The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Menace (4 page)

He ignored the
sharp look Perry shot him and took the slip of paper.

“
You had no right to make that promise,” Perry told him, as
they caught the train to Clerkenwell. They’d shown their identity
cards at the station, earning free passage. “You can’t assure
Jamison that no harm shall come of this. By law–”

“
The only way anyone is going to know what Hobbs is up to, is
if either of us tell them. I know I’m not going to speak of it. Are
you?”

Perry subsided
with a growl under her breath that sounded like she swore at him.
“You’re asking me to break the law. This is reportable.”

“
And all you’ll end up doing is harming mostly-honest people
who had the misfortune to be born to the human classes. It’s a
stupid law. The Echelon made it because they don’t want anyone
competing with their contracts. Hence, the poor get poorer and the
rich grow richer. If you think I’m going to follow their edict,
just because some rich lordling’s pocket doesn’t get lined,
then you don’t know me very well. I know you
don’t like to bend the rules…” She was so bloody obstinate
at times, “but allowing this doesn’t hurt anyone.
Indeed, quite the opposite.”

“
Laws exist to protect society.”

“
If you believe that, then you should turn yourself in to the
Echelon,” he shot back, following in her wake as she stepped down
from the train and fought her way through the crowd. “Females are
most certainly not allowed the blood rites that make an aristocrat
into a blue blood.”

“
I wasn’t
allowed
to take the rites.”

None of the
Nighthawks were. Otherwise, they’d be dining in gilded dining rooms
in the West End and not working themselves into exhaustion on the
streets. “The point’s the same. Females are unsuitable to the
craving virus infection.” He shot her a wry look. “Something about
their gentler natures and hysteria and...”

Perry’s glare
could have shriveled chestnuts.

“
I didn’t make that law,” he reminded her. “I know you’re more
capable than most of the Nighthawks we work with. More
bloody-minded perhaps, but certainly capable. As far as I’m
concerned, I don’t think of you as female.”

“
Perhaps because I don’t bat my eyelashes at you and simper.
That’s how women are supposed to act, is it not?”

Poor choice of
words. “That’s not what–”

“
Perhaps I should take a leaf out of Miss Radcliffe’s
book?”

“
What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He caught her
wrist.

Perry spun,
breaking his hold, her gray eyes spitting sparks. “Why don’t you
tell me?” The words were a dare, a challenge.

He ground his teeth together, seeing red. Back to the way
he’d handled Miss Radcliffe.
Christ.
He’d smiled, he’d flirted...
It was nothing he hadn’t done with numerous female witnesses over
the years. “Perhaps I’m not the one with the problem with Miss
Radcliffe?”

Her jaw dropped. “
What
?”

“
Are you jealous of her?” Perry’s cheeks actually paled at his
words and Garrett pursued the thought relentlessly. “Is it because
she’s everything that you’re not? Is that what’s stirring this
insane train of thought?”

The moment the words were out he knew he might as well have
used a knife. Her gray eyes widened and a flash of something - hurt
- flickered over her face. Then they hardened. “Do you honestly
think that I would want to be nothing more than some frivolous bit
of muslin? Everything that I am, I’ve made of myself.” She stabbed
a finger into his chest. “I hunt murderers and thieves through
London, and I’m damned good at it. Tell me that’s not more
important than curling my hair or...or butchering some needlework?
Or perhaps you’d prefer it if I made my curtsies and bit my tongue
and pretended everything you said was the most enlightened
witticism I’d ever heard - which it’s
not
, by the way. Perhaps you’d like
me more if I simpered or... or flirted, or.... God only knows!” She
threw him off, stalking ahead of him with hunched shoulders, as
though he’d somehow wounded her.

Shit.
Garrett started after her.
“Perry, wait.” If anything, her strides lengthened. “Perry.” He
grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.” He’d never
been so unkind, but she’d touched a nerve and he’d cut back at her
before he could think. “I like you just the way you are. You know
that.”

Her gaze slid
away. “Of course you do. It doesn’t matter. This is it. 291 Aplin
Street.”

“
What?” He looked up in surprise.

“
We’re here,” she repeated tonelessly, shrugging out of his
grip. “Now, let me go. I’ve got a job to do.”

“
We,” he corrected, following her. She hadn’t forgiven him, he
knew that, and he was still feeling a little irritated himself, but
they had a job to do now. It could be dealt with later, though he
certainly wouldn’t forget himself again and cast his words so
carelessly. He shot her a sidelong glance. He felt like a right
proper bastard, and she’d been the one who was challenging his
professionalism.

Later.
He let out a slow breath and
knocked on the locked shop door.

There was no
answer.

“
Garrett,” she murmured.

“
Yes?”

“
I think I can smell something. I think you ought to pick the
lock.”

A moment’s
work. The shop bell tinkled as she pushed her way through but the
place was empty and silent. Garrett eased the door shut, then
wrinkled his nose. His blue blood senses were nowhere near as acute
as hers, but even he could smell the faintly rotting odour. It was
nothing a human would have picked up, however.

“
Jesus.” He cupped his sleeve over his nose. “What is
that?”

Perry had a
handkerchief at her face. She tracked through the shop to the
counter and peered over it. There was a trapdoor there - and a mess
of blood spatter against the back wall.

“
It’s coming from below.”

Their gazes
met.

“
You first?” she asked hopefully.

“
Flip you for it.” He tugged a shilling from his pocket and
tossed it in the air.

As he clapped
his palm over it, Perry called, “Heads.”

It wouldn’t
take much to skew the results - he’d seen which way it landed and
could easily use a bit of sleight-of-hand - but the memory of her
shock outside as he laid into her, still haunted him. Garrett
sighed as he lifted his hand. Tails it was.

“
Bugger,” he said, and swung his way down through the
trapdoor.

Perry
followed, shaking the small glimmer ball she’d brought with her.
Its phosphorescent glow lit the interior of what looked like a
storeroom. Eerie half-finished mechanical limbs hung in racks along
the walls. Evidently, this was where Hobbs kept his side
commissions. Out of sight and out of mind.

There was a
pallet made up in the corner, with a pair of nestled blankets and a
small stack of personal items, like children’s books and toys.
Garrett lit the candle down there and lifted it high. A body
sprawled on the bed, though bloodied drag marks on the floor showed
that it had been moved from upstairs.

The man looked
to be at least two days dead, judging from the softening state of
cadaveric rigidity. His arms were crossed over his chest and a pair
of pennies gleamed over the closed lids of his eyes.

“
Hobbs, I presume.”

“
What are the chances that he’s been shot in the chest, just
as an actress goes missing from the theatre?” Perry breathed
softly.

“
Interesting circumstances,” he agreed. And
that was what they had to
look for. Patterns, coincidences... Anything unusual. “Looks
like we’re investigating two possible murders.”

“
Well, this one is definitely murder. Unless he ran into a
bullet at high-speed.” Perry stepped cautiously around the pallet.
“The door was locked and nobody would have seen his body behind the
counter. Why move him down here?”

“
It was done very shortly after he was shot too,” Garrett
noted. Otherwise they’d have never gotten his arms to cross like
that.

He checked inside the man’s shirt. Bruising darkened his
right shoulder, but not the left. Tugging the man’s shirt out of
his pants, he checked the man’s sides. Signs of
livor mortis
on his side, but though
he’d been lying on his back, the skin there was pale, where the
capillaries were compressed.

“
He fell on his right side and lay there long enough for his
blood to begin congealing. Could have been an hour or so. Not much
longer I think, judging by the minimal extent of the discoloration
on his side - and see here, where the majority of it indicates he
spent most of his time on his back.” Garrett sat back on his heels.
“I doubt whoever moved him was the killer. It looks like he was
shot and lay there long enough for
livor
mortis
to begin setting in, but not
rigor mortis
. So
somewhere between an hour and three hours after he was shot,
somebody moved him.”

“
It could have been the killer,” Perry argued. “He might have
stayed around and shifted the body later.”

“
Then what was he doing for that first hour or so?” It usually
took at least that long for signs of discoloration to begin
mottling the skin.

She had no
answer.

This was how
they worked. Coming up with theories that the other would try to
shoot down.

“
They didn’t alert the authorities, whoever they were,” Perry
said. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“
Perhaps they were protecting this.” He gestured around the
room. “Once the blue bloods of the Echelon realize he was crafting
mech work on the side, they’ll run an investigation into
Hobbs.”

“
Or they panicked, or were threatened.”

“
Maybe they witnessed it,” he suggested, looking up at her.
“Maybe they knew the killer?”

“
The interesting question is, just how well did Nelly Tate
know Mr Hobbs? The link is definitely the leg - he must have
crafted it for her at some stage, so she obviously had fittings
with him.”

“
So either the work he does has some involvement with the
case, or perhaps it’s the connection between the two of them,” he
said.

“
He could be her mysterious beau, perhaps. That makes more
sense than someone killing mechs.”

“
She has a beau?”

“
I suspect. The stagehands were telling me how excited she was
to receive peonies on her birthday - when she receives roses and
far better bouquets from her numerous admirers all the time. She’s
been receiving the bouquets once a month. They thought she had been
walking out with someone.”

“
Hmm.” Miss Radcliffe had said nothing about Nelly having an
admirer - and women were usually alert to these matters. Though
Miss Radcliffe had said that Nelly was close-mouthed about
herself.

Perry reached
for the stack of books beside the pallet-bed. “So, Hobbs was
killed, then a day or two later - judging from the smell and the
rate of decay - Nelly goes missing.”

“
Jealousy? We could be looking at a disdained suitor taking
revenge on Nelly’s lover.”

“
Could be something from her past too - perhaps a member of
the mysterious family nobody knows anything about.” Perry gently
flipped the pages in one of the books. “Or the mysterious person
who moved Hobbs and placed him like this. Maybe Nelly had something
to do with Hobbs’ murder, so the witness goes after
her?”

“
You’ve been reading too many penny dreadfuls.”

“
Ha, ha,” she said flatly. “Do you want upstairs or down
here?”

He was still
feeling guilty, damn her. With a sigh, he said, “The smell’s not as
bad for me. You take upstairs. And send a ‘gram to the Guild so
they can send the autopsy cart out to collect Hobbs.”

CHAPTER
THREE

HOBBS WAS
BUNDLED back to the Guild, so Perry and Garrett took a couple of
hours to question the nearby business owners and go over the scene
for anything else. Nobody had heard a gunshot, but with the
bustling intersection outside, that could perhaps be explained
away.

They took a
brief swing by Hobbs’ listed residence, but the place was cold and
sterile. Nobody had been there for days and indeed the place looked
like Hobbs spent most of his time in the shop. Time to get back to
the Guild then.

Perry vanished
the second they returned on some pretext of paperwork. Garrett
watched her go. She despised paperwork.

Which made it
evident she was avoiding him. Neither of them had mentioned the
earlier argument, but it lingered in the room like some ghost. Lips
thinning, he turned down into the depths of the Guild, toward the
autopsy room and Fitz’s dungeon. Doctor Gibson hadn’t finished his
autopsy - they’d put a rush order through - but from the sounds of
gunshots, Fitz was in next door.

The tall,
scrawny blue blood was the Guild’s resident blacksmith-of-sorts,
once it became obvious he couldn’t handle anything gorier than a
poisoning. For a man who took his blood with his tea, the sight of
it tended to make him even paler than usual. If it was mechanical,
however, then Fitz could tell you the make, model and purpose.