Fearless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 1): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series

by Nicola Claire

  “I’ll be fine here,” I assured him, but he just shook his head and tapped his cane restlessly.

  Minutes passed, and I wondered if Blackmore was still inside the hotel, throwing punches like the inspector had had to. Trying futilely to escape. Perhaps my coming here had been a massive mistake.

  But then, neither the inspector nor the sergeant would have recognised the Guard. At least, that was what I told myself. An unsettling sense of guilt and shame invading my bones. Making the shivering that had started turn into a full body tremble.

  I began pacing myself, matching the inspector. He didn’t pass judgement, but I was sure my nervousness was not missed by the man.

  “You’ll have to go in,” I finally declared. “There’s no other way to determine if the sergeant requires assistance.”

  Kelly spun to look back at me, halting his steps mid-stride. A small smile graced his lips; lips I’d only just had pressed against mine. I blinked away the visceral sensations that thought brought with it.

  “You think Sergeant Blackmore incapable of fending for himself, Miss Cassidy?” the inspector asked, amusement lacing his tone. “Fear not, he is more than proficient at holding his own.”

  “Then what is it that has you pacing?” I demanded.

  The smile fell.

  “If this is the murderer we await, then I find myself well outside the loop.”

  I stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “I like to be in the thick of it, Miss Cassidy. Standing idly by, while one of my men carries out the arrest, is not familiar to me.”

  Oh. I was hindering his usual style. I wasn’t sure how to take that. I had guilt enough on my shoulders without adding the inspector’s woes to the pile.

  I also didn’t fail to note the repeated use of my surname, as if the inspector was attempting to remind himself - and perhaps myself as well - that we were acquaintances only. Work colleagues at best.

  I turned away, taking a few steps to distance myself from the man, when movement down the side of the Swan Hotel caught my eyes. In a flash I was running toward Sergeant Blackmore, as he staggered out from between more damn stacked crates rubbing the back of his head. When his hand came away, it was covered in blood.

  “Dear God, man,” I exclaimed. “What happened?”

  I began to help him toward a crate where he could sit, when Kelly appeared at my back.

  “Are you fit, Sergeant?” the inspector demanded brusquely.

  Blackmore straightened, surreptitiously wiping his bloodied hand on his dark trousers and nodded his head. Hiding the wince, at a guess.

  “Of course he’s not fit,” I exclaimed. “Can’t you see…”

  “I’m fine, miss. A mere scratch, is all,” Blackmore managed to say gently. The tone belying his frustration.

  I took a step back from him, from the near moment of fussing, and replied, “Of course, Sergeant.” I offered a smile. “Too much excitement for me, this evening.”

  The sergeant saw through the ruse immediately, offering me an appreciative smile and then turning his attention to his superior.

  “He was up to no good, sir,” he announced.

  “Of that, we can be sure,” Kelly offered.

  “I fear he was about to buzz the bookie,” Blackmore explained.

  “And you interrupted his plans,” Kelly surmised.

  “Whatever the caper, he took off runnin’,” Sergeant Blackmore advised. “I gave chase, sir, but that hotel is nothing more than a flash house. Two or more of his men jumped me.”

  Silence met his words. Inspector Kelly glanced up at the Swan Hotel, something of calculation flaring behind his deep blue eyes.

  “It has avoided suspicion rather successfully,” he finally commented.

  “That it has, sir,” Blackmore agreed.

  “And yet it allowed a police inspector and sergeant into its confines without so much as a baulk.”

  Blackmore frowned.

  “This could well be larger than we suspected,” Kelly declared. “If this Militia Guard is indeed our man, and he runs in a pack, then what was the purpose of granting us access?”

  “Perhaps my contact wasn’t aware of the consequences,” Blackmore suggested.

  “Can you find him?” Kelly asked. “Determine just how entrenched in the criminal underbelly the Swan is?”

  “He’s high up in the circuit, sir. But at the Swan? I think he was only placed on the door as a nobbler.”

  “A guard for the Guard,” Kelly mused. “See to it, then, Sergeant,” he added with a sharp tap of his cane on dirt.

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Blackmore replied, turning and hurrying away. He didn’t seem to be hindered by his attack, but even in the low light of the moon, I could see where his hair was matted and blood coated his shirt collar.

  I hoped he wouldn’t suffer too greatly from the blow, or blows, but it was obvious the sergeant had not wanted to show weakness in front of his superior. And if there was one thing my father had taught me, allowing men to be who they needed to be meant treating them when the time came went so much better. If the sergeant ever required medical attention in the future, he’d remember this moment and trust me to administer it discreetly.

  It wasn’t much of a consolation to the niggling desire to tend to his wounds. I am a product of my upbringing; my need to aid the ill or informed is deeply entrenched in me now.

  “And what shall we do?” I asked, returning my attention to the inspector and the situation at hand. “Do we wait here for Sergeant Blackmore to emerge?”

  “It may take some skillful play on his part to elicit the information whilst in that setting,” Kelly replied, eyeing the Swan Hotel sceptically. “And as we have no idea of where this Militia Guard has gone, there is little to be done for it here.”

  I suspected there was more to his reasoning than practicality. I was a hindrance and Kelly needed to strip himself of that encumbrance immediately.

  “Shall we?” he said, offering me his arm like any gentleman would a lady. But Inspector Kelly was more than just any gentleman. At least, to my suddenly frantically beating heart he was.

  I lifted a gloved hand and placed it on his forearm, allowing the contact because it was proper. Knowing his nearness, so soon after what had happened in that hallway, would undoubtedly smart. Indeed, I found myself trying to breathe through my slightly parted lips, because to inhale the musky scent of his cologne and whatever else it was that made him him simply was too much to bear. How I had placed myself in this position, I did not know. But it seemed all my hard work of late had come to naught.

  Here I was pining for the inspector all over again. Had I learnt nothing?

  He assisted me up into his curricle and then climbed aboard the vehicle as well. I was getting used to his close proximity beside me on the bench seat. But I would never get used to all that immense heat that seemed to emanate from the man. I could ignore the touch of his coat sleeve. I could pretend his thigh wasn’t a mere inch from mine. But the heat, the warmth, was impossible to disregard. Kelly was an inferno, wrapping around my senses and lowering my guard.

  We rode in silence toward the city centre. Mechanics Bay a threatening darkness to our right. The low lamp lights from houses a welcoming glow on our left. Sea salt spray drifted on the night air, offering an earthy tint to the scents of a metropolis. Few carriages passed us, but as we rounded Custom House Street, approaching Queen, evidence that this was indeed a bustling city emerged.

  A couple walked their dog, while sailors came stumbling out of Anderson’s Imperial Hotel, arms wrapped around shoulders in camaraderie, course words shared and then apologised for when a lady and her gentleman walked by. Several hansom cabriolets rolled past, some vacant, some harbouring fares to their destinations in style. The odd shout of greeting met a similar cry in return, interspersed with a quiet tip of a hat and a curtsy offered behind a small smile.

  Auckland city was alive and well, even with dark clouds hanging ominously in the distance. I wond
ered if these people thought of Margaret’s death, not more than a few yards from where they all cavorted now. I wondered whether their cavalier attitude would change when they were appraised of Mary’s as well.

  I knew I was being morbid. I knew I was being too harsh on the average man. But anger boiled up inside me, at my friends’ deaths, at the fact we’d made little progress in finding who had felled them tonight. I felt impotent with rage. I felt desolate with worry.

  We hadn’t caught him - had I expected such so swiftly? - so when would he strike again?

  “These things take time,” Kelly suddenly said, as if he could read my mind. “Small clues will ultimately lead to bigger clues. Not everything can be solved overnight.”

  “I had not thought we could solve it all tonight,” I lied.

  “Anna,” he whispered, “You expect the rest of the world to move at the speed in which you manage your own life.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded.

  He sighed, slowing the horse down with a small tug on the reins.

  “Exactly what it sounds like,” he countered, not looking at me, but staring into the distance.

  I noted absently that he’d allowed the horse to follow its own lead, and surprisingly it hadn’t headed directly to the police station on Cook Street, nor farther afield to my own home on Franklin. But instead the mare had taken a detour, pulling our curricle towards Albert Park and the old Barracks Wall.

  “Perhaps you could elaborate?” I pressed, gripping my parasol tightly in both hands as though I contemplated using it.

  Kelly, for his part, paid my “weapon” no heed and soldiered on.

  “You became your father’s pupil at fifteen. You knew more about his role of chief surgeon at the age of eighteen than any officer in the Force. At twenty-one he declared you trained. There was nothing more he could teach you. You’d learnt everything a physician needed to learn by the time you had matured.”

  “Hardly the speed of which you refer,” I pointed out sullenly. Six years had felt like a lifetime. “And how do you know all this?” I demanded, wringing the blasted parasol with tight hands.

  “He and I talked most nights. Before he headed back to you and Wilhelmina. If there was one thing I remember most about your father, it was the great pride he had in you. He marvelled at your quick brain. At your ability to face such horrors with aplomb. He couldn’t tell everyone, but he found a solid audience in me.”

  “If only I had been born a man,” I whispered, remembering my father’s own anger at how unjust society was to women like myself. How I could accompany him on his police calls, but I could not go on my own. How his insistence that I was qualified to carry out a post-mortem meant nothing to the kinds of ears that needed to listen.

  “You are ahead of your time, Anna,” Kelly murmured, snapping the reins and making the horse pick up speed as we approached the fountain in the centre of the park.

  The area was bereft of pedestrians; this late in the evening, most would not venture to the picturesque grounds. Buildings in the distance sat like dark boulders, shadows low to the earth and unmoving. I realised the horse had been heading towards one of the police occupied “barracks.” I wasn’t sure what the extra space was actually used for, but the horse was familiar with the route all the same.

  The trickle of the fountain filled the silence that had sprung up between us, the smell of honeysuckle and roses floated on the air. In daylight, the park was magnificent. A small piece of God’s beauty in the middle of a bustling town. There was a part of me that wistfully fantasised that it was for the setting that Kelly had brought us here. Not because his horse was following a well trodden route without guidance.

  Anger made my words sound sharper than they needed to be. “And you believe, Inspector, that I wished for an outcome ahead of its time tonight?”

  “I believe, Anna,” he said steadily, “that patience is not one of those traits your father praised enthusiastically late into the night.”

  I turned to him, the parasol briefly forgotten, self-righteousness acting as a weapon instead. The fountain came closer, the sound of the water drowning out the wind in the nearby trees. I opened my mouth, ready to fire my barrage at the inspector, when something on the fountain’s edge caught my eyes.

  The cast iron shapes of dolphins, with their horn blowing cherubs atop, came into a shaft of moonlight. The water glistening off the dolphins’ long noses, trickling from the lip of each horn. Landing in a splash around the base, making the water lap out in concentric circles and nudge a pale hand.

  I knew immediately, even though I could not discern the sex yet, that the body would be female.

  The water in the fountain was tainted red.

  “Oh, no,” I managed, before the inspector pulled hard on the reins, halting the curricle and making our bodies rock forward.

  “Stay here,” he instructed authoritatively, climbing down from the buggy and starting to move off.

  Of one thing I was certain, I had been trained by the best.

  I slid off the seat and landed on my feet without making a sound, and then rounded the front of the curricle, patting the horse on its nose to keep her happy, and following in the footsteps of the inspector.

  The woman wore, I noted as I neared, a beautifully crafted, bronze toned dress. The pattern of which somehow catching my eye; little embroidered flowers, sewn in fine aquamarine coloured thread. It was exquisite. And an outfit I had on many occasions coveted in the past.

  The parasol fell from my limp hand, clattering to the ground, making Kelly turn around instantly. Fear and panic marring his stoic features.

  No.

  I took a step towards both him and the body. He took a step towards me.

  No. No. No.

  I started shaking my head. My heart thundering inside my aching chest. Tears marring my vision, making the inspector waver as he approached. Making his outstretched hands seem more plentiful in number than just the two of them.

  No. It couldn’t be. Not her. She knew to stay home tonight.

  I stumbled, my legs somehow buckling, as if all my strength was needed to just breathe and not walk. The inspector caught me; two strong arms wrapping around my frame and practically lifting me off the paving, swinging me away from the sight of my fallen friend.

  “No,” I said, my voice quivering in a manner I had never heard myself use before. “No. It can’t be,” I pleaded.

  “Shhh,” Inspector Kelly murmured, his hand in my hair, pressing my face to his broad chest, trying his best to halt my efforts to see the woman’s features.

  “Tell me it’s not her,” I said, panting for breath. “Tell me!”

  He looked down at me, sorrow and something else, something darker and much more sinister that spoke directly to me in that moment, shining from his face. I clung to him. This rock in amongst a stormy harbour. I clung to him.

  But I knew what that look meant.

  “It is Miss Nelson,” Kelly confirmed, his voice rough with unspent emotion.

  I clung to the inspector. My hands fisted in the lapels of his jacket coat. My eyes unseeing. My ears roaring, as if they too wanted to scream.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Not Helen. Not Wilhelmina’s best friend.

  I sucked in a deep breath and screamed all my guilt and frustration to the heavens.

  “No! No! No!” Until I had no voice left.

  Fifteen

  Miss Cassidy

  Anna

  The shrill sound of a whistle blowing broke my frozen pose. I jumped, the inspector’s coat falling from my shoulders, the curricle bouncing under the shifted weight. A soft snort fell from the disgruntled horse’s nose, two plumes of steam rising on the chill air. I stared at them for too long, knowing there was something more important I needed to do.

  Knowing I didn’t have much time to do it, but unable to make a move.

  The inspector blew his whistle again. Hard and long, piercing the night. Signalling to any constable in
the vicinity that aid was required.

  We couldn’t leave Helen. The inspector wouldn’t leave me.

  And there was no way I could leave either of them.

  A shattered breath escaped my lips. My throat all but closed off to me. I wanted to swallow, but I had no available saliva to effect the move. I licked my parched lips, a salty tear reaching my tongue from the corner of them.

  I swiped at my face with an already damp glove. Then stared at my trembling fingers for too long.

  Move.

  I couldn’t move. All I could do was think.

  The body was cold, so the inspector said. Rigor not having set in, but coolness to the limbs indicating at least an hour, maybe more, since she’d been killed. Blood coated her clothing and spilled over the edge of the fountain’s tub, tainting the water and white chip gravel surrounding it red. Or so the inspector said.

  I needed to know more. I needed to stop the thoughts swirling about my head, the questions, the hypotheses, the endless search for an answer. If I knew more, I’d have that answer.

  I shifted from the curricle’s seat, my muscles sore from remaining in one position for such a length of time. My bones felt ancient as I climbed down the side. My limbs heavy. My heart a lead weight inside an empty chest.

  “What are you doing?” Inspector Kelly’s not unkind voice said from over my shoulder.

  I didn’t turn around.

  “I need a better estimate of time of death.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” he insisted, from closer this time.

  I shook my head, soft tendrils of hair falling down from my clips. My hat long lost to the bowels of the curricle. I didn’t need it. I needed answers.

  “She is my friend,” was all I managed to murmur.

  “Precisely why you shouldn’t do this,” Kelly insisted, this time rounding in front of me, and barring my way. “Anna,” he pleaded.

  My eyes rose to his and he flinched. Just a small movement, but enough to indicate I was a sight. I sucked in a deep, measured breath, and when I released it, my shoulders had moved back, my spine was once again stiff, and my chin had lifted.