Etiquette & Espionage

LESSON 15: KEEPING PROPER RECORDS AND HOW TO STEAL THEM

So their little private study parties of three became four. If Agatha observed Sophronia and Sidheag’s occasional jaunts to the boiler room, there was one thing Agatha was really very good at, and that was holding her tongue. Their private club didn’t help modify Monique’s behavior, however. Later that week, a rumor sprouted up that Dimity had stepped out with Lord Dingleproops, alone and unchaperoned.

Dimity was absolutely crestfallen. “I never! I’m a good girl, much to Mummy’s disappointment. We always stayed in company. Besides, I don’t think he likes me in that way.”

Sophronia began pacing about the room. “Monique started the rumor, I know it. Something is going to have to be done about her.”

“I don’t think any of us are ready for a full-on covert reputation destruction. Monique has four extra years’ training. She may not be a natural intelligencer, but she certainly is a natural pain.” Dimity chewed her lip, still upset.

“She’s a natural cod-slinger, is what she is.” Sidheag had rather taken to Dimity. Dimity is like that; she wears you down eventually.

“Sidheag, language!” Dimity gasped, then she turned to Sophronia. “What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know yet, but it had better be good. And something where I don’t get caught or turned in.”

Dimity, who was on Sidheag’s bed, flipped over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “You mean to say, where we won’t get caught.”

“We?”

“I’m going to help you,” said Dimity.

“Me, too,” insisted Sidheag.

“And me, though I probably won’t be much good,” said Agatha.

“And there’s Bumbersnoot—he’ll help,” added Dimity.

“Really? What’s Bumbersnoot’s difficulty with Monique?”

Dimity considered this seriously. “I don’t know, but I wager he has one. Oh, she dented him once. Didn’t she, Snooty darling?”

Sophronia took a deep breath. “We could go after the prototype. That would show them all. And she wouldn’t be able to pass it on to her employer, whoever that is.”

Sidheag and Agatha, who hadn’t really been involved in her covert investigations thus far, looked as though they were trying hard to understand what she was talking about.

“So what’s the plan, then?” asked Sidheag.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Why not?”

“It involves a ball.”

Sidheag and Agatha paled at the very idea.

“I’m not ready for a ball!” said the taller girl with an uncharacteristic look of panic.

“Oooh, a ball.” Dimity clapped her hands.

“Well, there’s one the night I return home. It’s a good excuse to bring you three to visit. I can’t write to ask, of course. But it will be an excellent cover for searching the house and grounds while Frowbritcher and the other mechanicals are distracted.”

“But that’s the start of winter holidays. How are we to get the prototype into the appropriate hands?” Dimity wanted to know. “Even supposing we do find it.”

“That’s the other part of the plan. Someone told the school to recruit me. We have to figure out who reported on me to Lady Linette. We find out who that person is, we can give her the prototype.”

“I don’t suppose you know who that might be, do you?”

Sophronia grinned again. “No, but—”

Dimity said, “I know that look. That’s the look she gets right before she goes off exploring.”

“But?” prompted Sidheag.

“But we could break into the school records to find out.”

“Sophronia, that’s a terrible idea!” protested Dimity.

“You’re mad,” added Sidheag.

Agatha only looked wide-eyed.

“Ah, but I have the trump card.”

“You do?”

“Oh, yes. I’m going to borrow an obstructor and some soap.”

“I could, but it’ll take a long time. I spent years learning how. I’m thinking you need it before the holidays?”

Soap and Sophronia were sitting watching Sidheag take on a small herd of sooties in a rousing game of dice during a break in the late-night shift. The two girls had come for coal and stayed for conversation and, in Sidheag’s case, gambling. She really was a lost cause. Sophronia had hoped she might get Soap to teach her his neat trick of getting inside locked doors.

She nodded glumly.

“What do you want to know lock-picking for, anyway?” Soap asked.

“I need to find out about school-affiliated intelligencers in my home area who might have recruited me for Mademoiselle Geraldine’s.”

“You’re wanting to break into the record room?”

“That’s about the sum of it.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Soap, what if you get caught up top?”

“Now, there, miss, you think every time you come visit us we aren’t at risk? It’s a good thing there are so many sooties and so many places to hide. And that you bribe all of us with them smallish cakes. Because otherwise someone would have long since put a stop to these little visits of yours.”

Sophronia only gave him a look. She didn’t like Soap taking too many risks for her.

He grinned at her, sidled over, and bumped her shoulder. “Stop your fretting. I can get away. Plus, how you going to do it without me?”

Sophronia felt a little giddy despite her worry. “Oh, very well! But this is becoming quite the expedition.”

It took them a week to plan their raid on the record room. Vieve agreed to lend Sophronia the obstructor with remarkably little fuss. She was involved in some new invention and it was taking up most of her time—even the temptation of a midnight record room break-in could not lure her away. She also told them where the room was located. “ ’Course I know. Whatcha take me for, an amateur? They keep records of inventions there, too.” After that there was a good deal of arguing about who should go and who should stay behind.

Sophronia didn’t tell anyone Soap was coming; she only said she had a way of getting inside once they found the place.

Dimity advocated most strongly. “I want to come! I haven’t had any exciting excursions yet.”

“It’ll be either you or Sidheag; we have to keep the numbers down.” And Agatha clearly isn’t interested.

Dimity looked pleadingly at Sidheag, who, not unsurprisingly, shrugged.

Dimity took that as an affirmative and clapped her hands in excitement.

“You may have to tone down your sparkles, you know. The point is not to be seen.”

Dimity, with great reluctance, removed all her jewelry and put on her darkest gown, a royal blue walking dress.

“Will I do?”

“Admirably.”

Soap was waiting as arranged on the deck outside Sister Mattie’s empty classroom, lurking among her potted plants. He materialized from darkness behind a tall foxglove. Good as a poison in large doses or for trouble breathing in small amounts, Sophronia remembered.

“Good evening, ladies.”

“Good evening, Soap. All prepared?” He was looking cleaner than usual, and his clothing almost fit. He put on his Sunday best for me. Sophronia was chuffed.

“Of course. You have the obstructor?”

“I do, indeed.” Sophronia showed him her wrist.

Dimity remained silent, her mouth a perfect O of amazement as she looked at Soap.

“Dimity, this is Soap. Well, Phineas B. Crow is his proper name.”

Soap grinned his perfect grin and doffed his cap at the still-dumbstruck Dimity. “How-d’ye-do, miss?”

“This is Dimity Plumleigh-Teignmott.”

Dimity bobbed a curtsy and recovered her voice, fortunately remembering to keep it low. “How do you do, Mr. Soap?”

“Oh, just Soap will do, miss.”

Dimity looked up at him, eyes wide. “You know we have a stable lad just like you. You know, in color. Perhaps you know him, name’s Jim, he—”

“I’m loath to cut introductions short, but we really must get moving,” said Sophronia, mostly to forestall anything further Dimity might come up with.

The three of them turned and proceeded in a measured way toward the teachers’ section of the ship. They spent a good deal of time pausing to let the obstructor work its invisible magic, dashing around a frozen mechanical, and then going onward.

Fortunately, the record room was exactly where Vieve said it would be: on the upper floor of the front section of the airship.

Getting there was rather less easy than it might have been. Dimity was no climber, and she kept wobbling around and squeaking about the distance to the ground—far—and the difficulty in bridging gaps—impossible. Eventually they climbed a rickety set of steps that wound in a corkscrew around the outer hull from Professor Lefoux’s balcony to a small, cupboardlike door.

Directly above was the forward squeak deck, where Sophronia had stood on her first day and acquired Bumbersnoot. Below were the levels containing the teachers’ private quarters; below that, the massive boiler room. The forward section housed everything important, and the attic level was one of the only ones Sophronia hadn’t visited. Consequently, she was dying of curiosity.

Dimity signaled them to keep their voices down. “Professor Braithwope, remember? He’s still awake, and he’s only a level or two below us, with vampire-acute hearing.”

Wish she’d thought of that when she was squeaking, thought Sophronia.

They continued along in silence. The level was somewhat squashed. Even Sophronia felt cramped, and she was by far the littlest of the three. It was not rigged with gas parasol lighting. They had to feel their way along in the dark.

They found the room, conveniently labeled RECORD LIBRARY—CONTAINING RECORDS OF IMPORT in big gold letters.

There was a soldier mechanical directly outside the door. It spotted them approaching and whirred to life, puffing smoke out from below its headpiece in a huff of alarm. Before Sophronia could even raise the obstructor, the mechanical raised one cannonlike arm and shot at them.

Soap dove down on instinct. Sophronia and Dimity flinched.

They found themselves covered in a net of some spongy, sticky material, like tripe, that was nevertheless very strong. The mechanical advanced toward them, hissing menacingly.

I feel like a partridge wrapped in bacon, thought Sophronia. Most unpleasant. Sophronia couldn’t raise her arm to point with the obstructor, as the netting held it firm at her side. “Dimity, can you reach your sewing scissors?”

“I can’t move,” peeped Dimity, and then she made a puft noise as some of the sticky netting got into her mouth.

“Soap?” Sophronia tried to look about to see the sootie.

“I’m better off than you are, miss. But it’s a mite embarrassing.”

Sophronia glanced down. In diving to avoid the blast, Soap had ended up partly shielded by the skirts of her dress. Only one side of his body was trapped to the floor by the netting; the other half was under her petticoats.

The mechanical was upon them, and had apparently been instructed to try to capture any intruder, but was confused to have caught three at once. It was making bewildered whirring noises and rocking side to side on its track as it sifted through its protocols for the correct approach.

“Do you have any sewing scissors?” Sophronia asked Soap.

“No, miss, but I have a knife.”

“Can you get to it and try to free up my wrist?”

Soap squirmed, fluffing out petticoats as he wiggled his free arm. Dimity made a muffled squeak of alarm at this indignity to Sophronia’s person. Soap managed the task barely, cutting away enough of the strands to allow Sophronia to raise her arm and point it at the mechanical. Unfortunately, the strands were now stuck to his knife.

The soldier mechanical appeared to have reached a decision. It leaned back and brought up its other arm, this one spouting smoke.

“It’s going to burn us alive!” gasped Dimity.

Before the mechanical could do anything further, Sophronia hit it with the invisible blast from the obstructor. The mechanical froze, but they still had to extract themselves from the net. Soap continued to hack from below with his knife, using the hem of Sophronia’s gown to clean it as he did so. Sophronia managed to access her reticule with her free hand and pulled out her sewing scissors. She cut away at the netting around Dimity until she, too, could get to her scissors.

“This stuff is so sticky. I’m sure it’s food by nature. Should we be handling raw foodstuffs? My dress is entirely ruined, and even using it to wipe with isn’t very effective.” Dimity was not pleased.

Sophronia checked the tackiness of the net between two fingers. I wonder if oil might work. She fished some perfume oil out of her reticule—rose-scented. She cleaned her scissors as best she was able and then coated the blades with the oil. It worked a treat.

“Would you look at that?” Soap was impressed. Sophronia dropped the bottle down to him. He coated his knife, then handed the oil up to Dimity. Things went much faster after that, although they all ended up smelling like roses.

All the while they were working to get free, Sophronia had to pause to blast the mechanical with the obstructor. When the sticky stuff was finally gone, they could not push the huge, heavy soldier mechanical out of the way, for it was somehow locked down.

Soap couldn’t manage to pick the lock in the space of one obstructor blast. So Sophronia had to stand before the sentry and disable it with the obstructor every six seconds while Soap worked diligently behind it.

Sophronia worried the obstructor might run out or fade in its effectiveness. Vieve had not explained exactly how it worked, and Sophronia could hardly believe it would continue indefinitely, but it showed no signs of stopping.

Eventually Soap got the door open. Sophronia hit the mechanical with one last blast and they squeezed inside the room before the thing woke up again. They closed the door firmly behind them.

Only to be faced with an entirely new problem.

The record room looked like a small factory or cotton mill—machines and conveyors and rotary belts ran along the walls and filled the corners of the room.

“Look up,” hissed Sophronia.

Dimity and Soap did.

Above them dangled the records. They were clipped to conveyers mounted on the ceiling, like an upside-down, dangling version of mechanical tracks. The records themselves looked like nothing so much as laundry hanging from a clothesline. They were far too high up to reach, and there seemed no way to know where any particular record was. There were hundreds there, if not thousands—it was a nightmare.

“There must be some method of search and recall,” Sophronia said, looking around desperately.

There were three desks in the room, each with a small leather seat, an oil lamp, and a writing pad. Each also boasted a large brass knob with a lever sticking out of the top. Around the base of the knob, and taking up a good deal of the desk space, was a circular piece of parchment paper with writing on it.

Soap went to one desk, Sophronia to another, and Dimity to the last. Each bent to light the oil lamp and examine the writing on the round parchment.

“Try not to touch anything; we are still all-over sticky,” warned Sophronia.

Even as she said it, a quill adhered itself to Dimity’s bosom as she leaned in. Dimity didn’t notice. She said, “Mine is labeled with locations.” She craned her neck to the side to read around the circle. “Cities, counties, a few districts, and even some wards. Here’s London. Here’s Devonshire.”

Sophronia looked at hers. “Mine looks like it’s skill sets. Knife, seduction, armored umbrella, flirtation. What’s yours, Soap?”

Soap was standing over his desk with his head down, not even looking at the paper.

They didn’t have much time. “What’s it say, Soap?”

Soap looked up, clearly embarrassed. “Sorry, miss, can’t tell.”

“Goodness me, why not? Is it something horrid and unladylike?” Soap was proving, often, to be far more conscientious of Sophronia’s dignity than Sophronia was.

Soap only shook his head.

Dimity said in a sympathetic tone, “You can’t read, can you, Mr. Soap?”

“No, miss. Sorry, miss.” His voice was almost a whisper.

Sophronia blinked. Poor Soap! What a thing to go through life without books. “Oh, right.” She ran over. “It’s the alphabet.” She pointed, “See, A, B, C, D, and so forth.”

Soap only backed slightly away, looking hugely embarrassed. Sophronia bumped up against his side, much in the manner he had done to her in the past, and gave him a little smile. This seemed to only embarrass him further. “Aw, miss.”

“What do they mean?” asked Dimity.

Sophronia shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

She grabbed the lever on Soap’s desk and pushed it toward A.

All around them, with what seemed to be a tremendous amount of noise, the machinery of the record room came to life. Steam hissed out from pistons and rotary mechanisms as they whirled up, thundering, shaking, and groaning. Above them the records moved on those tracks, shifting from one part of the room to another, parting and regrouping. They whizzed around one another, the parchment flapping and crackling. Finally a large cluster moved purposefully in Soap and Sophronia’s direction, coming to a stop directly above the desk.

“Now what?” wondered Soap.

Sophronia searched around the desk for some other operational mechanism or switch.

“This is when I wish we had Vieve with us,” she said, frowning. She returned to the original lever, and after tapping and picking at it, pressed down hard on the round brass nodule at the base.

With a loud clunk, the records above her dropped.

She and Soap both ducked out of the way, narrowly missing being whacked by dangling paperwork as the collection above the desk came flying straight down and stopped, hovering, in a manner undoubtedly convenient to whomever was seated at the desk.

Sophronia unclipped and examined one of the pieces of paper, mindful of any stickiness. She read bits aloud, in deference to Soap, and to the fact that Dimity still stood at her desk some distance away.

“ ‘Comtesse de Andeluquais, Henrietta, née Kipplewit,’ it says at the top of the file.” Below this was a sketch of a personable young woman, with written vital statistics such as hair color, eye color, social position, and fashion preferences. Then came a string of locations and dates, starting with what Sophronia assumed was a birthplace and ending with what must be the comtesse’s current residency in France. Below that was written a list of particular skills, which in Henrietta’s case appeared to be “Parasol manipulation, hairstyles for concealment, ballistics, quiet footsteps, fast waltz, and rice pudding.”

There were a goodly number of additional papers covered in neat handwriting. Sophronia tried to sum up for her audience. “Reports on various assignments, I believe. Yes, here it says she infiltrated French diplomatic offices. And here is a report on her marriage to the comte.” Sophronia looked over at Dimity. “You mean we are going to have to marry whomever the school chooses?”

Dimity was unconcerned. “Within reason. This is a finishing school, after all. That’s what all finished girls do—marry well. Besides, how else would we infiltrate positions of power?”

Sophronia postponed any protestations for a later date and turned her attention to the issue at hand. She replaced Henrietta’s paperwork and depressed the brass knob of the lever, and the records rose back up to the ceiling.

“Which desk had locations?”

Dimity pointed at hers.

Soap and Sophronia went over.

“We need a location close to my home. That’s near Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire.” Sophronia began reading the place names. “Aha, Swindon should do it.” She grabbed the lever and pulled it.

The records shifted and whisked around, rearranging themselves until a cluster coalesced and came to hover above the desk. This time there was a much smaller number of records—three, to be precise. Sophronia depressed the nodule and the paperwork plummeted down.

They were all ready this time and didn’t duck or flinch.

It was a moment’s work to read through the names of the three women in Sophronia’s area who had also once attended Mademoiselle Geraldine’s. Of the three, one was now dead, the second had lived there for only a brief time in 1847, and the third… well, the third was…

“Mrs. Barnaclegoose!” said Sophronia.

“I take it you know her?” asked Dimity.

“Yes, indeed.”

“Then we’ve got what you came for, miss?” said Soap.

Sophronia desperately wanted to read the entire file on her mother’s dear old friend and chronic teatime companion. She’d always thought Mrs. Barnaclegoose no more than a meddling busybody with stylish propensities at odds with her ever-increasing waistline. “Please, wait!”

“Now, miss, we’d best move. Them machineries make enough noise to spook a poltergeist, and we got us vampire hearing to worry over. Best get the records back the way they were to start and get out.” He seemed very nervous. Sophronia wondered if it was all the paperwork.

“No point in trying to make the break-in invisible.”

“No?” Dimity was confused.

“No. The place reeks of rose oil, and there is sticky netting all over the hallway. We are going to have to try to cast the blame on someone else. I’ll simply put this lot back up and dial in something random. At least that’ll throw them off the trail.”

Sophronia depressed the nodule, and they watched as the three Swindon records rose up to the ceiling. Then she dashed over to the final desk and pushed the lever toward the “tea leaf encryption” skill set. A new cluster of papers came over to that desk. Instead of pushing them to ascend, Sophronia left them there. They snuffed out the oil lamps and made their way out of the record room.

They managed to blast and then sneak by the soldier mechanical, which was rocking back and forth in confusion. Something about having trapped an intruder and then suddenly having that intruder be multiples and then vanish had put it into a protocol loop. It was paralyzed by indecision and hadn’t sounded the alarm. Luck, thought Sophronia. Is that something an intelligencer should count on?

They made their way back down through the ship, using the obstructor as needed and separating from Soap at Lady Linette’s balcony.

“Thank you kindly for your help,” said Sophronia, rather awkwardly formal.

“ ’Course, miss,” said Soap, coming in far too close and tucking a loose bit of Sophronia’s hair behind her ear before swinging himself back over the railing and clambering away.

Dimity gave Sophronia a long, suspicious look.

Sophronia pretended not to see and said, “Turn around. I’ll get your buttons.”

Dimity sputtered, “But we are outside! At night! On a balcony!”

“Yes, but sometimes decency must be sacrificed on the altar of not being found out by teachers because we smell of rose oil and are covered in sticky stuff! Now, please, Dimity.”

They helped each other to remove their outer gowns. Dimity threw hers over the edge rather sadly. “I did like that blue gown.”

“Let’s hope Captain Niall doesn’t find them.” Sophronia chucked hers after Dimity’s without much care. She’d grown to appreciate that she needed to learn to be fashionable, but that didn’t mean she had vested any emotional compassion into her existing clothing. “I’ll steal us some vinegar from the kitchen in the morning; we can soak our smalls in that. It should get out the smell.” She bit her lip, thinking. “And suet, for cleaning our scissors.”

Dimity looked faintly unwell at the idea. “So much for smelling like roses.”