Blood Rites

by Sharon K Gilbert

  “Sure as I know me own name, sir! I canno’ remember seein’ any other folks in the park. I never seen them women. I tell no lies!”

  “Forgive me, Miss Murdoch. It is just that the women were discovered in the park by rail porters, so we’d assumed you were attacked by the same man who slew these women.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout it, sir. Truly, I don’t. I never seen no one else, outside o’ them two men.”

  “This second man,” he continued, patiently. “Is he the one who attacked you?”

  She began to weep, and the nurse arrived to remind the detective that his time had expired, but as he stood, Moira clutched at Sinclair’s coat sleeve. “Sir, that second man weren’t a man at all! He changed—right then and there! Howlin’ at the moon like the light hurt him, and he run at me, with his mouth open and teeth chompin’! I’ll swear it on the Holy Bible, sir, if you’ll bring me one! I ain’t makin’ it up, no matter what tha’ lady doctor thinks. And then ‘e up an’ flew right up into the sky, screamin’ ‘bou’ the moon, an’ how he hated it! I ain’t mad, sir. May all the saints serve as witness, I ain’t! Please, help me! They wants ta take me away, bu’ I ain’t mad!”

  The nurse cleared her throat. “Superintendent, you must leave now, sir. Miss Murdoch’s mind suffers, and your continued presence will only make her worse. Please, sir. Do not force me to send for an escort.”

  Charles had no will to leave Moira, but he did so, protesting the entire way back into the hallway. “This is outrageous! I am a police officer, endeavouring to identify that woman’s assailant, and five minutes will not suffice! Nurse, what is your name?”

  “Oxbridge, sir. Mrs. Alice Oxbridge.”

  “Well, then, Mrs. Oxbridge,” he shouted, not caring who overheard, “you may tell Dr. Kennedy that I intend to file an injunction to have Miss Murdoch released into police custody as a material witness to assault and murder. She is not to be transferred to Castor or anywhere else. Am I understood? If I return here to find her gone or harmed in any way, both you and Dr. Kennedy will find yourselves explaining it to me from the other side of iron bars!”

  Once outside, the two men entered the waiting coach, and Charles slammed angrily into the leather seat. “Damn those people!”

  “It will achieve nothing, if you lose control, Charles,” his cousin warned. “I understand. I do, but the world is filled with desperate women in desperate circumstances. You cannot save them all.”

  “No, but I might be able to save this one,” Sinclair bit back, his eyes fixed on the passing scenery. “The girl said she felt no pain, Paul. How can that be, if her injuries were as serious as we’ve been led to believe?” He turned his head, almost as if he expected no reply, and Paul could see his cousin’s hands were shaking.

  The earl took a moment. In the ten years he’d known Charles Sinclair, he’d learnt that the detective seldom lost his temper, but when he did, no arguments would alter his mind—only the passing of time.

  “You’re right, of course,” Aubrey said after several minutes. “Something about this hospital and their treatment of Moira Murdoch is skewed towards the inexplicable, or worse towards intentional evil, but you will not help her by threatening the staff.”

  “Hospitals are meant to heal people, not imprison them!” Sinclair shouted, rapping on the ceiling. The driver pulled to the side of the road, and Haimish Granger hopped down from his seat and opened the marquess’s door.

  “Yes, my lord?” the burly Scotsman asked.

  “Take us to Victoria Park next, rather than K-Division. I want to see where this crime took place before I meet with Steed,” Sinclair ordered in a voice quite different from his usual, respectful tone.

  “Very good, sir,” Granger replied evenly, taking no offence. “North end, sir?”

  “Yes, so I understand. Near to Gascoyne.”

  The driver shut the door and mounted the seat again, and in a moment, the coach’s horses began to trot once more. Charles opened the file Reid had given him on the park murders, reading silently for several minutes. Finally, as his mood slowly improved, he shut the folder. “Forgive me, Paul. It’s just that... Well, it infuriates me how the poor are treated in this city. As if they are little more than refuse.”

  “I agree, Charles, and so does Beth. That’s why she’s been making long lists of things to do in preparation for building this hospital she mentioned to us last month.” Charles said nothing, his gaze once again focused upon the passing scenery. “Did you notice Murdoch was completely bandaged, yet there is no sign of bleeding?” the earl asked.

  This caught the detective’s attention. “What are you suggesting?”

  “K-Division’s photographs of the slain women reveal unspeakable savagery, as if a wild beast tore at them, and yet Murdoch’s bandages were pristine with no sign of bleeding. In ’84, I spent three months posing as a physician in Antwerp, and I can tell you that wounds such as Murdoch is said to have suffered bleed profusely for two to three days if not longer, and the bandages must be changed frequently, showing stains within a very short time. Also, there were no wound management medicines on her nightstand. Usually, for such a patient, you would find bottles of iodine or carbolic acid. All I saw was a vial of white powder and a pitcher of water. I think she’s being dosed with a soporific.”

  “You posed as a physician?” Sinclair asked, his mind digesting his cousin’s strange commentary.

  “All my patients survived,” Aubrey said with a wry smile. “But this woman—Murdoch. Is it possible that she was not wounded at all? That she is being held not for treatment but to prevent her from providing eyewitness testimony regarding what really happened in that park? She told us that this creature flew up into the sky, yet she said nothing about being harmed. Only that he ran towards her.”

  “That’s true,” the detective answered. “Perhaps, then, the real reason she’s being transferred to Castor Asylum is to stop her from speaking to reporters or policemen. But why is her sister not visiting her?”

  “Pressure or even inducement,” the earl replied. “I’d guess that the sister finds herself either threatened or rewarded. I lean towards the latter. Melinda Murdoch certainly had no qualms about leaving her sister alone with a monster in an isolated park.”

  “Perhaps, she was afraid,” Sinclair suggested. “Perhaps she is still fearful.”

  “That’s possible, but we’ll have to interview her to know more. You say Inspector France spoke with the woman?” asked Aubrey.

  “I have his notes here, but Melinda Murdoch’s answers are evasive. She even refers to Moira as a practising prostitute, who regularly met men in the park.”

  “Well, someone is lying,” the earl concluded.

  “Nearly every crime involves liars, Paul. Learning to glean truth from those lies is half of police work. Tell me, how much do you remember about the Cricket Ground Murders?”

  The earl leaned back against the leather seat, his eyes still as he considered the question. “As I mentioned to you in Reid’s office, I was in America until late January in ‘79. In the southwest on assignment for both England and the circle.”

  “Doing what?”

  “The Crown had asked me to apply pressure to a Nevada Territory politician regarding his dealings with British banks. Whilst there, the circle tasked me to conduct research into local Indian claims regarding giants.”

  “Giants? Human or animal?”

  “Both, in a way. Certainly human in appearance,” the earl replied, cryptically.

  “Dead or living?” the detective asked.

  “I found none alive, though some of the local natives claimed to have seen them, high up in the mountains. We did uncover skeletal evidence though, and I brought back two sets of bones to England.”

  Sinclair gaped. “Giant human skeletons? Larger than seven feet?”

  “Much larger. One measured t
welve feet in height, the other only a few inches shorter. The tallest, living man I’ve ever heard of was just under eight feet tall.”

  “Were these skeletons otherwise ordinary, or did they, perhaps, possess prominences that indicate the attachment of wings? Might they have been able to fly?”

  Paul smiled. “That is a very good question, Cousin. It’s possible they were hybrids of some kind. One of the two had six fingers on one hand, the second had six on each. I’ll tell you more about them at a later date. For now, let’s see if I can recall Galton’s notes about the Cricket Ground Murders. Six women—three of them known to be prostitutes, one a housemaid, another did piecework from home for a west end tailor, I think. And the last was...a music teacher?”

  “No, actually she worked as a typist for a banker in the city but lived in Spitalfields, but your memory’s remarkable.”

  “It suffices. I’d forgotten the city connexion. The seventh was a small boy, though there was a theory that he wasn’t the intended victim at all, but rather his sister was. A liaison gone wrong, or some such claim. They began on the first of January, and every third night, another victim was found—all on or near the Victoria cricket ground.”

  “Yes, but by the third victim,” Charles added, “that pattern had been discerned. As two of the victims lived in Spitalfields, H-Division joined with K and placed plain clothes constables in the park each night. Despite our best efforts, the killer managed to slay two more women. By then, the people of our quarter had lost all confidence in the police. Much like we find it now.”

  Aubrey nodded his head. “Yes, so I understand. Thomas had three men from the circle watching the park as well. Charles, were you ever there at night?”

  “No. Amelia and I had just buried what remained of Albert a few weeks earlier, and she didn’t want me gone after dusk,” he answered softly.

  “What do you mean when you say ‘what remained’ of him? Didn’t your son die of smallpox?”

  Charles turned his face away to hide his emotion. “Yes. He did, but you may remember that the bodies were all burnt. Cremated to halt the spread of disease after death. We were given a box of ashes. We buried that.”

  “Charles, I am so sorry,” the earl said, his hand on his cousin’s forearm. “I cannot imagine how I would feel if anything happened to Della. She’s my heart and soul. I know you must have felt that way about Albert.”

  Sinclair nodded, his face still turned, and Paul noticed tears sliding down his cousin’s stubbled cheek. “I haven’t told Beth about him yet, but I will. I have to. It’s just so very difficult.”

  Realisation suddenly hit the earl’s mind, and his mouth dropped open. “Smallpox. Of course. Oh, Charles, forgive me. That’s why you became so concerned about this rash affecting Beth’s maid, and why you asked if she’d had measles as a girl. Charles, I’m sure it’s nothing serious. I really doubt that Ada MacKenzie has smallpox.”

  “At first, we thought the outbreak in ’78 might be measles, Paul, but the doctors were wrong. Fatally wrong.”

  Paul said nothing, and the coach began to slow, so he waited, allowing Sinclair to recover on his own. In a moment or so, Granger appeared at the door and opened it. “Cricket ground, my lord. Is this where you wanted me to stop, or shall we move farther in?”

  “This is perfect, thank you,” the marquess replied. “Oh, and Granger, I hope you’ll forgive my temper tantrum earlier. I’m lacking sleep and feeling rather angry with the world just now, but that’s no excuse for taking out my rage on you.”

  “I took no notice of it, sir,” the driver replied with a slight smile.

  Charles touched the driver’s shoulder. “Accept my apologies nonetheless. The earl and I are going to walk about the grounds for a few minutes. If you see anyone or anything unusual, give us a shout.”

  “Very good, sir,” the muscular man replied.

  Charles and Paul left the coach and walked towards a large parish church, perched upon a tree-lined rise to the north. “I’ve always thought it odd that a cathedral sits so close to the cricket ground,” Sinclair said as they journeyed across the gently rolling lawn. “This park is so different from anywhere else in the east. A vast refuge of green grass and magnificent trees, wrapped around serene bodies of water. Look there, Paul. See those three boys taking advantage of the break in the rain to dip their feet and legs in the pond? Those lads have access to a stretch of public land rivaled only by Regent’s and—well, Queen Anne. I suppose that’s why the murders in ’79 seemed so very heinous. Hundreds of people walk through this park of an evening, but you can bet that anyone walking there in January of that year did so out of necessity.”

  “Working women, you mean?”

  “It is the sad truth of our age, Paul. Girls as young as nine or ten sell their fragile dignity for a meagre scrap of bread. And men like Ripper and this wolf beast—be he Trent or another—these men quite literally prey upon such desperation. I truly hate that man!”

  “Ripper or Trent?”

  “Both,” Sinclair stated simply. “Though, they may be one and the same.”

  “Enough to kill them—or him?” the earl asked as they reached St. Augustine’s.

  “In cold blood? Perhaps. I don’t know. I’d like to think I’d arrest them first, but I can tell you that if I saw one of these fiends threatening a helpless woman, especially Beth or Della, then I would not hesitate to shoot.”

  “Nor would I. It’s easy, sometimes, to make such a decision, but it still has eternal consequences. Killing Trent sends him straight to a just punishment, but it would affect you nonetheless, Charles. I’ve murdered only once in cold blood, but I’ve sent many men to eternity in the heat of battle. Each life taken eats at us. Strips away a bit of our compassion, I think. Our humanity. Makes us a little colder, more detached.” He grew quiet for a moment, his eyes on the horizon. “So, you and Morehouse were in charge of the case in ‘79?”

  “We were,” Charles replied as he stopped near a thick stand of wych elms. Their broad canopies had been nearly swept clean by autumn winds, and a thick carpet of fallen leaves of bright gold lay about the cousins’ feet like discarded robes. “And then we traveled to Paris to follow their case.”

  “Paris had a similar case?”

  Sinclair nodded. “The same case actually, or so I thought. Bob wasn’t convinced. London’s murders stopped on the sixteenth. The boy was slain on the seventeenth, an alteration in the pattern, which is one reason I’ve never believed him killed by the same hand. By the twentieth, we believed the string broken, but then a detective with the Sûreté wired Scotland Yard about two murders along the Quai d’Orsay, the first on the nineteenth, the next on the twenty-second; both with the same manner of death as ours: corpses drained of all blood. We took the next boat to Calais.”

  “And was it the same man?” Aubrey asked.

  “I never found out. We stayed four days, attended a very strange party in the country, and then came home. When we returned to Whitechapel, Bob became morose and distant. Amelia had decided by then that she hated me, and I... Well, the truth is I spent the next six weeks living inside a whisky bottle, mourning the loss of my son and my marriage. Drowning my sorrows, I suppose. It was a very difficult time,” he said darkly. Then he looked up, and his bleak face was slowly transformed by a more pleasant memory. “And then I met Beth,” the detective continued, his azure eyes growing moist. “Little Elizabeth Stuart, a precocious girl with no memory and the biggest smile and brightest eyes on the planet. In a very real sense, she saved me, Paul. Beth saved my life.”

  Paul laughed softly. “Our little duchess has that effect on nearly everyone, Cousin. And I think she would say the same about you.”

  “She still loves you, Paul,” Sinclair assured him. “Beth will never stop loving you. She wouldn’t know how.”

  “I know that, Charles. I know. Our affections are rooted in rich soil, far
too deep to lose one another. I just want her safe and happy,” he said, focusing his mind on the crime scene to avoid further self-examination. “Look, Charles. See here on this section of grass. Blood.”

  Sinclair knelt down, running his hand along the stained ground. “And clear signs of men’s boots. Very large boots, which makes sense if one of the attackers was quite tall. The lawn’s marked and flattened where someone ran about in circles. Someone—or perhaps something—quite heavy. Moira said this beast seemed to grow manic when the moon shone upon him, as if the beams hurt. A strange statement, but what if it’s true? Might rays of moonlight so affect a supernatural creature? What phase was the moon last night?”

  “Full, I think, or nearly so,” Aubrey replied. “But the lingering rainclouds would have covered it part of the time. We’ll need to consult Martin and the others on this tomorrow night at the meeting. I’ll send a message to Ed MacPherson. He’ll likely want to talk to you anyway, as he’s presiding at your wedding on the eighteenth.”

  “Dr. MacPherson sits on the circle?”

  “He has for thirty years or more. Mac’s an expert on demonology, exorcism, and witchcraft. Not from an occult practitioner’s point of view, of course, but as a man who’s fought against Redwing many times.”

  “I look forward to meeting him.” Charles stood, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. “Well, I’ve made George Steed wait long enough, I think. What say you and I discover what the dead might tell us that the living cannot?”

  Chapter Seven

  1:10 pm

  K-Division Police Station sat at the busy intersection of Bow Road and Fairfield, next to McBowry’s Almshouse. Superintendent George Steed barely reached five foot seven inches tall, but his barrel chest and stern eyes made him seem a giant to his men. He ruled his division with an iron hand and tolerated no interference from other policemen, not even his superiors.

  “St. Clair,” he said, deliberately using Sinclair’s old name. “No one told me you were visiting today,” he lied. “What can I do for you?”