by L. J. Oliver
“It was Dyer!” I roared. “Thomas Guilfoyle was raving about Dyer coming to save him. Not some long dead and drowned father. Lord. Dyer. You broke trust with me. And if you lied about that . . .”
Trembling, she said, “Then I must have lied about everything. Tell me, am I the killer as well? At very least, the Lady?”
“You tell me.”
The carriage drew up before us and the driver swooped down to open the side door. I gave him money and told him to take the young woman wherever she wished to go. I would get the next one. He flew back up to his perch, holding a lantern high for us. The nearest of the stallions was a nightmare black, the pair beyond a rich chestnut. They chuffed and wheezed, whinnying uneasily. They sensed something electric, some palpable danger in the air. As did I.
Lips pressed together tightly, she gave me an icy glare and took my hand as she placed one booted foot into the carriage’s side stirrup. She settled onto the leather seat, and I was about to command the driver to remove her from my sight when heavy boots kicked at the snow behind me.
“Madam, Monsieur,” said a heavy voice as a trio of men peeled from the shadows. “Have you the time?”
I sighed, fished out my pocket watch, and gazed at its face. Before I could speak, Adelaide gasped. My gaze whipped upward, right into the smiling faces of Roger Colley, Baldworthy, and the man with the claret mark. I should have detected his rough voice under the clearly fake French accent.
“You don’t know dung from wild honey if you think you can escape us,” Roger promised.
“Go!” Adelaide hollered as she held her hand out to me.
I leapt onto the stirrup and grabbed a leather strap above the open door, which waggled and creaked in the stiff December wind. The driver hooked the lantern in place on a sturdy golden pole, and with a crack of whips, we lurched forward, hooves stamping wildly to smash the ice already forming on the cobbles. Adelaide caught me by my suspenders as I bowed outward, nearly losing my grip as we barreled forward. Then I was scrambling inside, reaching for the open door even as a shot rang out and the flapping door’s window exploded.
At the sound of the shot, the team of horses catapulted forward, and we nearly swept another hack.
“Sirruh, what’s the meaning of this, eh?” yelled the driver.
“The meaning is be silent and drive if you want to live!” I yelled to him, and at that, he turned and smacked the whips again.
I heard distant screams and looked back to witness Roger and his boys driving off the crowd before the steam bus while ushering the terrified engineer up to his perch. Baldworthy and the man with the claret mark hopped inside.
“They can’t catch up to us,” Adelaide said, hope sparking in her eye.
“Not strictly true,” I muttered, recalling an investment brochure I’d read from that annoying Frenchman who brought these monsters to our city three years ago. In seconds, the bus was barreling ahead spewing a giant plume of black steam into the air from its spout. White steam billowed from its flanks, firing then quickly dissipating. It chugged much like a Cornish steam engine and gained on us with merciless speed. “Twice as fast as a horse-drawn, blast it all!”
Our carriage swayed as our blurring wheels dug ruts in the street. We clung to each other, bracing ourselves in our seats as best we could against the mad jostling bounces, crashes, and thumps. The beasts were in a heavy lather, froth and sweat flying as easily as their spit.
“Lucifer!” the driver cried, whipping the horses into a gallop that was just short of a frenzy. “Belial! Azazel! Faster, or it will truly be the pits of hell for all of us!”
Buildings flashed past us. Brilliant lights blurred. Long-legged youths crossing streets ran in terror from our hurtling carriage. A bobby blew on his whistle and chased us, fast falling behind into the whistling dark abyss at our backs.
“Roger Colley?” Adelaide managed, barely able to catch her breath.
I nodded. Though why he should be after us now . . . I thought.
A golden light swept over us, twisting our shadows forward. Another shot struck the still wildly flapping side door beside me. I looked back to see the bus’s lanterns burning a trio of suns at our back while Baldworthy hung half-out the vehicle’s side flank, pistol aimed squarely at my head.
An old drunk stepped into the street, and the bus’s engineer jerked the wheel, swaying the bus wildly to avoid him even as the shot was fired. I heard a window shatter somewhere, followed by a shrill scream.
“Turn there, turn there!” I hollered, pointing at a side street. I prayed the bus could not corner as well as a carriage.
We flew about the corner, and another flash of yellow light appeared from Baldworthy’s hand. A surprised grunt burst from our driver, who had half-risen to guide the precarious turn. The carriage swung madly to one side and righted, jolting us and sending shrieks of exertion from the horses. The reins slipped from his fingers as he stood, one hand covering a nasty wound to his shoulder. Then the wheel closest to him struck a pothole and the carriage bounced, the shock of it sending him jerking fully upright and swaying off-balance. For an instant he looked like a teetering tin soldier, spine stiff and straight, as he fell from the cab and was swallowed up by the night.
The horses were runaways!
Trading desperate looks with Adelaide, I forced a thin smile into place, then climbed half out of the speeding carriage, my foot miraculously finding the stirrup, my hand the strap. Sharp stinging winds seared my eyes and cheek. My hat was picked off my head and flung into the black and frozen abyss. Adelaide surged forward, again grabbing my suspenders, helping to steady me as I tried to find purchase on the driver’s box. Only the pole upon which our lantern was secured offered any chance at all if I was to wrap around and take the driver’s spot—and the reins. Springing off the stirrup, I thrust my free hand up, missed the golden shaft, and hollered as Adelaide lost her grip on me and my foot missed the stirrup.
I held onto the strap, gripping it now with both hands, as my body was pounded by the swinging door. The carriage swayed as I was arced back and away from the carriage, then I was smacked against it once again with a fiery jolt, a macabre dance.
The steam bus whipped out from behind us, flew to our side, and, as the engineer yanked his wheel hard to the right, smashed into the side of the carriage. The impact was brutal, terrible, a hammer that smashed into my entire skeleton, sending a shattering vibration through my muscles, my brain, along with a shrieking shower of agonized sparks.
What happened next was a blur. I felt the strap yanked from my hand. The carriage angled crazily, the wheels on its opposite flank rising off the cobblestone street. Adelaide screamed and flew towards me.
Empty air, a floating, just for an instant, then impact with something massive and mercifully soft. A snowdrift? An ash pile? I didn’t know. Adelaide and I spun and tumbled, arms and legs akimbo, and we heard a cacophony of thunderous crashes from somewhere near, coupled with cries of fear and pain.
My every nerve jangling, burning, I climbed onto my side, lifted myself up, and saw a horror unlike any I’d ever imagined: The carriage had drawn down the stallions when it capsized, and the beasts—those that survived, were a pile of screaming, quaking limbs. The carriage’s lantern had set fire to the carriage’s remains. Only a mercifully slight separation of the harness to the carriage’s body—one wheel defiantly still spinning—kept the broken creatures from being roasted alive.
The steam bus had been knocked about. It was parked up onto a sidewalk beside an accordion-like array of tightly pressed together office buildings. Something seemed to be stuck half in the bus, half-smashed against the wall, and fully pulped into something that only vaguely resembled a man. Except for the face.
Baldworthy.
Another body lay in the snow past a shattered window. The glass shards dripped crimson. The dead man had been sliced to bits in mid-flight by the jagged jaws of shattered glass.
Roger hauled the engineer out of the bus, shoved him
down on his knees. “My men—my only men left—both of them dead. This is your doing!”
“No, no, guv’nor, please, I did everything you asked,” the engineer pleaded, his hands raised, his body shaking with fear. “Got a family, two little boys—”
“Stop bleatin’, you bloody sheep,” Roger replied. And he punctuated that reply with a single roaring gunshot that brought an end to the engineer’s words—and his life.
I fell onto my side, searched for Adelaide. Found her near the curb, bruised and bloodied, her chest rising and falling in quick, frightened breaths. Still alive.
For now.
Screams sounded as men and women out for strolls scattered and sought refuge from the chaos and mounting horror as Roger Colley stalked towards us, smoking gun tapping the outside of his thigh.
“You two!” he yelled. “You two, then this is well and truly done!”
His boots crushed snow, smashed ice as he drew closer. I heard horses, running footsteps, carriages braking and skidding on ice. But all I could look at was Roger Colley as I climbed to my knees and crawled in front of Adelaide, attempting to shield her with my body should the madmen fire again. I acted on instinct, my fiery anger cooled by this mortal danger.
Roger raised his gun. “My brother Jack sends his regards, you fucks!”
I shook my head. “No! We had nothing to do with your brother’s death.”
“Everything!” Roger spat. “You had everything to do with it. I thought Smithson had betrayed me, that he’d got the filth to come raid us and bring us down. So I lashed out at him. Did things to hurt him; hurt his precious business. And in return, he had my Jack done like a filthy dog. But it wasn’t him at all, was it? It was the two of you all along!”
“It was me,” Adelaide snarled, shoving me away, rising to tottering feet. “I have no regrets. You’d have killed Ebenezer that night if I hadn’t brought the police to stop you.”
Colley’s eyes were hollow and dark. He smiled slowly and waved his gun between us. “I wonder, should it be ladies first? Then I might see the fine gentleman’s grief before I end his miserable life. Or I could let him die wondering what I might do with his fair bit of crimp before I send her down to hell for Jack to enjoy. That’s agony, ain’t it? The not knowing of a thing?”
A sharp echoing CRACK split the night, and I gasped, waiting to feel the searing pain of the bullet tearing through me. But instead, Roger was lowering his gun even as I heard the unexpected clomping of hooves through the snow as a spooked horse raced away. Roger’s legs bowed as he took a step this way, then the other, a drunken stumble, while his head bobbed and wobbled. He exhaled deeply and dropped face-first into the snow, suddenly looking smaller than ever, a frail bird.
The back of his head was a reddened nest, a cavity that should not have been.
Shen Kai-Rui stood a half-dozen yards behind the dead man, a smoking pistol in his hand. The horse that I guessed he had ridden here was now racing down a narrow alley, vanishing past the moonlit cobblestones.
“Why would you save me?” I asked, my heart thundering.
He smiled. “If anyone is going to take your life for your transgressions, it will be me. I am not done seeing you suffer. As for my change of heart where your woman is concerned, well, all she’s been put through since meeting you . . . She has suffered enough, wouldn’t you say?”
A look passed between Adelaide and me. The chains of trust between us had been broken, yes. But, as Marley had said, links might be strengthened and repaired, though at a cost.
She nodded slightly, as did I. Our fates were again bound, it seemed.
“As for our business, I was following you so that I might catch you alone and tell you—” Shen froze, his gaze fixing on something on my coat.
Had I been wounded after all?
Shen stalked closer, his gloved hand pointing at my pocket. “I know that handwriting! The Lady!”
I looked down even as he snatched away an envelope that had been half-sticking out of my pocket. “I’ve never seen that before!”
He ignored me. Tearing open the envelope with shaking hands, he drew out a folded sheet and scanned its florid writing. Lips trembling, breath catching, he dropped the letter to the snow and fished about for his watch. “The time . . . the time! I must know!”
I snatched up the letter and read:
Sir,
How does it feel to speak to a corpse? That is what you’ve just done, Mr. Scrooge. Think me and my words a Humbug, if you will. But the whore Nellie Pearl dies at midnight at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Perhaps I’ll see you there? The little slut always adores an audience.
—An Admirer
Shen was casting his gaze wildly about. His horse had bolted, and the cathedral was miles away.
A carriage stopped halfway down the street, the driver suspiciously eyeing the wreckage before us. Shen broke into a run, charging the surprised driver. He drew up his reins, as if to turn his alarmed horses and flee at once.
“One shilling!” Shen shouted. “I’ll give you one whole shilling, but hold!”
The driver held.
“What is it?” Adelaide demanded. “What’s happening?”
“Humbug,” I said. “He’s taken Nellie.” He or she, I inwardly corrected myself. Was The Lady also Humbug? Or just the killer’s sponsor?
More carriages drove into view. The police rounding corners, converging on us from all sides except the street ahead. There Shen was shoving coin into the driver’s palm while eyeing me impatiently. I understood. Humbug had slipped the letter into my pocket, had invited me to the latest performance. Shen must have worried what might happen to Nellie if I was not at his side when he reached the cathedral.
“Go!” Adelaide said. “I’ll deal with the police.”
I ran into the night even as the shouts of bobbies and blaring whistles were drowned out by the screeching wind at my back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SHEN BURST FROM the carriage as it ground to a stop before the tallest and most striking building in England: St. Paul’s Cathedral. Beneath its great dome—topped by a baroque lantern—stood the mourning stone figure of St. Paul flanked by St. John and St. Peter. A bell tower containing the Great Paul, a single sixteen-ton bell, speared the night sky on the southwest corner; a second empty and waiting tower the other. The statues peered down at two figures mounting the stone steps leading from the street to the column-strewn portico towards the propped-open center door. One wore a black cloak and veils, the other the same billowing white dress I’d seen her wear at the theatre only an hour ago. The murderer hauled the stumbling, dazed, yet oddly compliant Nellie Pearl into the darkness; I trailed behind Shen in his mad dash to catch them.
I found him inside the dull, featureless nave, panting, pistol in one white-gloved hand, whipping his head about as he searched for any sign of our quarry. But Nellie and the killer were nowhere to be seen. Great stone arches towered above us, and the long aisle stretched with endless shadows towards the vast central crossing. White bolts of thin cheap fabric hung down over the abandoned stepstools, ladders, planks, platforms, and scaffolding left over from the recent rounds of repairs done here.
Darkened doorways and niches taunted us with a wealth of shadowy hiding places. The choir with its great organ was housed in the eastern apse, beyond the central crossing. I knew that the morning congregation at St. Paul’s faced east for the sunrise, a metaphor for resurrection. Before resurrection might be possible, though, there must first be death.
“Can’t have gotten far,” Shen whispered, teeth gritted. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His breath was ragged. Rage and fear danced in his dark eyes.
“Miss Pearl was drugged,” I said, panting. “She is outside herself. Compliant. Humbug was practically dragging her. The killer used chloroform on Fezziwig. A small enough dose . . . ?”
“No. An opiate, surely.” Shen’s voice was cold, distant.
“Shen, is this one of yours?” I asked. I’d recalled Dickens rem
ark that the killer moved much the same as a Chinese acrobat. Was it not possible that we had all become caught up in some power play between Shen and a rival opium dealer? That Fezziwig had been silenced for information he had innocently stumbled upon and it was our connection to the kindly old man that had marked the rest of us?
He stared at me as if I were an insignificant gnat that had suddenly gained the power of speech. “Enough.” He stepped away from me and called out, “Miss Pearl! Miss Pearl, if you can hear me, say something! Make a sound. Do it now!”
A candelabra teetered and fell a dozen yards ahead. We were in motion before it toppled and spilled an armful of three-foot-long candles across the floor. The robed murderer broke from behind a pillar, and Nellie shrieked as she was pulled along. She looked like a rag doll, legs wobbly, hair flopping over her face.
Shen raised his weapon, cursed, lowered it. He could not chance hitting Nellie.
It would be over in seconds, I knew. The killer could not move quickly enough while pulling the drugged actress along.
“Let her go!” Shen screamed.
Humbug obeyed. The cloaked figure darted from Nellie, leaving her hunched forward and teetering like a puppet hanging by a single frail thread, arms sweeping this way and that. Shen rushed for her—
And Humbug dove into another alcove and yanked at a rope. I heard a mechanism whirl above me, a hard, ratcheting sound. With a sudden rush of air, a steel boxed lantern nearly eight feet high flew down and crashed to Shen’s side. Glass shattered and rained upon me as I flung up my arms and spun to protect my face. A few tiny stinging glass splinters dug into my arms and I heard footsteps, a woman mumbling, muttering confusedly. I turned back to see Shen crawling and dazed, groping for his pistol.
It was no coincidence, I now realized, that Humbug appeared yanking Nellie onto the steps after our carriage arrived. It wasn’t just that we had been given a set time for this “performance.” The killer had been waiting for us and had waited for our arrival as the cue to begin. This had all been carefully planned.