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Marianne got home without incident, and took to her rooms for the remainder of the day. She wrote everything down, so that she would remember it clearly in the future. She also began a list of things she had to do and people she had to find.
Jack Monahan was a problem. Not only had he thrust himself upon her at the séance, but he had also come to the house. She would have to find out about him, and discover if he was a man to be pitied, or a potential danger. She started a new page in her notebook for him.
Then she began to read the latest journals and periodicals, and a stack of newspapers that had been read already by Price and Phoebe. She missed the constant debate and meetings of university and tried to keep up to date through magazines and newspapers. A story about the events in East Prussia caught her eye, simply because George Bartholomew had been there, but it was all about the Junkers – the aristocracy in the region – and their refusal to give up their ancient rights to keep serfs under their thrall. For serfs, she thought, you may as well say slaves. But the legal language in the article bored her and her eyes flitted on, caught suddenly by the word Maskelyne.
But the story was not about the celebrated stage magician from the Egyptian Hall. She was eager to discover what he was doing, as all the rumours were that he was closeted up and writing a book that would shatter the public’s illusions about magic. Instead, it mentioned a “true heir and perhaps rival” to Maskelyne called Harry Vane, lately arrived in London and already stirring up the salons with his shows and talks.
She had been hearing more and more of him, and she made a new note to seek him out. She would be interested to hear what he had to say, and saw him as another potential ally in her mission to lead the British public away from superstition and firmly into the future – a future of science. She travelled to public lectures as often as she could, and it was heartening to see more and more women attending these events.
She was a member of the University Club for Women, a rather new venture that linked up the recent graduates of all the colleges that now accepted women. They met at Bond Street, and she thought it would be worth her while popping in soon, and asking if anyone there knew anything. She looked at her list of questions again. She wanted to find out about Edgar Bartholomew and Wade Walker. She wanted to know exactly why George Bartholomew had returned to England. She wondered about Price Claverdon’s ill-advised situation of blackmail. She flipped the page of the notebook and studied the barest, blankest page: who was this Jack Monahan?
She was interrupted in her thoughts by a knock at her door. Her father was in a lucid period, and requested that she spend the evening reading to him, and she agreed though she could not persuade him that there were more interesting things to read than a journal of chemical science. The evening dragged, but he was happy, and she had to remind herself that she should be a dutiful daughter. She owed him a lot, and it was her turn to repay that debt.
She stifled her frustration and smiled like a pleasant young lady and counted out the minutes until she could finally abandon the discussion of Graham’s effusion and diffusion of gases, and head to bed.
The next morning, she was startled quite early by a quick rapping on her bedroom door. She was not yet dressed, and pulled her loose robe around her as she called out, “Who is it?”
Phoebe, as immaculate as if she had been up for three hours, danced into the room. Of course, she had staff who would dress her. Emilia, her personal maid, was a particularly patient genius. “Who do you think it is? Have you a stream of gentleman callers? What happened yesterday? Oh! You have changed your curtains. I like the red. When you came home, I was being held hostage by Mrs Digby and her half-dozen daughters, and they simply wouldn’t leave. I hoped you might manufacture a disaster to save me.”
“Oh, I didn’t realise. What is that?”
“This,” said Phoebe, waving the newspapers at Marianne, “is a revelation. You must see it. They have just been delivered. I wrestled it from Price’s grasp before he took it to breakfast and covered it in egg and fish. He will be annoyed with me. I don’t care.”
“You do care.”
“Yes, I do. I shall be awfully contrite later though. Now, look!” She opened one of the wide papers up and flung it onto Marianne’s bed. “Look. Just look!”
“An electric corset with health giving properties?” Marianne said, peering at the half-page advertisement. “No, Phoebe, we’ve spoken of this. It is nonsense. It will kill you more likely than do anything useful. Just like that headband of zinc and copper discs that you bought for your migraines. Useless.”
“The discs do work but I cannot stand the smell of vinegar. But surely, Marianne, the corset will fill me with vibrancy?”
With a sigh, Marianne sat on the bed and pulled the large paper closer. “There will be ink on my sheets and the maids will be angry,” she remarked as she scanned down the narrow columns of tiny print. “Anyway, you have quite enough vibrancy, I feel.”
“There are quotes there from some eminent people.”
“Anyone could print anything. No, Phoebe, I really would not recommend this. But I do not think this is really why you’ve come to see me so early.”
Phoebe slid onto the bed alongside Marianne. “So astute. Go on. Tell me everything. You went without me to the Bartholomew place, and I am unhappy, though it could not be helped.”
Marianne told her cousin everything that had happened at the house. Phoebe nodded seriously when she was finished.
Phoebe began to fold the newspapers back into manageable sizes again, ready to take into the breakfast room for Price. “Are you definitely taking the case, then?”
“Yes.”
“Thrilling! You must find out all you can about Edgar Bartholomew. Marianne, do you not ever worry about making enemies?”
“Mrs Silver is hardly a terrifying nemesis.”
“Perhaps not, but there are others. What about that dreadful little man you exposed last month?”
“Oh, the Incredible Duke Illanni? Wasn’t he vile! He swore to disembowel me in Downing Street, which I thought was a curious threat. For safety’s sake I have avoided calling on the prime minister, of course.”
“Of course,” laughed Phoebe. “But seriously, are you not sometimes afraid? He was very upset that you made such a fool out of him. And not just you, too. Didn’t that man, the one you admire, Harold what’s-his-face, do the same?”
“Harry Vane,” said Marianne with a sigh. “Oh, I simply must meet him. I keep reading about him since he came to London and I do so want to talk with him.”
“I am sure your paths will soon cross. But once this Vane had hold him of, coming after your exposure, well, that fake Illanni was quite done for. He has been run out of town.”
“And with good reason. He really was a menace. Simeon was annoyed, of course. He admired the man’s tricks and wanted to learn more.”
“Well, your Simeon is a menace all of his own.”
“Hush now. He is a good friend.”
“Marry him and be done.”
“Oh goodness, no, I should as rather marry a fish. We are too much friends, and that is all. I know him too well to ever want to marry him.” Marianne got up and began to choose her clothing for the day, laying it out on the bed and checking for stains.
“I’ll send my Emilia to you,” Phoebe said. “You have repairs and darning to be done there.”
“Thank you.”
Phoebe stood up and shook out her skirts, then scooped up the papers. “Come along. You shall miss breakfast at this rate.”
“I intend to. I have other things to do.”
***
SHE WAS NOT GOING TO sit around and wait for the next thing to happen to her. Marianne had never sat around and watched life go by. She simply wasn’t built that way. Instead, she sallied forth into the fresh open air and took the next train into town.
She marched briskly, buffeted by crowds and street hawkers and tourists and workers and children and dogs and noise. She headed for Simeon’s workshop, wanting to tell him what had been going on, and perhaps to ask for his advice in how to find out more about Edgar Bartholomew and the irritating Jack Monahan. She found her old friend hard at work on a cabinet of mirrors, set at cunning angles to disguise their true purpose, and instead the mirrors merely showed the contents of a hidden compartment.
“You are very clever,” she remarked as he demonstrated it.
“Yes,” he said. “And everyone knows it, which is why they target me so much.”
Ah. She had thought he might have moved on to a new paranoia by now, but obviously not. “They seek to emulate you,” she said soothingly. “They are copying you out of flattery.”
“Then why do they do so much better than me?” he wailed suddenly, and flung himself dramatically into a shabby armchair, his legs sticking out at angles like an abandoned puppet. “There is a conspiracy against me, I can tell. There are whispers.”
“Why would there be?”
“I am different. I have no background, no history. It marks me.”
“Oh, tush. What rot. You are what you make yourself. The world is changed, Simeon. Even the meanest man can rise, now. You are not what your father makes you.”
“And as I have no father, that is all to the good. Do you want some cake?”
“Yes, please.”
He jumped up. He had to be in motion. When he stopped moving, thoughts and worries would overwhelm him. So he bustled around the end of the large room set aside as the kitchen, and came back with a slab of something sticky and gingery on a clean plate. His own, she noticed, was marked with pickle and the remnants of a pie. But at least he knew how to treat his guests well.
She blamed his slovenly habits on his erratic upbringing. The son of a prostitute, he had been in a Foundling Orphanage until he was adopted by an impoverished but well-meaning clergy couple, who doted on the young boy but brought him up with equal measures of discipline, praise and the fear of Our Lord. They had encouraged him to pursue his interests and apprenticed him to a carpenter who specialised in the theatre. The clergy couple then promptly expired, leaving him very little in the way of inheritance, but no lasting troubles, at least.
Marianne had met him when she was still in her first year at college. She had come back to London and was attending a public lecture about the possible use of electricity in telepathic transference. She had listened to the start of the lecture with deep scepticism and finished it utterly unconvinced, and a little sad that she did not believe it. They had sat next to one another and very politely ignored one another as they were perfect strangers, and that would have remained the case. Except when the lecture ended, Simeon had risen to his feet, seen that she was unaccompanied, and said, “Oh, I suppose I ought to offer to escort you to a cab or the station? Only I need to go quite quickly because there is a show on I need to see. There will be an elephant.”
And that was it. She, too, needed to see the elephant, and they became friends with a shared interest in the workings of magicians, mediums and mystery.
She told him about the visit to Mr Bartholomew, and he listened with interest. “And you have taken the case, then?”
“Yes.”
“So what is your next move?”
“I shall find out all I can about the older Mr Bartholomew. And I must hunt out Mr Wade Walker.” And look up this Jack Monahan, she thought, but decided not to tell Simeon that. He was concerned enough for himself; she didn’t want to add worries about her to his burdens.
“How will you find out about these men?”
“By using my innate charm when speaking to people.”
His face flickered for a moment and she was offended. “I can, you know,” she said. “I can be charming.”
“Good luck,” he remarked. “Would you like some eel pie?”
***
SHE HAD EATEN FAR TOO much, and wasted rather too much time at Simeon’s workshop. It was after midday when she continued on her journey. She decided that she would walk back to the station, and get home, and begin to write letters of enquiry. She walked slowly, as it was hard to breathe and digest at the same time in her narrow clothes. She didn’t tight-lace her corset – only a few, madly fashionable women ever did – but she had dressed herself when she had been empty of food, and now her belly was rebelling. Acid burned the back of her throat.
She paused by a bench, and debated whether to sit for a moment. As she did so, a man stopped alongside her.
The cologne in her nostrils told her who it was.
“You, again,” she said.
“Of course,” replied Jack Monahan with a grin. He swept off his hat and bowed low. “Didn’t I tell you that we should be friends? I shall watch you and I shall follow you until I convince you.”
“Sir, you cannot do such things!”
“It seems that I can.”
“There ought to be a law against it.”
“Perhaps there is. Shall we go to a police station and ask?”
She frowned at him. “I am going nowhere with you.” She felt powerless under his onslaught.
“Then let us sit here, and discuss ... business.”
“No.” But curiosity finally burst out of her, “Well, sir, what business?”
“Aha! At last. Excellent. I always get my way, in the end.” He grinned and she felt a little ill. He would not take no for an answer, and she began to wonder about men like that. How dangerous would he become if she kept refusing him? Had she become a point of pride and principle – someone that he had to break?
He put his hand up as if to stroke her cheek, and she stepped back with a hiss. He let his hand drop but he continued speaking as cockily as his gesture had suggested that he was. “I knew that you were a woman of sense. And that is exactly why we will go into a kind of partnership together. I speak only of business, Miss Starr. I know better, now, than to appeal to your womanly nature. This business arrangement will be a temporary one, but it will serve us both well.”
“Doing what?” she asked, in spite of herself, and slightly miffed at the insinuation that she had no womanly nature worth appealing to. She remained standing though he had taken a seat on the bench now, and lounged, with one arm resting along the back of it. She could not sit down without it looking as if he had his arm around her shoulder. She kept her chin held high.
“The exact details can be worked out as soon as you agree to it,” he said. “But suffice it to say that I think your talents for spotting the tricks of mediums and frauds could be very useful to my current line of work. You are a talented investigator. Very well-known, very clever. So let us harness our cleverness together. Yes, that’s it exactly.”
“I will not agree to anything that has only the barest of details. I am not that stupid,” she said scornfully. He had made his excuse up on the spot and she didn’t believe a word of it. He was riddled with lies, and he was simply saying what he thought would appeal to her. “You are making things up as you go. What exactly is your current line of work? For I am beginning to imagine that you are a fake and a fraud yourself, sir.”
“Are we not all composed of layers and not all are revealed truly even to ourselves?”
“No,” she said.
“There are many perceptions of truth,” he went on, like he was giving a philosophy lecture. “For example, while I believe you to be an able and indeed talented woman of science, others think you to be a shrill harpy.”
“How dare you!”
He opened his hands wide. “Not my words, dear Miss Starr. The words of others. There are those in this town who don’t appreciate your talents as I do.”
“Who?”
“Rivals in your very own business.”
“I have none! We all work towards the same aims.”
He shook his head sadly. “Would that this were true. Some resent a woman’s influence in the masculine arts. But I do not! All I want, Miss Starr, if I may speak plainly, is a little time in your company. I should dearly love to see your laboratory! May I not call?”
“You have tried and you were rebuffed. I am sorry, sir, but you may not call.”
His face darkened and his fists seemed to briefly clench. “What must I do to be able to be accepted at your house?”
“It is not my house,” she said through gritted teeth. “Sir, if you have any decency in your heart, you will leave me alone. I am very busy.”
“With what? I can help.”
“You can help by allowing me space. Good day, sir.”
She strode away and counted to thirty before she looked back. When she did so, he had gone.