A Coldblooded Scoundrel

by JoAnne Soper-Cook

  One would hope Devlin had not forgotten.

  Three

  Freddie Lewis was waiting when Devlin returned from the archives, dusty but beaming in something very like triumph. Freddie had managed to burn off his little fit of pique in a game of cards and a brisk walk around the block; the physical exercise had done wonders for both his mood and his intelligence, and he was certain he was prepared, if need be, to dissuade his dear inspector from his dangerously questionable course of action.

  Devlin, characteristically, made no mention of their earlier disquisition. "What time is it?" he asked. He had a smudge of dirt on the tip of his nose, and another on his chin. Freddie had to physically restrain himself from fetching out his handkerchief and cleaning the inspector up.

  "Quarter to six." Freddie gestured at Devlin's face. "You seem to have collected a little evidence of your own, sir."

  "Eh?" Devlin gazed at him blankly, his mind still wholly occupied with the Whittaker files, the evidence and facts. He followed Freddie's pointing finger to the shaving mirror. "Damn." Devlin chuckled. "How is it you always notice such things, Constable?"

  Freddie coughed diplomatically. "It's the light, sir."

  "Hmmm." Devlin was having trouble with his collar button, his fingers stiff with fatigue.

  "Let me, sir - " Freddie's touch was rather more deft, seeing as how he'd spent the afternoon playing whist with several ageing sergeants down below. Winning all their money had made his fingers rather more supple now than usual.

  It was odd, Devlin thought, that it therefore took him so damned long to fasten one small collar button. Devlin found his gaze drawn to the constable's, made to linger there. "You're worrying," he said quietly.

  "I am, sir."

  "Freddie, for the love of God, we're alone. You can leave off the obsequious bit."

  "How long have I been working here with you?" Freddie's hands had finished with the collar button and had somehow come to rest on Devlin's shoulders.

  "Five years, give or take."

  "Have you ever known me to do anything exceptionally stupid?"

  "Well, there was that one time with Lady Digby's parasol and that unfortunate small dog - " Devlin let it go when he realised that Freddie wasn't laughing. "No," he said, "No, you've never done anything stupid, Freddie."

  "Who taught me not to be stupid, eh? Who said to me, 'Freddie, for the love of God, get yer head down, don't be such a damned maniac.'?"

  Devlin smiled. "Freddie, if you get anywhere near a point - "

  The constable's hands tightened on Devlin's shoulders. "You're going to sit about and wait for - "

  "Not wait," Devlin assured him. "No waiting required, Freddie. I'm sure he's here - in London already." He grinned, and in his excitement swayed closer to the young constable, so close that their noses were all but touching.

  "Oh, that eases my mind a lot, does that," Freddie murmured. He wouldn't have cared less, just then, if Whittaker had sailed in through the window and announced he was the Second Coming. Devlin was close to him: so close that Freddie could see the tiny flecks of gold in the inspector's dark, dark eyes, and the fine lines at their outer corners, and the indentation in Devlin's top lip...

  All at once, Devlin was back in the dream again, lying on the grass and looking up through oak leaves at the sky, and warm hands were on his body, burning through his clothing to his skin. Devlin folded into Freddie Lewis like he was made of wet paper....

  It wasn't the world's most successful kiss - at least not at the start: their noses mashed together and Devlin wondered for one horribly embarrassing moment what in Hell he'd gotten himself into. Then it was right, beautifully right, his mouth opening despite himself, inviting the caress, hungry for it. He felt Freddie's hands move to clasp his face, a gesture of consummate tenderness that made him whimper aloud, forget himself.

  "Freddie -" Devlin caught his subordinate's hands and removed them from his face. "Someone might walk in." He was breathing hard, and his cock felt huge - what the Hell was Freddie thinking? He still clasped Freddie's hands in his: lean, elegant hands, the hands of an aristocrat.

  "You're shaking," Freddie observed this most salient point with a grin.

  "Get stuffed," Devlin snapped. Freddie tilted Devlin's face up, gazed into his eyes.

  "Liked that, did you?" The grin was wider, if that was possible.

  "Listen, Freddie, don't - "

  "Don't kiss you?" The young constable adopted an appropriately submissive expression. "Thought you liked it, sir." Quick as a thought, he dipped his head and claimed Devlin's mouth again: a deep, devastating caress.

  If he keeps this up, Devlin thought, I'll burst into flames. With an effort, he pushed Freddie away. "Flames," he stuttered, his mind still mostly unhinged from the astonishing kisses that his constable, his subordinate- here Devlin groaned out loud - had bestowed upon his too-willing mouth. "How many burned bodies have been through the morgue this month?"

  Freddie stared at him as if Devlin had grown extra limbs. "What?"

  But Devlin was away, dashing around the desk, snatching up his coat and hat. "Flames, man, flames! Bodies set on fire!" He called back over his shoulder to Freddie as the younger man struggled to keep up. "Has to be some kind of fire starter! Something to make it burn - flesh won't do that on its own."

  Whittaker had doused Elizabeth Hobbs in spirits of alcohol, designed to make her burn. Any flammable liquid would do, anything to start the conflagration.

  Within three days, Devlin had obtained samples of the eschar from every burned body presently in the morgue. Being naturally squeamish about such things, he'd dispatched Freddie Lewis to do the gathering, taking careful scrapings of the charred and ruined flesh and sealing each piece of vital evidence inside a test tube.

  A day after that, he brought his scrapings to Fowler Street.

  Devlin decided that there was no time like the present to educate young Lewis about the social strangeness of the pair he had dubbed The Resurrection Men. It would save much embarrassment later, when Freddie finally figured it out and allowed himself the luxury of a mental breakdown. "I don't feel that I need to tell you that Mr. Harker and Mr. Donnelly are rather...unconventional." That was putting it mildly, Devlin thought. "Neither is married and, although it's not widely known in Society, they have...well, an arrangement."

  "What?" Freddie's mouth hung open artlessly. "You mean they're... perverts?" Freddie had to bite his lip to keep from laughing aloud - perhaps it was time he introduced Devlin to the Peacock Club.

  "You didn't hear it from me," Devlin replied primly - and then there was nothing more to say, for their cab had arrived at its destination. Devlin led the way past Mrs. Cadogan, who took their coats and bid them a good morning. On the landing just outside the Harker/Donnelly household, he took another moment to instruct Freddie about the 'arrangement' between the two, so there would be no misunderstanding or unfortunate social gaffes. Freddie loved it when Devlin got like this - when he got all earnest and concerned, and his dark eyes shone, and two spots of colour bloomed high up on each of the inspector's pale cheeks. Freddie wondered what Devlin would look like after a bloody good rogering.

  "Inspector Devlin!" Harker was dressed in a ratty pair of gentlemen's pajamas and a red dressing gown that had clearly seen better days; his expression was one of great pain, and Devlin imagined it irked Harker to have been fetched early out of bed." Donnelly has been called away for the morning, I fear - research in Bow Street - so you have only my company to sustain you." He poured brandy for them both, despite the early hour, and offered them cigars, which Devlin refused and Lewis accepted. Devlin sketched the outline of their problem for the solicitor, as he sat with his head in his hands, contemplating the holes in his dressing gown. It was Harker's way to assume various poses and postures, the result of a lifetime spent among the upper classes (from whose unsuspecting loins he had sprung) and the scions of the Inner Temple. Harker was no longer practising the law, of course, having been summarily ejecte
d from the bar after some shady dealings with the London underworld.

  Devlin didn't know the full details, of course, but he'd heard that Harker had been caught in some sort of money-changing racket that involved a billiards table, three rent boys, and a French poodle. Ever since his unfortunate (here Devlin allowed himself an inward chuckle) tumble from the higher echelons, Harker had seen fit to content himself with a wayward residence among the lesser classes of London society, and the occasional foray into some ad hoc research toward dubious academic ends. He was assisted in these affairs by apothecary Donnelly, another upper-class ne'er-do-well who concerned himself with slightly recherche experiments on unwitting corpses. Devlin thought better of wasting his breath in warnings: if Donnelly and Harker wanted to spend their leisure time invading graves, they deserved whatever they got. Besides, he had bigger things to worry about than The Resurrection Men and their esoteric habits.

  "It is a thorny little problem, to be sure." Harker opened pale green eyes to peer at Lewis and Devlin in turn. "If this murderer of yours has access to some unusual kind of chemical - say, eau de toilette, for example - then he would tend to use it again and again. Whatever is easiest to lay the hands upon." Harker exposed a hole in his stocking and picked at it resolutely. "What must be established, my dear Devlin, is this: the residues left behind by various chemicals can differ from one another widely, or be frustratingly similar. If your murderer took care to use something which leaves an easily detected signature, so much the better. If that easily detected signature appears in several of the bodies that have so lately passed through the police morgue, again, it is to our betterment. What we are looking for is an esoteric or unusual compound, something which he used as a means of inciting the bodies to burn..."

  Devlin waited patiently for Harker to continue, but the solicitor seemed to be sunk in his own musings. "And?"

  "Leave the samples with me. This is a problem for a chemist, Devlin, and I daresay you have other lines of inquiry to follow?"

  Devlin indicated that he had.

  "One more thing, Mr. Harker - " Lewis cut in with a wary, sidelong look at Devlin. "This Whittaker - we think he's only doing this to get at Inspector Devlin."

  "Freddie!" Devlin was stayed from further acrimony by the motion of Harker's hand.

  "As Inspector Devlin can tell you, Constable, I, too, have followed the Whittaker case from beginning to end. It would not surprise me if this fiend did indeed take it into his head to cause harm." Harker rose grandly, indicating that the interview was at an end. "Thank you, gentlemen. I shall be in touch." He reached into his dressing gown and brought forth a blank piece of paper, approximately the size of a matchbook cover. "My card."

  At the door, Freddie turned: "Mr. Harker...you wouldn't be familiar with a pub called the Peacock Club? I'm certain I saw - "

  "Ah, Constable, there you have me. I have truck with neither peacocks nor the clubs in which they habitually congregate." Harker replied shirtily, and offered them a chilly smile. "Good day, gentlemen."

  As Devlin took Freddie out onto the landing, Harker could be heard bellowing at Mrs. Cadogan for hot water. "What Peacock Club?" Devlin demanded, collaring Freddie at the first turning of the stairs. "What in God's name got into you?"

  Freddie shrugged. "Sorry, sir. Must've forgot myself."

  "And another thing - " Devlin was winding up for the full speech when Freddie interrupted him.

  "What day's this, sir?"

  Devlin stared at him as if he'd been poleaxed. "What day? You mean, day of the week?"

  "Day of the week, sir."

  Devlin thought for a moment. "Why, it's Friday." He stared at Lewis. "Why?"

  "You know what tomorrow is, sir."

  "What?"

  "Mrs. Alcock's tea dance."

  Devlin's eyebrows climbed towards his hairline. "Tea dance?"

  "Yes, sir - remember Old Br - I mean, Sir Neville - "

  Devlin paused on Mrs. Cadogan's final landing and rammed his forehead against the wall. Of course he had forgotten. Of course he had to go. And he had to take Freddie with him. He'd bloody well take Freddie with him, now, whether -

  "You do realise Sir Neville expects your presence as well, Constable...?" Devlin tried to keep from grinning as he pulled his gloves on, breathing deep of the bracing October air.

  "Me?" Freddie's neck made several contractions, not unlike a dodgy ostrich. "What for?"

  Devlin hailed a cab, waited while it stopped, and climbed aboard. It really was rather too much fun, making Freddie squirm like this, but the little bastard had it coming, after all, on account of that awkward questioning just now, with Harker all eyes and ears and ready to pounce upon any shred of evidence. The last thing Devlin needed was that disgraced solicitor and his intimate apothecary prying into his case with hands that were perhaps none too clean.

  Devlin sat back and smiled, reached out to clap Freddie briskly on the arm. "I do believe his Phoebe's looking for a husband," he said.

  The look on Constable Lewis's face was worth a great deal of money.

  Four

  It was as bad as Devlin had expected - no, it was worse, for there was absolutely no liquor to be had except Mrs. Alcock's putrid punch and the ever-present pots of tea. Devlin had poured himself a glass of punch and carried it held out slightly in front of him, as if to fend off any eligible women with fantasies of marriage. He wished bitterly that he'd thought to bring his silver brandy flask - a few dollops of that and even Mrs. Alcock's punch would taste remotely palatable.

  "You must be Inspector Devlin."

  He turned rather more quickly than he ought, sloshed punch out of the glass and onto his shoes. He found he was looking at a woman perhaps his own age, wearing a stunning afternoon dress in navy blue; her face was a perfect rounded oval, smooth as milk, and her eyes were somewhere between brown and green. "I'm afraid you have the advantage of me, Miss....?"

  "Oh, bugger that nonsense." She stuck her hand into his and shook it with a surprisingly strong grip. "I'm Phoebe Alcock. I bet Father invited you here because he's trying to marry me off - am I right?" Devlin was caught rather off his balance by her forthright manner, but couldn't take his eyes off her plump white bosom, bared to perfection by the exquisite dress. His collar was too tight again, and he wondered desperately where Freddie Lewis was. "Something like that."

  She grinned, revealing two rows of perfect white teeth. "Well, don't worry - I've no intention of burdening you with anything like that. I deplore these tea dances of Mother's - you'd think she'd know by now."

  "You're not interested in marriage?" She was the first one yet, Devlin thought. He was certain English females had the homing-nesting instinct infused into their brains at birth, by some sort of magical syringe.

  "Marriage?" Phoebe's pretty face assumed a shocked expression. "Are you mad?" She laughed uproariously, her small, plump hands latticed across her lovely mouth. "Not bloody likely." She leaned close to Devlin and spoke confidentially. "Have you got a fag? I'm dying for a puff." She reached into Devlin's silver cigarette case and extracted one, toyed with it for a moment or two. "I can't smoke it in here - Mother would have a fit. Come out into the arbour with me. We can talk." And she took his arm and steered him after her.

  It was warm for October, as evidenced by the many doors and windows of Sir Neville's house that were left wide open to the evening breezes. Phoebe led him up a small incline to a gazebo, set behind a stand of poplar trees, out of direct sight of the house.

  "You know Freddie Lewis is absolutely mad about you," she began. Devlin struck a match to hide his incipient confusion, held it carefully to light her cigarette. "He tries to make out like he doesn't, but anybody with eyes can see he'd be on you in a minute." She tilted her head and gazed at Devlin. "You're not used to a woman talking this way, are you?"

  Devlin conceded that he was not.

  "Mother sent me to America to be educated - I suppose it's made me rather sharper with my tongue than I would be otherwise." She
slanted a gaze at him. "You're awfully handsome - how come you're not married?"

  "Ah...well, you see, I'm very busy and police work - "

  "You're going to tell me that a policeman's life is no life for the wife and kiddies, and you wouldn't want to tie yourself to home and hearth while there are criminals afoot." She laughed gently. "I've heard it all before, Inspector. And yet to look at you -" She trailed off abruptly. "I think I've said too much."