THE TIME THIEF Read online

  Kate was expecting to be taken to Buckingham House, so when the landau pulled up in front of a sweet little cottage in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, and when two kangaroos proceeded to hop in front of her line of vision not twenty feet away, she felt more than a little confused.

  They followed a footman into the cottage and up a curved staircase. His skinny form was clothed in a uniform trimmed with gold braid and he wore a stiff white wig complete with ponytail or queue, as they were called, tied with taffeta ribbon. The white stockings that covered the footman’s disproportionately muscular calves were spotless; the effect was spoiled, however, by the dark curly hair that showed through the fine silk of the hosiery. Kate paused for a moment to put a little more distance between herself and the footman and wrinkled her nose. She wondered how many more days without a shower it would take for her to smell as bad…. As she climbed the stairs she smoothed down her dress and tried to tidy her hair which, although she had pinned it up this morning, was now tumbling down in untidy strands over her forehead. Mr. Schock, whose face was pale gray, still had the sensation that he was swaying and clung on to the banisters to steady himself. He was creased and crumpled but felt too awful to care what he looked like, even if he was about to meet the Queen of England.

  At the top of the stairs the footman opened a door with white-gloved hands, bowed deeply, and invited Kate and Mr. Schock to enter. He closed the door and stood stiffly to attention next to it. They found themselves in a modest-sized room, painted pale peppermint green, with bare oak floorboards and a high vaulted ceiling. Daylight from a huge picture window poured onto an oriental-style table set for tea in the center of the room. Seated in a bamboo chair was a silver-haired woman in a gray silk dress. She scraped back her chair and stood up, smiling, in anticipation of her guests’ imminent curtsy and bow. Instead Kate stared. She did not mean to but she could not help herself. Then, involuntarily, she put her hand to her mouth in shock. Could this really be the young Queen of England she had seen at Buckingham House only two or three weeks ago? She had grown old! Her hair had turned gray! Her face was no longer firm and deep wrinkles were etched into her forehead. She scarcely recognized her. She understood, of course, that twenty-nine years had passed for her but, all the same, from Kate’s point of view this abrupt decrepitude was hard to accept.

  The Queen, too, was taken aback. Her gaze was fixed on Kate and she, too, gasped and held on to the back of one of the chairs.

  “It is you…. It is scarcely to be believed…. You are exactly the same! I remember that day as if it were yesterday … you held my little George’s hand … he could barely walk. We strolled in the gardens…. It was the day that Peter Schock entered my life….”

  At the sound of his son’s name Mr. Schock immediately forgot all about his travel-sickness and looked from Kate to the Queen and back again. Kate finally remembered her manners and curtsied.

  “Bow!” she whispered to Mr. Schock.

  The Queen composed herself and motioned for them to join her at the table. The footman poured Earl Gray tea from an exquisite teapot and the Queen instructed him to withdraw. No one felt like drinking anything.

  “Mr. Schock, it is a privilege to welcome a visitor from the future. Miss Dyer, it is good, if unsettling, to be able to renew our acquaintance after such a long period of time. I understand, Mr. Schock, that you have come here in search of your twelve-year-old son.”

  “Yes, I have—except we’ve ended up in 1792 instead of 1763 which was our intention … Your Majesty.”

  “So, if I understand you correctly, it was an error that brought you here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you intend returning to 1763?”

  “In principle, yes, but—”

  “I am glad to hear it for I have grave news which I am obliged to break to you.”

  The Queen bowed her head, and Kate and Mr. Schock exchanged worried glances.

  “Peter Schock set sail for America nearly twenty years ago in order to start a new life in a new country. It is my sad duty to inform you he has not been heard of since. If you wish to be reunited with your son, it is through time which you must travel.”

  “Oh no,” gasped Kate. “Not Peter …”

  Mr. Schock stared blankly in front of him and the muscles of his face began to contort in anguish.

  “Excuse me, Your Majesty,” he said and walked unsteadily to the door. He opened it, and after a swift, desperate glance at Kate, he fled down the stairs and out into the grounds as fast as his injured leg would allow him. In the Picnic Room upstairs, Kate burst into tears. So her friend, whom she had promised never to abandon, was never to see his home, nor his family, nor his own time again. And without the machine she and his father would end their days here too. The Queen looked at Kate, distraught.

  “What a truly terrible thing I have told you,” she exclaimed bitterly. “But you can travel back to a time when Peter was safe, can you not? To a time when he was still a child and the possibility of going to America had not even entered his head…. Then you can return home with the young Peter Schock and all will be as it should be?”

  Kate wiped away her tears with the back of her hand.

  “The antigravity machine is broken, Ma’am. We can’t go back to 1763 and we can’t go home either.”

  “Broken!” The Queen looked horrified.

  “Yes.”

  “But, it can be mended? Surely it can be mended?”

  “I don’t know…. It’s a complicated piece of machinery. Who would understand how to mend it?”

  “We must mend it!” exclaimed Queen Charlotte. “We shall mend it! Sir Joseph will be able to advise. He is a man of science, the President of the Royal Society no less! Come, let us seek him out at once!”

  The Queen’s faith in Sir Joseph kindled a spark of hope in Kate’s heart against her better judgement and she thought, Well, if we don’t try we certainly won’t get back. The Queen took Kate’s arm and they hurried down the stairs, out into the grounds and toward the lake. Mr. Schock, too, though he did not know it, was headed toward the lake. He came to a halt close to the water and rested his forehead against the rough bark of a Scot’s pine.

  As Kate struggled to keep up with Queen Charlotte’s frantic pace she tried to imagine what Peter’s father must be feeling. He had seemed so cheerful when she saw him before breakfast because, at long last, his leg had improved enough for them to contemplate beginning their search for Peter and Gideon. But scarcely ten hours later, here they both were, reeling from a series of blows, each worse than the last: they had arrived twenty-nine years too late; the antigravity machine, their only means of returning to the twenty-first century, was broken; and, most terrible of all, Peter had been missing believed dead for the best part of twenty years…. Poor Mr. Schock, she thought. Poor Kate, too. It was like some awful game of chess in which, one by one, all their pieces had fallen, and now, it seemed, they faced checkmate.

  Meanwhile, deaf to the birdsong all around him, Mr. Schock sank to his knees against the tree trunk, utterly defeated. Had he but known it, the son whom he mourned stood, in point of fact, only a stone’s throw away, deep in conversation with Sir Joseph, and wielding a muddy spade. They were clearing away some reeds in order to give the Angelica atropurpurea a chance to get established. Sir Joseph was telling him about the dreadful problems Captain Bligh had encountered with his crew on the Bounty on the way to Tahiti to gather breadfruit. Normally Peter would have been fascinated by Sir Joseph’s stories, but he was currently listening with only half an ear. He had heard the landau approach the cottage and knew that the Queen must at this very instant be telling his father that he was missing presumed dead. Peter’s mind had wandered and all at once he realized that Sir Joseph was no longer talking to him but was marching off toward a large pine tree. Then Peter noticed the blond-haired figure crouching at the base of its broad trunk. Sir Joseph placed a hand on the man’s shoulder, leaving a muddy imprint.

  “What ails t
hee, sir?”

  Mr. Schock shot up, in fright, and turned to face Sir Joseph.

  “Dad!” Peter cried.

  His cry was drowned out by Queen Charlotte herself.

  “Sir Joseph! Mr. Schock!” she called. “Where are you?”

  Queen Charlotte and Kate appeared on the scene, flushed and a little out of breath.

  “Ah,” said the Queen to Peter’s father, “Mr. Schock. I am happy to have found you. Miss Dyer has explained to me that your machine is broken and I am come to tell you not to despair. Sir Joseph, here, is a man of great learning and the President of the Royal Society. You can count on him being able to come to your aid.”

  “The machine is broken?” exclaimed Peter, his expression, as he approached them, betraying the horror that he felt.

  Kate eyed Peter suspiciously. Why should this stranger care? “Yes, it is broken. Was it you who came to the vicarage a couple of days ago? I think you took my can of Coca-Cola….”

  Peter did not answer, for his father had turned to look at him. His mouth went dry and his stomach lurched. He clenched his hands to stop them trembling. Would his father recognize him? He fervently hoped that he would not. But, then again, a part of him fervently hoped that he would. Peter waited for his father to react. His heart thumped wildly in his chest. For a moment Mr. Schock’s eyes bore deep into his own and Peter discerned in them a flicker of doubt, the stirring of recognition in the far reaches of his mind. But then, all of a sudden, like a light being switched off, the intensity of his father’s gaze diminished, contact was broken, and Peter had to suffer the agony of knowing that his wish had been granted: His father took him for a stranger.

  “Are you Mr. Seymour who came to Middle Harpenden in search of us?”

  Peter would have cried out if he could. As it was, he only trusted himself to remain silent. Queen Charlotte gave a sharp look in the direction of Sir Joseph, indicating that he should remain silent. Kate and Mr. Schock exchanged glances—who was this person? Then the grown-up Peter Schock shot a desperate look at his Queen and she immediately understood that his courage was failing and that he needed her help.

  “This is indeed Mr. Joshua Seymour, Gideon Seymour’s half brother who always treated Peter with such kindness.”

  Mr. Schock stepped forward and shook him warmly by the hand.

  “So you knew my son?”

  Peter gulped and somehow the right words came out. “I did, sir, very well indeed.”

  Kate, too, stepped forward and offered him her hand. She had met Joshua briefly at Tyburn at Gideon’s hanging but she did not recognize him now. And yet, there was something familiar about this handsome man although she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.

  “Do you remember me, Joshua? I know we only met for a short time….”

  When Peter saw how young she was, and when he thought of how long he had waited for her to come to rescue him, he had to blink back a tear. “I do remember you,” he said. “How could I forget?”

  They shook hands, her skin smooth and pale, his rugged and already showing the early signs of age. But when they touched both of them stepped backward in shock. It was as if a strong electric current had passed from one to the other. How bizarre, thought Kate. Where did all that static come from?

  “My dear Sir Jos,” Queen Charlotte whispered to Sir Joseph on the way back to the cottage, “I would ask of you that you inquire neither about the reason for the collective deception of which you have unwillingly been a part, nor about the provenance of this device. All you need know is that it is broken and that it is vital—I do assure you, vital—that it be mended. I am counting on you as a man of science to find a solution to this problem and I trust that I can rely on your discretion.”

  The machine had been placed behind a Chinese screen in one corner of the Picnic Room. Torn away from his Angelica atropurpurea, the bemused Sir Joseph had been crouched behind the screen for some ten minutes while the rest of the party paced about downstairs like anxious relatives waiting for the doctor to give his diagnosis.

  “Your son would tell me such wonderful things about the twenty-first century,” the Queen said to Mr. Schock in an effort to lighten the atmosphere. “I have vivid pictures in my head of cars and planes and hospitals and telephones … and police cars. I have often found it difficult to keep this knowledge to myself. Peter taught me to imitate a police … er …”

  “Siren,” interrupted Peter. “A police siren.”

  Kate flashed a look in his direction.

  “Peter … taught me, too,” he added hastily. “Nee-noo, nee-noo …”

  Mr. Schock laughed heartily at the thought of his son teaching the Queen of England how to sound like a police siren.

  “But what I loved to hear about most of all,” continued Queen Charlotte, “was the movies. He often talked about cinemas—he frequented one near Richmond Bridge, I believe …”

  “Yes,” laughed Mr. Schock. “He did! We used to argue about the price of popcorn!”

  “Yes! I know of popcorn. How fascinating. He would throw it at people’s heads in the dark.”

  “I didn’t know that!”

  “Ah,” continued Queen Charlotte, “I should love to see the big screen and hear the music. To see a face as big as a house! He told me the stories of all his favorite films and would act out the parts. I recall there was one about a creature from …”—she gestured vaguely toward the sky—“… space? Who was stranded on Earth …”

  Queen Charlotte did not notice Peter desperately indicating with his facial expression that she should go no further with this anecdote.

  “Yes, this creature longed to be reunited with his own kind. He was an extraterrestrial. What was it that he said? Ah yes …” Queen Charlotte mimed putting a telephone to her ear. “E.T. phone home … E.T. phone ho-o-o-me …”

  Queen Charlotte laughed in delight but Kate had to turn away and tears came into Peter’s father’s eyes. Unlike E.T., his son had never made it.

  Dismayed at their reaction, Queen Charlotte said sadly: “Ah, I see that you know of it….” She looked up at Peter. “I am sorry, the connection had not struck me before now.”

  Sir Joseph finally emerged wiping his hands on a large handkerchief.

  “I have never seen the like of this machine! A truly astonishing device! Extraordinary! I should dearly like to investigate its workings yet I dare not dismantle it lest I damage it further. What expertise I have is in botany and zoology—this device is beyond my understanding. Do you have a notion, in broad terms, of the areas of knowledge one might need to comprehend the workings of this machine?”

  Kate and Mr. Schock shook their heads sadly.

  “Not really,” said Kate. “Antigravity?”

  “Electrical circuits?” said Mr. Schock, looking at Kate.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  “It is depressing to be quite so ignorant about science,” said Mr. Schock. “Suddenly I regret all those times I skipped physics class….”

  “No matter, my dear sir, we will do what we can…. ’Tis a pity good Benjamin Franklin is no longer with us! With his inventive turn of mind and his knowledge of electricity and interest in all things mechanical, I fancy he could have given you a helping hand. There’s Volta, of course. He is sound. He has recently published a work on the storage of electricity. But he is far away in Italy, and, besides, I think we have need of a generalist, a person with a broad knowledge and with a practical bent. Someone, above all, who is prepared to take a risk and will not easily be discouraged.”

  Viscountess Cremorne arrived to inquire if there was any service she could perform for the Queen before taking her leave for the evening.

  “Ha! I have it!” exclaimed Sir Joseph. “The Marquis de Montfaron! A true scientist and a philosopher. I invited him to speak to us at the Society two, or perhaps three, years ago—an immensely tall fellow, and a more fertile and impressive intellect I have yet to encounter. He is a fine mathematician and has published well
-received papers on electricity and gravity. He has, moreover, a particular interest in all things mechanical, and, being a prolific correspondent, he keeps abreast of all the latest developments. Yes, I am certain you could not find a better man than Montfaron in the whole of Europe.”

  A smile came to Sir Joseph’s lips. “Although I should warn you that his belief in the healing powers of garlic makes it preferable to speak to him in a well-ventilated room….”

  All at once Sir Joseph’s face fell. “Alas there is a problem there, too. Montfaron has a large estate in France and heaven knows what fate he has suffered since the Revolution began.”

  “I believe you are mistaken,” Viscountess Cremorne interjected. “The Montfarons are currently living in Golden Square. I encountered his wife, la Marquise de Montfaron, only last week at a soirée—a frightful woman but utterly exquisite….”

  “Ah, that is welcome news!” said Peter, stepping forward toward Kate and his father. “I hope you will permit me,” he said earnestly, “to offer you my hospitality in the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields which is already familiar to Miss Dyer. I should then be happy to accompany you to Golden Square tomorrow as early as good manners permit. I can assure you, sir, that for the sake of father and son I shall do everything in my power to enable you to return to 1763. We shall seek out this Marquis de Montfaron and we shall repair the machine.”

  Touched and bemused at the same time, Mr. Schock took Peter’s hand and shook it again. “Thank you, Joshua, we appear to have had the good fortune to find a friend.”

  EIGHT

  INSPECTOR WHEELER’S CHINESE TAKEOUT

  In which Inspector Wheeler congratulates himself on a successful hunch and enjoys a celebratory meal

  Detective Inspector Wheeler was treating himself to Chinese takeout. The telephone receiver was lodged between shoulder and ear as he ordered his favorite dishes. He moved around the room in time to the Blue Danube Waltz which crackled at high volume from his old-fashioned record player.

  “One chicken in black bean sauce, one sizzling king prawns, one crispy beef, and some egg fried rice. Yes, that’s it. And—why not?—a couple of wee spring rolls, as well. No, no, I’ll be collecting it myself. I’ll be seeing you shortly, then.”