The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter (27 page)

– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

The low winter sun warmed the red brick and cream sandstone of London Road Coach Station, catching the words Arrival and Departure above the arched entrances. London Road – the very name sent a thrill of excitement through me.

A woman travelling in a group is always less conspicuous. Therefore it was my intention to catch up with Julia and her father
en route
and arrive in the capital with them. If things had gone to plan they would now be at an inn near the air terminus at Bedford, having made the journey from Market Harborough by coach.

The faster route to Bedford was priced at a premium. I counted out an alarming number of notes from my newly changed paper money and was soon clattering out of the grand station forecourt on the express coach. A team of six fine horses rushed me and a select group of well-to-do travellers south towards the air terminus at Foxton Locks.

The landscape through which we passed became more familiar the further we travelled out of Leicester. Gripping the leather strap to steady myself against the wild rocking of the carriage, I stared out of the window at small fields, thatched cottages and winding side-lanes as they whipped past. In a cut-off triangle of grass at the intersection of three fields, I saw a bow-topped gypsy wagon with smoke rising from its chimney pipe. Animal skins were stretched on three wooden frames planted in the ground. Fox and deer, I thought. Pressing my face to the window glass, I craned my neck to prolong my view of the small encampment as it receded behind us.

“Does their squalor unsettle you?” asked a gentleman in a green velvet jacket. He was sitting directly opposite and seemed to be taking an unwholesome enjoyment in the sight of my ankles. I remembered him wearing a wedding ring earlier in the journey. At some point it seemed to have disappeared.

I could think of no answer that would extricate me without seeming waspish. Therefore I turned my face to the homely looking lady sitting next to me. Noting her pallid face, said: “You’ll feel better if you keep your gaze on the horizon. Would you like the window seat?”

She accepted my generous offer and thus I left the man in the green jacket disappointed.

Foxton was an important staging point even before the signing of the Great Accord and the birth of the Gas-Lit Empire. The famous ladder of locks allowed boats to descend towards Leicester, completing the canal route from the south. There being no other practical means to transport heavy loads, traffic increased every year. Eventually the canal was widened and a boat lift constructed – an engineering marvel that cemented Foxton’s importance as a transportation hub.

Wide beam barges carry cargo from London all the way to South Leicester, where they are unloaded. The cargo is given into the hands of teams of porters, who carry it through the maze of the Leicester Backs to be loaded onto the same barges that have, in the meantime, slipped across the border paying no duty. From North Leicester the boats can steam on to Nottingham and the north.

When the age of the airship dawned, it was natural for the terminus at Foxton to grow in importance. As Anstey is to the Republic, so Foxton is to the Kingdom. Along the fifteen miles that separate the two air termini is the best paved road in either nation. Thus I was at Foxton before sunset, had bought my ticket and seen my case loaded.

Once again I felt the unsettling lurch of take-off. Having never before been on a night flight, the view and experience were thrilling to me. Instead of seeing the fields and towns spread out below, the world appeared like a map of the heavens, the lights burning by roadsides and in windows seeming more like clusters of stars than the creation of man.

As with the coach trip that had preceded it, I found myself subjected to the unwanted attention of a male traveller. This time older and dressed in charcoal-grey. A tourist, I thought, behaving disgracefully abroad. Excusing myself from his company, I took a seat near a husband and wife and was thus able to complete the flight unmolested.

The engine noise changed, the carriage began to tilt forward and I felt that fluttering in the stomach that accompanies descent. Soon the floodlights of Bedford Air Terminus came into view. We slowed. The landing lines dropped. The ground crew hauled and we inched into dock.

A fugitive sees peril in every stranger’s face. Picking my way down the stairs from the alighting platform I scanned the waiting crowd below. Some waved and jumped on seeing their friends or relatives emerge from the carriage, displaying degrees of exuberance that would have drawn disapproving looks at an air terminus in the Republic.

Others in the crowd held up paper signs on which the names of people or corporations had been written: “Herrick Mathews” “Telford Castings Ltd.” “Edgar Payne”. Cabbies, I spotted there also, furtively touting for business, keeping clear of any terminus marshals who might throw them out onto the street. Scattered through this throng a few men of nondescript appearance stood watching, drinking in all the details of the arrival hall. I picked out three of them, each wearing unremarkable clothing. There may have been more.

Just as they stood out to me, so must I have been conspicuous to them. Though dressed in appropriately colourful clothes, I could not yet walk through a crowd with the same fluidity as the women of the Kingdom. That I travelled alone made me even more unusual.

I clipped across the polished stone floor, not turning to look but certain that one of them had fallen into step behind me. I seemed to feel his eyes on the back of my head as I handed my chitty to a magnificently moustached baggage handler and received my battered travelling case in return.

“Will there be more arrivals tonight?” I asked.

The handler shook his head. “She’s the last of them.”

“When’s the next London flight?”

“Nine tomorrow morning. You’ve got somewhere to stay?”

“Thank you, yes.”

I gave him a warm smile then started off across the emptying passenger hall. With less noise than before, I could hear the footsteps of the person following behind me. They only stopped when it became clear that I was heading for the ladies’ washroom. I slipped a Kingdom penny into the turnstile and pushed through, hefting my case over the top of it.

Inside were white and blue tiles, a row of porcelain hand basins smelling of lavender soap and a line of stalls along the opposite wall. Choosing the stall furthest from the entrance, I bolted myself in, put down the toilet lid and sat with my case resting across my knees.

It was going to be a long night.

Chapter 33

Why disdain the bullet catcher who employs a stooge? The illusion will amaze just as surely, unless the method be guessed.

– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

There are many ways to confuse a witness, change of appearance being first among them. As I sat in the ladies’ washroom, I occupied myself by searching through my travelling case for the elements of an improvised disguise. The best I could find was a change of clothes. I swapped the full-sleeved, puffed-shoulder blouse I’d been wearing on arrival, to one with straighter lines. I pinned up my hair, exchanged the straw hat for a cotton bonnet, folded my coat away and was thankful he hadn’t had a close view of my face the night before.

The eye of the observer is not a scientific instrument of brass and lenses. It perceives a greater picture, and thus it can be distracted. Have a man walk through a crowd and many will afterwards be able to describe the things he wore and even the details of his face. But if that man were to walk the same path carrying a parlour palm or a stuffed crocodile or any other unexpected object, all details of his person would be forgotten. Everyone would see the object, but no further. Thus he could not be identified without it. My travelling case was my crocodile, so to speak – too battered and conspicuous for me to risk carrying it out of the washroom.

Since I had not returned through the turnstile the night before, the intelligence gatherer who’d followed me must know he had found a story of interest. He would still be there.

By half past seven in the morning, women had started to come and go from the washroom with enough frequency to confuse anyone watching outside. Water flowed in hand basins. Cisterns flushed. It was time to make my escape.

I emerged from the stall to see the floor being cleaned by a hunched Negro woman with a wrinkled face. She was pushing her mop from side to side across the tiles, leaving them wet and shining behind her.

“Could you watch my case?” I asked.

“I’m no luggage service,” she said.

I placed a two shilling coin in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Twenty minutes.”

“The men will be for you then,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

She flashed her eyes towards the exit. “The men that’s waiting.”

“How many?”

She showed me the five fingers of her hand.

“Private intelligence men?”

“Red coats. Men-at-arms.”

“Did you see the badges they wore? Whose insignia?”

Shaking her head, she took the suitcase from my hand and put it back in the stall from which I had just emerged. Then she took a wooden sign from one of the capacious pockets of her housecoat and hung it on the door catch: CLEANING IN PROGRESS.

The cleaner had not spotted the sixth man, a private intelligence gatherer who stood leaning against an iron pillar, nursing the last inch of a cigarette. As for the other five, they were exactly as she had described. Red-coated men-at-arms, swords hanging from their belts on one side, flintlocks holstered on the other.

Stitched to each chest was a badge of office, the emblem of the aristocratic house from which they derived their authority. It showed a green oak tree below a blue sky in which hung an off-centre triangle of white stars. All aristocratic families might have seemed the same to the cleaning woman, but they were not the same to me. This was the house I had grown to fear and loathe. This was the emblem of the Duke of Northampton.

To my credit, I did not break step on seeing them, but pushed through the turnstile and stepped out into the passenger hall, holding my head up so that the private intelligence man could get a clear look at my face – something he would not have been able to do the previous night. He frowned as he stared at me, then made a small shake of his head, a signal to the men-at-arms who were tensed, awaiting his direction. Only when I was clear of them did I begin to gasp in lungfuls of air, trying with no success to slow my racing heart.

Julia and her father were waiting near the alighting platform, watching the unearthly sight of a large airship approaching the docking pylons.

Mr Swain saw me first. “Elizabeth!”

I rushed the last few paces, holding my finger to my lips in warning.

Mr Swain beamed at the sight of me. “Why, my dear, I thought you were to stay in the north.”

I could not speak, but held my hands to my chest, trying to slow my breathing.

“What’s wrong?” asked Julia.

“Don’t... speak... my name,” I gasped.

They guided me to a seat. Julia placed her hand to my forehead.

“You’re perspiring Eliz–” She brought herself up to a sudden stop then whispered urgently. “What has happened?”

“Your luggage–”

“They told us to bring it to the alighting platform.” Mr Swain gestured to a pile of bags by the window. Among them, I now saw Julia’s travelling case, which we had packed together two days before. It was newer, bigger and definitely more expensive than my own. I opened my mouth to speak but then changed my mind and closed it again.

Julia clutched my hand. “What is it?”

“I can’t ask it.”

“If something needs to be done, you must!”

Mr Swain cleared his throat. “If there is some danger, I should be the one to do it, whatever it is.”

“You can’t,” I said to him. “This must happen in the ladies’ washroom.”

It was not the men-at-arms or the intelligence gatherer that disturbed Julia. Rather, it was the thought of her clothes being on public view as we emptied her travelling case. But still she did as I asked and soon her things were piled on the seat next to me. Mr Swain placed his coat over the top to hide his daughter’s underwear from public view.

We watched over the balcony as she descended the stairs, suitcase in hand, and made her way across the passenger hall towards the women’s washroom. As she approached the men-at-arms she slowed. My heart did a double beat as I realised she was heading for the intelligence man who still stood leaning against the pillar.

“No!” the word escaped my mouth as a gasp.

Her father stepped forwards and gripped the railing. His knuckles whitened.

Below us, Julia was speaking to the intelligence man. She put down her case then handed him something too small for us to see at such distance. He fished in his trouser pocket and passed her something in return. Suddenly I understood.

“It is a penny for the turnstile!”

“But him! Of all the people she could have approached!” exclaimed Mr Swain.

“Oh, but you should be proud of your daughter. Don’t you see? When she comes out, he’ll know she’s not the one he’s watching for. He’ll know her face.”

Blowing air through his lips like a deflating balloon, Mr Swain lowered himself into a seat. “And your brother does this for a living!”

Julia was emerging from the washroom. Too quick, I thought. She should have waited longer. And now she struggled with the case, where before she had carried it with ease. One of them would surely notice. If they searched hers and found mine concealed inside... the thought of it sent dread through my veins. Watching was greater agony than ever I had felt when my own life had been in danger.

The intelligence man stepped towards her and reached his hand for the case.

Mr Swain was on his feet again. “I must go to her,” he said, and was ready to act on his word but I reached out and gripped his hand.

“Wait.”

Julia had placed the case on the ground. She was nodding, in conversation with the intelligence man. At last he touched the brim of his hat. She smiled, picked up the case again and was off towards the stairs.