The Dastardly Miss Lizzie

by Viola Carr

  He don’t seem discouraged. “Come, Miss Hyde, we both know that isn’t what happened.”

  “Live with it, Todd, she shopped you. But only ’cause I couldn’t get to you first.”

  A predatory smile. “You must think me so dull-witted. My masterwork would have served you excellently. Please don’t insult me by pretending it wasn’t exactly what you wanted. What a pity you were too afraid to take me up on it.”

  My stomach turns salty. His bleedin’ masterwork were to slit the throats of all who knew our secret. Eliza’s servants, Marcellus Finch, Inspector Griffin, Remy Lafayette. Everyone.

  Truth is, ’twould’ve solved a lot of my problems. No more life for Eliza equals more life for me. But I ain’t murdering to get it. Miss Lizzie ain’t the one seduced by this fiend’s twisted logic. Not I.

  Defiantly I fold my arms. “Step out of line and I’ll end you, so help me.”

  “As usual, all promises and no action.” A mischievous green wink. “Consider me in your debt, if it sweetens the deal. What favor might I owe you when you need it most?”

  Fuck his favors. He’s playing with me. Life and death, a pretty crimson game.

  Just the cove I need, then. Never mind he deserves to hang fifty times over for what he’s done.

  Aye. I swallow a hungry grin. Ain’t because Eliza is cringing right now, recalling how he hypnotized her into acting the fool. His bloodthirsty lunacy her scripture, the crazed twinkle of his eye her shining light.

  Was it love, Eliza, that special shade of madness? Did you secretly yearn for death? Or did you just crave him, the way any woman wants a man?

  Honestly, I don’t dare ask. I just know I can’t let your screaming and thrashing and scratching in my insides change my mind.

  Todd’s my ally now. Live with it or leave . . . oh, but you can’t. So shut the fuck up.

  I turn back to Johnny. Still he fidgets, that disillusioned shimmy in his eyes. As if he’s seeing me in a whole new light. How can you love me, Lizzie? Because she doesn’t. And she’s better than you.

  I drop Mr. Todd a sinister smile.

  Mr. Todd smiles back. Half prince, half monster.

  Ain’t because I like it when she suffers. Not at all.

  An hour later, we’re promenading through Soho towards Mrs. Fletcher’s, the talented Mr. Todd and me.

  Gaslights flicker in chilly breeze, dancing on the windows of gin palaces and brothels, theaters and low lodging houses and dirty grog shops. Prostitutes prowl, finery and squalor blended. Mud splashes my skirts, the ground slippery and uneven. Drunken revelers spill out onto the road, stumbling and thumping each other and singing at the top of their lungs. “God save the king!” a fat gin soak yells, and vomits on his boots. Today’s the dimwit king’s birthday, and folks is entitled to a party, even if we ain’t invited to the fancy one at Buckingham Palace.

  Every few seconds, I can’t help but shoot a nervous glance at Todd. I’m a rabbit marching alongside a lion who’s promised to be good. We left Johnny behind—palaver with Fishy Dolittle, he claimed, and I can’t blame him for the lie, though he and I need our own palaver, and sooner rather than later—and now I’m wishing we hadn’t.

  But Todd just saunters along, wearing an entranced smile. As if he ain’t the legendary Razor Jack, what murdered a score and more. That claret coat—Venetian red, says he—shimmers faintly in the gaslight, enchanted. Even in this squalid place, light seeks him out like a lover, abandoning all else to darkness. From here, I can’t see his burned half. He’s the Mr. Todd of old, pretty and crimson-haired, enough like everyone else to be the worst kind of monster.

  “So,” ventures I, more to quiet my nerves than for having aught to say, “tell me what you’ve heard of this Slasher.”

  “Only what I’ve read in the papers. Which is quite a piece, as it happens.” Todd’s gaze glues to the blue satin bodice of a dolly-girl as she sashays by. “Did you know Eliza’s charming post-mortem reports have been published in full? No pictures, sadly. I do miss the police gazettes. All those appalling Lombrosian lithographs of L’uomo delinquente, flourishing their garrotes above maidens in distress. Nonsense, of course. Whence the ‘born criminal’ when crime itself is a human construct? These illustrators have quite the lowest form of imagination.”

  Todd’s eye latches onto a drooling mountebank’s harlequin coat. The fool leers, gripping a rusted iron cudgel, and I have to drag Todd away. “Keep your bloody eyes to yourself, can’t you—shit!”

  A single electric-red eye glints from the depths of a muddy alley. I scuttle backwards, cursing. Fucking Enforcers . . .

  But I halt, prickling with not-right. Not a hulking brass machine, but a slim figure in a long cape. The head turns, and light falls on a familiar face. A woman, one soft cheek scarred with shining steel.

  Miss Burton.

  I frown. The Philosopher’s special agent, slumming it with the great unwashed by a Soho gin palace?

  Casual-like, I sidle up to see what she’s about. Beside her is a gent with glittering white hair and a deformed, shrunken hand like a crow’s claws. A silver chain with a black stone shines around his throat. He hands her a slip of paper. She stuffs it in a pocket, where another folded letter pokes out an inch or two.

  I brush past, and light as you please, I dip the letter from her pocket. Oho! Think Miss Lizzie’s spent years following Wild Johnny about for no profit? Her hip shifts, and for a heart-stopping moment, I think she’ll turn, spear me with those evil black-light eyes, and holler stop, thief!

  But her back stays turned. Triumphantly, I slink away into the crowd and unfold the letter. Thick expensive paper, a knotty black hand I can barely read.

  Ignore what was said this afternoon. The funds are at your disposal. Threaten them, pay them off, do whatever you have to. This must be ours, in absolute secrecy.

  Speak to our mutual friend. I trust in your discretion.

  By way of signature, there’s an inked animal sketch, a little horse’s head with a horn.

  A unicorn. Now where’ve I seen one o’ them recently?

  But the crowd’s already swept us by. Todd ain’t even noticed. He’s gawping like a Yorkshire yokel in Haymarket, at flowers, dresses, lights, costumes, all the colors of the rainbow. His eyes are glassy. I can hear him breathing hard. He’s practically drooling.

  “Christ, can’t you stop that?” I elbow him. “You’re scaring folks. They don’t like it when you stare. Get it?”

  He looks faintly surprised. As if them liking it or not ain’t never crossed his mind.

  “This Soho Slasher,” mutters I. “You was saying?”

  “Only that I understand there are missing organs and the like.” He picks his way across a puddle, and offers me his hand. I don’t take it, and he smiles, lickerish, before withdrawing. “Extravagant use of his tools, beyond the usual death blows and what have you. A furious artiste. Or,” he adds slyly, “an exuberant one. We shall see. I confess, I’m looking forward to examining his efforts.”

  “Aye, I bet you are. Craving a nice lick of blood?” I point at the blue-and-gold façade of Mrs. Fletcher’s. “This is it.”

  “Blood, Miss Hyde, is never a waste, if one does it properly.” He wrinkles his nose as we hop up the steps, as if the place is a rotten tomato. “Gauche. And they say I have strange ideas about recreation.” He holds the door for me, a gent taking his lady for a treat.

  Mrs. Fletcher flounces from her parlor, a huff of green silk. She takes one look at Todd’s wrecked face and diamond cuff links, and gives a fulsome smile. “Lovely to see you so soon, Miss Hyde. Can I assist you and your escort with something more . . . exotic?”

  “You’re fucking joking.”

  Todd tips his hat. A well-mannered walking corpse, a horror of the finishing school graveyard. “Malachi Todd, at your service. But no. Sadly, your worthy profession isn’t to my solace. I prefer a more impulsive attitude to fun. One never knows when the next opportunity might pop up.”

  A flare o
f smoky interest. “We cater to all tastes. I keep many specialists, for the right price. A game, perhaps, of your choosing?”

  “Madam,” says Todd with a delicately threatening smile, “my choosing is far from a game. Shall I show you?”

  “Trust me, missus, turn this one down.” I push between them into the hall. Scrubbed timber floors festooned with rugs, Queen Anne furniture, flowers arranged in large pots. Somewhere, someone tinkles an old harpsichord. “Johnny sent us, so no bullshit. Tell me about Saucy May.”

  “So sad.” Mrs. Fletcher lets her face fall into perfect pity. Jesus. Next she’ll dab away a tear. “The poor girl is—was—one of my street tenants. Not a house girl, you understand. She rented her room per client.”

  “And this particular client?”

  “We operate a strict regime of privacy, no names or questions asked.” Her eyes are cold black stones. A hard woman from a hard profession. No time for sentimentality when your friends are dropping like flies from the pox or starvation or long freezing nights, and even when you can find a mark, you’re as like to get beaten as paid. “Our gentlemen prefer it. You understand.”

  “Right,” I grumble, sounding like Harley Griffin, “a dozen girls lounging about every which way and not one of ’em seen a thing. So who found the mess?”

  “One of my girls. Rose—I believe you know her? May hadn’t emerged during the night and she was worried.” Fletcher dabs her nose with a handkerchief. “My girls are like sisters. Such a terrible day for them all.”

  “You never called in the crushers?”

  “Certainly not. I shan’t allow their sort in here. Poking around, making vile insinuations.” Fletcher’s mouth twists. “Mr. Wild insisted I leave everything as it was. My girls are beside themselves. The smell, you see. I’ve brought in flowers, but . . .” A sigh. “I’m extremely busy, Miss Hyde. Do you wish to see this ghastly display or not?”

  She ushers us up to the landing. On the gilded couches, those twins still lounge. Their eyes shine dully from lack of sleep, and their smiles look strained, as if their cheeks ache. Plaster girls, about to break.

  We approach Eddie’s favorite room, and my heart lurches, but thankfully Fletcher waves us up another flight, down a badly lit corridor to a room at the end.

  She throws the door open. “Forgive me if I don’t come in.”

  “One more. Did King Eddie come by here last night?”

  A measuring stare. “I’m afraid I can’t say. Client confidentiality, you understand.” And she sweeps away on a cloud of silken green screw-you.

  The smell hits me first. A hot, fleshy scent, half-spoiled meat mixed with piss or stale sweat. I cover my nose. Jesus. I don’t know if I can go in there. How does Eliza do it, day in and day out? Does she love death so much? Or is she merely forestalling her own by wallowing in theirs?

  Todd inhales, and his good cheek reddens, in memory of something not quite respectable. “Do you detect that bitter overtone? That’s the flavor of fear. Our subject had time to be afraid of what was coming.”

  “Great. Thanks for that.” Now I don’t want to breathe in. Inside, it’s cheap and dingy, gaslight bleeding through a greasy window. Dusty dressing table, washstand, wooden bedstead . . . and the shape on that sagging bed don’t look like a woman no more.

  Nightgown ripped, limbs splayed. Flesh torn and sliced, white nubs of bone exposed. Walls and bedclothes sprayed with gore. And the head . . .

  Christ. He’s hacked the head almost clean off. And the face, well, ain’t no face left. Just carved flesh and hanks of bloodied yellow hair.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. But the images linger, a blood-spattered phantasmagoria, and in it I see Eddie.

  My father, eager and unsteady, drunk to his eyeballs. Crushing with clumsy hands, heedless of bruises, the thin girl on the bed with wide pleading eyes. Swinging that glinting blade with a song on his lips, blood spurting onto his shirtfront. “Maggie, Maggie Mayyy . . . they’ve taken you awayyy . . .”

  Stttrrrk! Light flares. I jump, ready to run.

  Mr. Todd just shakes out a match and pockets the box. He’s found a candle, and the flamelight lovingly caresses him. “Shall we take a look?”

  Light leaps over poor Saucy May’s remains, a cruel landscape of fleshy hills and blood-soaked valleys. Todd exhales. “Eliza’s observations are meticulous, if thin on insight. A surgical blade, yes. Not a butcher’s knife.”

  “An expert, then?” Steeling myself, I creep closer.

  “Hardly.” Todd strokes the ravaged flesh with one fingertip. “How shallow the cuts, how hesitant the exposure of viscera. Observe this stretch mark. The skin is ripped, not sliced. Odd, wouldn’t you say, for a man who delights in such work?”

  Shadowy images dance, and I feel sick. My father pins her down and stabs. Blood squirts, and with a gleeful roar, he grabs a fistful of flesh and pulls . . .

  “Six strokes, maybe seven, just to sever the windpipe. Surely a surgical instrument ought to be sharp. How does one even achieve such inept results? The incompetence of artists these days. It’s positively scandalous.”

  May’s pearly eyeballs gleam, her bright hair dull with crusted blood. Eddie grabs her hair and twists, crimson splashing from her opened throat . . .

  I drag my eyes away. Jesus, this place is chewing my nerves raw. But blood smears the peeling wallpaper by the bed, too. He falls back, leaning on the wall to catch his breath . . . “Handprint?”

  Todd’s eyes flare with interest. “But no arterial arc. There’s skin under her nails, of all things. How careless. And look at this.” He prods at a yellower stain on the girl’s ripped nightgown. “Vomitus. Honestly, does this imposter think me an amateur?”

  “More like a flop-brained loon with a blood fetish . . . hold on. What d’you mean, imposter?”

  “Plagiarism, Miss Hyde. Passing off. Theft, in fact, of the vilest sort.” He taps an exposed nub of bone with a thoughtful finger. “Do you see what’s happened here? No? Well, it’s to be expected, if you’ve no experience. I’ve made quite a study of blood, you know.” He sets the candle down. “Let me show you something. Your hand, if you please.”

  Let me show you, he’d whispered to Eliza that night in his studio. Let me show you how I love you. “Ha! Not on your life, nutbag.”

  A sorrowful sigh. “I did ask nicely.” Like a snake, he strikes, forcing my right wrist up over my head.

  “Oi! Get the hell off me—ugh!” My back hits the wall, and effortlessly he twists my cane away and tosses it aside.

  Eliza’s screaming at me. Why, Lizzie? Why did you trust him? But that prickly blue mixture I swallowed has sunk deep into my flesh, and she seems far away, no help to me now. Is he hiding that twinkling razor in his pocket, thirsty to drink my life? His strange lunatic heat, his ruined skin, his crust-edged lips. The burned husk of beauty. His awful scent curdles my blood. The memory of Eliza’s paralysis—and how I raged against it to no avail.

  God rot it, if I had my stiletto I’d finish him right here. Thrust hot steel into his belly, swallow his coppery groan with my tongue, whisper into his mouth as he dies. This is for my Eliza. You could’ve stopped her loving you, but you didn’t and this is for her.

  “Let me go.” But my voice withers like a lost promise, and I curse and get ready to clock him. Jam my knee into his balls, if the cold-blooded fucker’s even got any, and run while he retches . . .

  Todd’s cunning smile makes me blanch. “Merely a demonstration. If I desired your death, do you imagine you’d still be breathing?”

  Good point. Furious, I nod at him to carry on.

  “Very well. Imagine a horizontal orientation of this struggle we enact. I am on my knees, you on your back. I restrain one-handed”—he tightens his grip, and watches with interest as I flinch—“because I require the other to wield my tools. The subject fights . . .” He waits politely. “If you please.”

  “Oh.” I wriggle and kick. “Like this?”

  “Very nice.” Fluently, he evades and
restrains me, hip and knee here, forearm there, and mimes clocking me hard under the chin. “And I reply thus.”

  A disorienting blow, to dizzy and confuse. This is how he does it. A crazy-arse slaughterhouse johnny, quieting his beasts for the kill.

  My bones shrink in horror, but I’m strangely warm inside, some weird new seduction that lures me from reason. What must it be like to wield such effortless power? To provoke such terror, to rule over life and death?

  To grab all the hurt the world ever hurled at you, and hurl it right back? Isn’t that real freedom?

  “Now, if I strike like so—” With fluid grace, Todd slits my throat with an imaginary blade, and indicates with a musical flutter of fingers. “Look where the crimson will flow. To the front, up, over. Some secondary splashing here. Even taking into account the initial euphoric confusion, the struggling and dying and so on, one would expect a more melodic arrangement of spatters.” He lets me go, abruptly cold. “Not this clumsy re-enactment.”

  Huh. Whatever else you can say for him, the man knows his murder. “You mean that ain’t a real blood spatter?”

  “Au contraire.” He mimes again, cupping his maimed hand and flicking his wrist. “I swipe up a handful, I throw. Out of rage? No. Because I want it to look as if the subject were alive when the performance began. But now my fingers are coated. Do I glory in it, as an artist might? Do I taste or otherwise indulge? No.” He points to a finger-smudge on a clean patch of sheet. “I wipe, of all things. Clearly I’m no connoisseur of the macabre.”

  I stare, oddly detached. “So it’s staged. But why?”

  Absently, he strokes May’s crusted hair. “His hand shows no strength, no artistry, and dare I mention it, no pleasure. He cringes at what must be done. He vomits on his work out of disgust. For a man who’s eagerly created five masterpieces already . . .” Todd sniffs, dismissive. “No, and no, and once again no. This is not your Soho Slasher. This”—and he waves a disdainful hand—“is something else entirely.”

  “An imitator.” My heart sinks. Two knife-wielding crazy men.