Newbury & Hobbes 04 - The Executioner's Heart (22 page)

They turned and quit the church as one, leaving the eviscerated corpse of the Reverend Josiah Carsen for the singular attentions of the mortuary attendants.

Outside, the afternoon sun cast a diffuse bronze glow across the small graveyard. Uniformed policemen were milling about in small clusters. They looked up as Bainbridge and the others emerged from the grandiose doorway and quickly stood to attention.

Veronica loitered for a moment in the shadow of the doorway as their small group parted company. She smiled warmly at Newbury as he glanced at her over his shoulder, walking with Bainbridge towards the row of waiting conveyances. They bade one another farewell and climbed into separate carriages.

Then, catching sight of Professor Angelchrist, who had quietly slipped from the graveyard on foot, as if hoping not to draw too much attention to himself, she set out after him at a safe distance.

CHAPTER

19

A man once asked her why she made a point of opening up her victims’ chests and removing their hearts, and what exactly she did with the strange, misshapen organs after the event. Was there a purpose to these most personal of thefts? A significance? There was no judgement in his voice, none of the disgust she had faced during similar conversations over the years. Only interest.

This was years after she had fled Montmartre, some time in the 1850s, during her first excursion to the frigid city of St. Petersburg. She sat in the parlour of his opulent house, her hands still sticky with the blood of her latest kill. She had left the dead man lying in the snow close by, opened up to the freezing night like a silken purse, glossy and stark against the pure white snow. She had brought his heart with her in a tanned leather satchel, and it sat upon the table before her as she waited for her employer to fetch water and a towel.

He placed the steaming bowl carefully on the table beside the leather bag and took his seat opposite her, his eyes wide with fascination. He watched her intently, patiently, as she washed herself down.

He was a well-connected man with links to the Russian royal family, and he had paid well for her services. She had executed seven men on his behalf, each of them former officials of the Tsar’s Court who had known far more about his nocturnal habits—his predilection for spending his nights in the arms of other people’s wives—than he was comfortable with. He had ensured that they had all been dismissed from their posts, of course, but he nevertheless feared the hold they had over him, the constant threat of exposure, blackmail, or worse. And so he had ordered them killed, and she was only too willing to oblige.

By this time in her long, unchanging existence, her death toll measured in the thousands. She had spent years as a hired assassin, drifting from city to city, one day finding herself in the squalid slums of Berlin, another amongst the sumptuous, gleaming spires of Prague. She had seen much of the world, living hand to mouth, from moment to moment, always trapped in the perpetual twilight of her own half-life.

The man fetched her more water, and she considered her answer while she scrubbed the sticky blood from her forearms, slowly revealing the whorls and glyphs of the dark tattoos that covered her flesh.

She could not remember a time when she had made a conscious decision to begin removing the hearts of her victims. It had begun with the acrobat’s lover. On that first occasion, of course, it was symbolic, a tribute to the woman whose heart he had broken. Yet she had been fascinated by the sight of the still-beating organ when she had cracked open the man’s rib cage, the way it pulsated and throbbed, so full of life. When she’d reached in and touched it, felt it beating beneath her fingertips, she’d wanted to claim it for her own. That, of course, had been the root of the acrobat’s entire dilemma: that the man had not pledged his heart to her. And so the Executioner had done it for him.

Three days later she had killed again. This time the act had been motivated purely by the need for money; she had fled the acrobat’s caravan with nothing, and so she’d been forced to murder a lonely businessman for the contents of his wallet.

As he’d lain dying at her feet, she’d been struck once again by that interminable sense of curiosity. She’d wanted to examine his heart, to watch it beat its last, to take it for her own. It was as if, by making it hers, she could somehow—for a few moments—replace the heart she had lost.

The man had begged her to stop as she tore open his shirt. He was weak by this point and shivering with blood loss, and she’d have to work quickly if she wanted to see the heart before he died. She’d muffled his screams with a strip of ragged cloth, and hacked him open with her razor-sharp blade, revealing the glistening jewel within.

When the heart finally shuddered and ceased to beat, she had cut it out and wrapped it in the remains of his shirt like a treasure.

It was the closest she had come to feeling anything for some time.

She told her employer all of this in calm, collected tones, reciting as many details as she could remember. He listened to her intently, and if he was shocked by her curiously unemotional manner, he did not show it.

He was, however, shocked when—just as calmly—she withdrew one of her curving scimitars and thrust it through his belly, skewering him to his chair. He had shown her kindness and tolerance, fulfilled all of his obligations to her, and more. He did not understand.

But she felt no obligation to explain. She had addressed the situation in the most logical way she could. The man had fallen into the same trap he had faced at Court, with his seven untrustworthy confidants: She had revealed to him something about herself; therefore, she could not allow him to live.

When she finished, she washed her hands again using the man’s bowl and towel, and then she left, her leather bag bulging with the fruitful dividends of her evening.

CHAPTER

20

It was raining when the cab finally ground to a halt at Grosvenor Square, a relentless downpour that thrummed upon the thin wooden roof, drowning out the sounds of the outside world.

Veronica peered out of the window, wishing she’d had the foresight to bring an umbrella. The sky was a dark, brooding canopy of grey, a bruised smear across the rooftops of the city. Carriages churned the fast-flowing tributaries of gutter water with their wooden wheels as they raced past, the drivers huddled in thick coats against the inclement weather. The passengers inside stared blankly out of their temporary havens: pale, ghostly faces, briefly glimpsed.

Across the street, in the shadow of the towering tenement buildings, the door of the other cab opened and the figure of Professor Angelchrist emerged. He dipped his head and hunched his shoulders as if depressed by the onslaught from above. He glanced up and down the street, then hurried around to the driver and passed him up a handful of coins. The driver doffed his cap and pulled sharply on the reins, and the horses, their flanks glistening in the nimbus of a nearby streetlamp, whinnied and stamped their feet before starting off again, clopping away into the downpour. In a matter of moments the cab was completely swallowed by the shimmering curtain of rain.

Veronica watched Angelchrist withdraw a key from his jacket pocket, drop it, bend down to retrieve it, and then hurry to the door of one of the apartment buildings. He fiddled with the lock for a moment, pushed open the door with his shoulder, and then dashed inside. The heavy black door swung shut behind him. She made a mental note which building he had entered.

The rain was still drumming noisily on the roof of the cab, obscuring the view through the window. Reluctantly, she gathered her belongings. Just as she was about to reach for the door, there was another eruption of heavy drumming from above, and she realised that the driver was banging on the roof, attempting to hurry her along. No doubt he was getting soaked up there in his dickey box and wanted to make a dash for cover, or else he was intent on finding another sorry pedestrian looking to exchange their hard-won coppers for a brief respite from the rain.

She turned the handle and pushed open the door, struggling with it as a sudden gust almost blew it back in her face. Rain swept in, spattering her dress. She climbed down, cursing as she dropped into a puddle. The icy water ran into her boots, soaking through to her stockinged feet, drenching the hem of her skirts. She stepped up onto the kerb, squinting in dismay as the water lashed her face.

“Miserable day fer it,” said the driver, hulking down in his box, his cap pulled low over his brow. She could barely see his face past the upturned collars of his thick woollen coat.

“It certainly is,” she said, fishing around in her pocket and withdrawing a few coins. She passed them up to him.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, his voice as thick as treacle. “Good day.” He flicked the reins and the horses pulled away ponderously from the kerb.

Veronica glanced around. Behind her, the park appeared almost empty, the treetops swaying in the breeze. The street itself was nearly deserted, other than a handful of carriages trundling by in both directions. She could see the warm glow of lights through the windows of the row of tall tenement buildings.

Now that she was here, she wasn’t entirely sure what she intended to do. She’d followed Angelchrist on a whim, jumping into a cab at St. John’s Wood and ordering the driver to follow the professor’s own conveyance at a short distance. She’d been following her instincts, anxious to know more about what the man was really up to. Should she simply knock on his door and confront him?

She dismissed that idea almost as soon as it had formed. He was hardly likely to respond well to her admission that she’d followed him from the murder scene. It would beg the obvious question of why, and then she’d be forced to admit her reservations about his motives, and most likely find herself drawn into a protracted argument. Even if he accepted her concerns and invited her in out of the rain to discuss the matter with her civilly, she wasn’t likely to extract the truth. Better that she observe from the shadows, at least for a while. That way she might actually see something of use, something that might shed some light on his role in proceedings.

She was becoming slowly drenched as she stood there in the rain, and what was more, she risked being seen from one of the tenement windows.

There were precious few opportunities to take shelter. The park, she decided, represented her best chance at escaping the storm, so she pulled her overcoat tighter about her shoulders, dipped her head, and made a dash for the gates.

She passed a hooded figure hurriedly dragging a dog along on a lead. The poor creature looked sodden and downtrodden as it scurried along beside its owner, water streaming down its pugilist’s face. Otherwise, the park appeared utterly abandoned, desolate. The weather had driven everyone to their homes. Everyone sensible, at least.

Veronica took shelter beneath the boughs of an ancient oak tree, close to the boundary of the park and with a good view of the row of residential buildings on the opposite side of the street. At this time of year, the denuded branches tapered to spindly fingers that provided little cover from the gusting weather, but she huddled close to the gnarled trunk, leaning up against it beneath a fat, overhanging limb. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Across the road, the building that Angelchrist had entered a few moments before was quiet and still. She saw the warm glow of a lamp being turned on in a fourth floor window, and then a shadowy figure appeared, seeming to peer out at the street below. The figure remained there for a few moments, watching, and then pulled the curtains to, blotting out the view. It might possibly have been Angelchrist, but she could not be certain from the brief glimpse of the person’s build.

Another gust of wind blew stinging raindrops into her eyes. As she raised her arm to ward them off, she cursed herself for her interminable suspicion. If Angelchrist was now ensconced in his rooms for the afternoon, then she might as well strike out for Kensington and home. She’d succeeded only in allowing herself to be soaked to the skin, with perhaps the small victory of ascertaining where the professor lived. Although, in truth, that was information she might have gleaned easily from a five minute conversation with Newbury. She’d anticipated that Angelchrist might have been heading to another rendezvous, one that had a more pertinent bearing on the investigation, or at least her understanding of the man and his motives. Reluctantly, she admitted to herself that she’d been wrong.

Nevertheless, she was here now, huddled suspiciously beneath a tree, so she decided she might as well remain there for a short while. If nothing else, there was a chance the rain might abate, and then she could duck out from under her makeshift cover and hail another cab. She’d asked to call on Newbury that evening, but she’d be forced to return home and change out of her wet clothes before even considering heading back to Chelsea. A few more minutes wouldn’t make a great deal of difference either way.

As it transpired, however, her diligence bore the most unexpected fruit. Nearly half an hour after installing herself beneath the tree, her attention was drawn to a plain black carriage that rolled up outside the front door of Angelchrist’s apartment building. Both horses were frothing at the bit, as if they’d made a punishing journey across the city.

She heard the door open on the other side of the carriage, accompanied by the gentle murmur of voices. She couldn’t yet see the figures that climbed out, but it was clear from the glimpse she caught of their feet through the spokes of the carriage’s wheels that there were two of them.

The driver barely appeared to move as one of the carriage’s prior occupants spoke to him, giving instructions. No money changed hands, which told her it was a private carriage, and not one that had been hired for the occasion; the lack of a tip or fare suggested the driver was most likely salaried.