Free Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond by Jayne Barnard Page A

but cleaners found him still abed. He woke up ranting about his trunk of papers being gone. Day crew had no idea what he meant, just hurried him ashore with promises it had been offloaded with the rest of the luggage. We went straight on to Paris and never heard another word from him.”
    “Ah. And did Professor Plumb disembark in London too?”
    “That he did. When Obie said you was interested, I asked around. Plumb were one o’ the first off the ship. Nobody remembers how much luggage he had. Not after a whole winter’s weekly crossings.”
    “Thank you, Hiram.” Maddie smiled, and then, at a faint sound from the small stateroom’s door, asked how to get her charges transferred to a private airship the following afternoon. Obie said finding a Steamlord yacht at the terminal would be peaches and cream.
    “Just you ready them and their luggage when you see Venice off the port bow, likely around teatime, and I’ll pop by with porters as soon as we hook onto the terminal. Bring you any news at the same time.”
    “Thank you, Obie.” After checking for long-nosed matrons, she saw the two young men out into the corridor and went to bed, worrying how to proceed in Venice if no message came from Madame to help direct her actions.
    On the third morning since Cairo, the airship cruised low along the Dalmatian coast, over unfolding views of rocky crags, green fields, and stony medieval towns with orange tiled roofs. It was not yet teatime when Venice rose out of the sea in the distance, its islands verdant and its buildings antique cream in the misty sunlight.
    Obie arrived with the porters, and said in quick, quiet tones, “The imposter’s long gone. On arrival in February, she stayed a week at the Lido Hotel under your name, vanished for a month, and then departed on a White Sky liner as you again.”
    A small mercy: she had not spent all of Carnivale carousing as a Main-Bearing. “Going where?”
    “Paris-London, same as us. Only thing is, she never got off in either place. Not under any name Madame’s minions could discover.”
    “She switched names on me again? How will I ever find her now?” And what was to stop the woman switching back to Maddie’s name whenever convenient?
    “Madame says if you will come straight up to London, she may have more answers by the time you arrive there.”
    “London! Oh, Obie, that’s a terrific risk.”
    “What else can you do? Where else would you go?”
    Clarice, in the parlour doorway, exclaimed. “You’re going? Oh, please, not yet, Miss Hatter. You must turn us over to Lucy in person.”
    “Yes, of course I will take you to your cousin,” Maddie assured her. She’d long ago worked out that Lucy was no threat to her identity. An Aquatiempe, possibly a sister of the groom, had attended pre-Season dance classes at the same academy as Maddie in the same year, but she would be far away in London. No Steamlord’s daughter would interrupt her all-important dress-fittings to supervise the return of two little cousins by marriage. “I was merely asking whether there would be an affordable stateroom to London, for this one is too large for me alone.”
    “You’re going on to London at once?” Clarice clapped her hands. “Come with us. The yacht has bags of staterooms. And surely you could write a column about our Court dresses?” Maddie’s eyes met Obie’s. He shrugged. She did too. As a way to get to London, it had the merits of being both fast and free.
    “Yes, I will come, if your cousin permits.” She swept up her wide hat, with TD already nestled amongst the metallic ribbons, and pinned it into place.
    In a very short time, Maddie, Clarice, and Nancy were walking down the gangplank to the Venetian aerodrome. The greeny-gray waters of the Grand Canal murmured four floors below, but the gangplank was wide and the side-rails sturdy oak. Their trunks, bags, and hatboxes followed in a veritable parade of porters. Mist kissed their cheeks, too delicate to be called