A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) (3 page)

“Kitty was a good girl! She didn’t do one thing, one bloody thing to bring this on her,” Mrs. Tull sank into the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

“I know,” Royston said. “I know. I talked to her flatmate earlier. And in my line of work, I’ve seen enough to know that horrible, horrible things sometimes happen to the best of people. The small-minded would prefer to blame the victim because it makes them feel safer, no matter how much it hurts those left behind.”

It had been that way when his mother was killed.

He pulled out a fresh handkerchief and offered it to her. Tools of the trade. He’d never yet had to fire a gun in the line of duty, but he’d employed a handkerchief more times than he could count.
A gentleman always carries a clean handkerchief
,
his mother had told him, time and time again. Little did she know how handy that would be in his chosen field.

Mrs. Tull dried her eyes and looked up at him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, it’s just. . .” She took a deep, shuddering breath.

“It’s all right. Take a moment.”

He poured tea for both of them while he waited for her to collect herself.

“Kitty was such a sweet girl,” the woman said after a calming sip of tea. “Good worker. Honest as the day is long. Always had me send part of her pay back to her widowed mother in Derbyshire. What kind of man could do this?”

“That’s just what I’m trying to find out, ma’am.”

The shopkeeper, though more than willing, had nothing of substance to offer. Kitty was a friendly girl, so sweet and so pretty, a favorite of all the customers, but no, there was no one she could recall who paid her any special attention, or who hung about often enough to make anyone uncomfortable, mostly it was women who did the shopping, don’t you know? No, there had been no gentlemen meeting her at the door to walk her home.

Essentially the same story as the flatmate had given. He thanked her for her time and extracted her promise to contact him should she think of anything else.

She walked him to the door. “Thank you. Thank you for listening.” She tucked a packet of biscuits into his pocket before he could protest. “To strengthen you on your way. Catch this monster for us, Inspector.”

He wished he could promise that he would. Instead, he said the only thing he could. “I’ll do my best.”

On the walk to catch the omnibus, he passed a beggar in ragged, ill-fitting clothes. The man looked familiar, and he scoured his memory. Not one of his sources. Someone he’d arrested at some point? Maybe—no. Clean the man up, take ten years off him. . .

“Smythe, is that you?”

The man looked up sharply, startled at being recognized.

At least that explained why an apparently able-bodied man was begging in the streets mid-day when there might be work to be had on the docks. In the wealthy, idleness was considered a virtue, but in the poor, it was a sin. A smart beggar would either have to appear to be seeking work, or show an obvious reason why he could not work. It seemed Smythe was still too honest to pretend blindness or other malady.

Smythe was smart and good at maths, and everyone at school had agreed that he was destined for something better than the factory work that was slowly breaking his parents’ health. A clerk, for sure, maybe even a bookkeeper, it could happen.

But that was before he was bitten.

“I had heard. . .” Royston trailed off awkwardly.

It wasn’t something you talked about, was it?

Smythe gave a weary shrug of one shoulder, as though two would be too much effort. “These things happen.”

Royston glanced away and tried to think of something to say. He dealt with terrible, terrible things every day in his line of work, but it was different with someone he knew.

Smythe had been robust in their school days, muscled from helping his uncle load delivery carts in the dark morning hours before the start of school. Now he looked like a scarecrow. Probably lived off of soup kitchens and scraps. No one would hire a werewolf, and few who knew what he was would spare a ha’penny to one begging in the streets.

Royston put a hand in his pocket.

Smythe shook his head and backed away. “No. You don’t have to.”

Bad enough to be begging in the streets. Royston imagined it would be far worse to accept a hand-out from someone one knew. He managed a smile. “Not charity. Just think of it as me buying an old friend a drink.”

A small difference, especially as he offered enough silver to buy a couple of meals as well.
 

“You’re a good man, Royston,” Smythe said. “Always have been.”

Smythe glanced around furtively before accepting the money. Looking for other ‘wolves. Werewolves, excluded from normal society, had one of their own. If it was largely criminal, well, what other options had they? No ’wolf who valued his skin would be seen by others taking money from a police inspector. Whether Smythe was part of the criminal subclass or just afraid of them, Royston didn’t want to know. He wished the man well and hurried to catch the omnibus.

It had been too long a day on too little sleep, and he contemplated a quick stop at his favorite fish-n-chips cart and an early night, but when he stopped at the Yard to file his notes there was a dinner invitation awaiting him from Jacob Godwin.

Godwin always showed an almost psychic sense for when Royston needed to talk, but with last night’s dead girl all over the papers and the headlines screaming of the Yard’s lack of progress, it wouldn’t take a master detective such as Godwin had been to know Royston’s state of mind.

***

Jacob Godwin forbade two topics at the dinner table—the work and Godwin’s son, Willie. Willie’s mother was long gone, and Royston often took meals with his mentor in Godwin’s rented rooms, which were small but well-furnished, and significantly more comfortable than Royston’s lonely portion of a two-up, two-down.

Royston had been a constable when a bank robber’s bullet had shattered Godwin’s kneecap, ending the career of one of the finest detectives London had ever seen. Godwin was an impressive man even now, tall and broad of shoulder, posture proud and straight, the steel streaking his black hair speaking of dignity rather than infirmity. His big hands were equally suited to collaring a criminal or to comforting a young boy who was being bullied.

The roast and potatoes were excellent. Pursuant to Godwin’s rules they kept the conversation light, discussing the merits and disadvantages of the newfangled, steam-driven horseless carriages over a good, old-fashioned carriage-and-four. Pure frivolity—neither Godwin on his police pension nor Royston on his new detective’s salary could afford either conveyance.

Royston’s mind was only half on the subject, anyway.

Finally they adjourned to the sitting area to smoke by the fireplace. Godwin handed Royston tea liberally laced with brandy.
 

“So,” Godwin said. “They’ve found another one last night.”

Royston nodded, though it hadn’t really been a question. Godwin filled his own pipe from a seashell-encrusted box that had been a souvenir from a Brighton Beach trip when Willie was a boy, a memento of happier times. He handed the box to Royston. Royston took his pipe case from the inner pocket of his jacket and proceeded to fill and light his pipe. He seldom indulged in tobacco, except for this ritual with his mentor who had given him his first pipe when he turned eighteen.
 

He leaned back, taking comfort in the familiar scent and flavor of good tobacco, one of Godwin’s few extravagances. This same overstuffed chair had dwarfed him as a child, that first day Willie brought him home to meet his Da.

The chair had been of good quality, finer than any Royston had sat on before, but now it was a bit faded, upholstery worn thin at the arms.
 

He had been anxious to talk about the case over dinner. Now that the time had come, he wished he could indulge in the comfort of fire, brandy, and tobacco without dragging the memory of dark alleys and torn flesh into this sanctuary.

He opened his jacket buttons. No need to stand on ceremony with someone who had washed his grubby hands and face when he was a boy, and Godwin always kept his home warmer than Royston did his own rooms. Even on his inspector’s salary, the extra coal seemed like a needless extravagance. He’d become used to much colder when he was a child.

“You always say to think like a criminal, to understand how he thinks as the huntsman understands the fox, but how can I begin to understand a mind like this? Though I’ve been fortunate enough never to come to it myself, I can imagine killing in the line of duty to protect innocents or in self-defense. Killing in hot blood, in rage, I can understand, even if it is reprehensible. But to abduct a girl off the streets and kill her slowly, take her apart as she screams and cries and begs for mercy, I can’t understand it. I’m not sure I want to. But if I don’t understand it, then I can’t understand the killer, and I can’t catch him before he kills another poor girl.”

His chest heaved with emotion by the time he finished his rant. In silence, Godwin; calm, implacable, and understanding, waited until he pulled himself together.

“The newspapers are saying that the Ladykiller walks again,” Royston said at last. “Ridiculous, of course, though the
modus operandi
is similar. Except for the brass wolf token Blackpoole left, and that was meant to throw us off his track.”

Godwin would know all of this, of course. But it helped to talk things through. Godwin was always patient about letting Royston work his way through to an answer. When Royston had been a boy, Godwin would bring tales of his cases home for Royston and Willie to whet their minds on. Willie had been better at the game, but Royston keener and more focused, so it had often been Royston who puzzled out the answer after Willie had wandered off to shoot marbles.

“Still, I can’t ignore the similarities in the victims. All were young women, mostly working class.” Royston fingered the charm on his watch chain, a small French coin his mother had given him with the watch and chain. It was both a novelty and a symbol, so that he would never be totally penniless. “What if Blackpoole wasn’t acting alone? His death may have caused the other to change tactics. There may be more predators out there, just as I’ve always believed that the Ladykiller had more victims than have been recorded. As you’ve always said, a killer like that often starts young.”

Godwin shook his head. “The trail was cold on your mother’s case years before headlines with the Ladykiller started selling newspapers. For your own sake, I wish you the closure of certainty, but I fear you’ll never find it.”

Royston turned his mind to mysteries more recent. “It still bothers me. About the werewolf. We never found out who he was or why he came to Miss Fairchild’s rescue alone among all the victims. And then there was the thing with the tracks.”

Godwin lit his pipe. “Tell me again about the tracks.”

Godwin wouldn’t have forgotten a single detail, but sometimes things came together in a new way when the details were spoken aloud. It hadn’t worked yet on this particular mystery, but it might.
 

“There were human footprints all over the garden. Mrs. Pemberton had led the early guests on a moonlit tour of it. The wolf prints were very clear in the soft dirt, but it was as if the wolf just appeared a few strides away from where the kill took place. As though he had materialized out of thin air.”

“Or as if some of the muddle of human footprints were his human form and he had transformed there,” Godwin said.

“In that case, he would have had to transform among the guests, as they were walking about the garden just at moonrise, according to all accounts. The moon was well up when Blackpoole tried to make away with Miss Fairchild, and the ’wolf intervened.”

“I can hardly imagine such an elegant company allowing a ’wolf among them,” Godwin said. “Was there no other mention made of unusual occurrences that night?”

“Nothing so unusual as a werewolf among the guests. You know how conscious such gently bred folk are about the company they keep. Such a scandal would surely be remarked on. I think we can rule out that he transformed in the middle of the garden at moonrise before all of Pemberton’s elegant guests. Yet if he transformed elsewhere, where are the rest of the tracks? And a werewolf cannot help but transform at the rise of the full moon.”

“There’s an alchemist who’s been claiming his draught can suppress the shift. It's still in the experimental stages but supposed to be promising,” Godwin said.

“Snake oil?”

“I don’t think so. It’s the same alchemist the Yard uses for blood analyses.”

“That Foster fellow? I’ve met him. He seems sane enough, as far as alchemists go. But if the draught works and if the werewolf were taking it, he wouldn’t have changed at all.”

“You haven’t heard of the Riley case?” Godwin paused. “No, you would have been a constable then, sorting out drunken workers on the docks. It was kept pretty quiet, too. No one wanted to stir up controversy.”

“What happened?”

“One of Foster’s early test subjects was walking home from the pub in human form on a full moon night. He was set upon by a back alley cutthroat who would have taken his purse and his life. He abruptly shifted into wolf form to his own surprise and that of his attacker. Killed the man quick as a terrier with a rat. Pure instinct—which is not a legal defense, and it was clearly self-defense.”