This began with a brief article in the newspaper. It was not too far a stretch, to my searching mind, to think I would be able to trace the connections I could all but sense through the same.
“Anything that stands out from the normal gossip,” was the best I could give.
“Hmm.” The low hum was not encouraging, but for a time, we lapsed into a companionable silence, broken only by the occasional snippet of shared information.
“ ‘The visit to London of the great Houlier, the celebrated Paris detective, has caused quite a stir in Scotland Yard,’ ” Fanny read aloud.
“No, too big and too . . .” I flicked my paper. “Unrelated. Detective Houlier won’t care much for anything beyond the Ripper, I’m sure.”
Again, a companionable silence fell over the parlor. I combed through article after article, many about the terrifying Whitechapel murders and others about politics in Her Majesty’s Parliament, various reforms, the latest on the travails with the Irish Home Rule—I admit to being more than a little impressed with the now infamous three-hour speech given by the disgraced Mr. Gladstone some years ago—and various carry-ons reported below the drift.
I found once more the article regaling readers with the death of Professor MacGillycuddy—poison was not once mentioned—and set that aside.
“Ah.”
I glanced up, my head full of so many useless facts, it took me a moment to place the sound. “Yes?”
Fanny studied her paper, now folded for easier reading, and glanced at me through her spectacles. “There was a scene at the Athenaeum Club nearly a fortnight ago.”
“The Athenaeum,” I repeated slowly. A fine establishment, and one of very few gentlemen’s clubs in London that had converted to electrical lights. A remarkable feat in and of itself. I’d often dreamed of stepping foot within, yet the membership was limited to a mere thousand, and the waiting list long.
And, of course, while the charter welcomed all who were of distinguished renown in literature, science or the arts, it would never, ever allow a woman. No matter how wealthy, well-bred or brilliant.
I grimaced. “What set them on their ear, then?”
“An unwanted guest,” Fanny replied, her gaze once more flicking at me, but over her spectacles this time. “It seems a woman was found wearing the guise of a man. In fact, a member’s very suit.”
I stared at her for a long, unblinking moment.
Fanny raised her chin, looking down at the paper as if even her spectacles were no longer quite so helpful. “I see the names of the gentlemen involved with evicting her from the premises.”
“Either MacGillycuddy or Lambkin?”
“Neither.”
I chewed on my lip for a moment, lost in thought.
A woman braving the depths of a club known particularly for its patronage of science and the arts.
A link? I tossed aside the articles I skimmed in favor of one I remember viewing some days ago. Was it over a week, now? “Does it say what she was there to accomplish?”
“No,” Fanny said after a moment’s reading. “Cause trouble, I’d wager.” I ignored her scorn, hastily rifling through the now jumbled pages.
“Why was the woman there?” I repeated to myself. “To what purpose? Thievery? Espionage? An illicit tryst?”
“Cherry, really.” She sighed. “Although it seems the gentlemen of the club have been much more arduous about checking the identity of its patrons since.”
“They would, wouldn’t they?” I muttered. I’d often considered pulling the same prank on the Athenaeum. Or the Gresham, or even the Travellers’ Club, who retained the most distinguished personages from across the globe. Whoever this woman was, she beat me to that race. Soundly.
Of course, as far as I knew, I retained the distinction of remaining the only female collector. I would take that win.
Although, I certainly would like to meet the woman who’d been so bold. “A name, then? Of her?”
“Ah . . .” Fanny frowned at the small printing. “Yes. A Miss Hensworth. She has been delivered a citation.”
“Eureka!” The word snapped out of me, a triumphant cry emphasizing the sudden flash of illumination Fanny’s delivery achieved.
Miss Hensworth. Of course.
“Good gracious, Cherry,” sighed my chaperone as I shook a folded newspaper in triumph. “What does this have to do with your . . .” She paused delicately. “Your mystery?”
I flipped to the requisite page, muttering to myself until the now-familiar header caught my eye. “A letter,” I explained, though it wasn’t much of an answer to my exasperated companion.
“What letter? Cherry, slow down and clarify.”
I could barely endure to remain seated. I took a deep breath, skimmed the words once more, and laughed outright. “Oh, Miss Hensworth, you are so clever,” I crowed. There her name was, once more affixed with fiery bravado to the words that demanded the Master of Admissions permit women to study the same courses that allowed men to be licensed by the boards of medicine. “ ‘Allow this,’ ” I read aloud, “ ‘or be removed from a post that continues to be mired in the stench of male hubris and fear.’ ”
“Oh, my.”
“Indeed.” I chuckled, waving the paper now over my head. “This is a declaration of war, by our very own Miss Hortense Hensworth.”
Fanny stared at me blankly. “Who is she, dear?”
Oh, of course. I lowered my evidence, set it aside for research purposes later. “A suffragette, it appears. One who all but demanded Professor MacGillycuddy’s head on a platter, if not by name.”
Fanny frowned, looking between her gossip columns and my small stack of articles. “It’s not enough, Cherry.”
“What?”
“It’s not enough,” she repeated firmly. “There is no evidence to mark her as the murderer, much less the villain you wish to paint her as. Good heavens, you would vilify her for speaking her mind and doing what you would do, indecorous though it might be.”
Had I? An outspoken woman, suddenly painted by own hand as cause for concern?
Damn and blast, she was right.
Our innocent wallflower could be just that.
I needed more. Was either professor a member of the Athenaeum? How would I go about finding out? “There must be something else,” I said, more to myself than to her. I reached for the next paper, leafed through them at a rapid pace. Silence fell for another hour, broken only by Booth’s limping step as he replaced our now cold tea with fresh.
I found nothing. Only another letter, same as the others but lacking in threat, names or link to the murdered men.
I leaned back in my chair, crossing my ankles under my skirt as a man often did, and stared at the ceiling in blank thought.
Perhaps I’d leapt to this conclusion. Miss Hensworth certainly had a mind of her own; I could respect this easily. But was she a murderer?
I couldn’t see it. Quiet, genteel Miss Hensworth, hardly the face I’d draw when confronted with such impassioned words of suffrage, or the derring-do required of a woman in a man’s garb.
A coincidence?
The word stuck in my throat and would not make it fully formed beyond my skepticism. Coincidence was not a thing I believed in.
“Here are the facts,” I said aloud, uncaring if Fanny heard me or not. “One, Miss Hensworth demands Professor MacGillycuddy’s capitulation on the twenty-fourth of September. Two, she is forcibly removed from the premises of a gentlemen’s club. Three, said professor is murdered shortly thereafter, ostensibly by poison.”
“Goodness me.”
I laced my fingers together, tucked them under my chin as I stared at the light played over the pale ceiling. “Four, Professor Lambkin takes his own life, some days after his colleague. Or he is dispatched, like his predecessor, by someone else.”
“Why someone else?”
“Entirely different method,” I explained, patient for all I’d mentally moved past this detail. “Murderers tend to follow a pattern, a method by which
they are most comfortable. Women often select poison, but when pushed, we choose to go for a knife rather than, say, a garrote or simple strangulation as a man would. Pistols, by the majority, are also a man’s domain.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Fanny huffed, rising in a rustled fall of silk and linen. She set her paper down in a neat pile, so at odds with my chaotic nest, and glowered at me. “Why on earth would you be mired in such a sordid affair as this?”
I did not straighten from my lackadaisical sprawl. “Lady Rutledge set the challenge.”
“Really.” Another sigh, and back ramrod straight, she crossed to the tea cart and poured another cup. Yet she paused before setting the pot down once more. “Perhaps,” she said slowly, “you aren’t looking at it with the right set of eyes.”
Now, I straightened. “I beg your pardon, Fanny?”
When she turned, her mouth was set in a pursed line that suggested she was deep in thought. “Perhaps,” she continued in the same contemplative tone, “you should look less at the professors, and more at . . .”
“At?”
“Well.” She gave herself a small shake, her smile rueful. “This is hardly my forte, you understand, but you should look at something else. You’re not looking past the professors.”
Past the professors? What the devil did that mean? Of course the professors were key, if I could learn why they died—
I froze, suddenly stiff as the thought flared like a beacon.
Alchemy.
Whether the notes had been Lambkin’s or MacGillycuddy’s, it did not matter. They referenced some kind of alchemical study, a formula or series of them. To what end?
Perhaps the professors weren’t the key.
“That means the formulae are,” I said suddenly, and leapt to my feet. I whooped loud enough to wake the dead, grabbed Fanny and spun her madly in a circle before planting a kiss on her cheek. “You are brilliant,” I swore, and hurried for the hall.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“To fetch the key!” I called, plucking my winter coat from the stand by the door.
I’d given Mr. Pettigrew the very motive I’d been searching for. All I needed was to know what it was, and I would track down the killers from there.
It wasn’t about the individuals, God rest their souls. It was about science. Intent! Results.
“But, Cherry, you can’t—”
I closed the door on Fanny’s near-panicked hue and cry, turned and hurried for the main thoroughfare, where I would be able to hire a gondola for the duration.
Mr. Pettigrew would have my answers. I would visit earlier than his three days, but given the circumstances, he would understand.
The gondolier I fetched at the main thoroughfare looked at me as if I’d lost my mind, but at promise of double his usual fare when he returned me to my home, he closed his mouth and depressed the lever that widened the spigot in the small aether engine at the tail.
I was so close to the heart of this mystery, I could all but taste it on my tongue.
Alchemy.
Not the first time such mysteries had ever driven a St. Croix to recklessness.
I was halfway to my destination before I realized I’d never been to Mr. Pettigrew’s without my collector’s disguise.
Much too late, now. I would have to brazen my way through; and if necessary, swear the old man into secrecy.
As the gondolier lowered us into the fog, I remembered with longing my fog-prevention goggles. As my eyes began to water and sting, I found myself considering even the delicate French protectives Compton had gifted me.
Once more, I’d gone off on a wild fit, and I would feel this sting for a while.
I instructed the gondolier to drop me at the main concourse just outside the West India Docks, and bade him return to my home for his fee.
“Are you sure, miss?” he asked, scanning the thick, daylight-swallowing fog roiling about us.
“I’m sure.”
“Daft,” he muttered when he thought I could not hear. I only smiled, waited until the shape of his gondola faded into the smoke, and hailed a hackney.
The looks I received weren’t as pointed as I’d expected. The last time I’d come below without my collector’s garb, I’d been wearing something much more somber. Today, my poplin would draw attention, but not nearly as much as if I were wearing one of my more delicate day dresses.
Yet I would not risk traveling through the districts below the drift garbed as I was. Certainly, I would not be the only woman going about my business, but I did look more like a toff now than I ever had in my own company.
I would prove an irresistible mark from some of the more unfriendly gangs, and could not stop to beg help from Ishmael Communion on the way.
He did not know my identity, either, and I preferred to keep it this way.
It took me too long to fetch a hackney, and longer still to convince him to take my fare. I had no coin upon me, and I swore he’d fetch his coin once he delivered me safely to Mr. Pettigrew.
Finally, he relented. “Get in, then,” he growled, jerking a thumb to the carriage. His horse, long since accustomed to the stench of the coal-laden miasma, nickered softly.
Within the hour, I disembarked, bade the large driver to remain waiting, and hurried across the damp cobbles to the third shop in the row. By day, a faint ambient light colored all things.
I could see where I stepped well enough, and the fog even took on a lighter hue in these early hours. Deceptively friendly, if one had no sense of trouble below the drift.
For my part, I sensed nothing. The fog dampened everything—sight, sound. Even the rustle of my shimmery poplin was swallowed into the smoke. Waving at the fog in front of my face, I reached Mr. Pettigrew’s door and knocked loudly.
There was no reply. I knocked again, coughing against the near-constant sting in my throat and echoed by the horse’s restless hoof falls on cobble.
It was day. Not that one could tell by looking, but it was decidedly working hours.
Where was the old man?
I looked back, squinted my burning eyes to barely pick out the huddled shape of my hired hackney. I couldn’t very well go back and suggest he go without his fare.
I sighed, reached for the door and found it unlatched.
The first sense of unease skittered through me.
Now I sensed trouble. Why did I continue to follow my impulses and end up weaponless for it?
The shift in my stance was as unconscious as it was telling. Weight to the balls of my feet, odd enough in my skirts and delicate boots, I pushed open the door.
A wave of familiar warmth washed over me.
“Mr. Pettigrew?” I called, seeing nothing but the one corner of his bookshop outlined to me.
Nothing moved, not a voice or a sound.
Frowning, I stepped inside, shut the door behind me to keep the damp away from the books I knew he considered precious. My footsteps creaked along the wood floor, lacking carpeting that might collect damp. Wood floors and the occasional small rug for creature comfort; these were the things Mr. Pettigrew preferred.
At first glance, all seemed exactly as it should be. The shelves were orderly, not a book out of place, the brazier glowing merrily and giving off its dry, welcome heat.
And then I noticed the paper on the floor.
Mr. Pettigrew would not approve.
Nor, I realized as my gaze trailed to the work desk beside the stray parchment, would he care.
The man was dead.
“Oh, bollocks,” I said quietly, because it was all I could think to say as sympathy welled in a great tide and my heart twisted to think I might be responsible. Rubbing the back of my neck in abject misery, I forced myself to approach the slumped figure of old Mr. Pettigrew. My gaze darted from one side of the shop to the other, but there was nowhere for anyone to hide; I was alone.
Alone but for a body.
He had been attacked at his work table, that much was clear. His frail frame, w
rapped in his beloved dressing gown, had fallen forward, forehead against the worn wood. Blood, thick and very red, matted the back of his head. A terrible cavity where there should have been none showed me bits of stained white bone.
I swallowed hard as a shudder wrenched through me.
Poor, dear Mr. Pettigrew.
As I circled his still form, I noted the crimson smears on the papers beneath his flattened face. His nose was bent crooked, as if he’d come in contact with the table too hard and too fast. His milky eyes were wide open.
Fixed, I realized in mounting curiosity and horror, upon a hole in the table.
There were no splinters, no sharp grooves as there would be if something had driven through the solid oak. Beside his outstretched hand, weathered palm turned up, a broken bit of glass glinted, but there was nothing to indicate what could have caused such damage.
Or why beside it, lined perfectly with the missing bit of table, was half a book.
“Why sever a book?” I asked of myself, unable to imagine such a reason. If all the murderer had wanted to do was make it unreadable, there was a brazier at full light just behind me.
Full light. . .
I spun, bracing myself with a gloved hand to the table, and stared at the shining brazier. Of course. It had been fed recently. I looked down at Mr. Pettigrew’s corpse, bent until I was eye-level with the terrible, gaping wound in his skull.
The blood was only just beginning to congeal, possibly slowed by the unseemly warmth of the room.
I flexed my fingers, steeling myself as I lifted my hand from the table and stripped off one glove.
If Mr. Pettigrew had been killed recently, his body would still be warm. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to touch his cheek. His throat, where I knew to find a heartbeat, if there would be any. There was none. I did not expect one.
Yet it was not the stiff resistance of a body caught in rigor mortis, either. The warmth of the room wasn’t enough to keep a corpse at this temperature, added to the as yet uncongealed color of his blood and the strange dampness on the table—I frowned at my fingers, pulled on my glove but saw nothing staining it—and that meant he was dead within moments of my arrival.
Mere moments.
Elation—energy, anger, a surge of righteous justice—filled me as I spun, once more scouring the shop.
Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles Page 20
