A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) (2 page)

“Can you think of a reason someone might want to have hurt your friend?”

“Why? Papers say it’s random, say anyone could be next.”

“We haven’t found a connection yet. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”
And if there isn’t one, finding the killer will be as hard as finding a drunken sailor in Church on Sunday.
“Besides, we have to rule out the possibility of someone using these killings as a cover.” When totally at a loss, the only thing to do was to fall back on the standard questions. “We must be thorough. We owe that much to Miss Harper, don’t we?”

She nodded, and sipped at her tea, making a clear effort to compose herself. “There was no one. This may sound impossible, but I can’t think of a single person who disliked Kitty. She was the sweetest—“
 

He waited patiently for her to get herself back under control. “Was there any beau? A special young man she was walking out with?”

“No. She had her share of admirers, sir. ‘Course she did, pretty as she is. Was. She was friendly with all of them,”

No strong suspects, not even a weak one.

“Oh, not like
that
, sir,” she said, catching and misinterpreting his frown. “Just, she came from the country, see? Everyone was a friend to her, she hadn’t learned London ways. She was just. . .friendly. Never saw the bad in people.”

All the easier for a charming stranger to chat her up and lead her off. From the lowliest schoolyard bully to the worst of the men who killed for amusement or for the few coins in the victim’s purse, predators looked for weakness. Unfortunately, in the streets of London, being too kind, too friendly, too willing to help a stranger in need constituted weakness, especially for a vulnerable unmarried woman.
 

Royston drank his tea, bitter in his mouth despite milk and extra sugar, hoping it would somehow stave off the headache building near the front of his skull, the combined result of a lack of sleep and a lack of hope.

“Kitty was the best friend I could ever hope for,” the girl said. “I just can’t believe something like this could happen. It’s just like with the Ladykiller, except the ’wolf got him. Would figure that it’d be the rich girl he saved, that’s just how the world works, innit? Except I can’t figure why a werewolf would side with the hoity-toity; they’re kept even lower than us working folk.”

That was just one on the unsolved mysteries around that supposedly closed case. Royston was just glad it hadn’t been his case, though the Inspector in charge had brought him in to assist. He'd been newly promoted and enthusiastic and had that really been just over a year ago?

“I’m so scared, Inspector. All us girls are so scared." Her eyes pleaded, full of fear. "Please catch him, sir. Please catch him before he gets another one of us.”

Royston saw her out with a solemn oath to do his very best to see justice done for Kitty Harper. That much he could swear to. He’d do his best, he’d been doing his best, but right now his best felt utterly inadequate.
 

Royston forced himself to choke down a cold sandwich at his desk before his next interview. The headache would only be worse if he didn’t eat. The food sat in a lump in his stomach as he left to interview Miss Harper’s employer.

The Commissioner and his daughter were coming into the Yard just as he was leaving. Adela Chatham was a vision indeed. An intricate twist held her hair up under her peacock-plumed hat, but a few rich chestnut curls artfully escaped to frame the sweet oval of her face. The rich emerald of her dress complimented her coloring perfectly.

She had consented to walk out with him a time or two. Royston had dared to hope, but it had come to naught. He suspected that her father’s disapproval had something to do with that, but she was too well-bred to embarrass him by explaining the cause in detail. He supposed it had no future to begin with. Though the gentry would consider a police commissioner barely above a tradesman, the commissioner thought much more of himself, and Miss Chatham had been brought up as gently as any lady, untouched by the darker realities of her father’s world and as untouchable as an angel in a dream.

“Inspector Jones, how do you do?” The sincerity of her smiled warmed him through.

“Well, thank you. You are a vision as always, Miss Chatham.”

She blushed prettily. “And you are still the consummate gentleman.”

“Adela, could you wait for me just inside? There’s a lamb.” When she was out of earshot, the Commissioner turned to Jones. “A word, if you will, Jones.”

He had already started on his way. He stopped and turned, one step down from the Commissioner and feeling that much shorter for their relative positions.

“Any progress on these new killings?”

Royston looked down for a moment, then made himself meet his superior’s eyes. “No, sir, not yet. We have an identity for the girl found last night. Her flatmate wasn’t able to tell me anything of use. I’m on my way to talk to her employer.”

“Honestly, Jones, if I’d know from the outset how big this case was going to be, I’d have assigned it to someone more seasoned.”

“Yes, sir.”
 

He wouldn’t point out that of the more seasoned inspectors, two had retired, three had been fired for graft, and the remaining couldn’t come close to Royston’s success rate.

“I’m keeping you on the case because of your work in the Dalton case and because Godwin seems to see something in you. This case could make your career, Jones. I’m giving you a chance to rise above your background. Not many men get that. It’ll be on my reputation as well as yours if you fail. Don’t let me down.”

“No, sir.”

He could not entertain the fear that Chatham’s low opinion of him was justified. He had proved himself time and time again. But this was his biggest case yet. What if he wasn’t equal to it? He’d sworn he’d prove himself to those who looked down on him as a governess’s bastard with a name his mother had usurped from her betters. But what if his pride meant that a killer stayed free and more girls died?

This case could, as Chatham pointed out, make his career. But the girls were more important, the ones walking home from merciless jobs through lonely walkways, yes, even the ones working the streets because they had no choice. The women who, like his mother, had no one to care for them in a city that made it difficult and dangerous to be a woman alone and unprotected.
 

Royston walked a short distance and then caught the omnibus that would take him to the dry-goods shop where Kitty Harper used to work. The interior of the ‘bus buzzed with a half-dozen conversations, not all of them conducted in English. Most of the words he caught and understood (English, plus the French and Greek he’d learned from his mother) had something to do with the dead girl, the killer, the terror that ran through the streets of London, and the ineffectiveness of the Yard. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glad that his rank freed him from the identifying uniform.

As the patient, plodding horses wove their way between hackney cabs and delivery carts, stopping here and there to avoid pedestrians and bicycles and the occasional steam-driven horseless, he turned his mind to the dead girls.

He could see no obvious link between them. The first two had been prostitutes, which was probably why Royston had been put on the case instead of someone the Commissioner favored more. No one cared about a couple of dead whores. Good riddance, many would say.

As though prostitution weren’t the inevitable result of a society that declared a man should not marry until such time as he was financially settled and that ‘good’ women did not have sex outside of marriage. Combine that with natural urges and the pressure on boys to ‘become a man’, add in the extreme desperation of poverty, and he couldn’t imagine how anyone expected that there wouldn’t be prostitutes.

The only reason an investigation had been opened at all was the gruesome way the girls had died and the similarity to the Blackpoole case. The next girl had been a seamstress, though, and the one after that a washerwoman. Three of the four girls had been fairly new to London, and both of the prostitutes had been fairly new to the trade. No common acquaintances.

The omnibus jerked as the horses pulled to a sudden stop to avoid a flashy horseless carriage zipping through traffic in a particularly reckless manner. Bloody toffs thought they owned the road!

Although he had to admit, it had been a particularly fine-looking machine, all bright paint and polished chrome. He didn’t imagine he’d have a chance to ride in one of those in his lifetime.

The horses leaned into their traces once more, and the omnibus continued its slow progress.

One thing kept repeating in his mind, words repeating like a chant in time to the slow clop of the horses’s hooves against the paving.
It’s just like with the Ladykiller, except the ’wolf got him. . . I can’t figure why a werewolf would side with the hoity-toity. . .
When something wouldn’t leave his mind, he’d learned to pay attention.

From where the omnibus let him off, it was only a half a block walk to the dry-goods shop. Not the fanciest part of town, but definitely not the worst. There was a stationer’s, a dressmaker’s, and a butcher with offerings that looked fresh and wholesome.

The merry jangle of the bell on the door of the dry-goods shop set Royston’s nerves on edge. The gray-haired woman behind the counter turned at the sound. He took in the pride of her manner and the quality of her dress, which, while though of plain gray linen, bore lace embellishments on the sleeves. Surely this must be Mrs. Tull, the proprietress.
 

Her eyes, red-rimmed from crying, softened the first impression given by the thin, downturned lips and the hard lines of her face. She had heard already what had happened to Miss Harper, then. At least he did not have to break the news—by far one of the worst parts of his job.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Ma’am. I’m Inspector Jones of Scotland Yard. Do you have a moment to answer a few questions about Kitty Harper?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course. “You’d best come through to the back. The bell will tell me if anyone comes in. I’m sorry, I’m short-handed today because…” A sob caught in her throat, and she swallowed it with visible effort. “I’m short-handed,” she repeated in a firm, business-like tone.

“Of course,” Royston said softly. “I’m sorry.”

He followed her to the back room of the shop, which was dimly lit by a high window and crowded with a hugger-mugger of accounts books and receipts and an overflow of shop merchandise. A small stove huddled in one corner. He pictured Miss Harper here, perhaps shuffling through things looking for a special order for a customer or having tea on a break, greeting a coworker with a sweet smile.
 

“I’ll put on a kettle for tea,” she said. “It won’t be but a minute.”

She bustled about, putting a kettle on the stovetop, getting the plain blue tea pot down from a high shelf in the cupboard, carefully measuring out the tea leaves from a canister with the focus and care of an alchemist working with precious metals or dangerous chemicals.
 

Royston made himself sit patiently through the ritual of tea-making. One thing about this part of his job—he’d never go thirsty. Refusing tea would have set the woman off her routine and emphasize the fact that this wasn’t a social call. The closer she came to forgetting that he was a Detective Inspector and not a sympathetic neighbor, the more open she’d be.

The bell at the door rang. She jumped, nearly dropping the china cups and saucers.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I’d best. . .”

She took a step toward the front of the shop, and then back, indecisive.
 

Royston smiled at her in reassurance. “It’s fine. You have a shop to run. I’ll take care of the tea, shall I?”

That only made her do the back-and-forth dance once more, with a quick glance to her china as though uncertain whether a mere man could be trusted with so delicate a domestic operation. But at last the needs of commerce won out, and she excused herself, leaving him to watch the pot on the stove.

He listened to the sound and rhythm of the voices in the front of the shop but couldn’t make out the words until Mrs. Tull’s voice rose in anger.

“Fine then! Your custom will be no great loss to me, I assure you, ma’am.”

The kettle whistled, and Royston jumped to pour it over the measured leaves in the pot, performing with the honor of all bachelors everywhere at stake. Thus distracted, he missed the customer’s reply, though he heard the bell ring angrily as the door jerked open hard and slammed shut. To his surprise, next came the sound of the lock on the door as it shot home, followed by the sound of windows being shuttered.

Mrs. Tull stalked back to Royston, her face red, her hands on her hips. “Gossips! Nasty, filthy-minded gossips. Third one this morning. I’ve closed for the day. I can’t bear it, I tell you!” Her face screwed up as though she didn’t know whether she wanted to sob, scream, or do violence.
 

“And you! I expect you’re here to try to dig up some sordid stories about poor Kitty, find some way that this was all her fault to excuse yourself and the rest of you Peelers for your inability to do your bloody jobs!”

Royston flinched. Her anger came out of fear and grief, not rationality, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.