P. Elrod: The Hanged Man

Tension that Alex had not been aware of left her shoulders. “Thank you, sir.” He was being inordinately generous, and though she was consciously not Reading the man, that did not feel right to her.

What else was afoot?

* * *

It was discovered that Fingate had apparently made his way home, packed, and departed via the mews, slipping past the constable on watch. Mrs. Woodwake lost his fading psychic trace in the lane behind the house. His modest quarters were stripped of clothing, papers, and money. So far as could be determined by the housekeeper, nothing else was missing. The man had efficiently cleared out and vanished.

Alex admitted that it looked bad, but Lord Richard held fast and did not change Fingate’s status to that of a fugitive. That was a relief.

None of the servants had any idea where Fingate might have gone, agreeing that he was friendly, but not given to idle chatter. All of them had come to Dr. Kemp’s house from the same agency and had excellent characters, confirmed by Mrs. Woodwake when she questioned each in turn. They thought Fingate was also from the firm; he had never said anything contrary to that assumption. He always addressed their employer as Dr. Kemp, never by another name. No, Dr. Kemp had no patients, he’d not opened for practice yet. He had no need for a practice; his money was from that throat elixir, didn’t you see the sign in the parlor?

Alex remained with Lord Richard, the misery of the cold and her state of mind mitigated by hearing the reports as they arrived. In the lulls between, he questioned her about her travels around the world. She was certain he wasn’t simply passing the time, but more likely fleshing out whatever information he already possessed. He was skillful, making it seem like ordinary drawing-room conversation, exactly what was not to be found in a chilly landau next to a murder house at four in the morning. Alex suffered it, though. For all its shortcomings, she was committed to her duty. If the head of the Service wanted to know about her, so be it.

* * *

When Alex was ten, her father swooped in to remove her from her mother’s family. He and his wife had been estranged for a few years; Alex never knew why, though she suspected it was because the Fonteyns were manifestly unstable and given to drink. That’s what had happened to her mother. Alex barely remembered her. She was a dim face and a babbling voice, supplanted by a succession of nannies and aunts.

Lord Gerard judged that none of the Fonteyns possessed the temperament suitable for raising a child and claimed his paternal rights. Later, Alex suspected a sum of money had changed hands to speed things and, given the mercenary nature of her maternal relatives, she was not particularly surprised.

For the next five years father and daughter had journeyed around the world-twice. Though at times dangerous, it had been a marvelous series of adventures.

Those came to an end one night in Hong Kong when an English messenger stopped at their house in Victoria, departing less than a half hour later. Though curious, Alex had not been privy to the conversation that had taken place between him and her father, but afterward she’d been told to pack. She was used to sudden departures, always traveling to a new place to learn new things. They’d been in China for nearly two years, though, and she’d not completed her studies with Master Shan.

Father had not answered her questions, which was unusual, just told her to see to the packing-which included that of her paid traveling companion, the fearfully proper widow of a Methodist minister. Mrs. Falleson had been stranded in Hong Kong after the death of her husband and had lost her enthusiasm for converting the heathen. The lady was happy to chaperone Alex if it meant a trip back to England at some point.

The last time Alex saw her father was on the steamship that would take her eastward across the Pacific. It was her second crossing, but this time she was bound for the United States, not Mazatlán, in Mexico. He saw to it that she and Mrs. Falleson were well accommodated and had more than sufficient funds and the means to get more, but never said exactly why they had to depart without him.

“I’ve business to see to first, my dear,” was all he imparted to Alex on the topic. “Please do look after your companion. I fear she is no sailor.”

He kissed Alex on the forehead, and then waved from the dock as the ship left the harbor. Alex kept him in sight for as long as possible, but eventually her tears and distance became too great and he was lost to view.

She initially thought Father would catch up with them in San Francisco and that they would wait there, but Mrs. Falleson had strict orders to get to England as quickly as possible, which was in line with her own heart’s desire. Their choices were limited. The much-touted transcontinental rail line was yet incomplete. Mrs. Falleson refused to inflict a long, dusty stagecoach journey on herself and her charge, convinced they would be slaughtered by Indians or robbed by outlaws (and then slaughtered) at some point along the way. The contents of various newspapers validated her avoidance of that route.

They could take a slow steamship around Cape Horn, make a dangerous land crossing of Mexico, or court death in the fever swamps of Panama. Alex had traversed Mexico on her first trip around the globe, but in a large, well-armed party. Her accounts of that journey were enough to send her chaperone on a hunt for smelling salts.

Mrs. Falleson, after a number of prayers pointedly asking the Almighty for a solution, picked an unorthodox alternative that delighted Alex.

The Americans were an enterprising lot when it came to commercial exploitation of their inventions, even the more terrifying ones. The San Francisco papers had been full of stories about the triumph of air travel. Mrs. Falleson read of the many successful flights achieved by the Aerial Navigation Company, particularly those executed under the command of a certain Captain Lucius Miracle, whose surname offered a strongly symbolic appeal to her spiritual side.

Taking it as a sign from above, she and Alex boarded one of the lighter-than-air ships to skim (barely) over the Rocky Mountains and beyond. Though not the first females to make the trip, they were enough of a rarity that their participation was of interest to the newspapers. Mrs. Falleson was more horrified at having her name in a common rag than by defying gravity in a frail-looking gondola suspended beneath three balloons shaped like fat cigars.

The ladies boarded swathed in veils and heavy coats, having been warned it would be cold, and at her request the captain of the ship gave false names to anyone who asked. Alex did not understand until her chaperone explained that a proper lady should only ever be mentioned thrice in a paper: when she was born, married, and died. Anything else was simply vulgar.

Alex had heard stranger views expressed on her journeys and learned to discount them without offence to the speaker. A nod and a polite smile usually sufficed, and so it proved again.

Their air transport was wanting in comfort, but peerless in speed. They rode the prevailing winds far above the wilder portions of territories claimed by the United States. For three days and nights Alex clung to the gunwales, gaping in wonder at the changing landscape below. Her eyes stung from the chill, her face hurt from smiling so much, and she grew hoarse asking countless questions of the crew and the captain. Mrs. Falleson prayed a great deal, only occasionally pausing in her orisons to admire the view. Alex tempted her often with that distraction, having the idea that God might appreciate the respite.

Their airship landed in St. Louis amid fanfare that included a brass band and jugglers. Mrs. Falleson once more resorted to obscuring veils and managed to get them away unscathed and unidentified by the local press. She found a respectable hotel and there they rested for two days before boarding a slower if more sensible train for Chicago, another to New York, and finally a clipper ship back to a country Alex barely remembered.