by Viola Carr
“Burglary’s a felony,” she corrected automatically. But temptation warred with caution in her mind. Never mind the payment, which she could surely use. To solve a big case, yet again prove herself worthy of a proper job . . .
“Not a very glamorous one. So are you in, or shall I call the next on my list of stunningly attractive medical geniuses?”
She snorted. “Is that what passes for charm at the Royal these days? Since when is homicide your purview?”
A flippant shrug. “It isn’t. But from time to time—I can’t imagine why—people like to whisper to me of certain peculiarities. And this case is very peculiar.”
“Your spies, you mean. To save their own skins. Such public spirit.”
“Call them what you please. I thought you might enjoy it, that’s all. Told you I could use a crime scene physician, didn’t I?” He hesitated. “Perchance you recall that conversation?”
She fidgeted.
“In your consulting room, one evening six weeks ago? When I asked you to marry me? Whereupon the conversation abruptly ended?”
Light suddenly glared into every crevice, leaving her nowhere to hide. The constables grew deeply entranced by their tasks. Even Griffin examined a pile of coiled wire with unwarranted intensity.
Smiling blandly, she dragged Lafayette into a corner, beneath a pair of ugly spaniel portraits on the wall. “This is hardly the time nor place, sir,” she hissed. “If you’re hoping to embarrass me into an answer, it won’t work.”
Lafayette winced, and tugged his chestnut curls. A little too ragged for decency. A creature such as he needed frequent haircuts. “I didn’t mean it like that. If you want the case, it’s yours, regardless.” An irrepressible glint of bright eyes. “But I note you haven’t yet said no to either. Dare one hope?”
Reeve strutted up, brandishing his cigar stub. “Are you two love bunnies quite finished?”
Eliza sprang a foot backwards, certain her face out-reddened Lafayette’s coat. “Chief Inspector. We were just—”
“Spare me the sordid particulars, missy. I pay you to work, not pursue your little affair d’amours.”
Piss off, you rude little rat, yelled Lizzie in her ear. Eliza fought to keep still, nerves jangling.
Lafayette bristled, stroking his sword hilt. “Were your French not such a tragedy, sir, I should take you to task for that insulting plural.”
Honestly. Add “gallant” and “idiotic” to his list of maddening attributes. “Gentlemen, please. Such primitive hostility.”
Reeve just grinned bullishly. “Watch it, Captain. This isn’t 1815, and you’re not the Duke of bloody Wellington. I could arrest you, Royal Society or not. Dueling’s a capital crime.”
“Only if I kill you.” A chilly Lafayette smile. “Perhaps I’ll just leave you to bleed.”
“With a dozen armed constables at my back? I don’t think so.” Reeve chewed his cigar. “Now clear off. I don’t remember inviting you to my crime scene.”
Lafayette didn’t budge. “What a pity I don’t need your invitation.”
Let Remy kill the little squeezer, hissed Lizzie. Better still, let ME tear the rude bastard’s face off. Stuff that stinking cigar up his nose. Squeeze his scrawny neck until his eyeballs bleed . . .
Sweating, Eliza laid a hand on Lafayette’s arm. “Captain, be so good as to refrain from gutting our Chief Inspector, at least not this morning.”
“If it please you, madam.” Lafayette’s stare didn’t defrost. A flat, disturbing, metallic shine. A wolfish shine. Oh, dear. Was it that time again?
Shakily, Eliza faced Reeve, with Lizzie roiling and thrashing beneath her skin. “As for the crime scene, sir? No forced entry, and your witnesses claim they saw no one. Either they’re lying and someone let the thief in—in which case I’ve no doubt a man of your impressive stature will beat the truth out of them directly . . .”
Finally, Reeve scowled. “Or?”
She smiled brightly. “Or they’re telling the truth, and the burglar has covered his tracks with an unorthodox trick.”
Ha ha ha! Lizzie cackled. Stick that in your cigar, weedbrain!
“Makes sense,” put in Griffin airily.
“Unorthodox, eh?” muttered Reeve, with a sharp glance at Lafayette. “Clever of you, I’m sure.”
Eliza widened her eyes. “Are you ill, sir? Or was that a glimmer of grudging regard?”
Reeve flicked away his cigar stub. “Don’t push me, missy. I can’t scour the streets for an invisible thief.”
“Can’t you? And here I thought you were the expert.”
“Sting me with your wit, will you?” He gave her a hurt look. “Last time I do you a favor.”
Eliza stared, taken aback. Reeve was old-fashioned in more than his condescending attitude. He’d thrived on the old thief-taker’s methods: informers, tip-offs, bribes exchanged in dark corners, confessions beaten from yowling unfortunates. But epic mulishness made him dogged, not incompetent, and impressing the Home Office with a swift result was his idea of a good day’s work. Reeve truly thought this petty theft an important case.
What if he’d honestly intended to help her?
But Lizzie’s rage made her shudder and sweat, and her mouth stung with sour need for the elixir. She wasn’t inclined to show mercy. “Shall I do your job for you yet again? I suggest you put the hard word on your security guards and smoke out the burglar’s accomplice. Otherwise, I believe only one invisible thief of note is at work in London, and that’s Harry the Haunter.”
Reeve gaped like a half-skinned eel. “Harry the who?”
“The mythical miscreant who stole the Balmoral Diamond and robbed the Royal Exchange? Perhaps you’d have read of him in your divisional reports, if you weren’t too busy hobnobbing with the Commissioner to pay attention to real detective work.”
She stuffed her optical into its leather case and shouldered her bag. “I shall forward my account in due course. Good day, Chief Inspector.” And in a satisfied swirl of skirts, she stalked out.
Outside, on Great Portland Street, acid bubbled in her throat, and her hair coiled like wound springs, yearning to change. She swallowed a scream. It’s not your turn, Lizzie. Stop it!
Hippocrates scurried after her, brassy feet clattering over the curb. Uncaring traffic hustled by, the din roaring in her ears. She inhaled deeply, then again. It didn’t help. The foul air only wrung her throat dry with unbearable thirst.
The crowd jostled her, a barrage of skirts and coattails and careless elbows. She fumbled for her little phial of remedy—a drug to relieve the symptoms of her darker dependency on Lizzie’s elixir—and gulped a mouthful.
Her eyes watered. The horrid salty flavor made her gag. Gradually, her squirming skin subsided, but still, the craving for that warm, strangely bitter drink that set Lizzie free writhed, a ghost trapped in a bottle, swirling in ever-tightening knots, until . . .
“That went well.” Effortlessly, Captain Lafayette matched her stride, dodging loping clockwork servants and costermongers yelling about strawberries or salted fish.
Curse him, but the man didn’t give up easily. “Did someone speak? I’m afraid I heard only childish babbling.”
A sheepish glance. “Fair enough. I apologize. I lost my temper with him. Your hair looks stunning, by the way. Is that a new hat?”
“Lost your temper? If I’m not mistaken, you grabbed for your sword to defend my honor. I rather think you’ve lost your mind.”
“Well—”
“Or is it that you imagine yourself some swashbuckling Georgian highwayman, to duel at dawn for a lady’s favor? Either way, I recommend a swift pistol shot as the better solution.”
He opened his mouth, and shut it again.
“Wise,” she remarked, wedging past a flower-seller, who waved a basket of red chrysanthemums. “I’m glad we’re agreed you’re a romantic fool, Remy Lafayette.”
“I prefer ‘foolish romantic,’ but point conceded. I’m sorry.”
“Apolog
y noted.”
“And accepted?”
“Your credit is limited, sir. Don’t waste it all in one day.” But uneasily, she recalled that glint of wolfish eye. An impending full moon did strange things to those who changed. “I trust you’re in good health,” she added belatedly. “It being, er . . . Friday quite soon.”
“Never better,” he announced, too readily. “Your concern touches my heart.”
“How quaint. From your daft behavior, I imagined it had touched your wits.”
“Ouch. Is it wrong that I’ve missed your tongue-lashings?”
“No, but it’s timely.” She smiled sweetly. “I’ve been polishing my store of insults on the off chance you should show your irritating face.”
They reached Oxford Street, where electric omnibuses rattled amongst horses and clockwork carriages. Glowing purple coils crackled amidst the whir of cogs and the thundery smell of aether. Tall brass velocipedes weaved in and out on teetering wheels, their riders holding on to the handlebars for dear life.
At length, Lafayette chuckled. “Harry the Haunter, eh? Or did you invent that to annoy Reeve?”
She waved at a one-legged paper-seller, whose headlines today yelled EMPIRE PREPARES FOR WAR—LAST CHANCE FOR PARIS EMISSARIES and DEPORTATION SQUADS RAID ENEMY ENCLAVES IN WEST END and RADICALS PUSH FOR COMMONS REFORM. “Don’t you read the broadsheets? Harry’s responsible for every grand theft since the Crimean Gold, they say. In and out like a ghost, they say, seen and heard by no one.”
“Except you.”
Her optical with its unorthodox lenses suddenly weighed her down, incriminating. Secrecy and suspicion died hard. She laughed to cover her unease. “It’s all nonsense. Likely the thief overpowered the guards with some stupefying concoction, and they were too embarrassed to confess. Reeve will have a fine time closing this one without me.”
“Dr. Jekyll, did I ever tell you you’re magnificent?”
She frowned. “Your idiotic remarks make such limited impression, I’m afraid I don’t recall. You uttered some flattering nonsense about my hat?”
“If you’ll take my murder case, I’ll happily flatter you all over.”
Temptation warmed her skin again. Money, prestige, a case that mattered . . . “I can barely wait. Good day, Captain.” She swept around the corner, dismissing him.
But Lafayette jumped into her path, unsheathing an utterly unfair smile. “That’s a yes, then?”
Her skirts were jammed between his thigh and the centipede-like brass legs of a waiting omnibus. She tugged. They wouldn’t come free. “Do you deny your ulterior motive?”
“Not for an instant. Doesn’t change the fact that you want me desperately. My case, I mean.”
She sniffed. “I suppose a mild diversion could amuse.”
“There you are, then. Admit it: you’ve missed me.”
Eliza sighed. “Very well, if you insist. Show me what you’ve got.” She eyed him sternly over her spectacles. “For the case, that is.”
A dazzling twinkle of blue. “Naturally. Whatever else could you mean?”
THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY
HOW BURLESQUE,” REMARKED ELIZA AN HOUR later, as grimy mid-morning fog crawled through the broken window of a grandiose drawing room in Grosvenor Square. Peevish yellow sunlight glared at a set of Queen Anne armchairs, a green-baized billiards table, expensive Indian carpets. The grit stung her throat, driving away even the meat-copper stench of clotting blood.
The dead man sprawled on his side in a pool of black gore. A hunk of bronze poked from a ragged wound in his neck—a crucifix, complete with emaciated Christ—and the victim’s face was missing. Peeled away, leaving a sticky crimson mess in which his lidless eyeballs glistened. His starched shirt front was torn open, and a bloody hole gaped below his sternum. On the carpet, in a splash of blood, sat his heart.
“I promised you gruesome.” Lafayette made an ironic bow. “Meet Sir Dalziel Fleet, baronet. Painter, culture critic, society’s arbiter of artistic taste. Fashionable fools hanging on his every breath. A genuine waste of space, in fact. They ought to have elevated him to the peerage.”
“I’ve heard the name. Poor silly fellow.” She knelt by the corpse’s skinned face, and a swift ache knifed her heart. In life, this man had been rich, privileged, powerful. What was he now? Dead, mutilated, his effects poked into by strangers.
No matter the victim, murder demanded justice. And she, Eliza Jekyll, would make certain he got it.
Behind the body, in one papered wall, yawned a secret door. The hinged panel had swung inwards, revealing a large private closet. Ransacked, papers and books littering a desk and a plush red chaise. A wall safe hung open, the picture that had covered it torn down and crushed.
“Love and money,” she murmured. “The two most common motives for murder. Which is this, I wonder?”
“Add ‘fear’ to the list.” Lafayette shielded his eyes from the bloodied crucifix. “Brr! Clandestine Roman Catholics, scourge of the Empire! We’ve suspected the good baronet for years.”
His casual “we” made her squirm. The Royal preyed on anyone weak or vulnerable. She’d thought Lafayette to be different. But his offhanded charm made it all too easy to forget his defining characteristic: threat. “Persistent of you,” she said tartly. “Last I heard, faith isn’t a crime.”
“But dangerous superstition is. It’s difficult to reason with people who eat the flesh of their god.” He grimaced. “Still, I wouldn’t wish this horrid demise on anyone.”
In a corner, a clockwork footman jigged on long hinged legs. It wore a tailcoat and tie over its narrow brass skeleton. Hipp galloped up and tried to climb it, flashing his blue happy light. The footman screeched, flapping hysterical arms. “Unacceptable! Unwelcome visitor! Recompute!”
“Do shut up,” muttered Eliza. The machine whirred indignantly, but obeyed.
Beside it, the butler—a living one—was spotlessly turned out in black coat and white gloves. An unusually young and ornamental fellow, to be sure, for such a senior post, with dark-lashed eyes and startling coal-black curls. “The room’s as I found it, my lord. Madam.”
“Excellent.” Lafayette winked down at him. “But flattery will profit you none. At least, not at this hour.”
The butler blushed. “Effusive apologies, sir.”
“No matter, Mr. Brigham. Easy mistake. You say no one else has seen this?”
Brigham licked a reddish bruise on his lip. “The household is from home, sir. I sent to you soonest when I discovered what ’ad ’appened.” A trace of the East London accent he was trying to cover.
“Where might ‘from home’ be?”
“Hampstead, sir. Lady Fleet’s country house. She goes every weekend, with ’er maid and the carriage and the first footman. We held a dinner party here last night. Twenty, or thereabouts. The guests didn’t leave until nearly two. No visitors since.”
“Outstanding work, Mr. Brigham. Don’t go far.” A tip exchanged hands, and Brigham bowed out.
Eliza eyed Lafayette archly as he closed the wood-paneled door. “How much did that cost?”
“Five pounds and a flirt? Least I can do for such a precocious lad. Twenty-one if he’s a day, and already the senior manservant. Shouldn’t surprise me if he gets fired after this. I rather feel for him, don’t you?”
“Quite,” she said, chastened. Doubtless, Lafayette had lived in a house full of servants from childhood, but it was just like him to notice people. For fair reason or foul. “So your solution is to make your pet butler the Royal’s spy?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” protested Lafayette. “True, he’d get along better if he didn’t blush quite so brightly at the sight of a gentleman in uniform, but that’s hardly my fault.”
“The poor deluded boy. His definition of ‘gentleman’ clearly leaves much to be desired.”
Lafayette glanced at the ugly crystal-faced mantel clock. “Well, don’t just stand there looking clever. Time is of the essence! The grieving widow
will soon return, having called on our erudite friends at the Metropolitan Police. I’d say we’ve all of ten minutes until your fame-seeking Chief Inspector arrives.”
“Excellent.” She petted Hipp. “Have a sniff for organic traces, there’s a good boy.” Hipp ground eager cogs, skrrk! skrrk!, and snuffled off with his happy light blinking. He’d a catalog of organic samples stored in his tiny brain. If blood or other stains were present, he’d find them.
She poked her tweezers at the severed heart. “Torn out, not cut. That aorta has snapped at the weakest point, adjoining the heart.” She slid her fingers beneath the corpse’s armpit. “Quite cold, muscles stiff. Several hours dead. I’d say soon after the dinner party ended.”
“Twenty suspects. How convenient.” Lafayette examined a drinks tray that sat on the untidy desk, amidst tossed papers, and sniffed a dirty glass. “Scotch, single malt.”
“Collar and cuffs removed,” she mused. “Comes down après party, takes a drink . . .” She frowned. “Wait. Everyone was out of town. They held a party with no servants? Just Brigham and the clockworks?”
“Perhaps a secret, racy sort of party.” Lafayette beckoned to the clockwork footman, which still jerked in the corner like a frantic marionette. “You. Tell me about last night.”
Cogs rattled in its pointed head. “Dinner,” it yammered, “ten o’clock. Twenty guests. First course, tuna fish wafers—”
“Delicious, I’m sure,” interrupted Lafayette. “What time did the guests leave?”
“Last departure, ten minutes to two. Ten minutes to two. Ten minutes to two . . .”
Hippocrates popped out a glowing purple coil on a stick and jabbed the machine’s legs. Zzap! “Fault! Inferior mechanism. Upgrade!”
“Ten minutes to two! Ten minutes to two . . .”
Eliza waved the footman off. “Enough, silly thing.”
It dashed out, flailing frenzied arms. “Unacceptable! Ten minutes to two! Tuna fish!”
“Inferior,” sniggered Hipp. “Upgrade futile. Recommend scrap heap.”
