The Diabolical Miss Hyde (2 page)

Eliza shivered, sweating. “Indeed. What I can tell you is that the blood on Miss Pavlova's dress is still rich. A large quantity has pooled without disturbance on the cobbles, and there's one bright splash on the wall. Which points to syncope as the mode of death.”

“The Queen's English would be adequate.”

She rolled her eyes. “Exsanguination, Harley. Miss Pavlova
bled to death. Also, the lividity—that's the post-mortem bruising, as the blood pools in the corpse, you can see there, beneath the petticoats—that indicates she died where she lies. Our man knelt here.” She pointed to a pair of smears in the blood beside the body, the imprints of trouser-clad knees. “And worked undisturbed. For at least four or five minutes, I'd say, to get this done.”

“You're saying he amputated while this poor woman was still alive? God's blood.” Griffin stroked his impeccable mustaches. Since the sensational trial of Razor Jack, he'd been the Metropolitan Police Commissioner's darling. Which was why he was permitted to employ a lady legal medicine specialist with dubious antecedents, when his Scotland Yard colleagues regarded her with suspicion and scorn, at worst outright mirth.

“Yes. A professional could do it faster, but it doesn't take an expert to sever a limb in this fashion. Any able man with these tools could have done it.”

“But why didn't she struggle, for heaven's sake? She's within earshot of the busiest street in Haymarket. No, there must be something more.”

Eliza crouched and sniffed the dead woman's lips. “Aha!” She dug in her satchel for a swab, wiped it carefully over the woman's tongue, and applied solution from a glass bottle. Drip, drop. The golden liquid spread and soaked in, and the swab turned bright green.

“Just as I thought,” she exclaimed happily. “Our victim was drugged. A narcotic, or . . .”

She tipped her optical down over her spectacles and flicked a few spectroscopic filters, frowning. How strange. Perhaps
an alchemist's concoction . . . “Ah, I see,” she covered briskly. “How delightfully mysterious. I shall require further tests—”

“The short version?” Griffin interrupted, with a long-suffering smile.

“For shame,” she scolded, but her skin prickled. If it was alchemy, she'd have to find a way to cover it. To keep the evidence and omit its origins. “Don't you know one ought to avoid conjecture in the absence of basic facts?”

“Flirt with disaster, then, and give me your best guess.”

“If I
must
speculate so irresponsibly? A substance that rendered her insensible, unable to complain. Though it might not have deadened the pain.”

“Ether, then,” suggested Griffin. “Or chloroform?”

“Chloroform,” echoed Hippocrates hopefully. His blue glass
happy
globe flashed atop his head. Even Her Majesty had breathed chloroform while giving birth, to ease the pain. Chloroform was respectable. It didn't get you burned at the stake.

“No,” said Eliza, taking another swab of the substance and storing it carefully away for analysis. “That stupefies slowly, over a period of minutes. Our man had a few seconds, at most, to subdue her . . . that is, I venture no screams were heard?”

Griffin snorted. “How did you guess? Dozens of noble citizens strolling by and no one noticed a thing. Not even a man covered in blood, carrying a woman's legs. My astonishment knows no bounds . . . here, get that fellow away at once!”

Crack!
A magnesium flashlamp erupted in a puff of white smoke. The constables dived on a skinny man wearing a ruby-red waistcoat and dragged him away, knocking over the
camera he'd somehow managed to erect just beyond the linen barrier.

Griffin shrugged. “Damn fool writers. They encourage more crime than they expose. As I was saying: our killer seems to have escaped rather easily.”

“Perhaps the murderer lives or works nearby,” offered Eliza, secretly satisfied. She was acquainted with that particular damn fool writer, and good riddance to him. “Or, he brought a change of clothes. Such an elaborate scenario isn't enacted on the spur of the moment.”

“Agreed.” He flipped through his notebook again. “Two . . . no, three different witnesses say they heard an arc-pistol going off, around two o'clock.”

Eliza frowned. “But I see no gunshot wounds. Strange, that the killer should give himself away, after going to such effort to quieten this poor woman. Assuming it was he who fired.”

“So why remove the legs? Is he making a point? A warning?”

“Perhaps. If you still favor your vengeful Russians.”

“Or a souvenir,” suggested Griffin grimly. “A trophy from the hunt. Perhaps we have another collector on our hands. Like the Lincoln's Inn Toe Merchant . . .”

“Or the Mad Dentist of Fleet Street. The world is alive with strangeness, Inspector.”

“Most of it in my division, apparently,” he grumbled. “Always with the lunatics. Why don't we ever get a good honest bludgeoning anymore?”

“Indeed. This decline in boring murders is most distressing. But . . . hmm.” Eliza flicked on a buzzing electric light, a tiny filament set into a small half-globe of brass, clipped to
her waist on a short chain. She slotted the correct filter into her optical. A violet glow blossomed, and she scanned the body swiftly before the filament burned out with a bright metallic flash. The blood glared, a black accusation. But no smears, no creeping gleams.

“As I suspected.” She stood, skirts swishing. “The absence of fluids on her clothing suggests there was probably no intimacy. Miss Pavlova was not assaulted.”

“Absence of evidence . . .”

“. . . isn't evidence of absence, no. But such
interesting
killers are not often so meticulous, nor so restrained. It does rather tend to rule out a purposeless crime of passion.”

Griffin cleared his throat and fingered his necktie.

Eliza glanced at her gadget, the goggles still boggling her eyes, and grinned. “Oh. Yes. Fascinating, isn't it? It is called ‘ultra-violet.' A gift to my father, many years ago, from Mr. Faraday.”

“The Royal Society burned Faraday,” reminded Griffin gruffly. “You should be more careful.”

Eliza tucked the ultra-violet coil back into her belt purse, uneasy. Griffin had a point. In the past twenty years, while bloody revolution swept the Continent at the behest of sorcerers and charlatans, the Royal Society had become sole arbiters of what was science and what was witchcraft. Anyone found disputing the Philosopher's Laws—or deliberately defying them by dabbling in classically unexplained phenomena—was mercilessly re-educated . . . or worse.

“Yes, well,” she commented dryly, “if given free rein, the Royal's Enforcers would burn everyone who dared study any science published since Newton's
Principia
—”

“Do you take argument with the
Principia,
madam?”

Eliza's heart somersaulted. At this new voice, the crowd shuffled and muttered, and the constables suddenly grew deeply fascinated with the contents of their notebooks.

“Oops,” muttered Hippocrates, and jigged on jittery feet.

Inwardly, she groaned.
Oh, bother.

G
RIFFIN SHOT ELIZA A DARK
TOLD-YOU-SO
GLANCE
and arranged his polite, professional face. “Not at all, Captain. The doctor was merely being amusing.”

With what she hoped was a primly confident air, Eliza turned to squint up at her accuser. “And you are, sir?”

“Captain Remy Lafayette, Royal Society.” The fellow bowed, but his grin was insolent. His hair was flaming orange, his eyes dazzling azure. He wore a glaring purple tailcoat with flashing epaulets.

Eliza frowned. How peculiar . . . Ah. She tugged off the optical, leaving just her spectacles. Better. Immaculate red-and-gold officer's uniform, white trousers, tall black boots, and a jaunty black hat. Some infantry regiment? Saber—cavalry, then—sheathed at one hip on a black sash, a polished electric-coil pistol holstered at the other. He looked about her age—not old, but no longer especially young—and his rainbow of campaign jewels indicated far-flung theaters of war: India, Calais, Samarkand.

A career officer. How mind-numbingly tedious.

But unruly brown curls spilled carelessly close to his collar,
suggesting a disregard for authority that she rather enjoyed. His open, attractive face was permanently suntanned, his hands scarred with gunflash burns. He'd seen some combat.

And his eyes,
sans
optical, hadn't dimmed. Dazzling, electric sky blue.

Her corset suddenly seemed to be laced too tightly. How inconvenient.

She lifted her chin. He was alone, no team of clockwork Enforcers behind him. It didn't make him any less threatening. “Well, Captain Lafayette, I trust you've good reason for interrupting our investigation. Last I heard, murder was still a police matter.”

“Police matter,” repeated Hippocrates smugly. Eliza swiftly shoved him behind her skirts, eliciting a buzz and an indignant whir of cogs.

“Just a routine check. I trust you'll all cooperate.” Lafayette studied her boldly, sizing her up. Examining her simple gray gown, her tightly wound hair, her wire spectacles, and the doctor's satchel slung over her shoulder.

Plain, clumsy, middle-class Eliza, twenty-six years old and unmarried. Police physician and alienist, with a world of dark secrets to hide.

Old resentment frothed in her breast. No wedding ring—nothing so radical—no fraying on his uniform or wear on his boots to tell of the interwar poverty many officers suffered. And a cavalry officer's life was notoriously expensive. No doubt he'd purchased his commission, in the army or the late and sincerely unlamented East India Company, using some indecently vast family fortune—and spent his half-pay leisure time killing foxes on his country estate, lounging in his private
box at the opera, and romancing dashing
equestriennes
on Rotten Row.

That didn't explain his commission with the Royal. Or his attendance at her crime scene.

Her mind spun in circles. Did the Royal suspect her? Had they tracked her from Finch's Pharmacy? God forbid, was Mr. Finch in danger? Or had she simply made some trivial slip at a crime scene, conducted some test that wasn't strictly orthodox? Uttered some careless remark that smacked of sorcery, within earshot of the Royal's numberless spies?

Heaven knew, she was more conspicuous these days than she liked. Her name and likeness had made not only the garish penny pamphlets, but the daily newspapers too—notoriety, that horror of all middle-class horrors—in the sensational reports of Razor Jack's trial at the Old Bailey. But the trial was months ago, the murderer long since locked away at Her Majesty's pleasure. And purely by chance, the Royal chose
today
to review her crime scene?

No. This wasn't because of Razor Jack. It was something else. Something more.

Captain Lafayette cocked a single eyebrow, still expecting some reply.

Hungry shadows tugged inside her, a dark undertow.
Ooh, I say. The very devil in scarlet. Sparks'll fly there, let me tell you.

Eliza sniffed dismissively. Such romantic fascination with danger was for fools who read too many novels. She preferred a more mathematical approach. But the Royal's witch hunts were anything but mathematical. The sooner she got rid of this Lafayette—with his scandalous French name and impeccable British self-importance—the better.

She straightened her satchel with a sharp tug. “Very well. I will cooperate. Now kindly move aside and cease trampling my crime scene.”

“Trampling,” squeaked Hipp, muffled beneath her skirts. “Move aside.”

Lafayette rested a cocky hand on his sword. The iron badge pinned to his lapel was engraved with the Royal's motto, fine silver letters glinting in pale sun:
N
ULLIUS IN
V
ERBA
. “You didn't answer my question, Miss . . . ?”

“Doctor,” she corrected coolly. “Doctor Eliza Jekyll. And since you ask, Captain, I've no argument with the Philosopher's science. Just with the mis-educated apes who interpret him. Do excuse me.” And she stepped neatly around him and crouched again by the murdered body.

Ha ha! Mis-educated apes, eh? That'll tell him. Jesus, you can't even insult the man properly, let alone make a decent effort at flirting . . .

Fuming, she kept her gaze down and yanked out another swab to check for matter under the fingernails. Offending this Captain Lafayette was probably not the wisest course. The Royal had burned poor Mr. Faraday. They'd not think twice about doing the same to her, Eliza Jekyll, medical practitioner of dubious orthodoxy, daughter of an infamous dabbler in arcane diabolicals.

God help her if they ever discovered the rest of it.

Griffin was already covering. He had his career to think about. “I do apologize, Captain. If there's anything you require—”

“Naturally.” Captain Lafayette cut him off breezily. “Witness statements, drawings, that sort of thing. I'll have my
people examine your findings. You know the drill. It's all just routine.”

“Naturally.” Griffin bristled like an angry badger, but, with ill grace, he handed over his notebook.

Lafayette digested the inspector's careful handwriting in a few seconds and tossed the book back to Griffin. Then he squatted beside Eliza, his shiny black boots creaking. “What do you make of this?”

She eyed him coolly, slipping her sample into a glass tube and jamming in the cork. “Are you addressing me, Captain?”

Brr. Chilly in here, ain't it? Royal or not, he's a man like any other. Lift them prim-and-prissy skirts o' yours, and orthodoxy will be the last doxy on his mind . . .

“You're the police physician, aren't you?” He prodded the corpse's lips, exposing the small white teeth. He wore a silver chain around his wrist, locked with a seal of some kind. How odd.