Tenfold More Wicked (8 page)

“I'm afraid I do not.” But her heart sank, despairing. Why could no one take her seriously? After Razor Jack's sensational trial, she'd been targeted by gossip-mongers and rubber-neckers who wanted a glimpse of the infamous “lady doctor” who'd single-handedly caught the lunatic. She'd felt like a zoo exhibit, poked and prodded for public amusement.

“I'm rather busy,” she added shortly. “If you're merely curious, I'd prefer you to leave now.”

“But we've barely begun. Shall we take a look?” And he circled the room, examining her trinkets and poking at her papers. “Yes. I see. Hmm. Thought so.” From his coat skirts—voluminous like a pickpocket's—he produced a silver tobacco case and a wad of matches. He thumbed the case open and dipped in a match, coating the head in sparkly black powder.

She jumped up. “I'd rather you didn't smoke. I say, whatever are you doing?”

He just struck his match—
ker-pop!
—and flicked it into her water glass.
Hissst!
The match sizzled out . . . but the water's surface caught alight. A tell-tale lick of strawberry flame.

That oily iridescence, washed from her lips. Finch's remedy. Unorthodox. Illegal. Dangerous.

“Oh, dear.” Regretfully, Moriarty Quick shook his head . . . but above those sinister glasses, his cunning eyes gleamed. “That's alchemy, Dr. Jekyll. Whatever shall we do with you?”

W
HAT'S THE MEANING OF THIS?” ELIZA DEMANDED.
“Slip some noxious poison into my drink, will you, like a common cad?” Lizzie remained oddly quiescent, but still Eliza's pulse thudded, demanding she act. Scream. Run. Smash those glinting spectacles into his eyes and watch them bleed.

Quick didn't smile. Not a gloat or threat in sight. “Told ye I know who y'are.”

She edged towards her desk. What was that black powder? Highlighting traces of alchemical flux in the visible spectrum? God help her if the Royal ever got their hands on that. “You make no sense, sir. We have nothing to discuss. Kindly leave my house.”

“But I can help,” insisted Quick. “An improvement on your present pharmaceutical arrangements. At little or no cost to you, of course. Think of me as . . . a talented friend in need.”

“Oh, so I'm to agree to your ignoble demands, whatever they are, to stop you spreading malicious slander?” Eliza
whipped her electric stinger from the drawer and kindled it,
zzap!
“I don't think so.”

“Whoa, Nellie. Take it easy.” He lifted his hands, with an injured expression. “And I was being so polite—”

“You've ambushed the wrong weak female, Mr. Quick. Were you ever stung by one of these? Not lethal current, heavens no. But the voltage is quite ridiculous. I'm told the sensation is most disagreeable. Now get out, before my mood deteriorates.”

“All right, fine, don't get your garters in a tangle.” Quick swept his hat on with a flourish, tipping his tinted glasses down. Like a stage actor, every movement choreographed. “Truly, I'm pained we couldn't come to terms. You're an intelligent woman, Dr. Jekyll. Think on whether it might serve ye well to oblige me.”

“I'll oblige you with three thousand volts if you don't get out of my house. And don't come back. I shall be summoning the police directly.”

He flipped a card onto the sofa. “In case you reconsider. I'll see meself out.”

In the hall, Hippocrates
zzzp!d
indignantly at him, and flashed his red
unhappy
light. Quick tilted his hat ironically, and slammed the front door behind him.

Eliza thumbed off her stinger and ran to the window, peering out. Dusk, a sinister yellow-gray miasma. There he strode, beneath flickering arc-lamps into the fog-bound park. Hands in pockets, bowler hat at a jaunty angle, a whistle on his lips. Who was this Quick? How did he know her secret?

She scooped up the trade card he'd dropped. Stiff white paper, embossed lettering in black and gold, all the barely suppressed excitement of a fairground playbill:

P
ROFESSOR
M
ORIARTY
Q
UICK!

P
OTIONS!
L
OTIONS!

E
FFICACIOUS
P
HARMACEUTICALS!

T
HE
B
EST IN
T
OWN!

and an address along the expensive end of Piccadilly.

At your service,
he'd said,
or for your entertainment.

She snorted. Professor, indeed. A circus charlatan, with his mysterious powders and flashy matchbook tricks, making a fine living charming unsuspecting ladies out of their husbands' cash for snake oil and fake fairy dust at inflated prices. Money, that's what he wanted. Gold in return for his silence.

She almost laughed. He'd picked the wrong target . . . but her stomach twisted. Madam Murder. Had he merely heard rumors, and confronted her to see what she'd do? Or did he
know
what she was?

No, he was just an opportunist. A con man. Yes. That had to be it.

Mrs. Poole poked her head around the doorframe. “Went well, did it?”

“Another sightseer, I'm afraid. Don't let him in again.” A thought struck her. “What time did you say he arrived?”

“A quarter hour ago. I told him you'd be out until eight, but he said he was certain you'd be along soon and he'd wait, thank me very much. Wouldn't take tea either.” A dismissive
sniff. “Bless me, Irishmen in your parlor. Next it'll be Frenchmen and Republicans.” Mrs. Poole handed her the mail tray and bustled out.

Eliza rubbed aching eyes. Quick had waited. As if he'd known to expect her early.

Had he eavesdropped at Finch's? Was the horrid fellow spying on her?

Ridiculous. Not everyone was plotting against her. She'd attended deluded patients like that at Bethlem. Huddling in corners or under the bed, imagining themselves the target of nefarious plots and persecutions.
They're spying on me. They're after me. It's THEM.

But that chilly strawberry sweetness lingered on her tongue, nagging, and she couldn't escape this creeping unease. Like a sticky rut in the road, dragging her deeper the more she struggled.

She toe-poked Hippocrates, who awoke with a jerk. “Hipp, pop along and wire Mr. Finch. Ask him what he knows about a pestilent Irishman named Professor Moriarty Quick. Oh, and same question to Inspector Griffin.”

“Finch,” echoed Hipp sleepily. “Griffin. Professor.” She opened the front door a crack, and he scuttled out, whistling.

Listless, she wandered back inside, flipping through the post. An account from her book-seller, another from her glove-maker. Always more bills.

She tore open an unmarked envelope with her fingers. Since the business with Razor Jack, she'd avoided letter openers. She didn't like to touch their smooth silver, recall that wickedly sharp edge.

Inside lurked an antique-white invitation card.

A P
RIVATE
V
IEWING

T
HE
R
OYAL
A
CADEMY OF
A
RTS

S
UMMER
E
XHIBITION OF
N
EW
W
ORKS

T
HE
N
ATIONAL
G
ALLERY,
T
RAFALGAR
S
QUARE

She turned it over. Confident, flyaway handwriting, but without a wasted blot of ink:

      
Dr. J,

      
In case you change your mind.

      
Tomorrow night?

                    
Remy

Her smile quirked. Change her mind, indeed. The
y
's tail curled, a cocky swirl. Insolent use of his first name. He could wish they were so familiar.

Stubbornly, she tossed the card onto her desk and sat. Notice from the dustman, advertisement for a new dress shop . . .

Trembling, she picked up the last letter.

Delivered by penny post, stamp pasted in one corner. Exquisite linen paper, the kind she wanted to smell or brush across her lips. Folded into three and sealed with crimson wax, the imprint of a tiny rose.

Her name—
Eliza Jekyll, M.D.
—and address, in narrow left-slanting letters. No sender.

But she knew the handwriting, the paper, the seal. Artist, escaped lunatic, wielder of a bloody straight razor. Murderer of seventeen people; at least, seventeen that the police knew about. The newspapers called him Razor Jack, but in her
thoughts—her darkened, breathless dreams—he was always and forever Mr. Todd.

Her fingers turned the letter, considering it. A faint chemical odor, memories of a wet midnight in Chelsea, and another, stormy one at Bethlem Asylum, the Chopper's awful laboratory, rich with secrets and thunder. Todd had vanished into the rain that night, gone like a frosted breath. Her lips tingled, the echo of a murderer's almost-kiss . . .

She dropped the letter as if it burned her. It landed alongside Lafayette's invitation, an unsettling unspoken question.

Suddenly her situation suffocated her. She'd no money, not without accepting Mr. Hyde's ill-gotten charity. No income, since she'd alienated Chief Inspector Reeve. Add this Moriarty Quick's inscrutable demands . . . Either she found more work, or she admitted failure—and that, she would not do.

She
needed
this new case. Even if it meant proceeding without Harley Griffin, whose career needed just as bitterly as hers to be salvaged. At least it was real police work, a case that mattered. And—she gritted her teeth on stung pride—lest she attract the Royal's ire, she needed to keep on safe terms with Remy Lafayette.

So he'd proposed. The dreaded M-word. What of it? He'd no right to pressure her into an answer. A husband—whoever he might be—would take her property, her income, her right to make business decisions. Everything but trinkets and the clothes she wore. English common law at its finest. She wouldn't surrender her independence lightly.

So why not take the case? Maintain a professional relationship. If Lafayette had it in mind to flirt—and when didn't he?—she was more than fit for the challenge.

As for Mr. Todd . . .

Glowing coals guttered in the grate, beckoning.
Burn it,
hissed Lizzie, a red-lit demon in the shadows.
Burn it unopened.

Compelled, Eliza slipped a hooked key from her pocket and unsnapped a hidden drawer in her writing desk.

A pile of newspaper clippings stared up at her. She fingered through the headlines, discomfited. Rumors, sightings, deaths of a specific and bloody kind. Nothing confirmed, nothing concrete . . . but she knew better.

Todd was alive. And Todd was killing. The two were inextricable.

T
HREADNEEDLE
S
TREET
S
LASHING

B
ANKER
F
OUND
D
EAD

A money-lender, officious, bad-mannered. Had he annoyed Todd? Refused him credit? Worn the wrong color coat?

T
ALES OF
C
HELSEA
H
AUNTINGS
S
PURIOUS,

S
AYS
L
ANDLORD

That one was a laugh. Souvenir hunters had flocked to Todd's Chelsea studio, hoping to scrounge a memento, but the place had been stripped on police orders. Nothing remained of that strange, fragrant attic boudoir. Still, hardly surprising no one would rent the place.

M
ISSING
B
EADLE
I
MPLICATED IN
P
ARISH

E
MBEZZLEMENT
S
CANDAL

Her bones shuddered, and she pushed the clipping aside. The man who'd fired her from the parish workhouse, “missing” and exposed as a thief. Coincidence?

She'd told no one about her collection. Especially not Harley, who thought her obsession with Todd's case unhealthy. Harley didn't know the half of it.

Beneath the clippings lay a pile of letters. Identical crimson seals, imprinted with a rose. But these seals were broken.

Eliza shivered, sweating. She'd read his letters, alone at midnight, sleepless at her desk or huddled in her bed by candlelight. Lingered over their singular contents, word for darkly beautiful word. And wondered . . .

The night Todd had escaped—
you LET him escape, oh yes
—he'd visited her while she slept. Spied on her at her most vulnerable. She imagined him tracking the rise and fall of her breath, brushing her hair aside, fingering the pulsing vein in her throat . . .

If Mr. Todd wanted to kill her—and heaven knew he had cause—then why hadn't he?

She cursed. Harley was right. She should inform the police. They'd watch her house, track her mail deliveries. Set a trap.

But her nerves wriggled, worms from salt. If he was caught, he'd be hanged. That wasn't justice. She was a doctor, not an executioner, and Todd was ill. Not criminally responsible. The surgeon's “therapy” regime at Bethlem had been anything but civilized. She'd researched other options. Aversion training. Drugs to aid memory of repressed trauma. Hypnotism, if you believed in that sort of thing. Her professional curiosity itched at the prospect of a challenge. Science could solve any problem. Surely, with proper treatment . . .

A scratching at the front door dragged her back to sense. Flustered, she hurried to open it, and Hippocrates bounded in. “Telegraph. Success!”

“Good boy.” She dropped the latch and walked back to her desk. Her gaze jumped from letter to invitation and back again . . .

This was ridiculous. She didn't care
what
Todd wanted. Let him write her, if it fed his fantasies. She needn't respond. He wasn't her responsibility. Right?

Then burn his god-rotted letters!
Lizzie, fighting to be heard? Or just Eliza's own common sense?
Toss 'em on the fire and be done. What's stopping you?

Eliza put the new letter with the others, turned the key, and with a sigh, pulled from her bag the pile of papers Lafayette had taken from Sir Dalziel's office. She flipped through them. Just dull correspondence from bankers, brokers, the Academy Hanging Committee.

Sketches, too, mostly of beautiful ladies in flowing dresses. Exquisite faces and forms with expressions that seemed alive, lips on the brink of speech or smile. One pair of dark eyes in particular arrested her, beautiful but bitter with self-knowledge. Landscapes, too: an inky moonlit sky, a hunting scene, the penciled skyline of London in a storm. Dalziel had an excellent eye for light and shadow.

Here was the dinner guest list, in the butler Brigham's careful hand:

Dr. Silberman, Lord & Lady Havisham,

Lord Montrose, Sir Wm Thorne, Hon.

Mr. Cartwright MP, Revd and Mrs. Mortimer,

Hon. Miss Mary Wallace, Miss Watt,

Lt Lestrange, Mr. Zanotti, Mr. Hunt,

Mr. Lightwood . . .

She recognized none of them. She'd need Lafayette's help. Wearily, she put the list aside and reached for a book.
On the Origin of Species,
a fascinating new publication by an intrepid naturalist. The Philosopher himself had recommended it as revolutionary. She tried to lose herself in tortoises, water birds, the faraway Galápagos Isles.