Cold Stone and Ivy (37 page)

“I would warrant that everyone has a slight difference in the length and style of their nails, sir, depending on their handedness.”

“So then. Professional anatomist, butcher, or murderer?”

“I cannot express an opinion, sir. There is conflicting evidence.”

“Indeed?”

“Well,” said Christien. “To me, it looks to be different perpetrators but the same victim.”

Rosie snorted out loud but ducked before Henry could hit him.

“Gruesome theory,” said Bond. “Right then, boys, let’s hope we find the torso to which these belong. Bonus marks to whichever of you is correct.”

“Aw, now, Dr. Bond . . .” groaned Bender. “That ain’t fair, is it?”

The Police Surgeon turned to leave. “Put our girl away. And I want you all to scrub up good. Lister’s rules, remember?”

“But the ladies love a bloody frock,” said Rosie. “They practically swoon for it!”

“Off you go, boys. See you tomorrow. And Remy, if you need anything . . .”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

As Dr. Bond left the mortuary, Bender swung around on his companion.

“Rosie, you git! You’re going to see us all sacked.”

“It won’t ’appen,” moaned Rosie. “Williams won’t let it ’appen.”

“He will, mark my words,” said Christien as he wrapped the first arm back in canvas. “He will retire if something goes wrong. He’s protected by the Club.”

“And so are you, Remy,” said Bender. “You Clubbers stick together something fierce.”

“I’m not sure I’m in, boys. This has become entirely too complicated. Bond is bound to put it together sometime and the Hs are all over the hospital.”

“What’s wit’ yer finger anyways, Remy?”

“Yeah, it’s disgusting!”

Christien shook his head as he studied his hand. The little finger was purple and twisted, looking more a slip of dried tendon than live flesh.

“I can’t get it off,” he repeated.

“’Ere,” said Rosie. “Take this, then. It ’urts me eyes just lookin’ at it.”

And he held up a glove made of fine black leather.

“One?” asked Christien. “Why do you have only one glove?”

“You find all sorts of flash gear on the streets under Big Ben.” Rosie grinned. “It’s cause o’ the gangplanks. I got myself a new topper last week, traded it for a pint at the Bells.”

Christien slid the glove over his hand, hiding the decaying digit from view as the boys turned to clean up the arms, one from the river and one from the road.

THE CLARENCE WAS
both pub and restaurant, and it was a favourite of royals, lawyers, and Parliamentarians alike. It was crowded and full of smoke and she thought them lucky to find a table on their own. So they sat tucked into a corner by a street window, drinking tea and saying nothing at all to each other.

Their meals were delivered by a stout automaton whose chestplate slid open to rolls of billowing steam. A tray cranked out, two plates of golden meat pies slid off and onto the table. A hose snaked out, refreshing both cups of tea before it turned and wheeled back in through the crush of patrons at the bar.

She didn’t want to look at him. She had prided herself on her expanding sensibilities, but she had to admit, all this talk of the Ghost Club and secrets and now Lees, had left her wondering if she really knew what she was doing at all. Life had seemed so simple back in Stepney. Flat and safe and two-dimensional, like the pages of a book. In a book, you started at the beginning and went on to the end. Life, she was beginning to realize, was not like that.

She turned the card over in her hand—
Robert James Lees. Psychic. Spiritualist. Clarivoyant.
She wondered if he too saw with the eyes of a cat.

She looked at Sebastien. He had picked up his knife, but was only prodding at his food. He glanced up at her, eyes brown once more.

“Why did you kiss me, Ivy?”

Her heart thudded once in her chest. So he
had
noticed.

“In the infirmary,” he went on. “You kissed me. Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose I was happy you’d lived and it was my fault that you got shot in the first place, really. I’m terribly sorry. It was too bold.”

“It was entirely pleasant. I never get kisses like that. Sometimes . . .” He sighed and pushed his plate away. “All the time, actually—I find myself wishing I were normal. I wish I could have friends that didn’t have four legs, a pretty fiancée, perhaps marry. Have children and a regular occupation. Like Christien, you know. I think it would be wonderful to be normal.”

“But why can’t you marry, Sebastien? I can’t see why you couldn’t.”

“Christien has told you, surely . . .”

“About?”

“About my parents.”

She lowered her eyes. “He hasn’t told me, but I have heard.”

“My father killed my mother, because
his
father killed
his
mother, for how many generations I honestly can’t say. Madness runs in the family and it needs to stop, you see. And so it does. It ends. With me.”

Her throat was growing tight.

“Christien says the lithium would help, but honestly, Miss Savage, I can feel nothing at all on the lithium. I do prefer laudanum to the lithium. My mind is free and the darkness is beautiful. Really, it is.”

He reached for his tea and she noticed his hand shaking.
A ghost hunter,
Fanny had said.
Drove him mad.

“It’s been good for me at Lasingstoke lately. I have my dogs, I have my horses. And while he may be prickly, Rupert is very fine company. I do what I can, and if I’m not forced to be around people for too terribly long, I manage well enough. For you see, the spirits are getting louder, more insistent, certainly more gruesome, and it is to the point where the dead and the living look alike to me now. It is very difficult to tell them apart.”

He paused, the cup hovering over the table in his hand.

“What does that mean, Miss Savage, when I can’t tell a living person from a dead one?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know, either.” He looked out the window. “And so I stay up north and do what I can to keep out of trouble. Dash the broadsheets for hounding me. Poor Christien. I know why he is driven as he is.”

“I don’t know why the papers hound you, Sebastien. I think you’re a brilliant, gifted, fascinating man. But I don’t think you should be shooting people, no matter what the reason. There must be a better way.”

“Can you think of anything? You heard the officers. You know what they think.”

“What about Edward, or Albert Victor, or even Victoria? Surely, there is someone higher up who can assist you.”

“A royal?” He arched a brow and smiled. “No, I fear I am very much alone in this pursuit.”

“You are not entirely alone, sir.”

“No?”

She saw something odd and hopeful in eyes that were brown now like chocolate.

“You have Rupert,” she said rather quickly. “And, and Frankow and Castlewaite and, and the dogs . . .”

She cursed her inadequate, foolish tongue and her fear.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I do have them.”

She leaned forward, keeping her voice deliberately low.

“In Milnethorpe, you said, ‘You are forgiven and the Crown has been served.’ So
do
you work for the Crown, sir? Do you murder murderers for the Crown?”

“No, I murder murderers for me,” he said. “It is the only way I can have peace.”

“That’s criminal.”

“It is no different than a hanging at the Old Bailey, Miss Savage. The Empire rigorously pursues stability and order. I serve at the pleasure of Her Majesty.”

“It’s not the same at all, Sebastien. A hanging at the Old Bailey is the result of an investigation and trial by judge and jury.”

“In Wharcombe, a drunk kills his son with a poker to the head. Tell me, in a town with one overworked police constable, who is going to investigate the death of an eleven-year-old fishmonger’s boy?”

“That is why we have a police service, sir. To do that very thing.”

“But a dead boy doesn’t go to the police, Miss Savage. He goes to me.”

“And what if you make a mistake or what if you don’t find the killer? What happens then?”

He sighed.

“Seventh is very full.”

“But why Seventh? Why do these ghosts go to the Seventh House of Lasingstoke?”

“Because bad things go to Seventh,” he said. “That’s what my father always said. When I first started seeing them, I was younger than your Davis, and my first inclination was that they belonged at Seventh. What sense does a young boy have?”

Thunder rumbled once again and the old beams in the ceiling shook cobwebs onto the floor.

“Nature is a powerful force, Miss Savage. If there is a hole in a barrel, a crack or a flaw in the wood, the water will find it. I am that hole, Miss Savage, that flaw in the integrity of the world. Spirits come to me and I send them to Seventh.”

“You’re not a flaw, sir.” She looked out the windows. The sky was very dark. “But what I saw in Milnethorpe, the cold, the frost, the wind—it defies rational explanation, it defies reason, and it makes me afraid. What if the dead asked you to shoot me?”

“But they wouldn’t, Miss Savage. You’re not a murderer.”

“You are putting peoples’ lives into the hands of angry dead spirits. Your women almost killed my brother and yet Davis is no more a murderer than I.”

“They are not my women.”

“I can’t see how the dead are more trustworthy than the living. You put more faith, more value, in a departed soul than in a living one. It’s not only dangerous, sir, but I believe it morally wrong.”

He looked away and she sighed.

“I’m sorry, Sebastien. I am speaking out of turn as usual. I just wish you could involve an officer of the law in your investigations.”

“Your idealism is charming, Miss Savage, but unrealistic. It is only the increasing frequency and brutality of the murders in Whitechapel that are attracting attention. I guarantee you that if there had been only one woman—even one woman a month—there would be nowhere near the clamour for justice.”

She sighed, knowing this to be true.

“What I do is a labourious and subjective process, dependent entirely upon my ability to interpret supernatural communications. You saw how Lees was treated by the police. They would never take me seriously.”

He was right. People regularly reported their dreams and visions to the police and London’s Whitechapel killer was no different. In fact, people were crawling out of the woodwork claiming supernatural knowledge of the villain, and she could hear her father’s voice deriding them as lunatics, fantasists, and crackpots.

Even he would not take the Mad Lord seriously.

She took a deep breath.

“I would.”

“You would what, Miss Savage?”

“Take you seriously. We made a crackerjack team in Milnethorpe. I could be that moral compass in your quest for justice. I have a good mind for a mystery and I do know the law—my father’s unit made sure of that. I sat and listened at their feet for hours. You asked me what I want for my life, back in Lasingstoke. Well, this is what I want. Please say that you’ll consider it?”

He smiled sadly.

“Now you are reaching a little too high, Miss Savage. Crumb’s bullet could have struck you, and Christien would never forgive me if something were to happen, nor would I be able to forgive myself.” He shook his head. “No, we’ll head straightaway to the docks, but once I have found your mother, I will insist you fly back to Lasingstoke while I stay in London alone. I will find this London Ripper, I will kill him, and the Crown will be satisfied. I will turn myself in to the Ghost Club and Christien will be free to marry you. You see? It is much better for everyone all around.”

“Turn yourself in . . .?”

“Don’t worry, Miss Savage. They won’t find me as tractable as my father. In fact, Christien says that St. Mary’s Bethlem has crackerjack surgeries for people like me.”

“Bethlem? You mean,
Bedlam?”
Visions of horrific procedures and wailing lunatics ran through her mind. St. Mary’s Bethlem Hospital, better known as Bedlam, had a history of visiting the cruellest treatments upon its patients. Just the name alone evoked horror.

“The very one,” he said, looking down at the golden crust of the meat pie in front of him. “In his last letter, Christien mentions a procedure in which the surgeon drills three tiny holes in the forehead like so . . .”

He picked up his knife and poked the crust gingerly once, twice, three times. Gravy oozed out onto the plate.

“Sebastien . . .”

“And then a long aluminium probe is inserted—”

“Sebastien, no.”

“Christien says it is quite effective.”

“Sebastien,
stop!”

She threw her napkin onto her plate. “You don’t need surgeries, Sebastien. And you most certainly do not need Bedlam! You simply need to exercise a little restraint, obey the law, and stop shooting people!”