Cold Stone and Ivy (57 page)

“’ERE, GIRL,” SAID
Cookie. “Yer weak as a drowned cat. Some tea’ll be good for yer bones.”

And the housekeeper pressed the cup and saucer into her hand. Ivy took it, noticed the tremor as she did, but lifted it to her lips nonetheless. Cookie tugged the blanket higher up on her shoulders, fussing over her like a mother hen.

“Enough of that,” growled Rupert. “The skirt needs a Scotch, not tea.”

They were in the library of Second, and a hearty fire was roaring in the hearth. Rupert St. John leaned against his wing chair, arms folded across his chest, staring at her with eyes as hard as flint. Sebastien stood facing the fire, a silent silhouette, and while Cookie fussed and coddled, the tension in the room was thick. Not one of the dogs on the floor was wagging.

“Ah’ll go fetch some toast and honey. That’ll set ye to rights.”

“Thank you, Cookie,” said Ivy, and she managed a smile for the fearsome woman. Cookie shook her head once before bustling out of the dark room, leaving her with the fine but frightening men of Lasingstoke.

“So?” said Rupert. “You want that Scotch then, skirt?”

She looked up, wondering how she could ever have suspected him. “Yes, sir. A double, if you please.”

He moved to a table, lifted a crystal decanter, and set about pouring three glasses. The crystal clinked, the liquid lapped, the fire crackled. For the first time since Hollbrook House, her senses worked, every sound magnified, every scent amplified. Wet dog and leather, wood smoke and whiskey. She was trembling from head to toe, but her jaw was set, and she would not back down. She would end this story if it killed her.

The Scourge of Lasingstoke stepped over to his nephew, pressed a glass into his hand, which was accepted and downed in one go. Rupert moved over to her, passed her a glass, and this time he took his seat, swirling the Scotch around in the glass and watching it as it splashed within.

She sipped it now, feeling the burn as it slid down her throat. She was intent on emptying the entire contents when the Mad Lord of Lasingstoke spoke for the first time.

“You are a foolish girl,” he growled, still looking at the fire. “A foolish, foolish little girl.”

She felt Rupert’s eyes on her, but she said nothing, quietly sipped the Scotch.

“You could have been killed. You know that, don’t you? I think you know that very well.”

She had never heard him angry. Had even wondered if he was capable. Still, she would not be moved, and concentrated on her Scotch. Like it, the whole world was a golden, intoxicating, mind-numbing blur.

“What if I weren’t here at Lasingstoke? What if I were away, or in Lonsdale or Manchester or Wharcombe? What if I was—”

“Dead?”

He smashed the snifter into the fire, and Rupert sighed.

“Expensive Kosta Boda, Laury,” grumbled Rupert. “We’ll have none left if you keep breaking them this way.”

He turned now and the locket swung on its pendant, happy to be there as if home. She could see the patch of hair shorn from his skull where the bullet had grazed. He looked older somehow, more gaunt, and for the first time since meeting him, she felt afraid.

“What were you thinking, Miss Savage? Please tell me. I truly wish to know.”

Ivy tossed the rest of the Scotch back the way a man would, gagging as it lit a fire in her throat. But to her credit, she kept it down. Rupert smirked, and she felt a flash of pride that she had caused it.

“Actually, I was thinking that if I rode up to Lasingstoke Hall, knocked on one of these many doors, and asked to speak to the dead Lord de Lacey, you simply would not be available. Dead people generally aren’t, I’m told.”

“It was the only way. He said . . .” He stopped himself. “Damnation, woman. You are a bloody badger.”

“Who
said, sir? And what did this mysterious ‘he’ say? It must have been pretty terrible to make you want to pretend to kill yourself like that.”

Suddenly she felt the heat rush to her cheeks and she rose to her feet.

“In fact, I hope it was a terrible thing, because what you
did
was a terrible thing. Poor Christien. He looked as though he had been hit by a four-wheeled steamcar. You tore the heart right out of him, you did. That was a terrible, terrible thing to do. To both of us.”

Sebastien stepped toward her. “You should not be here.”

She stepped toward him, her hands curling into fists at her sides. “Neither should you. You’re dead.”

“I should have let them have you, if only for a little while. It might have taught you some sense.”

“But then you would have felt the urge to take my wounds on yourself like you did with Davis. I know you, sir. Chivalrous to the core.”

“Rupert?” For some reason, Sebastien looked at his uncle. “What do I do with her?”

“Not
my
skirt . . .” Rupert rolled his eyes, swirled the Scotch, and grinned his lazy cat grin. “How did you know he wasn’t dead?”

She struggled to control her breathing, for she had never downed an entire Scotch so quickly. Or ever, for that matter.

“No pawprints on the grave.”

Rupert looked down at the six dogs lying across the floor. Clancy raised his head, wagged.

“I know how these dogs adore him. Had there really been a body in that grave, I would have seen pawprints, digging, impressions of lying dogs, something. It was as clean and undisturbed as a parliamentarian’s.”

“Not bad,” said Rupert.

“But that was not my first clue. No, that simply served to reinforce what I was already beginning to suspect.”

“Your first clue?”

“Feathers.” She looked at Sebastien now. “In the foyer of Hollbrook House. Feathers and an axe blow to the floor in the bedroom. That had Miss Lizzie Borden written all over it. And the undertaker’s carriage. It was Frankow at the rein. Even with his silly cap and overcoat, I could tell it was he. I knew something had to be up, but still, it did take a while to come together in my head.”

Her fists began to relax. “But there was so much blood . . . on the floor. On the walls. Poor, poor Pomfrey. And the doctor next door. How could you fool him?”

“She’s caught it all, Laury. May as well tell her.”

“You are both utterly impossible,” growled the Mad Lord and he strode over to the small table for the Scotch, looked around for a glass. Rupert shrugged. Sebastien snatched up the decanter, took a long deep swig, set it down with a bang.

“Sit,” said Sebastien.

“I think I’ll stand.”

He turned and raised a finger.
“Sit.”

She sat.

Rupert snorted. “Good dog.”

“Jekyll,” began Sebastien, “is one of Frankow’s men.”

“Dr. Jekyll? Christien’s neighbour?”

“The very one. Twenty years ago, when the Lovecrafts of Kent lost their fortune in petrol stocks, the house came up for sale. The War Office took it, leased it out from time to time. They figured it would come in handy to have an ear to the wall of a de Lacey residence.”

“But why?”

“Because of my father, that’s why.” He sighed, pulled up an ottoman, dropped himself on it this time, the decanter still in his grip. The locket pulsed like a heartbeat, glittered like a star. “It was something your Mr. Beals said that got me started thinking, about whether my father was flesh or spirit? When he was a member of the Ghost Club, he and Frankow had been experimenting on soul transference—what the spiritualists might call ‘possession.’ It’s a terrifying process and was quite likely the thing that drove him mad. It was, in fact, the last thing he had been working on before he killed himself, so naturally the Club was suspicious. Had he learned these techniques himself? Could a spirit truly ever be gone? And if he was not, in fact, gone, where was he these last fifteen years? Not heaven surely, and not likely hell, not if he could come back so easily. So where had his spirit been for fifteen years?”

She swallowed. The thought of such an horrible man moving through the body, the soul, of another was perhaps even more terrifying than all the women of Seventh.

He took another swig, wiped his mouth with his wrist, and she wondered how he handled it so well. He drank rather heavily, she reckoned.

“In the holding cell of the Yard, my father entered the room. Told me if I did not do exactly as he said, then you, my dear Miss Savage, would be his next victim. First you, then your brother, then all the rest of this household, Rupert included.”

“He could have tried,” muttered the Scourge. “I’m quite certain I would have prevailed.”

“While he was in the room, I noticed a face at the window. At first, I thought it was simply another of the dead—there were so many in the room at that time—so paid it no mind. On the way to Broadmoor, the carriage was struck by a steamcar. Spooked the horses something terrible but it was Carl at the stick—”

“Carl? Carl Feigenbaum? From Lonsdale?”

“The very one. He helped me escape, and it was then I realized the face at the window belonged to Mr. Home. Arvin had sent him to locate me in the building, keep an eye on me in order to best secure my release. Three stories up. He’s got his skills back right smartly, he has.”

Ivy sat forward, frowning. “Did Frankow bring them all to London? Lizzie, Carl, Home? All of them?”

“And Grigori as well.”

“The undying Russian?” she said. “Grigori Raspberry?”

“Rasputin. His name is Rasputin. The boy can surely bleed. I’ll attest to that.”

She looked at his head, the shorn patch and red welt. “But you did shoot yourself, didn’t you?”

“A mere graze across a metal skull. I am after all, a crackerjack shot. But I kept the locket with me. I could not bear what he might do with my Ghostlight . . .”

And he reached up, brushed it with the tips of his fingers. It pulsed and purred, a clockwork cat arching its back to the stroke.

Ivy glanced at Rupert, who did not look back.

“And so you planned to ‘kill yourself’ and slip out of the city . . . But why? Not to live somewhere else under an assumed identity. You would not have returned to Lasingstoke if that were the case, surely.”

“Surely.”

“So? Why return here?”

He now glanced at Rupert, who did not look back.

“Tell me, sir. Or I will simply continue my sleuthing. I can be quite persistent, as I’m sure you have noticed.”

“To continue our investigations. My father is still at large in London, and while there hasn’t been a Ripper murder for over a month, I’m positive it will not be in his constitution to stay down for much longer.”

She cocked her head, puzzled. “I thought you said you’d lost the pistol?”

He said nothing, lifted the decanter, took another swig.

“So did your father give you the pistol that night? In the room at the Yard? Surely not, for they would never have let you onto the Broadmoor coach armed like that.”

“No. He did not give it to me. It was waiting for me at Hollbrook.”

“How odd.” She thought for a long moment, felt the men exchange glances. There was something they did not want her to know, something she was very close to uncovering. She furrowed her brow, finding the thread, following it. “You said that Home saw you through the window . . .”

Sebastien looked again at his uncle.

“Yes,” he said. “I did say that.”

“That Mr. Home saw you ‘while your father was in the room with you.’ You did say that, did you not?”

He rose to his feet, turned back to the fireplace.

“Well?” asked Ivy, glancing now between Mad Lord and Scourge. “Whom did he see? Did he see your father, Sebastien? Did he see Renaud Jacobe St. John de Lacey?”

“No,” said Rupert quietly, and he stared at the fireplace. “He didn’t see Renaud at all.”

“But did he see someone, then? Anyone? I mean, if the spirit of Renaud was inhabiting the physical body of another man, surely Mr. Home would have seen this other man’s face, yes?”

Neither Rupert nor Sebastien answered her. There was only the crackling of the fire now, the occasional sigh of a dog on the floor.

“Well?” She was not above begging. “Please, sirs. Out with it. I’ve been through far too much to see this affair ended so. Whom did Mr. Home see in the room?”

Rupert smiled, but it was strained and sad.

“Christien,” he said quietly. “Home saw Christien.”

Ivy stared at him. He cleared his throat, tossed back the last of his Scotch.

“Yes. It appears that our Christien is the man all of London is calling Jack the Ripper.”

Of Brothers, Father’s Sons,
and a Violet from Mother’s Grave

NOVEMBER 8, 1888

The Good Samaritan was thick with smoke and the sharp tang of beer and unwashed bodies, but he didn’t care overmuch. He had just cleaned out his locker from the students’ row at the Royal, and everything had fit neatly into his medical bag. On his way out, he had shared a sad but civil conversation with Bond in the halls. The police surgeon was a decent man. He did not mention the torsos, nor the scandal, nor the suspension. Christien was grateful for that.