Tenfold More Wicked (4 page)

They reached Oxford Street, where electric omnibuses rattled amongst horses and clockwork carriages. Glowing purple coils crackled amidst the whir of cogs and the thundery smell of aether. Tall brass velocipedes weaved in and out on teetering wheels, their riders holding on to the handlebars for dear life.

At length, Lafayette chuckled. “Harry the Haunter, eh? Or did you invent that to annoy Reeve?”

She waved at a one-legged paper-seller, whose headlines today yelled E
MPIRE
P
REPARES FOR
W
AR—
L
AST
C
HANCE FOR
P
ARIS
E
MISSARIES
and D
EPORTATION
S
QUADS
R
AID
E
NEMY
E
NCLAVES IN
W
EST
E
ND
and R
ADICALS
P
USH FOR
C
OMMONS
R
EFORM.
“Don't you read the broadsheets? Harry's responsible for every grand theft since the Crimean Gold, they say. In and out like a ghost, they say, seen and heard by no one.”

“Except you.”

Her optical with its unorthodox lenses suddenly weighed her down, incriminating. Secrecy and suspicion died hard. She laughed to cover her unease. “It's all nonsense. Likely the thief overpowered the guards with some stupefying concoction, and they were too embarrassed to confess. Reeve will have a fine time closing this one without me.”

“Dr. Jekyll, did I ever tell you you're magnificent?”

She frowned. “Your idiotic remarks make such limited impression, I'm afraid I don't recall. You uttered some flattering nonsense about my hat?”

“If you'll take my murder case, I'll happily flatter you all over.”

Temptation warmed her skin again. Money, prestige, a case that mattered . . . “I can barely wait. Good day, Captain.” She swept around the corner, dismissing him.

But Lafayette jumped into her path, unsheathing an utterly unfair smile. “That's a yes, then?”

Her skirts were jammed between his thigh and the centipede-like brass legs of a waiting omnibus. She tugged. They wouldn't come free. “Do you deny your ulterior motive?”

“Not for an instant. Doesn't change the fact that you want me desperately. My case, I mean.”

She sniffed. “I suppose a mild diversion could amuse.”

“There you are, then. Admit it: you've missed me.”

Eliza sighed. “Very well, if you insist. Show me what you've got.” She eyed him sternly over her spectacles. “For the case, that is.”

A dazzling twinkle of blue. “Naturally. Whatever else could you mean?”

H
OW BURLESQUE,” REMARKED ELIZA AN HOUR
later, as grimy mid-morning fog crawled through the broken window of a grandiose drawing room in Grosvenor Square. Peevish yellow sunlight glared at a set of Queen Anne armchairs, a green-baized billiards table, expensive Indian carpets. The grit stung her throat, driving away even the meat-copper stench of clotting blood.

The dead man sprawled on his side in a pool of black gore. A hunk of bronze poked from a ragged wound in his neck—a crucifix, complete with emaciated Christ—and the victim's face was missing. Peeled away, leaving a sticky crimson mess in which his lidless eyeballs glistened. His starched shirt front was torn open, and a bloody hole gaped below his sternum. On the carpet, in a splash of blood, sat his heart.

“I promised you gruesome.” Lafayette made an ironic bow. “Meet Sir Dalziel Fleet, baronet. Painter, culture critic, society's arbiter of artistic taste. Fashionable fools hanging on his every breath. A genuine waste of space, in fact. They ought to have elevated him to the peerage.”

“I've heard the name. Poor silly fellow.” She knelt by the corpse's skinned face, and a swift ache knifed her heart. In life, this man had been rich, privileged, powerful. What was he now? Dead, mutilated, his effects poked into by strangers.

No matter the victim, murder demanded justice. And she, Eliza Jekyll, would make certain he got it.

Behind the body, in one papered wall, yawned a secret door. The hinged panel had swung inwards, revealing a large private closet. Ransacked, papers and books littering a desk and a plush red chaise. A wall safe hung open, the picture that had covered it torn down and crushed.

“Love and money,” she murmured. “The two most common motives for murder. Which is this, I wonder?”

“Add ‘fear' to the list.” Lafayette shielded his eyes from the bloodied crucifix. “Brr! Clandestine Roman Catholics, scourge of the Empire! We've suspected the good baronet for years.”

His casual “we” made her squirm. The Royal preyed on anyone weak or vulnerable. She'd thought Lafayette to be different. But his offhanded charm made it all too easy to forget his defining characteristic: threat. “Persistent of you,” she said tartly. “Last I heard, faith isn't a crime.”

“But dangerous superstition is. It's difficult to reason with people who eat the flesh of their god.” He grimaced. “Still, I wouldn't wish this horrid demise on anyone.”

In a corner, a clockwork footman jigged on long hinged legs. It wore a tailcoat and tie over its narrow brass skeleton. Hipp galloped up and tried to climb it, flashing his blue
happy
light. The footman screeched, flapping hysterical arms. “Unacceptable! Unwelcome visitor! Recompute!”

“Do shut up,” muttered Eliza. The machine whirred indignantly, but obeyed.

Beside it, the butler—a living one—was spotlessly turned out in black coat and white gloves. An unusually young and ornamental fellow, to be sure, for such a senior post, with dark-lashed eyes and startling coal-black curls. “The room's as I found it, my lord. Madam.”

“Excellent.” Lafayette winked down at him. “But flattery will profit you none. At least, not at this hour.”

The butler blushed. “Effusive apologies, sir.”

“No matter, Mr. Brigham. Easy mistake. You say no one else has seen this?”

Brigham licked a reddish bruise on his lip. “The household is from home, sir. I sent to you soonest when I discovered what 'ad 'appened.” A trace of the East London accent he was trying to cover.

“Where might ‘from home' be?”

“Hampstead, sir. Lady Fleet's country house. She goes every weekend, with 'er maid and the carriage and the first footman. We held a dinner party here last night. Twenty, or thereabouts. The guests didn't leave until nearly two. No visitors since.”

“Outstanding work, Mr. Brigham. Don't go far.” A tip exchanged hands, and Brigham bowed out.

Eliza eyed Lafayette archly as he closed the wood-paneled door. “How much did that cost?”

“Five pounds and a flirt? Least I can do for such a precocious lad. Twenty-one if he's a day, and already the senior manservant. Shouldn't surprise me if he gets fired after this. I rather feel for him, don't you?”

“Quite,” she said, chastened. Doubtless, Lafayette had lived in a house full of servants from childhood, but it was just like him to
notice
people. For fair reason or foul. “So your solution is to make your pet butler the Royal's spy?”

“Don't look at me like that,” protested Lafayette. “True, he'd get along better if he didn't blush quite so brightly at the sight of a gentleman in uniform, but that's hardly my fault.”

“The poor deluded boy. His definition of ‘gentleman' clearly leaves much to be desired.”

Lafayette glanced at the ugly crystal-faced mantel clock. “Well, don't just stand there looking clever. Time is of the essence! The grieving widow will soon return, having called on our erudite friends at the Metropolitan Police. I'd say we've all of ten minutes until your fame-seeking Chief Inspector arrives.”

“Excellent.” She petted Hipp. “Have a sniff for organic traces, there's a good boy.” Hipp ground eager cogs,
skrrk! skrrk!,
and snuffled off with his
happy
light blinking. He'd a catalog of organic samples stored in his tiny brain. If blood or other stains were present, he'd find them.

She poked her tweezers at the severed heart. “Torn out, not cut. That aorta has snapped at the weakest point, adjoining the heart.” She slid her fingers beneath the corpse's armpit. “Quite cold, muscles stiff. Several hours dead. I'd say soon after the dinner party ended.”

“Twenty suspects. How convenient.” Lafayette examined a drinks tray that sat on the untidy desk, amidst tossed papers, and sniffed a dirty glass. “Scotch, single malt.”

“Collar and cuffs removed,” she mused. “Comes down
après
party, takes a drink . . .” She frowned. “Wait. Everyone
was out of town. They held a party with no servants? Just Brigham and the clockworks?”

“Perhaps a secret, racy sort of party.” Lafayette beckoned to the clockwork footman, which still jerked in the corner like a frantic marionette. “You. Tell me about last night.”

Cogs rattled in its pointed head. “Dinner,” it yammered, “ten o'clock. Twenty guests. First course, tuna fish wafers—”

“Delicious, I'm sure,” interrupted Lafayette. “What time did the guests leave?”

“Last departure, ten minutes to two. Ten minutes to two. Ten minutes to two . . .”

Hippocrates popped out a glowing purple coil on a stick and jabbed the machine's legs.
Zzap!
“Fault! Inferior mechanism. Upgrade!”

“Ten minutes to two! Ten minutes to two . . .”

Eliza waved the footman off. “Enough, silly thing.”

It dashed out, flailing frenzied arms. “Unacceptable! Ten minutes to two! Tuna fish!”

“Inferior,” sniggered Hipp. “Upgrade futile. Recommend scrap heap.”

Wryly, Eliza shook her head. “Practically manic. That's what you get for choosing a cheap substitute.”

Lafayette shrugged. “It confirmed Brigham's story. Machines don't lie.”

“You don't trust your blushing beau?”

A spectacular half-smile. “I'm a Royal investigator, Doctor. I don't trust anyone.”

“I'm sorry, were you including me in that?” She peered at the corpse through her magnifying lens and swabbed crusted blood. “Look: markings cut into his chest. Quite precise. A
thin blade, like a penknife. A five-pointed star, encircled, with . . .”

A half-circle, joined to a circle, joined to a cross. An alchemical symbol. Mercury.

Her nerves smarted. What did it mean? Was Lafayette trying to trap her? “Looks like something from a bad gothic novel,” she amended lamely. “What is it?”

“Irrational,” muttered Hipp, scratching the carpet. “Does not compute.”

Lafayette studied the cuts. “A pentacle. Used in, shall we say, doubly unorthodox rituals? And the symbol for mercury,” he added, “as if you didn't recognize it. Anyone would think you were hiding something.”

“Anyone would think
you
knew about this before we arrived. First a crucifix, now a pentacle. Tell me you don't believe in black magic.”

“I did promise sinister enemies unknown.”

Zzap!
Hipp jabbed gleefully at the corpse with his glowing coil, making it jerk. “Irrational. Logic flawed. Recompute.”
Zzap!

“Stop it, Hipp,” scolded Eliza. She eased one of the cuts apart with her tweezers. “Look how pale this flesh is. The cuts haven't bled. Post-mortem, same as the heart extraction.
You don't jam your hand into a living man's chest without making more of a mess.”

“Unless he was insensible. He reeks of that single-malt Scotch, enough to fell a medium-sized horse. Also, that's Caribbean tobacco, laced with . . . Chinese opium, or some such. See, I come in handy sometimes.”

“A veritable scent encyclopedia.” She scraped ash into a test tube, and pointed at a long bloodstain at the desk's foot. “But look, the victim was standing when he was stabbed. Not so insensible after all.”

“How's that?”

“That's arterial blood, sprayed under pressure. Imagine the victim standing here.” She twirled to assume the position. “Crucifix in the throat,
whoosh!
Blood all over the assailant. Except . . .” She frowned. “The spatter is unobstructed. It doesn't make sense. If you're close enough to stab a man in the throat, there's no leaping out of the way. You'll get it all over you.”

Lafayette eyed the carpet, dubious. “Perhaps the killer was very short.”

“An opium-smoking dwarf brandishing a crucifix. How our theories deteriorate. No, the victim was attacked from behind. Which necessitates a killer of a certain height, to achieve that downwards angle of entry.” Gingerly, she freed the bloodied crucifix. “Not exactly sharp, is it? A perverse choice of weapon.”

“Spur of the moment? He grabs whatever was to hand.”

“And lingers afterwards to carve up the corpse? No, this was the spur of no moment that I can perceive. The killer brings a knife, yet chooses this. Why?”

“A sense of theater?”

“Or something in particular to say.” She eyed Lafayette expectantly. “So was Sir Dalziel dabbling in black magic as well as papistry? Is that the real reason the Royal are watching him? Is this a ritual gone wrong?”

The crystalline clock chimed the quarter hour.

“Three minutes to go, Doctor. You tell me.” Lafayette began to rummage through the desk. “Drawer forced, letters and sketches ripped up. And that empty safe, key in the lock, contents missing.” He indicated the mangled painting on the floor. “They knew where it was, or took an educated guess.”

She eased the crucifix back into the wound. “Seems a lot of effort just to cover up a burglary. If I'd killed a man who'd caught me in the act, I don't believe I'd hang around to mutilate the body.”

“You imagine the fellow who did that”—Lafayette pointed to the extracted heart—“is thinking things through?”

“I'm thinking he had a very particular purpose. Murder was his aim, theft an opportunity.”

“Ah. So he breaks the window to enter. Stabs the old man, tears out his heart, rips his face off,
schllpp!
Job done. Filches the fellow's cash for good measure, and off he trots?”

“Plausible. Especially if the killer was hired, and looting the scene for a bonus.” She tested the sliced edges around the dead man's chin with her scalpel. “A human face isn't strongly attached to the skull. Cut around the edge, it'll just peel off. But why?”

“For fun? No point trying to hide this victim's identity.”

“Hmm. But to hide something else about him . . . ?”

“Like what?”

“I've no idea,” she admitted. “Where is it? I wonder. The face, I mean.”

“Perhaps the killer took it with him. Proof of a job well done. A powerful man like Sir Dalziel has enemies. Sending a message?”

She rose to examine the carpet, where Hippocrates snuffled and squeaked. “All this carving and stabbing. Surely he's left some traces . . . Aha!” She pointed triumphantly at a curved smudge of blood. “Difficult to make footprints when you're drowning in your own blood. Captain, meet our killer.”

“Man or woman?”

Her brows arched.

“The wife's always the chief suspect, isn't she? I get the impression they didn't like each other.”

“But peeling his face off? Hardly a society wife's specialty. Simpler to poison the fellow's port.”

“Given it much thought, have you? Murdering one's husband, I mean.”

“One should plan for every contingency.”

“Indeed. I sleep with a loaded weapon for that very purpose. Just so you know.”