A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) (14 page)

If nothing else, they could monitor how much trouble Jones' questioning was bringing down on his head, though she couldn’t think of anything to do about it. Her last attempt to intervene had only made things worse.

“I don’t care that his mother had the bad taste to give him that name. He doesn’t have to use it!”

There could be only one man who fit that complaint. Catherine drifted closer.

“Well, what do you expect the poor man to do?” countered a more sensible voice.

“He could shorten it to ‘Roy’ for a start, which would be more fitting to his station.”

Catherine took as deep a breath as she could against her stays while she fought the urge to say something she shouldn’t. The best she could do for Jones was to listen and observe. He didn’t expect more of her. In fact, he didn’t expect that much and might be annoyed that she exerted herself on his behalf. Men could be so territorial about their work, and they had not parted on the best of terms.

“Pardon, Miss Fairchild, may I have the pleasure of this dance?”

Wishing she had had the forethought to pick up a glass of champagne from one of the passing trays as an excuse, she turned. Her skin crawled. Downey.

They had been introduced last season at a soirée, and so he overstepped no bounds by approaching her. Her mind scrambled for a reason to refuse. She loathed the thought of his touch, even hand against hand for the duration of the dance.
 

She knew enough of him to want to know no more. But what if she might learn something that could help Jones stop the killing? She extended her hand to him. “It would be my pleasure, Lord Downey.”

The band started up a waltz. Dear Lord, she would have to endure his hand at her waist as well. And for the entirety of the dance, as the waltz did not call for an exchange of partners. At least she would have plenty of opportunity for conversation. Perhaps she could learn something of use.

Downey danced with an effortless, elegant grace. Catherine resented having to admire him for anything at all.

He guided her into a turn more sweeping and flashy than the dance strictly required, his hand forceful on her waist to the point of discourtesy. “I understand I should congratulate you on your upcoming nuptials,” he said, his face a mask of pleasant civility.
 

“Thank you,” Catherine said with as much grace as she could muster.

He stroked the small of her back with his thumb. If she ripped his thumb out of its socket and snapped the bone in front of his face, she’d never be invited to another ball in her life. Which would not be such a great tragedy, except that she’d lose a source of potential information-gathering. Not to mention that it would embarrass Richard.

Downey pressed forward to speak in her ear. “I am going to the races next Saturday with a small group of friends. One last girlhood fling before you enter into the staid, dreary life of a married woman?”

She drew back as far as she gracefully could given the dance and the waltz hold. The smart thing would be to accept, but she didn’t think she could bear the company of Downey and his friends for so long. Nor did she wish to subject Richard to the gossip that would arise were she seen keeping company with Downey. For her own self, she cared little about reputation, but Richard worried about such things.

Instead, she would be as bold as he was rumored to be and see if she could spark some sort of reaction. “Is that what happened to Rosalyn Beauchamp? A girlhood fling?”

It wasn’t spoken of, of course, except in excited whispers sealed with promises not to tell. Generally Catherine kept herself apart from those circles of gossip. But she had known Rosalyn a little. They’d fallen into a conversation about oil painting techniques once, and the girl proved more intelligent and spirited than she generally let on. The younger woman had decided to make Catherine her confidant, and so Catherine knew about her ill-advised association with Lord Downey.

She hadn’t, at the time, suspected just how far that association had gone.

Downey faltered in his step. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Miss Beauchamp was a sweet girl, although a little delicate of temperament. Tragic, how death took her in the flower of her youth. Rather like the Lady of Shallot.”

Downey’s droll off-handedness had returned in the space of a measure. A mask, but what did it hide?

“The Lady of Shallot was doomed by love,” Catherine said to pry at the edge of the mask.

He added a quick spin to the dance, an unexpected ornamentation that made her lose for a moment the rhythm of the waltz. “Was she? I only half-remember the poem.”
 

Of course. Tennyson, with his Arthurian chivalry, wouldn’t be to Downey’s taste. She held her tongue for the last few measures of the dance, letting him think the conversation had dropped.
 

“I had a few conversations with Miss Beauchamp that spring,” she said. “I seem to recall that she went out to the races with you several times.”

He stiffened momentarily, then relaxed into his customary charming smile. “I have gone to the races with many ladies. I found Miss Beauchamp’s innocence and enthusiasm. . .amusing.”

They stood off to the side of the dance floor now, Downey having returned her to the place where she had been, as a gentleman ought. But despite his birth, he was no more a gentleman than was a hunting stoat. “So was it your child that Miss Beauchamp carried when she died?”

At last, a blow that drew blood. Flushed with anger, he drew his thin lips back in a snarl. Despite the setting and the presence of witnesses, instinctive fear of violence made her heart pound painfully. She had not known about Rosalyn’s condition at the time of the drowning. When rumors came out of the Yard that Royston was investigating Downey, she had started a conversation with Aunt Rose, always a prodigious fountain of gossip. She regretted now not paying more attention to Rosalyn’s death, but at the time, it seemed just another of life’s meaningless tragedies.

“Were you truly Miss Beauchamp’s friend, you would not be spreading such malicious gossip.”

He was hardly one to talk about propriety, and it was hardly gossip to mention the matter to the father of the child. She watched the stiff set of his shoulders as he stalked away. Judging by his reaction, there had indeed been a child, and he the one who had fathered it.

But was that reason enough to kill? Rosalyn had been ruined, but the consequences of such things fell mostly on the woman. Since Downey already had a reputation as a rake, it could hardly matter to him. Surely not enough to risk being hanged as a murderer. Unless there was more at stake than his name.

It was not enough to go to Jones with yet. The man was getting himself in enough trouble as it was. She would need more, especially since the death did not directly relate to the current case. Why pursue it at all, then?
 

Justice for Rosalyn would be reason enough. Whether Downey hanged for one murder or many, he would be just as dead. Jones would be vindicated with regards to Downey’s character, if not the nature of his crime.

But if Downey was willing to kill once to preserve his secret, what would he do if he discovered that she persisted in her curiosity?

***

It was a Friday night, and Fishtail’s Gin Palace was packed with people determined to make merry. The gaslights shone bright within multi-colored glass sconces, giving the bar the festive surrealism of a child’s dream. The proprietor’s unlikely name adorned every wall in ornate red-and-gilt letters. In one corner a garishly painted mechanical clown juggled for the entertainment of the tipsy crowd, its too-large mouth frozen in a rigor mortis grin.
 

An eccentric born, Fishtail put out bowls of clean water on full-moon nights so werewolves wouldn’t go thirsty. Neighboring establishments complained, but, as Royston pointed out when he was a constable, Fishtail broke no laws. Privately, he found that act of simple kindness charming.

For once, Royston wasn’t in the bar to pull Willie out of trouble. He was drinking right alongside him.

Willie offered him a cigarette from a silver case that made Royston wonder if Willie’s landlord was going to go unpaid again. When Royston shook his head, Willie took one for himself, lit it with a match, and took a deep drag.

Godwin had given Willie a pipe on his eighteenth birthday as well, but Willie had either lost it or pawned it. Royston didn’t ask which.

“Here.” Willie pushed a glass in front of him. “Try this one. It’s from France, or so old Fishtail says.”
 

Fishtail’s was known for its samples of unusual wines and spirits from all over the world.

Royston sipped at the shot, which was sweet and strong and tasted of pomegranate. “Don’t talk to the bluebloods. Don’t talk to the street urchins. Who does that leave me with, the vicar?”

“And you get on so well with vicars.” Willie laughed and knocked back his own shot.

“If they stopped insisting I repent the sin of being born, we might get on better.” Royston took a deeper swallow of the French liquor.

It was his second shot. No, was it his third? He should slow down.

Willie waved the bartender over for another round. Oh, hell, it wasn’t like he was on duty, and tomorrow was his day off.

“What’ll it be this time, mates? Something stronger? I’ve a spiced rum straight from the Americas that’ll put hair on your chest.”

Royston looked up into the lifelike, lifeless eyes of the
thing
balancing on the bartender's shoulder. Almost human hands, small as a child’s, almost human features on the thing’s frozen mechanical expression. The liquor churned in his gut. Someone had taken a monkey and. . .

The thing scampered clumsily down the bartender’s arm and up to Royston’s shoulder. He shuddered and grabbed the thing, ready to hurl it away from him.

The fur beneath his hand was wooly. Combed lamb’s wool, like a child’s toy. A clever replica, not a taxidermist’s abomination.

The bartender and Willie were both staring at him.

Royston forced a laugh. “Sorry, sorry. Friend of mine got bitten by a monkey once. Sailor’s pet. Public drunkenness, down on the wharf.”

A true story, if not the reason for his reaction.

The bartender chuckled. “Was the sailor drunk, or the monkey?”

“Both, actually,” Royston said.

The bartender threw back his head and laughed. “That’s a story worthy of a round on the house. What’ll it be?”

The rum was sounding good. He said so.

“I almost forgot about poor Chester and that monkey.” Willie laughed. “Never a dull shift down at the wharf. Remember that crazy Yank?”

“How could I forget?”

The man had been screaming and sobbing and raging about angels and demons. Too long at sea, too long in the opium dens, or a naturally unbalanced mind, Royston would never know. Talking him into the wagon so they could get him to a sanitarium seemed about as likely as coaxing a cat into a bath, but Royston had been making progress. Until suddenly the man snapped.

Quick and strong, Royston still could not match the infernal strength of a madman. The man had his hands around Royston’s throat, pressing into his windpipe, and the world went black. When he came to, on his back looking up into the light of the streetlamps, Willie had been bending over him, an improbable angel in a constable’s uniform.

“For what it’s worth,” Willie said, “My money’s on Winchell and this Downey fellow working together. Would explain why neither of them match up exactly with all the dates.”

“I thought that, too. But everyone says they’re bitter rivals, haven’t so much as spoken since that cotton deal went bad.”

“Everyone knows they’re not on speaking terms.” Willie downed his shot. “Convenient, that.”

“If you know something, if you’ve worked something out, you’ve got to tell me.”

Willie shrugged. “Nah. Just a feeling. Detective work, that’s your job.”

“Willie, please—“

“Would I hold out on you?”

Not on something this important, surely. Willie could be careless, even callous. But he could not be so unfeeling, not with lives at stake.
 

“The problem is that you’re too smart for the Yard and they know it,” Willie said after the bartender had left them with their fresh drinks. “Same as me.”

Willie’s problem had been that he drank too much and worked too little, but Royston didn’t want to fight. He needed this, needed a night laughing and drinking with Willie, just like old times. Wasn’t that little enough to ask?

“The more you let yourself feel, the less clearly you’ll think,” Willie quoted his father “Take the emotions out of it. Treat the case like one of the problems Da used to bring home for us to stretch our brains on.”

“How can I? You know how those girls died.”

“What did Da always say? Think like the criminal.”

Royston knocked back the rest of his shot. “This isn’t a simple criminal, this is a madman. A monster.”

“Your problem, Roy-boy, is that you need a diversion. Let me teach you how to get a woman to come home with you. Or better yet, to take you home with her. Easier that way, you can just slip out in the morning.”