A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1)

by Shawna Reppert

  “Murder?” Royston asked.

  Why else would she have asked him here? Only a drowning, even murder-by-drowning, would seem to have little to do with the Doctor Death case.

  “The coroner ruled it accident, but everyone assumed that was to avoid having to bury a girl from a good family in unhallowed ground.”

  “Suicide?”

  “They tried to keep it a secret that she was three months’ pregnant when she died, but rumors will out. Too far gone to hide it for a wedding in three months’ time, and too far gone to pass the babe off as premature.”

  “If the father had been her betrothed, they would have just found some excuse to move up the date of the wedding,” Royston said.

  “There would have been whispers, of course,” the lady agreed. “But all would be forgotten with the next Season’s scandal.”

  “You are about to tell me that she was keeping close company with Lord Downey,” Royston said. “If seduction were a crime, there would be no lack of work for carpenters, because there wouldn’t be enough gallows in all the Empire.”

  And his own father would have been hanged long before he had the chance to ruin his mother.

  “I’ve no doubt that Downey might be morally responsible for the girl’s death,” he continued. “But responsibility under the law is another matter. I’m sorry for your friend’s death”—he could tell by the emotion beneath the peacock mask that the lady had been close to the unfortunate girl—“but I don’t see what I can do, even if there were better proof, and I don’t see what this has to do with…”

  “I don’t think it was suicide,” the lady blurted out. “I think she was killed, and Downey did it.”

  A wind picked up, and she shivered. He took off his cloak and put it around her shoulders.

  “There was a good deal of laudanum in her system when she drowned,” she said. “I think he drugged her into compliance and held her under the water.”

  “It’s not unheard of for a suicide to use the drug to find the courage to carry their plan through,” Royston said gently.

  “That’s what I thought as well. Until I saw the poem.”

  “Poem?”

  “My brother takes a literary journal. Not all of what is in it is proper. Oh, I know it is wrong of me to look at it. You’ve no idea what it is to be a woman. Anything of interest is kept from one.”

  The darkness hid her blush at her own indiscretion, but he could hear it in her voice and picture the delicate pink warming her aristocratic cheekbones.

  “So this poem?” he prompted.

  She looked down at her folded hands. “It was truly horrible, sir. It described the drowning of a maid, as though the poet were the killer. It described it in a way, to be indelicate, as though he were describing an act of sexual congress.”

  “Who was the author of the poem?” Royston asked, although he suspected he knew.

  “It was published as anonymous.”

  “But?”

  “I did some asking. One of my brother’s friends knows the publisher. They said that the poet wished his name withheld because he was a gentleman and a scholar. He refused to disclose a name, but he gave me enough details to tell me I was right.”

  “Downey.”

  She nodded.

  Royston had seen the worst of humanity in his profession. It no longer surprised him that there were men who lusted after violence the way a normal man desired the act of love; it sickened him, but it didn’t surprise him. They were like rabid dogs in that nothing could be done save to put them down. Unlike rabid dogs, the fault was in them, not in some disease caught by mischance.

  Under his disgust, a rising excitement swelled in his chest, warming him, quickening his pulse. Could he be one step closer to finding his killer, saving the next victim before the killer could strike again? Was this what Brandon in wolf form felt with his nose to a clear scent trail?

  Yet reality crashed in with its inevitable frustration, choking him down like a slip chain pulling a hound from the hunt. Evidence this weak wouldn’t convict a tradesman, let alone someone like Downey. It wouldn’t even be enough to convince the Yard to let him reopen an investigation, not when the girl’s parents preferred the ruling of accidental death. Just then the girl leaned forward, pulled him into a passionate embrace, and kissed him in a manner that would be quite scandalous even if they were not essentially strangers. His arm went around her waist, and he kissed her back instinctively, pulse quickening.

  Reason kicked in and he started to pull away, when he heard voices on the path to the gazebo.

  “Oh, dear, it looks like someone else has had the same idea.” It was a woman’s voice, slightly slurred with drink and slightly sulky with disappointment.

  “No matter, my dear,” replied a baritone. “There are many private spots in this garden, and I know all of them.”

  The peacock woman shifted closer, and he could feel the warm, silken press of her against him. In spite of himself, his blood stirred, and his imagination whispered what if it were real?

  She kept up her enjoyable pretense with Royston until the sound of footsteps faded, and then they broke apart.

  “I’ve never done anything like that before,” she said with a little laugh. “You must think me terribly improper.”

  “I think you’re terribly resourceful,” he assured her.

  It might have been the first time she’d kissed a man beneath her class, but it clearly hadn’t been the first time she kissed a man. He almost wished the other couple had not moved on so quickly.

  “I had not thought a member of the police would be so well-spoken.” She looked up at him coquettishly through her lashes. “Nor so good at kissing. It is well that I am already promised, or I would be tempted to incur my father’s wrath and break my mother’s heart by marrying beneath my station.”

  Well indeed, or he’d be tempted to dream of things that couldn’t be. The peacock woman was clearly farther above him than Miss Chatham, and her father, whoever he was, would ruin him for his presumption. Besides, among these people who married for money and connections, flirtations meant less than nothing. They were merely a way of passing the time by bringing the semblance of love into their sterile lives. If he were Willie, he’d know how to make the flirtation matter, for a night at least—and bring troubles on himself as numerous as wasps in a nest. It might even have been worth it. But he was not Willie.

  Even knowing she toyed with him, still he warmed toward her, making it even harder to say what he must. “I thank you for telling me this. But I have to say…"

  “I know you can’t act against someone of Lord Downey’s stature,” she said in a rush. “Not without more evidence. But I wanted you to know what kind of man he was. To know, for yourself at least, that you may not be wasting your time investigating him.”

  “Thank you,” Royston said. “I will do my best to get justice for all of Doctor Death’s victims. If your friend is among them, may she rest in peace for it.”

  “That is all I can ask.”

  She held out her hand to him. Impulsively, he kissed it instead of merely shaking it. She tittered charmingly.

  He had, after all, learned some small things from Willie.

  ***

  The next day, he delved into the questions surrounding the death of Rosalyn Beauchamp. It was like trying to dig through marble with a spoon. The death notice in the paper alluded to a tragic accident. The coroner’s report held little detail. The man who had done the autopsy had retired to the country a year ago. Royston couldn’t justify the expense or the time to his superiors without a less tenuous connection to the current case.

  Even if Downey had killed Miss Beauchamp and even if Royston could prove it, so what? The man had money to hire the best solicitors in London. He might or might not hang. And it didn’t necessarily make him Doctor Death. He had an iron-tight alibi for several of the disappearances. As did Winchell.

  But neither of them had alibis for all of them. If they were working
together, Royston could chart out how one or the other of them could have either kidnapped or killed all of the murdered girls. Could their spectacular falling-out have been a ruse, as Willie had suggested? Killers generally didn’t plan things out on that level, but he already knew that he dealt with an extraordinary villain.

  ***

  “Not that I am not delighted to see such a lovely young lady and such a good friend to my daughter, but I’m not certain why you are here.”

  Catherine set her tea cup down in its saucer. Lord Beauchamp was an elegant man, slender and straight of carriage. His hair, though silver-white, grew in thick waves. As a younger man, he must have cut quite the striking figure. His study was very much a reflection of the man himself, done in a masculine spruce green with a polished mahogany wainscot. The scent of well-maintained leather furniture weighed the air together with the rich, slightly sweet odor of quality tobacco. Hunt paintings hung on the walls together with portraits of distinguished gentlemen in military uniform. It was the study of a man who would give his sons over to death in service to the crown and consider it an honor to do so, the study of a man who would rather let his daughter’s death remain a mystery than let an investigation besmirch the family name.

  It was also a room more accustomed to seeing port or brandy served than tea, but of course the very traditional Beauchamp would not serve a female guest in the same fashion that he would a gentleman caller. Besides, the tea gave the excuse for the presence of a maid to serve it, thus neatly managing the questions of propriety that would otherwise arise from a young, unmarried woman calling alone on the gentleman of the house.

  “I’m sure you have heard that I have some interest in alchemy,” Catherine said.

  Beauchamp looked away. “Oh, yes. Quite.”

  “An associate of mine suggested that I might want to serve as patron for a young man he knows, a promising alchemist if a bit of a dilettante. I understand that you have financially supported some of his projects from time to time, and I’d like your opinion of the man.”

  “I support any number of alchemists,” Beauchamp said. “Especially those working on cures for typhus and wound infections. Lost my eldest son to the first and my youngest to the second.”

  He spoke with proper restraint, merely recounting facts, but she caught a slight tremor to his voice, an undercurrent of deep sorrow never healed. And with Rosalyn dead, all his considerable fortune would go to his very much younger second wife. Catherine might have suspected her, but she knew the woman. A shallow opportunist, but Catherine doubted she had the nerve for cold-blooded murder.

  “I understand,” she said. “I lost my parents to consumption not long before the alchemists finally developed a cure, and that, in part, fueled my interest in alchemy. I don’t want anyone else to lose family to diseases for which a cure might be waiting to be discovered.”

  She let emotion color her own voice, so he knew he was not alone in his mourning or his devotion to saving lives through alchemy. His face softened, and suddenly she found herself liking the man. “How long have you supported Downey’s research?” she asked.

  “Oh, years and years. Since he was a student, really. His parents cut him off, you see. Some silly indiscretion, but boys will be boys. He had his own trust fund, of course, so he wasn’t destitute, but he was accustomed to a certain standard of living. Mustn't have a researcher of his caliber distracted by poverty.”

  Which meant he would have been supporting Downey at the time his daughter was killed.

  “We had him over to dinner on many occasions. My wife thought him quite charming, and he was like a brother to my poor, dear Rosalyn.”

  She saw the same level of sorrow, just as quickly and properly covered, as when he had spoken of his sons. Not a man without feelings, then, but a man of feelings too deep to express and too fond to see those closest to him clearly.

  “Has Downey many financial backers?”

  “Quite a few, quite a few. Though I must say that I’m his largest source. And he lost a number of patrons when he split with Winchell. I continued to support both of them, saw no reason to take sides.”

  If Downey was relying on Beauchamp to fund either his research or his lifestyle, he would have reason enough to kill to keep Beauchamp from discovering that he’d gotten his daughter with child.

  They talked for a while longer about Downey’s research and about the horrors of battlefield infection. He spoke to her as a fellow supporter of the sciences rather than a lady who needed to hear only the most delicate of conversations. If only he had treated Rosalyn as though she had had a brain. Things might have turned out differently. Then again, if Rosalyn had told him of her preference for Downey, he might have been willing to quietly break off his arrangement with his old friend. Downey carried a name nearly as important as Beauchamp, and the old man certainly thought well of him, however unfounded that opinion might be. Would a life with Downey be better than a death at the bottom of a pond?

  With that grim thought, Catherine took her leave. Beauchamp saw her to the door, and as she started down the walk toward her waiting carriage, she saw Jones stepping down from a hansom cab. They had no choice but to pass, though she could see by the way Jones' face closed in when he saw her that he had no desire to share a sidewalk with her.

  She had hoped that his association with wolf-Richard might have won her forgiveness by proxy, but apparently it was not so. In his place, she might feel the same.

  “Good day, Inspector,” she said when they were close enough to make a greeting both possible and necessary.

  He inclined his head. “Miss Fairchild.”

  Steel grated under the coolly polite tone like a knife on a whetstone. Oh, dear. He’d better adjust his mood before his interview with Lord Beauchamp, or he’d get nowhere and make an enemy he could ill afford. Jones' presence here could only mean that he knew about Beauchamp’s support of Downey or of the circumstances of Rosalyn’s death. Sometime soon she should sit him down to compare notes, but if they stopped to talk here, a woman of her station and a police inspector, it would attract attention. She could only help him if her role remained unknown.

  Still, she couldn’t help uttering a soft word of advice as she passed. “Careful, Inspector. He thinks most highly of Downey. And he won’t thank you for reminding him of his daughter’s death.”

  He ground his teeth; she could see it in the movement of his jaw.

  “I do my duty, Miss Fairchild. No more and no less.”

  ***

  For once, Royston left work almost on time. Nothing would keep him from being seated by curtain-rise for Willie’s opening night. Lear wasn’t his favorite of Shakespeare’s works— the tragedy seemed too all-encompassing in its hopelessness and it lacked the poignancy of Hamlet or the nobility of Julius Caesar. Still, it was Shakespeare, with all the glorious language and meter. There was a reason the man’s work had survived from Elizabethan times.

  He tried not to feel guilty about taking this one evening off while Doctor Death still stalked London. Godwin had taught him that when a problem seemed insoluble, often the best thing to do was to step away for a while and come at it from a new perspective. His mother would tell him that it was important to find time for music and theater, for things edifying and uplifting, as these were the things that separated us from the dumb beasts. Willie would tell him that he bloody well deserved a life, too.

  By the time he had shaved and dressed, he had to take a hansom cab to arrive on time. He took his seat just before the lights went down, and he had only to allow himself to be transported. The sets and the costuming were rudimentary at best, but the actors were good, delivering their lines with feeling and masterful elocution. His chest filled to tightness with that warm, content feeling brought on by well-crafted prose, beautiful music, or well-done theater.

  Had Royston not known that this was Willie’s first time on stage, he never would have guessed, and he ceased to wonder why the company would grant such a large part to a ran
k beginner. Willie’s natural charm made it entirely believable that he could sway two women into betraying their husbands. Willie seemed to find subtle depths to the villainous Edmund that Royston, in his many readings of the play, had never found. Royston now saw another level of tragedy in the play, the tragedy of the bastard shut out from any hope of inheritance by circumstances of his birth, circumstances that were someone else’s sin that he was forced to pay for while the guilty party prospered. He saw beneath Edmund’s ruthless seduction of the two sisters a sort of desperate vulnerability, a need to prove that he was capable of winning love and therefore worthy of it.

  He, himself, might have turned out much like Edmund, had it not been for his mother’s loving influence and Godwin's mentorship?

  Perhaps Willie had finally found his true calling.

  Royston sent a congratulatory note backstage after the curtain fell, and moments later, Willie came bounding out through the crowd. Traces of greasepaint remained around his eyes, making him look like a deranged clown.

  “Wasn’t it just brilliant?” Willie clapped Royston on both shoulders.

  “You have definite talent. How long is the run?”

  Willie bounced on the balls of his feet like the excitable boy he’d once been. “A week, at least. More if we get held over. I’m sure we’ll get held over. We’re doing Romeo and Juliet next. I’m a natural for the lead, don’t you think?”

  Royston smiled and withheld comment. That Willie could talk a girl into bedding an enemy of her family, he had no doubt. But to play the part of a sincere lover? Well, that was why they called it acting, he supposed.

  “You have to come out with the cast to celebrate!”