CHAPTER 25 #2
He glanced at the corpses lying beneath the tarp. Including quietly disposing of those they deemed guilty—and that likely would include Oliver Carrick—without a public trial.
However, he believed that the rule of law applied to everyone, even the most heinous criminals.
“I assure you, Pierson, murder and betrayal are not a game to me.” He glanced up at the sky, where the first pale flickers of dawn had given way to morning sunlight.
“Now, if we are done here. I would like to return home for my breakfast.”
* * *
“You need to take some nourishment.” McClellan joined Charlotte by the arched windows of the breakfast room as dawn gave way to early morning. “One never thinks well on an empty stomach.”
“Hear, hear.” Henning swallowed a mouthful of broiled kidney and washed it down with a slurp of coffee. “Lud, if Mac ran my kitchen, I would soon be a genius.”
The Weasels chortled over the comment as they helped themselves to fresh-baked muffins.
Charlotte forced a smile in spite of the dark thoughts that were tumbling and tangling inside her head. But the flash of humor couldn’t keep her brooding at bay. It seemed as if the more they learned, the less the facts made any sense. None of the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit together.
“Toast would be welcome, Mac, along with a dish of apricot jam,” she conceded. “And coffee—a pot of it, if you please.”
“And you may bring tea for me.” The tap-tap of her cane in the corridor announced the imminent arrival of the dowager. “Here I go away for a visit to my friend in Kent for a short while, only to discover on my return last night that you are up to your neck in skullduggery.”
“Guilty as charged.” Given Alison’s awareness of Milton’s murder, Charlotte had felt obliged to send a note to the dowager’s residence updating her on the progress of the investigation.
Alison took a seat at the table. “Now that I am back, how can I help?”
“I’m not sure.” Charlotte gave a nod of thanks to McClellan for bringing the coffee and poured herself a cup.
“We now have a key clue, which could help us solve the murder. We know that the killer was a friend called ‘Axe’ by Milton, but we can’t seem to make any progress in discovering his real identity. ”
Alison frowned. “Axe?”
Charlotte dutifully explained—with much help from the Weasels—about finding Oliver Carrick and learning what he had seen and heard at the scene of the murder.
“Hmmph.” Looking thoughtful, the dowager buttered half a muffin.
“It’s imperative to locate Axe, because we have found another piece of circumstantial evidence that points to Oliver Carrick as the murderer.” She told the dowager about the marks found beside Garfield’s dead body.
“There is much else to tell,” she added. But before she could begin, Cordelia hurried into the room, accompanied by her cousin.
“I’ve just shown Oliver the papers that Wrex retrieved last night!” she announced.
“They were definitely created by Mercer Wayland. I know his handwriting, so I’m sure of it,” said Carrick. “Furthermore, Cordelia was correct in saying that Jasper would never have made the mistakes that appear in some of the equations.”
He paused. “But as for the actual mathematics, that’s a more complicated situation.”
“I told Oliver that Wayland mentioned having had a peek at Jasper’s scribbling book,” said Cordelia.
“Yes.” Carrick brushed back an unruly lock of hair from his brow. “And I think that Wayland may have actually provided us with a clue pointing to Jasper’s ultimate discovery. I recognized certain elements . . .”
His voice betrayed a note of rising excitement. “It’s an area of mathematics called the ‘calculus of variations,’ first developed in the last century by the great Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler and the Italian-born Frenchman Joseph-Louis Lagrange.”
“The calculus of variations?” murmured Alison. She made a face. “You might as well be speaking Greek or Hindi.”
“I know, I know,” said Carrick. “But trust me, it offers a wealth of exciting new possibilities for understanding how our physical world works!”
“We’re just beginning to understand how mathematics can be used to create models of natural processes and then applied to science, engineering, mechanics, and the like,” explained Cordelia.
“These applications include practical problems such as how to design longer, stronger, and safer bridges. For example, the calculus of variations can be used to analyze the distribution of weight loads throughout a bridge and to establish the center of its mass. It can also show how a bridge should be expected to respond to vibrations from wind, traffic, and the stress imposed by its own cables and towers.”
“In formulating the calculus of variations, Euler and Lagrange further developed the work of Sir Isaac Newton and the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz, who had invented calculus a century earlier,” interjected Carrick.
“At the heart of the calculus of variations is something called the Euler–Lagrange equation. A current mathematician—a woman by the name of Marie-Sophie Germain—has used some of these techniques of the calculus of variations to develop more advanced mathematical models for the issue of vibrations and how they affect structures like bridges—”
“Oliver, let us not overwhelm our friends with such advanced mathematical concepts.” Cordelia made a face. “Indeed, I confess that I don’t entirely understand the calculus of variations and its ramifications. We need to do more study on it.”
“Cordelia is going to borrow some rare mathematical books from a friend of hers at the Royal Institution and bring them back here,” said her cousin.
“Then we will set to work with Mrs. Guppy and Mademoiselle Benoit to see if we can figure out if I am right in assuming Milton’s innovation centers around the calculus of variations. ”
“Let us hope that is so,” murmured Charlotte.
“I am going back to the earl’s workroom and will get started,” said Carrick, waving off McClellan’s offer of breakfast.
Cordelia waited for her cousin to leave the room before turning to a different topic.
“While we work on the mathematics, Kit is going to concentrate on discovering the identity of Axe. He has some meetings today with several of the supervisors overseeing the Bristol Road Project, as they are in Town for the transportation conference,” she said.
“He’s also going to make some inquiries regarding the most talented bridge engineers in the area and see if any of them has a connection to Jasper Milton. ”
“And I will take a careful look through Debrett’s Peerage for any clue to the identity of Axe,” said the dowager. “A mother’s maiden name, an image on a coat of arms—there’s a wealth of important information within its pages if one knows what to look for.”
“I’ve already done that, having learned from you during previous investigations how much that book can reveal,” replied Charlotte. “Alas, no luck.”
Raven put down his fork. “What can I do to help?” he said to Cordelia.
“Alas, sweeting, Cordelia may be able to swear her cousin to secrecy, but Mrs. Guppy and Mademoiselle Benoit have seen you as a ragged urchin,” said Charlotte. “Were they to learn that you are our ward, it might raise awkward questions—”
“And put our family secrets in danger,” finished Raven. Disappointment rippled in his eyes, but he nodded in understanding. “Oiy, I’ll be careful to keep out of sight.”
“We all will,” piped up Hawk.
“Actually, there is something you can do without putting the family at risk,” offered Cordelia.
“You can gather all the mathematical books in Wrex’s library, especially the ones on Leonhard Euler’s work, and stack them on one of the worktables for me to fetch when I return from the Royal Institution. ”
Charlotte gave her friend a grateful smile. “And I had better go and compose my next satirical drawing for Mr. Fores.” The previous night’s discussion with von Münch had sparked an idea, though it might be a dangerous one. She needed to think it over.
The quiet solitude of her workroom was a welcome respite from the turmoil of the last few days. Charlotte went through the comforting ritual of sharpening her pencils and pens, uncapping her inkwell and selecting a fresh sheet of paper to begin her preliminary sketching.
As always, she closed her eyes for an instant and finished her preparations with a whispered thanks to Hephaestus, the god of art and creativity for both the ancient Greeks and Romans.
It was a habit she had formed while living in Rome, a city in which even the smallest sun-bleached stone seemed to thrum with a silent ode to the imagination.
“Perhaps I’m mad,” whispered Charlotte. But the moment her pencil point touched the paper and began to move in concert with her thoughts, she felt all her uncertainties unknot and float away.
A. J. Quill was fearless.
Caught up in the rhythm of mind and body at work, she lost track of time. One sketch finished, she moved on to a second idea and then sat back to scrutinize the results.
As her gaze shifted to the first one, Charlotte gave an involuntary gasp. It wasn’t often that she could take herself by surprise. The image was powerful—perhaps too powerful.
“A. J. Quill is bold, but not reckless,” she told herself. And this particular drawing would stir up a maelstrom within the highest circles of government.
It depicted a massive arched bridge, one thin end planted on the tiny island of Elba and the other widening as it curved and came to rest in the heart of France.
Straddling the top of the curve, as if he was riding his war horse, was Napoleon Bonaparte in full battle dress.
Charlotte could already envision the title—A Bridge to the Future?
She stared at it for a moment longer, then pushed it aside. The second sketch was safer, though it still raised important questions that would no doubt capture the public’s attention.
They trust me to tell them about issues that affect their lives.
The drawing was based on the same bridge theme. But this one showed an arched bridge with one end anchored in London and other coming to rest in the industrial city of Manchester. Rather than a single famous figure, it showed a crowd of working-class men and women trudging across its span.
“A Bridge to Freedom,” she mused, thinking aloud about a possible title.
The captions would discuss the preachings of the French radicals, who claimed that cheap and reliable transportation would give workers a modicum of power by allowing them to seek better wages in other areas of the country if their local employers refused to pay them fairly for their labors.
A part of her yearned to publish the Napoleon print. If war erupted in Europe again, it would affect millions of lives. But she knew in her heart that she didn’t know enough about the situation to make such a risky decision.
“Which one do you intend to submit to Fores?”
Charlotte turned around to face Wrexford, who had entered her workroom without making a sound. “I don’t really have a choice. One of them is too reckless, and I know it.”
He came to sit on the arm of her chair and brushed a quick caress to her cheek.
A fleeting touch, and yet it lifted her spirits.
“It may feel like we are struggling right now to beat Evil. But we have faced the devil before,” he said softly, “and pitched him back into the fires of Hell.”
“Amen to that,” she murmured as he tucked an errant curl behind her ear.
It was strange how the little everyday gestures were a source of courage to face the unknown threat.
Love, friendship . . . they were far stronger than fear.
“What did Griffin want?” asked Charlotte, after reaching for his hand and twining her fingers with his.
“He took me to a secluded spot across the river to meet with George Pierson, who wanted to have a chat about what happened at Vauxhall Gardens. He’s been ordered to find Milton’s papers.”
“By Lord Grentham, I assume,” responded Charlotte. Merely saying the man’s name made her skin prickle. They had crossed paths with the minions of Britain’s shadowy minister of state security in the past. She didn’t relish the idea of getting involved in another encounter.
“But why?” she added.
“I asked Pierson the same question. He did not deign to give me an answer,” replied Wrexford. “That’s no surprise, of course, but he did offer an explanation of why Wayland and the Frenchmen were shot dead.” A frown. “However, based on the evidence I saw, it can’t be true.”
His expression turned troubled. “I saw no weapons around the bodies of the three victims. And yet Pierson claimed that his men told him that they did not fire the first shot but responded in self-defense.”
“My sense is that Pierson’s position as Grentham’s top operative requires him to lie without compunction,” observed Charlotte.
That’s true,” agreed the earl. “However, why bother? He had no reason to lie to me. He could simply have said that matters of state security demanded the elimination of the two Frenchmen, and that Wayland was guilty of conspiring with the enemy, so deserved his fate.”
Charlotte considered his point and had to agree with him. Pierson was pragmatic. Wrexford had proved helpful to the government in the past, so spinning pointless faradiddles risked alienating a useful ally.
“So, there was one party made up of Wayland and his two French contacts, and a second party made up of the two government operatives,” she mused. “Are you thinking that a third party was present and deliberately instigated the mayhem?”
“It seems the only logical explanation,” said Wrexford.
“I can’t see how that would play to anyone’s advantage,” she said. “Indeed, if the object was to steal Milton’s papers, the strategy was absurdly risky—”
“But what if the third party knew that the papers were false?” interrupted Wrexford, “and used the mayhem to eliminate Wayland?”
An involuntary gasp slipped free as she grasped his meaning. “Axe!” Charlotte steadied her voice. “You think Milton’s killer was afraid that Wayland might remember something that would lead him to realize Axe’s identity?”
“Perhaps,” replied the earl. “Garfield was murdered, and now Wayland has also been killed. To call it mere coincidence sticks in my craw.”
He absently picked up one of her pencils and slowly twirled it between his palms. “I think I should pay a visit to Ezra Wheeler to inform him of what has happened. If I were he, I would come to the conclusion that London is a decidedly unhealthy place for a member of the Revolutions-Per-Minute Society to be until a cunning murderer is caught.”