3
Mr. Babcock leaned back in his chair as I finished my recitation, the buttons of his waistcoat straining. It was the second dawn since the Frenchman had died in my uncle’s workshop, and the sun had only just crested the moors. But I had been prepared for one of Mr. Babcock’s infamous early arrivals, the natural result of putting himself on a train as soon as my express could have arrived in his London offices. The story I told him had been clear and succinct, my manner calm, expression collected. In other words, I was an utter sham. I held my hands in my lap, watching the shrewd eyes of the Tulman family solicitor hood themselves into a familiar expression of deep contemplation. My gaze moved from Mr. Babcock to the settee, where I found Mr. Wickersham coolly regarding me.
Mr. Wickersham appeared exactly as he had the last time he’d dropped unexpectedly into my morning room, even down to the nameless companion who sat beside him, scribbling our words into a notebook. If it was not the same scribbling man, then it was another of the breed, showing the similar traits of too much ink and too little sun. But Mr. Wickersham was of a different variety, more farmhand than gentleman of vague position in the British government, with large, rough hands and a manner to match. A lump of coal broke in the fireplace, glittering, the nameless man’s pen scratched across the paper, and I challenged Mr. Wickersham’s gaze with growing dislike each passing second.
“Well, this is bad, my dear. Very bad,” said Mr. Babcock eventually. I could not disagree with him. He drummed three fingers on his round belly. “I must say that I considered Mr. Wickersham’s warnings last month to perhaps be a bit overcautious. But now I am inclined to believe that we have not been near cautious enough.”
“I put men at the doors and in the corridor,” I said, the weeping of John George’s widow still fresh in my mind. “But my uncle will wander. Perhaps with a man at —”
“Tosh, Miss Tulman,” Mr. Wickersham broke in. “This house is a sieve, and you know it.”
My gaze went back to the settee. He was right, of course. I had seen the scratches on my lock, made by a thin tool used to turn my key from the outside, and we had also found where the two men had entered, a broken window in a lower storeroom, two floors and a dozen rooms away from any ears that could have detected the shattering glass. A house as vast and empty as Stranwyne Keep had to be vulnerable, but how I hated Mr. Wickersham for saying so. There was one empty room in Stranwyne for which I blamed him entirely.
I caught a glimpse of Mr. Babcock’s eyes, now unhooded, lifted to my face and perceiving my anger. “Katharine, my child, there is common purpose here. We would do well to remember it.”
I took his gentle admonishment and focused my attention on the matter at hand. “Mr. Wickersham, obviously you believe my uncle is not safe at Stranwyne. If we —”
“Do you not believe it yourself, Miss Tulman?”
“We would value your opinion on how to make him so, I’m sure,” I replied, my voice crackling with ice. Mr. Babcock sighed while Mr. Wickersham eyed me from behind his bushy mustache.
“Miss Tulman, a child of only marginal intelligence could enter this house without being seen, and we are not dealing with children or stupidity.” He held out a hand and the scratching of the pen instantly stopped, the nameless man’s eyes seeking a portion of the carpet and remaining there, as if he were one of my uncle’s clockwork machines that had suddenly wound down. I looked in surprise from the man back to Mr. Wickersham, who was leaning forward in his chair.
“England is at war in the Crimea, Miss Tulman, and with France as our ally against the Russian tsar. The —”
“We do get the newspapers at Stranwyne, Mr. Wickersham,” I said, unable to help myself. The man was schooling me like a child. He smiled at my rudeness.
“What you perhaps do not know, Miss Tulman, is that the alliance between England and France is an uneasy one, one that will likely continue to be uneasy, no matter who wins this war or which country controls what in the Ottoman Empire. And the war does not go well. The Royal Navy has suffered a defeat at the hand of the Russians, a defeat so humiliating that the admiral in command shot himself in the hold of his own ship rather than face his government.” I grimaced, but Mr. Wickersham took no notice. “It is the strength of our navies that will decide whether England or France is the supreme power in Europe. And the emperor has built ironclad batteries, floating arsenals impregnable to cannon that can bombard a shoreline, and ironclad ships powered by steam are not far behind them. These French ships will be fast and impervious to our weapons. They will be unstoppable, Miss Tulman.”
“You seem rather certain of these doings by the Emperor Napoleon,” I cut in. “Just where has all this information come from, Mr. Wickersham? From Lane Moreau, by any chance?”
“I will say to you again, Miss Tulman, that the late Mr. Moreau’s doings in France had nothing to do with me or the British government.”
Mr. Wickersham leaned even farther toward me in his chair, the move almost a threat. “The only information I have of Mr. Moreau, Miss Tulman, is the notification of his demise six weeks ago.”
If I could have flayed the man alive with my eyes, I would have. “Then perhaps you could provide me with this document, Mr. Wickersham? Or a certificate of death?” Mr. Babcock sighed heavily from his chair.
“I have no obligation to provide you with anything, young woman. But let us stick to the pertinent facts, shall we? We believe that guncotton is currently being manufactured by the French, the same explosive the man you knew as Ben Aldridge was testing for use in your uncle’s mechanical fish. We …”
Instantly my mind went to my uncle’s fish, swimming in a sleek metallic streak beneath the surface of the water, never sinking, never floating, holding its depth for reasons only Uncle Tully could fathom. To him the fish had been a “toy,” no different than the peacock that walked or his humanlike machines that played games or musical instruments. It was Ben Aldridge who had seen the great monetary advantage of handing France my uncle’s fish filled with a powerful explosive. I felt a moment of grim happiness that Ben was dead. Then I realized Mr. Wickersham was still speaking and that his thoughts had been following my own.
“… that your uncle’s fish would become an exploding weapon that could sink the fastest, most unsinkable ship clad in iron. If the Emperor Napoleon acquires this weapon first, then the race to naval supremacy is over. France will rule the seas and, inevitably, will rule Britain. The emperor knows this well; the fact that two French- speaking men entered your house to take Mr. Tulman tells us so, and it tells us that the time for perfecting this crucial weapon grows short. But I also believe the attempt to take Mr. Tulman means that the French cannot make their version of his mechanical fish work.”
I stared at Mr. Wickersham. Mr. Babcock’s fingers drummed. “But how could the French even begin to make their own version?” I replied. “The only models of my uncle’s fish were destroyed. And only Ben Aldridge had discovered how the device worked — if he even had — and he is long dead. There is no one to demonstrate, no model to refer —”
“Hence the difficulties, I’m sure!” Mr. Wickersham interrupted. “You know that we have long believed that Mr. Aldridge — or Mr. Arceneaux, to use his true name — had an accomplice, a contact on the French side. I believe that enough was known about the workings of the fish to attempt the creation of another, and that the attempt does not go well. It has not gone well for the British, and I am certain we began with more information than Napoleon did.”
Mr. Babcock’s mouth rounded in a silent “ahhh,” as if Mr. Wickersham had spoken something he’d been waiting for, and the little fingers changed to a staccato rhythm.
“Do you mean to say,” I asked, “that you have been trying to make one of Uncle Tully’s fish as well, Mr. Wickersham?”
He smiled amiably. “France may be ahead of us in the race to an ironclad ship, Miss Tulman, but both countries shall certainly have them. It is the side that has the weapon to destroy an ironclad that will own the seas, and that is a prize that both Her Majesty Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon would very much like to reserve for themselves. England and France may march together in the Crimea, but do not forget that the first Napoleon Bonaparte ruled Europe and came close to defeating us. And now his nephew Napoleon the Third has dissolved the French parliament and crowned himself emperor. He is out to recapture the reign and glory of his family, Miss Tulman, make no mistake about that. And I, for one, would not like to see that much power fall back into the
