The Immorality Engine (6 page)

More cheering. Veronica tried to dodge a man who was waving his arms above his head with wild abandon and received an elbow in the ribs for the effort. The guilty little urchin—a girl of no more than ten—charged off, ducking between people’s legs. Veronica checked her bag. Thankfully, nothing appeared to be missing.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Bainbridge behind her, resolutely forging a path through the crowd, keeping pace with her and Newbury, his face like thunder. She was jostled roughly left to right, and clung to Newbury for dear life until, a moment later, they burst through to the front of the crowd to be confronted by one of the most bizarre spectacles she had ever seen.

Two men, dressed in full plate armour, sat astride identical brass warhorses, and appeared to be attempting to club each other to death.

Wooden barriers had been erected in a large oval to form a sort of arena, around which a crowd had gathered to watch the spectacle that was unfolding within.

The two men—dressed, Veronica gathered, as mediaeval knights—were locked in fiery combat, swinging flaming braziers at each other as their strange, mechanical mounts bucked and weaved and circled. The horses were clearly automata, of some sort: iron skeletons clad with shining brass plates, powered by tiny steam engines hidden somewhere in their workings and evidenced only by the jets of hissing vapour that issued from their nostrils. Each was bigger than a normal horse, with glowing, demonic eyes and sculpted manes. As they danced around each other with jarring but surprisingly rapid movements, Veronica caught glimpses of their internal workings, exposed as the overlapping plates of their bodies parted at the seams. Cogs whirred inside them like hidden clockwork nervous systems.

The two men were knocking each other about with tremendous vigour. Veronica flinched as one of them struck the other hard in the chest with his brazier, denting the steel plating of his opponent’s armour and sending hot coals spinning into the audience. The crowd parted to avoid the fiery missiles with a loud roar, but it was a roar of approval.

Veronica beckoned for Newbury to lean closer and spoke loudly into his ear. “What are they doing?” She turned her head to catch Newbury’s response.

“Fighting,” he said with a broad grin.

She gave him a playful slap on his chest. “I realise that. But why?”

“I have no idea. But it’s keeping this lot entertained.”

Veronica looked back, searching for Charles in the sea of faces. He was right behind her, and offered a resigned shrug. Then, spotting something, he pointed to a wooden board propped up against one of the barriers. It had been painted white, with words neatly stencilled onto it in red paint. Veronica tried to read around the people who stood in front of her, but they seemed intent on not staying still for even a moment. Eventually she managed to decipher the words
FOR CHIVALRY! FOR ENGLAND!

Veronica frowned. Saint George’s Day had passed months earlier. She wondered what it all meant. A demonstration by an Arthurian society, perhaps?

She had little time to wonder further as Newbury, clearly growing tired of the entertainment, dragged her away, towards Regent Street and the scene of the previous night’s crime.

*   *   *

Regent Street was almost as busy as Piccadilly Circus itself, with shoppers milling before impressive window displays filled with all manner of luxury goods, from exotic food hampers to oil-powered shaving kits, antique books to imported automata.

One store appeared to be selling Revenant Repellent Kits hand over fist. Veronica smiled at the hopeful faces of the customers as they emerged from the shop clutching their talismans and holly sprigs, still attributing supernatural causes to the plague that had infested the slums the prior year. People needed an enemy, something palpable to hide from. They would rather see devils than pox—at least devils could be kept at bay.

Veronica wanted to feel scornful towards these people for their naïvety, but she could not. They were only doing what they thought would protect their families from the Revenant curse, and surely it was better than nothing. Even hanging a talisman on the door was
something,
regardless of how little effect it had. And if it made them feel better … well, she couldn’t judge them for that.

She turned to see Bainbridge pointing towards the front of a nearby jeweller’s store with the end of his cane. The legend on the sign read
FLITCROFT & SONS, FINE JEWELLERS
. There were wooden shutters over the windows and the door was shut. There were no lights on inside the premises.

Veronica had heard of them by reputation, of course, but she’d never had reason to pay a visit to the store. Indeed, she suspected most of the items for sale inside to be well beyond her means. Shops like this one catered to the lords and ladies of high society, and whilst she could never be considered poor—she had a small allowance from her parents that she supplemented with her income from the Crown—neither could she afford to squander her money on elaborate and unnecessary trinkets.

“This is the place.” Bainbridge approached the door and tried the handle. It was locked.

Veronica studied Newbury. He was shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, staring down the street. He looked slightly more himself following their visit to his Chelsea home, but the dark bruises beneath his eyes and the pallor of his skin said a great deal about the general condition of his health. This was not the Newbury she had come to know. Even now. Even with the fire of a case in his belly. There was something else at play, and she had yet to discover what it was.

Bainbridge rejoined them. “Right, when you’re ready.”

Newbury searched the other man’s face, puzzled. “Are we not going inside?”

“Round the back. I want to show you how he got in.”

Newbury nodded and trailed after Bainbridge.

*   *   *

The rear of the shop was as featureless and nondescript as the rest of the buildings in the long row, save for the two uniformed bobbies who were loitering outside, kicking their heels, deep in conversation. One of them was smoking a cigarette. He swiftly cast it away when he saw Bainbridge coming, but was unable to hide the riffles of smoke that still curled from his nostrils. He quickly adjusted his posture and stood to attention, wearing a guilty expression. His companion fought to contain a wide grin.

“Hardly surreptitious, Peters,” Bainbridge said as he approached the pair, clearly attempting to hide a chuckle at the uniformed man’s expense.

“No, sir, not surreptitious at all, sir.” The man looked utterly crestfallen.

Bainbridge leaned in close to him, lowering his voice. “A little tip for you, Peters. If you’re going to have a sneaky smoke while on duty, try not to get caught.”

The man, Peters, looked visibly relieved at Bainbridge’s leniency. Veronica thought he might even grab the chief inspector by the hand. “Yes, sir. Sound advice, sir. I’ll remember it well.”

“See that you do, Constable.” Bainbridge patted the man firmly on the shoulder, then motioned the two of them aside with a wave of his cane. He pointed it at the rear door of the shop, which was down a short flight of stone steps and across a small yard. “So here we are, Newbury. Take a look at that. See if you can’t spot anything the rest of us might have missed.”

Newbury nodded politely at the two bobbies then crossed the street, taking the steps two at a time, and dropped to his knees in the yard, examining the flagstones along the approach to the door. Veronica followed him at a reasonable distance, keen to see what was going on without disrupting his train of thought.

From his pocket, Newbury withdrew a small magnifying lens, about the size of a penny piece. He held it up to his right eye, clutching it between his thumb and forefinger. From where Veronica was standing, it made his eye look suddenly enormous. She stifled a laugh.

She sensed Bainbridge moving to stand beside her and looked over at him. He stood watching Newbury with interest. “Remarkable,” he said without the slightest hint of irony.

Veronica grinned. Bainbridge was a traditionalist. He did things the old way. That wasn’t to say that he was outmoded—far from it—but simply that his thought processes had been worn into familiar grooves over many years of policing. In most instances, this read like a shorthand that could sometimes seem like arrogance to those who didn’t know him better: He would arrive at the scene of a burglary or murder and immediately suggest the means by which the crime had been committed. It was a kind of insight, Veronica mused, a way of seeing the world through the criminal’s eyes gleaned from years of experience and many hours spent cogitating on the motives of the men he sent to the gallows, prisons, or asylums. He could walk into nine out of ten crime scenes and immediately put his finger on the solution. It was the reason he had risen so swiftly through the ranks at Scotland Yard, and the reason he was such a trusted agent to the Queen. But sometimes, on those rare occasions when his intuition failed him, when he found himself flummoxed by circumstances outside his realm of experience, he called on Newbury.

Newbury had a knack for turning things on their head, of being able to take any situation and see it in a different light. He offered a perspective that often seemed obvious with hindsight, but represented a logical leap that many people would find unimaginable. And that made him a truly remarkable detective. He was able to glean insight from the slightest fragment of a clue. And his experience reached beyond that of the traditional detective: Newbury was an anthropologist and an expert in the occult. His work for the Queen had tended to centre on this latter trait: Newbury was the man she called in when something unusual or otherworldly was suspected, or when all of her other agents were confounded.

Veronica watched as he scrambled around the yard on his knees, ruining his fresh suit, bowing his head so low that his nose was nearly touching the ground. He continued in this manner for some time, moving from the foot of the steps right up to the shop door and then back again. Then, suddenly imbued with energy, he leapt to his feet, pocketed his magnifying glass, and ran over to the two bobbies, who were watching all of this with growing confusion.

“Show me the soles of your left feet,” he said, the urgency in his voice enough to cause them to both turn around and do just as he said. Newbury ran a hand through his hair, bent low to examine the proffered shoes, and then proclaimed “Ha!” before bounding back over to stand before Bainbridge. Veronica was taken aback by this sudden alteration in his behaviour, but was gladdened by it; it was more energetic a display than she had seen from him for many, many months.

“A man, Charles. He was here late last night, after the light rain. His stride was confident and purposeful, and his shoes were flat-soled size nines.” He eyed the chief inspector triumphantly. “What size shoes did the dead man wear? Sykes?”

Bainbridge smiled. It was clear he was relieved by Newbury’s sudden outburst of enthusiasm. Vindicated, too, she suspected, since it had been his idea to involve Newbury in the case. Although Veronica knew there was more to it than a simple desire to help Newbury find a reason to drag himself away from the opium dens, she also believed he was utterly perplexed by the mystery and in need of his friend’s assistance.

“Size nine,” Bainbridge conceded. There was a glint in his eye. “Take a look at the rear door, Newbury.”

Newbury was like a bloodhound that had suddenly got hold of a scent. He turned and made a beeline for the door. Veronica followed him, curious to see what he would do next.

The door itself was a heavy wooden affair, unmarked and unremarkable, and clearly designed to keep people out. It was at least an inch thick—she could see this because it was now standing ajar—and was lockable from the inside by virtue of a large dead lock and two thick iron bolts. It had been crafted from a dark hardwood, possibly mahogany.

Newbury was on his knees again. Veronica crouched low to see what he was looking at. He was running his hand around the inside edge of a large circular hole in the door, admiring the smooth, clean edges of the cut. The hole was about the size of a dinner plate and had been punched clear through the door. Through it she could make out a grille of iron bars—another lockable barrier between the rear yard and the shop beyond.

“Have you seen this, Charles?” Newbury beckoned the other man over without averting his gaze from the door. “Around the hole, here.” He traced his finger around the rim of the aperture. The door sported a series of eight smaller marks, nothing but faint indentations in the wood. They were evenly spaced around the outside of the larger, central hole.

Veronica looked at Bainbridge, who was standing over them, grinning. “Yes, I’ve seen it, Newbury. Perplexing, isn’t it?”

Newbury stood. “Perplexing, indeed!”

Veronica sighed. “Can someone please explain what the devil it is you’re talking about?”

Bainbridge laughed. “Yes, I’m sorry, my dear. Allow me to explain.” He leaned on his cane. “Edwin Sykes, whom we—until now—presumed to be responsible for a series of daring and elaborate burglaries all over the city, had a most ingenious method of entering a property.”

“Go on,” Veronica urged him.

“Well, he’d somehow managed to lay his hands on a mechanical device. We have only secondhand reports of what it looks like, but we’ve seen the results of its work.”

“The holes in the door?” Veronica suggested.

“Yes, but you’ll soon see there’s more to it than that.”

“So what is this thing, this device?”

Newbury stood, turning to smile at her. “It’s a spider,” he said.

“A spider?”

“Exactly that,” he continued. “A large mechanical spider. See those eight small markings in the wood around the central hole? We believe that’s how it fixes itself into place while it burrows out the main entry point. It’s a dead giveaway. I’ve never seen anything else like it.”

“But there’s a full-height metal grille behind that door. And what use is a hole like that? Are you saying that Sykes—or whoever was responsible—reached through that opening to pick the lock on the other side? And what about the dead bolts?” Veronica gave them both a dubious look.