Champagne Charlie and the Amazing Gladys

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The sun – breakfast conversation – iron ships – a policeman calls – an unpleasant revelation

The moon and planets had been kind to Charlie, but the cruel sun chose to stab him in the eyes. Shading his face with his hand he looked about, surprised to find himself still in the seat of the cab.

Clambering out, he found that the cab was parked outside of his own house. The street was just beginning to come alive. Few of the owners of those large Regency houses were yet awake, but their servants were commencing work—fetching and preparing, bringing in wood and coal for fires, disposing of yesterday’s rubbish.

The cabman’s seat was empty. Deep inside Charlie’s aching head a bell chimed, a warning that all was not well. He stared at the vehicle, uncertain. At length, he took a handful of coins from his pocket and laid them on the driver’s seat. The bells did not cease their ringing, but the gesture allowed him to ignore them.

Charlie crept into the tiled front hall of his family’s London home. It was decorated with an assortment of seascapes and nautical decorations that clashed horribly with Wedgewood vases and still-lives of flowers. The décor was wasted on Charlie. Any house is a palace to the hungover, so long as it is quiet and dim. He dozed in a plush chair until he was awoken by breakfast smells. Feeling a little better, he slouched into the huge oak-panelled dining room where his parents were sitting down to eat.

“Ah, Edward,” his mother said, as she opened an egg. “You are up early. No, I am mistaken. You are up late.”

“Hello, Mother,” Charlie said, helping himself to a plateful of sausages and toast. “Father.”

“Whassat?” his father roared. “Oh, it’s you, boy.”

There was a considerable difference in age between Charlie’s parents. Lady Decharles was a well preserved fifty, while Lord Decharles was a mass of white hairs and wrinkles in an admiral’s uniform.

“Out late, eh?” the Admiral said.

“I had dinner with Roldo Landry.”

“Ah, yes,” Lady Decharles said. “He has a position with the Air Ministry, does he not?”

“Yes, Mother,” Charlie said, knowing at once which way his mother’s questioning was leading.

“And his father is Commissioner of Works,” Lady Decharles said. “There are careers to be made in the Civil Service, Edward. That is, if you still do not care to enter the navy, like your brother.”

“Pah! Navy,” the Admiral grumbled, spearing a saveloy. “What navy? When I was a boy, there was a navy! Now it’s all machines. There are no sailors anymore, only God-damned mechanics.”

“Language, dear.”

“Well, it’s true. At any rate, Edward, your mother is correct. It has been two years since you graduated. What have you done since then? Eh? What?”

There was no good answer to this. Fortunately, Charlie was not to be allowed to offer one.

“You have done nothing, Edward,” Lady Decharles said. “Nothing. Now, you know your brother-in-law is a bishop. Have you considered a career in the clergy?”

Charlie’s gasp of horror was drowned out by a bark of a laugh from his father. “Ha! Like they’d give this sot the keys to the altar-wine store!”

“Now see here, Father,” Charlie began, but just what he wanted his father to see there would have to wait, because he was interrupted by the arrival of Haaven, the butler.

“Your lordship,” Haaven said, “there is a policeman in the kitchen. He would like to talk to whomsoever may have taken a taxi-cab home yesterday.”

As a child, the huge kitchen had been Charlie’s favourite room. It was warm and full of pleasant smells and noise. It was a hive of activity, presided over by the kindly Mrs O’Higgins, a flour-drenched little whirlwind of an Irishwoman. It had been years since he had been down there, but Charlie’s nostalgia was overcome by his sense of ill-defined guilt as he saw the burly detective by the kitchen door.

“Good morning, sir,” the detective said. Just why did plainclothes officers all dress so similarly? The cut of the man’s coat, the set of his bowler hat, his very stance all marked him as a copper just as certainly as any uniform. He was sipping tea, but at Charlie’s appearance he put the mug down, nodding his thanks to Mrs O’Higgins.

“Good morning,” Charlie said, though he’d a feeling it would not be. “What seems to be the problem?”

“I am Sergeant Arkwright,” the policeman said. “Might I henquire as to whether you hengaged a cab ‘ome last night?”

The warning bells rang again. “Yes, sergeant, that is correct.”

Arkwright licked the tip of his pencil and wrote in his notebook with an ostentatious flourish. “‘That… is… correct’,” he repeated. “And may I henquire as to sir’s happellation?”

“Happy… Oh, I see. Edward Decharles.”

“‘Ed-ward De-charles’. And where did you hengage the cab, Mr Decharles?” the sergeant asked.

“I’m afraid I couldn’t say. I’d lost my way in the fog, you see.”

“‘Fogbound’,” Arkwright said. “‘Mystified’, as it were.”

One of the scullery maids sniggered at this, but Mrs O’Higgins silenced her with a glance.

“At what time was this, sir?” Arkwright asked.

“Early in the morning, I suppose. Two or three o’clock.”

“Two or three?”

“Split the difference and say half two,” Charlie said. With that, he plumbed the foggy depths of memory to reconstruct as best he could his movements from his dinner with Roldo to breakfast with his parents.

Arkwright listened patiently until the end. “I am afraid I simply don’t hunderstand, sir,” he said, scratching his head. “The Hair Ministry sounds like an hexcellent career for a young man of your standing. If this Landry fellow knows of an hopening, well…”

“Be that as it may, Sergeant, when I awoke the sun was up, the cab was parked outside, and the cabman nowhere to be seen.”

“Perhaps, sir, you might do me the courtesy of haccompanying me to the cab. There’s something I should like you to see.”

In the street, Charlie’s neighbours strode by on their way to work. Mrs Framley from across the street limped off on her charity rounds. A footman argued with a gardener. A delivery boy weaved to-and-fro on one of those little caloric tricycles that were the latest fad amongst the fashionable shopkeepers of London. To the north, a triplane manoeuvred like a sluggish bumblebee. Ignored by most, a lone steam-cab stood outside the townhouse of Admiral the Lord Decharles.

“Do you believe he abandoned his cab?” Charlie asked.

“Do you think, sir, that a cab left hunattended for a few hours is a police matter?”

Quasimodo himself could not have rung the bells louder.

“‘Ave a look, sir,” the sergeant said.

Charlie examined the cab. Inside sat a silver hip flask bearing the monogram “E. d. C.” Embarrassed, Charlie put it back in his pocket.

“No, sir,” Arkwright said. “Hevidence. It will be returned.”

Charlie handed over the flask without a word and turned his attention to the workings at the back of the cab. It bore a shining brass plate that identified the cab as belonging to the cab yard on Handel Street. On a hunch, he tapped at the boiler with his knuckles.

“Empty!”

“Boiled dry,” Arkwright said. “Safety valve sprung. ‘Ope that didn’t hawaken you.”

Charlie frowned at the suggestion and examined the caloric container to the side of the steam whistle. The gauge read “Empty”.

“Well, there you are,” Charlie said. “He must have left the stopcock a trifle open, and the caloric dripped in and boiled away the water.”

“Do you know much about caloric fluid, sir?” Arkwright asked.

“Good lord, no,” Charlie said. “No more than the next chap. I know that it’s supposed to be heat in its pure fluid form. Distilled from coal, so they say. Not really my area. Studied History, you know.”

“Yet you are correct, sir,” Arkwright said. “Pure ‘eat, what moves like liquid. Stored in special containers.”

“Yes,” Charlie said. Why was the big policeman talking about this?

“And do you know much about the reciprocating steam-hengine?” Arkwright asked.

“I had a toy engine when I was a boy. Ran off a spirit burner.”

“Did you learn much from your toy?”

“I’m afraid I broke it.”

“Would you care to hexamine the workings of this hengine? The rods what connect the piston to the wheels are located hunderneath.”

Charlie looked under the cab and let out an involuntary shout. He looked up at Arkwright, horrified. The detective was a big man with a red nose and a set of luxuriant side whiskers joined by a moustache. In short, he looked like a caricature of a London policeman. But there was nothing amusing about his expression. It was dispassionate as a surgeon.

Shaking his head, Charlie looked back under the cab, as if to confirm what his eyes had told him the first time. Sure enough, there was the cabman’s body, twisted and mangled in the workings of his own engine.

“You might have warned a chap!” he said.

Arkwright made a note in his book. “It was necessary to hexamine your reaction. I am convinced, sir, that your surprise was hunfained. Since you did not know that the cabman was dead… You follow my reasoning.”

“I follow your reasoning, Sergeant, but I can’t say I like it,” Charlie said. “Damn it, why should I mean the poor chap any harm? Surely his death was accidental? He was poking around in the engine and got himself caught and… Well, it’s lucky he was parked over a drain, that’s all I can say.”

“Hindeed, sir,” Arkwright said. “It was a sewer worker what spotted the blood and contacted the police. As you say, it may be an haccident, but we must consider all possibilities.”

A piece of flotsam from last night’s conversation washed up on the beach of Charlie’s mind. “He said he had a fiancée. I believe her name was Sue.”

“Then it must fall upon me, as it hoften falls upon members of the Metropolitan Police, to be a bearer of sad tidings to the hunfortunate girl,” Arkwright said. “As for you, sir, please be hadvised that your testimony may be called on by the Coroner. And, if I may make so bold, you’ve ‘ad a shock. Per’aps you should take a rest today? Don’t hundertake any great responsibilities.”

Charlie hesitated for a moment. “I am sure I won’t, Sergeant,” he said. “I am quite sure that I won’t.”