Heaven's Bones (36 page)

Janet screamed, and Robarts looked up at her. Mouth open, she stared at him.

That face. The face in the mist, in a London alley, fifteen years ago. The man who chased her through the fog and reached out for her with terrible purpose.

The Gentleman. Robarts was the Gentleman.

She backed away, trying to scream, trying to accuse, but it was as if a giant hand was clamped around her throat.

Robarts shoved McPherson aside. His limbs lolled brokenly and a sticky dark puddle was forming under his head.

For an instant, Robarts stared at McPherson, puzzled, then at the paperweight in his hand.

Had he done this?

Why
had he done this?

He looked back up at Janet, and his expression shifted again. He reached inside his coat, where he kept his scalpels safe in a small leather pouch.

“You might have been an Angel, Janet,” he said. “But it's too late now.”

He sprang for her but her paralysis was gone and she ran, desperately ran in the dark, out the door, down the abandoned street,
too out of breath to call for help. She felt him close at her heels and summoned up every reserve of strength she had.

A sharp burning pain struck her shoulder, and she staggered into the wall, desperately trying to stay on her feet. She dodged as he swung at her again, narrowly missing her.

He was off balance and she struck out instinctively, and he fell away from her, giving her a chance to run again.

She ran until she could no more, turning to face him in one desperate effort, but he was gone, and the gas lamps shone on nothing. She could only hear the sound of her labored breathing echo off the alley walls. Her shoulder was on fire, and the back of her dress was cold and wet.

Sophie. McPherson said Robarts was going to take Sophie.

She must find Artemis Donovan.

Robarts watched Janet run away, the bloodied scalpel in his hand. He should hunt her down and finish her off—but Sophie would be at the Clinic soon, and he mustn't miss this opportunity.

“Foolish girl,” he remarked, as he wiped the scalpel clean on his sleeve. “She could have been an Angel.”

Sophie stared at the man on her office floor.

“Doctor McPherson?”

Shaking, she kneeled beside her mentor, feeling for a pulse in his neck, finding none.

Blood congealed beneath his head, and there was an unnatural depression in the middle of his forehead, discolored purple. His eyes were open, staring blindly at the ceiling.

She touched the cornea, trying to provoke some reaction, some sign of life. There was none.

Her mind noted details automatically, noting the color of the inner eyelid, the bruising of the forehead, the stiffness of the limbs.

Someone grabbed her from behind; something wet and sickly-sweet smelling was pressed against her mouth and nose and she flailed uselessly at the air until her limbs stilled and her eyes were forced relentlessly shut.

The last thing she saw was Bartholomew McPherson's empty eyes, looking at her like a gutted fish.

Janet staggered down the streets, trailing one hand along the filthy wall for balance. The base of her neck, where Robarts' scalpel had bit deep, burned. She concentrated on putting one foot before the other—each step was agony, but she knew that if she fell she would never get up again.

Late-goers, singly and in pairs, walked the streets, but she hadn't the strength to call out to them. Once, a couple, man and woman, passed close by and she reached out to them, begging for help—but her tongue didn't seem to work right and it was impossible to articulate, and they had drawn back from her in disgust.

“Drunken trull,” she heard the woman exclaim, and the man laughed, and their footsteps faded behind her. She didn't even have the strength to turn around.

I'm going to the Clinic late tonight, Janet
, she heard Sophie say, cheerful in the bright sitting room that was a thousand miles from this dark, despairing place.
Doctor Robarts will be there so you needn't fuss; I'll be quite safe
.

She might be there already, at his mercy.

Quite safe
.

Men—four or five of them, fresh from the pub and laughing boisterously—stumbled down the opposite side of the street, and
one called out to her crudely, provoking more laughter from his fellows. He started across the street for her and she cringed against the wall, fearing he'd come to her, and fearing he wouldn't.

The others called him back and they stumbled on down the alley. She wanted to call after them but it was too much effort; at the same time, she was relieved they'd left her alone.

Her vision was fading at the edges; she saw only dim light at the end of a cloudy black tunnel, the cobbles of the sidewalk in sharp contrast, a slick of moisture in the gutter where the evening's waste had been thrown. While she had strength, should she try one of the doors?

Most likely they'd take her for a madwoman or a drunk, and leave her be. If she was loud enough they might summon the watch, and she might find Artemis Donovan that way—but she doubted she had the power to be noisy long enough.

What little she could see of the streets and the doors looked suddenly familiar, and she racked her fading consciousness to remember.

Lady Cecelia. That was Lady Cecelia's town house.

Of any of these doors, that was the one most likely to open to her. She grasped for the rails, pulled herself painfully hand-overhand up them, nearly slipping on the polished stairs.

At least Lady Cecelia's maids knew how to clean marble, she thought, although their diligence might be the death of her.

Somehow she made it to the top, her shoulder throbbing. Somehow she reached the door, seized the polished knocker, lifted it and let it fall. It hit the door with a hollow thump: no chance, she thought, of it being heard inside the house. She would die here, cold on the doorstep.

She leaned her forehead against the panels of the oak door and began to slide down, no more strength left in her legs. She sank down into the pool of pain that spread from her body, hot
and pulsing. But there was peace there in the center, and cessation of the agony: a quiet stillness in the chaos of pain, sleep, and death.

A lozenge of warm yellow light spread above her as the door opened, and a dark figure was silhouetted against it, leaning over her. Someone exclaimed: a gruff male voice, and a softer voice answered from inside that place of light and warmth. Strong arms gathered her up, pulling her out of the black center of the pool, back into pain but back again into life.

It was Alexander, Lady Cecelia's coachman, who held her. She could feel the strong thump of his heart against her.

“She's bleeding, milady, all blood soaked down the back,” she heard him say. It seemed to come from a great distance.

“Why, it's Janet,” came the gentle voice of Lady Cecelia, and Janet felt soft fingers on her face, lifting her hair away. “Lay her on the sofa, and fetch a doctor at once—fetch Doctor Huxley.”

Sophie. Janet tried to form the word, but no sound, no air would come.

“Don't try to talk, Janet,” said Lady Cecelia.

She was placed on something soft, and Lady Cecelia was kneeling beside her. All she wanted to do was close her eyes and sink into oblivion, but she mustn't; she must speak now or it would be too late.

“Sophie,” she gasped. “He's going after my Sophie.”

“Sophie was hurt? Alex!”

“No—you must listen.”

Janet swallowed—it felt like razors in her dry throat—and tried again.

“Robarts—killed McPherson. Tried to kill me. He wants Sophie, wants to take her … I don't know. He's mad. Those women, fifteen years ago, when his wife died … it was Robarts the whole time.”

“Janet, Janet dear.” Someone was fumbling at her clothing, carefully stripping away the sodden cloth over the wound. “You must be mistaken. Sebastian would never hurt anyone.”

“Stabbed me with … scalpel.”

There was a pause, and she felt air across her back.

“Could be, ma'am,” came Alexander's voice, monotone and noncommittal. “Wound's narrow like a scalpel would do.”

“He's mad,” Janet managed. “He's not …
him
anymore. Like that time in the fog. I should have known, but it wasn't him. Haven't you seen it? You must. And now he wants my Sophie too.”

With a sudden, desperate surge of strength she sat up and grasped Lady Cecelia by the arm.

“Artemis … Donovan. He's with the police—a detective. Clever as the devil. Pub—Cat and Whiskers. Get Donovan. Tell him this: ‘Robarts is the Gentleman.' He'll know.”

Lady Cecelia's face was pale, her dark hair and her lips a shocking contrast against the whiteness of her skin; her eyes were wide and horrified as she stared at her. Gray spots swam into Janet's vision then and she sank back into the sofa, her strength failing at last.

“Have you heard of the man, Alex?” demanded Lady Cecelia.

“I have,” came the coachman's gruff voice. “Touched, some say, but a good sort, and catches his man most of the time.”

“Send Hamish to the Cat and Whiskers—was that it?—yes, and tell him what Janet said, and ask him to meet us at the Clinic. But first, Janet must have a doctor.”

“I'll knock up the apothecary, ma'am, and then take you to the Clinic,” said Alexander, and Janet tried to say no, no, Clinic first or else it's too late, but there was a roaring in her ears and everything faded to nothingness.

Artemis sniffed the air and frowned.

“Chloroform,” he said, staring abstractedly at the body on the floor of Sophia Huxley's office.

The victim—for the great dent in his forehead and the dark viscous pool spreading beneath his head bore witness to his murder—was a distinguished-looking gentleman of about fifty, with salt-and-pepper hair, professionally clad. His eyes were glazed over and beginning to go opaque, and he stared at the ceiling with the indifference of the dead.