P. Elrod - The Hanged Man

Alex sealed herself within the leaden armor of her imagination to avoid being emotionally overwhelmed by the crowd. She would get through this part of things, get answers from Fingate, and then deal with the looming grief.

Or not. Her father’s death was still an abstract concept. In her mind’s eye he remained alive, active, and vital. She could hear his voice, see his smile, and almost feel his tall, reassuring presence next to her, as clear as it had been more than a decade ago. However angry she was that he’d sent her away, she had no reason to think she would never see him again.

Which was simply not sinking in. She was numb and must remain so for the present. Later, when alone and able to let down her defenses, she might succumb to tears, but not now.

She took a seat at the house’s bay window to keep watch on the street. Fingate approached, silently offering tea. Constrained by Lennon’s orders, neither could speak. It was cruel.

She accepted the saucer and its cup of sweetly fragrant jasmine, nodding her thanks to him. Fingate winked once, his somber gaze dropping to the tea, then he moved off.

Under the cup was a scrap of paper. Alex covered it with her thumb and continued as normally as possible, given the circumstances. It took a moment to shift things to make an examination without anyone noticing. The flimsy piece had been torn from the margin of a newspaper, about half an inch wide and an inch long. The message, written in neat pencil, was disappointing:

Cold duck, 9:00.

What the devil?

It appeared to be a dining or drinking appointment, being vague enough for either; it was meant to mislead others, but have a meaning she alone would appreciate.

It was too outlandish. To cast her mind back ten years to recall some incident involving Fingate and ducks was ridiculous. How could the man expect her to remember?

Duck-was it meant as animal, action, or drink?

Ducks swim and duck under water to feed. That covers both animal and action.

There were plenty of ducks in London. Most of the parks had ponds, and the ponds all had ducks. Did cold mean they were to meet at a park? If so, then which one?

What about vintners or poultry shops? Impossible, there were too many. He could just as easily written cold goose or beef or-

Cold duck . Any duck would be cold at this time of year, with some ponds frozen over, preventing them from swi-

The meaning came in a gratifying flash.

For decades the maddest members of the Serpentine Swimming Club met in Hyde Park for their Christmas morning race. There were always stories about it in the papers. As a child she’d walked with her father to one such event. Fingate brought a hamper with bread, apples, and cheese. She’d given bread to some wayward ducks, finding them of more interest than the swimmers. Fingate had picked apart his loaf to tempt the ducks in closer, but none would leave the water. They’d fled, quacking with indignation, when the swimmers dove in.

Alex had not witnessed the race for herself for years, finding the press of crowds and their emotions to be wearing. Why meet her there? Why not wait until things were sorted out, when they could sit for a proper talk?

She spared a glance toward Fingate, to let him know she understood, but he was no longer in the parlor, probably in the servant’s hall negotiating more tea and seeing about sandwiches.

She slipped the scrap into her coat pocket just as a black landau rumbled to a stop next to the walk. Its front and back hoods were up, and a curtain covered the window set in the door. That should have been the conveyance sent to fetch her in the first place.

Not waiting for the driver to descend, a slender, competent-looking woman a decade older than Alex emerged, looking around with a stern face. Lennon hurried to put himself in her way, escorting her to the house next door.

Alex knew her: Mrs. Emma Woodwake. A widow, she was in charge of the psychical training branch of the Service and rarely ever called to do Readings. She was many rungs up the ladder from those out in the field.

Lennon returned a moment later, going straight to Alex.

“You’re for it,” he said, jerking a thumb to indicate the general direction.

Instead of the murder house, Lennon guided Alex toward the coach, opening the door and assisting her inside. He was a hindrance to balance with his great paw tight on her lower arm, and she dropped with a clumsy bump onto the thinly padded bench. The interior was cold and dark with the black velvet curtains in place. It turned to pitch when Lennon slammed the door and strode off, growling.

As she tumbled in, Alex glimpsed another passenger sitting opposite: male, wearing black trousers, a walking stick with a worn iron ferrule braced between his polished black boots. The rest blended into the shadows, including his face.

“Hallo? Who’s there?” she asked.

On the seat next to the man was a bull’s-eye lantern, as she discovered when he eased open its shutter. The beam of light fell on her, but there was enough ambient glow to fill most of the interior. Her mouth went dry as she recognized the imperious-looking fellow across from her.

“Lord Richard?”

“Miss Pendlebury,” he said in greeting. His voice was soft, just enough for the confines of the coach. Any listeners without would hear nothing.

She matched his level. “Sir, I was not aware of my relation to the deceased, else I would have-”

“Miss Pendlebury, be assured that had we known, you’d have never been called. This was an oversight. There will be repercussions, but not directed at you.” He fixed her in place with a chill and impersonal gaze. His eyes were a clear icy blue, but the lantern light stole their color so they seemed to be white, the pupils like black pits. “May I offer my condolences for your loss?”

The question, spoken in the same tone one might use for any mundane social inquiry, caught her off guard, and her breath hitched in her throat. Lord Richard Desmond was the head of the Psychic Service, so far upstream as to be unreachable. He reported and answered directly to Queen Victoria herself and no one else, not even the prime minister. Only the Lord Consort Arthur was higher up. For someone like that to unbend enough to offer Alex sympathy, however formally framed, took her aback.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

She had only ever seen Lord Richard this close on the day three years ago when she’d been accepted into the Service. Shockingly tall, strongly built, a faint red tint to his gold hair, he did not look old enough to have been running things since 1848. When she discreetly asked, she was informed that the Psychic Service had been wrested into existence by Lord Richard’s father (also named Richard) as an outgrowth of the Ministry of Science. Exactly how that happened and how he’d gotten the ear of the queen in the first place were not general knowledge.

That the son took over his retired father’s duties was hardly worth notice. There were many families in more or less hereditary service to Her Majesty, after all-such as the Pendlebury clan, who’d been at it for generations. Uncle Leo did something at the Home Office. Her cousins held positions in other areas of service, and without a second thought she’d used family connections and the fact that she was one of the queen’s many goddaughters to apply for her own place in the great machine that ran the empire.

Three years ago Lord Richard had personally welcomed Alex and five other nervous recruits, shook their hands, and presented them with the gold medallions that identified them as bona fide agents of Her Majesty’s Psychic Service. Since then, he had been a rarely seen figure in the distance.

“Sir, if I may ask, why are you here?” Alex had expected her supervisor to deal with the situation, or perhaps his supervisor, but not the head of the Service himself. She was a small cog in the machine; just how bad were things to bring out the chief engineer?