A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1)

by Shawna Reppert

  “No, sir.”

  He could not entertain the fear that Chatham’s low opinion of him was justified. He had proved himself time and time again. But this was his biggest case yet. What if he wasn’t equal to it? He’d sworn he’d prove himself to those who looked down on him as a governess’s bastard with a name his mother had usurped from her betters. But what if his pride meant that a killer stayed free and more girls died?

  This case could, as Chatham pointed out, make his career. But the girls were more important, the ones walking home from merciless jobs through lonely walkways, yes, even the ones working the streets because they had no choice. The women who, like his mother, had no one to care for them in a city that made it difficult and dangerous to be a woman alone and unprotected.

  Royston walked a short distance and then caught the omnibus that would take him to the dry-goods shop where Kitty Harper used to work. The interior of the ‘bus buzzed with a half-dozen conversations, not all of them conducted in English. Most of the words he caught and understood (English, plus the French and Greek he’d learned from his mother) had something to do with the dead girl, the killer, the terror that ran through the streets of London, and the ineffectiveness of the Yard. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glad that his rank freed him from the identifying uniform.

  As the patient, plodding horses wove their way between hackney cabs and delivery carts, stopping here and there to avoid pedestrians and bicycles and the occasional steam-driven horseless, he turned his mind to the dead girls.

  He could see no obvious link between them. The first two had been prostitutes, which was probably why Royston had been put on the case instead of someone the Commissioner favored more. No one cared about a couple of dead whores. Good riddance, many would say.

  As though prostitution weren’t the inevitable result of a society that declared a man should not marry until such time as he was financially settled and that ‘good’ women did not have sex outside of marriage. Combine that with natural urges and the pressure on boys to ‘become a man’, add in the extreme desperation of poverty, and he couldn’t imagine how anyone expected that there wouldn’t be prostitutes.

  The only reason an investigation had been opened at all was the gruesome way the girls had died and the similarity to the Blackpoole case. The next girl had been a seamstress, though, and the one after that a washerwoman. Three of the four girls had been fairly new to London, and both of the prostitutes had been fairly new to the trade. No common acquaintances.

  The omnibus jerked as the horses pulled to a sudden stop to avoid a flashy horseless carriage zipping through traffic in a particularly reckless manner. Bloody toffs thought they owned the road!

  Although he had to admit, it had been a particularly fine-looking machine, all bright paint and polished chrome. He didn’t imagine he’d have a chance to ride in one of those in his lifetime.

  The horses leaned into their traces once more, and the omnibus continued its slow progress.

  One thing kept repeating in his mind, words repeating like a chant in time to the slow clop of the horses’s hooves against the paving. It’s just like with the Ladykiller, except the ’wolf got him. . . I can’t figure why a werewolf would side with the hoity-toity. . . When something wouldn’t leave his mind, he’d learned to pay attention.

  From where the omnibus let him off, it was only a half a block walk to the dry-goods shop. Not the fanciest part of town, but definitely not the worst. There was a stationer’s, a dressmaker’s, and a butcher with offerings that looked fresh and wholesome.

  The merry jangle of the bell on the door of the dry-goods shop set Royston’s nerves on edge. The gray-haired woman behind the counter turned at the sound. He took in the pride of her manner and the quality of her dress, which, while though of plain gray linen, bore lace embellishments on the sleeves. Surely this must be Mrs. Tull, the proprietress.

  Her eyes, red-rimmed from crying, softened the first impression given by the thin, downturned lips and the hard lines of her face. She had heard already what had happened to Miss Harper, then. At least he did not have to break the news—by far one of the worst parts of his job.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Ma’am. I’m Inspector Jones of Scotland Yard. Do you have a moment to answer a few questions about Kitty Harper?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. “You’d best come through to the back. The bell will tell me if anyone comes in. I’m sorry, I’m short-handed today because…” A sob caught in her throat, and she swallowed it with visible effort. “I’m short-handed,” she repeated in a firm, business-like tone.

  “Of course,” Royston said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  He followed her to the back room of the shop, which was dimly lit by a high window and crowded with a hugger-mugger of accounts books and receipts and an overflow of shop merchandise. A small stove huddled in one corner. He pictured Miss Harper here, perhaps shuffling through things looking for a special order for a customer or having tea on a break, greeting a coworker with a sweet smile.

  “I’ll put on a kettle for tea,” she said. “It won’t be but a minute.”

  She bustled about, putting a kettle on the stovetop, getting the plain blue tea pot down from a high shelf in the cupboard, carefully measuring out the tea leaves from a canister with the focus and care of an alchemist working with precious metals or dangerous chemicals.

  Royston made himself sit patiently through the ritual of tea-making. One thing about this part of his job—he’d never go thirsty. Refusing tea would have set the woman off her routine and emphasize the fact that this wasn’t a social call. The closer she came to forgetting that he was a Detective Inspector and not a sympathetic neighbor, the more open she’d be.

  The bell at the door rang. She jumped, nearly dropping the china cups and saucers.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “I’d best. . .”

  She took a step toward the front of the shop, and then back, indecisive.

  Royston smiled at her in reassurance. “It’s fine. You have a shop to run. I’ll take care of the tea, shall I?”

  That only made her do the back-and-forth dance once more, with a quick glance to her china as though uncertain whether a mere man could be trusted with so delicate a domestic operation. But at last the needs of commerce won out, and she excused herself, leaving him to watch the pot on the stove.

  He listened to the sound and rhythm of the voices in the front of the shop but couldn’t make out the words until Mrs. Tull’s voice rose in anger.

  “Fine then! Your custom will be no great loss to me, I assure you, ma’am.”

  The kettle whistled, and Royston jumped to pour it over the measured leaves in the pot, performing with the honor of all bachelors everywhere at stake. Thus distracted, he missed the customer’s reply, though he heard the bell ring angrily as the door jerked open hard and slammed shut. To his surprise, next came the sound of the lock on the door as it shot home, followed by the sound of windows being shuttered.

  Mrs. Tull stalked back to Royston, her face red, her hands on her hips. “Gossips! Nasty, filthy-minded gossips. Third one this morning. I’ve closed for the day. I can’t bear it, I tell you!” Her face screwed up as though she didn’t know whether she wanted to sob, scream, or do violence.

  “And you! I expect you’re here to try to dig up some sordid stories about poor Kitty, find some way that this was all her fault to excuse yourself and the rest of you Peelers for your inability to do your bloody jobs!”

  Royston flinched. Her anger came out of fear and grief, not rationality, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.

  “Kitty was a good girl! She didn’t do one thing, one bloody thing to bring this on her,” Mrs. Tull sank into the nearest chair and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

  “I know,” Royston said. “I know. I talked to her flatmate earlier. And in my line of work, I’ve seen enough to know that horrible, horrible things sometimes happen to the best of people. The small-minded would pref
er to blame the victim because it makes them feel safer, no matter how much it hurts those left behind.”

  It had been that way when his mother was killed.

  He pulled out a fresh handkerchief and offered it to her. Tools of the trade. He’d never yet had to fire a gun in the line of duty, but he’d employed a handkerchief more times than he could count. A gentleman always carries a clean handkerchief, his mother had told him, time and time again. Little did she know how handy that would be in his chosen field.

  Mrs. Tull dried her eyes and looked up at him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, it’s just. . .” She took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “It’s all right. Take a moment.”

  He poured tea for both of them while he waited for her to collect herself.

  “Kitty was such a sweet girl,” the woman said after a calming sip of tea. “Good worker. Honest as the day is long. Always had me send part of her pay back to her widowed mother in Derbyshire. What kind of man could do this?”

  “That’s just what I’m trying to find out, ma’am.”

  The shopkeeper, though more than willing, had nothing of substance to offer. Kitty was a friendly girl, so sweet and so pretty, a favorite of all the customers, but no, there was no one she could recall who paid her any special attention, or who hung about often enough to make anyone uncomfortable, mostly it was women who did the shopping, don’t you know? No, there had been no gentlemen meeting her at the door to walk her home.

  Essentially the same story as the flatmate had given. He thanked her for her time and extracted her promise to contact him should she think of anything else.

  She walked him to the door. “Thank you. Thank you for listening.” She tucked a packet of biscuits into his pocket before he could protest. “To strengthen you on your way. Catch this monster for us, Inspector.”

  He wished he could promise that he would. Instead, he said the only thing he could. “I’ll do my best.”

  On the walk to catch the omnibus, he passed a beggar in ragged, ill-fitting clothes. The man looked familiar, and he scoured his memory. Not one of his sources. Someone he’d arrested at some point? Maybe—no. Clean the man up, take ten years off him. . .

  “Smythe, is that you?”

  The man looked up sharply, startled at being recognized.

  At least that explained why an apparently able-bodied man was begging in the streets mid-day when there might be work to be had on the docks. In the wealthy, idleness was considered a virtue, but in the poor, it was a sin. A smart beggar would either have to appear to be seeking work, or show an obvious reason why he could not work. It seemed Smythe was still too honest to pretend blindness or other malady.

  Smythe was smart and good at maths, and everyone at school had agreed that he was destined for something better than the factory work that was slowly breaking his parents’ health. A clerk, for sure, maybe even a bookkeeper, it could happen.

  But that was before he was bitten.

  “I had heard. . .” Royston trailed off awkwardly.

  It wasn’t something you talked about, was it?

  Smythe gave a weary shrug of one shoulder, as though two would be too much effort. “These things happen.”

  Royston glanced away and tried to think of something to say. He dealt with terrible, terrible things every day in his line of work, but it was different with someone he knew.

  Smythe had been robust in their school days, muscled from helping his uncle load delivery carts in the dark morning hours before the start of school. Now he looked like a scarecrow. Probably lived off of soup kitchens and scraps. No one would hire a werewolf, and few who knew what he was would spare a ha’penny to one begging in the streets.

  Royston put a hand in his pocket.

  Smythe shook his head and backed away. “No. You don’t have to.”

  Bad enough to be begging in the streets. Royston imagined it would be far worse to accept a hand-out from someone one knew. He managed a smile. “Not charity. Just think of it as me buying an old friend a drink.”

  A small difference, especially as he offered enough silver to buy a couple of meals as well.

  “You’re a good man, Royston,” Smythe said. “Always have been.”

  Smythe glanced around furtively before accepting the money. Looking for other ‘wolves. Werewolves, excluded from normal society, had one of their own. If it was largely criminal, well, what other options had they? No ’wolf who valued his skin would be seen by others taking money from a police inspector. Whether Smythe was part of the criminal subclass or just afraid of them, Royston didn’t want to know. He wished the man well and hurried to catch the omnibus.

  It had been too long a day on too little sleep, and he contemplated a quick stop at his favorite fish-n-chips cart and an early night, but when he stopped at the Yard to file his notes there was a dinner invitation awaiting him from Jacob Godwin.

  Godwin always showed an almost psychic sense for when Royston needed to talk, but with last night’s dead girl all over the papers and the headlines screaming of the Yard’s lack of progress, it wouldn’t take a master detective such as Godwin had been to know Royston’s state of mind.

  ***

  Jacob Godwin forbade two topics at the dinner table—the work and Godwin’s son, Willie. Willie’s mother was long gone, and Royston often took meals with his mentor in Godwin’s rented rooms, which were small but well-furnished, and significantly more comfortable than Royston’s lonely portion of a two-up, two-down.

  Royston had been a constable when a bank robber’s bullet had shattered Godwin’s kneecap, ending the career of one of the finest detectives London had ever seen. Godwin was an impressive man even now, tall and broad of shoulder, posture proud and straight, the steel streaking his black hair speaking of dignity rather than infirmity. His big hands were equally suited to collaring a criminal or to comforting a young boy who was being bullied.

  The roast and potatoes were excellent. Pursuant to Godwin’s rules they kept the conversation light, discussing the merits and disadvantages of the newfangled, steam-driven horseless carriages over a good, old-fashioned carriage-and-four. Pure frivolity—neither Godwin on his police pension nor Royston on his new detective’s salary could afford either conveyance.

  Royston’s mind was only half on the subject, anyway.

  Finally they adjourned to the sitting area to smoke by the fireplace. Godwin handed Royston tea liberally laced with brandy.

  “So,” Godwin said. “They’ve found another one last night.”

  Royston nodded, though it hadn’t really been a question. Godwin filled his own pipe from a seashell-encrusted box that had been a souvenir from a Brighton Beach trip when Willie was a boy, a memento of happier times. He handed the box to Royston. Royston took his pipe case from the inner pocket of his jacket and proceeded to fill and light his pipe. He seldom indulged in tobacco, except for this ritual with his mentor who had given him his first pipe when he turned eighteen.

  He leaned back, taking comfort in the familiar scent and flavor of good tobacco, one of Godwin’s few extravagances. This same overstuffed chair had dwarfed him as a child, that first day Willie brought him home to meet his Da.

  The chair had been of good quality, finer than any Royston had sat on before, but now it was a bit faded, upholstery worn thin at the arms.

  He had been anxious to talk about the case over dinner. Now that the time had come, he wished he could indulge in the comfort of fire, brandy, and tobacco without dragging the memory of dark alleys and torn flesh into this sanctuary.

  He opened his jacket buttons. No need to stand on ceremony with someone who had washed his grubby hands and face when he was a boy, and Godwin always kept his home warmer than Royston did his own rooms. Even on his inspector’s salary, the extra coal seemed like a needless extravagance. He’d become used to much colder when he was a child.

  “You always say to think like a criminal, to understand how he thinks as the huntsman understands the fo
x, but how can I begin to understand a mind like this? Though I’ve been fortunate enough never to come to it myself, I can imagine killing in the line of duty to protect innocents or in self-defense. Killing in hot blood, in rage, I can understand, even if it is reprehensible. But to abduct a girl off the streets and kill her slowly, take her apart as she screams and cries and begs for mercy, I can’t understand it. I’m not sure I want to. But if I don’t understand it, then I can’t understand the killer, and I can’t catch him before he kills another poor girl.”

  His chest heaved with emotion by the time he finished his rant. In silence, Godwin; calm, implacable, and understanding, waited until he pulled himself together.

  “The newspapers are saying that the Ladykiller walks again,” Royston said at last. “Ridiculous, of course, though the modus operandi is similar. Except for the brass wolf token Blackpoole left, and that was meant to throw us off his track.”

  Godwin would know all of this, of course. But it helped to talk things through. Godwin was always patient about letting Royston work his way through to an answer. When Royston had been a boy, Godwin would bring tales of his cases home for Royston and Willie to whet their minds on. Willie had been better at the game, but Royston keener and more focused, so it had often been Royston who puzzled out the answer after Willie had wandered off to shoot marbles.

  “Still, I can’t ignore the similarities in the victims. All were young women, mostly working class.” Royston fingered the charm on his watch chain, a small French coin his mother had given him with the watch and chain. It was both a novelty and a symbol, so that he would never be totally penniless. “What if Blackpoole wasn’t acting alone? His death may have caused the other to change tactics. There may be more predators out there, just as I’ve always believed that the Ladykiller had more victims than have been recorded. As you’ve always said, a killer like that often starts young.”