End of the Century (9 page)

“Thank you, gentles,” Caradog said to the room at large, rising from the couch and taking up his tablet. “If you will all return tomorrow at midday, we will hear each of your complaints in due order.”

As those gathered reluctantly shuffled from the audience hall, some shaking their heads in bewilderment, others muttering darkly in their discontent, Galaad rose from the bench, expecting to be ushered out with them. But he noted that none of the twelve captains had left their positions, except for Caradog who stood at the table's edge, and that the High King kept his seat. Galaad half turned to leave when Artor caught his eye and gave a quick shake of his head, his expression unreadable.

Glancing at the retreating backs of the plaintiffs, Galaad swallowed hard and sat back down on the bench.

When the room had cleared, the silence was finally broken.

“What madness is this, Artor?” Caradog fairly shouted, wheeling around and pointing a finger at the High King.

Artor sighed heavily, but didn't yet answer.

“Surely there is some jest in this, right?” Lugh asked, leaning back on the couch, chuckling. “Though I'll admit that the humor escapes me.”

“Perhaps that says more about your faculties than about the jest,” chided the captain with the Demetian accent, at which Artor cracked a slight smile.

From his privileged position at the rear of the otherwise empty room, Galaad noticed that, without an audience, the captains and their king comported themselves very differently. No longer the dignified ruler and his trusted counselors, they seemed now much more relaxed, much more a group of equals, though all still deferred to Artor to some degree. What he saw before him now, Galaad realized, was the easy camaraderie of the battlefield.

“Perhaps, Bedwyr,” Lugh said to the Demetian captain, “you simply have a better vantage that I, what with your nose buried so far up Artor's arse.”

Bedwyr flicked the end of his nose with his thumb and grinned. “Is
that
what that smell is? I thought for certain that it was the air wafting from that rotted maw you call a mouth.”

“Will you two either fight or fornicate and be done with it?” said an auburn-haired captain who spoke Britannic with the accent of Gwent.

“Careful, Pryder,” Lugh said with a leer. “You might give the impression that you'd like to join our coupling, and that would make your dear brother jealous.”

Across the marble circle a captain, who except that his hair and beard was blond instead of auburn could have been Pryder's double, scowled and lay his hand on his sword hilt.

“Peace, Gwrol,” Pryder said, raising a warning hand. “There's no need for that.”

“You're all a pack of children!” Caradog barked, slamming his tablet onto the marble table and dropping loudly back onto the couch. “In case it has escaped your feeble attentions, there is a more serious matter before us.” He glared at the other captains, then turned his attention to the High King. “Come now, Artor. What
is
all this about?”

Artor glanced around the marble circle at his captains and, shaking his head, let out a heavy sigh.

“Surely I'm not the only one bored senseless with this.”

Caradog looked to the other captains, who seemed as confused as he. “With what, precisely, Artor?”

Artor waved his hand, though whether indicating the room, or the palace, or the city beyond, Galaad couldn't say. “With this. With all of this…this
officialism.
”

The High King pushed his gilt chair back, scraping noisily against the floor, and climbed wearily to his feet, his scabbarded spatha in his hands.

“I don't know about you lot, but this isn't what I fought and bled for. My intention was to drive the Saeason from our lands and restore order. To make Britannia safe for our families, safe for our children and children's children. But I never intended this. Never intended…” He paused, and his lip twisted. “Grain levies.” He pounded a fist on the marble table. “Or the boundaries of farm land. Or tin tariffs. Or preferential trade agreements.”

More than a few heads around the marble circle began to nod.

“I had no intention to
rule
. Hell, I never even wanted to
lead
. But Ambrosius tapped me as his chief lieutenant, and when his hour came the sword of the Count of Britannia passed into my hands, and that was an end to it.”

Artor held the spatha up, regarding the silver- and gold-worked hilt.

“But I might never have taken it up if I'd known it would all lead to
this
.”

He threw the sword onto the marble table with a clatter of metal on stone.

“My heart scarcely seems to beat, these last few years, so sluggish does my blood course around my veins. I would have my pulse quicken again, if only once, before death takes me in my sleep or boredom at last reduces me to stone. And if that quickening comes at the cost of a fool's errand, of taking a stranger at his word and following a senseless vision to the ends of the earth, then so be it.” He passed his gaze over those sitting before him. Then, with a shrug, he said, “And who knows, perhaps the boy does receive visitations from some angel or spirit or goddess, and there will be something waiting for us at our journey's end. But I can tell you one thing for certain. We'll never find it sitting here on our widening backsides, listening to the endless prattle of these petitioners.”

A number of the captains seemed to find sense in Artor's words, while others were clearly unconvinced, Caradog chief among them.

“Listen to reason, Artor,” Caradog said, his tone gentle. “I know that our present duties may lack the vigor of our younger days, but these are offices which must be fulfilled.”

“Then leave others to fulfill them,” Artor snapped. He calmed himself visibly, and took a deep breath. “I'm a soldier, friend, and a poor statesman. I'll not abandon my duties here, but if I'm not allowed to step away from them, if only briefly, I doubt my spirit could weather it.”

“I'm with Artor,” Bedwyr said, slapping the tabletop with his palm. “I'm tired of all of this statecraft, and could do with a bit of venturing.”

Some of the other captains grumbled, shaking their heads.

“As much as it pains me to say, I agree with Bedwyr,” Lugh said. “I feel myself suffocating within these city walls and would value the chance to roam.”

“And I think you've all been at kegs that have gone bad,” Caradog objected. “Artor was selected as High King by those he now rules, and he owes them his time and attention.”

Other voices raised around the marble circle, some in support of the notion and some opposed.

“Enough,” Artor said, his voice quiet but firm. “It's clear we won't be of one mind about this. Then let us be, for a moment, a democratia, such as the Athenians practiced. We shall put it to a vote, and each man shall decide his own course for himself. As for me, I know my own mind.” He reached out a hand to the spatha that lay on the marble table, but stopped before his fingers touched the sheath. He paused, then drew his hand back, leaving the sword where it lay. “I'm for boarding White Aspect and sailing down the Tamesa with tomorrow's first light. Now, who is with me?”

S
ANDFORD
B
LANK AND
R
OXANNE
B
ONAVENTURE
reviewed the materials Melville had provided. The details were scant and raised more questions than they answered.

There had been a full coroner's inquest into the first murder, two weeks previous, though if it had been reported in the papers, it had escaped the notice of Miss Bonaventure and Blank, who habitually scanned the day's news for such stories. If they'd overlooked the story, they were hardly to be blamed. On the surface, it seemed just another anonymous murder, the sort that happened with an altogether depressing regularity in the city. The victim, evidently, had been a prostitute, or so the coroner concluded after hearing the testimony of the witnesses who had discovered the body and of the officers and physicians who had investigated the case.

It was to the credit of the city's police that they investigated the murder of those for whom society at large had such little regard, though admittedly with less vigor and tenacity than they would the slaying of a duchess. However, simply to label a woman, whether living or dead, as a “prostitute” was to paint a portrait with too broad a brush. In addition to the untold thousands of women for whom prostitution was their sole means of employment, there were countless more women engaged in the various menial and low-paying professions, seamstresses and the like, who were forced by circumstance to engage in more casual prostitution when needs must. There was
little in the transcription of the inquest to suggest in which of these types of prostitution, career or casual, the victim had engaged. This was a point which Blank resolved to remember.

Of particular interest was the testimony of one Doctor Thomas Bond, a resident at Number 7, the Sanctuary, Westminster, and surgeon to the A Division of the Metropolitan Police. He had been the one to examine the remains of the first victim, which had been brought to New Scotland Yard, and who also visited the site where the body had been found, along the embankment. In addition to the transcript of his testimony at the inquest, Blank and Miss Bonaventure had been provided with the postmortem report that Bond had written and delivered to his superiors.

The portmortem was quite graphic in its descriptions, enough so that Miss Bonaventure, whose stomach for such unpleasantries was usually cast iron, was forced to turn away. The report dwelt on the appearance of the armless, headless torso, bloated white after some indeterminate amount of time spent in the Thames, with special attention given the condition of the wounds, which appeared to have been fodder for fish at some point after death. The inquest testimony was thankfully somewhat less descriptive, though even here there was enough to make Miss Bonaventure turn a bit green at the gills. Blank, who had seen far worse things in his time, was too overcome by a frisson of recognition to allow himself a moment of queasy unease.

He'd had dealings with Dr. Thomas Bond before. Bond had been one of the physicians to examine the remains of the Torso Killer's victims. The man was well regarded, both by his peers in the medical establishment and by the police authorities, but Blank had quickly deduced that the man was an unctuous buffoon. He seemed too eager to impress, too eager to please, and as a result he had a habit of rendering his verdicts sooner than was appropriate, preferring a ready answer that sounded clever and learned to spending the time necessary to root out the actual truth.

In the case of the Torso Killings, Bond had quickly determined that the bodies had been dissected by someone with anatomical knowledge, later amending the statement to say that the knowledge could have been that of a butcher, rather than a surgeon. However, based on his own examinations of the remains, Blank knew full well that the killer displayed little knowledge
of anatomy whatsoever, having simply hacked at his victims like a poor woodsman with a dull axe, rather than carving them with the skilled precision of a surgeon or cleaving them into quarters with at least the workmanlike skill of a butcher.

If anything, Bond's assistant, a Dr. Charles Alfred Hibbert, was the more skilled of the two, and so it was with interest that Blank read the transcript of Hibbert's testimony to the inquest. It was Hibbert's contention that the cuts had not been made by an anatomist, given that the positioning of the cuts did not conform with the locations of the various joints. The cutting implement had simply been applied to the body and pressed straight through bone.

The body, when found, had been in the early stages of decomposition, having been dumped into the Thames somewhere further upstream and catching up on the embankment in Pimlico. As a result, the state of the wounds at the time of death was difficult to ascertain. However, both Bond and Hibbert made specific mention of the bones being sheared cleanly through, without hack or saw marks.

That was about all that could be learned about the first murder. Blank found it somewhat surprising that no one involved in the inquest had even raised the specter of there being some connection with the Torso Killings of the decade previous, when there were obvious parallels. He perhaps shouldn't have been surprised that Bond had failed to mention the possible connection, given the slapdash way with which the man conducted his business, but he could not help but feel some regret that Hibbert had not put up his hand, either.

Blank and Miss Bonaventure moved on to consider the evidence of the second murder. The body had been found on the grounds of the Blind Asylum in Lambeth by a police constable on patrol, who had reported it to his superiors before the locals were aware of the incident. The officer dispatched to investigate, one Inspector Marshall of the Criminal Investigation Department, immediately recognized a connection between this new case—a body found murdered, its head and one arm missing—and the body that had been found on the embankment in Pimlico the previous week. Knowing that there was potential for panic, to say nothing of the sensation should the papers catch wind of a new series killer, and having received orders on high that nothing was to be allowed to disrupt the smooth operation of the
Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the inspector had the remains quietly transported to New Scotland Yard and informed his superiors.

There was no publicly held inquest into the second murder, though there had been a full postmortem conducted by the Divisional Surgeon, Dr. Thomas Bond himself. Blank and Miss Bonaventure had been given a copy of Bond's report, to which were appended Dr. Hibbert's own working notes. The examination had quickly revealed that the victim had been dispatched no fewer than three hours earlier and no more than thirty-six, given the state of rigor in which the body had been found; further, given the fresh state of the wounds, lacking even the earliest stages of corruption or decomposition, it was determined that the body had been living less than twelve hours previous. Given that the scene made it evident that the murder had taken place at the Blind Asylum itself, rather than being conducted elsewhere and the body relocated after the fact, that meant that the PC had only missed stumbling upon the murderer by somewhere between three and twelve hours.

Again the postmortem made reference to the clean shearing of the bone, but in this instance there was the additional detail that the flesh had likewise been cut in a level plane. To all indications, the wounds had been administered in single blows, there being no indication that the cutting implement was removed and reapplied.

The postmortem was silent on the topic, but in his notes, Hibbert had ventured a supposition as to what sort of cutting implement might have been used. He advanced the notion that the killer might have employed a guillotine, which would have possessed the sharpness and force necessary to drive to skin, muscle, and bone in a single swipe. How the killer managed to maneuver a guillotine into the grounds of the Blind Asylum, without leaving any track or trace of it, Hibbert failed to speculate.

Blank knew at a glance that these were not wounds inflicted by a guillotine. He'd seen those kinds of cuts firsthand, and could not expunge the memory of them from his mind if he'd wanted to. Even Madame Guillotine had not been so precise in her cuts, the edges of flesh left ragged and torn, and on rare occasion the blades had even been caught by the bones of the spinal column, requiring the operator to wrench the blade free and pull it up
for a second try. Whatever had been used by the killer had been even sharper, or used with greater force, or both.

That was virtually all that distinguished these new murders from those of a decade before. In all other particulars they could have been part of a single, unbroken series. Like the victims of the Torso Killer years before, these latest three had been prostitutes, though whether casual or career it was impossible to say. And like those, the three new victims remained anonymous. Of all the Torso Killer's victims, only one was ever given a name, and Blank questioned the means by which that identification was reached. Five anonymous victims before, and three more now…so far, at any rate. Even the players were the same—Doctors Bond and Hibbert, Superintendent Melville, Blank himself—and the locales—the Thames embankment, the Blind Asylum, Pimlico, and Lambeth.

The only difference between the two groups was that the latter was dispatched by some unknown, impossibly sharp implement, while the former had been done for with a blunter instrument. But Blank was committed that there be another difference between the two groups. This latest, he vowed, would not remain anonymous. And if it were within his power, he would see that it grew no larger.

Having learned all they could from the reports and transcripts Melville had provided, that afternoon Miss Bonaventure suggested that they visit the scenes of the crimes. They'd already seen the walkway on Tower Bridge where the third body had been found, and there seemed little to be gained from visiting Pimlico, since the first body has simply washed ashore there, the murder having taken place at some unknown location upstream. It seemed most sensible, then, to visit Lambeth, across the Thames, and the Blind Asylum where the body of the second victim had been found.

Leaving Blank's Marylebone home, the pair hired a hansom cab. At Miss Bonaventure's request they detoured to her own home in Bayswater, so that she might change into clothing more suitable to the climate and circumstance. The temperature had already risen precipitously since she set out that
morning, and what had been a pleasantly warm spring morning was quickly becoming a beastly hot summer day.

The driver let them off in front of Number 9, Bark Place, and while Miss Bonaventure climbed the steps to her door, fishing in her reticule for the front door key, Blank paid the driver, enjoying the relative silence of the block. Bark Place was a short road just off Bayswater Road, near the Orme Square Gate of Kensington Garden, whose green leaves could be seen just the other side of Orme Court. With the serene quiet of Kensington on one side and the relatively sedate bustle of Moscow Road on the other, Bark Place was as a consequence inordinately quiet, even in contrast with the relative calm that hung like a heavy blanket over the whole of Bayswater. Blank had once remarked to Miss Bonaventure that it seemed hardly a fitting place of residence for a “New Woman” such as herself, who was as likely to go for a bicycling tour of the countryside as she was to stay at home knitting doilies, and was more skilled in arts martial than marital. He had difficulty imagining her in a typical domestic setting; but then, he had difficulty imagining a typical domestic setting, full stop, given his scant experience with them, so that was probably hardly surprising. In response, Miss Bonaventure had simply explained that the signal feature of Bayswater, and Bark Place in particular, was that it changed little with the passing years, being now virtually identical to the street it had been almost half a century before, and promised to remain unchanged for centuries to come.

Of course, Blank had known perfectly well that Miss Bonaventure had her own reasons for desiring that sort of immutable permanence in a residence, but he had no desire to queer their friendship and refrained from mentioning it. After all, who was he to begrudge someone their secrets?