With two hours remaining before the tidal surge, the river below Aylesford was shallow, slow moving, and deserted. The day was warm and the breeze had dropped, so that the silent afternoon had a brooding and timeless air, the shadows deep and still along the wooded shore. Alice St. Ives, wearing men’s trousers and India rubber wading boots over her shoes, moved farther into the river, throwing her fishing line into the deep waters behind the weir, jigging it hard, feeling it jerk once and then release. Something was interested in it.
She was fishing her own lure, tied up out of peacock feathers, silver wire, and a strip of green wool with a barbless treble hook. She had lost two big pike in the last twenty minutes, although it might have been the same pike twice. Both of them had thrown the hook, which was frustrating, but she was anxious not to do any damage to the fish’s lips with a barbed hook, since her goal was taxidermy and not dinner. There was nothing wrong with pike stuffed with ground veal and tiny pearl onions out of the garden, though, and she might have Mrs. Langley roast one for the family after all if she caught nothing larger than the single fish that lay now in her creel.
She found that she was distracted by the silence, and her gaze was drawn again to the forest, her mind running on the unpleasant idea that someone was hidden among the trees, watching her. It was a foolish apprehension. She had actually seen nothing, and nothing stirred now in the dead air. The only sound was the tiny chatter made by small stones in the moving water that flowed out of the narrow passage in the weir. She looked back downriver at her creel – an oversized salmon basket, big enough to hold a pike. It was apparently still lodged securely among the stones on the river bottom.
She’d had to kill the pike when she’d caught it half an hour ago. Despite the damage from the gaff, the ten-pound fish was ferocious enough to tear the creel apart if it were given a chance. She had used a pike-gag to hold its mouth open in order to work the hook out of the tongue, but the creature had twisted in her grip, dislodged the gag, and lacerated her hand with its teeth. Now the fish rested in wet moss, which, along with the cool river water, would keep it fresh. She wanted a larger fish if she could catch one, for the sake of the head, which she intended to mount on a plaque and give to her husband. There was a particular giant living in the weir, which she’d had on her line more than once. Langdon had volunteered to persuade it to the surface with a nitroglycerin bomb, but Alice was a proponent of fairness, especially when it came to fishing.
Their friend Tubby Frobisher had brought the greenheart wood for her fishing rod back from an expedition to South America. It looked like English walnut, but was light and flexible, the ten-foot-long rod weighing only a couple of pounds despite the heavy fittings. It was too short for salmon or trout fishing, but perfect for the kind of coarse fishing that was Alice’s passion. She had caught a heavy-bodied carp with the pole in the pond on their own property – an enormous thing with scales the size of twopenny pieces, black with burnished gold slashes on the side and a golden underbelly, quite the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Unfortunately the fixative that St. Ives had developed had failed to harden the skin, and in the end the carp was ruined, which seemed an almost criminal offense to her. She would try his newly reconstituted fixative on the pike, if she managed to land him.
She threw out the line again, but in the moment of silence that followed she heard a snapping and stirring of underbrush in the trees. She looked sharply in the direction of the sound, holding her breath and making an effort to sort out the shadows and the mottled sunlight. A man was standing there – she saw his figure clearly now – some fifty feet into the wood among the oak and chestnut trees. He was tall and thin and was standing perfectly still, his green shirt illuminated by a ray of sunlight. Certainly he knew he could be seen.
She resisted the urge to wade to the opposite bank, retrieve her creel, and walk back downriver to the farm. She and her husband had only lived on the place for a couple of months, having inherited it from her Aunt Agatha Walton, but Alice had already come to consider this quiet stretch of the Medway her own, and she was damned if she were going to flee from a shadow. She could acquaint the man with the hook of her gaff, if it came to it. A gaffed wrist or neck would be a most unpleasant thing.
She realized now that the figure had disappeared, but she was still uneasy. She would far rather know where he was than not know. Her rod dipped, and there was a tentative jerk on the lure. Nothing. The pike was teasing her. She reminded herself that there was a path in the wood. It was no crime for people to use the path on their way to and from the village of Aylesford. One could walk all the way to Maidstone that way more quickly than along the road. That no doubt accounted for the man she had just seen. The sight of a woman dressed as Alice was dressed and fishing the Medway for pike might easily strike a foot traveler as amusing or curious. In any event, clearly he had moved on.
Her line jerked heavily now and instantly began to run through the eye on the float, taking her by surprise. The big pike exploded out of the lumber of driftwood along the shore. She could see it swim in the clear water, angling fast toward the top of the weir, perfectly enormous. She stopped the line from spinning out of the reel and set the hook hard, fixing the rubber butt of the rod into the leather depression in the belt below her waist, gripping the cork handle tightly and watching the tip bow and bend as the pike raced upriver toward her again, weaving through the water, then turning and heading back. She reeled in the line, heaving the rod back against the considerable weight of the fish, putting her back into it. The sun glinted on the surface of the weir, nearly blinding her despite her blue-tinted goggles as she worked her way backwards toward shore.
She heard a sharp cry from behind her, and she glanced into the trees but still saw nothing. It had been a man’s voice, pained and high, as if he had been knocked on the head. She felt the pike turn abruptly, pulling heavily on the pole, which slipped out of its anchorage and twisted in her hands before the big fish yanked it entirely out of her grasp with a force that astonished her. The pole rocketed away across the weir. Alice staggered forward, stepping into a deep hole so that the river ran freely into her waders, which were leaden with the weight of the water in a matter of moments. She slogged to shore, climbed heavily up the bank, removed the boots, and drained them. She could see the pole right enough from her higher vantage point, its cork handle visible in the sunlight, its tip borne down by the pike, which was a monstrous thing, surely forty pounds if it were an ounce, taking into account the magnification of the water.
The fish disappeared from view, darting into the depths among the waterweeds and stones. Suddenly the pole shot forward, jammed into the stones, and the line snapped, the tip of the pole ascending slowly toward the surface, the base held down by the metal reel. She slipped her waders back on and went in again to fetch it, hooking it with the gaff in order to draw it to her. The peacock feather lure, the best she had ever tied, was no doubt lost forever.
At least she had the fish in the creel, she thought, removing her wading boots again and setting out along the bank. But the fish in the creel was small compared to the sea monster from the weir – definitely something to be eaten rather than hung on the wall. She bent over to pick up the creel, but stopped, her hand hovering over the handle. She looked at it curiously, fear rising within her again. The basket was still firmly set among the stones on the river bottom, but one of the stones that should have anchored its handle had been pushed aside and lay now a foot away. She was certain of it. The stone was boxy, some dark stone. There it lay, where she hadn’t put it. Someone else had put it there. The creel sat in shallower water, too. The pike lay inside the creel as ever, although the moss had been pushed aside and then rearranged, leaving the top half of the fish uncovered and dry.
Who had done this – the man she had seen standing among the trees? Why hadn’t he merely stolen the fish, which could feed a moderately large family? He must have been remarkably curious if he had simply wanted to get a look at it. She stared at the fish for another moment, then hoisted the creel over her forearm and started off along the shore once again, looking into the wood with a heightened sense of suspicion. She unfastened the gaff from where it hung at her side and gripped the handle. Carrying the gaff in one hand and the creel in the other meant leaving the waders, but she would be less encumbered. The man would think twice about approaching her once he’d had a look at the business end of the gaff. Soon she was entirely out of sight around the swerve of the shore, and in fifteen minutes she was home again.
The sun shone through the intertwined branches of the wisteria alley, stippling the path. Away to her left the hop plants were shockingly green, climbing up their twining supports toward the heavens. She saw that Eddie and his sister Cleo were playing at tin soldiers on the broad veranda, Cleo laughing and bowling through Eddie’s troops with a siege engine towed by a mechanical elephant that was a marvel of moving gears, visible through a sort of Momus’s glass set into the elephant’s belly. The wind-up engine had been contrived for the children by William Keeble, the preternaturally brilliant London toymaker and inventor, who had long been Langdon’s friend.
Young Finn Conrad, the gardener’s apprentice, was cultivating the soil in the flowerbeds nearby, clearing fresh weeds from around a riot of pansies and foxgloves and marigolds. Finn had come into their lives a year ago, having endured a hard passage on the streets of London for a time before that, after tramping down the North Road from Edinburgh when he was eleven years old, taking six months on the journey. He had grown up in Duffy’s Circus and had manifold talents, of which they knew only a small part. He spoke less of what he had learned on the road and shifting for himself on the London streets and docks than about what he had learned in the circus, although no doubt both of those worldly schools were colorful in their course of study. He could ride a horse as if he were born to it, which he had been, and he was an astonishing tumbler and acrobat, with a fearlessness that made Alice pale on occasion, and which she very much hoped would not appeal to Eddie beyond a merely useful degree.
Finn stopped hoeing for a moment, apparently giving Eddie advice about troop movements, and then he saw Alice and waved heartily. She knew that Finn was a little bit in love with her, which was endearing, although it was only one of many endearing things about the boy, who was honest and forthright to a fault. The summer afternoon was so serene, and the scene so idyllic, that Alice felt abruptly foolish to be carrying the gaff, and she regretted having abandoned the waders, which ran the risk of being stolen by the lurker in the wood.
“Did you catch him?” Finn asked
“I did not,” Alice told him. “He stole my newly tied fly and nearly took my pole into the bargain. But I know where he lives now. He can’t hide from me.”
She greeted the children, who marveled at the pike in the creel, especially its enormous mouth and teeth. Eddie immediately saw its military potential as a counter to the elephant, but Alice closed the top of the creel, pointing out the fish’s potential as supper, which failed to impress either of the children.
“I’ve built a parachute, Mother, in order to launch soldiers from an airship like the one Father is to have.” Eddie showed her a spotted handkerchief, cut into an octagon, the corners tied with string, the bottom ends tied around the neck of a marine.
“It doesn’t work,” Cleo put in. “He’s killed seven soldiers trying.”
“I have not,” Eddie said. “One’s broken his leg, that’s all. I set it with a splint.”
He broke off, seeing that Cleo was again mobilizing the elephant, and Alice leaned her fishing rod against the corner of the veranda and carried the creel into the house, where she found her husband sitting on the big upholstered chair next to a sunny window in the drawing room, his long legs resting atop an ottoman, Hodge the cat stretched out asleep across his knees.
Alice had bought the chair and ottoman in London, courtesy of Aunt Agatha’s estate. The chair was one of the new coil-spring affairs with a vast amount of padding. Most of the furnishings in the house had belonged to her aunt, and were in varying degrees ancient, including the watercolors of wild flowers and fish that hung on the walls. The room, with its Turkey carpets and polished wood-paneling, was somewhat beyond the fashion, which delighted Alice, who found these reflections of the past both comforting and beautiful.
St. Ives looked up from a copy of Benson’s Air Vessels of the Royal Navy, just now aware that Alice had come in. He wore down-at-heel slippers and the disreputable waistcoat with embroidered orchids and flower petal buttons that he had apparently owned since he was a young man at the university, when he was something more of a Bohemian. It was much frayed and was rubbed through at the collar, but he generally put it on when he was in an expansive, cheerful mood. The carpet roundabout the chair was littered with drawings, books, and catalogues.
“One week!” he said to her happily.
“Until…?”
“Until the vessel is airworthy. Or so Keeble tells me.” He picked up a letter from the table next to the chair and waved it at her. “It came in today’s post. Keeble has laid out the particulars – the miniaturization, the motive power. It’s a very nearly fabulous craft, Alice, perhaps the first of its type – a rigid skeleton, do you see, built of bent bamboo, with the skin stretched around it so that it maintains its shape even when it’s idle. Hydrogen gas will fill the nose of the craft first, so that it’ll be very nearly vertical at launch, with the interior of the gondola remaining level due to its being hung on a pendulum. We’ll stow it in the barn. I’m devising a means by which to draw back a vast section of the roof in order to sail her straight up into the sky. Have I mentioned that?”
“Not above a dozen times,” she said. “I think it’s a grand idea. The family can flee the country at a moment’s notice when Scotland Yard finds us out. I’ll keep a bag packed and ready.”
St. Ives laughed out loud. He was happy enough with his pending airship to be easily amused. “What do you have in the creel?” he asked. “Supper or something to hang on the wall?”
“Supper, I believe. It’s been a baffling afternoon.”
He set Hodge onto the ground, hauled his legs off the footstool, picked up a scattering of papers from the floor, and set them atop the upholstery. Alice ascertained that the bottom of the creel was dry before settling it on the papers.
“Baffling in what sense?” he asked, opening the creel. “Outwitted by a fish, were you?”
“Yes, but I expected that. He’s a wise old fish.” She told him about the man in the wood, the crying out, the battle of the weir, and the strange business of someone having meddled with the pike.
The kitchen door opened, and St. Ives’s factotum, Hasbro, walked in carrying lemonade on a tray. He and St. Ives had been through so many adventures together that neither factotum nor manservant quite applied, although it had at one time. Hasbro kept up his old habits, though, which had come to define a small part of him. Alice took a glass gratefully. Fishing was thirsty work. St. Ives pushed aside a mechanical bat that sat on the table – an automaton, built by Lambert in Paris, which was so perfectly contrived that it looked stuffed. He set his glass down and then peered into the creel again.
“You say that someone not only opened this, but examined the fish? And he didn’t simply pinch it?”
“Yes. It was the strangest thing, especially given the man hiding among the trees. I was never apparently in any danger, and the fish is comfortable enough, but someone had a highly suspicious interest in the creel and in my fishing. Absolutely nothing came of it, I’m happy to say, although I left my wading boots behind.”
“Should I fetch the wading boots, ma’am?” Hasbro asked. “I’m taking my afternoon constitutional shortly. I’d as soon walk along the river as elsewhere.”
“Thank you, Hasbro,” Alice said to him. “If you don’t mind. You won’t need to search for them.”
St. Ives had his head in the basket now, evidently smelling the fish. He looked up, frowning. “Do you detect an odor?” he asked Hasbro, holding out the creel. “Not the odor of pike, but something else, something musty? I don’t believe it to be the moss. Something quite distinct.”
Hasbro sniffed the open creel, thought for a moment and sniffed again. “Boiling parsnips,” he said. “Certainly neither the moss nor the fish.”
“Mouse filth, I was thinking, although parsnips emit the same odor.”
“If I were to make a hasty judgment, sir, I’d guess devil’s porridge.”
“Yes, and almost certainly distilled, not conveniently dredged out of a nearby ditch. There’s none of it mixed into the moss.”
“Devil’s porridge?” Alice asked. “You don’t mean to say…”
“Yes,” St. Ives told her. “Assuredly it’s hemlock. The demise of Socrates distilled into a clear liquid. Look here. The villain has sliced the fish open with something very sharp – a carefully honed knife or perhaps a scalpel – along the edge of the dorsal fin where the incision isn’t apparent. He wanted to make sure that the poison invaded the flesh, you see. It’s impossible to say how much he poured in or how potent the solution.” He picked the fish up by the mouth and tail and turned it over. “No doubt he dumped some here on the gaff wound, also, poisoning the adjacent meat. If you’d simply given this to Mrs. Langley to stuff and poach, we’d all of us be dead by bedtime, Eddie and Cleo included.”
“I’ll just take a fowling piece with me along to the river,” Hasbro said.
“Would you like company?” St. Ives asked.
“The rifle is company enough, I should think. I fear he’ll be far away by now.”
“Indeed,” said St. Ives. “An escaped lunatic, I’d warrant, except that he would have to be a tolerably careful chemist, not that chemists don’t run mad as often as the next man. Rather more often, quite likely.” He glanced at Alice, who was looking steadily at him.
“Shall I have Mr. Binger dispose of the fish, sir?”
“If you will, Hasbro. Ask him to hack it up and cover it with quicklime, then bury it deeply enough so that Hodge won’t get at it.”