The Immorality Engine (3 page)

Newbury grinned. The colour seemed to be returning to his cheeks. “To establish a cause of death?”

“No. To identify the victim.”

Newbury ran a hand over his bristly chin. “Very well. Lead on, then!”

Veronica couldn’t help feeling relieved at the enthusiasm evident in his voice—even if it
was
enthusiasm for a corpse.

*   *   *

The morgue was cold and unwelcoming. Veronica felt a chill pass down her spine as she stepped over the threshold and through the double doors. Or perhaps it was something more. Trepidation? Fear? Unease? She’d never felt comfortable around corpses and she hoped she never would. She’d seen plenty of them in her time—even taken a life in the course of duty—but something about seeing a human body laid out in such a way filled her with a terrible sense of dread. She hated how a person—a living, breathing, intelligent person—could be reduced to this, to nothing but an unmoving mass of flesh; how all that potential could so easily be invalidated. It was as if everything they stood for, everything they’d experienced or seen or had yet to see were suddenly worth nothing. All their deeds and loves and foibles: all of them amounting to this. A slab of meat on a slab of stone, ready to be butchered. Sometimes, seeing a corpse like that made her wish she hadn’t lost her faith in God. Living in a Godless universe could be bleak and dark, and the reality of death was a black cloud that scared her more than anything else in the world. Fear, however, could not distract her from what she saw as an ultimate truism: that God did not, and never had, existed.

Other times she wished she could be more like Newbury, able to disassociate himself from his emotions, to examine a corpse and see a puzzle there, to look past the dead person to the mystery beneath. But, truthfully, she was glad she was still shocked by such sights, and glad that she had not become so cynical or worn down by her experiences that they were now merely commonplace to her.

This, she mused, was one of those days. She wanted dearly to be anywhere but in the morgue, anywhere away from the stench of death and decay and the sight of bloated, festering corpses and the remains of people who had met untimely ends.

So when the tall, thin mortuary attendant ushered the three of them inside, giving Veronica the most disdainful of looks, she almost wished she could find an excuse to wait outside. But she knew that was out of the question and refused to bow to stereotypes. She would steel herself and press on. It was, after all, only flesh and blood. The dead people themselves had no further need of it.

The mortuary attendant—so pale himself that he could quite easily have passed for one of the corpses—looked down his nose at Newbury, then turned towards Bainbridge, raising a disapproving eyebrow. “Sir Charles. Another most irregular visit. How can I be of assistance to you and your … associates?” His voice was reedy and nasal. He held his hands out before him, his fingertips pressed together to form a spire before his chest.

Bainbridge pursed his lips and Veronica saw his knuckles whiten on the handle of his cane. For a minute she thought the chief inspector might strike the insolent fellow, but he managed to restrain himself. “You can help,
my dear fellow
”—he exaggerated those last three words to indicate his impatience with the man—“by taking me and my
associates
to see the unidentified body that was brought in by my men two nights ago.” He twitched his moustache testily.

“The young man in the suit? The suspected criminal?” The mortuary attendant seemed incredulous, as if he couldn’t quite understand how the three people before him could want to sully themselves with such distasteful business.

Bainbridge glowered but did not respond.

After a moment, the mortuary attendant shrugged. “If you’d care to follow me.” He turned, holding his head high, and strode off into the labyrinthine warren of corridors that sprang from the reception area, his footsteps echoing loudly off the tiled walls.

Bainbridge set out after the attendant, and Veronica followed with Newbury, sliding her arm under his, supporting him as they walked. It was as much for her own comfort as for his, of course—as they wound their way deeper into the building, beneath the acid glow of the lamps and the gleaming, tiled archways, she felt a knot tightening in her stomach.

The place was filled with the stink of blood and faeces, the tang of iron. As they walked, Veronica became aware of the atrocious sounds of the surgeon’s art: the rasp of a bone saw, cutting through the voiceless dead. The sound of fluid spattering on tiles. A man coughing and spitting. The wet thump of an amputated limb dropping to the floor.

She clutched Newbury’s arm a little tighter. For the first time that day, he turned towards her and she actually felt that he was seeing her. He patted her hand, took a deep breath, and seemed to grow in stature. It was as if being needed was somehow enough to rejuvenate him, to refresh him. As if it were the lifeblood that sustained him, imbued him with vigour. Was it neglect, then, that had driven him to such terrible depths? Was it loneliness?

It seemed Bainbridge had been right, whatever the reasons. What Newbury needed was a good mystery, some solid work. She wondered what he would make of the chief inspector’s little puzzle.

The mortuary attendant led them to a quiet corner of the morgue, where the body they had come to examine was laid out on a marble slab and covered in a thin white shroud. It was cool in the morgue, but the cadaver had already started to smell. Veronica wrinkled her nose in disgust. She hoped that Newbury wouldn’t want to do anything more invasive or prolonged than take a quick look.

“If you have no further need of me…?” said the mortuary attendant in his snide, reedy voice. Bainbridge offered him a curt nod in reply, and, with a haughty expression, he turned about and left the room.

Newbury turned to smile at Veronica, then extracted his arm and approached the slab. He hovered for a few seconds by the side of the body. “So, Charles. What’s the story?”

Bainbridge frowned, as if unsure where to begin. “He was found on Shaftesbury Avenue, the night before last. Lying in the gutter. No obvious cause of death.” He shrugged. “There are some … confusing circumstances. Take a look—see if you recognise the poor beggar.”

Newbury wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. He was sweating despite the chill. Veronica wondered if that had something to do with the opium he’d imbibed this morning, or if his body was already beginning to crave more.

Gently, Newbury took hold of the shroud and peeled it back, slowly revealing the body beneath. Veronica blanched at the sight of the waxy, bloated face, its eyes still open and staring, but now milky and sunken. The corpse had been stripped by the police surgeons and looked pale in the harsh yellow glow of the lamplight.

Newbury walked slowly around the slab, poking and prodding the body, spending a minute or two examining the face, rolling the corpse onto its side so that he could take a look at the dead man’s back. His expression gave very little away.

After a minute or two more, he stepped back from the slab and looked directly at Bainbridge. “Clearly, Charles, this is Edwin Sykes. I’m sure there are a hundred men who could have corroborated that for you. Why drag me halfway across London to see his corpse?”

Bainbridge smiled. “What do you suppose killed him?”

“Confound you, Charles, for dodging my question. I can’t see any obvious cause of death. Probably a heart attack, but there’d need to be a full autopsy to be sure. He’s clearly been dead for a couple of days.” Newbury rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his chin. “I should have thought you’d be pleased, Charles, to know that one of the most notorious burglars in London is on a slab?”

Bainbridge chuckled. “And there’s the rub, Newbury. There’s the rub. You see—as you’ve confirmed—Sykes has been dead for at least a couple of days. We’ve had his corpse in the morgue for two nights, guarded and locked in this room. But last night a burglary was committed on Regent Street that has all the hallmarks—down to the very last detail—of Sykes’s work. So either something very unusual is going on, or Sykes was never our burglar in the first place.”

Newbury looked thoughtful for a moment, before his expression broke into a wide grin. He glanced at Veronica. “Very well. It seems the two of you have my attention. So what next? Regent Street and the scene of the burglary?”

Veronica shook her head. “No, Sir Maurice. Chelsea, and the scene of a bath.”

Newbury looked down at his rumpled suit, clearly embarrassed. He smiled sheepishly. “As you command, my dear Miss Hobbes. But first, answer me this: What of Sykes’s personal effects? Had he been robbed?”

Veronica gestured towards Bainbridge, who pulled a small rectangular object from his trouser pocket and held it out to Newbury. It was a crumpled address card. Newbury took it and turned it over in his palm. It was emblazoned with the legend,
PACKWORTH HOUSE
.

“That’s all we found on him. No wallet, no jewellery, no papers. Just that card, stuck in the lining of his jacket pocket. Whoever stripped him of his personal effects must have missed it.”

Veronica nodded. “It seems as if it was more than just an opportunistic robbery. I find it hard to believe that someone happening across his body in the street would take such care as to remove
all
the contents of his pockets. What purpose could it serve them? The valuable items, yes. But his papers? To do so, they must have spent some considerable time beside the body, risking being seen all the while. It seems somehow … unlikely.”

Newbury frowned and handed the card back to Bainbridge, who tucked it away in his pocket once more. “Packworth House. Isn’t that the home of the Bastion Society?”

“Yes,” Bainbridge said. “It seems he was a member of that illustrious set. No doubt bought his way in with all that plundered money.”

“Or not,” Newbury countered, “if, as you say, he wasn’t your burglar after all. The circumstantial evidence certainly suggests not. And you never
were
able to pin anything on him.”

“Hmmm,” was Bainbridge’s only response.

Veronica approached the slab and picked up a corner of the shroud. She tried not to look too closely at the grisly, staring face of the dead man or breathe in his ghastly scent. “Sir Maurice?”

Newbury took the other side of the shroud. Together they covered the body once again—the body of Edwin Sykes, or someone who looked
very
much like him.

CHAPTER

4

“For God’s
sake,
Newbury! Look at the state of this place.”

Bainbridge thumped into Newbury’s drawing room with a thunderous roar, like a bear with a proverbial sore head. He strode first towards the sideboard, which was heaped with dirty wineglasses and plates, then to the fireplace and Newbury’s favourite armchair, around which thirty or forty newspapers had been discarded haphazardly on the floor. He knocked a heap of tobacco ash off the arm of the chair with his cane.

Veronica sighed. Just when she thought he’d finally begun to calm down.

“Mrs. Bradshaw!” Bainbridge continued to bellow at the top of his lungs. He charged towards the door, flung it open, and shouted down the stairs, calling for Newbury’s housekeeper. “Mrs. Bradshaw! Get up here at once!” He turned to Newbury. His voice lowered a fraction, but his tone was still harsh, critical. “I know you’re no disciplinarian, Newbury, but this really is unforgivable. What happened here?”

Veronica tried to take in the situation. Bainbridge was right: The place was in a miserable state. The curtains were still drawn, even though it was now midafternoon, and the room smelled of stale tobacco smoke and sweat. It clearly hadn’t been aired for days. Worse were the stacks of dirty plates and unwashed glasses and the smaller piles of tobacco ash from Newbury’s pipe, left spotted around the room in various bizarre locations: the windowsill, the coffee table, the arm of his chesterfield. It was as if Mrs. Bradshaw had given up trying.

“Mrs. Bradshaw!” Bainbridge was beginning to grow red in the face.

Newbury crossed the room and put a placating hand on his friend’s shoulder. “She’s gone, Charles.”

Bainbridge looked flustered and confused. “Gone? Where? Have you granted her leave?”

Newbury shook his head, and Veronica felt a pang of sadness as the gravity of his situation sank in. She really had gone. He’d chased her away. “She gave up on me, Charles,” Newbury continued, “and I can’t say I blame her. I kept unsociable hours. I had the most irregular habits.…” He trailed off. Veronica knew that he wouldn’t be able to give voice to the real reason Mrs. Bradshaw had left his service, but they were all very much aware of it. She could not watch his descent into addiction, or what it had made of him.

Something seemed to break, then, inside Bainbridge. His expression softened. All the rage, all the disdain seemed to pass out of him, and all that was left was the deepest concern for his dear old friend. Veronica watched as he placed his arm around Newbury’s shoulders. “Buck up, old chap. We’ll put it right. We’ll get things back on track.”

Newbury sighed. “Pop the kettle on, Charles. I haven’t had a good pot of Earl Grey for some time.”

Bainbridge gave him a hearty slap on the back. “I’ll get to it, Newbury. Right away. I’m sure Miss Hobbes here will run you a bath in the meanwhile.”

Newbury smiled thankfully. “And Charles?”

“Yes, Newbury?”

“I fear you may have to wash a few cups and saucers.”

Bainbridge chuckled, but Veronica could hear the undercurrent of sadness in the laughter. “Good God, it’s a few years since I’ve had the pleasure.” He set off in the direction of the kitchen.

Veronica stared at Newbury, and he looked back, his eyes filled with the apology he couldn’t offer. “He’ll be alright, you know,” she said. “He just doesn’t understand.”

“Do you?” Newbury looked away, staring into the cold, open grate of the fireplace.

“No. But I’m trying to.” She became aware that she was bunching her hands into fists by her side. She inhaled deeply to steady herself. “Right. A bath. And then Regent Street.”