A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) (29 page)

After a moment, he cleared his throat so he could speak. “Miss Fairchild has been very kind.”

“When I heard that they had arrested you. . .” Godwin broke off, shaking his head. “What has become of the Yard since I left?”

Royston gave a little laugh. “Lord only knows.”

Ridiculous, but having Godwin here suddenly made it feel like everything would be all right. It took him back to when he was a boy, and reaching Godwin’s home meant security and comfort and safety from bullies and teasing. Like nothing bad could ever happen to him in the presence of a Scotland Yard detective.

It was like being in the presence of God.

“Shall we?” Miss Fairchild brought their attention to the table, where tea had been laid.

She directed him to the chair next on her left. “And you remember Miss Waters?”

Royston looked in panic at the young woman to his right. Obviously he was meant to know her, and he feared his manners were about to fail because he had absolutely no idea who she was.

He had to know her through Miss Fairchild. He and Miss Fairchild had met only on a few occasions, fewer if he discounted any encounters in her guise as Doctor Foster. Not last night, he would have remembered. The encounter at Bandon’s aunt's house had been too brief to involve any additional introductions, and the night Blackpoole died had been too hectic. That left the day he came first came to Fairchild house to interview Miss Fairchild regarding a certain werewolf who had come to her rescue.

The girl at the window seat, absorbed in a book.

“Miss Jane Waters, your assistant, who likes to read,” Royston said just before the silence lengthened into awkwardness.

“You remember her well.” Miss Fairchild said, her voice inordinately pleased for no reason he could fathom.

Royston reflected that he might do better with women if he understood them more.

“Have you read anything good lately?” he asked Miss Waters politely.

“Nothing, I’m sure, that would interest you. A literary analysis of Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar.”

He ground his teeth behind a smile at her assumptions regarding his intelligence and education. “It’s true, I think
Hamlet
the better play, but
Julius Caesar
is not without merit.”

Her eyes went wide. “You know Shakespeare?”

“Not personally, no. I’m not
that
much older than you.”

She spared a glare for his flippancy. “You’ve read the plays, I mean.”

As many times as he could, until the books fell apart. “I have. I’ve even seen a few.” In the cheap seats, when mum could scrape together a few extra coppers. Once with a young lady he’d very much wanted to impress. She’d been bored and had fallen asleep in the middle of the second act of
Romeo and Juliet
. He’d never seen her again, though he understood she was now happily married to a city clerk.

“Oh,” she said, flushing in the way a debutante might if she discovered that the gentleman she’d just been introduced to was single, rich, and titled. “Did you see
A Winter’s Tale
last year at Covent Garden?”

“No, I regret that I did not.” He’d been too busy trying to catch another killer, but that wasn’t polite tea conversation to share with a lady.

“Oh, that’s a shame. The actress who played Hermione was absolutely brilliant. She brought such pride, such dignity to the role. I saw the play in a whole new light.”

Royston listened with half an ear to Godwin’s conversation with Miss Fairchild across the table. Godwin was using his best conversational interrogation-without-seeming-like interrogation techniques to try to discover the exact nature of Miss Fairchild’s association with him, and she was dancing around the truth with grace and aplomb. He saw no reason to intervene.
 

Besides, it gave him an excuse to wait that much longer before mentioning to Godwin and to Miss Fairchild that Willie’s scent had also been on him last night.

“Have you read any of Wilde?” he asked Miss Waters, and then realized belatedly that mentioning a writer of such scandalous reputation might offend a young lady.

“Oh, yes,” Miss Waters breathed. “Such brilliant wit. Horrible how they treated him, and for what?”

Royston privately agreed. In his line of work, he saw enough of the true horrors that human beings inflicted on one another. He saw no reason to prosecute a ‘crime’ that harmed no one. But that wasn’t something a gentleman said aloud at tea.

Fortunately, Miss Waters took the conversation on another tangent, talking about the plays themselves, and the pros and cons of the philosophy of aestheticism that Wilde so loved. It was, all in all, a most agreeable tea, and though Godwin’s presence across the table served as a reminder of the case, the uncaught killer, and his own legal troubles, the sense of overwhelming doom lifted briefly.

Certainly he never ate this well at his bachelor flat. Salmon and watercress sandwiches, delicate buttery biscuits, scones with lemon curd and clotted cream, and more of the honey of which Miss Fairchild was so justifiably proud.

When they had finished tea and the uniformed maid had cleared away the tea things, Miss Fairchild stated that he and Godwin simply must see the gardens that produced the flowers from whose nectar the bees made their exquisite honey. Since he had spent the better part of the afternoon in those same gardens, he recognized the excuse to take the conversation away from the ears of the servants. Time to discuss less pleasant and more serious matters than the works of Shakespeare and Mr. Wilde.

Miss Waters announced that she would be on the terrace with her book—still in eyesight as a pro forma chaperone but out of the conversation. He suspected that Miss Waters was very much in Miss Fairchild’s confidence, but it would be less complicated to have this conversation with Godwin without another civilian involved.

Miss Fairchild stopped at pair of facing white-painted iron benches situated in a cleared space between the roses and the lavender. The flowers perfumed the air, sweet and heady and belonging to another world entirely than the one that held dead shop girls and faceless killers stalking dark streets.

She sat, and indicated the other bench with a wave of her hand.

“If you will, gentlemen. I think we have much to discuss.” With that preamble, she calmly informed Godwin of her ruse as Dr. Foster.

“Ah,” Godwin replied with a smile “I had thought our alchemist had something to hide. “My guess was a titled family who didn’t want to be associated with a younger son doing something actually useful. Your diction is a bit too elevated for a man in the trades.”

“You were close,” Miss Fairchild said.

“You do good work,” Godwin said. “The Yard is lucky to have you, no matter what you’re hiding under that glamour.”

Royston released the breath he’d been holding on Miss Fairchild’s behalf.

“Now,” Godwin continued. “I’m assuming that you told me this for a reason, and that reason has to do with why we’re out here pretending to admire roses.”

Jones explained about the nature of his ‘source’, and about last night’s adventures.

“You mean to tell me,” Godwin said. “That you, an officer of the law, enticed a burglar out of retirement and participated in a conspiracy to break in to Scotland Yard in order to illegally access records.”

Royston dropped his gaze.

Godwin broke into hearty laughter. “I used to worry that your strict regard for the rules would keep you from being the detective you could be. It seems I worried needlessly. I’m proud of you, boy.”

In the end, though, Godwin could offer no insights into the killer’s identity. “Are you sure you came in contact with no one else?” he asked Royston. I know your memory is good, but getting arrested on a murder charge will rattle anyone. Think. Are you sure?”

Once, when they were boys, he’d come across Willie standing near a broken window, a ball in hand. He’d ignored Willie’s protestations of innocence and told Godwin that Willie had done it. Godwin had cancelled a promised trip to the zoological gardens as punishment. He’d found out, months later, that Willie had not been the one to throw the ball.

It had taken Willie a very long time to forgive him. This time, he might not forgive him at all, and Royston wouldn’t blame him. He’d never forgive anyone who thought
him
capable of such monstrous acts.

Willie had been certain of his innocence, had stood by him, even bribed a guard so he could see him in jail. How could he betray that trust now? And how could he tell Godwin that his own son was a suspect?

But how could he lie to Godwin?

Godwin knew Willie. He would surely see that Willie was innocent and that would help Royston allay his own doubts.
 

“Willie came to see me.” Royston said. “In the jail. Bribed one of the guards to let me in.” He glanced at Miss Fairchild. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want to get him in trouble. And I knew it couldn’t be Willie. He and I grew up together. We’re like brothers.”

“Willie Godwin,” she said. “I’ve heard of him.” By the flat tone of her voice, what she had heard hadn’t been good.
 

He waited for her to remonstrate him for not bringing this up sooner.

“We wouldn’t have had time to check out one more last night, anyway.”

Godwin said nothing, looking troubled and thoughtful. Royston wished he hadn’t brought this doubt into his mentor’s mind. No matter their estrangement, Willie was still Godwin’s son.

“There’s nothing we can do about it right now, anyway,” Godwin said heavily. “Not until nightfall, when we have the werewolf.”

“Best eliminate all possibilities,” Miss Fairchild said with false cheerfulness, as though that was all that was on her mind. Eliminating possibilities so they could focus on finding the real killer.

Royston put forth his theory of a false scent created by either Winchell or Downey. Miss Fairchild allowed that it was possible, though with little enthusiasm for the theory.

“So, then,” Godwin said. “We focus on the killer’s clues. “The old man’s greatest defeat.”

Royston cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. Given that the notes seem directed toward me. . .we, I. . .I thought the ‘old man’ might be you. It’s no secret that you’ve been my mentor, and well, I’ve always looked up to you as a father.”

“No need to be embarrassed, my boy. You’re more my son than the child I raised.”

Miss Fairchild broke in with the question that Royston would not ask. “Forgive the personal nature of the question, Mr. Godwin. But I think you’ll agree with its relevance. What, then, was your greatest defeat?”

Twenty-two

Richard woke to the glare of afternoon sun which pierced his eyes through the narrow space between his drapes. He threw an arm over his face to shield his eyes against the light. The morning after a full moon always made him feel like he’d been out too late and drunk too much, a feeling he definitely didn’t miss those months when he used Catherine’s remedy.

He rose to pull the drapes closer, and his body reminded him of the abuse it had taken in wolf form the night before. The slide down the metal roof had helped— he might not have survived a dead drop from the second-story window, though he’d still fallen a good twelve feet. Every part of him was bruised and battered. Fortunately, someone in the building had a garden out back, and the hydrangea bushes had cushioned his landing, though the pungent scent of broken vines made him fear that the young tomatoes he’d run through on his escape had been left the worse for wear.

His thick fur had protected him admirably from the shards of broken glass, though his ever-patient manservant had sighed and muttered over the cuts and scrapes. Richard didn’t have the heart to tell George how bad it could have been without the slide down the roof and the garden.

Worse still, infinitely worse, if he hadn’t jumped. The wolf, excited by the chase, frightened by being cornered, had almost overpowered his rational mind with its instincts. His nose told him almost instantly that the constable was not the killer, and yet, cornered and in danger, his muscles had bunched to jump the man. Teeth bared, jaws opened, he’d been ready to tear the man’s throat out.

He’d almost killed an innocent man. A constable like Jones and his friend Parker, who had dedicated their lives to protecting others.

Up to that point, working with Jones had been. . .well, he couldn’t say fun. Not with the horror of finding the girl in the warehouse, not with Miss Chatham still missing and Jones’ fate at risk and his own dual identity endangered by his involvement. But he had enjoyed the adventure, and the novelty of being useful, useful because of the very thing that had seemed so shameful before.

Last night, though, with his blood up and the thrill of the hunt singing in his soul, he’d very nearly forgotten his human mind and its veneer of civilization. In wolf form, he’d killed a cat once when he’d been an adolescent and less in control of his instincts. The thing had attacked him, all claws and teeth and hissing yowls, and his jaws had closed on it and snapped its spine before his mind had fully identified the ball of fury. In the morning, he discovered that the cat had been trying to protect a nest of kittens. He’d struggled to nurse the little, helpless things, but they were too young. They’d died one by one.