Bloody Business

by Ash, C. B.

  "Insult? Proper? His 'station?’" Hunter growled as he slammed his artificial hand down upon the table with a sharp bang.

  Nearby, Moira jumped at the sound, instinctively looking around for its source. Thorias and Rodney, no longer engrossed in conversation over the valve and gear, turned around as well. Rodney looked rattled, while Thorias was a deadly calm, turning slowly in his chair to lay his eyes upon the table where his old friend was speaking with Mrs. Anita Monkhouse. All around the tavern, conversations faded away and silenced.

  With pronounced effort, Hunter withdrew his clockwork fist from the small crater left in the table top. The wood cracked audibly in angry protest at the abuse. "Madam, your husband is a fat frog who enjoys sitting upon a 'station' supported by the sweat and labor of hard working men, women, and children. The latter, I would add, are put in constant danger by the ill-conceived choice of jobs they are required to do. As for my insulting him, Madam, I am now certain I did not properly finish the job. You, however, have insulted me, and by proxy, Miss Olivander, through your insinuation of impropriety!”

  From across the tavern at the bar, Mary rushed over with a small tray. On it sat the unlikely trio of tea, teapot, and a pint of dark stout. The barmaid came to a quick stop and placed the stout in front of the captain.

  "Here, Cap'n, a good cool stout, so ye can calm ye nerves," Mary said rapidly, her Scottish accent growing thick with her rising anxiety. She carefully set the remainder of the tray down by Mrs. Monkhouse, "Here ye go, one tea for the lady. Sorry 'bout the wait and all. Had to be finding the teapot."

  The barmaid glanced from the seething look of Captain Hunter, eyes bright with outrage, to Mrs. Monkhouse and her look of shock and stiff-backed stubbornness. Slowly, Mary stepped away from the table, "Well, then, ye two have a nice chat, eh? Just give a shout if ye need any more.”

  Captain Hunter grabbed the stout, but instead of taking a drink, slammed the glass back down upon the table. "And furthermore, as for shipping his textiles, allow me to formally suggest, Mrs. Monkhouse, an alternative solution that your husband may take with packaging and transportation!"

  At that moment, the door to the White Hart Tavern burst open. A young man, no more than fourteen at best, rushed inside. He was dressed in gray trousers with a rough-sewn patch at the knee, dirty leather work boots, and a threadbare waistcoat and shirt. He doffed his wool cap to reveal a shaggy mop of black hair and looked around the room. His face lit up in a bright smile the moment he saw Anthony.

  "Cap'n Hunter!" the young man exclaimed, racing over. He scrounged through the pockets of his waistcoat. "Got a message for ye, Cap'n." Finally, he withdrew the crumpled, stained paper from the bottom of a pocket and held it out.

  The captain, struggling to contain his boiling temper, gave the young boy a thin-lipped smile. "Thank you, Jimmy.”

  "Captain," Mrs. Monkhouse began carefully, "Ah do believe we've gotten off on the wrong foot somewhere. My purpose was to conduct a business arrangement with you, as you come so highly recommended. Forget all that unpleasantness with my husband. We can soothe ruffled feathers another time; this is business. Let's return to the details of the contract, shall we?"

  Anthony, blatantly ignoring the woman, unfolded the note, read it, then looked at Jimmy Quick curiously, "I'm not sure I follow this. 'Room service for you, Captain?’ Lad, who gave you this?”

  Jimmy shrugged, "Don't know his name, Cap'n. Big bloke. Big at the shoulders, he be, with busy black hair and a bent nose. Reminded me of a bulldog with an Irish accent. Oh! Limped he did, too, favorin' his left leg. One of a pair Ah be seein' here at the tavern quite a bit. Always dressed like Irish fishermen, but Ah don't think they are. Don't smell much like fish ta me. Looked more accustom to a bit of thuggery than fishin.'”

  Hunter was on his feet in an instant. "Bloody hell, it was Conor! Lad, stay put, you're likely in grave danger for just helping that man.”

  "What?" the lad blurted out, eyes wide in shock. As if shot from a cannon, the captain had already raced across the room for the stairs.

  Captain Hunter burst into the second floor hallway, startling the constable seated in a chair at the far end. The constable in his freshly pressed uniform, a young man no older than twenty years, was alarmed by the captain's sudden appearance. He sat next to the room in which Detective MacTaggart had arranged for Lydia Olivander to be kept for her protection. Anthony paused at the door to his own room while he waved a hand to the constable in a quick greeting. On recognizing the captain, the young officer relaxed his posture, though his eyes remained tense and alert for any other surprises.

  "Constable, has a large man with a blunt nose and sporting a limp come though the hallway within your watch?" Hunter asked quickly.

  The constable gave the captain a quizzical look. "No, Sirrah. No one like that. Just the tavern owner within the past hour, the barmaid several times, and a few of the guests.”

  "Has anyone come to see Miss Olivander?" Hunter then asked.

  "Not a one. As per the detective's orders, Ah take in a bit for the Miss to be nibblin' on. Ah won't be lettin' even the barmaid within a few paces of the door," the constable replied firmly.

  "Good man," Hunter said while he pushed a key into his door lock. When the unlatched door swung wide open, Anthony leaned heavily against the door frame and rubbed his eyes with a deep, depressed sigh. His room was a wreck, his belongings scattered wildly about. However, that was all secondary.

  There, in the middle of the room, was Vivian Carpenter, dead.

  She was tied to the chair, her body slumped ever so slightly to one side, eyes wide and staring in horror, her face lax in its death mask. The captain noticed a small scrap of paper pinned to her sleeve with a steel hat pin. He walked over and detached the paper. While he read the message, his face became a mask of cold fury.

  "Anthony, what is it?" Thorias asked as he skid to a stop at the door to Hunter's room. "Oh my," he said in a low voice.

  A gasp of shock behind Thorias was followed by Moira's voice, "Mrs. Carpenter ...”

  Thorias stepped into the room to examine the body while Hunter read the note aloud to himself and anyone within hearing. "'Stay out of matters that don't concern you!' Nothing else on the paper.”

  "Lydia!" Moira said abruptly. Then, before anyone could say a word, she bolted down the hallway. The constable immediately stood and put out a hand to stop her.

  "Sorry, Miss, the Detective be quite clear on it," he said firmly. "Only a handful are allowed to be visitin’.”

  "Look, there's a dead body down there," Moira said, pointing back to Captain Hunter's room.

  "What?" the constable said in alarm. "Just now?”

  "Weren't ya payin' attention? Yes! She is ... was ... Mrs. Carpenter," Moira explained. "Mrs. Carpenter was Lydia's friend. I'm just wantin' to check on Lydia. Just to make sure nothing's happened.”

  "She's there, Miss. Ah brought a tray in for her a wee bit ago. She ought ta be restin' now," the constable replied firmly.

  Moira fixed a stern frown at the constable. "We outta at least check, y'know!”

  Flustered with the turn of events and the obstinate woman standing before him in the hallway, the young constable fumbled for his keys. "The Detective'll be havin' my hide for lettin' you in like this. But it'd be only right to do.”

  A few yards down the hallway at Captain Hunter's room, Thorias looked up from where he knelt beside Mrs. Carpenter's body. "Strangled. More accurately, suffocated in that 'burking' manner I told you about before.”

  Hunter, who still stood next to the body, nodded as Brian and Anita Monkhouse appeared on the landing, followed by some of the more curious patrons from the common room below.

  Mrs. Monkhouse gasped in shock at the sight of the body. She held out a hand to steady herself against a nearby wall. Brian turned pale, then red with rage. "What be goin' on here?" he exclaimed..

  "A murder, and a warning," Hunter replied sharply as he left the room. The captain pushed through the
crowd towards the top of the stairs. "Jimmy!" he shouted. "I need to know precisely where you were given your message.”

  There was no answer from below. Hunter raced back down the stairs, but where Jimmy had stood, only Hunter's overturned pint of stout lay. Mary was on her knees scrubbing the floor.

  "Mary!" Hunter barked. "Where's the boy?”

  "Oh, him?" she said sourly. "Took a swipe of your stout, Cap'n. Ah told him to leave it be! But no, the lad had to go and be stubborn about it!" she groused bitterly. "Turned him green, it did. He said he was feelin' ill, so raced out the back.”

  Without another word, Hunter tore across the room for the back of the tavern. He opened the door so forcefully that it slammed against the wall with a bang while he rushed outside.

  The narrow street that ran behind the White Hart Tavern was empty save for three overgrown, forgotten wooden boxes stacked by the left side of the door. Black birds called out from their perch in the nearby trees that dotted the far side of the road. Jimmy, however, was nowhere to be seen. Hunter took another step out. He looked at the ground, the road, and behind the boxes.

  Finally, Hunter spotted Jimmy's woolen cap next to the road. Beside it were the partial imprints of hooves where a horse had stood for more than a few minutes. Turning the hat over, the captain found a small spot of fresh blood on the inside near the back.

  After a moment of morbid silence, all Hunter could say was, "Damnit, boy."

  Moira raced out of the back door of the tavern. "Cap'n!" she shouted. "Cap'n! It's Lydia! We just checked. She's not in her room! Her window's been cut open, and she's gone!"

  Chapter 28

  The pair of large black horses had raised up to stomp their hooves down onto where the young man lay. Darting back and forth, he tried to roll aside, but the mud and grass in which he lay seemed to clutch at his skin and clothes. Striking once, then twice, the horses missed, only destroying the tendrils of grass that had quickly whipped around him, holding him immobile. The black stallions reared up once more, thrusting their hooves towards William's chest when the young man spasmed awake from the nightmare with a garbled cry. He rolled onto his side with a dazed groan, the throbbing from a thousand drums in the back of his head reminding him – he had awoke from one nightmare only to find himself living in another.

  The young man instinctively tried to reach up and wipe his eyes, only his hands remained where they were, behind his back. Slowly, the veil of fog lifted from his mind. Snatches of memory danced like ghosts at the edge of his perception. A fight in the cemetery, shouts of anger, flashes of white hot pain, then the rough feel of rope while he was being bound, all taunted him with a complete picture of what happened.

  Grunting, William struggled to right himself from a wooden floor, slick with some nameless mucus. After two tries, he managed to get his feet under him, brace against the wall and push up into a sitting position. He tugged experimentally at the rope bonds. They were still secure, however, his feet were unbound. That told him his captors were not worried about him walking away.

  Despite the fact he could not really see, the young man looked around in the pitch-black darkness and sniffed the air. The room still smelled of rotten cabbage, an overpowering odor that made William's stomach turn. He slowly took shallow breaths until he became numb to the smell. He leaned heavily against the wall, flexing his fingers to try and bring some sense of life back. The walls were wooden and seemed familiar. "Only one way ta know," he muttered to himself, slowly sidestepping along the wall, feeling his way with half-numbed fingers.

  Eventually, he found what he was hoping for: the top edge of a loose set of boards tucked away in one corner. With the tips of his fingers, he could just feel the edge of a steel nail protruding from one of them. That meant they were keeping him in the same room. Earlier, he had been awake long enough to find this nail and loose boards before the Irishmen found him and knocked him out cold.

  William stood stock still in the darkness, listening for any sound, any indication that he was about to be discovered like last time. The seconds ticked by slowly. Finally satisfied no one was about to enter, he squatted down on his heels, feeling behind him for where the nail was. Doggedly, he sawed at the rough hemp rope, occasionally pausing every few minutes to try and pull the severed rope in two.

  On the fourth tug, the rope snapped with a dry, brittle shearing sound that, to William, seemed to echo throughout the room. Quickly, he pulled his hands around in front and massaged his wrists to encourage a better sense of feeling into them.

  “Now, just where in the bloody hell am I?” William asked the pitch darkness. As feeling returned to his fingers, he reached out and carefully ran his hands along the walls. They were primarily wooden, with the occasional odd metal band nailed in place. He slowly explored one of the pieces of metal.

  “What’d they put these in here for?” he whispered to himself. Unfortunately, he had no good answer. He reached down, then up. The metal straps seemed to run the height of the walls from the wooden floor to the ceiling, which he could not reach.

  Eventually, with a dissatisfied grunt, he moved on. A minute later, his fingers encountered the frame of what could only be a door. Unfortunately it was closed, with no handle on his side. Stubbornly, he continued exploring, only to discover that not only was there no handle, the hinges were on the other side. He rapped his knuckles on the rough wood out of frustration. The door sounded quite thick.

  “Well, I’m not gettin’ out that way,” he grumbled. With a heavy sigh, he extended his hands to the wall and continued his painstaking search in the heavy darkness.

  Finally, he found what he wanted - a set of boards that seemed to be either swollen or otherwise an ill-fit for the wall. He felt around the discernable edge. The boards, three wide planks in total, extended out just far enough that he could get a purchase with his fingers. Slowly, he tugged. Inch by inch, the boards pulled away from where they had been hastily nailed in place until they came free of the wall.

  Twice while working, William had to stop when he heard voices nearby. He could not hear what they were saying, but he recognized the tone and pitch. They belonged to the two men that had attacked him at Greyfriars. Both times the voices receded quickly into silence. Fortunately, they had no apparent interest in checking on his well-being this time.

  Removing the boards exposed a hole, easily three feet wide and two feet tall, that reeked of coal dust. William grinned. If this was a coal chute, and where he stood was an old coal bin, the chute ought to take him up and out. At the very least, he would be out of the room. Though why there were rotten cabbages in an old coal bin, he just could not understand.

  With a shrug, he got down on his hands and knees in the thin layer of slime coating the floor and crawled up the coal chute. A moment later, William tumbled out the other end, face stained black and eyes burning from coal dust.

  He half-collapsed out of the entrance to the chute, having the last-minute presence of mind to thrust out a hand and catch the small coal-stained door before it could slam shut in the silent room. Carefully, he eased the door back into its resting place, then looked around.

  Open crates, some as large as five feet on a side, were haphazardly clustered about the room. Illuminated in the dusty, stale air by weak shafts of light leaking through the boards far above, their contents sat silently forgotten. From steam engine pistons, turbine fan blades, stout wool and cotton thread to industrial strength needles, all manner of unusual materials were collecting dust. In general, they shared one common trait - most were in need of repair.

  The young man looked up. The wood was old, but not rotten. Here and there, sections of pipe ran in groups of two or three along the ceiling, eventually vanishing upward through rough-cut holes in the aged wood above William’s head. Distantly, machinery was clattering along its repetitive way, but what kind, he had no idea.

  He put a hand over his mouth and coughed at the dust assailing his nose. The young man assumed, based on the pipes and crat
es, he was in a basement of some kind. Where, he had no idea. However, if it was a basement, William knew it had to have at least one or more way out, especially with such large crates laying about. Slowly, carefully, he navigated the maze of boxes until ahead he saw the dim outline of stairs leading up.

  “Finally,” he muttered to himself, racing past the last few crates towards freedom.

  “Sure we can’t be sellin’ just one more?” Conor’s Irish accented voice whined through the gloom.

  William immediately ducked down, scurrying into a dark space beneath the stairs. He closed his eyes a moment, silently repressing a frustrated sigh.

  “I swear, I gotta be cursed,” the young man muttered to himself in the darkness.

  “Use yer head,” Liam snapped back to his accomplice, “we don’t dare.”

  The pair of killers lumbered out of the darkness into view from William’s new hiding place. Liam labored at pulling a long, wooden wheelbarrow behind him. Conor had no cart, but carried Lydia Olivander in his arms, where she dangled like an oversized rag doll. In the cart two figures were slumped over in a pile, however William could not make out who they were.

  Liam set the wheelbarrow down on its stubby front legs. He flexed his fingers, rubbing them as if they ached from the work, and scowled at his partner, “them peelers are sniffin’ around far too close for me comfort. I doubt that they’ll notice the old lady or the kid, but ye never know. And ye rightly know we can’t go and sell off that Olivander girl. I was right there, just like ye were, when the sawbones told us she had plans for her.”