End of the Century

Home > Science > End of the Century > Page 8
End of the Century Page 8

by Chris Roberson


  That was about all that could be learned about the first murder. Blank found it somewhat surprising that no one involved in the inquest had even raised the specter of there being some connection with the Torso Killings of the decade previous, when there were obvious parallels. He perhaps shouldn't have been surprised that Bond had failed to mention the possible connection, given the slapdash way with which the man conducted his business, but he could not help but feel some regret that Hibbert had not put up his hand, either.

  Blank and Miss Bonaventure moved on to consider the evidence of the second murder. The body had been found on the grounds of the Blind Asylum in Lambeth by a police constable on patrol, who had reported it to his superiors before the locals were aware of the incident. The officer dispatched to investigate, one Inspector Marshall of the Criminal Investigation Department, immediately recognized a connection between this new case—a body found murdered, its head and one arm missing—and the body that had been found on the embankment in Pimlico the previous week. Knowing that there was potential for panic, to say nothing of the sensation should the papers catch wind of a new series killer, and having received orders on high that nothing was to be allowed to disrupt the smooth operation of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the inspector had the remains quietly transported to New Scotland Yard and informed his superiors.

  There was no publicly held inquest into the second murder, though there had been a full postmortem conducted by the Divisional Surgeon, Dr. Thomas Bond himself. Blank and Miss Bonaventure had been given a copy of Bond's report, to which were appended Dr. Hibbert's own working notes. The examination had quickly revealed that the victim had been dispatched no fewer than three hours earlier and no more than thirty-six, given the state of rigor in which the body had been found; further, given the fresh state of the wounds, lacking even the earliest stages of corruption or decomposition, it was determined that the body had been living less than twelve hours previous. Given that the scene made it evident that the murder had taken place at the Blind Asylum itself, rather than being conducted elsewhere and the body relocated after the fact, that meant that the PC had only missed stumbling upon the murderer by somewhere between three and twelve hours.

  Again the postmortem made reference to the clean shearing of the bone, but in this instance there was the additional detail that the flesh had likewise been cut in a level plane. To all indications, the wounds had been administered in single blows, there being no indication that the cutting implement was removed and reapplied.

  The postmortem was silent on the topic, but in his notes, Hibbert had ventured a supposition as to what sort of cutting implement might have been used. He advanced the notion that the killer might have employed a guillotine, which would have possessed the sharpness and force necessary to drive to skin, muscle, and bone in a single swipe. How the killer managed to maneuver a guillotine into the grounds of the Blind Asylum, without leaving any track or trace of it, Hibbert failed to speculate.

  Blank knew at a glance that these were not wounds inflicted by a guillotine. He'd seen those kinds of cuts firsthand, and could not expunge the memory of them from his mind if he'd wanted to. Even Madame Guillotine had not been so precise in her cuts, the edges of flesh left ragged and torn, and on rare occasion the blades had even been caught by the bones of the spinal column, requiring the operator to wrench the blade free and pull it up for a second try. Whatever had been used by the killer had been even sharper, or used with greater force, or both.

  That was virtually all that distinguished these new murders from those of a decade before. In all other particulars they could have been part of a single, unbroken series. Like the victims of the Torso Killer years before, these latest three had been prostitutes, though whether casual or career it was impossible to say. And like those, the three new victims remained anonymous. Of all the Torso Killer's victims, only one was ever given a name, and Blank questioned the means by which that identification was reached. Five anonymous victims before, and three more now…so far, at any rate. Even the players were the same—Doctors Bond and Hibbert, Superintendent Melville, Blank himself—and the locales—the Thames embankment, the Blind Asylum, Pimlico, and Lambeth.

  The only difference between the two groups was that the latter was dispatched by some unknown, impossibly sharp implement, while the former had been done for with a blunter instrument. But Blank was committed that there be another difference between the two groups. This latest, he vowed, would not remain anonymous. And if it were within his power, he would see that it grew no larger.

  Having learned all they could from the reports and transcripts Melville had provided, that afternoon Miss Bonaventure suggested that they visit the scenes of the crimes. They'd already seen the walkway on Tower Bridge where the third body had been found, and there seemed little to be gained from visiting Pimlico, since the first body has simply washed ashore there, the murder having taken place at some unknown location upstream. It seemed most sensible, then, to visit Lambeth, across the Thames, and the Blind Asylum where the body of the second victim had been found.

  Leaving Blank's Marylebone home, the pair hired a hansom cab. At Miss Bonaventure's request they detoured to her own home in Bayswater, so that she might change into clothing more suitable to the climate and circumstance. The temperature had already risen precipitously since she set out that morning, and what had been a pleasantly warm spring morning was quickly becoming a beastly hot summer day.

  The driver let them off in front of Number 9, Bark Place, and while Miss Bonaventure climbed the steps to her door, fishing in her reticule for the front door key, Blank paid the driver, enjoying the relative silence of the block. Bark Place was a short road just off Bayswater Road, near the Orme Square Gate of Kensington Garden, whose green leaves could be seen just the other side of Orme Court. With the serene quiet of Kensington on one side and the relatively sedate bustle of Moscow Road on the other, Bark Place was as a consequence inordinately quiet, even in contrast with the relative calm that hung like a heavy blanket over the whole of Bayswater. Blank had once remarked to Miss Bonaventure that it seemed hardly a fitting place of residence for a “New Woman” such as herself, who was as likely to go for a bicycling tour of the countryside as she was to stay at home knitting doilies, and was more skilled in arts martial than marital. He had difficulty imagining her in a typical domestic setting; but then, he had difficulty imagining a typical domestic setting, full stop, given his scant experience with them, so that was probably hardly surprising. In response, Miss Bonaventure had simply explained that the signal feature of Bayswater, and Bark Place in particular, was that it changed little with the passing years, being now virtually identical to the street it had been almost half a century before, and promised to remain unchanged for centuries to come.

  Of course, Blank had known perfectly well that Miss Bonaventure had her own reasons for desiring that sort of immutable permanence in a residence, but he had no desire to queer their friendship and refrained from mentioning it. After all, who was he to begrudge someone their secrets?

  Blank waited in Miss Bonaventure's study, on the first floor up, while she was upstairs in her bedroom, getting dressed. Mrs. Pool, the day maid, had sniffed audibly on seeing Blank accompanying her mistress, evidently disapproving of the notion that an unmarried woman should spend so much time in the company of an unmarried man, but had accompanied Miss Bonaventure upstairs without comment.

  Blank passed the time scanning the spines of the books on Miss Bonaventure's shelves. Her collection was impressive, as catholic in its breadth as it was detailed in its depth. There also seemed to be, Blank noted with amusement, a small number of titles that had not, as yet, been published.

  Blank's gaze was arrested at a copy of the Ward, Lock & Co. edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray. He reached out a hand, tempted to pull it down from the shelf and page through it, but resisted the urge. After all, he knew what it would contain. He moved on, taking down and flipping through other titles of less persona
l significance.

  After some quarter of an hour had passed, Miss Bonaventure appeared at the door to the study, the heavier frock she'd worn that morning replaced by a silk walking dress, dark blue in color, the skirt straight and gored, tight around the waist, the hem a few inches from the ground. Over this was a matching double-breasted silk jacket. Her hair was gathered up under a straw boater, except for two strands that had defiantly worked their way loose and hung down on either side of her face like punctuation marks. The parasol in her bare hands was as much a concession to fashion as it was an item of practical use, but the only item of jewelry she wore was the wide bracelet which never left her wrist, the inset lenticular gem flashing in the sunlight through the open shade.

  “Well?” Miss Bonaventure said, hand on her hip. “Are you ready to go, Blank, or aren't you?”

  The driver steered his cab off Bayswater Road and south onto Park Lane, where the Marble Arch stood at the intersection of Oxford and Edgeware. Blank rested both hands on the silver-chased head of his cane, his eyes unfocused on the middle distance, already lost in thought. Miss Bonaventure, seated beside him, tucked her parasol to one side. She had pulled a copper coin from her reticule, which she now tossed in the air again and again; it glinted in the bright summer sun. Time and again she thumbed the coin flying into the air, spinning so fast it appeared a whirling copper sphere and then snatching it from midair before it fell.

  By the time they passed Buckingham Palace and turned onto Vauxhall Bridge Road, Blank had still not spoken. Miss Bonaventure, evidently, had gotten her fill of silence.

  “Penny for them,” she said, snatching the coin from midair and nudging Blank with her elbow.

  “Hmm?” Blank blinked, somewhat startled, as if he'd forgotten for a moment where he was.

  “Your thoughts, Blank.” Miss Bonaventure smiled. “Care to share them?”

  He managed a weary smile in return. “Not really, if truth be told, but if you're hungry for entertainment, I'll do my level best.”

  In point of fact, Blank had very nearly forgotten where he was, for that brief span. His thoughts had been years and miles away. He'd begun to dwell on the defeats of ten years previous as they left Miss Bonaventure's Bark Place house, but by the time they'd gotten into the cab he'd followed a chain of association that led far away. Very far away, indeed. The Torso Killer to Oscar, and thence to William, and thence to Quexi, and to Michel, and to Roanoke, and finally to Omega. All roads led to Omega, in the end. At least, that was Omega's most cherished desire. And if that desire was manifest nowhere else, it most definitely held true in Blank's thoughts. Through a tangled skein of association, it seemed that every notion which entered Blank's mind inexorably led, through one means or another, to thoughts of Omega, and of what Blank himself had become, and had done, in Omega's name.

  That was the nettle upon which Blank's thoughts had caught, and which Miss Bonaventure had offered coin in exchange for hearing. In response, though, he instead said, “There seem a great many soldiers abroad in the city's streets, don't you think?”

  Miss Bonaventure raised an eyebrow, giving him a quizzical look. Then, with a somewhat amused air, laced through with suspicion, she nodded. “Yes, I imagine there are quite a lot of them about, at that.”

  She fell silent, her gaze lingering on Blank, while he turned to watch the buildings slip past the moving cab.

  “Well,” she said at last, holding out the coin, good naturedly. “Aren't you going to take it?”

  Blank glanced back her way and shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said, smiling.

  Miss Bonaventure narrowed her eyes, suspiciously, and then resumed flipping the coin. “Suit yourself.”

  As he turned away, Blank's smile slipped from his face. Still, he couldn't in good conscience have accepted the payment. Not when he'd failed to meet his end of the bargain.

  Crossing the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge, they turned back to the north and rumbled into Lambeth. As they made their way to the School for the Indigent Blind, in the shadow of the Obelisk in St. George's Circus, not far from Bedlam, they passed the entrance to Hercules Road.

  “Blake used to live around these parts, didn't he?” Miss Bonaventure mused, glancing up the road.

  Blank hummed his assent, and pointed with his chin up the road. “Number 13, Hercules Buildings.”

  “Thought so,” Miss Bonaventure said, nodding. “Changed a bit since he lived here, though.” She smiled, a sly look in her eye. “I imagine so, at any rate.” She chuckled and tapped the foot of her parasol on the floorboard of the cab. “Mad old bugger, was Blake. Still, he was my favorite of the lot of them, much better than dour George Gordon, or strident Percy, or stuffy old Coleridge, heaven forefend.”

  Miss Bonaventure ran the fingers of her right hand over the jewel inset in the bracelet on her left wrist. Then, eyes closed, she recited aloud.

  “To see a World in a grain of sand,

  And a Heaven in a wild flower,

  Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

  And Eternity in an hour.”

  She opened her eyes, smiled, and glanced over at her companion.

  “There are times when I'm convinced that he was completely dotty and other times when I'm sure he knew precisely what he was talking about.”

  “Mmm,” Blank hummed thoughtfully, moving his hands back and forth, palm to palm around the cane, spinning it like a caveman attempting to start a fire. “I wonder what he'd have made of all this martial finery, though, all this talk of celebrating a great dominion upon which the sun shall never set.” He suddenly stopped the spinning of his cane, wrapping a fist around the silver-chased handle. “You can have your auguries of innocence,” he said, glancing over at Miss Bonaventure, “and leave for me his more fiery polemic.” He sighed. “But if once the king of England looked westward at America and trembled at the vision, I'm sorry to admit that his successor Victoria can cast her gaze where'er she will and suffer not the slightest twitch. In its prime the Roman Empire comprised perhaps one hundred twenty million people in an area a few million square miles in extent; today, Victoria holds dominion over some three hundred seventy million people spread across eleven million square miles, more than ninety times the size of these small islands. That's some quarter of the globe.”

  Miss Bonaventure gave him an unreadable look. “It won't last, of course.”

  “It's a comforting thought,” Blank said, “but how many years has it been since poor old mad William prophesied empire's end?” He took a deep breath, his eyes half-lidded.

  “The Sun has left his blackness, and has found a fresher morning, And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night; For Empire is no more, and now the Lion and Wolf shall cease.”

  He opened his eyes and smiled sadly at Miss Bonaventure.

  “More than a century since, and I'm sorry to say that far from ceasing, the lion and wolf are very much still at it. And empire, as we've seen, has weathered the years quite nicely.”

  Miss Bonaventure quirked a smile, her expression soft, and reached out to pat Blank's knee, consolingly. “Cheer up a bit, Blank. It's not all bad, you know. Look at all the positives empire brings.”

  Blank cocked an eyebrow.

  “Don't give me that look,” Miss Bonaventure scolded. “I'm quite serious. Just fifty years ago, a letter traveling from here to the farthest outposts of the empire took months, even years. Now, post from London can reach Australia in no more than four weeks, India in little more than two weeks, and Ottawa in scarcely more than a week. And if that's not quick enough, a telegraph message can now be sent anywhere in the civilized world in just a matter of minutes.”

  “And in future, these times will just diminish, and the distances themselves will seem to shrink, is that it?”

  Miss Bonaventure smiled, knowingly. “Naturally. Though prices might fluctuate a bit, admittedly. Seventeen days and fifty pounds can get you to India, but I shouldn't be surprised if that time drops precipitously as the co
st rises in inverse proportion.”

  “As the steam engines’ speed is improved, no doubt. No, let me guess. As they are gradually replaced with electrically powered engines, no doubt, cables snaking from London to Bombay.”

  “Of course not,” Miss Bonaventure answered. “That would be ridiculous. No, by air, naturally.”

  “Airships, is it, now?” Blank rolled his eyes. “My dear Miss Bonaventure, if nature had meant us to fly, it would not have put the sky so high up off the ground, now would it?”

  Miss Bonaventure chuckled. “And what do you suppose mad old Bill Blake would have made of air travel, at that?”

  Blank smiled. “Well, he was never one for convention. I suppose if there was some scandal to be had in an airship, William might well have been induced to fly. Not that he was a scandal monger, but seemed constitutionally incapable of escaping it. I remember the time that a Mr. Thomas Butts interrupted William and Catherine in the summer house at the end of the garden in Hercules Buildings, freed from ‘those troublesome disguises’ that have prevailed since the Fall, and reciting passages from Paradise Lost. As Butts fled, blushing at the sight of so much naked flesh, Blake called out, ‘Come in! It's only Adam and Eve, you know!’”

  Miss Bonaventure shuddered, squirming on the bench. “I quite prefer my Milton fully dressed, thank you. If at all, come to that.”

  “I found old John a crashing bore, myself,” Blake said. “But enough of that.” He tilted his bowler back on his head with the top of his cane, as the hansom came to a halt. “The School for the Indigent Blind awaits, my dear.”

  Once, long before, an inn had stood here, under the sign of the Dog and Duck. The patrons could drink at their leisure while watching a duck put into the water and a dog set to hunt for it. Sometimes the duck dove, and the dog went under after it. It hardly seemed deserving of the name “entertainment,” and Blank had never quite understood the appeal, but there it was.

 

‹ Prev