The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes (13 page)

“That’s it?” she said, with a frown. “That’s all we’re going to do?”

“I’m not sure we have any other choice,” said Newbury, in a placatory fashion. “If we alert the killer that we’re on to him, things could turn very bad, very quickly. We’re trapped in an overturned train carriage with no exits. A killer loose in a confined space, desperate and wielding a weapon...” He trailed off, his point made.

Clarissa gave a short, conciliatory nod. “Very well.” She stooped and collected up a handful of discarded items of clothing—a man’s tweed jacket, a woman’s shawl, a tartan blanket—and proceeded to set about covering the dead woman.

Newbury leaned against the wall—which had once been the floor—his head drooping. His memories of the events leading up to the accident were hazy at best, but they were slowly returning. It was surely just a matter of time before he could piece together what had occurred. Yet everything felt like such an effort. All he wanted to do was go to sleep. He lifted his hands to rub at his eyes, but realised they were smeared with the dead woman’s blood. Grimacing, he put his right hand into his jacket pocket to search out his handkerchief.

His fingers encountered something cold and hard. Frowning, he peered down as he gingerly closed his hand around the object and slid it out of his pocket. His eyes widened in shock, and he quickly stuffed the thing back, glancing around to make sure no one else had seen.

Clarissa was still busying herself covering the corpse.

Newbury took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. What the Hell was going on? His heart was racing, his head pounding, and he couldn’t remember what had happened, what he might have done.

He wasn’t a killer. He
had
killed, yes, but he’d been a soldier out in India, and latterly an agent of the Crown. He’d killed in self-defence, in the course of duty, but never in cold blood.

So why, then, was the object in his pocket a sticky, bloodied knife?

“So, how are you, Charles?” said Newbury, swallowing a slug of brandy and regarding his old friend, Chief Inspector Charles Bainbridge of Scotland Yard, from across the table. The older man looked tired, careworn, out of sorts. As if he had the weight of the world resting on his shoulders, and was beginning to buckle beneath it.

The two men were sitting in a private booth in the drawing room of Newbury’s club, the White Friar’s. Over the years Newbury had come to consider the place a second home, enjoying the general ambience and the intelligent banter he often overheard in the bar. The clientele was mostly composed of artists, poets and writers, and although he knew Bainbridge didn’t approve of this more bohemian of crowds, Newbury often insisted on meeting him there. It was good, he assured himself, for the older man’s soul. And besides, Bainbridge’s club was generally full of policemen; useful, perhaps, when one needed such things, but hardly a haven away from the busy matters of everyday life.

Bainbridge gave a heavy sigh. “Darn near exhausted, Newbury, if truth be told. That’s how I am. This Moyer case is taking everything I’ve got.”

Newbury gave a resigned smile. Bainbridge had been tracking a killer for weeks, a surgeon by the name of Algernon Moyer, who had—for reasons that appeared to be politically motivated—taken to abducting politicians and minor royals, chaining them up in abandoned houses and infecting them with the Revenant plague. He would then move on, disappearing into the great wash of the city, leaving his victims to slowly starve to death as the plague took hold and they degenerated into slavering, half-dead monsters.

Three days following each of the abductions, a letter had turned up at the Yard, addressed to Bainbridge, teasing him with the location of the most recent crime. By the time Bainbridge got there, of course, it was already too late. The victims would be beyond saving, reduced to nothing but chattering, snarling animals, straining at their chains as they tried desperately to get at the soft, pink flesh of their rescuers. Every one of them had been put down, electrocuted, their corpses burned in the immense plague furnaces at Battersea or dumped far out at sea along with the mounting heaps of bodies from the slums. Bainbridge hadn’t even been able to let the victims’ families identify the bodies.

There had been four victims to date, and the police expected another to turn up any day. And, as Bainbridge had continued to bemoan, they were no closer to finding Moyer or uncovering the criteria by which he selected his victims. He struck without warning, abducting them in broad daylight, no obvious connections between them. It was a campaign of terror, and politicians and councillors were increasingly growing wary of leaving the relative safety of their homes.

Newbury echoed his friend’s sigh. “I wish I could help you, Charles. I really do. But this Arkwell thing—the Queen...” He trailed off. Bainbridge knew all too well what the Queen was like when she had a bit between her teeth.

Bainbridge looked up from the bottom of his glass. A faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Ah. Well. That’s where I might just be able to help
you,
Newbury.”

Newbury leaned forward, pushing his empty glass to one side. “Go on.”

“One of our informants, a delightful little man named Smythe...” Bainbridge pronounced the man’s name as if he were describing a particularly venomous breed of snake “... Paterson Smythe. He’s a burglar and a fence, and not a very successful example of either. But he has a secondary trade in information, and that’s what makes him valuable to us.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Times, places, names. You know the sort of thing.”

Newbury nodded. “He doesn’t sound the type to be involved with a woman of Lady Arkwell’s calibre.”

Bainbridge laughed. “Well, precisely. It looks like he might have gone and gotten himself in over his head. He turned up at the Yard this morning claiming he had something big for us, but that he needed our protection.”

Newbury raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Bainbridge shrugged. “And it sounds as if it could be your Lady Arkwell. Smythe said he’d been doing some work for a woman, ‘a right smart ’un’, as he described her, sitting in Bloomsbury Square all night and reporting back to her the next morning to describe everything he’d seen.”

Newbury frowned. “Interesting. Anything else?”

“He said it had been going on for a week. No specific target or brief. Simply that she’d told him to note all the comings and goings in the area.”

“A scoping job?”

“Precisely that. Descriptions of everyone he saw, when they came in and out of their properties, what time the postman or milkman called. But nothing that might give away the actual target. It could be any one of those grand houses she’s interested in, for any reason.” Bainbridge frowned, tugging unconsciously at his moustache. “She’s clearly a clever one, Newbury. She hasn’t left us with much to go on, even after her hired help tried his best to sell her up the river.”

“It’s already more than I’ve been able to ascertain so far,” replied Newbury. “Where do they meet? That would be a start.”

Bainbridge shook his head. “As I said, she’s a clever one. They always meet in the back of a brougham. She picks him up at Bloomsbury Square and they drive around the city while he hands over all the information he’s gleaned. They always take a different route, and she always deposits him in a different street when they’re finished, leaving him with the cab fare home.”

“Fascinating,” said Newbury, impressed. “Does he have a description of the woman?”

“Only that she wears a black veil beneath a wide-brimmed, lilac hat, along with black lace gloves, so as not to be recognised. He says she dresses smartly in the current fashions, and is well spoken, with an educated, English accent. He does most of the talking, and she issues payment and instructions.” Bainbridge shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all we could get out of him.”

Newbury sipped at his brandy while he mulled over his friend’s story. Was this the mysterious woman he’d been looking for? And if so, what was she up to? It seemed like an extraordinary effort to go to for a simple robbery. But then, perhaps there was more to it than that. Perhaps this was an invitation to dance.

Bainbridge was looking at him expectantly. “Well? What would you have me do?”

Newbury smiled. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” echoed Bainbridge, confounded. His moustache bristled as he tried to form his response. “Nothing!” he said again.

“Precisely,” said Newbury. “Tell Smythe to continue just as he is. Tell him to keep reporting back to this woman on all of the comings and goings to the square, and to make a particular effort to ensure he offers accurate descriptions of all the people he sees.”

“Is that all?” asked Bainbridge, clearly unimpressed. “I fail to see how that constitutes an effective plan.”

“Not at all,” said Newbury. “I believe it’s time I offered to play Lady Arkwell at her own game.”

“Stop being so bloody cryptic, would you, and spit it out.”

Newbury laughed. “If she’s as clever as I believe her to be, Charles, she won’t have chosen a mealy-mouthed snitch like Smythe without reason. She has no intention of effecting a burglary in Bloomsbury Square. She’s doing all of this to announce herself to us—to
me.
She knew full well that Smythe would go running to the Yard. It’s an invitation.”

“An invitation?” asked Bainbridge. He looked utterly perplexed.

“Indeed. An invitation to respond.”

Bainbridge shook his head. “If you’re right—and I am not yet convinced that you are—what will you do?”

“Show myself in Bloomsbury Square. Smythe will do the rest,” replied Newbury, with a grin. “And then we shall see what move she makes next.”

“Good Lord,” said Bainbridge, draining the last of his brandy. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes,” said Newbury, laughing. “Absolutely.”

Was it possible? Could he have somehow been driven to kill the woman?

Newbury considered the facts. He’d boarded the ground train while trailing the female agent known as Lady Arkwell, the woman who was now dead from a knife wound to the throat. She’d taken a seat at the rear of the carriage, and so, trying to at least make the pretence of conspicuousness, he’d gone to the front on the opposite side, where he’d been able to keep an eye on her reflection in the window glass. The train had started off, rumbling down Oxford Street, and he’d settled back into his seat, content that he had until at least the next stop before he’d have to make a move.

Despite the fuzziness still clouding his thoughts, he was able to recall at least that much.

The next thing he remembered was waking up with a thick head, Clarissa’s hand on his cheek, his jacket covered in blood. Now, additionally, he’d discovered he had a bloodied knife in his pocket. He had no notion of what might have occurred in the intervening time.

He supposed there were two possibilities. Firstly, that he’d been forced to end the woman’s life during the aftermath of the accident, before he received the blow to his head that had rendered him unconscious and affected his recollection. Secondly, that the killer had taken advantage of his dazed state to plant the weapon on him, thereby making an attempt to implicate him in the murder.

Despite the apparent outlandishness of the notion, he decided the latter was the most likely option. He was, after all, dealing with assassins and spies, people who might have recognised him and decided he’d make a viable scapegoat to cover their tracks.

Newbury searched the faces of the other people in the carriage. There were at least twenty of them, still huddled in little groups on the floor. None of them seemed familiar. A dark-haired young man with a beard was slumped to one side by himself. His black suit was torn and he was bleeding from a wound in his left forearm. He was watching Newbury intently. Could it be him? Or perhaps the middle-aged man at the other end of the carriage, squatting close to where Newbury had been sitting. He was whispering now to two young women, but his eyes were tracing every one of Newbury’s movements, his rugged features fixed in a grim expression.

It was useless to speculate. It could have been any one of the other passengers. He’d have to wait to see if they’d give themselves away. There was nothing else for it.

Newbury rubbed his palm over the back of his neck, wishing the fuzziness in his head would clear. He could feel no lump, no tender spot where he had bashed it during the accident. Why, then, did he still feel so sluggish, so groggy?
It was almost as if...

A thought struck him. Perhaps he hadn’t banged his head at all. If someone really was attempting to frame him for Lady Arkwell’s murder, he might have been drugged. A quick prick with a needle while he was down, a dose of sedative to keep him under, to keep him slow. That had to be it. It was the only explanation for why he was feeling like this. Perhaps the killer had been carrying it in his pocket, intending to use it to incapacitate Lady Arkwell when she alighted from the train. The crash had provided him with a different opportunity, and he’d discharged the syringe into Newbury instead, while everyone else on board was still distracted in the midst of the initial panic and confusion.

It all seemed to make a terrible kind of sense to Newbury, but even so, it brought him no closer to identifying the killer, and at present, he had no way of proving any of it. All he knew for sure was that someone on the train was out to get him, or at the very least, was using him to protect their secret.

“Do you think anyone will notice?” whispered Clarissa from beside him.

He glanced round. She’d done an admirable job. The body might have been a heap of clothes, spilt from a burst case. “Not until we draw their attention to it,” he replied, “or one of them comes looking for their coat.”

Clarissa gave a wry smile. “I’m scared, Sir Maurice. I keep thinking that no one’s going to come and find us and we’ll remain trapped in here, with someone capable of...
that.”
She put her hand on his chest, and, throwing propriety to the wind, he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in. They stood there for a moment, holding on to one another as if they were the only still point in the universe.