The Missing: The Curious Cases of Will Winchester and the Black Cross

by Jerico Lenk

  I looked between Cain and Clement—Cain, dozed off, having made a pillow out of his muffler on Clement’s shoulder. And sleepy-eyed Clement, slouched in terrible posture with his arms crossed. He caught my glance to raise his brows, mouth perking in silent laughter at Cain’s childish nap.

  Perhaps I was overtired, or vulnerable after my talk with Cain; perhaps I’d simply had a bit too much to drink for my tiny body. But I was just suddenly so pleasantly overwhelmed by it all, and helpless against the smile that warmed my face.

  It took almost a week of balking and dwelling for me to finally sit down before Cain in the dining hall and declare, “There is something imperative I must bring up.”

  Cain looked over from his lunch of soup and hash, blinking a few times. “Mm-hmm?”

  I chewed on my lower lip. It seemed so outlandish and needless, but …

  “What are the chances of seeing the same thing twice, in two separate possessions?” I asked.

  Cain frowned. “And how do you mean?”

  “The cameo ring.”

  He waited, as if he expected me to say more. “Cameo ring,” he repeated dispassionately when I did not.

  “A gold ring, with a conch shell cameo on it.” I leaned closer over the table to him. “I saw it at the Starlight. An actress was murdered, but the villain made it appear suicide, and hasn’t ever been apprehended. He wore a pink cameo ring on his thumb. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but then I remembered I’d seen the ring before. At Miss Ophie’s, with Miss Maude.”

  Cain nodded slowly, brows just gently raised. “Miss Maude, with the psychograph. The one who died of excess … ”

  “Opium, yes,” I rushed in a half-whisper, “but she did not inject herself. Remember? If you don’t, it might be in the file. Quinn recorded all you said.”

  “I recall.”

  “And the hand on the syringe, did you see it? I did, before the possession moved to you. The ring was there. It was pink. Same design. The same ring, Cain. I’m positive. Is that not peculiar? It can’t be coincidence.”

  Cain peered at me intently with his owl eyes, which had grown wider and rounder as I last spoke, a bit intimidating below his still-knotted brow. For a moment, I thought he didn’t believe me; he thought me mad and was finally realising it.

  “So … ” I ventured.

  He stared at me a breath or two longer, then dropped his spoon with a dainty clatter.

  “So, what if Miss Maude was murdered, as well?” he breathed, taking the words right from my lips.

  ***

  Clement was irascible per usual. We’d apparently woken him up. He slumped on the pinstriped chaise in the shadowy corner of his room, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

  “I don’t know what riddles have you two all excited, but I don’t have time for Mother Goose,” he grumbled.

  “We’ve discovered a murderer,” Cain announced forthwith.

  I swung a pointed look at him, eyes wide. He just shrugged.

  Clement glared. “I could still be sleeping right now.”

  I sighed. “Clement, what Cain means is something feels afoot.”

  “And what on earth could that be?”

  Cain and I traded a glance.

  “The cameo ring,” I said, meekly. Clement just stared at us, uninterested. I heaved another sigh. “During inspection, in our possessions, twice a pink cameo ring has shown up. Once at Miss Ophie’s—we both saw it—and in the theater, the man who … you know. He wore it.”

  Clement rubbed at his face. “It’s a popular fashion.”

  “The curiosity has some merit,” Cain argued. “One of the cases involves a murder recorded in death ledgers as a suicide. Miss Maude was administered the tincture of opium by someone else, and that someone else wore the same ring.”

  “Right,” I urged, stomach all aflutter as the more we spoke of it, the realer it felt. “Well, consider the possibility Miss Maude did not die as officially recorded, either! You see? Paying attention to the spirits before we just eradicate them is important, isn’t it?”

  Clement scoffed weakly at that, but did not argue. He fell quiet, chin in hand. Finally, he threw his hands down and rose from the chaise. “I’ll be going back to sleep now, if you two don’t mind.”

  Frantically, I stepped in his way to keep him from his bed. “Clement—”

  He sighed through his teeth and sat down again, veritably sulking as he leaned back against the wall with arms crossed. “All right. You two mean to suggest the man who killed Miss Hughling also slew Miss Maude, and that he is still at large.”

  “Yes!” Cain and I cried, exasperated.

  “I just want to sleep,” Clement whined, rubbing at his face.

  “Should we notify Bartlett?” I asked. “Westwood?”

  “No.” Clement pointed. “You’re not telling anyone else. Not yet. Right now, this is merely a puzzle keeping you children busy.”

  “Must you be an ass?” I muttered. “Innocent girls have been murdered.”

  He sighed, dragging a hand down his face again. “You do realise that, to hypothetically solve this hypothetical mystery of yours, there must be more murders with more evidence of the ring.”

  “Not necessarily,” Cain pressed. “We can do our best to avoid that.”

  “If we could compare police records with Black Cross files and see if any cases note a—the circle!” I spun to Cain, eyes wide. But I hadn’t told him of that. My wild glance swerved to Clement. “The circle,” I said again. “In the theater. The man hung Miss Hughling over the center of a circle.” I waved my hands in the vague shape of it. “Like the circle we use to bottle spirits, but different. Something occult, though, certainly.”

  Clement sat up straighter, suddenly awake enough to flash me a brutally reproving glance. “And you divulge this now?”

  “I forgot,” I sputtered, blushing and frantically contrite. “I’d been in shock.” It was only half false, and I did feel guilty for the lie. I had no idea why I’d kept quiet about it.

  “You’re sure there was a circle? It wasn’t, I don’t know, a patterned rug?”

  “Well, what I saw was a bit blurry and fast … ”

  “Cults, Clement.” Cain leaned back against the desk. “It’s been some time since the Cross encountered a cult, hasn’t it?”

  Restless, Clement’s hands raked through his unruly hair, one of those gestures that seemed unfairly charming for his usual deportment. He slid his gaze over to Cain. “Say, Kingsley, haven’t you got a meeting with your secretary today?”

  Cain pushed off the desk, eyes widening. “Ah, you’re right! What time is it? Blast. Tilmont won’t be happy at all. I’m late—”

  “Wait,” Clement said, with uncommon patience and a loose fist pressed to his mouth as he stared darkly at nothing in particular. Finally, he husked, “Not a word about this elsewhere. It’s a riddle yet. This damn ring you see may be pure coincidence, and perhaps you didn’t see a circle, Will. Perhaps the girls knew the same man. Doesn’t mean he killed both. And anyway, Miss Hughling’s death was somehow concealed, so if there is a common villain, he may have that sort of power, and that’s something. But … ”

  Clement uttered a sigh that was more like the beginning of a groan, flopping down on the chaise and folding both arms over his head.

  “If it’ll put you both at ease,” he said, “we’ll visit Zayne later for a bit of after-hours research into recent—recent—unnatural or suspicious-sounding deaths. Not because I believe something’s really afoot. It’s for my own damn peace of mind, so you two will let this go once you agree it’s all nonsense.”

  I could see it written all over him that he didn’t quite mean that. He just wouldn’t admit he could not discount the odd reoccurrence of the cameo ring, either. And certainly, he felt obliged after he’d wrongfully failed to mention the unsolved attack on Miss Hughling to avoid discipline.

  Sounding defeated, he added, “Only when I say so—then and only then—shall we approach Westwood a
nd Scotland Yard. Understood?”

  ***

  Holiday spirit had officially inundated the world. The Crystal Palace and Polytechnic Institution were at it again, as every year, competing for most brilliant decorations. Roasted chestnuts sweetened the icy smell of the Thames as carolers strolled the slushy streets. And in the front room of the Stygian Society, Mr. Zayne peeked at Clement from his side of the examination table desk, with cracked spectacles perched on his nose and an old handwritten book open in front of him below a dusty graphoscope.

  “A mystery?” he said.

  “Something like it,” Clement grumbled. “More like random incidents that may or may not be related in a suspicious fashion.”

  “Why don’t you go to Quinn?” Zayne pushed the cracked spectacles to rest atop his head, his rolled-up sleeves stained with ink. “Surely he’s got more to offer you regarding a suspected serial murderer.”

  “It’s not that dire yet,” Clement said.

  Mr. Zayne sent him a disbelieving glance. “Well, it all seems so. Winchester’s nothing but wide eyes and Kingsley is staring into that mirror so deep, you’d think he might see the other side through it.”

  Cain jumped, flushing guiltily and looking around at us with a frown. “What?” he said. “No, I’m not.”

  “Clement,” Mr. Zayne whispered, gravely. “Simply tell me what I might do for you, and I’m on it.”

  Clement pulled a chair up to the ghastly desk with an awful scrape across the floor and announced, “We require a look through your books.”

  By the light of candles and over endless chains of fresh cigarettes, we crowded about Mr. Zayne’s ancient-smelling books to weed through entries that danced across the yellowed pages like handwritten lace, for any unnatural deaths in London over the last five years. Accidents, suicides, murders, anything that wasn’t sickness or age and that perhaps had some reference to an unknown assailant.

  “Find anything?” Mr. Zayne hummed after no less than two hours. As a light snow fell sadly down along the shutters, he sat cross-legged at the door with a stray cat he’d let in off Fleet Street, feeding it some Russian salted salmon right from the tin.

  Clement leaned back with a creak of the chair, covering his face with both hands and sighing long and tired into them. “The only ‘motif’ we have,” he said wearily, “is that both Miss Hughling and Miss Maude were young women who died tragically, in a way that is easily left alone—or easily concealed. There is no organised timeline that might correspond with cult ritual. Then again, our list is … what was it, Kingsley? Two hundred names long? Five years and two hundred-some unnatural deaths.”

  “Then you have nothing.” Mr. Zayne tapped the tin of salmon to loosen it up for the cat. “What are you to do, now?”

  Clement dropped his hands to his lap and looked at Cain silently—looked at me. He folded the list of names up and slid it Cain’s way.

  “Pick through Hermes Hall and see if any cases match those names,” he murmured. “Winchester, consult the cult cases for a circle that best matches what you believe you saw.”

  Cain looked to me as though I were the one to approve the decision. I shrugged, rubbing at the side of my neck. My eyes burned from so long hunched over the tight, minute names and dates and cemetery plots in the big books.

  The pink cameo ring …

  “Well,” I said. “What else are we to do, I suppose?”

  Cain crouched by the small mantle in our corner of Hermes Hall, poking at the coke there, which someone had kept stoked all night, until it flared up into tiny flames again. I ran my thumbnail along the ridge of my teeth, slumped in one of the hard-backed chairs at the table under the window and reading the list of names from Mr. Zayne’s books over and over, and over again.

  “How many names have we gotten through already?” Cain asked below a sigh.

  I dropped the slip of paper and propped a foot on the edge of the chair, leaning forward against my knee. “Thirty-seven and only three corresponding with cases here.”

  He stood up, reaching high to stretch his back. “I want tea. I’ll make us both tea.”

  His footsteps drifted away down the hall. The fire popped and rustled under the mantle. A delicate lace of ice had gathered at the corners of the windows, and outside across the way snow turned Regent’s Park soft and white. Stories below, street-cleaners scraped at the slush; voices and action rattled around in the icy air.

  The chair creaked as I unfolded myself from it to wander slowly over to the shelves. SPECTRAL DEPARTMENT, the plaque read … Cain had said the cult cases were in the archives of the Religious Department.

  Combing my fingers through my hair, tucking behind my ears the longer pieces there, I rounded into the neighbouring room. RELIGIOUS DEPARTMENT. The grate was empty, the room colder and emptier for it. Still, and silent. Pale wintry light pried through half-opened curtains. Next door, spectral case files formed three shelves down the center of the room, with one small rolling ladder; here, case files only loosely filled the space between books on the subject.

  The floor whined a bit underfoot. I pulled a file down, flipping it open. Flimsy, yellowed pages—Daemonologie, by King James VI. Theology books with fraying spines, dusty treatises … I plucked another thin file down. No. XVII – The Witches of Somerset.

  My heart gave a little twist.

  Witchcraft.

  Beside it, Clavicula Salomonis. The Key of Solomon. I slid the case file back on the shelf and pulled the grimoire down. Inside it was a plethora of conjurations, pentacles, circles … How could I possibly find precisely what I’d seen in the Starlight? I’d need to draw it myself, as well as I could remember it.

  Footsteps sounded down the hall, too heavy to be Cain’s. Frantic, unsure of what I’d say if I were found poking through witchcraft files, I shut the book and tucked it under my arm, turning sharply through the doorway—

  “Oh!” It was a disgruntled sound of dismay as I collided with Officer Dorland, who was on his way into the very room with a file marked No. MCMXCIII in one hand. I staggered back a step or two, dropping the grimoire in a terrible flutter of pages.

  Dorland himself reared back with a scrape of the heel and a look like he’d just seen a ghost. Which was very ironic. And for which I had to excuse him, as he was not an inspector and possessed no spectral talents as far as I knew.

  Gathering himself quickly, face flushed, his beady eyes hung attentively on my every twitch as I stooped to gather up the book, saying, “Excuse me, sir, I’m sorry … ”

  I cradled the book to my chest, smoothing out the pages on which it had landed as I hurried around him through the door. But, swiftly, Dorland caught me by the elbow.

  My heart stopped as I looked up at him. Days like this, on which I felt very much a girl constantly alert to the differences between myself and the rest of those in the role under which I was housed, a man like Dorland made me feel very small and in trouble. His dark little eyes roamed over me; I was almost too flustered to realise it was a pinch of regret to his pink face, nothing else.

  “Forgive me.” He cleared his throat. “For startling you. For a moment, I—mistook you for someone, whom you couldn’t possibly be.”

  “Well, we worked together,” I reminded him in a soft, tiny way. “At the girls’ school. And we spoke on All Hallows’. I don’t know that you remember, I was dressed up.”

  “Ah, yes.” I could not discern whether he truly remembered or not. “Mr. … Mr. … ?”

  His gaze drooped to the book in my hands, open on a page full of pentacles and amulets. I snapped it shut and cleared my throat lest I not be able to speak with my heart thundering below it.

  “Winchester,” I peeped. “Spectral inspector. Winchester.”

  His eyes cut to me fast; he squinted a bit tighter before releasing my arm, slowly. “I knew a Mrs. Winchester! In fact, I … pardon my bad manners.”

  I froze.

  “Margot Winchester?” I whispered.

  Dorland livened, remarkably�
��and nothing about it felt pretense. “Yes, actually.”

  “My mother,” I said, feeling dizzy and cold. I opened my mouth for more, but there was nothing else.

  “You don’t say!” he cried. “Yes, I knew her!”

  A lump thickened in my throat. I couldn’t breathe.

  Dorland’s eyes danced. “She was quite the medium, yes … passed only two days before her interview with the Cross. Such a tragedy. I’m so very sorry … I hadn’t known she had a son. I hadn’t known she had a child at all.”

  He’d known my mother. She had intended to join the Black Cross. Puzzle pieces, handfuls of puzzle pieces, and yet none of them matched together yet, not enough to see anything at all.

  “I was very small when she died.” I swallowed, mouth dry. “And my father didn’t speak of her much.”

  “We must take luncheon together one of these days,” he pressed. “I would feel honoured to share with you all I know of Mrs. Winchester, the wonderful woman that she was.”

  “Of course!” I blushed for my own unexpected eagerness. My head spun. Dorland wasn’t exactly preferable company, but he knew more about my mother than I did and I still burned with anger but I wanted to hear it. “I have a case tonight,” I said. “So perhaps not tomorrow. Will you be on grounds, or are you leaving for holiday?”

  “Will.”

  Dorland and I both turned sharply, to where down the hall Cain stood at the mouth of the stairs carefully carrying two little cups of tea. There was that darker side of him—the mismatching owl eyes, head slightly lowered.

  Everything in Dorland’s expression soured. “Why, Kingsley, it is good to see you again.”

  “You as well, Dorland.” Cain turned on his heel and strode unhappily into the spectral archives.

  I bobbed my head graciously to Dorland then hurried after Cain, hoping Dorland did not mistake my excitement for some sort of tolerance of him as a person. He merely nodded his head in return as he disappeared into the other room, a bit too turtle-chinned and beady-eyed to look gentlemanly without seeming snide.