Thursday,
16
September, 1875
I count myself fortunate. I have cracked ribs, a wrenched
shoulder, and some spectacular bruises, but I am at least
ambulatory. I spent much of today keeping the children
entertained and looking in on my more seriously injured
colleagues. Everyone seems to be recovering. Mrs Cuthbert
has mostly been napping, waking to work on our more severe cases,
eating as much as she can, then going back to sleep.
There are cleanup efforts continuing at the Château, and now Mrs
Salmalin, Mrs Cuthbert, and Frau Metzger have dragged themselves out to
make sure there is no dangerous after-effect of the incomplete ritual
or the various dangerous persons lingering around the place.
We did have a scare earlier this morning regarding Mr O’Flaherty.
One of the housemaids went in to check the fire in his room and was
quite certain he was dead. I went to investigate her screams
(though why the silly creature though screaming would help is beyond
me), and found he was quite inert--no pulse, no breathing, and
noticeably chilling. I had looked in on him not long before, and
Mrs. Cuthbert had pronounced him to be on the mend, so I was
surprised. I sent Robert for Mrs Cuthbert and Helen.
Wilhelmina also came in, and I was arguing her out of applying some
kind of battery to his chest--really, her fascination with reanimating
the dead is too dreadful. Fortunately, this was forestalled when
Mr O’Flaherty suddenly started to breathe again. He roused enough
to give an incoherent account of a dream in which he met a figure of
Death, then went back to an easy sleep.
We had another startling episode, in which Robert came running into my
sitting room, very upset and exclaiming about a naked man in the
nursery. As you can imagine, I sent him for reinforcements and
went to investigate. Indeed, there was a man in the nursery, whom
I recognized with horror as one of the Baroness von Erbersbach's
outdoor staff. But he looked more bewildered than threatening,
and as I watched, he turned into a frog. I caught him up and
bound him (not an easy task with a frog, but I've had practice).
It turns out that Robert had collected this frog specimen yesterday,
after the battle at the von Erbersbach chateau. It proved to be
one of the werewolves, who had been transformed by Sir Cosmo with the
wands, but while he was in his lupine form. He could still
transform into his human shape, but instead of the wolf state, he can
only become a frog. The temperamental transference which
normally gives werewolves in human form their fierce demeanour is still
in effect, but it results in a froglike mentation in the man werew
subject's human semblance. Or perhaps he is simply a particularly
stupid individual.
In either case, he has been delivered to the Carpanian authorities,
(who seem not particularly surprised at this turn of events), along
with the warning to look out for others like him--and stray
mangold-wurzels as well.
The final trial of the day is to be the Duke of Nesseldorf Ball.
"Duke of Nesseldorf" is actually one of the King's titles, so it would
be very poor form to fail attendance. Besides, Wilhelmina is
already in a frightful state about missing 2 parties while we were
trapped in time, and how this has entirely disarranged her schedule for
which dress she would wear to each event.
Mrs Wooster is too badly injured to attend, and although Mrs Pinker is
a very astute chaperone, she is not perhaps equal to all of
Wilhelmina's bag of tricks. Mrs Salmalin and I, each being
about half our usual strength, will both go, in hopes of making up one
chaperone's worth between us.
We still have a few loose ends of investigations to tie up, so this is
a necessary opportunity for me to become familiar with the dramatis
personae of the Carpanian court. Not to mention, my Mother
would
never forgive me if I had an invitation to a Royal Ball and did not
take it up. Top that, Mrs Berringer!
Mr Frazer is in Potsdorf with the Inspector, following some of the
clues we found at Prince Heinrich's headquarters. Now that we
know with fair certainly that Lord Paul Sackville was not
murdered by Prince Heinrich nor the Anarchists working with him, we
must pursue other possibilities, including the mysteriously diverted
shipments of metals.
I am hoping that Mr Frazer will be able to join us at the ball.
Even with my ribs wrapped, I would enjoy a dance with my
husband. A slow one.
I had better begin to dress, it will take me some time.
Friday, 17 September, 1875
(very early morning)
We have returned from the Duke of Nesseldorf Ball. Nothing
untoward happened, except that a useless French aristocrat made an
ill-advised attempt to woo our Miss Moriarty. She had no
particular interest in him, as far as I could see, but I think she
would have played along (probably farther that would be wise) just to
see what he would do. At several of the recent social events, he
has been paying Attentions to her, to the degree that Miss Pinker
pointed him out to Sir Cosmo, who looked into his Circumstances.
He was found sadly lacking. Not only is he impoverished and
indebted, he had the unmitigated stupidity to assure some of his
creditors that he would shortly be marrying a fortune. He seemed
to have no idea that Miss Moriarty is so far his superior in wit.
In any case, Sir Cosmo warned him off quite emphatically. If that
weren't enough to dissuade him, Comte de Mulineaux got wind of the
man's scheme, gave him a most thorough reprimand, and sent him back to
France in disgrace for embarrassing the diplomatic mission with his
reprehensible self-seeking behaviour.
Little does the villain know that he escaped a worse fate:
I didn't get a chance to hand him his hat. Or the worst possible
fate--if Miss Moriarty had agreed to marry him! She would chew
him up and spit him out, and he would be her puppet for the rest of his
life. But he is not nearly useful nor amusing enough for her to
bother with.
I should get to sleep, now. Tomorrow I will be going to Kosel
with Mr Frazer and the MacGreggors. Though I could sleep on the
train, I am looking forward to the opportunity to catch up with
Helen--she has been keeping matters in hand for days, and I simply must
hear her sensible account of what's been happening. I'm also
looking forward to talking with Aaron, who has by all reports been a
tremendous help in the last few days, and a most brave guardian of the
younger children. Caroline has been talking about him
continuously, and Robert seems to watch him and gravitate toward him
when the young people are all together. No one could ask for a
higher recommendation that that.
Friday 17 September, 1875
Today has been a long but interesting day. Helen and I have
accompanied our husbands to the customs offices in Kosel, where
shipments cross the border and are changed onto different gauge
railcars to go on to various destinations.
We continue to discover that the late Lord Paul has been inquiring
before us, though usually not under his own name. We simple keep
hearing that another gentleman asked the same questions a couple of
weeks ago. This might mean that we are on the right track, or
simply that we are on the same wrong track as he was on. It is
likely at least that if his killer is still at large, our inquiries
will provoke an attempt on our lives--a sure way for us to identify the
culprit.
We have traced at least some of the circuitous routes that the diverted
shipments of metals are taking, and several of them have converged at a
factory in Senof, not far outside Kosel proper. The factory was
formerly used for producing ( ), but according to record, is now closed
and derelict.
We have sent a coded wire to the rest of the League, telling of our
discoveries. I doubt we will hear back, as I know Sir Cosmo and
Lady Cowperthwaite have gone on a little jaunt with Prince Stefan's
aerocorvette, up to the headwaters of the Becta and the Oder
Rivers. Sir Cosmo learned that the Godmothers had hidden the two
wands he currently has in his care, one into each river, where the
strong running water was supposed to neutralize some of their
power. He is going to do the same. I am not sure this is
the best idea, since like the disposition of the Fenris and his sons,
it has not been proof against the return of the hazard. All the
same, it was the best idea of practitioners reputed to be wise and
powerful, and I would just as soon such artefacts did not stay anywhere
near our more mischief-prone young people (come to think of it, the
mischief-prone adult people, either).
We have spent the last of the day seeing the sights of Kosel (at least
the ones that weren't destroyed during our last visit), and we have had
a pleasant dinner (at least the conversation was pleasant--the sausage
and mangold-wurzel casserole was not to my taste). We are settled
in to a reasonably clean Inn and have checked all the doors and
windows. Tomorrow, to Senof.
Saturday, 18 September, 1875
Today we solved the homicide of Lord Paul Sackville,
unraveled the fate of Master Zacharias, and discovered the whereabouts
and travels of the long-sought engineer Mr Dower.
The key to the first was indeed at the old factory in Senof. We
took our rented carriage out there, and as we drove past the outermost
fences of the compound, we noticed no people, but a number of peculiar
mannikins. After we passed by, we found a place a bit out of
sight to park the carriage, and we observed the factory from
concealment.
I noticed two suspicious things simultaneously. First, the
mannikins were some sort of automata, and were lurching about the
compound as if patrolling the grounds.
Second, I saw a familiar and unwelcome figure through one of the
windows: the goblin Blackhammer. In fact, I saw several
copies of him, some of them very small. These might have been at
Prince Heinrich's lodge, and been arrested in their re-growth by Mrs
Salmalin's ritual (unless someone else had done something similar to
him them at another time, which seems somewhat unlikely).
The next surprise was that Inspector Kempf rode up in an official
carriage, and as he climbed out at the gate, the automata saluted him
and admitted him to the compound. He went in with all appearance
of familiarity with the facility. A most unlooked-for
conspirator, and I hesitated to draw the conclusion that he was
involved. But indeed, it was so.
We sent the late Mr MacGreggor to Mrs Cuthbert to alert them to what we
had found. We moved carefully closer to listen and try to see in,
but it was difficult to get close because of the fence and the
patrolling automata. We also caught a glimpse of a man who
matched the description of Mr Artundweiss, the man who had been Master
Zacharias' apprentice until a few months ago.
We located barrels at another old factory, and also some water, and
filled two barrels with water, liberally dosed with soap from my
reticule's supply. I expected that could be helpful when we began
to tangle with the variously-sized Blackhammer goblins.
It was nearly five o'clock when the rest of the League reached
us. I reported what we had seen to Sir Cosmo. George managed to
creep in to the compound unnoticed, and took up a position on the
factory roof. From there he signaled to convey the conversation
within. When he indicated that the conspirators were arguing
about whether to abandon this factory because we had traced it, or
whether to advance the timing of their plan and activate their
automaton army immediately to march on Potsdorf, Sir Cosmo decided to
act.
He and Sir Spencer fired some of his new etheric grenades into the
compound, which disabled the automata there with a searing flash of
lightning.
We charged toward the building, with one of Sir Spencer's' carriages
coming behind us to bring the soapy barrels and our usual additional
artillery.
Once inside, and in a reasonably covered position, I paused to look
over the factory floor. The building was cavernous, and the
entire floor was packed with ranks of brass or bronze figures.
The automata outside the compound were approximately man-sized, and
seemed clumsy in their movements, and somewhat grotesque in their
failed attempt at mimicking human appearance. These figures were
each 12 feet tall, and had only the faintest resemblance to human
form. They looked constructed to a single purpose--that of
merciless warfare. We had seen just one such in action at
Nituriax' cavern, and it had taken great effort to disable it.
Here were serried rows of the same--some 300.
I am pleased to say that I never saw them in action. I was just
outside, keeping watch over Mrs Salmalin and Mrs Cuthbert, along with
our footmen David and Stuart. I heard the humming sound that
signals the rise in energy of an activated crystal-powered
device. Inspector Kempf, who had taken a position on a
gantry way above the automata, had just begun some internal effort to
activate them, and suddenly, the humming dropped and I heard George's
voice exclaiming that he had found the control room. Inspector
Kempf was given no time to react--Sir Spencer shot him in the chest
with one of the large-calibre weapons.
I hardly had time to sigh with relief over this delightfully
anticlimactic turn of events when I heard another shot. In the
control room, Inspector MacGreggor had shot another automaton, which
had been menacing George. This one seemed singular. It was
more like the human-sized mannikins, but seemed an older design.
It had a strange face, like a grinning doll, and was dressed in
antique-looking elaborate costume. It looked almost like a toy,
except that in place of one of its hands was a very sharp blade.
Mrs Cuthbert had come into the factory (and I with her), and she
pronounced that this automaton had a large part of Inspector Kempf's
"soul" in it, and also Lord Paul Sackville's soul.
She told us that there were mystic strands of
Inspector Kempf's soul stretched between his body and all of the
automata in the compound, and indeed there was very little left in his
own body.
When Inspector MacGreggor and Mr Frazer examined the blade of the
automaton, they determined that it matched the wounds on Lord Paul's
body, and they found minute traces of blood around the base of the
blade. This evidence supports the idea that this automaton, under
the control of Inspector Kempf, had attacked and murdered Lord Paul in
Potsdorf, and that the charged crystal which powered the automaton had
caught Lord Paul's' consciousness as he died. This
consciousness was trapped there, but without access to the quasi senses
of the automaton, so this part of him could not tell where he was or
what had happened to him when Mrs Cuthbert tried to find him.
Mrs Cuthbert relayed a few more of our questions, then released his
spirit to whatever next phase awaited it. She then set about the
business of gathering up the pieces of Inspector Kempf's
consciousness. As the parts came gradually together, she was able
to learn his story (apparently souls, like living people, like to talk
about themselves and justify their questionable actions). She
relayed to the rest of us that some years ago, Kempf had noticed the
growing Anarchist movement, including the tendency for military leaders
to be unreliable in support of monarchs. He had desired to create
an army which would be absolutely loyal to King Franz Kristof.
Because of his own prosthetic limbs, he had some knowledge of Master
Zacharias's special brand of clockwork, using the Atlantean crystals to
allow the brain to control the machine parts. He seems to have
recruited the disaffected former apprentice of Master Zacharias, Mr
Artunweiss to help him with the clockwork and the crystals. Like
Master Zacharias, Inspector Kempf was not aware of the cumulative
effect of using portions of one's own consciousness to remotely control
machines--i.e. gradual diminishing of vitality and of sanity. By
the time Kempf had parceled out so much of his volition out into these
demanding machines, he had quite lost his grip on why he had begun the
project in the first place.
I expect that around this time is when the goblin got involved.
His agenda seems to be to sow as much discord as possible, to soften up
the human world for domination by the King of the Winter Court of
Fae. This would explain why Blackhammer was involved in Prince
Heinrich's scheme as well, without the apparent principals of either
conspiracy being aware of the other.
And he was involved with at least one more fiendish plot.
We were finishing our work at the Senof factory compound, which mostly
involved catching and immersing goblins, at least for my part.
Suddenly, the thunderstorm which Mrs Salmalin had been working to hold
off sprouted an enormous bolt of lightning off to the West, right over
Potsdorf. When my eyes had recovered from the flash, some of our
party were gone--Miss Moriarty and Mr O'Flaherty. Mrs Wooster was
very alarmed, because she found suddenly that a note was pasted to her
face. It was from Miss Moriarty. The note said:
I should mention that the penmanship was admirable,
under the circumstances.
We were just doing a head count and determining if anyone else was
missing when Miss Moriarty and Mr O'Flaherty returned, along with Lady
Cowperthwaite and Galen and Lady Cowperthwaite's great-grandmother, and
some of her friends.
They told us that some further copies of the goblin had gotten in with
Master Zacharias and convinced him to build another version of the
"glass clock" which has the power to halt the progress of time.
Only a few entities are exempt from this effect, but this number seems
to include a startling percentage of people we know. Many of
those converged on the area of Potsdorf in order to disable the
device. I am not sure why Wilhelmina and Mr O'Flaherty were among
the select company, when most of them were not entirely human. My
best guess, derived from the presence of several of the incarnations
they met at the mythic "crossroads" during our adventures at Tabor
Island, is that their participation there marks them as somehow apart
from the rest of the world. That would account for Lady
Cowperthwaite as well, if her connexions with Kali aren't enough.
This assemblage found a collection of the goblins guarding Master
Zacharias' workshop. Once they got past them, they found Master
Zacharias, engrossed in his work, and happy to finally have "enough
time to catch up on his projects." They found a blood trail there
and followed it out to the yard behind the shop, where they found the
long missing Mr Dower, who was being harried by three werewolves--the
seemingly ubiquitous sons of Fenris.
The exact sequence of events is not yet clear to me, which is not
surprising, given that the persons telling me the story are not the
clearest narrators, especially when excited about the technical aspects
of temporal effects. Or just not very linear in giving
reports.
Perhaps at some point I will be able to assemble a sensible account,
but for the meantime, it is sufficient to say that the clock device has
been disabled, the goblins rounded up and soaped (though there may be
yet more running about somewhere), and the Sons of Fenris have been
trapped in a column of stopped time (which I hope will be more secure
than throwing them in the lake, at least keeping them until we go back
to England).
Mrs Cuthbert is beginning to work on Master Zacharias, gathering the
scattered parcels of his consciousness. He seems better already.
Mr Dower, we have discovered, has been in America for the past few
years, under the protection of none other than our friend Dr
Wilson. It seems that more than one government is concerned about
the potential danger of such a brilliant inventor being led astray,
which is exactly what has happened here. Mr Dower is a gentle
soul, eager to please anyone who seems to be a friend, and completely
engrossed in any technical project without regard to it eventual use or
abuse.
Somehow, he was found in America, taken from Dr Wilson, and brought
here, where his trust was manipulated and his skills were employed by
the goblin and the sons of Fenris. He was able to collaborate
with Master Zacharias (also easily manipulated because of his
scattered condition), in producing a form of the time device made of
very accurately worked metal, and therefore not so easily shattered as
the previous device. I expect he also helped with some of the
other devices used by the goblin against the various entities trying to
deactivate the clock.
After all that, Mr Frazer and Inspector MacGreggor had to stay a bit
longer in Senof to finish gathering evidence and writing the
interminable reports. Helen, Aaron, and I squeezed into one of
the carriages returning to the Lodge. Mrs Salmalin and Mrs
Cuthbert slept the whole trip back, propped together most
companionably.
I hope we can at last have a quiet day tomorrow. This
country is very picturesque, but if one more outlandish storybook
occurrence interferes with my going about my business, I will not be
held accountable for my temper.
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