The Constantine Affliction (12 page)

Once Ellie had made it around the corner without any sound of alarm, she walked with more confidence until she was able to catch one of the omnibuses. She swung up onto the cart, delighted at the ease of motion that came with wearing trousers. The omnibus trundled along its predetermined route, with a young-looking driver by the brake who seemed terrified by the very machine he commanded. She got as close to the proper neighborhood as the omnibus would take her, and walked the rest of the way.

Her garb was rather too posh for this part of the city, and she drew a few dark looks from workingmen on the street, but she had no other options when it came to male attire, and anyway, it was hardly unheard of for more professional men to seek illicit pleasures in such parts of the city. She prowled along the streets, smelling the reek of the river, avoiding the throngs trying to sell wares to those who could scarcely afford them, and peering into the smeared windows of taverns as she passed. As the sun began to go down, and there were more shadows for her to hide among, she began to feel less watched and more secure.

Her colleague Barnard at the
Argus
had told her that Abel Value’s undisputed territory covered a significant swath of Alsatia, which was no surprise. It seemed reasonable to Ellie that, if someone was killing Value’s employees, they must be doing it here—and, in that case, Lord Pembroke was probably here somewhere as well, keeping an eye on things, hoping to catch the killer in the act. Ellie would happily interview him once he concluded his business, but she hadn’t become a reporter to take dictation. She wanted to be on the ground, in the thick of things. Cooper had often cautioned her—
“See
the story, don’t
be
the story”—and she recognized the wisdom in that. She just wanted to
see
the story from the closest possible vantage.

Unfortunately, she didn’t see much of interest. Several women propositioned her, which at least spoke to the efficacy of her disguise, and she always politely declined without getting too close. If Mr. Value had men watching the street, they were good at blending in with all the
other
men, the ones staggering out of taverns, or lounging in shadows watching the ones who staggered with speculative eyes. Of murder or Lord Pembroke, there was no sign.

The hour grew later, the air grew colder, and the terrible strange lights overhead waved and rippled like unnatural ribbons. Ellie was hungry, thirsty, and her feet hurt in the men’s shoes that didn’t
quite
fit. She resolved to go home and sleep—she needed to finish writing up her article on the visit to the clockwork comfort house in the morning—when a piercing whistle tore through the air. A few people looked up, frowned, and then went about their business, but to Ellie, the noise had the quality of a signal. She started walking, as nonchalantly as possible, toward the sound of the whistle, but after three bursts it didn’t sound again, and she was unable to pinpoint the location of its origin. After a moment’s hesitation, she started down a narrow alley crowded with splintered crates, the sweet smell of rotten fruit emanating from a pile of refuse. A man rushed down the alley toward her, almost but not quite running. Ellie noted his fine coat—it seemed to be bright green, a rather daring shade, but in the dimness it was hard to tell—and his anxious face. The man pushed past her without slowing down, almost knocking her into a crate, and Ellie caught a distinct whiff of something chemical as he went by. She hesitated. Would she be better off following the running man, or going to investigate what he was running
from
?

Shouting voices echoed from the direction of the running man’s origin. Knowing how shortly this alley entered a maze of streets, and deciding the running man was likely already lost among them, Ellie crept toward the other voices. She peered around the corner, just briefly, but long enough to glimpse a body on the cobblestones, and Lord Pembroke crouched over the still form, listening for a heartbeat, and two other men deep in serious conversation.

A chill gripped Ellie’s heart, far colder than the clammy air wafting in from the river. The man who’d rushed past her was the murderer. She had no doubt. Would she be able to recognize him again, if the police called on her to do so? She’d barely registered his face, just a pale smear beneath a top hat—he’d been clean-shaven, and his cheeks pockmarked, but beyond that, she would have been hard pressed to come up with any identifying characteristics, though something about him had been faintly familiar. She hesitated over whether to step forward and let Lord Pembroke know she was there. Explaining her garb would be embarrassing at the very least, but she had a duty to see that justice was done, and if she could help apprehend the killer, she would. Then again, the men Lord Pembroke was with were likely Value’s employees—hardened criminals!—and they might not appreciate a witness to their involvement with Lord Pembroke. As embarrassing as it would be for Lord Pembroke to have his name linked with a criminal like Value, wouldn’t it also damage Value’s reputation to be a known associate of the great detective?

Ellie expected Lord Pembroke to send for the police, and considered waiting until an officer arrived before stepping forward, but to her surprise, the detective and the big brute lifted the dead woman between them, the third man hovering about unhelpfully, and began to carry her north, her toes dragging on the ground as they proceeded in the general direction of the devastation that had been Whitechapel.

Now
this
was interesting. Were they attempting to cover up the crime? If so, why? Or was the woman only injured? She certainly appeared dead, but she might simply have fainted, or been rendered unconscious by a blow to the head. Ellie decided to follow them at a discreet distance.

As if she could possibly do anything else. Walk away, now, without knowing the particulars of the situation? She could no more do that than she could sprout wings and fly. Elllie had an excess of curiosity. That quality had caused her trouble, over the years, but not as often as it had shown her wonders and delights.

After a few blocks, the large man barked at the smaller one, who shrugged and hurried off in another direction. Ellie kept following the others, and after a long walk through twisting alleys, they reached a truly atrocious neighborhood, not so much dangerous as abandoned by most sensible folk in the city—sagging warehouses that hadn’t been used to store anything in years, broken-roofed houses inhabited by desperate people willing to risk living so close to ruined Whitechapel if it meant a measure of shelter. Lord Pembroke paused by the front door to a particularly narrow house squeezed between two warehouses, then conferred with his companion. They continued on, rounding a corner farther down the street and disappearing from view. Ellie followed as discreetly as she could, though she was aware of eyes watching her from a little knot of children sitting on the steps of crumbling brick structure across the street. She pressed herself against a warehouse wall, crept forward, then peered around the corner just in time to see Pimm, his large associate, and the presumably dead woman vanish into what looked like a cellar door. The entrance was guarded by another man, dressed in rags, but presumably in either Lord Pembroke or Value’s employ. Were they hiding the body? The basement of a building this close to Whitechapel was a good enough place to do so, but to what end?

Ellie decided to take up a position in the shadows across the street, to wait for Lord Pembroke to emerge. Or, if the entry to the cellar was at any point left unguarded, she could sneak down and see what waited in the dark for herself. Perhaps whatever she found there would answer some of her questions. Lord Pembroke, Value, Oswald, the clockwork courtesans, murdered girls—how were they all connected?

Ellie had the sense that she’d glimpsed a portion of something far larger than it first appeared—the peak of a mountain breaking through clouds, the jagged top of an iceberg visible on the surface of the sea. She’d followed that sense into big stories before. Cooper called it her “woman’s intuition,” not without a certain amount of admiration, but Ellie preferred to think of it as reporter’s instinct.

She crept across the street, finding a likely-looking doorway to shelter in. The entryway had been clumsily boarded-up, so the rightful inhabitants were unlikely to be along anytime soon. Ellie pressed her back against the boarded door, confident the shadows hid her utterly, and settled in to watch the alley.

After a few minutes, the large man who’d helped Lord Pembroke move the woman’s body reappeared, pausing to speak with the guardian of the cellar door, then hurried on his way. Ellie tensed, waiting for Lord Pembroke to emerge, but he didn’t. Ten minutes became fifteen, then twenty, then half an hour, then perilously close to an hour. Her feet ached, her left leg kept falling asleep, and the bindings on her breasts itched. She feared that, if things took a dangerous turn and she had to run, she would collapse on her cramping legs. When she could stand to be motionless no longer, she stepped out of the doorway, sidling along close to the building until the alleyway and its guardian were out of sight. She stretched her arms over her head, flexed her knees, and twisted her torso, wincing as she stretched out her protesting muscles. Once she felt less like a half-carved statue and more like a living woman again, she started back toward her doorway.
After no more than five steps, something sharp and pointed pricked Ellie in the back, to the right of her spine, just above a kidney. “I didn’t think you’d ever come out of that doorway,” a man’s voice hissed in her ear. “I was beginning to think I’d have to walk up to you bold as brass and demand you tell me your business.” The man holding the knife on her whistled, and the vagrant-guardian from the end of the alley soon appeared, and trotted over.

“Who’s this, then?” he said.

“Someone spying, but I don’t know who or why,” the man behind her said. Ellie’s stomach lurched as she recognized his voice. It was “Crippler” Crippen from the clockwork comfort house, perhaps banished to serve as a guard in this filthy neighborhood as punishment for his failure to apprehend Mr. Smythe in the brothel. Now he’d remedied
that
, though Ellie feared his redemption would do her no good. Crippen prodded her with the knife, not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to remind her how easily he could. Ellie hoped the knife hadn’t damaged the coat she’d borrowed from Mr. James, and a moment later, realized the hope was a bit ridiculous—the coat, and the person wearing it, would very likely be sunk into the Thames, or perhaps interred in a dark cellar with the body of at least one other woman.

“But we’ll find out his business, won’t we?” Crippen said. “People are always happy to answer my questions, after they hear how sweetly I ask.”

Footsteps sounded on the stones as another man approached from the alleyway. He stopped a few feet away, frowned, and sighed heavily. “Gentlemen,” Lord Pembroke said. “May I ask why you’re holding a knife on my assistant?”

The Luna Club
Unknowingly Integrates

“S
orry, my lord.” Ellie made her voice as gruff as she could. “They spotted me.”

Lord Pembroke nodded. “Yes, well. Subterfuge has never been your specialty, Jenkins. I’m disappointed, of course, but these things happen.”

“Wait,” the vagrant guard said. “You
know
this fellow?”

Lord Pembroke sighed as only a put-upon son of nobility, forced to deal with the lesser orders, could sigh. “Of course I know him. I am currently doing a bit of work for Mr. Value, but that doesn’t mean I
trust
him, any more than he trusts
me
. Jenkins here was meant to follow me at a discreet distance and step in to assist me in the event of any… unpleasantness.”

“What’s he supposed to do?” the vagrant said. “I’ve met ten-year-olds bigger than him.”

“Jenkins is a master of the mysterious Eastern art known as gongfu,” Lord Pembroke said, voice absolutely deadpan. “Though unarmed, he is deadlier than most men who wield swords or pistols.”

“Ha,” Crippen said. “I’d like to see proof of
that
.” The knife pressing against her back was removed, and Ellie let herself fully exhale for the first time in minutes. Well. As fully as she
could
exhale, given the bindings wrapped around her chest. “We’ll have to tell Mr. Value you had a confederate skulking around,” Crippen said.

“Oh, dear,” Lord Pembroke said. “Why, then Mr. Value might learn I believe him capable of low acts of betrayal! How will our relationship ever recover from such a crushing blow?” He snorted. “Come, Jenkins. We have work to do. The night is not so young as it was.”

Ellie tipped her hat to the vagrant guard, and started to follow Lord Pembroke. She tried to keep her face averted, but Crippen made a point of circling around and peering at her. His eyes widened. “Halliday,” he growled. “This man works for
you
? Always?”

Crippen recognized her, she was sure of it, from the clockwork comfort house. He’d seen her only for a moment, when she passed him playing cards downstairs in the brothel—he’d even winked at her—but that glimpse was enough to doom her now.

Lord Pembroke stopped walking, and frowned. “I do not engage his services at every hour of every day, man. Why do you ask?”

“He has a familiar face. Mostly it’s that mustache.”

“Mmm,” Lord Pembroke said. “It
is
a fairly beastly mustache. Now, if you don’t mind, I have business to pursue.” He started to walk away, then paused. “Crippen, isn’t it? Crippler? I saw your bout against Hamilton in ’59. A truly fine example of the pugilistic arts.”

The suspicious cast left Crippen’s eyes, and he straightened, puffing out his chest. “Hamilton never fought again after that night, you know.”

Lord Pembroke smiled, showing a flash of teeth as thin as a knife blade. “I rather doubt he ever ate solid
food
again after that night, Crippler.”

“Ha! Too right, m’lord.” Crippen tipped his hat, then nodded to his fellow guard. “Back to our posts, mate. Only a few more hours until relief, eh?”

Lord Pembroke walked on, and Ellie hurried after him. They walked silently for some time, the only sound their footsteps and the click of Lord Pembroke’s walking stick against the ground. At last he said, “I confess, Miss Skye, I found your earlier attire more fetching. And that mustache
is
beastly.”