The Diabolical Miss Hyde

by Viola Carr

  “How did it feel, Sally, jabbing your knife into his skinny neck? Did he squeal? Did the light in his eyes die while you watched?” My breath shortens, I’m sweating. God help me, I’m enjoying thinking about this. “Was his blood warm on your face? Did he shit himself, when you twisted that blade—”

  “He was already dead, all right?” A flush rises in her cheeks. “I went for him but the arsehole was lights-out on the ground when I got there. So I snaffled his coin and his watch, and scarpered.”

  “Don’t believe you.”

  “Don’t care. It weren’t me.” She’s crying now. Real swollen-eyed tears, not the crocodile kind you shed to play the helpless girl for the crushers. “I wish it was, but it weren’t, so just fuck off and lemme ’lone!”

  Startled, I ease my grip. It’s the look on her face, hate and frustration and empty anger that’ll never be satisfied. I know that look . . . and with a jolt, I recall why she’s so familiar.

  Billy’s trial. In the gallery, throwing fruit and weeping while he laughed. Sally were stalking him, all right. Someone else just got there first.

  “What’d he do, Sally? Did he . . . ?”

  “Not me.” The electric streetlamp washes her face green. “My little sis. She’s five.”

  “Bleeding Christ.” Red mist sparkles before my eyes, and I close my fists on empty air. My palms sting. Now, I wish even harder that I’d killed him. “Did you see who done for him?”

  “No, I told you. He were lyin’ on the ground when I got there.” She swipes smudged eyes. “I got mad. Might’ve stabbed him a few times, just to make sure the scum-fucker was dead.” Her chin trembles. “All right for him, innit? He don’t have to suffer no more. I shoulda raped his stinking corpse with a stick. There. Happy?” And she grabs up her stolen skirts and hustles away.

  Uh-huh.

  I weave my way back through the crush, thoughts spinning over and under like a broken clockwork toy. Sally didn’t do it. Sally didn’t see it. And Sally didn’t see me.

  So what happened?

  Do I even care?

  I duck around a snorting horse and his carriage full of quality—Mr. Horse’s tail quivers, and the fine fellow lets loose with a glistening pile of turds, thank you very much—and I wonder if I shouldn’t just let this be.

  Billy ain’t touching no more little girls, and good riddance. If hell’s real, he’s in it. As Johnny said: a win’s a win.

  But the coppers are hunting me, the lady in the red dress. I’ve no alibi, no defense. Just a pub-full of folk who seen me slink out to the loo game, and jealous Jemima Half-Cut turning Queen’s evidence. What they used to call “telling the Royal,” before that came to mean something worse.

  I am, as they say at St. James’s Palace, screwed. And I’ll need to do better than Gosh, Constable, it weren’t me, I swear!

  I don’t give a damn that Billy’s dead. I do care that I’ll hang for it. And so will Eliza, who never hurt no one in her life, not even scumbags like Billy who deserve it.

  Not even crimson-haired crazy men who’ve killed seventeen people already and won’t never stop, not so long as they’re alive and free.

  I slip from the crowd, into the darkling side alleys where folk are wild and the dogs hungry, down shadowy Southampton Street back towards Seven Dials. So now what? How will Miss Lizzie wriggle out of this one?

  Eliza would know what to do. Eliza would stick to the facts. Someone stabbed Billy Beane in the neck that night. Was it me?

  Seems to me I’d remember ripping out a man’s throat, no matter how much gin I’d sucked back. Seems to me my clothes would remember, too, and I know that no blood ruined my dress that night. And I’ve got Johnny to back that up.

  Look at me, eh? I can read them clues, just as good as Eliza. And the clues say Miss Lizzie didn’t do it.

  So who else wanted Billy dead?

  I skip over a piss-stinking puddle and chortle. Big help that is. Everyone, that’s who. Man like that keeps a lot of enemies. Folk from St. Giles to Covent Garden have riper reasons than mine to off the Bastard.

  A creditor, waiting for him to get out of Newgate so they could hush him. A rampsman, craving Billy’s coin. Someone who found out he’s a snout. Someone like Sally Fingers, who don’t like child-rapers.

  Someone who wanted to kill Billy so bad, they swiped me out of the way . . .

  I halt, my breath sucked dry.

  What if I’m chasing down the wrong rabbit hole? I wanted Billy dead: he’s dead. What if this mysterious cove didn’t kill Billy instead of me?

  What if he killed Billy for me?

  Someone who didn’t want me to dirty my hands. Someone protecting me. Watching me. Following me.

  Like Mr. Shadowy No-One-There from earlier this evening. Like the shiver under my skin t’other night, when I snuck out of Eliza’s fancy town house. Like . . .

  The dirty old man’s voice slithers back to me, glittering with Eliza’s romantic notions but steeped in dark-bitter threat. No one wants a scene. If I have to protect you, I will.

  Jesus in a jam jar.

  Well, screw it. I ain’t gonna find out who killed Billy by thinking. Stick to the facts, says Doctor Eliza, and Lizzie can dig them little bastards up just as fine as she can. Sort of. I ain’t got her fancy opticals and swabs and bottles of goo. But I’ve got eyes, and attitude. Those’ll have to do.

  Beneath scudding clouds, I cross the Dials, where the usual trade of drug-sellers, footpads, and gin-soaked dollies parade like circus beasts. Flitches of moonlight slant though gaps in the smoke to caress my face, and my pulse quickens, that warm tide tugging deep.

  I slink in behind the Cockatrice, towards the yard where Billy the Bastard met his deserved end. Flames flicker against one wall of the pub from a burning pile of rubbish, and two spindly-fingered urchins shiver and warm themselves. Twigs grow in their tangled hair. One has webbed feet, his green toes spreading like a frog’s in the mud. Right Rats’ Castle material, they is, if that place were real, which it ain’t.

  The yard’s fence is low, with broken planks, and it ain’t much to vault over the top. My skirts billow as I land, and black puddle-muck splashes my velveteen. The yard stinks of piss and kitchen refuse. It’s dark, but I can make out the spot where Billy and me had our romantic rondy-voo. I poke the scuffed dirt with my foot. It crumbles, crusted with blood. Here lies Billy, child-raper and all-round arsehole, sorely missed by precisely no one.

  I squat and poke at the ground. The yard’s empty. If there were a murder weapon, a knife or sommat, it’s long gone now, stolen and sold. Sally Fingers took Billy’s watch and his coin, and his moldy boots wasn’t in that bag at the mortuary, but not even corpse-robbers wanted his louse-stinking green coat . . .

  Aha. The tortoise to Eliza’s hare. I’m slow, but I get there.

  The killer left Billy’s goods behind. So whoever offed Billy weren’t in it for profit.

  I sniff, a sharp scent freshening my nose. What’s that? Smells like the Electric Underground. Hot metal, sparks, a whiff of singed skin . . .

  Cold iron kisses the back of my neck.

  I jerk, chilled to the spot.

  Zap-click! An electric pistol primes, and now the barrel’s warm against my skin. Eerie purple light wells. My new friend’s shadow leaps on the wall, lean and hungry, and I curse inside that I never seen him coming. Beneath my skirts, my stiletto buzzes angrily, but what can I do? He’s got me dead to rights. Copper or killer, it don’t matter. What a dumb-arsed way to go.

  I hold my breath and wait for the light.

  But what I get is an easy male laugh.

  “The famous lady in red,” says he, and my blood sparkles alive. “We meet at last.”

  THE DEVIL IN SCARLET

  I LIFT MY HANDS, TO SHOW THEY’RE EMPTY, AND RISE. The pistol follows me, singeing the back of my neck. Carefully, I turn, edging away.

  Rough-spun coat, dirty shirt revealing an ungentlemanly expanse of tanned throat. Strong chin, hair curling over his co
llar, a smudged hat tipped to shade his face. But I can still see his bright hunter’s eyes. Stained with midnight madness now, by the pistol’s purple glow, but I happen to know they’re cry-to-heaven blue.

  “That’s close enough.” Captain Lafayette aims his sparker at my chest. “What’s your business here?”

  My thoughts skip, a stone across water, unable to penetrate the depths. He don’t recognize us. Not yet. This is good.

  But what in hell is he up to? Eliza’s nemesis, handsome as the devil, keeper of torture dungeons, burner of weird-folk and on the trail of a killer he thinks is me. Out of twig—it’s a damned fine look, mind you, Lizzie enjoys a man in uniform but he’s dead lovely all roughed up like this—and roaming around Seven Dials after dark. No Royal Society trappings, outside this damned pistol that’s spiking hot fight into my veins.

  Against my thigh, my sweet steel sister whispers black murder. My fingers itch. If he wants a fight, I’ll give him one. He knows far too much. And while Eliza might mind her manners around him, he don’t scare Miss Lizzie one whit.

  Badge and commission be damned. In these stinking alleys? Lafayette of the Royal is just one more corpse.

  Quick as clockwork, my plan ticks over. Lose the sparker. Disarm him, get him talking instead of threatening, and then . . . well, it ain’t no accident that Miss Lizzie hides her weapon beneath her skirts. And the world knows she ain’t got no shame.

  Besides, I like the fire in his eyes. Hell, I’ve stuffed my hand down worse pairs of trousers.

  “Could ask the same of you, sir.” I cock my chin, feint at him with my saucy black eyes. “Lurking in alleys like a garroter instead of courting me as a proper gentleman should. Oh, wait. It’s just my fortune you’re after? You heartbreaker. Say it ain’t so.”

  His aim don’t slip. “Don’t dissemble. This is a murder scene. But you knew that, didn’t you? The police are looking for you, Miss Redskirts.”

  “Are they? Jesus, I just shat meself.” I lower my hands, plant them on my hips, lean forward to show off my chest. “Look, I ain’t got all night. If you’re a copper, nick me and be done. If you ain’t, then get your god-rotted sparker out of my face, and let’s talk.”

  My heartbeat thrums. It’s a gamble. He might just shoot me. But I don’t think he wants to, not his mystery lady in red. He’s too much the adventurer for that.

  His smile flashes, brighter than Wild Johnny’s and twice as dangerous, and hell if I ain’t charmed to the teeth. “Fair enough,” says he, and lowers the pistol—but he don’t power it down. “Consider me unmasked, madam. What’s your name, pray?”

  I give a crooked smile. “You first, handsome.”

  An ironic little bow. “Remy, to you.”

  Silently, I taste it, rolling the “R” on my tongue. Exotic, foreign-like. And not a lie. Intriguing. “What’s that, froggie? Vive la révolution, and all that?”

  “Hardly. Third-generation English, I’m afraid. And you are?”

  “Lizzie Hyde.” I lift my chin, insolent. Nothing fancy or foreign-like here, and if that ain’t good enough for his exotic arse, he can just piss off.

  As if I care what he thinks of me anywise.

  But he just dips his devilish head, like we’re introduced in some snotty salon. “Well, Miss Hyde—” He sharpens my name, as if he’s mocking me. “Care to tell why you’re sneaking around a murder scene after dark?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Oh, you know. Truth, justice, crime doesn’t pay, that kind of thing.”

  Moonlight slants through a gap in the clouds, and my tongue gallops off before I can rein it in. “Cowshit.”

  Bugger. But he ain’t on Royal’s business tonight, and damn it, but I’m itching to find out what he’s up to.

  He arches an appreciative eyebrow. “To the point, aren’t you?”

  “Saves time.” Inside me, Eliza wriggles in protest. I should run away, lose him in the maze of Seven Dials. I should just kill him and be done, get him off our backs for good. Why is nothing ever simple?

  “Save more, then, and tell me, Miss Hyde: if you had nothing to do with this murder—as I feel sure you’re about to insist—then why are you the Met’s chief suspect?”

  I open my mouth to answer before I realize that my words don’t matter a damn to him.

  He’s watching my face. Cataloging my every tic and twitch, like one of Eliza’s clockwork measuring devices, searching for a glimpse of guilt.

  My cheeks burn. Damn it. Handsome plus charming don’t equal harmless. He’s playing my own game on me, and he’s winning. And just because he’s no crusher don’t mean he can’t arrest my scarlet-skirted behind, only the Royal don’t need murder or thieving or ringing the changes. Looking at him the wrong way will do.

  “It weren’t me, if you must know,” I say at last, giving him another eyeful of my bosom. “Some stupid snout dropped me in it because her fancy man made eyes at me. Not my fault her bloke’s got good taste.”

  Inside, Eliza whispers fiercely at me to back off, for heaven’s sake, before he recognizes us or arrests me anyway for the suspicion of it. She’s near the surface tonight. Too near for my liking.

  But dark mutiny mutters in my blood. I ain’t backing off. I’ve had enough of his insinny-ations. If he’s got words for me, he can bloody well say ’em and be done.

  “So,” says I. “You believe me, or do we have a problem?”

  A knowing smile. “I find your half-truths quite convincing. Even without the view.”

  I have to laugh. “Was wondering if you’d noticed.”

  “I’d have to be dead not to.”

  “And how do you like it?” I inch closer, daring. I like him. I think he likes me. No dancing around the issue tonight.

  He allows himself a good look, and then it’s back up to my eyes, a fresh smolder of interest. “I like it well enough to know you’re using your charms to distract me.”

  Heh. He’s good. A man who knows how to get what he wants. But still, screw him and his attitude. He’d never dare speak that way to her. Am I so far below her?

  “Is that so? From what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says he, offhanded. “Evidence. The murder scene. Breathing.”

  The nerve, sniffs Eliza in my ear. Lizzie, he flirts with anything in skirts. Don’t lower yourself.

  Oh, aye. As if you ain’t thought about it, missy.

  I cough. Lower meself, indeed. Rich gents like him want women like me, no matter what they all pretend in their fancy salons and soirees. That’s what they come here for: to shed their virtuous mask and be real. Wife for duty, dolly for desire. At least whores get paid, for all the wife gets is grief.

  But envy glitters in my blood, green like fairy fire. Damn her. Is it so hard to believe he’d mean it?

  Now, I’m itching inside. I want to flirt back. I want to punch his arrogant face. “So what’s your game, sunshine? If you’re no crusher, why d’you even care about the Bastard?”

  Lafayette toys with his pistol’s charger, a restless hiss-flick, hiss-flick. He squints up at the cloud-wreathed moon and pops his neck bones. “Truthfully? I couldn’t care less.”

  “Then—”

  “But I do care for the manner of his death.” Steel glints in his violet-blue eyes, same as I seen on that dangling beam at Her Majesty’s, and it’s a side of him I like. “I care for that very much. So I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what you know.”

  The manner of Billy’s death? Stab, slash, die. Ain’t no mystery . . . But an ugly thought strikes ice into my bones. What if Lafayette killed Billy? And now he’s back to clean up some clue or other? Cover his tracks, eliminate all the witnesses?

  Well, now. That’d be interesting.

  But why the hell would he kill Billy Beane? No. It ain’t true. Not he. Because everyone knows that handsome plus charming never equals killer. Right?

  I finger a loose curl. “And what if the coppers are right, and I killed him?”

  “If you
killed him, Miss Hyde”—he holsters the pistol at last, as if he’s decided I’m no threat—“then you’d be just the woman I need to speak to, wouldn’t you?”

  I drift closer, and I can’t help but admire the strong line of his throat, the tempting shape of his lips. My, he’s pretty, for a torturing son of a dog. He smells dark and warm, the inviting scent of stranger. “What, you don’t believe me?”

  “That you’re a murderess? And you’d admit it to me? Not for a moment.”

  “But clearly there’s reward in it. If you’re so interested in how Billy was done . . .” I trace a fingertip over his shoulder. Time to show your quality, Captain Blue Eyes. “. . . Maybe we can come to an arrangement?”

  “Mmm. What did you have in mind?”

  I slip my finger inside his shirt, where his bare skin is warm. He swallows, but he don’t back off, and my mouth sours. He might talk fancy and polite to Eliza, but down here in the slums, he’s the same as all the rest. Just a man with an itch, be it gin or gambling or girls who don’t say no.

  Either that, or the lady in red’s just next on his murder list.

  “I could show you evidence.” I ease my skirts higher, rub my stockinged ankle against his calf, a kitten purring to be stroked. “And you could help me get away with it. Y’know, if I was real nice to you.”

  He grips my waist, and now I can feel his heartbeat, invasive against my breast. An enemy that wants to take me, force me, mold my rhythm to match its own.

  Shit. I recoil, but he yanks me in, possessive, a crude gesture of mine. A shaft of moonlight spills over his face, illuminating it with eerie living fire, and like a genie sucking back into a bottle, his refined façade melts away.

  “And I should be nice to you in return, is that it?” His whisper is rough, almost a growl. His fingers clamp tighter on my waist. He ain’t polite. There’s a wild, primitive glint in those heaven-blue eyes that says he ain’t playing by the rules no more.

  Well, now. Suddenly I’m hot, itchy, thirsty for vengeance and destruction.