Riot Most Uncouth (11 page)

“I don't think you are very funny, Lord Byron,” he said.

“That's understandable,” I replied. “You seem rather slow-witted.”

“And you have not answered my question.”

“What question?”

“Do you know who killed the girl?”

“If I did, don't you think I might have told someone?”

“I am unsure of your motives, but your poking about this matter has aroused curiosity.”

“When I poke about, I assure you, I arouse much more than curiosity.”

“And still, you give me no answers!” Dingle turned very red and balled his meaty fists.

“There is a deeply suspicious and shadowy man by the name of Leif Sedgewyck skulking about Cambridge. He was a suitor to Felicity, but I've no evidence yet that conclusively links him to her murder,” I said. “Angus Something-or-other is the local volunteer constable, and may possess useful information. I'd not accuse him of corruption or complicity in the murder, but neither would I trust him.”

“Thank you,” said Dingle. “And I'll have you know, I am not slow-witted. I am deliberate. Methodical. I am a professional dedicated to the advancement of a burgeoning field, and though people like you may not respect what I do, I am sincere and diligent in the practice of it. And whatever you might think, I am effective.”

“I'm sure you are,” I said. “Now, methodically remove yourself from my premises.”

 

Chapter 15

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art!

Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove;

I court the effusions that spring from the heart,

Which throbs, with delight, to the first kiss of love.

—
Lord Byron,
“The First Kiss of Love”

It seemed to me that criminality must be rooted in peculiarity, and I was surrounded by the strange. But the weirdest detail of all was the arrival of the second investigator. I decided to confront Archibald Knifing and see what he had to say about his new colleague. Perhaps he would let slip some useful fact. So, as soon as I got rid of Mr. Dingle, the Professor and I set out with resolve to interrogate the one-eyed man hunter.

We made it halfway across the Great Lawn before we got distracted. You see, although I was quite interested in untangling the mystery, I also had girls on my mind, and girls must always take precedence over all other concerns, even very urgent ones. So the Professor and I marched with purpose to the women's rooming house to see Olivia.

If one did not know the horrors that had occurred in there, one would think the house to be a peaceful place. It was a three-story white-columned structure on a rather quiet side street, close to the College but far enough removed that the noise and stink from the horse traffic along the main drag would not impose upon the young ladies' tender ears or delicate noses during their hours of repose. Indeed, the smooth, warm cobblestones were so spotless, they looked as though no horse had ever trod or shat upon them, and I imagined that they bore the footfalls of a disheveled, rakish young lord and his trusty bear with some measure of disdain.

My frenzied knocking upon the front door was met by the house matron, a dour and joyless spinster who served as the girls' chaperone. Her task was protecting the virtues of her charges from my sort of contamination, so she was naturally loath to permit me to enter upon the premises.

I was certainly not about to be cowed by this glorified nanny; the house matron was a mere servant, an unimportant person with no official capacity and no authority to prevent me from doing whatever I wanted. She was merely someone concerned parents had hired to keep men out of the girls' rooms. And better guard dogs than this one had failed to protect henhouses from bears. All that was required to gain entrance to the house was the invocation of my noble title and a threat to inform various respected friends of my displeasure at the matron's conduct if she refused me.

“I can't allow that animal inside, though,” she said. “He's a danger.”

I shrugged. “That's fine. He can wait with you. You'll find he is excellent company.” I offered her the end of the Professor's chain leash.

She hesitated while the Professor busied himself by scraping his four-inch claws against the doorframe.

“Maybe you can take him in with you, after all,” she said.

Olivia had not been awake for long when I banged on her door; she answered my knock clad in a sheer dressing gown that was falling off one shoulder. The girls shared a kitchen and the services of a couple of cooks among them, and the rooming houses didn't offer parlors or sitting rooms, so Olivia had only the single chamber. I noticed, however, that the room was immaculate, even though this house had no maids or servants. Like Archibald Knifing's clients, Olivia Wright would not tolerate disorder. Her bed was already made, the sheets carefully tucked and the coverlet pulled smooth. Books were stacked on her desk, alphabetized by subject, and none of the clothing or papers that typically littered the floors of collegiate residences were in evidence. Her mode of décor was antithetical to the chaos and grand decay that defined my own brooding aesthetic, and her room was precisely the kind of place where one might expect not to see a bear. Olivia took one look at the Professor and screamed.

“Do try to control yourself,” I said. “You will hurt his feelings.”

“What is that?”

“
Ursus arctos arctos.
The European brown bear. You may refer to him as Professor, or, if you do not like the honorary, you may call him Earl Honeycoat. He's not really an earl. That's just a name.”

“Why are you here, Lord Byron? You're drunk.”

“Usually. But there's a murderer about, and I feared you might be in mortal danger. My gallant friend and I rode to your rescue, because we are heroes.”

She gasped a couple of deep breaths, recoiling from the bear and trying to recompose herself. “That's why you brought that animal to my home?”

“That's the most honorable reason.”

“No one poses any danger to me, excepting you, and possibly your pet,” she told me. “Your presence here is a scandal, especially after your visit yesterday with the constable. I fear this will be the subject of much gossip among the other girls, and may harm my prospects.”

“Your prospects?” I asked. “But why should you need a man?”

“We've already had this conversation,” she said. “You don't have to tell me what I need.”

“If what you need is a respectable marriage you do yourself injury by wandering unsupervised in the dubious company of Leif Sedgewyck,” I said. “I am convinced he's responsible for the plague of violence that has torn Cambridge asunder.”

“Mr. Sedgewyck? A murderer? That's absurd. Mr. Sedgewyck is the portrait of propriety. Nobody would accuse you of being anything similar, Lord Byron.”

“I should hope not.”

“Mr. Sedgewyck took his leave at the front door, so as not to allow others to cast aspersions,” she said. “But they will certainly be cast in the wake of your arrival.”

“Let them. I enjoy aspersions.”

“Not everyone shares your appetite for notoriety.”

I grabbed her around the waist. “I have appetites for all sorts of things.”

“You ought to have stayed away, Lord Byron.” Her white skin flushed red up from her chest to her cheeks. Her breathing was rapid, and I could hear her heart pounding as I pressed her against me.

“I couldn't stay away. You're so beautiful.” I moved my face close to her neck and took in the scent of her skin and her hair.

“Why do men always tell girls that they're pretty?” she said. “Why don't you ever say a woman is bright or talented or witty?”

“We do say that,” I said. “We say it all the time. To the ugly girls. We tell them they have charming personalities and remarkable senses of humor, and we avoid looking directly at them; we fix our gaze on a point behind them, or off someplace to the side, to see if a prettier one is just beyond the periphery of our vision.”

“You must let go of me.”

“I don't believe you want me to,” I said.

“I do. I think you should. I know you're a kind of trouble I don't need.”

“You say that. But your eyes are pleading me to stay.”

She hesitated. “I cannot deny that I have sometimes admired you, from a safe distance.”

I knew it!

“Desire for me is a common affliction of your sex,” I assured her as I exhaled onto her neck. “I'm afraid I only know of one cure for it.”

“I never thought my distant affection put me in danger, because I didn't imagine that it might someday be noticed, let alone reciprocated. You are so very dashing, and yet you're such a very awful person.”

“The two qualities are not unrelated.”

She pressed a pale hand against my chest. “Lord Byron, I really think you ought to leave, before we make some irreversible mistake.”

“You're probably right.” I pulled her body against mine. “But I rarely do the things I ought.”

She stamped her bare foot on the rug. “Why do you insist upon being so impertinent?”

I touched my lips to hers. She didn't pull away. “Because I know what's best,” I said. “And I know your prudent impulses cannot stand for long against the force of unreasoning desire.”

“You're mad,” she said. But her voice was scarcely a whisper; and her protest was weak.

“Probably. I'm also right.” I pressed my mouth hard against hers and briefly lost track of time, place, and several of my senses as I explored. I carried no watch, but when she finally decided to resist my embrace and pry my roving hand off her ass, the sunlight was streaming in the window from a slightly different angle.

I tried to shove her down onto the bed, but she grabbed my arm and pushed me back, toward the door.

“You must leave at once,” she said. “Even with this killer on the loose, you're still the worst and most dangerous man in Cambridge.”

I relented, hoping for both our sakes that she was right, and I set out to find Leif Sedgewyck, who was obviously probably the murderer. I would vent my fury and disappointment upon him, and perhaps, if I was really piqued, I'd turn loose the Professor and give the bastard what he really deserved.

 

Chapter 16

The Vampire superstition is still general in the Levant. Honest Tournefort tells a long story, which Mr. Southey, in the notes on Thalaba, quotes about these
“Vroucolochas,”
as he calls them. The Romaic term is
“Vardoulacha.”
I recollect a whole family being terrified by the scream of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror. I find that
“Broucolokas”
is an old legitimate Hellenic appellation at least is so applied to Arsenius, who, according to the Greeks, was after his death animated by the Devil. The moderns, however, use the word I mention.

—
Lord Byron,
from a footnote to
The Giaour

Am I a villain? Am I a madman? The reader will inevitably ask himself this, and it's a question I've given much consideration to. One fact that may prove relevant: some months prior to the death of Felicity Whippleby, I told my mistress Violet Tower a secret, one so closely held that no soul knew it, save my loyal Joe Murray and, of course, the Professor. I was drunk, which was not unusual, and I was speaking a bit too freely about Mad Jack and my desire to hunt him down and hold him to account for his treatment of me and my mother.

“Your father is dead,” she said as we lounged after an athletic lovemaking session in my rooms at Nevile Court. “He pressed a gun to his head while riding the French harlot he'd spent his last shilling upon.”

I'd never spoken to her of this particular myth about my father, though I'd heard it before. Her knowledge of it surprised me. Perhaps it should not have; I was the subject of much gossip, as Mad Jack was before me. Both of us did everything possible to make ourselves objects of popular fascination.

“Lies and misdirection,” I said. “I will reveal to you the truth. But you must promise to share nothing of what you learn here with any soul.”

She teased my hair with her fingers. “Byron, you're frightening me.”

“And you should be frightened. I've discovered things that are truly terrifying; things that will upset your understanding of the nature of life and death.”

She smoothed my tangled hair and wiped sweat from my pale brow. “You know, when people say you're mad, I defend you. But I am beginning to think you need some kind of help, perhaps a tonic, or treatment in a sanitarium.”

“Swear to keep my secret.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“Very well. Forget I ever mentioned it.”

“Oh, come now! You cannot dangle the possibility of such exclusive knowledge and then withhold it.”

“Then swear.”

“You're being dramatic.”

“Swear it.”

“Fine.” She crossed her arms. “I swear that I'll never betray your secret, Lord Byron.”

I rose from the bed, and she followed me down my hallway, where I unlocked the door of the Professor's study, a windowless interior room that made a nice lounge for a gentleman or a suitable lair for a medium-sized mammalian predator. I cracked the door slowly, to avoid surprising the occupant, and ushered Violet inside. The bear stirred from slumber upon the pile of rugs and skins he used for a bed, and regarded the woman with a rumbling growl.

“That creature makes me uneasy,” she said.

“The Professor is perfectly harmless,” I assured her. “In any case, our concern is over here.” I pointed toward a large, heavy piece of furniture, a thing like a wardrobe. It would have been sleek and black, but the Professor had scored the wood with his claws. It had come from Newstead; part of my inheritance from William, the Wicked Lord. Joe Murray told me my great-uncle had liked to lock his whores inside the cabinet when they displeased him, hence the heavy doors and sturdy lock. The use I'd found for it was arguably more disturbing. I unbolted the doors on the front of the chest with an iron key.