The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (17 page)

“That’s too much,” he said.

“You do not yet know what I’m hiring you to do.”

“Nothing illegal, right? I’m just suspended from the force. I ain’t been booted yet.”

The hand holding the money did not waver. “I cannot share anything until you are officially in my employ.”

With a commingling of reluctance and relief, Blenkinsop took the banknotes, glanced at them, and then crossed the room and handed them to his wife saying, “Here ya go, girl. Mebbe you can pop to the shops and buy the babe some milk and a rusk, and something for our tea.”

The young woman snatched up a shawl and wrapped it about her and the babe in arms. “I’ll be off, then,” she said, and moments later the two men were alone in the room and able to speak freely.

“What’s going on, Doctor Doyle?”

“Nothing short of a coup d’
é
tat.”

“A coo—? You mean the Frenchies are about to invade?”

Conan Doyle chuckled. “Not exactly, but our nation is in crisis. The murder of Lord Howell is part of a plot of programmed assassinations aimed at key politicians and magnates of industry. But that is only the beginning. The plot will culminate in the assassination of the queen and the overthrow of the government.”

“Lumme! What can I do, Doctor Doyle?”

“I have needs of your sleuthing skills.”

A smile cracked Blenkinsop’s face for the first time. “You can count on me, sir. It’ll be good to be back in harness and out from underfoot with the wife and little-un.”

“There is one thing, Detective.”

“Tom. You’d best call me Tom. I’m suspended, remember?”

“Ah, yes. Very well then,
Tom
. I must stress, there will be danger involved. Possibly, great danger.”

Blenkinsop sniffed at the possibility. “No different from me regular day job then, is it? I’m your man, sir. Like you say in your Sherlock Holmes stories, the game’s afoot, eh?”

Conan Doyle clapped the detective on the shoulder and smiled. “Indeed, Tom, the game is very much afoot!”

*   *   *

When Conan Doyle and Detective Blenkinsop alighted from the cab, they found a cordon of blue uniformed constables surrounding Tarquin Hogg’s house. Three hearses and a black Mariah were already drawn up at the curbside.

“Blimey,” Blenkinsop said. “How do we get past that lot? Sneak in the back way?”

Conan Doyle thought a moment and said, “I say we sneak in the front way. You still have your detective’s badge, I take it?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Bluff and bluster are often superior to stealth. You and I will march up there as though we are in charge. Flash them your badge. Just make sure they don’t have time to read it. Eh, Detective Sutcliffe?”

Blenkinsop frowned with puzzlement. “Sutcliffe? But me name is—” And then a smile broke across his face. “Ah, I tumble it. Very good …
Doctor Watson
. Shall we?”

The two men stepped onto the road and walked briskly up to the knot of police officers. But as they drew close, an officer in plainclothes noticed them and threw down the gauntlet.

“Who are you two, then?”

Judging by the man’s bushy brown moustache, martial bearing, and flat-footed stance that comes from years of pounding the beat, Conan Doyle guessed they had run into a plainclothes inspector. Blenkinsop flashed his badge, one finger held across it so no one could read the number.”

“Detective Sutcliffe.”

“Who? What you doing here, sonny Jim? This ain’t your manor—”

“Commissioner Burke sent me personally. Told me to get down here sharpish and fetch a doctor.” Blenkinsop indicated Conan Doyle with a nod. “Course, you got a problem with that, you could take it up with the commissioner when he arrives.”

Invoking the name of the police commissioner worked its magic. The inspector was suddenly all smiles. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound narky.” He extended a hand. “The name’s Barnes.”

“Good to meet you, Inspector Barnes.” The two men shook hands. “So, what’s happening?”

“Beggared if I know. We been here all night. No one’s allowed to go in until his nibs gets here. He don’t want nothing disturbed.”

“Yeah,” Blenkinsop quickly ad-libbed. “Commissioner Burke wanted the doctor to examine the victims’ bodies and have a report ready for him.”

Conan Doyle spoke for the first time. “So why three hearses?”

“Three stiffs. The murderer, the fat banker himself, and a butler copped it as well. Old army lad. Put five rounds in the murderer. Only the geezer had a bomb strapped to his chest. Butler found it with the fifth round, didn’t he? KA-BOOM!”

“D
é
j
à
vu?” Conan Doyle muttered to Detective Blenkinsop.

“Any witnesses still breathin’?” Blenkinsop asked.

“Maid. Name of Myrtle. Saw the murderer doing the dirty. A monster, she called him. Of course, you know women and their hysterics. But he was a big bastard as you’ll see from what’s left of him.”

“Right,” Blenkinsop said. “I’d better get the doctor in there before the commissioner arrives and thinks we’re all slackin’ off.”

They made a move to step past, but Inspector Barnes held them back with a gesture. “Wait, before you go in.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial rumble. “There’s something queer about this one. The victim looks like he went ten rounds with a circus gorilla. And you should see the state of the room…” The inspector shook his head. “… in bits.” He squinted up at the second story balcony. “So maybe what the maid said ain’t so daft after all.”

With that, Detective Blenkinsop and Conan Doyle passed unmolested through the gaggle of constables and entered the house. In the entrance hall, a solitary constable slouched against a wall, but jerked to attention as they entered.

“Oi! No one’s allowed in here—”

Blenkinsop flashed his badge. “Detective Sutcliffe. I brought the doctor with me.”

“Oh, right. Second floor. Can’t miss it.”

The two men ascended a grand staircase that spiraled upward in a swirl of polished mahogany balustrades. From behind they heard the constable guarding the door shout up to them: “Hope ya got a strong stomach.”

As they reached the first floor, a greasy haze hung suspended in the air and their mouths filmed with the acrid tang of scorched hair and burned flesh. They found the butler’s body sprawled close to the stairs on the second-floor landing. His eyes were open, shocked wide, as if surprised by his own death. His right hand still gripped a pistol. The blast had merely singed him, but a weeping hole in the middle of his forehead showed the cause of death. When Conan Doyle bent closer to look he found a brassy bolt protruding from the skull.

“Nasty,” Blenkinsop commented.

“Yes. No doubt a component from the bomb.”

They stepped carefully around the butler’s body. The blast had stripped the fine flock wallpaper from the wall and it hung in peeling curls. Farther up the hallway, the assassin’s corpse lay on its back: a hulking form with the mass of a toppled idol, heavy with inertia. Even in death it radiated menace and threatened to jerk to life at any moment. The yellow eyes were wide, the dreadful gaze scorching the ceiling.

“Charlie Higginbotham!” Detective Blenkinsop hissed from several feet away, his legs unwilling to carry him any closer.

Conan Doyle stepped close and dropped to a crouch over the body. The tattered remnants of the shirt were burned black and crispy. But most remarkable was the perfect rectangular opening in the middle of the chest, out of which a thin gray tendril of smoke still curled.

“You can see he had a bomb strapped to his chest,” Blenkinsop observed. “It’s blown a hole.”

Conan Doyle leaned closer, peering into the smoldering cavity. “No. This hole is far too neat and regular to be caused by an explosion. The chest has been cut open by someone with the skill of a surgeon using a bone saw.” He grunted with astonishment and looked up at the young detective. “The heart … it’s gone!”

Blenkinsop’s mouth dropped open. “What? How? How is that possible?”

Conan Doyle looked around the hallway and spotted a twisted metal box lying several feet away. Even from a distance, he judged that its dimensions exactly matched the rectangular hole in the assassin’s chest. He arose from the corpse and stepped over to pick it up. The oblong metal box was constructed of machined plates of shiny metal, held together around the edges by precise rows of brass bolts. One bolt was missing—likely the one that wound up in the butler’s forehead. An outward-puckered hole in the metal showed where a bullet had punctured the casing. Beside the bullet hole was what appeared to be a gauge, although the face was unreadable behind cracked and blackened glass. Something rattled loose when he shook it and fell out on the hall rug. He snatched it up. The heavy cogwheel had been formed from a solid chunk of metal, exquisitely machined so that it iridesced in the light. Conan Doyle wrapped it in a handkerchief and tucked in his pocket.

“This is not a bomb,” Conan Doyle announced.

“What, then?”

The Scotsman shook his head. “Some kind of infernal device.”

He turned it over and froze. A sick heat washed through him followed by a chill as sweat dried on the back of his neck. A tangle of rubber hoses dangled from the backside, and a trickle of blood now dribbled from one.

“Good heavens! It appears to be some kind of … mechanical heart!”

Before he could speculate further, a booming voice vaulted up the staircase ahead of its owner: “Come along, Dobbs. Don’t dawdle, man!”

The two companions shared a look of alarm. Blenkinsop ducked back down the hallway, darted a quick look down the stairs, and quickly jerked his head back.

“Commissioner Burke!” he hissed in a low whisper. “If he finds us…”

“Come!” Conan Doyle urged. He set the metal box down where he had discovered it. “There must be a servant’s staircase somewhere.”

The two hurried along the hallway as the tramp of climbing feet grew louder.

“So no one’s been in here?” Burke bellowed.

“No, sir.” The voice belonged to Barnes, the inspector they had bluffed their way past. “Just Detective Sutcliffe and the doctor you sent for.”

“Doctor? What doctor? And who the devil is Detective Sutcliffe?”

“But. He’s upstairs. I thought—”

“You imbecile!”

The thunder of police feet grew louder. Conan Doyle and Blenkinsop ran to the end of the hallway, which branched in two directions.

“If we go the wrong way, we’re buggered!” Blenkinsop said.

Conan Doyle noticed what appeared to be a bedroom door nearby. He snatched it open and the two men ducked inside and pulled it shut behind them.

The bedroom proved to be a linen closet. They stood in the darkness, straining to hear, breathing in the clean aroma of freshly ironed linen. Heavy feet tramped past, grew distant, but soon returned. Both men drew in a breath, and held it.

“Where are they?” Commissioner Burke’s voice thundered from the other side of the door. “Tell your man in the entrance hall not to let anyone leave.”

Thankfully, after a few minutes, the voices moved away and they were finally able to breathe out. From downstairs they caught the cannonade of the police chief’s voice bawling orders, in an obvious state of dyspepsia. Should they be caught, it seemed entirely likely that both would indeed be tossed into the deepest, darkest, dankest cell in Newgate.

Minutes passed. The voices faded from hearing. And then they heard the soft tread of approaching feet. Both men tensed as a floorboard on the other side of the closet door creaked. Suddenly, the door flung wide, spilling in light. The look of astonishment on the maid’s face betrayed her surprise at finding two men crouching in the darkness. It would have been comical in less dire circumstances.

“Thank you so much,” Conan Doyle said mildly as he and Detective Blenkinsop stepped past her. “We were quite lost in there.” He threw a glance up the hallway. The body of Charlie Higginbotham had been removed, but he could still hear the rumble of Commissioner Burke’s voice echoing in the entrance hall. He turned his attention to the astonished maid. “Where are your servant’s stairs?”

The woman numbly pointed.

“Thank you,” Conan Doyle said, and then asked, “Are you Myrtle?”

The maid nodded slowly.

“Excellent. Myrtle, I have a few questions for you.”

At Conan Doyle’s prodding, the young maid began a halting description of the events of the previous night. When she mentioned the steam car that visited earlier in the evening, Conan Doyle fought to keep his voice steady as he asked her, “And did you happen to see the driver of the steam car?”

The maid nodded. “Just a glimpse, sir—it was quite dark. He was a queerly dressed chap in a great black stovepipe hat. I took his card. It were a funny old name.” She suddenly remembered something and scrabbled in the pocket of her pinny, producing a calling card, which she handed to Conan Doyle.

He read the name on the card and gears meshed in his brain: “Ozymandius Arkwright!”

“That’s him!” the maid agreed. “Wot you just said.”

“Who?” Blenkinsop asked.

Conan Doyle threw a meaningful look at Blenkinsop. “Ozymandius Aurelius Arkwright, one of the nation’s best engineers. I’ve no doubt the steamer he rides around in is his own invention.” He was about to continue when the police commissioner’s head-splitting voice boomed up in the stairwell from below: “Dobbs! Blast you man. Get over here. Come with me upstairs.”

Both men flinched. They had to leave quickly. The Scottish author grasped the young maid’s hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Thank you so much, Myrtle. Do carry on. You’re holding up wonderfully during such trying times.”

They fled down the servant’s stairs and emerged from a tradesmen’s entrance on the side of the house. When they reached the police cordon, Blenkinsop nodded familiarly to the waiting constables and slapped one on the shoulder, saying, “Good job, lads. Stay sharp.”

And so they slipped unchallenged through the police line and sauntered back up the road to their waiting hansom. They were just climbing inside when four funeral attendants exited the front door of the residence bearing the coffin containing the body of the dead assassin. The two friends watched as it was loaded into the waiting hearse. And then something struck Conan Doyle as remarkably familiar.