The Dark Unwinding (26 page)

T
he removal of Alice Tulman from Stranwyne was a messy business, ending with a forcible escort to the carriage by Mr. Lockwood, poor frightened Hannah cowering at her side. I pointed out to my aunt that making herself an unwelcome addition to my household was not in her own best interest, as I was now the arbiter of her monthly allowance, but jealousy and spite are not always wise. I instructed Mr. Babcock to keep my aunt’s allowance the same, adjusting only for the yearly rise in expenses, and to inform her that if she wanted more she need only ask me. And as I was confident she never would, I was also quite confident I might never see her again.

Mr. Babcock and I stood on the rise above the flooded Lower Village, and he muttered and
tsk
ed and blew his nose, and then we walked back to Stranwyne and together laid out a scheme for rebuilding. We turned our attention first to restoring housing, doubling the output of the pottery kilns until the foundry, engines, and gasworks could be rebuilt. The canal was closed off and enormous ditches dug to siphon off the water, but it was weeks before the ground truly drained, and months before every family had a cottage. It was decided to move the site of the Lower Village closer to the Upper, above the repaired canal wall, to prevent a repeat of recent disasters, and merge the two into one. I pored over every aspect and detail of these plans, pleased to be rebuilding what I had once thought I would destroy.

I also made Mr. Babcock aware of the other events at Stranwyne, a talk that lasted far into the night, and in true Mr. Babcock fashion, this conversation resulted in a visit from the British government. Mr. Wickersham arrived on a December afternoon and sat with me before a fire in the little morning room, a room I had set aside for my own use, and one of the first to receive the benefits of my father’s money. The walls were not crimson or pink, but pale green, the curtains a shade darker. Mrs. Jefferies had piled the chimneypiece with evergreen and berries for Yule.

Mary brought in a gyroscope my uncle had recently built, gave both it and a small curtsy to Mr. Wickersham, and left the room with her nose wrinkled, eyes riveted to the small pocket watch she carried. I’d not seen her expression so intent since the day I had found her in Marianna’s bedchamber, feeding the fire with pieces of my worsted. Mr. Wickersham spun the gyroscope, a tiny wheel in the center of a small, shaped flower, watching the petals open and close as the little machine balanced on his palm. He listened as I explained everything I knew about the workings of my uncle’s fish and about the cotton fluff that had exploded so powerfully as to blow up the boat and crack our canal wall.

When I had finished, he said, “And you say the original fish, Miss Tulman, was not found in the ruins of your uncle’s workshop, but is likely buried somewhere in the mud, or washed into the canal?”

I inclined my head. The same was true for Ben Aldridge, though neither one of us said it. I glanced once to my right. Mr. Wickersham’s companion was a thin, nameless little man with ink-stained fingers, scribbling into a tiny book at a furious rate. He dipped his pen and, alongside words, I caught a glimpse of a drawing of my face, quite recognizable. The man tilted the book ever so slightly away from me without interrupting his pen.

Mr. Wickersham let the gyroscope wind down, set it on the table, and slapped his knees. “Well, I do thank you for your time, Miss Tulman, and for the service you’ve done Her Majesty’s —”

“Mr. Wickersham,” I said. He had begun to stand, but sat down heavily again at my interruption. “Surely you are going to tell me whether any of my suppositions are correct?”

“Correct, Miss Tulman?”

“Was Mr. Aldridge planning to blow up ships, sir?”

Mr. Wickersham sighed, and put his elbows on his knees. “Aldridge was not even his name, Miss Tulman. The man was born Charles Benjamin Arceneaux, son of a Frenchwoman who went by the name ‘Aldridge’ while in England — to avoid local prejudices, one might suppose — and a Royal Naval officer of the name Daniels. Under none of these names, however, was this man a graduate of Cambridge, or any other institution, or employed in any sort of teaching position in London.”

I looked back at Mr. Wickersham’s copious mustache, thinking of so many lies, heaped one upon the other, like coins of brass. “And the ships, Mr. Wickersham?”

“Yes, yes, Miss Tulman, of course he was planning to blow up ships. Or at least, to sell the ability to do so. That threat is now neutralized, for which every sailor in Her Majesty’s fleet thanks you.”

“Mr. Wickersham,” I said. He paused in a half crouch, sighed, and sat down again. “I would like to know why Ben Aldridge did not … dispose of me.”

Mr. Wickersham looked at me keenly while the pen scratched. “You are asking me why you weren’t murdered in your bed? You would have found that a more logical solution, young lady?”

“Of course.”

The man stared at me a moment longer and then chuckled. “We could also ask why he didn’t merely steal the fish, Miss Tulman, sail away before the thing was missed, and have the contraption studied by an expert at his leisure.”

I nodded. I had thought of this, too.

“As you are obviously not a fool, I shall be frank with you, Miss Tulman, and depend upon your discretion. There were letters going out in the post, I understand. Three of them, at different times, and written completely in French.”

I frowned. Mary had mentioned this to me long ago, though it had never crossed my mind since.

“And though Mr. Moreau is the only professed French-speaking literate on the estate, it appears that he was not the author of these letters. They were left anonymously, and right at sailing time, and, most unfortunately, Mr. Moreau was never able to read one.”

Davy
, I thought, a twinge of sadness temporarily diverting me from Mr. Wickersham’s words. “So you are saying that you believe Mr. Aldridge wrote these letters, and that therefore someone else was involved in his plans. Someone who was perhaps French.”

“Someone, or perhaps many someones, planning to pay your uncle’s workshop a visit. If one extraordinary and valuable idea was present inside it, then why not two, or three, or even four? It would have been imperative, therefore, to have the workshop and your uncle in place and intact, as hidden and private from the world as they’d always been. And, I must say, that your dead body would have been rather likely to attract more attention from the outside than less of it, Miss Tulman. But if you were to be proven insane … well, in that case, you would merely be the unfortunate victim of illness, unremarkable, and any tales you chose to tell about Stranwyne likely to be discounted.”

I had almost stopped listening, thinking of men like Ben descending on the estate. I leaned forward in my chair. “Mr. Wickersham, is my uncle safe at Stranwyne?”

“There is no longer a workshop, Miss Tulman, so I think these men will likely believe that the honey has left the hive. And let us remember that Mr. Aldridge himself was attempting to leave in the end, whether from a change in the game or a magistrate that was more penetrating than he could wish, I do not know. But in return for your question, my dear, I will ask you two. Are you aware, perhaps, that the current leader of France, Louis-Napoléon, is none other than the nephew of the tyrant Napoléon Bonaparte?”

I felt my brows come down. “Yes, I’m aware of it.”

“And are you quite certain, Miss Tulman, that last June Mr. Aldridge made the statement to you that the emperor of France expects his ironclad ships to sail very well?”

“Yes, that is almost verbatim.”

“Then please consider, Miss Tulman, that in June of this year the nation of France had an elected president. Not five days have passed since Louis-Napoléon dissolved his parliament and declared himself to be Napoléon the Third, emperor of France. Vigilance, my dear, would not be out of order for any of us.” He stood and bowed quickly, giving me no time to speak. “A very good day to you, and again, many thanks from Her Majesty’s navy.”

Mr. Wickersham strode from the room while the man without a name finished his last bit of jotting, gave me a bob of the head, and hurried out after him. I watched the hearth flames, thinking.

“Are they gone, Simon’s baby?”

I turned to see my uncle’s bright blue eye peeking around the doorjamb. “Yes, Uncle. And you did splendidly. You let him hold it for …”

Mary’s head popped into the doorway, and she held up the pocket watch. “Four, Miss!”

“Four minutes,” I continued. “Last time you only waited for three.”

“Five comes next,” my uncle sighed, coming cautiously into the room to take his mechanical flower. “Big things can be little.”

Or sometimes little things can be big
, I thought, my mind on Mr. Wickersham.

“Twenty-eight!” Uncle Tully shouted suddenly. “Twenty-eight to playtime! If you come to the workshop in twenty-seven, you shall be early, little niece, and in twenty-nine you shall be late!”

I smiled. “I will be there in twenty-eight, Uncle.”

And that was the first day that Lane did not come to the workshop.

Marianna’s library had become the workshop, temporarily at least. It was full of tools, benches, whirring, ticking, my uncle’s chatter, and new burn holes in the carpet. But I did not think Marianna would have minded that. On Wednesdays, Uncle Tully allowed Mary to join us, and she brought him salvaged pieces from the flood to play with and reassemble. It was Mary’s day when my uncle’s newest project became recognizable: a child-sized clockwork arm connected to the gears of a long-legged rabbit. Lane set down the wax he was carving and said, “I can’t make that face for you, Mr. Tully.”

My uncle’s mouth went slack, as if Lane had pronounced a sudden predilection for the green-striped cup. “You can’t?”

“No, Mr. Tully.”

I watched them both cautiously, and when my uncle showed his first hint of agitation I said, “You like to remember numbers in your head, don’t you, Uncle?”

He frowned. “Yes, but …”

“You don’t always write them down to look at, do you?”

“No … I …”

“Well, I think Lane would like to remember Davy in his head, too. Without looking.”

“Oh!” My uncle’s face brightened. “He likes to remember in his head! That is just so. Lane always knows what is just so.” He picked up the clockwork arm and the bright blue eyes fixed themselves on the gray ones. “But what about … rabbits?” he whispered very loudly. “Do you like rabbits to be in your head or outside of it?”

“I think outside will do just fine, Mr. Tully,” Lane replied, his smile as much for me as for my uncle.

I’d been glad to see it. With the rebuilding for him and the planning and management for me, the care of my uncle, a house full of people waiting on the completion of their cottages, and Mary’s watchful eye, it wasn’t often that he managed to take my face in his hands, as he had once before. Though he had managed it. He could be rather ingenious that way. When I brushed my hair at night, I looked at the silver swan on my dressing table and no longer saw the upward escape of flight. I saw the act of alighting, of settling softly in. But lately he had struck me as restless, and sometimes I would catch his gaze wandering, looking at things I could not see.

And then one evening he knocked on the bedchamber door and asked Mary if I would like to go rolling. I couldn’t imagine what he meant, the polished floor of the ballroom still being mud-covered and ruined, but when I saw the long, wide hallway that led to the upper garrets, the floor newly polished, and the skates, cleaned, oiled, and dangling from his hand, I could not hide my delight.

We raced — no telling what the villagers still in the house below thought of our noise — while Mary, ever vigilant, watched from the garret steps. He wouldn’t let me win, as I thought a gentleman might have, and only laughed when I complained, telling me that I had no complaint, as he’d never been a gentleman. But I could also see that he had something on his mind. When I slowed after our sixth lap, laughing and trying to catch my breath, he turned to me and said, “Mr. Cooper came to see me today.”

I waited for him to go on, but there was no other noise than our wheels on the passing floor. And then I saw something I had only ever seen once: a tinge of pink beneath his skin. I stared at the new color as he skated on, hands in his pockets, until we were at the farthest end of the hall, away from Mary.

“Mr. Cooper came today and … he asked my permission to marry Aunt Bit.”

I blinked. As good friends as Mrs. Jefferies and I had become, I had never thought of her as … marriageable. Of course, I’d never thought of myself that way either, not before Stranwyne. But I’d not forgotten Mr. Cooper’s signature on the paper denouncing my sanity, though in light of the threat to his home, I had struggled to. The gray eyes were on me, waiting, so I said, “Well, what does Mrs. Jefferies say about it? Isn’t it rather sudden?”

He slowed to a stop and ran a hand through his hair, and I watched, enthralled, as his skin flushed further. “That’s … why I’m telling you this, actually. Aunt Bit says she’s going to come to you herself, and …” He lowered his voice. “The truth of it is, this whole thing’s been going on a long time. I didn’t know until you said something about the room with all the ornaments and the crystal and such. I knew she’d borrowed that silver wolf — or I knew it after she told me she had — but …” He sighed. “I reckon she was trying to impress him, and they had to meet away from the village, so …” He shrugged. “Aunt Bit says Mr. Cooper has a taste for ‘fine things.’”

My eyes widened. I remembered Mr. Cooper’s twitchy gait down the tunnel, and Mrs. Jefferies opening the ballroom door when they knew we were all going to the castle, and the silver wolf on the table in the room of the ornaments, with a supper laid out before the fire. I thought of that night, and felt my hand go to my throat.

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes,” he replied.

“And I just sat there on the settee, waiting and waiting….”

“While they peeked through the window, their supper going cold.”

I stared back into Lane’s appalled face. The situation was ridiculous and horrifying all at once. A long moment passed, and then I giggled, Lane smiled, and seconds later the bare walls rang as we laughed. Mary shook her head at us, her face showing disapproval from the stairwell as Lane took my hand, pale cream in his tan, and pulled me forward to skate the other way down the hall while I tried to catch my breath.