“Oh, thank you all,” she said, round cheeks glowing. “If you’ll forgive me, I may be out of practice . . .” She gave a nervous cough.
Another movement in the carriage caught my eye. Nurse Temby rose to her feet and seized the handles of the bath chair. “Please excuse us.” She was a small, sturdy woman of middling years, with iron-grey hair held up by a white peaked cap. She wheeled the bath chair into the aisle. “Miss Penrose isn’t feeling up to this much company, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, do forgive me.” Miss Penrose’s voice was thready and ethereal, like she was speaking across a great distance. Her pallid skin looked translucent in the lamplight, and the hand she offered Miss Ballingall trembled. Miss Judson had said she was only twenty-two years old, but it was hard to believe.
“Dear Maud, there’s nothing at all to forgive!” Miss Ballingall gave them a kind smile. “Don’t trouble yourself about my little business here.” She watched them depart, concern creasing her brow—unless that was the weight of the tiara. “Poor girl,” she murmured.
Miss Penrose’s departure cast a pall over the carriage, but Sir Quentin set us back on track. “We need a little musical entertainment more than ever now, my dear.” With a snap of his fingers, the electric lights dimmed, and Cicely slipped to the piano. A hush fell over the carriage, Miss Ballingall coughed again, and a moment later, a tremulous song, wan and wispy as Miss Penrose, made its hesitant way past her lips.
We had to strain to hear her. In the low lights, the carriage felt cavernous and echoey. Every sound seemed amplified: each slight rustle and intake of breath, sour note of the piano, uncomfortable shift of backside against velvet. Miss Ballingall’s song—an Italian melody that might once have been on its way to an opera, but got lost and found Miss Ballingall instead—tried to work through the crushing silence, but her voice wavered and broke and caught back on itself.
I bit my lip to push back a dreadful—I think it was Sympathy, Dear Reader. Like watching a fledgling take its first awkward foray out of the nest, before plummeting to the earth with a splat.
The song finally splintered to its brittle end, and Miss Ballingall took a tiny, shy bow.
“Brava!” Miss Judson clapped with far too much enthusiasm. A painfully long moment later, Mrs. Bloom and the Bird Ladies joined her.
“I keep telling you, Quentin, she ought to have pursued a career on the stage,” Aunt Helena said rapturously, shocking me. For one thing, I had never heard Aunt Helena give the faintest suggestion that a woman should pursue anything other than the delicate art of decorating a drawing room. For another, it was not like Aunt Helena to be—well, nice.
Sir Quentin didn’t seem to notice. “That song was written specially for her.” His voice rang with pride. “Wait till you see the stage I’ve built for her in Fairhaven!”
Miss Ballingall beamed, the tiara sparkling. “You’re too kind. Are there any requests for my next piece?”
The Bird Ladies chirped in unison: “‘Spanish Ladies,’ ” suggested one, while the other said, “‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’!”
Faced with these polar opposites, Miss Ballingall balked—but at a nod from Sir Quentin, Cicely struck up a lively march, and Miss Ballingall relaxed and caught up. She was a little more confident this time, her voice warming to a popular current song with a chorus everyone could join. And all the while, there was the tiara. As Miss Ballingall’s head bobbed in time to the music, the electricity and mirrors sent the alexandrites and diamonds into a shimmering shower of dazzling purple light—exactly like the celestial display from which the Northern Lights took their name.
Cicely’s piano hit a devastating crescendo, and Miss Ballingall’s voice rose to a pitch and volume that shuddered the crystals on the chandeliers. And our eardrums. She had just taken a great breath when, abruptly, the electricity failed, plunging the carriage into darkness.
Miss Ballingall’s voice cut off immediately, but it took Cicely a couple more keystrokes to catch up. I stared around me, fruitlessly, as everyone murmured protests and alarm. Miss Judson’s arm reached for me, and on instinct, I caught her hand and squeezed back.
“No one move.” I think that was Mrs. Bloom. “Temperance, kindly be on your guard.”
“What’s happened?” said one of the Bird Ladies. “Is this part of the entertainment? How exciting!”
“Exciting!” Her companion clapped her hands.
“No, no, just a power surge, I’m sure. Nothing to fear, ladies! I’ll be along to check on it.” I heard Sir Quentin lever himself from his chair. An electrical dynamo might take some time to repair, and the modern carriage, outfitted with its modern fixtures, was ill equipped for primitive catastrophes like this.
A moment later, I heard the squeal of the heavy door, followed by a rush of icy air.
Followed by a little cry.
And then a shriek. “My jewels! The tiara! It’s gone!”
3
Highway Robbery
Thanks to the advances of the modern railway, travelers need no longer fear the hazards that faced our forebears on their arduous journeys across the lawless countryside.
—Hardcastle’s Practical Travel Companion
After that, it was pandæmonium.* Miss Ballingall kept screaming, drowning out the wail of the train whistle and a confusion of gasps, cries, and panicked rustles. Aunt Helena fought to be heard above it all.
“For heaven’s sakes, someone fetch a light!” she bellowed. “The poor girl’s being murdered!”
Miss Judson’s crisp voice came from beside me: “Myrtle, the signal cord.”
“Of course!” I was closest, but lacked reach. I felt something pressed into my hand—Mrs. Bloom’s umbrella! Flailing overhead in the pitch dark, I finally caught the handle around the electrical cord that would signal the locomotive and open the brake pipes, bringing the carriage to a shrieking halt. I gave it an almighty yank, expecting the alarm to sound, and braced myself for the crash.
Nothing happened. Frantically, I tugged again and again.
“It’s not working!”
Was it the faulty electricity? I tried to scramble free of the seat, with the thought to make it to the next carriage down and pull that cord—but I thunked into somebody’s skirts. A shower of red light flared up, casting a devilish halo around Mrs. Bloom’s pale face.
“Fusee,” she said. “Signal flare. Standard equipment on every English train. Never travel anywhere without them.” She held the torch aloft—it wasn’t terrifically bright to see with, being intended to be seen by, but it was better than nothing. “No one move!” she called out again. “Myrtle, take this.”