We were forced to stop while Lestrade commandeered a couple of lanterns: the darkness was simply too thick, and there were building materials scattered everywhere, like the toys of a giant child who needed to be told to pick up the nursery before bed. Crow asked, with unusual caution in his voice, “Doyle, are you all right?”
“Oh, I’m just fine,” I said bitterly and then caught myself. “That is to say, I’m as well as I can be. You needn’t worry.”
“I’m not certain I agree with you,” Crow said, but then blessed Lestrade returned with two lanterns, and Crow was obliged to drop the subject we both knew we were talking about.
I had one lantern and Lestrade the other, and we were able to proceed much more safely, if not necessarily more rapidly. Even following the quasi-scent as directly as I could, our path still wound and twisted like Theseus’s path through the Labyrinth. We had to backtrack more than once.
“This place was originally going to be an opera house,” Lestrade said after a while. “Dunno how it’s going to feel, coming to work in an opera house.”
“Well, you’ll have all the oubliettes you could ever need,” I said. “The architect was clearly a megalomaniac.”
“I’ve never been in a police station yet that wasn’t bursting at the seams with files,” Lestrade said. “This will all get used, never fear.”
“I hope it will also get better lit,” I said. Even with a lantern, the darkness was a thick, heavy, utterly unignorable presence, pressing in from all sides, almost seeming to wind around our feet. It was the sort of darkness in which you imagine you see things out of the corners of your eyes.
And all the while, even as our progress remained excruciatingly slow, the scent that wasn’t a scent grew stronger and stronger until finally I said, “Here. She’s here.”
It took only minimal investigation of the corners and cubbyholes before Lestrade said, “Augh. God in heaven, I think I’ve found her.”
From a corner so swallowed in darkness that even a lantern didn’t help, Lestrade pulled out the most incongruous possible object, a paper parcel, tied up with string.
But the paper was black with foul, seeping ooze, and the reek of it was discernable to Lestrade and Crow as well as to me. “I don’t want to open it down here,” Lestrade said.
“No, don’t,” I said.
Lestrade said, “You two wait here. I’m going to fetch a constable.” He strode off with one lantern, leaving Crow and me to eye the parcel uneasily by the light of the other.
“That can’t be all of her,” Crow said.
I had been doing the same geometry of solids in my head. “It can’t hurt if we look around a little more,” I said; no sooner had I turned my back on the parcel than I knew, with terrible urgency—“Here.” I thumped painfully down on my knees in the same recess out of which Lestrade had dragged the paper parcel, though not in quite the same place. I managed to restrain myself from clawing at the earth with my fingers, but it was a near thing.
“Doyle?” said Crow.
“It’s been buried,” I said.
“Buried?”
“There must be something to dig with around here somewhere.”
I gave Crow the lantern and he obligingly started poking around, even as he continued to voice objections: “But why would he bury part of her and leave the rest done up in paper?”
“God only knows,” I said and meant it. “I don’t think it’s buried very deeply.”
“I can’t imagine somehow that it would be,” said Crow. “Here.” He handed me something, a tool, a ripping chisel. Not ideal for the task, but better than bare hands. I dug carefully and within minutes found something that was not dirt.
Crow by this time had wedged himself in with me; I did not object, even though it meant I had one wing draped over me like an opera cloak. Crow’s presence was not the same as a human being’s—he did not smell human, and his temperature was about five degrees lower—but he was a living creature all the same, and a great comfort against the reek of death in my nostrils and the cold clay under my fingernails.
We unearthed the length of a human leg, and I knew by no defensible method that it belonged to the arm at Ebury Bridge and to whatever was in that horridly seeping parcel.
“What on Earth has happened to Lestrade?” Crow grumbled.
“Can’t you hear him?”
“There are too many echoes down here,” he said, “and too much noise above us. I won’t hear anyone actually here until they’re right on top of us—which is why I would like Lestrade to come back so that we can leave.”
“You didn’t have to come,” I started, but he said, “Doyle, surely you aren’t seriously suggesting you would have left me behind?”
He made me laugh, which was the last thing I was expecting. “No, of course not,” I said.
“Good,” said Crow, “for you wouldn’t have succeeded.”
He stood up, and despite the fact that I disliked the touch of his feathers, I found myself missing the slight weight and static prickle of his wing. “Where on Earth is Lestrade?” he said. “Maybe I should just—”
“Don’t leave me here alone.” I didn’t recognize my own voice.
“Doyle?” Crow sounded both alarmed and uncertain. “I won’t take the lantern.”
“It’s not that,” I said, although “that” was certainly part of it. “But if you leave me here by myself…” I couldn’t force the words “I’ll change” out of my throat, although that was certainly what would happen, and I did not know how else to explain how close I was to the edge, how little it would take for me to fall over.
Mercifully, Crow was an intelligent creature. “Oh,” he said, and then, “Oh. All right, Doyle, I won’t go anywhere.” He hesitated, and his voice was wary when he said, “Do you want me to help you up? Would it be … easier if you were a little farther away from the body parts?”
It would be easier, of course, since the actual reek of the leg was combining with the vile and overwhelming stench of the Thames and the not-exactly-scent I’d been following all morning in a fashion that was both sickening and relentless, so that although it was a sore wound to my pride, I said, “Yes, I could use a hand.”
Crow was my height, and his wings made him appear bulkier, but angels being built more like birds than mammals (for all that Crow said birds were a bad analogy), it took all of his strength and considerable care on my part to ensure that his help did not end with both of us sprawled across the grave of this nameless woman’s right leg. Still, I could not have made it to my feet by myself, and although he had never said so, I knew that Crow did not like touching, or being touched by, human beings.
Therefore, I said, “Thank you,” although I could not make the words come out as anything other than a growl.
“You’re welcome,” Crow said, laughing at me, and handed me my cane.
I steadied myself, then limped a few cautious steps out into the darkness. Crow had the lantern and was leaning close over the leg, obviously determined to collect all the observational data he could before Lestrade found his way back.
The darkness coiled around me and caught in my throat. It was impossible to breathe deeply, given the stench, but I breathed steadily and regularly, and by the time Lestrade finally reappeared, with reluctant constables in tow, I had better control over myself than I had had since Crow had moved the burlap covering this poor woman’s arm.
The constables had brought an ambulance, onto which they carefully—cringingly—loaded first the parcel and then the leg. Lestrade demanded to be told whether the leg belonged to the arm from Ebury Bridge Road. I choked off the words that wanted to spill out, and Crow said, “Your guess is as good as mine. Really, Lestrade.”
“It depends on what’s in the parcel,” I said, my voice as hoarse as if I’d spent the morning yelling to be heard through the racket of heavy machinery. “I suppose there’s no necessary reason they all have to be part of the same person”—even though I knew they were.
&n
bsp; “Bite your tongue, Doctor,” said Lestrade, and I thought he was not joking.
The constables started away with their macabre load, and I was about to tell Crow to bring the lantern, so that we could follow them—I’d found my way here by means that would not serve to lead me back to daylight—when I took an incautious step toward that damned alcove, and the scent—or not-scent and I could no longer tell the difference—hit me like a cramp.
For a white-out panic moment I thought I had shifted. The scent was so strong it seemed impossible I could be smelling it with mere human senses. Then Crow said, “Doyle?” which grounded me enough that I could open my eyes and see that nothing, including me, had changed.
“Doyle? Don’t you dare tell me you’re fine.”
I exhaled a shaky half-laughing breath and said, “There’s another piece.”
“There’s what?” said Crow, his voice ringing in the vault, and I heard Lestrade yell at the constables to stop.
“It’s in the same place,” I said disbelievingly. “He must have buried one on top of the other.”
Crow muttered something I did not wish to catch and then said loudly, “Lestrade, did you bring a shovel?”
“What?” said Lestrade. He came back into the room where Crow and I were still standing and said, “I beg your pardon,” as though he were pleading with us to tell him he’d misheard.
I think we both would have liked to tell him we were joking, but I had never felt less facetious in my life. Crow said, “Dr. Doyle believes we’ve missed a piece.”
Lestrade did not swear, which I thought showed admirable restraint on his part. He called his ever-more-reluctant constables back in, and they, under Crow’s nitpicking supervision, exhumed a left arm that looked, on hasty inspection, to be a match for the right arm found by the Ebury Bridge.
“I really hate this cove,” Lestrade said while the constables unhappily added the arm to their awkward pile of body parts. I realized with a breath-stealing sense of relief that, wherever the rest of this woman’s body was—and in how many pieces—I could not sense it.
Magnanimously, Lestrade said, “You’ve done us quite the favor this morning, Dr. Doyle. God only knows how long it would have been before someone noticed the poor wretch.”
“Years, maybe,” Crow said.
“Or never,” said Lestrade, and we followed the constables and their sad burden back toward the light.
10
Secrets Shared
We barely made it into the flat (past that watchful dragon Martha Climpson) before I could endure it no longer. I fled in lurching strides to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me, and stripped out of my clothes with none of my usual care. I was only just in time, for I was still shaking my bad leg free of my undergarments when the change rolled over me like a wave, quite literally knocking me off my feet.
I was still human when I started to fall, but I was not still human when I hit the floor.
I grumbled at the light, pulled the bedclothes off the bed, and was dragging them toward the closet when there was a knock on the door.
I froze.
“Doyle?” The angel’s voice. I whined soundlessly and tried to crawl under the bed.
“Doyle? You know I can hear you. I’d ask if you’re all right, except I’m fairly certain you’re not.” And the door, which I had stupidly forgotten to lock, opened.
From my awkward position wedged half under the bed, I turned and bared my teeth at the angel in the doorway.
There was a long silence, during which neither of us moved. Then the angel said, “Well. There’s definitely a difference between knowing your flatmate is a hell-hound and actually seeing it. I, um … Doyle, can you understand me?”
I managed to get half an inch further under the bed.
“Well, let’s try this,” said the angel. “I’ll assume you understand what I’m saying—I know werewolves understand human speech when they’ve shifted, so that it’s at least logical to assume that hell-hounds do, too—and when you’re … when you’re yourself again, you can tell me if I’m right.”
The angel closed the door and knelt down, buttocks resting against heels. It was a familiar posture and somehow comforting. “So,” said the angel, “I’m hoping you’ll shift back soon. You usually stay a hell-hound for about six hours—did you know that?—but this seems a rather exceptional case. Thank you, by the way, for not shifting in front of Lestrade. I’m afraid he would feel he had to arrest you. Which I cannot imagine being anything but a complete disaster for all concerned.”
The angel’s voice, soft, rapid, and clear as water, was soothing, and I could only fit the front half of my body under the bed, no matter what I did. Cautiously, I rearranged myself so that my hindquarters were under the bed and protected, then laid my head on my paws and watched the angel’s lively gestures as the words rolled over me.
The angel said, “Yes, that’s better. Although to be perfectly honest with you, Doyle, you’re a little unnerving at present. It’s the eyes, the phosphorescence, and d’you know, Doyle, I can’t see if you have pupils. I suppose you must still have them, since you’re not blind, but it’s definitely much more eerie than I’m really looking for in a flatmate. By which I mean, please change back quickly, as this is all very disquieting. Also, I have a thousand questions I want to ask you. I doubt you’ll answer them—since you don’t like talking about yourself—but my word, Doyle! I’ve never seen a hell-hound this close before.”
The angel moved as if thinking about coming closer, and I showed my teeth again.
“All right, message received. I shan’t move. I should have brought a newspaper in, then I could read to you about the Chapman woman. But I suppose I’m more than capable of filling the silence regardless. You’re welcome to change back any time and tell me to shut up.”
The angel paused, then said, “Really, the other thing—and at least I know you’re curious about this—is the fellow who butchers his victims so neatly. At least, I’m operating on the assumption that it’s one person. It might not be. Once you’ve murdered someone, there’s only so many ways you can get rid of the body. And I can see that the Thames would be a tempting solution.”
I sighed and uncramped my body a little.
“So. The first one—yes, do get more comfortable, Doyle, you look ridiculous crammed under the bed like that—the first one was found in Battersea. The left quarter of her torso, then her right thigh, and her right shoulder with part of the arm. They kept finding pieces of the poor woman, all just floating merrily downstream in the Thames. The most gruesome part is, they found her face. Not her skull, mind you, just her face. And they still couldn’t identify her. Eventually, they found all of her except her right foot—and, of course, her skull. As I think Lestrade mentioned, it looks like he keeps their heads. Or he disposes of them in some other fashion. And even with almost all of her body, no one could identify her. And it’s not as if people didn’t try! Half London must have gone and gawked at her. They really thought for a while that she was a woman named Mary Ann Cailey—her landlady and two of her brothers identified the body, except then, most inconveniently, Mary Ann Cailey came back alive and well from a trip to Scotland. And that was as close as they’ve ever come. I know losing your name isn’t as disastrous for you as it would be for one of us. But it still seems terrible to me that all of these women, either nobody noticed they were gone, or nobody cared enough to go to the police and tell them the dead woman’s name. Which I suppose comes to the same thing in the end, although— Just a moment, that’s Mrs. Climpson on the stairs.”
The angel twisted around and got up in one motion, and slipped out of the room. I growled, although I remembered not to do so loudly enough to be heard.
And then, whether it was the new threat of discovery or whether some necessary amount of time had elapsed, I was abruptly and uncomfortably human again.
I managed, by dint of a mad scramble, to be at least partially clothed and properly under the bed covers (in the bed)
when Crow came back in.
“I don’t know, Doyle,” he was saying as he came in. “I think Mrs. Climpson could teach Lestrade a thing— Oh! You’re you!”
I started forthrightly enough, “Thank you for…” but then I didn’t quite know what I was trying to express gratitude for.
He waved it aside. “I’ve nothing against hell-hounds.”
“The eternal enemy of your people?” I said dryly.
“Oh, Doyle, that’s a mad exaggeration. You didn’t fall on me and rend me limb from limb, did you?”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “I was too afraid of you to try.”
“Afraid of me?” He sounded appalled and intrigued in equal measure.
“Afraid of angels,” I said. “I think the Fallen in Afghanistan still … smelled like an angel?”
I was afraid he might be insulted, but his eyebrows went up, and he said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever considered the olfactory aspect before. Now, are you sure that it’s the Fallen that smelled like an angel, or do I smell Fallen?”
“You don’t smell like the Fallen at all,” I said. “I couldn’t share a flat with you if you did.” The Fallen in Afghanistan had smelled of salt and gunpowder and blood. Crow smelled, insofar as my human nose could determine, of tea and newsprint and the flesh of a newly cut apple. Whatever common scent the hell-hound recognized between the two was something much too subtle for me to detect.
“Well, that’s some comfort,” he said.
“Crow, you aren’t Fallen,” I said. “I don’t know how it is that you aren’t, but—”
“Let’s trade secrets,” he said abruptly. “I know yours. Let me tell you mine.”
“You don’t have to,” I said, taken aback.
“No, but I want to,” he said. “I want someone to know. And I know I can trust you. Here. Here’s how I do it.” Out of his inner waistcoat pocket, he pulled a chunk of marble about the size of a hazelnut. It looked like it had chipped off something larger, like a balustrade. “This is all that remains of my original habitation.”
The Angel of the Crows Page 10
