“If he is identified. No one is going to want to admit knowing him, and it isn’t as though they’ll pay the reward to someone who identifies a dead man.”
“You are a cynic,” Crow said.
“Yes. I’m also right. Where was that constable in all this? What was his name?”
“Dew,” said Crow, “and he was under Inspector Abberline—they fell down the areaway stairs together.”
“Oh dear.”
“No bones broken, but no one can say he was shirking his duty.”
“No, I suppose not,” I said and yawned jaw-crackingly.
“Go to sleep,” Crow suggested and closed the door behind him as he left.
I slept for a couple of hours, there being nothing more useful I could do, and when I woke, I was in a good deal less pain. I was able to get up and wash and dress and go out to the sitting room.
I did not know if Mrs. Climpson or Jennie had seen me the day before—although the fact that I hadn’t been tossed out on my ear suggested they had not—and it took some considerable willpower to ring the bell as if nothing had happened. But if there was a charade, Jennie was part of it and an actress of more talent than I thought possible, for she brought tea and toast and the usual array of suggestions from the cook without any hint of alarm. Also The Times, which I eyed with dismay.
The rest of the story—or I suppose you might call it the other shoe—found us as I was halfway through my third cup of tea and a wincing perusal of The Times’s pronouncement on the capture and death of Jack the Ripper. The only mercy in the entire thing was that apparently no one except Crow and Lestrade actually knew who I was, and thus no one could give my name to inquisitive reporters: The Times merely called me the “Unknown Hell-Hound,” which was an oppressive soubriquet, though better than the truth.
“Crow,” I said, “have you seen—”
I was interrupted by someone pounding on the front door as if he wanted to break it down with his fist.
“It’s Gregson,” Crow said, listening intently. “And he has a warrant. Quick! You’ll have to go out the trap in the roof.”
“But—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Doyle. Go to Kate Moriarty. She’ll have a solicitor who can keep you out of prison. Go!”
I barely managed to grab my cane before Crow physically shoved me into the attic stairwell.
I climbed as quickly as I could. As I was opening the door at the top, I heard Crow say, “Good morning, Inspector Gregson,” and my heartbeat began thumping in my ears.
Part of my mind, cognizant of the fact that I was in Crow’s sanctum, where I had never been before, was trying to look everywhere at once—at the cyclone of newspapers and the teetering stacks of scrapbooks—but I was mostly looking for the half door to the rest of the attic. I had to shove my way through the newspapers to reach it, and I mentally apologized to my friend, as I had no doubt that there was method to his madness and order in this paper chaos. Then through the half door, bad leg dragging, and I was in something that looked like an Egyptian tomb, if the pharaohs had been addicted to tea chests. The path between the looming rows was so narrow that I was surprised Crow could fit.
I passed the dividing wall where Anuvadaka had scratched the words THANK YOU, and then I was standing beneath the locked trapdoor to the roof.
Unlocking it was simple, and I threw it open. The question was whether I was going to be able to haul myself and my cane up through it.
I put my cane on the roof beside the door and then, desperate and out of options—for it couldn’t take Gregson more than a few minutes to think of searching the attic—I gripped the opening and jumped, using my good leg, and just barely managed to get my floating ribs across the lip. I groaned and kicked and somehow got my legs to follow where my torso had gone.
I crawled up the roof far enough to close the trapdoor and then I sat for a second, steadying my breathing and looking around at the weird panorama of Marylebone roofs, trying to orient myself and figure out what to do. Crow had said to go to Kate Moriarty, but I found myself deeply reluctant to do so. James Moriarty had saved my life; I had saved Judith Shirley’s life. We were even across the board, and I wanted to keep it that way. Besides, I thought as I picked myself up and started toward the next roof over, I wasn’t sure that even a clever vampire lawyer—and vampires were the cleverest of lawyers—could help me. I had known I was a hell-hound for months, and I had not registered. I had broken the law, and I am sure some would argue it was mere wickedness that made me so unwilling to accept the consequences of my wrong-doing. But those consequences might well include being locked up in Colney Hatch for the rest of my life.
No, a solicitor couldn’t help me. But I thought I knew someone who could.
* * *
“I need to speak to the Angel of Whitehall,” I said to the polite young man.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but this is a matter of great urgency. Tell him Crow sent me.” True in spirit, if not in letter.
The young man looked dubious, but he said, “Just a moment, please, and I will inquire.”
He was just starting to get up when the door behind him opened, and the Angel of Whitehall said, “No inquiry will be necessary, Fenton. Dr. Doyle, how pleasant to see you again. Please come in.”
Whitehall’s office was austerely furnished and painted clean, blank white. Whitehall sat on a backless bench and motioned me to the chair. “Please be seated. How is your leg?”
“Much better, thank you.”
“Did Crow send you? It’s unlike him not to come in person.”
He knew I had lied, and in his own sideways fashion, he was inviting me to explain myself.
I took a deep breath and did the best I could.
Whitehall was an attentive listener, and he let me pour the whole story out before he said anything. “Certainly, it seems most unfair that you should be betrayed in the course of catching a murderer, and I admit I am not enamored of the Registration Act, which seems to create the very behavior it is meant to prevent. But I don’t quite see what it is you think I can do.”
“I don’t know!” I said. “But if you want me to stay with Crow, you have to do something. Or he’ll be visiting me monthly at Colney Hatch.” Where all the occult prisoners were sent.
“And that if you can hold your temper and not get your privileges revoked,” murmured Whitehall in a way that suggested he thought I couldn’t. But something in what I had said had caught his attention. “Crow is better since your advent. More … I hesitate to use the word ‘human,’ but less like a machine devoted to murder.” He looked at me, his gaze steady and his eyes very blue. “Less like someone who might Fall.”
“Crow would never Fall,” I said with considerable certainty.
“Maybe not,” said Whitehall. “But he no longer has a habitation, and he refuses to embrace the Consensus. You must admit his options are few and his position extremely precarious. But you make it less so.”
“He brought me to meet you,” I said, suddenly understanding what that odd, awkward afternoon had been about. “You and the Angel of the Great Synagogue. His family.”
“Are we?” said Whitehall, looking almost taken aback by the idea. “Gracious.” He looked at me silently for long enough that I wanted to squirm; then the faint frown cleared, and he said, “I know who we need.”
Going to the door, he said, “Really, I shouldn’t do this.” He opened the door and said, “Fenton, I need Sir Edwin. As quickly as possible.” He returned to his bench and told me, “Fenton will find him.”
As we waited, Whitehall said, “Forgive me, but my curiosity about this has been unendurable since we met. Your, ah, secret…” And he paused, eyebrows raised, until I nodded. “It must have been discovered when you were wounded. How is it that you receive an Imperial pension and continue to dress as a man?”
I smiled grimly and said, “I blackmailed the Imperial Armed Forces.”
“Go on,” said Whitehall.
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“Almost nobody knew, you see. The doctor who first found out was a friend—a good friend—and he made sure that only he and the orderly who saved my life tended to me. Murray would have died before he betrayed me. I don’t think he even cared, although things were very strained with Kilpatrick.” I laughed suddenly, surprising myself, remembering some of those dreadful conversations. “But then my wound became infected, and I had to be sent to Dr. Sylvester. And Kilpatrick had a crisis of conscience and reported me to General Dr. Brook.”
“Oh dear,” said Whitehall.
“When I was well enough, I had a series of very nasty conversations with him and the nearest general to hand, in which I said that they would discharge me with a pension and with my medical rights and without discussing anything else, or I would go to the first war correspondent I saw and. Tell. Him. Everything.”
“And was there a great deal of everything to tell?”
“Well, first there was the scandal that one of the I.A.F.’s best surgeons—I have medals to prove it, though I don’t suppose I’ll ever wear them—is actually a woman. Max Chesney could have run with that for days. But then…” I hesitated, and Whitehall said, “You’re not going to shock my unsullied virgin ears, you know.”
“All right,” I said. “There’s a great deal of corruption in the I.A.F. Corruption and incompetence and the most vile kind of nepotism, and I saw far more of it than I wanted to, for I’m afraid Brook may be the most corrupt of the lot. You know how the newspapers are about the war, and I’m sure you can guess the damage I could do.”
“Quite,” said Whitehall.
“They implored me to think of my Queen and my country, and I assured them that that and my foolish loyalty to the I.A.F. were the only reasons I hadn’t gone to a war correspondent long ago.”
“Clearly, they did not call your bluff.”
“I wasn’t bluffing. I would have told Max everything I knew, names and dates and places, and given him my diaries, and then, I don’t know, I probably would have blown my brains out.”
“My dear doctor!” Whitehall said, aghast.
“I’m not a man,” I said, “but I’m not a woman, either. I’ve masqueraded as a man far longer than I wore long skirts and corsets, and I don’t think I could go back. I certainly couldn’t go back to the gossip and embroidery that are a woman’s lot.”
“Many women do other things,” said Whitehall.
“I know. I … oh, it doesn’t matter. But to be alone and friendless as a man is still far better than to be alone and friendless as a woman.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t bluffing.”
“Well,” said Whitehall, “I certainly feel—”
There was a tap at the door.
“Come in,” said Whitehall, and a stout, cheerful, bald man with a tremendous red walrus mustache stuck his head in the door.
“Fenton said you had need of me?”
“Yes,” said Whitehall. “Pray come in, and shut the door behind you. Sir Edwin, this is Dr. J. H. Doyle, who is in a quandary. Dr. Doyle, this is Sir Edwin Ottershaw, a solicitor who may be able to help you. You can certainly trust his discretion.”
Whitehall got up, and he and Sir Edwin had a momentary, silent disagreement over who should sit on the bench, which Whitehall won. Whitehall went to stand by the window. Sir Edwin therefore sat down across from me and said, “I am bewildered, yet game. Tell me your story, Dr. Doyle.”
Thus I went through the whole matter a second time, explaining things as I went in a most disorganized fashion. Sir Edwin proved himself as game as a pebble, for he listened raptly and asked incisive and uncomfortable questions, which I did my best to answer. His small, bright, wren-like eyes widened a little when he realized I was the Unknown Hell-Hound who had caught Jack the Ripper, but he rendered no judgment, good or bad, on the rest of my tale, and said when I had finished, “Yes, I see why Whitehall called me,” as if he were entirely delighted to have my thorny and awkward problem dumped in his lap. “My sister is a hell-hound, you see, and I have very strong feelings about the Registration Act.”
“Very strong,” Whitehall said dryly from the window.
“And yours is a very interesting case from my perspective, because it shows that occult persons may act in the service of the law. But I quite see that, from your perspective, you don’t want to go to prison.”
“I don’t,” I agreed.
“And Whitehall has asked me in because angels can’t lie, but lawyers can.” From the way he twinkled at Whitehall, this was an old joke between them. “You will have to register, I’m afraid. There’s nothing to be done about that.”
“I know,” I said and shivered involuntarily.
He saw my expression and said, “There’s an anti-Registration movement, you know. The ladies marching for the right to vote march for occult rights, too.”
“Wonderful,” I said. The thought gave me a great dismal feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Sir Edwin,” said Whitehall, “you stray from the point.”
“So I do,” said Sir Edwin, cheerfully unbothered. “In any event, it isn’t really the registering per se that bothers you—well, it is, but that’s not the part with which I can help. What we’re trying to avoid is the prison sentence handed down for not registering in the first place.”
He thought for a time, so fast and hard I could almost hear the cogs turning. “Well!” he said at last. “I do see a way, although I will have to use up a favor with Sir Guy to achieve it. But I would not see anyone put in prison over the Registration Act if I could possibly help it, and you are the man who caught Jack the Ripper. The Queen was saying just this morning that you ought to be commended, and it doesn’t reflect well on Her Majesty’s government to be arresting you the same day. And this is a good story, very plausible. We inform Scotland Yard that you are an agent of the Home Office, and that it was crucial to your cover story that you not register. Perhaps we were sending you to spy among the unregistered. They certainly prey upon the Home Secretary’s mind a good deal.”
“Perhaps,” I said, thinking uncomfortably of Madame Silvanova and her brother.
“In any event, those details are naturally top secret, and Scotland Yard need not know them. I will bring you a letter tomorrow—of the to whom it may concern variety. I can bring the Registry paperwork at the same time, make sure it gets done and all that.” He shot me a bright, not unsympathetic look over the walrus mustache. “There is, however, a quid pro quo.”
I had known there would be. “What is it?”
“I wish you to call upon a lady named Mary Josephine Dickerson—I will give you my card, so that you may assure her of your bona fides—and tell her your story. The true story.”
I felt that great dismal hollowness in the pit of my stomach again. “I will do it, but may I ask why?”
“Miss Dickerson works for occult rights. She will find much to interest her in your tale.”
“But I don’t—” I stopped myself. I might not enjoy the thought of being made part of a cause, but what I did not want was to be sent to Colney Hatch. Whatever Sir Edwin’s benevolent blackmail demanded was a small price to pay.
“She’s a very pleasant young lady and hardly ever dines upon her callers,” said Sir Edwin. “And you will be doing your brethren a great boon.”
I bit my tongue and did not deny that the occult were my brethren.
* * *
I spent the night in the same hotel where I had lived when I first came to London, and was horrified anew at how oppressive and dismal it was. I realized what a great debt I owed Stamford and thought that I should find him and tell him so, although the thought made me feel nearly as hollow as the thought of talking to Sir Edwin’s pleasant young lady.
I slept badly.
In the morning, I dared to return to Baker Street, where Crow gave me a vivid and gleeful account of Gregson’s visit. “He wanted to arrest me for obstruction of justice—I could see it in his eyes—but there was nothing to show that I helped yo
u escape, and how could I be obstructing anything when I answered all of his questions truthfully?”
“Yes, I’ve seen you do that,” I said dryly, and he laughed.
“He’ll be back, you know,” he warned me.
“That’s all right,” I said, “and I must tell Mrs. Climpson we’re having a guest for lunch.”
Mrs. Climpson gave me a sour look—which I fully deserved for springing a lunch guest on her at the last minute—but whatever crises I caused in the kitchen, by the time Sir Edwin arrived, there was no sign of them.
We had spent a lazy morning, mostly discussing the discussion of Jack the Ripper in the newspapers. “Have you seen The Times?” I had asked Crow as he came back into the room from his stairs.
“Very much as one might expect,” he said. “The Star is yelling about conspiracies and suggesting that the man who died on Monday wasn’t really Jack the Ripper at all.”
“Evidence is rather sketchy—which The Times is trying hard not to discuss.”
“Evidence consists of Mary Jane Kelly’s heart on his table,” Crow said. “And Constable Dew and Inspector Abberline can testify to that. It isn’t just my word for it.”
“You can’t lie. No one can ask for a better witness.”
“No one will put me on the stand,” he said. “No matter which side I would be a witness for, the other side would bring up the question of whether I can lie—being Fallen rather than merely…” He made an oddly precise gesture indicating inadequate vocabulary. “Whatever I am. Ergo, I’m no use as a witness. But that’s not the point. The point is that Inspector Abberline saw that heart—human and extremely fresh—and—”
“We have no proof that it came from Mary Jane Kelly’s chest.”
“Yes, we do.” He stared at me, his gaze as unnerving as ever. “You tracked it. And I don’t think you would have lied about it, even if we could have explained to you how.”
“But I can’t testify, either,” I said. “Not as a hell-hound.”
“No, but Constable Dew and Inspector Abberline can testify to what you did, just as they would if you’d been a tracking dog. Or if Clifton Barnaby had ended up shifting. Or, rather, they would have been able to testify, if there had been a trial.”
The Angel of the Crows Page 41