Ripper

by Michael Slade

  Probably punched holes in the roof himself, thought Zinc.

  Luna Darke joined them, dress cut to her navel, the depth of her cleavage attracting Hunt’s eyes before it did the men’s. Dolly Parton meets Twiggy, Darke’s grin taunted.

  “You should see the bed in our room,” she said. “Katt was so entranced, Elvira assigned it to us. The bed’s a four-poster so big Henry VIII could have screwed all six wives at once. Wanna bet Craig II had orgies on its springs? They cry out for a menage a trois, or quatre, or cinq, et cetera.” She winked at Alex. “Hot thought, huh?”

  “Yoo-hoo, Alex.” Elvira approached the group. “I need your opinion, dear,” she said, leading Hunt away. Frumped up in a matronly ball of pink chiffon, she reminded Zinc of Margaret Rutherford as a plump Miss Marple.

  “I told you,” he heard Franklen whisper to Hunt in conspiracy. “Nelson Eddy and Rose Marie.”

  Leaving Bolt to ogle, and Darke to flaunt her breasts, Zinc worked his way around the table, noting the seating arrangement. Each place card bore a tiny skull & crossbones. The arrangement was:

  Zinc Chandler

  Stanley Holyoak Adrian Quirk

  Katt Darke Alexis Hunt

  Glen Devlin Lou Bolt

  Wynn Yates Luna Darke

  Colby Smith Barney Melburn

  Pete Leuthard Al Leech

  Elvira Franklen Sol Cohen

  Death

  Sorry, Elvira, Zinc thought. Hope I don’t mess things up. Now what’s the best excuse to pull the old switcheroo? Got it. Quirk.

  Katt and Colonel Sanders’s double flanked Quirk’s wheelchair, parked between the fireplace and the ocean windows. According to Elvira’s thumbsketch in the cab, Dr. Stanley Holyoak, late of Shaughnessy Hospital, was the foremost Sherlockian this side of the Atlantic. Zinc joined them as Katt asked, “What’s a pastiche?” She was drinking champagne with the men. “Looks like I’m about to get busted,” she said, hiding the glass from the Mountie.

  Zinc pulled an Alex, and swiped her hat. Too small, it sat on the top of his head like Stan Laurel’s bowler. The figure of Death on the Tarot card had its own place at the table.

  “The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse,” quipped Quirk. “Behold the pale rider.”

  “A pastiche,” said Holyoak, “is a story that finds its origin in someone else’s work. Unlike a parody which pokes fun at its source, a pastiche is a serious imitation. I write Holmes pastiches. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle penned four novels and fifty-six stories about the Great Detective and his friend Dr. Watson. His work we call the Canon. By ‘we’ I mean Sherlockians who meet in scion groups around the globe. Groups like the Baker Street Irregulars in New York, the Northern Musgraves in Britain, the Red-Headed League in Australia, the Stormy Petrels here.”

  “Cool,” Katt said. “But what do you write about?”

  “In my case, unresolved puzzles in the Canon.”

  “Puzzles like what?”

  “My story ‘The Case of the Oxford Don’ found its source in ‘The Gloria Scott,’ Holmes’s first case. In Conan Doyle’s story, Sherlock speaks of ‘the two years that I was at college’ without naming the school. A man of his intellect would have attended Oxford or Cambridge, but how do we solve which? Holmes tells us Victor Trevor was ‘the only friend I made … and that only through the accident of his bull-terrier freezing onto my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.’ From clues in the Canon we’ve deduced Holmes was a freshman in 1872. Back then, first-year men at Oxford lived in college, and only took lodgings in town during their third year. Cambridge men, however, lodged in town from day one. As dogs aren’t allowed within the grounds of either school, if Holmes was going from lodgings to chapel does that mean he attended Cambridge as only there could Trevor’s dog have chomped his ankle?”

  Franklen tapped a glass with a spoon to summon the sleuths to the table. “The ‘Séance with a Killer’ is about to start,” she announced. Gripping the high-backed wheelchair by its handles, Zinc kept pace with Katt and the doctor so Quirk could hear his theory.

  “In my story,” Holyoak said, “Oxford wins. What if Holmes stepped into the street to buy a paper on his way to chapel? Is that when the dog nipped his ankle? What if the college he attended was one of those at Oxford with buildings on both sides of the street? What if the dog was smuggled in as a practical joke? What if the dog was frightened outside and sought refuge in the grounds? What if Holmes, for a change, went to chapel in town …”

  Zinc tuned the conversation out as Katt and the doctor took their seats at the table, and picked up on Bolt’s renewed sexual harassment of Hunt. “You’ll have more room if you take my place,” he said to Quirk, moving the chair at the head of the table to the space reserved for the wheelchair on the other side.

  “I’ll be fine over there,” Quirk replied, as Zinc parked the wheelchair at his place.

  “I insist,” the Mountie said, moving to catch Alex before she sat beside Bolt. “You’ll be warmer by the fire,” he said, offering her his chair.

  “Thanks,” Alex said with obvious relief, switching places with Zinc to sit down in front of Quirk’s name card while Chandler sat beside Bolt.

  “Silk purse made into a bull’s ear,” Lou complained.

  The new arrangement at the head of the table was this:

  Adrian Quirk

  Stanley Holyoak Alexis Hunt

  Katt Darke Zinc Chandler

  Glen Devlin Lou Bolt

  “Fifteen sleuths arrive for dinner at Castle Crag,” Franklen said. “One of them brings Death as an uninvited guest.” She indicated the place card at the far end of the table. “Let’s begin by finding out who the sleuths are. Sol, you’re busy with dinner so you go first.”

  Chef Boyardee left the hearth and walked to the head of I he table. There he stood with both hands on the back of the wheelchair like a predinner speaker at a podium. At five-foot-one, maybe two, little more than his head was visible over Quirk.

  “My name is Sol Cohen, and I’m your chef tonight. I own Restaurant Murder & la Carte on Granville Island, and was hired by the lord of the manor to cater this party. Our meal this evening begins with …”

  As Cohen described the appetizer and entrée to follow, Zinc recalled Elvira’s thumbsketch in the cab. Sol was head chef at a downtown hotel when he bought a bankrupt bistro on the island in False Creek. As a gimmick to promote his new restaurant, Sol self-published Murder on the Menu, a novella set in his eatery the mystery of which revolved around his “secret recipes.” Thanks to a cheaper dollar and the fact it’s hard to find America as it was in the States, Vancouver has become Hollywood North. Each meal at Murder à la Carte came with the latest edition of Sol’s ever-changing book, while the stars among his clientele considered it trendy to have themselves written in as diners. The original plot saw a film crew dock on the island to eat at Sol’s after a day without food, shooting up Indian Arm. The film was about a husband and wife plotting to kill each other, so the director ordered his leads Sol’s famous beef Wellington aux champignons. The pastry came puffed “his” and “hers” ready to cut asunder, and Sol was asked to halve it with the prop knife from the movie. After the table was cleared and the dishes were in the washer, the male lead dropped dead from poison in the food. If he and his screen wife ate the same dish and nothing else, and if Sol who cooked and set the table wasn’t involved, how was the poison administered to the hapless star?

  Answer: the director had smeared it on the “his” side of the prop’s blade.

  “… followed by beef Cohen with peppercorn sauce, or lamb à la moutarde,” the chef continued.

  “I’m hot,” said Quirk.

  Beads of sweat dotted the disabled man’s brow, while Cohen, closest to the fire after manning the hearth, glistened with perspiration. The issue raised, Zinc felt uncomfortable too, his neck sausaged in the collar of his wool tunic, so he reached to undo the top button, and that’s when the glass of the cabinet beyond Death’s place at the foot of the table exploded
into the room.

  For a moment Chandler thought Franklen had gone too far, hiring Industrial Light & Magic to put on her show, shards of glass spraying the table and tinkling to the floor, the large pieces smashing into fragments as they hit, while candles jumped from their candlesticks to roll across the cloth, and shhhhewwwh shot a streak past his startled eyes, the jet stream behind it causing him to blink, before shhunkk a hole was punched through the back of Quirk’s wheelchair in line with a cut slashed across the side of his neck, followed by a jet of blood that arced like a fountain over the table from where Cohen stood.

  “Hit the floor!” Zinc shouted. “Everybody down!”

  As if reacting to the order, Cohen crashed to the rug. The back of his head bashed the fireplace stones with an ugly squashing sound. Blood bubbled from his mouth like rabies froth, while pump, pump, pump, arterial geysers spurted in time with his heart. The chef’s hat shriveled in the flames that ignited his oil-slicked hair.

  Quirk’s wheelchair was pinned to the table by Sol’s dead weight behind it. Shouting for help, the disabled man toppled it to one side, pulling himself free like a child learning to crawl, dragging his immobile legs as he frantically churned with his arms.

  Chairs tumbled this way and that as the sleuths hugged the floor, those scrambling under the table bonking heads with their counterparts.

  Zinc pushed back, crouched, and gripped his chair like a shield. Then he moved toward the cabinet through the shattered glass of which the shot was fired.

  One hand releasing the chair, Zinc went for his Smith.

  The instinct was there.

  But not the gun.

  Hidden among the sleuths in the room, Skull watched Chandler.

  Hidden among the sleuths in the room, Crossbones watched Skull.

  RIPPER’S CROSS

  Approaching Vancouver

  7:02 P.M.

  “Sorry, son,” DeClercq had said. “Something I had to finish.” He’d turned his attention from the Tarot cards in Jolly Roger to the freckle-faced kid sitting by the window. “Did you find Sea Island in the Fraser River’s mouth?”

  “Here,” the boy said, placing his map on the empty seat between them, a nail-bitten finger stuck to where the runways met.

  The moment DeClercq glanced at the map he saw the Ripper’s Cross. Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge and the Dogfish Burial Pole marked its stem. The left arm of the crossbar was tipped by Musqueam Park. Like the tau cross the Ripper had signed in East End London, the Vancouver cross pointed west, more upside down than upright. DeClercq withdrew his Visa card from his wallet as he imagined a line from Musqueam Park across the stem at right angles to the North Shore. Inserting the card into the slot that released the Airfone, he waited for a dial tone, then rang Special X.

  “Inspector Chan.”

  “Me again.”

  “You read my mind? Communication’s trying to patch a call through to you. An escort named Lyric Stamm’s gone missing from Hans Stryker’s stable. She had a ‘date’ last night and didn’t return. The trick arranged to meet her at the Top Hat Club. Said she’d recognize him by his ‘white dress tie.’ ”

  “Stamm’s dead,” DeClercq said. “They plan to hang her tonight. The North Shore. Lighthouse Park. Near my home.”

  “Wow,” Chan said. “You do read minds?”

  “Long story. Tell you when I get in.”

  “If you get in. Fifty/fifty chance. Warning is to brace for a hell of a storm. Weather office says it may rival Typhoon Frieda in ‘62.”

  “Where’s the storm now?”

  “West coast of the Island. It’s circling but could break out. No planes up or boats out there. If it moves east, you’re off to Abbotsford or Seattle.”

  “Pray,” DeClercq said.

  “That’ll help. God listen to you? He’s always been deaf to me. What makes you think the body will be hung tonight?”

  “Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, they hung Marsh. Wednesday night/Thursday morning was the double event. Tonight/tomorrow morning, they’ll hang Stamm. If we don’t catch ‘em now, a mass slaughter follows.”

  “Want a car at the airport?”

  “Mine’s in the lot. I’ll get Napoleon and meet you at Lighthouse Park.”

  “Rabidowski?”

  “You read minds, too? If Skull & Crossbones arrive, sic the Mad Dog on ‘em.”

  All that was several hours ago, somewhere over the East, before the flight across the prairies took an eternity. To pass the time, Robert had sketched the latest Ripper’s Cross, wondering why he hadn’t drawn the symbol earlier. True, he’d been preoccupied with building cases against Stephenson/D’Onston/Tautriadelta and Samson Marsh, but there was a time when his mind could process a dozen matters at once. A million brain cells die every three weeks he’d read, and as they’re never replaced we have to make do with less. Getting old’s the shits.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Captain Banks speaking. Our descent into Vancouver will be turbulent. Fasten your seat belts securely, and enjoy the view.”

  The plane dropped from a starry sky into a sea of clouds, thunderheads circling to the west like blood-mad sharks. Gazing out at the cosmos before it disappeared, DeClercq had little trouble accepting Jack the Ripper’s and Skull & Crossbones’s motive. In a world of TV evangelists and the Jonestown Massacre, where Charlie Manson thought killing “pigs” would precipitate Helter-Skelter, and religious nuts hole themselves up in armed bunkers awaiting Armageddon, signing the Hanged Man’s symbols in blood to conjure the Devil fit. In a world where scientists accept E = MC2, and the Big Bang as how the universe formed, and Stephen Hawking’s Arrow of Time, and “black holes” where the density of matter in space approaches infinity, and “dark matter” halos around the Milky Way cannibalizing a nearby galaxy, and “wormholes” through warped space and time … In such a cosmos where human thought is E = MC2 energy sparking through our brains, is it irrational to believe mental “wormholes” access the Occult’s Astral Plane?

  Now as the plane broke through the clouds to approach Sea Island from the east, he glimpsed the hazy outline of Vancouver through the rain. And there was the Ripper’s Cross he’d sketched from the young boy’s map:

  North Vancouver

  7:05 P.M.

  After dropping Skull near Thunderbird Charters early this afternoon, Garret Corke had driven across Lions Gate Bridge to the North Shore where he’d rented a motel room on Capilano Road. Locking the door, he’d drawn the drapes before stripping off his clothes, then had removed the Snoopy helmet from his duffel bag. In the years since it had served him during those glorious “lurp” raids in Vietnam, the hood had undergone a few modifications. Now when Corke pulled it on he looked like a hunter’s falcon, the leather completely covering his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, with only the tiniest perforations so he could breath. Gripping the hatchet Skull had given him in one hand, Corkscrew sat cross-legged Indian-style on the cold linoleum floor, his other hand playing with the metal piercings through his cock and balls. For hours he sat in this delicious state of sensory deprivation, honing his stalking skills for the mission ahead, until the stench from the astral graveyard was so strong he erupted all over the floor.

  At seven P.M. his internal clock told him it was time, so he took off the helmet, cleaned up the come, dressed, and left the room.

  Time to hang the body.

  Time to ax DeClercq.

  PHANTOM FINGER

  Deadman’s Island

  7:24 P.M.

  Rounding the end of the table by Cohen’s empty chair, Zinc scooped a still-burning candle off the floor and approached the cabinet from out of the line of fire.

  The display case stood five feet high, backed against the wall beneath the stained-glass window beyond the chairless end of the table reserved for Death. It’s front faced Quirk’s wheelchair at the other end by the fireplace. Through the shattered glass grimed with years of dust, seven shelves were stacked eight inches apart. Displayed on each shelf was a two-an
d-a-half-foot prod resembling a miniature archery bow on its side. The edge of each shelf bore a label describing its weapon:

  A 13th-century crossbow cocked by a cord and pulley;

  A 14th-century crossbow cocked by a claw and belt;

  A 15th-century crossbow cocked by a goat’s-foot lever;

  A 16th-century crossbow cocked by a cranequin;

  A 17th-century slurbow with a barrel like a handgun;

  An 18th-century stonebow for hurling pebbles;

  A 19th-century Chinese repeating crossbow with a bamboo prod from the 1894-95 war with Japan.

  Like a Dutch door opening into a secret passage, the back of the cabinet was ajar. Through the broken glass and between the shelves, Zinc reached in, pushed the panel, and shone the candle inside. The flame revealed a hidden nook filled with undisturbed cobwebs and dust half an inch thick. The cabinet could be secured to the wall by hooks around its back edge latched to eyebolts screwed into the frame of the nook. The hooks were now unlatched. Zinc pulled the cabinet away to expose the cubbyhole behind. The nook was a half-moon enclosure with the same dimensions as the bow in (he wall above which held the stained-glass window, its curve the solid outer stonework of Castle Crag.

  “No one move,” Zinc ordered, turning to the room. “Bolt, you know the drill. Preserve the scene. Devlin, grab a candlestick and come with me.”

  Glen Devlin was one of the muscular pair who’d carried the old deed-trunk up from the cove, and the sleuth who’d provided the Zippo to descend the cellar stairs. Dark-haired and dark-eyed with a keen competitive intensity, he’d be at home thrashing all comers on a court at Wimbledon. A soldier who’d fix his bayonet and gladly take no prisoners, Devlin had the cocky air of a man who could take care of himself and damn everyone else.

  Candlestick gripped like a bludgeon, he followed Zinc.