by George Mann
Renwick frowned, suddenly concerned. “What is it?”
“It’s Veronica. She’s in great danger,” he said.
“So you agree? These deaths, they’re the work of the Executioner?” said Renwick-surprised, perhaps, at how readily Newbury had accepted his report.
“Yes,” said Newbury. “Yes, I agree. It’s her. And I have reason to believe that Veronica is likely to become one of her targets. I need to find out who’s directing this woman. I need to get to them before she gets to Veronica.”
Renwick stood, clasping Newbury’s shoulder. “Go, then go. And be careful. With the Executioner on one side and the Cabal on the other, you need to watch your own back, too.”
Newbury smiled, but it was mirthless. “Thank you, Aldous. For everything.”
“Thank me by keeping yourself alive,” said Renwick as he held the door open for Newbury to exit.
“I’ll do my best,” said Newbury over his shoulder as he left.
CHAPTER 23
This man was the same as all the other desperate souls who had sought out her most particular of services over the years. He, like them, had deceived himself that what he was doing-hiring a murderess to despatch those who might oppose him-was ultimately altruistic. He believed he sponsored these terrible deeds because they contributed to the greater good, and that by using her as an instrument to carry out such distasteful and necessary measures he remained one step removed from the responsibility. In other words, he wished to ensure that his hands remained clean and his conscience unblemished. He used phrases such as “a necessary evil” and “if I had any other choice” … but, truthfully, he was fooling only himself.
She had seen men-and women-struggle with such rationales a hundred times before, and she knew this behaviour for what it was. Their fragile minds were unable to cope with the truth: that they shared equally in the responsibility; that they, in effect, were guiding her hand as she hacked apart her victims’ chests and relieved them of their hearts. Men like this (for it was, predominantly, men) entered into the arrangements willingly, enthusiastically even. Afterwards, when she returned to describe the target’s death and show them the leather satchel containing the stolen, bloody organ, they wished to distance themselves from the results almost without fail.
She found this amusing, if, perhaps, a little tiresome. Only the Russian had remained impervious to such things, all those years ago in St. Petersburg. But he had paid for his inquisitiveness with his life.
Of course, she did not really care to understand the motivations of her clients, nor the means by which they made peace with themselves after the event. Hers was not to question, but to act. She understood, however, that in accepting a commission from a man such as this, she also accepted that a role in a political game
This time, though, something was different. The demeanour of the man had changed. Whereas before he had adopted a business-like approach to their encounters, had refused to look her directly in the eye, now he sat staring at her across the table as if imploring her to understand.
He looked tired, with dark rings beneath his eyes, and she wondered if he, too, was plagued by demons. This thought piqued her insatiable curiosity. Was that what it was to feel? It had been so many years, she could no longer remember.
He took another sip of his whisky and cleared his throat, but did not speak. The room was silent, other than the steady ticking of a grandfather clock. It stood in the far corner monotonously checking off the minutes: a steady, mechanical heartbeat, measuring each second.
She found the sound of a clock deeply reassuring. To her it was as if the constant tick-tocking was an echo of the heartbeat at the centre of the universe. It reminded her that she was still alive, despite her inability to appreciate the joy that such a thing should inspire. Indeed, she surrounded herself with clocks wherever she went. Her own heartbeat had died long ago, but in the tiny mechanisms of stolen clocks-often removed from the homes of her victims-she found peace.
The man was ready to speak. She could sense his need to divest himself of his burden. She would listen with ambivalence, and then ask for her instructions. She had no interest in his reasons, or how he felt about them. She wished only to know the name of the person he wanted her to kill.
The man placed both of his palms upon the table, exhaling. When he spoke, it was with great gravitas and solemnity. “I have another task for you,” he said. “There has been an alteration in our circumstances.”
She nodded, but did not reply.
The man reached for a sheaf of papers that he had laid out on the desk earlier in preparation for their meeting. He withdrew a single sheet from amongst the others, cast his eye over it, and then, with a sigh, slid it across to her. She noticed his hand was trembling.
She glanced down at the name and address written on the page:
SIR MAURICE NEWBURY, 1 °CLEVELAND AVENUE, CHELSEA
She took the piece of paper, folded it twice, and slipped it carefully into a concealed pocket.
“It is with great reluctance that I ask you to do this,” he said. “I had, until recently, hoped to spare this particular agent from the fate which awaits his colleagues. However, his tenacity is such that he puts us at risk of exposure.” He paused, looking her directly in the eye. “I ask that you end things swiftly and efficiently, and that you do not, under any circumstances, deprive the body of its heart.”
This was new. He was asking her to alter her modus operandi, to break the habit of almost a century. She had not killed without opening a victim’s chest since she’d fled Montmartre in the 1820s, aside from an incident in Bruges almost twenty years ago, when she had been interrupted in the process of cracking a man’s breastbone and was forced to flee to avoid capture.
She thought she should be outraged by the man’s impertinence, but she looked inside herself and could find no spark of anger, no consternation. Only the perpetual void where her heart had once been.
Outwardly, she shrugged her agreement, and the man nodded, clearly relieved.
Inwardly, however, she decided that she would make her decision after the deed, when the man lay dead before her on the floorboards of his Chelsea home. Only then would she know if she were truly prepared to do it, if she could leave empty-handed, knowing that she was granting the dead man a privilege she had willingly granted no one since her father: allowing him to keep his heart.
“So-you will do it this evening?” asked the man.
“Yes,” she replied, pushing back her chair and standing. “I shall end his life before the night is out.”
CHAPTER 24
Veronica was relieved to discover, upon arrival at Newbury’s house, that Angelchrist had not been invited to join the evening’s conference. She’d half expected to discover the three men-Newbury, Bainbridge, and Angelchrist-already ensconced in the drawing room, deep in conversation. Instead, she found the two old friends hunkered down over a brandy, and couldn’t help but smile as she was instantly reminded of old times.
She stood in the doorway for a moment, leaning against the jamb. The two men looked dour and serious, yet it was the first time she had seen either of them so comfortable in each other’s presence for quite a while. Gone was Bainbridge’s blatant frustration over Newbury’s opium use, replaced by a shared concern that had rendered all other issues between them insubstantial. The way they sat together, brooding and silent, was reminiscent of the way they had acted when she’d first taken her post as Newbury’s assistant, just a year and a half earlier. So much had changed in the intervening months.
Newbury looked healthier than he had for some months, with colour in his cheeks and a gleam in his eyes, though his expression was dark and worrisome. She tried not to recall the sight of him curled up on the rug in the upstairs room, twitching and seizing as he suffered the repercussions from his treatment of her sister.
He must have sensed her standing there, for he looked up, smiling with evident relief. He placed his drink on the coffee table and stood to greet
her.
Bainbridge followed suit, crossing the room to take her hand. “Good evening, Miss Hobbes,” he said.
“Good evening, Sir Charles,” she replied. She glanced at Newbury. “Sir Maurice.”
“We must talk,” said Newbury, hurriedly. He looked concerned, distracted.
“Yes, yes, Newbury. Let the woman get through the door,” said Bainbridge. He raised an eyebrow at Veronica, and she smiled. “Would you care for a drink, Miss Hobbes?” he continued.
“No, thank you,” she said, looking for a place to sit down. The sofa was still piled high with precarious towers of books. She decided she’d be better off perching on the footstool between the two armchairs than risk shifting anything. She’d only end up sending something priceless crashing to the floor. She settled herself on the low stool, enjoying the warmth of the fire at her back. “I take it, then, that you’ve had some success in obtaining the list of agents from the Prince?” she asked, searching Newbury’s face for any clue as to the nature of what was troubling him.
“Indeed,” he said, returning to his seat and producing an envelope from beneath his chair. He held it out to her. She took it and opened it, withdrawing the thin sheaf of papers from inside. As she’d anticipated, it was a long list of names and addresses, written in small print on around eight sheets of paper. “There are more names here than I’d anticipated,” she said. She passed half of them to Bainbridge, who took them and glanced through them eagerly.
“Quite,” said Newbury. “I doubt any one of us were aware of the extent of Her Majesty’s network of agents and spies.”
“Some of them have been struck through in black,” said Bainbridge, pointedly.
“I gather they are all deceased. Killed in the line of duty, presumably,” replied Newbury. He glanced at Veronica, his expression dark. Clearly, he thought there were other, more sinister reasons behind some of those deaths. It was entirely possible that the Queen had removed them to suit her own obscure whims. “The recent murder victims are all present on the list, but not struck through.”
“We’re all named,” said Veronica, scanning the list. She pointed to Newbury’s name, holding the page up for him to see.
He nodded. “Remember, it’s a list of agents, not a list of targets.”
“Which might yet amount to the same thing,” said Bainbridge, bitterly.
“Well, yes. I suppose you have a point,” Newbury conceded. “All the same, we must look for patterns. Were the dead agents all part of a single investigation, for example? There are annotations in the margins denoting key operations. Do they have something in common that might point to a motivation? Revenge, perhaps, from a villain they thwarted? Any or all of these things might point to a reason for their deaths.”
“I can hardly conceive of understanding the motivations of a killer who removes his victims’ hearts as trophies,” said Bainbridge, balefully.
“Ah,” said Newbury, “but it is not the motivations of the killer herself that we’re interested in, but the person who is pulling her strings.”
“Her?” said Veronica, surprised. “You have some notion of the killer’s identity, then?”
Newbury nodded. “There’s more. I’ve been to see Aldous.”
Bainbridge glanced up from the pages on his lap. “He’s found something, hasn’t he? Well, give it up, Newbury!”
“Aldous believes he has identified our murderer,” said Newbury. “A hired killer from Paris, brought over by some enterprising person-or, perhaps, a faction or organisation-with the express purpose of eradicating the Queen’s operatives in London. It has all the hallmarks of a certain individual. A woman.”
“A woman!” echoed Bainbridge, shaking his head. “Did Renwick give you a name?”
“Not a name,” said Newbury, his jaw tightening. “A moniker. She’s known as the Executioner.” He glanced pointedly at Veronica, who felt herself growing suddenly pale.
The Executioner. Was it true, then? Everything that Newbury and Amelia had seen, had told her? That this woman, this killer-for-hire, was to come after her? Was she the next target on the list? She had dreaded this moment since the first time Amelia had uttered that name.
Veronica swallowed, but her mouth was dry. She suppressed her urge to bombard Newbury with questions. She had made her decision, and she would stick to it. She would not flee. The future was not fixed and settled, despite this alarming revelation.
“Is that all?” asked Bainbridge, frowning now over his empty brandy glass. He had evidently downed the contents while she’d been distracted, as he assimilated the new information. “What about the missing hearts? Is there any relevance?”
“That’s her hallmark,” said Newbury. “That’s what led Aldous to the conclusion it was her. It’s said that she never leaves a corpse without first removing its heart. And, as we suspected, they mean something to her. They are symbols of a life she cannot have.”
He glanced from Bainbridge to Veronica. “This is the difficult bit to stomach. According to Aldous, the Executioner is nearly a century old. She’s almost mythical. She appears in the footnotes of history, all across the Continent. Aldous showed me the stories, drawn from esoteric books and papers, woodcuts and etchings. She looms large in the shadows of all the important events that have shaped the world for the last eighty years. She’s always there, in the background, operating on behalf of the highest bidder.”
Bainbridge sighed, placing his empty glass upon the table. “This is ridiculous, Newbury. Utterly ridiculous.”
Newbury held up his hand, staying Bainbridge’s objections. “Hear me out, Charles. I have every reason to believe that Aldous is correct in his assertion.” He took a swig of his own brandy. “The story goes that this woman, who appears as if she’s in her early twenties, wears a substantial metal construction on her left shoulder, and is covered from head to toe in elaborate tattoos”-Veronica raised an eyebrow at the bizarre description-“is actually as much a machine as a human being. Just like the Queen herself, she is part mechanical. The Executioner’s heart has been replaced by a clockwork mechanism that feeds her blood through her veins. Occult enchantments and runic rituals have prevented her flesh from withering, leaving her locked in a sort of permanent stasis. But she has lost something in the process. By becoming something more than human, she has somehow given up her humanity. So now she walks throughout history, massacring people for money and removing their hearts as a reminder of the one thing she can no longer have: a real life of her own.”
Bainbridge was frowning. “Say this is true, that this woman actually exists and is responsible for the deaths. Who is pulling her strings? Who’s this enterprising person you spoke of?”
Newbury shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s what we need to find out. It’s one thing to stop the Executioner herself-and at the moment, I’m no clearer on how we might achieve that; it’s another entirely to identify her employer.”
“Well, let’s consider the facts,” said Veronica. “We have a string of deaths, apparently related only by the fact that the victims are all agents of the Queen. If we assume that’s why they’re being murdered-reasonable enough under the circumstances-then we’re looking for someone who has access to that sort of information.” She held up the sheaf of papers in her hand. “After that, it’s a case of identifying any further links between the victims, just as you suggested. If they were all part of the same operation, for example, that in itself might suggest a potential perpetrator. Otherwise, we may be looking at a person or organisation that has something to be gained by undermining the Queen’s position. In that case, the targets may in fact be chosen at random, and we’re back to the beginning again. Who else besides the Queen and the Prince of Wales might have access to this list of names? A servant? No one would suspect someone such as Sandford, for example. He might be swayed by untoward pressure from a third party.”
“I cannot believe that of Sandford,” said Newbury, frowning. “But you may have a point, nonetheless.”
Newbury nodded. “Good idea.” He glanced at Veronica. She passed the cream-coloured envelope across to Bainbridge, who accepted it with a weary smile. “There’s one other matter we need to address,” said Newbury, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “I have reason to believe that Miss Hobbes may be in danger.”
“From the killer? This Executioner character?” asked Bainbridge. “Whatever gives you that idea, Newbury? If you know something more, you should spit it out. Now’s the time.”
“It’s just … a feeling I have.” He looked at Veronica as he spoke. “A concern.”
“And what do you propose we do, Sir Maurice?” she asked.
“I know you will not be persuaded to leave London, but I suggest that you temporarily move into the spare room here, at Cleveland Avenue. That way, I can protect you if my fears prove to be justified,” he replied.
Bainbridge frowned. “It’s hardly proper, Newbury! You don’t wish to sully the woman’s good reputation, surely?”
“Not at all, Charles. But I do wish to protect her from a murderous assassin who may be hell-bent on eradicating us all. Is it really worth the risk, just to protect a reputation?” said Newbury, firmly.
Veronica felt herself going red in the face. “I am here, you know, gentlemen! I rather think this decision should be made by me!”
Newbury sighed. “Quite so, Veronica. Of course. I apologise if I seem forward. It’s simply that I’m concerned for your well-being.”