Clubland Heroes

By Kim Newman

Catriona Kaye would always remember the first time she looked up and saw one of them. In her case, it was the woman—the Aviatrix—swooping from a cloudless sky. An unhooded hawk, the Aviatrix was tracking quarry through holiday crowds who were beneath her.

Like the 20th Century, Catriona was nineteen years old. On an unseasonably warm Spring Bank Holiday, she had motored down to Brighton in a charabanc with a rowdy group of nurses and their quieter patients. Most of the party were about her own age, but the girls, in flapping white uniforms, seemed a different species from the haunted-eyed men, all veterans of the Great War. In theory, she was researching an article for the Girls’ Paper on angelic latter-day Florence Nightingales aiding the recovery of shell-shocked officers. The commission had devolved into an outing to the seaside. The mostly tiny nurses, strong in the upper arm as wrestlers, got behind wheelchairs and pushed mind-shattered men along the promenade like babies in perambulators. They even held races, which made Catriona fear for fellows who had come through the War whole in limb but might here take a nasty spill.

Between the piers, she observed human behaviour. Fellows in striped suits and straw boaters loitered, eyeing each passing ankle, calling out cheerful impertinences. She had already fended off several propositions, and would have been more flattered had supposedly heartbroken suitors not instantly recovered to press their attentions on the next girl to twirl a parasol. Old ladies occupied deck chairs, snoozing or staring out to sea. Families shared fish and chips. Boys built sand-castles and conducted sieges with tin soldiers. Hardier types in bathing costume dared the still-freezing sea and, through wracks of shivers, proclaimed their dips most invigorating. By the West Pier, a knot of children gathered around a tall thin striped box, looking up with mouths open as Punch and Judy went through their eternal ritual of bloody farce. A cheer rose from the audience as the crocodile clamped long jaws around the policeman’s wooden helmet.

A news-vendor sang “Have You Seen Him?,” promoting the Daily Herald’s competition. Among the teeming crowds at the resort supposedly lurked that master of concealment, Lobby Ludd, whose silhouette was printed on the front page (in Fleet Street, Catriona had learned the expression “slow news day”) and on circulation-boosting posters. Keen-eyed readers brandished Heralds and barked “you are Mr. Lobby Ludd and I claim my five pounds” at bewildered local characters, sometimes tugging genuine whiskers in an attempt to unmask the elusive gent. She had witnessed several scuffles, with indignant non-Ludds battered by rolled-up newspapers, and one genuine fist-fight.

Floss, who could have boxed for Lancashire, trundled Captain Duell up to the guardrail and locked the brake on his wheelchair.

“I’ve got to spend a penny. Mind the cabbage, would you, love?”

At first, Catriona had been shocked to hear nurses say such things, but she’d soon seen they were ferociously devoted to their gentlemen. When a Member of Parliament touring the convalescent hospital refused to visit the shell-shock ward on the grounds that the patients there were all shamming cowards, Floss had rolled up her mutton-chop sleeve and personally punched his head for him. Captain Duell, twice sole survivor of his battalion, had served twenty-eight months in the trenches.

Floss tripped off in search of a convenience.

Catriona looked into the Captain’s watery eyes. He was in a near-permanent dream-state. He didn’t flinch at loud noises—those cases were left behind at the Royal Vic, since Brighton on a Bank Holiday wasn’t where they’d be at their most comfortable—or stutter to the point of incomprehensibility. He just seemed used up, forever on the point of falling asleep or starting awake, head hung loose on his neck, lolling forwards. Always tired, never resting. She couldn’t imagine what he’d seen.

A middle-aged woman carrying a Herald stared at Captain Duell, comparing his face to the front page silhouette. Catriona tensed, sure the Captain was about to be harangued as a probable Lobby Ludd, but the woman thought better of it and passed by, looking for another suspect character.

Catriona shrugged a smile at Captain Duell, forgetting momentarily that he had little idea she was there. Then, she saw something spark in his eyes. She knew better than to believe in miracle cures, but had learned that every tiny interaction with the world outside their minds was a triumphant step.

The Captain looked upwards, eyes rising. He lifted his head, detaching his chin from his breast.

“Yes,” said Catriona, “look at me.”

His gaze passed up over her face. She tried to encourage him with a smile, but he didn’t focus on her. She was puzzled as Captain Duell looked up higher, above her head, into the sky.

The crowds hushed. She had a frisson, almost of fear, and twisted away from the man in the wheelchair, following his eyeline. All along the sea-front faces were turned upwards. Fingers pointed. Breaths were held. Then, thunderous applause rolled over the sea. A cheer went up.

A woman flew out of the skies, towards the prom.

Catriona had, of course, heard about the Aviatrix.

Since her stunning debut, the Girls’ Paper had three times pictured Lady Lucinda Tregellis-d’Aulney—”Lalla” to her friends and an Angel of Terror to her foes—on the cover. Shortly after the armistice, distracted from her initial aerial experiments over Dartmoor, the Aviatrix had swooped upon an escaped murderer, bearing the terrified felon up into the sky and dropping him back in Prince Town Jail.

The principles of Lady Lucinda’s winged flight had been explained in learned articles which Catriona understood only vaguely. She had imagined a classical angel—though she knew a human with functional bird-wings ought to have a sternum like a yacht’s centreboard to anchor the necessary muscles. The Aviatrix’s wings, hardly visible unless sunlight caught them just so, were more like a butterfly’s than a bird’s. Complex matter seeped from spiracles along her backbone, like ectoplasm from a medium, unfolding into sail-like structures at once extraordinarily strong and supernaturally fine. Extruded through vents in her white leather flying jacket, the wings lasted a few hours. Shed, they liquesced like cobweb, melting to silvery scum. But while Lalla had wings, she could fly.

Like everyone, Catriona was awestruck.

She knew from her father, a country parson, that this was an age of miracles foreseen only by M. Verne and Mr. Wells. In his lifetime, the world had accepted the telephone, the Maxim gun, recorded sound, the motor-car, the aeroplane, motion pictures, raised hemlines, world war. But those were things, concepts, reproducible. The Aviatrix was a person, an embodied marvel, a heroine literally above ordinary humanity.

Captain Duell tried to speak. Catriona was concerned for him; how could she explain that he wasn’t “seeing things?” Everyone else also saw the woman in the sky. She wasn’t an angel come for him.

The Aviatrix hovered, wings beating every few seconds, a rainbow shimmer of facets in sunlight. She was barely twenty feet above the sea, ankles primly together, arms casually folded. With a whoosh, she swam through the air, like a phantasmal manta ray. She flew over the beach, up towards the prom.

All at once, Catriona actually saw the woman with the wings. Lady Lucinda wore white jodhpurs and riding boots, matching her slightly baggy jacket. An abbreviated yellow leather flying helmet freed waves of pale gold hair that swirled about her shoulders, while tinted goggles concealed her eyes and a long white scarf trailed behind her. A button-down holster hung from her belt, heavy with a service revolver. As insignia on the breast of her jacket and caste-mark on her helmet forehead, she wore the d’Aulney coat of arms—birds and castles.

Catriona realised the Aviatrix was looking through the crowds, checking each upturned face. She was searching for someone. Since doing so well with the jail-breaker, she had specialised in tracking down escaped or wanted felons, like a Wild West bounty hunter—though no d’Aulney would ever stoop to seeking payment for doing his or her duty. Her late brother Aulney Tregellis-d’Aulney, vanquished over No Man’s Land by Hans von Hellhund (the so-called “Demon Ace”), had never claimed a penny of his RFC pay.

The outfit showed little of the woman inside—bee-stung red lips and a blot of artificial beauty mark. It struck Catriona that Lady Lucinda painted her face like an actress, so as to give the best effect from a distance. Up close, her mouth would be an exaggerated scarlet bow.

Now the wings hung like a kite, and the Aviatrix held out her arms for balance, gliding on an air current. She seemed to walk on a glass promenade above the general run of humanity, considering then rejecting each.

Catriona recalled that Lady Lucinda had announced that she would hunt down and bring in an international revolutionary known as the Crocodile. The anarchist was behind a series of dynamite outrages on the Continent and reportedly intent upon bringing his stripe of violent upheaval to England.

A chill crept through her. A bomb on the sea-front, timed to go off at the height of a Bank Holiday, would be devastating, resulting in enormous loss of life. With the War so fresh in mind, it was scarcely conceivable that such horrors should resume, and on the mainland. And yet she knew better. Humanity’s capacity for beastliness was undimmed even after the mass slaughter of the trenches.

The Aviatrix passed overhead. Catriona had the illusion she could reach up and touch the heels of her boots, though the woman was a good ten feet beyond her grasp. Captain Duell rose from his chair, back creaking, uniform wrinkled around his waist from so long in a sitting position. He was still trying to speak. Floss was back, an arm around the patient, cooing to him, supporting him.

Everyone else—Catriona included—looked to the Aviatrix. At last, Lady Lucinda stopped, as if a gem had caught her eye in a tray of coals. She stood still, above the entrance to the West pier, and looked down at the Punch and Judy theatre. Her scarf streamed like a banner. She slipped her goggles up onto her forehead, disclosing long-lashed blue-grey eyes.

The puppet play continued, but the young audience was hushed, staring at the new arrival, who put a finger to her lips, entreating them to keep the secret a moment longer. The policeman puppet seemed to turn to look up too, truncheon in its arms. A slit opened in the front of the theatre, the puppeteer’s eyes shining through.

The Aviatrix smiled and made fists against her chest, crossing her wrists in a pose of concentration, then beat her wings. A hummingbird gust bore down and ripped away the striped fabric of the theatre, revealing a bearded fellow holding up the policeman and covering his face with the crocodile. The stall fell, struts twisting around the puppeteer’s legs. Hung inside the stall were the familiar figures of Punch and Judy, their dog and baby. A string of sausages turned out, upon examination, to be linked sticks of dynamite.

The Crocodile waved his crocodile hand, as if warding off the harpy who fell viciously upon him.

Claw-tipped gloves slashed across the anarchist’s arm, tearing the puppet off his hand, and hooked into his face, digging deep. A slapstick blood spray spattered the audience.

“You are Mr. Lobby Ludd,” said the Aviatrix. “And I claim my five pounds.”

Catriona felt more than she could cope with - awe, terror, love, disgust. She fainted, unnoticed. When Floss revived her with smelling salts, the show was over, the Crocodile in police custody, the heroine fluttered away. Relieved holidaymakers, only now sensing the peril averted, redoubled their efforts to enjoy their day away from normal life.

In the melee, someone had stolen her purse.

* * * *

Eight years and many singular experiences later, Catriona Kaye had learned to accept that she shared a world with women who flew. Indeed, by comparison, the Aviatrix was almost a routine marvel. After all, Lady Lucinda was a public figure, while her own adventuring usually involved matters which tended to be kept from the newspapers or recorded only as buried, inconclusive items at the foot of the column on an obscure inside page.

In the Bloomsbury flat she shared with Edwin, she sat up in bed, swathed in a sumo-size kimono, fiddling with a Chinese puzzle box. Souvenir of a gruesome bit of business she thought of as The Malign Magics of the Murder Mandarin of Mayfair, the box had defeated her fingers for fourteen months. It held the preserved forefinger of a centuries-dead courtesan-sorceress whose sharpened nail-talon had several times altered the course of history. Or maybe the rattling, lightweight treasure inside the box was a very old twig.

Catriona was no longer primarily a journalist, an observer—though she had published books about bogus spiritualists and genuine hauntings. Through her complicated association with Edwin Winthrop of the Diogenes Club, she was a participant in a secret life conducted busily just beyond the perceptions of the man or woman in the street. She was still alive and sane; if she thought about it, she was rather pleased with herself for that— such a happy, if provisional, outcome seemed so unlikely for a person in her line.

She slid lacquered panels back and forth, rattling the box, discovering new configurations with each click. The fiddling was at least educational, expanding her knowledge of Chinese characters.

“Still no joy?”

Edwin came into the small bedroom, with a tray of tea, toast, and Catriona’s mother’s marmalade. He wore a cardinal-scarlet, floor-length dressing gown that might have done for a ball-gown, over last night’s dress shirt with the collar popped and the tie undone. There had been talk of disowning and a cessation of parental relations when she elected to share accommodation with a man to whom she was not married, but it hadn’t lasted.

This was a decade of change.

“It’s always three moves away.”

Edwin kissed her cheek, took away the puzzle box and poured her a cup of tea, ritually tipping in just the splash of milk she liked.

This morning, he was being especially considerate. He had been out at his club—always the Club—last night. She gathered he had not slept.

“You’re going to ask me to do something?”

“A brilliant deduction, Catty-Kit,” he said, sitting on the bed, legs stretched over the coverlet, pillows propped behind his back. His hair smelled of tobacco; the inner rooms of the Diogenes Club were a perpetual fug, thicker even than the pea-soupers which still afflicted London.

“And it’s going to be wretched?”

Edwin rattled the puzzle box next to his ear. He subscribed to the old twig theory. He had also suggested solving the puzzle with an Alexandrine sword-stroke, but she knew he was only teasing.

“It’s just a tiny little murder,” he admitted.

“That’s extreme,” she said, nibbling a corner of toast. “Couldn’t you just have whoever it is crippled?”

“Not murder as in committing, murder as in investigating.

“You may not have heard, ducks, but there’s an excellent service for that. Those fellows in the bell-shaped helmets, the ones who always know the time and have those dear little whistles. They don’t take kindly to lady journalists getting under their size-eleven boots, or so I’ve read in the Police Gazette.”

Edwin shrugged, noncommittally.

“Good fellows the ‘peelers,’ even out in the trackless terra incognita that is Heathrow, Surrey. A fine yeoman constabulary excellently qualified for locating missing bicycles, rescuing cats from trees, and cuffing apple-scrumpers around the earhole. Maybe just a bit baffled by Murder Most Foul, though. The penetrating intellect and discreet tact of Miss Catriona Kaye would be much appreciated in certain circles.”

He marmaladed more toast and chewed it over.

“If Mr. Charles Beauregard of the Ruling Cabal of the Diogenes Club wants me to do something,” she said, “he could always ask me himself.”

Edwin paused midmouthful. He always looked naughty boyish when his superior and mentor was involved.

“Better yet, Charles could nominate me for membership, you could second me, and we wouldn’t have to go round the houses every time the least-publically-acknowledged of the Kingdom’s intelligence and investigative agencies has a task uniquely suited to my abilities.”

Edwin scoffed.

“That would be murder. A woman member of the Diogenes Club! The ravens would flee the Tower of London. Sir Henry Merrivale would bust a corset. Anarchy in the streets. England would fall.”

“Serve it right. This is 1927. We’ve got the vote. And the Married Women’s Property Act.”

This was an old scab, picked at whenever they got bored. The last thing she wanted was to be a member of Edwin’s club, but it was still an annoyance that she put herself so frequently at the disposal of an institution that would only allow her into a select few rooms of their cavernous premises in Pall Mall, refusing her admittance to the rest of the place on the spurious grounds of her sex. As it happens, she had seen everything anyway—with the connivance of Charles and Edwin, and disguised as a post-boy, while thwarting the efforts of Ivan Dragomiloff, the soi-disant “ethical assassin,” and saving the somewhat over-capacious hide of that bloody-minded old reactionary Sir Henry.

“‘Sides, independence is what makes you an asset,” said Edwin, touching her nose. “We trust your objectivity. Diogenes isn’t entirely free from the compromises, rivalries, and politickings that shackle all servants of the crown. Sometimes, only a free agent will do.”

“You aren’t making this trip to the country any more attractive.”

Edwin smiled, a line of white beneath his clipped moustache. He made adorably sad eyes, like Buster Keaton.

“And that’s not going to work either, beast.”

He was tickling. Which wasn’t fair.

“The problem has features of uncommon interest.”

He shifted a facet of the box. It would be just like him to solve the thing without even trying, after she’d spent months on it.

“You mean, it’s embarrassing and dangerous.”

“Not at all. It’s probably very ordinary, run of the mill, and even, as murders go, tedious. But there’s an aspect that stands out. Almost certainly an irrelevance, but it needs mulling over. It’s something with which the locals have not a hope in Hades of coping. Only you, Catty-Kit, can bring to bear the tact and cunning needed. Hark, what’s that? Britannia, calling the finest of her daughters to do her duty...”

She swallowed the last of the toast.

“Aren’t you curious?”

He was maddeningly right.

“So, is it a dagger of ice, melted away in an open wound? A beheaded corpse in a room locked from the inside, with the head missing? The venomous bite of a worm unknown to science?”

“None of the above, old thing. Plain blunt instrument, applied to the back of the noggin with undue force. Probably a length of lead pipe. Or a fireplace poker. Mr. Peeter Blame, our luckless householder, apparently surprises a burglar in the course of felonious filching, gets badly bashed on the bonce, then left to die on the kitchen floor. Usual portable valuables missing. Cash, watch, minor jewelry. String of housebreakings in the vicinity. Official description of the fellow sought to help the police with their enquiries almost certainly runs to a striped jersey, crepe-soled shoes, a black domino mask, a beret, and a big black bag marked ‘SWAG.’“

She was being led by the nose. He was daring her to spot what was wrong with this picture.

“Peter Blame?”

“Peeter. Pee, double-e, ter. If you ask me, that’s an invitation to unlawful killing by itself. The late, lamented had an endearing habit of bringing suit against newspapers who misspelled his name.”

“Was he mentioned much in the ‘papers?”

“In the legal notices, which contributed to the problem, really. He had the habit of bringing suit against people for all sorts of things. A stickler for the letter, rather than the spirit, of the law.”

She knew what he meant.

“So, Mr. Peeter Blame, of the Extraneous E, was one of those busybodies who enjoys dragging all and sundry into court?” she deduced. “Thus scattering motives for murder throughout the countryside in which he lived. Heathrow, you said. I assume he’s also been known to, ah, strongly criticise the constabulary currently charged with investigating his demise?”

Edwin barked a laugh.

“They didn’t hold an inquest, Catty-Kit. They threw a party. With streamers and funny hats. I’m making that up, but you get my drift. An area of the law in which Mr. Battered Blame took especial interest was the licensing of establishments that serve alcoholic beverages.”

“Ouch.”

“Indeed. Last January, he was successful in ensuring the dismissal of several policemen and the disbarring of a Justice of the Peace on the grounds that they not only allowed the Coat and Dividers, the local pub, to stay open after regular hours but were photographed drinking there.”

“Photographed?”

“Another of Blame’s hobbies. Flash photography. Neat bit of trickery, done through a mullioned window. All the faces clear and the clock over the bar in perfect focus. Pints in mid-pull, merry coppers in mid-draught, JP rendering the ‘sober as a judge’ saying inapplicable. Twenty minutes past midnight. On January the first.”

“New Year’s Eve? Are you sure killing Mr. Blame was strictly against the law?”

“‘Fraid so. Even the smallest, and smallest-minded, of His Majesty’s subjects deserves full restitution when knocked off by skull-cracking crooks.”

Catriona pulled her kimono tighter. She saw the trap closing.

“I’ll concede being a killjoy and a bounder isn’t grounds for justifiable homicide,” she said. “But there’s an elephant in the room, something colossal you’ve omitted mention of. The Diogenes Club doesn’t concern itself with page seven stuff, no matter how flagrant the misapplication of local justice. Charles is only concerned with matters momentous. It takes a serious threat to the nation to get him out of his armchair. Even then, he’s only excited by a serious threat to our plane of existence. So? Perfidious foreigners or supernatural spookery?”

“Maybe both, maybe neither.”

She was close to teasing it out of him.

“I give up. What’s the feature of uncommon interest?”

Edwin’s eyes shone.

“The address. The Hollyhocks, Heathrow, Surrey. Mr. Blame has... had... unusual neighbours. His property abutted the Drome.”

“Ah.” Catriona saw it. “The Splendid Six.”

“Those are the fellows. And lady. Mustn’t forget the lovely Lalla Tregellis-d’Aulney.”

Catriona considered the situation.

“When an ordinary everyday unsolved murder is committed right next-door to the greatest sleuths and saviours in the land, it’s a tad awkward.”

“Rather.”

“So it had better get itself jolly well solved.”

“Indeed.”

“Quickly and quietly.”

“On the nose, admirable girl.”

She thought about it.

“But you want me to look into it? You’re staying out yourself, along with the whole Club?”

“Matter of jurisdiction. Diogenes prefers the shadows, you know. And the Splendid Six... well, they’re great ones for the spotlight. We’ve got by so far on staying out of each other’s way. Best all round, really. But Captain Rattray put in a personal telephone call to Charles, on his private line...”

“Captain Dennis Rattray. Blackfist?”

“Yes, Blackfist. He asked our opinion. Not something he does often. Rather, not something he’s done ever before. The thing is that the Splendid Six are all very well when you want the Eastern Empire saved from a Diabolical Mastermind or need a Royal Princess rescued from the inbred descendants of a lost legion of Roman soldiers maintaining a fiefdom in a hidden Welsh valley, but they aren’t who you want to turn loose on a mundane robbery-murder. It’d be like using a team of Derby winners to pull the milk-cart.”

“But I’m a suitable dray-horse? Very flattering.”

“You have to appreciate our quandary. We can’t go charging in mob-handed and take over from the police.”

“What you mean is that Charles doesn’t like the Club being called in like a tradesman to tidy up a mess on the doorstep of a crew of glory-hogs who won’t sully themselves with it. Blacklist didn’t ask for your help, he told you to take out the rubbish and lock the gate behind you. So, to get out of the who-can-spit-further contest, you’re palming this off on me—because I’m ‘independent.’ Well, I’m not really allowed to poke into murders. I know there’s this craze for amateur detectives, but they’re usually so well-connected that the police bite their lips and pretend to appreciate the ‘help.’ I don’t have an ancient title, a chair in advanced cleverness at an Oxbridge college, or an obliging nephew in Scotland Yard. I don’t think my press card will get much respect. I’m not even eccentric.”

Edwin took out a sealed envelope and pressed it into her hand.

“Don’t think of yourself as ‘amateur,’ think of yourself as ‘unsalaried.’ This will give you all the official status you need. Guaranteed to make any bobby in the land doff his helmet and snap a salute. And, indeed, bite their lips.”

She examined the seal.

“Good grief. That’s...”

“Yes, and he addressed it personally. Look.”

She turned over the envelope and saw her name, written in a most distinguished scrawl. It was misspelled: Catrina Kay.

“You feel like saluting yourself, don’t you?” Edwin teased.

Actually, she felt hollow and terrified. Being noticed from on high was deeply discomfiting.

But she had no choice.

“And here, oh my best beloved, is a train ticket.”

* * * *

Rattling out of Paddington Station, Catriona had a compartment to herself. Having purchased the current number of British Pluck from the magazine stall, she read up on the latest exploits of the Splendid Six, individually and as a side.

Teddy Trimingham, the Blue Streak, had successfully smashed his own land-speed record, in a bullet-shaped multipurpose vehicle of his own design, the Racing Swift. Lord Piltdown, the All-Rounder, had just attained his century of centuries in an exhibition match at the Oval, then celebrated by shinning up Nelson’s Column and bellowing in triumph from atop the Admiral’s stone hat, terrifying the pigeons. The Aviatrix had snatched a fleeing poisoner (and his Eurasian mistress) from a ship at sea just before the absconding pair reached the safety of international waters, and bore the miscreants back to Scotland Yard. And the Six had foiled the Clockwork Cagliostro’s grand scheme to seize Edinburgh Castle with wind-up tin soldiers, smashing his ingenious army into scrap metal and springs. Nothing unusual, there.

Since that Bank Holiday in Brighton, she had got used to the Splendid Six and their like. She knew there had always been such unusual individuals, cheerfully eager to turn their talents to the cause of the helpless. Just as there had always been darker fellows, only marginally less gifted, who served only their own interests or flew the Jolly Roger. For every Aviatrix or Clever Dick, there was a Spring-Heel’d Jack or a Wicked William; Edwin had once theorised that the stalemate between these unique persons, clubland heroes and villains, meant that the rest of the world could get on with whatever they were doing relatively unimpaired. Some great battles of Good and Evil turned out to be little more than squabbles: The Aviatrix’s continuing campaign to bring Hans von Hellhund to international justice had more to do with her brother’s defeat than the Demon Ace’s minor postwar smuggling activities.

Sometimes, though, the rest of the world’s business was impaired by the doings of superior individuals. Throughout last year’s General Strike, the Splendids had been staunch in helping to keep “essential services” running. Something about press photographs of the Blue Streak working as a volunteer driver (joking about the snail’s pace of a London omnibus) struck her as comical yet disturbing, while she had very definite feelings about Lady Lalla Tregellis-d’Aulney hovering over union meetings and taking a note of who spoke out the loudest. Catriona’s own sympathies had not entirely been with the government in that time of national crisis— she had rowed with Edwin throughout, and he had shown the unexpected decency not to crow at her grief when the strike failed. Many a mine-worker or factory girl, raised on British Pluck or the Girls ‘Paper, looked up in awe and admiration, but moderated their opinion when the Six flew what socialist commentators were quick to label their “true colours.” Trimingham didn’t call himself the “Red Streak,” did he? Zooming heroically through certain areas of the country, a Splendid was as liable to be the target of a tossed half-brick as the prompt of a hearty cheer.

At the back of Pluck was a helpful article about the Drome. A plot of scrubby flatland had first been turned into a proving ground for Trimingham’s pioneering contraptions, where he could whizz and whoosh and go bang well away from the prying eyes of foreign spies or rival inventors. (Peeter “I’ll see you in court” Blame must have enjoyed living next door to that racket!) The Splendid Six first convened when the Good Fellows Four put out the call for new recruits to battle the plague hordes of the Rat Rabbi, Norwegicus Cohen, and the Celestial Schemer, Dien Ch’ing. At the successful conclusion of that exploit, the Drome became the Head Quarters of the Six, home to their famed Museum of Mystery. There, surrounded by souvenirs a good deal more impressive than a puzzle box, the Six sat around King Arthur’s original table, each in their appointed place. The round table was recovered from the Shadow Realm of Perfidious Albion during an adventure that had run in British Pluck for six consecutive numbers under the title “Against the Nights of the Underground Fable.” From the article, she deduced that at meetings the original GFF had the Aviatrix serve the tea, and put the brown-skinned Chandra Nguyen Seth, the Mystic Maharajah, on a stool in the draughty corner.

A fold-out map of the Drome kept her busy turning the magazine upside-down to examine details. The village of Heathrow (and its railway station) was shown, but there was no indication as to which of the adjacent properties had belonged to the late Peeter Blame.

As he saw her off, Edwin had given a final friendly suggestion.

“If you can get this settled without even involving the Splendid Sausages, that would probably be for the best.”

That would suit her perfectly.

However, she had muttered “some hope.”

She considered the portraits dotted in misty ovals around the map: bright eyes (inevitably blue with silver-grey flecks), forthright chins set against underhandedness, devil-may-care half-smiles eager for adventure, stalwart knotted brows ready for any intellectual challenge, gleaming teeth suitable for biting into a fresh red English apple, dashing signatures (and one thumb-print).

The Splendid Six were heroes. And they terrified her.

* * * *

It was fortunate there was little reason for anyone to visit Heathrow. The station was tiny and dilapidated: boards missing from the platform, sign hanging askew. She alone alighted, taking care to avoid jets of steam aimed at ankle-height. The engine came to the boil again and the hissing, clanking train trundled off, picking up speed in anticipation of more interesting stops further down the line.

An old man emerged from a hut. He tripped over someone’s left luggage, which had literally taken root. The two suitcases were furred over with moss, weeds sprouting from cracks in the leather.

“You the missy from up Lunnon?”

The toothless apparition wore a battered station-master’s cap on the back of his head. He had a white fringe around his collapsed face, thinning hair up top, sparse beard under his chin. He walked bow-legged with the aid of a stick. A single medal hung from his loose blue tunic.

“I’m Catriona Kaye,” she said.

“Come about the killin’?”

He gurned something that might have been a smile, making a puckered black hole of his mouth.

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“I’m ‘Arbottle.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Harbottle.”

“Sergeant ‘Arbottle,” he insisted.

He snatched off his cap and looked at it with disgust.

“Wrong ‘at. Sorry.”

Sergeant Harbottle dashed into the hut and came out wearing a policeman’s helmet that must have been issued in Victoria’s reign. Or perhaps William and Mary’s. The chin-strap hung loose under his wattles.

“I’m Station-Master, Post-Master, Captain of Militia, and Police Sergeant. Do the milk-round, too.”

“Very public-spirited.”

“No one else would take the jobs. Not since New Year’s Eve.”

Catriona understood.

“That might change now.”

There wasn’t much point coming at this case from the angle of motive.

“Sergeant, please understand I’m here only to offer you assistance. I have full confidence in your ability to bring this unpleasant matter to a neat conclusion.”

“Eh?”

“I’m sure you’ll bag the culprit.”

“Never had one of those round here before. Culp-whatchamacallits. But you’re right, missy. Once I put my mind to something, it gets done.”

“Should we begin by visiting the scene of the crime?”

Harbottle went cross-eyed.

“‘E’s been taken away. What with the warm weather, it was best. I’m sure you understand, missy. Deaders gives off a bit of a pong.”

“So I understand.”

“What for you be wantin’ to nose round where a deader’s been, then?”

“Clues, Sergeant. Every sleuth needs clues.”

“I’ve never ‘ad a clue.”

“That, I’ll be bound, will change also.”

Harbottle’s face set in a crumpled version of a determined look. Catriona wondered if she wouldn’t be best off on her own.

Then again, she wasn’t “up Lunnon” now.

“Lead the way,” she invited.

* * * *

Harbottle produced a collapsible bone-shaker bicycle from his shed and unfolded it into a shape to delight a Parisian surrealist. He apologised that there was no room for two and told her she’d have to keep up, then began pedaling down a muddy lane away from the station.

She had to drag her feet to let him stay level with her. His conveyance wobbled alarmingly from side to side and his legs were too long, forcing his knees out as he pushed on the pedals. If it hadn’t been for the modest slope of the lane, adding gravity to motive power, she feared Harbottle would have made even slower progress. She didn’t like to think about his return journey.

A jolly rustic, sat outside the Coat and Dividers, shouted “get off and milk it.”

Harbottle spat a stream of brown juice and invective at the fellow, who lifted his pint in salute. Catriona checked the nurse’s watch pinned to her blouse. Opening time wasn’t for an hour.

“The last sergeant,” muttered Harbottle. “Billy Beamish.”

She looked back at the celebrating ex-copper. He toasted her too, and showed every indication of having toasted any passerby, human or animal, for the last two days.

“Grieving hard, I see.”

“Oh, not him. Billy Beamish hated Pee-ee-eeter Blame worse than poison. Lost his job, see. Lot of them lost their jobs. For drinkin’ after hours. Not me, though. I’m temperance.”

The Coat and Dividers was in the fork of a Y-junction. A triangle of green with a tree and some small cottages made up the rest of Heathrow. Untended geese muddled about. It was rather pleasant, if dusty.

Harbottle pedaled past a mile-post, then hopped off the bike with a creaking of bones and spokes. From here on, the gradient was against him. He made better time pushing the thing.

“Here’s the Hollyhocks.”

The cottage was set in its own grounds, very neat and tidy, with regimented rows of petunias and roses. The white filigree gate was set in an arched bower threaded through with pretty red and purple flowers, its picturesque aspect marred somewhat by a superfluity of engraved boards with black warnings: “No Hawkers or Circulars,” “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law,” “Uninvited Callers Unwelcome,” “Keep Off the Grass,” “It is Impermissible to Operate a Motorised Conveyance in This Thoroughfare,” and “Vagrancy and

Mendicancy Are Criminal Offences—The Police Will Be Called!” Each board was signed “P Blame, Esq.”

The gate was open. And so was the cottage’s door.

“There’s someone inside,” said Catriona.

“I told you, ‘e’s been taken away on account of the potential whiff...”

“Not the owner,” she said. “Have you ever heard about the murderer returning to the scene of the crime?”

“Why’d ‘e want to do a fool thing like that?”

“Hard to fathom, the criminal mind. Even for sleuths such as we.”

She opened her purse.

“What’s that there?” asked Harbottle, eyes bulging.

“It’s a ladylike little automatic.”

“It’s a pop-pop gun is what it is. A concealed weapon!”

“It’s not concealed. I’m showing it to you.”

He thought about that.

She ventured into the garden of the Hollyhocks and stepped up to the doorway.

“Knock knock,” she said, rapping the open door with the barrel of her ladylike little automatic.

“Who’s there?” came a squeak.

“That’s what I should be asking,” she said.

Little sharp eyes showed in the gloom inside the cottage, one much larger than the other.

“What wight have you to quiz me, madame?”

“I’m with the police,” she said.

A little boy stepped into the light. He wore his oiled-down hair centre-parted, and was dressed in grey shorts and a matching blazer. His gaze was resolute, but his chin a touch underdeveloped. The child held up a magnifying glass the size of a large lollipop, which was why one of his watery blue eyes seemed four times the size of the other, emphasising the steely grey flecks.

“You’re late,” he said. “The clues are getting cold.”

* * * *

There was a sticky black-red splash on the rug. The boy held his glass over it, and peered at the mess.

“Blood, bwains, bits of bone,” he said. “Nothing intewesting.”

Catriona stood out of the way as the boy detective poked about, examining things through his glass. The study where the body had been found was a mess. From the neatness of the garden and the rest of the cottage, it was an easy deduction that the room had been thoroughly ransacked by the murderer. Or else an earlier clue-hunt from one of the too many sleuths on this case.

“Here, a file has been wemoved.”

The boy solemnly pointed at a gap in the bookshelves, as obvious as a missing front tooth in a broad smile, between “Oct -Dec ‘26” and “Apr-Jun ‘27.”

“January to March of this year,” he proclaimed.

“Amazing,” commented Catriona, drily.

“It’s simple, weally,” he responded, pleased. “A perspicacious person can tell from the files either side which is missing.”

Harbottle scratched his head in admiration.

The boy beamed a wide, not-very-pleasant smile.

This, she knew, was Master Richard Cleaver, “Clever Dick,” the brightest eleven-year-old lad in the land. He had taken a double first in Chemistry and Oriental Languages from Oxford last year. Independently wealthy from the patent of a new, more efficient type of paperclip he had twisted out of one of his mother’s hairpins when he was seven, he divided his time between solving mysteries that baffled the police and adventuring with the rest of the Splendid Six.

She should have brought the Chinese puzzle box. Clever Dick could probably open it in seconds.

“This isn’t the first murder I’ve solved,” he announced, somewhat prematurely. “If it weren’t for my bwain-power, the Andover Axeman would never have been hanged. Last Whitsun half-holiday, I wecovered the Cwown Jewels. They’d been stolen by Iwish oiks. Served them wight when they got shot.”

She reminded herself not to laugh at the child.

His bumps of intellect might be swollen to incredible proportions, but those of humour and humility had withered away entirely.

“I proved Nanny Nuggins was a Bolshevik spy. Stalin sent her to Sibewia for failing to kidnap me.”

She deduced that Stalin had never met Master Richard.

“You must have got on well with Mr. Blame,” she ventured. “You had a lot in common. An interest in the law.”

Clever Dick made a face.

“Ugh! No fear. That common fellow kept saying I ought to be in school. He alleged there were laws about where childwen should be.”

Catriona was beginning to sympathise with the unlamented departed.

Clever Dick sorted through strews of papers on the desk.

“I think you’d better leave those alone,” she said, mildly.

“I don’t think that and you can’t make me.”

He patted his hands on the papers to prove it, pawing around the desk.

“See. I’m not leaving these clues alone. And there’s nothing you can do about it. I can identify seventy-eight different types of type-witer letter. I can hold my bweath for four and a half minutes. I have a medal from Scotland Yard.”

“So have I,” she said. “But it’s not done to brag, is it?”

Clever Dick whirled around and looked at her for the first time, applying all his reputed intellect. He was genuinely puzzled by what she’d said, and didn’t like the sensation.

“Whyever not? If you’ve earned something, it’s yours. Why shouldn’t you bwag?”

“Nobody likes a smart-arse,” she suggested, mildly.

The boy waved it away.

“Nonsense. You are a silly person. And a girl, besides. I didn’t know they let girls in the police. Or old smelly men without teeth.”

Harbottle grunted. “‘Ere, you mind your manners, Sonny-Jim-me-Lad.”

The brainiest boy in Britain stuck out his tongue at them.

Catriona looked at the papers on the desk. Correspondence with lawyers, courts, newspapers. Blame kept copies of all his letters.

“Those are my clues,” said Clever Dick. “You find your own!”

This was becoming tiresome.

“I’m ever so much cleverer than you. I can deduce masses of things about you. You live in a house in Bloomsbury but were bwought up in Somerset or Dorset. You had marmalade on toast for bweakfast with a man who has a moustache.”

“It’s a flat.”

“I meant flat when I said house!”

“Somerset.”

“I knew it. Your type-witer has a faulty shift-key. You don’t spend much money on clothes. That purse was a gift fwom someone Canadian. You have a two-inch scar just above your knee. It’s no use pwessing your skirt down. I’ve seen the wolled tops of your stockings.”

She deduced that in a few years’ time, Clever Dick was not going to be popular with the ladies.

“You were wecently nearly killed by a Chinaman. (So was I, so there!) You have no bwothers or sisters. And you lied about being a police girl. No, you didn’t. You were twying to be clever when you said you were ‘with the police’ because this fathead is a policeman and you are with him. It’s no use twying to be clever, because I’ll always outfox you. Do you play chess? I can beat anyone, without looking at the board. You’re married but you won’t wear a wing.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Your husband is the bweakfast fellow.”

She wasn’t about to explain her domestic arrangements to an eleven-year-old.

Sweetly, she said “I don’t believe you can really hold your breath for four and a half minutes.”

“Can so.”

“Prove it.”

He huffed in a breath, expanding his cheeks and screwing his eyes shut, then began to nod off the seconds.

She looked cursorily around the room, but thought she’d learned all she could for the moment. Later, she would have to spend hours going through all the papers and files, mulling over and rejecting dozens of leads. It was the sort of investigative work the Splendid Six never had to deal with, any more than they cooked their own supper or cleaned their own guns.

Clever Dick’s face went red, then distinctly blue. He continued nodding.

She pressed a finger to her lips for quiet and shooed Harbottle out of the room and cottage, following him on tip-toes.

She heard a certain straining behind her, but thought little of it.

Outside, she found a shining reception committee.

* * * *

Three more of the Splendid Six were crowded into the tiny cottage garden. Blackfist, the All-Rounder, and the Aviatrix. The space wasn’t quite suitable for such big persons, though only the tall, wide, shambling Lord Piltdown was really much larger than the ordinary.

When her feet were on the ground, Lady Lucinda—Catriona was slightly shocked to realise—was tiny, at least a handspan shorter than her own five foot two. From that first sight, she had reckoned the Aviatrix a full fathom of Amazon glory. Without wings, the woman was a petite, long-faced debutante whose jodhpurs wrinkled over thin legs.

Captain Rattray, Blackfist, was a smiling, casual fellow with patent-leather hair and arrow-collar features. On a thin gold chain around his neck hung the famous Fang of Night, the purple-black gemstone he had plucked from the forehead of a prehuman cyclopaean idol discovered in a cavern temple under the Andes. The story was that when the Captain made a fist around the jewel, his body became granite-impervious to harm and his blows landed with the force of a wrecking-ball. Unconsciously, or perhaps not, he fingered his magical knuckle-duster all the time. The fingertips of his left hand were stained black, as if qualities of the gem were seeping into his skin.

He stuck out his free hand to shake hers.

“Miss Kaye, welcome to Heathrow. I’m in the way of being Dennis Rattray.”

She shook his hand. He had a firm but not crushing grip.

“Blackfist, don’t ch’know? Silly cognomen, hung on me by the yeller press, but have to live with it. This lively filly is Lalla d’Aulney...”

Catriona nodded at the woman, who gave a token curtsey like a little girl presented to disreputable foreign Royalty.

“And dear old Pongo Piltdown. Don’t be alarmed by his fizzog and the massive shoulders business. He’s the compleat gent.”

Lord Piltdown extended a yard-long arm and took her hand with supple, thick, complex fingers. His immaculate cuff slid back over a thickly-furred wrist. He bent low and kissed her knuckles with his wide, rubber-lipped mouth.

The All-Rounder had been found frozen in a glacier under the Yorkshire estate of an aristocratic family whose son and heir had just been lost in the Boer War. The bereaved parents raised “Pongo” as their own, sending him to Uppingham, where he gained his nickname by captaining the rugby and cricket sides, proving himself nigh-unvanquishable at the bat and nigh-unstoppable as a bowler. He was also the author of several slim volumes of privately published poetry, favouring as subjects courtly love, English country sports (he was a Master of Fox Hounds), and the superiority of tradition over shallow modernity. His views on the proper place of women made Sir Henry Merrivale seem like Dame Ethel Smyth.

Lord Piltdown gave her back her hand, which was slightly moist. His beetle-browed face was marked by a distinct blush, and he screwed a monocle into one of his eyes.

“Pongo likes you,” said Lady Lucinda, looking at her sideways. “Watch out, or you’ll be showered with rhymes.”

The All-Rounder covered his face with his enormous hands, peeking out shyly between banana-fingers. His perfectly tailored tuxedo would have served her as a survival tent. Two-thirds of his body was barrel torso, supported by bent, spindly legs that gave the impression of powerful, coiled springs. She noted he wore stout, polished leather gloves on his feet.

“It’s a shame you should visit in such unhappy circumstances,” said Blackfist. “This is an idyllic spot, sheltered in the bosom of Mama England. It’s almost sacred to us, untainted by the bloodier businesses for which we are best known. I don’t mind telling you it strikes home, such a common-or-garden crime right smack next door. We shall not rest until our good neighbour has been avenged.”

Harbottle tugged what little forelock he could find.

“A burglar did it, sir,” he said. “We’ll feel his collar soon.”

From inside the cottage came a spluttering explosion. Catriona checked her watch. Nearly five minutes. Clever Dick had broken his record.

The boy came into the garden. His comrades broke out in identical, indulgent, tolerant smiles. Blackfist patted Clever Dick on the head, mussing his hair.

“We sent our best and brightest to lend a hand,” he said.

“Thank you very much,” she responded.

“I found a big fat clue,” announced Clever Dick. “A missing file.”

“Very significant, I’m sure,” said the Aviatrix.

“It could be,” Catriona admitted.

“The beginning of the year is missing,” said the boy. “Wemember what happened then? After the New Year’s Eve lock-in at the Coat and Dividers? Old Blarney made a gang of enemies. I’d venture one or more took bloody wevenge on him.”

“That’s a theory,” she said.

Captain Rattray’s smile grew. “We’ve found young Master Richard’s theories often have a funny way of hitting the nail right smack on the jolly old head.”

“It’ll be that Beamish,” said Lady Lucinda. “You can tell he’s a wrong ‘un.”

“Frightful rotter,” said Blackfist, “drunk as a lord—no offence, Pongo—from noon til Maundy Thursday, and spouting off all manner of resentment against the deceased. That’s a throbbing eyesore of a motive.”

As he spoke, Rattray grasped the Fang of Night. His hand turned black-purple instantly, skin taking on a rough, gritty texture. A flush of colour appeared at his neck and swarmed up around his jawline, extending vein-tendrils across his cheek, stiffening around his lips and eyes. Inside his Norfolk jacket, the upper left quarter of his body became swollen and lumpy.

“Give the fellow a good grilling and he’ll crack, spill the beans.”

Blackfist’s speech became slurred. He apprehended the change and let go of his jewel. The effect rolled back and he smoothed his face, dabbing spittle from his mouth with his breast-pocket hankie.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “No call for the Auld Blackie here.”

“When are you arresting Beamish?” demanded the Aviatrix.

Four of the Six looked at Catriona, expectantly, intently. Even Harbottle joined in.

She had never felt smaller, and mentally cursed Edwin for sending her here. He must have known what she’d be contending with. These people were accustomed to purported master crooks who usurped the BBC’s airwaves to issue proud boasts about the authorship of atrocities as yet uncommitted, helpfully outlining their wicked plans in good time for them to be thwarted. The Splendid Six specialised in crimes that were vastly complicated but easily solved.

“I’m not strictly supposed to make an arrest. That’s Sergeant Harbottle’s duty. I’m here to advise him.”

“I’ll have Beamish in jug before tea-time,” said Harbottle.

“I wouldn’t advise that.”

“Really, I think you should consider it, Miss Gayle,” said the Aviatrix. “The fellow has practically been bragging about it. Sitting there drunk and celebrating.”

“It’s ‘Miss Kaye,’ Lady Lucinda. Before we arrest anyone, we’ll need to establish some things. My reading of the situation is that at first everyone assumed Mr. Blame was killed during a burglary, robber or robbers unknown being the culprits. Now, general opinion seems to have swung around to indict someone with a grudge against the victim.”

“Items were stolen to make it look like a burglawy,” said Clever Dick. “It’s an old, old twick.”

“Absolutely.”

“The Mountmain Gang only stole the Cwown Jewels as a distwaction. The weal point of their waid on the Tower of London was to assassinate the Sergeant-at-Arms who shot Aoife Mountmain during the Iwish Civil War. I was the only one who wealised.”

“It’s the copper-bottomed truth, Miss Kaye,” said Blacklist. “We were all haring off after the orb and sceptre, while brainbox Dickie saw the veritable answer to the mystery. Made us all feel proper clods and no mistake. Still, turned out all right in the end. There are two nations who’ll be glad never to hear from the Mountmains again.”

“See, I’m clever and you’re stupid. Now, awwest Beamish.”

Catriona’s back was literally against a wall, covered in ivy. Through the window, she saw the untidy desk, the missing file.

“It’s a mistake to harp on the solution of your last case when dealing with this one,” she said. “If a murderer can fake a burglary to conceal his identity, could he not also fake a ransacking for the same reason? If ex-Sergeant Beamish or any of the others who lost their livelihoods after the New Year’s party were guilty, why would they take away the file covering their grudge against Mr. Blame?”

“To hide their motive, twitty girl.”

“But it doesn’t hide their motive. The missing file points directly at it. Why not take away a file covering something else, say the nuisance suit that led to the bankruptcy of the local newspaper? And point the finger of guilt at someone else? In fact, that’s what I think has been done. The missing file isn’t evidence against Beamish, it’s evidence for him.”

She saw Clever Dick follow her reasoning. His face started to go red, as if he were holding his breath again. He got bad-tempered, which she took as an admission that he, junior genius, was forced to agree with her, a girl.

“But the missing file, which contains nothing of value, also rules out the unknown burglar theory.”

“Ah-ha,” said Clever Dick, trying to trump her again, “but what if it didn’t just contain papers but also something pwecious, something concealed...”

“Then why take the whole file? If it were a golden penknife or the deed to an oil-well or something, the burglar would just have taken it, rather than be burdened with a lot of irrelevant letters of complaint and dry-as-dust writs. No, the missing file is just a distraction...”

“You’re rather good at this, aren’t you?” said Blackfist, admiring.

Lord Piltdown nodded, bristly chin squashing his four-in-hand cravatte, and—without bending over—fingered the lawn, raising little earthy divots.

“I don’t like to blow my own trumpet,” she said.

“So ‘oo should I arrest?” demanded Harbottle.

Everyone looked at her again. Lady Lucinda lit a cigarette and sucked on a long white holder, pluming smoke through her nostrils. Clever Dick held up his magnifying glass and big-eyed at her.

“I’m not quite ready to stick my neck out yet,” she admitted.

There was evident disappointment.

“She’s got no idea,” said Clever Dick.

Catriona had to admit, though not out loud, that the brat wasn’t far off the mark. She’d shot down two theories and it wasn’t yet time for lunch, but had no suitable replacement.

Maybe it was natural causes?

Or suicide?

Or one of those fiendish suicides supposed to look like murder so an innocent was hanged and which, therefore, are acts of attempted homicide as much as self-slaughter?

That was ridiculous—the sort of thing she’d expect Clever Dick to suggest.

Her head was beginning to ache.

* * * *

At last, she was alone in the cottage. Harbottle had tottered off on his bike to the Coat and Dividers for his lunch, while the Splendids had got bored with watching her mundane sleuthing and gone back to the Drome. Sifting through wastepaper baskets, opening drawers, and the like were all pursuits far less exciting than following a trail of burning corpses left in the wake of the Witch-Queen of Northumberland or skirmishing with the terror lizards of Maple White Land.

Catriona sat in a chair with a wonky wheel at the small desk in Peeter Blame’s study, wriggling a little in the dead man’s seat, trying to think herself back into the crime. One surprisingly useful thing Harbottle had done—prompted, he admitted, by a suggestion from ex-Sergeant Beamish—was to employ the victim’s own photographic apparatus to take flashlight snaps of the scene of the crime before the “deader” was taken away. Prints rush-developed by a local photographical society, of which the deceased had been a member until he found cause to sue the chairman and committee, now lay before her on the blotter. Though the desk was shoved up against a window—the moderne arches and watch-tower of the Drome were visible beyond the forsythia at the end of the back garden— the study was gloomy even in early afternoon. She snapped on a green-shaded reading lamp to examine the snaps.

Blame lay in a huddle, a spatter from his caved-in head on the rug, his chair—the one in which she was sitting—overturned. From the proximity of body to chair, she assumed he had been at his desk when attacked. The thought made her swivel round (the wonky wheel complained) to look at the low doorway through which the murderer must have entered. She had an intuition-flash of a dark, strong shape stepping quickly across the room, blunt instrument raised but arcing down, colliding with Blame’s cheek...

A close-up showed a wound where she’d imagined the blow landing.

...and lifting him out of his chair, which caught in his legs and fell with him. She didn’t go as far as to tip the chair over, but she looked and judged where the assaulted man would have fallen. There was a stain on the wall and a star-crack in the plaster where his head must have struck. The bloody rug was beneath it, smooth now but wrinkled in the photographs.

One blow had not been enough. The killer had applied the bludgeon many more times, concentrating on the side and top of the head. A panicky burglar, making sure not to leave a witness? A grudge-holding local, exterminating an enemy? That old fail-safe, the escaped homicidal lunatic? She could rule out the last—no reported escapees in the vicinity. Or did it come down to the Splendids? One of their many archenemies, frustrated at their untouchability, taking out his or her wrath on their nearest neighbour? Could Blame himself have been the minion of a master villain like Dien Ch’ing or the Clockwork Cagliostro, crushed out of hand for hesitating to follow an order or learning too much of some appalling terror plot? It was tempting to write Edwin’s “tiny little murder” into a more satisfying, momentous storyline, to unmask Blame and his attacker as secret players in the great game of clubland heroes and diabolical masterminds. Then, there might at least be the illusion of a point to it.

There was a small fireplace, complete with poker and andirons, all present and correct. A cursory glance around showed other easily-accessible blunt instruments, in their place. The inference was that the murderer brought his own cricket bat or monkey wrench or whatever and had taken it away with him.

She looked back at the photographs.

Under the blood, Peeter Blame looked a sad old man, all dignity torn away. He wouldn’t be suing anyone any more. It was difficult to consider the victim as the mean-spirited curmudgeon all accounts made him out to be. The neatness of his garden and the trivial comforts of his cottage made him less a caricature, more pitiable than odious.

She found a droplet of water in her eye and blotted it with her hankie.

A siren sounded, loud enough to rattle teeth and shake every small object in the room. Then, from the Drome, she saw a cloud of white smoke as a large steel shutter opened, lifting a section of lawn to give egress from an underground hangar. A vehicle shot out of the dark, belching flame and crunching gravel. From a perch high above, the Aviatrix—fully winged— launched herself into the air and followed the flapping pennants of the Racing Swift, her scarf streaming behind her.

The Splendid Six were off adventuring.

Perhaps a personal call from the Prime Minister or an even more exalted personage, and a deadly threat to every man, woman, and child in Britain? A human fiend, almost certainly foreign, working some vast, subtle, nigh-unbelievable plot? Again.

In any case, the Blue Streak’s latest wonder-wheels whooshed down the lane past the Hollyhocks—Catriona saw the All-Rounder clinging to the roof, huge teeth bared as the rushing wind slipped into his mouth and blew back his lips—and took a sharp turn, spattering pebbles against Mr. Blame’s collection of homemade signs (“It is Impermissible to Operate a Motorised Conveyance in This Thoroughfare”), and tearing for the London Road.

It took long seconds for the noise to die down. Even then, Catriona could still feel it in her inner-ear.

No better course of action occurred to her than to examine Blame’s remaining files. It would have to be done eventually, and she was in any case stuck.

The first box-file covered the last three months of 1916. It was full to bulging, papers tied into packets and tamped down by a metal spring. A puff of dust suggested that the box hadn’t been disturbed in a while. She sampled some of the packets—several contained back-and-forth between Blame (Commander Blame, RN, he signed himself) and the Admiralty. She gathered that after having a ship sunk under him at Jutland, he had cooled his heels ashore while agitating for a new command only to be “retired” on the grounds of an unspecified, much-contested injury sustained in action. Blame’s letters, then hand-written (and hand-written twice if these were copies) foamed with indignation and barely veiled accusations of dereliction of duty on the part of those bodies who kept him from active service in the nation’s hour of direst need. He also had a bee in his bonnet about a particular type of propellor-screw in wide use which he alleged was susceptible to fail under certain conditions and should thus be withdrawn before further disastrous reversals affected the course of the war. There were many, many articles—laboriously transcribed by hand, rather than clipped—on this subject, and an exchange of heated debate in the public forum of the Times letters column. The minutiae of stress-points and knot-rates defeated her.

Still, she could add Admiral Viscount Jellicoe and most of the Royal Navy, plus the letter column editor of the Times, to the list of suspects. Blame had begun his retirement hobby of bringing suit by naming them all in a massive, still-unresolved private prosecution on the grounds of “high treason.”

The next two dozen boxes—four to a year—were more of the same, with a gradual shift as Blame turned his attentions from national to local issues. Mixed in with suits against bird-watchers, a gypsy tribe, the Kaiser (!), and the holder of the patent on a “faster” photographic plate which Blame claimed to have invented first were more innocuous items. Letters of welcome from societies concerned with local history, gardening, photography, and the welfare of naval veterans—which gave her the picture of an active, frustrated man casting around for a cause, for some form of companionship. With sadness, she found each of these involvements terminated in quarrel and, inevitably, a flurry of lawsuits. At first, he had acted through a London firm of solicitors, then local lawyers—of course, he had ended up suing them too. Finding few professionals willing to bring suit against colleagues, Blame had become an amateur enthusiast, representing himself on the rare occasions his complaints made it before the bench, whereupon they were almost invariably if reluctantly upheld.

She was amazed to find Blame even successfully brought an action for breach of promise against one Maggie McKay Brittles, a barmaid at the Coat and Dividers. An addendum listed every expense he had been put to in his pursuit of a lass thirty years his junior. Maggie’s arm, muscled from pulling pints and cuffing drunks, could certainly have wielded a mean blunt instrument.

Peeter Blame’s chair was not comfortable. Catriona’s back ached and she had only progressed as far as 1922. It was evening outside. Midges buzzed in the pre-sunset summer haze.

A noise alerted her to the return of the Splendid Six.

The Racing Swift almost idled on its passage back to the Drome, probably at a mere 100 m.p.h. A foghorn that might be sounded in Dover and heard in Calais honked as the car passed the cottage.

Everything rattled again. She choked on the dust her investigations had put into the air.

With renewed determination, she opened the first of the 1923 files. Still more of the same. Blame succeeded in proving that the members of a ramblers’ association on a walking tour of the district were technically subject to the laws concerning tramps and beggars, and got them jailed until their holiday time was up and they had to go back to office jobs in Bradford. By now, much of her empathy was washed away. She reimagined the crime as if she were stalking into the study with a length of lead-pipe in her hand and venom in her heart.

The first connection of metal and bone was so satisfying!

The second 1923 file felt different.

It was nothing obvious—though a rough comparison made by balancing each box on her palm as if she were a human set of scales showed that the second box was much lighter than the first. In mid-1922, Blame had purchased a type-writer—the receipt was in the box, along with a writ against the vendor for “price-gouging”—and had switched from making two copies of all documents by hand to using carbon-paper and a flimsy second sheet. She could even see him learning to type—at first, his more impassioned passages (Marked by Use of Capital Initials and Triple Exclamation Points!!!) tended to rip through to the flimsy, which must render the top-copy a stencil. That partially explained the change in weight and bulk.

She tapped her front teeth with a pencil and looked at the type-writer, its case off, on the desk. The letters were worn away from the E, S, and T keys.

On the lawn of the Drome, the Splendids—in cricketing or croquet whites—were served supper by a deferential staff whose livery included Splendid Six armbands. Occasionally, a braying laugh—Trimingham’s— could be heard. Between courses, there was a great deal of champagne flute clinking.

Catriona hadn’t eaten since an apple on the train. Harbottle had said he’d bring a sandwich back for her, but had never returned.

She stood up and stuck her fingers into the small of her back.

She thought about foraging in the dead man’s larder, but that didn’t seem right. After being exposed to his personality for hours, she assumed he’d reach out from beyond the grave and sue her for pilfering. He’d probably also sue her for not identifying his murderer in double-quick time, usurping the powers of the police without real legal standing, and sitting in his bloody chair.

As a compromise, she decided to make herself tea.

The cottage kitchen was a walk-in cupboard with a sink and a stove, and cupboards that locked. She suspected Blame had duplicated the cramped set-up of some ship on which he had served. A hairpin served to pick the locks, which revealed single items of crockery—one cup, one saucer, one plate, one bowl, etc.—and tins of tea, powdered milk, cocoa, sugar, and so on. No major clues, though there was something heartbreaking about a man who only had one teacup, and disturbing also since she was about to make use of it.

She got a fire going in the stove and set a kettle on it.

The cup was clean, but best to wash it anyway. That done, she decided to do the same for the teapot, which was a little dusty.

Dust!

The second 1923 file had produced no dust-puff when opened.

She went back, but it was impossible to check. There was moderate dust in both opened 1923 boxes, disturbed by her thorough search. She lifted the lid of the third 1923 file carefully, as if a live grenade nestled below. No dust-puff. The fourth file, the same. The desk was crowded now with opened boxes. She took a random 1926 file, and didn’t get a puff.

Of course, the recent files—in more common use—would have less dust than the older ones, whose business was settled. But that didn’t explain what she could swear was a sudden change. It’s not as if dust became extinct or radically changed quality at the beginning of April, 1923.

Dust gone. And the boxes lighter. That 1926 file was practically empty when compared with the stuffed earlier boxes. Blame certainly hadn’t moderated his habits; if anything, he’d become a more enthusiastic litigant as the years wore on.

She chewed her lip.

A whistle shrilled in the kitchen. The kettle boiling.

* * * *

She had finished her tea and her search through the files, and was sunk in a deep dark thought pattern, when a rap came on the window.

She jumped, startled.

Black knuckles pressed against the pane. A white smile gleamed through the glass.

“I say, uh, Miss Kaye, it’s Dennis... Captain Rattray, um, Blackfist, don’t ch’know... we were wonderin’ if you’d care to join us at the Drome for a bit of a feed. Strawberries and cream, what. Hungry work, this sleuthin’, I’ll be bound.”

It took some work to calm down. She smoothed her hair and her skirt, and constructed a smile.

“That would be most pleasant, Captain,” she responded, her voice brittle and fakey inside her head. “I’ll just have to wash my hands.”

“We’re terribly informal, I don’t mind saying. No need to stand on the old ceremonials.”

“Dusty,” she said, showing her hands.

Why ever had she done that! The answer was in the dust!

Blackfist smiled and nodded. He was clutching his gem. His whole hand glistened like a bitumen cactus studded with flint-chips.

She passed through into the kitchen, ran the tap over her fingers, dried herself off, and stepped out into the garden.

“Lovely evenin’, isn’t it? So bally peaceful.”

The Captain smelled the breeze and looked at his ease.

“I say, bit of a scrape this afternoon, don’t ch’know. Frightful business in the fens. Viking skeleton fellers with axes like, well, like big axes. Some sort of a geas, according to Mystic Mary. Know what a geas is?”

“Yes.”

“Cor,” he breathed admiration. “I didn’t.”

It was a warm evening, but she felt a touch of chill in the air. Autumn coming. She feared for the petunias and roses of the Hollyhocks when the frosts came. There was no gardener to see them through the next cold snap.

Blackfist offered her his arm and led her down the garden path, towards a small gate—once wired shut but recently opened by a few judicious snips, she noticed—that led onto the Drome.

* * * *

At the white filigree table (oblong, not Arthurian) on the lawn, Catriona found herself seated between Chandra N. Seth, the Mystic Maharajah, and Teddy Trimingham, the Blue Streak.

Seth had piercing blue eyes in a carved teak, fearsomely bearded face, and his large, bulbous turban bore a sapphire to match. He reputedly possessed amazing mesmeric and mentalist abilities and had taught Houdini some of the most dangerous fakir tricks, but he also had a high-pitched voice and a strange way of adding “hmmm” to every sentence that would disqualify him from the talkies. Trimingham was squiffy on champagne and kept “accidentally” brushing her thigh as he described the various crashes he had survived. A matinee idol in photographs, his face close-up was shiny and oddly textured, except for goggle-shapes around his eyes. He was proud of the number of times he had caught fire and put out the flames by going faster.

Though Blackfist still blathered about being terribly informal, Lord Piltdown had dressed for dinner in a tropical white tuxedo with a sunflower in the lapel and a white silk hat that perched steadily on his heavy brow-ridge, and Lady Lucinda had exchanged her flying gear for a backless silver cocktail number that cost more than a house in Chelsea. When the Aviatrix turned, Catriona saw the double-row of spiracles outlining her spine, dribbling liquescing traces of wing-matter. The goo was discreetly dabbed away by one of the maids with a towel.

Clever Dick had chocolate all over his face and was explaining how he had known at once the afternoon’s phantom horde weren’t proper Vikings because they had horns on their helmets.

“Any fool knows it’s a fallacy that Viking helms were horned.”

“New one on me,” said Captain Rattray. “Bless.”

Catriona drank good champagne in moderation and scoffed strawberries like someone who had missed dinner. An afternoon in the small and dusty study, not to mention the small and dusty mind, of Mr. Peeter Blame made for a shocking contrast with an evening among the Splendids. She imagined the camps eyeing at each other across the forsythia; rather, she imagined Mr. Blame glaring fury at the Drome and these fantastical creatures barely noticing him. At first. Their world took little account of Peeter Blames, and barely acknowledged Catriona Kayes. She was their guest now because she was seen as the creature—a step above a servant— of Charles Beauregard, who carried some weight in heroic circles even if he stayed out of the public eye.

“I’m surpwised the Diogenes Club has girls!”

She thought Clever Dick might have snuck some champers. Or maybe his brain boiled over on chocolate alone.

“I think they would be too,” she said.

“Girls,” repeated Clever Dick, eyes wide, sneer eager.

Catriona noticed the Aviatrix’s mouth pinching tight as if she were restraining herself from slicing a silver salver across Britain’s boy brainbox as if topping a breakfast egg. For the first time, she felt a disturbing kinship with the flying woman. Then she remembered the Crocodile’s blood raining down on children’s faces and the taloned gloves; this rose had thorns.

“How... hmmm... is your most excellent investigation... hmmm... coming?”

She spread her empty hands.

“As I thought... hmmmm... I shall concentrate my third eye... hmmm... and seek answer on the psychic plane.”

“She’s orff again,” belched Trimingham. “Bloody Mystic Mary.”

Seth pressed fingertips to his forehead, shut his conventional eyes, and hummed to himself. His gem glowed eerily.

“It’s a twick,” said Clever Dick, smugly. “A little ‘lectric bulb. It’s not weal magic. Not like Wattway’s Fang of Night. That’s pwoper magic. The darkie does it all with twicks!”

It occurred to Catriona that she had come across Chandra N. Seth before, under another name, when she was chasing fraudulent mediums.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a trick,” said Lalla. “What matters is if it works.”

“Girls and darkies. We shouldn’t have them. We could go back to being the Good Fellows Four.”

“Of whom... hmmm... you were not... hmmm... one.”

“Ho, she’s awake now,” burbled Trimingham.

“The matter is clouded... hmmm... but truth will emerge, as trueness always does and... hmmm... justice will prevail.”

The Mystic Maharajah laid a hand on Catriona’s and looked deep into her eyes. Clever Dick was wrong about one thing: He wasn’t non-Caucasian, but a dyed white man whose name used to be Sid Ramsbottom. His vocal mannerisms were the same, though. Mystic Sid had been on the halls as Woozo the Wizzard.

She laughed the wrong way and champagne got in her nose.

“Sorry,” she said.

Seth let go of her hand, and seemed direly offended.

The All-Rounder picked up a bowl-sized teacup, little finger perfectly extended, and raised about a gallon to his mouth, which he sucked down in a long, noisy draught. He dabbed his lips with a napkin and excused himself from the table, bowing formally to Catriona and Lady Lucinda, then bounded across the lawn, raising divots at each clutch, followed by a footman who replaced the sods and smoothed them over by hand.

“Pongo puts in an hour in the nets every night,” said Trimingham. “Never know when the MCC will call.”

As dark gathered, lamps automatically came on, shining columns rising around the Drome, criss-crossing the lawn, playing like searchlights across the grounds.

“One of mine, you know,” said Trimingham. “Inventions.”

Every few seconds a roving lighthouse beam shone on the Hollyhocks, bleaching the cottage white.

“We have light all night,” said Captain Rattray.

“No darkness... hmmm... need apply.”

She could imagine.

* * * *

“So,” said Edwin, springing from his chair as she was admitted into the Strangers Room of the Diogenes Club, “who dun it?”

“Ha ha,” said Catriona. “Who didn’t?”

Charles Beauregard was also present, which meant that here at least she was taken seriously. In the end, if there weren’t such a horrid business at the bottom of it, her trip to Heathrow would have been ridiculous.

“Catriona, would you care for a light lunch?” offered Charles. “Then, we’ll debrief.”

“I’m fine, thank you Charles.”

She had spent the night at the Coat and Dividers, eaten a proper country breakfast prepared by Maggie Brittles (who, surprisingly, was the first person she had met who even tried to seem sorry that Peeter Blame was dead), bade Harbottle a fond farewell (though overnight he’d forgotten who she was), and taken the train up to town.

“Then, if you’d care to oblige, we’ll have your report.”

She sat in an armchair, allowing the men to return to theirs. As always with Charles in the room, Edwin was boyish, eager to please the house-captain but also concerned with demonstrating his own brand of 20th Century sharpness.

“Do I need to tell you anything? You must already know.”

At her tart tone, Charles’s face fell.

“And I can’t prove anything. You must know that too. Someone told me last night that... hmmm, justice will prevail...”

“Chandra Nguyen Ramsbottom, that’s him exactly!” exclaimed Edwin. “Mimickry, another of your talents!”

“Well, justice won’t prevail, will it? In this case, it can’t.”

“Please be assured, Catriona, that you have not been used, that there was a real purpose to what we have asked you to do.”

Despite herself, she believed Charles.

“As for proof, well... if I thought there was proof to be had, I’d have sent Edwin. No offence, young fellow, but it’s what you’re good at and if it’s not there you’re at a loss. Catriona, I wanted you to look into the murder of Peeter Blame because of your capacity for feeling....”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Nobody could like the deceased, I understand, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be fell for. What happened to him was not permissible. Do you understand?”

She was beginning to.

“So, which of ‘em was it?” asked Edwin, flashing a grin. “My ten bob is on that Pongo fellow. Long reach, plenty of cricket bats in his kit, superhuman strength...”

“In a small room, he’d have done more damage, I think,” she said. “See, I can cope with evidence and proofs too. And it took more delicate fingers to go through Mr. Blame’s files and extract all the relevant documents. That said, I wouldn’t rule Lord Piltdown out. My feeling, since you set so much stock in it, Charles, is that it was Rattray or Trimingham in the study with the blunt instrument, and Lady Lucinda or—and I really mean this— Clever Brat handled the file-filleting to get the Splendids off the hook.”

“So you think they all did it?”

“If all six can be roped in on a spur-of-the-moment thing, yes.”

Charles steepled his fingers and considered the case.

“To sum up,” he began, “what’s missing from the files?”

“All documentation in connection with lawsuits Blame was trying to bring against the Splendid Six, collectively or as individuals. My feeling— that word again—is that there were dozens of them. Just sitting in his cottage for a day, I saw a dozen different ways in which an ordinary person would be infuriated by having clubland heroes as next-door neighbours, and Peeter Blame was far touchier than the average.”

“You’ve ruled out any link between him and their recorded enemies? That Clockwork fellow or the Demon Ace?”

“Edwin, I thought of that. No, this had nothing to do with defending the realm or warding off villains vile. It was about roses shrivelled by passing cars and bright lights shone into the cottage at all hours of the night and people flying overhead heedless of who crawled below and grumbled. It was about the noise, and the view, and the commotion, and the flaunting, and the obnoxiousness. And frustration, because Blame could sue and sue all he liked, but no court in the land was going to haul in a hero of the age of marvels. Every complaint he lodged would have been quietly quashed. He managed to get rid of a local Justice of the Peace, remember. He must have thought that a victory which would clear the way for a new local bench to sympathise with his complaints. That’s how bloody stupid he was; he really thought that getting a JP sacked wouldn’t set the county judiciary against him forever. He believed all that stuff about impartial justice that we’re supposed to uphold. My guess is that, frustrated in his usual avenue of action, he took to complaining in person, over the hedge, at every opportunity, nagging, whining, moaning...”

Charles nodded.

“And one of them snapped,” he concluded. “Went over, maybe to make a gesture of peace, found Blame resolute, not properly respectful of a national hero. So our Splendid killed him, in a moment. The others clubbed together, tidied up, and walked away...”

“And called you to get it dealt with.”

His face darkened. “Yes, Catriona. They called me.”

“That’s what annoys you, isn’t it? That’s why you’ll have them for this. Not for the murder—after all, this is 1927, everyone we know has killed someone or something—but for treating the Diogenes Club like a window-washing service.”

“I say, Catty-Kit, that’s going a bit far...”

“I hope I’m better than that, Catriona.”

“I hope you are too.”

Charles rose. Above the fireplace hung a portrait of a corpulent man with gimlet eyes, in immaculate Victorian morning dress. One of the Club’s founders, and literally a huge figure in the secret world. Charles looked up to him, and thought.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But this business is all about getting angry. Blame was angry, permanently. His murderer lost his rag for a moment. Now it’s me and you. This is what appals me the most, the contempt. To them, Blame wasn’t even worth using their abilities. No black fist or mystic energies or invented contraption, just a plain old common or garden cosh, as used by the dimmest thug. I admit if it were otherwise, we’d have them bang to rights. But it wasn’t calculated. Peeter Blame wasn’t really murdered, he was swatted—like a midge.”

Charles turned.

“This, Catriona, is what I will promise. The Drome will fall. A wrong done to the least of the King’s subjects is still a wrong, no matter how eminent the wrong-doer might be. The Splendid Six will be removed from the game.”

“And the game goes on?”

“Of course. But while I have anything to say about it, rules will be observed.”

Charles Beauregard turned again, and looked into the empty, cold fireplace.

Edwin held her arm and escorted her out of the Strangers Room.

* * * *

It happened over months. She perceived the fingers of Charles Beauregard pulling loose ends. Sometimes, she suspected he merely stayed his hand, suspending services that would otherwise step in to protect the Splendids from themselves.

Trimingham suffered a serious smash-up on the proving grounds, and his insurers finally cavilled at the loss, repudiating his daredevilry as a compulsive, nigh-suicidal mania for taking unnecessary risks, which drove his inventing businesses into insolvency. Lady Lucinda, turning thirty, was struck by a debilitating ailment which led to a permanent loss of her power of flight (she could still grow wings but they wouldn’t lift her). Clever Dick’s investment portfolio went down in flames with the Wall Street Crash and he became a recluse, suffering a serious case of teenage facial eruptions which led unkind souls to rename him “Spotted Dick.” Lord Piltdown, searching for his Northern roots, simply disappeared on a fjord, leaving behind an elegant but empty suit and shaggy footprints that gave out on glacial ice. The MCC missed him dreadfully and she couldn’t help but wonder if the Neolithic Nobleman hadn’t been the only true innocent among the Splendids. Captain Rattray made an unwise marriage to a mercenary Tiller girl and, fifteen days later, was the first of the Splendids actually to be hauled into court (Peeter Blame, you are avenged!). His divorce action drew mildly mocking, then outright critical, press comment, as more and more lurid detail spilled out in the dock. Noel Coward penned a witty, nasty revue sketch that made Blackfist impossible to take seriously, especially when the whole truth came out about the long-term physical alterations wrought upon his body by the Fang of Night. Chandra Seth announced to the world that he would perform a fabulous feat of endurance, buried in a glass coffin on the banks of the Thames for a month, but had to be rescued after three days when panicky humming alarmed passersby. In the wake of this fiasco, five women showed up alleging that they were deserted wives of the Mystic Maharajah, who had lived under a bewildering number of names. The line-up and thus the name fluctuated: the Splendid Five, then Three, then it was all off.

The Splendids were eclipsed in popular imagination by the dramatic and headline-hogging reappearance of a dark defender (the original Doctor Shade!) once thought dead. British Pluck suspended its serial exploits of the Six, and began to run stories of Shade, who worked alone and struck by night, travelling from his secret lair in Big Ben by autogyro to combat the enemies of decency. Catriona wondered what the point was of having a secret lair but letting everyone know the address?

“Happy now?” asked Edwin, tossing her a folded Herald.

They were in the flat, warmed by a nice coal fire as the first January of a new decade brought snow to the city. The puzzle box was on a mantelpiece, undisturbed for some months. There were new matters mysterious, requiring the attention of the Diogenes Club. And Catriona had been freshly accorded the privileged status of Lady Member, prompting a serious blood pressure condition for Sir Henry Merrivale. He was not mollified by the fact that she was obliged by oath not to own up to her status for at least fifty years after her death.

She looked at a foot-of-the-column note in the paper.

“The Heathrow Drome has been reclaimed by HM Government,” said Edwin, “set aside for purposes of military aviation.”

“That’ll gobble up the Hollyhocks as well.”

“They’d never have got an airfield sited with Blame next door to file suit against the scheme.”

“True.”

Though no longer eminent, the Splendid Six were all free. No one had ever answered in court for the murder of Peeter Blame.

“Catty-Kit, you’ve pursued this hawklike. Were they that bad?”

“They were worse, Edwin. That’s what I feel.”

He put his arms around her.

“And that’s why we value you.”

“For having feelings you know you ought to have but can’t stretch

to?”

“That’s a fairly merciless way of putting it.”

“But no argument from you.”

Charles and Edwin were clubland heroes too, veterans of wars that didn’t make it to the history books. They quietly refused the offered knighthoods and would never murder anyone who happened across their way, but they worked in the same arena as the Splendid Six and Doctor Shade, coping with the worst of the world, mulling over intelligence which would cause anarchic panic if it became public knowledge. They had to contain in their minds a big picture, the sweep of an ongoing saga of adventure.

Which was why they needed her. To ground them in the importance of the mundanities, to speak for those in whose name the great struggles were undertaken. Charles understood that deeply—she had been surprised to learn that she was not the first Lady Member associated with the Diogenes Club—and Edwin superficially, though he would grow into a proper understanding.

Without her, they might be monsters too.