From the journal of Sgt. Robert A. Frazer, London Metropolitan Police (deceased):
21 July, 1870
Benton and his associates are pursuing leads into the city of Metz, in France. They had a bit of a wait at the border, during which time most of the company caught up on their correspondence. Except the sickly little dog, he pryed open a window and ran for it. There are some dogs that will take to a leash, and some that won't. He never struck me as the leashing kind.
Eventually we made it to our destination. We were met at the station by a Mr. Middleton from the Consulate. Mr. Middleton is Mrs. Cuthbert's son-in-law, and he seemed quite surprised to find the Cuthberts travelling with Sir Cosmo.
There was a bit of a mix-up with Mr. O'Flaherty's baggage and the Marquis insisted on playing with his flash-powder photographic gadget but eventually everyone was loaded into carriages and on our way.
We're staying in the Palais de Guise, which was built for the Duc de Guise in the fourteenth century. His descendants owned it until the Revolution. During Napoleon's time a distant English relative of the de Guise family, the Earl of Brichester, purchased it. When he died, he left it in his will to the Her Majesty's government.
I know all of this because the Earl himself explained it. He seems a pleasant enough old chap, if a bit absent-minded. He introduced me to a few of the other spirits of the place. They're an interesting lot. Not quite as entertaining as the bogeys or leprechauns that also live here. One of them is a bit too fond of drink, as they sometimes are.
Everyone got settled in. Mrs. Cuthbert's granddaughter, little Elinore, heard us coming in and insisted on seeing her grandmama. She's quite the charmer.
Benton was up at the crack of dawn, as usual. Explored the grounds and the surrounding neighborhood, and gave Sir Cosmo a report before most of the rest of the party had turned out for breakfast.
The Consul, Sir Robert Jennings, had gone to the French authorities in an attempt to obtain Sir Cosmo an interview with someone who could act on the intercepted Prussian message. Meanwhile Sir Cosmo and Mr. Cuthbert studied maps of the city and the other members of the group went about their usual business.
Mr. Hassan spends quite a lot of time spinning around in a sort of reel. Benton tells me that it's part of his religious observance. He is certainly in contact with something beyond this world. And I don't mean spirits such as myself.
Mr. O'Flaherty had made the acquaintence the night before of one of the little bogeys, and he communicated his discovery to Miss Whitnell and Mrs. Cuthbert. They searched the house and questioned little Elinore about the creatures. Edward had seen one of them liberating a bit of breakfast, and spent the rest of the morning attempting to catch another glimpse of the little rascals.
It appeared that nothing dangerous was likely to happen for a while, so I decided to have a word with Benton about this business with Miss Sinclair. I don't understand that boy, sometimes. It is so clear to me that Miss Sinclair is as smitten with him as he is with her, but he won't come out and say it. When I tried to reason with him he just became stubborn.
Mrs. Cuthbert is aware of the situation and seems to think as I do: they should stop wasting time.
Our discussion was interrupted by a bit of thievery by the Wee Folk. One of them seemed to think that the brass buttons on Benton's dress jacket were made of gold. While making his escape, after cutting the buttons loose, the little critter knocked the entire armoir over. The noise brought most of the party to the room.
Upon discovering what had happened, Miss Sinclair immediately offered to sew replacement buttons on the jacket. Benton tried to defer, she became insistent. So she sewed while he repaired the damage done to the furniture. If that didn't give him some clue as to the depth of her feelings, I don't know what will get through to him.
Sir Robert returned with some news. Sir Cosmo could return to the Citadel with Sir Robert and there meet with some officials. As they are all very busy, what with the war forming up just outside the city, exactly when they would be allowed to speak to someone in authority was unclear. Sir Robert also had news of Lt. Wooster. Somehow the man sailed all the way here, over a hundred miles inland, to deliver some sort of message. As usual, no one knows precisely what he's talking about.
A subset of the league was deputized by Sir Robert to go to the docks and attempt to sort it out. Benton, being one of the official representatives of her majesty's government (at least more official than most of the others), was included in the party.
Mr. Cuthbert took most of the others to survey the properties surrounding the Citadel, to map all the likely places an assassin might use to effect an attack on the Emporer.
And Sir Cosmo went with Sir Robert. George went along to look after Sir Cosmo.
The docks are not as impressive as London's, though they are more extensive than I had imagined. Lt. Wooster, Mr. Caine, and several sailors were there in a sloop. They had a pair of passengers, a striking young woman named Magda, who was introduced as 'the Slayer,' and her mentor, Prof. Cremina.
Wooster told a rather fantastic tale of fighting werewolves and Prussian agents. In the course of their adventure, they had intercepted the same coded Prussian message that Benton and his associates had found. They had made best speed here, to attempt to save the Emporer, or at least eliminate the supernatural fiend, Schmidt.
I feel a tad uncomfortable saving the French Emporer. I understand that we are currently on good terms with France, but so many times in the past they have been our rivals, if not outright enemies. However, I agree with Benton that this Schmidt needs to be stopped. Since an ordinary jail cannot hold him, he must be stopped by other means.
I couldn't help noticing that Benton's new partner, Insp. MacGregor, seemed distracted much of the day. Since I happened to overhear his conversation with the scruffy little dog the other day, I had at first attributed it to his current difficulties in matters of the heart. However, at one point I caught a glimpse of another spirit, who seemed to be talking to MacGregor. There was no mistaking the family resemblance between them. I suppose not every father can be on good relations with his son.
The authorities were eventually persuaded to allow Wooster and his passengers to disembark. The entire party retired to another chapterhouse of the Order of St. Jerome. They seem to be everywhere.
The pleasant tea and conversations about sorcerers and demons and the like was interrupted by what sounded like an explosion. Or a scream. I felt a sudden urge to go toward the explosion. It was almost impossible to resist. But I knew that something quite diabolical was happening, so I stayed close to Benton, in case he would need my help.
All the sorcerers felt it, too, though from what they said in a somewhat different way. We loaded into carriages and headed off at a gallop. Eventually we found a church, or what remained of it.
Miss Whitnell was there in the church yard, doing her magic. Mr. Cuthbert's party had apparently caught a group of assassins in the very act of preparing a spot to lie in wait. There had been a gun fight. Not to mention a rocket fight, some sorcerous combat, and even the destruction of much of the church. The bells had been knocked down, the chancel was collapsed. Several of the miscreants were mortally wounded.
Unfortunately, one of the dead men, the biggest one, wasn't willing to stay down. They were all fighting him: Mr. O'Flaherty, Miss Bertilde, Mr. Cuthbert, the Marquis, Edward, even Miss Sinclair was hurling stones at him.
And still he stood and kept fighting them, all the time spouting some Latin nonsense.
Mr. Salmalin, Benton, Miss Chigwidgeon, Magda, Wooster, and the others jumped into the fight. Magda is much stronger than she looks. It was a battle of epic proportions.
Miss Whitnell, Mr. Ramsay, and Mrs. Cuthbert managed to complete a ritual that finally put the undead creature down. In the sudden quiet, Dr. Wilson announced he was getting worried, as he was out of bullets and nearly out of rockets.
Then the French soldiers arrived. French police had made an earlier appearance, but had run off at the first sight of the big guy lumbering around with a great grisly hole in his forehead. It shouldn't have surprised me. The only time, back when I was still alive, that I faced something similar, most of the other Constables turned tail and ran, too. And I am the first one to admit that if Rip Chigwidgeon hadn't stuck around to help us, Duncan and I would have probably died that day.
Speaking of Rip, he would have been proud as punch of his little girl. She was right there in the thick of it. He should have seen that little slip of a thing standing on top of the rumble, stomping on the stones trying to slow the creature as he dug his way out.
The soldiers arrested the lot of us. Can't say as I blame them. We'd destroyed a church, after all. Everyone was hauled off to the Citadel. We were placed in a pair of rooms -- not your usual cells. The women in one room, the men in the other. And we waited.
Eventually, Sir Cosmo, Sir Robert, and some French official, who is also a member of the Order of St. Jerome, arrived to vouch for us and sort things out.
We had captured the sorcerer who was working for the assassins, though it seems that man has completely lost his mind when his ritual went awry. Still, Miss Whitnell was able to question him and gain some useful information. Though most of this group were Americans, they are associated with Herr Hans Bopp, the head of Prussia's Secret Police. The same man who held Benton prisoner this last spring. Benton tells me the others witnessed him murdering some young girl recently. He's a very bad fellow who should be brought to justice. Unfortunately he's out of my jurisdiction, but perhaps Benton and his associates can do something about him.
Everyone was eventually released and free to go back to the Consulate. Things were a bit tense there. Elinore had been worrying about her grandmama. Mrs. Middleton was scandalized that her mother had been taken into custoday less than a day after arriving in France.
Miss Whitnell and the other mystically-inclined ones did some sort of spell that made the whole castle very quiet. Everyone is settled in for a well-deserved rest.
22 July, 1870
I have put my foot in it with Miss Sinclair. I didn't mean to, but there you have it.
Benton got up early, as usual. After breakfast he retired to one of the parlours with the maps and worked on his reports. Sir Cosmo was up in his room writing reports. MacGregor was in his room transcribing his notes. Everyone was taking it easy.
Miss Sinclair and young Edward were out in the garden. It was a fine morning and they were doing a bit of sketching. The garden seemed much more interesting to me than what everyone was doing inside, so I was out there, taking in the air.
Miss Sinclair has a sharp eye for detail and a steady hand on the sketchbook. One of the bogeys was sitting in the tree, singing to the flowers. Young Edward was drawing a quite detailed sketch of the little creature, with those dragonfly wings and such. Miss Sinclair was drawing a bird. Bee eater, I think it was. She's normally so perceptive, I would have expected her to see right through a simple bogey illusion, but apparently not.
She remarked on Edward's imagination, with that tone of voice governesses and headmasters use when they mean they think you're off your rails. So I made a perfectly innocent comment, talking to myself, really, about him drawing what he could see.
Miss Sinclair jumped up as if she had been stung. She whirled around and me and said "I beg your pardon!"
She's never noticed me before, all the times I've been around her and Benton. She's never heard any of the things I said to Benton in her presence. Here she was in a garden that was infested with faeries and she couldn't perceive one right in front of her, even when someone showed her what it looked like. I had no reason to believe that she would suddenly develop the ability to see me.
It was a bit embarassing, frankly. If I'd known she could hear me, I would have said something a bit more circumspect. Or at least waited until we'd been properly introduced. Now here we were, face to face, both of us startled and unsure what to say. It was quite the pickle.
She asked me who I was. Since Benton wasn't on hand to do the proper introductions, I introduced myself. She put out her hand and told me her name. Naturally, when a lady offers her my hand, like a gentleman I tried to shake it. And my hand went right through her. I spent 57 years on this earth with a body as solid as anyone's, and I forget, sometimes, that I'm less substantial than smoke, now.
I could see that it had quite unsettled her to realize I wasn't flesh and blood. The colour drained from her face and she was breathing a bit more rapidly than is healthy while wearing a corset. I immediately apologized.
In a very uncertain tone of voice she asked, "Are you related to Mr Benton Frazer?"
I allowed that I was his Father.
Her eyes became even larger and her face paler. She said, "I had understood that you were…" she paused for an uncomfortably long moment, obviously trying to think of a more delicate way to put it before saying, "dead."
I nodded, feeling quite sheepish, and admitted that I was, in fact, no longer one of the living, though still among them, in my own way.
She attempted to rally herself and asked what I was doing in France.
I explained that I was just looking after Benton.
Then she asked if there was anything should could do for me.
I couldn't think of anything, and she still seemed very distressed, so I told her I was just taking the air, and she shouldn't mind me at all.
She stood there for another moment or two, just staring at me. She sat back down rather suddenly, and she didn't look any better. I feared she would faint at any moment. Of course, not having solid hands there isn't much I could do. So I said I'd go get some help and hastened into the house, hoping to find Mrs. Cuthbert or Benton quickly. Mrs. Cuthbert was closest to the garden, and she went straight out when I told her Miss Sinclair was in distress.
I don't know what Benton is going to say when he finds out. He'll be fit to be tied, I'm sure. Perhaps I should just stay out of sight for a while, until everyone has calmed down.
Proceed to Schmidts everywhere!
Contents this page copyright 2004 by Gene Breshears. All Rights Reserved.