Cold Stone and Ivy

by H. Leighton Dickson

  “He doesn’t need to be encouraged.” The splash of milk, the level spoon of sugar. “He needs to be medicated, hospitalized, and treated.” The slow, hypnotic circles caused by the stirring. “He is an innocent, Ivy. A wild, brutal child. He needs to be protected from people and people need to be protected from him.”

  She swallowed, watched him drop two tablets into the tea.

  “Vitamin supplements,” he said. “He doesn’t eat when he’s manic.”

  She remembered the pasty, three knife holes bleeding gravy.

  “And what if he decides that I’m next? You know his women want him to shoot me.”

  “He won’t,” she said. “He’s promised.”

  “What about you then? What if he decides to shoot you? Or stick a knife into you just to make sure you’re real?”

  “He won’t hurt me,” she said.

  “Until the ghosts tell him to.” He smiled sadly and held the cup and saucer out to her. “I’m sending him back north. Take this to him, say your goodbyes, and never see him again.”

  Her eyes flashed now, and he could tell.

  “The last door on the right before the second-floor terrace,” he said, and he raised the cup once more. “Go on. Be a good girl.”

  Be a good girl.

  She was a good girl. She had always been a good girl.

  Reach a little higher, then . . .

  For some reason, the tears began to sting now.

  She took the cup and fled back up the stairs.

  THE TEARS WERE flowing down her cheeks as she knocked on the door, the last door on the right before the second-floor terrace. There was no answer, so she tried the handle, relieved to find it unlocked. She nudged it open and peered inside. A great expanse of draperies was drawn shut and the fireplace had dwindled down to a few glowing coals. She glanced at the bed but it was empty.

  There wasn’t even a spread on it.

  She stepped in and closed the door behind her.

  “Sebastien?” she called softly into the room. “Sebastien, it’s me, Ivy. I, I have tea . . .”

  In the far corner, she saw a strange shape and she moved closer. Someone was sitting on the floor, underneath a blanket, like a little child hiding from its parents. She crossed the room to kneel beside it.

  “Sebastien? Would you like some tea?”

  The spread moved for a hand to slip out and she saw his wrist, swollen and blue from his late-night adventures. Christien had been right—she had been drunk in the cab. She barely remembered him after the pier.

  She passed him the saucer and it disappeared under the blanket.

  “May I join you?” she begged, wishing just for one moment that she were a little girl. She and Davis would make tents under their blankets, pretend they were adventurers in Africa and India, fighting lions and tigers on the frontier of the Empire. She had been eleven. She’d had to grow up very quickly after that.

  He said nothing, so she lifted an edge and peered under.

  The side of his face was purple, and he was cradling his right arm as though it were still in its brace. The spread draped from his head and he was staring into the teacup, although, like her mother, she doubted he was seeing anything. She could imagine him very much like this at Lonsdale. The only thing missing was Mumford.

  It broke her heart all over again.

  She slipped underneath the blanket, wrapped her arms around her knees, and tears spilled fresh from her lashes. And so she sat, weeping silently until he raised his eyes to look at her.

  “Why are you crying, Miss Savage?”

  “Me”—she smiled through her tears—“I’m a good girl, aren’t I?”

  “Yes. A very good girl.”

  “I hate it,” she sniffed. “I hate being a ‘good girl.’ I hate having to follow orders. I always have. I am so stubborn but I hate being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, why I should do it, what I should think, how I should think. I wish, I wish . . .”

  Her breath shuddered in her chest. “I wish life was very different . . .”

  He blinked slowly. “Me too.”

  “And I try to reach higher, really I do. But I think I only succeed in making a mess of things. Do you ever feel that way?”

  “Always,” he said. “I am a madman and a failure.”

  “No, Sebastien. At least, no more than me.” She smiled, and this time it didn’t feel forced. “Quite a pair, we make, yes?”

  “Hm.”

  “Are you going to drink your tea?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, and raised the cup to his lips. “Thank you.”

  “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Not so good.”

  “I’m terribly sorry. Can I help?”

  He shook his head. The blanket moved when he did so.

  “I think you shot one of the men on the pier,” she said. “I found blood and fabric next to a hole in the plank.”

  “Hm.”

  “Did you find them, then? The ‘head’ men?”

  He shook his head again.

  “Oh. Well, how did you get so clobbered up?”

  “The Ripper is as good with a spade as he is with a blade. He is also left-handed, by the way.”

  She felt the blood drain from her face. “Sebastien . . .”

  “He was going to kill me, but he didn’t.”

  “You need to tell the police. My father will listen.”

  “I saw him.”

  “What? You saw him?”

  “The Ripper. I saw him. It’s my father.”

  She stared at him.

  “My father, who’s been dead for years, is killing women in Whitechapel.”

  “But . . . but he’s dead . . . How can he?”

  “It’s a challenging question. I think I’ll stay in here for a while. The dead don’t come under blankets.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that.

  He sipped his tea, and once again, she noticed a tremor in his hands. She had never seen that before London.

  They sat in silence for a moment, and finally, he laid the empty cup on the floor. Between his feet was a small golden tin, which he picked up and began to fold over in his hand. Inside, it rattled like crushed stones.

  “Lithium,” he said. “Christien wants me back on it.”

  “I know. What do you think?”

  Finally, he looked up at her.

  “I felt a woman die last night. I’ve never felt that before, but I was no more than fifty feet away, so it stands to reason. It was like nails in my skull. My dead father almost beat me to death with a spade, and when I came home, there were nine women in the hall. One of them had barely a face. They don’t want to be dead, and they’re very angry about it. There are four torsos, Ivy. Four dismembered women everywhere I go. I’m not doing enough but honestly, I can’t do any more, and I want it to stop.” He looked down at the tin in his hand. “I want it all to stop.”

  “Oh my dear Sebastien . . .” She frowned, hugged her knees. It never occurred to her that it was odd, conducting such a personal conversation under a blanket in the corner of a room. “So, with the lithium, you don’t see the dead?”

  He frowned now, blinked as if trying to focus.

  “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t see the dead. But the problem is that I don’t see much of the living either . . . Hm . . .” He frowned again, rolled his head on his shoulders. It caused the blanket to bunch and pull. He said nothing more for some time, and so they sat, toe to toe, saying nothing.

  “Would you talk to my father, Sebastien? If you fought off the Ripper, you should tell him what happened.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe it was someone who looked like your father. You could describe his height, his frame, his clothing—”

  “No, Ivy.”

  “Sebastien, you are a witness to a terrible crime.”

  He said nothing, didn’t even seem to have heard. In fact, he was blinking very slowly.

  “Sebastien?”

 
“Hm,” he said again, and reached for his cup, fumbled with it, then stared into it as if it were a puzzle. “Lithium in the tea. Quite clever. I never expected it . . .”

  Ivy looked up. “What?”

  “It dissolves quickly in hot water. Well done. Rupert was right.” His voice was sluggish and slow. “You’d make a tidy spy. Christien has you trained.”

  “What? Sebastien, no. He said they were vitamins . . .”

  “Please leave.”

  “I—”

  “Now. Please. You are filled with shadow.” He pulled away so that the blanket slid off of her head, and suddenly, she was sitting on the floor in a corner of the bedroom of a man she barely knew.

  He won’t hurt me, she had said.

  Shaking, she rose to her feet.

  Not until the ghosts tell him to.

  She fled the room and ran down the stairs, seeing neither Christien nor Pomfrey when she left the house, a fact for which she was grateful.

  Chapter 32

  Of Alexander Dunn, Henry Babbage,

  and an Engine Named ERICA

  IF THE SUN was sweet in Kensington-Knightsbridge, then it was positively sugar along the ivory streets of Pall Mall, where all the Clubs of the civilized world set up shop. She kept her head down as she walked past them. It would take many hours to get to her home in Stepney, for she didn’t have the money for a cab, and her mind was racing faster, more furiously, with each step.

  Christien had deceived her.

  She had trusted him and he had deceived her.

  She twisted the ring on her finger as she walked, wondering if this was really what she wanted for herself, this marriage to a very fine man from Kensington-Knightsbridge. It had made sense, once upon a time. It still did. Her father liked Christien, liked the stability and security he brought to her life, and the fact that he could help the family with Catherine’s care. And she liked him too, liked the fact that he was interested in Forensics and crime and mysteries. He was better than she could have hoped for, better than she deserved, as stubborn and willful as she was. But still, she couldn’t shake the image of the Mad Lord from her mind, sitting like a child under a blanket, standing under an umbrella on a rainy pier, lying on a hospital slab with a knitted dog under his arm. He had managed to strike a chord deep inside. She barely even knew him, and yet he resonated like a very familiar song.

  Alexander Dunn had stolen Penny’s heart.

  She shuddered to think of it—it had happened so quickly. Penny had been happy until she’d met Dunn but now, how could she ever look at Julian the same way after that? Not when there was always the possibility of Dunn lurking around the corner with his thievery, his tricks, his devilish smile. What did that mean for her stories? What did that mean for her?

  No, it was better for Sebastien in the north. London was hard on him, he’d said it himself. She’d seen clear evidence of that this morning. He was stranger than he’d ever been, and she found herself wondering how much to believe. She had seen the head in the water, but had he really fought off the Ripper? How in the world could she believe that same Ripper was his dead father? How could she possibly believe any of it?

  Perhaps Christien was right to question his brother’s sanity. Could Sebastien be not only a killer of killers, but of women as well?

  She slowed as her eye was drawn up to the plaques on the limestone walls, and memories ran through her mind, back to a late afternoon by a newly purchased steamcar and a locket, given as a gift. These are dangerous times, Christien had said, and I have no idea where this Ghost Club may lead. In fact, it’s probably nothing, simply a Pall Mall club for gentlemen with scads of money and far too much imagination.

  She paused, looked around the street. Plaques beside every door announcing all manner of Gentleman’s clubs and it didn’t take her long to find it between the Reform Club and the Athenaeum. The Ghost Club—London, est. 1862. She took a deep breath, raised her chin, and pushed open the door.

  It was entirely what she would have expected. Wood-panelled walls and golden frames, elegant furnishings and books. It smelled of pipe smoke and brandy and old, old money and she felt a rush of nerves as she closed the door on the street. At the foot of a long, spiral stair, an automaton raised its polished head.

  “Welcome to the Ghost Club,” it droned in a clipped Sussex accent. “My name is CHARLES. Chippendale’s Handy Automated Representative for Licensing, Etiquette, and Service.”

  “Hello Charles,” she said. “I was wondering—”

  “This is a Gentleman’s Club, I’m afraid. No women allowed.”

  She could hear raised voices echoing down the stair.

  “I, I’m here to see Dr. John Williams.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “He told me to meet him here,” she lied.

  The yellow lights on its faceplate flashed several times.

  “Williams, Dr. John. Logged in at 8:20 Greenwich Mean.”

  She swallowed. Jolly good luck, that.

  “Where is he, please?”

  “You may await Williams, Dr. John, in the Red Room. Do follow me.”

  And his shiny head turned on his shiny neck, followed by shoulders, then torso, and all the parts of him turned one after the other like a spinning top, until finally the contraptions that served as his feet turned and he clanked away to the right, toward a room decorated entirely in red.

  Ivy waited for him to disappear before trotting up the stair. The voices led her down a long hallway filled with the sharp odour of cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. She slowed as she neared a set of doors.

  “Dashitall, Bookie,” said one voice. “This is bad! Very bad indeed!”

  “Two women, last night! It’s impossible!”

  “Now, Westie,” said another. “The truth is almost upon us. It’s not our fault there’s a madman loose in the city. If anyone, it’s Jackie—”

  “Here, here,” said a voice that she immediately recognized as Williams’s. “I resent that implication!”

  “Tosh,” said the voice called Bookie. “Bertie will see us all cleared if events do surface. He stands to lose the most.”

  “Damn that Eddy and his infernal whoring . . .”

  The voices dropped down low, and she had leaned in to listen when there was a sound on the stair behind her. With slow, methodical movements, the automaton was making its way up the steps, its head slowly spinning on its neck, a thin beam of red light searching out ahead of it.

  With heart in her throat, she pushed open the doors. Through the smoky haze, a dozen men looked up at her.

  “A woman?”

  “A woman, indeed! Where is CHARLES?”

  “CHARLES! CHARLES!”

  “Ivy Savage?” snapped Williams. “What the deuce are you doing here?”

  “Dr. Williams . . . I . . . I . . .” She froze, suddenly realizing that she had just stepped in over her head and out of her league. “I need to speak with you, sir.”

  “Not now, Ivy,” he growled. “We have a situation.”

  “Is that the locket?” asked one man, and a charge ran through the room. Suddenly, all eyes fell upon the pendant, hanging sweet and coy around her neck.

  She looked across the sea of the gentlemen. Not one of them was younger than her father and they all had the look of academia. These were learned men, scholars and gentlemen and politicians of the Empire of Steam, and she had just turned their world upside down, simply by stepping a foot inside their doors.

  These were very strange, modern times indeed.

  She raised her chin.

  “Ghostlight sends her regards.”

  “Come with me, Ivy dear,” said Williams. “We can talk in another room.”

  A fellow with a white beard and bushy brows laid a hand on the surgeon’s arm.

  “Can she leave the locket, Jackie?”

  “Not now, Bookie.”

  And Williams took her elbow and escorted her out the doors into a long corridor.

  “Ivy,” he
said, keeping his voice low. “What are you doing in London? Does your father know you’re home?”

  “No sir. I only arrived last night.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re here with Sebastien de Lacey?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “We have some questions for you regarding these Whitechapel killings.”

  “We? Is he putting you up to this? Damn the man. Damn him to hell.”

  “No, sir. These are my questions and mine alone.”

  His grip on her elbow increased as they walked toward an open iron-grilled door. Above it, a clockwork eyeball stared at them, following them as they approached. Williams pulled a card from his pocket, held it up. It blinked and she could hear the groan of interlocking gears as the grille door rattled open. An hydraulic lift, she realized. All the rage in London. She stepped onto the cage floor, could see black and gold cables in the shaft beneath her boots. As Williams closed the grille, the entire platform shuddered and massive hydraulic gears began lowering them down.

  “Now Ivy,” he said, over the grinding of the gears and the rattling of the cables. “You’re not writing that story, are you? You know what your father thinks about that.”

  “I know, sir, but—”

  “You are not an investigator, Ivy.”

  “Is there a chance that Annie Chapman may have been pregnant?”

  He hesitated. Gaslight on the walls cast moving shadows across their faces as they descended, and for the first time, she realized that he had a very grim mouth.

  “Now why would you ask something like that, Ivy?”

  “It’s a thought I had regarding the removal of her womb. I just can’t fathom a killer taking something like that. Why remove the womb?”

  “This Ripper is an ill man, Ivy. Nothing more.”

  “But would there be a way of telling, sir? Please, just answer me that.”

  He smiled in a fashion that reminded her of Arvin Frankow. Patronizing. That was it. Patronizing.

  “Yes, Ivy. There would be a great many ways of telling.”

  “So,” she said. “What if she were pregnant but couldn’t keep a baby?”