Wild Boy (12 page)

The paper trembled in Wild Boy’s hands. He read it again, barely able to believe what it said. It was just like at the fair — he’d been set up, his name written at another murder scene. But he didn’t even
know
this new victim.

Anger boiled through him. Just because he was a freak, everyone believed that he was guilty. Unable to control himself, he grabbed one of the soup bowls and hurled it against the wall of the underground chamber. He leaned over the table, swearing and pulling the hair on his face.

“Finished feeling sorry for yourself?” Clarissa said.

“No, I ain’t,” Wild Boy spat. “Leave me alone, will you?”

“I will not! My name’s at that house an’ all, you know? And you’re going to help me get out of this.”

“Yeah? How am I gonna do that?”

“We’re going to find clues to prove we’re innocent.”

Sir Oswald collected the remaining bowls. “Listen to her, Master Wild. She speaks sense.”

“It was his idea really,” Clarissa said, nodding at Sir Oswald. She prodded Wild Boy’s arm. “That’s your skill, ain’t it? Seeing things.”

“I ain’t got a skill.”

“Master Wild,” Sir Oswald said. “It is poor form to lie to a lady. Perhaps, were you not so busy being angry, you might use your abilities to solve this mystery. Indeed, were you and Miss Everett to put aside your differences, I believe that you would make a formidable duo. Why, you even look like partners already.”

He gestured to their clothes — Wild Boy’s long crimson tunic with its gold tassels, and the red-and-gold sequined dress under Clarissa’s coat. “A detective and an acrobat,” he said. “Yes, a quite formidable duo.”

“I can pick locks an’ all,” Clarissa added.

“Good for you,” Wild Boy muttered.

He knew it was a silly thing to say. The truth was, he felt embarrassed. He’d always prided himself on being a survivor, but so far all he’d done was shouted at Clarissa. At least she wanted to do something about this. But he knew her plan wouldn’t work. “Ain’t no point trying to prove our innocence,” he said.

“Why ever not?” Sir Oswald said.

“Because no one will listen. See this?” He threw the news sheet across the table. “The Wild Boy of London. A monster with a price on my head. All anyone will care about is the reward. They don’t wanna hear about our innocence.”

“Great!” Clarissa said. “So you just wanna sit here and get caught. We ain’t friends, but I thought you were tough at least.”

“I ain’t saying we do nothing.”

“Then what are you saying, Master Wild?” Sir Oswald asked.

Wild Boy thought for another moment, wondering if his plan was right. They couldn’t hide down here forever, even with Sir Oswald’s help. The bounty hunters would flush the tunnels, drown them in the darkness. At best they’d get caught and only have their word to give the police.

“We go after the killer,” he said. “We find out who he is, and we catch him.”

Sir Oswald looked alarmed. “Master Wild, surely it would be more sensible to investigate those clues that you know. Miss Everett said the killer was after a machine of Professor Wollstonecraft’s. And she spoke of an individual with a golden eye. Perhaps you could pursue one of those leads, or —”

“No,” Clarissa interrupted. “I like his plan. We owe the killer anyhow. Revenge, right?”

She looked at Wild Boy, and it was as if her eyes lit that fire again inside him. They may not have been friends, but they were both fairgrounders and they had a score to settle.

“Revenge,” he agreed.

“Then we need to make a list,” Clarissa decided. “Things we know about the killer. Got any paper?”

Wild Boy dug in his pocket, brought out the warning letter from Greenwich Fair. He and Clarissa looked at it for a moment, wishing they’d never seen the thing. But it was too late now. “Write on the back,” he said.

Clarissa dipped one of her lock picks in the muck on the wall and used it as a quill to compose her list. “First,” she said, “you thought the hooded man walked funny.”

“Yeah, but he’s fast and strong an’ all.”

“Master Wild,” Sir Oswald said. “Did you recognize the killer’s voice?”

“No. It was muffled by his mask. But he knew the Professor, called him Henry. Stole his ring too.”

Clarissa scribbled that on her list. “And there were cane marks around the Professor’s body, right?”

“I dunno,” Wild Boy replied. “They
looked
like cane marks. . . .”

“Anything else, Master Wild?”

Wild Boy cast his mind back to the fair. The images were frozen perfectly in his memory. He closed his eyes and studied them for clues.

“The killer’s cloak,” he said. “There were creases in the leather. That means he crumples it up to store. But he doesn’t fold it, so he must take it off in a rush and hide it. And the hood had marks from where it had brushed a low ceiling. There were lots of them, so he brushes that ceiling often. Could be where he lives — a low-roofed place, small and cheap.”

Clarissa looked at Wild Boy, astonished by his recall. Then she shrugged, made another note on her list, and shoved it in her pocket. “Well then, you do the clues and I’ll think about how we catch him.”

Sir Oswald clapped his hands. “I suggest you begin at the house of this second victim, Doctor Charles Ignatius Griffin. Perhaps you will find a clue there to track down the killer.”

Clarissa sprung up. “Let’s go!”

“I fear it won’t be that easy, Miss Everett,” Sir Oswald warned. “The Doctor was killed at his college in Southwark. That is over a mile away, and half of the city is after you.”

A chill ran through Wild Boy that had nothing to do with the cold. Southwark — he knew that place. That was where his old workhouse was, a grim brick building that overlooked the Thames. He’d sworn he’d never go back there. Only now he had no choice.

“The sewers,” he said. “We can go underground until we get near the river. Then we’ll be close.”

“It’s a damned risky go,” Sir Oswald said, “but I smell adventure. I shall travel overground and scout for danger. We shall begin at first light.”

Wild Boy had no idea when first light was. Down here everything was black or brown. He pulled his coat around him and curled up beside the fire as the dying embers pulsed orange and red in the draft.

But he couldn’t sleep. Spying on people at the fair was one thing, but this was something bigger, and much more dangerous. Scared as he was, though, he was excited too. The details in the newspaper report about the locked house intrigued him. It was that same feeling that had led him to Professor Wollstonecraft’s caravan at the fair. A puzzle waiting to be solved. Only, could he really solve it?

He had to. Because if he couldn’t, he and Clarissa were as good as dead.

W
ild Boy crouched beside the drain cover, ready to dive back into the sewer at the slightest hint of danger in the street. Somewhere close, a dog barked. Glass broke. A woman screamed. And then silence, except for the sound of his filthy coat dripping onto the greasy cobbles.

He reached to help Clarissa up from underground, but she swatted his hand away as she climbed from the drain. They’d been on the move for hours, hacking and retching through the stinking darkness. Only when they’d climbed a drain shaft and seen a sign for Tooley Street did they know they’d reached Southwark, where the hooded man’s second victim had lived — Doctor Charles Ignatius Griffin.

A thick brown cloud swept along the street. Wild Boy remembered fogs like this from when he’d lived at the workhouse. These sickly brews of coal smoke and factory fumes shrouded the riverbank nearly every night, bringing confusion and fear. But as the clouds swirled around them, Wild Boy and Clarissa grinned. Thanks to the fog the streets were empty — for now.

As they looked at each other, their smiles turned into laughs that echoed around the thick fumes. Partly they were relieved to have made it this far. But also they both looked so
revolting.
Brown slime dripped from Clarissa’s hair. It was all over Wild Boy too — sliding down his coat and soaking the hair on his face and body. They looked like monsters risen from a swamp.

“Over there,” Clarissa said.

They rushed to a horse trough and dunked their heads in the water, then tore off their coats, splashed their arms, and rubbed their faces. Soaked through, Wild Boy shook himself like a dog, spraying mucky water over Clarissa.

“Hey!” she cried.

She grabbed the trough bucket, about to hurl more water over him, but she froze mid-swing. A curtain of fog parted long enough to see the wall behind the trough. It was covered with posters, each with the same printed announcement:

Clarissa dropped the bucket. “Fiend,” she said. “Is that like a ghost?”

Wild Boy heard voices. Quickly he pulled Clarissa into an alley between two buildings.

Slowly they dared a look. Through the fog, they saw several men silhouetted against the jaundiced light of a streetlamp, dressed identically in high-collared coats and stovepipe hats. At the base of the lamp was something ragged and black, like a crow.

“Sir Oswald’s cravat,” Clarissa said.

They’d agreed that Sir Oswald would go ahead and tie his cravat around the lamppost nearest to where Doctor Griffin had lived and worked. The house he’d signaled rose higher than those around it — four floors of brick and glass covered in so much soot and grime from nearby factory chimneys that its entire face seemed to drip with darkness. Wrought-iron railings ran along the front, like prison bars guarding the ground-floor windows.

“Who are them people outside it?” Clarissa said.

“Coppers,” Wild Boy said, and cursed. They had to get inside that house.

But before he could think what to do, Clarissa turned and ran off — a blur of red and gold charging down the alley. “I got a plan. Follow me.”

Wild Boy chased after her, whispering for her to slow down, but she was in her element now. She swept along the back of the houses, back-flipped over a fence, and vaulted over a wall.

“Hurry up!” she called.

He caught up with her in a small yard surrounded by high walls. Brightly colored handkerchiefs hung on a washing line, fluttering in the fog, and the voices of the policemen echoed down an alley that trailed along the side of the building. A shiver of excitement ran up Wild Boy’s spine. This was Doctor Griffin’s house.

Clarissa was already at the back door, fiddling her picks in the lock. “It’s bolted from the inside,” she said. “This window’s barred an’ all.”

Wild Boy moved closer, intrigued by the iron bars that protected the window. He ran a finger around the mortar where the metal met the window ledge. “These bars are new,” he said.

“So?”

“So the Doctor was scared of something.”

“But how did his killer get in?”

Wild Boy stepped back and surveyed the building in the light of a spluttering gas lamp. A cloud of fog parted just enough for him to see the first-floor window. It wasn’t barred.

“Can you get up there?” he asked.

“Course,” Clarissa said. “I’m a circus star, remember?”

She kicked of her boots, tied the laces together, and slug them over her shoulder. Then she unhooked the washing line at both ends and threw that over her shoulder too. “I’ll pull you up after,” she said.

In one lightning move she sprang onto the top of an outhouse that stood against the wall. Then she shinned up an iron drainpipe and stepped casually onto the first-floor window ledge. “This window’s locked from inside an’ all. I’ll try higher.”

Reaching up, she began to climb the wall like a spider, her fingers and toes curled into the gaps between the bricks.

Wild Boy watched in amazement. Sir Oswald had been right — it
was
useful to have an acrobat on his side. He saw that all of the fear had vanished from Clarissa’s face, and her eyes seemed to sparkle even in the fog. She looked happy.

She glanced down and saw him watching. “What?” she said.

“Nothing,” Wild Boy replied, trying to sound unimpressed. “Hurry it up, will you?”

A few moments later she reached the second-floor window. And then she disappeared into the swirling fog above.

Behind Wild Boy, something moved. His heart lurched in his chest, and he flinched back, staring around the yard. “Hello?” he said.