by A. W. Exley
She laughed, she knew what it was like to live in servitude to curiosity.
“—I decided to try and hunt down his lineage. There aren’t many Imrus Cseszneky’s with an older brother called Csenger. I only went through about thirty volumes like this before I found them.” He tapped the sprawling tree spanning the two enormous flaps. “These are the only occurrence of those names as only siblings and in the right birth order that I ever found.”
In her mind, she conjured the small boy scanning the hundreds or thousands of names looking for the matching pair. Crouched over the book on the floor, magnifying glass zooming over the pages as he recited each name under his breath. “You must have been bored to tackle this tangled hedge of family lines. Hadn’t found girls yet, huh?” She elbowed him gently.
The rich chuckle bubbled in his throat. “That was the following winter. My studies suffered from that point onward.”
She committed the names and dates to memory. It wasn’t much, but it was better than the empty hands and lack of knowledge she walked into the shop with. “I have my starting point. Now I need to trace him forward through the decades.”
“He swims upriver in time and is a slippery fish.” Malachi followed another branch to another line of the family.
“His river is well and truly frozen now, let’s hope that allows us to trap him.” What did the Curator hope to achieve by freezing the capital? Did he intend to blackmail Victoria or was there some other plan at play?
nsipid sunlight filtered into the room and lit Cara’s eyelids. Awareness of day outside stirred her from the depths of slumber. She yawned and found herself in a cocoon of warmth with Nate’s chest under her cheek and his arm around her back. She pressed herself tighter against him and wiggled her toes. For the first time in weeks, her brain felt recharged, rather than drained. Although her muscles ached from the previous evening, and she needed to get out of bed and stretch before she seized up.
“You barely moved all night. Not even when I carried you from the Pit.” He stroked her shoulder as he spoke. “I am mortally wounded that you fell asleep on me after sex.”
She snorted. “More likely you saw it as a compliment that you made me pass out.” Once her body had relaxed, exhaustion swept her away. She vaguely remembered being wrapped in a blanket, the murmur of voices, and the sway of a carriage, but no more.
His hand stilled. “Did I hurt you?”
She smiled and placed a kiss on his chest, tasting salt. Nate would never hit her, but she made him defend aggressively and they were both covered in sweat long before the fight turned in another direction. Now they could both do with a bath. “No. My body aches but in a good way, and it’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a long time.”
Raising her head, she met his gaze. The tired lines had retreated from around his eyes. Both of them had needed the temporary escape oblivion offered. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “Now I need a wash before I venture out for the day. I smell like sweat and sex.”
He growled and rolled her over, back to the mattress. “My favourite scent on you.”
She emerged from their suite an hour later. Brick waited at the bottom of the stairs. He leaned on the newel post and read the paper.
“Anything about you and Clarence this morning?” she asked.
He snapped the paper shut. “They’re still twittering on about the event at the museum. They call us the Greek Gods of the season.”
She laughed. “I can see that going to your head.”
He swept a hand down his immaculate outfit. “I work hard to look this good you know, as does Clarence. It’s nice to get a little recognition rather than worry about being lynched.”
She looped her arm through his. “You can regale me with your hardships on the way to Belgravia.” Inwardly she was relieved at the ton’s reaction to the unusual couple. The matrons were far more scandalised by Brick’s origins in the Rookery than his sex, but then women were rarely threatened by homosexuality and made a bigger fuss out of using the wrong fork.
Outside, the snow had stopped, but the temperature still hovered in the low single digits and the drifts froze over. The brass and steel horses didn’t complain, and the studs on their shoes rang out as they hit the cobbles under the light covering of powder.
She bounced from the carriage and up the stairs of the sad looking house, then let herself in, long ago having given up on the elderly butler who waved his arms at her, as though trying to shoo her back out.
“I’ll have a walk around, check everything is fine,” Brick said and headed off down the dark hallway.
“Helene?” she called and was rewarded by a muffled noise from the parlour. She pushed open the door and stopped as frozen in time as the Thames.
Helene danced naked around the room. Vertebrae protruded from paper thin skin which pulled over her skeletal frame as she moved. Bright red patches and lesions from the syphilis marred her appearance; otherwise she could have been carved from alabaster. A music box played on a table and the mad countess sang along to the country tune.
Cara frowned and tried to judge how lucid her spinning friend was today. Not very, going by the naked dancing. “Helene, where are your clothes?”
“They itch. Today I want to be free.” She whirled around and around with her arms widespread. Her long grey hair twisted and spun to a different tune. Ends whipped into her face and away again.
“I will fetch you a robe.” She couldn’t have a conversation with a nude twirling countess, it seemed to break one convention too many. She left and hurried up the stairs and down the hall to the main suite. Minnow appeared from his cave under the stairs and trotted alongside. Cara paused by the bedroom door and glared at the large portrait with his mouth taped shut. Small print and the pervading gloom did not for a comfortable reading environment make, but she squinted at the canvas and gave a satisfied cry on seeing Imrus scrawled over a bowl of flowers.
Excited to be on the right path, she bent down and stripped Minnow of his plain tweed jacket and threw it on the end of the bed. Then she grabbed a red silk robe from a hook by the door and jogged back downstairs and hoped Helene hadn’t vanished into the woodwork.
Back in the parlour, the music box had run flat and the dancing ceased. Helene gazed out the dirty window. Cara slid the robe around her shoulders, thankful for the cheerful fire that chased away the chill. At least she’s lucid enough to crank the fire up before stripping.
Helene patted her hand. “When will this end?” she spoke against the glass and her words frosted on the pane. With a fingertip, she traced the path of a lone snowflake as it drifted by outside.
Cara sent up a silent prayer that her friend was in charge of that rattled head of hers. “That’s what I am trying to figure out. I need to talk to you about Henry, or Imrus as some know him.”
A shrill laugh bounced off the window and shot around the room. “I should have known he would have a hand in this.”
“Quite.” She really should have a long chat one day through Helene with those on the other side of the veil, they seemed to know more about what was going on than she did. “I need anything you can tell me about them.” Because conversations with inanimate objects always yield the best information. I’m as mad as she is.
Helene spun and fixed Cara with her a wild stare. Sometimes she displayed a keen intellect and other times only a childlike wonder remained. Today, Cara struck gold, lucidity held tight and her gaze settled.
She held a finger to her lips. “The library, he cannot hear us there because the books protect us.” Then she darted out the door.
Cara chased the sprite down the dark passageway to the quiet sanctuary and pressed the door shut. Another fire burned in the grate and the library exuded cosy warmth. Here, the unnatural winter that tapped at the window was banished and forgotten. She ran a hand over the ancient tomes as she passed the book-lined wall.
“Words have power.” She learned the truth of that at Malachi’s side. She plonked herself d
own in a battered leather armchair, and Helene began.
“They are Hungarian brothers born to a wealthy family. As the only sons, they were spoiled and indulged from the moment they emerged from their mother. With such a beginning, they grew into greedy and arrogant boys never satisfied with what their riches bought. Not just items but women, as many and as beautiful as they wanted.”
Helene spoke with her hands and every word carried nuance and inflection. She held Cara rapt as though she spun her tales around the Gypsy campfire and conjured a story not unlike a Grimm fairytale.
“How did you learn all this?” she asked when Helene paused to fill a glass with water.
“Henry used to talk a lot, trying to impress me.” She rolled her eyes and scoffed a laugh. “I am a countess, and they are not the princelings they like to think they are.”
Cara frowned. “What happened to Henry? Why is he tied to the painting?”
“They grew into handsome young men and travelled Europe, seducing women and collecting anything bright and colourful that caught their attention. In 1687, Imrus despoiled the wrong virgin. He was called out in a duel by the girl’s enraged brother and took a wound above his heart.”
“He died?” Oh to have a protective sibling, if she had an older brother, would he have saved her and killed her abuser? Perhaps he would have stood up to her father and she would never have fallen into Clayton’s clutches in the first instance. She shook her head. The past was full of so many fractured paths, she could lose herself trying to walk them all.
“He suffered a painful, lingering death from infection.” A bright and vindictive gleam crept into Helene’s eyes. “The painting was a recent commission at the time, Henry says he touched it as he passed and escaped the Devil’s outstretched clutches by giving his soul to the picture instead.”
“There are days when I wish I had stayed away from London, and then a painting would have just been a painting,” Cara muttered.
Helene barked in laughter. “And what of Nathaniel, if you had tried to escape your fate?”
“He probably would have found me eventually.” She stuck her tongue out at Helene. Of course she wouldn’t give up Nate just to have a normal life again, but that didn’t stop her speculating. “What happened to Csenger after Imrus died?”
“Ah.” Helene’s hands took flight again. “He was bereft and for a long time he even changed his ways. He devoted himself to study with a particular interest in languages, history and antiquities.”
An academic path seemed to lead some scholars to the ancient artifacts.
Cara leaned back in the chair and mulled over the knowledge. “Does a leopard really change its spots? Or did he take a new direction for a different reason?”
Like her father, so bereaved after her mother died in childbirth. Did the two men share a common purpose? Did Csenger undertake study in an effort to find a way to resurrect his brother? Which begged the question of who put him on that path? Who mentored the future-Curator who mentored her father? Possibilities splintered into a thousand shards and she tried to focus on the main one. “How did Csenger become the Curator?”
Helene smiled and nodded as though satisfied she asked the right questions. “As a wealthy man, he always collected bright baubles; but with increased knowledge, he became selective. He sought very particular, very powerful, items. Over the last one hundred and fifty years, he has evolved into what you see today.”
Cara let out a breath. “Henry’s death resulted in him learning about artifacts. But why does Henry disturb your sleep?”
Her friend battled for control of her fractured senses and Cara’s heart sank as her gaze drifted away. Yet, her words still carried and cut through Cara. “He believes his brother will revive him, one day. Csenger will control London until he has that which they seek. Then they will be reborn and set free on the world once more.”
Csenger and Lucas did share a goal, they both sought to reverse a death. Which brought her back to the main question; was the item they hunted to resurrect their loved ones also responsible for draining London, or were they two separate things?
nspector Fraser stared at the overturned chair, the only sign of any disturbance in the small room. The bed was made with not a wrinkle on the wool blankets pulled taunt over the mattress. Someone had swept the grate and set a new fire, it just waited for a match to light the tinder. The square table under the window gleamed with fresh wax. On the surface sat a glass vase with a single bract of pussy willow, the furry heads undisturbed by events played out a few feet away.
Returning his attention to the tossed chair, he raised his gaze six inches above the wooden seat to a pair of work boots. A dockworker’s, or perhaps a builder’s? The well-waxed leather was scuffed and cracked from long use, but no grime or mud marred the soles. His eyes kept travelling north over hardwearing canvas pants with reinforced knees. Then came a navy wool jumper in plain fisherman’s rib, functional and able to keep out the chill bite of the wind. His gaze kept moving up until it stopped at the rough hessian rope, his mind blanked out the distended tongue and bloated purple face above the tight knot. He wanted to figure out who the man had been while alive and not focus on the ugly image he became in death.
He sighed, he saw far too many visages like this lately. “Suicide.”
The sergeant clutched his pencil and notebook. “You satisfied with that?”
His gaze swept the room once more and he ran through a mental checklist. “Yes, nothing is disturbed. The chair is within his reach and there are no apparent defensive wounds on his arms. And, of course, the door was locked from the inside.” The deceased had thoughtfully slipped a note under his landlord’s door before slipping on his noose. The agitated man waved down a uniform in the street saying he held grave concerns for his tenant. Fears that proved correct once they poked the key through the lock with a piece of wire, and the landlord let them in with his master key.
At a signal from Fraser, two other uniformed Enforcers approached the corpse. One man held him around the legs while the other righted the chair, and then used it to reach up to cut the rope around the exposed beam. Once freed, they wrapped the deceased in a plain calico body bag for removal from the tenement.
“Another one gone to meet his maker too early.” Fraser watched the distended face disappear under the fabric. His mind swam in a stream of possibilities as he closed his eyes. He saw his body slumped in the chair by his fire as a fellow inspector declared death by excessive laudanum while unformed men wrapped him in unbleached cotton.
The rational part of him knew he chased his habit too far, but the bone weary part of him didn’t care. He longed for release, and if it came accidentally, well, that gave him wriggle room to argue with Saint Peter at the pearly gates.
“It’s this blasted cold. It’s not natural and it’s got people spooked.” Connor finished writing up the death in his notebook and slid it back into a pocket on the side of his trousers.
“The irony is that people seek to escape God’s wrath on Earth by taking their own lives, and therefore guarantee his displeasure in the afterlife.” If he sipped too much poppy, would God believe his death was accidental? Each time he settled in his armchair he wondered if it would be the day that his exhausted brain no longer saw the razor’s edge his body had to balance upon.
Connor snorted. “Perhaps this fellow would rather toast his balls in hell than freeze them off in London.”
“Quite.” Fraser smiled as he followed the sombre procession down the narrow stairs and out to the street. The men placed the body in the back of their steam carriage for transportation to headquarters, where the doctor would make his pronouncement. Fraser pulled on his gloves and tightened his scarf. Then tugged it loose when his neck felt strangely constricted after spending time with the hanged man. “I shall walk back to headquarters.”
Connor saluted and hopped up onto the carriage, preferring to ride outside and risk the cold over the smoke filled interior below.
Frase
r’s body walked the pavement with easy familiarity, knowing which road to cross and which direction to take at intersections. His mind wandered in a different direction. For three years, he worked a particular case. Over the last year, his fervour built to see it concluded. Now he found his witness, the one person willing to stand before a magistrate. Where there is one, surely others will now follow. His hands itched inside his gloves as though he had only to reach out and squeeze Lyons’ neck. So close.
Taking over the Rookery was an odd step in Lyons’ career. Even more bizarre, he cleaned out the drains and repaired roves. Was it all for show, while his desperation for money demanded a cut of petty theft and prostitution? He tried to trace financial records to find evidence of criminal activity, but everything led to Lyons Cargo and was wrapped in the veil of legitimacy. The lawyer McToon squashed every request he made for open access to all accounting records. The argument there was no hint of wrongdoing by the business and therefore the Enforcers had no right to know the financial position of a peer.
Peer. Lyons hid behind that word, thinking his position in society and with the queen held him above the law. Fraser kicked a stone in his path, and it scuttled to one side and dropped off the edge of the pavement.
Invoices and cargo manifests would never be sufficient. Not that he cared if Lyons imported tea or dynamite nor if he sold silk or women. He wanted him to hang for his more despicable crimes. Murder. Whispers told of his penchant for blades and the mess on his hands. That he kept a secret room deep underground for the sole purpose of indulging his blood lust. It was up to him to expose the monster in their midst, to rip aside the mask and show society that the man sitting at their table was no more than a hideous demon.
Feet appeared in his view and shook him from dreams of revenge. He halted when the feet failed to move from his path. His gaze focused on the world around, and before him stood Fanny Brandt with a man’s long coat wrapped around her body and a grey woollen scarf over her hair and twisted around her neck.