An Unseen Attraction

by KJ Charles

  Rowley would have sprinted after him, in the sheer fury of the moment, but Clem was doubled over, and if the thief had carried a knife— “Clem!”

  “Fine,” Clem wheezed. “Hit me—stomach.”

  “Oh, Lord. I’m sorry.” Rowley helped him straighten, checked his front for blood—he’d heard of people who didn’t feel wounds in the excitement of a scuffle—and then looked around at his violated premises. “I’d better have a look. Damn and blast.”

  The lock had been forced, and would need replacing. He lit the gas inside, sending reflections dancing off glass and shadows leaping over walls, and looked around. It was quite hard at first to tell if anything was out of place between the dark and the clutter, but as his eyes accustomed themselves, he relaxed slightly. “Well, he didn’t make a mess.”

  “What about the cash drawer?”

  Rowley emptied the drawer at night except for the smallest change, but the thief could have caused a lot of damage finding that out. He went behind the counter, frowned, then bent and checked. “How odd. It’s not been touched.”

  “Do you suppose he’d only just got in?”

  “Must have. I’ll have a look upstairs.” Rowley lit a heavy-based oil lamp he kept for late nights and headed upstairs. Nothing seemed out of place in the showroom either. “What on earth was he after?”

  “Is there a particularly valuable mount he might have been trying to steal?” Clem suggested, coming up behind him.

  Mount. Clem was using Rowley’s words, and that thought was so pleasing it made his toes curl in his shoes, cutting through the irritation. “Well, the larger ones are worth a fair amount, but you could hardly put a lynx under your coat. I don’t think anything’s gone.”

  “We must have disturbed him before he got to work. That was lucky.”

  “I suppose we must.” Rowley squinted, then went over to the corner of the room, where a beaver rose on its hind legs. “Good Lord. Look at this.”

  Clem looked over his shoulder. “What on earth—? Is that a billy club?”

  It was indeed, a short truncheon with a leather strap at one end for better swinging. Rowley picked it up in a cautious fashion, and found it was weighted at the business end, probably with lead. These things could crack a skull, and he felt intensely thankful the robber had misplaced it.

  A crude J was burned into the wood, probably with the end of a poker, but it had no other identifying marks. He contemplated the thing, shrugged, and slipped it into his pocket. “So he did come up here. But he hadn’t tried the cash drawer.”

  “Mmm.” Clem was squinting at the countertop. “Could you bring the light over a bit more? Yes, look at this. There are drag marks here, in the dust. It looks as if he was moving the mounts around.”

  Clem was quite right. Dust always settled thick in preservers’ shops, thanks to the sacks of sawdust, plaster of Paris, hay, fluff, cotton wool, chalk, camphor, arsenic, and the like. Rowley could see clearly in the light of the oil lamp that a number of mounts had been pushed or dragged around. Not dropped on the floor, not damaged so far as he could see, simply moved.

  “Well, this is damned odd,” he said. “And inconvenient. Ugh, I’ll need to put a board across the door.”

  “Can I help?”

  Rowley was a very competent carpenter, with years of experience making his own cases for mounts, and it was cold outside and, indeed, in here. “No need. Perhaps you could put the kettle on? I won’t be long.”

  He secured the door without too much trouble, but he was still thoroughly chilled when he came in. Clem had indeed made tea, rather too early because it was slightly stewed and tannic, but at least it was warm. Rowley sipped it gratefully.

  “You look frozen stiff,” Clem said.

  “Quarter to ten on a November night is no time for carpentry.”

  “No. Mr. Lugtrout still hasn’t come back.”

  “Has he not.”

  Clem prodded the fire. “Do you think it’s a bit odd that he was complaining about being robbed, and then you’ve been robbed?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I was robbed,” Rowley said. “I can’t see anything was taken. Which, now you bring up the subject—did he actually lose anything?”

  “Not that he mentioned to me.”

  “That is a bit peculiar, isn’t it? But my intruder was a big man, and Miss Sweeting said that she heard quiet footsteps.”

  “If she heard them at all, and Mr. Lugtrout didn’t simply wreck his own room and forget he did it. Oh, I don’t know.”

  Rowley wrapped his hands round his mug, enjoying the heat. “Nor I. Goodness knows, Clem. We’ll go to the police tomorrow to ask what’s best to do.”

  That seemed like an excellent plan, and so did a very comfortable half hour kissing in front of the fire. Nothing more; it was too late to stay long, and Clem was evidently keeping one ear out for noises in the hall until he could lock up the house. Rowley couldn’t blame him. He didn’t imagine the two intruders (or one intruder and one case of imagination) meant anything more than the usual troubles of London, but petty thieves were persistent brutes. They’d all do well to keep doors and windows locked, and Rowley would need to get a locksmith to work on his shop tomorrow.

  He went to sleep to hazy but contented thoughts of kissing Clem, and woke up to screaming.

  He sat up in bed, dizzy with the abrupt waking, and wondered for a fraction of a second if he had dreamed the noise, before it came again. A woman’s wordless shrieks, long and loud and piercing, signalling danger, and right below his window, which looked over Wilderness Row toward the Charterhouse Gardens. Rowley swung himself out of bed, grabbing his spectacles from the nightstand and hustling on his dressing gown and slippers. Mr. Rillington was emerging from his room as he hurried past, and on the next landing Mr. Hirsch had come out too.

  “What the devil is it, a fire?”

  As if in answer, the woman—could it be Polly?—let out one more hoarse cry.

  “Murder!”

  “Hell’s teeth,” Rowley said, and ran downstairs with Mr. Hirsch at his heels.

  The street door stood open. It was indeed Polly screaming, standing in the street in her coat and hat, posture stiff and awful, like nothing so much as a poor-quality mount. On the step Clem was frozen, his face a peculiar sallow shade with the blood gone from his cheeks, staring down at something. Rowley weaselled past him to see, and had to swallow an oath.

  It was far from his first dead body. It wasn’t even his first human body; he’d been in morgues, seen a few men and women dragged from the gutter or the Thames, watched his father die. He’d never seen a body like this.

  Mr. Lugtrout’s mouth was fixed open in a scream, revealing two pits in his gum that hadn’t been there when Rowley last saw him, both blackened with dried blood as though the teeth had been extracted carelessly. His face was sallow where it wasn’t livid with bruises, his dirty white hair a wild mess. His body lay at the steps as if dumped there, one arm outstretched to the door. Its wrist was rubbed raw, and two of the fingers of its hand had their tips missing. Flat incisions, leaving bone bare and beginning to dry back.

  “Mother of God,” Rowley said, and stooped for a closer look.

  Polly made a hiccupping noise. Clem blinked, then took hold of her. “You have to sit down. Sit down, Polly. It’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right!”

  “What’s not all right?” enquired Miss Sweeting from the stairs.

  “Laura, don’t look,” Mr. Hirsch said urgently.

  “Both of you, can you take care of Polly?” Clem asked. “Get a physician if she needs one. She’s had a, a bad shock.”

  He didn’t sound any too steady himself. “Mr. Talleyfer, shall I go for a constable?” Rowley asked, and waited till Clem nodded. “Right. Don’t let anyone disturb the, uh, the body.”

  “Shouldn’t we do something for him?”

  Rowley refrained from asking what he thought might help. “I think the best thing we can do is get the polic
e, quick. The back of his head—well, it looks to me as if he was coshed.”

  “On our doorstep!” Polly said shrilly.

  If he’d been killed on their doorstep there would have been a lot more blood, judging by the shattered mess of the skull. Someone had killed their errant lodger and brought his corpse home, a fact that Rowley decided to keep to himself for the moment.

  He hurried straight to the police station, which was on Old Street across the Goswell Road. The wind flapped at his pyjama trousers and chilled his bare ankles; he ignored the shocked looks and catcalls he received. The policeman on duty looked appalled too, but Rowley forestalled that with a curt “There’s been murder done.”

  After that, it got busy. Constables arrived, and a photographer, and a surgeon, and a divisional inspector. Rowley found himself sitting with Clem in the study, he in the very chair on which he and Clem had frotted and spent, being questioned by one Inspector Ellis, a thin and weary-looking man. He kept his eyes on the inspector and his attention, as far as was possible, on the murder, and prayed Clem was doing the same.

  They recounted the events of the last few days under questioning, from the possible burglary to the morning’s ghastly discovery.

  “And you were sure at once it was murder, Mr. Talleyfer?” the inspector asked.

  “Rowley—Mr. Green—was.”

  “I’m a preserver. I have the shop next door,” Rowley added.

  “And that tells you about murder, does it?”

  “Well, I’m used to flesh and bones, so I wasn’t afraid to look. And it means I can tell the difference between fingers crushed by a cart and cut by a blade.”

  “Can you, now.”

  “The bone was smoothly severed,” Rowley said. “I’d guess a cleaver.”

  “Would you, now.”

  “And the back of the head was stove in, and at this point, Inspector, I should tell you that my own shop was broken into last night.” Rowley summarised the events. “It may have nothing at all to do with the dead man on the doorstep, but we found this.” He held out the cosh. The inspector took it, face tightening as he turned the little weapon over.

  “Well.”

  “I didn’t want to leave it lying around, and I was intending to report the break-in this morning, so it was in my pocket all last night,” Rowley added. “It may be entirely irrelevant, of course.”

  “Might be. Any idea what your thief was after, in your shop?”

  “None. I didn’t notice anything gone last night.”

  “And what about Mr. Lugtrout?” the inspector asked. “What would someone have been after from him? Any idea?”

  “After?” Clem asked. “How do you mean?”

  The inspector sighed. “Well, a bash on the head is one thing, Mr. Talleyfer, but when I see a corpse with a couple of teeth pulled, and bits cut off, and rope marks on his wrists and ankles, that’s a man who had an enemy. And it makes me wonder what he did to deserve what he got. Or, maybe, if he had something someone wanted, and that someone had a very persuasive way about him.”

  Clem seemed entirely nonplussed. “How do you mean?”

  The inspector gave him a look. Rowley set his jaw. “I think Inspector Ellis is suggesting Lugtrout was tortured. For something.”

  Clem blenched. “Oh no. Surely not. No.”

  He looked sick. Rowley sympathised. He wasn’t a particularly imaginative man, but he had an unnecessarily vivid mental image now of Mr. Lugtrout tied to a chair, and of men with pliers and a cleaver. He shuddered.

  “Any idea what Mr. Lugtrout had that anyone would have wanted? Any odd connections? Anything you think I ought to know?” The inspector looked between them. “Because we’ll all be safer when whoever did this bit of work swings for it, believe me.”

  “Absolutely nothing,” Rowley said, hearing the flatness of his own voice, unable to change it. “He just lived here.” Just lived here on the strict instructions of Clem’s brother. He carefully didn’t look round.

  “I don’t know either,” Clem said, muffled by the hands he had pressed to his face. “He was an old drunken clergyman. He didn’t have anything, he didn’t do anything. I don’t know why anyone would hurt him.”

  “Are you quite sure of that?” The inspector looked keenly at Rowley. “Mr. Green?”

  “I’m quite sure I don’t know anything. I’m not sure why you’d think I would.”

  The inspector slapped the cosh absentmindedly into the palm of his hand. “Well, sir, you must admit it’s a strange business. Burglary here, burglary there, torture and murder here, back and forth between you. What’s next?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Clem said, raising his head. “I keep a lodging house and Mr. Green preserves birds. We don’t have anything to do with murder and torture and burglary. We live here, that’s all.”

  “There is nothing in my shop that a criminal would want unless they have a fancy for mounts,” Rowley said. “You’re welcome to take a look. I’d be grateful if you would.”

  “Very generous of you, sir. I shall, after I’ve had a look at the deceased gent’s room, if I may.” The inspector rose and stood, looking down, from one to the other of them. “I’ll leave my card, in case anything should have slipped your memory, gentlemen, or if you should think of something. It would be a good idea to tell me if you do, before anything else happens, you see. Good morning to you.”

  Chapter 5

  The rest of the day was frantic. Clem had to deal with appalled neighbours, hysterical staff, and terrified lodgers. Mr. Rillington seemed to take the murder as a personal affront; Mr. Power and Miss Sweeting had a vituperative argument over remarks that she—and Clem, as it happened—regarded as tasteless jests.

  Rowley wasn’t there. He couldn’t be; he’d had to find a locksmith who’d repair his shop door on a Sunday. Clem wished he were. It wasn’t that he wanted to rely on Rowley; the very opposite. It had been a little prickling humiliation to have someone else take charge, and it rankled slightly more than usual because it was Rowley. Clem wasn’t looking for someone to do his work for him.

  What he wanted from Rowley now was that sense of someone on his side in a world that seemed very hostile and loud and more than usually inexplicable. What he wanted for Rowley was the same thing. It had been terrifying, seeing the thug charge out of the shop and send the smaller man flying. Clem was no fighter, but at least he had a bit of heft to him, and he couldn’t be incapacitated by someone knocking his spectacles off. He didn’t like to think of Rowley alone in his workshop, surrounded by staring glass eyes, shadows, and blades, with only an easily forced lock between him and the nebulous menace of someone with pliers and a cleaver.

  But Rowley was dealing with his own business, so Clem did the same, including writing a note for his brother to advise him of Mr. Lugtrout’s demise. Clem had no idea what Edmund’s relationship to Parson Gin had been, but he would surely wish to be told.

  With everything that had to be done and all the people who had to be calmed down, and then several solitary circuits of the Charterhouse Gardens to calm himself down, it was four o’clock and fading to twilight before Clem went to knock on the newly mended door of ROWLEY GREEN—PRESERVER.

  Rowley let him in. He was in his waistcoat and shirtsleeves despite the cold, a little flushed and dusty. The shop, by contrast, gleamed in the gaslight.

  “You’ve been cleaning.”

  “Mmm. I started to tidy up and then I didn’t like all the traces. That man putting his hands over everything. He did do some damage, I found, once I saw it in the light.” Rowley indicated the counter, on which lay three brightly coloured canaries in a neat row and, above them, their heads. The black glass eyes gleamed in the light; the bloodless necks leaked stuffing.

  “He twisted their heads off.”

  “Yes,” Rowley said. “It’s hard to see that as a friendly gesture.”

  “But why?” Clem demanded. “What on earth would some ruffian want here? I don’t understand why anyone would kill Mr. Lugtrou
t, much, but even if someone did, what would it have to do with your shop?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with my shop, whatever it is. The extent of my involvement with that blasted drunkard is that he came in here twice, and bought nothing. It’s got something to do with you, though.”

  “Me?”

  “Clem!” Rowley threw up his hands. “Your brother has been insisting on you housing Lugtrout for years, for nothing. Don’t you think that’s a little bit odd?”

  “It’s his house. He can make what stipulations he wants.”

  “Yes, and he made that one,” Rowley said. “Odd stipulation, odd man, two odd break-ins, and a bloody odd murder! Don’t you think Inspector Ellis ought to know about that?”

  “No!” Clem felt startled and affronted. “How could this have anything to do with my brother?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with me either, but I’ve still had my shop broken into. What if he was right? What if Lugtrout was up to something and whoever tortured him isn’t finished yet? Frankly, I’d like that to be someone else’s problem.”

  “Like my brother’s?” Clem demanded. “It’s not his problem. Mr. Lugtrout was my lodger and he was left on my doorstep—”

  “As a warning.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “What else would it be? Cat, leaving corpses as friendly gifts?”

  “There’s no need to be sarcastic,” Clem said stiffly. “I meant, there’s nothing to warn about. None of us had anything to do with Mr. Lugtrout’s business—”

  “Except your brother, who owns the house, and the doorstep.”

  “Except, nobody knows about that,” Clem retorted. “If someone wanted to bother my brother, and I don’t believe they would, they’d use his doorstep.”

  Rowley pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with the tip of a finger. He looked tired and cross. “Clem, someone tortured and murdered Mr. Lugtrout. I think you need to tell Inspector Ellis everything. If it isn’t relevant, there’s no harm done.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Rowley almost shouted.