Teacups & Tentacles | ONC 2022

19. First, Tea

Godwin was waiting by the hearth in the small upstairs room at the Mastermind Society when Amelia arrived, hat askew, umbrella inside out and almost twenty minutes late. It was a blustery night and she'd had a cog-welder's time finding an available hackney cab once she'd escaped the house.

"Godwin!" she cried, shutting the door and throwing her umbrella into a corner. "We were right! The octopus is hiding in the Thames. I found some of its trails wiggling all over the place. What've you unearthed?"

Godwin rushed to her side and, in his excitement, grabbed ahold of her hands. "The entire thing is a charade! It's not real. It's an automaton!".

"A what?" An irritated furrow formed on Amelia's brow as she extracted her hands from Godwin's grasp. "Say that again."

"It's an automaton!"

"The octopus?"

"Yes!" cried Godwin, his released hands flying to and fro like startled pigeons.

He couldn't contain himself. The idea was still too incredible for him to believe even after having paced ruts in the salon carpet and turned over every detail in his mind more times than a stalling motor. "Listen, it has no smell, it doesn't move, doesn't eat, doesn't crap and it has nine arms. That's not a living creature, that's a machine. An insanely well-constructed machine that someone has passed off as an real animal! And it's fooled everyone. Simply everyone!"

"Nine arms, you say? Wouldn't someone have --"

Godwin shook his head. "It's not a mistake. It's there for a reason. Believe me, I say that as a professional stage magician. That extra arm is bloody important for whatever its true goal is."

"And all this you unearthed at the Zoo?"

Godwin shook his head again, then quickly related how he had met with and hypnotised the zoo keeper, failing entirely to mention his abandoned attempt at pretending to be a journalist and humiliating defeat at the hands of a simple butterfly cravat.

Amelia listened without interrupting him, her head tilted to the side in thought, occasionally clucking her tongue as the entire breath of the discovery sunk in like sherry into plum pudding before it was set alight.

"It was all a hoax, then," she said. "An elaborate hoax. From start to finish."

"The most amazing one I have ever seen, yes. He's taken everyone in. The London Zoo, the papers, the Metropolitans..."

"Us," said Amelia, quietly. "He took us in, too. We were there, we all saw it and yet all we two were able to do was say there was something not quite right about it, but not what. Damn sight better than most, but still not a top drawer showing on our end, was it? More like third leek."

Godwin could only agree. Just like Amelia, as member of the Mastermind Society, he felt he should have been more alert. But there was a second element with him: he was embarrassed professionally. 

He made his living fooling people from a public stage and yet he'd been fooled right along with everyone else by someone performing on a much larger, very public stage. He, a professional hoaxer, had been hoaxed himself.

Perhaps it really was time to hang up his turban and ask Alistair's brother for a position hawking ladies unmentionables.

"And it's hiding in the Thames?" Godwin asked, moving his mind as far away as he could from the image of himself folding piles of XXL bloomers with kitten and wheelbarrow patterns.

Amelia nodded. "Which is probably why no one has found it yet. The water is thicker than gravy all the way along. An entire colony of mermaids with human bones in their tresses could be down there, no one would have so much as an inkling. We were looking for a place an octopus would feel comfortable, not somewhere where it would be invisible. But that is exactly what it is there. Invisible."

"Invisible," repeated Godwin, a notion taking form in his mind that had only been a vague theory before. "The papers said its owner had also disappeared, didn't they? And at about the same time as the octopus. That's the only reason we decided to leave him out. But that was when we thought it was real. If it is a machine, however, then he must be involved, or rather, he must be a significant part of the hoax, correct?"

"Correct."

"Do you think it is possible," said Godwin, slowly, "that where the octopus is, the owner is, as well? I don't mean in the area, as we'd assumed, I mean..."

"Exactly in the same place as the octopus. Yes, that would explain a number of things, wouldn't it?" said Amelia, quickly catching onto the idea. "How accurately it has been targeting specific places, for example. It is being directly operated. From inside. And in that case, I think it is quite clear what we need to do first."

"Indeed. Have nice cup of tea," said Godwin, rubbing his hands together, still unable to believe the situation they found themselves in.

Amelia didn't hear him, she was already reaching for the order bell.