urgent. Hush–hush. All that.”

“I see.”

Earnestine decided to wait patiently. She could do that, she knew: keep her head while all about her were losing theirs. They turned onto the main road and picked up speed, before–

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Caruthers gave her a smile and patted her hand.

This seemed rather familiar and Earnestine remembered a similar journey with this man when they’d been to the theatre.

When they arrived at their destination, Earnestine didn’t recognize the area. It was somewhere near Whitehall, she guessed, and the buildings were tall, stone and Romanesque, like temples, and the one they entered was austere, august and reeked of power and money.

Caruthers took her through the main hall and up a flight of wide, well carpeted stairs. As they passed through, various Gentlemen saw her and harrumphed, flapped their papers and made a point of turning their heads away. This was a realm of men: women were clearly not welcome, so the person they had come to see surprised her.

“Mrs Frasier!”

Earnestine felt her lips tighten: this was the woman who had so rudely invaded her sister’s house and who had, without a moment’s thought, taken their Uncle from them. Here she was, almost larger than life, in the very heart of London.

“Ah, Earnestine, come in,” Mrs Frasier smiled warmly, her gold tooth evident, a replaced canine.

It was a smoking room and, like the rest of the building, it was grand, high ceilinged with enormous oil paintings of serious looking and important historical figures hanging everywhere, each looking down on the meeting with disapproval. The expectations of the past loomed over them. The smoke from Mrs Frasier’s cigar spiralled up to the ornate fresco ceiling.

There were others here, important looking men in well–made black frock coats. Earnestine glanced at the tables and sideboard, but she couldn’t see any top hats or white glasses. Perhaps they had been given to the Porter and stored in a cloakroom.

She stood prim and proper.

“I should introduce these people,” said Mrs Frasier. “But I have forgotten your names… again.”

The gathering smiled at her admission.

“Suffice to say this is a Judge, a Bishop, a Peer of the Realm, General, Admiral, rich man… poor man…. the others are all Lords.”

There was a cough.

“Oh, I beg your pardon… or Members of the Commons.”

The Peer, a young man, came forward: “Miss Deering–Dolittle, we are very pleased you are here. I am Lord Farthing; here is General Saunders, Sir Neptune Atkinson, Admiral Tempington, the Right Reverend Samuel Lilliworth…”

He went on.

Earnestine tried to take them in, but there were too many and they were introduced too quickly.

“Anything to be of service,” said Earnestine, “although I do not understand why I am here.”

“Of service,” said Lord Farthing, his jovial repetition directed to the others. “Now where were we?”

“It’s a question of trust,” said the Judge.

“We cannot trust you,” said Mrs Frasier, “that is the point. This era, as every schoolboy in my time knows, was full of conspiracy: German spies, Russian agents and those followers of Marx and Engels. But there are conspirators in the Entente Cordiale and the Triple Alliance, American industrialists, expansionists on all sides and warmongers, those who want this terrible conflict to engulf the entire globe, for the purposes of profit. They must be stopped.”

“Then I see an impasse,” said the Judge.

“There is a way.”

Everyone was all ears.

“We have decided,” continued Mrs Frasier, magnanimously, “to allow a representative of this time to visit the future, so they can see for themselves the extraordinary progress and the vital nature of our work here in the past. Once they are reassured, we will return them safely. Their word would be your guarantee.”

“That seems to have potential.”

“But it must be someone we can all trust, someone above suspicion, and, as a compromise, someone whom you know is not a temporal agent.”

There were many opinions from the assembled company:–

A Judge: “Perhaps someone from the judiciary.”

The Cabinet Minister: “A Member of Parliament.”

The General: “The military, wot?”

Earnestine put her hands together as she tried to follow the conversation. Opinions had clearly gone round and round in circles for some time.

“I’m afraid we have had to arrest a Member of Parliament. The Chronological Committee will never accept someone from such a historically tainted organisation.”

“Then who?” Caruthers asked.

“A member of a club,” Mrs Frasier suggested

Again, there were many opinions.

“The Reform.”

“I think not. The Cuckoo?”

“The Diogenes, surely?”

Mrs Frasier steepled her hands, imitating Earnestine’s thoughtful posture. She waited until an expectant hush had settled onto everyone assembled.