The Constantine Affliction

by Tim Pratt

  Lord Pembroke nodded. “I would be pleased to hear it, as I said. But not tonight. I have much work ahead, and you need sleep. We will talk tomorrow, all right?”

  Ten minutes later, Ellie was climbing into the waiting carriage. If the driver was curious about what she and Lord Pembroke had been doing in the house, or why only Ellie was leaving now, he did not show it. She gave him Lord Pembroke’s address, and he jostled the reins and set the horse to clip-clopping along the stones.

  Despite the terrible things she’d witnessed that night, Ellie allowed herself a small smile beneath her faltering mustache. Her life had certainly taken some unusual turns.

  Spending the night at Lord Pembroke’s! She wondered if she could squeeze an article from that experience. Or perhaps just write a profile of his mysterious wife. That would certainly be a coup.

  Detective Whistler emerged from Worth’s study, frowning. “He’s confessing to terrible crimes, Pimm. Are you sure he isn’t mad?”

  Pimm, who sat on a stiff chair with a cup of rapidly cooling tea balanced on his knee, shook his head. “No. Some of my contacts have mentioned rumors of working women disappearing in Alsatia in recent weeks. I was prowling about the area this evening, hoping to catch sight of anything untoward—don’t smile at me like that, I’m serious—and happened upon this man in an alley. I smelled ether on him, suspected him of wrongdoing, and confronted him. He fled, but I was able to track him here, where I gained entry to his home and convinced him to confess.”

  “I see.” Whistler’s voice was mild. “I sense you have elided over several relevant details in that account, such as how you knew women were disappearing, and how precisely you tracked the man, and how you enticed him to confess.”

  Pimm sighed. “Jonathan, I have… certain sources in the underworld. You know that. I would rather not have to name them. They might be less willing to talk to me in the future if I involve their names in your inquiries.”

  Whistler took a seat. “The problem, Pimm, is this: I have no evidence that a crime has occurred, only this man’s word.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “Belief is irrelevant. I require evidence. No bodies have been found. We had a man down at Scotland Yard yesterday who claimed he’d killed the moon, knocked it right out of the sky. He believed he was telling the truth. But that didn’t make it true. My men are searching this house, looking for some evidence, but apart from a rather large quantity of ether, they’ve turned up nothing. I’ll admit, the ether is suggestive, but it does not constitute proof of murder. I—”

  One of the officers appeared in the doorway, holding a carved wooden box perhaps a foot across. “Mr. Whistler, sir, you should take a look at this. Mr. Worth said we should look in a secret compartment in his desk if we didn’t believe him, and…” He handed over the box. Whistler opened the lid and looked inside for a long time.

  “What is it?” Pimm asked, though he knew quite well, having advised Worth to reveal the box and its contents—which Pimm had provided. He’d coached Worth extensively after Miss Skye was gone about the best way to confess. Pimm hadn’t wanted to reveal the extent of his planning to Miss Skye, lest she think ill of him. Pimm had known ever since speaking to Margaret’s brain that he’d need to manufacture evidence to implicate the killer, and he’d taken steps to create a compelling proof of crime. False evidence of a true murder… well, it wasn’t strictly ethical, but it would get the job done.

  “Rather cheap jewelry, for the most part,” Whistler said. “Rings meant to look like silver, necklaces meant to look like gold. A bloody knife wrapped in a handkerchief, and a hank of blonde hair, tied up with a ribbon. There appears to be blood in the hair as well.”

  “I would say that is more than suggestive,” Pimm said.

  “And if I find a dead body that matches this hair, I will agree that we may have a murderer on our hands. Until we do…” He shrugged.

  “Perhaps Worth would be willing to—”

  “Lead me to the location of his latest victim’s remains, yes, I know my job, Pimm. The man has already offered to do just that. I shall have to investigate, of course, and hope the trip is not a waste of time. But something about this whole affair strikes me as odd. I sense there is much you are not telling me.”

  “I feel obliged to protect my informants, but I can assure you, none of them are guilty of anything as terrible as this string of murders.” Not entirely true. Value had surely done worse things… but he was a target for another day.

  “I gather we’re bound for a trip down to the river, then. Would you like to join us?”

  Pimm considered, then nodded. Best to see this thing through. If Mr. Adams had not done as Pimm requested, some improvisation might be necessary. He hated plans that depended on unreliable people doing him favors. Worth had acquitted himself admirably, at least, salting his true confession with the inventions Pimm had prepared for him, but Adams was an enigmatic fellow. Who knew if he would do as Pimm had asked? The scientist had waved away the offer of money for his service. Pimm would have felt better if he’d believed the man could be bought.

  “Let’s go then,” Whistler said. “There’s nothing I like better than tromping through riverfront slums looking for corpses.”

  “Come now, Jonathan. You love a good crime.”

  “No, I love a good mystery, and there is no mystery here—everything is laid out neatly before me. At this point, it’s all mere police work. Still, it must be done, I suppose.”

  Adam carried Margaret’s corpse over his shoulder as he trudged through the stinking tunnels beneath Alsatia—but the stink did not bother him, for the redolence of nearby sewage brought with it a vision of beautiful swirling gray-green fog, with patterns that fascinated him. He did not whistle as he walked, but he considered whistling, because he had seldom been happier.

  Bringing Margaret’s brain back to life had been a great triumph. Adam’s own creator had been able to reanimate dead flesh, yes, but he had not been able to maintain continuity of mind, and memory, and personality. Whatever thoughts Adam’s own brain had possessed in its original life were lost forever, entirely overwritten by his new personality. His creator had brought dead flesh to life; but Adam had brought a person back to life.

  Of course, he’d ruined her body in the process, something he had not mentioned to Margaret. But he had some ideas about how to correct that situation. Since he had no pressing use for her broken-skulled corpse, he was content to perform the favor Lord Pembroke had asked of him—the detective had brought him a freshly-killed woman, as requested, so Adam owed him a favor in return. He did not understand Halliday’s plans, nor did he much care. After Margaret revealed the name of her murderer—her former pimp, Thaddeus Worth—Halliday had asked Adam for a knife, and a hank of Margaret’s bloody hair, and for any jewelry or personal effects that remained from the other dead women. Adam kept those few things Value’s thugs didn’t steal for themselves in a box on a shelf, mostly because he never threw anything away in case he someday needed it, and he handed the cheap rings and necklaces over without comment.

  Halliday’s final request had been for Adam to deposit Margaret’s body in a particular location near the river. Halliday had been very concerned about how Adam might manage to complete that task without alerting the guards, suggesting a series of complex subterfuges, until finally Adam grew bored enough to say, “Fear not, detective—I have my own methods for traveling throughout the city unseen. There are… tunnels.” Halliday had looked about him then, peering into the laboratory’s darker corners, clearly unnerved at the thought of secret passageways all around him, and why not? There were all manner of mysteries beneath the Earth. Adam himself was one of the least of them.

  He reached the end of the tunnel, and peered up toward an exit hatch, which was hidden beneath a heap of refuse behind a dockside cavern. Adam gently deposited Margaret’s broken-headed form on the ground, then climbed up the wall, fitting his feet into holes cut into the stone long before
his own creation. At the top, he shoved open the hatch, emerging to look around and make sure he was unobserved. He descended again, collected Margaret, and clambered back up. Adam could fault his creator for many things, but at least he had endowed Adam with prodigious strength.

  He closed the hatch, kicked rotted vegetables and broken boards across it to once again disguise its existence, and made his limping way toward the riverbank. The bank was built up here, bolstered by crumbling stones, and he had to step over a low wall and then gently ease himself down a steep slope toward the muddy, mired edge of the water. As he lowered poor Margaret’s body to the mud, he heard a gasp.

  Turning, Adam beheld one of the creatures called tide-waitresses, women clothed in filthy rags who picked among the refuse along the banks of the river for anything they could sell, from bits of wire to empty bottles to pieces of wood. She stared at him, and Adam stared back, and then she shrieked and ran.

  Or tried to run. Ignoring the ache in his leg, Adam surged forward as quick as he could, and seized her from behind. She was frail as a twig in his hands, and he squeezed her throat as she beat her hands against his chest and face helplessly. Finally she went slack, and he continued to squeeze, because it took longer to cause death than it did to induce unconsciousness. Once he was convinced the woman was dead, he slung her body over his shoulder and trudged back up the hill. A shame. He had hoped to walk back home unburdened. He could always toss her into the river, but he wasn’t one to waste a perfectly good body. She could become one of Abel Value’s mindless whores, perhaps. Or failing that, she could join Adam’s honor guard—or become food for them. He had over a dozen of his own feral, reanimated women now, each one officially a failed experiment, as far as Value knew. Adam did not expect that he would ever have need of their violent services, but when dealing with someone as treacherous as Value, it was good to have protection—and why should Value be the only one with bodyguards? The honor guard was ravenous, though, and he had to keep them fed, or even the magnetic devices he’d implanted in their brains to let him guide their movements would prove insufficient to curb their natural urges. They were not altered into docility like the unliving whores he provided to Value.

  His honor guard required flesh, and no matter what, they would feed.

  A Body, As Evidence

  “There we have it, then.” Whistler shone his alchemical torch on the corpse his men had dragged up from the riverbank. “Right where Worth said she would be, and in the state he promised.” He shook his head. “Why go to all that trouble to remove a woman’s brain? Just to toss it in the river?”

  “Who can fathom the behavior of such men?” Pimm said. “I understand his wife was transformed by the Affliction, and disappeared not long after. Presumably Worth was infected by a whore—one of his own, he was a known purveyor, after all—and then brought the infection home to his wife. He may harbor some twisted grudge against such women as a result.”

  “Motives do interest me,” Whistler admitted. “And what you say makes a certain amount of sense. I still don’t understand the bit with the brain, though. Worth said it was just a strange impulse, a whim, but good heavens, the effort—the tools—required to cut open a skull and—”

  “It is a mystery.” When Pimm had asked Adams to dispose of the body in this spot, to make it appear Worth had dumped her corpse here, the giant scientist had paused and said, “I will do as you ask, so long as I am permitted to keep her brain. I enjoy having someone to talk to. It is generally very lonely here.”

  Pimm had assented, having little choice—the mutilated skull would be noticed in any event, even with the brain shoved back into the cavity. Worth had been disgusted when Pimm suggested he tell the police he’d mutilated the body. “I never left a mark on them!” he’d objected, “or took souvenirs, either!” Pimm had apologized but insisted, saying it was the only way to make the police believe his confession. It was the oddest apology he’d ever given.

  “Worth says he has information about Abel Value,” Whistler said. “But I hesitate to deal with someone who commits acts like this.”

  “It is a terrible crime,” Pimm acknowledged. “And Worth is a terrible criminal. But Value’s criminality is of a whole other order. Worth commits terrible acts personally, according to some derangement, but Value orchestrates terrible acts coldly, impersonally, and whilst in full possession of his faculties.”

  “True,” Whistler agreed. “No one is actually howling for Worth’s head, since the murders have not been publicized—or even noticed, really. If he does have information that might be useful to me, I can save him from the gallows tree, and see him merely imprisoned, or committed to Bedlam. The latter seems appropriate, after seeing what he did to this poor girl’s head. You’ve brought me another long night of work, Halliday. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.”

  “I am always pleased to help the police with their inquiries.” Pimm shook Whistler’s hand. “Now, sir, I believe I will take my leave. I don’t mind staying awake until the sun rises, but I prefer to spend those late hours in more pleasant occupations than this.”

  He started to turn away, but Whistler put a hand on his shoulder. “Take care, old man. Don’t overindulge, eh?”

  Pimm smiled. “You know I believe alcohol is the panacea, detective. If one has a triumph, champagne for celebration. If one has a setback, whiskey for comfort.”

  “As long as you have a reason for drinking a whole bottle down,” Whistler said. “It’s when one starts to empty bottles for no particular cause that I become concerned.”

  “Ah, but a resourceful man can always find reasons to celebrate, detective—or to seek comfort.”

  Whistler sighed. “It’s none of my business, Pimm. But this work we do… I’ve seen good colleagues succumb to drink, because they could find no other way to deal with the things they’d witnessed.”

  “Fortunately I am a mere hobbyist when it comes to being a detective,” Pimm said. “My profession is being a bon vivant. Fortunately, I excel at both.” He tipped his hat.

  “You know, I thought finding a wife would settle you down.”

  Pimm looked skyward, striking a pose of thoughtfulness. “Winifred? Settle me down? Oh, that’s right. I forgot—you’ve never met her.” He grinned wolfishly, and the detective snorted laughter.

  “Away with you, then. I may have further questions tomorrow, after I talk to Worth a bit more. I trust you won’t tell me any more lies?”

  “Not any important ones,” Pimm promised.

  At least from the outside, Lord Pembroke’s home was not as lavish as Ellie had expected. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but surely the younger son of a Marquess could be expected to live in splendor. His home was certainly nice, but it was not the palace she had, on some level, anticipated. (Of course, his family’s country estates were surely a different matter.)

  Lord Pembroke and his wife had a small house near Hanover Square in Mayfair, with a front garden surrounded by an iron fence, and colorful stained glass panes set in the windows. Ellie rapped on the door, well aware of the lateness of the hour, feeling ridiculous and conspicuous.

  She had expected a servant to answer the door, remembering only as it swung open that Lord Pembroke’s man Ransome had left his employ without notice. Instead of a servant, the open door revealed a woman with long blonde hair, a face that might have been the model for a Greek statue of a nymph, and a body in keeping with that general theme. She wore a robe of Chinese silk in shocking red, patterned with gold dragons, and held an ebony cigarette holder smoldering in one hand. The other hand was hidden behind the door… and Ellie, strangely, wondered if she was hiding a weapon. Lady Pembroke’s eyes were blue and merry, and her lips the sort of red that most women required cosmetic assistance to achieve. Ellie felt a certain shifting in her attitude toward Lord Pembroke, a change epitomized by the stray but fully-formed thought: Ah, so he likes women like this, then.

  “May I help you, sir?” She looked Ellie up and down. “
Or, rather, madam? Pray do let me know which form of address you prefer—should I refer to you as what you are, or as what you are attempting to appear to be?”

  Ellie blinked. She had assumed a woman who looked like this—who answered the door looking like this—would not be particularly perceptive, but she had punctured Ellie’s guise readily, and responded with a certain sardonic wit. The sparrow always hopes the peacock is a dullard, Ellie supposed. How unfair that one person should be both bright and look as though they’d just stepped off a pedestal in a museum. “Ah, I am Eleanor Skyler. My appearance is… Here. I have a letter from Lord Pembroke.”

  “Dear old Pimm sends the most peculiar messengers.” Lady Pembroke held out her hand, and Ellie passed her the folded sheet of paper. She opened it and scanned the page rapidly, a line appearing on her forehead just between her eyes. The line did little to mar her appearance. Indeed, Ellie suspected most men would find it adorable.

  Lady Pembroke lifted her eyes to Ellie. “Did you read this, Miss Skyler?”

  “I did not.”

  “Did Pimm tell you what it said?”

  “Ah, just that he would explain who I am, and….”

  Lady Pembroke dazzled Ellie with a smile. “It does tell me who you are, and more. Come in, my dear, come in, get changed, have a drink if you like, I’ll get the guest room prepared. But I hope you aren’t too tired. You must tell me everything.” She beckoned, and for the next twenty minutes Ellie found herself caught in a sort of benign whirlwind as Lady Pembroke (“Call me Winnie, dear”) poured her a cup of tea laced with a lavish dollop of brandy, helped her remove her false mustache and the sticky spirit gum, exclaimed over her short hair (“Just tell everyone it’s the latest Continental style, the height of fashionable rebellion among the young ladies in Paris”), convinced Ellie to wear one of her nightgowns (fortunately quite modest), complimented her writing (“Mr. E. Skye is a woman! You are a credit to our sex!”), and generally never gave Ellie the chance to tell her everything, or really much of anything at all.