A Merry Widow

Christmas Day came and went, leaving at the back of my mind a strange floating inebriation, which I knew would never pall. I was buoyed up by the certainty that a cloud had now been lifted from Sparkle of Sound. Jasper and his companion were persistent, they were ingenious, but they could not fight a spirit.

On Boxing Day, the first thing I did was to pay my respects at Uncle Arthur’s tomb. There were no flowers about, so I gave him a little kiss by way of thanks and then, as the shop was in easy view from the park, I built a snowman by way of tribute. I’d have liked to have thanked Harry, too, as much of the magic had been due to his eight little hands, but I think that he had already taken my gratitude as read.

My relationship with Mr Whybrow appeared to be forming much as I’d expected it to. Yes, I was still The Shopgirl, but I knew beyond any doubt that while there were things I could never expect to be, I was still special to him in a way that nobody else could be. That was sufficient for us both.

It would have been nice to get on with assembling my airship, but the pavements were too icy to risk dragging the gondola up. It’d probably have to stay in the cellar until the snow melted. Besides, I owed Mr Whybrow some time as shopgirl. The shop, as I’d expected, was freezing. I stoked up the stove to a blazing heat, and left the office door open in the hope that some of the warmth would carry out.

Inspired by my memory of Christmas Day, I took a fancy to some chestnuts and wondered if he’d kept any in the safe. I looked in an old cardboard box at the bottom and found not chestnuts, but a cylinder phonograph and some cylinders. Sarah Bernhardt – Nellie Melba – I was familiar with the names, but naturally had never heard them perform save that one time Sarah Bernhardt had sung at the workhouse, and instilled in me my own short-lived ambition to sing.

I’d never actually used a phonograph before, but I’d seen Mr Whybrow use his only the previous day, and remembered the particular manner in which he’d poked two fingers inside the cylinders when putting them on their mandrel. I cranked up the spring, being careful not to overwind it, and within a minute, that voluptuous voice which had charmed London and Paris was filling the back office. What a wonderful thing the phonograph was! I was elevated, with the famous and talented performing solely for me. It was so tempting to sing along with the recording, but I dared not. My carol-singing outside the town hall had kept the fire brigade busy all Christmas Eve.

I chanced to look out of the window and was alarmed to see a richly-dressed lady coursing across the shop floor like one of those new destroyers with full steam up.

I snatched off the needle, killing the music, and hastened out to greet her, hoping that I wasn’t blushing. But I might as well not have bothered. Fizzing with excitement, she drove a locomotive over my innocent act.

“Why did you stop? That was heavenly!”

“The master forbids music in the shop, Miss. He says it’s a distraction.” I’d missed the delight in her face until that moment. What a fool I’d been, worrying about getting into trouble. She was just a music lover who’d chanced to hear the phonograph as she’d passed by. I noticed that she was glancing about the back office with a quizzical frown.  “Can I help you, Miss?”

“No – I was looking for the accompanist, that’s all. I don’t see anyone else here……..”

“No, Miss, the Master’s in his workshop.”

Light broke across her face. “Ahh, I see. Your master plays the piano?”

“Yes, Miss.”  I began to wonder who she was, and more particularly, where she was leading.

The lady nodded, apparently satisfied. “That’s excellent. Good accompanists are so hard to find. It’s been delightful talking to you, Miss.” She bobbed her head, and by the time I could acknowledge her compliment she was already steaming out of the shop.

A puzzling encounter; we appeared to have been at cross purposes, of which she had been unaware. But then I heard Mr Whybrow’s footfall on the stairs, and knowing how delicate wax cylinders are, I replaced the phonograph in the safe with as much alacrity as I dared.

By the time he arrived, I was standing dutifully behind the counter, needing only a cartoon halo to portray my innocence. I observed that he was carrying a familiar little parcel under his arm.

“Ello ello ello,”  he merrily effused. Yes, that Christmas Day had certainly worked its magic on him!  “Did I hear a customer just now?”

“Just a lady asking directions, sir. Is that - ?”  I nodded to the parcel.

“Yes, Mrs Beauregard’s work. I didn’t want to send the fobwatch down the Lamson. Didn’t take long,” he snorted. “Gave me a chance to use some of those uvarovites I’d been trying to shift. Will you be all right, delivering this?”

Something sharp transfixed my bowels as I saw his concern writ unashamedly across his face. “Yes, sir. I’m used to riding the bike in the cold.”

“Ah – I was thinking more of our recent – “

Putting our new relationship to the test, I risked resting some fingertips on his lapel. “I’ll be quite all right, sir. I’ll check the Dreadnought over and once I’ve set off, there won’t be much they can do.”

He tried to smile back, but his misgivings remained clear to see. He patted my fingertips distractedly. “I’d be happier if that airship of yours was finished. It’d be perfect for deliveries. Once you’re up in the air, you’d be safe from anything. Except maybe an aerial kraken.”

Or another airship. I wouldn’t put anything past those two.  

“I look forward to finishing it, sir. And thank you for making that possible.”

Bashfully, he looked to the ground. “Can’t have you held up by a minor detail like that, can we?”

I laughed back, provoking a smile to twitch on his face. “A minor detail like an engine? Indeed not, sir.”

I was very thorough when I checked over the Dreadnought, but everything was in place, with nothing missing or added. Thus, the only problem remaining was starting the beast in the cold. Oh, and my necessary lack of skirts while riding it through Caledon, but I wouldn’t have got very far with them on.

At least he’d sent me out in plenty of time to catch the daylight. I kept a weather eye out for traps, but Caledon was quiet, a thousand festive dinners still settling. I had to traverse half the community before I found Mrs Beauregard’s house, and when I did, I wondered if I’d come to the right place.  As I shuffled my skirts back on, I took in the clapboard structure – it appeared sound enough, but in desperate need of a lick of paint. Or three. And the garden was a bleak blanket of snow crowned by a single tree that clung defiantly to its sole ambition of giving the place a spot of colour. And boy, did it have its work cut out.

A loud report reached me from behind the house. I recognised it instantly as a shotgun, and heard it so clearly that I could even distinguish it from that sharper bang particular to a rifle. Pressing myself to the wall of the house, I inched around and peered into the back garden.

I need not have worried. There in the middle of a snowy lawn, stood a lady in late middle-age, reloading a shotgun, with a nearby tree as the apparent object of her target practice or whatever. I thought it best to introduce myself before she could raise the muzzles again.

“Mrs Beauregard?”  I called out. “Sparkle of Sound, with your ring and fob watch.”

The lady turned to scrutinise me as though she herself was suspicious of a trap. Then, breaking the barrels, she hefted her shotgun in the crook of her arm and marched over to me. Her face was lined through stress, but I saw in her an inherently jovial lady who had refused to let life trample her down.

“Ah, there you are, my dear. That’s wonderful. Do pardon the artillery, I was just scaring off the birds. Wretched magpie took my ring, you see.”

From what I’d seen, she was wearing her monocle over the wrong eye. The magpies were perfectly safe, which was more than I could say for anybody else within range of that shotgun which stared at the ground like two disconsolate drainpipes. Caledonians never did anything by halves.

“We call him Zeus,” Mrs Beauregard explained. “My late husband kept him handy when he was stationed in the far east, in his younger days. A double eight-bore is a powerful argument when the locals get restless.”

“But surely, Madam, if the magpies took your ring, it’d be in the nest?”

“That had occurred to me,”  said Mrs Beauregard sourly. “But as you can see, I no longer have the advantage of youth, so I’m not in a position to shin up a ladder. Easier to try and shoot the thing down.”

“I am,”  I offered. “If you have one available?”

Her eyes widened with joy. “I say – would you really do that for me? That’s most kind of you. Just wait here a moment.”

She stomped off back to the house and returned minus Zeus, and toting instead a ladder. “It’s my balance, you see. The first thing to go, if you’re not used to ladders.”

Bracing the ladder hard against the tree, I soon clambered up and located the nest. But that’s all that was there. An empty nest. I shook it about, turned it upside down, held it up to the light, but only a couple of beer bottle tops fell out.

I descended, empty-handed.  “I’m sorry, Madam; if a magpie took your ring, then it wasn’t this magpie.”

The news seemed to cut at her, making her bite off a bout of tears. “Blast. I’m sure they must have taken it. There’s no other explanation.”

“I’ve brought a replacement,” I offered, hopefully.

Mrs Beauregard gave a snort, her grief unmissable. “It’s not the same, though. I’d had that ring since we were married.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Madam.”  A sympathetic lump rose in my own throat. “I do have your fobwatch as well.”

“Thank you, my dear. One moment.”  Mrs Beauregard produced a handkerchief from her sleeve, and blew her nose with a trumpeting that carried across the garden. “Would you bring it inside, please?”

Leaving the ladder where it was, I followed her inside to a parlour that was clean, but as dark and otherwise neglected as the exterior. At least it was warm, though. She took my parcel over to the window where she unwrapped it. I was relieved to see happiness break out on her face as she examined the fob watch.

“Oh, yes – he’s even set the right time. Thank you so much, my dear. I do rather depend on this for the time.”

I gave her a nod to reply, Indeed, Madam  but my attention was drawn to a large astronomical clock standing nearby. It appeared amazingly intricate, and I was sure that in a better light, it would be dazzling, although I couldn’t help finding it grotesque; it wasn’t the sort of thing I’d want on a mantelpiece. Marble was for civic buildings and tombstones, not clocks. Besides, it was also quite inert.

“You’ve discovered my secret, then,”  said Mrs Beauregard, sadly as though silently appending, And now you must die.

But I was only more puzzled. “Madam?”  I nudged.

Mrs Beauregard hesitated before crossing the room to a plain sort of framed certificate hanging up hard by the clock. “This,” she stated simply, unsure whether to cry again or to get angry with me.

“I’m sorry, Madam, I thought you meant the clock. I hadn’t noticed this.”

Suspecting that she might be about to divert me from this mystery, I stepped over to take in the certificate. I scanned the plain, official print in a couple of moments.

“DECLARATION OF SHERIFF AND OTHERS. 

“31 Vict. Cap. 24  [whatever that meant]

“We, the undersigned, hereby declare that  Judgment of Death was this day executed on Cuthbert Beauregard in Her Majesty’s Prison of Newgate in our presence. Dated this 1 day of March 1885.”

Underneath were sundry official signatures. Governor, chaplain – anyone who’d have been present at the event.

Mrs Beauregard took down a great double lungful of air and held it for a few moments, to steady herself. “They pinned that to the gate, the day he was taken from me. Now you know why I live so quietly here. I can’t bear to put that away, and it’s why I never let anybody in. I prefer to be alone with my memories.”

I felt as though I was intruding on something private. “I’m terribly sorry, Madam. I was assuming that you’d meant the clock.”

“Oh, that old thing! It hasn’t worked properly in years. I’ve never let it out of the house. Cuthbert loved astronomy; he’d had to learn the motion of the planets as part of his navigation. The Admiralty didn’t want its young officers confusing them with stars, after all. When I last saw him, two days before – the end, he told me that he’d be found innocent when Venus and Mars were in trine. I thought at first that he was being metaphorical – referring to war and love, somehow; I suppose he had to be cryptic with the warders looking on. It was only afterwards that I realised he was being quite literal. I’ve spent years sitting up half the night studying the sky, but on the one occasion the planets fell into that alignment, absolutely nothing happened. It was just another day, like all the rest since he was taken from me. Bleak.”

She was obviously riding a wild horse with her reminiscences, and I had decided it would be best just to let her ramble. But now she was getting upset and it was time to step in with the Londoners’ Panacea.. “Mrs Beauregard, would you like me to put the kettle on for you? It’s bitterly cold outside.”

“Thank you, my dear – that would be most kind. You’ll find the matches by the stove.”

The kitchen was like the rest of the house. Dark, neglected, yet clean. And thanks be to God, she’d had gas laid on. No faffing around trying to get coal to light in that mausoleum. Her gas jets needed cleaning, though. I used two matches before it became clear that I needed to give the gas more time to build up before applying a flame. So, I twiddled the knob, counted to five, struck a match and –

FWOOMF!

A cloud of town gas exploded in my face, making me step back. My heel jammed down hard into the floor, which gave way underfoot. The boards were rotten. I didn’t even have time to yell as I felt myself falling right through. Luckily, the joists were made of sterner stuff although they were as wormy as the floorboards. When I’d recovered sufficient breath to assess my situation, I found that I was jammed into the twelve-inch gap by my bustle.  Nothing was sticking into me, but I was well and truly stuck fast. Rapid cinematographic images flickered through my mind of Mrs Beauregard’s horror when she found I’d destroyed her floor, Mr Whybrow’s wrath at my carelessness (“Surely you’d have had the sense to be careful in a house so delapidated!”)…….

I was wondering how I was going to get out of there when Mrs Beauregard appeared standing over me.

“I’m sorry, Madam, it gave way under me.”

Mrs Beauregard was quite unabashed at the damage I’d caused. “My dear, I’m terribly sorry. This old place does need a lot of work on it, but I’m afraid I don’t even get a pension from the Admiralty, even though he was on active service.  Here, let me give you a hand – oooooops – “

The lady was no longer young, but her weight told in our favour as she pulled me out of the hole I’d created. After dusting myself down and inspecting my bustle for splinters, I looked into the hole. The joists were uninjured, and I wouldn’t have fallen far anyway. The ground was only about three feet below the floor.

“It’s fortunate you don’t have a cellar,”  I remarked.

“I do, but it doesn’t stretch this far back,”  said Mrs Beauregard. “Don’t worry about the floor, I can soon have that put right. I’m more concerned about your dress. Would you be so good as to turn your back to the light?”

“Don’t worry about that, Madam; it was my own fault.”  Nonetheless, I complied. My view of my own bustle was necessarily limited. As I turned, I chanced to look into the chasm. Something tiny glinted from its depths.

“Yee – ha!”

Poor Mrs Beauregard must have thought I’d gone insane as I dropped to lie on my front and felt around in the hole. But she wouldn’t have thought that for very long. I fumbled around with my fingers, and found what I was looking for. Small, shiny, round and with a rough edge. Triumphantly, I pulled out of the hole and held Mrs Beauregard’s ring to the light.

For a moment I thought that she was going to faint. Her face paled, and set like marble. Then her racing mind found its bearings.

“Ohmygod. You’ve found it!” Seizing the ring from me, Mrs Beauregard kissed it fervently, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I never thought I’d see it again – my dear, you can’t imagine how happy you’ve made me!”

It was left to me to help myself up. “Do you by any chance take it off when washing up?”  I asked.

“Well, yes – my fingers are thinner than they used to be, I worry about losing it down the plug hole.”

“Might I suggest that in future Madam puts it in an egg cup when washing up?”

“You can be sure that Madam will!”  Ecstatically, she clutched the ring to her chest. “And it looks like I owe the poor magpies an apology. No more letting off Zeus at them!”

I took the spare ring back with me. Mrs Beauregard had said nothing about payment, and with Mr Whybrow’s earlier advice in mind, I hadn’t mentioned it either. My delight at having found her original ring was only slightly abated by the darkness surrounding her late husband. He must have done something wrong to have attracted the ultimate penalty, yet she was devoted to his memory. Could he have been innocent? Or was she just too besotted to accept anything wrong with him?

I found Mr Whybrow waiting for me in the shop. He was pretending to tidy his office – I say pretending, as that was something he never did, so I could only assume it was a very clumsily-contrived excuse to wait for me and see for himself that I was all right. This, I pretended not to have noticed as I announced that Mrs Beauregard had not needed the spare ring.

“Indeed?” He raised an eyebrow, inviting me to continue.

I explained what she’d been doing when I got there, and why she was doing it. Mr Whybrow gave a mirthful grunt.

“I can see why she didn’t hit anything; she’s blind as a bat. Missed that rip in your skirt.”  He nodded to my rear side.

“Oh……….. I’m sorry, sir; I’ll stitch it up.”

“In your own time, there’s no rush.”  He bit off what he was going to add. Customers won’t be looking at your rear.  Because he’d have then added, Even if I do. And that would have embarrassed us both. I had the perfect means of breaking the awkward silence that followed.

“Sir – did you know that her husband had been executed?”

“She told you that?”

“She kept the official form they pin up on the prison gates when it’s been done. But it was at Newgate, and she said he was in the Navy, on active service. He must have been an officer; she said he had to know all about navigation.”

A gear or two seemed to have jammed in Mr Whybrow’s mind. “Beauregard, Beauregard………….”  I could see the jammed mechanism stumbling over, “Where have I heard that name before?”

Finally the tumblers dropped. “Oh, dear Lord, yes. I remember now. That’s going back before your time; almost before mine! It depends what you mean by ‘active service.’  He was a commander, but the Admiralty cashiered him and threw him to the civil courts when he was arrested for murder; they reckoned he was spying for Germany. There was a hell of a fuss in the papers. Witnesses not turning up, evidence not being produced – the case had more holes than Aunt Fanny’s drawers. The press reckoned the judge had been ordered to send him down by the government.”

Things began to make more sense. “She clearly still loves him, and I got the impression she accepts he was guilty.”

“Love can be the strongest pull of all,”  Mr Whybrow agreed. “It can drive many to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do, or stretch their faculties beyond the human norm.”

I could understand that; I’d seen it in the workhouse. My own father had put me there out of love, after all.

Mr Whybrow seemed to have misinterpreted my faraway look. At any rate, something must have been on his mind for some time.  “Yes, I expect that one day, someone will sweep you off your feet.”

Resolutely, I shook my head. “No, sir. I’m happy here.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of love. I lost a previous shopgirl to what was originally a casual customer. You’re as human as anyone else; one day a man will spirit you away on a cloud of rose petals, and I’ll give you my blessing.”  He turned to leave, darkly adding, “And on that day, the light will go out of this shop.”  He said it mezzo voce, as though not certain that he wanted me to overhear. But hear it I did.

 “Then you’ll have to learn to trust me, won’t you, sir?”

He spun on his heel, glaring back, but I met his countenance firmly. We remained like that for but a moment, but it seemed to last forever.

Finally, he admitted, “Yes. Perhaps we need to learn to trust each other.”

Then he was gone, leaving me with another enigma. What he had just said could be interpreted in many ways! But he was right. What he was trusting me with, was the ability to define the rules and change them at will. Only a man with a great deal of faith would do that. Or a man prepared to risk losing someone for the sake of seeing her happy ………..

A Ghost of a Chance

[Editor’s note: As has happened before, some of the pics which follow were taken at night, so they’re a bit dark. VB]

I half-fell down the steps to the cellar. Pausing only to shed my skirts, I set the crate carefully on its side with a single heave. The stout industrial lid stood no chance against my crowbar, and half a nerve-tingling minute later, there it was. A meticulously-engineered metal organism raising its twin horns at me, complete with all the nuts, bolts, copper piping, electrical leads and its own dinky little carburettor!

I knew that Mr Whybrow would be preoccupied with Mrs Beauregard’s work, to which he’d have given priority, so I saw no reason to delay mounting the engine. The instructions were as comprehensive as those for the new convenience, and in any case, there was only one place everything could go.

As I bolted it into its mountings, I could already see myself drifting down to land at Llyr, and dancing amongst the ancient stones, and Mr Whybrow’s wonderful surprise in the back yard gave me an added uplift while I worked; I felt a big, effusive happy angel watching over me. My own convenience – nay, a veritable powder-room! Even though I had yet to use it, I felt like a real lady of substance, although I had to see the funny side to it. Most gentlemen give ladies flowers, chocolates, jewellery – he had given me a toilet!

[Editor’s note – if you’re hoping for any pictures of the grand christening, you’re going to be disappointed. Sorry!  VB]

But engines are not simple things like gondolas and flushable conveniences. They have “settings” to consider, and ancilliaries to connect up. These came with the engine, but the evening was well-advanced before it was all in place, with every bolt torqued to its correct tightness. There was a lot to deal with, and unless everything was set just right, it wouldn’t work. I’d heard many of the terms used by Mr Whybrow without actually understanding them myself, but once I saw how everything related to everything else – top dead centre, valve clearance, spark timing etc, it all became quite logical.

All right, I’ll admit it. I couldn’t wait to interrupt my engineering to inaugurate my new convenience. I felt like a queen enthroned as I sat, and gave the chain its ceremonial first pull to unleash two gallons of water with a mighty eight foot head.

[Editor’s note: I relented. A moment like that just had to be captured on glass plate. But did you ever try taking pictures with a tripod camera, in the days before auto-timers, by pulling a string attached to the shutter?  VB]

When all the moving parts were correctly synchronised, bolting on manifolds and exhaust pipes was child’s play.

That just left the propeller. I had to saw a couple of feet from one of Mr Whybrow’s spares before it would clear the ground, but that was simple enough, and it was not long before the gondola was in all respects Ready.

I don’t know how long I spent standing admiring it. What I’d come to think of as a machine that just needed assembly was already an extension of myself, to transmute me into a flying creature, able to go anywhere at will in three dimensions, and with its own yet-to-be-discovered idiosyncracies that imparted it not only life, but personality. The engine had made all the difference; it now had a heart.

The next thing would be to test-run the engine for a few minutes, and then retighten any bolts that needed it. But it was late, and I knew better than to run an engine in the confined space of the cellar. Getting the gondola out wouldn’t be difficult; there was a goods ramp to ground level, and the Golden Grisset  would drag it out easily. A few more instruments would also be useful, and these I’d already set aside from one of Mr Whybrow’s boxes of spares.

Looking forward to the leisurely soak in the tub which I’d earned, instead of the usual hasty scrub-down, I dressed and headed for home, swinging the cellar keys with a playful tinkle as I left the shop. The first snow had already fallen during my incarceration in the cellar (yes, and in that other room) but the cold bite to the air only invigorated me. I was beaming with triumph, almost drunkenly, as my feet crunched through that soft blanket. I realised how remarkable it was that I’d been allowed to work on the airship undisturbed for so long. But then, it wasn’t remarkable at all. Mr Whybrow must have known all the time and privately, been wishing me luck.

Adding to my happy-floaty sensation was the crisp snow. I noticed that Mr Gongfermer had wasted no time in supplementing his income by shovelling the pavements clear. Unlike the unpredictable London weather, snow in Caledon always presaged Christmas and although few had put out decorations as yet, the advent of that day infused the atmosphere with a scintillating, electrical thrill like laughing gas without so many laughs.

My euphoria must have blunted my senses. I was almost home when I detected a soft, heavy footfall behind me, and a bag of some sort descended over me as far as my elbows, where it tightened, paralysing me as fast as a manacle. A hint of gorilla armpits reached me, telling me instantly what had happened.

I hacked with my heel, but Jasper was prepared for the move and I connected only with air. An arm tightened around my midriff, and I was hoisted off the ground. I was jolted about as he ran; his arm ramming into my diaphragm with every step to make me feel like a human bagpipe bellows, but not for long. My spine twisted violently, his grip left me, and I met the ground.

Coarse fabric stung my ears as the sack was snatched off my head. Raising myself to my elbows, I recognised my surroundings instantly by the moonlight falling through the windows. I was in the schoolhouse – an astute move on Jasper’s part; nobody would be coming near this part of the harbour so late in the evening.

I forced a painful breath deep into my bruised lungs. In that instant a shaft of moonlight fell across me as he stepped away, revealing another silhouette slouching on a desk like the school bully. I discerned only her shape, but that was sufficient to confirm her as Jasper’s companion, still in her guise of a maid. Her knees underlined her sneer with their bold indecency; I don’t know where she’d worked as a maid, but it wasn’t in Caledon. She spoke smoothly and level, yet overladen with menace.

“I think it’s time for a settling of accounts, don’t you? And this time there’ll be no avenging angel with a frying pan to save you.”

Jasper leaned over me, treating me to a cloudburst of tobacco breath. “Norra chance this time, my gel. Once ol’ Missus B gets into ‘er cups, she sleeps like the dead until the following sun-up. And in a few minutes, that’s just wot you’ll be doing. Only you’ll be sleepin’ like the dead ‘cos you are  dead!”  He sniggered, overcome with his own mighty wit.

I stood up; they made no attempt to prevent me. But then, with Jasper’s bulk blocking the doorway, my options were limited. Positively constrained, in fact, since he made a show of stropping a long knife against his palm, savouring the glint of the blade in the moonlight.

“Thank God for corsets,”  I told him. “It’s only thanks to mine that my sides haven’t split with laughter.”  My freedom was beyond reach at that present moment, but I could still regain my dignity. With a deep breath to steady myself, I observed, “You’re remarkably ready to hazard your own lives. You can’t kill me without putting ropes around your own necks; everyone here knows about you two. You were that widow who tampered with my bike’s brakes, weren’t you?”

Jasper’s companion stepped forwards, her heels clacking on the tiles. She gave out a chesty chuckle. “I have many guises. And as for our own prospects, I think not.”  She caressed my cheek with the backs of her fingers; suppressing a shudder, I suspected that under other circumstances, she could have taken a different sort of interest in me. “No-one will be finding you in anyone’s lifetime, Miss Bluebird. When you’re put to sleep, it won’t be in your own bed. It’ll be on the sea bed, with half a hundredweight of stone to keep you there.”

Even as she spoke, a noose flicked about my waist and grabbed tight, pinioning my arms. I damned my latest carelessness at having allowed her to distract me while Jasper threw the rope. He yanked yard, almost cutting me in two, holding me fast while his lady wrapped a couple more turns about me and tied a knot. I tried another kick, but she sidestepped easily. Blast!

There had to be a way out of this, but no skill would avail me, held immobile as I was. My mind raced, but Jasper wrenched my attention back to him with a leer which, in the poor light, made him resemble a disinterred corpse. “You and Mister Jeweller should have left alone fings wot don’t concern you. And now it’s personal, too. You cost me my job and took my mate ‘arry.”

What?

“Be glad that’s all I cost you,”  I retorted, livid at his compounding evil with untruth. “And I didn’t take Harry; you poisoned him.”

That got him. Jasper took half a pace back. “You wot?”

“You poisoned my milk, didn’t you? Well, he drank it himself to warn me.”

Jasper astonished me by clutching at his eyes and doubling up in grief. But then, despite his appearance, Harry did have certain endearing qualities. “Oh, my Gawd! Wot’ve I done?”

“Shut up, you fool,”  snarled the woman. “You want to wake up the whole neighbourhood?”

“I’ve killed ‘arry!”  Jasper wailed.

Maybe I should have let him go on thinking that. It might have put a rift between them. But fool that I was, I had to give him the truth, even if it was to let him know that he couldn’t even murder a spider without making a hash of it. “He’s alive and recovering,”  I told him. “I found him in time and managed to save him.”

“He’s gonna be awright?”

“Yes, and for that, you can thank Mister Jeweller. If he hadn’t had the remedy to hand, Harry would be buried in the park. But I’d write him off as lost, if I were you. He’s tired of your uncouth criminal ways. He’s switched sides, Jasper. He doesn’t want to see you any more.”

I let him soak it up as I stirred a dagger in the one thing that meant anything to him. It’s amazing the sort of bond that can arise between the most unlikely partners, but I was going to play on it.

His lady knew that,too. She punched him on the arm. “Put your personal feelings aside, damn you! She’s learned too much, so there’s an end of it - and her. But don’t worry, my dear.”  She caressed my cheek again; a thin smile split her face in two. “You’ll soon be reunited with your darling jeweller. Once you’re out of the way, we’re going to do the same to him. I’m sure you’re quite used to him going on top, eh?”  She gave me a jocular punch on the arm; Jasper snerked like a moron but I could only fume. Those two would never accept the truth, anyway.

She then forestalled any further attempts I might make to protract the proceedings, by flipping out a handkerchief and tying it tightly around my mouth. Starched linen, by the feel of it, which was no small mercy. I think I’d have passed out if she’d used one of Jasper’s hankies. His arms wound around me, almost making me retch as he held me still for his lady to tie another rope about my ankles. I tried kicking out at her, but Jasper gave a wrench to my diaphragm that bought her all the time she needed to lash me to a chunk of masonry which I recognised as having come from our own back yard.

Bundled up in my skirts, Jasper slung me over his shoulder like a palliasse. I wriggled, I twisted, I tried to kick out, but I could only seethe helplessly as he lugged me out to the quayside with his companion toting the ballast. Mr McKew was long in bed, and the police station was unmanned at that time of night. I tried to scream, but that woman had been too good with her gag, and I only made my throat sore.

At the quayside edge, Jasper stopped and started to unsling me.

“Not right here.” His woman’s snarl carried easily on the light but biting winter breeze. “It’s nothing like deep enough. Cross over the ships and put her in where it’s deeper.”

My breathing apparatus, already bruised, was knocked about by Jasper’s shoulder as the gangplank sprung and flexed beneath his step. I tried struggling again, but was held quite fast. Gawd, isn’t there anything I can do?

Then everything happened at once.

A green glare appeared – I imagined that some sort of cavorite bomb had exploded nearby. Jasper emitted a dreadful gargle of pain or panic, while his lady let rip with a scream that made my High C sound like a lullaby. I could not see what had terrified my captors, with my view limited to Jasper’s rump and his alternate feet as he walked, but I wasn’t given time to consider it. The uncomfortable obstruction left my diaphragm, I was in mid-air. But only for an instant; in the next, the gelid waters of the harbour closed over my head.

Christ I’m going to drown!

I’d swear that the coldness of the water stopped my heart as it cut at me like a huge razor blade, adding malicious impetus to the constriction that was already driving my remaining breath from my chest. It was desperate reflex rather than commonsense that led me to thrust my feet downwards into firm-ish mud. I lanced my body upwards, in the hope that maybe my nose would reach the surface, and found two feet of wintry air cutting at my sodden dress. The rest of me was in three feet of steely-cold water with my feet mired in several inches of thick sticky mud.

I blinked water from my eyes to find my captors fleeing for their lives. The green glow still hovered over the quayside, limning a figure I would never have expected to see. Had it not been for the ethereal radiance, I’d have believed that Spring Heeled Jack himself had come to my rescue, but my saviour wore no skin-tight mask, and the leather-suited figure of legend always spewed blue or white flame, not green. However, I was no less glad to see him. It was Uncle Arthur, the very epitome of demonic wrath.

He stood, presiding over the quayside, until my captors were lost to sight and hearing. I suppose he could have gone after them, but he couldn’t have frightened them any more than he already had.

I was completely unafraid of him as he remained for a moment, staring into the distance to reassure himself that their absence was guaranteed, and then turned to me and cut a bow. I was never so glad to see someone, although I’d hardly expected my saviour to be a ghost. A waft of breeze cut through my sodden dress, sparking an electric shiver. “Sir, can you help me – “

He held up a patient hand. Wait.

Then he was gone and with his departure, went all life from the harbour.

Grateful as I was regarding my rescue, and stunned with disbelief, I began to fret again. I couldn’t move the gag, the quayside was too high up to reach, and my already-numbing fingers were held beyond use by the bonds that were gripping tighter. I don’t know why those two had worried about being overheard; not a soul was in earshot. So there was nobody to get me out of the water before I succumbed to hypothermia. Above me, the snow clouds cast their frosty petals dispassionately over SouthEnd and over me; I couldn’t even blow away the cold tickly flakes that landed on my nose. I began to wonder if it was true that freezing to death was like falling asleep, but then most of those people weren’t standing upright in water – would I actually drown?

Then a fresh footfall clattered from the street. Urgent, and wonderfully familiar. Even in the sparse light, I recognised Mr Whybrow’s silhouette as he ran around the corner, paused to dart searching glances about the harbour, and bolted over to the quayside. I noticed a revolver in his hand; somehow he had learned about my predicament, as he had arrived expecting trouble. So that was why Uncle Arthur vanished so quickly; it was he who had summoned Mr Whybrow.

He wrestled the gag from my mouth and at my gasp,an icy girder transfixed my lungs. I tried to speak, but the words lacked the strength to emerge from my shuddering chest. Mr Whybrow thrust his revolver back inside his coat, and leapt into the water beside me. “Don’t move; I’ll soon have you out of here.”

He dropped below the surface and my deadened ankles felt some furtive activity about them; I remembered that he always carried a penknife. There was a brief tugging, and the rope fell away about my feet. Then strong, agile fingers probed about my waist – another tugging, and my arms were freed.

“Come on. Can you climb out?”

I tried to answer, but again, could not speak – I wasn’t even sure what I was trying to say. My whole body felt as though it belonged to someone else, it would no longer obey me at all.

Mr Whybrow muttered, “Of course she can’t, you daft ha’p’orth.”  Then he scooped me up in his arms and carried me up the slipway, to the street. “I don’t know,” he chode, mirthfully. “Two dousings in a day, and the second one, you dragged me in with you. Thanks so much.”

I knew that he was not really angry; just trying to cheer me up, but I could not reply. The water, which had been a single frigid corset on my body, sucked up the gentle wintry breeze to penetrate to my very bones. Although he was as wet as I was, I snuggled my head into his waistcoat as he carried me through the snow to my house. The silly idea ran through my head that at that moment, I could have said absolutely anything I pleased, and even if he understood it, he’d just ascribe it to the feeble ravings of a half-expiring mind. As it was, I contented myself with calling down a thousand feverish blessings on the confident arms that were bearing me home, and the great heart warming my ear inside his sodden waistcoat.

He set me down at my front door; my quaking hand fumbled the door key from my blouse and passed it to him.  He ushered me inside and made straight for my candle, which he lit with a hand which was nearly as unsteady as my own. “I think I can guess what happened. Some of it, anyway. Can you speak yet?” He was plainly fighting to keep his own voice steady against the frigid hands squeezing his lungs.

“Jasper and that woman,” I mumbled. Gawd, I sounded almost comatosely drunk!

Mr Whybrow took my candle to the fireplace and gave me a stern look up and down. “Get those things off – all of them. Just chuck ‘em into a corner for now. Then dry yourself thoroughly while I get this fire going.”  He managed to look authoritative, even while dripping puddles all over my parqueting.

“What about you, sir? You’re as wet as I am.”

He shook his head.  “You were in the water for longer. Don’t worry about me.”

Without the wind to play on the chilly wetness, my strength and control were already returning, but he was right. I stumbled into the kitchen and rubbed my hair briskly with a towel while he rustled old newspaper and clinked coal on top of it.

“Someone fired an empty tube up the Lamson,”  he called out. “I thought you were in trouble, but finding you as I did, I’m a little curious as to who fired that thing.”

Wrestling free of my blouse, I drew a deep breath for strength, and gushed, “They were waiting for me outside the shop – took me before I was ready. They were going to drop me off Old Stumpy, but Uncle Arthur turned up and scared them away.”

Even from the next room, with a wall between us, I could see the respectful roll of his eyes. “Well, well. Someone’s watching over you, then.”

It certainly looked like there was more to being dead than startling the occasional shopgirl in her own home. Then I remembered the rest of it. I leaned out and told him, “Yes, but sir – they know we’ve discovered their racket. They were going to drop you in the water after me, and they’re after Mrs Boltclyster, too.”

“Christ.”  He steadied himself. “Have you got your revolver?”

“It’s in the shop, sir.”

“A fat lot of bloody use it is there. All right – I’d better check on Mrs Boltclyster. Lock the door after me and don’t answer it until I’m back.”

With that, he bolted out, although I think we both knew that those two had been too badly rattled to bother with Mrs Boltclyster for a few days. At least he was considerate enough to shut the door behind him.

My fire was a merry blaze of newspaper; the coal was just starting to catch. I gave it a few puffs of bellows for encouragement, and returned my attention to myself. I peeled off my horribly clammy underthings and stockings; it was like shedding a layer of malaria. The growing flames played over me as I briskly towelled myself down, and wormed into my nighty.

My clothes having been in the harbour, I squished the lot into a bucket and filled it from the kitchen pump, adding a tablespoon of Jeyes’ fluid to be on the safe side, and then collapsed gratefully into my chair to watch the flames grow. I remembered from my workhouse days that if someone had frozen near to death for any reason, one of the best ways of restoring their body heat was “shared warmth”  which in our case, meant somebody particularly close climbing into bed with them when the lights were out – in living memory, it had been common to use the servants as bedwarmers, so nobody condemned the practice. But that option was not available to me for two reasons. One was that it only worked if you were unclothed, otherwise your clothes would insulate your warmth from each other. What was more to the point, were I to suggest such a thing to Mr Whybrow, I would get warmth a-plenty from his volcanic eruption.

I began to take stock of my situation, wondering if Jasper had really been frightened off for good, but a brisk knock came at the door.

“Miss Bluebird? It’s only me.”

I admitted Mr Whybrow; he ambled over to the fire and warmed his hands. He had dried himself and changed; there was nothing to show that he had been in the harbour. “Mrs Boltclyster’s all right, and she keeps pretty good precautions of her own. Bucket of horse manure over the door. If I hadn’t known how her mind works and checked, I’d have got it all over me. Here – “  He delved into his pocket and produced a bottle of brandy.  “The best medicine known to man. Park yer bum a moment, will you?”

He disappeared into the kitchen and returned a moment later with two glasses with an inch and a half of amber promise in each. “No soda, no water, just the pure stuff. But sip, don’t gulp.”

Some control restored, I lowered myself into the chair and did as he suggested. The liquid soaked into my bloodstream quickly, coursing through my system like a gentle liquid fire.

“So Mrs Boltclyster’s well?”  I nudged.

“As well as someone’s likely to be when they’re aroused at this hour and have the disposition of a hung-over lioness,”  Mr Whybrow grunted into his glass. I guessed that he had not been received with any gratitude, even though he might have saved her life. “I’m tempted to put the authorities onto those two, but they’ll have vanished by now. That’ll only make it more difficult to get any response from officialdom when it is  in a position to do some good.  So they know that their cache has been discovered?”

“Yes, sir. We hadn’t disturbed anything, they must have left something to warn them that someone had been there.”

“Probably a thread crossing the threshold. The oldest trick in the book.”

Cupping my glass to warm the brandy, I leaned forwards urgently. “Sir, who is  that woman?”

“Her name?”  Mr Whybrow gave me a curious squint, as though I’d confronted him with an intractable crossword clue. “I know of several. She changes names like underwear. Tell you what is puzzling me, though.”  He swirled his brandy about the glass and studied the clavichord, as though the answer to his quandary was written on the lid. “I’m impressed that Uncle Arthur could fire the Lamson. All right, we know little about spirits, but – well, he is one, isn’t he? I wonder how he managed it?”

That point should have occurred to me. “I don’t know, sir. Maybe desperation gives them the strength they need?”

“Like a seven-stone mother can lift a half-ton cart off her infant? I have to admit the possibility, but – “  He turned it over again, unconvinced. Then he looked at me sharply, but with kindness in his eyes. “Miss Bluebird, you are quite obviously in immediate peril of your life. Are you quite sure you won’t accept my offer to retire to a different part of the world, at least until the danger is past?”

His words, and the sincerity behind his eyes, gave me the strength which the brandy had yet to impart. I stood and took his hand in mine, fixing his stare sternly with my own. “I’m in no more danger than you are, sir. I won’t be driven away from y – “  I caught myself and hastily resumed. “ - everything you’ve given me; nor will I leave you to face them alone. Unless you fire me, we’re going to see this through together.”

I think he’d picked up on my hesitation, although I suspect he’d have behaved no differently had he not. To my surprise, he responded by doing something that he’d never done before.

He clamped his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. My automatic reaction was to pull back, but I stifled it instantly, lest he react to my reflexive panic and drop his hold.  To make sure that my true wish had been understood correctly, I nuzzled into his cravat. He, too, tensed a little, but relaxed. I guessed that he’d been prepared for either reaction from me, but had been hoping for the positive one.

Softly, as though he had not meant me to hear him, he murmured, “Good. If any harm came to you, I wouldn’t rest until I’d killed him. And if he succeeded in driving you out, I’d shoot him anyway, however I find him at the time.”

I don’t think he noticed my slight tensing as I caught my breath. The law would look leniently on someone who shot a danger to life, but only when that danger was immediate. I’d seen the depth of his care exhibited in numerous little ways, but I knew from his dreadful stillness as he spoke, that it went right to the very core of his being. He would carry out his promise as surely as night follows day, and I had never thought that any man would risk a visit to Mr Billington over me. But then, a man who single-handedly builds his shopgirl her own convenience tends to keep his promises.

[Editor’s note: James Billington served as executioner in the United Kingdom from 1884 until his death in 1901. I hope the reader will understand the difficulty in recreating Mr Billington, when the only remotely reliable pictorial record of that individual is a drawing of middling quality. The execution chamber, however, IS a fairly faithful reproduction of a standardised British facility which was in use in the 1890s. Forget the multiple-coiled knot; the UK had long abandoned those by this time. VB.]

I took advantage of Mr Whybrow’s cravat to hide the awe which, unbidden, froze my face. He must have read it from my stillness, as he changed the subject.

“How’s your patient, by the way?”

I flew back, almost stepping into the fireplace. “Oh, my God! I’ve been sitting – “

I looked back to the chair, but there was no appalling travesty to haunt me for the rest of my life; just a few crumbs of charcoal biscuit, for which I thanked God. It had taken that mortifying shock to show me just how much I cared for something that I was too scared to pick up.

Mr Whybrow spoke for me. “Good Lord; he’s gone.”

“So I see.”  I hoped that I didn’t sound as horrified as I felt. It could have happened so easily.

“Jasper couldn’t have got him, your door was still locked. You did say he was recovering; he’s probably scuttled off somewhere.”

“Of course, that must be it,”  I sighed. I knew then how the Lamson tube had come to be fired. And it wasn’t by Uncle Arthur.

Mr Whybrow made a point of checking his watch. “Well, life has to go on. If you want a lie-in, I shan’t object, but I reserve the right to call for you if I get too worried.” He sounded slightly awkward, as though looking for an excuse to be elsewhere. Twitching a sheepish smile, he added, “If you have any trouble getting to sleep, think about your airship. Oh, and don’t leave this behind again.”

Fishing my revolver from his belt, he handed it over and was gone.

He was right. Jasper wouldn’t try for me in my bed again after what had happened the last time, and there was no point in dwelling on my latest escape, narrow though it was. I did, however, notice that Mr Whybrow had not repeated his previous offer of sanctuary in his own home. I suppose I had been somewhat careless with his pride, in the way I’d handled that.

The room suddenly felt dead, as though something was missing. Well, it was. I’d got used to my little eight-legged patient, although cold commonsense told me to be more realistic. I addressed the empty room. “Sorry, Harry; you’re as much a victim as the rest of us, but don’t think of settling down here. You and I just wouldn’t make good bedfellows.”

To be sure, I tore the sheets from my bed and searched thoroughly before settling down to what remained of the night.

All Panning Out for the Best

All right, first an apology for the slight hiccup in chronology here. I knew that my Christmas entry would need a lot of drafting and sundry preparation, so I thought it would be a good idea to get that out of the way first. I bounced the idea off Mr Whybrow, who leapt at the chance of something original to put with the firm’s Xmas card. As for the bent chronology, he told me not to worry. “In the years to come – early 1970s, I believe – a couple of blokes will write a trilogy called “Illuminatus”  in which the chronology appears to have been written on hundreds of cards in penny packets, tossed into the air, and then incorporated into the book in the order which they were picked up from the floor. Don’t let that put you off reading it, though.”   No, sir. All I have to do is to be sure of living another seventy-five years.

I do sometimes wonder about that man. He knows too much about the future. Could it be that spirit mediumism is one of his talents? Or does he have a time machine lurking somewhere in the cellar?

Anyway. The Christmas entry, which through necessity came early, contained nothing which needed to be led into which the reader wouldn’t have known about already, particularly since our two protagonists were quiescent over the Christmas period. Similarly, as you’ll see, what follows between now and Christmas contains nothing which will pre-empt or change that day in any way whatsoever, so the twenty-four hours over Christmas can quite safely be said to be self-contained, and a brief transposition in time won’t confuse the reader. If you aren’t confused, please pardon a brief recapitulation for those who are.

Mr Whybrow had discovered a previously unknown tunnel system which was used by Jasper the (former) Postman and his mysterious female companion, we’d deduced that those two were pilfering legitimately-smuggled goods (if there is such a thing) in order to go into “distribution” on their own account, and they had decided that Mr Whybrow and I constituted An Obstacle To Be Removed, thus their urge to Remove us came not entirely through thwarted romance. That aspect had only been a failed ploy, not a motivation on its own. Consequently, I’d been nursing Harry the spider, who’d bravely taken my poison to warn me of its presence, and Mr Whybrow and I were regarding the world with eyes in the cheeks of our fundaments, as Mr Whybrow would put it.

So, there I was, standing in the shop and fretting about my patient – quite unnecessarily, I’ll admit, since his rapid ingestion of my charcoal biscuits indicated that he was quite definitely recovering. I could not help wondering who that woman was. She was clearly known to Mr Whybrow, and I suspected that he was keeping some details to himself. Why that should be, was not my business to inquire. He valued his privacy, and I valued the kindnesses he’d shown me. What I did know was that those two would not give up until Mr Whybrow and I were in no position to inconvenience them any further.

Mr Whybrow was working in the yard – suspiciously quietly, I thought, leaving me starting at every footfall and rattle of wheels that went by, and with my trusty Boxer revolver under the counter, always within arm’s reach.

I tried to distract my nerves, with some success, by planning the work outstanding on my airship. After all these weeks, it now looked like an airship, albeit in pieces, and I had every confidence that it would work. In between chewing over mechanical minutiae, I indulged in a minor amusement in the back office.

My divertissements were interrupted by the arrival of a messenger boy, bearing a small parcel. Without thinking, I signed for it, thanked him, and prepared to open it. Then I hesitated and started thinking. For its size, the parcel was heavy and solid. I remembered what Mr Whybrow had said about bombs, and almost dropped the bloody thing as the little package took on a whole new and dreadful significance.

I should have consulted Mr Whybrow immediately, but since my refusal of his sanctuary, he’d been behaving as though he was a little uncomfortable about me, and consequently, I was uncomfortable being about him, as I hadn’t worked out how to rectify the misunderstanding.

So it looked like this problem was down to Shopgirl. If it was a bomb, it could have a timer to it, so speed was important, although it couldn’t have had a tilt switch or the delivery boy would have triggered it. In fine, with care and a judicious haste, it should be safe to handle.

Gingerly, I picked it up and carried it out to the harbour. Relying on the heavy stonework for protection, if its sudden immersion should set it off, I dropped it in the water and threw myself flat.

Absolutely nothing happened. Well, apart from a saucy little splosh of a probably innocent parcel entering the water. Raising myself on my elbows, I noticed Mr McKew giving me a very curious look from his shop.

I didn’t want to create a panic, so I gave him a cheery wave. “I tripped over myself!”

He rolled his eyes and went back to stirring batter, which left me to contemplate my next action, which I’d been hoping to avoid. Now I would have to notify Mr Whybrow.  I brushed the dirt from my knees and rapped on the door. As I’d expected, his response was sharp and best described as “irritated.”

“What is it?”

“A parcel arrived, sir.”

“So?”

I cleared my throat. “In the light of previous experience, I judged it wise to take precautions.”

Silence. That, I did not  find favourable.

“What did you do?”  he asked, suspiciously.

I told him. Forcing a brightness I didn’t feel, I added, “And it didn’t explode, sir!”

There followed another silence. Longer, this time. “Did you read the return address?”

Oh, Gawd!  “No, sir – “

Mr Whybrow emerged, wriggling into his frock coat. “If that was what I think it is, you won’t be popular.”

Without another word, he stormed out to the quayside and made me point it out. Luckily, I’d dropped it right at the water’s edge, where it was relatively shallow, so it was easy to see.

Mr Whybrow tapped a toe, patiently. “That is not a bomb, Miss Bluebird. Kindly retrieve it.”

“But I can’t reach – “

He met my horrified look with one that made me shiver. Unforgiving and as yielding as the Forth Bridge. I knew what I’d have to do.

I bit off a sigh as I dropped my skirts and stockings. It had been my own silly fault. The cold water clutched my feet in hands of steel as I lowered myself in. It was shallow enough to stand in, and after a futile attempt at moving the parcel with my toes, I accepted that there was nothing for it but to undergo total immersion, as the Baptists say.

I tried not to think about all the things that must have gone into the harbour over the years. I closed my eyes tightly, fumbled around with my fingers, and quickly located the parcel, which I passed up to Mr Whybrow. I looked up in the hope of getting a helping hand from the water, but he was preoccupied with the parcel’s return address, and took no notice of me until I’d clambered out by myself.

The look that he gave me, as I stood before him dripping all over the harbour, was almost sneering in its condemnation. “I’d been expecting this, as you’d have known if you’d been keeping up to date with the correspondence. You’d better stoke up the stove in the back office.”

Without another word, he marched back, leaving me to follow. My feet proclaimed my ignominy to the world by splatting wetly with every step as I carried my skirts, which I dared not try to put on as I’d only make them as wet as I was. He did not speak, but he didn’t need to. His silence was a greater testament to my disgrace than any words could have been.

In the back office, I threw a few shovels of coal into the stove and watched, shivering, as he gingerly unwrapped the parcel. It contained a large copper-cased fobwatch and, with the accompanying letter, a drawing which had been slightly smeared by the water. It appeared to be of a ring, with two parallel bands of tiny stones sandwiching a third band of larger gemstones; the author had labelled all the little ones with a key down the margin, in two columns. The design was familiar to me, but I was too unsettled to think clearly.

“Thank God she’d anticipated the Post Office leaving it out in the rain,”  said Mr Whybrow, sliding the letter towards me. “The fobwatch would have been salvageable, but another ten minutes would have been too late for the drawing. I think that will explain all.”  He nodded to the letter; although the paper was barely damp, the writing had started to spread and blur.

“Dear Mr Whybrow,

“I enclose my late husband’s fob watch, as agreed in our recent correspondence. I suspect that it simply needs a good clean, as indicated by the gradual nature of its failure to work, although I leave this matter to your judgment which I am content to accept. 

“Of more importance to me is the ring which I lost. My own skills with pencil are not remarkable, but I trust that the accompanying drawing will furnish sufficient information as to enable you to supply a replacement. The metalwork, as you can see, is not complicated; the true significance lies in the stones themselves.

“Should you encounter any difficulty, please let me know. Otherwise, I await your delivery at your soonest convenience.

“Yours Faithfully,

“E.M. Beauregard (Mrs)”

Then I remembered where I’d seen the ring before.  Mr Whybrow, seeing recognition dawn on my face, bore me out.

“The middle stones are Diamond, Emerald, Amethest, Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire and Tourmaline,”  he supplied. “’DEAREST’ is an old device, I’ve been selling ‘em myself for long enough. Sooner use Tanzanite, but many see it as a fancy modern stone and unbecoming to a romantic testament. The outer stones are the names of herself and her late husband, of course, spelled out in similar fashion.”

“And she lost the original ring?”  I said.

Mr Whybrow nodded – his reticence, I suspected, was more out of sympathy with the widow Beauregard rather than through disparagement at anything I’d done. “The fobwatch’ll get a clean now, whether it needed one or not. That should be no problem. But the ring will be a different matter, with only her drawing to go on. She’d had the original for forty years, and couldn’t afford to insure it; I would like to make a half-decent job of it.”

“Then – if it isn’t indelicate, sir, if she couldn’t afford the insurance, how does she hope to pay you?”

His face softened as he turned to me, all acrimony forgotten. “You can probably guess. She lost her husband ten years ago, killed on active service. She lives very quietly and sees nobody, so you’ll be honoured by getting to see her. I never have, we’ve corresponded only by letter. Don’t tell anyone I’ve accepted her IOU, by the way, or they’ll all be trying it on. I’ve had too many fluttering their eyelashes and then throwing a fit because they can’t get free work out of me.”

That was one IOU which I knew would remain unpaid for as long as Mr Whybrow lived. He pocketed the parcel’s contents and turned to go back to the yard; Mrs Beauregard would receive his attentiion in his own good time.

“Won’t this interfere with your work in the yard, sir?”

My probe failed with a big Thud. Mr Whybrow, blocking the view of the yard with his body, half turned to me with a chuckle.

“Keep trying, Miss Bluebird. And since  you ask – not at this stage; in any case, Mrs Beauregard is in no desperate hurry. Now go and change, you’re making my office all wet.”

I did so, after a nip of Mr Whybrow’s brandy in case I’d ingested anything nasty from the harbour. I felt such a fool, and it would have to have involved a particularly “sensitive” customer. However, Mr Whybrow knew I’d acted for the best, or his explosion would have been heard across the district.

I was still brooding on this latest embarrassment when I became aware of a pair of customers at the door. I almost leapt out of my skirts, and had to stifle a reflex grab for my revolver. What had Jasper done to my nerves? These couldn’t possibly be our adversaries – the lady was too old and stout, and the young man with her too lean. No disguise could remove four stone from Jasper.

Hoping they had discerned nothing of my fright, I gave a shaky curtsy behind the counter.

“Good day, Madam, Sir. May I be of assistance?”

The lady gave me a good-natured beam, although her companion had a cast to his eye which I did not trust. Well, both eyes actually, but they were so close together that the difference was nil.

“We’re looking for something suitable for vampires,”  she explained.

Vampires? All right. Mr Whybrow had warned me that we could expect to see those amongst the clientele. He had taught me about Mr Stoker’s recent novel and Calmet’s Histoire des Apparitions, and neither source had covered costume jewellery although this lady’s fashion sense appeared to be contemporaneous with Calmet’s treatise of a hundred and fifty years ago.

“Did Madam have any sort of thing in mind?”  I flannelled. All I had in mind was inverted crucifixes, which I knew for a fact that Mr Whybrow would not countenance.

“We were hoping you could show us,” returned the lady, pleasantly.

Boing!  The ball bounced back into my court. Oh, Gawd. Ah, just a minute.  These two were obviously harmless; I stepped out from behind the counter. “We have some pentagram ear pendants which might suit; if Madam would be so good as to follow me?”

I led the way up to the top floor, where all the loose ear pendants were situated, and took care to remain ahead of the couple. They were not the two I was dreading, but something was not right about them. I kept my unease to myself as I stood before the ear pendants, proudly explaining, “And here we are, Madam. Gold pentagrams with Barney Bat hanging from a crossbar – “

Something else had been nagging at me, and I realised what it was. Oh, you silly little fool!  “I’m afraid the pentagram has one horn exalted, Madam –  “ I broke off my apology under her quizzical frown. “Is something wrong?”

“One horn exalted?”  queried the lady. The young man with her didn’t appear to have a clue what I was talking about, either.

“One point sticking up,”  I explained, grateful that Mr Whybrow’s tuition had been so thorough. “As opposed to two – one being the benign pentagram, and two being the – ah, other variety.” A big alarm bell rang in my head. They should know this themselves!

The lady’s booming laugh resounded from the ceiling.  “Oh, I see. That. Yes, of course that’s the sort I meant. We’re nice  vampires.”

 I – see. Everything about them seemed wrong, but until they revealed their true intentions, they were just two somewhat extraordinary customers. And most of our customers were extraordinary.  “One moment, Madam, I’ll get them down for you.”

As I reached up to remove the ear pendants, a shadow fell over me. A small patch of my throat began to feel warm, and I knew instantly what was about to happen. I steeled my every muscle, and spun on one heel to drive my elbow into the diaphragm that I knew would be there.

It was. The younger vampire folded in two like a glove. Without pause for consideration, or paying any heed to the lady’s appalled expression, I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hurled him as far as I could. Unfortunately, there was a window in the way, and doubly unfortunately, it was closed.

But the tinkle of glass meant nothing to me as I glowered at the matron. I was still searching for a suitably diplomatic follow-up when she gave up searching for anything from “1001 useful phrases for Self-Righteous Customers”  that might have helped her, and settled for “1001 useful phrases for Self-Righteous Minor Bureaucrats”  instead. Luckily, she wasn’t the hysterical type or she’d have followed the young oaf out of the window.

“I can’t believe my own eyes! You’ve laid hands on my son!  I shall call a constable at once – they’ll hang you for this – “

A groan reached me from the street below. “Put a bung in it, Madam! He’s as sound as you are, although you won’t be if you try what he just did. Or didn’t you teach him never to bite people without an invitation?”

She could hardly dispute the fact that he was too alive to pose the ultimate threat to my well-being. “Your master shall hear of this. Fetch him at once! At once!”

Oh, the sort who was always in the right. Especially when she wasn’t.  “That  will be a pleasure, Madam.”

We arrived on the ground floor, with the matron trumpeting like an elephant with piles, as her son stumbled in from the street, shaking broken glass from his collar.

“Are you all right, Sweetums?”  cooed Mama.

“Uh, I think so. Landed on my head.”

That would explain a lot. “Sweetums,”  for the love of God!  Stiffly, I marched behind the counter, simmering as Mama fussed over her offspring.

“Did the nasty girl hurt you, then? Don’t you worry, she’ll never work again if I have my way.”

Her son soaked it up, stretching a dreadful countenance of misery that would have got him expelled from even the worst amateur dramatic societies. He must have been in his early twenties, and I was sure he would still be sleeping with his teddy bear, had those been invented at the time.

Mr Whybrow burst in from the back office. Of course, he had heard all that had happened on the ground floor, and the crash of the broken window.

Mama wasted no time. “This gel of yours just assaulted my son – threw him clean through the window.”

“From the second floor,”  Junior put in.

Mama waved him to silence. “I demand that you fetch a constable at once! She’s not fit to be at large.”

Mr Whybrow ignored her and turned to me. “Are you all right?”  he asked me, quietly.

“Vampires,”  I mumbled. “He tried to bite me.”

He spun to the injured party. “What do you have to say about that?”

Junior rolled two large puppy eyes to Mama. “Of course I didn’t. You tell him, Mama.”

Mama folded her arms and snorted as though her son had said all that needed to be.

Mr Whybrow told her, “If my shopgirl defenestrated your son, then he not only deserved it, but can thank his lucky stars that that was all she did. Now get out, the pair of you.”

Mama drew herself up to deliver a retort, but Mr Whybrow beat her to it. He snatched out the revolver from under the counter and aimed it squarely between her eyes. “If you’re real vampires, this’ll give you no more than a headache. If you’re not, we’ll be redecorating the shop.” He drew back the hammer with a resounding click.

A longish silence ensued, which probably wasn’t as long as it seemed, during which the Madam tried to maintain her haughty stance while deciding whether or not he was serious about pulling the trigger. I could see the white of his knuckle; he was. Her son seemed to hang with his feet on the floor like a laundry item on an invisible washing line; his face looked to have been left out in the rain. Finally, a little diamond pane surrendered its death grip on the leading, to tinkle on the pavement, provoking Mama to a decision.

“You’ll be hearing from the authorities about this, sir!” Mama snorted. “Come, Marmaduke.”  She held out an elbow as a visual signal for her son to escort her out.

As they went through the door, Mr Whybrow levelled the revolver at her head, and squinted. “Bang,” he said, barely loudly enough for me to hear.

Marmaduke? I had to bite my tongue for my incipient laugh to emerge as a snerky snort. It was probably just my nerves; gallows-humour, I think they call it. I suppose the real surprise was that Mrs Vampire had actually bred – you know, with a man. Maybe he was the result of one of those society weddings I kept hearing about, where “that sort of thing” was a mere duty, like inspecting the servants for lice.

“Yours, I believe.”  Mr Whybrow handed me the revolver, butt-first. I appreciated that. “Those two are all we need on top of all that other stuff.”

I had reservations. “How would the authorities receive her story, sir? He really did try to bite me, you know.”

Mr Whybrow shook his head. “They’ve more to fear than you. For a start, even if he’d broken the skin, you’d get nothing worse than an infection that we could clear up with surgical spirit.”

A penny dropped. One of those big copper pre-1860 ones which fishermen used as ledgering weights. “Sir, did you know  they were fakes?”

“Of course I did. Would a real vampire have called during the daylight hours? No, Miss. There are those who aren’t actually vampires but for reasons of their own, admire the lifestyle. Some of them take advantage of the innocent, to blackmail them into servitude. He’d no doubt have told you that you were his to command, and that if you wanted to survive beyond sunrise you’d have to perform some particularly unsavoury service for him. Believe me, Miss Bluebird, they won’t go within a mile of a policeman.”

I shuddered, partly at my own ignorance. Even now I still had so much to learn about these people. Then my nerves caught up with me and I had to grip the counter to suppress a shuddering that tried to surface. I hoped for some tangible reassurance from Mr Whybrow – he must have seen me shaking – but of course I should have known better.

“They won’t be back,”  he told me, quietly. “Just stay alert, and I’ll be in the yard if you need me.”

“Thank you, sir.”  He’s right. Get a grip on yourself.

I felt slightly stung at his off-handed dismissal. Was he still irked over my refusal of his own private sanctuary? But I had just given myself sound advice. Get on with something! Mr Whybrow was so absorbed in whatever he was doing in the yard that I could do almost what I wanted, provided it didn’t make any noise likely to attract his attention. Now, there was the matter of an unfinished airship.

One thing I needed was enough cable to sling the gondola from the gasbag. He was quite determined that Old Stumpy’s sailing days were over, so he would not miss two hundred yards of one-inch line from her cable tier. Keeping an ear on the shop, I passed a therapeutic couple of hours in the cellar, turning it all into a netting which I hoped would support the structure.

That still left the matter of an engine. I filched one of Mr Whybrow’s cigars from the back office and mulled over my problem.

There had to be a way. Running it on steam was out of the question, with all that explosive gas floating scant feet above me.  Clockwork – electricity – both were swiftly labelled as, “Don’t be silly!”

Then I realised that I was sitting on that crate which had arrived during my swimming lesson, and which Mr Whybrow had been irked to find that he could not use. I puzzled over its legend. “EXCELSIOR V TWIN THIRTY HORSEPOWER” – I had no idea what the first bit meant, but anything measured in horsepower had to be an engine of some sort.

Oh, you clod! All this time………..

Mr Whybrow called down; from the remoteness of his voice, he was still in the yard. “Miss Bluebird? Are you there?”

Hastily, I shuffled my skirts on. That rope had roughened my hands a little, but at least it had been clean. He wouldn’t notice anything. I sauntered up the stairs to the back office and was surprised to find the door to the yard standing open. My view of whatever lay beyond was occluded by Mr Whybrow standing in the way. I’d guessed that he was finally going to show me what he’d been doing, but if I’d expected a showman’s flourish, I’d misunderstood him completely. Instead, he looked at the ground in embarrassment, and stepped aside with a mumble.

“I hope this will meet your needs, Miss Bluebird.”

I stepped inside to a wonderland. A candle on a shelf cast its cheery welcome over a little room, with a porcelain pan and mahogany seat – he’d even put in one with pretty pink flowers, like I’d asked for. A sink with tiled splashback in the corner, and presiding from on high was a water cistern. He'd even laid a lovely pattern of tiles on the floor.

Suddenly I felt very small and insignificant. “It’s – a – convenience,” I spluttered, dumbly.

“Can’t have you traipsing out into the rain and catching cold, can we?”  he said.

I scarcely heard him through my stupefaction. “You – pull the chain to make it work, right?”

“Right.”

“And is that – “  I pointed at a small cylinder on the shelf.

“Proper paper. No more cutting the “Times”  into squares. I’ll let you get better acquainted with it, I think. I’ll leave the manufacturers’ literature in the back office.”

Which was probably the right thing to do. An army of nagging spirits tore at me. So this was what he’d been up to all this time – all for me –  Guilt crushed my throat; I wanted to squeeze him to me in a neverending hug. He’d probably guessed that last, and decided that it would be prudent to absent himself for a little. It’s not a ladylike thing to think about, I know, but I couldn’t wait to use his gift in anger, and I knew that it’d be a thrill which would never pall.

It came with easy instructions on how to clean it, how long to let the cistern recharge, and what to do if any of the components should fail.

Mmm-hm, all right. Straightforward enough. The health and safety manual, however, was another matter.

Half way through the chapter on ladder safety while re-attaching disassociated chains, I realised that I hadn’t thanked him at all. That was awful of me; what must he have thought? I ran out immediately. He could read me so well; I’m sure he was waiting for me, silently and correctly predicting my every move when I found him outside quietly ruminating over a cigar.

For a long moment, we just looked at each other. I think he knew that I wanted to give him a great big hug, but was forbearing.

Oh, sod it!

In the street, uncaring of who might have been watching, I stretched up and pecked his cheek. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much indeed.”

He didn’t flinch at all; he must have seen it coming. Neither did he press back. He merely twitched a smile as if to say, “You’re welcome.”   “Stay warm, Miss Bluebird.”

There was so much else that I wanted to say, but he wouldn’t have appreciated it. Simple thanks were vital, but all that were necessary with him. But something else flared in my mind. It was an ideal time to ask, although I hesitated a little, anxious that I might appear greedy.

Feigning innocence (appallingly), I asked, “Sir; I was tidying up in the cellar when I noticed that crate you had delivered a few weeks ago.” At his curious squint, I described it. “Did you want it thrown out, sir? You don’t appear to be using whatever it is.”

My probe bounced off.  “Good Lord, no!”  he exclaimed. “I haven’t found a use for it yet, but I’m confident that I will. One day,”  he added, after a suitable pause.

“What is  it, sir?”

“An internal combustion engine,”  he explained, happier now that we’d moved onto technical matters. “I was going to use it in the Dreadnought, for more power up the hills now that it’ll be carrying us both as a matter of course. But it turned out to have too long a stroke.” Seeing my puzzlement, he explained, “The pistons drive it like a locomotive, as I’ve told you. The distance they travel is called the ‘stroke.’  And that one’s so long that neither of us would have a hope in hell of starting it. We simply don’t have the leverage,”  he explained, stretching an arm out. “Not unless you have legs five feet long,”  he added with a chuckle.

Legs, or – a propeller! Problem solved!  Well, almost. I still needed to do a little work on him to get him to hand it over.

No, I didn’t. He astonished me by adding,  “You might as well put it in your airship. I’d use it in mine, but I’m happy with the one I have.” Ignoring my look of absolute stupefaction, he gave me a grin that told me, You didn’t expect to keep it a secret forever, did you?  “Go on, Miss Bluebird. Finish your airship.”  Then he left me to contemplate my windfall, but threw over his shoulder, on the way back in,  “You’ll need a 9/16 inch AF spanner to mount it. Try the back office, bottom desk drawer.”

I could have thrown myself around him like a starved octopus, but as we all know, he didn’t Do That Sort Of Thing. Besides, he was already too far away. “Thank you, sir,”  I called after him.

Mr Whybrow waved back. That was all I’d needed to say.

I wanted to explode in a human firework display of happiness. My airship was almost finished – it was so close!