by Jerico Lenk
Mr. Zayne pulled down the handkerchief he’d tied about his nose and mouth. “She’s a victim, too, eh?” he asked reverently, shaking dirt off his axe.
Clement burrowed lower into his thickly knit neck-wrap. “All we’ve got is a list of deaths and questionable evidence. No suspect. Westwood and the Yard won’t think anything of it unless we have a suspect.”
A fresh snowfall had begun on our way to Abney Park Cemetery; the flakes sparkled along the corpse as Mr. Zayne climbed out of the plot and Clement rummaged for our purging items.
“I don’t know the words,” I said glumly, hands shaking just a bit as I took the pouches and flasks from Clement. “Will you say the words?”
Mr. Zayne crouched, leaning against his upright shovel and holding our little lantern as he watched Clement and I both cross ourselves. As Clement began the banishment rosary, I wandered round the open grave to sprinkle blessed salt, splash holy water and oil. Clement handed me the matches. I struck the flame, and as I dropped the match into the coffin with Miss Weiss, Clement murmured, “Amen.”
Flames skittered along the splashes of sacred oil, crackling as it met kerosene and chancel. The smell of burning hair and putrefying flesh rose with the smoke, ruining the pureness of winter night wind.
As I watched the fire, I noticed Clement’s eyes hanging on me with a sort of melancholy pride. As if he wanted nothing more than to watch me in my newfound confidence and bask in silent adulation the rest of the night—at least until he realised I noticed, probably, the miserably predictable thing.
I should have been excited, I thought, to have found another piece in our cameo ring puzzle. But I didn’t feel anything, really. I was hollow and cold in the most peaceful of ways. Like the way Regent’s Park looked, covered in December snow. Quiet. Indifferent. Happy nothingness.
If we couldn’t find the man who’d killed all these women, I at the very least refused to leave any of them trapped in the in-between, waiting. Forever.
***
Hands stinging with the sudden relief from the cold, I cuddled the hot water bottle for which I’d stopped by the quarters of the dormitory’s night maid, then moved on to the footman’s alcove.
“Hello,” I murmured, peeking in through his door where he nursed a small cup of coffee. Just after four o’clock in the morning—an employment like this turned almost everyone nocturnal, it seemed. “May I leave a message for Officer Dorland?”
The old man squinted at me, skeptically. Perhaps I looked every bit as defeated, and ragged, and cold as I felt. His eyes moved off to the cubbyholes, pencil labels on yellowed cardstock with the names of all the dormitory terrace residents, which once each month were full of bundled bank notes for us all.
“No Dorland on grounds,” he replied, voice light and whispery like autumn leaves on the street. “But I shall drop it with the secretary, for whenever the officer next arrives. What’s the message?”
“If he could please call not later today, but tomorrow—for elevenses? If he’s free. I know tomorrow is Christmas. I shall understand if he postpones.”
The footman gave me a glance as if he judged my request for a meeting on Christmas Day, either way.
I dropped my coat and muffler near the door of my room and emptied out my pockets at the desk. The notes from Mr. Zayne’s books, which Cain and I had used earlier, only to find nothing … the drawing of the circle and little symbols I was most confident were like those in the circle I’d seen, a handful of similar shapes and images from that grimoire …
And that, with Miss Ogden’s drawing, apart from a list of girls who’d died terrible deaths, was all we had.
Feeling dull and bruised inside, as if I could not feel anything else until I got some sleep, I changed and crawled into bed, tucking my toes under the hot water bottle.
Someone stared at me.
My eyes rolled open to the pale apparition of Mary Ann right there at the edge of the bed, her gaze fixed plainly on me in the dark.
“Good Lord—” I half-hissed, startled, pulling the blankets over my head.
“Sorry,” she chirped. “Why do you wear bandages? Are you hurt?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not hurt.”
“Why do you dress as a boy?”
I sighed, still rather disgruntled by the prospect of a peeping ghost. I was not in the frame of mind for it. “Because,” I grumbled. “I can’t just suddenly dress like a girl when I am one, can I? That would cause a hell of a scene and a lot more trouble than I need.”
“Is it fun dressing up as a boy?”
“Mary Ann,” I said firmly, then regretted being so impatient. “It’s not dressing up. Listen, I’m tired. I need rest. Is that all right?”
“I’m sorry, miss!”
I flashed her a reproving glance.
“Sir!” she added. “Daddy always did say children were to be seen and not heard … ”
With a patter of tiny footsteps, Mary Ann drifted away. I peeked over the blanket to watch her. Despite the footsteps, she had no feet. In fact, she had manifested only half a body, from the waist up very defined but somewhat misty. She lingered at the desk, inspecting Cain’s motif notes.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“A riddle,” I mumbled. “Mary Ann, shh.”
“What does ‘pro … pen … city’ mean?” she struggled to read aloud.
“Propensity. A predilection, an inclination.”
“These aren’t like the riddles I’m used to.”
“No, I expect not.”
“Daddy had the prettiest rings,” Mary Ann said on a wistful sigh.
“Did he?” I yawned. Why was I still going on with her?
Mary Ann’s voice emerged from the shadows, full of a little girl’s woe. “My daddy’s cameo rings, from Great Grandmama. He never would let me wear them or play with them … Mamma sometimes did, when he wasn’t home.”
I closed my eyes and hoped she’d understand my silence was a sign for her to go.
“He says they are his good luck charms,” she went on anyway. “But they didn’t work.”
Sighing through my teeth, I said, “I’m very sorry for him. Anyway, I need to sleep, Mary Ann.”
A floorboard creaked in the corner.
“My daddy said he’s a scientist, not an inspector!” Mary Ann’s voice was muffled, tiny and warbled against the scrim between our worlds. “But the rings didn’t work and nobody listened!”
The prettiest rings … good luck charms … Inspector.
And what if … ?
Despite how quickly I sat up and looked to her, Mary Ann was gone again from sight.
“Mary Ann,” I said firmly. I could feel her in the room yet. My heart skipped a beat. Surely it meant nothing. But … “Mary Ann, what do you mean by that? Where is your father?”
“I don’t know. He used to be here.”
I almost forgot to breathe. “Here?”
“They wouldn’t let him do his research!” Mary Ann cried, bodiless, thin and shrill as though she thought she were in trouble.
My mouth went dry. It seemed my voice came not from my throat but from somewhere distant instead as I said, “Your father was here, at the Black Cross?”
“He still is!”
“What’s his title?” I demanded, clutching my blankets. God, but I wished she’d show herself again. “His department? Mary Ann, where is he?”
“Don’t know! I don’t know what you mean!”
“Mary Ann, where did your father go?” The air was cold and full of a brittle urgency. They wouldn’t let him …
Mary Ann’s hopeless voice came from the far corner of the room, like she cowered there invisibly, frightened by my interrogation.
“He said he wants to know where a ghost comes from, and I don’t know where he went because I got sick like Mamma, and he promised I was going to Heaven, and I don’t know about Mamma but I’m still here and Daddy left!”
I felt sick, staring blankly into the shadows of my roo
m. “You lived with your father here?” I could barely drag the words out. “You haven’t a clue where he might be found now?”
“No … ”
“What’s your full name, Mary Ann?”
Mary Ann flickered into existence in the far corner, like a fresh flame dancing up on a candle wick. Seemingly solid again, white and wide-eyed, she chirped as though she didn’t know why I asked, “Why, it’s Mary Ann Joyce Dorland.”
Dorland.
Officer Dorland, holding bottled Jude in his grossly slender hands. The circle under Miss Hughling’s dangling feet. Dorland with a thick cloud of cigar smoke around him, All Hallows’ Eve. Slipping into the Stygian Society with Marius. Speculate as to whether he’s likely to return in spectral form? I hadn’t ever seen a cameo ring on him. Never mind that, what sort of imbecile donned such a distinct accessory while committing unspeakable crimes? Good luck charms.
Surely it couldn’t be that easy. A member of the Black Cross. A man with whom I’d spoken to scarcely twelve hours ago. Jude. Hyacinth. Where a ghost came from. That was it, wasn’t it? It made perfect sense. What else—who else could it be? The Black Cross refused to allow the experimentations he wanted, so he experimented on strangers.
A sick, reprehensible, deranged suspect, one of our own, and I was to meet with him to speak about my mother.
Shaking, I forewent my bandages and just tugged my big cable knit sweater over my nightshirt, nearly tripping as I hurried into socks and shoes and coat. I passed the second night maid, who tended to the occasional iron heating grate and dwindling lamp as I hurried quietly, but urgently, through to King’s Hall and knocked at Clement’s room. Nothing. I knocked again.
Clement flung open his door and he couldn’t even look at me properly before I sputtered, “I know our man!”
Swaddled in his blankets like a child, Clement fiddled around for a cigarette. He ran a hand through his messy hair and met my eyes in a dazed and groggy sort of way.
“Have you slept at all?” he croaked.
“No,” I replied.
He winced like he couldn’t handle as much. “All right … and about what have you arrived so worked up this time?”
“It’s Dorland,” I said. “He’s said many times he—you remember, don’t you? At the girls’ school, his interest in the relationship between cause of death and Electro-Static energy? It’s him and he’s testing his theories on these ladies and if you just come to my room, I have proof, you’ll see!”
It took a moment to sink in for him. But by mid-drag on his cigarette, Clement’s eyes widened and he shoved up from his chair, ditching the blanket for a patchwork coat.
With a pinch to his face, clearly a whirlwind of shock and disgust inside as much as I was, he husked, “Shall we fetch Kingsley?”
***
With Cain still buttoning up a black velvet-backed waistcoat, he and Clement followed me to my room.
“Mary Ann,” I half-whispered, heart thumping, mildly nervous to expose my roommate. “Mary Ann, can you tell them about your daddy?”
“Your room’s haunted,” Clement surmised, raising his brows. “By Dorland’s daughter.”
I shrugged and nodded.
Mary Ann was hesitant at first, watching fearfully from the frosty glass of the window. Cain saw her, too, I realised by his little breath of surprise. And Mary Ann knew it.
“Who’s he?” she mewled.
“This is my friend Cain,” I said gently.
“No, the scary one!”
“My other friend, Clement.”
Clement scoffed, slipping the leather-corded quartz off his throat.
“No, the … never mind.” Mary Ann sounded frustrated. Suddenly she flickered into being near my bed, her hands clasped against her middle, and she peered around at us with such a look of heartbreak.
“Tell them, Mary Ann,” I begged. “They want to hear.”
Appearing overwhelmed by guilt, she told us—as if it were a burden for us to know. Cain turned to me, wide-eyed and alarmed. He seemed in as much disbelief as I that the events at hand had coincided in such a way.
“Will … ” he started, but suddenly Clement moved forward, past Mary Ann, who petered out with a flinch. He drifted to a stop at my bookcase and without a second thought began inspecting the shelves. In his free hand, he wound the leather-corded quartz anxiously between his fingers; he dropped to his haunches and dragged his fingers along the spines of my modest collection. Drew one book and flipped through. Put it back. Another, another, a fourth.
Clement slipped out an older book, one of the few already there when I’d first moved in. Fantasmagoriana. I hadn’t touched that one yet. He stroked the cover with a loving touch, dreadfully silent. With hooked fingers, he opened it at its page marker—a photograph.
He stood. Pulling the little daguerreotype out, Clement first passed it to Cain, who then passed it forthwith to me.
It was a photograph of Mary Ann, standing in the Cross courtyard with whom one could only presume were her mother and father. An extraordinarily petite, wan-looking woman with her hands on a tiny Mary Ann’s shoulders, looked as if she’d married a bit too young. Standing next to them, but without touching them, was Officer Dorland.
I was awestruck. “How did you know this was here?”
Clement shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “I was drawn to it,” he explained finally, with all the shame of an apology. “Psychosensitivity.”
“I put that in the book!” Mary Ann said proudly. “Before Daddy left.”
“Shall we go to Fleet Street?” Cain whispered.
“But it’s the first day of holiday leave,” I said. I checked the clock on my desk. “And … nearly five o’clock in the morning.”
Clement shook his head, returning the quartz to his throat. “Zayne will be there. He lives upstairs, after all.”
As we left, Mary Ann cried softly. But it was a sound of relief, like she’d been waiting for too long to tell anyone about it all.
***
Mr. Zayne’s mouldy book listed the death of Mary Ann Joyce Dorland, buried in early 1875 in Brookwood Cemetery, as an accident due to arsenical poisoning. Clement kept his cocaine out on the table near our mugs of muddy coffee as Mr. Zayne groggily took the better part of an hour to sort through his receipts box for Mary Ann’s actual death certificate and obituary. A mistake of rat poisoning for flour in some morsel or another, it said, but which was never traced to any one cook despite the grieving father’s inquiry.
We were all very quiet, clustered together in the dim, creaking hush of the Fleet Street shop.
Nobody had to speak it.
If what we suspected of what Mary Ann said and what the death ledger read was true, then Dorland might have poisoned his own daughter and left her to haunt the building. It was quite possible I boarded in the very room in which she’d died. And his wife?
“Will we be off to her grave, then?” Mr. Zayne sighed, rubbing his hands together for warmth in the freezing pre-dawn hours of Christmas Eve. “Don’t know which train we’ll catch, but it’ll have to be come morning … all the way to Brookwood … ”
“No,” Clement said. I looked to him sharply—as did Mr. Zayne and Cain. Clement stretched his arms above his head then folded them tight to his chest, hands tucked beneath. “Dorland,” he growled. “The bloody shit of a man. I remember when he petitioned for experimentation rights, too! All this because he can’t have his way, and he’s covering it up so well. What are we to do, then? We don’t have adequate proof to offer the Yard. And what’s to say he hasn’t assistance from a man in their offices in concealing the crimes?”
Cain fidgeted, looking at Clement from the corner of his eye as he announced, “I’ve already sent for Dorland’s present address from our registration office. Inconspicuously, of course.”
“Bless your poor valet.” Mr. Zayne gave a little snort of a tired laugh. Cain smiled in a flat way.
“I’m to meet with Dorland today or tomorrow,” I said, staring
blankly at Mr. Zayne’s death ledger. Each of my companions shot pointed looks my way.
“And why the hell would you?” Clement demanded.
“To speak with him about my mother.” Finally, I looked up at them, brow knotted.
“Will, no,” Cain hissed.
“It’s fine,” I argued, for the first time neglecting kindness with him as he had with me at Miss Ophie’s.
“Agreed,” Clement said. “It’s fine.”
“What?” Cain and I echoed almost in unison. Mr. Zayne’s glance volleyed between all three of us.
Clement fixed his eyes on me with a terrifying measure of trust. No, I couldn’t bear anyone depending on me. Panic throbbed for a heartbeat or two. What could he possibly want?
“Meet with him if you must,” he said thinly, bone-weary and clinging to the cocaine’s alertness. “Do not let on you know a thing. Gain his confidence. Perhaps, if you can manage the act long-term, we might be able to secure a confession from him somehow.” He saluted with just two fingers, a droll gesture at odds with the grave fire in his eyes. “Brilliant, hmm?”
“Brilliant!” Mr. Zayne agreed, but it was mockery. He shook his head very firmly, assuming authority I’d never expected from him. “The three of you have hardly slept a wink these past two days, and I’ll turn you all in for breaching Cross protocol if you don’t get some damn rest before going after this may-be-killer of yours. It’s no empty promise, Clement. Also, build a bloody case. I’ll lend you copies of the death records.”
***
As I’d asked of her, Mary Ann woke me at half-past six o’clock in the evening, and the world was already sullen and bonelike with the slow, wintry dusk. Strange, how it didn’t mean anything to me anymore to accidentally sleep the day away.
There was something both mournful and beautiful about the Cross draped in a soft snow, near empty as it was on the first evening of holiday leave. While the rest of London gathered for Christmas Eve dinners and parties, Cain and I picked at a birdlike dinner of tea and sandwiches—Clement claimed he was not hungry but we made him take food anyway—as we pieced together a pseudo-case. Barely even pre-work standards. Cross-referencing files, Miss Ogden’s psychic drawing and my tentatively sketched summoning circles … scratching up new reports entirely for Miss Weiss and Mary Ann.