The Zeppelin Deception Read online

  Fortunately, when I got home at dawn, I was able to wash up then get into bed (with Pepper’s assistance) and sleep for a few hours before Florence was pounding on my door. Because I’m a Venator, I heal miraculously quickly, and so the lump on the back of my head was barely noticeable by then. I no longer felt anything but the faintest twinge, even when Pepper stabbed the bump with a hairpin (it was more annoying than painful).

  I was about to dash off a note to Mina when I remembered that she was still in Pix’s hideaway, which meant any communication had to go through Fenman’s End and Bilbo. I wasn’t going to trust that.

  So I suffered through my fitting—the poking, the tucking, the jolting and jerking that comes with it all—and as soon as Mrs. Glimmerston and her staff left, I told Florence I had an engagement.

  I don’t know whether she was feeling bad about our recent arguments, or whether she was just pleased that the fitting had gone well (meaning that I didn’t gripe about it), but she didn’t argue with me. She didn’t even ask whom I was meeting with, which only indicated how distracted she was.

  “You’ll need to stay in tonight, Evaline,” she told me while flipping through a multi-page list of something. “No dinner parties or theater, even with Mr. Oligary. You’ll want to look fresh and beautiful for the masquerade tomorrow night. On your wedding day you’ll need to share the attention with your groom. But tomorrow night, it’s all about you, my dear.”

  That was when I realized the entire next day was going to be spent being prepared for the blasted masquerade ball that I really had no interest in. My mood sagged.

  At least Mina was going to be there—I hoped; that was something I needed to talk to her about today—along with Grayling (which I would insist upon). I expected to see Miss Adler as well.

  Perhaps between the three of them, I might enjoy my own birthday party.

  “And so someone—presumably Lady Isabella—coshed you on the head—and this was after she complimented you on your vampire staking—and then had you dumped under a lamppost three blocks away?”

  I gritted my teeth. This was the third time Mina had made me confirm that, yes, I hadn’t even gotten across the threshold of the house before being taken by surprise. I was beginning to reconsider my delight in being reunited with my old partner. “Yes.”

  “So she didn’t want you inside Cosgrove Terrace,” Mina mused. “And yet she didn’t want to hurt you or detain you either. I wonder why.”

  “She didn’t want me to find Pix,” I retorted. “She knew once I was inside, she couldn’t keep me under her control.”

  “But we aren’t even certain that Pix is in there. I’ve been thinking about it more thoroughly, Evaline, and I’m not completely certain the Ankh is the one responsible for Pix’s disappearance.”

  “Well who else would it be?” I demanded. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  Mina shook her head. “No. I don’t think he’s dead. Because if they wanted him dead, he’d not only already be dead, but his body would have been found.”

  “But why?” I tried to squash the glimmer of hope that I really had no business feeling.

  “Because if they want him dead, they need his body to be found. He is, after all, an accused murderer. What better way to close the case than to have the accused escape from prison and be found dead, and then the case is closed because he can no longer defend himself?”

  I nodded. I supposed that made sense in a roundabout way. “All right. But you have to admit that I was right about the Ankh being connected to the airship.”

  “Evaline, you’ve brought up that point at least a dozen times since you arrived,” Mina snapped.

  I smiled at her. “It just doesn’t happen very often that I’m right and you’re wrong—”

  “I wasn’t wrong,” she retorted. “I just wasn’t convinced that the Ankh was connected to the airship. I didn’t say she wasn’t. I don’t just leap to conclusions without first employing considerable ratiocination—”

  “Well, she wants me to join forces with her—like she asked you to do.” I gave her a piercing look. “Apparently there are things we need to talk about that happened at The Carnelian Crow.”

  “Yes indeed. The woman thought she would compliment me by asking me to partner with her,” Mina said with a sniff. “As if I’d fall for something so blatantly obvious. She attempted to flatter me into the idea, and of course I declined. Presumably you did the same.” She looked at me with her brows arched.

  “Of course I did. She was very offended that I used the term murder when talking about Lord Belmont.”

  Mina must have found that amusing, because she smiled. “Very well, then. I surmise Lady Isabella is quite threatened by the two of us. Particularly if we are in concert, which we are now, after several months of—er—a sort of hiatus. I’m certain that’s why she’s framed me for the murder of Frederick Boggs. Even if I’m not thrown in jail—which was clearly the intent—I’m completely distracted by the problem…or so she would hope.

  “And you—Evaline, she must assume you’re so busy with your wedding plans and now this masquerade ball, along with all of the other society obligations, that you don’t have the time or energy to pay attention to her either. If you hadn’t found my message lost in your house, I might have suspected she’d caused it to go astray. It’s in her best interest to keep us apart.”

  “I suppose that makes some sense. And maybe that’s why she invited me to tea—to find out whether I was busy or not.”

  “Indeed. She knows that only the two of us can stop her. After all, we’ve stymied her several times in the past.”

  “Right. But stop her doing what?” I asked in exasperation.

  Mina sighed and sank back into her chair. We were, of course, still in Pix’s hideaway. “I wish I knew, drat it. And I wish I wasn’t locked up in this place. But that’s precisely what she wants.”

  “I know. But why?”

  She frowned and looked down at her hands. “If only I had asked you to bring my knitting. I need something to do with my hands so I can free up my mind to think.”

  “Well, what do we know? We know that the airship landed at her house, and since she accosted me at the door, then she must have been awake and about and knew about it. I think she was with Sir Emmett and that they went to Paris. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

  Mina lifted a brow. “The only thing? I can think of at least eight other things that make just as much sense as that, Evaline. And that’s without even trying very hard.”

  I sighed. “Well, then what do you think she is going to do?”

  She erupted from her seat and began stalking about the chamber. “I have no bloody idea!”

  I stifled a laugh. It was rare to see the unflappable Miss Mina Holmes in such a state. “Well,” I ventured after a moment of enjoyment watching her work herself into a dither, raging back and forth at top speed, “maybe she’s not going to do anything at all. Maybe she’s given up on her—what would you call it? Villainous plot?”

  “Never. Impossible. We are talking about a woman who killed young ladies in order to raise the powers of Sekhmet from the dead—” She stopped suddenly, her eyes widening. “Evaline. The Theophanine Chess Queen!”

  “What about it?”

  “We have no idea what ancient secrets or knowledge Isabella obtained from the inside of that chess table.” She whirled so quickly that I felt the air move. “What if she has some powerful information—some, some recipe or formula or something that she’s about to put to use to—to take over the city?”

  I might have laughed to hear Miss Specific, Pedantic Mina Holmes use the word “some” so many times in one sentence if the thought wasn’t so intriguing. “That’s true. We don’t know what she found in there, do we?”

  “She’s said all along—even from the first time we heard her speaking at the Society of Sekhmet—that she wants power. Especially for women, and especially power over the men who have controlled them for so long. Even b
eyond power. I believe she really wants revenge.”

  We looked at each other.

  “But what about the special battery devices she was using to control Lord Belmont? I thought that was her villainous plot.”

  Mina shrugged and made a noise that sounded like a pained groan. It meant she didn’t know the answer.

  “Perhaps with Pix in jail, she no longer had a source for the battery mechanisms. Or perhaps they didn’t work as well as she intended. Or perhaps since we killed all the vampires that night at The Crow—well, except for at least the one you staked last night—she has decided to do something different.”

  “Or maybe whatever was in the chess table was even better than the battery devices,” I said.

  “Good gad, I should hope not.” She paused, looked at me unseeingly, then began to pace again. “But there remains the fact that there was a small piece of wire found in Pix’s jail cell—just the sort that would be attached to those battery mechanisms.”

  A horrible thought struck me. “What if she put the controlling device onto Pix?”

  “That’s the obvious explanation,” Mina said in an offhand manner. “Either she did, or we are meant to believe she did. Obviously.” She rolled her eyes at me.

  I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at her (I hadn’t done that since I was six).

  “I need to find out who Frederick Boggs is. There has to be a reason the Ankh picked him to kill, and frame me for the crime.” She was pacing again. “Speaking of which, Evaline, what do you think about me coming as Sekhmet to your fête tomorrow night? I have an appointment with the woman who took over at Mrs. Thistle’s, and she’s very nearly as clever and brilliant as Mrs. Thistle was. Her name is Madame Trouxeau. With an X instead of two S’s.”

  “Madame Trouxeau? That’s her name? Really?” I scoffed.

  Mina flapped a hand at me. “I haven’t decided yet, but if so, you’ll know it’s me because Sekhmet is traditionally portrayed as a woman figure with a lion’s head. She wears a ureaus—surely you remember from our first case that a ureaus is the snakelike tiara sort of crown worn by the pharaohs in Egyptian—”

  “Of course I remember,” I snapped. I couldn’t believe she was worried about masquerade costumes when there were so many other things to attend to.

  Besides, I wished I’d thought of coming as Sekhmet or something interesting like that to my party.

  Instead, I was going to be wearing a towering wig, broad pannier skirts (which would not only be impossible to dance in—a benefit, to be sure—but also inconceivable to fight in) (not that I anticipated any UnDead at my ball) and a beauty patch because Florence had insisted I dress as Marie Antoinette.

  I wondered if it was too late to change my mind.

  After all, it was my masquerade ball.

  Miss Holmes

  ~ Of World & Time Travelers ~

  Och, then, Miss Holmes,” said Inspector Grayling. “I never thought I’d have occasion to cross the threshold of this establishment again.”

  He had, as instructed by a message from me (actually, one of several over the course of the last day), arrived to pick me up for Evaline’s birthday masquerade at the former Mrs. Thistle’s street fashion boutique.

  His comment was in reference to the fact that during The Carnelian Crow Escapade, Evaline and I had discovered the deceased proprietress inside her shop. Grayling, of course, had been the one to manage the crime scene.

  “I can assure you there are no dead bodies involved this time.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” he muttered. Then his expression changed as he got a good look at my costume. His eyes bugged out of their sockets.

  Smiling to myself—for I had hoped for such a reaction from anyone who saw my attire—I swept past him from the boutique, where Madame Trouxeau (it really was a ridiculous name, but the woman was quite a genius when it came to street fashion, so I decided it would be detrimental to my appearance to hold such creative license against her) was still nattering on about a last-minute customer who’d expected her to accommodate them for the costume ball.

  But apparently this last-minute customer had promised to pay her an exorbitant amount of money, and as Madame Trouxeau was quite practical—except, clearly, when it came to the matter of her professional reputation—she accepted the fee and created (in her words) “a brilliant fashion arrangement in modern street style.”

  As her name would suggest, Madame Trouxeau was rather flamboyant, and the direct opposite of her assistant—a quiet blond woman who wore a long, simple gown that put me in mind of a medieval chatelaine’s attire. She even went by the title “Lady” instead of madam. The two of them worked in tandem, speaking hardly any words between them as they outfitted me.

  Grayling joined me in the carriage he’d arranged as our transport for the evening, and I had the opportunity to admire his costume as well. While it wasn’t quite as unique as mine, his achievement in concocting his ensemble was more than adequate and rather dashing.

  My companion was wearing breeches of mahogany velvet tucked into knee-high black boots that laced all the way up the front using small copper cogs as the hooks. I immediately noticed the slyly hidden pockets on the inside of each boot and was intrigued by the possibilities they presented. They would be the perfect place to secret a slender dagger or some other useful implement.

  Grayling wore a rather simple but dashing duster that reached past his knees and was made from dark blue wool. As he climbed into the carriage in a pleasant waft of peppermint, I observed several pockets on the inside of the coat as it flapped open with his movements, then went on to admire the array of timepieces (both modern and a bit dated) attached to the lapels. Clearly, time was an important clue to his identity; not that I had needed that hint, of course.

  Beneath the duster, Grayling had donned a waistcoat of shiny fabric striped in brown and blue over a crisp cream-colored shirt with an elegant cravat. He carried his mask, which was untraditional and an integral part of his costume: slick, complicated aviator’s goggles made from black leather and copper fittings to hold them in place. The eyeholes were long oval shapes and appeared to have different colored lenses which could be flipped into place as required. And was that a tiny illuminator attached to the top? I was fascinated, but didn’t want to ogle too much. Grayling also carried a small expanding map and a complicated compass of brass and bronze.

  “Mr. Fogg, I presume?” I said with a smile.

  He seemed pleased that I had identified him as the intrepid traveler from Mr. Verne’s celebrated Around the World in Eighty Days.

  “Yes indeed, Miss Holmes. But I am at a loss as to what your costume is meant to portray. I confess, I’ve never…er…seen anything quite like it before.”

  He certainly hadn’t.

  No one in 1890 London had.

  I’d decided at the last minute (although apparently not as last-minute as Madame Trouxeau’s other, much-lamented client) to dress as something far more daring and interesting than Sekhmet.

  I’d been inspired by one of my previous conversations with Dylan, during which he’d mentioned something called flapper girls. He was explaining about how in the not-so-very-distant future—within thirty years!—not only would women get the right to vote in both England and America, but they would begin to wear more comfortable, less restrictive clothing with shorter skirts.

  And they would all cut their hair short as a man’s.

  Which I had actually done—not only for the sake of this costume, but also for the practicality of it all.

  Yes, indeed—on the floor of Mrs. Trouxeau’s shop there had been left long, thick tresses of my brownish/chestnut-ish/auburn-ish hair when she was done. (I’d suggested she keep the bundles in order to make a wig for her clients, and she lopped off a significant percentage of the cost for my ensemble in exchange for the donation of my lopped-off hair.)

  My head now felt incredibly light, and with the weight gone, shockingly, my hair had sprung up into gentle waves. The feel of
those airy tresses brushing against the sides of my neck instead of feeling the heaviness of it hanging nearly to my hips was a wildly liberating feeling.

  “Did you…cut your hair?” Grayling asked. His expression was a cross between astonishment and, I believe, admiration.

  “No, of course I didn’t cut my hair, Inspector,” I replied with a pedantic smile. “Her assistant cut it for me. It would have been a disaster had I attempted to do so.”

  “Of course.” His reply was grave. He was silent for a moment, then said, “It’s quite unusual. But it suits an unusual woman.”

  Our eyes met in the dim light of the carriage, and I couldn’t help but remember that emotional moment two months ago when Ambrose had fairly crushed me to his body upon learning that I was, in fact, unharmed…and then commenced to kissing me with the same expressive sentiment.

  “I shall take that as a compliment,” I managed to say, despite the fact that my mouth had gone dry and my stomach felt as if a flock of butterflies had been released therein. I lifted my chin a trifle in subtle challenge. Just in case.

  “It was intended as one.”

  I smiled and settled back in my seat even though my insides were still fluttering. “I was gratified when you agreed to attend the masquerade with me tonight. I realize it was quite short of notice, but I feel certain it will be worth your time.”

  “As do I.”

  We lapsed into a companionable—if unusual—silence during the remainder of the ride.

  One might find it surprising that I should have allowed myself to be distracted by such social frivolities as a masquerade ball when there were serious matters afoot, but rest assured that I had my reasons. And it was because of them that I was particularly pleased Grayling had agreed to accompany me.

  However, despite my attention being focused on the evening’s upcoming revelry, there were two other items that bothered at me, and were likely the cause of my silence during the carriage ride.