Gilded Gauge: The Maddie Hatter Adventures, #2

By Jayne Barnard

****2018 Alberta Book of the Year & Prix Aurora Finalist*****

 

A mysterious message from a midnight duelist sends fashion reporter Maddie Hatter to New York's finest parasol dueling academy, where she foils a daring daylight kidnapping & ends up undercover in a Gilded Age mansion. Soon she's up to her lace gloves in social teas, industrial intrigues, and irrepressible street urchins. But when she comes face to beard with a powerful figure from her past, everything she struggled to earn is in jeopardy.

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"Spirited heroines, secret identities, engaging orphans, dueling parasols and gadgets galore!"

"another well-crafted, fast-paced mystery laden with intrigue; a romp through steampunk New York"

"this world of steam-driven machinery, inventions, airships, clockwork-type animated birds seems as real as our own"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clockworks & Crime Media
• Release date: Jun 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781777584603

Jayne Barnard

Winner of the Canadian Crime Writing Award of Excellence and the Alberta Book of the Year, she’s been a finalist for both the Prix Aurora and the UK Debut Dagger. Her short fiction won the Calgary Crime Writers Award, the Bony Pete/Bloody Words award, and was 3x bridesmaid for the Great Canadian Story prize. She lives in a vine-covered cottage between two rivers, keeping cats and secrets. Find her on: Twitter     https://twitter.com/JayneBarnard1 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/je_barnard/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MaddieHatterAdventures

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

MADDIE HATTER WAS TRAPPED. Surrounded. Hemmed in by billowing clouds of tulle, taffeta, and satin, all adorned with ells beyond measure of ribbon, ruffle, and flounce. Bustles as big as breadboxes blocked the aisles. Hats wider than tea trays endangered the unwary eye with poking plumes and fulsome flowers. Fans in fabulous fabrics wafted the stuffy air. The viewing gallery was a fashion reporter’s heaven, crammed with copy for the whole autumn’s worth of daily columns. Coming after a delightful summer of travel and adventure across all America, however, it was a stark reminder of the coming winter. Whether Maddie returned to Europe or remained in New York City, she faced endless hours in overcrowded rooms, rhapsodizing over sleeves and skirt-hems until her fingers cramped and her eyeballs ached.

Two hours earlier, a mysterious message had lured her away from breakfast at Mrs. Darling’s boarding house in Lower Manhattan. If yer wants an ’ot tip, uttered the street urchin who brought the communiqué, Emmy Gat says git yerself ta Madame Lavinier’s Parasol Academy, ’ard by Carnegie ’all, afore them snooty ladies goes fer mornin’ coffee.

Between spoons-full of porridge, Mrs. Darling’s nephew Hiram, an international airship steward when he wasn’t at home, explained that Emmy Gat was an odd lass who dressed like a boy. She could often predict when a factory might be sold, allowing workers to prepare for job changes or losses, and last Spring she’d suggested a certain garment-making attic was a fire risk, a warning that saved a whole block from conflagration and led to arson charges against the owner. If Emmy pointed Maddie at a story, it ought to be looked into.

That sounded promising for a spot of investigative reporting.

Hiram’s young Darling cousins, on the other hand, loudly proclaimed Emmy a villainess worse than the whole Five Points Gang. They chanted a rhyme in unison, thumping their spoon handles on the table for emphasis.

Emmy Gat ain’t no flat. Strangled a man with her silk cravat. Catch her eye and she’ll cut you in half. Ain’t no flies on Em—

There might have been more but Mrs. Darling, returning with a jug of milk, hushed them in no uncertain terms.

It wouldn’t do, dear, to ignore a tip from Emmy Gat, she said to Maddie when the boys were quietly shoveling porridge once more. Best get a move on, for that parasol academy is far uptown, nearly at Central Park.

Society coffee and visits traditionally began at eleven a.m., leaving Maddie just enough time to finish her breakfast, press the travel creases from her linen suit, perch her clockwork bird among her hat-ribbons, and catch the trolley that ran up the length of Manhattan. The Academy was two short blocks from Central Park, near the grand Vanderbilt mansions at Fifth Avenue. It stood amid dainty cafes, millionaires’ clubs, and a handful of professional offices behind imposing facades. There might be a story in any of those buildings, but in a parasol academy where young ladies went to learn the honorable combat imported from Europe? No place in New York seemed less likely to merit the attention of an investigative journalist.

After lingering a full quarter of an hour outside, waiting for something to happen, Maddie had followed a chattering flow of exquisitely gowned ladies through the academy portals, and here she sat still, suffocated by ruffles and lace, with not a sniff of a story worth investigating. She had gathered fodder for her Kettle Conglomerate fashion columns: rising waistlines, expanding sleeves, shrinking bustles. Coifed ladies in Paris-inspired gowns peered into the gymnasium below, making sly observations about this woman’s daughter and that one’s niece, or eying another lady with a fan-concealed sneer.

Gossip and fashion: two interminable pastimes Maddie had fled her family to escape, and yet was forced back into as one of the few respectable means of support for an independent young woman. Mentally cataloguing the sizes of leg-of-mutton sleeves—from Spring lamb to aged ram—she too gazed down into the academy’s gymnasium.

Two roped-off dueling rings at the far end were unused. In front of them, young ladies in blue exercise frocks stood languidly, their practice parasols drooping as they awaited instruction from a severe woman in brown garb. Parasol dueling? Hah. The clockwork bird on her hat could fly circles around any of those young duelists.

She wasn’t aware of muttering aloud until a young lady at her side leaned closer.

Are you quite well, miss?

After a full hour of ignoring Maddie’s existence, could one of these insular Society women be addressing her at last? She slanted her eyes sideways.

The young lady who had spoken looked back at her from anxious amber eyes under soft topaz curls. A demure day dress of daffodil, trimmed with gold-threaded lace, imparted a glow to her whole being. The question came again.

Perfectly well, thank you, Maddie replied, keeping her voice low. I merely noted that these parasol duelists do not exhibit much enthusiasm for their pursuit.

Indeed. The gem-eyed girl turned her gaze on the gymnasium. It is not at all the done thing to appear enthusiastic. Or to, well, move vigorously. Lest one... She trailed off, leaving Maddie to silently fill in the indelicate word perspire.

I see, said Maddie, although she didn’t really. What was the point of dueling if one did not even wake up one’s pulse? It is certainly less vigorous than the dueling I witnessed in California.

You went to California? The amber eyes widened. Is that not rather a long journey?

Hardly a week by airship if one flies direct. Unless one meets those frightful prairie storms that sweep the ship backward, away from the mountains.

Gracious, said the girl. Papa is flying from San Francisco this very week. Shall he be long delayed, do you think? Is September a bad time for storms?

Any storm would blow his ship in this direction, as I understand the prevailing winds. As the girl seemed willing to converse although they had not been formally introduced, Maddie ventured a question of her own. Might you explain to me how parasol dueling is done here? My travels have exposed me to many regional styles, but nary a one had this leisurely air about it.

The girls only learn the forms in order to display them gracefully while strolling in Central Park. Rarely does anyone duel at all. The gilded-lace girl ended on a sigh. At least, not in our circles.

You wish they would? 

Oh yes! I paid for private tutoring, for all the help that was. I intend to travel and must be prepared to defend my honor in foreign parts. Where, pray, have you seen duels?

London, at first. Strictly Brandenburg Rules there, as approved by Her Majesty. France, where graceful movement and fetching attire are de rigueur. Prussians march, in coordinated movement through the figures. Rather like an infantry drill, in fact. I learned a little from each style, and sometimes prevailed.

You dueled? The words came on a breath of excitement. Would you duel with me?

Surely a girl of good family wishing to duel was not the promised story? But Maddie had nothing else to occupy her, and if the girl truly intended to travel, she must learn some skills beyond this passive posing or she would be meat on the skewer of any European duelist. And Maddie could use the exercise.

Where would we undertake such a thing?

I am a member here, said the young lady. I could book us gymnasium space. Perhaps before tomorrow’s class, if you don’t mind arriving early? The students below bowed to their severe instructor and departed, while the ladies along the gallery moved in a silken rustle to the stairs. Maddie’s new friend stood, too, and put out her hand. But we have not yet been introduced. The card she offered read, in flowing script: Miss E. G. Gauge. 

Miss Maddie Hatter, said Maddie, offering her Kettle Conglomerates card. After a summer of informal living, where names were swapped as readily as smiles, she found polite society foolishly formal. But she must behave or be labelled brash, which would severely curtail her access to the fashionable events that bought her bread and butter.

Downstairs, Miss Gauge made arrangements for the following morning and procured for Maddie a visitor’s card. As they neared the exit to the street, however, she hung back. 

Go on without me. I have, that is, I need to . . .

Assuming that prudery forbade Miss Gauge simply excusing herself to visit the lavatory, Maddie bade her goodbye and stepped out into the unseasonably sultry autumn morning. On the fading hope of finding a story worthy of investigation, she stayed to watch the elegant ladies and languid girls mount into waiting carriages and steam-driven conveyances. The conveyances drew away, all except one, a sleek, shining steam-mobile shaped rather like an artillery shell, with a hatch that opened upward to admit passengers. This vehicle’s chauffeur pulled his machine up to the Academy’s entrance and stood by the passenger hatch on the deserted sidewalk. For interminable minutes he waited.

Then Miss Gauge hurried from the Academy doorway, scanned the street, and scurried as quickly as her slim skirts allowed toward the mobile. She scrambled inside, the chauffeur closed the hatch, and the machine drew away.

The last sight of Maddie’s new friend was a frightened face peering out from the shadowed interior. Of what was Miss Gauge frightened in this genteel neighborhood?

Maddie surveyed the street with all her senses on alert, but nobody seemed to pay the slightest heed to the departing Gauge girl. The only person loitering was a newsboy, wafting a folded broadsheet and yelling, America’s greatest detective called to White House.

America’s greatest detective? Maddie pulled a penny from her purse and snatched the newspaper. The headline read, Sneero Fawkes, New York’s Greatest Detective, Finds First Lady’s Lost Ring. Was the man a great detective or, like Maddie’s one-time employer, Hercule Hornblower, merely fond of tooting his own horn? She scanned the story for details hinting of genius but the main point was in the headline: the detective had gone to Washington D.C. and found, or helped find, a bauble misplaced by the president’s wife.

A policeman gave Maddie the stern eyeball. Realizing she was the only solitary female on the avenue, and lacking either a story or a ferocious girl in boy’s clothing, she gave up on Emmy Gat’s mystery and strode off toward the trolley stop for the long, rattling ride back to her boarding house on the edge of the East Village.

On arrival, however, she found the young brothers all agog. They dragged her out to the rear stoop, where a small, grubby lad in a newsboy’s cap waited. He whipped off his cap and recited, Midnight at Stuyvesant Street Triangle. Bring a parasol. Emmy sez.

CHAPTER TWO

A STEEPLE CLOCK CHIMED the three-quarters as Maddie, with Hiram as escort, approached the rendezvous. The moon laid deep shadow at the edges of the tall, narrow buildings but nothing stirred. She stopped before the corner, staring out across the deserted pavement. Where three streets crossed was a triangle of beaten grass and dusty shrubbery, anchored by a rundown bandstand and a single, spreading tree. No-one could be seen.

An owl launched from a branch and floated over their heads, hooting softly. Maddie put her hand on her hat to keep her own bird, Tweetle-D, from answering. The hunting birds of New York City—hawks by day and owls by night—viewed smaller birds as their rightful prey. While TD’s brass and gears were surely indigestible, he was not armor plated. His delicate mechanisms would be severely damaged by aggressive talons and beaks, and the only person who could repair him was far off in London. Or was it Singapore by this time? Madame Taxus-Hemlock never stayed in one place for long. If she wasn’t negotiating her family conglomerate’s business in some hub of global finance, she was overseeing a country’s parasol dueling championship at some fashionable resort.

She was not in New York, at any rate, and Maddie could not be half so effective a reporter without TD’s secret skills of capturing images and recording speech. He was far and away the most valuable gift Madame, or indeed anybody, had ever given her

Hiram muttered, We’ll have to go out in the open, where Emmy can see us.

I’ll go. You stay here, ready to aid me if I call. And keep your eyes skinned for an ambush. Not that Maddie was frightened—she had handled riskier situations in more dangerous locales than a deserted New York garment district—but Hiram would feel purposeful and might yet be useful.

Whispering, TD, look, listen, and record, she strode toward the grass, eyeing the shadowy bushes and peering into the deep gloom beneath the tree. Nothing moved, yet she could feel eyes upon her. She shifted her parasol to a dueling grip.

Hello? Miss Gat?

A chuckle echoed eerily off the surrounding buildings. Miss Gat? Ain’t been called that afore. 

Maddie turned, trying to pin down a direction before the voice vanished. Nobody. A rustling of leaves drew her hand up to her hat again, lest the owl be making another pass over TD. A dark form swung down from the tree, landing two-footed, with a thump and a cackle. Striding into the moonlight it bowed, with a flourish of one scuffed velvet arm.

Emmy Gat, and I ain’t at nobody’s service.

Forewarned Maddie had been, but still the mysterious neighborhood oracle was a strange sight. She wore dark satin knee breeches over black-and-white stockings. Old-fashioned heel shoes held glittering buckles. The wine-dark velvet was an old man’s frock coat fashionable forty years ago, and around the neck, under a blunt fringe of cherry-red hair, was a black silk cravat. Filling the gap between red lips and battered black bowler hat was a white-and-gilt eye-mask. By moonlight the eye holes were devoid of reflection. Screened with black chiffon, Maddie guessed.

However dramatic the setting and the player, it was a chilly September midnight and she was tired. Emmy Gat had better come up with a good story or this reporter was going straight home to her warm bed.

Pleased to meet you, she said. I’m Miss Hatter, reporter. What’s this hot tip you’ve got?

Emmy cackled again. Comin’ out with all sails set, hey? Mind I don’t shoot ’em all away on yer.

Talk to me or I’m leaving.

Fight me an’ I’ll decide if yer worthy.

Fight you? 

The creature turned. Held along her leg was a tattered umbrella of some dark fabric, with the hook of its handle broken off. She raised it in a parody of formal salute.

Ah. You want to duel with me? Here, now? Maddie glanced around, but the area was still empty. The grass underfoot seemed reasonably level, and if the shadows gave her opponent’s darker clothing an advantage, it was slight. Maddie’s navy blue suit would vanish into the shadows almost as completely. She raised her own parasol to the exact vertical before her face. What rules are current here? I take it not Brandenburg.

Emmy chortled. My street, my rules. No hits past a Snub.

That’s it? Anything else goes?

Yer cries, yer out. Yer bleeds, yer out.

As you wish. Maddie swished down her parasol and sprang forward, swiping the weighted tip at the other girl’s ankle.

Emmy leapt aside and parried. Unseen barbs on her umbrella snatched at the cloth of Maddie’s parasol, pulling it and her forward. She stumbled before jumping out of reach, evading a Plant so ferocious it stabbed into the earth her right foot had abandoned. 

So the umbrella had a sharpened tip? This strange girl was playing for blood. 

While Emmy yanked out her weapon, sending a divot of dried grass into the air, Maddie swung her dainty parasol sideways like a baseball bat, landing the weighted tip precisely on her opponent’s exposed wrist-bone. 

Gah! Emmy backed, raising and opening her brolly in a swift Snub.

Checked from hitting her head on, Maddie sidestepped until a prickly bush blocked her way. She feinted forward, forcing Emmy to give ground, and darted sideways to get around the open Snub. In a flash, Emmy spun on one clunky heel, dragging the umbrella over her shoulder and slashing it wide open, right in Maddie’s face.

The hat-brim took the worst, but as the barbs dragged it over Maddie’s eyes, TD rose with a whirr of clockwork wings and darted away. She didn’t dare call him back lest her opponent realize he wasn’t a real bird or a night-hunting bat. Instead, she concentrated on dodging the sharpened tip that was probing for her cheek.

Shifting her grip, she swung for Emmy’s knee. The parasol connected instead with the wooden bandstand support. A shock ran up past her elbow. She leaped clear, shaking out her arm.

The brolly swung away from her face. As she shoved her hat up to clear her eyes, Emmy flung herself heels over head, up the bandstand’s shallow steps, balancing on her left hand. Her right maintained the Snub as she flipped upright.

The instant Emmy’s feet clunked down, Maddie rammed her weighted tip at the toe of one preposterous shoe. Emmy leapt into the air, landed neatly atop the bandstand’s wooden railing, and grinned.

Hittin’ past a Snub. Fer shame, lady. 

While she balanced there, a whistle shrilled through the night.

Coppers, said Emmy. She backflipped off the railing to the grass below, dodged behind a shrub, and was lost to view. Her voice floated back. Uptown at the dueling place, that’s yer story.

Her footsteps clattered away, dying faster than Maddie would have thought possible. Hiram rushed across the pavement. She waved to him from the bandstand and gave a chirp to summon TD.

An owl’s twa-too answered her. The feathered predator was circling the tree, its great eyes fixed on one small section. Attacking TD?

Maddie ran, her parasol waving overhead. The owl veered off with a disappointed snapping of its dangerous beak. The little clockwork sparrow hopped from a twig down to her hat. She touched his beak with one finger and turned to Hiram, who already knew TD was more like a