The Devil is French: A Whipping Society Novel

by Delilah Marvelle

  Dunning gripped the ends of his coat until his knuckles went white, still fidgeting.

  “Stop. Fidgeting.” Ridley swung the cane at the boy’s head hard, stopping it before it touched his ear, making the boy flinch. “It announces to the world you have no self-confidence. The next time you grip your coat like that or fidget in my presence, this cane will hit your head and it will remind you that having no self-confidence hurts. Are we understood in this?”

  The youth stilled. “Yes, sir.”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Yes, sir!” Dunning boomed.

  “Good. Use more force when speaking. There is no need to yell, but never mutter.” Whirling the cane, Ridley thudded it into the floor. “How old are you?”

  “I’ll be nineteen soon.”

  The boy would see more than his eyes needed to. It was the one thing he himself regretted about his life. A mind could never unsee horrors and in his case, he sought to better understand it thinking it was the only way to stop it. All he understood now was that he had erased any chance of giving himself a normal life. “Why did you sign up for the military?”

  “My father. He…” A breath escaped Dunning. “I was hoping to attend a university but he refused to pay for it.”

  Typical. “How long is your contract?”

  “Ten years, sir.”

  It was going to erase not only this boy’s life but his dreams. That is…if he lived long enough given was happening all over India. Ridley knew he himself couldn’t erase the path he had long chosen, but he could erase it for this boy. “Did you want out of your contract and your university paid for?”

  Dunning’s lips parted. “More than you would ever know.”

  Ridley nodded. “I’ll speak to the Field Marshal about reducing your years to something more attainable and ensure you have a stipend waiting for you.”

  Those brown eyes widened. “I…why?”

  “The world needs more educated men. Go to Cambridge. They know what they’re doing.”

  A tremor of a smile touched Dunning’s lips. “I heard the officers say you were arrested twenty-four times.”

  “They do nothing but lie. It’s fifty-three times. C’est la vie.”

  Dunning grinned sheepishly. “I wouldn’t mind getting arrested once.”

  Ridley pointed. “I wouldn’t recommend it. There is no access to cigars or champagne.” The military clock chimed. Ridley paused, his gaze snapping toward it. Jemdanee. “Do you have time to deliver a message to Miss Kumar for me over at Spence’s?”

  Dunning brightened. “Yes and with pleasure, sir. I know Miss Kumar.”

  “Good. Inform her that I will be late given I have a few other case files to organize, but that I will meet her at the Garden House this evening. She and I are attending a gathering the Field Marshal is hosting for his soldiers. Inform her to arrive on time and that I will join her shortly therefore when I am able.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you. Now if you will excuse me…” Ridley turned.

  Dunning gestured toward the parcel. “Do ensure you address it, sir.”

  Ridley nodded, waving him off. “I will, thank you. I will see you tomorrow at three over at the tennis courts. You and me.”

  “Yes, sir!” Hitting his four fingers to his cap, the cadet swiveled on his boot and marched down the corridor, calling, “No fidgeting be my name, tennis be the game!” He wiggled.

  The boy was going to need every minute of his day.

  Ridley set his cane against the wall and picked up the parcel bundled in twine to keep all of the folded parchments in place.

  He paused, noting the seal binding the string together was marked with Scotland Yard’s emblem. Breaking it, he quickly unfolded the top parchment, his gaze settling on Finkle’s sloped writing.

  Ridley,

  I am detailing what has turned into a city-wide search and regret to inform you of the gruesome murder of our finest: Parker. The details of his death have already found its way into every newspaper and there is no silencing the panic. I have included facsimiles related to everything recovered from the cellar Parker was found in. His wife insists he had been missing for three days. The cellar belongs to a dram-shop on Birken Road where he was known to frequent. There are no witnesses and no arrests have been made. The facsimile pertaining to the rendering of the crime is included, along with the letter recovered from the scene itself. Take its meaning with due seriousness. Streets are being patrolled and residents on Basil Street are being warned. I have dispatched our best inspectors to your mother and your former wife and will continue to follow all leads. I trust you know what to do.

  -Richard Mayne AKA Finkle

  Staring at the words, Ridley’s fingers gripped the parchment almost to crushing. It took four breaths before a lethal calm overtook his mind.

  So much for retiring.

  What the fuck was going on in London?

  He methodically folded the letter back into its original state and unfolded every single facsimile Frederick had included, laying them out one by one.

  Eleven. All related to Parker’s murder.

  Jesus. The man had a wife and three children.

  Shifting his jaw, Ridley rifled through the parchments until a detailed charcoal sketching of the murder scene made him pause.

  It was a dismembered, male body in a cellar surrounded by unmarked barrels. Bone and flesh scattered left, right, center, walls, floors, and the wood of the barrels. An ax was methodically propped beside the skull. Smeared against the wall in what he knew was the artist capturing blood, were the letters: HATCHLING.

  Tucked into the gored mass of the sternum was a detailed sketch of a raven feather.

  Ridley snapped up the parchment, bringing it to eye level.

  It was staged.

  He’d seen the original sketch of his father’s murder. Hers was out of passion. This was methodical.

  Someone else was mocking his pain and wagging their fingers. Someone else was bringing an ax to the skull of his past and swinging it.

  Quickly searching for the duplication of the letter left at the scene, his gaze settled on the reproduction.

  To the one who calls himself Mr. Evan Oswald Ridley,

  By the time you travel back from a land full of heathens, an unlit ardor will blaze. Vidocq will be delivered in pieces wrapped in that flag of Blue, White, and Red. Your mother will scream in the same room your father did, holding a feather to her heart. Quincy will be missing more than a finger as a new client paints Mrs. Berkley’s black door red, and razored into your arm will be more than a Hindu who will die from too many nicks. Your death or theirs. You decide their fate as forty-seven men await one word from my lips. Return by September and meet me at the crypt where your bones will lie alongside mine.

  With blood pouring affection,

  Chaucer who is back from the dead

  His breath burned his throat.

  Vidocq had once confided that every great inspector unearthed a notable Herculean nemesis.

  A nemesis that made an inspector face everything he was in the eyes of the law while deciding what mattered most. He had called it the Mephistopheles Clause. When Faust had been forced to stand in the darkest part of the woods and wager his soul to a faceless demon whose fingers and lips and chin dripped with unending blood.

  It had finally come for him.

  After fourteen years of taking a shovel to the dirt, and just as he had decided to finally wash the muck from his hands, something had crawled out of the hole and grabbed his ankle.

  Ridley numbly gathered the stacks of paper.

  Death had never really held much power over him after he had spent his entire life holding a noose to criminals. Unfortunately…too much had changed.

  He’d been blinded by a light too bright: Jemdanee.

  She, who had forced him to be more than the devil.

  Regrettably, only the devil knew how to slit the throat of darkness.

  It was back to t
he battledore and shuttlecock.

  Fuck.

  “I’ll right this for you, Parker.” Yanking out his think rope, Ridley methodically knotted it twice, ensuring each knot reflected each thought. To save those he loved, he was going to have to play battledore with more than the villain.

  He was going to have to play battledore with everyone he needed to keep safe.

  Visit solicitor. Tight. Last testament. Tighter.

  He had to take more than the ordinary precautions. Parker had already been spattered like paint across a canvas set on an easel by a master. It whispered of a demented darkness seeking to play with far more than pain.

  It wanted acknowledgement.

  And unlike most, this one was equally intelligent.

  Forty-seven men await one word from my lips.

  His father had died at the age of forty-seven.

  It was no coincidence.

  Someone had dug through old broadsheets from 1810 and was now writing a libretto.

  “Who are you?” Ridley thudded his weight into the nearest wall, trying to think.

  This one knew he was in India and knew he had marked his arm with Jemdanee’s name. He’d only ever shown his bare arms and chest in one public place: Jackson’s Boxing Academy.

  It meant he’d been under surveillance for about nine months prior to coming to India.

  So who would take that time? Why wait? Why now?

  It was personal. Which meant…they had met.

  Ridley felt himself drifting, his mind whizzing through every case his exhausted mind could sift through. Too many names. Too many cases. Piles of it.

  Coca/limestone might and could and would speed it up.

  What matters more? Your sense of justice or her faith in you?

  Shifting his jaw, he flipped open the leather casing of his stash of cheroots from the side table lying beside Parker’s file and stuck a cheroot into his mouth. Striking the flint of the match, he lit the end of the tobacco and dragged in several riled breaths, igniting it with a hiss. He eased out smoke between teeth, tossing the flint and matches.

  Spreading out every last parchment, he dismantled the scene piece by piece.

  His mind spiraled him into that inner-connected world of dissections he wedged together.

  Skull downward.

  Weapon belt gone.

  Trouser flap unfastened.

  Shattered porcelain chamber pot set in corner by barrel.

  He’d been pissing. His back had been turned when—

  Hack, hack, hack. At least fourteen times judging by the cleaved pieces.

  Pool of blood with center swiped through. Body dragged.

  Why? Not now. Back to the barrels.

  Seven unmarked barrels set in no particular order.

  One shifted to get to the wall to write a message meant for him.

  Filled barrels impossible to move, indicating partially drained or empty.

  HATCHLING.

  This was personal. What hatched? Birds. A crow.

  Chaucer had been hatched and purchased from the Zoological Society.

  He would start there the moment he arrived into London.

  After he…

  Grabbing the side table with digging white knuckles, he jarred it into the wall violently, chanting to himself that he wouldn’t pick it up or throw it. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

  He swung away and dragged his hands through his hair before letting it drop.

  Numb, he stared at the wall across from him, knowing what needed to be done.

  He had to bury every weakness.

  Ones this lunatic would expose, slaughter and gorge.

  Welcome to the life you never wanted.

  Chapter 9

  Later that evening

  The Garden House Terrace

  Draped in a very expensive jade sari she had purchased at the emporium with an all too devious smile, Jemdanee reveled in it being subtly sheer at the shoulders and at her midriff, giving the illusion she wore two pieces. She had even unraveled her black hair, letting it cascade down in thick waves past her waist and tucked and pinned a flamboya flower on each side.

  She wasn’t one to ever brag about her ability to make a man kneel, but she was doing it tonight.

  Watching insects and moths veer toward the massive oil torches that singed them instantly to ash in the jutting smoke, it was a subtle reminder that she was merrily heading down that same path. Yes, life was the flame, and they were all eager moths, but love was the glass of the lantern that kept a moth from getting burned.

  Arriving at the torch-lit terrace that was trellised to give the illusion of a dance hall tucked within the tropical grove of tamarind trees, Jemdanee dragged in a readying breath as if it were the first and only breath she had ever taken.

  The muggy warmth of the night air was tinged with the heady scent of raat-ki-rani.

  Its flowery, spice-ridden sweetness hinted of what the night would bring: Ridley.

  With the flow of her veil, she breezed past gathered wives and daughters and mothers of officers who wore massive Western gowns that prevented them from even standing too close to each other.

  Sweat trickled down their flushed faces and bejeweled throats, tarnishing the illusion of their unending sophistication.

  Aside from Kalpita whom the Field Marshal always graciously permitted to attend for reasons everyone knew, Jemdanee was the only Hindu female in attendance.

  Given she was in India, she found it disturbing. Where could a native go to be a native?

  A flurry of low words from behind fluttering ostrich fans drifted toward her as she passed.

  “I have yet to garner an introduction,” Mrs. Jones stated, quickening her fan enough to cause her curl-frizzened hair to quiver. “Not that I am pining for one. Despite the level of intelligence he exudes, Mr. Ridley is nothing short of being a savage. India defines him.”

  “Is he French or is he British?”

  “Both. I heard—”

  The two women fell into silence and eyed her.

  Jemdanee tucked herself against the arch of the terrace.

  To show their snubbing didn’t bother her any more than their discussion of Ridley, Jemdanee leaned over to a tray-holding servant in a scarlet turban and pertly used her cupped hand to pile peeled oranges into it.

  She paused. Oranges.

  How fitting.

  In between methodical chews of each sweet slice, she stared the two women down.

  A thousand poisoned wedges to you.

  They puckered their wrinkled lips and positioned themselves away.

  A sudden flurry of words, whispers and the increased speed of countless wagging fans before female faces rouged from the heat, made women lean toward observing an arriving guest.

  Pushing the last orange into her mouth, Jemdanee angled to see past pin-curled coifs.

  Ridley strode past the torch-lit stone arches, his muscled frame dressed in all black.

  Startled, Jemdanee choked on the segment of the orange in her mouth.

  He looked like a Persian assassin.

  Even his silk cravat and high collared linen shirt pressed beneath that form-fitted black embroidered waistcoat was black. Even his cuff links and the onyx cravat pin that gleamed against the torchlight as he turned to greet officers were black.

  He was so imposing and so unconventional it was…provocative.

  After coughing past the last of the orange and fully swallowing, with her eyes still watering, she veered out of sight and behind the farthest stone pillar, mentally preparing herself.

  How did a woman seduce a man who had done more in his life than she had in her head?

  It was intimidating.

  On occasion, she peered out to see if he was looking for her.

  With a widened stance of his hands locked at the wrists behind his broad back, Ridley remained by a group of officers on the far end of the terrace. Among all the red coats, he was the only one dressed in black.

  He glanced around in between c
onversation with the officers.

  Jemdanee pinched her lips knowing he was looking for her.

  Turning away from him and the crowds, she offered up a chant to the gods, asking them for guidance in what she knew was a passion not even time had cured. Their passion had been born to smash the world into pieces and she was here to collect on it.

  She removed her dance card from her wrist, unraveling the velvet string and using the small pencil, regally wrote onto each and every line, Ridley, Ridley, Ridley, Ridley, Ridley, Ridley and…Ridley.

  She folded it against her sari, ready to collect every dance.

  Captain Thornbur veered in, his bruised round face beaded with sweat, his dark eyes searching her face. “I came to apologize for my behavior toward you over these past few months.”

  Arrey. She knew why this whoreson was apologizing. Because of his fear of Ridley after he’d been pummeled. There was still blackened thread hanging from above his brow as if the edge of a table had clipped him to the skull. Uff.

  She set her chin. “Salla. I have no interest in holding any discussions with you, sahib. You were never civil and therefore you have not earned a word from me.”

  He eyed her. “I brought a gift for you.”

  She snorted. “If you are attempting to socialize with me now after almost four months of treating me like an animal and terrorizing my respectability as a woman, you are sorely mistaken.”

  He cringed. “I don’t usually converse with Hindus. ‘Tis all very new to me.”

  She tightened her hold on the folded dance card, which her fingers crushed. “You have been in India for eleven months.”

  Thornbur adjusted his cap and dug into his other pocket. “I acknowledge that.” He removed a gold bracelet and held it out. “For you.”

  Other women now peered in.

  Shiva, Shiva. What an idiot.

  Jemdanee tried to block others from seeing the bracelet, lest the gossip begin. “An apology was all I needed. What are you doing? People will assume you are attempting to woo me.”

  He eyed her. “Don’t be ridiculous. Ridley had asked that I be genuine in my approach. So I…here.” Thornbur leaned in and tried to wedge the bracelet onto her wrist.