A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) (10 page)

The only evidence of the moon in the overcast sky was a silvering of the dark clouds where the moon should be. A light, misting rain started. Royston was glad for his caped great coat as he cursed the changeable spring weather. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He had gotten maybe four hours sleep in the last two days, and the cold he was fighting seemed to be winning. If that toff werewolf left him standing in the rain waiting because he had a more promising engagement. . .

Bandon had helped last night, yes. Had helped of his own free will, since he and his lady had made it clear that there would be no coercing him. But gentry were fickle. Things, people, didn’t matter to them the way they did to working folk. Certainly people like he and Molly didn’t matter. He leaned against the building and closed his eyes. Just for a moment. Just while he waited. . .

He jumped awake to the touch of a wet nose on his hand. The wolf gave a little whine of concern. How long had Bandon been standing there?

“All right,” Jones said. “I’m assuming it was the cart you were following last night to find this place. In the daylight, we saw tracks where the ground was soft.”

Richard nodded.
 

“I want to know where the cart went when it left here.”
 

***

Richard cast about. No new trails of horse-scent. The cart must have followed its own back-trail for a distance. The trick would be to catch it if and when it deviated.

The rain came down more heavily, pelting him, soaking past his naturally oiled guard-hairs and down to the depths of his undercoat. It diluted scent, and he missed where the scent trail turned off toward the market square. Backtracking, he nearly ran into Jones. He’d forgotten that he had a partner in this hunt.

The inspector shook hard with cold, and he staggered a little as he shifted his path to avoid the collision.
Are you all right?
Richard wanted to ask. He pushed his muzzle against Jones’ hand and whined.

Jones straightened, seeming to pull himself back to focus. “Have you lost the scent?”

Putting his nose to the new trail, Richard followed more slowly. Tracking was trickier here. The streets were better-traveled, and the trails of many horse teams crossed and overlapped until they reached the marketplace, and Richard could no longer be certain he followed the right cart. He was more mindful, too, of his human partner, who now and then snuffled surreptitiously into a handkerchief.

He yelped at a sharp pain in his left forepaw. Jones was by him in an instant, taking up the paw.

“Damn. You’ve glass in it. Someone must have broken a bottle here.”

The scent of his own blood filled the air. Richard instinctively tried to draw his paw back, but Jones held firm.

“This is one place where fingers are better than fangs, I think.”

The inspector’s hands were gentle as he drew out the embedded glass. Most people would not go near a bleeding werewolf, even though science had proven that it took the saliva of a werewolf in an open human wound to cause the change.

“That’s a nasty deep cut, and these streets are filthy. I think we’d best get you back to your lady alchemist.”

But Richard had not forgotten the scent-memory of the horrors at the warehouse, just as he knew Jones had not forgotten the sight of the dead girl. Resolutely, he put his head down to the trail and limped forward. Jones, coughing, followed.

By the time Big Ben chimed midnight, he had to admit it was futile. For the last quarter hour he had been crossing back and forth across the same street, trying to pick out the days-old scent of one horse team among dozens older and newer, all overlaid by spilled beer and dropped fish-and-chips and the fading exhaust of horseless carriages, all washed into a muddle by the downpour. Jones had long since surrendered to his misery and huddled in the meager shelter of an overhang, watching him sniff.

Richard limped over and pressed against his legs in a mute plea and an apology.

Jones dropped a hand to his shoulder. “We tried. No one can say we didn’t. I know you gave it your best.”

Richard started to limp off.

“Come back to my flat and dry off,” Jones called to him. “Do you drink in that form? Spirits, that is? I think we could both use a stiff one, and I hate to drink alone. It isn’t a fit night for man nor beast.”

Jones started off, and Richard followed.

“None of that window nonsense, mind you,” Jones said over his shoulder. “You’ll come in by the front door like a proper guest.”

***

Royston paused at the cubbies by the door to gather his mail. There was a yellow telegraph slip, but he’d need better light to read it. The neighbors would complain if they saw the werewolf padding upstairs after him, but he didn’t care. Bandon was far more respectable than his usual parade of informants.

He let Bandon into his rooms and lit the fire before excusing himself to change into dry clothes. His throat felt raw, and his head felt twice its size. The night’s adventures hadn’t done him any good. He brought a towel out with him. The werewolf stood on three legs, dripping on the hearth rug. Oh, this was awkward. Bandon could scarcely towel himself dry, and one did not leave guests cold, wet, and uncomfortable. Rubbing him dry like he was some stray he’d brought home from the streets seemed a bit too familiar.

He held the towel out. “Do you want—?”

Bandon limped forward and, head high with dignity, submitted to a toweling.

“Better, I hope?” Royston tried to ignore the wet-dog odor. Canis lupus or canis familiaris, even a clean wet canine inevitably smelled doggy.

Bandon gave a slow wag of his tail.
 

Royston took the whiskey out of the liquor cabinet and set out two glasses. Then he contemplated the width of the ’wolf’s muzzle relative to the width of the mouth of the glass. Perhaps a bowl would be better. Only setting down a bowl on the floor for a guest to drink out of seemed impolite.

Finally he hit on a solution.
 

Bandon gave him a gaping wolf grin before lapping whiskey from the delicate but wide-mouthed china teacup that was part of the set Royston had inherited from his mother.

“Let me see to that paw before you go,” Royston said.

Bandon held the paw out in acquiescence, looking for all the world like a trick dog trained to ‘shake’. Royston suppressed a smile as he took the proffered limb. The cut was as deep as he'd feared. “You shouldn’t be running on this,” he said.

Bandon pulled his foot back and limped to the door. Unfortunately, he was right. No cab would take a werewolf, and it was too late to hire a horse and cart. Staying wasn’t an option. Bandon would be giving hard evidence to confirm Royston’s suspicions as to his identity, and the laws being what they were that would put them both in an awkward situation.

Not to mention, he could think of only a few explanations for why a member of the landed gentry would be leaving the rooms of a humble police detective in the detective’s own clothes in the early hours of the morning, and any one of them would have them up on bribery charges if not violations of the decency act. Royston sighed. “At least let me treat it with iodine and bandage it. I’d rather not have your lady after my hide if you die of infection.”

Bandon bore the sting of the iodine without a whine and sat patiently for the bandaging. Royston wound extra cloth around the foot, making an impromptu boot. It probably wouldn’t hold for long against the rain-soaked ground, but at least he’d tried. “I guess you’d best be off then.”
 

His own reluctance surprised him, but the werewolf was good company despite his lack of speech or maybe because of it. Royston wasn’t eager to be alone with the memory of Molly as he had last seen her.
 

The ’wolf padded to the door, already limping less thanks to the protective bandaging.

“I know we have one more day of the full moon,” Royston said. “But you need to stay off that paw.”

Bandon gazed up at him, eyes inscrutable.

“I know a man of your stature thinks he needn’t take orders from a commoner like me, but if you turn up tomorrow I’m not going out with you. You can howl under the window until you’re arrested for a nuisance.”

Ben chimed in the distance.

He opened the door. “I don’t suppose you’ll send a note tomorrow to let me know you made it home safely. That would be too much of an admission of who you are.”

When Bandon left, Royston picked up the telegram and settled into a chair by the fire. Despite his exhaustion, he wasn’t eager to meet whatever dreams lay in store for him.

The yellow slip held a response from a clerk in the property records office. He now knew who owned the warehouse where Molly had been found. He smiled in grim satisfaction.

Eight

The manservant let Royston into Dr. Edmund Winchell’s red brick townhome. “This way, sir. The master will see you in his laboratory.”

Royston followed the impeccably-dressed servant up the winding staircase and down a corridor. Artistically rendered designs for airships and steamcars lined the walls, varied only by a detailed, violent depiction of a wolf brought to bay by a huntsman and his hounds.
 

The servant turned a polished brass handle and opened the door at the end of the corridor. “Sir, Inspector Royston Jones has arrived.”

Royston stepped across the threshold—and gasped. A large black wolf shuffled toward him with the unmistakable stiff-legged gait of an automaton. Its eyes had the creepy dead stare of taxidermy glass. Sick, cold horror washed over him, the same sensation he'd felt when he found Molly.
Bandon. Oh, no.
 

“Have no fear.” From the recesses of the room came a cultured male voice. “He’s perfectly harmless.”

This wolf had white on its chest. Bandon had no such markings. Taxidermy took time, and Bandon had been alive only last night. But natural wolves were extinct in England.

“Remarkable, is he not?” A well-dressed man skirted a table filled with oddly-shaped frames with clockwork innards and slipped past racks of test tubes. “One of my proudest creations. I’ve a plan for some improvements, mind you. I think I can make the gait
much
more life-like.”

“Where—” Royston swallowed. “Where did you get the wolf?”

“Oh, a breeder out in Devon. Breeds for the sport hunters. He gets his breeding stock from Russia, I believe.”

Plausible. But there was no way to distinguish the body of a werewolf killed in wolf form from the body of a natural wolf. The Yard wouldn’t be very aggressive in investigating a werewolf disappearances, even if someone bothered to report it.

The automaton lowered its head, huffed an approximation of a lupine pant, and stiffly wagged its tail.

Even ordinary taxidermy made Royston’s skin crawl. The idea of killing an animal for sport and decoration instead of for food or self-defense felt wrong in some fundamental way he couldn’t articulate. But this,
this
was abomination.

Winchell came forward and patted the thing on its head. “I assume you’ve come about the girl found in my warehouse. Unfortunate business, that.”

“Very unfortunate for Molly MacArthur.”

“Who? Oh, yes. The victim, I suppose. Sad, but really it has nothing to do with me. I haven’t used that building in nearly a year. I thought to dabble in cotton, but it never caught on as I thought it might, and with the supply chain problems, the business turned out to be more trouble than it was worth.”
 

“I can verify that.”

Winchell waved a hand in the air, a carefree gesture. “Verify away. It’s no concern of mine. Except, perhaps, for the waste of my taxes, but I’ve a clever accountant. I never pay more than I can miss. I only kept the building because it’s big enough to house a small dirigible if I knock out a few walls. I’ve been meaning to build my own. I’m sure I can improve upon the design.”

“You were a student of Blackpoole.”

“I would say more a colleague, but have it your way. A great man, Blackpoole.”

Royston inhaled sharply. Surely he hadn’t heard right? But the words had been clear. “He brutally murdered twelve innocent girls.”

“True. Quite a shame that such a brilliant career should be so marred by that regrettable streak of madness. It is his work I speak of, of course. Without parallel. And his dedication to protecting us all from the fanged menace. I daresay he did more good than harm.”

Royston opened his mouth, then closed it again, unable to think of what to say to such an assertion.

“Ah, I see you don’t agree,” Winchell said. “But then, you are an uneducated man, with a common man’s sensibilities. You cannot appreciate the scientific mind.”

“Be that as it may, I will ask that you verify your whereabouts on certain nights.”

Winchell let out an aggrieved sigh. “If you must. You may apply to my secretary for my calendar. I never keep track of such mundane details.”

“Be sure that I will.” Royston turned to leave.

“Oh, and inspector? A hint,” Winchell called after him.

Royston stopped and looked back.

“If you are truly looking for someone who shared Blackpoole’s more. . .recreational interests, you may want to have a chat with Alexander Downey. Blackpoole’s last apprentice. He and Blackpoole shared a mutual appreciation for the art of Sickert.”