The Pierced Heart: A Novel

by Shepherd, Lynn

  Charles goes to the desk on the far side of the bedroom, but the surface is clear and clean, apart from a deep scratch where something heavy has been clumsily moved. The drawers are empty, too, at least at first sight. Though when he pulls one out he feels it catch, and bends to find a sheet of paper caught in the back. But when he eases it out it proves to be nothing but scientific annotations, covered with sketchy diagrams and tiny hand-scribbled notes of letters and numbers, but none of it in any pattern Charles can recognise.

  “What’s that?” asks Sam.

  “I’m not sure—it’s all in German. Looks like some sort of optical diagram—this here is a prism with the lines showing light refracting through it.” He turns the paper. “And this might be a concave mirror, with some sort of wiring attached to it—”

  For a moment, as he says it, there is a half memory of a half thought, but as quickly as it comes it is gone, and he cannot grasp it again. A moment later he shakes his head and turns again to look slowly round the room. And that’s when he notices it. Where the slanting sunlight from the window zigzags across the panelling there is a slight misalignment. It’s only the tiniest imperfection of line, but it’s enough. He moves quickly to the wall and slides his hand along the edge of the wood. Sam comes up behind him, and then the two of them hear a soft click as a door swings open. But the cupboard—for it’s hardly more than that—is bare. Sam sighs and turns away, but Charles is suddenly on his knees, pressing his finger against a dank stain on the floor. A dank stain that comes away red.

  “Blood?” says Sam, leaning over his shoulder.

  Charles nods. He gets to his feet and starts feeling along the back of the cupboard.

  “It’s another door,” he says quickly. “But I can’t get it open—we’ll have to go round the other way.”

  Less than a minute later they’re standing in the vestibule of the adjoining apartment. The stench of shit and rotting food in the shuttered, airless space has the young constable gagging in his handkerchief, and as Charles recognises what else it is he can smell, he feels the bile rise in his own throat and he throws open one of the doors and rushes to the nearest window and opens it wide. He takes huge gulping breaths, feeling the breeze on his face and hearing the sound of girls laughing in the courtyard below. Laughing in the sunshine. And then he turns back slowly to face the room, knowing what it is he will see.

  There is blood everywhere.

  Pools of it spilt across the wooden boards in trails of footprints and dark smears. Hand marks of it running along the walls, and next door, in the bedroom, a bare mattress so drenched with it that the floor below is saturated. And when they open the water-closet even Sam has to cover his mouth. The bare bed explains itself now. The closet is heaped with blood-stained bed-linen, torn into strips and wrapped into wads, the cloth sodden black-red and stinking.

  “Jesus Christ, Chas,” says Sam behind him, coughing, “what the bloody ’ell ’appened ’ere?”

  Charles stares at the spewing water-closet. “I think someone’s been kept in these rooms. Locked here like a prisoner. And for a long time.”

  “So this is where ’e does it? ’E keeps ’em caged up in ’ere for God knows ’ow long, an’ then ’e kills ’em and cuts the bodies up? No wonder it looks like a bloody abattoir.”

  Charles looks round. “This blood is new—some of it isn’t even dry. Whatever happened in here, it was only a few days ago.”

  Sam stares at him, his face white. “Jesus, not Rose’s little girl—”

  Charles turns and goes back into the sitting-room and stands there looking at the pattern of the blood-stains. The faint trail leading to the hidden door, the deeper, darker trail from the front door to the bedroom and from there to the water-closet, the footprints smeared here and there, and the marks of fingers along the walls, as if feeling their way in the dark.

  “No,” he says at last, “it was a woman who was kept here, not a child. The marks on the wall are too high to be a child’s. I think the bleeding started on the bed and carried on for several days, during which time she moved about these rooms, sometimes on her hands and knees. And she ended up there, in the water-closet. The blood is heaviest and newest there.”

  “So what exactly are you sayin’?”

  Charles hesitates, realising for the first time that whoever this woman was, she must have been in this very room, terrified and bleeding and only yards away, when Sam stood face-to-face with the Baron not twelve hours before. And he wonders then if the same thought has crossed Sam’s mind, too.

  “I think she had a miscarriage, Sam. I think she lost her child.”

  The constable turns and stumbles out of the room, and they hear him being horribly sick in the corridor outside.

  Sam shakes his head sadly. “Poor bastard! His wife just lost a baby. It were the third time, too.” There’s a pause, then, “Could she still be alive, this woman? I mean if we’re sayin’ none of this blood were from Rose—”

  “I don’t think so—it’s too new. And in any case the doctor at the morgue would have seen at once if she’d recently been pregnant.”

  “In that case where is she—the woman who was ’ere? Is she dead, too?”

  Charles sighs. “I don’t know, Sam. I just don’t know.”

  Sam watches as his friend starts to pace around the room. Charles thinks best when he’s walking, even in such a small place as this; even in such a scene of horror as this. Was only one girl kept here, he wonders, or were they all imprisoned before they died? How did Rose come to be discovered dead in Shepherd’s Market, but without any of the tell-tale disfigurements inflicted on the other girls? Did she manage to escape the Baron, only to be hunted down on the street and killed there? Was that why her body was intact when they found her? And if another girl was indeed kept in this place all these weeks, why was she allowed to remain alive so long? And then Charles remembers those other waxworks in the Baron’s castle—those girls with their legs spread and their unborn babies unpeeled to the air, and it’s his turn to stumble outside with his hand over his mouth.

  He’s still wiping his face when the other constable comes labouring up the stairs, sweating and out of breath. He looks at Charles and then at Sam, standing in the doorway.

  “I was just speaking to the steward, sir, a Mr Nicolas Williams his name is. He says the tenant of these rooms left suddenly this morning, just before dawn. He says there was a long wooden box strapped to the carriage roof. Like a coffin, he thought. Only then he remembered there’d been a delivery a few weeks back from a maker of medical apparatus. Apparently one of the delivery men said it was one of those tables surgeons use. For dissection, sir.”

  Sam shoots a glance at Charles. “Does this Williams know where the man was goin’?”

  “No, sir, but something the man let drop made Williams think he was heading for the Channel—he asked about steamers from Folkestone.”

  “And was there anyone wiv ’im? A woman? A kid?”

  “He thought there might have been a woman in the carriage—the man did come here with a woman, apparently. A young woman. Williams was a bit reluctant to admit it, seeing as women aren’t supposed to be on the premises. Not in the apartments at any rate. I got the impression this man had paid Williams well over the odds to keep it quiet.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “It was dark when they arrived and she had a veil over her face. And no-one’s seen her since.”

  “And there was no sign of the kid? A little girl?”

  The constable shakes his head. “Sorry, sir. But I did find this in the refuse receptacles around the back,” he says, holding out his hand. “This being a bachelor establishment, I thought it might be significant.”

  Sam takes one look at what he’s clutching and swears under his breath.

  It’s a child’s rag doll.

  Back at Vine Street the temperature is soaring and tempers are fraying. One of the officers at the door has the beginnings of a black eye, and some of the
crowd have cobbled together makeshift banners and placards. It’s clear to Charles at once that the mob is much more angry and much less middle-class than it had been even an hour before. There are rough-shod men shouting, and the police are being jostled and abused. It has all the makings of a riot.

  According to the desk sergeant, Rowlandson is still upstairs, “and absolutely not to be disturbed, not even by you, and certainly not by any of this lot.”

  He cocks his head in the direction of the people crowded in the corner. It’s the area that normally does makeshift service as a waiting room, but the two or three worn and spindle-less chairs are hopelessly inadequate for the numbers now herded there. Some huddle together and others press against the constable deputed to keep a clear path through from the door, but if the mood outside is irate, the atmosphere inside is anxious, and afraid.

  “Who are all these people?” asks Sam in an undertone. “What the ’ell are they doin’ ’ere?”

  “Getting in the bloody way, that’s what they’re doing. Thanks to the confounded Daily News, every Tom, Dick, and Harry in London thinks their missing wife or daughter’s been abducted by a bleeding vampire. That one there,” he continues, gesturing in the direction of a man at the edge of the group, with a leather case wedged between his feet, “claims his daughter disappeared two months ago in Whitby. Bloody Whitby, I ask you—must be nigh on three hundred miles!”

  Charles looks across at the man. He must normally be handsome, but his face is pale and hollowed by anxiety. There is grey about his temples, and threads of silver in his beard. He looks up every few moments—every time a door opens, or there’s another burst of noise from the street.

  “I told him to hook it,” continues the sergeant, “but he refuses to budge. Insists on seeing whoever’s in charge. He’ll have a bloody long wait, that’s all I can say.”

  The sergeant is shaking his head, but Sam and Charles have both remembered where the Baron first came ashore, and are already moving towards the man, who starts up at once saying, “Is it Lucy? Have you found her?”

  “Might be best if you came wiv us, sir,” answers Sam in a low voice. “There’s a room out the back ’ere.”

  The man is paler now, if that were possible, but he picks up his bag and follows them into the room behind the desk. It’s where they keep the lost property, and the lanterns and flasks used by constables on night patrols. The shelves are stacked with umbrellas and briefcases and solitary gloves, and there’s a strong smell of stewed tea. Charles points the man to the only seat, and he sits down slowly, still clutching his bag.

  Sam gets out his notebook. “The sergeant told us you reported your daughter missin’, sir.”

  The man swallows. “I last saw her in Whitby. On the morning of April twentieth.”

  “And you are?”

  The man flushes a little now. “Alexander Causton. But I am not usually known by that name.”

  Sam and Charles exchange a glance; no policeman likes an alias, and the man senses their disapproval. “It’s not what you assume,” he says quickly. “I have a stage persona, that is all. I am the theatrical illusionist Professor de Caus.”

  Charles notes that definite article—not an illusionist, but the illusionist; this man clearly has some reputation, or at the very least pretensions to it, but Charles, for one, has never heard of him.

  “And you live in Whitby?” continues Sam.

  “I was born there, but I have not lived in this country for many years. I have worked on the Continent. First in Paris, and latterly in Vienna.”

  And hence the slight stiffness in his speech, thinks Charles. The stiffness of a man who has not routinely spoken his mother tongue for a very long time.

  “So you came back for an ’oliday? Visit the family?”

  Causton hesitates. “My daughter has been unwell for some time. I consulted many doctors in Austria, but none was able to help—none could even say what ailed her. I thought a change of air and scenery might be of some benefit.”

  He pauses, but his face has darkened now; this is clearly not the whole story, not by a long way.

  “There was another reason, wasn’t there, Mr Causton?” presses Charles.

  The illusionist looks up at him, and then away. “I had also arranged to meet an eminent scientist, who I discovered would be in England at this time. He assured me he could treat my daughter’s condition, and I was naïve enough—stupid enough—to believe him.”

  The bitterness is savagely apparent now.

  “And it’s this man you believe abducted your daughter?”

  “I was away barely an hour, but when I returned the house was empty and she had gone. He left me a message saying he had taken her to Edinburgh for further treatment. He insisted that we had discussed it, that I had consented to it, but it was a wicked falsehood! I had agreed to nothing of the kind. He sought only to throw me off the scent.”

  The man gets up and starts to pace the room. “I was such a fool—such a blind, gullible fool! He claimed the therapy he had pioneered required complete darkness—complete silence. That my presence would serve only to threaten its accomplishment—”

  Charles’s heart sinks. “You allowed him to be alone with your daughter?”

  Causton nods. “You must remember that he was a man of science—a man of medicine. And a member of the aristocracy in the country I now consider my home.”

  Charles shakes his head. “I fear noble blood is no guarantee of rectitude, or not, at least, in the case of the Baron Von Reisenberg. I have proved that to my own cost.”

  Causton stares at him. “I have not uttered his name—how did you—” He stops, and when he speaks again his voice trembles between fear and hope. “So you know about him? But in that case you must know where he is—you must know what he’s done with my Lucy—”

  Sam holds up a hand. “It’s early days, sir. Let’s just say we do know this man ’as been in London for some weeks, and we ’ave reason to believe your daughter might still be wiv ’im. And if she is, there’s a chance we can find ’er and bring ’er ’ome.”

  “I will do anything—God knows what that villain has done to her—”

  Charles and Sam are silent; neither is about to reveal what they found in that apartment, or what Charles deduced had happened there.

  “One question, Mr Causton,” says Charles. “It is more than seven weeks since your daughter disappeared—what have you been doing in that time?”

  “I went first to Edinburgh—I left Whitby that very afternoon, not staying even to pack. I scoured the city looking for them, but there was no trace.”

  Charles nods slowly; that would have taken, what—a week, two? Causton looks at him, evidently divining his thought. “After that I returned to Whitby. I consulted the police, but as soon as they heard that my daughter was of age and the Baron unmarried they claimed they were unable to assist me. But it is unthinkable that she would have left with him of her own accord—unthinkable.”

  There’s something in his voice that suggests to Charles that Causton is trying to convince himself as much as them. And something in all of this that still doesn’t quite add up.

  “So why did you come to London? Why did you think he might have brought your daughter here?”

  “I could think of nowhere else—no other plausible alternative. I knew he might easily conceal her in a city of this size, and so I bought a ticket and boarded a train. That was three weeks ago. Ever since then I have been walking the streets for hours every day, looking for any trace of her—starting at every fair-haired girl I glimpse. I have enquired at hotels, I have been to the Home Office, but everywhere I have met with refusal—no-one has been prepared to give me any information whatsoever. And then, this morning, I saw that newspaper.”

  Sam glances up from his notebook, and Causton bridles. “I am well aware that that uncivil fellow at the desk thinks me insane, but as soon as I saw that report, I knew—there was no possibility of coincidence. And that is why I refused to leave
here. That is why I insisted on seeing someone in authority. Someone like you.”

  Charles frowns. What “coincidence” can the man mean? All the victims were young women, and one of them, at least, was fair-haired, but surely the resemblance ends there? This Lucy, whatever else she might have been, was no whore.

  Causton looks from one to the other. “You do not know of what I speak?”

  “No, sir,” says Sam, nonplussed. “Afraid we don’t.”

  “No-one has informed you about what happened in Whitby? I should have thought, in the circumstances—”

  “Mr Causton,” says Charles, glancing at his pocket-watch, “we have no time to waste. This man already has several hours’ start on us. If you have anything to say that might help us, then say so, and quickly.”

  “Very well. Soon after our arrival in England, Lucy was befriended by the daughter of a lawyer in the town. This girl—Miss Holman—suffered from some kind of wasting sickness that left her pale of skin and weak in limb. I think it was one reason why they were so drawn to each other. But within a few weeks Miss Holman sickened suddenly and died, leaving Lucy inconsolable. I did not discover what took place thereafter until I returned from Edinburgh, but it seems the very morning Lucy disappeared Miss Holman’s father received word that his poor daughter’s grave had been desecrated—her body had been exhumed and the most appalling defacements inflicted on her helpless remains.”

  “Jesus Christ,” mutters Sam, under his breath. “Not a bloody novver one.”

  Causton nods. “I am afraid so. The heart had been cut from the chest cavity, and the head removed. Days later, they had still not been able to discover it. And so you see, now, why I had to come.”

  Sam snaps his notebook shut. “Wait ’ere, would you, Mr Causton?” he says, beckoning to Charles.

  Out in the front office the two of them almost collide with a man with heavy eyebrows and strongly chiselled cheekbones, wearing a coat thickly encrusted with braid. Charles recognises him at once: Richard Mayne, one of the two Joint Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police and the man personally responsible for the policing of the Exhibition. No wonder Rowlandson was not to be disturbed. And no wonder, when they are admitted, that the Inspector is in a less-than-affable mood. But as he listens to what they found in the Albany, and what they have since found out, his anger subsides and the policeman in him quickly subvenes.