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dnd oakley street > Oakley Street Part Six
London
The party disembark from the airship in London, enjoying their first few breaths of city air as it stings their eyes and their throats.
Cassandra is eager to check on Marchestra, who has been moored for the entirety of the party’s trip to Paris at a police mooring on the River Thames in central London. Walking up to the mooring, she encounters a burl police officer. He has a bald head and a bushy, thick mustache. His daemon is a dog. He looks like the kind of character whom, given the choice, Cassandra would much rather avoid.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” he asks Cassandra, directly.
Sighing, because she views the officer as an obstruction between herself and her boat, Cassandra replies, “My vessel is under Police protection.”
Before the burly police officer has a chance to reply, Oakley Street’s friend in the Thames Police arrives. “I got this, Clyde,” he says casually, assuring the burly police officer that the group stood before him are none of his concern. “Have you seen the papers?” he asks, as soon as Clyde has left.
“How good to see you again,” begins Cassandra. “And what do you mean? The flooding in Oxford?”
“Is Marchestra okay?” asks Dahlia, hurriedly, at this moment more interested in Cassandra’s boat than its owner is.
“Yes, yes, she’s fine,” replies the officer. “See for yourself,” and he begins walking. “The flood didn’t get as far as London, but it is very bad in Oxford. Supernatural, I’d say.” In a quieter voice, after checking over his shoulder that there are no eavesdroppers, “Friends of Oakley Street in Oxford are having a hard time.” Returning to his previous volume, “The gyptians are helping the community, but they are stretched.”
Dahlia sympathises with those in Oxford by adding “I can’t swim!”
“I live on the canal, I avoid swimming at all costs,” says Cassandra.
“I sink like a good egg,” says Tom, proudly.
As the group approach Marchester, Cassandra can see that she is in a tider state than when she was left. “Thank you for cleaning her, I see you have done a good job,” says Cassandra.
“Not at all,” says the police officer. “Will you be needing the mooring for much longer?”
“Just whilst we are in London,” says Cassandra, “There is a little more business to attend to yet.”
“Keep the mooring for as long as you need it,” replies the officer.
The party board Marchestra to sit and discuss their next move. “We have several options,” says Cassandra, once they are all seated. “We could go straight to Oxford and join the gyptian effort helping people affected by the flooding,” she suggests first, prompting a smile from Dahlia. “Or we could stay in London and hunt for Bonneville.”
“We’d best do that while the trail is hot,” suggests Ethel, at the idea of searching for the man. “Besides, getting to Oxford will be treacherous right now.”
“Agreed,” replies Cassandra, simply. The group disembark once more from Marchestra, leaving her in the safe hands of the Thames Police, to leave on foot for the Bonneville’s London residence.
As before, at the Paris residence, the party decide to use the servant’s entrace to gain access to the house without arousing suspicion. They are greeted immediately by a tall, gaunt man. His daemon, a hound, looks healthy but tired, as though it has been a busy and stressful day. They are beckoned in. Ethel, picking up on the mood of the daemon, offers everyone in the servant’s dining room which they have just entered, a barley sugar sweet from her handbag. Everyone, except Cassandra and the gaunt man, accept.
“So, what’s happened here, sweetie?” asks Ethel, kindly, but at the same time pushing hard for an answer.
“Oh, nothing really,” replies the man, sarcastically. “Only Gerard attacking his own mother! At seven thirty this morning, he barged through the front door, broke the hinges, his daemon laughing, would not stop laughing…” He trails off. “He was looking for something.”
Each member of the party is thinking the same, and knowing that the others are thinking it too. The item that Gerard was looking for is most likely the Bonneville alethiometer.
“Would it be possible to request an audience with Lady Bonneville?” asks Dahlia.
The gaunt man looks aghast at this request, as though it were something that most, rational people would not ask for. “I… suppose so,” he says. “Here is her ladies maid. She will request the audience and then, if it is granted, escort you to her ladyship.”
Meanwhile, as Dahlia requests the audience, the others listen in to conversations amongst the staff. They overhear the staff talking about how they are not surprised by what happened early this morning, but there is a nervous mood amongst them, as though something very bad has happened. Cassandra begins speaking loudly with Tom and John about Gerard’s crimes in Paris, and how the staff might help by providing access to the London residence. A few ears prick up, but most of the staff are too busy to pay any attention.
Tom offers to help the staff with the food preparation, hoping that in exchange, some of them will listen to what Cassandra has to say. Dahlia, hoping to gain Tom acceptance into the kitchen staff, says “That ratatouille you cooked in Paris was swell!”
John becomes distracted by a cabinet of fine alcohol. It is locked; the butler, or perhaps only the lady of the house, keeps the key close. John manages to pick the lock without anyone noticing, and takes a couple of bottles of fine spirits in case they are useful later on.
The ladies maid and the butler return. Addressing Dahlia, the butler says “Lady Bonneville will see you at once,” the ‘at once’ stressed to the point of scaring Dahlia. “Her ladies maid will take you.”
Dahlia, accompanied by Ethel, follow the maid to Lady Bonneville’s chamber. The maid has a swift daemon, who flutters between the two sides of the staircase, as though himself nervous.
At the top of the staircase, loud, clattering sounds can be heard from the room. Ethel gives an audible gulp. The maid stands aside from the door, beckoning for either Dahlia or Ethel to knock. Dahlia knocks, and a yell from inside of the room, in French, invites her to “Come in.”
Lady Bonneville, on seeing Dahlia, switches to English. “You’re here about my son? What has he done in Paris?”
Dahlia begins to explain, nervously. “He… He severed most of his staff from their daemons.”
“What!” comes the loud, screeching reply. “I’m glad I didn’t allow him to build a lab here. He’s blasphemous. He’s walking a fine line.”
“He’s past the line,” says Dahlia, without thinking.
Lady Bonneville ignores Dahlia’s comment. “He’s going to ruin this family.”
“Did you have some sort of a disagreement?” asks Ethel, wary that their time with Lady Bonneville is limited by her patience.
“He wanted money to build a new lab,” explains Lady Bonneville. “But I wouldn’t give it to him. His experiments, as you’ve clearly seen, are blasphemous.”
“Did he come here looking for something, too? An item?” asks Dahlia.
Lady Bonneville sighs. She sounds weary, helpless; her guard has been worn away by recent events and is now down entirely. “Yes, the alethiometer. He started a rumour that it is his, but it isn’t. He believes that it was willed to him by his father, but that simply isn’t true. The alethiometer belongs to me, and is safer with me.”
“Does Gerard have a private study?” asks Ethel.
“Yes, several, in family houses all over Europe.”
As Lady Bonneville is talking about the Bonneville family’s houses, Ethel realises that she has not seen Lady Bonneville’s daemon. The thought, despite everything that she has seen in Paris, is deeply unsettling. Nervously, she asks the question, “Where is your daemon?”
Lady Bonneville changes the subject instantly. Angered by it, she starts yelling inconsolably and tearing a pillowcase to shreds. Dahlia and Ethel leave the room quickly and quietly.
Having regrouped in the servant’s dining room, Dahlia and Ethel share with the group everything that they learned from Lady Bonneville. Tom speaks to the butler, asking him, in front of the group, “What happened to Lady Bonneville’s daemon?”
The butler replies, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, “He was a wren. He left. Can you imagine living with her?”
Sitting around the servant’s dining table, the party discuss their next moves.
“We should go to Oxford and use Marchestra to help those affected by the floods,” offers Dahlia.
“Yes, a good suggestion, but we are hot on Gerard’s heels,” says Cassandra. “We should consider where else the alethiometer might have been hidden.”
Cassandra obtains a list of other Bonneville family residences from the butler.
“Did Mr. Bonneville have any favourite offices?” ask Ethel, hoping to narrow down the location.
The butler begins to look uneasy. “Yes, he preferred his office close to the Majesterium. Look, whatever you’ve doing, promise me that I won’t be implicated in it.”
Cassandra steps in quickly. “Don’t worry, we are keen to operate in secret. We avoid attracting attention to ourselves.”
Lady Bonneville’s butler appears to be satisfied at this. “Mr. Bonneville was a member of the Consistorial Court of Justice. A respected member of the Majesterium. He was called ‘Father Bonneville’.”
“So Gerard went against his father?” asks Cassandra.
“Not really, Father Bonneville passed away before Gerard began his blasphemous work,” the butler replies.
“There is another possibility,” suggests Dahlia. “The alethiometer hasn’t been seen for many years. Might it have been buried with Father Bonneville?”
Everyone takes a moment to think silently about this suggestion. It is a possibility. Evaluating it would not take a huge effort. John turns to the butler. “Where is Father Bonneville buried?”
The butler looks aghast at the question, but knowing that anyone would be able to find the location in public record, he sees no reason to withold the information. He provides the information to John, and in doing so, appeals again to the party not to do anything that might implicate him.
The party leave the Bonneville residence and walk to the cemetery, following the butler’s directions. The cemetery appears, at first, to be a compact site near the middle of the city. However, once through the gates, it appears to extend well beyond the street. The size is difficult to judge, as much of it is coered by grand, old yew trees, obscuring paths to more private areas of the complex, reserved for individual families. A small building behind the gate houses the cemetery office. The group step in, crowding the visitor area.
Behind the desk sits an old man and his daemon, a small, pathetic-looking dog. The dog reacts to the group entering the office well before the old man, who is preoccupied with a stack of papers. Ethel’s daemon, a much neater looking Cardigan corgi, attempts to befriend the old man’s daemon. They appear comfortable with each other, but this does little to influence the old man. “What do you want?” he asks, gruffly.
Cassandra steps up. “We would like to see the burial records.”
The old man gives a deep breath, then holds his hands in the air. “We have lots of burials here. Can you be more specific?”
Remaining calm, Cassandra specifies. “Father Bonneville’s resting place.”
A second long, deep breath comes from the old man at the mention of the name. “And who are you, to just walk in here, visiting the grave of a respected Majesterium official?”
Ethel steps in. “We are here on behalf of Gerard. My colleague,” she gestures to Dahlia, “Has a family ring, to prove our status.”
The old man sighs again. “This is above my pay grade.” Without explaining what he is doing, he opens the door behind the desk. Untidy stacks of papers can be seen in the room beyond. Working in the room is a younger man, whose daemon is also a dog. The younger man is making a futile attempt to organise one stack by splitting it among several others, then splitting that stack again and returning some papers to the first. The old man picks up a large folder, places it loudly on the desk, then returns to the back room, yelling some inaudible criticism at the younger man.
The large folder that the party have been presented with is titled ‘Mausoleums’. It contains details on not just the Bonneville family, but all of the mausoleums at the cemetery. Skimming through pages and pages of records, Cassandra finds that there is a mausoleum dedicated to the Bonneville family. There is also a smaller one nearby, in light of Father Bonneville’s importance, dedicated solely to him.
A map in the folder directs the party directly to Father Bonneville’s final resting place. There is no specific record of burial goods, which might have pointed to the alethiometer being present. There is also a note of a key being required to enter the mausoleum, and that this is not held at the cemetery, but privately by the Bonneville family. Satisfied that the group has all of the information they need for now, Cassandra closes the folder and leaves it on the desk. She does not disturb either the old or the younger man, who are fully engrossed in an unproductive argument about the organisation of the records in the back room.
Taking one of the paths to the more secluded part of the cemetery, Dahlia is first to sense that something is wrong. Rays of sunlight shine through the trees, making dappled patterns on the ground. Dahlia can see, illuminated by the rays of sunlight, dust hanging in the air. Something ahead has been recently disturbed. Rounding the final corner on the footpath, both mausoleums come into view. Both have been broken into, in the least subtle manner. Solid stone slab walls have been broken into pieces as the burglar gained entry. Remains of statues, purposely smashed to pieces, lay all over the floor. The purposeful nature of the destruction, singling out individual statues, points to the perpetrator disliking the subject of the pieces.
John spots a small alcove in one of the walls, containing a leather pouch. He picks it up. It would be an ideal pouch for carrying a large pocket watch safely; or, as John suspects, the missing alethiometer. It would appear that whoever broke into the mausoleums was searching for the alethiometer, and they found it. Given that the dust has not yet settled, and the party appear to be the first to discover that the mausoleums have been broken into, the thief must be only marginally ahead of them.
Disheartened by missing the thief by a matter of hours, John is distracted on his way out of the mausoleum, and trips on a step, knocking his head on a statue still in its correct position.
Tom is aware that, unless they report the break in to the cemetery office, they are likely to become the prime suspects for it. So Tom leads the group immediately to the cemetery office and complains to the old man, who pauses his argument with the younger man in order to listen to Tom’s complaint. “I did hear something,” he says, “About an hour and a half ago. Some mad, laughing sound, like a hyena. Above my pay grade,” excusing himself from taking part in any further investigation.
It is clear that Gerard was here earlier, and that he broke into his father’s burial place to locate and steal the alethiometer. “He will need the Books of Reading,” ventures Ethel. “The only copies we know of are in the care of Doctor Hannah.”
“He’s heading to Oxford? To St. Sophia’s?” asks Dahlia, enthusiastically.
“That’s our best guess, dear,” confirms Ethel.
“Then we must go to Marchestra, and thence to Oxford, and offer our help to those affected by flooding on the way,” says Cassandra.
The group leave the old man to deal with mess of the two mausoleums in his own way, which is probably not at all, and return to the police mooring, where Marchestra is still berthed. Cassandra quickly greets the officer friendly to Oakley Street, and informs him, “We have made a breakthrough in our investigation and will be leaving on Marchestra immediately.”
“I shall not ask for any details,” says the officer, “But if you should need anything else, do not hesitate to ask.
“Is there anything you can do to cover up some tax evasion?” asks Dahlia, hopefully. Cassandra ushers her onto the narrowboat quickly, before the officer has a chance to ask questions.
Cassandra, aided by John, quickly casts off and takes the helm of Marchestra. They set off immediately for Oxford. Aiming to travel through the night, Cassandra begins to teach Dahlia the art of canal boat navigation. Dahlia is a receptive pupil, hanging on Casssandra’s every word, and at the end of her few hours of tuition, she can not only navigate perfectly, but also teach others the same. Cassandra retires, leaving Dahlia alone to teach John to navigate.
The time is one of the morning clock. Cassandra, fast asleep in her bunk, wakes with a start. The air is humid. She climbs up onto the stern to find John at the tiller. They are in the middle of nowhere, on a long, open stretch of the Thames. This part of the river is in flood. The location of the riverbank can only be discerned by the occasional tree or tall fence post, poking out above the high water level. Cassandra makes a decision. “Stop here, John,” she says. “A storm is coming. Stop here, where it’s deep, and we will drop anchor before it hits.”
John helps Cassandra to drop the anchor, which sees little use on the canals and rivers in calm weather. Within moments of them having secured Marchestra, the first bolt of lightning hits, then rain sweeps across the river. Cassandra and John can see it getting nearer as it chops up the calm surface of the river into a static haze. They heaad below decks. Cassandra rushes around, checking that the windows and hatches are closed, and the the bilge is free of water. The party are all awakened by the noise of the storm and begin to wait it out on Marchestra, now their small shelter and lifeline in a landscape of chaos.