A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) (25 page)

“We’ll take the horseless carriage.”

The ’wolf made a questioning sound in his throat.

“It’s fine. I finished putting it back together this morning. I even filled the boiler, so she should be ready to go in a tick.”

He refrained from commenting that she hadn’t mentioned the horseless carriage when she was trying to convince him of the impossibility of departure. It wasn’t polite to point out a lady’s contradictions.

Seventeen

In theory, the prospect of riding in a horseless carriage intrigued him. But faced with the actuality of a metal box with no horses in front, powered by a mysterious, mindless engine hidden beneath its steel skin, controlled by a too-small wheel in front of the driver’s seat—Royston suddenly found that he'd rather be facing down a whole shipload of drunken sailors. And their monkeys.

The thing was all shiny metal, painted electric blue with shiny brass trim. It was shaped vaguely like on open carriage, only instead of shafts for horses a long, angled nose jutted out in front, housing the engine.
 

Without the benefit of glamour, Miss Fairchild had changed into men’s trousers, shirt and waistcoat—a scandalous disregard of decency laws. She had tucked her long hair up in a man’s cap. Royston only hoped that, if they were seen, she would pass for a particularly effeminate man. Otherwise, they’d all be up on morals charges to add to his suspicion of murder.

“Can I help with something?” Royston asked as Miss Fairchild pumped a lever, muttering something about steam pressure, a fine sheen of sweat building on her face..

With any other lady, he’d insist on taking over the physical work as a matter of course, but Miss Fairchild seemed to nullify the normal rules of correct behavior. Most disconcerting.

“No, thank you.” Her voice was clipped, distracted. “I have the routine down. You’ll only get in the way.”

The ’wolf nudged her leg.
 

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “I find directness refreshing.” Bandon was a lucky man to have found a woman so spirited and intelligent.
 

“Where’s the coal?” he asked.

“I’ve modified her to burn gasoline to heat the water to steam. Much more efficient.”

Gasoline. He’d heard of gasoline. “But isn’t that dangerous?”

“Not if you know what you’re doing.” Pulling down her goggles, she crouched in front of the horseless and probed with a long metal instrument Royston couldn’t identify. “I thought about kerosene, but it takes too long to heat.”

A jet of flame shot out. She dodged and cursed. “I hate when it does that.”

Bandon lay on the cool of the floor, relaxed and watching with interest, so Royston didn’t interfere. To distract himself while Miss Fairchild woke her metal monster, Royston wandered the carriage house, workshop, whatever the space could be called, wrinkling his nose a bit at the unfamiliar scent of machine oil. Tables and benches held an assortment of tools, gears, wheels, and tortured bits of metal. The white walls boasted a generous few scorch marks, and Royston’s tension about the upcoming adventure built with the steam.
 

Something nagged at his mind, and the gears and levers brought it closer. Mechanics, no, but something science. Alchemy, chemicals, and what was scent but chemicals drifting in the air?

“Miss Fairchild?”

“What?” On her back now beneath the metal beast with only her legs visible, she tinkered with something underneath the carriage, and her voice was as sharp as her nose.

“You’re an alchemist…“

“If you’ve nothing to do but state the obvious, please delay until I’m not trying to get this bloody thing going so we can catch a killer. And prove you innocent, of murder if not of stupidity.” She banged at something near the left tire and uttered a curse he wouldn’t have suspected her of knowing.

Royston had been set down by better than her and heard sailors utter oaths that would make Satan blush. “Could it be possible for an alchemist to distill a scent, spread a false trail? Winchell knows a bit about alchemy. So does Downey.”

“A bit,” she said. “Though half of it is wrong. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the killer is Winchell.”

And here he had thought she might be different from the rest of her class. “Because someone of his education and standing couldn’t possibly commit such crimes?” He didn't try to hide the sarcasm in his tone.
 

“No.” She grunted, torqueing something-or-other beneath the infernal machine. “If you ask me if either or both are capable of murder, then the answer is yes, provided he was sure he could get away with it. Doubly so, in Downey’s case, with the murder of women. The man is sick and evil. I’ve been in the same room with him on occasion, and it made my skin crawl. But these murders lack finesse. God’s mercy, machine, will you cooperate?” She threw the wrench halfway across the room and picked up another.

Royston choked on a startled laugh. “You are worried that the killer isn’t dainty enough?”

“I’m not, but they would be. Downey would arrange the bodies artistically in the park, complete with floral arrangements. Winchell might make them into automatons as he was trying to do with that deluded man’s poor wife. Maybe I’m wrong, but dumping bodies in alleys doesn’t seem like his style. And as for this game of follow-my-clues, well, the killer is playing with you. Sorry, but Winchell and Downey would consider it beneath their dignity to play with a lowly detective.” She slid out from under the carriage and pulled a lever beside the driver’s seat. The monster grumbled, wheezed, then started an unsteady chuffing.

“One of them had me demoted,” Royston protested.

“Possibly,” she said. “But if either of them was behind it, be sure he saw it as swatting an annoying fly, not engaging a rival.”

“But it
is
possible? To create a false scent.”

She sighed. “Yes, it’s possible. And I have been known to be wrong. Not often, but it does happen.”

“Wasn’t one of Downey’s papers something about scents?” he persisted.

“Some sort of spurious attempt to cure consumption by using pleasant smells to drive out the miasma of illness. About as scientific as attempts to predict criminal tendencies by the shape of someone's skull. And not relevant to your line of inquiry.”

“But if he was working at all with scents—“

A loud bang echoed off the walls. Royston ducked reflexively. When Miss Fairchild laughed, he realized it was the engine, not a gunshot. The chuffing stopped entirely, and he thought his worries about getting into a horseless carriage were premature, as were any hopes of making headway toward rescuing Miss Chatham. But then the chuffing started again, slowly but regular now and picking up speed. Steam hissed, then whined. The odd, almost chemical scent of burning gasoline made him rub his nose. How did Bandon cope?

The ’wolf jumped into the back seat and lay down, tail thumping against the upholstery. Taking a deep breath, reminding himself of Miss Chatham, of nameless future victims, of what would happen if he didn’t clear his own name, Royston took the passenger seat next to Miss Fairchild.

The carriage leaped forward, steam billowing from a gleaming brass pipe that rose from the nose of the beast. The tires kicked up gravel as they left the courtyard and, impossibly, the thing picked up speed. A hired carriage horse had once bolted with him, and they had careened down a country road with no barrier in sight, the cart swaying dangerously on the turns. It had been one of the most terrifying experiences in his life.

This was worse.

“Aren’t we going a bit too fast?” He had to shout to be heard over the rushing wind.

Miss Fairchild tilted her head back and laughed.

Royston looked over his shoulder at the ’wolf in the back seat, hoping he would intervene to bring Miss Fairchild to her senses. Bandon was sitting up, eyes closed, nose tilted up to catch the scents rushing by. No help from that quarter.

The horseless swerved abruptly to avoid running down a hedgehog that darted across the road. Though long alienated from the Church, Royston closed his eyes and began to pray. The carriage had to slow a bit when they neared the heart of London because of narrower roads and the occasional lovely traditional horse-drawn carriage. When Miss Fairchild finally brought the vehicle to a halt and they were all still alive, Royston started to rethink his opinions on the power of prayer.

“We’ll have to walk from here,” she said. “The horseless will never fit down the alley where Tom lives.”

They walked down the narrow alley, the ’wolf taking point with Miss Fairchild just behind. Royston held the rear, alert for trouble. It was a rough neighborhood, and anyone out and about at this time was surely up to no good. Including themselves, come to think of it. At least it wasn’t one of the werewolf slums. ’Wolves had good reason to be hostile and suspicious of full humans in their territory. Miss Fairchild’s client must be hiding his nature from his landlord and neighbors.

They avoided stepping in the narrow streamlet that trickled down the center of the alley and stank of sewage and steered clear of the garbage piled along the side. Royston couldn’t blame the residents—landlords too infrequently bothered with the expense of emptying privies, which often overflowed, and rubbish collection in poorer neighborhoods was infrequent and often too dear for households that barely managed to pay for food.

Despite the remedy that kept him from changing form, Tom clearly kept the hours of all his kind on full moon nights—candlelight shone from the windows. Miss Fairchild stepped up to the door and knocked.

“Ar, and who be there this time of night?”

Royston couldn’t quite place the muddied accent—clearly lower-class, and he suspected that the man had moved from place to place a lot as a child.

“Dr. Foster sent me.”

There was a rush of movement from inside, and the sound of something—maybe a small table— being knocked aside in the rush to the door.

The man who opened the door was shorter than Royston by a good two inches, thin and wiry. He was the sort of man that a ruffian might mistake for an easy mark until said ruffian saw the flint in his eyes and took in the way he carried himself. Hard to tell his age—too young, probably, for the gray in his hair. The lines in his face spoke more of trouble seen than years passed.

“Anythin’ Doctor Foster wants, I’m his man.”

Royston saw the moment when the odd nature of the assemblage registered—a young woman in man’s clothing, a man in a disorderly constable’s uniform, and a werewolf. The man’s eyes went wide with surprise, his mouth opened in a silent ‘O’.
 

Royston recognized the man, now. He’d arrested him once, years ago, for a string of burglaries. Tom was good at what he did. Royston might not have caught him if not for the man’s bad luck; a wet night, a ladder that slipped, a man with a criminal history turning up at one of the charity clinics with a broken leg.

Royston waited for the door to be slammed in their faces.

Instead, the man pulled himself together and stepped out of the way to grant them entrance. “If Doctor Foster sent you, best come in. You lot’ll surely draw attention standing there.”

He let them into a single-room flat, neatly kept but spare. A plain table of unfinished wood was probably homemade. Woodworking tools sat on a rough bench in one corner, and the floor was adorned by chips of wood. The three-legged stool by the bench was probably dragged over to the table for meal-times. A collection of roughly identical miniature birds sat on a table nearby. A few had fallen to the floor, probably when Tom bumped the table in his haste to answer the door. Linseed oil fumes thickened the air.

“I’ve gone straight.” Challenge in Tom’s voice suggested that he expected Royston to doubt his assertion. “Found a man who didn’t know me from before, didn’t know I’m a ’wolf. Easy enough to hide it now, thanks to the good doctor. Piece work, doesn’t pay much, but I’m honest now.”

“I’m glad for you,” Royston said. “Doctor Foster has done a lot of good.”

“Saved my life.” Tom nodded. “If I’d been caught one more time, did one more stint in the workhouse, it’d kill me for sure. Breaks a man’s health, it does. What can I do for you? Anything Doctor Foster wants, anything at all, it’s his.”

Royston couldn’t manage the words. In the end, Miss Fairchild was the one who spoke up.

“We need you to break into Scotland Yard.”

The man paled, took a step backwards, sat down on the rough cot. “Well,” he said. “Well.”

Almost, Royston hoped the man would refuse. He didn’t want to be the one responsible for this man risking what little he had won from the poor hand fate had dealt him. But it wasn’t only, or even primarily, about Royston. It was about Miss Chatham and about all the women of London who would live in terror until the killer was caught.

Miss Fairchild explained what they needed, and why, leaving out only the human identity of the werewolf and the connection between herself and Doctor Foster.

“And what is the doctor’s interest in all this?” Tom finally asked.
 

Royston exchanged glances with Miss Fairchild.

“The werewolf committed to tracking the killer is another of his clients, and very dear to him,” Miss Fairchild said. “He has worked with Inspector Jones in a professional capacity and is not only convinced of his innocence, but feels he may be the only one who can find and stop the real killer. Foster nearly lost someone close to him to Blackpoole, and these new murders. . .bring back unpleasant memories.”
Tom looked at Royston. “Not that anyone’ll listen to us, but none of us think you did for those girls. Thieves and beggars and lowlife we may be, but we knows a gentleman when we sees him. A true gentleman, not a toff. You’ve never roughed up anyone who didn’t need roughing up, and you’ve always been extra polite to the women, even the working girls.”