Newbury & Hobbes 04 - The Executioner's Heart (25 page)

“You’ve
what
?” said Newbury, taken aback.

Renwick grinned, evidently pleased with himself. His left eye let out a grating whirr. Newbury could see the winking red light at the heart of the mechanism, deep inside Renwick’s skull.

“Allow me to tell you a story,” said Renwick, dragging out another stool and lowering himself onto it, “about ‘the Scourge of Paris.’”

Newbury sat back, making a steeple with his hands. “The Scourge of Paris?”

Renwick nodded. “In the early 1820s there was a spate of vicious murders in the streets of Montmartre. The victims came from all walks of life: nobles, peasants, soldiers, maids. Their bodies were found in a variety of despicable conditions, some of them with their throats cut, others disembowelled, others still with their limbs lopped off or garrotted. The locations varied, too. Some were killed in their homes; others down darkened alleyways, left amongst the detritus of the slums. Only one thing connected them: the fact that they’d all been brutally killed within the space of a couple of weeks. The authorities claimed it was the work of a single, insane killer, although no witnesses came forward. At least, not officially.”

“Like the Ripper,” said Newbury.

Renwick nodded. “Similar,” he said. “The newspapers of the time called this killer ‘the Executioner.’”

“The Executioner?” said Newbury, his voice cracking. He felt a sudden palpitation in his chest.
The Executioner
. The resonance of the word was like a physical blow.

Renwick frowned. “Does that mean something to you?” he asked.

“Possibly,” said Newbury, waving his hand and urging Renwick to continue. His mind continued to race, but he tried to focus on the rest of Renwick’s tale.

“Soon after, the final victim was discovered. He was an inventor named Monsieur Gilles Dubois. He had been dead for nearly two weeks, found stabbed to death in his drawing room. His adoptive daughter—an orphan he had taken in when his wife had died of a wasting disease ten years earlier—was missing. The girl had recently been diagnosed with a weak heart. They eventually gathered that Dubois had been carrying out unusual experiments on her, and she was now missing.”

“What kind of experiments?” asked Newbury.

“They found a workshop full of drawings and mechanical components. It seemed he’d been constructing a primitive clockwork heart to replace her failing organ. What’s more, they found evidence of occult practises, of rituals and spells conducted in the cellars of the house,” continued Renwick. “He’d been desperately trying to keep her alive, and it seems he was prepared to try anything.”

“And she killed him for it,” said Newbury. “She killed all of those people and disappeared.”

“Yes,” said Renwick. “It’s thought that’s where she started.”

“Started?” said Newbury, surprised. “It sounds like quite the career already.”

Renwick smiled knowingly. “She was next seen in Prussia, almost five years later,” said Renwick. “It’s not known what happened to her in the intervening time, but by the time she surfaced in Berlin, she’d adopted the moniker given to her by the French newspapers. She was selling her services as a murderess for hire under the name the Executioner. And she had a trademark now, too. She always stabbed her victims with a curved blade, then opened up their chests and claimed their hearts.”

Newbury sat forward again in his chair. “You can’t seriously be telling me it’s the same woman. Is that what you’re suggesting?”

Renwick laughed, but otherwise ignored the questions. “Throughout the course of the nineteenth century she is seen again and again, popping up all over the Continent. St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Leipzig, Venice, London, Madrid, Bruges. Always she is known as the Executioner, and always, without fail, she removes her victims’ hearts. It’s thought that her death toll is in the thousands.”

“But how can that be?” said Newbury, sceptically. “Surely she’d be dead by now.”

“There are very few descriptions of her, as most who meet her do not live to tell the tale. But those few that I
have
found,” he indicated the pile of books on the stool, “all describe her in the same way. Slim, around twenty years of age, her pallid flesh completely covered in elaborate tattoos, said to describe ancient rites and pacts with the very devil himself. It’s claimed she has precious metals inlaid into her cheeks, highlighting particular runes or symbols. She wears a metal brace across her left shoulder which contains the clockwork mechanism that long ago replaced her heart. It bears a porthole in its outer casing, through which her own, decaying organ is still visible, now just a blackened, shrivelled lump. She is ruthless and unfeeling, and will stop at nothing to accomplish her goal—to kill the person she has been charged with executing—and claim their heart for her own unspecified purposes.”

Renwick leaned over and passed Newbury the black book he’d been holding throughout his tale. His thumb marked a specific page. Newbury took it and scanned the contents. The text was in Flemish, but the etching that filled the entire right edge of the page was of a woman, just as Renwick had described. She was dressed in a form-fitting black suit, and what flesh was visible—her hands, forearms, and face—was covered in intricate tattoos. She was wearing what looked like a sword guard on her left shoulder, and she carried twin scimitars, one in each fist.

Newbury took a deep breath. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “How can it be the same woman?”

Renwick shrugged. “Whatever Dubois did to her, it worked. Whether it’s the machine he built to replace her heart, or whether he really did make a pact with the devil … I don’t know. Whatever the case, there’s no denying the truth. She exists. Her presence is felt on the sidelines of history throughout all the great nations. Everywhere you look, she’s there in the background, and she’s always the same, always killing to order and stealing people’s hearts.”

“Why has no one stopped her?” asked Newbury. “In all that time?”

“She chooses her clients well. Lords, ladies, governments … the sort of people who know how to suppress information,” replied Renwick.

“But if it
is
her…” said Newbury, gauging the immensity of what he’d just said.

“Then you have two problems,” finished Renwick. “The Executioner herself, and whoever is pulling her strings. She doesn’t kill for pleasure, and she is not aligned to any particular regime. She is a mercenary. If she’s here in London, she’s here because someone has contracted her services.”

Newbury glanced again at the image on the page before him. “It sounds like pure fantasy,” he said. “A fable. A myth. It’s utterly preposterous. And yet…” He trailed off again, deep in thought.

“I know,” said Renwick. “I know. It’s hard to stomach. But I’ve spent days looking into this, Newbury, and it’s all here in these books. Once you piece it together, her life story is right there, as old as the last century. If you have any doubt, think of the Queen. Life can be sustained beyond its natural span. Inevitably, however, something is lost in the process.”

Newbury nodded absently.
The Executioner
. The name he had heard in his dreams. The name he had scrawled upon ream after ream of paper in a clairvoyant frenzy; had screamed in terror and rage as he’d scratched it into the floorboards with his bloodied fingernails, back in his study in Chelsea. The name Amelia had warned him of, once he’d disclosed his secret to her.

The woman who would kill Veronica.

Renwick was right. Despite everything, it made sense. What he’d seen in his hallucinations had been real. The corpses told their own tale.

“It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” said Renwick, flexing his shoulders and reaching for the flask on the still once again. He took another swig, shuddered, and put it back.

Newbury stood, placing the book back on the pile. “I’m sorry, Aldous. I have to go.”

Renwick frowned, suddenly concerned. “What is it?”

“It’s Veronica. She’s in great danger,” he said.

“So you agree? These deaths, they’re the work of the Executioner?” said Renwick—surprised, perhaps, at how readily Newbury had accepted his report.

“Yes,” said Newbury. “Yes, I agree. It’s her. And I have reason to believe that Veronica is likely to become one of her targets. I need to find out who’s directing this woman. I need to get to them before she gets to Veronica.”

Renwick stood, clasping Newbury’s shoulder. “Go, then go. And be careful. With the Executioner on one side and the Cabal on the other, you need to watch your own back, too.”

Newbury smiled, but it was mirthless. “Thank you, Aldous. For everything.”

“Thank me by keeping yourself alive,” said Renwick as he held the door open for Newbury to exit.

“I’ll do my best,” said Newbury over his shoulder as he left.

CHAPTER

23

This man was the same as all the other desperate souls who had sought out her most particular of services over the years. He, like them, had deceived himself that what he was doing—hiring a murderess to despatch those who might oppose him—was ultimately altruistic. He believed he sponsored these terrible deeds because they contributed to the greater good, and that by using her as an instrument to carry out such distasteful and necessary measures he remained one step removed from the responsibility. In other words, he wished to ensure that his hands remained clean and his conscience unblemished. He used phrases such as “a necessary evil” and “if I had any other choice” … but, truthfully, he was fooling only himself.

She had seen men—and women—struggle with such rationales a hundred times before, and she knew this behaviour for what it was. Their fragile minds were unable to cope with the truth: that they shared equally in the responsibility; that they, in effect, were guiding her hand as she hacked apart her victims’ chests and relieved them of their hearts. Men like this (for it was, predominantly, men) entered into the arrangements willingly, enthusiastically even. Afterwards, when she returned to describe the target’s death and show them the leather satchel containing the stolen, bloody organ, they wished to distance themselves from the results almost without fail.

She found this amusing, if, perhaps, a little tiresome. Only the Russian had remained impervious to such things, all those years ago in St. Petersburg. But he had paid for his inquisitiveness with his life.

Of course, she did not really care to understand the motivations of her clients, nor the means by which they made peace with themselves after the event. Hers was not to question, but to act. She understood, however, that in accepting a commission from a man such as this, she also accepted that a role in a political game

This time, though, something was different. The demeanour of the man had changed. Whereas before he had adopted a business-like approach to their encounters, had refused to look her directly in the eye, now he sat staring at her across the table as if imploring her to understand.

He looked tired, with dark rings beneath his eyes, and she wondered if he, too, was plagued by demons. This thought piqued her insatiable curiosity. Was that what it was to feel? It had been so many years, she could no longer remember.

He took another sip of his whisky and cleared his throat, but did not speak. The room was silent, other than the steady ticking of a grandfather clock. It stood in the far corner monotonously checking off the minutes: a steady, mechanical heartbeat, measuring each second.

She found the sound of a clock deeply reassuring. To her it was as if the constant tick-tocking was an echo of the heartbeat at the centre of the universe. It reminded her that she was still alive, despite her inability to appreciate the joy that such a thing should inspire. Indeed, she surrounded herself with clocks wherever she went. Her own heartbeat had died long ago, but in the tiny mechanisms of stolen clocks—often removed from the homes of her victims—she found peace.

The man was ready to speak. She could sense his need to divest himself of his burden. She would listen with ambivalence, and then ask for her instructions. She had no interest in his reasons, or how he felt about them. She wished only to know the name of the person he wanted her to kill.

The man placed both of his palms upon the table, exhaling. When he spoke, it was with great gravitas and solemnity. “I have another task for you,” he said. “There has been an alteration in our circumstances.”

She nodded, but did not reply.

The man reached for a sheaf of papers that he had laid out on the desk earlier in preparation for their meeting. He withdrew a single sheet from amongst the others, cast his eye over it, and then, with a sigh, slid it across to her. She noticed his hand was trembling.

She glanced down at the name and address written on the page:

SIR MAURICE NEWBURY, 10 CLEVELAND AVENUE, CHELSEA

She took the piece of paper, folded it twice, and slipped it carefully into a concealed pocket.

“It is with great reluctance that I ask you to do this,” he said. “I had, until recently, hoped to spare this particular agent from the fate which awaits his colleagues. However, his tenacity is such that he puts us at risk of exposure.” He paused, looking her directly in the eye. “I ask that you end things swiftly and efficiently, and that you do not, under any circumstances, deprive the body of its heart.”

This was new. He was asking her to alter her modus operandi, to break the habit of almost a century. She had not killed without opening a victim’s chest since she’d fled Montmartre in the 1820s, aside from an incident in Bruges almost twenty years ago, when she had been interrupted in the process of cracking a man’s breastbone and was forced to flee to avoid capture.

She thought she should be outraged by the man’s impertinence, but she looked inside herself and could find no spark of anger, no consternation. Only the perpetual void where her heart had once been.