I sagged in relief then. Guiltily, my attention settled on Mornaday, still clutching his bloodied shoulder. “You are wounded as well. You should have treatment.”
“It is a flesh wound,” he assured me. “Bloody bullet went right through.” He glanced down at the recumbent form of my uncle. “More than I can say for him. One of the Ripper’s victims wasn’t cut as badly as that,” he said, his expression one of mingled distaste and approval.
“I wanted him to know that I meant it,” I said dully.
He put a heavy hand to my shoulder and for the first time I realized his brows were white, heavy and unnatural. The odor of spirit gum and licorice still clung to him. “Of all the fiendish stratagems,” I breathed. “You were the porter outside Madame Aurore’s rooms. You are the one who brought her body to the Belvedere.”
He nodded. “There is much to tell. But later. When he can hear it too,” he added with a nod towards Stoker.
I returned the nod and went to help Mr. Pennybaker, mastering my shaking hands and the dull certainty that if anything were to happen to Stoker, life would not be worth living.
The next hours were not ones I remember with any great fondness. There was blood—a great deal of it—and copious swearing, both on Stoker’s part. He came to once or twice before Mr. Pennybaker, a gifted and courageous surgeon, managed to employ the necessary anesthetics. He administered ether with a liberal hand and Stoker finally slept, a calm and motionless sleep that mimicked death. Mr. Pennybaker, having received his training on the battlefield during the Crimean War, was just as comfortable performing surgery on his dining room table as he would have been in hospital, he said.
“And a man is as likely to die of dysentery or typhoid as his wounds in such a place,” he added calmly. “We will attend to him here so long as you can provide me with a steady hand and a strong nerve.”
I did as I was told, handing over instruments newly boiled and still hot from the pan, wiping his brow as he worked, never asking questions or daring to look beyond the ends of my own arms. I moved like an automaton, at his bidding, with no mind of my own save what he needed of me.
Mornaday was there, patiently waiting his turn, and J. J. Butterworth as well. We worked, this curious band, as one unit, with the surprising Mr. Pennybaker as our leader, giving orders in a calm, authoritative manner. He was patient with us, and because he displayed no nerves, we were able to do things we could not have even imagined. J. J. was quietly sick into a potted palm in the corner at one point, but she rallied and returned, and in that moment, I realized we were destined to be allies for the rest of our lives. Mornaday, whose loyalties had so often been tested, was the greatest help of all. Before Stoker was thoroughly sedated, he was in a mind to fight, and it was Mornaday who sat on his legs and held him down, even as the wound in his own shoulder opened and the blood flowed freely.
When it was finished and the last bandage had been tied and the last pool of blood had been mopped, Stoker lay, pale and unresponsive, as immobile as one of Madame Tussaud’s own creations. Ether, that glorious insensate elixir, was slowly being pumped from a bottle through a rubber mask over his face. It was J. J.’s task to squeeze the balloon on the bottle at regular intervals to ensure the anesthesia’s delivery.
I looked at Stoker’s face, a curious marble cast to it that I had never seen before.
“It is the ether,” J. J. said knowledgeably. “He will come around soon enough when Mr. Pennybaker removes the mask.”
“How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I have nursing experience.”
I did not ask and she did not elaborate, but it occurred to me that our lives had perhaps not been so very different after all. Both of us were women of the world, forced to make our way without help from others. And I made up my mind then that if ever I were to tell my story, it would be to her.
Mornaday’s injuries were dealt with swiftly—a mere matter of a few stitches and a bandage that he sported with considerable pride as his superior from Scotland Yard arrived.
“Sir Hugo,” I said, greeting the head of Special Branch when he entered with a few of his juniors.
“Miss Speedwell,” he replied dryly. “Why am I not surprised to find you in the midst of this debacle.” He turned his penetrating gaze upon Mornaday. “And you have managed to get yourself shot, I see.”
“Only a little,” Mornaday replied with a winsome smile.
Sir Hugo was not impressed. “A few minutes in private, Mornaday. You will brief me and then I will give orders.”
Mr. Pennybaker hastened to show them into a small study, where they remained locked away whilst one of Sir Hugo’s juniors stood watch and the other was dispatched to the gallery to investigate the scene. When his investigation was concluded, he slipped into the room with Sir Hugo and Mornaday, and after a moment, the trio emerged, sober of face and manner. Sir Hugo turned to his men. “There are three consequences in the gallery. Inspector Mornaday will show you where.”
Mornaday looked to Sir Hugo, his face alight. “Inspector Mornaday?”
“Yes, well. If you haven’t earned it yet, you will with this night’s work,” Sir Hugo said, adding a grim smile for emphasis.
“Yes, sir.” Mornaday saluted smartly.
Mr. Pennybaker spoke up. “I must protest, sir,” he told Sir Hugo. “This man has been injured and is in need of rest.”
“I will rest when the job is finished,” Mornaday said, earning him an approving nod from Sir Hugo.
Mornaday escorted the others out, J. J. trailing discreetly in their wake—no doubt to sniff around for whatever gleanings she could find to print.
Mr. Pennybaker excused himself to fetch more hot water and clean bandages, leaving me alone with Sir Hugo. The head of Special Branch fixed me with an impassive stare. His eyes were deeply shadowed and there were new hollows beneath his cheeks, new silver threads in his dark hair. The Ripper case was clearly wearing hard upon him, and I knew he felt the failure of bringing it to a close every moment.
“I wish I could say you looked well,” I began.
His smile was slow in coming. “It would be ungentlemanly of me to remark that you are looking less than bandbox perfection yourself, Miss Speedwell.”
“Most ungentlemanly,” I agreed. “Did you receive my note?”
“I did. It arrived concurrent with Mornaday’s urgent summons to this location. Providentially, I was in the office at the time. I should like to point out that you omitted to relate several key pieces of information,” he said with his customary severity.
“I thought you rather had your hands full with the Ripper investigation. This seemed less important.” I gave him a grin, which he did not return.
“Your consideration does you credit,” he told me.
“What will happen now?” I inquired.
He sighed. “What do you think?”
“That you cannot risk opening an investigation,” I said simply. “A public inquest would bring it all to light—my uncle’s plans, my identity. It would accomplish almost what de Clare intended in the first place, would it not?” I did not wait for him to reply. “And, perhaps more damning, it would expose Archibond, a member of your own force, as an anarchist just when you cannot afford the disapprobation of the public.”
“They already hate and fear us for not bringing this monster to justice,” he said, clearly reluctant to speak the fiend’s name. “They call us incompetent and corrupt and brand us as failures because we cannot solve the insoluble. If we permit this case to become public, it would indeed prove a blow from which the dignity of the royal family—indeed the Empire itself—could not recover.”
“Did Archibond have family?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A sister who kept house for him. She is the only one who will care when he does not come home.”
“What will you tell her?”
“The same as we will tell the rest of the Yard—that Archibond was in pursuit of a criminal and died in the attempt. The criminal escaped. The doctors at the Yard will certify Archibond’s death as a fall, and he will be given a quiet hero’s funeral. It is better than he deserves.”
“And de Clare and his man?”
Sir Hugo considered this. “The Thames carries all sorts of refuse out to sea,” he said after a moment. “And what is carried away does not come back.”
I nodded. “It is a kindness to preserve the fiction of Archibond’s respectability for his sister’s sake.”
“It is more for the sake of my men,” he said with more candor than I expected. “Their morale is at low ebb at present. I could not countenance breaking it further. Those who are here today are my most trusted juniors. They will die before they reveal what he was. And it is a good secret to die with.”
He gave me a tired smile. “And you will go on about your life,” he said firmly. “Without meddling in matters you oughtn’t.”
“Certainly,” I said in a milky tone whose blandness did not fool him for a moment. His expression turned severe.
“You have had enough lucky escapes to do credit to a cat,” he told me. “One might even say you were born under a lucky star.”
He reached into his pocket and drew out the diamond star that had been the source of all our troubles. He held it out to me and I took it, marveling at the heft. Illumination broke across the surface, glittering in the gaslight.
“Where did you find it?”
“Archibond had it in his pocket. My man turned it over when Mornaday and I were in conference.”
I handed it back to him. He regarded me in obvious surprise. “I thought you might like to return it yourself.”
“No, thank you,” I said firmly. “I have had quite enough adventure for the moment.”
He gave me an enigmatic look. “I am glad to hear it, although I think I shall believe it when I see it, Miss Speedwell.”
He shook hands and left me then, just as Mornaday returned, looking a little green for his recent exertions. Mr. Pennybaker entered with a fresh can of hot water, his eyes shadowed with fatigue, but he would not rest with unfinished business.
“What about you now, Miss Speedwell?”
“What about me?” I inquired.
He looked at my arm. “My dear, didn’t you realize? You have been shot.”
I glanced down at the sleeve of my jacket where a neat hole formed the black heart of a rose of blood. “Mornaday,” I said distinctly. “I do hope you won’t hurt yourself when you catch me.”
And before he could respond, I pitched headlong into blackness.
* * *
• • •
When I awoke, the first exquisite sensation was one of floating, just resting gently upon a golden cloud that drifted on a golden sea. I shifted slightly and a shaft of pain ripped through my arm.
“Mind you move slowly,” said a familiar voice. “If you tear out those stitches, Pennybaker will have my guts for garters. He told me to watch over you.”
I opened my eyes to find J. J. Butterworth sitting on a chair, her eyes deeply shadowed, but her mouth curved into a smile. A line of sunlight fell upon the carpet at her feet.
“Stoker,” I said, barely forming the words through lips so parched I could scarcely speak.
“Awake before you, and now out again,” she told me. She rose and put a cup to my lips. Water, that most precious, most delicious libation. I drank greedily until she took the cup away. “Not so fast. You will heave it all up again if you aren’t careful. It is the ether making you thirsty. I will give you another drink in ten minutes if you stay awake.”
I forced my eyes wider. I turned my head, that strange and floating balloon that seemed oddly detached from my body. I tried to move, but my legs refused to answer, weighted and dead.
“I am paralyzed,” I murmured, closing my eyes.
J. J. snorted. “You are not paralyzed. Vespertine is lying on your legs.”
I opened my eyes again to see the great shaggy beast draped over my lower limbs, head heavy upon my stomach, eyes gazing up at me in anxious adoration.
“He refused to leave you,” she told me, ruffling his ears fondly. “I wanted to keep him for myself, but he has attached himself to you.”
“I do not want a dog,” I said, forming the words slowly and distinctly. My tongue still felt not entirely under my command.
“Well, you have one,” she said firmly. “Deerhounds are a frightfully loyal breed, and he has already lost one mistress this week.”
I lifted one hand and put it onto Vespertine’s head. He gave a deep sigh and settled further, closing his eyes as I did mine. Perhaps owning a dog was not such an unthinkable proposition after all.
After a moment, I opened my eyes again and inspected my surroundings. I lay on a narrow bed, tucked firmly beneath a coverlet printed with elephants. I blinked hard and then closed my eyes again.
“Do you see elephants or am I having an hallucination?” I demanded in a hoarse croak.
“They are on the walls as well,” she informed me. “You have been put to bed in the night nursery at the top of the house.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Because with three beds already in one room, it was almost a makeshift ward. Far better for looking after the lot of you,” she told me.
I opened my eyes again and looked to my left. Mornaday occupied a narrow bed identical to mine, save that his coverlet was printed with dancing bears. A nightcap was perched at a quizzical angle on his head, and his mouth was open as he delivered lusty snores. With great care for my aching head, I turned to the right. Stoker.
I thrust myself up onto my elbow and paused as the room spun like a carousel. My other arm was bound to my side by a sling. I pushed gently at Vespertine and he leapt gracefully from the bed, landing noiselessly on his feet.
J. J. swore but came to me, helping me up. “Go slowly,” she admonished. “You’ve had nothing to eat and you were under the ether for rather a long time. Your arm will be fine, by the way. Pennybaker probed the wound thoroughly and found a piece or two of bullet that must have chipped off, but the rest passed through. He stitched you up and it looks rather like the constellation Orion now.”
“I don’t care if he cut the bloody thing off,” I muttered as I tottered across the few yards of carpet to Stoker’s bed. He lay just as I had seen him last, pale and still. The only change was a darkening of the beard at his jaw.
“You said he was awake,” I told her, my tone more than a little accusatory.
“Was,” she emphasized. “And I said he was out again. He needs the rest. As do you,” she added. I looked down at him for a long time before I allowed her to coax me back to my bed. I tumbled down onto it and into sleep. Just as I drifted off, I mumbled my thanks.
“You are welcome, Princess,” she said with a note of amusement.
* * *
• • •
It was not until the next time I woke that the little barb stuck. I awoke and immediately realized what she had meant.
“Bloody bollocking hell,” I said, opening my eyes.
“Well, that is one patient clearly feeling better,” Mr. Pennybaker said in his mild voice. He applied a finger to my pulse as I struggled to rise.
“A moment, if you please, Miss Speedwell.”
“How are the others?”
“Mr. Mornaday is in the grip of a fever. Nothing serious, but he did quite overexert himself and I should like to keep an eye on him for a day or so more. You are free to get up and move about as you like, my dear. I have examined the wound. There is no sign of infection, but I am afraid it will leave a series of small scars. You will have a story to tell when you wear an evening gown.”
I pushed Pennybaker aside. Stoker sat up in bed, his bear
d frankly disreputable now, but he was smiling. That beautiful, inimitable smile. His torso was lavishly bandaged and bruised every color imaginable, but his coloring was good.
I flew at him, landing on his bed with a thump and heedless of Pennybaker’s admonitions. I cupped his face in my hands, my voice tender and deceptively sweet. “Stoker, I hope that you will mark me well when I say, if you ever do such a thing again, I will shoot you myself and save the villains the trouble.”
* * *
• • •
Several days later, Mornaday and J. J. Butterworth joined us for a sort of postmortem, bringing word of the doings abroad. J. J. was illuminated like a faery light as she bore her latest endeavors in the Daily Harbinger in triumph.
“The Ripper has struck again,” she pronounced. “And they let me have the front page,” she added, pointing to the byline.
But my gaze had fallen to the name of his latest victim. “Mary Jane Kelly,” I said slowly, remembering the pert girl with the pretty blond hair and the cheap dress I had not returned.
I forced myself to read the piece as J. J. went on. “This one was killed in her room in Miller’s Court,” she told Stoker, whose face was ashen against his pillow. I remembered the man who had passed us in the street the night we wandered in the fog in search of Whitechapel High Street, the sense of foreboding that had leeched from him.
I thrust the newspaper back at J. J. “It is very well written,” I told her truthfully. “It is as if I were there.” The details of the crime turned my stomach.
“I hope that this will finally prove to those toffee-nosed prigs in Parliament that something must be done for the poor and indigent,” she said, her color high.
Mornaday was watching her with a gleam of emotion in his eyes, and I wondered if he knew his feelings would never be reciprocated. J. J. Butterworth would make no man a wife. She was wedded to her career, her calling to expose the truth to the harsh light of day. She was a crusader, and crusaders were always touched with a bit of the fanatical. There was also the matter of the waltz we had shared and the tiny kiss she had bestowed upon me at the end of it. I looked at her and saw she was watching me, a small, inscrutable smile playing about her mouth. I knew that some women had Sapphic inclinations, and of course it was possible J. J. was one of their number. But I suspected she was more enchanted with the fact of her own outrageousness, calculated little stratagems designed to keep everyone she met slightly off-balance. She had faced many trials in her quest to become a journalist of renown, and I did not doubt she would use any weapon at her disposal in the pursuit.
A Murderous Relation Page 27
