A Coldblooded Scoundrel

by JoAnne Soper-Cook

  The club - if it might be called such - was located underground, and could only be reached through a complicated series of tunnels and treacherous switchbacks. He'd disembarked from a cab above, accompanied by Harker, and within perhaps ten minutes he was standing in the main meeting hall. It looked like pictures Devlin had seen of flash gentlemen's clubs, all mahogany and baize, and carpets that seemed to grip your foot about the ankle. Devlin had never actually been a member of a gentlemen's club, not possessing any of the necessary prerequisites for entry, but he knew what he was looking at. This was the place where London's able boys came to rest their weary bones, when the Hunt and the Horn had lost their savour. He felt remotely nauseous. He was quite nervous, too, in the too-large set of evening clothes he'd borrowed from John Donnelly, the shoes that Harker had bestowed upon him. He'd found what looked to him like fingernails inside one of the pockets, but could not determine whether they belonged to Donnelly or Harker, or to one of their resurrected subjects. Perhaps Donnelly had found the clothes within the course of his midnight foraging - it wasn't beyond possibility for Donnelly and Harker to strip their corpses of the mortal shroud.

  The cards were going round the table again, and Devlin felt Harker's elbow in his side, warning him to place his bet. He tried not to fumble the cards, aware of the eyes upon him, the unspoken expectation. "There we are!" He forced a note of cheerfulness into his voice. "I'll raise five."

  Again, Harker's elbow in his ribs. Devlin grunted. The men were looking at him, and he saw or felt some frisson of disgust pass between the others. "I say, if you're going to be niggardly, you might as well not play at all." This from a vapid blond man, with the predatory sleekness of an eel.

  "From the paucity of your own bet, I should think you'd keep quiet, Ronald." Harker smirked, eyelids at half-mast, and Devlin found himself admiring the silken ease with which the Resurrection Man allayed the unpleasantness of the discourse. "Unless, perhaps, your fortunes are not what they were?"

  Bitchy, Devlin thought, relieved that he hadn't been the one to say it. If nothing else, he had to congratulate Harker on the relative size of his balls, not to mention his slick bravado. "Quite something about the hubbub in the East End," he said. He was aware that he was venturing into dangerous territory, but that the risk was necessary. Considering what Sarah Whittaker had told them, there was precious little time to waste.

  "What about it?" The one called Ronald fleered at him, lips curled in disdain. What was it, Devlin wondered, about the upper classes, that they could so easily achieve that particular expression? Perhaps the projecting teeth...

  "Well, from what I've heard, this fellow might be the Ripper." Devlin accepted a cigar from Harker, allowed the Resurrection Man to light it for him. The taste was rather stronger than he was used to, and for a moment the table and its occupants swam weirdly before his eyes, but he recovered his composure soon enough.

  "So what if he is?" The redheaded son of Lord and Lady Inkpen tossed his chips upon the table, the very portrait of elegant aplomb. Devlin suddenly understood why everybody hated the upper classes - even young Inkpen had the very same projecting teeth as all the rest. "City needs to be cleaned up - who cares if he's topping a few old whores?"

  Devlin felt his eyes bugging out, darted a savage glance at Harker. The Resurrection Man continued as he had done: cool and smooth as ice, utterly without regard. "Perhaps so," Devlin allowed, "but what if he's got his cap set for something bigger?"

  The blond man snorted. "Like what?"

  Devlin shrugged. "Could be anything. You never can tell what might happen."

  A clock ticked in the silence, each stroke sounding like attenuated hammer blows. Devlin felt the keen tickle of sweat behind each ear, and his overwrought nerves were twanging savagely.

  "Nothing going to happen." This from redheaded Inkpen. "As long as he confines his fun to the great unwashed, he can carry on, as far as I'm concerned." He glanced at his companions and laughed, eerily horsey in the dim light. "He knows what side his bread's buttered. He'll keep to the lower, and not bother with the upper."

  Devlin felt his insides go very still, the room retreat from him: vague, unreal. He darted a glance at Harker, shuffling cards with the impunity of the intimately favoured. "Deal me out," he said. "Need to find the lavs." It was becoming a pattern with him, he thought, that all his most awkward encounters in life should necessitate a trip to the Seat of Ease. He was no more pleased when he found himself wandering throughout the cavernous interior of the club, turning down numerous blind hallways and coming hard against many dead ends. At one point, he had ascended a short flight of stairs and was making for a closed door, located at the terminus of the hallway, when certain exclamations of carnal excitement and various invocations of the Deity caused him to turn about. He found himself hopelessly lost, and had decided to relieve himself upon a nearby aspidistra, when he discerned that he was being followed.

  Devlin crept behind a pillar, slowed his breathing to the point where it would be all but inaudible, and waited. The footsteps came nearer, echoing eerily in the stony spaces of the underground cavern. He heard the footsteps pause, could almost visualise the intellectual processes of their owner - when a man's head appeared, and then the rest of him, and Devlin leapt to collar his opponent neatly. "That'll be far enough, then!"

  "I beg your pardon, sir! How dare you!" He struggled fitfully against Devlin's steely grip, his eyes darting wildly in his head, his lips drawn back over his projecting teeth (there it was again, Devlin thought) like a stallion scenting a mare.

  "You were following me!" Devlin pressed the man against the pillar and gazed at him spitefully. "What d'you think you're doing, eh?"

  "Lord Dalyrimple, sir - unhand me immediately!"

  Devlin's fingers released their grip; Lord Dalyrimple tidied his clothing with an air of significant resentment, and regarded Devlin narrowly, as if the inspector were no more than a butterfly impaled upon a pin.

  "Much better," Dalyrimple sniffed. "You might do better than to roam about the corridors yanking people by their clothing."

  Devlin waited.

  "Yes, well then - I heard you talking at the poker table. I was seated two tables over, with Lord Bastadge and the Duke of Boneasse. You're a bit of an inquisitor, aren't you?"

  Devlin wondered how he'd come to be linked with the Spaniards all of a sudden, and that nastiness the Catholics did. "I don't understand."

  "Mmmm, no vast surprise there." Dalyrimple raised one aristocratic eyebrow. "Cheapside?"

  Devlin felt himself bristling, or perhaps it was Donnelly's purloined suit. "I beg your pardon!"

  "You're a Yard man, aren't you?"

  Devlin raised his eyebrow, but was unable to effectively mimic Dalyrimple's delirious sang froid. "And if I am?"

  "Let me guess - Brixton. It would have to be Brixton, really...not quite low enough for Cheapside, but dear God where ever did you get that suit?"

  "Keep your hands where I can see them!" Devlin snapped. "Unless you'd like to lose 'em."

  "You might want to mind your tongue," Dalyrimple observed mildly. "Talking in the wrong places. You might miss it when it's gone."

  Devlin thanked him for the warning.

  "They all dance to Johnny's tune, nowadays," Dalyrimple shouted after him. "Johnny's got them doing what he wants - he'll make sure of it."

  Devlin turned. "What the Devil are you talking about, man?"

  "Johnny Whittaker - that's what you were asking about, isn't it?" Dalyrimple's smile was slick and oily, like his hair. "Johnny's got them all at his disposal, ready to carry out his every wish."

  "Really."

  "Some of us have debts, you know - a little too much money spilt about for comfort's sake. Whittaker has an open purse, and nothing buys loyalty like money." Dalyrimple inclined his head. "I'd stay clear if I were you." He laughed noiselessly. "I'd stay bloody well clear."

  If he managed it just right, he could ease himself onto the floor and then -
r />   Freddie Lewis stopped, his senses tuned to the approaching footsteps along the hallway. He shoved his legs into his trousers, and rammed his feet into his shoes.

  "Constable Lewis!" Violet Pearson stared at him, outraged. "What in God's name are you doing?"

  "You've been very good to me." Freddie treated her to his brightest smile. "But I'm afraid I can't be away from duty any longer."

  "You'll do no such thing!" Violet caught the sleeve of his shirt and somehow got the unfastened cuff twisted round his wrist. "Get out of those things immediately and get into bed!"

  "No, you mustn't - " Freddie wrenched the sleeve away, stumbling backwards in his weakened state and landing on the bed. "I simply must get dressed!"

  Violet caught the front of his shirt in a violent grip, rather like an escapee from a Bluestocking home for wayward girls. "You cannot leave. I forbid it!"

  "Inspector Devlin - "

  "Inspector Devlin is a grown man - "

  "Violet - Miss Pearson - please!" Freddie reclaimed ownership of his shirt, and righted himself, panting from the exertion. "Please. Inspector Devlin cannot proceed with this investigation alone."

  "Mr. Donnelly said you were to take complete bed rest."

  "Mr. Donnelly is an apothecary!"

  Violet, seeing that he was not to be swayed, sighed and gave up the fight. "I'll have your things waiting at the bottom of the stairs." She swept out of the room in a cloud of offended feminine dignity, banging the door shut as she went.

  He'd been watching the house for awhile now: Constable Freddie bloody Lewis under the tender ministrations of two middle-class Sapphists - it was simply too amusing. Freddie Lewis, Devlin's favoured mollycock, seemed to have regained his strength. It was a pity, he thought, that his associates had not finished the job.

  You couldn't get good help these days.

  Eleven

  It was, Devlin had to admit, rather an unusual parcel to be landing on his desk at this hour of the morning, but then, nothing shocked him any more, or at least, nothing of this small magnitude. A dead cat ' a dead cat in a box ' well, that he could take in stride, having seen at least one or two dead cats before now. The cat wasn't the problem ' the problem was the note that had come along with the cat: My lads should have finished the job. Of course this was talking about the recent assault on Freddie Lewis, and this made Devlin's blood boil and froth like a pot of overheated coffee. Speaking of that, the beverages around these parts had been none too savoury, ever since Freddie's enforced absence. Whoever made the coffee down below must have boiled it up in the laundry kettle ' and the tea was wholly unworthy of any comment whatsoever. Devlin forced himself to swallow the last mouthful of his cold coffee and found himself wishing savagely that Freddie might return. At least then the quality of the refreshments would improve. He carefully avoided examining his feelings beyond that ' it wouldn't do for him to get all sympathetic and maudlin about Freddie, especially not now, and particularly not after the incident with the dead cat in the box. Curious means of getting a message through, Devlin thought, but Whittaker had never been one to take the median route towards anything. Straight through, and as flamboyant as possible ' that had always been his style.

  My lads should have finished the job... Yes, too bloody right, Devlin thought, or perhaps my lads ought to finish you. The cat, of course, bothered him, because he was something of an animal fancier, and he couldn’t imagine that Whittaker had picked the poor thing up out of the gutters after it was dead, so that meant that he'd killed it himself. It didn't bear thinking about. It was the sort of thing that Whittaker had always gone in for, even when he'd been a boy at school: pulling the wings off flies, decapitating ants, hounding field mice round and round the dormitory and then cornering them so he could chop their tails off.

  This was entirely Whittaker's style ' here Devlin allowed himself a small grimace of remembrance ' to hurt, and keep on hurting, that was his belief, both creed and tenet.

  When they were both boys at school, it had been the same: Whittaker dictated, and Devlin obeyed, at least in most things. He could at least say that he had never gone along with Whittaker's campaigns of torment against other boys, nor would he willingly participate in the kinds of gory experiments that Whittaker enjoyed. No, it was different than that: he was Whittaker's shadow, content to trail behind the older boy and feel protected in his presence. Devlin had never truly belonged at the exclusive boarding school, but being with Whittaker had helped to erase some of his awkwardness. Being with Whittaker was a sort of protection: as long as he and Johnny were together, then Devlin felt himself to be legitimate. He had gone far, he realised, to court Whittaker's regard and, having gained it, fought like mad to keep it, lest he fade again into invisibility.

  But that was then, Devlin thought, and this is now. He no longer cared whether he had Whittaker's regard. He only wanted to track Whittaker down and take him in, and then see him swing for what he'd done.

  Freddie had made his way immediately to the Yard ' really, there was no other place for him to go ' and enquired after Devlin, to see where he could be of best use. It wasn't that he was eager to be back at work ' his body felt like it belonged to someone else, and he'd merely borrowed it for a day or two ' but he knew that unless he intervened, Devlin would go after Whittaker all on his own, and get himself in trouble, and then Freddie would have to get him out of it. The very idea made Freddie feel inexpressibly weary. It meant that he would have to go chasing after Devlin, probably following him God-knows-where. Once Devlin got a thing into his head, it was difficult to dissuade him.

  "He's not been here?" Freddie leaned on the desk for support, and hoped it didn't look this way. The desk sergeant applied himself fastidiously to his book, and pretended to look interested in what Freddie was saying. "At all?"

  "He was here earlier ' he went out of here like the bells of Hell, with a dead cat under his arm." The sergeant sucked on his peppermint with a derisive noise. "Like I said ' he weren't asking after you, he said nothing about you. Out that door, dead cat. That's all I know."

  Freddie sighed gently, twitched at his moustache with a fingertip. He turned round and retraced his steps, went upstairs to Devlin's office. The door opened on a musty interior, and no Devlin. The desk was covered in various bits of paper, and Devlin's empty teacup was glued to one corner by a sugary residue. The window blinds were drawn ' Freddie wondered when Devlin had last been in ' and Devlin's overshoes stood empty beside the umbrella stand, by the door. Freddie sat down in the chair and surveyed the office for a moment ' very nice. He'd like to have an office like this someday, although (here he smiled gently to himself) he could never be as good an inspector as his guv'nor. He could try, though, and he would do. He considered himself and Devlin as two of a kind, and that was good enough for him. He'd still got no closer to giving Devlin a bloody good tumble, but at least the inspector had kissed him, that night at Miss Pearson's house. Freddie remembered the kiss with a kind of hazy enjoyment, leaning back in Devlin's chair and running his fingers over Devlin's sticky desk.

  There was a clattering on the stairs and Freddie sprang to his feet, immediately busied himself at the filing cabinet, and feigned great interest in an ancient article about sailing on the Thames ' why on earth did Devlin keep such things? He divined a presence in the doorway, but chose not to turn around just then, and strove to maintain his air of busyness, until he was addressed in dry and docile tones by one of the sergeants from down below.

  "Yes?" Freddie turned slowly, taking full advantage of his natural grace (and also the remaining stiffness in his back and shoulders) to present an air of haughty disdain that would not have been out of place on a scion of the Hunt and Horn. It was a shame, therefore, that Freddie had been raised in Pimlico, and could not entertain even the faintest hope of social ascendancy.

  But the visitor was no one worth posturing for ' Dennis Foster had been with the Force as long as anyone could remember, and had never attained a higher rank than his presen
t one of sergeant. It was much bruited about that he was dim in his wits, and had only received his position through some outside influence, but Freddie could not be sure what that was. Several of the more waggish constables whispered that Foster was Old Brassie's son, begotten on the wrong side of the blanket, but Freddie couldn't honestly see Sir Neville completing the act of coitus with anyone. He was certain that Phoebe had been deposited with Sir Neville through the agency of fairies.

  "Are you lookin' for his nibs?"

  Freddie blinked at him.

  "Devlin! Are you lookin' for Inspector Devlin?" Foster sighed: why in the name of God did they stick the pretty ones in with the inspectors? Clearly, the lad had not enough brains to blow his nose.

  "Oh! Oh yes, I am, yes."

  "You'll not find him here. Morris said you were askin' after him."

  Freddie drew a blank. "Who's Morris?"