Felicity Carrol and the Perilous Pursuit Read online

  FELICITY CARROL AND THE PERILOUS PURSUIT

  A MYSTERY

  Patricia Marcantonio

  To all those who find mystery in life

  There she weaves by night and day

  A magic web with colours gay.

  She has heard a whisper say,

  A curse is on her if she stay

  To look down to Camelot.

  —Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I could not have stepped back in time without the aid of many resources, including help from the House of Parliament Parliamentary Archives and the British Railroad Museum as well as information from the websites of the Royal Parks, the Digital Library of Villanova University, the University of London, the City of London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Police, the BBC, Wikipedia, Express.co.uk, Nationalarchives.gov.uk, Britishnewspaperarchive.org, Historic UK, Smithsonianmag.com, and Nationalgallery.org.

  I am most grateful to my writing friend Bonnie Dodge for her insights; to my terrific agent, Elizabeth Kracht, who helped me become a better writer; and to editor Faith Black Ross, who helped this become a better book. Ongoing love to my family who support me in all that I do.

  CHAPTER 1

  Surrey, England

  1887

  “Everyone, please take shelter behind the hedges,” Felicity Carrol announced.

  Her homemade bomb was about to explode.

  The dozen servants obeyed without hesitation. It was nearly ten at night, and they had already rescued what furniture and art they could from the east wing before Felicity told them to leave the rest to the flames. With help, she had first rescued the chemicals and scientific equipment from her laboratory, which was the source of the fire currently consuming the house.

  When Felicity had determined that the blaze could not be contained and would spread, she had come up with a plan to save the rest of Carrol Manor. In the kitchen, she had combined the perfect amounts of glycerin with nitric and sulfuric acids. She added torn paper and porridge oats to absorb the unstable mixture. With cautious movements, she packed the volatile paste into an Italian ceramic urn she had always disliked. As she did so, she reviewed the formula in her mind. Many times, pride in her knowledge and abilities suppressed any doubt about her experiments. She loathed that aspect of her personality—taking pleasure in what she could accomplish. For instance, she would have bet no other young woman in England—well, in all of Surrey anyway—was capable of constructing a bomb in her kitchen. Despite the delicate work, Felicity wanted to laugh. Besides her, what young woman would even want to pack an urn with dynamite?

  Still, better to be careful in case she did not know as much as she thought she did about bomb making. Although confident in her chemistry, she didn’t want anyone harmed if something went wrong. And plenty had already gone wrong this evening. The fire was proof of that. So she had asked the servants to leave while she created the explosive.

  Aided by John Ryan, the affable Irishman in charge of the grounds, she had carried the dynamite-filled urn outside. Together, they had placed it in the middle of the long hallway connecting the east wing to the rest of the manor.

  After glancing back to make sure everyone was protected, Felicity lit a match to a line of gun powder Ryan had supplied. Spitting sparks, the powder burned toward her handmade explosive.

  “Time to run,” she told Ryan.

  “As you say, Miss Carrol.”

  She picked up her skirt for an unfettered escape. Ryan ran alongside her.

  Behind the hedge, they all waited. The air pounded. The ground tremored, and glass shattered. A burning timber flew over their heads, eliciting gasps from the female servants.

  Felicity peeked around the hedge. A good thirty-foot chunk of the hallway had been blasted away. Her explosion had contained the fire to the east wing. The main house had suffered some shattered windows but was otherwise safe.

  “You did it, Miss Felicity. No doubt they heard your bomb clear to Guildford,” Ryan said in his comfortable brogue.

  “How much simpler if we’d had a stick of dynamite. But one must make do, thanks all the same to Mr. Alfred Nobel.” She did not want to appear too pleased with herself.

  The remaining fire spit and hissed.

  “What in heaven will your father say to all this?” Ryan shoved his hands in his pockets.

  How would her father react? She knew very well. Samuel Carrol would only squint his eyes, let out a billow of annoyance at his daughter’s actions, and hole himself up in his den with cigars and brandy. He had scarcely visited the manor since she had returned home from the university eight months ago. She didn’t expect him to rush back because she had accidentally torched part of the house.

  Felicity wiped ash from her forehead. Her throat dried from more than the smoke in the air. She wished her father would yell. Better yet, she wished he would sit her down and talk about how she had been careless and tell her to be more careful next time. Ask whether she had been injured during the course of the evening. Did she need to see a doctor?

  But all those conversations with her father would never happen. For they would mean actually talking with her and not around her or through her, as was her father’s way.

  “Although the fire did start in my laboratory, we did manage to save the rest of the manor. Perhaps the explosion will amount to a point in my favor,” she told Ryan.

  “Let’s hope so, Miss.” Ryan bowed. “Excuse me, I’m going to have the men soak the hallway nearest the house so the blaze won’t jump the fine new gulf you created.”

  He ran off to join others hauling buckets of water drawn from one of the wells on the estate.

  Ash scattered onto their heads as Felicity and the other servants watched the fire broaden its reach into the east wing. The flames resembled orange ribbons waving destruction. The servants’ faces were red from the heat and smeared with cinders. With recognizable annoyance, Horace Wilkins shrunk his eyes down to nothing and gripped his braces when three windows blew out in the flaming building.

  “What do you estimate we lost, Mr. Wilkins?” Felicity said.

  “Several of your father’s paintings from Russia, and maybe a tapestry or three.” The head butler’s stiff politeness stung with accusation.

  “I must admit I did find the Russian artwork utterly depressing, Mr. Wilkins.” She loved to tug at the servant’s dour demeanor. She also admitted her behavior to be childish beyond words, especially when watching a section of her home burn.

  “All a matter of taste, Miss Carrol.” Wilkins did not flinch.

  “My experiment with a voltaic pile got away from me.” She brushed long reddish-brown hair away from her eyes. “Thankfully, no injuries except to my ego. It is terribly bruised.”

  She had been creating an electrical battery similar to the one invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800 and trying to improve on it. Following his plan, she had alternated copper and zinc discs with cloths soaked in diluted sulfuric acid in between to boost the conductivity. She had succeeded in sparking a current through the voltaic pile when she linked the bottom and top contacts with a wire. But lace curtains had hung too close and a spark had caught them alight.

  “Pardon me, Miss. I shall see to the work inside the part of the house not on fire,” Wilkins said, and bowed.

  Without an acknowledgment, he passed his sister, Helen, who was Felicity’s former nanny and now her personal maid and friend. A marked contrast to her older brother, Helen was big-boned and benevolent. Horace Wilkins came in thinner and efficiently grim.

  “You were very fortunate tonight, Miss Felicity,” Helen said. “You could have been burned alive.
”

  “Better than being burned dead, Hellie.”

  Helen gave a laugh. “Nor that.” But her laughter stopped abruptly.

  “What is it?” Felicity said.

  “I hope your gown doesn’t stink like smoke. You have to attend the ball at the Wheaton house tomorrow night. Your father’s orders.”

  Felicity hated that word—orders. “It’s too bad that ballroom didn’t burn down.”

  “Miss Felicity, really.”

  Felicity put her hand on Helen’s. “A joke. A weak one, Hellie, but a joke.”

  “Yes, a weak one.” Helen smiled.

  “Don’t fret. Smoky gown or not, I shall go and dance in my father’s hope that I attract a suitable mate.” At that moment, Felicity had the urge to walk into the flames consuming the east wing. She shook away the negativity.

  She would also do something positive.

  Walking in front of the servants also watching the fire, Felicity motioned for them to quiet down for her announcement. “Thank you all for your help tonight. I believe a bonus is in order for your extraordinary service.”

  The male servants bowed their heads while the women curtsied.

  Felicity spun at the sound of the bells from the fire brigade wagon rushing up the road. “At last.”

  At the onset of the fire, Felicity had asked a servant to summon the brigade in Guildford, a village located nine miles away. In sunlight and good weather, the distance could be covered in one hour with steady horses. Since it was near eleven at night, the brigade had needed to travel slower but had managed exceptional time to the manor. When the wagon pulled up, the firefighters bolted off the engine and toward the blaze.

  Felicity noticed the steam-powered pump on the wagon. “Very progressive,” she pronounced, and would have liked a closer inspection of the machine, but this was not the time.

  Soon after the fire brigade arrived, the roof of the east wing collapsed with a whoosh and another spray of ashes. At midnight, the brigade commander ruled the fire out but the structure lost. While the men gathered hoses and ladders, Felicity asked the cook to prepare eggs, bacon, and bread to serve them in the large dining room. She requested Horace Wilkins to open several bottles of French wine from the cellar. He was the only person with the key. At his elevated eyebrows, Felicity remarked how bravery should always be rewarded. The brigade men ate and toasted her with a “Hip, hip, hooray.”

  “No, gentlemen. You deserved that toast for your work tonight.” She raised her glass to them. She admired their courage.

  The house finally settled at almost two in the morning. In her chamber on the second floor, Felicity relished the breeze from the open window. An occasional stink of torched and wet lumber from the other side of the house drifted through. Although fatigued, she could not sleep. There had been too much excitement. Experiments. Fire. A bomb.

  How could anyone close their eyes after that?

  Putting on slippers and a white dressing gown, Felicity lit a candle to guide her way along the blackness of the hallway. She had suggested that her father install electricity in the house, but he abhorred the thought of artificial light.

  As a child, she had been just as restless. Often sneaking out of the nursery, she had roamed the many halls and rooms of the manor, searching for the ghost of her mother. She imagined finding the ghost sitting in a chair in the library. The apparition would open her translucent arms when she saw Felicity and enfold her in them. Felicity had lived for such an encounter.

  Descending the wide front staircase, Felicity supposed she must presently resemble a spirit roaming the house. Perhaps the ghost of her mother. Solitary. Forever young. Forever waiting to be discovered by her child.

  Her grandfather Anthony Carrol had built Carrol Manor. Adept at making money, he had proved less so at architecture. Gothic, medieval, and Palladian styles clashed throughout the home. To Felicity, the result was gauche rather than grandiose. No matter the design, the house was never so large and oppressive as at that time of night. She might as well have been carrying all the Italian marble fireplaces and stone columns square on her shoulders. Once she was old enough, she had come to understand that the burden had been a constant all her life. The weighty price of privilege and having more than enough money.

  She tried to make sure she didn’t pay the price with her soul. The only way she had found to resist the pressure of all that stone and marble was through knowledge. Through education, she would become more than a young lady of society. In a few hours, she would have to resist again. Felicity’s father rarely asked her to do anything, but he had launched a campaign to put her in the way of bachelors of means ever since she had returned from her studies at the University of London. Through Helen, her father had commanded Felicity’s attendance at the Wheaton ball. Felicity would rather remain home, reading and pondering and redoing her voltaic pile experiment. But she would be a good daughter and follow her father’s dictate. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help hating herself for it.

  On the main floor of the manor, servants had nailed boards across the doors leading to the burned-out east wing. She went outside through the wide front doors. In the moonlight, the bones of the burnt wood took on the form of a prehistoric creature. Tendrils of smoke rose as if the earth still cooled. Horace Wilkins had been correct about the losses. Several of her father’s beloved Russian paintings had burned, as well as two tapestries once belonging to the Borgias. Anyway, the artwork was insured, so her father would make out financially, as was his talent.

  Although artwork covered their house, Samuel Carrol had constructed the east wing to display his favorite treasures. As a child, Felicity had often followed him as he observed each item in his personal art gallery. Pretending it a game, she had kept out of sight by ducking behind chairs and curtains. Although her father must have memorized every stroke and stitch, he had smiled with admiration and contentment at his belongings. But his smile dwindled when he spotted her. After that, she had stopped following him.

  Wrapping the dressing gown tighter around her, Felicity headed back inside. The destruction of the Russian paintings and Borgia tapestries was the best birthday gift she had ever received.

  CHAPTER 2

  A fire and a ball within forty-right hours. Felicity believed she must have set some sort of record in Great Britain. If not, she certainly should have.

  As the orchestra played, gowns whirled around her. Gowns of lace, silk, satin, muslin, and tarlatan twirled like bright umbrellas across the parquet dance floor of Wheaton House. Bodices were pulled tight as torture devices from the Spanish Inquisition, and Felicity wondered how the women could breathe, much less move. While conservative fashion of the day demanded concealment of a female’s body, the décolletages on display hinted of outrage.

  The men, meanwhile, were stiff in black dress coats and white shirts and vests that directly contrasted the ruffles and flounce of their partners. In regimental colors of red and black, military officers maintained rigidity as if a ball were merely another maneuver. As they danced, males held onto the tiny waists of females. Their white kid gloves intertwined. The faces of the young women opened like flowers, their curls springing as they moved. On their feet were satin slippers that could not be heard above the rustle of swishing fabric.

  Couples swayed to music customarily played at such events. Waltzes, slow polkas, quadrilles. The air thickened with ladies’ scents and burning candles everywhere, which added to the stifling atmosphere. Servants dressed in spiffy black outfits carried silver trays of punch, wine, and biscuits to and from refreshment tables.

  At these events, upper-class young ladies met upper-class young men in the hopes of matrimony and producing upper-class children. At the mere thought of it all, Felicity almost choked on her punch. She estimated there were two hundred people who actually wanted to be there, unlike her.

  The ball was taking place in the opulent home of Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay Wheaton, an estate or three removed from the larger Carrol Manor. The Wheatons we
re a pale and punctual bunch, the only noticeable traits Felicity could discern about them. Mother, father, son, and daughter also shared red hair and expressions never straying far from reserve.

  “Your father has high hopes for Lindsay Wheaton Junior’s pursuit of you,” Helen had told Felicity when they arrived at the ball. “He says you would be a lucky woman to have such a young man.”

  That was the way Felicity learned about her father’s intentions—through Helen. Felicity and Helen were mistress and servant in name only. Helen had raised Felicity after her mother died. Cared for her through sickness, read her bedtime stories, kissed her good-night, and talked with her about thousands of things important only to a child. Helen used to play the inventive games Felicity made up, such as knight and damsel in distress. Felicity always played the knight, saving Helen, who wailed and cried for help with such enthusiasm that Felicity hugged her in appreciation when the game ended. Helen’s attention went well beyond salary or the assigned duties of nanny or personal maid.

  Felicity could not conceive of a life without her friend. Her surrogate mother, whose love and support had seen Felicity through the death of her mother and brother and the neglect of her father. Such was Helen’s love that Felicity had the feeling the older woman would have stayed with her, wage or not.

  At the ball, Helen sat with a collection of other chaperones and governesses on one side of the ballroom. Felicity looked over at her friend in the gallery of black silk dresses, which they all wore. The older woman pushed her lips up into a smile to encourage Felicity to do the same. Felicity did so, if only to please Helen.

  With the forced smile, Felicity turned to watch the crowd. She observed, as she always did at similar activities. She was an outsider of her own making, and she would have it no other way. Besides, the view from the periphery proved infinitely better than from the center. She listened in on conversations among the young women. Too bad they consisted mostly of gossip and how to win the man of their dreams. The girls all seemed to share the dream of the same prince who showed up in every Grimm fairy tale. The shining knight who would carry them away, and they didn’t appear to care where he took them.