The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes

by George Mann

  Newbury swallowed. “You wished to speak with me, Your Majesty?” he prompted, attempting to change the subject. He’d long ago grown tired of the woman’s threats, although he understood all too well that they were far from hollow.

  “There is a woman, Newbury,” said Victoria, her tone suddenly shifting from one of amused scorn to one of stately authority, “who is proving to be something of a thorn in our side.” She emitted a wet, spluttering cough, and Newbury saw a trickle of blood ooze from the corner of her mouth. She dabbed it away. Her bellows sighed noisily as they laboured to inflate her diseased lungs.

  So, she had a job for him. “A foreign agent?” he prompted, intrigued.

  “Perhaps,” murmured the Queen. “Perhaps not. She operates under the alias ‘Lady Arkwell’. It is imperative that you locate her and bring her to us.”

  “What has she done?” enquired Newbury.

  “Ignored our invitation,” replied Victoria, darkly. She grinned. Newbury nodded slowly and waited for her to continue.

  “She is a slippery one, this woman. A trickster, a mistress of sleight of hand. A thief. She has many aliases and she always works alone. She has been linked to a number of incidents throughout the Empire, from thefts to sabotage to political assassinations. Her motives are obscure. Some believe she sells her services as a mercenary, working for the highest bidder, others that she is a foreign agent, working for the Russians or Americans. Perhaps she works alone. We, as yet, are undecided.”

  Newbury shifted slightly, drawing his hand thoughtfully across his stubble-encrusted chin. He’d never come across the name before. “Do we have any notion of her actual nationality?”

  Victoria shook her head. “Unclear. Her various guises have at times suggested Russian, Italian and, indeed, English.” She gave a wheezing sigh. “It may be, Newbury, that we are dealing with a traitor.” She spat the last word as if it stuck in her throat.

  Newbury had dealt with “traitors” before—people like William Ashford, the agent Victoria had mechanically rebuilt after his near-death, a man who was declared rogue because he’d come out of cover in Russia to seek revenge on the man who had tried to kill him. Newbury wondered if he was being handed something similar here. It wasn’t only Lady Arkwell’s motives that were obscure.

  “Her age?” he asked, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The Queen wasn’t giving him much to go on.

  “Indeterminate.”

  Newbury tried not to sound exasperated. “But we have reason to believe she is active in London? Do we know what she is planning?”

  Victoria laughed, detecting his frustration. “We have heard reports that she is operating in the capital, yes. We do not yet know why. You are charged, Newbury, with uncovering her motives and bringing her in. Preferably alive.”

  Newbury sighed inwardly. Where to even start with such an endeavour? “With respect, Your Majesty, you’re describing a needle in a proverbial haystack. Amongst all the teeming multitudes in this city...” He trailed off, his point made.

  Victoria watched him for a moment, a curious expression on her face. When she spoke, her voice had a hard edge. “You are resourceful, Newbury. You will find her.” Newbury was in no doubt: this was an order. Victoria’s will would be done.

  She reached for the wooden wheel rims that would allow her to roll her chair back into the darkness, drawing Newbury’s audience to a close. Then, pausing, she looked up, catching his eye. “Be warned, Newbury. She is utterly ruthless. Do not be fooled. Do not let your guard down for a moment. And what is more,” she drew a sharp intake of breath, reaching for her wheels, “do not fail us.”

  Newbury watched the seated monarch as she was slowly enveloped by the gloom, until, a moment later, she was swallowed utterly, and he was left standing alone in a sea of black. The only sounds in the enormous audience chamber were the creak of the turning wheels against the marble floor and the incessant wheeze of the Queen’s breathing apparatus.

  IV

  “Oh God. This wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  Clarissa was standing aghast over the corpse of the dead passenger, her hands to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. Newbury wanted to put his arm around her; she looked so young and vulnerable. Propriety, however, dictated he did not.

  “No. Someone has very purposefully slit her throat,” he replied, keeping his voice low to avoid any of the other passengers overhearing. He released his hold on the corpse and the head lolled forward again, the body slumping to one side. He straightened the hat on the dead woman’s head, arranging it carefully to cover her blood-smeared face in shadow. He straightened his back.

  “Oh God,” Clarissa repeated. She remained staring at the body for a moment longer, before tearing her eyes away to look at Newbury. “Whoever did this... do you think they caused the accident?”

  Newbury blinked, still trying to shake the grogginess. He must have struck his head badly to be so concussed. It was strange there was no pain. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. I imagine it was more opportunistic than that. Whoever did this must have remained conscious during the explosion and the ensuing chaos, and acted swiftly while the rest of us were still blacked out.”

  Clarissa looked wide-eyed at the dark bloodstains on the front of his jacket. “Why is her blood all over you? You were sitting up there at the front of the carriage near me. How do I know it wasn’t you who killed her while I was unconscious?” She looked startled and terrified, and she was backing away from him.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Of course I didn’t do it!” Newbury didn’t know what else to say.

  “So you can explain the blood?”

  “Well, not exactly,” he said, with a shrug. “There’s nothing to say whoever did it didn’t move the body afterwards. I don’t know. But I didn’t do it. You need to believe me.” He reached out a hand and leaned heavily on the back of a nearby seat. His legs felt like jelly. “And remember, my legs were trapped beneath that seat. How could I have done it?”

  Something about the conviction in his voice must have reassured Clarissa, as she gave a weak smile and stepped forward again. Nevertheless, he could see that she was still wary. Perhaps she could sense that he was holding something back, keeping from her the fact that he knew who this dead woman actually was.

  “Alright. Assuming I believe you, that means there’s a murderer somewhere on this carriage.” Her voice was a whisper. “No one could have got out. We’re trapped in here until the firemen arrive to cut us free. So whoever did it is still here.” She glanced around as if sizing up the other passengers, looking for a likely suspect.

  Newbury could see the sense in her words. The killer still had to be on board the train.

  “And why would they do it? This poor, innocent woman? What could have possibly inspired them to cut her throat?” She shuddered as she spoke, as if considering how different things might have been—how it could have been her, slumped there in the seat with her throat opened up.

  Newbury knew the answer to that but chose not to elaborate. It wouldn’t do to go involving this girl in the affairs of the Crown, and if he did tell her why, it would only give support to her fears that he was somehow involved in the woman’s death. Aside from all that, he didn’t want her raising the alarm. The other passengers were scared enough as it was, wondering when—and if—they were going to be free from the buckled remains of the carriage, or whether they were only moments away from another explosion. The last thing these people needed to know was that there was also a murderer on board.

  Besides, from everything he knew of her, “Lady Arkwell” was far from innocent. Rumour had it that she was involved in everything from political assassinations to high-profile thefts. No doubt she had scores of enemies, with as many different motives for ending her life.

  That suggested the killer had to be another agent. But which nation or organisation they were representing was another question entirely. It wouldn’t surprise him to discover the Queen had organise
d a back-up, a second agent on the trail of Lady Arkwell, just in case Newbury failed. Or perhaps the intention had been for Newbury to lead an assassin to their target all along. Whatever the case, this wasn’t a motiveless murder. The killer knew what they were doing, and whom they were targeting.

  That in itself begged another question: did the killer also know who he was? Was he also at risk? In his current state, with his head still spinning, he knew he wouldn’t be able to handle himself in a scuffle. He had to be on guard.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Clarissa, tugging insistently on his sleeve. He looked down at her pretty, upturned face, framed by her shock of red hair, and realised that he hadn’t answered her questions.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, shaking his head. “You’re right. The killer must still be on board. But we have no way of telling who he might be. I suggest we tread very cautiously, and stick together. We should cover up the body and try not to panic anyone. When they finally cut us free, the killer is going to try to slip away. We need to be alert, watching for anything that might give him away. That way we can alert the authorities when the time is right.”

  “That’s it?” she said, with a frown. “That’s all we’re going to do?”

  “I’m not sure we have any other choice,” said Newbury, in a placatory fashion. “If we alert the killer that we’re on to him, things could turn very bad, very quickly. We’re trapped in an overturned train carriage with no exits. A killer loose in a confined space, desperate and wielding a weapon...” He trailed off, his point made.

  Clarissa gave a short, conciliatory nod. “Very well.” She stooped and collected up a handful of discarded items of clothing—a man’s tweed jacket, a woman’s shawl, a tartan blanket—and proceeded to set about covering the dead woman.

  Newbury leaned against the wall—which had once been the floor—his head drooping. His memories of the events leading up to the accident were hazy at best, but they were slowly returning. It was surely just a matter of time before he could piece together what had occurred. Yet everything felt like such an effort. All he wanted to do was go to sleep. He lifted his hands to rub at his eyes, but realised they were smeared with the dead woman’s blood. Grimacing, he put his right hand into his jacket pocket to search out his handkerchief.

  His fingers encountered something cold and hard. Frowning, he peered down as he gingerly closed his hand around the object and slid it out of his pocket. His eyes widened in shock, and he quickly stuffed the thing back, glancing around to make sure no one else had seen.

  Clarissa was still busying herself covering the corpse.

  Newbury took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. What the Hell was going on? His heart was racing, his head pounding, and he couldn’t remember what had happened, what he might have done.

  He wasn’t a killer. He had killed, yes, but he’d been a soldier out in India, and latterly an agent of the Crown. He’d killed in self-defence, in the course of duty, but never in cold blood.

  So why, then, was the object in his pocket a sticky, bloodied knife?

  V

  “So, how are you, Charles?” said Newbury, swallowing a slug of brandy and regarding his old friend, Chief Inspector Charles Bainbridge of Scotland Yard, from across the table. The older man looked tired, careworn, out of sorts. As if he had the weight of the world resting on his shoulders, and was beginning to buckle beneath it.

  The two men were sitting in a private booth in the drawing room of Newbury’s club, the White Friar’s. Over the years Newbury had come to consider the place a second home, enjoying the general ambience and the intelligent banter he often overheard in the bar. The clientele was mostly composed of artists, poets and writers, and although he knew Bainbridge didn’t approve of this more bohemian of crowds, Newbury often insisted on meeting him there. It was good, he assured himself, for the older man’s soul. And besides, Bainbridge’s club was generally full of policemen; useful, perhaps, when one needed such things, but hardly a haven away from the busy matters of everyday life.

  Bainbridge gave a heavy sigh. “Darn near exhausted, Newbury, if truth be told. That’s how I am. This Moyer case is taking everything I’ve got.”

  Newbury gave a resigned smile. Bainbridge had been tracking a killer for weeks, a surgeon by the name of Algernon Moyer, who had—for reasons that appeared to be politically motivated—taken to abducting politicians and minor royals, chaining them up in abandoned houses and infecting them with the Revenant plague. He would then move on, disappearing into the great wash of the city, leaving his victims to slowly starve to death as the plague took hold and they degenerated into slavering, half-dead monsters.

  Three days following each of the abductions, a letter had turned up at the Yard, addressed to Bainbridge, teasing him with the location of the most recent crime. By the time Bainbridge got there, of course, it was already too late. The victims would be beyond saving, reduced to nothing but chattering, snarling animals, straining at their chains as they tried desperately to get at the soft, pink flesh of their rescuers. Every one of them had been put down, electrocuted, their corpses burned in the immense plague furnaces at Battersea or dumped far out at sea along with the mounting heaps of bodies from the slums. Bainbridge hadn’t even been able to let the victims’ families identify the bodies.

  There had been four victims to date, and the police expected another to turn up any day. And, as Bainbridge had continued to bemoan, they were no closer to finding Moyer or uncovering the criteria by which he selected his victims. He struck without warning, abducting them in broad daylight, no obvious connections between them. It was a campaign of terror, and politicians and councillors were increasingly growing wary of leaving the relative safety of their homes.

  Newbury echoed his friend’s sigh. “I wish I could help you, Charles. I really do. But this Arkwell thing—the Queen...” He trailed off. Bainbridge knew all too well what the Queen was like when she had a bit between her teeth.

  Bainbridge looked up from the bottom of his glass. A faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Ah. Well. That’s where I might just be able to help you, Newbury.”

  Newbury leaned forward, pushing his empty glass to one side. “Go on.”

  “One of our informants, a delightful little man named Smythe...” Bainbridge pronounced the man’s name as if he were describing a particularly venomous breed of snake “... Paterson Smythe. He’s a burglar and a fence, and not a very successful example of either. But he has a secondary trade in information, and that’s what makes him valuable to us.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Times, places, names. You know the sort of thing.”

  Newbury nodded. “He doesn’t sound the type to be involved with a woman of Lady Arkwell’s calibre.”

  Bainbridge laughed. “Well, precisely. It looks like he might have gone and gotten himself in over his head. He turned up at the Yard this morning claiming he had something big for us, but that he needed our protection.”

  Newbury raised an eyebrow. “And?”

  Bainbridge shrugged. “And it sounds as if it could be your Lady Arkwell. Smythe said he’d been doing some work for a woman, ‘a right smart ’un’, as he described her, sitting in Bloomsbury Square all night and reporting back to her the next morning to describe everything he’d seen.”

  Newbury frowned. “Interesting. Anything else?”

  “He said it had been going on for a week. No specific target or brief. Simply that she’d told him to note all the comings and goings in the area.”

  “A scoping job?”

  “Precisely that. Descriptions of everyone he saw, when they came in and out of their properties, what time the postman or milkman called. But nothing that might give away the actual target. It could be any one of those grand houses she’s interested in, for any reason.” Bainbridge frowned, tugging unconsciously at his moustache. “She’s clearly a clever one, Newbury. She hasn’t left us with much to go on, even after her hired help tried his best to sell her up the
river.”

  “It’s already more than I’ve been able to ascertain so far,” replied Newbury. “Where do they meet? That would be a start.”

  Bainbridge shook his head. “As I said, she’s a clever one. They always meet in the back of a brougham. She picks him up at Bloomsbury Square and they drive around the city while he hands over all the information he’s gleaned. They always take a different route, and she always deposits him in a different street when they’re finished, leaving him with the cab fare home.”

  “Fascinating,” said Newbury, impressed. “Does he have a description of the woman?”

  “Only that she wears a black veil beneath a wide-brimmed, lilac hat, along with black lace gloves, so as not to be recognised. He says she dresses smartly in the current fashions, and is well spoken, with an educated, English accent. He does most of the talking, and she issues payment and instructions.” Bainbridge shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all we could get out of him.”

  Newbury sipped at his brandy while he mulled over his friend’s story. Was this the mysterious woman he’d been looking for? And if so, what was she up to? It seemed like an extraordinary effort to go to for a simple robbery. But then, perhaps there was more to it than that. Perhaps this was an invitation to dance.

  Bainbridge was looking at him expectantly. “Well? What would you have me do?”

  Newbury smiled. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” echoed Bainbridge, confounded. His moustache bristled as he tried to form his response. “Nothing!” he said again.

  “Precisely,” said Newbury. “Tell Smythe to continue just as he is. Tell him to keep reporting back to this woman on all of the comings and goings to the square, and to make a particular effort to ensure he offers accurate descriptions of all the people he sees.”

  “Is that all?” asked Bainbridge, clearly unimpressed. “I fail to see how that constitutes an effective plan.”