Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (10 page)

Chapter
XXVI:

Cockspur
Court – Grenville’s story

W
e spent the
next fifteen minutes cooling our heels in Salamander’s shop while he looked
through his files in the back room.
 
The
sounds of wooden file cabinet drawers opening and closing were slow and
deliberate at first but became more insistent after a few minutes had passed.

“This really is most embarrassing,”
Salamander said when he reappeared.
 
“I
simply cannot put my hands on the file.
 
You might almost think it had been stolen.”
 
He allowed himself a rueful grin at the very
notion that someone would do such a thing.
 
“I did, however retrieve a copy of the original drawings which may be of
some help to you.”

W
e spread
the drawings on the dashboard of
Schrödinger
’s
van and marveled at the complexity of the clockwork mechanism they detailed.
 
Max the Cat did his best to help by walking
over the drawings while purring and nuzzling Sarah’s cheek.

“Seems like you’ve made a friend,”
I said.

“He’s a precious little
snuggums
,” Sarah said, scratching behind the cat’s
ears.
 
“But he really must get down now,”
she continued, putting the protesting animal on the floor.
 
“We’ve business to take care of.”

Each of the drawings was a work of
art, hand lettered in India ink without a single erasure or correction.
 
The only exception was one of the title
blocks where someone had written and partially erased something in pencil.
 
I felt sure it was not Geo. Grenville, the
draughtsman, whose pride in his work was evident in every pen stroke.

“Can you read this?” I said,
showing the erasure to Sarah.
 
I don’t
have my glasses with me.”

Sarah held the drawing to the
light.
 
“I believe it is an address,” she
said finally.
 
“

I spent the next hour maneuvering
the caravan through narrow, twisting streets filled with carriages and delivery
wagons.
 
I couldn’t decide which was
worse, the loose-bowelled horses or the soot-belching steam engines.
 
I finally came down on the side of the
engines.
 
You could close the windows and
keep out most of the soot but there was no escaping the all-pervasive smell of
manure.

Sarah’s directions led us to a dead
end street off

“You lot looking for the watchmaker
then?” said an adolescent voice behind me.
 
I turned and saw the grimy face of one of London’s many street sweepers.
 
“Them pictures, they look like a watch,” he
said, nodding at the drawings.

“Yes I am.
 
Do you know where he works?”

“I might do.
 
Cost you a bob.”

I found a shilling in my pocket and
handed it over to the urchin who bit it with crooked teeth.
 
Satisfied, he put it in his pocket and nodded
to an alley next to the building.
 
“Around the side,
ain’t
he,” he said.
 
“But he
ain’t
there.”

“How do you know?”

“The Old Bill came and took ‘
im
away yesterday.
 
Sumfink
to do with them bombs the strikers been setting
off.”

“Did anyone else work with him?”

“No but you might try ‘is friend
what made that picture.”

“You mean this drawing?”

“I don’t see no other pictures, do
I?
 
Bloke has a shop next street over.”

“I
f you
making inquiries about poor Ivan on behalf of the authorities, I must refer you
to my solicitor,” George Grenville said when we tracked him down to his shop on

I assured him that while we were
interested in the clockmaker, we had no official connection.
 
He seemed dubious until he noticed Sarah
surreptitiously checking the time on her pocket watch.

“May I see your timepiece?” he
asked, extending his ink stained fingers.
 
“I thought so,” he said, after examining the watch closely through
rimless half glasses.
 
“This is one of
Ivan’s early creations.
 
You can tell by
the Cyrillic lettering near the hinge.
 
He switched to the Roman Alphabet only a few years after he came to this
country.
 
He thought it would help him
fit in.”

“How did you become friends?” I
asked.
 
“A draughtsman and a
clockmaker.
 
It seems unusual.”

“Ivan sometimes sent work my way
and we got to know each other,” Grenville said.
 
“And to call Ivan
Mezgin
a clockmaker is akin
to describing Sir Henry Irving as a mummer.
 
If they send him back to Russia,
Britain
will lose its finest
horlogist
.”

“Who wants to send him back to Russia
and why?”

“Our so-called intelligence
service.
 
They claim he made timers for
the bombs the laborites are alleged to have detonated.
 
As if Ivan would waste his talents on such a
shoddy undertaking.
 
As to why?
 
It is my feeling they need a scapegoat and
Ivan’s foreign status makes him an easy target.”

“What did you mean when you said
the bombs the laborites are ‘alleged’ to have set?”

“I know people in the labor
movement and they have no idea who might have committed such acts of violence.”
 
His bright eyes looked at me suspiciously
from their lair beneath his green celluloid eyeshade.
 
“If you are not with the authorities, what do
you want with poor Ivan?”

“I think you may have created these
for him,” I said, opening the drawings.
 
“Could you take a moment to look at them?”

“No need,” he said, waving
dismissively.
 
“I remember them
well.
 
A most unusual assignment, if I
may say.”

“Can you tell me who commissioned
the work?”

“No, I cannot.
 
All communication was through Ivan.”

“And Ivan paid you?”

“In cash, minus his finder’s fee of
course.
 
Although now you mention it, I
did receive a bank draft for a supplementary drawing I did of one of the
components.
 
There was no letter attached
so I always assumed it came from Ivan.”

“Do you have a record of it?”

“I may do, if you will just give me
a moment.”
 
He went to a bank of oak
filing cabinets and opened a drawer.
 
“Here it is,” he said, pulling out a sheet of paper.
 
“£5-15s payable by
Smethings
& Sharp.
 
But this is peculiar.
 
I hadn’t noticed before, but the branch in
question is located at
Totnes
in Devon.
 
I cannot think what Ivan might have been
doing there.”

Sarah and I looked at each
other.
 
“I think it’s time we paid a
visit to your alma mater,” I said.

Chapter
XXVII:

On
the Road – More About Sarah

A
nother
advantage of steam power is that, in a pinch, almost anything combustible can
serve as fuel.
 
Good thing, because the route
from London to
Worthing
-By-The-Sea is not over supplied with roadside
collieries.

You name it I burned it - wood,
paper, oily rags, once even a pile of dried horse manure.
 
Some fuels didn’t work as well as others (the
road apples were an experiment I was not likely to repeat) but the Schrödinger’s
van just kept chugging along.
 
I even
chose a name for our clanking carriage - the
MaxMobile
,
after our feline companion.
 
OK, so it
isn’t great, but the Orange Blossom Special was already taken.

I tried to strike up a conversation
once we had cleared town, but it wasn’t easy.
 
I couldn’t ask Sarah about her work, she didn’t have any.
 
Favorite TV shows was out for obvious
reasons.
 
An inquiry about what she liked
to read elicited only a grunted “never enough time.”

It wasn’t until I asked about her
old school that she showed signs of life.
 
Her feelings about Bishop Jewel were an odd mixture of gratitude and
resentment.
 
Gratitude for providing her
with a better education than most of her peers, and resentment at being unable
to apply her education because of her sex.

“Have you studied anything since?”
I asked.

“I took a six-month course in
practical nursing at the Florence Nightingale Institute when it appeared there
might be war with Germany, but I have never had a chance to apply it.”

“There doesn’t have to be a war for
you to practice nursing.”

“Being a man, you obviously have no
understanding of what it means to be patronized by an inept physician whose
only real qualification is his sex.”

“You know,” I said, “I really wish
you’d ease up on the ‘you men’ stuff.
 
You complain that men are always putting you down, but that doesn’t seem
to stop you from doing the same thing to me.”

“I apologize,” she said.
 
“But you must admit you have an
advantage.
 
At least you have a voice in
what goes on in the world.”

“Are you talking about the
vote?
 
If you want it, you can have
mine.
 
I haven’t voted in years.”

“I am appalled.”

“When it comes to politics, I’m
with Will Rogers.
 
Each party is worse
than the other and the one that's out always looks best.”

Things loosened up a bit after
that.
 
I told her about sleep research
and she told me about her coming out season which had left her with the
conclusion she was likely to remain a spinster since the men she met were “a
parcel of braying buffoons forever bragging about their golf scores while
consuming too many gins and tonic.”

It was late afternoon by the time
we reached
Worthing
-By-The-Sea
.
 
Bishop Jewel
School for Girls was located in a sprawling red-brick manor house on the
outskirts of town.
 
There were a few
weeds poking through its graveled driveway and the wood frames of its arched
windows could have used a coat of paint, but overall, it appeared prosperous.

“Where are all the students?” I
asked, as we puffed our way through the empty grounds toward the turreted front
entrance.

“It is almost five thirty,” Sarah
said.
 
“They’ll be at chapel.
 
I suggest you wait here while I speak with
Miss Trelawney.”

Chapter
XXVIII:

Bishop
Jewel

“Y
ou always
were a most unconventional girl.
 
Fancy,
traipsing around the countryside like a gypsy,” said the woman standing next to
Sarah.
 
She was a typical headmistress at
first glance, hair in a spiral bun, glasses on a chain, but there was something
about her that said she was nobody’s fool.
 
Maybe it was the unusual pink shell cameo pinned to her blouse or maybe
it was the sharp look in her eyes as she took in the layer of mud on Schrödinger’s
van and the forlorn state of my clothing.

“Miss Trelawney, this is my driver,
Mister
Liddel
,” Sarah said, giving me a warning glare.

“I like your cameo,” I said.
 
“Are those the three graces?”

“Very good, Mister
Liddel
,” Miss Trelawney said.
 
“Extra marks if you can name them.”

“Let’s see.
Aglaia
.
 
Euphrosyne
.
 
And…?
 
Rumpelstiltskin
?”

“
Thalia
.
 
I am impressed, Mister
Liddel
.
 
Are all western cowboys as well versed in
Greek Mythology as you?”

“Western…?”

“I told Miss Trelawney about your
time in the American West,” Sarah interrupted.
 
Again with the warning glare.
 
“And she has asked that you speak to the girls about your
experiences.
 
I told her you would be delighted.”

T
hey
billeted me in a spare room in the gatekeeper’s lodge.
 
I think the idea was to keep me as far away
from the girls as possible while still allowing me to stay the grounds.
 
The bed was hard and the room smelled of mice
but I was tired and looking forward to a night’s sleep.
 
I was just about to blow out the bedside oil
lamp when there was a knock on the room’s outside window.
 
I opened the cast-iron casement latch and was
almost knocked over as Sarah pulled herself into the room over the window
ledge.

“You know this building does have
doors,” I said.

“It would never do for me to be
seen in a man’s room
unchaperoned
,” Sarah said.

“It’s too late for them to expel
you.”

“True, but it would set a very bad
example for the girls.”

“Can’t have that,” I agreed.
 
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I wanted to let you know about the
special assembly Miss Trelawney has called for ten o’clock tomorrow.”

“Does this have something to do
with you volunteering me as a guest speaker?”

“Yes.
 
You are to talk on the American West.”

“See, now here’s the problem.
 
What I know about the American West wouldn’t
fill the back of a postage stamp.”

“Just make something up.
 
Nobody will know the difference.”

“Why don’t we just slip away before
everyone is up?”

“We need to keep on Miss
Trelawney’s good side, in case someone comes looking for us.”

This was a side of Sarah I had
never seen before.
 
With her long
chestnut hair pulled back in a ready-for-anything ponytail and her normally
pale cheeks flushed with color, she looked like a grown-up version of Harriet
the Spy.
 
“Ok, I’ll just come out and
ask,” I said.
 
“Why would the headmistress
think someone might be chasing you?”

“I told her I am being persecuted
because of my suffragette activities.
 
She is a clandestine supporter of the movement.”

“Well I suppose I could fake my way
through a short talk.
 
But prepare
yourself to be bored.”

As it turned out my speech was
anything but boring, not because of what I said, but because of the
accompanying distractions.