Twilight Robbery aka Fly Trap

everything in this room, Mr Clent! Weave it how you will, there’s a Locksmith spy in among us.’

‘I fear you are right. In fact, I fear the mayor has trusted too many people with our secrets already. His steward, the Chief Clerk of the Committee of the Hours and the High Constable are all in his confidence. Worse still, I am not. I would be quite in the dark if I had not persuaded Mistress Bessel to look into it. She might show an unladylike ferocity of temper at times,’ Clent continued, in tones of quiet admiration, ‘but when it comes to finding things out, that woman is sharper than lemon. And, thank the Beloved, she has managed to win the mayor’s trust where I have failed. Just yesterday evening he remarked that she was the finest-’

But Mosca was not to learn what Mistress Bessel was the finest example of, for at this moment the front door crashed open. Through her tiny scope Mosca saw Clent scramble on to his knees, so that he seemed to kneel in prayer in the little chapel. However, it soon became clear that the new arrivals had no attention to spare for Eponymous Clent.

‘Help him – help him!’ Sir Feldroll was shouting. ‘And close the doors behind us, man – we do not want the whole world agog! My lord mayor, will you sit? Fetch him a chair!’

Confusion ensued, with a lot of people running around to show that they were eager and concerned.

‘Send for a physician!’ shouted Sir Feldroll. ‘Tell him his lordship has received a great shock and is suffering palsies of the limbs. Mistress Bessel – call for laudanum!’

‘A shock?’ Clent had risen to his feet again. ‘Simpering stars, has there been ill news of Miss Marlebourne?’

A terrible croak of a voice interrupted. It was hardly recognizable as that of the mayor. ‘No – worse! Worse!’

‘Worse?’ Sir Feldroll sounded outraged. ‘How can anything be worse?’

There was a sound of coughing and ragged breaths before the mayor spoke again.

‘The Luck… the Luck! The Luck of Toll has been stolen!’

Goodlady Blatchett, Lifter of the Stone from the Toad

After this announcement, nobody was any use for about five minutes. A young maidservant running in with the requested laudanum had by chance overheard the mayor’s words, and promptly went into such violent hysterics that she had to be dosed with it herself. She seemed convinced that Toll was about to pitch off the cliff into the Langfeather, like a tilted hat with its crucial pin removed. Worse still, the mayor seemed much of the same opinion.

Maddeningly, everybody wanted to rush about so that Mosca could not keep track of them, and nobody wanted to stand where she could see them through her little peepholes.

‘Send that girl to bed, and close that door!’ shouted Sir Feldroll at last. ‘Nobody leaves this house! If the common people find out that the Luck is stolen, half the town will be thrown into fits!’

‘Oh, probably a good deal more than half,’ Clent opined helpfully, and was ignored. Sir Feldroll however was not, and after a while things got a lot quieter.

‘Steady yourself, my lord mayor,’ came Mistress Bessel’s warm, motherly tones. Evidently she had entered with the rest. ‘How in the world did somebody come to steal the Luck?’ Remembering that Mistress Bessel had had her own ill-fated plans for stealing the Luck, Mosca suspected that she

was probably a little aggrieved that somebody else had managed it.

‘Through the clock face!’ The mayor had the breathless, rasping tones of one who has just been punched in the stomach. The kidnap of his daughter had left him towering and wrathful, but the loss of the Luck had apparently broken him. ‘They took advantage of the repairs to come in through the clock face on the front of the tower! I did not even know that that was possible!’

Mosca realized that she at least should have guessed that it was possible. Paragon had told her that he was in charge of adding the little wooden Beloved figures to the clock mechanism as required. Therefore there must have been some way of accessing the clock’s works from his cell. Under cover of repairing the clock, the thieves must have stealthily removed the cogs until they found the hatch into his private chamber.

‘So… you are saying that the Luck of Toll is an actual object?’ Sir Feldroll was keeping the situation under control very well, but was clearly a few pages behind when it came to understanding it. ‘I always assumed it was a figure of speech!’

‘Not an object… a person,’ answered the mayor. ‘A… a boy. The Luck of Toll is the person born under a more auspicious Beloved than anybody else in town, and thus granted the best and most fortunate name. They are shut away from the world, close to the bridge so that their luck seeps into it and keeps it aloft… and holds the cliff steady under us…’

‘A boy? Locked up inside a clock… so that his luck…’ Sir Feldroll cut short his sentence, perhaps realizing that it could go nowhere tactful. ‘Well, as far as I am aware the town has not noticeably fallen into the river, so if everybody could please recover their senses -’

‘Not yet, but the power of the Luck only holds while he or she is within the walls of the town,’ intoned the mayor. ‘Should they ever stray outside, then Toll’s good fortune leaves with them once and forever, and all is calamity. Then we shall see agues and poxes sweeping through Toll, and the wells filling with poison, and foes storming our gates unopposed, and the ground crumbling beneath us…’ Somewhere on the far side of the room the youngest footman started to whimper.

‘My lord mayor, you are not helping!’ exploded Sir Feldroll. ‘This is mere superstition! And besides, if the Luck is the fellow born under the brightest Beloved and gifted with the best name, then surely it is a simple thing to replace him? Who has the second-best name?’ There was a long pause, during which everyone singularly failed to sound as cheered as Sir Feldroll had evidently expected.

‘The second-best name in Toll,’ explained the mayor coldly, ‘is possessed by my daughter Beamabeth. Whom you have told us is also in danger of being spirited out of Toll. And besides, the title of Luck only passes on to the next-best name when the current Luck dies. If the Luck is taken outside Toll while still alive, then disaster and catastophe-’

‘Yes, yes,’ Sir Feldroll interrupted hastily. ‘I believe I have grasped the point.’

Mosca wondered if she was the only person who remembered that Paragon was a person in his own right, regardless of whether he was ‘lucky’ or not, and right now possibly a frightened and ill-treated person. Then again, given that he had lived under lock and key for nearly all his life, perhaps his existence might actually have been improved by being kidnapped. It would certainly have made it less monotonous.

‘Well,’ Sir Feldroll pronounced grimly, ‘surely everybody must now agree that things have gone far too far, and the strongest action is required. As I predicted, the ransom has been taken by the kidnappers, and Miss Marlebourne has not been returned to us. And now this further outrage! My lord mayor, surely you cannot still doubt the wisdom of striking at these radicals with all the might we can muster – striking at the very root and fountainhead!’

‘Ah…’ Clent’s cautious tones edged gingerly into the ensuing silence. ‘I hate to interrupt any eloquent and ardent speech… but do we have the slightest reason to believe that Miss Marlebourne and the Luck have been stolen away by the same party?’

‘The slightest reason?’ If Sir Feldroll had been an ordinary man, his tone might have been described as ‘shrill’. But he was a knight, so Mosca assumed he was probably just ‘impassioned’. ‘These blackguards Skellow and Appleton are kidnappers. They kidnap your girl Mye from Grabely, they kidnap Miss Marlebourne, and now, hey presto, we have another audacious kidnapping of a young and defenceless victim! The slightest reason? How stocky do you require your reasons to be, Mr Clent? Make no mistake, this is the handiwork of the same monsters. Appleton has undoubtedly fled with Miss Marlebourne, and now his men have taken the Luck to throw us into confusion, so that we lack the coordination to pursue Appleton and act against his radical allies.’

This was agony. Mosca had to bite down hard on her own knuckles to stop herself calling out. What Sir Feldroll