Reggiecide (Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries) Read online

  _______________

  Copyright © 2012 by Chris Dolley

  All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Published by Book View Café

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-207-5

  Cover art © Chris Brignell - Fotolia.com

  Steampunk Font © Illustrator Georgie - Fotolia.com

  Cover design by Chris Dolley

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, mad scientists, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my editors: Jennifer Stevenson and Sherwood Smith.

  And, of course, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

  One

  t is a truth universally acknowledged that a chap in possession of a suffragette fiancée is in need of a pair of bolt cutters.

  “Which railing is she chained to now, Reeves?”

  “The Houses of Parliament’s, sir. Miss Emmeline and five other ladies are protesting in Parliament Square.”

  “Have the police been summoned?”

  “I fear their arrival is imminent, sir. Shall I fetch your driving coat?”

  I positively shot out of the door. Reginald Worcester does not dawdle when a damsel is about to be distressed by the long arm of the law. Especially when said damsel happened to be Emmeline Dreadnought who, like Queen Elizabeth when confronted by the Spanish Armada, would not go quietly. And there was nothing that irked a magistrate more than a person who would not go quietly. She could get fourteen days!

  I pushed the Stanley Steamer to its limits, turning into Piccadilly on two wheels.

  “How’s the brain, Reeves? Up to pressure and full of vim?”

  “It appears to be functioning within acceptable parameters, sir.”

  Reeves’s steam-powered brain was one of the Seven Wonders of the Victorian World. If anyone could save Emmeline from fourteen days of embroidering mail sacks, Reeves was the chap.

  “Can you see her?” I asked as we swung into Parliament Square.

  “I believe,” said Reeves, holding onto his bowler with one hand and the side of the Stanley with the other, “that that is Miss Emmeline by the main gate, sir. It does not appear that the constabulary have arrived yet.”

  I swerved the car towards the small outcrop of humanity clustered around Parliament Gate. Emmeline was on the far right of a line of six ladies. I don’t know if there’s a dress code for protesting, but these ladies would not have looked out of place in the Royal enclosure at Ascot — except for the placards and chains. The Ascot stewards take a dim view of both.

  “Votes for women!” they chanted in unison, waving placards conveying a similar message. Emancipation Now! Votes For Ladies!

  A small group of onlookers had stopped to watch the protest. I aimed the car to the right of them and pulled hard on the brake lever. The Stanley stuttered to a complaining halt a few yards short of Emmeline.

  “Good morning, ladies,” I said, rising from my seat and doffing the old driving cap. “Sorry to interrupt and all that but ... Emmeline! Quick, jump aboard. The rozzers will be here any second!”

  “Good,” said Emmeline, affecting a surprisingly haughty tone. “Let them come. Votes for women!”

  “What?”

  I climbed down from the Stanley and attempted to reason with the young firebrand.

  “I don’t think you quite understand, Emmeline. The police take a dim view of the Queen’s peace being disturbed. Especially when it involves people chaining themselves to the Palace of Westminster’s wrought ironwork! You’ll go to prison.”

  “Perhaps I want to go to prison. Votes for women!”

  “No one wants to go prison. It’s much over-rated. They don’t serve tea until well after six and there are positively no cocktails. Come on, Reeves. Cut those chains.”

  “Reeves!” commanded Emmeline. “Stay where you are!”

  “If you wish, miss, though ... might I suggest you reconsider your current plan of action?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Emmeline. He’s a man,” said one of Emmeline’s sisters-in-chains. I’m not sure if Valkyries had aunts, but if they did — and they were partial to large hats and ostrich feathers — this woman could have been a stand-in for Brunhilde’s on her days off.

  “Actually, he’s not a man,” I countered. “He’s an automaton. A dashed brainy one at that. And if Reeves says reconsider, I’d jolly well listen to him.”

  Emmeline would have none of it. “This is not a time for listening, Reggie. This is a time for action.”

  Reeves coughed, one of his mildly disapproving coughs. He’d aired it earlier upon discovering a pair of duck egg blue spats I’d hidden at the back of my wardrobe. “Would not your arrest, and subsequent incarceration, miss, severely limit your ability to protest?” he said. “If you accompany us now, you can protest again tomorrow but, if you are imprisoned, you will be unable to demonstrate for fourteen days.”

  “Fourteen days of hard embroidery,” I added.

  “Ah, but I’ll have my day in court,” said Emmeline. “It’s time we took our fight to the judiciary and showed them that women will no longer put up with injustice. Votes for women!”

  Four contralto voices echoed Emmeline’s call.

  This was not going well.

  “Why don’t you take my vote, Emmy? I never use it.”

  “That’s very sweet of you, Reggie, but I should have a vote of my own. All women should. It’s outrageous that it’s Nineteen Hundred and Three and women still don’t have the vote.”

  “I think you’ll find that most aunts have had their husbands’ vote for years. I know Aunt Bertha has. I’m pretty sure she has the gardener’s too. One glare from Aunt B and one toes the party line.”

  “I say,” boomed a male voice from somewhere to my right. “Aren’t you Reginald Worcester, the gentleman’s consulting detective?”

  I didn’t recognise the chap. He looked like a taller and less menacing version of my old house master at Melbury Regis — Stinker Stonehouse, a man who viewed the protection of the school larder from the nocturnal predations of small boys as the highest possible calling.

  “Well this is a rare piece of luck,” said the newcomer. “Scrottleton-Ffoukes is the name. I’ve mislaid a relative and I need to get him back pretty smartish.”

  “Have you looked in all the usual places?” I asked.

  Reeves coughed, not one of the disapproving genus this time, more of the ‘I have an observation to make, sir, but am far too well-mannered a valet to interrupt’ variety.

  “I’m afraid in this case,” said Mr Scrottleton-Ffoukes, a man obviously unfamiliar with Reeves’s oesophageal lexicon. “That there are no usual places. I had wondered if I might find him here, but am rather relieved I have not. I say, could we go somewhere private? This is a most unusual and delicate matter.”

  Reeves coughed again.

  “You have an observation, Reeves?” I asked.

  “Only that this appears to be a most interesting case, sir, and what a pity it is that Miss Emmeline is otherwise engaged.”

  Reeves had done it again! The man must bathe in fish oil. His brain was positively turbot-charged.

  “Indeed,” I said, catching Emmeline’s eye. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider? I know how much you love a good mystery.”

  Emmeline wavered. She looked at her chains. She bit her lip. She sighed.

  “Don’t listen to him,” s
aid Aunt Valkyrie. “It sounds like a ruse to make you abandon the protest.”

  “I’m sorry, Reggie,” said Emmeline, looking down at her feet. “I’ve got to see this through.”

  “But Emmy—”

  “My mind is made up.”

  “I don’t wish to intrude,” said Mr Scrottleton-Ffoukes. “But this is a matter of great urgency. I cannot involve the police. I need your assistance this minute.”

  I looked once more at Emmeline and realised it would be pointless to try again. Once Emmeline had made up her mind, she was resolute.

  “Don’t forget to use a false name, Emmy. I’m rather partial to Nebuchadnezzar Blenkinsop whenever I’m up before the beak. You could be his sister, Nefertiti.”

  ~

  We toddled over the road into the lawned central area of the square and found a quiet spot under that new statue — the one by Eckstein.

  “I believe we would be safer over there, sir,” said Reeves, indicating a spot by Westminster Abbey. “If we remain here I fear the police may think us guilty of vandalising this statue.”

  I gave the Eckstein a swift perusal. “Are your eyes malfunctioning, Reeves? This statue looks tickety-boo to me.”

  “The female personage — if indeed it is a female personage, sir — would appear to have three eyes. And is orange.”

  I tutted. Fourteen years locked in a cupboard had given Reeves a very narrow view of what is and what is not art. Our opinions had clashed several times.

  “It’s modern art, Reeves. And who is to say the model was not orange ... or indeed three-eyed. One should never jump to conclusions these days. As the bard said to Lord Nelson, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

  Reeves put on his disapproving face — and made a show of shielding his eyes from the offending statue by placing his right hand hard against his brow — whilst Mr S-F presented his story.

  And what a story it was.

  “Have you heard of Prometheans, Mr Worcester? Corpses assembled from many parts and brought back to life by the introduction of electrical energy?”

  “I should say so. I’ve even conversed with a couple. Thinking about it, I was almost related to one once — until she ran off with next door’s pig.”

  “Pig?”

  “A Promethean pig, assembled from a collection of Europe’s finest porkers. And a Scotsman. Although I’m not quite sure how the Scotsman got into the mix. Do you recall, Reeves?”

  “No, sir. I fear that will remain one of life’s little mysteries.”

  “Oh.” Mr Scrottleton-Ffoukes appeared somewhat non-plussed, an effect I often have on people. I believe Sherlock Holmes generates a similar effect. Emmeline says it’s because our brains are differently wired. Our thoughts skip and gambol along paths that the general populace doesn’t even know exist.

  “Well,” he continued. “I have been financing a study into Necrometheans — that is the reanimation of long dead corpses. Very long dead corpses.”

  “How long?”

  “300 years.”

  I whistled. “Three hundred years? Isn’t there a problem with um ... you know ... the condition of the specimen?”

  “That was one of the first things Mr Snuggles worked on.”

  “Snuggles?”

  “He’s the scientist fellow I’ve been financing. A veritable genius. Anyway, to cut a long story short, yesterday we re-animated an ancient relative of mine and this morning he’s gone. We can’t find him anywhere.”

  “Are you sure he’s gone and not just ... dissolved into a pile of dust? If someone left a window open last night his ashes may have scattered.”

  “I assure you, Mr Worcester, my relative was very much alive when he left the room for he broke the lock on the laboratory door! I fear he has a strong dislike of confined spaces.”

  “Three hundred years in a coffin is wont to do that to a person.”

  Mr Scrottleton-Ffoukes began to look a little sheepish. “I fear it is more than that,” he said. “He was ... somewhat ill-used before his death. And I think he may be seeking revenge.”

  “Upon whom? Mr Snuggles hasn’t re-animated any other 300 year-old corpses, has he? The Jacobean Scrottleton-Ffoukes weren’t involved in a blood feud with the Capulet-Smythes, were they?”

  “I fear it is not so much a person that he intends to harm, as an institution.”

  Institution? The Worcester brain boggled.

  “Perhaps if you gave us the name of your relative, sir?” asked Reeves.

  Mr Scrottleton-Ffoukes looked down at his brogues and shuffled. “Er ... Guy Fawkes.”

  You could have struck me across the mazzard with a wet halibut.

  “The Guy Fawkes?” I asked. “The Gunpowder Plot Guy Fawkes?”

  “Yes, though I am sure he is innocent. I have read a great deal upon the subject and am quite convinced the plot was orchestrated by Robert Cecil. He wanted to ingratiate himself with King James and convince the King of the Catholic menace.”

  “Really?” I said. History had never been one of my strong subjects. I knew King James had written the Bible, and what schoolboy hadn’t heard of the Gunpowder Plot? Bonfire Night was one of the highlights of the school year — all those fireworks and the weeks beforehand spent constructing your Guy to toss onto the bonfire.

  But this Cecil cove had passed me by.

  “It was to clear his name that I had Snuggles re-animate Guy — so he could give his side of the story. I have a son, Mr Worcester, and I do not want him to suffer the same humiliation I had to suffer at school. Every November the Fifth it was my effigy the boys placed on the bonfire in the quad. It’s about time the world knew the truth.”

  “Quite,” I said. “Did your ancient relative have much to say upon the matter?”

  “He was not entirely coherent. He was frightened at first — which was not surprising as his last memories were ones of torture and execution. Then he became angry, and later violent. It took two of us to hold him down while Snuggles administered a sedative. We hoped a night’s rest might calm him down.”

  “But he broke out instead. What do you think, Reeves?”

  “Perhaps if we were to visit the location Mr Fawkes was last seen, sir. There may be evidence of a trail.”

  I wasn’t sure what kind of trail a three-hundred year old reanimated corpse would leave but, that aside, Reeves’s steam-powered logic could not be faulted.

  Two

  r Scrottleton-Ffoukes conducted us to a fourth-floor attic in a Georgian house off Great Smith Street in Westminster. The attic door looked undamaged at first sight. It wasn’t until our host pushed the door open that one could observe the splintered wood around the lock on the doorjamb.

  “Are Prometheans noted for their prodigious strength, Reeves?” I asked. Both lock and door looked on the heavy side to me. And yet Guy had wrenched the door clean open.

  “Not that I have read, sir,” said Reeves, bending down to give the door a thorough eyeballing.

  I left Reeves to his sleuthing and toddled inside after our host. It was one of those large attics lit by several skylights — the sort much favoured by artists, except this one was pervaded by a strange smell as though someone had been experimenting with cocktails and had mistaken a bottle of floor cleaner for gin.

  I don’t know what I’d expected a Promethean laboratory to look like: maybe lined with shelves full of jars containing spare knees; or giant electrical machines buzzing and belching forth sparks of electrical energy; or grave robbers lining the stairs with today’s special offers in a sack.

  I was right about the electrical machines, but they were neither buzzing nor sparking. They towered over a plinth-like bed whilst three large leather straps dangled from the plinth’s sides.

  “Was Guy strapped to that plinth?” I asked.

  “Only during the reanimation,” said Mr S-F. “When we left him he was unfettered.”

  Reeves coughed from the doorway. “May I make an
observation, sirs?”

  “Observe away, Reeves. We are agog with anticipation.”

  “I do not believe Mr Fawkes to be responsible for the forcible opening of this egress, sir.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because the door was forced open from the outside, sir. One can observe the faint outline of a boot upon the lock rail. A size eight right boot if I am not mistaken.”

  “Someone kidnapped Guy?” said an incredulous Mr S-F.

  “Someone with at least one leg,” I added.

  “One leg?” said Mr S-F.

  “That’s all we can deduce from the evidence so far. We consulting detectives are pretty hot on deduction. Any sign of a left boot, Reeves? On the landing, perhaps? An outline in a patch of rare silt of tropical origin, tracked in on the sole of our mystery man’s boot?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What about a circular indentation from a wooden leg? Sherlock Holmes rarely investigates a case without finding at least one one-legged man.”

  “Not that I can observe, sir.”

  “Well, there we have it. A person, or persons, with at least one leg between them. Now, who else knew that your relative was here?”

  I think Mr S-F was pretty impressed by my demonstration of the deductive arts, for he took a moment to reply, his mouth agape in obvious reverence. “Er ... Who else knew? No one, except for Snuggles and myself. We were very careful. Neither of us wished for news of this event to leak out before we were ready to tell the world.”

  “So,” I said, embarking on a spot of pacing. I always find pacing aids the detecting process. Well, that and gin. But as our host hadn’t offered the latter, the former had to suffice. “No unexpected callers in the last couple of days? Or anyone showing an unusual interest in your activities?”

  “Not at all.”

  This sounded to me like a three-cocktail problem and there I was without so much as an olive!

  I paced some more. In The Woman in Taupe, Inspector Lapin of the Sȗreté solved the case by examining the psychology of the victim. What did I know of Guy Fawkes other than he’d been burned at the stake?