Why disdain the bullet-catcher who employs a stooge? The illusion will amaze just as surely, unless the method be guessed.
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
There are many ways to confuse a witness, change of appearance being first among them. As I sat in the ladies’ washroom, I occupied myself by searching through my travelling case for the elements of an improvised disguise. The best I could find was a change of clothes. I swapped the full-sleeved, puffed-shoulder blouse I’d been wearing on arrival to one with straighter lines. I pinned up my hair, exchanged the straw hat for a cotton bonnet, folded my coat away and was thankful he hadn’t had a close view of my face the night before.
The eye of the observer is not a scientific instrument of brass and lenses. It perceives a greater picture, and thus it can be distracted. Have a man walk through a crowd and many will afterwards be able to describe the things he wore and even the details of his face. But if that man were to walk the same path carrying a parlour palm or a stuffed crocodile or any other unexpected object, all details of his person would be forgotten. Everyone would see the object, but no further. Thus he could not be identified without it. My travelling case was my crocodile, so to speak – too battered and conspicuous for me to risk carrying it out of the washroom.
Since I had not returned through the turnstile the night before, the intelligence gatherer who’d followed me must know he had found a story of interest. He would still be there.
By half past seven in the morning, women had started to come and go from the washroom with enough frequency to confuse anyone watching outside. Water flowed in hand basins. Cisterns flushed. It was time to make my escape.
I emerged from the stall to see the floor being cleaned by a hunched Negro woman with a wrinkled face. She was pushing her mop from side to side across the tiles, leaving them wet and shining behind her.
“Could you watch my case?” I asked.
“I’m no luggage service,” she said.
I placed a two shilling coin in her hand and closed her fingers around it. “Twenty minutes.”
“The men will be for you then,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
She flashed her eyes towards the exit. “The men that’s waiting.”
“How many?”
She showed me the five fingers of her hand.
“Private intelligence men?”
“Red coats. Men-at-arms.”
“Did you see the badges they wore? Whose insignia?”
Shaking her head, she took the suitcase from my hand and put it back in the stall from which I had just emerged. Then she took a wooden sign from one of the capacious pockets of her housecoat and hung it on the door catch: CLEANING IN PROGRESS.
The cleaner had not spotted the sixth man, a private intelligence gatherer who stood leaning against an iron pillar, nursing the last inch of a cigarette. As for the other five, they were exactly as she had described. Red-coated men-at-arms, swords hanging from their belts on one side, flintlocks holstered on the other.
Stitched to each chest was a badge of office, the emblem of the aristocratic house from which they derived their authority. It showed a green oak tree below a blue sky in which hung an off-centre triangle of white stars. All aristocratic families might have seemed the same to the cleaning woman, but they were not the same to me. This was the house I had grown to fear and loathe. This was the emblem of the Duke of Northampton.
To my credit, I did not break step on seeing them, but pushed through the turnstile and stepped out into the passenger hall, holding my head up so that the private intelligence man could get a clear look at my face – something he would not have been able to do the previous night. He frowned as he stared at me, then made a small shake of his head, a signal to the men-at-arms who were tensed, awaiting his direction. Only when I was clear of them did I begin to gasp in lungfuls of air, trying with no success to slow my racing heart.
Julia and her father were waiting near the alighting platform, watching the unearthly sight of a large airship approaching the docking pylons.
Mr Swain saw me first. “Elizabeth!”
I rushed the last few paces, holding my finger to my lips in warning.
Mr Swain beamed at the sight of me. “Why, my dear, I thought you were to stay in the north.”
I could not speak, but held my hands to my chest, trying to slow my breathing.
“What’s wrong?” asked Julia.
“Don’t... speak... my name,” I gasped.
They guided me to a seat. Julia placed her hand to my forehead.
“You’re perspiring Eliz–” She brought herself up to a sudden stop then whispered urgently. “What has happened?”
“Your luggage–”
“They told us to bring it to the alighting platform.” Mr Swain gestured to a pile of bags by the window. Among them, I now saw Julia’s travelling case, which we had packed together two days before. It was newer, bigger and definitely more expensive than my own. I opened my mouth to speak but then changed my mind and closed it again.
Julia clutched my hand. “What is it?”
“I can’t ask it.”
“If something needs to be done, you must!”
Mr Swain cleared his throat. “If there is some danger, I should be the one to do it, whatever it is.”
“You can’t,” I said to him. “This must happen in the ladies’ washroom.”
It was not the men-at-arms or the intelligence gatherer that disturbed Julia. Rather, it was the thought of her clothes being on public view as we emptied her travelling case. But still she did as I asked and soon her things were piled on the seat next to me. Mr Swain placed his coat over the top to hide his daughter’s underwear from public view.
We watched over the balcony as she descended the stairs, suitcase in hand, and made her way across the passenger hall towards the women’s washroom. As she approached the men-at-arms she slowed. My heart did a double beat as I realised she was heading for the intelligence man who still stood leaning against the pillar.
“No!” the word escaped my mouth as a gasp.
Her father stepped forwards and gripped the railing. His knuckles whitened.
Below us, Julia was speaking to the intelligence man. She put down her case then handed him something too small for us to see at such distance. He fished in his trouser pocket and passed her something in return. Suddenly I understood.
“It is a penny for the turnstile!”
“But him! Of all the people she could have approached!” exclaimed Mr Swain.
“Oh, but you should be proud of your daughter. Don’t you see? When she comes out, he’ll know she’s not the one he’s watching for. He’ll know her face.”
Blowing air through his lips like a deflating balloon, Mr Swain lowered himself into a seat. “And your brother does this for a living!”
Julia was emerging from the washroom. Too quick, I thought. She should have waited longer. And now she struggled with the case, where before she had carried it with ease. One of them would surely notice. If they searched hers and found mine concealed inside... the thought of it sent dread through my veins. Watching was greater agony than ever I had felt when my own life had been in danger.
The intelligence man stepped towards her and reached his hand for the case.
Mr Swain was on his feet again. “I must go to her,” he said, and was ready to act on his word, but I reached out and gripped his hand.
“Wait.”
Julia had placed the case on the ground. She was nodding, in conversation with the intelligence man. At last he touched the brim of his hat. She smiled, picked up the case again and was off towards the stairs.
Her father said something under his breath that could have been a prayer or an oath, I could not tell which. Then she was up with us again, cheeks flushed and wearing the broadest smile I had ever seen on her.
“That was such excitement!” she said. “He wanted to know if there was anyone suspicious waiting inside. I told him someone could have been hiding in one of the stalls.”
Then her father hugged her and so did I.
It was the biggest airship I had ever seen. Four carriages hung below the vast envelope. Though my ticket had been for a different carriage from the Swains’, a word with the conductor was enough to have me transferred. Thus we sat together at the very front, just behind one of the great engines.
Julia and her father took the window seats.
The front mooring rope had been tethered to a traction engine. This now began to steam forwards, leading us through the hangar doors much as a tug might guide a ship through the tight confines of a harbour mouth.
Never having travelled on a ship of such size, this ballet of machines was new to me. In other circumstances I might have drunk in the details as my companions were now doing. But my mind was occupied with the perplexing events of the last few hours.
All ports and crossing places have their spies. That one of them had chosen to follow me across the arrival hall presented no mystery. As a woman travelling on my own, I had piqued his interest. Doubly so when he realised I was spending the night in the washroom. He would surely have suspected me of being a runaway from a husband or a father. I imagined him casting around the crowds for sight of a waiting lover.
But the intelligence man had not simply waited and watched, collecting information to sell later. He had immediately sent a message to the Duke of Northampton, who had dispatched men-at-arms so promptly that they were waiting when I emerged in the morning. It had been five years since my flight from the Kingdom. If I was indeed the one they sought, it could only be because news of my crossing the border had reached the Duke.
“Will you tell me your thoughts?” said Julia.
I wondered how long she had been observing me. “You should be enjoying the view,” I said.
“There is no view.”
I looked through the window. We had climbed already and cloud swirled around the ship.
“In such conditions they navigate by compass and dead reckoning,” her father said.
“Why didn’t the soldiers enter the washroom?” Julia asked.
“You should know that from our reading,” I said. “The warrant they carry doesn’t allow entry into private places. And certainly not to a ladies’ washroom. They have to wait for a regular constable. Then they can force entry if need be.”
Mr Swain tutted. “The law of the Kingdom seems unreasonably complex.”
“The aristocrats wouldn’t give up their private armies,” Julia explained. “It adds a whole layer of law enforcement.”
“And the King?”
“It may be called a kingdom. But the Council of Aristocrats makes the laws.”
“Your lessons haven’t been wasted then,” her father said with a wry smile. “But if the aristocrats have all that power, why do their soldiers need a constable at all?”
Julia frowned. “I don’t know.”
She and her father both turned to look at me.
“That’s politics, not law,” I said. “Why should I know?”
“You have a way of seeing under the surface of things,” said Julia.
“Well...” I began. “I guess there’ve been enough revolutions around the world to give them warning. There aren’t many monarchies left. Perhaps the Council of Aristocrats knows that if they push the people too hard it’ll be the end for them.”
“You’re saying they rule fairly?” asked Mr Swain.
“Certainly not! But I’m suggesting there are limits.”
A growing puzzlement on Julia’s face told me that she had begun to think through the events of the morning. “How did the soldiers know where to find you?”
“Harry Timpson doesn’t want me to reach London,” I explained. “Nor does he want to waste his time trying to stop me.”
Her puzzlement turned to shock. “But he wouldn’t!”
“I’m afraid he would. He’ll have sent a message to the Duke of Northampton telling him I’ve crossed the border. I guess they’ll have searched the washroom by now. That means they’ll know they’ve been tricked. They’ll also have a good idea where I’m heading.”
Julia reached across and put her hand on mine.
“You’re surely safe,” said her father. “You’ll be in the capital and disembarked and lost in the crowds before news reaches St Pancras. Nothing is faster than airship.”
“I wish that were so,” I said. “But a carrier pigeon is faster still.”