The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead Page 6

  He leaned against the reception top casually and whispered: “I think your presence needs an explanation.”

  “I am well aware of why I am here,” Earnestine replied.

  The landlord said something to her in German.

  “He wants to carry your bags,” Pieter said.

  Angrily, Earnestine wafted her hand to indicate the empty floor around her feet.

  The landlord tutted, took the Prince’s bag and led the way to the stairs. He took each step one at a time and the Royal party bunched up behind him. Eventually they reached the landing.

  As the old man led the way along the corridor, he pointed out various items in German, but with such a mumble that no–one could understand the importance of the pipe spigot in the wall, the heritage of a faded watercolour, the design of a blue chair or why a perfectly blank plastered wall should be of interest. Finally, he reached a door and ushered Kroll and Metzger inside. Further along was another room and he held the door open.

  Pieter ducked his head under and Earnestine followed.

  The landlord pointed to various items in what was clearly his best room. It boasted a wash basin, a writing desk and chair, an extraordinary view of the white peaked mountains and the large, robust four–poster that dominated the space.

  Pieter tipped him a coin.

  The man nodded, smiled and chuckled before leaving, closing the door behind him. Pieter and Earnestine were left standing next to the comfortable and inviting bed.

  Earnestine coughed politely.

  Pieter undid the top button of his jacket.

  Earnestine blinked at him.

  Pieter smiled, continued unbuttoning and the dark material teased open to reveal the white frills of his shirt.

  Earnestine tapped the heel of her shoe on the floorboard.

  Pieter took off his jacket.

  Earnestine folded her arms and glowered.

  Pieter placed the jacket over the back of the chair.

  Earnestine pointed at the bed.

  Pieter pretended not to understand.

  Earnestine lips narrowed into a fine line.

  Pieter held up his hands in surrender: “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  “Yes,” Earnestine said sharply, and then when he didn’t take the hint, she added: “In another room.”

  Pieter looked round as if somehow he could examine the entire inn: “I doubt there is another free room.”

  “I have a reputation.”

  “So do I.”

  “Exactly.”

  “No–one will know.”

  “I will know!”

  “I don’t see any alternative.”

  “Herr Cheshire Cat can sleep with the Hatter and the Dormouse!”

  “I doubt there’s enough space.”

  “That is hardly my concern!”

  Earnestine snatched Pieter’s jacket off the chair and handed it to him. The Prince contrived to hold Earnestine’s hands as he took it back, but Earnestine jerked away.

  “Out!” she commanded.

  Pieter paused in the doorway to click his heels and bow: “Jawohl, mein Fräulein.”

  “I am not your Fräulein.”

  “But Liebchen, I–”

  “Liebchen!”

  Earnestine slammed the door, bolted it, pulled the chair in the way and then decided that the writing desk would be better, so she heaved the mahogany weight across. Once she’d finished, there was a knock on the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Sleep well.”

  Earnestine entertained a few choice retorts, but they all involved the B–word and so she held her tongue.

  Miss Georgina

  Quickly and breathlessly with leaps back and forth, Georgina told the three British men about the Austro-Hungarian soldiers’ arrival through the snow, Miss Trenchard being attacked, the dogs, the shooting and the urgency of rescuing her sisters. When she’d finished, Caruthers had forced her to sit down and go through it all again from the beginning.

  The three of them then went into the other room to discuss the matter privately. Georgina sat and fidgeted. When they came back in, Caruthers simply nodded.

  “B– but you have to stay here,” said Merryweather.

  Georgina let out a strangled screech: “You don’t know the way.”

  “She is right,” Caruthers agreed.

  “B– but…” Merryweather flapped his arms in exasperation. “Ah! She has n– nothing to wear.”

  “That’s true,” Caruthers said, “doesn’t Mac have some spare cold weather gear.”

  McKendry got to his feet: “Aye.”

  Merryweather turned to the others: “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  Georgina was amused that Merryweather was still trying to think of an objection, or at least that’s what she assumed the procession of expressions across his face meant – it was endearing.

  McKendry came back in with a variety of bulky outfits and dumped them onto the table.

  “We’ll get changed in there,” said Caruthers and the three departed.

  The jumble sale of kit was extensive, but Georgina soon realised that she had to choose from the smaller outfits. Some of the overcoats were more like tents beside her frame. She selected a few, knowing that she needed layers, changed out of her petticoats and bustle and struggled into some heavy trousers and shirts. When she turned to pick up a windcheater, she saw Merryweather standing in the doorway. His horseshoe moustache extenuated his adorable hang–dog expression. They considered each other for a moment, Georgina trying to work out how long he had been there.

  “I, er… d– d– didn’t see… if that’s what you were… Miss.”

  Outside it was crisp, the sunlight having that brightness that only seemed to exist with snow on the ground. Georgina, impatient, had to admit that Caruthers had been right last night. Even in the daylight, she had little idea which way to go to the school. The blizzard had covered all trace of any paths.

  “Up or down?” Caruthers asked.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Did you go uphill or down?”

  After a brief reflection: “The lake… downhill… downstream.”

  “That figures. People being chased tend to go downhill.”

  They set off trudging upwards and after a while the landscape started to make more sense. Stuck in the College for Young Ladies, Georgina had spent a lot of time staring out of the window, so she knew the surrounding mountains from a particular angle. She pointed out the peaks and, down the valley, the small village with an inn which was just visible.

  She strode ahead, the three men following in her footsteps. Eventually the gothic architecture of the building came into view as a brick edifice sandwiched between the snow on the ground and the snow on its roof. Georgina took them through the arch in the wall at the back of the building. She showed them the stonework.

  “Fresh,” said McKendry, when he examined the pock marks made by the bullets. “Eight millimetre, Ruck–Zucks.”

  The men exchanged looks. They hadn’t exactly disbelieved Georgina, but now they clearly took her story far more seriously, and Georgina found herself affected by the new professional air they had about them.

  The door to the equipment room was ajar, a horror that Miss Hardcastle would never have countenanced: her precious heating, what little she allowed of it, escaping into foreign climes. The door to the corridor was closed and once inside each of them dropped their voices to a hushed reverence. Somehow the vastness of the building sounded empty.

  “It’s freezing in here,” said Caruthers.

  “Is it?”

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  “It’s always like this. Miss Hardcastle doesn’t agree with heating, she says it makes one indolent.”

  “Sounds like my boarding school days,” said Caruthers.

  Further in, Georgina hesitated: “It was down there, Miss Trenchard…”

  “Don’t worry,” Merryweather patted her gently: “We’ll look.”

&nbs
p; The three explorers went down the corridor.

  “There!” Georgina directed. “Just to your right.”

  “Mac?” Caruthers said and his colleague crouched down to examine the floor. He rubbed wood and brought his fingers to his nose.

  “Blood,” he said, standing. “The evidence fits the lass’s story.”

  Georgina could stand it no longer: “What is it?”

  “We’ve found the place your teacher was attacked… no body.”

  “My sisters,” Georgina said impotently, when she joined them. “We have to find them.”

  “We could split up,” McKendry suggested, “cover more ground.”

  Georgina glanced at the floor, the dark patch stained the wood’s varnish.

  “I d– don’t think so,” Merryweather said quickly.

  Caruthers was in charge: “I agree.”

  They started off in a clump, but Caruthers edged in front and McKendry dropped back while Merryweather stayed with Georgina.

  “How many girls were here?” Caruthers asked. His voice, all their voices sounded loud in the hard library silence of the empty college.

  “I don’t know – fifty… and half a dozen… no, a dozen staff if you count the servants.”

  “Servants?”

  “Maids, cooks.”

  “Any men?”

  “Certainly not, well…”

  “Well?”

  “Doctor Mott, he taught Mathematics, and the caretaker, both rather old – sweet – and recently Pieter, the Gardener’s Boy, and the other Gardener’s hands.”

  “And the Gardener?”

  “Oh, yes, sorry… he was old too. Miss Hardcastle didn’t approve of young men.”

  They reached the trophy case outside the hallway.

  “Merryweather!”

  “Caruthers?”

  “Keep the lass back.”

  Merryweather blocked Georgina’s view of the… whatever it was that was in the hallway. She tried sidestepping, but Merryweather was too quick for her.

  “M– M– Miss,” he said. She could tell that he was torn between curiosity and concern for her wellbeing. His hand was raised, not threateningly, but simply as a gesture of friendship, but it hovered above her shoulder like a hummingbird considering whether to dip down for nectar. He was tall and strong and his presence was reassuring in a very strange, novel way. She wanted him to put his hand on her shoulder and make it all right, whatever ‘it’ was.

  Caruthers and McKendry, who had knelt down to examine something, stood and backed away.

  Caruthers didn’t look across to her: “The caretaker was old, you say?”

  “Yes,” Georgina replied.

  “Put up a hell of a fight,” said McKendry, mostly to himself. If the school had been cold before, it felt freezing now.

  Caruthers cast a pointing finger about the room. The others went to the various doors that led off: the Headmistress’s office, the Staff Room, the Library…

  “Bodies, I’d say,” McKendry replied, his eyes tracking across the rucked carpet, “dragged… here or… oh damn!”

  Merryweather’s hand was now on Georgina shoulder.

  “My sisters?” she asked.

  “Keep her back,” said Caruthers. “For God’s sake, keep her back.”

  Merryweather was a brick wall.

  Caruthers disappeared into the library. He was gone so long that Georgina’s fingers felt raw as they squeezed Merryweather’s coat. When he returned, Caruthers looked ashen – not white and clean like the snow outside, but grey and dirtied.

  “My sisters?” Georgina said.

  In a voice that sounded drained, Caruthers said: “They’re all dead… murdered.”

  “I must know.”

  “No.”

  “My sisters, I must know.”

  Caruthers shook his head.

  Georgina shoved Merryweather to force him to look at her. Her eyes moistened, her vision blurred as a deluge of tears threatened. She stepped back, smartly, sniffed, wiped her nose on her sleeve in a very unladylike manner, and took control of herself. When she spoke to the three men, it was in a tone that brooked no argument.

  “I must know.”

  “You’d have to look at the bodies,” Caruthers said.

  Merryweather held her hand.

  A few steps along and Georgina reached where the caretaker had put up a fight: there were stains everywhere, something had torn him apart. Georgina couldn’t look and instead turned her attention to the library. Inside, arranged neatly, were piles of clothes with tiny feet sticking out foolishly, human–sized dolls discarded, shapes and forms that made no sense, because Georgina’s head did not want to believe, did not want to take it in, did not want to see.

  They’d killed all the girls, dragged their bodies to the library and piled them high. The teachers were to one side by the reference books and their charges were dumped by fiction and biography. So many lives cut short beneath tales of longer lives.

  McKendry steeled himself and moved the bodies one by one, showing each face to Georgina.

  “Beatrice,” she said. “Dolly, Maud, Tilly, my roommate, Smithie, I don’t know.”

  Georgina cried when she saw the girl she didn’t know. For some reason being unable to acknowledge that she ever existed seemed too harsh.

  “Do you want to stop?” Merryweather asked, his voice far away and soft.

  “No.”

  “This one?” McKendry said.

  It was a girl who wouldn’t smile again: “Julietta… I hated her, she was a bully, but…”

  “No–one deserved this.”

  “I told her to go to drop dead.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Amazo, Amazon, I’m a spot, am as gone, am as lost…”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing.”

  Caruthers bent to assist McKendry, so the process went quicker. After a while, Georgina’s words became monosyllables. When they reached the Life and Times of Wellington, there were none left to consider.

  “They’re not here,” Georgina said.

  “Are you sure?” Caruthers asked.

  “They’re not here.”

  Georgina turned her attention to the teachers. They weren’t laid on top of one another, so she could scan down the line by herself.

  “I think all the tutors are here,” Georgina mumbled, “except for old Motty.”

  Most had been shot, but some had been bitten, torn and ripped.

  “Who could do this?” Merryweather asked.

  “They had dogs, I heard them,” said Georgina.

  “I’ve never seen a dog do this,” McKendry said.

  “Miss Price was my Latin teacher, she was teaching me when… I wished her dead.”

  “Come away,” Merryweather said.

  “Gardener’s Hand… unless they are elsewhere with Lottie and Ness… oh, help.”

  A darkness leapt up to take Georgina and Merryweather’s arms were there to catch her as she toppled.

  Miss Charlotte

  The magnificent airship turned as it dropped through the clouds. The castle below was rugged, constructed from large blocks of local stone, so it looked like it had been carved out of the mountain itself. Most of the towers ended with an elongated roof like a witch’s hat, but one had been converted into a lighthouse. Its beam sliced across the valley to guide airships away from the rocks.

  A loud boom reverberated.

  “Oh,” said Charlotte, “they’re firing a… one gun salute.”

  “Nein,” the Graf replied. “It is the battery signalling our return – see!”

  Below the castle at the end of a zigzag path was a small building. A cannon was fired again.

  The Graf laughed: “A two gun salute.”

  “One each.”

  “Ja.”

  The Zeppelin was close now as it bore down upon a platform of metal gantries that poked outwards and upwards. The wind gusted, so they had to manoeuvre to approach upwind. The motors st
rained as the giant behemoth narrowed the gap to yards and then inches as the crew called out in metres. The nose caught the gantry and a shudder coursed through the metal skeleton, a deep cavernous sound echoing the thrill that Charlotte felt.

  Once the two cables from the nose had been secured, they grappled other lines and dragged the Zeppelin around. It trembled as the wind began to press against its side, but eventually it was tied off with the cabin section over another platform. As Charlotte waited by the exit with Graf Zala, ground crew jostled a large wooden staircase into position.

  Graf Zala disembarked first.

  “Careful, my Princess,” he said.

  Although the gap was only a foot or so, it was nerve–racking to step across, but Charlotte made sure the Graf saw how brave she was. He held the railing and she held his hand as they descended. When his boot hit the stone flags, those waiting dropped to one knee, bowing.

  “Vögte?”

  “Graf, willkommen in–”

  “In English, Vögte, in honour of our Royal guest,” said Zala, holding Charlotte’s hand high as if presenting her at court.

  “Es tut… Apologies, welcome home, Graf, and welcome, Your Royal Highness,” the Vögte said. He was thin, gaunt, with his oiled hair slicked back and despite being clean–shaven, he didn’t look like a boy. His starched collar meant he couldn’t turn his head, which was funny.

  Charlotte bowed in thanks: she was having such a good time.

  The Graf turned to her: “You are tired. The Vögte will see to your needs.”

  “I’m not at all tired.”

  The Graf laughed: “I’m sure not, but I must leave you, duties you understand. I must see my father, the Crown Prince, and the dowager Gräfin. Tell her the good news.”

  “I’d like to see around the castle.”

  “Later, I will show you.” He stood to attention, clicked his heels and bowed. “The Vögte will see to your needs.”

  Charlotte did the same in reply as she was still wearing the fabulous uniform with its trousers. The Graf strode away, every inch the leader of men. The Vögte, whatever that meant, was a subservient, bent figure, weighed down by his robes rather than augmented by them. He led a different way to a stone spiral staircase that descended seemingly into the bowels of the Earth, although each window afforded a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains. Finally, the dizzying rotation came to an end and a long landing stretched in a straight line to another wing of the castle. Everything was bare stone with the occasional hanging tapestry depicting mythical beasts or battles between knights in armour. It was all too thrilling.