The Chemickal Marriage (7 page)

‘Then must we visit the
Herald
after all?’

‘Possibly,’ continued Svenson, ‘yet if the Contessa possessed the entire clipping, why send only this part?’

‘To force us to visit the newspaper.’

‘Or the opposite,’ replied Svenson. ‘She could have given the whole page. Do you see – in reducing the text she also omits extraneous facts that might distract us.’

‘You speak as if she can be trusted!’ cried Phelps.

‘Never in life, but her actions can be deduced from her appetites, like any predator’s.’

Miss Temple plucked the clipping from Mr Brine, who currently held it. She reread the text and then turned it over. At once she snorted with disgust.

‘I am an outright ass.’ She held the scrap of paper out for them to see. ‘Our destination is Raaxfall.’

Phelps gave an exasperated sigh and looked to the Doctor for support. ‘That is an advertisement for scalp tonic.’

‘
Yes
,’ said Miss Temple, ‘look at the
words
.’

‘Scalp? Tonic?’

‘No, no –’

Phelps read aloud. ‘New guaranteed formula for medical relief! From Monsieur Henri’s Parisian factory! A recipe for healing, restored vitality and new growth!’

Miss Temple stabbed her finger at the paper. ‘Factory – medical – formula – healing – new growth! Those words – in reference to the Comte d’Orkancz –’

‘But they aren’t in reference –’

‘
He
is on the other side of the paper! Put them together! It is the Contessa’s way!’

Phelps shook his head. ‘Even if that is so – which I doubt – how do you possibly reach the conclusion of Raaxfall? If anything “new growth” would point us to a repaired Harschmort, or even back to Parchfeldt!’

Miss Temple swatted the paper again. ‘It is obvious! “Monsieur Henri”!’

‘ “Monsieur Henri”?’

‘Henry Xonck!’

‘O surely not –’

‘Doctor Svenson!’

She shifted to face him, willing her expression to blankness, as if she would accept his impartial verdict. He pursed his lips.

‘I would not perceive the interpretation myself –’

‘Ha!’ cried Phelps.

Svenson was not finished. ‘However, the puzzle was not sent for
me
to solve, but to Celeste … and the Contessa is one to know her target.’

Miss Temple smiled, but her victory was tempered. Her cleverness had been fitted like a jigsaw piece into her enemy’s plan.

Raaxfall emerged as a sooty smear of workers’ huts clustered on the river’s curl. The banks bristled with an unsavoury dockfront, the wood as black with tar as the water was with filth. Everything in the town seemed blasted and cracked, even the ashen sky. The carriage took them to an inn where the driver might wait as they partook of a meal, it being by then near noon.

‘I have entered the Xonck works but once, for a demonstration of a new model carbine for territorial service – there were disagreements on the size of projectile required to stop
native
militia.’ Phelps cleared his throat and went on. ‘The point being, the works are outside Raaxfall proper, and less a standard mill than a military camp, with discrete workhouses built to protect against inadvertent explosion. At the inn we may find men put out of work who will know more about the present occupation and can show us a less visible approach than the main road.’

Miss Temple felt the grit beneath her boots as she climbed down, aware in this drab town of the colour in her clothes – green boots, dress of pale lavender, violet travelling jacket – and her chestnut hair hanging in curls to either side of her face. Mr Brine’s stout wool coat was the colour of dark porter, while Mr Phelps still availed himself of Ministry black. Doctor Svenson was last to appear, once again in the steel-grey greatcoat of the Macklenburg Navy. He stood tall next to Miss Temple, tapping a cigarette on his silver case.

‘I thought your coat had been lost,’ she said.

‘Mr Cunsher was able to liberate a spare from the diplomatic compound – along with my medical bag and my cigarettes.’

‘How resourceful.’

‘Extremely so. I wonder if we will see him again.’

They were the only patrons at the inn. The luncheon came as bleached of colour as the town – everything boiled to the near edge of paste. The men drank beer, while Miss Temple made do with barley water, impatient at how much time they seemed to be wasting. She stood well before the others had finished.

‘I will be outside,’ she announced. ‘Do take your time.’

‘What if you are seen?’ asked Mr Brine, a white potato spitted on the tip of his knife like an eye.

‘
Seen?
’ she replied waspishly. ‘We have been here half an hour.
That
cheroot has been smoked.’

Their blunt entry to the town was Mr Phelps’s way of disputing her leadership, and the insistence on a meal – though they had not eaten since dawn, and did not know when they might eat again – another way to curb her personal momentum. She stood outside and scanned the dark huts, all scalded brick and planks tarred with paper. The air was crisp in a way she might have enjoyed, save for the metal tang in which all of Raaxfall seemed steeped. She saw where the road stopped at a towered gate, like a castle made of iron instead of stone.

They had asked at the inn after Mr Ramper, but he was not remembered. Who was at the Xonck works? The townspeople did not know. Was anyone there at all? O yes, they saw lights, but could say nothing more.

She looked up and saw doorways around the battered village square now dotted with pale faces. Had they never seen a violet jacket before? Miss Temple walked towards the river. Here too she passed faces, young and old and those aged too soon by work, peering at her and then stepping forward to follow. As the citizens of Raaxfall crept into view, they reminded Miss Temple of rats on a ship, emerging from every possible crevice. She picked her way to an especially long wooden dock, to its very end, ignoring the people behind her – none yet bold enough to follow onto the pier – and gazed over the water.

Just beyond the river’s bend was her first glimpse of the Xonck works proper: high loading docks and a canal leading deeper inside. She looked directly below her. Several small oared skiffs had been roped to the pilings.

A skittering
clomp
caused her to spin. The townspeople now formed a wall across the pier. Another
clomp
. A
stone
had been thrown from the crowd. Miss Temple looked with shock into the blanched faces and perceived that she was hated –
hated
. The fact stung like a swinging fist. Her first impulse was to pull out the revolver – but there were a hundred souls before her if there were five, and any such step would justify their rage.

A ripple of bodies burst through the centre of the mob: Doctor Svenson, harried and out of breath, Brine and Phelps close behind.

‘Celeste – we did not see you –’

The three men dropped their pace to a rapid walk, aware that the mob was slowly following them onto the planking. Svenson reached her and spoke low.

‘Celeste – what has happened? The townspeople –’

‘Pish tush,’ she managed. ‘There are boats below: I suggest we secure one.’

Quite belying his bulky gait on land, Mr Brine swung himself over the pier like an ape, seized a rope and slid into an open skiff. Mr Phelps and Doctor Svenson took out their pistols and at this the mob halted, perhaps thirty yards away.

‘Citizens of Raaxfall,’ called Phelps, ‘we have come to discover why you have been put out of work – why the Xonck factory has barred its doors. We are here in your own interests –’

With his city accent Phelps might as well have been Chinese; nor did the presence of Miss Temple – and a foreign soldier – help to make any credible show. Another rock whipped past Phelps and splashed into the water. Svenson seized Miss Temple with both arms and held her over the edge – she squawked with surprise – where she was caught about the waist and hustled to a seat in the bow.

‘The rope, miss.’ Brine returned his attention to the pier.

Miss Temple tore at the knot linking the skiff to the pilings. Another rock struck the water, and then three more. Phelps’s pistol cracked out as Doctor Svenson dropped into the skiff, the entire craft tipping as his weight came home.

A cry came from above, and Mr Phelps’s black hat struck the water, floating like an upturned funereal basket. The man himself lurched into view, blood pouring from his cheek, and stepped into the air. He plunged into the river and came up gasping. Mr Brine extended an oar to his flailing hands, and Svenson snapped off six deliberate shots above them, emptying his revolver, but keeping the mob back from the edge long enough for Brine to gather Phelps and push off.

Brine stroked at the oars to propel them away from the teeming mass that lined the dock. The stones came in a hail, but, barring two that bounced dangerously off the wood, they were only splashed. Phelps slumped between the thwarts, water streaming from his clothes, a handkerchief held against his face. The natives of Raaxfall hooted at their ungainly retreat as if they’d chased a gang of armoured Spaniards off a palm-strewn strand. Phelps shrugged off Svenson’s attempt to see the wound and took up an oar, pulling with Brine. The Doctor shifted to the tiller and when enough distance had been gained turned the small skiff east.

No challenge came from the Xonck docks as they neared, fully visible in the afternoon light. The main canal into the works was blocked with a gate of rusted metal bars, like a portcullis sunk into the water. They bobbed before it, unable to see into the shadows beyond. At Svenson’s nod the other men pulled to the nearest floating dock. Miss Temple scrambled out with the rope. She looped it around an iron cleat and held it tight until the Doctor could tie a proper knot.

‘Here we are,’ sighed Mr Phelps. ‘Though I confess it seems a wasted journey.’ He peered at the lifeless canal.

‘How is your face?’ Miss Temple did not feel responsible for what had happened at the pier, but nevertheless appreciated Mr Phelps’s bravery.

‘It will do,’ he replied, dabbing with the handkerchief. ‘Stoned by an old woman – can you believe it?’

‘Can all that truly be a response to no work?’ Svenson had opened the cylinder of his revolver, and from a pocket he retrieved a fistful of brass.

‘No work in the city anywhere,’ offered Mr Brine.

Svenson nodded, slotting in the new shells. ‘But when exactly did the Xonck works close?’

‘After we returned, some three weeks now.’ Phelps patted his coat and looked behind them. ‘My weapon is in the river.’

‘It cannot be helped,’ said Svenson. ‘But before this recent stoppage, did not the people of Raaxfall enjoy near total employment? The marriage between a crocodile and the birds that pick its teeth?’

‘You can imagine the wages Henry Xonck would pay – they will have no savings to last out one bare week, let alone three.’

The Doctor sighed. ‘You are right, of course … yet I cannot credit poverty with such an unprovoked attack. On strangers, no less – on a woman!’

‘Why should you think it unprovoked?’ asked Miss Temple. The three men turned to her in silence. At once she flushed. ‘Do not be absurd. I did nothing but stand in the air!’

‘Then what do you imply?’ asked Phelps.

‘I do not know – but perhaps there is more to their discontent than we understand.’

‘Perhaps. And perhaps this same mob tore your Mr Ramper to pieces in the street.’

They climbed rusted stairs and met another wall of iron bars. The Xonck works were a honeycomb of huts and roads, bristling with towers and catwalks. It was divided by earthen redoubts and moats of sickly green liquid and caged blast tunnels, the earth around each entrance black as coal.

‘The lock is on the other side,’ Svenson said, slapping a wide metal plate. ‘Nothing to pick or even to shoot open. We need a field gun.’

‘There must be someone within,’ observed Phelps.

‘No one especially
mindful
,’ said Miss Temple. ‘We are veritable tradesmen at the door.’

‘We might climb,’ offered Mr Brine, pointing up. The fence was ten feet high, topped with sharp spikes.

‘Surely not,’ said Phelps.

Miss Temple went onto her toes to peer through the bars. ‘Do you see that barge?’

Svenson screwed his monocle in place. ‘What about it?’

‘Was it not at the Parchfeldt Canal?’ she asked. ‘I recognize the rings of red paint around the mast.’

‘Perhaps it came from Parchfeldt with the machines.’

Miss Temple turned to Phelps. ‘From the river here, could one reach the Orange Canal – and Harschmort?’

Phelps nodded. His hair was plastered to his skull, and Miss Temple saw that the man was shivering. ‘But if they have gone to so much trouble, where
is
everyone? What is more, if the people of Raaxfall are so exercised against the factory, what has stopped them from storming it? Not their own reticence, I am sure, yet – no, no! What is this?’

His last words were petulantly addressed to Mr Brine, who had nimbly clambered halfway up the fence.

‘Mr Brine,’ Miss Temple called. ‘There are spikes.’

‘Not to worry, miss.’ Brine gathered himself just beneath the spikes, curling his legs, then recklessly sprung over them, slamming into the other side of the fence with a clang. Miss Temple gasped, for a spike had gouged through his sleeve.

‘Not to worry,’ he repeated, and lifted the arm free. Brine landed with a solid
thump
on the other side.

‘Well
done
!’ cried Miss Temple.

‘Is there a lock?’ called Svenson. ‘Can you –’

Before Mr Brine could reply, he was surrounded by a dozen sudden lines of jetting smoke, each lancing towards him with a serpentine hiss. Brine staggered, eyes wide with shock, then toppled off the platform and out of sight.

Miss Temple had the sense not to scream, and instead found that she – like both men – had dropped to her knees.

‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘Where is he?’

‘Is he killed?’ asked Phelps.

She quite quickly began to climb, fitting her feet like a ladder.

‘Good God!’ cried Phelps.