by Viola Carr
Screw it, then. Now or never.
I step into view, and strike a handful of matches. Pop! Light flares, a wisp of phossy smoke. “Becky, it’s me. Listen—”
Becky staggers, grabbing her guts.
A dark patch spreads, dripping over her hands. Blood. Gouts of it, copper-smelling, the tell-tale stink of ordure. Becky retches and gasps, but there’s only gore.
The caped gent oozes from the shadows. His dagger glints, a bright crimson slash.
She falls. Her face slaps the mud. I wait for her to curse and scramble afoot . . . but the only thing moving is her leaking blood.
My muscles clench, tight as a frog’s arsehole.
She’s dead. Gut-stabbed, chilly as you like. And here I stand, dumb and cheery in a red dress, holding a god-rotted light.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Red Cape glances up. My pulse thunders. I never seen you. Never seen your face . . . but that singular visage sears like red-hot iron into my memory. Hooked nose, slashing brows, eyes dark as the devil’s heart.
He wipes her blood from his hands, and gives a rueful headshake. “I rather wish you hadn’t seen that.”
STRUNG TO THE PITCH OF MURDER
I DROP THE MATCHES, AND RUN.
I slip-slide in treacherous mud, my heart’s pounding, I can’t see, can’t think. Behind, those unseen rustles deepen into grunts, and heavy boots splash after me. The killer’s henchmen. At least two, maybe more.
Baby Jesus on a bonfire. I’m a witness. A loose end. I ain’t escaping alive.
Around the corner I skid, past the lodging house and the match girl, who scarpers with a screech. Smart girl. Smarter than I, what should’ve turned the blind eye as soon as I seen Becky doing business on the sly. Clever Becky, blinded by betrayal, wits askew with rage. She never seen it coming. She died in a cesspit with her guts in her hands because of me.
Footsteps lurch up behind, squick! squock! My legs weigh down like logs. My lungs burn fit to burst. The henchman paws for my skirts, missing by an inch. “Come ’ere, you dopey quim!” He yanks me backwards, fuck, I’m falling . . .
I stub my toe on a slab of rotting wood, and instinctively I jump. Crack! The trap breaks under the henchman’s tread. He falls, screaming. A guttural giggle, and the scream slices to silence.
Splat! On my face in stinking mud. I scrabble up, on, away from henchman-soon-to-be-pie and poor dead Becky and the devil in the red-lined cape. I glimpse the second henchman behind me, a leering giant waving a rusty-nicked knife . . . but I’m a local and soon I’ve lost him in tangling lanes. I don’t stop running till I spy the murky green lights of Great Earl Street, and swear to God, drunks and thieves and grinning fools ain’t never looked so fine.
I lurch up the Cockatrice’s steps, where that figurehead guffaws its half-dragon arse off at me, gasping Miss Lizzie with her sassy red dress soaked in shit. Miss Lizzie the idiot. Miss Lizzie the murderer.
The door slams. I fall against the wall, numb with relief. That legless bloke on the trolley drags his stunted self by with bulging arms. Jacky Spring-Heels eats the lice from his hair. People drink, curse, sing rude songs. Business as normal.
But restless seeps chill into my bones, and the once-delicious smells and sights are alien to me. Unsafe. Over and again, I glance behind. If Red Cape finds me, I’m a dead woman.
For once, I want to blend in. At my feet, a droopy-nosed bloke retches and drools. I drag off his rat-chewed coat. It reaches my knees, drowning me in sour spew smell. I bunch my scarlet skirts out of sight. Filch his shovel hat, too, jam it over my eyes.
Not a classy fakement. It’ll have to serve, till I can get out of here.
But that square-rigged bastard’s face—vicious nose, high-boned forehead with dark hair swept back—scorches undimmed into my brain, as if I stared too long at the sun.
Hmm. Gent in fancy new-tailored duds, putting up lays with thieves? Ain’t exactly inconspicuous, is he?
See, cracksmen are a vain bunch. They talk ’emselves up, the lays they scoped, the deadlurks they fleeced of jewels and gold. They sell stories, especially to a man I know with a big name.
Grimly, my determination sparkles. I’ll winkle Red Cape out, mark my words. Avenge poor Becky’s murder, or I ain’t Lizzie Hyde. For all the profit it’ll win Becky now.
But I cringe like a whipped dog at the idea of facing Johnny after what I done. Strangeface Willy, then? A fence’ll know his competition. Or maybe Tom o’ Nine Lives hears whisperings. Someone haunting this flash joint must know sommat . . .
I groan as I scan the crowd. Tom’s gone. Willy and Three-Tot Polly, too.
My guts burn. I don’t want to. Let me slink into unholy darkness and die. But I make myself look for him. Not just for Becky’s sake. For me.
By the bar, a strawberry velvet slash. Drunker now, a glazed fug over his eyes. His hair’s still tousled from my hands, a reddish bruise staining his lip.
Stiff like a clockwork servant, I march up. Johnny takes in my muddy face, my stinking coat. “Lizzie, what . . . ?”
“Becky’s murdered.” My throat strangles, surely as if that killer squeezed my windpipe.
Johnny’s crooked gaze don’t slip.
Faltering, I explain. The cesspit, Red Cape, the blood-splashed dagger. My flight through mud-choked streets. Henchmen. Deadfall trap.
Johnny swallows, eyes a-shimmer, and reaches for the gin. My heart aches. I touch his sleeve, expecting a stinging rebuke. He can punch my lights out, for all I care.
He just offers me the bottle. Hardly a ringing invitation, just a listless one-fingered push. But bitter acid eats at my heart.
I did this. Me, Miss Lizzie. Lured him when I know he can’t say no, and now a clever girl’s croaked believing he don’t love her. And Johnny still won’t punish me. Won’t say, get the fuck out of my place, you conniving twat, before I have your sorry carcass fleeced to the bone. Hell, he don’t even blame me.
My brains boil. I kick the bar, hard, a hot bullet into my ankle. Ain’t enough. Slam my skull into the sawdust, Johnny, kick me until I piss red. Watch while your dumb-faced thugs do with me as they please and heave me into the mud when they’re sated, because Becky’s dead and I’m alive and there ain’t no justice in this black and ugly world.
Johnny, it ain’t your fault. I’ll make amends. I’ll end the bastard who did this, so help me.
It ain’t your fault.
But muddy guilt clogs my throat silent.
Blindly, I stagger into the dark street. A turbaned Turk jostles me, calls me an ugly name. I just huddle into my stolen coat, let my stumbles drag me where they will.
Beneath a broken archway, across a courtyard, down a twisting lane that reeks of rot. The night chill slides an icy sword deep inside my bones. My fingers was blue and stinging, now they’re white and numb, just a distant ache. People lose limbs that way.
Don’t care. Just keep sloshing through the mud. A starving dog gnaws a corpse. Livid flesh, purple and black. I want to lie in its stinking embrace, wallow in decay. Let my living warmth seep away.
My vision swims. My mouth bubbles sourly, foul rat stew. Eliza’s vile pink juice repeating on me at last. I don’t want to go back. Not to my dungeon, her respectable shell where it’s safe and tidy and no one knows what I am.
Icy rain needles my face. Don’t care. Leave me be, Eliza. Dirty your precious hands in my affairs, will you? You’ve your own murderer to chase, your own smug justice to uphold, in your sheltered black-and-white world where criminals and killers is other people, bad people. Keep your disgust, Eliza. I’ve enough of my own.
I fumble the elixir from my knotted skirts. The neck’s broken where I fell, and the hellbrew’s leaked away to soak my dress. I suck out the last of it anyway. Splintered glass cuts my lips. Cruel and bitter, fire swirling in my guts.
Let him find me, that gentleman killer. Gut me with that crimson-splashed dagger, spill my soul into the shit where Becky lies. Let him lather his hands in my worthless
blood and laugh.
ELIMINATING THE IMPOSSIBLE
THE NEXT MORNING, ELIZA AND CAPTAIN LAFAYETTE regarded the bloodied mess in the tiny attic room with dismay. “Gruesome,” she offered at last. “I doubt even Reeve could claim this as a burglary gone wrong.”
Acidic yellow fog seeped in through a slanted clerestory, blotting out the straining sun. It coiled around her skirts, making them damp and itchy. The room contained little but an empty easel, a wooden chest, a half-made bed. But fresh blood soaked the wooden floor and splashed the dusty walls, and a meaty, metallic stink nauseated her.
The thing tied to an overturned chair by wrists and ankles didn’t look much like Carmine Zanotti anymore.
They’d come to question him. But too late. His face was beaten, his dark hair soaked in gore. Welts and burns crisscrossed his naked torso. A slashed pentacle dripped on his breast, and below his sternum, ragged flesh dangled from a fist-sized hole.
On a table, in a puddle of blood, sat the mangled remains of his heart. An eyeball, trailing clotted veins. And his severed tongue.
“I suppose we can scratch Carmine as a suspect.” Lafayette was back in uniform, saber and pistol polished, spurs glistening. Just like her, his armor back in place. Probably just as well. But he wrinkled his sensitive nose, fidgeting in the smell of blood. Today was Wednesday. On Friday night . . .
Hippocrates ran mad laps, spattering Eliza’s skirts with red. “Witness examination! Opportunity missed! Make greater speed!”
“A fine help,” she muttered. But guilty memory swirled, of her own handwritten letter, a foolish throwaway line. Posted, of course, by the ever-helpful Mrs. Poole. I viewed the Exhibition this evening. What I saw was surprising, to say the least.
Eliza had told Mr. Todd about Eve and the Serpent. And now Carmine Zanotti was dead.
Her guts chilled. Surely, such carnage wasn’t Todd’s style? Could he even have received her letter in time? The penny post stuck to a meticulous schedule, delivering until late at night . . .
“Doctor?” Lafayette nudged her. “Are you ill?”
“I feel responsible, that’s all,” she improvised. “We retired early last night on my account. If we’d arrested Carmine on suspicion, he’d still be alive.”
“He might. And another might be dead. You can’t save everyone.”
No, she thought dizzily. But it’d be nice if I could save someone.
She dragged her gaze from all that mutilated flesh. Hipp trotted about, snuffling at the dead man’s things. Outside, sickly fog hung between tall houses, carrying the shrieks of terrified animals from a nearby slaughterhouse. What a charming neighborhood.
Eliza had woken before dawn, huddled in a Covent Garden doorway, wrapped in a mud-splattered coat and dangerously numb with cold. Her mouth had stung bitter, gin and elixir and half-forgotten remorse. She’d hurried home, squirming under the scrutiny of passers-by. Probably they’d thought her a disobedient servant after an illicit night out.
But like this mist-shrouded morning, Lizzie’s memories proved elusive. A crowded street of gaslights, a smoke-wreathed room. Tobacco, gin, berry-pink kisses . . . a bright squelch of blood in creeping shadows . . . but pervading all, the flesh-crawling ache of guilt.
Lizzie? What did you do?
But Lizzie shuddered, and wouldn’t speak.
That bottle of chilly pink remedy dragged Eliza’s pocket down, as if it weighed ten pounds. She’d risked a few more drops this morning, and the sickly-sweet taste still bubbled up in her gullet.
“A little late to arrest poor Carmine for fraud,” said Lafayette. Cheerful as usual, but his eyes were reddened. As if he, too, hadn’t slept well. “Still, this is good news. If we needed further proof that this pentacle-carving lunatic is a habitual killer.”
“Your enthusiasm disturbs me, sir. How is that good news?”
“Multiple murderers do seem to follow you around, Doctor. I’m gratified that I’ve chosen the best woman for the job.”
“Thank you. I think.” But her mouth twisted. Yes, she’d caught the Chopper, but only by accident. As for Razor Jack . . . Determined, she jammed on her optical. If Todd hadn’t done this, she’d prove it. “Shall we proceed? Looks as if Carmine was a real painter after all, or at least a forger.” She indicated a couple of rolled canvases on a shelf, tied with string, paint on the outside. Next to them, a clutter of paint pots, brushes, oils and solvents.
“Another ransacking,” said Lafayette, poking at papers and books that scattered the bloodstained floor. Candles lay overturned, wax splashed white. “Hardly an efficacious cover-up, given the carnage.”
“Agreed.” On that gruesome table, beside those unfortunate parts, sat tools: a ghastly pair of pliers, an oil-painting knife, a wooden-handled scalpel. All smeared with blood.
Unnecessary mess. None of Todd’s chilling elegance at all.
She laid fingers on Carmine’s dead flesh, anticipating that cold waxy texture . . . “He’s still warm,” she exclaimed. “Limbs pliable, no rigor. I’d say he’s been dead an hour. Since dawn, at the very earliest.”
Lafayette examined the corpse’s mangled chest. “Forgive my ignorance, but for a man with his heart torn out, there doesn’t appear to be an obvious cause of death.”
“I’m afraid there is.” She popped on the tiny brass-cased electric light on her waist chain, then wiped sticky blood from the corpse’s chest onto a slide and added a few drops of solution. Slipping a spectroscopical lens into her optical, she pulled the brass concertina to focus. The blood cells crawled, separating into tell-tale spectral lines. “As I thought. He’s experienced massive shock. All this”—she indicated the lacerations—“happened while he was conscious. His sensory system attempted to shut down.”
“A natural painkiller.” Lafayette’s expression was grim. “Tortured to death.”
Carefully, she turned the eyeball. “Look at those burst capillaries. This was forcibly extracted, probably with a finger. And the tongue’s torn, not sliced.” She picked up the pliers, checking the pincers with her magnifying glass. “The killer shoved these into his mouth and yanked.”
Lafayette poked the heart. “Aren’t there supposed to be four chambers?”
“Indeed there are. Part is missing . . . Oh, my.” Her stomach cramped, sick. “It’s been chewed.”
“Good God. You mean an animal?”
“Animal,” muttered Hipp, skulking under the bed.
“I’m afraid not.” Stiffly, Eliza pulled out her ruler to measure the teeth marks. A man’s, most likely. Surely, this couldn’t be Mr. Todd’s work. Death, not pain, aroused him. And as for eating the victim’s heart . . .
Her courage quailed. At least with Todd she knew what she was dealing with. But whoever did this was either utterly inhuman or irretrievably insane. How did one catch such a creature?
“‘Means, motive, and opportunity,’” she quoted shakily. “That’s how Harley always starts.”
Lafayette pointed at the tools. “All items you’d find in an artist’s things. Only cold blood and a strong stomach required.”
“A ready-made killing jar.” That ragged eye socket stared at her, and she tried not to look as she inspected the corpse’s graying skin with her tweezers. “Similar pentacle,” she reported, “with the same mercury symbol. Half-circle, circle, cross Left-hand knuckles smashed, three fingernails pulled. Also some burns. A cigar end?”
“Voilà.” Lafayette retrieved a cigar butt from the floor. “Some brutish Continental blend.”
“Opium? Or that drug you smelled at Dalziel’s?”
“Not a whiff, sadly for Carmine. But good for us. He must have screamed fit to split. Surely, someone heard.” Lafayette cocked his ear to the screeches of dying beasts. “Then again, hardly a quiet street.”
She put the stub away carefully. “Still, the killer’s means are in ready supply. All our man required was evil intent. He enters, subdues Carmine enough to get his shirt off and tie him to a chair . . .”
&nbs
p; Lafayette pointed to a heavy paperweight on the desk. “Hits him? There’s blood and hair on that.”
“Or he thinks he’s with a friend.”
“Maybe he’s under a spell.” Lafayette mimed swinging a watch chain before her eyes. “Abracadabra, you’re very sleepy; sit down and let me burn you with my cigar.”
“Brilliant. A cannibal dwarf hypnotist. Wild-flung theories, sir, will profit us none.”
“They worked last time. We began with vengeful ballerinas, progressed through rogue assassins, and ended at a crazed surgeon with a wolf curse who coveted your skull. A hungry dwarf sounds positively banal.”
She shivered, remembering how the Chopper had tricked her. Pretended to befriend her while all along he was sewing dead girls into grotesque homunculi. “Motive, that’s the key. What does the killer want?”
“If it were Carmine alone, I’d favor a greedy criminal competitor. You don’t just decide to torture someone mid-conversation for no reason.” Lafayette frowned. “Unless . . . Help me move him, will you?”
She grabbed the chair and helped Lafayette roll the corpse aside. On the floor, partly obscured by gore . . .
“Another pentacle!” she exclaimed. “In white chalk, right beneath his chair. How did you know?”
He picked up a candle stub, and matched its base to a waxy blob on the floor. “Five candles, five points of the star. I’ve seen this before. Pain wasn’t the point here. It’s a summoning.”
“I’m sorry, I thought you just said this was a magic spell.”
“I’ve investigated those accused of witchcraft. It’s an interest of mine. Black cats, broomsticks, magical flying ointment, the works. This pentacle business? It’s to summon a familiar spirit, or dedicate a soul.”
“To whom, pray?”
“Satan, of course. The Dread Forces of Evil. Last I heard, even Roman Catholics don’t pray to the Blessed Virgin by eating a man’s heart.”
Uneasily, she recalled ironical Penny Watt. Apparently London’s positively riddled with evil covens . . . sold his soul to the Devil . . . why am I never invited to these occult orgies . . .
