Tenfold More Wicked (19 page)

“Take care, sir, lest your curses betray your sympathies. Do you mean black magic? Is this Silberman the ringleader?”

His face drained. “Never said that.”

She dragged him into the bay window's niche, out of the noisy crowd. Time for a dose of Lafayette's methods. “Don't waste my time with more lies. Sir Dalziel was murdered for plotting to expose this Silberman. Now Carmine Zanotti's dead, and he might not be the last.”

A shrug. “Ain't my problem.”

Incensed, she slapped his cheek. “Shame on your chilly heart,” she hissed. “It'll be your problem, when I tell the police you tampered with those clockworks to falsify evidence. Fancy a stretch in Coldbath Fields? I hear the convicts reserve special treatment for pretty papist lads such as yourself.”

“Piss on you,” muttered Brigham, but his sullen gaze shifted.

“Whatever floats your boat, sir. Who else knew about this?”

He fidgeted. “Lady Fleet'll know I told.”

“We'll keep you safe,” she promised, far from sure it was true. “Captain Lafayette has powerful friends. Who can just as easily implicate you as protect you, if you don't prove your worth. Does Lady Fleet deserve your silence so well?”

Defeated, Brigham yanked his cap off to rake his black hair. “All of 'em stayed until three,” he admitted. “Lady Fleet never went down to the country. She wouldn't miss their naff-arse rituals. Blood sacrifices, demon summoning, the usual bollocks. There's a secret basement where they all go at it. Old Dalziel were nutty as a fruitcake. Thought he'd live forever.” He flushed. “I've already crowed too much. I 'ave to go.”

Briskly, she grabbed his coat and shoved him against the window. “Don't imagine I'm too ladylike to thrash sense into you,” she lied. “Where can I find this Silberman?”

Brigham's eyes lit. “Joking, ain't you? That's just what he calls himself. No fixed abode. A bad egg, no mistake.”

She relinquished her grip, only half satisfied. “Do you mean a murderer?”

“Lady, there's worse things than dying.” Casually, he yanked his coat straight, but his brow gleamed with sweat. “Look, I don't know who done it. I lied about the dinner 'cause I wanted to keep my job, that's all. I never talked to you, all right? Swear to Christ, if you come looking, I'll make you sorry.” He stuffed his bag under his arm, the electric head poking out. “Get your pet looked to, madam,” he added politely, as Hipp capered at his ankles, yelling nonsense. “Leave him much longer, he'll pop.”

“Please—”

But Brigham was already swallowed by the teeming rush-hour crowd.

H
IPP,” ANNOUNCED ELIZA, HER MOOD ONCE AGAIN
buoyant, “we have a suspect.”

Hipp bounced in agreement. “Investigate,” he yammered. “Information please. Information-mation-mation . . .”

“Do try to calm down,” she added, exasperated. She'd more important things to do than tinker with Hipp. Witnesses to re-examine, a case to build. Who was this elusive Dr. Silberman? Everyone at that Exhibition had lied, and she intended to extract the truth.

Beside her, Lizzie laughed, a bright phantom in red skirts. “Oh, aye. You and whose army?”

Eliza rolled her eyes. “For heaven's sake, don't
you
start.”

“You ain't the police,” persisted ghost-Lizzie. “If they's all in on it, like Brigham claims, think they'll talk to you? Not without a certain scarlet-coated Royal agent to strike fear into 'em.”

“Indeed. Did it escape your notice that the captain and I disagreed?”

“Well, you'd best agree again, missy, or for you this case is over.” Jauntily, Lizzie tossed bouncing curls. This time, she
wore a crooked top hat and a huge monocle, one eye looming impossibly large. She seemed scarily real. Almost opaque.

“Nonsense. I don't need him. I'll return to the Fleet house, ascertain if this secret basement is real . . .”

Lizzie just laughed.

Stubbornly, Eliza pursed her lips. “I don't
need
anyone. Especially not you.”

She hailed an electric omnibus, waving at the driver through the raucous crowd. The thundery aether scent brought to mind that stormy night at Bethlem, when the Chopper tried to bring a stitched-up corpse to life.

Mr. Todd had offered bizarre insights into the Chopper case. What would Todd say about this pentacle-carving, heart-eating killer? Perhaps she could mail him her case notes. She wouldn't need Captain Lafayette for that.
Dear Mr. Todd, why did the crazy person do this?

She squeezed onto the crowded omnibus, thanking a gaunt fellow in black with a rolling glass eye who offered her his seat. He clambered up the spiral steps onto the roof, and the omnibus rattled away, leaving Lizzie standing on the sidewalk.

Eliza grinned, and waved.
Ha! See you later.

Hipp bounded into her lap. “Bus! Bus! Bus-bus-bus . . .”

Her vision wobbled, lurching vertigo, and the pale-haired governess sitting opposite suddenly seemed to wear Lizzie's face.

“Aye,” the apparition taunted, “stand on your stupid pride, until this pentacle-brain loon kills someone else. Face it, missy. You NEED Remy.”

The cramped omnibus suddenly trapped Eliza, the thick
air choking her. Surely everyone was staring. What she
needed
was a tonic and a good lie-down . . .

The Lizzie-thing practically purred. “Pox on your precious independence. Would it be so dreadful to spend another day in his company? Or is you scared
he
don't want to see
you,
after you accused him of torturing folks for fun?”

Bang!
The omnibus jerked to a halt at the corner of Southampton Row, and Lizzie smirked and vanished. The governess returned Eliza's stare with suspicious eyes.

Heavens, she was losing her mind.

Hurriedly, Eliza paid her threepence and jumped down with Hipp under one arm. The gaunt glass-eyed man tipped his hat to her, and her spine crackled cold. Hadn't she seen him before? He put her in mind of Lizzie skipping along a dark street, a weaving drunkard who bellowed a song.
While soft the wind blew down the glade . . .

Good God. Was the whole town spying on her?

“Fine,” she snapped, to no one in particular. “Hipp, if you please, telegraph Captain Lafayette. Tell him I've a development in the Pentacle Killer case, and I'll come by tomorrow morning, if he doesn't mind terribly. If he's not too busy, that is.”

“Busy,” yelled Hipp happily, galloping away. “Inner Temple, ten o'clock . . .”

Niggled by dumb animal guilt—what had her harsh words with Lafayette even been about?—Eliza headed reluctantly for home. Birds twittered in the leafy park, irritatingly cheerful. Shoppers strolled and laughed. Smiling couples flirted. Children frolicked on verdant grass. How infuriatingly domestic.

She stomped onwards, peeved. If Lafayette thought she'd forgiven him—“For what,” yelled Lizzie from a passing carriage window, “making you face the truth?”—he could think again. In the meantime, she must do the Philosopher's bidding. Unless she fancied a rusty electrified dungeon in the Tower.

And that meant the elixir. Lizzie would fare better by far in the Rats' Castle than she . . . and as always, since her guardian's identity had been revealed, Eliza felt a strange mixture of reluctance and girlish eagerness at the prospect of seeing Mr. Hyde.

But the Philosopher's coercion maddened her. Always subject to another's orders, following another's plans. Never acting of her own volition.

“Not so nice, is it?” called Lizzie gaily, swinging lace-gartered legs atop the spiked park fence. “Ha ha! How'd you like
them
apples?”

“I like ‘them apples' perfectly well, thank you.” Eliza crossed the street, dodging a blue-skirted young lady swerving along on an electric velocipede, and stomped up her front steps. “What does that mean, anyway? Where are these ‘apples' you're forever on about? Why do you have to be so picturesque?”

“Picture-who?” Now Lizzie lurked beneath the porch, spitting on a dirty handkerchief and polishing Eliza's shingle.

“You know that word. You can display perfectly respectable manners when you feel like it, but insist on acting like a circus clown. No one likes following the rules, Lizzie. I can behave myself. Why can't you?” Eliza slammed the door, her breath short.

Was she truly going mad at last? Or just that sweet-pink remedy, playing tricks?

She dropped her bag on the consulting-room desk. Now Lizzie was fighting in her guts again, punching her insides black and blue. “Stop it! You're not squirming out while I'm sleeping this time. I need to remember, not wake up half drunk in a doorway with mud up my skirts. It's the elixir, or nothing. And you'll come straight back when you're finished, young lady,” she added, half-hidden memory scorching her cheeks. “No messing about with your seedy gentlemen friends. Kindly salvage a whisker of self-respect.”

“Ha!” Lizzie's grin poked from between the drapes. “At least I'm honest about it, instead of making out my turds don't stink. Forever pretending to be sommat you ain't, just to impress a man. Call that self-respect? Arse-licking, more like.”

“Call it what you please,” snapped Eliza, flinging herself into her chair. “Just don't expect sympathy from me when you contract some horrible disease.”

“Don't matter if I do, eh? I just
change,
and everything's healed! Ha! How'd you like
them
apples . . . ?”

Mrs. Poole bustled in, brandishing a vase of fresh freesias. “Everything all right, Doctor? I heard voices.”

Confused, Eliza glanced left and right. Lizzie had vanished. “Er . . . quite. Thank you. Uh . . . I'll retire early tonight, if you please. I'm rather tired.”

Mrs. Poole bossed the flowers into order. “Quite an evening last night, was it?”

Eliza covered a fake yawn. “Home by eleven, if you must know. I barely stayed awake.”

“You poor thing. How unbearable, swanning about in a fancy gown with that handsome captain on your arm. Took
you long enough to come inside, didn't it? Anyone would think something salacious was going on.”

“Is that what happened? I hardly recall. Might you fetch me milk and a sandwich, please? I'm not very hungry.”

“Humph. Something amiss with my suppers, is there?”

“You have me. All these years, I've been pampering your feelings. I'm afraid you can't cook to save yourself.”

“All that fine food wasted,” grumbled Mrs. Poole. “I suppose I can rustle up something.”

“A jewel, as always. Whatever should I do without you?” Eliza started upstairs.

“Starve and work yourself to death, like your father?” called Mrs. Poole after her.

“In a matter of days. I've little doubt.”

The sunset had faded, staining her bedroom's white drapes with watery blood. She lit the electric light,
pop!
Her skin jittered, a poor fit, and her palms itched, begging her to scratch them raw. How she longed for Lizzie's devil-may-care confidence. Yank that well-oiled sconce, dive into the secret chamber, fill her mouth with that bitter delight . . .

Mrs. Poole arrived with supper. Eliza ate it, barely tasting. She sat at her writing desk and tried to read—Herr Gross's text on the identification and preservation of crime scene fluid samples—but her concentration scattered like marbles. She paced up and down. Loosened her clips, pulled hairpins loose in readiness. Fetched her elixir from the cabinet. The glass felt warm and greasy in her hand. Pulsing, like a living creature, eager to be free.

Grimly, she stared at it. It stared back. Waiting. Yearning.

The mantel clock struck eight.

I
SMACK MY LIPS, ELIXIR ROLLING IN MY BELLY LIKE
molten gold.

About time.

I ditch the empty bottle. Stretch my hungry muscles, pop my neck,
crack!
I feel . . . odd, as if my skin don't fit proper. That shiny pink hellbrew is playing merry bugfuck with me, my friends, and I won't stand for it.

My dresses beckon from my closet, tempting red devils . . . but I let 'em be. Becky's killer might still be a-hunting, and if he is, he's wanting a saucy-eyed dolly in a red dress, not a prim schoolmarmish lady. Out of twig, no less! Ha ha!

I pop a few corset clips, and my chest swells, grateful. Her shoes are too damn sensible, ugly, too, but they'll serve. No stiletto—my sweet steel sister's lost—so I grab Eliza's stinger and test the button.
Bzz-ZAP!
Current forks blue between twin metal prongs. Well enough. I tuck him into a pocket.

I knot my crackling dark hair, and check my reflection,
sans
spectacles. Christ, we looks a sight. This dull gray dress makes me out like a ghost, corpse-pale face and shadow-ringed eyes. I giggle. I feel like them ladies of the night from
Soho, putting on a fancy fakement.
Sir, you make me blush. Be gentle!

Or maybe the particular sort. I pout, and crack an imaginary whip,
ka-chishh! You're a bad boy, Gerald. I shall spank your skinny arse with this handy riding crop until you repent.
Ha ha! Plenty o' cringing weasels in Soho would pay good coin for a whuppin' from Dr. Eliza. Missed her calling, that's what.

Giggling, I creep down the back stairs. In the alley, chilly air hangs damp, them promised warm nights of summer stubbornly unarrived. Fog haunts the streets, shrouding the almost-full moon. When I reach New Oxford Street, thick clouds streak. By the time I stomp down the twisting lane with the cracked blue-lit doorway, it's raining, her stupid dress is soggy to my skin, and I'm gripped by a right foul mood. On the broken wall by the entrance, someone's scrawled this season's revolutionary claptrap.

INCORRUPTIBLE

I salute it, mocking. Vicious crop of bomb-happy madmen, if you ask me, though Eddie Hyde seems to enjoy their antics. Shoot Her Crazy Majesty down, lads, and her god-rotted Philosopher with 'er. Suits me.

Chilly rainwater drips from my hair, seeping down into my bodice. I knock. The beady-eyed door-keeper's head pokes out. “What?”

I leer. “The watchword's
let me the fuck in, snotface.
”

He grunts and oozes aside, for he recognizes me. The boss's daughter, Princess Lizzie of the Rats' Castle, second only to King Eddie hisself.

Don't work like that, o' course. No jeweled tiara, none o' that shit. Only that Eddie cares for me, and they say you mess with Eddie's cares at your peril. Right. Tell it to Becky's red-caped killer.

I sashay down the pitch-black corridor in the musty sweetness of fairy dust. Push aside a creaking leather curtain and I'm in.

My eyes boggle. Magic ripples over my skin, creeping beneath my clothes to pleasure me. The noise smothers, voices and laughter and music of all sorts, endlessly layered and reflected. So loud it judders nails into my bones.

In here, your perception
stretches,
drunken yet alert. Most of the Rats' Castle lies underground, bigger than you'd think possible from outside. A vast atrium, gallery stacked upon gallery, down and forever till I can't see no bottom. Giddy plank walkways criss-cross, lurching above nothing. Rat-nosed boys, squirrel-tailed urchins, and odder chimeras caper and swing, whooping with the thrill.

Around the galleries, the crowd heaves and roars, a force of nature. Deformed, warped folk, half-man and half-beast, the magical and the mad. If the god-rotted Royal would burn you, this be the place for you. Hair of all colors, frilled skirts and rough-spun coats, weirder rigs of silk and brocade, from rags to the richest finery. I smell perfume, pig shit and noisome coal smoke, gin and absinthe, and the storm-rich scent of aether.

Curious fingers tug my skirts. A blueberry-faced boy thrusts a sloshing drink into my hand. Wine, sin's bloody red. I drink deep. “Hail to the King!” I yell, and a pig-snouted bloke cheers. “Incorruptible!”

The buzz is immediate, intoxicating . . . but I'm troubled. Something's off tonight. The crowd's pushy, hungry, ripe with muttered curses. They flex yellow claws, bare sharp teeth in thirsty grins. I can taste their rage, bitter and fragile like my own, the sulfur-piss tang of gunpowder. The air bristles, armed, a battle poised to erupt.

But I lets 'em sweep me along, down ladders and across bridges, beneath archways and down drainpipes, always down, to where Eddie's carnival dances its tipsy waltz. His carousel, wacky plaster creatures draped in electric lights, bobbing in that eerie organ melody. Men on stilts, acrobats flipping, fire-eaters and blade-swallowers and sultry belly dancers with naked breasts soaked in gin. All roads lead to Eddie.

Here's a card game, deep in some dim-lit corner of a forgotten gallery. A fire pit glows red, and the table's heaped with strange collateral. Coins, clothing, a hedgehog in a wicker cage. A broken piece of Enforcer, two brass forearm bones and a jointed hand. A coil of green hair tied in a stained love knot. A pot of congealing blood. Is that a kidney in a box? Here, you really can bet your life.

My father's slouched in a winged chair, dented top hat askew. Empty bottles litter the floor. He points with his cigar, a wave of foul smoke, and laughs his fucking head off.

Drunk, Marcellus Finch might say, as a skunk. Excy-llent.

I glance around for Johnny the rat-fink traitor, thicker with my father than he dared, for ten years, to let on. Don't see him. Good. I'm still too heartsore and guilty to face Johnny now.

I strut up behind Eddie, clap fingers over his eyes. Inhale him, booze and sadness and darksweet alchemy. “Gin,” I announce. “Game's mine.”

“Eliza?” Weary, alight with hope.

Fuck him. I drop a kiss on his forehead. “Try again.”

A grin erupts. “Lizzie, m'darling. Thought you was someone else.” He jumps up, flinging his cards aside—his hand were rubbish anyway, a pair o' tens is all—and knocking the hedgehog to the floor. The cage smashes, and the creature's spiny arse scuttles away. A furry-faced cove sprints after it, snuffling with a long agile nose. Mayhap the hedgehog's his lady friend.

“Your Majesty.” I spread Eliza's prim skirts, a proper lady.

“How do?” My father flips me a bow. He ain't tall—his shoulder's sort of hunched, if you must know, and he lurches about lopsided like a cross-eyed tortoise—but somehow he's graceful, too, vigorous as a man half his age.

“Not too shabby. We need to talk.”

“Good day, I trust you're well, how quaint, good golly gosh, is that the time?” He thumps me again with that rakish Eddie grin, what must've spelled doom for so many enraptured ladies in its day. Hell, today's still its day, because I want to be sore at him for loving Eliza best—doesn't everyone, God rot their eyes?—but suddenly I ain't.

I ain't. He gives me those big, mad eyes—storm-gray, like hers and Henry's, but glimmering like thunder clouds with the
weird
—and I want to grab him and dance. Laugh like jackals to the stars, dive into madness together and die.

He twirls me on one hand, flaring my skirts. Tough hands, roughened like no gentleman's should be. “Holy goat's balls. Don't know 'bout the rest of these giddy bastards, but I'm in
love
.”

This is Eddie's idea of charm.

“Piss off,” mutters I as we go to the gallery's rail to survey his domain. “I'm out of twig, all right?”

“What for? You in trouble?” Those storm clouds blacken, ominous. A muscle jumps in his cheek, and his once-handsome mouth twists into something cruel and ever-hungry.

This, my friends, is how murder looks. Unless you're a red-haired loon with a razor, but that's a knottier sack of eels. And even as my guts recoil, my stupid girlish heart overflows.

So easy, what with Eddie's wild romantic soul, to forget what he is. The rascal what spat Henry Jekyll's good intentions to the dust, what took the good doctor's wife to bed on the sly, and produced
us
—and then hurled her down the stairs when she wouldn't have him no more.

The devil what gave Eliza her elixir, and cursed me to this nether-life forever.

“Ain't nothing.” A drunken funeral cortege staggers through the carnival, black crepe and lacquered coffin. A fat tattooed dwarf howls a dirge, accompanied by groaning organ pipes. “Setting a trap, is all. A toff square-rigged, stabbed a girl in Seven Dials. Hooked nose, wears a red-lined cape.”

Hyde's expression clears. “You might try Mrs. Fletcher's in Soho. The girls there cater to his sort.”

I wonder what “his sort” means. “Rich and ugly?”

A wicked-sweet grin. “Been there myself. 'Cept I always act the perfect gent.” Emphasis on the
act
.

I grin, too, but I'm squirming like a wet worm. What the hell do you say to your father, when he starts on about whorehouses?
Ho ho, good one, Papa, go and get your rocks off?

But it's worse than daughterly embarrassment. His brutal smile unnerves me. I've heard the sin-black whispers. God
help the sorry lady of pleasure who lucks into Eddie for a customer.

“Where's the Queen of Tarts tonight? Powdering her pig?” His lady, green-skinned and lithe and nutty as a Yuletide pudding.

His grin don't fade. “She disappointed me.”

And I eyes that severed green lovelock on the card table, and wish I never asked.

I get to business. “Have I got a deal for you,” says I, and tell of the Philosopher stopping Eliza in the street. A truce, Royal and Rats. Cease fucking fire. “Talk is, you've got new friends,” I add. “Those boom-happy Incorruptibles and their Mr. Nemo. I dunno, Eddie. Them new Enforcers, half human . . . there's a bloody lot of 'em. Maybe some arrangement?”

Eddie laughs.

Raucous, reckless laughter. The fire pit flares, and far above, fireworks shower green and golden. When Eddie Hyde laughs, lights shine brighter. It's contagious. The card-table folk are guffawing, tears streaking pockmarked cheeks. Everyone's lost it, an outbreak of mirth fever with no cure.

I start, too. I can't help it. Hoarse, belly-splitting howls. It feels good.

At last, it subsides. We wipe away tears. God forgive me, Eddie, but I love you. And you won't never love me back. Not the way you love
her,
all hopeful and starry-eyed. I'm forever the embarrassing stepchild, and deep in the rotted bilges of my soul, I burn to
KILL
her for it.

“Arrangement,” sputters King Eddie, still chortling like the loon he is. “You're fucking joking.”

And that's all that need be said.

An hour later, the parlor of Mrs. Fletcher's high-class whorehouse in Soho. Brocade drapes, lacquered white furniture, and a girl named Rose in silk stockings and a French maid's outfit. Sixteen if she's a day, pert boobs and a heart-stoppingly high bottom.

Rose chews a candied apple, pigtails bobbing. “Depends. You a snout?”

I point at Eliza's drab skirts. “Do I look like a copper's whore?”

“Fucking copper's wife, more like. Aye, I knows 'im. Or should I say,” she adds, dropping into a fancy accent and tittering girlishly, “yes, most definitely, I'm acquainted with this fine fellow. What you might call a most singular visage. Heh heh! How awfully quaint.”

She's startled me, I confess. Didn't think she'd talk so easy. “He got a name?”

“Milord.” Back into bored Soho drawl. “As in, ‘Certainly, milord, I'd be honored to suck you off,' or, ‘God, yes, milord, jam it up my arse, please!'”

Snicker. “Is he a lord, then?”

“He never said he ain't. I figure he's in the Commons at least. Forever on about committees and petitions and the like.”

I scrunch my nose, recalling Eliza's snotty insults.
Have some self-respect.
The whores, I get. But why would some Parliament-minded cove hoof it down to Seven Dials and slaughter Becky Pearce? Don't make no sense.

Rose rouges plump cheeks. “Anyway, your red-caped gent's rich. Flashes gold as if it ain't nothing.”

“How much does he pay?”

She names the figure.

“Jesus wept. What d'you do that's worth that?”

She lips her lolly. “Pay and I'll show you.”

I smirk. “Likes it exotic, then?”

Rose blanches, just a little. “He's all right. Talks fancy, likes a game. Harmless once you get your hand on it. It's his gang of roughs what's the trouble. They ain't gents, not especially the bigger one. Tips extra if you fake it while he bites your titties.”

Charming. My erstwhile pursuer, stuffed into sausages as we speak? Or—more likely—his still-breathing mate with the rusty nicked knife?

“But I ain't 'is regular,” Rose adds. “The red-caped bloke, I mean.”

And now we gets to it. I flick her a pair of crowns.

She checks for clipping with an experienced eye. “Saucy May,” says she. “We rents upstairs rooms to streetwalkers. She's one. Skinny chit, yellow hair.”

“Thanks.” I halt, inspired by some impulse I don't comprehend. “Last thing. You know a cove with a parrot?”

Rose sucks her lolly. “Sure. Pirate Ship Gino. Raw-boned lag with three gold earrings and the clap.” Smirking, she waggles her little finger. “Likely got it fucking that bloody bird, if you get my meaning.”

In Soho's stinking rainbow streets, I'm asking for Saucy May.

I've coin, so it's quick work. A fat, sloppy cove shrugs, a flower girl shakes her lice-cropped head. But a half-drunk
Turk sloshes gin on my skirts and waves me towards Crown Street—sixpence—and then a skinny Creole boy with a furred growth on his face points me towards a side lane. Tuppence, thanks very much, and cheap at the price.