by Tim Pratt
“I understand the management is most discreet.”
“It’s quite some distance to transport a dead girl, since she was unlikely to be working in the vicinity. That’s a fair bit of effort—the killer is certainly trying to make some kind of point.” Pimm peered at the victim. “This girl has been dead the best part of a day, yet there is no sign of decomposition. Does that strike you as odd?”
“Mr. Value’s men brought her in a chest of ice. And for my part, I make use of certain… preservative elements,” Adams admitted. “They slow decay, which makes my work more pleasant. You don’t seem troubled by my occupation, if I may say. Most find it off-putting.”
“I had a second cousin who went into the medical profession. He was the despair of the family—until I came along, at least. He told me about his studies, bodies rendered down for their skeletons, cadavers dissected. He explained that the study of the dead could help the living, and ease suffering. It seems a noble enough goal to me, if the poor souls being examined have no families to claim their earthly remains. Not that I expect Mr. Value bothers with such niceties.” He glanced at the giant’s blank white mask. “And you, I wager, are no member of the teaching staff at St. Bartholomew’s?”
“I learned my profession in the old style, as the assistant to a master surgeon, when I was a younger man. I have no formal certificate, nor do I wish for one. I am content to perform my own researches, and my patron finds my work useful enough to fund those studies.”
“You are the one who tested the efficacy of tissue sympathy in victims of the Constantine Affliction, I suspect?”
The giant merely inclined his head.
“Quite clever,” Pimm said. “I do admire such intellectual accomplishment. Do you know what purpose your patron Mr. Value has found for your discovery?” He could not keep an edge of bitterness from his voice.
“Science is a tool, Lord Pembroke. Sometimes it can be used as a weapon, I know. But its intrinsic moral orientation is entirely neutral. The Steel Raja crushes his enemies with steam-powered automatons in the form of war elephants. Yet the same fundamentals of science power the ships that ply the seas, bringing trade to distant shores, and the digging machines that even now chew at the earth beneath the English Channel to connect this island to the Continent. Steam is not evil. Machines are not evil. But their uses can be.”
“An interesting perspective, Mr. Adams. While we are on the subject of evil, let us return to the nature of the murder before us. In your medical opinion, what was the cause of death? The poor girl has not a mark on her.”
“Poisoning, this time. Or perhaps inhalation of ether or some other chemical. Sometimes the killer—assuming it is the same killer—suffocates his victims, but in this case, there are no broken blood vessels in the eyes, as one sees in smotherings, and no marks on the throat, such as one finds in cases of throttling.” He paused. “The victims—there have been five—have all been only lightly marked, each more pristine than the last. When Mr. Value’s men found the first girl, they thought her heart had simply stopped, though no one understood why she’d strayed so far from her preferred neighborhood, to fall dead on the steps of a clockwork brothel. When another girl was found dead at a different establishment belonging to Mr. Value a week later… well. Coincidence no longer seemed likely.”
“Hmm.” Pimm gazed into the poor girl’s blank blue eyes. “If only she could tell us what she’d seen. The best witness of any murder is always, sadly, beyond the reach of questioning.”
“Not necessarily,” Mr. Adams said. “If a victim were brought to me within an hour of her death, say, I might compel her to answer a question or two. Any later, and the brain would surely be too damaged to be revived, but…” He shrugged.
Pimm stared at him. That explained why Adams had to work for a man like Value; he was mad. “What you describe… it’s impossible. Necromancy.”
“The body is a machine, Lord Pembroke. I will not address the question of whether humans have souls—but they do have brains, and those brains, if nothing else, reveal the pathways and passages favored by the thoughts of those souls. The cells begin to break down and decay soon after death, it is true, but if I could access the brain before decay went too far, who knows what secrets might be recovered?” He shrugged. “The difference between life and death is less clearly delineated than you might suppose. Bring me a fresh dead girl, and she might tell you her secrets.”
Pimm shuddered. “Cutting apart these bodies to learn the secrets of life—that is distasteful, Mr. Adams, but I recognize how it serves a greater good. What you describe now is…. One hates to be overdramatic, but I am tempted to call it blasphemy. To speak to the dead must surely be an affront to God.”
Mr. Adams chuckled behind his impassive mask. “Hadn’t you heard, sir? Man has already seized the power of the gods. We have stolen fire, and we bank those fires ever higher. We have eaten of the fruit of knowledge, and been expelled from the Garden, and yet every day we try to claw our way back into that lost Eden.” He took a shining scalpel from a tray of instruments. “Bring me a fresh victim, and you may be able to ask her what Heaven looks like personally. Though you might not like the answer.”
Pimm turned away before Adams made his first incision.
Escape from a Mechanical Brothel!
Ellie ran, of course, because she knew a threat when she heard one, no matter how genial the phrasing. She jerked the door shut after her and hurried down the hallway toward the stairs. As she ran, several doors along the hallway swung open… and clockwork courtesans stepped out.
She hadn’t realized they could walk, and they probably weren’t often called upon to do so, but they walked now, emerging naked or dressed in bits of lingerie, moving two abreast to block her path to the stairs. Men shouted angrily in a couple of the rooms, their mechanical paramours having abandoned them in the midst of carnal acts. (Though technically to be a “carnal” act, Ellie supposed both people involved had to be made of flesh.)
Ellie considered just trying to push through the courtesans, but there were half a dozen of the machines standing, blank-faced and patient. What if they seized her? The thought of being touched by such creatures—especially the ones that had so recently been touched by men—was abhorrent. She turned the other way, though there was nothing at that end of the hallway but a velvet curtain. Though she had no idea what waited behind that barrier, it seemed unlikely that it would be worse than a small army of mechanical women. Oddly, Sir Bertram didn’t emerge from his room to pursue her—perhaps he was afraid someone else would discover his presence here? The man widely believed to be the Queen’s unofficial consort—some wags even called Queen Victoria “Mrs. Oswald”—found in a house of extremely ill repute, in the act of tinkering with the mechanical innards of one of the clockwork courtesans… the scandal would be extraordinary!
But there was no time to think of being a reporter now. Ellie dashed for the curtain, pulled it aside, and found a set of stairs. As she rushed upward, she heard human voices shouting in the hall below. Were they merely angry clients, or the rough men who inevitably policed establishments like this? Men like Crippen? The stairs switchbacked, leading up to the third floor, and to another velvet curtain. Ellie peeked around the edge of the flimsy barrier, and saw only another hallway, not unlike the one she’d just escaped. These doors were all closed, except for one on the left at the far end. She raced down the hall and looked into that room. It was furnished in the same style as the other boudoirs, but presently unoccupied by either man or machine. Ellie pulled the door shut behind her and listened intently.
Footsteps pounded up the stairs, and a male voice—not Oswald’s—said, “He must be hiding here somewhere. Check the rooms.”
Ellie rushed to the window, hoping for a ledge she could stand on, but when she threw back the drapes, there was no window; it had been boarded up, and the nails were driven too deep for her to pry them loose. She could hear, faintly, doors opening farther down the hall. They would reach
her, soon, and when they did…
She closed her eyes for a moment. They were looking for a man. Well, then. She’d just have to make sure they didn’t find one.
Ellie tore off her false mustache and stuffed it in her coat pocket, then slipped off the coat, vest, shirt, shoes, and socks, and undid her trousers, finally removing her underwear. She unwrapped the bandages that constricted her breasts—worse than a corset, honestly, and at least unwinding them was a relief—and hurriedly wadded up the clothes and shoved them deep under the bed. Now she could just climb into the bed and try to look like a switched-off machine, with the covers arrayed to hide her modesty—
Her hair. All the models had long hair, of course. She went to the sea chest at the foot of the bed, though it was a futile hope. The courtesan she’d examined hadn’t been wearing a wig, after all, the hairs had been sewn into her scalp—
And yet, in the depths of the chest, beneath the frills and bits of leather, she found a blonde wig, a pair of ridiculously oversized high-heeled shoes, and a corset large enough to fit a gorilla. How odd. Clearly none of this clothing was made to fit the clockwork women, so whom—
A door nearby opened with a crash, so Ellie hurriedly pulled the wig over her own head, trying not to think of who might have worn the false hair last. She checked herself in one of the mirrors, adjusting the wig and trying not to notice her own nude body, something she’d certainly never perused in a looking glass before. Ellie was not as bountiful in her figure as the Delilah model, but some of the sketches had shown slimmer models, so perhaps she could pass.
After snatching up a flowing silk scarf and draping it around her neck and to cover her breasts, she hurried onto the bed, trying to remember how the courtesan in her room had been arranged. Not too lewdly, fortunately—it had been almost demure, like a sleeping woman, and she should pretend to be the same. She stretched on the coverlet, hoping the bedclothes were laundered between sessions but knowing they almost certainly weren’t, and rested her head on the pillow. Eyes open, or eyes closed? She settled for a sleepy sort of half-lidded gaze which allowed her to keep an eye on the door. The clockwork women appeared to breathe, and even to move, in imitation of life—now she would have to imitate their imitation. At least the alchemical light on the dresser was relatively dim.
As she awaited capture, she wondered how much of this she could put in her story. Precious little if Cooper insisted on using “A Gentleman” as a byline. He’d sell more papers if he let it be known a woman had done the report, but he would also risk being denounced in Parliament. The story skirted the edge of decency anyway. Perhaps if she wrote it as a fiction…
Keep your head, Eleanor, she scolded herself. In times of extreme stress her mind tended to spin and whirl, addressing everything except the problem at hand. When she’d gotten word of David’s death in India, all her thoughts had gone to practical matters: how to assist the family with funeral arrangements, the difficulty of conducting those arrangements when his remains were impossible to recover, making sure his mother and sisters had all the support they needed, and so on. It was weeks after the services before the grief finally caught up with her, a wave of sudden loss that had had made her knees buckle in a millinery shop. The shopgirl had assumed Ellie was swooning. Alas, no. She was entirely conscious the entire time. That was the problem. Those who fainted in the extremity of emotion were lucky. Ellie was awake and aware to experience everything.
The door opened, and Ellie willed herself to lay still. Her concubine hadn’t reacted until Ellie touched it, so there was no reason she herself should react to the sudden entry of a lantern-jawed man in an ill-fitting suit—“Crippler” Crippen.
Crippen looked behind the drapes, but paid no more attention to Ellie than he would to an ornamental vase or an ottoman. He crouched and looked under the bed, and Ellie tensed, lest he discover the men’s clothing and false mustache and make the connection. But apparently a wad of discarded clothes was no reason for alarm in this establishment, for he rose to his feet and turned toward the door.
Then he paused, and looked down at Ellie, and grunted.
She did her very best not to tense, or to flicker her half-lidded eyes. Crippen leaned over her, openly ogling—and why not? She was a machine; she had no dignity or modesty to protect. That was the point. Still, his gaze made her skin crawl, and it was so much worse when he extended a hand toward her bosom—
“Here, now, no time to play with the dollies,” said a gruff voice from the hallway. “I checked all the rooms on the other side, and the bloke’s nowhere to be found. Must have slipped past the mechanical dollymops before we got upstairs. The old man’s going to be furious, he is.”
“Who cares if some toff’s poking a rubber doll anyway?” Crippen prodded Ellie in the ribs sharply with his forefinger, as if by way of illustration, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out.
“What, you don’t know? That man with the funny goggles isn’t just any old knight of the realm, Crippler. He’s got the Queen’s ear.”
“Ha. Just her ear, then?” Crippen said. “None of her other parts? Maybe he comes here because Vicky doesn’t satisfy—”
To Ellie’s surprise, the other man stalked over to Crippen and snarled. “Here now, don’t go disrespecting our sovereign. She’s our mum, ain’t she?”
“She’s got nine children, but I’m not one of them,” Crippen said. “I didn’t know you loved her so.”
“Just watch what you say,” the man said darkly, and stormed out of the room. Crippen chuckled and pulled the door closed after them, leaving Ellie alone.
She’d survived that, at least.
Now what?
“Charles!” Ellie bellowed, slamming open a door, and startling the man inside. He was in his fifties at least, pale as a fluffy cloud, and with a similarly amorphous body shape. He fell off the clockwork woman he’d been riding and landed on the other side of the bed, where he cowered. Ellie stomped on to the next room, brushing a length of blonde hair out of her face. She’d done the best she could, dress-wise, though the most modest thing she’d found to wear in the courtesan’s room was a satin evening gown better fitted to a ballroom than a boudoir, and there were a few small stains on the skirts she chose not to contemplate too deeply. Who knew the fantasies of men were so elaborate? The dress didn’t fit her terribly well, and she had entirely the wrong undergarments, but it would stay on her body, and any disarray would likely be overlooked given her obvious state of agitation.
She flung the next door open. “Charles, I know you’re here, you debased animal, you wretched philanderer—”
“Madam!” The man who’d admitted her to the establishment earlier rushed down the hall toward her, and Ellie had a twinge of fear that he would recognize her, but he saw what he was meant to see: a furious woman, looking for her husband.
“I wish to see my husband at once,” she said icily.
“Madam, I’m terribly sorry, no one by the name Charles is here this evening, I can assure you. If you’d like, I can make sure a message reaches him if he—”
“As if I would trust a message to someone employed in this… this den of iniquity!”
He winced. “Madam, please, I understand your distress, but you are quite correct—this is no appropriate place for a lady.”
Ellie made a great show of calming herself and controlling her emotions. “Yes. Fine. I’m sure you are quite correct. I should… Perhaps I should go.”
“Please, allow me to escort you out.” He took her gently by the arm and led her toward the stairs, which would take her to the first floor and, blessedly, the front door. “If I may ask, madam, how did you obtain entry to the premises?”
“I knocked at the door, and no one answered. I tried the knob, and it opened. I heard shouting upstairs—I gather there was some commotion here?”
He colored. “Yes, madam. One of our guests suffered a mishap. Nothing serious, I assure you.”
Ellie said nothing as they proceed
ed to the front door. The man touched the doorknob, then paused, and Ellie was afraid he’d recognized her after all. But he merely looked at the ceiling, and said in a low, solicitous voice, “I hope madam will forgive me for saying so, as it is hardly my place, but… men have certain needs. Surely it is better for your husband to sate those needs here, in a safe, clean establishment, where he will not suffer any… ill effects… than to seek satisfaction in less salubrious circumstances?”
“I will thank you to keep your opinions about my husband to yourself, sir,” Ellie replied in her best icy matron’s voice. The man sighed, nodded, and opened the door.
Ellie stepped out, walked in stately dignity toward the nearest alley, and, once she made sure no one was watching, slipped into the shadows and shrugged off the dress. She was wearing the suit Mr. James had provided her underneath, with the jacket tied around her waist by the sleeves. She shoved the dress into a heap of rubbish, along with the wig, though she hesitated over the last; it was good quality, and her hair had been cut terribly short. But better to erase any connection between herself and the brothel. She had not re-bound her breasts, and though the cut of the jacket was generous enough to keep her from looking too obviously feminine, she still worried the ruse was unconvincing. Her mustache would not reattach to her face, the adhesive of pine tar and alcohol having lost its efficacy. She pulled her hat low, looked down at her feet, and walked in as straight a line as she could manage in the direction of Mr. James’s shop so she could recover her own clothes. She would not tell her dear uncle of her dangerous experience, nor would she tell her editor—at least, not yet.
Ellie had gone in search of a bit of risqué fluff for the newspaper. In the process, she’d stumbled onto a mysterious link between the brothel’s apparent owner, the notorious criminal Abel Value, and Bertram Oswald, the Queen’s closest confidant. She could scarcely imagine a more unlikely pairing.
