The Ripper Affair

Chapter Twenty Founded Upon Much Less

Emma freed her hand from Mikal’s and took in the grey light of predawn, the fog sallow and the Scab underfoot slippery enough that she had to take care with her balance.

“What the devil are you about here?”

It was a greeting from a direction she would not have preferred, but at least the hailer’s presence would solve a number of problems. She used her sweetest smile. “Mr Aberline. My, you’ve grown.”

Frederick had thickened since she last saw him, and acquired a very fine moustache and side-whiskers. At the moment he was scowling, and it did not improve his knife-beak of a nose or his slightly choleric cast. He had been a very promising lad, a watchmaker’s son who rose through the ranks of the Metropoleans by dint of ability and persistence.

It must be something extraordinary to set him a-glower, for normally he was rather… sedate. Many of his suspects had learned too late that his solicitor’s mien did not make him stupid or placid.

And many of his quarries, in his younger days, had learned that a broken head in the service of Justice did not trouble Aberline overmuch. He was rightly feared among the more intelligent flashboys in Londinium’s seamier quarters.

“Is it… Bannon? Yes. A pleasure.” But his mouth turned down, and she rather thought not. “How’s our lad Geoffrey?”

“Mr Finch is still in my employ, sir.” If that changes, he will be in another country before you get wind of it. “How is your wife?” I seem to recall she was perennially sickly.

“Which one? And, Miss Bannon, what is the occasion that honours us with your presence here?” His sharp gaze drifted over her shoulder, took in Pico and Clare just alighting from the carriage, and he looked even more unhappy–if that were possible. “Sightseeing on the Scab’s not for gentlefolk this morning.”

As if you think me an excitement-seeker. How very insulting. She had never given him reason to think his attempts to be offensive were even noticed, and she saw no need to alter her course now. “The gentle are no doubt still abed. We are left to our own devices in this affair.”

“I should have known,” he muttered. “He said someone else from the Crown would be along.”

Now that was interesting. “Who?”

“Oh, Gull. He’s become Her Majesty’s hangman now, like Conroy was her mother’s, God rest that poor woman’s soul.”

He jammed his bowler hat more firmly atop his dark, slicked-down hair, and she saw, even in the dimness, grey beginning at his temples. His boots splorched and slid through the Scab crusting the cobbles, and she did not have to glance about to know she was upon Hanbury Street.

The smell alone would have told her so, and she wondered if Peggy Razor still door-watched a dosshouse a few doors up; if Trout Jack still ran the child-thieves in this slice of Whitchapel; if the Scab still made fine delicate whorls up every wooden wall before sunlight scorched it away, leaving a filigree of caustic char…

Gull. Her well-trained memory returned a face to go with the name. Physicker to the Queen, and a singularly bloodless and dedicated man. Rumour had him as one who had always wished he were among sorcery’s children, but educated rumour simply said he liked a bit of secrecy, and so had joined a certain “Brotherhood of Stone”. They played at Ritual and Initiation, with a certain degree of ridiculousness, and, like any gentlemen’s club, membership was skewed toward the wealthy, or those who wished influence.

Nothing about said brotherhood interested Emma overmuch, but if there was gossip linking Gull and Victrix as her mother and Conroy had been linked, it was a trifle worrisome.

She set the consideration aside; Victrix’s troubles, except in this one small matter, were no longer hers. This affair was to be laid to rest quickly, so she could return to her studies and other concerns.

Chief among those concerns was Clare, who sniffed the soup passing for air in Whitchapel with bright interest. He glanced down, toyed with the Scab’s green organic sludge with one boot-toe, and nodded slightly. “Most interesting.”

Would you find it so, if you saw what it does to bodies? Or to rats, on particularly active nights? Emma turned back to Aberline. “I am gratified to find my coming was foretold,” she remarked, drily. “There is a body, sir.”

“Yes.” The inspector–because he was no doubt one of that august brotherhood now, being neither encased in a bobby’s blue cloth nor bearing the ubiquitous whistle–furrowed his brow mightily as he took in the mentath. “There is quite a crowd already—”

“Be a dear and clear them away, so we may examine the premises.” She put on her most winning smile again, and saw his flinch with a great deal of satisfaction. “My companion is a mentath, and quite useful. As you shall no doubt be. The Yard’s taking an active interest in this?” Not just at the Queen’s bidding, if you are here.

“Third’s a charm. This will be in the broadsheets and dreadfuls before long.” The man’s face was positively mournful. “I don’t suppose you could…”

“Mitigate somewhat?” Her sigh took her by surprise, and Mikal’s comforting warmth at her shoulder was the only thing on Hanbury Street that did not appear worrisome. “My days of mitigation are somewhat past, Inspector. But I shall do what I can.” Mostly to suit myself, for I do not wish to be bruited about in print.

“Well, good. Come along then.” He did not further insult her, which was a very good sign–or a very bad one. He halted, and she noted the breadth of his shoulders under his jacket. Inspector Aberline had not let the iron go cold, as the saying went. “I don’t suppose this is merely a social visit?”

From me? Now there is an amusing thought. “Of course not, sir. I shall, however, see whatever unpleasantness this is to its conclusion, and as quickly as possible.”

“Good. Because the Eastron End’s about to explode.”

Is this a new state of affairs? “Is that so?”

“Foreigners.” His lip actually twisted. He moved through the Scab with a distinctive sliding step. You could always tell Whitchapel flashboys and the like from that step, rolling and settling the weight only after they were sure something under the thick, resilient slime wasn’t going to shift. “Have you still a strong stomach, Miss Bannon?”

“You ask me?” She shook her head, glad Mikal was following step for step. He had not the trick of moving in the Scab’s deep cover, and she could actually hear him.

Her skirts dragged in the caustic sludge, and she let them. Scab would eat at the fabric, but there was no use in holding them high; she might need her hands. No doubt this affair would ruin a frock or two by the end. You can tell a Whitchapel drab by her ankles, the saying went. Or, if you were raised in the argot, A nav’Whit slit shews gam, sh’doon.

She might have let herself consider sending the Crown a bill for whatever cloth was ruined before said end. While amusing, it did not have the savour such thoughts usually did.

Aberline was speaking again. “We’ve mancers now. At the Yard, and in the station houses.” He did not sound pleased by the notion. “I doubt any of them would want to see this.”

And you sensitive to sorcery, but unable to hold a charter symbol in free air. How that must grate upon your pride. “Indeed.”

She followed him to a dark cleft, a passage leading to the back of the building. Mikal’s attention sharpened. The Scab became much thicker, giving reluctantly under her heeled boots and still coating the cobbles at the bottom of every step. Her ankles ached–she had not lost the trick of easing through the mire, but her legs had grown unused to it. Her skin chilled, remembering slipping barefoot and bare-legged through the sludge, dodging cuffs and curses, a stolen apple clutched to her flat child’s chest.

Clare’s voice, indistinct behind her. Philip Pico’s murmured reply. And Mikal’s hand at her shoulder, fingers slightly digging in as if he felt her… uncertainty?

The passageway ended, and Aberline pointed. He needn’t have, for Emma could feel the plucking in the æther all along her body, down into her core. There was no question it was a corpse, and not a drunkard in stupor-sleep.

“No name yet.” Aberline’s expression was set. He pointed to the far end of the yard. “There is the Yudic Workingman’s Club, though. Which will no doubt prove a deadly coincidence.”

“Yudic?” The ætheric disturbance pulsed as if sensing her nearness. Twice now he’s mentioned the Foreigners.

“Coming from the east and taking jobs from poor honest Englene, the story goes. And socialist to boot. Bloody anarchists. The End’s full of them, and trouble every time one’s accused of anything from following a pretty girl to murdering a thief.” He shook his head. “Now this.”

“Has it truly grown so dire?” Well, of course. Why else would a full-blown detective inspector from the hallowed Yard be here at this hour? “Yes. I see. Three corpses and a workingman’s club–there have been unwholesome incidents founded upon much less.”

“Examiner’s been sent for. I hope you’ve some idea of what to do, Bannon. Can we move the body?”

I have no desire to endure another vision of murder. “It should be safe enough.” The Tebrem woman’s corpse was moved, after all. She stared at the mangled corpse, took two steps past the inspector and examined it more thoroughly. Yes, there was the head turned to the side, the ripping-open of the abdomen, entrails flung over the unfortunate’s shoulder. Thick legs in striped stockings, the legs obscenely splayed. Two dull farthings lay on a blood-soaked handkerchief by her curled right hand, and her pocket had been slit. The throat was cut, and there was a quantity of blood…

… but not nearly enough.

She decided it was perhaps time to remind the detective inspector just who held the whip hand in this particular situation. “Curious,” she murmured, and heard Philip Pico’s sharp, indrawn breath as he caught sight of the body. “Tell me, Inspector, do you still have dreams?”

He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he shook out his left hand, which had tightened into a fist. “Curse you.” Softly, conversationally. “Bloody sorceress.”

Yes. And you have, though not in the way you might think. I merely need to remind you to mind your duty, and your place. “Indeed. Tell me something else, Inspector. Where did the blood go?”

“I know where some went. See that?” He pointed, and she stared for a few moments. Even with her sensitive eyes, it took time for what she saw to become comprehensible.

“Leather. Cobbler’s apron?”

“Or slaughterer’s. Could have been there already. Soaked in the claret, Bannon, though still not enough. And you don’t need to be a mancer to know something’s amiss here. Look.” He jabbed two fingers at the shimmering over the corpse. It was akin to the heat-haze over a fire, or a slate roof on a hot day. “And underneath.”

“Yes.” Under the body, the Scab’s venomous green had been scorched. Where blood falls, the Scab greens, that was the proverb. Here, the blood–or something else–had burned down to ancient, slime-scarred cobbles and blackened, sour dirt that hadn’t seen free air in longer than Emma had been alive. “Yet she was not murdered elsewhere.”

“I’d ask how you know that.”

“And I would tell you I know, and that is enough.”

“Bloody sorceress.” No heat to it, he merely sounded weary. He scrubbed one flat-bladed hand over his face, precisely once, a familiar mannerism. “I happen to think you’re right.”