Blenkinsop drew the homburg from his head and held it slackly in his hands, turning it slowly by the brim. “There’s been a murder—no, not a murder. That ain’t right. I guess you’d properly call it … an assassination.”
Conan Doyle and Wilde exchanged stunned glances.
“Are we permitted to know whom?” Wilde asked.
The young detective’s expression grew tragic. “The whole world will know soon enough: Lord Howell.”
Both Wilde and Conan Doyle grunted as if gut-punched.
“The prime minister’s secretary for war,” Conan Doyle muttered in shocked tones.
Wilde leaned forward, his expression tense. “An assassination, you say? Do you suspect the party or parties responsible for such an act?”
Blenkinsop shook his head. “Not a clue. Right now all we got is the body. But it’s not just the murder. It’s how he was murdered. The murder scene…” A gasp tore loose from Blenkinsop, whose eyes lost focus as he stared blankly into space. “I can’t tell ya no more. I can’t describe it. I seen some dark doings in me days as a copper. But I ain’t never seen nothing like this. When I shut me eyes, I can still see it.”
With Blenkinsop unwilling to reveal more, the men fell into a tense silence for the rest of the journey. Held to a slow walk by the fog, the horses clop-clopped through deserted streets, at times narrowly avoiding horseless, abandoned carriages that loomed like shipwrecks in the fog. And so the Black Mariah took thirty minutes to travel less than a mile to reach its destination. When Conan Doyle and Wilde finally climbed out, the fog had grown thicker still, caging the streetlamps in tremulous globes of light.
Conan Doyle, who knew London intimately, looked about, utterly lost, and asked in a baffled voice, “Where the devil are we?”
“Belgravia, sir,” Detective Blenkinsop answered. He nodded toward the limestone façade of a handsome residence where two constables stood guard on either side of the front gate. “That there is Lord Howell’s residence.”
As he spoke, a third constable came staggering out of the house. He wobbled a rubber-legged path to the pavement where he doubled over and vomited explosively into the gutter. Conan Doyle and Wilde jumped back to avoid having their shoes splashed as a second wave hit and the officer gargled up the remainder of his dinner. As he sagged to his knees, clutching the railings for support, the young constable looked up at them, his face wretched with horror, and moaned, “Don’t go in there!”
Conan Doyle shared a look with Wilde, whose eyes were saucered, his complexion waxen and ghastly in the otherworldly throb of gaslight.
“Oscar, perhaps it would be better if you remained outside. As a medical doctor, I am used to such sights—”
“No,” Wilde shook his head. “If I do not see for myself then you shall be forced to describe it to me, and I fear my imagination excels when it comes to fathoming horrible things from nothing.”
“Right then,” Conan Doyle said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Boyle! Jennings!” Blenkinsop called to the two officers posted on either side of the gate. Lend the gentlemen your rain capes,” he fixed the two friends with a dire look. “You’ll be needin’ them, I reckon.”
With their fine clothes protected beneath long police rain capes, Conan Doyle and Wilde cautiously stepped up to the front door—or rather, what remained of it. A solid chunk of milled and planed English oak, the door had been smashed violently inward, tearing the mortise lock completely through the doorframe and wrenching two of the three hinges loose. Once painted ivory, the door gleamed crimson with spattered gore. The two friends stood goggling at the site, which bore mute testament to an act of extreme violence. Although the door had been solidly locked—they could see the exposed brass tenon—something with the force of a steam locomotive had smashed straight through it. They entered the house and found the marble tiles of the entrance hall slippery with blood. The footprints of every police officer that had entered the space tracked in all directions, like macabre steps in a dance studio from hell. Conan Doyle cast a doubting look at his tall Irish friend. “Really, Oscar, I don’t think there’s a need for you to see this.”
Wilde, who had yanked a scented handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it over his nose and mouth, shook his head. “No,” he said in a muffled voice. “Proceed. I have witnessed the dreadful prologue. I must see how the act ends.”
Their feet slithered across blood-slick tiles to a front parlor where the same maniacal force had also ripped the lighter parlor door to splinters. Inside the room, toppled chairs and broken furniture testified to a dreadful struggle. The tepid air of the parlor roiled with the ferric tang of blood. Beside an overturned divan, a body lay on the floor. Conan Doyle stepped around a broken end table to inspect it.
The corpse had a face both men recognized from the newspapers: Lord Montague Howell, hero of the battle of Alma and the siege of Sevastopol—amongst a score of Crimean campaigns. Miraculously, the handsome features had escaped unscathed; the blue eyes retained a calm gaze, the lids drooped slightly, a rictus-smile drawing back the lips, showing strong white teeth beneath a scrupulously groomed brown moustache. However, Lord Howell’s head was unnaturally kinked upon his neck.
With his years of medical experience, Conan Doyle was used to blood and death, but as he stepped closer, his gorge rose and invisible needles tattooed his face as he saw, to his horror, that the body was lying chest down.
The head had been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, so that it pointed in the wrong direction.
“Dear God!” he gasped. “His neck has been wrung like a pigeon’s.” He crouched down to examine ten finger-sized bruises, five tattooed on either side of the neck. “And by someone with a demon’s grip.”
Wilde made a dry heaving sound and gripped a drinks cabinet to steady himself. “I think I shall look for clues outside,” he said in a squeezed-tight voice.
“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed. “Detective Blenkinsop, please help Mister Wilde.”
The young detective took Wilde firmly by the arm and walked him out of the room.
As they left, two new constables crowded in through the parlor door, gawking at the corpse.
“Lumme! What’d I tell ya, Alfie?” the first said, elbowing his companion.
“Yer right, Stan. Won’t nobody be sneakin’ up on him from behind now!”
The prospect of the horrifying tableau becoming a macabre attraction struck a nerve with Conan Doyle. He rose to his feet and bellowed at the young constables: “Show some respect, damn you! This man was a hero of the British Empire. He was at the Charge of the Light Brigade and earned the Victoria Cross for valor!”
Detective Blenkinsop stepped back into the room just in time to hear. He threw a scowl at the two constables and jerked a thumb at the door, saying, “Right, you two, hop it!”
The young constables skulked out, heads lowered in shame. Conan Doyle took in a deep breath, bracing himself, and then dropped to his knees and rolled the body over. Once turned upon on its back, he took the noble head in both hands and turned it the right way around. The corpse wore evening dress, the once-elegant tuxedo jacket glutinous with congealing blood.
“Dressed for dinner,” he noted. “Lord Howell was evidently about to go out.”
He paused and sniffed in deeply. A bitter tang of cordite spooled in the air. He looked down to see the fingers of Lord Howell’s right hand still curled about the trigger of a revolver—a Webley Mark IV. Conan Doyle eased it from fingers stiffening with rigor and snapped open the barrel with a practiced flick of the wrist and dumped out a handful of spent shell casings into his palm.
“All six rounds have been fired.”
Conan Doyle gripped the corpse’s wrist. The body was cold and when he lifted the arm, it bent like a strip of India rubber—the bones had been smashed to fragments. He unbuttoned the tuxedo jacket and peeled open the blood-soaked fabric. A moment’s palpation revealed that the sternum and every rib were broken. He concluded
his examination by patting down the stomach and legs, searching for bullet wounds. To his astonishment, he found not a one.
And then he looked up and his mouth dropped open in astonishment. One wall bore the bloody imprint of a body. He rose and stumbled closer. Something had hurled Lord Howell’s body at the wall with tremendous force, leaving a man-sized dent in the plaster and a ballistic spray of blood.
“What on earth could have done this?” Conan Doyle breathed.
Blenkinsop shook his head, baffled. “Now you know why I fetched you, sir. I can’t fathom none of it.”
The Scottish doctor finally turned away from his ghoulish task, wiping sticky blood from his hands on a handkerchief. He flashed a grim look at Detective Blenkinsop. “I can find no bullet wounds. Not a single one. That can only mean—”
“All this blood?” Blenkinsop interjected. “It’s not his?”
“Unbelievable, but yes.”
“There must have been multiple assailants,” Conan Doyle speculated. “Lord Howell fired six shots, many of which clearly found their target. If a single man lost that much blood he would have died on the spot.”
“If it was something human what killed him.” Detective Blenkinsop spoke aloud what Conan Doyle had secretly conjectured. The smashed front door, the demolished parlor, the body hurled against the wall and then beaten to a bag of broken bones—all after six shots spilled pints of blood everywhere—defied rational explanation. It seemed more like the attack of a raging monster than a man … or men.
“Pardon, Detective, but I must step outside to clear my head.”
When Conan Doyle emerged through the ruined doorway, Wilde was lurking by the front gate, smoking a cigarette. The Irishman saw Conan Doyle approach and drew him farther away with a nod.
“What is it, Oscar?”
“I believe I have spotted what your fellow Sherlock Holmes would have referred to as ‘a clue.’”
Conan Doyle’s eyebrows rose. He leaned close and whispered, “What?”
“Look at the gatepost on the right.” Wilde drew out his silver cigarette case, opened it with a practiced flick, and held it out to the two constables standing guard. “Care for a cigarette?”
The nearest constable turned his head, sneaking a subtle look-around. “Very decent of you, sir. Don’t mind if I do.” As he stepped forward, the gatepost he had been shielding came into view, giving Conan Doyle clear sight of a figure scrawled in chalk:
“Much obliged, sir. I’ll smoke it later.” The constable grinned as he tucked the cigarette in a pocket and stepped back to his post, hiding the chalk scrawl once again.
Conan Doyle and Wilde casually stepped away, leaning their heads together to confer.
“Just random graffiti?” Conan Doyle pondered.
“We are in Belgravia. A place where the idle scribbler and his ball of chalk seldom make an appearance.”
“Quite right.”
Something caught Conan Doyle’s eye, and he tugged at his friend’s sleeve, nodding at the road. “If you look at just the right angle, you can see a trail of bloody footprints leading off into the fog.”
The Irish wit peered down, eyes asquint. “Ah yes, I see them now. Should we inform your detective friend?”
Conan Doyle shook his head. “Not just yet. Perhaps you and I should investigate before the London constabulary has a chance to tramp all over them with their regulation size nines.” He stepped onto the road and nodded for his friend to follow. “Come, Oscar. Let’s see where they lead.”
Wilde’s face plummeted. “Ah, you expect me to accompany you? I had rather planned on standing sentinel at the front gate.”
“I need you to watch my back.”
Wilde’s expression betrayed a decided lack of enthusiasm. “Which begs the question, who shall watch mine?”
Conan Doyle stepped from the curb into the street and Wilde reluctantly traipsed after. In less than ten strides, the house, the Mariah, and the police officers vanished from sight.
“I do not think we should stray too far,” Wilde worried aloud, “lest we become lost in the fog.”
Conan Doyle did not reply. He had his head down, eyes scouring the pavement for footprints. They reached a low garden wall daubed with a bloody handprint.
“Look! He put out a hand here to steady himself.” Conan Doyle looked at Wilde and spoke in a voice coiled tight with urgency. “Come, the assailant cannot be far ahead.”
“That is precisely what I am afraid of.”
“Judging by the staggering gait, if the murderer is still alive, he’s badly wounded and unlikely to be a danger to us.”
They followed the trail of fading footprints as they reeled around a corner into a side street. But instead of petering out, the footsteps carried on. And on. And on. Until finally, in a circle of light beneath a streetlamp, they found the bloody corpse of a large man slumped facedown on the pavement, the staring eyes opaque with death.
“Riddled from front to back with bullet wounds,” Conan Doyle said. “I count at least five.” He fixed Wilde with an urgent look. “Guard the body, Oscar, I must fetch Detective Blenkinsop at once.”
Distress flashed across Wilde’s long face. “Come now, Arthur,” he laughed shakily. “Dead bodies require little guarding. Who would wish to steal one? I have seen my share of wakes and lyings-in growing up in Ireland and I have found that the dead seldom make for good company. They are poor conversationalists, and should one actually speak, I am sure it should have nothing I would like to hear.”
“Very well. You fetch Detective Blenkinsop and I shall remain behind.”
Wilde took one step away from the pool of light beneath the streetlamp and recoiled. It was clear he realized that becoming lost in the fog was a real possibility.
“On second thought,” he corrected, “you are quite right. It would be better if I remained here whilst you return for help.”
As Conan Doyle moved to step away, Wilde death-gripped his arm. “This would be an appropriate time for haste, Arthur.”
“I shall not dilly-dally.” In just three steps the fog swallowed the Scottish author. Two more and it suffocated even the sound of his footfalls.
Instantly, Wilde found himself totally … utterly … alone. A solitary figure marooned on an island of lamplight, his isolation was palpable. The street. The houses. London … no longer existed.
It was a bitter night. He squirmed his shoulders deeper into his fur coat, large hands rummaging for warmth in his fur-lined pockets. Cold radiated up from the pavement through the soles of his shiny leather shoes. He stamped his feet, setting frozen toes tingling. Reluctant to look back at the bullet-riddled corpse, he gazed instead into the seething grayness, shivering from more than the November chill.
Long … long … long minutes passed.
“Really,” he said aloud to keep himself company, “what is taking Arthur so long?” He finished his cigarette and tossed the glowing fag end away, then fumbled his silver cigarette case from his pocket, flicked a lucifer to life with his thumbnail, kindled another cigarette with shaking hands, and gloved them in his pockets once again. He drew in a comforting lungful of warm smoke and let it out. Then, from somewhere, a faint noise caught his ear: wisssshthump … wisssssshthump … wissssssshthump …
It was a noise somehow familiar. He looked around, straining his eyes. The fog curled into arabesques, as though stirred by invisible shapes moving through it. A nervous glance confirmed the body was still there. But then, as he watched, the fingers of the left hand twitched.
Wilde’s eyes widened.
The left leg shivered and kicked.
The cigarette tumbled from Wilde’s lips.
The corpse heaved; the chest rose and fell.
Wilde’s head quivered atop his neck, but he could not look away.
And then, the arm flexed. Shifted. Drew back. A bloody hand grappled for a handhold and the corpse began to push itself up from the pavement.
Wilde took a step backward.
A plume of steam shot out both its nostrils with a pneumatic hissssssssssssss.
Wilde stumbled backward several steps, unaware of the shape looming in the fog behind him.
The arm suddenly buckled and the corpse slumped facedown to the pavement with an expiring wheeze.
Wilde shrieked as a hand clamped upon his shoulder and a ghastly glowing face swam up through the fog. “It’s me, Oscar.” Conan Doyle was holding a police officer’s bull’s-eye lantern that lit his face eerily from below. A second wraith materialized beside him: Detective Blenkinsop.
“It moved,” Wilde said breathlessly. “It groaned and moved.”
“That happens,” Conan Doyle reassured. “Dead bodies are filled with gases. They gurgle. They twitch. Sometimes sit up. I have experienced it myself, working the morgue as a medical student. It’s simply—”
“No, you fail to understand. It struggled to rise—”
“Oscar, I assure you, the fellow is quite dead.”
But despite the reassurance, the Irishman was reluctant to approach any closer. Conan Doyle and Detective Blenkinsop stepped to the body, hitched their trouser legs, and dropped to a crouch for a closer examination. Lit from below, the glare from the bull’s-eye lanterns stretched their faces into black-socketed fright masks.
“I count five bullet holes,” Conan Doyle said.
“Lord Howell was quite the marksman. He only missed once.”
“How on earth did the man stagger this far after taking five bullets? It’s almost as if he walked until he ran out of blood.”
Blenkinsop shook his head. “Like I said, something awful queer…”
Conan Doyle did not respond. The night. The fog. The grotesque murder. Everything conspired to twist minds in an eldritch direction. Determined not to lose his grip on rationality, he asked, “When do you estimate this happened?”
“The neighbors said they heard a row about six o’clock. A lot of shoutin’ and yellin’. Then shots. Five or more. A footman from the house two doors down was sent to run and fetch the police. But it took a while for a constable to arrive—what with the fog and all.”
The Dead Assassin Page 2