Not the last flight of the Arabella.
The old steam driven Airship Arabella have crossed the night skies of Bristol for more than 20 years and was part of the landscape, long familiar and ignored by all who saw her tonight, until they remembered that she had crashed not a week ago, lost with all her crew dead in the wreckage.
Heads turned skyward as the familiar beat of the old steam engine drifted overhead. The light from the half moon mixed with gas street lights to cast a faint glow on the much patched airship, its outer envelope a quilt of old patches and repairs.
Her cabin and Gondola stained red with ancient rust and just the hint of long forgotten paint.
At her forward window the shadow of her captain could be seen, his high peeked cap and narrow shoulders making him instantly recognisable even in the night.
She was not showing a light, even her port and starboard lamps were out.
Silent apart from the steady thrum of her steam engine she drifted gently along.
As she flew overhead at a fast walking pace arguments began in the streets below her. She had crashed, no she was just damaged. I heard she had burned to ash. No it was just minor damage.
Then the truth spoke. There is always someone who says it’s true, because they knew it to be true, they had seen it or a good friend of a relative had seen it but it was true. The Arabella had been destroyed in a crash.
Some in the crowd began to follow her as she drifted past, a few others muttered amongst themselves about this and that until that word was spoken.
A few heard it and repeated it; others laughed and mocked then fell silent as they thought about it.
Then a few spoke the word more loudly and suddenly everyone was calling it and a mob was running to catch up with the Airship.
A loud shouting mob that attracted the attention of one young constable who was on his first week of solo night patrols and really didn’t want to deal with a riot. Of course once he heard the word a riot was the last thing he was worried about.
~
Obadiah Peck had been a sergeant in Her Most Britannic Majesties Bristol Constabulary for twelve years and a common copper for eight before that. He had seen everything, murder, kidnapping, mugging, African cultists, smugglers, thieves and even that alleged outbreak of alleged huge rats in the sewers by the old docks.
But when young constable Lankam burst through the door to the sergeant’s office shouting about a ghost Peck almost dropped his tea in surprise.
Giving the youngster his second best glare Peck told him to calm down and start from the beginning.
Ghost or not the prospect of a mob running riot was something to be avoided so Peck grabbed his truncheon and helmet and headed for the door, pausing just before he left to pick up his other truncheon, the lucky one, and slide it into the pocket of his trousers.
On his way out of the station he ordered the few constables wasting time in the canteen to follow him and following Constable Lankam they jogged across the dark streets towards the shouting and the mob.
Just before they reached the mob the Arabella passed overhead and some sense of wrongness had Sergeant Peck reaching for his lucky truncheon before he had time to even think about it. He set off in pursuit and the other constables followed him.
Led by Sergeant Peck, the handful of constables and the ever growing crowd ran after the Arabella as she drifted overhead, word was spreading rapidly through the area and more and more people came out to watch the ghost or to follow her.
Running along the streets parallel to her flight the crowd followed the officers of the law along the rows of terraced streets.
Sergeant Peck had been watching the Arabella as it flew and that feeling that something was wrong had not faded. He judged the airship flight path and realised it was going to come down at the air field but there was a long row of houses between him and the field that the airship would fly over but he would have to go round.
Slowing and coming lower and lower the Arabella was barely fifty feet in the air and travelling at no more than a walking pace as she passed just above the chimneys of that last street.
The airship passed over the long line of houses and descended towards the air field and loading dock beyond, the crowd were forced to run to the end of the street before they could follow her and they lost sight of her as the buildings blocked their way.
Breaking into a run again the crowd surged up the street with shouts and questions coming from most of the upper windows as locals preparing for bed found a riot in their street.
As they came around the end of the houses and out into the open expanse of the landing field the by now several hundred strong crowd saw, nothing.
The Arabella was gone, the field was dark and empty for as far as the eye could see. The vast airship could not have sped up enough to be out of sight and there was nothing here that could have hidden her. She had vanished into the darkness.
The crowd milled around for a while but then slowly wandered off, to bed or to the closest source of a pint. No one could understand it and now that the Arabella was gone again they suddenly felt foolish talking about ghosts.
Sergeant Peck picked two of the constables that had annoyed him the most recently and left them to keep an eye on the field, in case anything else happened, then led the rest back to station.
He knew nothing about ghosts but something was wrong here. Nothing to do tonight but tomorrow he would do some old fashioned policing, asking questions. If that didn’t work there was always the really old fashioned policing but apart from that outbreak of alleged giant rats the Chief Inspector got very nervous if he did that sort of thing. It might make the papers.
~
Late afternoon the following day Sergeant Peck went straight to the landing field and spent some time talking to the ground crew and various types that were hanging around. Even the old airship spotter by the fence answered a few questions. Then it was time to talk to the management.
Barnaby H Hensworth had run the Airship docks and landing field for donkeys years, as a lad he had been the engine lackey on one of the big ships on a regular run down to Paris and he still had the oil stains on his hands.
He stood up as the Sergeant came in, gesturing to a wooden chair in front of his desk then sat again as the Sergeant asked about the Arabella.
“Well I was here when the Arabella came in; she was bringing in cargo, small load paid for by a special customer, a straight flight down from Manchester, no stops. Just the one item, no passengers so just the three crew on board. That was her last flight, a week ago today”
He paused to take a slow sip of his cooling Tea.
“I was here, at my desk just like today. It was all the shouting that told me something was wrong. I stood at my window and saw the Arabella coming in. It was like she was on fire but there were no flames, just this pale blue glow that seemed to be everywhere around her.
I would swear in church I saw her captain standing there in her front window, no mistaking that thin coat rack of a man with that great tall captains hat he always wore. He just stood there like he always did, barely moving but with that blue glow all around him.
He just stood there as the Arabella came across the field, lower and lower, till her cupola hit the grass and she tilted over. Her balloon hit the ground and burst open. One flash of fire and she was gone.
Just bits of metal and burning canvas.
And the captains hat.”
He paused again, staring out across the landing field as if reliving that night.
“We all saw the crew, that’s what went in the report, crew seen at their stations just before the crash.
We searched, as soon as the fires were out we searched. No bodies, no cargo, just the wreckage and that hat.
That damned old hat.”
He lapsed into silence, lost in his own thoughts.
The sergeant waited for the man to start speaking again then finally stood, thanked him for his time and left the room. Hensworth, still lost in thought, didn’t notice.
On his way out of the office Sergeant Peck paused by the desk of the clerk who was busy moving sheets of paper from time to time.
Some primal instinct alerted the clerk that the short dark police Sergeant was not someone who could be safely ignored and he glanced up to meet Pecks dark and very intimidating eyes.
“Your boss said the Arabella was carrying a special cargo, what was it?”
The clerk considered the work involved and quickly decided this was not someone he could safely annoy so he stood, walked across to the tall stack of files and checked the hand written titles.
Finally he found the correct one and took it down.
“Here it is, Arabella cargo, special hiring. One crate. A Miss Abegale Summerly.”
Sergeant Peck reached over and twisted the sheet of paper so that he could read the address.
“She paid for an entire flight just for the one crate. Funny thing was we never found it in the wreckage but Manchester swear blind the Arabella picked the crate up that morning”
The Sergeant licked the tip of his pencil and wrote the address on the first clean page of his battered old notebook. Expensive area, you had to be rich to live there, old money or new didn’t matter but you needed a lot of it. That bought problems with it; the upper classes didn’t like someone like him sticking his nose in things that didn’t concern him. The word commoner or peasant was never said of course, not out loud anyway.
~
The street was somewhat across town, out of his way and he would not make himself popular asking questions there but he couldn’t let this one go.
Night was drawing in as he approached the address. A lamp lighter was at work turning on the gas lamps and lighting them. In passing the sergeant noticed that the lamp lighter wore a better quality uniform than the sergeants own police issue. That was the way things were in this part of town.
The house was an old one, set back from the street behind wrought iron gates high enough to be defensive not just decorative. The gate was well oiled and opened without a sound.
The walk way was old heavy flagstones, not local, a dark grey stone.
The door was a match to the rest of the house, dark and brooding, set with heavy iron reinforcements and rivets.
Oddly the door bell was a delicate tinkling thing, completely out of place and obviously new.
The bell was still trembling and the last echo of its chime was bouncing off the house walls when the door was opened, the darkly uniformed figure within must have been standing there waiting to have responded that fast.
The figure, dark and swarthy and from the Arab east no doubt, looked at the sergeant. Two dangerous men deciding if it was worth the effort to kill the other.
After several long seconds the Arab dropped his gaze and asked the sergeant what he wanted.
Peck explained he was looking for Miss Summerly with regard to the crash of an airship and its missing cargo.
The Arab thought about it for a few more seconds then grunted.
“Wait here” he said with a heavy accent and turned away from the door without another word, disappearing into the shadows of the long entry hall.
As he did so the Sergeant noted a shape under the dark military cut jacket, a long curved knife by the look of it.
Two minutes later the servant returned and without a word gestured the Sergeant to enter, then pointed to a door barely visible in the shadows.
The door led to a small cluttered study lit by a handful of lamps, the walls filled with look cases, the floor taken up by a quartet of very expensive leather high backed chairs, one of which was occupied by a young lady, no more than twenty but severely dressed in the fashion and style of a much older woman.
She glanced up from the book she was reading, a large thing bound in age darkened leather of some sort.
“That will be all Abdul”.
The servant withdrew and closed the door behind him.
She gestured to one of the empty chairs with a tilt of her head and asked the Sergeant what it was that he wanted.
After pausing while the worth of the chairs and the state of his uniform fought each other along with just how much trouble he could get into by being less than formal under such circumstances the Sergeant sat stiffly on the front edge of the chair and explained about the crash of the Arabella and the missing cargo.
Miss Summerly listened to what he had to say with just the slightest lift of a perfect eyebrow.
“Yes I hired the airship for the trip Sergeant. I wanted my Grandfather home as quickly as possible and the Arabella was the only ship available that day.”
The Sergeant looked up at that. “ Ma’am there were no passengers on the Arabella, just your crate.”
The young woman looked at the sergeant as if he were leaving marks on the leather chair.
“My Grandfather, Sergeant, died in Manchester. I wanted his coffin bought home as quickly as possible which is why I had my people charter the Arabella. There was some mix up though, I was told the Arabella had picked up the coffin but it didn’t arrive till this morning.
The man who delivered it said they had found it at the landing dock first thing this morning and bought it round at once. I don’t understand how they missed the fact that it was delivered, probably some clerk mislaid the paperwork. Still the General is home now which is all that matters.
So unless you wish to look into why it took a week to deliver my Grandfather I don’t think there is any other reason for you to be here.”
The dismissal was clear and the sound of the door opening came no more than a second later as Abdul responded to the tone of voice. He must have been standing outside the door waiting to have responded so fast. Again.
Sergeant peck took his leave of the young woman and the old house and walked the half mile to his station. Another night shift would bring all of the usual problems and the strange sighting of the Arabella would become nothing more than another unexplained event in the Sergeants career.
For a few weeks anyway.
The old steam driven Airship Arabella have crossed the night skies of Bristol for more than 20 years and was part of the landscape, long familiar and ignored by all who saw her tonight, until they remembered that she had crashed not a week ago, lost with all her crew dead in the wreckage.
Heads turned skyward as the familiar beat of the old steam engine drifted overhead. The light from the half moon mixed with gas street lights to cast a faint glow on the much patched airship, its outer envelope a quilt of old patches and repairs.
Her cabin and Gondola stained red with ancient rust and just the hint of long forgotten paint.
At her forward window the shadow of her captain could be seen, his high peeked cap and narrow shoulders making him instantly recognisable even in the night.
She was not showing a light, even her port and starboard lamps were out.
Silent apart from the steady thrum of her steam engine she drifted gently along.
As she flew overhead at a fast walking pace arguments began in the streets below her. She had crashed, no she was just damaged. I heard she had burned to ash. No it was just minor damage.
Then the truth spoke. There is always someone who says it’s true, because they knew it to be true, they had seen it or a good friend of a relative had seen it but it was true. The Arabella had been destroyed in a crash.
Some in the crowd began to follow her as she drifted past, a few others muttered amongst themselves about this and that until that word was spoken.
A few heard it and repeated it; others laughed and mocked then fell silent as they thought about it.
Then a few spoke the word more loudly and suddenly everyone was calling it and a mob was running to catch up with the Airship.
A loud shouting mob that attracted the attention of one young constable who was on his first week of solo night patrols and really didn’t want to deal with a riot. Of course once he heard the word a riot was the last thing he was worried about.
~
Obadiah Peck had been a sergeant in Her Most Britannic Majesties Bristol Constabulary for twelve years and a common copper for eight before that. He had seen everything, murder, kidnapping, mugging, African cultists, smugglers, thieves and even that alleged outbreak of alleged huge rats in the sewers by the old docks.
But when young constable Lankam burst through the door to the sergeant’s office shouting about a ghost Peck almost dropped his tea in surprise.
Giving the youngster his second best glare Peck told him to calm down and start from the beginning.
Ghost or not the prospect of a mob running riot was something to be avoided so Peck grabbed his truncheon and helmet and headed for the door, pausing just before he left to pick up his other truncheon, the lucky one, and slide it into the pocket of his trousers.
On his way out of the station he ordered the few constables wasting time in the canteen to follow him and following Constable Lankam they jogged across the dark streets towards the shouting and the mob.
Just before they reached the mob the Arabella passed overhead and some sense of wrongness had Sergeant Peck reaching for his lucky truncheon before he had time to even think about it. He set off in pursuit and the other constables followed him.
Led by Sergeant Peck, the handful of constables and the ever growing crowd ran after the Arabella as she drifted overhead, word was spreading rapidly through the area and more and more people came out to watch the ghost or to follow her.
Running along the streets parallel to her flight the crowd followed the officers of the law along the rows of terraced streets.
Sergeant Peck had been watching the Arabella as it flew and that feeling that something was wrong had not faded. He judged the airship flight path and realised it was going to come down at the air field but there was a long row of houses between him and the field that the airship would fly over but he would have to go round.
Slowing and coming lower and lower the Arabella was barely fifty feet in the air and travelling at no more than a walking pace as she passed just above the chimneys of that last street.
The airship passed over the long line of houses and descended towards the air field and loading dock beyond, the crowd were forced to run to the end of the street before they could follow her and they lost sight of her as the buildings blocked their way.
Breaking into a run again the crowd surged up the street with shouts and questions coming from most of the upper windows as locals preparing for bed found a riot in their street.
As they came around the end of the houses and out into the open expanse of the landing field the by now several hundred strong crowd saw, nothing.
The Arabella was gone, the field was dark and empty for as far as the eye could see. The vast airship could not have sped up enough to be out of sight and there was nothing here that could have hidden her. She had vanished into the darkness.
The crowd milled around for a while but then slowly wandered off, to bed or to the closest source of a pint. No one could understand it and now that the Arabella was gone again they suddenly felt foolish talking about ghosts.
Sergeant Peck picked two of the constables that had annoyed him the most recently and left them to keep an eye on the field, in case anything else happened, then led the rest back to station.
He knew nothing about ghosts but something was wrong here. Nothing to do tonight but tomorrow he would do some old fashioned policing, asking questions. If that didn’t work there was always the really old fashioned policing but apart from that outbreak of alleged giant rats the Chief Inspector got very nervous if he did that sort of thing. It might make the papers.
~
Late afternoon the following day Sergeant Peck went straight to the landing field and spent some time talking to the ground crew and various types that were hanging around. Even the old airship spotter by the fence answered a few questions. Then it was time to talk to the management.
Barnaby H Hensworth had run the Airship docks and landing field for donkeys years, as a lad he had been the engine lackey on one of the big ships on a regular run down to Paris and he still had the oil stains on his hands.
He stood up as the Sergeant came in, gesturing to a wooden chair in front of his desk then sat again as the Sergeant asked about the Arabella.
“Well I was here when the Arabella came in; she was bringing in cargo, small load paid for by a special customer, a straight flight down from Manchester, no stops. Just the one item, no passengers so just the three crew on board. That was her last flight, a week ago today”
He paused to take a slow sip of his cooling Tea.
“I was here, at my desk just like today. It was all the shouting that told me something was wrong. I stood at my window and saw the Arabella coming in. It was like she was on fire but there were no flames, just this pale blue glow that seemed to be everywhere around her.
I would swear in church I saw her captain standing there in her front window, no mistaking that thin coat rack of a man with that great tall captains hat he always wore. He just stood there like he always did, barely moving but with that blue glow all around him.
He just stood there as the Arabella came across the field, lower and lower, till her cupola hit the grass and she tilted over. Her balloon hit the ground and burst open. One flash of fire and she was gone.
Just bits of metal and burning canvas.
And the captains hat.”
He paused again, staring out across the landing field as if reliving that night.
“We all saw the crew, that’s what went in the report, crew seen at their stations just before the crash.
We searched, as soon as the fires were out we searched. No bodies, no cargo, just the wreckage and that hat.
That damned old hat.”
He lapsed into silence, lost in his own thoughts.
The sergeant waited for the man to start speaking again then finally stood, thanked him for his time and left the room. Hensworth, still lost in thought, didn’t notice.
On his way out of the office Sergeant Peck paused by the desk of the clerk who was busy moving sheets of paper from time to time.
Some primal instinct alerted the clerk that the short dark police Sergeant was not someone who could be safely ignored and he glanced up to meet Pecks dark and very intimidating eyes.
“Your boss said the Arabella was carrying a special cargo, what was it?”
The clerk considered the work involved and quickly decided this was not someone he could safely annoy so he stood, walked across to the tall stack of files and checked the hand written titles.
Finally he found the correct one and took it down.
“Here it is, Arabella cargo, special hiring. One crate. A Miss Abegale Summerly.”
Sergeant Peck reached over and twisted the sheet of paper so that he could read the address.
“She paid for an entire flight just for the one crate. Funny thing was we never found it in the wreckage but Manchester swear blind the Arabella picked the crate up that morning”
The Sergeant licked the tip of his pencil and wrote the address on the first clean page of his battered old notebook. Expensive area, you had to be rich to live there, old money or new didn’t matter but you needed a lot of it. That bought problems with it; the upper classes didn’t like someone like him sticking his nose in things that didn’t concern him. The word commoner or peasant was never said of course, not out loud anyway.
~
The street was somewhat across town, out of his way and he would not make himself popular asking questions there but he couldn’t let this one go.
Night was drawing in as he approached the address. A lamp lighter was at work turning on the gas lamps and lighting them. In passing the sergeant noticed that the lamp lighter wore a better quality uniform than the sergeants own police issue. That was the way things were in this part of town.
The house was an old one, set back from the street behind wrought iron gates high enough to be defensive not just decorative. The gate was well oiled and opened without a sound.
The walk way was old heavy flagstones, not local, a dark grey stone.
The door was a match to the rest of the house, dark and brooding, set with heavy iron reinforcements and rivets.
Oddly the door bell was a delicate tinkling thing, completely out of place and obviously new.
The bell was still trembling and the last echo of its chime was bouncing off the house walls when the door was opened, the darkly uniformed figure within must have been standing there waiting to have responded that fast.
The figure, dark and swarthy and from the Arab east no doubt, looked at the sergeant. Two dangerous men deciding if it was worth the effort to kill the other.
After several long seconds the Arab dropped his gaze and asked the sergeant what he wanted.
Peck explained he was looking for Miss Summerly with regard to the crash of an airship and its missing cargo.
The Arab thought about it for a few more seconds then grunted.
“Wait here” he said with a heavy accent and turned away from the door without another word, disappearing into the shadows of the long entry hall.
As he did so the Sergeant noted a shape under the dark military cut jacket, a long curved knife by the look of it.
Two minutes later the servant returned and without a word gestured the Sergeant to enter, then pointed to a door barely visible in the shadows.
The door led to a small cluttered study lit by a handful of lamps, the walls filled with look cases, the floor taken up by a quartet of very expensive leather high backed chairs, one of which was occupied by a young lady, no more than twenty but severely dressed in the fashion and style of a much older woman.
She glanced up from the book she was reading, a large thing bound in age darkened leather of some sort.
“That will be all Abdul”.
The servant withdrew and closed the door behind him.
She gestured to one of the empty chairs with a tilt of her head and asked the Sergeant what it was that he wanted.
After pausing while the worth of the chairs and the state of his uniform fought each other along with just how much trouble he could get into by being less than formal under such circumstances the Sergeant sat stiffly on the front edge of the chair and explained about the crash of the Arabella and the missing cargo.
Miss Summerly listened to what he had to say with just the slightest lift of a perfect eyebrow.
“Yes I hired the airship for the trip Sergeant. I wanted my Grandfather home as quickly as possible and the Arabella was the only ship available that day.”
The Sergeant looked up at that. “ Ma’am there were no passengers on the Arabella, just your crate.”
The young woman looked at the sergeant as if he were leaving marks on the leather chair.
“My Grandfather, Sergeant, died in Manchester. I wanted his coffin bought home as quickly as possible which is why I had my people charter the Arabella. There was some mix up though, I was told the Arabella had picked up the coffin but it didn’t arrive till this morning.
The man who delivered it said they had found it at the landing dock first thing this morning and bought it round at once. I don’t understand how they missed the fact that it was delivered, probably some clerk mislaid the paperwork. Still the General is home now which is all that matters.
So unless you wish to look into why it took a week to deliver my Grandfather I don’t think there is any other reason for you to be here.”
The dismissal was clear and the sound of the door opening came no more than a second later as Abdul responded to the tone of voice. He must have been standing outside the door waiting to have responded so fast. Again.
Sergeant peck took his leave of the young woman and the old house and walked the half mile to his station. Another night shift would bring all of the usual problems and the strange sighting of the Arabella would become nothing more than another unexplained event in the Sergeants career.
For a few weeks anyway.