The Zeppelin Deception Read online

  The Zeppelin Deception

  A Stoker & Holmes Book

  Colleen Gleason

  Copyright © 2019 by Colleen Gleason

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To everyone who was Team Mina or Team Evaline…thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  Contents

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Holmes

  Miss Stoker

  Miss Holmes

  A Note from the Author

  In Which a Masquerade Ball Unmasks an Undead

  More About Victoria Gardella

  About the Author

  Miss Holmes

  ~ In Which the End Begins ~

  The dawning of the last decade of the nineteenth century did not come—at least in my opinion—accompanied by celebration and optimism.

  In fact, I regret to say, the change from the old year to the new annal of 1890 brought with it darkness, apprehension, and despair.

  For the latter nine months of the year 1889, I had partnered with Miss Evaline Stoker—a young woman who, though quite different in temperament and intellectual capacity than myself, was an incredibly brave and honorable individual. We had formed this partnership at the behest of Miss Irene Adler, joining her in service to Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra.

  Those nine months had been fraught with adventure, danger, mystery, and crime-solving, as well as the burgeoning friendship between myself and Miss Stoker despite our mutual initial reluctance to work together. There had also been several members of the male gender who inserted themselves into our investigations, willy-nilly and, at times, unwelcomed.

  But as the year ended and rolled into 1890, everything changed radically—and in utterly unpleasant ways.

  On the day this narrative begins—specifically the seventh of February, which imposed cold, blustery winds and tiny, unforgiving ice pellets on the city as a sort of underscore to the news I was soon to receive—I stumbled gratefully back into the house after running several imperative errands that morning.

  Our housekeeper Mrs. Raskill had gone off to Cornwall to care for her niece, who’d just had her third child, leaving me to run the household on my own—which I am, of course, fully capable, though not particularly desirous, of doing. Today, that included going to market despite the inclement weather, and that was from whence I was returning.

  I’d misplaced half of my favorite pair of gloves—which I needed on a day like today—and instead of protecting me from the sleet and damp, my new umbrella had ended up dumping the wet all over me due to a malfunction of one of its mechanical ribs.

  This, along with the weather, had already put me in an untenable mood, but when I managed to get my dripping, freezing self inside the two-story brick residence I shared with my father, Sir Mycroft Holmes—at least when he bothered to come home—and saw that the mail had been delivered, my emotions soured further. And that was when something very like despair overtook me.

  I glared at the inanimate object of my antipathy as I removed my sagging hat and tossed my soaking cloak vaguely toward the automatic closet.

  There on the table, where the Eppie’s Mail-Monger had sorted each item by size, was the missive I had feared and dreaded.

  Please understand that despair is not a word often used to describe the emotions of a Holmes—whether by myself or someone else. Those of my kindred are of much stouter heart, stronger of spine, and ingenious of resource than to resort to despair.

  But I confess that when I picked up the small square box sitting atop the pile of mail, my insides shriveled. And for the first time in nearly a year, I felt utterly and completely alone.

  Although I knew who the sender was, and what awful news it portended, I examined the package with the careful study that has made the reputation of my infamous family—not only that of my father and my uncle Sherlock, but mine as well.

  The item that captured my reluctant interest was larger than the palm of my hand when I rested it there to feel its weight. A square, cardboard package of brilliant white, it had a crimson ribbon of velvet that tied it closed. A wax seal that seemed to be (and could very well have been, considering the wealth of the individual who’d sent it) made from ground pearls glittered at the seam and ensured that the ribbon had not been disturbed. A small cluster of flowers—miniature red roses of a stunning, bloodlike hue I’d never seen before, and fresh, in February!—were affixed to the top in an elegant sort of nosegay.

  The writing on the front of the teacup-sized box was in a hand not familiar to me, but the perfect script in—Good heavens, did the ink actually carry the scent of roses in its very makeup?

  Pushing a damp lock of hair from my face, I tilted the box and sniffed the pale red writing. Yes, the essence of rose emanated from the particularly large and thick dot at the end of my name—Miss Mina Holmes—on the front. A pale sprinkle of pearlescent glitter dusted the edge of that frontispiece of the cube, and had clung to the ink before it dried. This gave the script a lovely, sparkling depth.

  On any other occasion, I would have been properly awed by the beauty and uniqueness of such a package, but not in this case.

  I considered setting it aside and refusing to open it—after all, there were several other items in the sorted stacks of mail, including a simple, boring, small envelope with my name stamped on it that, at first glance, indicated nothing about the sender.

  But, as I have mentioned previously, a Holmes is always of stout heart (although in my case, that stoutness might be less robust when entering a small, dark, enclosed location), and I knew that ignoring the package would have no effect on its contents and the event it portended.

  And so I carefully removed the tiny blood-red nosegay and pried up the pearly seal, setting them both aside in order to open the lid.

  It lifted easily, and before I could look inside, I heard a quiet whirring from within. To my amazement, a small cardboard block emerged from inside the box, and then another smaller one from inside that one, and another and another, until it telescoped into a sort of tower approximately eighteen inches high from the original package.

  Each block was made from sturdy cardboard whose sides had been cut out in a complicated, lacy pattern and was painstakingly edged with gold paint. It looked almost like a square wedding cake with gilt edges, and as each little extension emerged, a little puff of rose fragrance was released.

  I was impressed and charmed in spite of myself, and when the smallest filigree cube had emerged, the whirring changed s
lightly. All at once, a small roll of paper emerged like a finger from the top, and suddenly it unfurled itself, down the front of the lacy tower.

  As it unrolled, the paper—which was a shimmery, pliable, vellum-like substance—unfolded two arms so that it became as wide as the original cube and the scroll cascaded down the front of the tower. Finally, the quiet mechanics ceased and the paper hung like a pearlescent banner from a miniature castle’s peak, proclaiming the event that I had been dreading.

  * * *

  Sir Emmett Oligary

  Requests your esteemed presence

  At the Nuptials of his brother

  Edward Lucas Oligary

  &

  Miss Evaline Eustacia Stoker

  The First of March

  In the Year of Our Lord

  The Oligary Tower Penthouse

  Six O’Clock in the Evening

  I was not at all surprised to see the words, but I was startled by my physical reaction to them. My stomach pitched sharply downward, my eyes stung, and my heart began to beat faster.

  It is actually going to happen.

  In three weeks.

  I supposed I’d somehow harbored hope that something would occur to change the inevitable. After all, during the last nine months, Evaline and I had managed over and over again to come forth triumphant in the endeavors we undertook.

  Well, most of them.

  I still smarted over the failure of the Chess Queen Enigma, wherein the devious villainess known as the Ankh had managed to steal—right from under my nose!—the secrets (if there actually were any) hidden inside a Byzantine chess table that had belonged to two powerful British queens.

  I sighed and pushed the dripping hair out of my face. As cunning as it was, I couldn’t look at the elegant, complicated, fragrant invitation any longer. I turned away in a whirl of skirts and abject frustration, nearly oversetting the Brolly-Warmer Deluxe.

  I hadn’t spoken to Evaline, nor heard anything from her, for nearly two months—since that night at The Carnelian Crow when the Ankh escaped justice yet again.

  I’d sent her a note the next morning…but she never responded. And despite the fact that I’d thought to call on her several times since, something held me back from contacting her again. She clearly had no desire to be in touch with me, and I told myself I was giving her the opportunity to contend with everything that had happened at The Carnelian Crow.

  Had I made a mistake, staying out of touch?

  And yet I hadn’t received even the whiff of a contact from her either. Apparently, she’d decided to move on with her life.

  But I don’t want to get married. Can’t you do something? You’re a Holmes!

  Evaline had said that to me—in a variety of words, tones, and volumes—more times than I cared to count during our investigation of The Carnelian Crow.

  But there was nothing I could do. Nor was it my place to do anything.

  For, as much as I hated to admit it, Evaline’s problem wasn’t something I or anyone else could fix for her. She had to decide what to do, and then take the appropriate action.

  It was Evaline’s brother, Bram, who’d gotten himself and his wife into a financial fix that required—or so they told Evaline—her to marry a wealthy man. And quickly. They’d told her she had to at least become engaged before the end of the year, or they would succumb to the bill collectors and all of them would be thrown out of Grantworth House.

  When she approached me for help, I merely pointed out to Evaline that she had three options: she could do as Bram and Florence wished and marry to save them, she could marry for herself when and if she chose, or she could simply decide not to marry at all and let Bram and Florence deal with their own mistakes and problems.

  I even offered to allow her to live with me for a while (although, to be truthful, I wasn’t certain how that would go on, for, as I’ve indicated previously, Evaline and I possess such different personalities that one might describe them as sand and glass).

  I glowered at the fancy filigree invitation. Apparently, Evaline had made her decision.

  As I continued looking at the shimmery vellum announcement, I attempted to quell the unfamiliar sense of despair. When Evaline married Ned Oligary on March first, our partnership would be over.

  In effect, it was already over.

  That was why I hadn’t seen nor heard from her in months. And I had no intention of contacting her.

  But what would I do without my partner?

  Well, certainly, there were benefits to working on my own—which I had been doing over the last months, thanks to Miss Adler.

  I could continue with the sorts of tasks to which she’d been setting me: discovering where one of Princess Alix’s ladies-in-waiting’s cat had disappeared to (in the cellar of Buckingham Palace, where the mouse population had happily been decimated), determining the origin of a particular, suspicious-looking tea leaf that had apparently found its way to Her Majesty’s table (a silver needle tip that was imported from China), translating a document from Russian that possibly revealed the location of the Lost Library of Ivan the Terrible (it turned out to be a badly written love poem), and more.

  Not particularly interesting or exciting cases—nor dangerous—but they were enough to keep my mind occupied.

  Working alone, I didn’t have to worry about Evaline doing something impetuous and getting us nearly killed—as she’d done that first night we encountered the Ankh in a secret chamber under the Thames—and several times since. She tended to rage into situations without thinking or planning… Although, I must admit, she’d slightly improved in that area over the last few months.

  I sighed and realized my eyes were stinging. I blinked rapidly, annoyed with myself. A Holmes does not allow emotion to guide her actions.

  Which was why I’d left Evaline alone for the last two months.

  I’d made a mistake in doing so, hadn’t I?

  And now it was too late.

  But perhaps it wasn’t. Her birthday was in three days. Perhaps I could—

  A violent pounding at the front door startled me out of my musings.

  What on earth?

  I was alone in the house, of course, and thus it fell to me to answer whoever it was that insisted on ignoring our mechanized copper and brass cog-work door knocker and using their meaty (they sounded like the size of a ham) fists—yes, plural—to attempt to gain entrance.

  “Open up in there! It’s Scotland Yard!”

  My eyes widened, and my heart gave a funny little skip. I hadn’t spoken to Inspector Ambrose Grayling since that night at The Carnelian Crow. I’d seen him once, from a distance, when I’d visited the Met with my uncle.

  Once, from a distance.

  Grayling had nodded at me, but hadn’t made an effort to speak to me, even after…well, after everything that had happened that night at the secret club.

  “One moment,” I called back, stifling the niggle of despair that reared its ugly head again.

  Grayling would never pound on the door in that violent, uncouth manner, and I certainly didn’t recognize the demanding voice, but the fact that it would be one or more of his colleagues—and perhaps even Grayling himself—spurred me to attempt to fix my drooping hair. I frantically jammed a pin into my heavy locks—and, painfully, into my scalp—in an effort to put myself to rights, despite the fact that the hems of my frock were soaking.

  “Open up!” The door heaved on its hinges beneath the onslaught of heavy fists, and I began to become alarmed.

  What on earth was the matter?

  Were they in search of my father on some urgent task?

  Was there an emergency? If so, why didn’t they say so instead of making such rude demands?

  Or were they just being ham-handed (I make that jest quite purposely) and obnoxious?

  I flung open the door, prepared to give whoever it was a very strident lecture. There were three men standing there—none of whom were Grayling. “Sir, your impatience and vociferous—”


  “Miss Alvermina Holmes?” demanded the burly constable whose raised hand indicated he was the one who’d been attempting to pound down my door.

  How dare he interrupt me? What a rude individual. I was going to have to speak to his superior.

  “I’m Miss Holmes. I cannot understand why—”

  “Miss Holmes, step out here, please.” The man actually had the audacity to interrupt me a second time—and to give me an order.

  “I most certainly will not—”

  “Miss Holmes, I’m not going to say it again. Step out of the house and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Evaline Stoker might be one of the most physically strong and capable people I know, and she might be quick to defend or attack, but at that moment, when I realized what was happening, I would have anticipated even her.

  I reacted in an instant, slamming the door and bolting it in one smooth, quicksilver motion. My heart was thudding wildly.

  Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  “Alvermina Holmes, open the door immediately! The house is surrounded by constables, and there is nowhere for you to go.”

  Something was definitely very, very wrong.

  “Open up, Miss Holmes!”

  That little niggle of despair I’d been battling?

  In that moment, as the situation began to sink in, it became a full-blown hurricane of shock and fear. And when I heard the next words, I went completely numb: