A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1)

by Shawna Reppert

  Godwin shook his head. “The trail was cold on your mother’s case years before headlines with the Ladykiller started selling newspapers. For your own sake, I wish you the closure of certainty, but I fear you’ll never find it.”

  Royston turned his mind to mysteries more recent. “It still bothers me. About the werewolf. We never found out who he was or why he came to Miss Fairchild’s rescue alone among all the victims. And then there was the thing with the tracks.”

  Godwin lit his pipe. “Tell me again about the tracks.”

  Godwin wouldn’t have forgotten a single detail, but sometimes things came together in a new way when the details were spoken aloud. It hadn’t worked yet on this particular mystery, but it might.

  “There were human footprints all over the garden. Mrs. Pemberton had led the early guests on a moonlit tour of it. The wolf prints were very clear in the soft dirt, but it was as if the wolf just appeared a few strides away from where the kill took place. As though he had materialized out of thin air.”

  “Or as if some of the muddle of human footprints were his human form and he had transformed there,” Godwin said.

  “In that case, he would have had to transform among the guests, as they were walking about the garden just at moonrise, according to all accounts. The moon was well up when Blackpoole tried to make away with Miss Fairchild, and the ’wolf intervened.”

  “I can hardly imagine such an elegant company allowing a ’wolf among them,” Godwin said. “Was there no other mention made of unusual occurrences that night?”

  “Nothing so unusual as a werewolf among the guests. You know how conscious such gently bred folk are about the company they keep. Such a scandal would surely be remarked on. I think we can rule out that he transformed in the middle of the garden at moonrise before all of Pemberton’s elegant guests. Yet if he transformed elsewhere, where are the rest of the tracks? And a werewolf cannot help but transform at the rise of the full moon.”

  “There’s an alchemist who’s been claiming his draught can suppress the shift. It's still in the experimental stages but supposed to be promising,” Godwin said.

  “Snake oil?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s the same alchemist the Yard uses for blood analyses.”

  “That Foster fellow? I’ve met him. He seems sane enough, as far as alchemists go. But if the draught works and if the werewolf were taking it, he wouldn’t have changed at all.”

  “You haven’t heard of the Riley case?” Godwin paused. “No, you would have been a constable then, sorting out drunken workers on the docks. It was kept pretty quiet, too. No one wanted to stir up controversy.”

  “What happened?”

  “One of Foster’s early test subjects was walking home from the pub in human form on a full moon night. He was set upon by a back alley cutthroat who would have taken his purse and his life. He abruptly shifted into wolf form to his own surprise and that of his attacker. Killed the man quick as a terrier with a rat. Pure instinct—which is not a legal defense, and it was clearly self-defense.”

  “Which is an excuse under the law, even if it’s seldom applied to werewolves.”

  Back when he was a constable trying to prove himself worthy of advancement, he’d read the laws, studied court transcripts, even sat in the gallery of the courthouse on his days off to hear cases tried. He’d seen a ’wolf sentenced to hang for killing two squires’ sons who had decided it would be fun to hunt a werewolf through the countryside with their horses and hounds as though he were a fox. The gentlemen’s surviving friend claimed that it was all in fun, testimony which was not supported by the bullet wound in the werewolf’s lower back. The shot had been clearly made while the wolf was still running and had been, as the unfortunate defendant testified, the reason he decided that fleeing was futile and his only hope of survival was in attack.

  Royston had left the courthouse after the verdict was announced even though half a day’s hearings still lay ahead. He'd taken a long walk through London, reminding himself of all the people who still deserved to be protected.

  “According to the coroner, the man died of a heart attack rather than directly from his injuries. That helped his case. Foster’s theory was that a moment of extreme passion somehow overrode the alchemy that kept the wolf chained inside the man.” Godwin’s voice pulled Royston back to the present. “He said it had happened once before, when one of his patients came home after moonrise and found his wife in bed with the neighbor. He changed instantly and barely restrained himself from tearing both their throats out. Good thing he did, for his sake, though they would have deserved it.”

  Given Godwin’s unfortunate marriage, Royston could hardly fault him for his hostility toward adulterers.

  “The werewolf who killed the mugger did get off on self-defense. He was lucky—a witness came forward, and the cutthroat he killed was known to authorities. If he hadn’t been a werewolf, he probably would have won some sort of award for public service.”

  “So you’re saying the wolf who killed the Ladykiller could be one of Foster’s patients? But why did he rescue Miss Fairchild and not the others? Are you suggesting he had passionate feelings toward the woman?” He chuckled. “If so, Lord Bandon will not be best pleased.” He did not have to be one of the gentry to be privy to the upcoming nuptials. It was splashed all over the papers. The heiress to the Fairchild estate was to wed the last Bandon scion.

  “It might not have to do with Miss Fairchild at all,” Godwin said. “Given how Blackpoole was trying to redirect blame toward werewolves, any ’wolf in London would have reason to hate him.”

  Which made sense. Only, Royston’s gut told him that it did have something to do with Miss Fairchild, and a good detective never ignored that kind of a gut feeling. He was less sure that the werewolf or Miss Fairchild had anything to do with his current case, but with no other leads to follow, it might bear investigation. His mind kept coming back to the werewolf, and that had to mean something. When he found his thoughts worrying at a subject, like a dog at a bone, he had to pay attention. Sometimes the idea came to naught, but more often it came to something.. He would have never solved the Dalton case if he hadn’t followed up on his niggling feelings about the bowler left on the scene.

  Two

  Richard Bandon frowned down at a selection of lace spread out over the breakfast-room table. The windows looked out over the garden on three sides of the room, so the light was particularly strong, glaring off the white lace.

  “They are all very fine,” he said to his intended. “But not one could do you justice.”

  Catherine laughed—a lovely, musical laugh he could never tire of. “We could just get married here. Then I wouldn’t need a veil.”

  Richard did think it silly that the Church required brides to wear a veil—‘for modesty’, the vicar said, which was ridiculous since his lady attended each Sunday without a veil, and no one had ever claimed that her attire was in the least bit immodest. And it was not as though he weren’t familiar with her face. It was as dear to him as the sun rising in the morning. The sharp nose—which some had slandered as a witch’s nose, though no one had been so bold within his hearing since they had announced their engagement, only complimented her delicate cheekbones. The grey eyes he had once mistaken for being cold and passionless were soft and warm as a summer’s rain.

  “The lace, Richard,” Catherine said. “Unless you’d rather I tell the gardener to start planning.”

  “No, my love. We’re doing this right. Aunt Rose will never speak to me again, elsewise.”

  Besides, he wanted the whole world to know how proud he was of his eccentric, outspoken lady, alchemy and all. He didn’t want a single whisper that he had married her for her money or her name or for any reason other than that he was completely and utterly besotted with her. His Catherine might not care what others thought of her, but he would care on her behalf.

  It was a fair day. The maid had drawn back the draperies and opened the window, letting th
e breeze carry in the sweetness of the first early roses. Catherine’s assistant was reading a book on the fakirs of India. As Catherine had no living family, Jane Waters served as chaperone. It was a good thing that his intentions were entirely honorable; when Miss Waters was engrossed in a book, the whole manor could come down around her ears, and she wouldn’t so much as look up.

  “So, the church it is,” Catherine said. “And the second sample from the end, I think, if you have no favorite. The phaeton and my red team, to convey us there and back. We should make quite the impression.”

  Quite the impression, indeed. Catherine’s peacock blue, gilt-trimmed phaeton was the flashiest carriage in the county. Her matched pair of red chestnuts always turned heads, with their identical white blazes and white socks up to their high-stepping knees. Richard admired the skill of Catherine’s driver in keeping them in hand.

  “I thought maybe my brougham, and my bays,” he said hopefully. Good solid horses, handsome but quiet.

  “The brougham if it rains, but the red pair either way.”

  “If you insist, my love.”

  At least she hadn’t suggested the horseless carriage. Possibly because its steam engine was currently in pieces on the floor of the carriage house while Catherine worked on ‘improvements.’

  He glanced toward the assistant. She was still engrossed in her book.

  “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” he whispered. “If my secret is discovered… It would have been bad before, but with the new law. . .”

  No need to say which law. It was now illegal for a werewolf to marry a human not so afflicted. The official reason given was the fact werewolves were often incapable of producing offspring—though he hoped to prove one of the exceptions. The state had an interest in procreation, which was the primary purpose of a lawful and moral marriage, though Richard noted no similar prohibition on the marriage of barren women or of men who proved infertile. The arguments in favor of the law betrayed a different motive. Richard, following the debate closely, watched the newspapers run page after page of editorials condemning werewolves as perverse, unnatural, lustful creatures, worse than animals, incapable of honor or love or commitment. Allowing them to marry, the papers screamed, was a threat to the institution of marriage itself.

  Under the new law the penalties for both the werewolf and anyone who knowingly married a werewolf were severe. Fines, prison—and the utter and irrevocable destruction of reputation. How could he let his love risk herself so?

  She smiled. “You forget that I have a secret of my own.”

  “How could I forget, when your secret helped to bring us together?” He dared a chaste kiss.

  Three

  The Fairchild manor was far enough outside the heart of London that neither the omnibus nor the Underground would bring him within reasonable walking distance, and so Royston was obliged to hire a pony trap. He was glad to find that the sturdy little dun provided him was obliging, if a bit sluggish— Royston’s previous and limited equestrian experiences had often been unfortunate. He was no natural with horses.

  He made the excursion at his own expense, though it meant using some of the money he carefully put by after strictly budgeting out each week’s pay. Better that than trying to justify what would doubtless seem like a frivolous expense to pursue trivial facts in a case long closed.

  He had a hard enough time justifying it to himself. But a week of interviews had produced nothing except memories that kept him from sleep, memories that encroached now to darken the bright day. Kitty’s flatmate replaced the faceless women in his nightmares about the next victim. It was only a matter of time. The murderer had taken Kitty two weeks ago. Since the first victim had been found, just after the new year, the killer had never gone much more than three weeks between kills.

  He turned over in his mind what they knew about the killer—nothing—and what he could deduce from the facts—next to nothing. The common assumption that the killer was a man was most likely correct. Not that women weren’t capable of horrible deeds. One of Royston’s first cases had been a baby farm run by a pair of widows. One of the women who'd paid a few shillings for them to ‘find the baby a good home’ had been too naïve to understand that she’d been paying to have the child discreetly done away with. She’d called the police when she read a description of a tiny, newspaper-wrapped corpse found discarded in an alleyway and recognized the unusual birthmark.

  But the nature of Doctor Death’s crimes, the strength involved, the serial preying on young women, all these pointed toward a man.

  So far, his investigation had only managed to narrow the field of possible suspects to roughly half the population of London.

  It was a pleasant enough day to be out driving. The April sun was just warm enough, and the air was sweeter outside the closeness of inner London. Birds were singing, and verdant hedgerows lined the roads. Despite the darkness of the case on his mind, Royston enjoyed the drive.

  And then the road took him past Beechwood, the Royston family estate where his mother had once been a governess.

  Royston had never passed through that tall iron gate, but he imagined beyond the twisting, hedge-lined path a fairytale house of white marble hidden behind venerable, moss-draped oaks and willows weeping greenery down to a verdant lawn, the house itself glowing in the sunlight like a dream. If the family’s eldest son, the man who sired Royston, had not been killed before he could fulfill his promise to wed Royston’s mother, Royston would have grown up on that estate, playing merry games of hide-and-seek with other lords’ children in the garden, doted on by father and mother and spoiled by servants. Denied the right to give her son his father’s surname, his mother had made Royston his given name instead, over the objection of the ancient and titled family.

  He clucked to the pony, wanting to get past those ivy-draped stone walls more quickly. Still the shadows of that estate seemed to chase him as he drove down the sunlit road to his destination.

  Everything about the Fairchild estate spoke eloquently of old money preserved into modern times. Two wings had been built off the central house—the white stone of the original had been carefully matched, so only the graying that came with weathering and age told that the center portion was older, probably by a century or more. Both wings had been added at about the same time.

  The manor could probably shelter the entirety of the London police force, from the Commissioner down to the lowliest clerk, without anyone feeling crowded. What did one family, even a family with servants, do with that much space? It looked like entirely too respectable a house to harbor any secrets, but Royston’s time with the Yard had taught him to see beyond such illusions.

  A pair of liveried servants came out to take the pony and to inquire whether sir was expected. Royston admitted that he was not, gave his full name and title, and stated with confidence learned with practice that he wished to speak to the lady of the house on a matter of police business.

  The servant’s expression clearly showed what he thought of a mere detective impertinent enough to disturb his mistress’s leisure, but he took his card all the same and left him to wait on the wide marble porch while he inquired if his mistress was disposed to speak to a detective. The marble, he noted, was worn near the doorstep where centuries of Fairchilds and their well-bred guests had crossed the threshold. It was a monument to ages of wealth.

  The two marble planters on either side of the door appeared to be more recent additions and lacked the patina of age. Each held well-tended rose bushes with abundant yellow roses, although the perfection of the bush on the left was marred by a black cat that nestled in near the bottom, bending stems and scattering petals. The cat considered him through slitted green eyes, as though it, too, questioned his right to disturb the household.

  His mother had loved roses. He'd dreamed of someday putting enough aside so she could have a nice little house with a bit of a garden, but she’d not lived so long.

  Waiting only gave him time to reflect on
how little he wanted to be here. Dealing with the gentry was bad enough when he had a clear excuse; no doubt Miss Fairchild would not be pleased with his vague errand and even less so with some of the questions he'd ask. In less time than he expected, a maid opened the door and saw him through to Miss Fairchild’s sitting room, which was as elegantly appointed as he had expected. The pale pink fleur-de-lys wallpaper might have been imported from France and certainly would cost at least half his annual salary, even at his improved detective’s wages. He was almost afraid to tread on the carpets, which were probably Persian. On the table, a crystal vase filled with roses the same shade as the wallpaper imparted a subtle floral scent, roses probably cut from the extensive garden he could see beyond the picture window.

  Miss Fairchild was not alone. In the window seat, a plainly dressed girl with careless hair squinted at a book, and across from Miss Fairchild sat a tall, elegantly handsome, auburn-haired gentleman dressed in a claret frock coat. His elbows stuck out a bit, as though he couldn’t quite decide what to do with all that length of limb, and he might have looked awkward if he were not so well-dressed and straight of carriage. The silver stock pin that held his cravat displayed a family crest, but Royston was hardly an expert at heraldry, even could he make out the details from this distance.

  “Inspector Jones,” Miss Fairchild said. “Please sit down. We were just about to have a late tea. Do join us.”

  “That would be most kind.” Royston had skipped his own tea to make the journey, and his stomach had begun to regret it.

  Her invitation was an unlooked-for courtesy. Generally, one of her station did not take tea with servants, beggars, or police inspectors. He took one of the cushioned seats by the lace-covered table and folded his hands in his lap, suddenly feeling as awkward of limb as the auburn-haired gentleman.

  “I believe we met in the aftermath of that unfortunate incident at the Pemberton’s ball,” Miss Fairchild continued.