P. Elrod - The Hanged Man

In London, the remarkable Mrs. Falleson tearfully delivered her charge to the Pendleburys and departed to seek out her own family, never to return. Though they did sometimes correspond, those occasional letters did not entirely mitigate Alex’s sense of having been dismissed again.

Thus ended her second circumnavigation of the globe, which put her ahead of all the adults in the Pendlebury clan, most of whom had never stirred from England unless one counted occasional trips to Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

It certainly put Alex ahead of the cousins of a like age to herself. She had nothing in common with them. What was normal to her was to them strange and worthy of ridicule. They teased her as a liar when the adults weren’t around and otherwise treated her like an exotic and not terribly safe zoo specimen. Cousin Andrina (who had often been to Balmoral as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Alice and her daughter, Princess Charlotte) informed her that Alex’s hiatus abroad was a disagreeable family scandal. It was on a level with Gerard marrying that unstable Fonteyn creature. Alex was told to keep both shames to herself and never mention her sordid history again.

Alex considered Andrina to be a great fool, but this was cruel and unnecessary. Cousin Andrina was wonderfully resentful and unreasonably jealous that she and Alex shared the same name and royal godmother. It didn’t matter that the girls were two out of the hundreds of Alexandrina Victorias named after the queen, Andrina was always putting about that the honor was wasted on her odd cousin.

Revenge for Alex, if not prudent, was imperative. Circumstances suggested a suitable retaliation. She poured out her cousin’s perfume and filled the bottle with gin. Andrina had no sense of smell, owing to a childhood illness, and the next day departed for a lengthy visit to Balmoral reeking like a drunkard.

There had been no repercussions since the prank could as easily been carried out by any of the other cousins-who were not talking. The only thing they abhorred more than Alex was a tattletale (and none them liked Andrina), so they closed ranks. Andrina, though, knew who was behind it, and from that point on ignored her cousin completely, thinking that a snub from a person of her social standing would completely crush her foe.

Nothing could have had less impact on Alex, who was unaware that she was supposed to be miserable. It proved to be an imperfect but workable resolution to both girls. They found ways to avoid each other and not speak at the dinner table.

Family disputes aside, Alex had written her father nearly every day, the first letters addressed to him in Hong Kong with “please forward” printed neatly on the envelope in English, French, and Chinese. She did not ask why she’d been sent away, reserving that question for the next time she would see him. She did inquire where he was and when he expected to be in England, then went on to describe the happenings of that particular day, certain that he would be interested as he’d always been.

Her certainty wavered as the months crawled on without a reply, puzzlement gradually giving way to hurt, and then anger. No one knew where he was, not even Uncle Leo, and no one seemed inclined to find him, though Leo made inquiries. Nothing had come of them.

A year after her return to England, a battered packet of unopened letters turned up, half a dozen out of the more than three hundred she’d sent. Someone had scrawled “return to sender” on the front in pencil and by some miracle it had found its way to her. It was not, so far as she could tell, her father’s handwriting. They were some of the earliest, on stationery acquired in San Francisco. She’d opened each, reading the events within, recalling forgotten details, but not relishing them as treasured memories. They mocked her then-belief that being sent away was only a temporary thing.

Five years with Father, a total of twenty years without him, and now he was gone forever.

* * *

“It must have been quite an adventure,” stated Lord Richard.

“Indeed, sir. The adventure of a lifetime.” She’d left out much from her account, and everything to do with her family. Childish feuds between cousins could hardly be of interest to him.

“Beginning when you were only ten? There is the danger that ennui might overtake a person exposed so soon to such variety.”

“I have thus far been spared.”

Not strictly accurate. Alex loved traveling and it had been difficult adjusting to living a quiet, relatively predictable life. While Samuel Johnson’s declaration that when one tires of London, one tires of life might be true for some, he’d never ventured farther than the Hebrides.

Besides, he’d not been plagued with a psychical ability for Reading or he’d have ended up in Bedlam.

Some of her Fonteyn relatives had done so or been secreted away elsewhere for their own good. The psychical gifts that ran in their blood sometimes had a malignant effect, hence the family reputation for brilliance mated with instability. Had Father not gotten Alex a measure of special training early on, affording her control of her talent, she might well have gone down the same path.

Mrs. Woodwake returned, climbing inside the landau to sit next to Alex. She nodded once in greeting, looking exhausted. “Pendlebury.”

“Ma’am,” she said, and nodded back like a schoolgirl to a respected teacher. Woodwake had that effect on her. “Shall I leave, Lord Richard?”

“No.” He looked at Woodwake. “Your report, if you please.”

It was much as Alex expected. The emotional traces in the murder room were contaminated, so they would have to rely on the physical evidence. It was well there was a goodly amount, with more being gathered. On the roof, Inspector Lennon traced the intruder’s tracks to an empty house along the row that had been broken into; Woodwake inspected the premises, finding only faint echoes of its previous occupants.

“You interviewed the servants?”

“Yes. Innocent, so far as I am able to ascertain. They’re genuinely shaken, no one is hiding anything. They’ve no idea where Fingate’s gone, either.”

He looked at Alex, who felt an uncomfortable prickling under her arms. She should tell him about the note. It was not too late. She could talk her way out of any serious disciplining. Knowing where Fingate was likely to be hours from now was different from not knowing where he was at present, though she doubted Lord Richard would appreciate the argument.

Besides, it was now her turn to be questioned by a Reader. It was a foregone conclusion that Woodwake would sense a lie and any lie to cover the lie.

“Sir, I-”

Something struck the coach with a great deal of force, making a strange, flat percussive sound like a hammer on iron. Several more percussive somethings struck, shattering the glass window facing the street. The curtain twitched.

Lord Richard flinched and grunted, then Alex felt the brute force of his hand on her shoulder. She and Woodwake were shoved down to the narrow confines of the coach’s floor with his lordship’s considerable weight on top.

Alex felt a wave of rage that was not her own and another of fear not her own, the first from Richard, the latter from Woodwake, before closing herself off from the onslaught.

More things pelted the coach, tearing through the leather hood. She was certain they were bullets, but could not hear gunfire. The curtain and hoods were holed, the supporting hoopsticks splintered, but nothing penetrated below the sides. From the sound those were made of metal, not wood.

She smelled blood and realized Lord Richard had been hit. She tried to shift, but he snarled at her to keep down.