by Viola Carr
“I refuse even to dignify that with the obvious retort.” Remy took a chair beside her.
“I call it commendable.” Eliza tasted her cool lemonade, the citrus invigorating. “Have you visited Paris recently? Is it as bad as they say?”
“Worse.” François grimaced. “Just last month, the Revolutionary Guard were skinning monarchists alive in the Place Napoléon. Some frightful blood ritual. Apparently you can never have too much salut public.”
She shuddered, reminded of those gruesome murder scenes. If sorcerers infiltrated London, such horrors would be commonplace, or so people feared.
François relaxed, resting both hands on his cane. “So, idiot, will you give it to her, or must I do it for you?” He laughed at Remy’s expression. “Don’t dance around it, lad. You’re only letting me meet her because she’s finally said yes, so get on with it.”
Remy shook his head, amused. “A true romantic. I swear, Eliza, I’d planned flowers and chocolates and breakfast by the sea, but now you must make do.” He produced a tiny lacquered box, and opened it.
Sunbeams flashed on a sky-blue sapphire ring.
She gulped, sinking rapidly out of her depth. “Oh. I say. It’s . . .” Gigantic? Terrifying? Worth more than my house?
“May I?” He eased the golden ring free, and slid it onto her finger.
She extended her hand to admire it. The weight surprised her. The stone sparkled wildly, rainbows scattering. Honestly, she’d seen smaller cherries. “It’s b-beautiful,” she stammered. It was. Gorgeous. Far too much.
“You’re beautiful,” whispered Remy, and she felt dizzy, overcome. Lost.
“Good God, Remy, she looks as if you just handed her the French crown jewels. Don’t be alarmed, Doctor, it’s comfortably nouveau riche. He had it unearthed last week from one of his ghastly pits in the Punjab.” François sipped lemonade. “So, you’re a physician. I congratulate you. That must have been more difficult for a lady.” Not an insult. Merely interested.
She’d known the tests would come. “Perhaps, but I don’t easily take no for an answer, sir.”
“A crime scene expert, no less. That must require considerable wits and good sense.”
She fidgeted. “I suppose it does.”
“Yet you didn’t punch my baby brother in the face when he proposed. Something wrong with you, is there?”
Startled, she laughed. “Insanity runs in my family, I’m afraid. And a lady can always use a decorative fellow with a sword, to fend off undesirables and look smart while shopping.”
François guffawed, undignified. “She has your measure, mon frère.”
Remy snickered. “My purpose in life revealed. Mother will be so pleased.”
“And now he’s blushing.” François thumped his cane on the deck. “I insist you elope with me at once, before it’s too late. You’re far too good for the likes of him. I’m not as decorative, to be sure, but at shopping and swordplay, I excel.”
“Perfect,” Eliza declared. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
Remy lifted his hands. “I surrender. In fact, I’d given up the moment you laid eyes on him. No, don’t tell me. It’s the same thing they all say. ‘If only I’d met the elder one first.’”
“All?” She fanned herself. “Goodness, how progressive. Am I to be one of a flock?”
François’s laughter deepened into coughing. Another, and another, wet hacking chokes that cramped him double. Wordlessly, Remy passed him a handkerchief. When François finally caught his breath, the cloth came away bloody.
He smiled wryly at Eliza’s shocked stare. “Doesn’t take a physician, I’m afraid.” His whisper was hoarse. Thin, soft-spoken, that over-bright glitter in his eyes . . .
Remy fiddled with his glass, and she realized with a jolt that he knew his brother was dying.
“I’m so sorry.” Her throat crisped. “How long?”
François unscrewed a pewter flask and swallowed, grimacing. She smelled brandy, a muscle relaxant. Medicinal. For what any medicine would be worth. “I’m told both lungs are quite far gone.”
“They said that last year, and the year before. What do they know?” Remy picked sullenly at a thumbnail.
“Not that I’ve much faith in doctors,” added François. “I’ve been cursed with too many rum-addled sawbones, killing more men than they saved. Present company excepted, naturally.”
“No offense taken.” Her uselessness maddened her. “If I can help in any way, anything you need . . . or your family?”
“Oh, I’m not married.” François smiled faintly. “I don’t imagine I could bear a grieving wife and children. Bad enough with our lady mother beside herself over the fate of our oh-so-precious fortune.” He sighed. “Shall we speak of more pleasant things? Being the family disappointment is so exhausting.”
Remy shrugged, careless. “I don’t know. I’ve had the job for so much longer than you. I’ve rather gotten the hang of it.”
But Eliza barely heard. Her mind was stuck fast, a biscuit snapped off in cold treacle.
Our oh-so-precious fortune.
The Lafayettes were wealthy. Land, cash, stocks, who knew what else. And François had no children. Remy would inherit everything.
Her stomach hollowed. Oh, no. That’s not fair, Remy. No, no, no . . .
The rest of the conversation passed in a blur, and before she knew it, they’d said their farewells and she stood back on the docks in brilliant sunshine, blinking and shaking herself and wondering what on earth she’d let herself in for.
The ring on her finger flashed, catching the sun, and the river glinted gaily, likewise oblivious to her turmoil. Just like the whole cursed world, expecting her to smile and carry on. Her eyes burned. Damn it.
“My lady, is everything well with you?” Remy watched her, cautious. “I suppose I should’ve warned you about François. It’s only that I don’t like to think about it. He made post captain at twenty-five, did I tell you? Always such an incorrigible hero.” The ghost of a smile. “I suppose I thought he’d go on forever . . . Eliza, whatever’s wrong?” He touched her cheek, where a tear rolled.
“Nothing.” She wiped her face, mortified. Overly emotional, that was all. Wrung out, from the pink remedy and the murder case and Reeve’s threats and Mr. Todd’s . . . well, whatever that was.
Remy lifted his hand in peace. “Please, if I’ve somehow offended you . . .”
“No, it’s all right.” She attempted a smile. “I just didn’t realize that when you asked me to marry you, what you really wanted was . . .”
He waited, wary. “No idea. You’ll need to speak.”
She swallowed. “A wife.”
“Now I’m truly baffled.”
“Family, Remy. Babies. To inherit your ‘oh-so-precious fortune’?”
His eyes widened. “That isn’t—”
“Don’t you care at all about my career? Did you think for a moment about what I wanted?” She didn’t even know if she could bear children, what with Lizzie and the change, her flesh always stretching and renewing. That wasn’t the point.
“Of course I care,” he protested. “It’s all I care for. We can do whatever will make you happy.”
She smiled, helpless. “You’re precious, but it won’t make me happy to strip your family of its heritage. What happens if you have no son? Everything goes to some distant cousin, I expect, whom you’ve likely never met.”
A dark blue flicker. “Something like that.”
“There you are, then. I believe in a woman’s choices, but I’m not heartless. Don’t you think I’d feel obliged?”
Stiffly, he bowed. “Madam, I would never insist you act out of obligation to me.”
“I know that,” she said desperately. “I just . . .”
“Do you know where my family’s money comes from? Our name wasn’t always Lafayette. My great-grandfather lost his head in the first Terror. La guillotine.”
“Oh. How awful. I’m sorry.”
“Thank y
ou, but don’t be. The fat tyrant got what he deserved. Ever hear of an old French fortune that wasn’t drenched in blood? Why do you imagine I left for India as soon as I was old enough? I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it.”
She stared, guilty. He’d made his own fortune in India. Risked his life, contracted an evil monstrous curse . . . all to escape. And now here he was, whether he liked it or not. “I wish you’d told me, that’s all.”
A bruised look. “Well, now you know.”
Aching, she touched his arm. “Remy, I’m sorry. I never meant to—What on earth?”
“Telegraph!” A clockwork messenger sprinted up, its scything brass legs nearly bowling her over. “Urgent!”
Puzzled, she took the ticker tape . . . and her heart skipped. “Oh, my.”
Instantly, Remy jumped to her side. “What is it?”
“It’s from Harley Griffin. There’s been another murder.”
LIKE COMMON EARTH
I CAN SMELL BLOOD.
Eliza’s prodding me, forcing me awake. Here’s Harley Griffin, dark and impeccable, somber like the grave. His blue-suited crushers, lighting torches in some shit-streaked alley in the shadow of St. Giles’s rickety steeple, where gore crusts the mud and a man in a ripped russet coat lies dead.
His head’s missing. Hacked off, stolen for a prize. Fleshy gobbets dangle around a pearly knob of bone. Fingers crushed into the ground, branded by the killer’s boot heel. Shirt torn open, and ragged, tooth-marked things done to his guts what make my throat burn with bile.
Slashed into his cold, white chest is the killer’s mocking crimson calling card.
A pentacle.
I cower deeper into my cramped cell. She drags me out, an oyster stretched in a hungry bird’s beak. Don’t make me look. I belong here, deep in slithering darkness where I can’t hurt us. Todd could’ve finished her last night, and where was I? Skulking under the dirt like a worm. You’re a coward, Miss Lizzie. You had your chance. You fucked it.
And now here that corpse lies, a rotting accusation I can’t deny. No head, but somehow that decaying flesh wears Eliza’s face. Her fingers, snapped like sticks under a boot. Her guts, spilled like offal into the mud.
The fiend what killed this poor bastard is a monster. The bad half of a bad half, with no purpose but pain. Like Todd, he don’t deserve to live.
And neither do I.
“Eh?”
Harley Griffin touched Eliza’s sleeve, jolting her back to her senses. The sun had slunk behind the tall rooftops, stubbornly refusing to penetrate this twisting alleyway. Torchlight flickered, and St. Giles’s bell chimed, dolorous. She struggled to focus, an empty hole in her chest that wouldn’t fill.
Headless body, bloodied mud, pentacle. Another victim. Further testament to her failure.
Griffin stroked his mustaches. “The rector called it in an hour ago. This ‘Pentacle Killer’ story is all over town and we still have nothing.”
“No mercury symbol this time,” remarked Eliza. “Apparently he’s done with framing Moriarty Quick. What would be the point? Quick’s still in custody.”
Remy examined the gore-trampled mud. “Belongs there, if you ask me. What a shame if unpleasantness should befall him.”
“Likely it will,” said Griffin. “Reeve banged him up with the drunks beneath the Yard. His noxious Irish wit will earn no sympathy there.” Griffin eyed the corpse, perplexed. “But now Reeve will have to set him free.”
Eliza snorted. “Serves him right. The rude little man takes credit for my evidence—which proved embarrassingly false, Harley, and you can scold me later for my rash assumptions—and arrests the wrong man. Then another victim turns up, and it’s in your division. One almost feels sorry for him.”
But as she crouched in the wavering light to inspect the severed neck, her vision swam. Why carve a pentacle at all, if not to pretend it was about black magic? A killer who left a calling card wanted to be noticed. But why?
Her wits protested, sluggish and helpless. She longed for her electric lights, her potions, her optical. Science, not blind conjecture. But she’d have to make do. This man was dead because she’d incorrectly identified the killer. No more room for error.
“I can’t test for toxins here,” she began, “but the cause of death seems self-evident. Stabbed in the throat, then a series of sawing blows. Not a chopping tool. Our old friend the short, sharp blade.”
“A spur-of-the-moment beheading?” suggested Griffin. “Forgot his ax in the rush?”
“Or relishes taking his time. Still, nowhere near enough blood for an on-site decapitation. This man was killed elsewhere and his body dumped.” She frowned. “Hmm. First a peeled face, now a missing head.”
To hide his identity . . . or to hide something else? She fingered the torn coat. Rough russet. Where had she seen this before? She sniffed it. Gin, stale sweat, excrement. “New soles on his boots,” she observed. “The stitching is freshly oiled. He can’t have lain here very long, or they’d be gone. Anything in his pockets?”
“Stolen, if ever there was anything.”
“The buttonhole’s torn, a watch chain ripped away. And . . . look, his index finger has been hacked off. And a ring yanked from his middle finger.” She prodded the savaged knuckle. “Enthusiastically, too. Flesh practically wrenched from bone.”
Remy nudged her, and she turned with a sinking heart to see Chief Inspector Reeve marching up, thumb tucked into his braces.
“So much for your theories, missy,” said Reeve. “I ought to charge you with wasting police time. Griffin, what possessed you to call her? She’ll only run off on another wild-goose chase.” He peered over her shoulder. “Leave your fancy gadgets in the kitchen?”
“A-ha-ha-ha.” Her new sapphire ring glared, overbright in the torchlight, and hurriedly she twisted it out of sight. “If you must know, I was engaged with another matter. I didn’t imagine I’d be examining a corpse this evening. I was merely observing the victim’s missing rings and watch.”
“Stolen, of course,” said Reeve irritably. “Doesn’t mean the killer filched ’em, if that’s what you’re thinking. Around here, a fresh stiff gets robbed in five seconds flat. Lucky he’s still got his clothes.”
“A lucky corpse,” she remarked. “How droll. Has it occurred to you that he’s still wearing a rather good pair of newly repaired boots? No common street thief has yet discovered this body.”
“Which means the decapitator took his rings,” put in Remy, flashing a provocative smile, “but left his clothing. Could it be that the body wasn’t stripped for money?”
Griffin feigned surprise. “Why, one would almost surmise . . .”
“That the killer is concealing the victim’s identity!” Eliza gasped, theatrical. “Astonishing. What do you think, Chief Inspector?”
Reeve eyed her sullenly. “That you’ve got a smart mouth?”
She checked a sigh. “This man is working class. No apparent connection with the other victims. Why would Pentacle take trouble to hide his identity, if it wasn’t a clue? We must discover who this is! It’s our only lead to the killer.”
“Is it?” Smugly, Reeve shoved a note into her hand. “I got this an hour ago. Wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”
She glanced at Griffin, but he only shrugged. She unfolded the paper.
Dear Chief Inspector Moron,
Here’s another for you, at the corner of
St. Giles. He wriggled, so I hacked off
his head. A pretty new picture in RED.
Ha ha!
I hope you show the lovely lady doctor.
It’s the sort of thing she likes. In truth, you’re
just not smart enough to catch me without her.
See you SOON
Razor Jack
She covered her mouth, her stomach contents threatening to expel themselves . . .
But the inked letters glared a challenge. Unevenly spaced, with jerky hooked underswirls, and such an ugly capital “M”
. . .
“This isn’t Razor Jack’s handwriting,” she reported, breathless. “It’s a fake.”
Reeve eyed her as if she’d grown a second nose. “You’d know, would you?”
“The syntax is wrong, too. Todd’s sentences are convoluted, not choppy. The word ‘red’ means nothing to him, he’s most specific about colors. Nor does he say ‘in truth.’ It’s ‘honestly’ or ‘let me tell you something.’” Shivering, she handed the note to Griffin. “I don’t know who wrote this, but it wasn’t Malachi Todd.”
But Todd’s gloating remarks slithered in her ears, distorted echoes of madness. So much blood in him, I stood there for a good four or five minutes. Dance with my shadow, will you?
She shivered. No, she already had a letter from Shadow. His hand was identical to Todd’s. Messy, I’m afraid, but I’m out of practice . . .
“It’s a fake,” she repeated firmly. “Ignore it.”
“So completely off his rocker that he can’t disguise his hand, is he?” Reeve snorted. “You’re dumber than I thought.”
Remy eyed him coldly. “Then why sign his nickname? Makes cutting off this unfortunate fellow’s head a waste of effort.”
Reeve chuckled. “Why the hell would this Pentacle Killer frame Razor Jack?”
Eliza sighed. “To distract us, of course. The papers already blame everything gruesome on Todd.”
“Rightly so,” insisted Reeve. “A crackpot like that, legging it from the nuthouse to lead a life of quiet contemplation? Not bloody likely.”
“You think Jack suddenly wants to be famous?” asked Remy. “He never wrote to the police before. Why start now?”
“And what are you, Royal Society—her knight in shining armor?”
A dazzling smile. “Since you ask? I’m—”
“Also, observe the jagged edges on that vertebra,” interrupted Eliza hastily, elbowing Remy and earning an amused glance. “Brutally severed. Todd’s never done that before. He doesn’t keep souvenirs.”
“Maybe he’s started,” suggested Reeve. “You’re the one who testified he’d lost his marbles the first time around. Hardly likely to be the picture of sanity now, is he?”
