Free Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond by Jayne Barnard

to fly at next month’s meeting of the Oxford-Cambridge Guild.
     
    Maddie raised her eyes from the brass monkey’s vest to the wide sky outside. Professor Jones was an expert on the Eye of Africa mask, and claimed his research had been stolen on his trans-oceanic passage. Could Professor Plumb have absconded with Jones’ research, and provided it to Baron Bodmin? Did either of the academic gentlemen have cause to engineer the death of the baron? Once the matter of the imposter was settled, Maddie would make her way closer to England and poke her nose more deeply into both professors’ movements. There was more to this Bodmin death to be explored, and the byline might be within her grasp after all.
    That night, after an hour spent gazing upon the ancient wonder that was the ruined Parthenon, its crumbled columns and tumbled stones ghostly white in the clear moonlight, she shepherded the girls into their beds.
    “Tomorrow we will come to Venice, after which you will be very busy getting ready for your Court presentations. Tonight, you must rest. I will speak to the crew this evening, to ensure you and your luggage are transferred directly to your cousin’s air-yacht with all possible dispatch.” That last would cover the situation if either girl woke later and heard male voices in the parlour.
    As the hour grew late, she began to fear some wakeful matron would spot two male crew members slipping at midnight into the stateroom of a young, attractive female passenger. That would ruin the reputation of this identity completely, and she would have to start afresh in some other arena. She was about to give up and prepare for bed herself when a bird warbled from the balcony. TD, bored with his day’s confinement to the wardrobe, answered it. There, at the balcony doorway, stood Obie, his hand raised to tap.
    “What on earth are you doing out there?” Even as she asked, she knew the answer. Obie, as a midshipman on that experimental Navy craft where they’d first met, had often taken unconventional routes around the outside of the airship. He had no fear of the altitude, and rather too great a belief in his own ability to move about the envelope’s netting in perfect safety. Behind him stood another young man in crew whites, looking rather like a long-legged crane and quite sanguine about his external scramble along the great ship’s envelope. Clearly this fellow was a kindred spirit to the adventurous Obie.
    Obie introduced his shipmate. “Miss Maddie Hatter, meet Hiram Phillips, great-grandson of the captain of the first settlement ship to reach Australia. He can tell you all about those professors.” Hiram Phillips bowed slightly, a courtesy due to any First Class passenger, even Maddie Hatter, lady reporter, whose status on solid ground was barely higher than that of an airship steward. She tipped her head to him, whipped out her pink sequined notebook, and invited both men to sit.
    “Mr. Phillips, please tell me: what do you remember of professors Windsor Jones and Polonius Plumb on their crossing last fall? Did they spend a lot of time together? Did they argue much? Do you remember anything they discussed? Did Professor Jones misplace any research materials?”
    Hiram stared at her. “Now how did you know about that, Miss? The crew made no report.”
    “So his research did go missing?”
    “Yeah, s’right. Last night o’ the crossing it was, sky calm as a millpond. The professors were elbow-bending a-plenty. Professor Jones has to be drunk to fly at all, but this was a big ’un. Started in the bar and went on to Jones’ stateroom in Second Class. They were in there for hours, yarning and looking at papers and charts, ringing for more brandy. Last time I went by, maybe four in the morning, door was open and Mr. Jones was snoring with his head on a bare desk. I shoved him onto his berth, stripped off his boots, and shut his door on the way out.
    “Next morning, they thought he was gone ashore with the rest