A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1)

by Shawna Reppert

  Bandon held the paw out in acquiescence, looking for all the world like a trick dog trained to ‘shake’. Royston suppressed a smile as he took the proffered limb. The cut was as deep as he'd feared. “You shouldn’t be running on this,” he said.

  Bandon pulled his foot back and limped to the door. Unfortunately, he was right. No cab would take a werewolf, and it was too late to hire a horse and cart. Staying wasn’t an option. Bandon would be giving hard evidence to confirm Royston’s suspicions as to his identity, and the laws being what they were that would put them both in an awkward situation.

  Not to mention, he could think of only a few explanations for why a member of the landed gentry would be leaving the rooms of a humble police detective in the detective’s own clothes in the early hours of the morning, and any one of them would have them up on bribery charges if not violations of the decency act. Royston sighed. “At least let me treat it with iodine and bandage it. I’d rather not have your lady after my hide if you die of infection.”

  Bandon bore the sting of the iodine without a whine and sat patiently for the bandaging. Royston wound extra cloth around the foot, making an impromptu boot. It probably wouldn’t hold for long against the rain-soaked ground, but at least he’d tried. “I guess you’d best be off then.”

  His own reluctance surprised him, but the werewolf was good company despite his lack of speech or maybe because of it. Royston wasn’t eager to be alone with the memory of Molly as he had last seen her.

  The ’wolf padded to the door, already limping less thanks to the protective bandaging.

  “I know we have one more day of the full moon,” Royston said. “But you need to stay off that paw.”

  Bandon gazed up at him, eyes inscrutable.

  “I know a man of your stature thinks he needn’t take orders from a commoner like me, but if you turn up tomorrow I’m not going out with you. You can howl under the window until you’re arrested for a nuisance.”

  Ben chimed in the distance.

  He opened the door. “I don’t suppose you’ll send a note tomorrow to let me know you made it home safely. That would be too much of an admission of who you are.”

  When Bandon left, Royston picked up the telegram and settled into a chair by the fire. Despite his exhaustion, he wasn’t eager to meet whatever dreams lay in store for him.

  The yellow slip held a response from a clerk in the property records office. He now knew who owned the warehouse where Molly had been found. He smiled in grim satisfaction.

  Eight

  The manservant let Royston into Dr. Edmund Winchell’s red brick townhome. “This way, sir. The master will see you in his laboratory.”

  Royston followed the impeccably-dressed servant up the winding staircase and down a corridor. Artistically rendered designs for airships and steamcars lined the walls, varied only by a detailed, violent depiction of a wolf brought to bay by a huntsman and his hounds.

  The servant turned a polished brass handle and opened the door at the end of the corridor. “Sir, Inspector Royston Jones has arrived.”

  Royston stepped across the threshold—and gasped. A large black wolf shuffled toward him with the unmistakable stiff-legged gait of an automaton. Its eyes had the creepy dead stare of taxidermy glass. Sick, cold horror washed over him, the same sensation he'd felt when he found Molly. Bandon. Oh, no.

  “Have no fear.” From the recesses of the room came a cultured male voice. “He’s perfectly harmless.”

  This wolf had white on its chest. Bandon had no such markings. Taxidermy took time, and Bandon had been alive only last night. But natural wolves were extinct in England.

  “Remarkable, is he not?” A well-dressed man skirted a table filled with oddly-shaped frames with clockwork innards and slipped past racks of test tubes. “One of my proudest creations. I’ve a plan for some improvements, mind you. I think I can make the gait much more life-like.”

  “Where—” Royston swallowed. “Where did you get the wolf?”

  “Oh, a breeder out in Devon. Breeds for the sport hunters. He gets his breeding stock from Russia, I believe.”

  Plausible. But there was no way to distinguish the body of a werewolf killed in wolf form from the body of a natural wolf. The Yard wouldn’t be very aggressive in investigating a werewolf disappearances, even if someone bothered to report it.

  The automaton lowered its head, huffed an approximation of a lupine pant, and stiffly wagged its tail.

  Even ordinary taxidermy made Royston’s skin crawl. The idea of killing an animal for sport and decoration instead of for food or self-defense felt wrong in some fundamental way he couldn’t articulate. But this, this was abomination.

  Winchell came forward and patted the thing on its head. “I assume you’ve come about the girl found in my warehouse. Unfortunate business, that.”

  “Very unfortunate for Molly MacArthur.”

  “Who? Oh, yes. The victim, I suppose. Sad, but really it has nothing to do with me. I haven’t used that building in nearly a year. I thought to dabble in cotton, but it never caught on as I thought it might, and with the supply chain problems, the business turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.”

  “I can verify that.”

  Winchell waved a hand in the air, a carefree gesture. “Verify away. It’s no concern of mine. Except, perhaps, for the waste of my taxes, but I’ve a clever accountant. I never pay more than I can miss. I only kept the building because it’s big enough to house a small dirigible if I knock out a few walls. I’ve been meaning to build my own. I’m sure I can improve upon the design.”

  “You were a student of Blackpoole.”

  “I would say more a colleague, but have it your way. A great man, Blackpoole.”

  Royston inhaled sharply. Surely he hadn’t heard right? But the words had been clear. “He brutally murdered twelve innocent girls.”

  “True. Quite a shame that such a brilliant career should be so marred by that regrettable streak of madness. It is his work I speak of, of course. Without parallel. And his dedication to protecting us all from the fanged menace. I daresay he did more good than harm.”

  Royston opened his mouth, then closed it again, unable to think of what to say to such an assertion.

  “Ah, I see you don’t agree,” Winchell said. “But then, you are an uneducated man, with a common man’s sensibilities. You cannot appreciate the scientific mind.”

  “Be that as it may, I will ask that you verify your whereabouts on certain nights.”

  Winchell let out an aggrieved sigh. “If you must. You may apply to my secretary for my calendar. I never keep track of such mundane details.”

  “Be sure that I will.” Royston turned to leave.

  “Oh, and inspector? A hint,” Winchell called after him.

  Royston stopped and looked back.

  “If you are truly looking for someone who shared Blackpoole’s more. . .recreational interests, you may want to have a chat with Alexander Downey. Blackpoole’s last apprentice. He and Blackpoole shared a mutual appreciation for the art of Sickert.”

  Sickert. Royston knew his work from the Ladykiller investigation, as one of the victims had been his model.

  “Oh, but you are not a man of culture,” Winchell said. “Perhaps you are not familiar. . .”

  “I know his work.”

  Sickert painted dance hall girls, clothed and unclothed, in poses more prurient than artistic. In one piece, it was ambiguous as to whether the reclined nude was asleep or dead.

  For a while Sickert had been a suspect in the Ladykiller murders, and Royston wasn’t entirely sure that the man hadn’t been involved in some way, perhaps as an accomplice.

  When he collected his mail on his return home, he found an envelope with no return address. Opening it, he found a single sheet of high-quality paper. No writing, just a quick, crude sketch of a smiling wolf with a bandaged paw sitting in front of a doghouse.

  Bandon had made it home safe. Royston chuckled to himself. With a
ll that money, you'd think the man could have afforded art lessons.

  ***

  Godwin handed Royston a glass of brandy. “Sickert, yes. I remember him. A hard man to forget. Any truth to what Winchell said?”

  Royston leaned back into the comforting, familiar embrace of the chair by the hearth and let the liquid warmth of Godwin’s brandy roll over his tongue. The liquor helped soothe his scratchy throat. Probably he should have opted for dinner at home and an early bed, but he wanted Godwin’s opinions. And, to be honest with himself, his support and reassurance as well. A tricky thing, going after the moneyed class. Dangerous to a career unless you could catch them with hot blood on their hands or a cooling body in their closet.

  “Downey’s signature appeared in the guest book for every gallery show of Sickert’s work, often either above or below his mentor’s, before Blackpoole’s death.”

  “The implication would be that they attended together. But an appalling number of people are fond of his work. Not all of them are murderers. Thank God.” Godwin opened his tobacco box, filled his pipe, and passed the box to Royston. “What else have you found out about the fellow?”

  “Downey came from a monied family and had studied at Oxford, but his parents disowned him abruptly just before his graduation. No one seems to know why.”

  “Have you asked the parents?”

  Royston paused in lighting his pipe. “They refused to see me. They sent a written statement via a lawyer saying that they no longer have a son.”

  “I can well sympathize with that sentiment,” Godwin said. “Is the man a wastrel like Willie?”

  “No, sir. He finished at Oxford without their support, using some funds of his own plus an inheritance from his maternal grandfather. He has good letters of references and received several offers of apprenticeship before he took up with Blackpoole.”

  Godwin blew a smoke ring—an ability Royston had never quite managed. “Anything else disturbing, beyond a questionable taste in art and an unfortunate choice in mentors?”

  “He had been engaged to marry a titled young lady, but she abruptly broke off the engagement and sailed for America. And . . .well, this part’s never been proven, but there’s enough smoke to believe a fire’s smoldering somewhere.”

  “Go on, lad.”

  “There’re reports of assaults on prostitutes. Encounters that started out as, well, business transactions and got rough. Rougher than the normal rough customer.”

  “Would have to be, to send them to the police.”

  “In two instances, the matters were referred to the Yard by a charity hospital.”

  “But no charges filed,” Godwin guessed.

  “None.”

  Sadly, not unusual. Victims wouldn’t cooperate, and too many of his colleagues could care less what happened to a woman who worked the streets. Godwin drew on his pipe, considering. “You think there’s something more.”

  “Possibly. Bribery, threats, who knows? But you told me to go with my gut, and my gut says this man is as evil as they come. Whether he’s the killer we’re looking for, I’m not sure.”

  “Anything to tie him to the victims?”

  “Not really, no. Other than the thing with the prostitutes, but only two of the victims were streetwalkers.”

  “Not all prostitutes walk the streets, lad, and many so-called respectable women scarcely deserve the name.”

  Royston bit the stem of his pipe to still a response. But Godwin was talking of Willie's mother, not Royston’s. “He was an investor in Winchell’s cotton enterprise,” Royston continued after a moment. “He would know about the empty warehouse. He fits the general description of the man one witness saw going off with one of the prostitutes who were killed, but then so would half of the male population of London, including the vicar, your son, and the Commissioner’s future son-in-law.”

  “What about the mysterious source that tipped you off to the location of the last victim? Wouldn’t be the first time a killer decided to play with the police.”

  “I was pretty sure from the beginning that he wasn’t involved. Again, a gut feeling.”

  Godwin frowned. “When I told you to trust your instincts…"

  “But I checked him out anyway,” Royston continued, forestalling the lecture. “I was able to establish his whereabouts on all but one of the nights the girls were taken.”

  He never thought he’d be so glad for the frivolously full schedule of balls and dinners kept by the gentry, nor for the ease with which one could trace the gossip about who was where on what night.

  “Though if he has an accomplice do the kidnapping—“

  “If the coroner is right about poor Molly’s time of death, my source was actually with me when she was killed.” And if they had only been a little bit quicker getting there. . .

  “Have you had a chance to confirm alibis for Winchell and Downey?” Godwin asked.

  “I’ll have to confirm the details, but after a glance at the calendar his secretary provided me, Winchell has alibis for at least three of the murders. Downey was out of town for two.”

  “Could they be working together?”

  “I had thought of that,” Jones said. “But if that were the case, why would Winchell implicate his partner?”

  “About that—”

  “Apparently they had a rather spectacular falling out over the failed cotton endeavor. From talking to their mutual acquaintances I gather the animosity went back further—professional jealousy, jealousy over Blackpoole’s time and attention.”

  “Jealousy over Blackpoole?”

  “Students’ jealousy over a teacher’s regard. At least as far as I can tell. Who knows? All that I have is a tangle of clues, no clear suspect, and too many dead girls. And a commissioner who feels that my inability to come up with an answer is what happens when you hire a man of questionable birth and upbringing.”

  Godwin snorted. “They didn’t find your upbringing questionable when you were the only one in the Yard with enough French and Greek to sort out that mess at the Diplomats’ Ball.”

  For which they had had to promote him to Detective Inspector because one didn’t send a mere sergeant to interview foreign ambassadors. Which followed his promotion to Detective Sergeant after a rather prominent case where he'd found an heiress’s missing jewels when none of the detectives could. They'd promoted him because they had no choice and would jump at any excuse to demote him, and now his failure to capture the killer might provide him with one.

  “You do know all that nonsense about you not being good enough is just that—nonsense,” Godwin said. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  “Tell that to Molly,” Royston snapped. After a moment he sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m not fit company tonight.”

  “You’re always welcome here, good company or poor. You’re more a son to me than my own son. You know that.”

  Royston nodded.

  “So take another approach,” Godwin said. “From the nature of the crimes, how would you describe the nature and character of the criminal?”

  “Besides the obvious, that he is a warped individual without a shred of compassion or human conscience? He is obviously clever, very clever, to have gone on so long and left so few clues. Either he's clever enough to figure out our procedures, or else he's someone with inside knowledge of police procedures. Since the only commonality among the victims is their sex, I would say the man has an abiding hatred of women, perhaps due to a bad experience with a mother, lover, or spouse.”

  Oh, hell. Had he just described Godwin himself? No. Ridiculous. Absurd. Godwin might have a strong suspicion of women due to marital problems Royston only knew through rumor and the occasional unguarded word, but surely his feelings didn’t rise to the level of unbridled rage. Besides, he knew Godwin far, far too well to suspect him capable of such obscene cruelty.

  “From what you've told me of the mutilations,” Godwin said, “the killer would have to have a strong knowledge of human anatomy. A doctor, or
a medical student. A butcher, at the very least.”

  “Winchell has that much knowledge, clearly.” Royston said. “Downey, I’m not so sure of. He has dabbled in art, may have done some anatomical studies. And he was a student of Blackpoole. Many alchemists do study medicine at some level.”

  His eyes went to Godwin’s bookshelves, to the book of anatomy he knew was there. Godwin in his day had been well-known for studying every possible aspect of criminal investigation. Stories had it that he even spent time at the coroner’s watching forensic autopsies.

  He didn’t fit the physical description of the man seen with one of the girls. But they didn’t know whether that man was the killer. Or if the killer were working alone.

  ***

  Royston began the next day conducting interviews and checking records against the information provided by Winchell’s secretary.

  The widowed Lady Abernathy was first on the list as the hostess of a charity ball for the benefit of research into the eradication of typhoid, at which his presence was much noted because of the large contribution he made. The ball had been the same night that the first girl had been killed.

  A butler opened the door of Lady Abernathy’s town home and looked down at him. Though Royston dressed appropriately to his own station, the butler’s dismissive gaze reminded him he dressed less well than the servants of a fine household.

  “We have a tradesman’s entrance, sir,” said the butler by way of greeting.

  Royston raised his chin. “I am not a tradesman, and my business is with the lady of the house, not her staff. If you would tell Lady Abernathy that Inspector Royston Jones of Scotland Yard would like to speak to her.”

  He had a title of his own, thank you very much, and it was one he’d earned himself.

  He only wished he could get rid of this cold. Sounding dignified and official was hard with a stuffed-up nose.

  “Her Ladyship is hardly in the habit of associating with police inspectors.” The butler’s voice grew even cooler.