At any rate, it would not have helped matters by reminding him there was a matter more urgent than sending me up in airships. The public convenience on the quayside still needed replacing, and I was getting mightily irritated at having to use his yard. Lately, I had discovered that it was not as private as might be. No, I don’t mean I was overlooked by some nosy Caledonian. But things were getting worse.
Mr Whybrow was sitting in his back office doing the books and, in keeping with our current tepid ambience, did not bother to look up when I went through to use the yard. Neither did he notice my cautious scanning of the sky through the half-open door before I went out. All clear so far. Better safe than sorry, though.
He did, however, raise an eyebrow when I darted behind the office door for his umbrella. “Whatever do you want that for, Miss Bluebird? There’s not a cloud in the sky.”
“It isn’t for rain, sir,” I sweetly informed him. “The seagulls have been taking too strong an interest in me, lately.”
“Precisely, sir. And they never miss.”
“Oh, so that’s where you disappeared to this morning.”
“Yes, sir; I had to wash my hair under the pump before the ‘discharge’ dried.”
Mr Whybrow gave me a curious frown. “Does this happen often?”
He knew full well that it did. “Only since I lost the use of the quayside facility, sir.”
He nodded, weighing up the matter uneasily. I’d broken the truce. He hadn’t mentioned airships, but I had mentioned the cubicle of convenience. “Must be McKew’s chippy attracting them,” he grunted, utterly disinterested. “Lord knows there are no fish in the harbour since I started chucking my coffee grounds out there.”
“If so, then he’s feeding them well, sir. They appear to have the output of elephants.”
Harrumph from Mr Whybrow. “More than likely. Very well, as you were, then, Miss Bluebird.”
Thus was the problem dismissed. I had seen his softness towards me at my silly accident with the drawing pin, but however I myself had softened towards him, he in turn knew how best I could satisfy the issue of gratitude. But I’d told him that he wouldn’t get me into an airship at gunpoint; I was not going to make a fool of myself by going back on that. And while his simple act of kindness had touched me more deeply than any, I was not going to admit that to him in so many words.
I kept my sojourn in the yard as brief as possible but still, while cowering under the umbrella, the stiff canopy gave a single thump to tell of a seagull chancing its luck. It was probably the same one each time; on previous occasions I’d glimpsed it wheeling overhead in jubilation after a particularly accurate shot. I snarled back many terrible things, wishing I could solve the problem once and for all with a Caledon-guage shotgun, but the neighbours would probably have a thing or two to say about that.
I peeped out from under the canopy’s rim. Yes, there he was, straightening out his feathers after landing from another raid on the local Bluebird; leering straight back at me, concealing his irritation that my umbrella had thwarted his perfect aim, his beady little eyes insisting, “Next time, Miss. Next time.”
When I returned to the shop, I found Mr Whybrow preparing to go out – on business, I suspected; for a start, that was the only reason he ever went out, and more obviously, he was hefting his business hat. You know how Victorian doctors carried stethoscopes inside their top hats? Well, Mr Whybrow’s hat carried a full tool set arranged around the inside like shells in a revolving battleship magazine, with items dispensed by a mechanical cuckoo on a spring, by the name of “Cyril.” I don’t know if Cyril ever embarrassed his master by handing him the wrong tool at the wrong time, but Mr Whybrow seemed happy with the arrangement. And, just to make sure he didn’t waste any space in the voluminous cylinder, it carried a large brass clock above Cyril so that he not only knew the time, but made sure that anyone else he was with knew it, too. A useful accessory, if he found himself needing to get away from a customer who just wouldn’t shut up, since the clock struck the hour with the volume and insistence of Big Ben. Nobody could gainsay a nudge like that!
So there was Mr Whybrow, having just wound up his hat prior to his departure, when I entered. He paused and studied the half-unfurled umbrella. “You know it’s bad luck to open one of those indoors, Miss?”
“Only when it’s been hit by a seagull,” I returned, sourly opening it a little more to show him.
“I see. Perhaps I should think about getting a cat in.”
“If you mean to scare the seagulls, you’d need one of Miss Rain’s snow leopards to have any deterrent effect on that one, sir. And I doubt if any such animal would be contented with Mr McKew’s cast-outs.”
Another harrumph and the matter was closed. “I’ve an appointment across town for a consultation, Miss Bluebird,” he told me. “Before I go, I should advise you that word’s been getting around of a griefer who’s been causing havoc with the ladies here.”
“A griefer, sir?” The term was new to me.
“Mmm.” Mr Whybrow studied the inside of his hat, as though the answer to my question was written on the lining. “A person – usually male – who deliberately tries to annoy or upset others here. I believe I’ve already mentioned that some leave about things that kill a neighbourhood with gravity? Others dress as fantastical characters and shoot at people. This one – “ he hesitated, awkwardly. “Likes to disport himself.”
“Disport himself, sir?” Well, come on. That could have meant almost anything.
“Displaying himself would be a better way of describing it,” said Mr Whybrow. “Although a trifle uncouth, perhaps.”
The penny dropped. “You mean – “
The Whybrow Nod. “Below the waistcoat area, Miss.”
“Oh, a flasher. That got you a month on bread and water, in the workhouse.”
“This isn’t the workhouse,” Mr Whybrow pointed out. “And many of the women live here because the quiet environment suits their nerves, so griefers of this sort cause harm out of proportion to their presence. Which, no doubt, is why they target places like Caledon. Anyway, there isn’t much risk to you here, so far he’s confined his attention to the northern parts. Just felt you should be warned.”
“Thank you, sir. And if he should put in an appearance here? What would you want me to do?”
Mr Whybrow halted in the doorway and gave me a shrewd stare. “Anything you please, Miss Bluebird. You may do absolutely anything you please.”
With that he was gone, leaving only a hollow clap of the door as a reminder that he had been there. Well, it was reassuring to know that he expected me to be capable of handling something that had driven better minds to the brandy and Sal Volatile.
I stared at the space where he had been, wishing that he was still there so I had another chance to say – nothing whatsoever. I knew I’d never be the one to make the first move. Why did I have to be so damned stubborn? I could have defused the tenseness between us any time I wanted. I guess I was just waiting for some suitable opportunity to present itself, not being smart enough to manufacture one myself. Or, come to that, brave enough to hit him around the head with a straight, simple request to go up in an airship.
But twisting my nerves into knots was a waste of time. Even on a quiet day, there were things to do; things which I took a pride in. I could show him that whatever he thought, I meant well by keeping the place in order.
There was always the dusting –
and sweeping the floor –
not forgetting, of course, the polish.
Yes, I was proud of my situation. Those who would deride it as menial fail to appreciate that this place, even though I didn’t actually own it, was mine. Just as the rawest privates in the Guards take a pride in polishing toilet pans, as they belong to their regiment. And like any specialist London shop, I was fully aware that much of the job would be waiting with occasional bits of high excitement, although I doubted that any London shopgirl had a master like –
Yes. Well. ‘nuff said. Even the chores did not take all day, so I gave attention to my own grooming. For a start, I was still used to workhouse shoes, and these more fashionable ones were very unforgiving. So, while waiting at the door to greet customers, I killed a few minutes dealing with my cuticles, ably assisted by Mr Whybrow’s boltcutters, which I borrowed from the cellar.
When I had finished, I thought back to Mr Whybrow’s final caution. It was not hard to accept the existence of the griefer mentality, many workhouse girls had been startled by invitations to view the ‘pink goldfish’. I was glad that Caledon, too, had its imperfections; it made the place easier to get used to if I was not constantly wondering if I was dreaming.
Then, inevitably, it was time to use the yard again. But as I was about to go through the door, I hesitated. How silly of me! I had already made a good ally in the cellar, had I but remembered it! Oh, yes, Mister Seagull. Your number’s up! BWAhahaha!
I scuttled down to the cellar for Mr Whybrow’s cattleprod of recent acquaintance. This time I knew what it could do, and I had a target in mind that nobody would mourn.
I peeped out of the door into the yard. There was that infernal seagull, gazing down at me, pointing its great prolific rump out to sea. Gawd, did it really have nothing better to do all day than wait for me to appear? Couldn’t it at least go and look for alternative targets?
It gave me an imperious sneer as I pretended to ignore it, studying it out of the corner of my eye as I traversed the yard to my favourite corner while gleefully maintaining a pretence of normality. It probably thought the cattleprod was a fancy type of umbrella. Furtively, I flicked the switch. The cattleprod began to emit its warming-up hum, and I hoped the noise would not scare the
My every nerve yelled at me to bring the muzzle directly to bear and let him have it. But I knew it was important that I made no sudden moves. Pausing by the gazunder, I settled stock to shoulder with a deliberately casual air, raised the barrel, and when I knew that my elevation was close to correct, I swung round and got the seagull slap in the middle of the crosshair. Without a moment’s hesitation, I squeezed the trigger and –
Vvvvv – WUMF!
A dazzling electric blue seared my retinas, and when they had cleared, the space where the seagull had been was a cloud of feathers idly drifting groundwards.
“Yeah! Shopgirl’s revenge. Bwahahaha!” I let out a resounding cheer, which I then bit off sharply. I’d been so engrossed in my quarry that I’d given no thought to the noise I’d be making. I replayed my vengeance in my mind. The cattleprod was undoubtedly quieter than a shotgun, but would anybody have heard it?
No, life seemed to be going on as normal. But it would be best to be discreet about the cattleprod; Miss Creeggan could be relied on not to talk, but Mr Whybrow preferred that nobody knew about his wonder-weapon unless that became necessary.
A shout went up from the far end of the quay. At first I thought I’d been discovered and that the locals were about to descend on the maniac shopgirl with torches and pitchforks, or whatever they used in Caledon, but I quickly recognised the call for what it was. Even in the workhouse, I’d heard newsboys in the street crying up the latest edition.
I paused and deciphered that patois that is so peculiar to newsboys. “Carmen geddit! Yer early aftanoon edish’n! Demon flasher strikes again!”
A moment’s consideration told me that this could be pertinent to Mr Whybrow’s business; the victims would have included customers of his and if they were afraid to leave their houses – yes, that was reason enough to hazard a penny from the petty cash. Besides which, I had run out of chores for now and we needed more paper for – uh, the yard.
Handing over Mr Whybrow’s penny, I scanned the headline article in the street. I’ll say one thing about the press, they weren’t always accurate but they were quick off the mark. The flasher had exposed himself only that morning in Tamrannoch – good Lord! That was less than half a mile from here. The unnamed victim, a middle-aged lady, had taken the full force of his display in her own front room of all places! She had fallen immediately into a coma, and it was not known when she would recover, or even if she would do so.
I mused for a moment. So the flasher had come south. He must have outstayed his welcome in the northern parts. A man of cunning, then; that sort typically kept to areas they knew to be safe until they eventually overplayed their hands and fell into those of the authorities.
Well, his main weapon was not his trouser-contents, but their ability to shock. Unless his “display model” had poisonous fangs, it would be no different to the pink goldfishes I’d been shown in the workhouse. But I knew that I was deluding myself. In the workhouse, I’d have lost my temper and stuffed any miscreant head-first down the privy. Here, I was already softening up in Caledon’s cosy cocoon of security, and I’d probably be as paralysed as the rest of his victims.
So, I took my new friend Mister Cattleprod by the hand, and placed him under the counter. I had no idea when Mr Whybrow would be back; his consultations sometimes went on for hours. Spreading the newspaper over the counter, I prepared to settle down to a quiet afternoon of reading. Then a knock came at the door. I looked up with a frown, curious that anyone should knock before entering a shop, and rapidly swept the newspaper under the counter lest I create a bad impression. But it was only the postman. Our gruff, genial postie whom I had so recently –
No, he did not suspect that it was I who had sent him into orbit. “Afternoon, Miss – got yer one o’clock post for yer.”
[Editor’s note: Victorian Londoners received maybe five postal deliveries a day. Yes, really. VB]
“Thank you,” I returned with my customary friendly beam, while discreetly looking him over for signs of damage. “I hope I find you well?”
“Oh, yes, got knocked orf me bike yesterday by some tearaway in one o’ them ‘orseless kerridge things, but uvverwise, mustn’t grumble.”
I put on a suitably shocked expression. “How awful. Were you hurt?”
Postie’s eyes narrowed in a mirthful squint. “Only me pride. Shan’t be able to sit comfy-like fer a week, but uvverwise – “
Mustn’t grumble, I concluded.
“It’s terrible abaht that flasher, Miss; dunno if you’ve ‘eard?”
“I just got the paper,” I said. “Tamrannoch this time.”
“Yerr, only ‘alf a mile dahn the road. I wonder wot goes froo the minds o’ that sort. Wants a dose o’ the cat if you arsks me.”
Of course, postmen were a goldmine of information and were usually happy to give it. “This may be a silly question,” I asked, “But what does he look like? There’s nothing in the paper beyond the fact that he’s male.”
“Ain’t a silly question at all, Miss,” replied Postie. “An’ a simple arnser is, I dunno, no more ‘n anyone else does. I spoke to the servant girl at that last ‘arse ‘e visited; she saw ‘im clippin’ it, but she only caught a blur and ‘er main concern was fer ‘er poor mistress wot was lyin’ prostrate on the rug. An’ that’s all anyone ever sees of him. A blur. Them wot gets a proper look, ain’t in no state to talk about it arfterwoods.”
“He’s travelling quite a distance now, though,” I persisted. “Surely someone sees him? He can’t be running all the time.”
“Again, I dunno, Miss. But then you could see any bloke in the street an’ it could be ‘im, couldn’it? You takes care, Miss. An’ don’t let no-one in unless you knows ‘em.”
I bade Postie a good afternoon and let him return to his rounds. That was the daftest piece of advice I’d heard yet! “Don’t let no-one in” – to a shop? Dear oh dear. He had also missed what I really wanted to know. How did such a villain travel great distances without being seen?
Well, the afternoon wore on and Mr Whybrow had not reappeared. It must have been a particularly tough consultation; he had warned me that some customers liked to yatter on all day while still expecting him to produce custom-made jewellery on demand. A lesser mind would have suspected a romantic assignation, but not this man. If he said he was spending all afternoon measuring up a lady’s cranium for a tiara, then that’s precisely what he was doing.
Another alternative struck me. He was “out and about” on the very day that the flasher had struck. And the flasher could have been anybody. Including a man who gave away absolutely nothing about his personal life. I recalled, from the tales of woe I’d heard in the workhouse, that that was precisely the sort the detectives would go for, to procure an easy arrest in the absence of any more feasible culprit. An awful suspicion formed, settling in my bowels and turning to cold sickly oil. I began to fret. I could not even give Mr Whybrow an alibi, since a dozen people must have seen him out today.
SouthEnd fell quiet as Postie continued about his rounds and the newspaperboy packed up for the day, leaving me alone with a vision that grew inside me like a tumour. Mr Whybrow locked in a grimy brick vault with a plank bed and only a tiny barred window, damned by the world without as a monster, with only me knowing the truth -
In the distance, a departing airship revved its engines. They were slightly out of sync, like a piano with one string out of tune, beating against the others. The vibrations were tangible fingers massaging me inside, and agitated further my already panicking mind. What if Mr Whybrow was the flasher? What I fool I’d been, to let my feelings take over my commonsense. It was staring me in the face. The man was so disenchanted with romance that he let nobody into his private house, not even me. Who would have had a better motivation to paralyse women with fear?
No, that was utterly unfair. He’d never laid a finger on me when he’d had every opportunity to do so. Unless he was using my position here as his alibi, his character reference……… the contradictions turned over and over in my mind like great splashing paddlewheels. Yet still one hope remained latched inside my head, as workhouse fingers to a pie.
Dear God, don’t let it be him!
Footsteps with an unfamiliar beat skittered along the pavement outside. By now, I knew the footfall of most of the inhabitants of Southend, and those who passed through regularly; this one was definitely unfamiliar. And he was getting closer. I remarked on the steps’ rhythm and tempo; rapid, almost nervous. They stopped outside Miss Folger’s store, but after only a moment, headed right this way.
A thinly-built man with nondescript features went by, I became aware of two tiny piggy eyes flashing a furtive stare through the window. And curiously, he was draped in an immense cloak. Curiously? Well, the weather was hardly inclement, and it was way too early for the opera –
He came into the shop, his features lit with the mirth of a schoolboy about to carry off a practical joke. His cloak, I remarked, he kept wound tightly about him. This did not bode well.
“Can I help you, sir?” I tried.
His response was a laugh of maniacal glee that rent the air as he hauled his cloak open, triumphantly displaying that he wore nothing below the waist but his shoes and socks, and – hanging from his hips, staring me in the face as insistently as my own death -
- a “Censored” sign! Ooh, the fiend!
His laughter racketed about the empty shop as he danced up and down, bouncing that evil sign in my full view. For an instant, I could only gape at the obscenity dangling at his waist.
Then my discipline reasserted itself. Without looking away from the monster before me, I reached below the counter and hauled out Mister Cattleprod. By the wrong end.
My mistake in no way diminished the outrage that erupted in me. It simply provoked a change of plan. I leapt over the counter like an avenging angel, doubled my grip on the muzzle with the other hand, and brought down the butt like Charles’ I’s executioner going for broke with a single fierce blow that would have truncated any part of the late King’s anatomy.
This, my enemy had not been expecting. He went down as though I had indeed poleaxed him, and tried to shield himself as I laboured about him with the cattleprod’s battery end. In my indignation, I vented a lot of Mr Whybrow’s choicest terms which under any other circumstances, would have earned me his Sternest Rebuke.
“You bounder! You rotter! You cad! You utter bad lot!”
It was as much as he could do to protect his hat from my wrath. This must have been the first time he’d encountered a lady who’d fight back! Somehow, he managed to regain sufficient equilibrium to propel himself out of the shop like a ferret down a rabbit hole. But I was not finished. THIS was the pond life that had devastated ladies’ nerves like a sledgehammer on a chronometer with his depraved “Censored” sign, and worse, had caused me to suspect the man whom I respected above all others!
I ran out into the street and stopped, looking and listening. The perpetrator had vanished. What – how could he have –
Come on, girl. What would a London pickpocket have done?
I looked up and sure enough, he’d taken to the drainpipe in the hope of throwing my pursuit. There, twenty feet up, a great smiling fundament leered straight back at me. Oh, what a ghastly greeting!
Hoping that Mr Whybrow’s workmanship lived up to his boasts and had survived my hammerblows, I flicked the switch on. The barrel warmed up with a satisfying hum. So far so good.
The flasher had never seen the cattleprod before, but recognised it as some sort of firearm; even as I took aim, he flitted up the drainpipe with the agility of a rat. My first bolt, aimed in too much haste, sailed harmlessly past his head. In the next moment, he had disappeared over the eaves.
Confound it! as Mr Whybrow would have said. If he made it to the other side, he’d get clean away. There was no other option but to go after him. Kicking off my shoes, I dropped my skirt, whipped off my stockings, and jammed the cattleprod into my teeth. My feet gripped on the drainpipe firmly as I resurrected the same skill that I’d used to recover the workhouse Chaplain’s hat from the gutter where it had been thrown by some of our tearaways, and shinned up after the miscreant. The pipe was old and rusty, but at least it was solid dependable cast iron, not lead, which would have bent and precipitated me to the ground.
I was about to pull myself up over the eave when I realised that he might be waiting for me, but fortunately he was more interested in making his getaway. Mr Whybrow’s roof was a double pitch; I clambered up over the tiles to find him climbing up the opposite side of the valley, so to speak.
Perching on the ridge, I called out (all right, I know it was a futile thing to do), “Come quietly! You can’t get away.”
Actually, he couldn’t. Once he was off the roof, I’d have a clear field of fire wherever he chose to land. But his only answer was to dart looks hither and thither. I let him. There was no other way out.
Oh, yes there was. He scampered along the ridge, knowing how difficult it was for me to aim with my feet splayed on the steeply-pitched tiles, and I saw what he was making for.
Mr Whybrow, like any sensible merchant, had a big colourful balloon tethered to his chimney stack for the purpose of advertising to passing airship traffic. And this joker was going for the cable. But it was an absolute dead end. He would be trapped, surely?
I tried to follow him through the crosshair, but it was too difficult to hold steady against a moving target. For a moment, he vanished behind the chimneystack and after that, I could only swear and curse under my breath as he scrambled up the cable like a monkey, too rapidly to be held in my crosshair. The balloon had a big basket underneath, where he would be able to recover his breath at leisure and ponder his next moves. But there, I would have him. End of the road, Mister.
With the bright sun in my face as I looked up, I knew that I could only guarantee a clear shot by following him. Less afraid than irritated at being put to a second climb, I stuffed the cattleprod butt-first down my unmentionables, and made sure the muzzle was clear of my head before clamping eight stone of shopgirl to the tether and hauling myself up, hand over hand. At least there was nothing up there which he could throw at me, unless Mr Whybrow had left any tools in the basket for maintenance purposes.
I should mention that this balloon actually had two circular banners about its cable. One was on the balloon basket itself, which was my adversary’s probable destination. The other was half way down – I presumed, for catching the eye of airship passengers who were at too low an altitude to see the main banner. I threaded myself through the lower banner’s spreading cables as through the eye of a needle, and for a moment stood on its rim, keeping an eye on the flasher. He was clambering over the side of the basket, steady in my sight, but my own footing was too unstable to chance a shot. It was no good, I’d have to go all the way up and face him in the main basket. And hope the cattleprod didn’t do too much damage to the cables when I let him have it.
My breath somewhat recovered, I’d just begun the second stage of my climb when I noticed him looking from point to point on the horizon, as though scanning for something. Then he leaned over the side of the basket, and something silvery flashed in the sun. He had a knife. I hesitated and clung to the cable, trying to compress myself to its thickness. He wasn’t going to throw it at me from that angle, surely?
No. He wasn’t. Oh, knickers.
He was going to use the balloon for his getaway. His ocular circumnavigation had been to check air currents and thermals and general aeronautical stuffs, which he clearly understood, and that in turn explained how he’d managed to get around so quickly without being spotted from the ground. By airship!
But there was no time for self-congratulation. Mr Whybrow had, as usual, overengineered his balloon tether by using nine-inch cable from Old Stumpy’s best bower anchor, but the singing vibrations beneath my fingers warned me that my quarry was sawing through with enough determination to have freed the balloon by the time I could reach him. My chest heaved as I redoubled my pace, the cable threatening to slip through my sweaty hands.
Then Mister Cattleprod solved the problem once and for all. Stuffed down my unmentionables, some little fold must have got hooked over the trigger. And, of course, Silly Tart here had left the thing switched on.
A single vvvv-wummm! beat at my ear like a passing artillery shell, and the next thing I knew, where the balloon had been, was a volcanic eruption of hydrogen – of course, Mr Whybrow had told me that he did not use cavorite.
My stomach wrenched into knots at the prospect of burning. But I’d forgotten how light hydrogen was; the flame just went straight up as it receded from me. Then I realised that the cable had gone slack in my hands; I was falling, and that would be just as lethal as any celestial crematorium. And just to really rub it in, one of those infernal airships that had been the cause of so much friction picked that moment to buzz past, taunting me by waving its bottom as it turned to head north. And just to give things a final polish with antique-grade beeswax applied lovingly in figure-8’s with finest Irish linen, it had a red cross on the side. They even used the things as ambulances!
Well, it’d be a pretty smart hospital that could do anything with me after I’d landed. Besides, even if the pilot had seen the conflagration, he was unlikely to have seen the insignificant little dot of a shopgirl plummetting beneath it. In those last moments that one gets to reflect on life, I relaxed and accepted the inevitable. I harboured no ill-feeling at having escaped the tedium of the workhouse to perish in sunny Caledon. I’d gained more in days than the Holborn Union had given me in years. And my last thought of all was that Mr Whybrow would not be implicated as the flasher. That prospect made me smile fondly, that my end would do some lasting good to repay his kindness.
Then something heavy smote me in the back, hips, legs, everywhere all at once.
I lay still. My body ached all over. So this was how it felt to be dead. How very strange –
No. My chest was still moving, the sun felt warm on my face, my cheeks tickled under the caress of the sea breeze, and the huge mushroom cloud of dust I’d raised was threatening to make me sneeze as it settled. With the hideous leer of a drunk, I chuckled at my fortune. Mr Whybrow’s roof had its tiles laid over thin battens, which had flexed to cushion my fall as effectively as a net.
Starting with my toes, I tensed each muscle in turn to make sure I was still working. I was. A bit bruised, maybe, but perfectly fit. I thought of leaving the cattleprod where it was, but decided against it. One scramble up the drainpipes was enough.
It was with a more gingerly, diligent pace that I lowered myself down Mr Whybrow’s drainpipe. And when my feet clapped joyfully to terra firma once more, it was no surprise to find the man himself standing by, awaiting an explanation.
I couldn’t be bothered with explanations. I flung myself around Mr Whybrow like a starved magnetic octopus. “Oh, sir! I’m so glad it wasn’t you!”
Whatever manner of interrogation Mr Whybrow had had planned, was never to be voiced. The unaccustomed eight stone of shopgirl clinging to him saw to that. He stood for several long moments with me wrapped around him before muttering, “Miss Bluebird! What do you think you’re doing?”
Releasing him, I beamed with a triumph that would not be gainsaid. “It’s the flasher, sir. Rather, it was. I thought he was you! But it wasn’t! I’m so happy – “
“One moment. The flasher’s been here?”
Nod from Shopgirl.
“And you’d thought he was me?”
“I didn’t. But others might have.”
“I see. And did he have anything to do with that huge explosion I saw over my shop as I crossed into SouthEnd?”
Another nod from Shopgirl.
Mr Whybrow turned the matter over and looked up; of his magnificent balloon, only a cloud of smoke remained hanging in the air. “Well, he won’t be flashing any more if he was in that. Not even to the undertaker. He went down like a comet; he won’t be pretty. So, Miss Bluebird.” He only pretended to be stern as he transfixed me with his eyes and demanded, “Would you mind telling me what the bloody hell you’ve done to my balloon?”
Well, he had told me I could do anything I pleased, although it would not have been a good time to remind him of that. But there was another way to go about this, for which the timing was perfect. “Sir – can we get away from here for a while, and I’ll tell you everything that’s happened? I mean, right away?”
Mr Whybrow knew that the loss of his balloon was a small price to pay for having restored peace to Caledon. Again, that gentle understanding sunbeam crossed his face and I knew that everything was going to be fine. “Certainly. Do you want to go back to Caledon on Sea?”
“Somewhere quieter, sir. When’s the next airship due?”
Of course he showed no surprise at my suggestion; he had been expecting it. He looked almost playful as he told me, “I’ve a better idea. Wait out here a moment. And get your skirts back on.”
Another nod from Shopgirl. This time I allowed myself a wink, too. “Before people start talking. Yes, sir.”
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