Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (6 page)

"Wainwright." Captain Nussbaum conveyed a military demeanour that matched his uniform.

While the
Rio Grande
was a civilian vessel, the crew's uniform was based loosely on that of the American Navy, perhaps a little more ornate and a little less saturated. If the Captain was a retired German officer, they were a far cry from what he would have worn during his term of service.

He refrained from further comment, standing near the hatch as a trio of airmen brought in a small folding table and a pair of chairs, which they set up in front of me so that the seats were across from my bench. When they'd left, shutting the hatch behind them, Nussbaum and his officer sat.

"You have already met Herr Dewit?" Nussbaum asked.

Dewit, First Mate by his insignia, scowled at me. As the man had walked in on me amidst a blood-soaked murder scene I cannot entirely fault him, though I must admit to some annoyance at the entire business.

"Let's cut to the quick, Wainwright," First Officer Dewit said. "Why did you murder the Second Engineer?"

"He was an engineer?" I asked. "Pity."

Captain Nussbaum swung across the table, striking me with the edge of his hand. He was a good deal stronger than his thin frame indicated, and my head rocked back with the force of the blow.

"Herr Henderson was a good man, Wainwright." Nussbaum wiped blood from his hand with his handkerchief. "You will speak of him with respect. Why did you murder my engineer?"

"I intend no disrespect. I simply meant that a vessel of this size needs as many engineers as it can carry." I put a manacled hand to my lip, and it came away bloodied. It occurred to me that protesting my innocence was the correct course of action in this social situation. "I didn't kill him. I didn't kill anyone."

"Liar. I saw you standing over him with my own eyes." The First Mate continued his glower.

"I ran across the man not two minutes before you arrived. I was simply checking to see if he could be--" repaired "--helped."

"Helped? The top of his skull was pulped and his vital fluids splashed across the engine room!"

"I'm not a doctor, Mr. Dewit."

The Mate looked like he was going to strike me as well, but the Captain held him off with a gesture. "You say you stumbled in upon him already killed. What were you doing in the Engine Room to begin with?"

"I heard a whine."

"A whine?" the Captain asked. "You heard him dying from the hall?"

"Impossible," the First Mate said. "Wait until you see the body, Captain – Henderson had to have died instantly, and–"

"No, not him," I said. "The engines. Their pitch had changed. It woke me up, and I went looking for an engineer to see if I could take a look at them."

"I didn't notice any difference when I found you."

"It wasn't that vast a change. A mere shift in hertz."

"I didn't notice any shift."

I lay the side of my face against the smooth metal of the bulkhead. "It's still off. Still different. I think the pitch may be increasing, but lacking a device to measure the oscillations' amplitude I cannot be certain."

Captain Nussbaum and his officer stared at me.

A knock at the door distracted them, and First Mate Dewit rose to answer it.

"Mr. Herbert." He greeted the new arrival.

American industrialist Frank Herbert had commissioned that the
Rio Grande
be built as a testament to American ingenuity and excess. It was, by far, the largest airship ever designed and a marvel of modern engineering. The sheer audacity of the thing, the pompous hubris of building a ridiculously large airship to serve as a luxury hotel for the richest men in the world, was the sort of vanity that appealed to me. Herbert had built the
Rio Grande
for no reason greater than that he could.

Herbert himself was no less ostentatious than his creation. He was big in all things – loud, fat, and stinking of cigars far cheaper than those you would associate with a man of such means. His waistcoat was stained with the evidence of the day's meals and exertions.

To my mild surprise my partner Bartleby followed him into the detention cell.

"Who's this?" the First Mate asked.

"This fellow is Mr. Bartleby," Mr. Herbert said.

With the five of us in the brig things had grown crowded, and I found myself pushed back towards the corner. Bartleby gave me a confident nod, and I relaxed a little.

"You may recognise his name from that affair with the clockwork assassin caught before Queen Victoria's jubilee last month."

"You're Alton Bartleby?" Dewit said with a start. Slowly, he turned to glare back at me. "So you are–"

Bartleby gestured towards me with a flourish. "My assistant and partner, James Wainwright."

"I'm sorry, Herr Wainwright. I had no idea," grumbled the Captain.

"He doesn't look the part of a famous detective, does he?" Bartleby shook his head, gesturing towards my sack coat and trousers, both in the dull earth tones I preferred. "Nothing but rumpled clothing and engine grease. I've been telling you, James, clothes make the man."

"An honest mistake on the crew's part, I'm sure." I raised my manacled hands. "If you would be so kind?"

The Captain hesitated. "The fact remains, gentlemen, that one of my engineers has been brutally murdered, and your Mr. Wainwright was discovered standing over the body."

"I told you why I was there."

"See?" Bartleby nodded. "He's got a good reason, whatever it is."

"The engine sounded a bit off."

"So there you have it." Bartleby sounded satisfied. "My partner, the R.G.A.E. accredited engineer, noted a mechanical problem and set about fixing it. I trust there's no reason to further involve the Guild?"

"Should I be notifying my Guild representative?" I asked, picking up on his lead.

"Oh no. No, that shouldn't be necessary," said Mr. Herbert. Many of his investments and enterprises were technological – conflict with the Royal Guild of Artificers and Engineers would ruin him.

The Captain's face reddened. "Herr Herbert, I strongly suggest–"

"The fact of the matter, Captain," said Bartleby, "is that if, as we say, James is innocent, then you still have a murderer loose on your ship. By the time we land and James is vindicated by the authorities then this killer will have gotten away with his terrible deed."

"What are you suggesting?"

"Let us investigate this matter for you and discover the true culprit."

"And if Herr Wainwright is the killer?" the Captain said. "I would not care to have a suspected murderer running free and planting false evidence to clear himself."

"Now hold on one moment, Captain." A calculating and predatory look had come over Mr. Herbert's face. "Yes. Having the consulting detectives who brought down the London Spider find the murderer would turn this disaster into a sensational coup. Perhaps if someone were to keep an eye on their activities? Captain?"

"If you insist, Herr Herbert, I believe that one of your guests has employed a Pinkerton agent as part of his security detail–"

"You mean Ives? No. Out of the question." Herbert shook his head. "Ives is one of my chief rivals. If he were to learn that the
Rio Grande's
maiden voyage was marred by murder most foul, I have no doubt that he would find some way to leverage that against me. I'll not have one of his men investigating it!"

"Herr Herbert, our priority should be--"

"If Ives finds out about this awful business, I want it to be through the same channels that everyone else does, on my own time table. The channels that I control."

The Captain let out a long belaboured sigh and set about unlocking my manacles. "Very well. Herr Dewit, you will accompany Herr Bartleby and Herr Wainwright and observe their investigations. Do not hesitate to come to me should you suspect them of tampering with evidence."

"And for God's sake keep it quiet," Herbert wiped at the sheen on his face with a greasy handkerchief. "The last thing we need is to set the passengers off into a panic."

A sour expression on his face, Mr. Dewit snapped off a smart salute, and the three of us departed.

***

The
Rio Grande's
engineering section was expansive, filled with the massive turbines and steam engines necessary to move a ship the size of a luxury hotel. At the fore of the section was the engineering control room where I'd first laid my eyes on the remains of Second Engineer Henderson. A crewman accosted Dewit as we returned.

"Can we get this cleaned up?" Chief Engineer Miller asked. "I don't mean to be insensitive, but I've got work to be done. This ship doesn't run itself."

The Chief Engineer was tall, gangly, and sour-faced. He didn't move or act like an engineer – he had about him the demeanour of a bureaucrat, one who's function in keeping the airship running was that of a cog, delegating the actual work to his subordinates.

"Soon," Bartleby promised. "Give me a few minutes to examine the crime scene, and I'll let you get back to your work."

The body was where we'd left it – crumpled next to an instrument panel in a congealed pool of blood. A tremendous force had pulped the top of the man's skull down to his upper jaw, powerfully enough to splatter brain matter and blood all across the walls and floor.

"Look here, James." Bartleby squatted next to the body, peering up at the fluids splashed across the bulkhead nearby. "Look at this spray. Whatever impact killed this man came from his front, like a powerful thrust, not from above like a crushing blow."

"And?"

"And that limits what the murder weapon may have been. There's no burnt flesh around his wound, either – no chemical burns. It wasn't a firearm or anything galvanic."

"There's no firearms allowed aboard the ship," Dewit said. "It's too dangerous – an unlucky discharge might puncture the hull and depressurise the cabin, or even hit the gasbag and ignite its hydrogen."

"That sounds unfortunate."

"Yes. So firearms are out of the question."

"It isn't just firearms. Any tools that can penetrate the hull are kept locked away," Chief Miller said. "And used only under very controlled circumstances."

"What sort of tools? Anything that might do this to a man if misused?"

"A tool that expels a great deal of lateral force," I said. "Silently enough that nobody heard it being used."

"What about a pneumatic rivet gun?" the Chief said. "We've got one in the storage locker."

Bartleby stood and gazed down at the body for a moment before giving me a studied look. "He's about your height and girth, James. Would you come and stand here, at his feet? Thank you." He stepped back, sighted an imaginary rifle towards me, then looked past me at the wall.

"Yes, yes, I think that–" Light on his feet, he practically waltzed over to the equipment locker to examine the blood dried over its lattice grating. "Chief Miller, can you open this?"

When he'd unlocked it, Bartleby opened the locker with a flourish. He examined the tools within for a moment before producing the a long cylinder ending in a tapered pipe, a pistol grip at its back end. The pneumatic rivet gun.

"Gentlemen: Your murder weapon."

"How can you be certain?" the First Mate asked.

Bartleby tossed the tool towards him, and Dewit fumbled to catch it.

"It's clean." Bartleby grinned and walked towards the door to the engine room. "Unlike the other tools in the cabinet, there's no blood spattered through the grillwork onto it. It wasn't in the cabinet when poor Henderson was killed – our killer must have replaced it after."

"Killed by a pneumatic rivet gun!" The Chief shook his head. "And that exonerates Mr. Wainwright – it had to have been used a crewman with keys to the cabinet."

"Well done, Bartleby," I knew my old friend wouldn't let me down. He can be a bit of a dandy at times, but he comes through when the pressure's on.

"Not necessarily."

"Bartleby?"

"I'm sorry, James, as much as I'd love to clear your name, if we act on the assumption that the killer needed a key to access the tools we cut out a large number of suspects. The truth is–"

"Bartleby!"

"The truth is that the killer could have very well simply picked the lock, or through negligence it might have been left unlocked, or the killer might have acquired a duplicate key. Maybe the rivet gun had been left out, and he simply locked it away when he'd finished with the killing."

"So we haven't learned anything new," Dewit said.

"We know how Henderson was killed. And given the opportunistic nature of the murder weapon, it's likely not premeditated. A crime of passion, perhaps – tempers run hot on a closed vessel."

"So what is our next course of action?" I asked.

"James, stay here with the Chief and see what you can discover while I search Engineer Henderson's quarters."

Dewit started after Bartleby for a moment before stopping to glance back at me. "Chief! Keep an eye on this one."