The Constantine Affliction

by Tim Pratt

  “We just have a few questions,” Lord Pembroke said. “They will take scarcely a moment.” His voice didn’t slur at all, every syllable clearly enunciated. He seemed, if anything, more sober than he had when he was actually sober. But was it a slightly exaggerated sobriety, an act of sobriety?

  Ellie hadn’t always been an only child. Her brother Robert had fallen in with bad companions, taken far too serious a liking to rotgut whiskey, and died with a bottle in his hand and without a penny in his pocket. The whites of his eyes had turned yellow, a sign that his poor beleaguered liver had given up under the onslaught of poison he daily ingested. But Robert had been quite charming, after a drink or two. It was only after three or four that he became a dark cloud in human form.

  “Come in, then,” Worth said, stepping back, and ushering them into the foyer. He shut and locked the door after them, then led them to his study, a room dominated by a large wooden desk, its surface devoid of anything but an inkwell, a sand cellar, and an uncut quill pen. The walls were covered in framed drawings of birds, but there were no shelves, and no books. “A drink, gentlemen?” He went to a small bar and began rattling glassware.

  Lord Pembroke stepped around and in front of Ellie, clasping his walking stick in both hands. “No, thank you, we won’t be here that long. We have a witness who saw you in the vicinity of the murder.”

  Worth stiffened, his back still turned to them. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no.” Lord Pembroke chuckled. “My apologies. No, we have no reason to suspect you, sir, we merely wanted to ascertain whether you had, in fact, been in the area, and whether you might have seen any suspicious—”

  The killer whirled, a knife in his hand, and lunged toward Lord Pembroke. Ellie gasped and staggered back a step, but Lord Pembroke merely lifted his walking stick and prodded the ruffian in the chest with its head. Ellie expected Worth to bat the stick aside and strike, but instead, there was a peculiar buzzing sound, and Worth gasped, then collapsed, knife falling from his hand. He fell to the carpet and twitched, his body drawn in on itself like a dying spider’s. He squirmed and moaned and spasmed.

  Lord Pembroke sighed. “It does make it easier when they try to kill you—it’s the next best thing to a tearful confession—but I always find it so tiresome when things descend to the level of gross physicality. I imagine he recognized you, and knew you’d seen him fleeing the scene of the crime. He felt the walls closing in, and made a last desperate attempt to break free.”

  “Did he suffer a heart attack?” Ellie wondered. “Or is he… having some sort of fit?”

  “Oh, no, it’s my walking stick.” Lord Pembroke held up the item, and pointed to the silver ball on top. “My—ah, a friend of mine, made certain modifications for me. There are batteries hidden in the body of the stick, and there is a switch here, you see. I can activate the switch and discharge a potent electric shock through the metal ball at the top. Like going swimming with an electric eel. It tends to end arguments quickly.”

  Electricity! “Will he recover?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I wouldn’t use such a device against the aged or infirm, or someone with a weak heart, but for a healthy adult, the effects are temporary. Convulsive muscle spasms, loss of motor control. It should pass in a few moments.” He kicked the knife away from Worth’s hand. “Granted, I did not know before I struck whether Mr. Worth had a bad heart, but the fact that he was attempting to stab me made me less concerned for his well being than I might have been otherwise.”

  “What happens now? Do we send for the police?”

  “Oh, eventually,” Lord Pembroke said. “But we need to have a conversation with him first. Let’s see if we can find something to tie him up with before he recovers, shall we?”

  True Confessions

  Pimm sat patiently in one of Worth’s chairs, one leg crossed over the other. His attention kept drifting to the bar along one wall, and the bottles Worth had pretended to fuss with as he’d readied his knife for a desperate lunge. A drink would be a great comfort now, but he didn’t think Skye would approve. “Skye”—of course her name was really “Skyler,” but her nom de plume seemed a better fit in the current circumstances.

  Her writing was truly her, he suspected, while in person he had interacted only with her disguises: respectable matron outside Value’s office, man with a horrible mustache now. Her piece on the victims of the Affliction had been thoughtful and sensitive without being overly sentimental, the journalistic voice reserved and careful, while she expertly chose and juxtaposed quotes from her subjects to create more emotional effects. He hadn’t remembered the byline on the article, but knowing now that it had come from her pen only increased his respect for her. Pimm could write a letter well enough, and he’d dashed off the odd essay at Oxford, but the ability to change minds and moods with the written word was a talent he’d never cultivated, and he admired it.

  Spoken words, though, were a different matter. He could sometimes change moods, minds, and even lives with those. He tapped Worth gently on the knee with the wooden end of his walking stick. “Mr. Worth, please. You awakened almost five minutes ago. Please stop feigning unconsciousness. I’ve given you time to gather your thoughts, but now, really, we must speak.”

  Worth lifted his head. He didn’t strain against his bonds, which held his ankles to the chair’s legs, and his wrists to the chair’s arms. Skye had found the rope in one of the other rooms, used to tie up drapes, and Pimm had pressed them into their current service. The chair was more likely to give way than the knots.

  Worth stared at Pimm with eyes empty and despairing. “I have been thinking,” Worth said, voice dull. “You did not summon the Peelers. You are not working for the police.”

  Pimm nodded. “Not in this particular instance. We are acting as private individuals. Concerned citizens. We—”

  “You work for Value.”

  That rankled. “Mr. Value did ask for my assistance, yes. He takes a dim view of his employees being murdered.”

  Worth shook his head. “Only when someone else is doing the murdering.”

  “You do not deny your actions, then?” Skye said, and Worth flinched, trying to look behind him. Skye sat there, in a corner, in shadow, watching. Observing. Very likely recording, though Pimm dearly hoped none of this would end up in the newspaper.

  “That I killed those women?” Worth shook his head. “I did it.”

  “Because you lost your wife?” Skye said. “Because you blamed them for the disease you brought home, that transformed your beloved?”

  “You lot have done your research,” Worth said. “Though not quite enough, it seems. No, I don’t blame the whores for that misfortune. I did not kill them out of some sense of outrage, or for revenge. I know about whores, sir. I was a whoremaster, once, and a successful one.”

  Ah, Pimm thought. A disgruntled employee, then? One of Value’s lieutenants, turning against his master, killing the women who earned Value money in an attempt to hurt his enemy’s business? Plausible, though less romantic than the notion that his grief over his wife’s transformation had driven him to derangement.

  Worth went on. “Those women working the street will have short and unpleasant lives anyway. Their miserable deaths are a foregone conclusion. At least with me they died swiftly, in a cloud of obliterating ether, a loss of breath that lulls them to a sleep and shades into easy death. I had hoped to save them from pointless deaths—to see that their deaths had meaning.”

  Pimm had heard many justifications for homicide. Revenge, fury, whim, compulsion. But to give the lives of the murdered meaning? That was a novelty. “How do you mean? What kind of meaning?”

  “I killed them, his whores, and I left them, on the steps of his brothels, because I hoped that would make the police finally investigate him. I thought such murders could not be ignored, especially if they came swiftly, in series, I thought surely they would draw attention to his business.”

  As if there were no better ways t
o draw the attention of the police! Though it was true, a series of murders would certainly have more impact than an anonymous letter full of unsupported accusations. Pimm cleared his throat. “I can assure you, the police are well aware of Mr. Value. He is the subject of many ongoing investigations—”

  “They suspect nothing,” Worth said. “They think he is merely a criminal, but he is involved in so much more, crimes that make smuggling and prostitution and theft look like schoolyard japes.”

  “Enlighten me, then,” Pimm said. “I so enjoy learning new things.”

  The man began to tremble, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Enough of this folly. Go ahead. Kill me.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Pimm said.

  Worth opened first one eye, then the other. “You… Do not toy with me, sir. You have been sent to kill me. Pray, do it, and let my suffering end.”

  “We are not murderers,” Skye said. “We are, ah, detectives. We seek only the truth.”

  Worth began to laugh. “You are fools. You work for Value. You think you are merely investigators? If you are not assassins yourselves, then you are the assassin’s hounds, leading him to his prey. When Value finds out I was the one murdering his whores, I will be fed to the things that live in the Thames, or tossed over the wall into what was Whitechapel. He does that, you know, to his most hated enemies. Some of those have survived for days inside, screaming at the walls, until they give in to thirst and try to drink what passes for water there.”

  Pimm suppressed a shudder. “I have not alerted Value to my findings. I am here on my own. I do not doubt that something terrible will befall you if Value learns your identity, and I cannot stall the man forever. But you have another option open to you.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Confess,” Pimm said. “I know men in the police, trustworthy men, incorruptible men—”

  “I have heard you called incorruptible, Lord Pembroke, and yet you took Value’s coin.”

  Pimm was offended, for an instant, and then he chuckled. “His coin? I neither need nor want his coin, Mr. Worth. My family is not one of those that possess titles and little else. We still have our wealth. Money is… simply not something I need to think about. I agreed to assist Mr. Value in order to stop a murderer. Mr. Value wished to avoid police involvement, and I agreed to his terms because I knew my chances of catching the killer—of catching you—would improve greatly if I had his cooperation, access to the schedules of his women, and the armed assistance of his men. And, indeed, less than a day later, here we are—I have succeeded in my task. From the point of view of those dead girls, and those you would have killed tomorrow, next week, next month, I believe I remain quite pure.” He leaned forward. “True, Value wants me to hand you over to him, for his own justice, but I will happily deliver you to the police instead. You can tell them what you did, and why.”

  “They will hang me.”

  “Surely you deserve to hang?” Pimm said, tone more thoughtful than accusatory. “But perhaps you can buy your life as well. Whatever secret you wished the police to uncover about Abel Value—why not simply tell them? I know you’d hoped to draw their attention anonymously, but we’re past that now.”

  “I am a murderer. My word would never be believed.”

  Pimm shrugged. “What is your alternative? You are a murderer, as you say. I cannot let you escape. I am going to summon the police. Now, when they arrive, you could deny everything, and have me arrested for breaking into your house—I’ve engaged in truly shocking behavior, and not even my friends in the police could overlook the fact that I entered your home under false pretenses, assaulted you with an electrical weapon of dubious legality, and subsequently tied you to a chair. But I would tell them everything I know—”

  “There are no bodies,” Worth said. “Value conceals them, to frustrate my goals. So where is the proof of a crime?”

  “Indeed,” Pimm say. “It is likely that Jenkins and I will be clapped away in a cell, and the police will apologize to you for the inconvenience, and that will be the end of it—for us. But do you think word of my imprisonment will reach Value? Do you think he will draw… certain conclusions? Do you think he will come for—”

  “Enough!” Worth groaned. “I will confess. It will only delay the inevitable. Value will have me dead soon enough—and if he cannot reach me in the cells, he has associates who can.”

  “If you would care to tell me what you suspect about Value’s crimes?” Pimm said. “I have no love for the man, you know.”

  Worth spat. “You are working for him. Perhaps you cannot screw your courage to the point of murdering a bound man, but you are tainted by your association. Why should I tell you what I know? You would only run along and report my words to Value, and I have no desire to reveal the extent of my knowledge to him.”

  “Can you answer one question for me?” Skye said.

  “Almost certainly not.”

  “I will ask all the same. How is Bertram Oswald involved with Mr. Value?”

  Pimm frowned. Sir Bertram? What a strange question. Might as well ask how the Prime Minister was involved with Value, or the Queen herself. Surely there was no connection.

  Worth tried to twist around in his chair again. “You ask the right questions, at least, Mr. Jenkins.”

  “And yet you refuse to supply useful answers.”

  “What do you expect? I am a lowly killer. Now let us find a real detective, Lord Pembroke, so that I might make my confession.”

  The Living, the Dead, and Others

  “This is the bit where you leave, Jenkins,” Lord Pembroke said, helping her into her borrowed coat in Worth’s foyer. “I can just barely explain my presence here, or come up with some explanation the police won’t bother to question, but your presence would make things difficult, especially the way your mustache is wobbling on its foundations.”

  Ellie tried to hide a yawn behind her hand. “I did see Mr. Worth flee a crime scene. I could be a witness.”

  “Hardly necessary when he intends to confess. Besides, there is no crime scene any more, as the body has been moved. I may need to do something about that. A crime with no victim is a difficult crime to prosecute… Well. Just because sleep will be a long time coming for me does not mean you should stay awake.”

  “I am happy to accompany you.” She stifled another yawn, less successfully. “This has been quite interesting.”

  “For me as well. You can make it home all right?”

  “At this hour? Alas, my rooming house is firmly shut for the night, and nothing less than the trumpeting of an angel of judgment could compel my landlady to open the door past midnight. But it is no matter. I have a key to the newspaper office. It would not be my first night spent sleeping at my desk.”

  Lord Pembroke looked horrified at the prospect. “Nonsense! No, you must stay at my home. I have no idea when I will be along, but I will write a letter for you to give to my wife.”

  “I could never intrude so! To wake your wife—”

  “Ha. Winifred keeps owl’s hours, Miss—ah, Jenkins, and she loves nothing more than the disruption of routine. Our apartment has a spare bedroom that I daresay would be far more comfortable than your desk.”

  Ellie groped for further objections, though in truth, the thought of meeting Lord Pembroke’s wife intrigued her for reasons she could not specify beyond her usual intense curiosity. What kind of woman would marry a man like this? “But, my attire—”

  “It is unfortunate,” he said. “But our house is relatively secluded, and we have no servants at present, as my valet, who also served as our butler, has moved on to pleasanter prospects, as you heard. I think you can slip in without causing a scandal. And if anyone asks, claim to be Winifred’s brother, visiting to see how married life is treating her. No one in London knows her family.”

  Ellie bowed her head in assent. “You are too kind, Lord Pembroke.”

  “Please, call me Pimm. After what we’ve been through tonight, a bit of informality
would be welcome, don’t you find?”

  “Then you must call me Ellie.”

  “It would be an honor. Here, just let me write a note to my wife, explaining who you are and so forth.” While in the midst of scribbling on a bit of paper taken from Worth’s desk, he said, in a voice so casual she knew it was anything but: “Why did you ask Mr. Worth about Bertram Oswald?”

  “It is… complicated. I did not mention Oswald’s name before because it hardly seemed germane to the pursuit of a murderer, which surely took precedence over all other matters. But… I have reason to believe Oswald has some connection with Mr. Value. I am curious to discover the nature and extent of that connection.”

  Lord Pembroke whistled. “Indeed? You saw them together?”

  “I…” She laughed, the very idea of telling him about her visit to a clockwork brothel embarrassing—but also, oddly, titillating. She reined herself in. He was a married man, and she was a spinster. This was business. “When I said it was complicated, I was not exaggerating. Telling the tale would take some time.”

  “I’d very much like to hear it,” Lord Pembroke said. “There are a few reasons a man of Sir Bertram’s stature would be involved with someone like Value, and none of them are terribly salubrious. If I were you, I would be very sure of my facts before I wrote a story linking two such well-known figures—and even if I were sure of my facts, I would still consider whether drawing the ire of the man rumored to be the Queen’s consort would be worth selling a few papers.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t publish it under my name, fear not.” She smiled, to make it light-hearted, but Lord Pembroke’s expression remained serious.

  “If a man like Oswald wants to find you, Ellie, he will do so. The shield of a pen name would prove insufficient under his attack.”

  The words chilled her. Crippen had recognized her tonight—in her male guise, at least—and would surely report to Oswald that Lord Pembroke had been seen in the company of the same man who’d discovered him at the brothel. Was Ellie putting Lord Pembroke in danger, too, by keeping that connection to herself? “Perhaps it would be best if I told you the whole story,” she said, and then yawned, hugely.