BTW, my prediction: Phase Seven isn’t going to be the perfectly-executed piece of hydraulic theatre everyone thinks it’ll be. Wam, bam, thank you, dam! Because nothing ever goes the way it’s planned. And things WILL get out. Just you wait, ‘Enry ‘Iggins, just you wait! All those horribly messy facts and details of how this modern day Atlantis met its end. Things that historians will be writing about for decades. The carnage will not stay hidden within that drowned valley. Bodies will someday be exhumed from that erstwhile iron pit, both those newly dead and all of those corpses of yore that will have to be dug up and transferred from the cemetery. Just how DOES one kill off 11,000 people and keep the whole thing safely beneath one’s hat?
And I will walk away with my twenty-year pin and my desk tchotchkes and wonder how a project with such relatively innocent beginnings became in the end so spectacularly wicked.
The Flatiron is a beautiful building in its own slendiforously funky way. But sometimes just looking at it makes me throw up a little in my mouth.
Love to Nichole and Layne and Valerie G.
PS: If your I.T. boyfriend McSprinkle doesn’t nuke all traces of this transmission, I will personally come looking for you and kill you.
Chapter the Forty-first. Monday, July 7, 2003
abber wept. He could not help himself. In less than an hour he would be turning his steps permanently from Dabber Hall, his lifelong home, inherited from his ironmaster father. He would be letting go of a lifelong collection of fine furniture and exquisitely fashioned art objets and everything that his income and his class had bestowed upon him. Sir Dabber could have had much more, had he made friends with other members of the gentry, had he served in the Petit-Parliament, had he not made the choice to live his life of wealth outside the usual margins and thereby unwittingly inoculate himself against the sins of his compeers. In exchange for his independence, Sir Seth Dabber had, most importantly, been kept uninformed of the details of the Great Lie. His novelty as a rich and powerful man who had nary a single rich and powerful friend now served him and served those of us who had used his good offices for our own benefit. But with his departure those days would come to an abrupt end.
For Sir Dabber was now poised to steal away with his newly reconciled son and the woman who stood a very good chance of becoming his daughter-in-law. And such a thing was far too great for the man to absorb in so short a span of time. So Sir Dabber wept. As he and his valet Fips performed the chore of selecting an article or two of clothing that Dabber could stuff into a knapsack, the large man put his handkerchief to his cheeks to wipe away the silent tears he shed without recess over all that he was leaving behind and for every uncertainty that the future now held for him. For his part, Fips’ own eyes were anything but dry, nor could Arabella, Dabber’s housemaid, withhold a vocalised expression of her own grief. Standing in the doorway to Dabber’s bedchamber, she sniffed and snorted and blew her nose and wondered aloud in a bit of a word-wail what was to become of her.
“I’ve left you with plenty of money, my dear,” snuffled Sir Dabber in return. “Upon my soul, dear girl, I’ve deeded to you and Fips the whole blooming house! No master would ever be so generous as I.”
“Begging your pardon, Sir Dabber, that isn’t what saddens her,” corrected Fips. “It is the simple dismal fact that you are leaving.”
“But leave I must. For I shan’t be apart from my son, and he has no desire to part with his beloved. It is as simple a story as any you would read in English or in French. Now take this slip of paper, Fips. It’s the combination to my safe in the library downstairs. Go and take out all of the silver therein — I have a little store of Outland pieces from my dealings with those who trade with the Beyonders. Silver is of great value in the Outland and will help Bevan and Miss Wolf and me to better make our way to safety there. Keep a coin or two for yourself and for Arabella, to provide for that day in which you may also find yourself abroad. And look sharp, man! We haven’t much time.”
Downstairs in Dabber’s library, Bevan and I paced. Miss Wolf sat upon a sofa and watched the face of the grandfather clock that had been one of Dabber’s most prized possessions. (It was one of the finest made in the Dell; its several companions had drawn top trades from the Outland brokers.)
Muntle had come, as well, from his new lodgings in the Fagins’ apprentice quarters, having watched Dabber Hall from the shadows, waiting for our return to hear the upshot of the meeting of the Bedlam Board. With one hand my good friend poured himself a glass of stiff brandy-neat. The other hand held within it the exchange of memoranda between the two Tiadaghton Project employees, which he had twice read since his arrival, and upon which he was now seeking detailed exegesis.
Turning to Ruth Wolf, Muntle enquired, “What exactly does this mean?”
“I call your attention, Sheriff, to the words ‘hydraulic theatre.’”
“There is another telling phrase in the missive,” I struck in.“This ‘wam, bam, thank you dam.’”
“A flood,” said Ruth Wolf with a nod. “Brought about by dynamiting the nearest dam upriver: the Tiadaghton Dam. This would be my guess.”
“Good God,” said Muntle.
“It should not be too difficult a thing to collapse the dam by such means, to place hidden charges there. And consider that the force of the water upon the Tewkesbury Cut would be of sufficient strength to rip away large chunks of the porous rock that delineates that narrow opening. The water would have free rein to wreak its havoc upon this valley.” It was apparent that Ruth Wolf had studied the topography of our region, just as she had thoroughly informed herself about everything else about our valley home that would serve her in the course of taking up residence with us.
“Then I must assume,” I said, “that our own dam to the south — the Belgrave — which prevents the Thames from exiting the Dell in any way other than through its subterranean discharge channel beneath Southern Coal Ridge — I assume that they are expecting that it should hold and thus allow for a rapid collection of floodwater within the valley basin.”
“Thereby drowning all of Dingley Dell,” said Muntle gloomily.
“But what of those who cling to rooftops and the like?” asked Bevan.
“The force of the water will no doubt collapse all but the sturdiest of our buildings,” said I. “And those structures that remain intact will be left fully underwater. As for those lucky few who have somehow purchased a few extra moments of survival upon the floating debris, there will, in all eventuality, be armed Outlanders standing at the ready to come in when the waters recede and pick off each of them one by one. It is no different from their obvious intent to slay all of those who are lucky enough to make their way to the woods or halfway up the ridges as the floodwaters race in. We will be fish-in-a-barrel as the saying goes. Do I have down the last chapter of our story as you would envision it, Miss Wolf?”
Ruth Wolf thought for a moment and nodded. “That would be the cleanest way to effect it. Then once the floodwaters have fully subsided, all of the dead bodies will be deposited into the iron pit, just as Miss Martin had said, and sealed for the end of time. Despite her predictions to the contrary, there stands the distinct possibility of complete and total success in this murderous venture.”
“Then we should act without delay,” said Muntle, bounding over to Ruth Wolf and myself to take first my hand and then Miss Wolf ’s in his usual exuberant, demonstrative manner, “to get as many of us out and away from this doomed valley as we are able before the floodwaters are unleashed.”