The Immorality Engine (12 page)

She hesitated, unsure now what to do. “Well, I—”

“Charles!” Newbury’s voice, raised in alarm, suddenly echoed throughout the hall. “You’d better get over here quickly.”

Veronica smiled weakly at Foulkes and moved past him, heading towards Newbury and the body.

She almost baulked at what she saw. There was blood
everywhere
. Everywhere she looked: sprayed up the staircase, spattered and pooling on the floor, even dripping—drip by ponderous drip—from the glass chandelier high above them. Jewels lay scattered all around the body, in all manner of colours, shapes, and sizes; tiny flecks of beauty in the midst of utter, devastating violence.

The corpse itself—or what was left of it—was splayed out upon the tiled floor facedown, its head and right arm thrown up onto the bottom stair. And there was a hole right through the middle of it, a ragged-edged void where the spider thing had chewed through the meat and bone and cartilage, burrowing through the man’s chest and bursting out through his back. Ribbons of shredded intestine hung like pink drapes from around the edges of the hole.

Newbury knelt beside the body, cradling the man’s head in his hands. The face was covered in a series of ferocious gouges, and the hair was matted with dark arterial blood.

She heard Bainbridge beside her, but couldn’t look away from the obscenity before her, couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sheer horror of what she was seeing.

“My god!” Bainbridge exclaimed. She surmised he was experiencing a very similar response to her own.

“There’s more,” Newbury said, shifting the body around so they could see.

“What? What is it?” Veronica just wanted to get out of there, to get outside and away from the stink and the blood. She had no time for games.

Newbury pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and used it to smear the blood away from around the dead man’s face. “There. Do you see it now?”

Veronica studied the man’s face. The expression was one of sheer terror, the lips curled back in a frightened scream. But beneath the blood and the webwork of scratches, one thing was suddenly clear: The dead man in Newbury’s arms was none other than the enigmatic Mr. Edwin Sykes.

CHAPTER

11

“It’s extraordinary! They’re identical!” Bainbridge exclaimed loudly. He looked terribly confused by the whole affair.

“Hmmm,” said Newbury, without looking up.

Much to Veronica’s unease, the three of them had returned to the police morgue. They had driven convoy across town from the house on Cromer Street, following the police wagon bearing the corpse. The journey had been arduous, conducted at a funereal pace, and now she was back at this most distasteful of establishments for the second day in a row, and starting to regret ever getting herself mixed up in the affair.

The body had been one of the most horrendous things she had ever seen, comparable to when she and Newbury had discovered the violated body of James Purefoy, the young reporter, or—perhaps worse—the shriveled, exsanguinated husks of former village folk at Huntington Manor earlier that year. It was the sheer violence of the attack, the utter disregard for life that disturbed her so. Seen like this, people became nothing but shreds of meat and bone, and she hated it. Perhaps it was also the understanding that, if not for Newbury, she might well have been discovered that morning in much the same condition. Either way, she didn’t wish to spend any longer in the company of the dead than was strictly necessary.

As it was, they had been at the morgue for an hour. It had taken the police surgeon only ten minutes to complete his assessment and ready the corpse on the mortician’s slab. For the rest of that time, Newbury had been examining the body in minute detail. Not only that, but he had recalled the corpse they had seen on their previous visit, which now lay uncovered on a second slab beside the new arrival.

It had been a few days since that first corpse had been found in the gutter, and the flesh had taken on a bruised, sickly hue. It had also begun to smell. Badly. As a consequence, Veronica had covered her nose and mouth with a handkerchief, which had the dual purpose of suppressing the smell and keeping her grimace hidden from the others.

Newbury was currently comparing the left hand of the new body with the identical hand of its double. He was stooped low, circling the marble slabs, a looking glass clutched in his right hand.

Veronica lowered the handkerchief. “Couldn’t this be a simple matter of identical twins?” she ventured. She’d read about cases such as this, where a long-lost or previously unheard-of relative had made a sudden reappearance, capitalizing on their likeness to their more successful kin. In some cases, they’d gone so far as to attempt to assume the identity of their brother or sister, even murdering them as a means of keeping them out of the picture.

Bainbridge, however, was shaking his head. “I don’t believe so, Miss Hobbes. We checked the birth records. Sykes was an only child. It was a complicated birth and his mother died during delivery. If there had been twins, the doctor would have recorded them as such at the hospital.”

Newbury stepped back from the slab and looked up at them, bleary eyed. “There’s far more to it than that,” he said enigmatically. “There are sinister forces at work.”

“Sinister forces! Whatever are you going on about, Newbury?” said Bainbridge. Veronica could tell by the way he was tapping his foot on the tiles that he was growing steadily more impatient. He’d been standing there, just as she had, for the best part of an hour. Now, it seemed, he wanted answers.

For a moment, Veronica thought that Newbury was going to ignore the question, but then he folded his arms and smiled. “One of these corpses,” he said, “is a doppelgänger. A copy.”

“A what?”

“A copy, Charles. It’s really quite remarkable. I don’t know how it was done. But the first corpse you found, this one—” He gestured towards the body on his right, the one that was beginning to putrefy. “—is not the original Edwin Sykes.”

Bainbridge glowered at the body, as if willing it to disappear, or else to sit up and reveal all its secrets. “I don’t understand, Newbury. A
copy,
you say?”

Newbury nodded. “I know it’s hard to take in, Charles, but this isn’t another case of familial secrets and long-lost twins. What we have here are two Edwin Sykeses.”

Bainbridge shook his head. He looked lost, as if he simply couldn’t comprehend what Newbury was telling him.

“But that’s impossible,” Veronica said, feeling as unsure about what she was hearing as Bainbridge looked. She covered her face with her handkerchief once again. The stench of the corpses was like rancid meat.

Newbury shrugged. “Who’s to say what’s possible and impossible in this world? I can only judge the evidence placed before me, what I see before my eyes. And the facts are that this—” He pointed to the eviscerated corpse they had pulled from the house on Cromer Street that morning. “—is the real Edwin Sykes. And this—” He pointed back at the other. “—is a duplicate.”

“How can you tell?” she replied, trying not to sound too skeptical.

“The forensic evidence speaks for itself,” he argued. “For a start, the facial structures, the sizes and shapes of the bodies—they’re in every way identical. Absolutely
identical
. But this Sykes’s skin has been lived in. There are laughter lines around the mouth, tiny creases and imperfections, scars. Whereas this one—” He crossed to the other slab. “—well, the skin is almost perfect. No scars, no sign that it’s ever been
worn
. I mean, look at the colour of it. It’s never even been exposed to the sun! It’s pale, soft, and new.”

“New? I’m having trouble following you, Newbury,” said Bainbridge.

“Then there are the hands,” Newbury pressed on, ignoring him. “Look here.” He grabbed the left wrist of the first body, showing them the hand he’d been examining earlier. He spread the fingers so they could see them. “Here. These hands are clean. Perfectly clean and unblemished.” He carefully lowered the hand, placing it gently on the chest of the corpse, and then ran around to the other slab. He was bursting with energy, filled with the ebullience of the hunt. “Now, look at this. Identical in almost every way, except
here
.”

Veronica gasped. “Calluses.”

“Very good, Miss Hobbes!” Newbury beamed at her. “And lots of them. Look at the ingrained filth, too. These hands have seen work, and recently.” Newbury looked at Bainbridge. “The evidence is compelling, Charles. I could list more: the teeth, the eyes … I’d wager if you sliced him open, the organs would tell a similar tale. I tell you: We’re dealing with more than one Edwin Sykes.”

Bainbridge was staring at him. “So you’re telling me there could be an army of them out there? Any number of Edwin Sykeses? He could have set that spider device on you last night at Miss Hobbes’s apartment?”

Newbury nodded slowly. “Once you accept the facts, Charles, anything is possible.”

“It’s unbelievable. Too outlandish, Newbury, even for you.” Bainbridge tapped his cane on the floor to hammer his point home. The sound echoed out around the tiled walls. “I’m more inclined to go along with what Miss Hobbes intimated back at the Yard, about there being other men involved…”

“Charles. Charles! The evidence is here before your eyes! Can’t you see it?” Veronica thought Newbury was about to start hopping from foot to foot with impatience.

“I don’t know what to believe.” Bainbridge gave a hearty sigh. “It’s a damn mess of an investigation. We can’t build a case on speculation alone. I mean, how the devil would Sykes even go about
starting
to copy himself?”

Newbury moved round the slab to stand before him. “
Think,
Charles. The mechanical spiders. He didn’t build them himself! He must have a sponsor, someone with the wherewithal, with the right technology. Someone who trusted him to handle the spiders on their behalf. Edwin Sykes didn’t mastermind the operation.”

“But really, Newbury…”

“Charles, we’ve seen all sorts of bizarre things during our many cases together. Why is this any different?”

“Because we’re talking about something as fundamental as the ability to copy a living person!”

“That doesn’t make it any more outlandish than automata with human organs, or poltergeists, or any of the other bizarre things we’ve seen before.” Newbury gesticulated at Bainbridge, imploring him to understand.

“But who? And why?”

Newbury shrugged again. “I can think of any number of reasons. If you were a jewel thief with the ability to copy himself, what would you do?”

“Sit and grow fat on the accumulated wealth of my duplicates,” Bainbridge replied thoughtfully. “And pay my sponsor a hearty cut of the proceeds.”

“No.” Veronica shook her head. “No. We’re missing something. It’s not that simple. If Sykes could just create copies of himself that easily, why was he at Cromer Street? The corpse with the calluses–that body has been
lived
in. Why would he still be committing a crime himself when he could have one of his duplicates do it for him? If it were me, I wouldn’t risk capture.”

“And there’s more,” Newbury said. “We still haven’t explained why he was lying dead at the foot of the stairs, surrounded by the spoils of his trade. I find it highly unlikely that his mechanical beast would turn on him after all this time. Not unless someone else was controlling it.”

Bainbridge leaned heavily on his cane. “This is a dark and intricate web, Newbury. And we still haven’t worked out what, if anything, it has to do with Graves and the Bastion Society.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’re involved, Charles, somehow. There’s a lot more to Enoch Graves than meets the eye.”

“Sir Charles?”

Veronica turned at the sound of a man’s urgent voice echoing down the passageway.

“Sir Charles?”

“Through here,” Bainbridge called in reply, with a dark scowl.

Veronica heard footsteps ringing on the tiles. Someone was running. Seconds later, a young man in a police constable’s uniform came hurtling out of the passageway and into the room, skidding to a halt on the slippery tiles. “Sir Charles!” he said, leaning against the wall as he attempted to catch his breath.

“Yes? What is it, man?”

“You’re needed, sir,” the constable said between gasping intakes of breath. “There’s been an intruder at the palace. Her Majesty sent for you.”

Veronica saw Bainbridge start in surprise. “An intruder at the palace?”

“Yes, sir. An attempt has been made on her life.”

Veronica and Newbury turned to stare at Bainbridge, waiting to hear his response.

“Have you got a carriage waiting?” Bainbridge asked, his voice low and serious.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I’m on my way.” Bainbridge turned to Newbury. He looked as white as a sheet. “You’ll have to finish things here, Newbury.”

Newbury narrowed his eyes. “Charles, do you need me there? I could come along—”

“No.” Bainbridge cut him off. “I’ll send for you if I need you. Finish up here, then get over to the Grayling Institute and talk to Fabian. We need to find out what that fool Graves is up to, and whether he has anything to do with this doppelgänger business.”

Newbury nodded. “Very well, Charles. Hurry. And give Her Majesty my regards.”

Bainbridge turned and ran after the young constable, abandoning the use of his cane as he dashed headlong towards the waiting carriage.

Veronica watched him go, then turned to face Newbury, who was looking down at the two dead men with a thoughtful expression. “You want to know, don’t you?”

“What?” He didn’t look up.

“How he did it. How he copied himself like that.”

Newbury chuckled, but didn’t take his eyes off the bodies. “At this moment, Miss Hobbes, more than anything else in the world.”

Veronica grinned. This was what she’d been waiting for. All the dead bodies, all the waiting around in the morgue, the arguments, the shouting. All of it had been worth it for this. She watched him as he carefully lifted the shrouds, one after the other, and covered the corpses.