The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead (8 page)

“My sisters,” Georgina said impotently, when she joined them. “We have to find them.”

“We could split up,” McKendry suggested, “cover more ground.”

Georgina glanced at the floor, the dark patch stained the wood’s varnish.

“I d– don’t think so,” Merryweather said quickly.

Caruthers was in charge: “I agree.”

They started off in a clump, but Caruthers edged in front and McKendry dropped back while Merryweather stayed with Georgina.

“How many girls were here?” Caruthers asked. His voice, all their voices sounded loud in the hard library silence of the empty college.

“I don’t know – fifty… and half a dozen… no, a dozen staff if you count the servants.”

“Servants?”

“Maids, cooks.”

“Any men?”

“Certainly not, well…”

“Well?”

“Doctor Mott, he taught Mathematics, and the caretaker, both rather old – sweet – and recently Pieter, the Gardener’s Boy, and the other Gardener’s hands.”

“And the Gardener?”

“Oh, yes, sorry… he was old too. Miss Hardcastle didn’t approve of young men.”

They reached the trophy case outside the hallway.

“Merryweather!”

“Caruthers?”

“Keep the lass back.”

Merryweather blocked Georgina’s view of the… whatever it was that was in the hallway. She tried sidestepping, but Merryweather was too quick for her.

“M– M– Miss,” he said. She could tell that he was torn between curiosity and concern for her wellbeing. His hand was raised, not threateningly, but simply as a gesture of friendship, but it hovered above her shoulder like a hummingbird considering whether to dip down for nectar. He was tall and strong and his presence was reassuring in a very strange, novel way. She wanted him to put his hand on her shoulder and make it all right, whatever ‘it’ was.

Caruthers and McKendry, who had knelt down to examine something, stood and backed away.

Caruthers didn’t look across to her: “The caretaker was old, you say?”

“Yes,” Georgina replied.

“Put up a hell of a fight,” said McKendry, mostly to himself. If the school had been cold before, it felt freezing now.

Caruthers cast a pointing finger about the room. The others went to the various doors that led off: the Headmistress’s office, the Staff Room, the Library…

“Bodies, I’d say,” McKendry replied, his eyes tracking across the rucked carpet, “dragged… here or… oh damn!”

Merryweather’s hand was now on Georgina shoulder.

“My sisters?” she asked.

“Keep her back,” said Caruthers. “For God’s sake, keep her back.”

Merryweather was a brick wall.

Caruthers disappeared into the library. He was gone so long that Georgina’s fingers felt raw as they squeezed Merryweather’s coat. When he returned, Caruthers looked ashen – not white and clean like the snow outside, but grey and dirtied.

“My sisters?” Georgina said.

In a voice that sounded drained, Caruthers said: “They’re all dead… murdered.”

“I must know.”

“No.”

“My sisters, I must know.”

Caruthers shook his head.

Georgina shoved Merryweather to force him to look at her. Her eyes moistened, her vision blurred as a deluge of tears threatened. She stepped back, smartly, sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve in a very unladylike manner, and took control of herself. When she spoke to the three men, it was in a tone that brooked no argument.

“I must know.”

“You’d have to look at the bodies,” Caruthers said.

Merryweather held her hand.

A few steps along and Georgina reached where the caretaker had put up a fight: there were stains everywhere, something had torn him apart. Georgina couldn’t look and instead turned her attention to the library. Inside, arranged neatly, were piles of clothes with tiny feet sticking out foolishly, human–sized dolls discarded, shapes and forms that made no sense, because Georgina’s head did not want to believe, did not want to take it in, did not want to see.

They’d killed all the girls, dragged their bodies to the library and piled them high. The teachers were to one side by the reference books and their charges were dumped by fiction and biography. So many lives cut short beneath tales of longer lives.

McKendry steeled himself and moved the bodies one by one, showing each face to Georgina.

“Beatrice,” she said. “Dolly, Maud, Tilly, my roommate, Smithie, I don’t know.”

Georgina cried when she saw the girl she didn’t know. For some reason being unable to acknowledge that she ever existed seemed too harsh.

“Do you want to stop?” Merryweather asked, his voice far away and soft.

“No.”

“This one?” McKendry said.

It was a girl who wouldn’t smile again: “Julietta… I hated her, she was a bully, but…”

“No–one deserved this.”

“I told her to go to drop dead.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Amazo, Amazon, I’m a spot, am as gone, am as lost…”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing.”

Caruthers bent to assist McKendry, so the process went quicker. After a while, Georgina’s words became monosyllables. When they reached the Life and Times of Wellington, there were none left to consider.

“They’re not here,” Georgina said.

“Are you sure?” Caruthers asked.

“They’re not here.”

Georgina turned her attention to the teachers. They weren’t laid on top of one another, so she could scan down the line by herself.

“I think all the tutors are here,” Georgina mumbled, “except for old Motty.”

Most had been shot, but some had been bitten, torn and ripped.

“Who could do this?” Merryweather asked.

“They had dogs, I heard them,” said Georgina.

“I’ve never seen a dog do this,” McKendry said.

“Miss Price was my Latin teacher, she was teaching me when… I wished her dead.”

“Come away,” Merryweather said.

“Gardener’s Hand… unless they are elsewhere with Lottie and Ness… oh, help.”

A darkness leapt up to take Georgina and Merryweather’s arms were there to catch her as she toppled.

Miss Charlotte

The magnificent airship turned as it dropped through the clouds. The castle below was rugged, constructed from large blocks of local stone, so it looked like it had been carved out of the mountain itself. Most of the towers ended with an elongated roof like a witch’s hat, but one had been converted into a lighthouse. Its beam sliced across the valley to guide airships away from the rocks.

A loud boom reverberated.

“Oh,” said Charlotte, “they’re firing a… one gun salute.”

“Nein,” the Graf replied. “It is the battery signalling our return – see!”

Below the castle at the end of a zigzag path was a small building. A cannon was fired again.

The Graf laughed: “A two gun salute.”

“One each.”

“Ja.”

The Zeppelin was close now as it bore down upon a platform of metal gantries that poked outwards and upwards. The wind gusted, so they had to manoeuvre to approach upwind. The motors strained as the giant behemoth narrowed the gap to yards and then inches as the crew called out in metres. The nose caught the gantry and a shudder coursed through the metal skeleton, a deep cavernous sound echoing the thrill that Charlotte felt.

Once the two cables from the nose had been secured, they grappled other lines and dragged the Zeppelin around. It trembled as the wind began to press against its side, but eventually it was tied off with the cabin section over another platform. As Charlotte waited by the exit with Graf Zala, ground crew jostled a large wooden staircase into position.

Graf Zala disembarked first.

“Careful, my Princess,” he said.

Although the gap was only a foot or so, it was nerve–racking to step across, but Charlotte made sure the Graf saw how brave she was. He held the railing and she held his hand as they descended. When his boot hit the stone flags, those waiting dropped to one knee, bowing.

“Vögte?”

“Graf, willkommen in–”

“In English, Vögte, in honour of our Royal guest,” said Zala, holding Charlotte’s hand high as if presenting her at court.

“Es tut… Apologies, welcome home, Graf, and welcome, Your Royal Highness,” the Vögte said. He was thin, gaunt, with his oiled hair slicked back and despite being clean–shaven, he didn’t look like a boy. His starched collar meant he couldn’t turn his head, which was funny.

Charlotte bowed in thanks: she was having such a good time.

The Graf turned to her: “You are tired. The Vögte will see to your needs.”

“I’m not at all tired.”

The Graf laughed: “I’m sure not, but I must leave you, duties you understand. I must see my father, the Crown Prince, and the dowager Gräfin. Tell her the good news.”

“I’d like to see around the castle.”

“Later, I will show you.” He stood to attention, clicked his heels and bowed. “The Vögte will see to your needs.”

Charlotte did the same in reply as she was still wearing the fabulous uniform with its trousers. The Graf strode away, every inch the leader of men. The Vögte, whatever that meant, was a subservient, bent figure, weighed down by his robes rather than augmented by them. He led a different way to a stone spiral staircase that descended seemingly into the bowels of the Earth, although each window afforded a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains. Finally, the dizzying rotation came to an end and a long landing stretched in a straight line to another wing of the castle. Everything was bare stone with the occasional hanging tapestry depicting mythical beasts or battles between knights in armour. It was all too thrilling.

Her quarters were spacious, furnished by big solid pieces of oak that were islands in the expanse.

The Vögte pointed out a few things without speaking: the four poster bed, the chest with linen and towels, and a water jug. He clapped his hands and a flurry of servants swept in and out depositing the luggage she’d last seen in the cabin of the Zeppelin. The view from her window didn’t include the Zeppelin and its moorings; instead, there were mountains, a tower on a projecting section of the castle itself, and below a compound with large stone buildings that belched smoke.

“Mister Vögte, what’s that?”

The Vögte came over: “They are factories, Your Highness. We are not so backward in this part of the world as people believe. The revolution in Britain has found its way to our little retreat. We have machines of all kinds in our Vulcan’s forge.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“And up there?”

“That is the research tower.”

“What’s there?”

“It is forbidden. There are experiments.”

“Experiments?”

“Chemistry and gal–”

“And the flying machine is there,” Charlotte interrupted, pointing in the direction she thought the airship was positioned.

“We have many airships.”

Charlotte’s eyes sparkled with delight.

A clutch of maids arrived to unpack her luggage. For a moment Charlotte wondered what they were doing, but then she realised that this luggage was hers on loan. She took to indicating where she wanted items placed, but she was only guessing. Her own battered suitcase always went under the bed.

“Hello,” she said to one.

The maid looked away hiding her eyes. They all did, these identical maids, as if to look upon royalty would turn them to stone. Briefly, when the Vögte was engrossed in triple–checking the Princess’s belongings were unpacked correctly, one of the maids made eye contact. Suddenly, the woman gripped Charlotte’s hand and whispered, almost like a prayer: “Sie sind so mutig.”

The moment passed as suddenly as it had arrived and soon everything was stored away. The maids stopped in a line, heads down and hands clasped in front of them.

With an imperative ‘shoo’, the Vögte ejected the women and turned to Charlotte, bowing in an altogether ingratiating way.

“I will leave you now, Your Royal Highness.”

“Mister Vögte, what does ‘Zee zint zo mootig’ mean?”

The man raised an eyebrow: “You are so brave.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said, pleased that she was a magnanimous ruler.

Once she was alone, all that remained for to do was to whoop, throw herself backwards onto the immense bed and grin foolishly.

She could go and have a little explore too, she thought. Except that a key turned in the lock. She ran over, banged on the thick oak and bent two hatpins beyond rescue in the lock before she admitted defeat, flopped down on the bed and went to sleep.

Chapter V

Miss Deering-Dolittle

It was a while before Earnestine realised that the tapping was real. It was dark, pitch black, and quiet except for the
tap-tap
. She got up, her bare feet protruding from the chemise she was using as a nightdress. The wooden floor was cold.

“Yes?”

“Fräulein?”

“Yes.”

She kicked a chair as she felt her way to the door.

“I have food and currency.”

It was one of the Austro–Hungarians: perhaps the small one.

Earnestine shifted the desk and opened the door, blinking against tiredness as well as the dark. It was Metzger, bent low, as if he was hiding, and more like a dormouse than ever. He had a basket of food and a shoulder bag.

“If you go down the valley, there is a road, twenty kilometres, no more.”

“You can’t possibly be asking a young lady like myself to travel alone.”

“But Fräulein–”

“Fräulein nothing.”

He glanced left and right: “May I come in to discuss this.”

“I beg your pardon!”

Her loud voice made him start and check the corridor again.

“I leave them here,” he said, and he put them down on a cupboard opposite the door before he stole away.

Ridiculous, Earnestine thought, that one of her kidnappers would bring an escape kit. Fleeing was obviously not something she could contemplate and any attempt had barely crossed her mind. It made her quite cross, so much so that it took her three attempts to strike the match that she’d palmed from the hotel’s reception. The candle took, casting its light over the room. She dressed quickly, double knotting the laces of her boots, and then slipped out. She bent low and checked the corridor and then straightened when she realised she was copying Metzger’s furtive movements. She added his bread, beef, knackwursts and cheese to the bag supplementing the rolls and the apple she’d purloined from dinner.