The Constantine Affliction (21 page)

The taste of oranges was overpowering, filling the world, at least until that world was dissolved into blackness.

A Picnic in the Park

E
llie reached for the knocker on the Lord Pembroke’s door just as it swung inward. Winnie was there, beaming, her hair pinned up under a darling little hat, dressed in a pale yellow dress that seemed the very essence of springtime, and made Ellie feel terribly dowdy by comparison. Her best dress would be no match even for Winnie’s worst, but Winnie exclaimed that she looked lovely anyway. She clutched Ellie’s hands and pulled her into the house. “Come inside, come inside! I’m just finishing the preparations. I hope you’re hungry. I have boiled eggs, cold roast chicken, some marvelous sweets…” She chattered happily as she led the way into the kitchen, where a large wicker hamper waited, filled with delectable things to eat. Ellie’s stomach rumbled. She hadn’t had anything all day, apart from a few shell-flecked bites of Winnie’s breakfast and a stale roll at the newspaper office. A morning of fighting housebreakers and writing newspaper copy would make anyone ravenous.

“Is Lord Pembroke here?” Ellie asked, looking around.

“Oh, please, you
must
call him Pimm, everyone does. When you say Lord Pembroke I feel as if I should… curtsy, or something. It’s not as if he’s lordly in the least. He’s just the younger son of a Marquess.”

“Oh,” Ellie said, faintly. “Is that all?”

Winnie chuckled. “I suppose it sounds impressive, but really, it just means one of his ancestors did something that pleased some monarch or another. Even Pimm’s older brother has no greater personal achievement than successfully managing the family estates.” She sighed. “I could do without the honorifics, myself. Do I look like a ‘Lady Pembroke’ to you?” Winnie picked up a yellow parasol from the table, frowned at it for a moment, then looked up at Ellie, blinking. “You’ll want to know where he is, of course. Pimm I mean. He hopes to join us later, but alas, cannot be here now. He’s out. Business, apparently, though you’d know more about that than I would, since you seem to be his partner in crime-solving these days.”

“I’m terribly sorry, I don’t mean to involve myself—” Ellie began, but stopped when Winnie threw back her head and laughed.

“Oh, dear, did I sound jealous? Please, be assured, I am anything but. Pimm has his interests, and I have mine, and while we are certainly bosom friends and great companions, we have our own lives. That whole notion of ‘separate spheres,’ you know, with the men out earning money, and the women running the house? It’s a bit like that, but I have my tinkering, and my salons, and Pimm has his club and his crimes. Occasionally I aid him in his affairs, or he in mine, but, truly, we prefer things as we have them arranged. You need not fear you have usurped my position.”

“I, ah, have never been married,” Ellie admitted. “I suppose every marriage is different, in its way.” Though the way Winnie airily described it, she and Pimm sounded more like friends who happened to live together than husband and wife.

“Some are more different than others,” Winnie said dryly, and picked up the huge hamper as if it weighed nothing at all. “Come along, I told Pimm to hire us a cab, and it should be along soon. We keep our own carriage, you know, but Pimm’s valet Ransome was our general man-of-all-work, driving us among his other duties, and since he’s left us, we’re simply bereft. We should interview potential replacements, but it’s so
tedious
.”

Ellie followed after Winnie—feeling a bit like she’d been swept along in a ship’s wake—out the door, where a hansom cab waited. “Pimm prefers closed carriages,” Winnie confided as the driver tipped his hat and lifted the picnic hamper into the cab’s high seat. “He likes to peer out at people unobserved, I think. But on a spring day like this it’s nice to be open to the sky, isn’t it?”

Once Ellie and Winnie were seated, Winnie told the driver to take them to Hyde Park, somewhere nice under the trees, and he flipped the reins and set the horse to clopping along the cobblestones.

Winnie put her hand in Ellie’s and smiled at her. “I feel that we shall be great friends, Ellie.”

“I’d like that,” Ellie said, and was surprised to find that she meant it. Winnie was rather above Ellie’s own social station, but they were roughly of an age, and the woman’s effusive warmth was contagious. “Winnie… how much do you know about Pimm’s… business?”

“Oh, he tells me a lot. Not
everything
, I wager, but most.”

“I’m sure if he keeps secrets it’s only because he doesn’t want to worry you—”

“Ha,” Winnie said. “If he keeps secrets it’s because he knows I’ll disagree with how he’s handling things.” She glanced sidelong at Ellie. “I think you might have the wrong idea about me, Ellie. I am… not particularly genteel. There was even a minor scandal when Pimm and I were wed. As for my involvement in his work… you’ve seen his electrified walking stick in action, yes?”

Ellie nodded.

“I made that.”

“You! You are an inventor?”

Winnie waved her hand. “More of a tinkerer, really. I confess, I seldom create entirely new things, but I have a knack for… combining the designs of others, and refining them, and finding uses the creators never intended. I have a workshop downstairs at home. In addition to the walking stick, I’ve built assorted other devices Pimm has sometimes found useful in his work. Are you surprised?”

“I suppose I imagined you… hosting formal teas,” Ellie admitted. “And doing charitable work. Perhaps…”

“Shopping?” Winnie prompted, and smiled—though, to be honest, it was more a
grin
, broad and decidedly unfeminine. “Sometimes. But probably not shopping for the sorts of things you think. Consider me one of Pimm’s operatives, if you like. I can tell you’re worried about something, and that your disappointment over Pimm’s absence isn’t
entirely
due to the loss of his good company. What’s on your mind?”

“I… it’s complicated…” Ellie took a deep breath. “Promise me you will tell no one?”

“You have no
idea
how good I am at keeping secrets,” Winnie said. She inclined her head toward the driver on his bench in front of them. “But perhaps save secrets for when we’re better settled in the park?”

“A wise choice.”

They rode in companionable silence until they approached the great park, when Winnie pointed and exclaimed. “What are they building over there?”

Ellie peered. “It looks like some kind of a stage… Oh, yes, of course, Bertram Oswald’s Grand Exposition.” Just saying the man’s name, and remembering his cold eyes in the brothel, made her shiver. “It starts tonight, doesn’t it? There’s to be some sort of initial introduction at the park tonight, and then exhibits all weekend, a grand pavilion, and so on.”

“Ah, yes, I read about the Exposition,” Winnie said. “More modest than the Great Exhibition was, and more wholly devoted to Oswald’s creations alone. He seems like a most arrogant man, though one cannot deny his scientific abilities.”

Those abilities seemed likely to include the creation and servicing of clockwork whores, but bearing in mind the coachman who might be listening, Ellie did not comment to that effect. Instead she pointed toward an immense pile of brassy metal tubes, all strange curves and arches, being fitted together by a group of workmen consulting printed plans. “Whatever could that be?”

“Something to change the world, no doubt,” Winnie said. “Perhaps it boils a pot of tea at three hundred paces? Or makes a delicious hot dinner at the press of a button?”

“That would be a triumph of science,” Ellie said, and they laughed.

The driver went around the park, away from the site of the Exposition, until Winnie directed him to stop near one of the gates and let them out. This end of the park was full of people strolling the paths, children playing, and other picnickers, but Winnie led them deeper, away from the sunnier well-traveled areas, so they could talk more freely. They spread a blanket and settled themselves beneath a tree, though it was a trifle cool in the shade. The hamper was ingeniously hinged, with multiple compartments, and Winnie set out china plates and silverware. “Tell me your secrets, dear,” she said.

Ellie looked around to confirm their privacy, then took a deep breath. “Two days ago, in order to obtain a story for my newspaper, I disguised myself as a man—you’ve seen my costume—and gained entry into one of the, ah, houses of specialized tastes…”

“A clockwork brothel?” Winnie said, dishing out pieces of roast chicken. “Oh, how marvelous, I’ve always wondered what they were like.”

“They are dreadful,” Ellie said firmly. “Though my perception may have been colored by the fact that I was nearly killed. You see, I was taking an opportunity to look around, and… I walked in on Bertram Oswald. He seemed to be working on one of the machines. And he was unhappy with being seen.”

Winnie let out a low whistle. “I can imagine why. Those houses may be technically legal, but Pimm says they’re all run by criminals like Abel Value, and for the Queen’s closest confidant to have dealings with a man like
that
… the consequences could be dire.”

Ellie nodded, and explained how she’d fled the room, and the manner of her eventual escape from the brothel.

“That’s dead clever,” Winnie said appreciatively. “Men seldom see anything but the obvious and superficial. Nice to see that tendency used against them. But why haven’t I read this on the front page of the
Argus
?”

“Oh, I wrote a bit of fluff about what the brothels are like just this afternoon, but made no mention of my… other adventures. Making accusations against Sir Bertram in print, without proof, hardly seemed prudent. And things are even worse than they seem. One of the men who hunted me in the brothel was present last night while I assisted Lord Pem—Pimm in his inquiries. He recognized me—or, rather, my disguise as Jenkins—and he must have been watching your house. He followed me out this morning.” She told Winnie how Crippen had broken into her rooming house, and been chased away by her landlady.

“Oh, dear.” Seeing Winnie frown was like watching a cloud drift across the sun. “You shouldn’t have come over for lunch. You should have sent a letter with your regrets.”

“What do you mean?”

“They saw Jenkins go into your house,” Winnie said. “It’s a rooming house, of course, so—”

“They have no reason to connect Jenkins with me, particularly,” Ellie said—and then the light dawned. Or, more accurately, the darkness fell. She groaned. “Except shortly after sending Crippen off, I went to Lord Pembroke’s house. They know Jenkins is connected to Pimm, and if they see you and I together, they will surmise that
I
know Pimm as well, and—”

“And that you know Jenkins. They will assume you were hiding him in your wardrobe, or something similar, when Crippen broke in. Which means Ellie Skye will go from being a complete non-entity to being a person who interests Sir Bertram very much. Moreover, as you are a journalist, they might concoct all sorts of conspiracy theories—that you and Jenkins intend to expose Abel Value, or Sir Bertram, with or without Pimm’s involvement. And while Pimm is protected, to a certain extent, by his fame and his friends and family, you do not have quite so much armor.” Winnie scraped the chicken off the plates and began putting the just-unpacked food away. “Walk away, Ellie. Go to your offices, somewhere with lots of people. I will let Pimm know the situation, and we will be in touch, and find a way to assure your safety until all this can be straightened out. Go, now.”

Ellie nodded curtly, rose, and started to walk north… but paused. There were people watching them from beneath the nearby trees. She stepped back, and lowered herself again onto the blanket. “Winnie,” she said. “Those women, watching us…”

“Mmm? Ellie, you should really—” She broke off. “There’s something odd about them, isn’t there? The way they’re standing, so motionless…”

“I recognize that one,” Ellie said, voice tight. “Delilah. I don’t know if that’s the name of the individual, or just of her… model.”

Winnie swore, and it was a measure of how afraid Ellie was that she didn’t even feel shocked by the profanity. “They’re
clockwork
?” Winnie said. “But surely they’re not sophisticated enough to…”

The clockwork women—there were six of them, rather overdressed for a day in the park, but they probably didn’t have any clothing that wasn’t meant for the bedroom or the ballroom—advanced from all directions, walking with what seemed to be very deliberate steps.

Winnie picked up her parasol and sighed. “I should have brought the parasol with an air-gun built into the handle. I was expecting a pleasant outing in the park. Not that a bullet hole would stop one of these things. Their movement is so
lifelike
, are you sure they’re automatons? I think you’re right that Oswald probably designed him, the man is a genius, whatever his other faults. I’d love to open one up and see how it works…”

“Winnie,” Ellie said. “What do we
do
?”

“We can probably outrun them,” Winnie said. “Their shoes are far less practical than ours. But I doubt they’re here on their own. I presume they have a human operator, or at least an overseer. I suggest we make our way
quickly
to one of the more populous portions of the park.” She stood, holding her parasol like a fencer’s foil, and peered at the approaching automatons, who were now no more than a dozen yards away.

“Now, now, ladies. No need to run off.” A young gentleman Ellie had never seen before sauntered out from between two trees. He had a cane in his hand, the end resting on his shoulder, and Ellie could easily imagine him swinging it like a cricket bat. He joined the artificial women, who now stood in a circle around Ellie and Winnie. All the clockwork figures were exactly the same height, Ellie realized, just a hair shorter than herself—and their faces were very nearly identical, too, apart from skin tone. The uniformity was eerie. “My employer would just like a word with you.”

“Is this Crippen, Ellie?” Winnie asked.

“You wound me.” The man pressed a hand to his chest. His mustache was black and neatly trimmed, his eyes blue and twinkling. “Crippen is a thug. He can’t even follow someone without making a botch of it, apparently, so my employer sent me. My name is Ronald Carrington. I am the personal secretary of… well. Not Abel Value. Though he and I serve the same master, I suppose.”