Heartless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 3): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series

by Nicola Claire

  Unfortunately for him, he was too tall to have been a professional jockey. However, I did not see the Yateses as lowering themselves to such a role in any case. They bred horses, not raised them.

  “Mr Yates,” Andrew said in return. “Success in the race?”

  “He threw a shoe at the last corner,” Yates said, glancing back at the horse and drawing my attention to the way the beast lifted its right rear leg off the ground as if injured. “We had it this year, only to be let down by the farrier.” He shook his head and looked back at Andrew. “I did not know you were a race man.”

  “I am not, I admit,” Andrew offered. “I am here in an official capacity.”

  “Official? There’s been a crime?”

  “Murder.” Andrew studied Michael Yates’ reaction but did not see what he was looking for. “I seek your brother, Barclay,” he finally added.

  “Of course. You wish a physician’s assessment before the crime scene is tampered with.”

  I arched my brow at the man, but it was not such a stretch of the imagination to believe his brother had regaled him on occasion of crime scene procedures.

  “Something like that,” Andrew said noncommittally. “Is he here?”

  “Damnedest thing,” Michael Yates said. “He didn’t show for the race at all. Most perplexing. He’s spent as much time as I have at the stables getting Fitzroy’s Regal Challenge ready. And yet I have not seen him since last night.”

  Andrew didn’t hesitate to answer. “Have you notified the Onehunga Police Station?”

  “There wasn’t time. I assumed he’d be here at the racecourse waiting.”

  “But he wasn’t.”

  “No. And I am beginning to worry.”

  Andrew looked around the entrance to the stable the Yates’ family had commandeered as their own. I wondered if he believed Michael Yates was lying. But even from where we were standing, it was clear that there were no available hiding places to stash a dead a body.

  Not that I believed Dr Yates was dead. Far from it in fact.

  Andrew reached into his breast pocket and removed the fly-sheet I had given him, and then handed it to Michael Yates.

  “What know you of this, sir?” he enquired mildly.

  Yates’ forehead wrinkled, and frown lines appeared around his mouth.

  “Barclay’s latest distraction,” he said, rather gruffly. “He is fixated on the occult.”

  “Occult?” I asked, stepping forward. Michael Yates offered me a cursory flick of his eyes and then immediately repeated it.

  “I know you,” he said.

  “Dr Cassidy,” I offered, giving the gentleman my hand. It was only after I’d said my title that I realised I’d misspoken.

  “The lady doctor,” Yates said. And then the frown lines returned to his features again. “But, if you’re here, then why do you need Barclay?” His attention returned to Andrew.

  For his part, Andrew did not show his anger at my having ruined the ruse. Just because I could not see it, however, did not mean it was not there. I was no police officer, but if I wished to be Police Surgeon, I needed to pay better attention to my surroundings.

  “I admit,” I said, rushing to correct my mistake, “that I would like a second opinion.”

  The looks both men threw my way were not comforting at all. Andrew’s was bemused and frustrated, and Michael’s was disappointed and judgemental. How his wife ever made it to Mayor of Onehunga, I could not fathom.

  “I see,” Yates said, handing the fly-sheet back to Andrew. “Well, it appears you’re out of luck, Doctor. My brother has not been here all morning, and as I said, I have not seen him since last night.”

  “Where did you see him last night?” Andrew asked.

  Michael Yates studied him, and I could see the moment he realised we were not after Barclay Yates’ expertise as a doctor. Perhaps my false step had set the foundation for his unease, but it was Andrew’s line of questioning that truly brought the situation home to him.

  “I cannot remember,” the man said and made a move to slip away. “Are we done here?” he added, half turned as he was. “I have a horse to see to.”

  “Thank you for your time, sir,” Andrew offered and gave him his back, leading me from the stables.

  He said nothing for quite some time, his eyes darting about the racecourse as if he could spot the missing Barclay Yates. Here and there were bobbies in uniform, asking questions, searching the throng, making a nuisance of themselves. The excitement of earlier had been replaced with uncertainty, and more than once I heard the murmured word, “Vampire.”

  “I am sorry,” I said, just as Andrew observed, “She is creating a heightened sense of fear among the masses.”

  He glanced down at me. I blinked back at him. Was I to pretend I hadn’t apologised?

  That I hadn’t stepped foul of our enquiries?

  Andrew pulled me in close, drawing my body against his side in the only way he could while walking in public. I leaned into him, accepting the forgiveness he offered without uttering a word.

  “She has done this before,” Andrew commented mildly as if we weren’t talking about a murderess woman, the wife who had tried to end his own life back in London. “In New England.”

  “America?”

  “Yes. I followed her there. After a jaunt in Bohemia.”

  Words failed me. I knew he had chased his wife across the globe. Europe, he’d said. Asia. The New World. But to know such intricacies, such detail was astounding. I was not certain if the flutter I felt in my stomach was joy or disquiet. For so long, Andrew had kept me locked out of his inner turmoil. He had hidden his past and refused to discuss anything that explained the man he had become today. I had tried, for I am nothing if not persistent in my enquiries. But Andrew Kelly is nothing if not stubborn in his pride.

  I looked up at the man; his eyes were set forward. His gloved hand rested upon my wrist where I wrapped my fingers about his arm. He offered a soft stroke of a thumb across flesh; acknowledgement of my thoughts and disquiet. He knew what had made me silent.

  “Her path was erratic,” he said. “Or so I thought at the time. Prague to Rhode Island made little sense to me.”

  “And now this. The vampires.”

  “Yes. Now this. Of course, I had heard the whisperings of housewives in Bohemia. I knew the lore that steeped much of that land in shadows and mysterious death. It was not until I reached the New World, however, following the smattering of crumbs she left for me, that I realised the tales had also touched my wife. New England was rife with stories of bloodless deaths upon my arrival. Consumption, I believed, was the culprit, but the tales she so expertly wove caused unimaginable strife.”

  I let out a slow breath of air considering what might have met him once he made land in America. The chaos and distrust that would have ensued from what were perceived murders and not simply natural deaths.

  “She is addicted to the mayhem,” he murmured. “To the control creating such disorder can give. It is not unlike a game of chess to the woman. Except on a far grander scale. She sees the world in fragments, a portion of a greater plan. Move something over here, and it affects how your opponent can move themselves over there. In the years that followed, the game became more intricate. Her board grew as did the playing pieces she placed upon it. Secrets became a commodity that boosted or lowered the power of those she played with. Misdirection became just as useful. As did death.”

  He looked down at me as we approached the constabulary standing guard at the entrance to the racecourse.

  “I know you question whether she is actually here as we have not yet laid eyes upon her,” he said, reading me far better than even my father had. “But this, all of this, has Eliza May’s handwritten all over it. She is here, Anna. I would bet my life that my wife is here and doing this.”

  “Let us hope you do not have to place that bet,” I replied steadfastly.

  Constable Mackey stepped out from the huddle of bobbies who awaited us and
gave his report to Andrew as my mind wandered and my heart tried to settle beneath my ribs. She was good at this, I acknowledged. Good at making you doubt, at making you second guess what you thought you knew and what you knew for certain. So many pieces to a bigger puzzle; I had to ask myself, what was she trying to create here?

  She wished ill on Andrew; I knew that. He had thwarted her efforts with Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel. He had found her out. Perhaps the only man ever to have found Eliza May Kelly out.

  She also, I acknowledged, wished ill on me, simply because I held his heart. In all other regards, I was inconsequential, apart from the fact that Andrew had fallen in love with me.

  We were her targets, but in hunting us, she brought death and destruction upon our city.

  How many more would die? How many good men would she turn into her playing pieces?

  Would she succeed?

  I looked toward Andrew where he talked animatedly with Constable Mackey. They seemed to have formed a decent working relationship. I missed Sergeant Blackmore. Not that I disliked the young constable. But the sergeant had an edge that I thought perhaps may well be needed.

  Mackey was an innocent. Andrew was too close to this to see clearly. But Sergeant Blackmore was a fighter, one who had earned his way off the dark and dank East London streets.

  I lamented his absence even as I realised there was one other who would miss his absence more than me.

  With nothing else left to me, being as I had not a position within the Police Force and Drummond had arrived at long last, I made my farewells, refused an escort, and boarded the train back to Newmarket.

  I needed to check on Mina, and I thought, perhaps, that Mina would need me.

  It was a hollow comfort, but one I clung to as I watched the landscape change outside the carriage’s window and wondered…Where was Eliza May Kelly?

  He Knew My Heart

  Inspector Kelly

  The trip from Ellerslie to Onehunga was not a long one, being as the railroad station there was on the same line. We made good time and stepped off the carriage into the noonday sun, weaving our way through the small smattering of passengers waiting to board the train into Newmarket.

  Steam billowed around our ankles and children ran in and out of satin-clad legs. The occasional parasol caught my attention, but I had seen Anna board the earlier engine toward the city and knew she could not be out here.

  Sergeant Blackmore greeted us as we stepped out of the station, his Black Maria already waiting for our arrival. The horses tossed their heads and whinnied, stomping their hooves in agitation. Blackie stroked a hand down one of their necks, and they quieted immediately.

  “Got your message, sir,” he said in greeting. “Not seen the man board this mornin’, but I was not advised of your need until an hour past.”

  “Very good, Sergeant,” I said, climbing aboard the driver’s bench of the black beast. Constable Mackey took up position on the rear footboard, as Blackie hauled his large frame up into the driver’s seat.

  “The Yates’ farmstead then?” he enquired.

  “Yes,” I said, finding it difficult to make conversation with my former friend.

  Blackie did not pass comment, merely clucked to the horses and flicked the reins, making the police carriage surge forward and away from the station. As neither of us spoke, the air seemed to thicken. I wondered if it was my imagination or the words we both wanted to say but couldn’t.

  I studied the sergeant out of the corner of my eye. He’d been fighting, I could see. His nose more crooked than usual. His knuckles raw. An unwanted but very much needed part of me considered the location of his bruises; tried to line them up with Chief Davies’ split fingers.

  They could have been from the chief.

  I turned my attention elsewhere and silently cursed myself for my cowardice.

  I did not want the murderer to be Blackie. But I also knew my wife. A more fitting way to harm me she could not have chosen.

  “How goes Onehunga life?” I asked, needing to fill my troubled mind with something other.

  “It is a sleepy hollow, sir,” Blackmore said. “I was much surprised to get your message, and I confess, much appreciative.”

  I smiled. Blackie had never liked to sit idle.

  “You walk the beat?” I asked.

  “Every morn, noon, and night, guv.”

  “And the locals have accepted you?”

  “They accept the uniform. Me, I’m not too sure of.”

  “Oh?”

  He scowled at nothing, directing the horses with expert hands to take a fork in the road that led away from Onehunga township.

  “I believe I am not genteel enough for them, sir,” he finally said.

  I laughed. “Would they rather a genteel police officer or a good one?”

  He turned his head and looked at me briefly, then refocused on the road before us.

  “Do you mean that, sir?” he asked quietly.

  The words had slipped out without thought. A moment’s reprieve from the nightmarish notions that assailed me.

  “It is a truth,” I murmured, for despite my misgivings there was no better policeman than James Blackmore in my eyes. Eliza May could not take away that. Not completely. Even if she had corrupted him, Blackie was good at what was required.

  And yet, the murders would taint everything if they led back to my man.

  I cleared my throat and took in the fine looking house that appeared on the rise.

  “This is it?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Blackie said, sounding subdued. “They ‘ave a few outbuildings, stables and such. I suggest we get the constable to stand outside while we enquire within.”

  “Agreed.”

  The Black Maria rolled to a stop in front of sweeping steps that led up to a grand entrance. The Yateses were not hurting for a penny. I could hear horses off to the side. The sound of a blacksmith at work on an anvil. A flock of startled birds shot up into the air out of a kauri tree in the distance. It was a picturesque scene, and yet I was hoping it harboured a murderer.

  For if Yates did it, Blackie was clean.

  My doubt annoyed me, and I jumped down from the seat without correct preparation, jarring my leg and sending shooting stabs of pain up into my lower spine. I grimaced and made a sound, as Mackey alighted the rear of the vehicle and came to assist me.

  I waved him off, fisted my cane, and took a careful step. I could place weight on the leg, but I feared I’d opened the wound again. Wetness seeped into my trouser leg. I shook my head at myself. She was winning.

  I was not thinking clearly. Not taking the correct precautions.

  I pushed the anger aside and walked up the path toward the front entrance.

  The door opened, and Mrs Elizabeth Yates stepped out. The Mayor of Onehunga was not at the races and this set alarm bells off. The Yateses were nothing if not a racing family. They all loved their horses.

  “Mrs Yates,” I said, bowing. “My apologies for arriving unannounced.”

  “Inspector Kelly,” she said, bobbing her head in greeting. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  She would not think it pleasurable when she found out.

  Treading carefully, for this was a woman with power, I said, “I am here in search of your husband’s brother. Mr Michael Yates is concerned about Dr Barclay Yates’ whereabouts.”

  She made a dismissive sound and then frowned at the house.

  “I am not surprised,” she said, then turned back to face us. “But to send the police is a little on the heavy-handed side.”

  “Heavy-handed?” I asked. “You are not concerned for your brother-in-law?”

  “Oh, I’m concerned, all right,” she said harshly. “But for his stupidity and not his life.”

  I blinked at the woman.

  “Best you come in, sir,” she said.

  I nodded to Mackey, letting him know to stand guard outside should Barclay Yates decide to evade us. And then stepped up onto the porch, hiding
the limp that wanted out. Blackie followed behind quietly, as he was so oft to do. A shadow at my back that was as much a reassurance to me as it was a threat in times past to those who came against us.

  It felt right having him there again and yet until I determined the evidence spoke of what we believed, I could not fully trust him. I kept my body angled to watch Blackie out of the corner of my eyes and silently cursed my wife most vigorously.

  Mrs Yates did not lead us into her parlour but instead started up the stairs to the upper floor of the farmhouse. I cringed at the number of treads I would be required to climb, aware that my trouser leg was well and truly damp now. I glanced at the wooden floor to determine I was not leaving a trail. The dampness had thankfully not reached my ankle but too may treads like these, and it would find its way down.

  We came to the landing and turned toward the front of the house, approaching one of two doors that would lead to bedrooms overlooking the front yard. I noticed Blackie reach for his billy club, pulling it out smoothly in anticipation of being rushed.

  But no one raced through the door as Mrs Yates opened it and it soon became evident why.

  Barclay Yates lay on his rumbled bed snoring, the scent of gin and whisky and God alone knows what else filling up the small space and making my eyes water alarmingly.

  “What the dickens…” I said.

  “I found him like this behind the stables this morning,” Mrs Yates said. “I am quite at a loss as to why he chose last night of all nights to get corned.”

  I stepped forward as Blackie pulled the curtains back, washing the room in light. Yates grumbled under his breath, snorted out loud, and then tried to roll over, only to roll right off the bed.

  He groaned and then attempted to right himself, but he’d twisted the sheets about his large frame and was quite at their mercy…and mine.

  Mrs Yates stepped forward to help her brother-in-law, but I laid a gentle hand on her arm to restrain her.

  “We shall see to him, Mrs Yates,” I said softly. “’Tis not right to have his brother’s wife see him like this.”

  She studied me for a moment and then nodded her head, exiting the room and leaving us alone with a suspected murderer.