City of Darkness

by Kim Wright

  City of Darkness

  City of Mystery, Book 1

  By Kim Wright

  To the Brinker’s Writing Group:

  Ed, Paul, Shontelle, Laura, Leigh, Mark, and Alan.

  You read every line, every paragraph, every draft.

  PROLOGUE

  August 7, 1888

  2:25 AM

  She saw the coins first. She always did. A palm filled with silver and copper, extended from the shadows, held by a man dressed in dark broadcloth. A man whose hands were clean.

  This was a lucky turn, for Martha had not secured a single gentleman all evening. She’d been roaming the pale gray streets of Whitechapel since ten, looking for a last-minute sailor – even a drunken or aged one, perhaps, for who could afford to be choosy with the hour so late and the stomach so empty? She’d smiled hopefully at each man she’d passed, and now, just as she’d been on the verge of turning back, her persistence had finally been rewarded.

  She took the arm he offered her with dignity, as if she were being led to the center of a ballroom. Martha suggested the lodgings she shared with a half-dozen other girls, for they weren’t far away, but the stranger declined, steering her instead toward one of the innumerable alleys which flanked the waterfront. A gentleman, yes, but apparently a gentleman in a hurry. The men who wore black broadcloth were often in a hurry, Martha had noticed. They never seemed to need much preamble, rarely expected her to open the front of her dress, didn’t request a name or a kiss. All the better. She’d be at the pub within minutes, money in hand.

  The man breathed something into her ear and extended an arm around her waist. Liked taking it from the back, he did, as was often the case with men who could afford wives and carriages and Mayfair homes and perhaps even a bit of a conscience, the greatest middle-class luxury of all. This was doubtless why they turned the faces of the whores away from their own, why they arched their backs and concluded the matter so fast. Martha didn’t mind. She’d always figured that whatever a gentleman pictured when he closed his eyes was no business of hers. She let the man turn her. She pressed both hands against the chipped brick wall and bent forward obligingly, giving him access to what he’d paid for, her mind on the coins and what they would buy. Beer and bread and stew, enough to fill her and perhaps a friend, because Martha Tabram was a generous sort, never able to enjoy her own supper while another went hungry, quick enough to give an extra twist or a moan if the man had clearly gone lacking for a while. We’re all in this dark world together, she figured. None of us saints.

  But the man did not lift her skirts. Instead, he murmured some words that Martha didn’t quite catch, and then she felt a strange tug at her throat. He had begun to laugh, a low uneven chuckle.

  Something was wrong.

  She tried to scream, but all that came out was a gurgle and, looking down, she saw the front of her gown turning dark. Her lungs ached for a breath that was not there, and the weight of her own body began to feel impossibly heavy. She raised her hand to her throat and felt blood spurting out, running through her fingers like water from a pump. Red, warm, and sticky.

  He released her. She fell at his feet. A light flared from above – was he striking a match? - and dimly illuminated the cracks of the cobblestones. The pools of blood grew larger and blacker around her until she could no longer see, but the other senses were still with her and she could smell, yes, the sulfur of the stranger’s match and the rich warm earthiness of his tobacco. It was the smell of her father and if Martha could speak she would have said “Papa?” She would have asked her father to pick her up and carry her away from this place, carry her like a child. There was a sound, the clink of metal against stone. Once, then again and again. Silver coins rained down into the street and the last emotion Martha Tabram felt was surprise.

  He was paying her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  September 9, 1888

  2:14 PM

  “Grandfather certainly picked an inconvenient time to die,” Cecil muttered, gazing out the carriage window into the shimmering heat of late summer. “The Wentworths are having their ball on Friday and I – “

  “Will be home well before then,“ William said sharply. “How long can it take to read a will? It won’t be like last week with the funeral arrangements and all those bloody scientists coming in from all over the continent. This is just the family.”

  Ah yes, just the family, Tom Bainbridge thought, glancing from one of his brothers to the other. Just the blessed family. Cecil and William had been dreaming of this day for years. The one when William would at long last inherit, and although they’d been on the road to his grandfather’s estate for more than an hour, William’s hands still gripped his cane with palpable tension. Tom’s mother and his sister Leanna sat across from the three men, their faces obscured by their mourning veils. Tom suspected there were many unspoken advantages to being female, and one of them was the privilege of hiding one’s thoughts behind a curtain of lace. Leanna had been weeping for a week, and she now sat slumped silently against the shabby blue velvet of the carriage wall, as if she no longer had the strength to even cry.

  “Do you think you could manage to show a little more respect?” their mother asked icily. She was the calmest of the lot, perhaps because Leonard Bainbridge had been a father-in-law and not a father, but more likely because the events of her life had taught Gwynette the virtue of patience. She was the only one in the carriage who was traveling to Rosemoral with neither grief nor hope. “Those scientists were Leonard’s colleagues and they’d come from great distance, at great inconvenience I would imagine, to pay tribute to what he had done with his life.”

  “Gad, mother, what was that?” Cecil said, hitting Leanna’s knee as he shook a fly off his top hat. “Taking an estate like Rosemoral and turning it into some sort of ridiculous laboratory with ape skeletons lying about the place? The last time I was there he had a full scale model of the….the digestive tract of a pig sitting on the French tea cart the Prince of Wales gave Grandmama.”

  “It was his tea cart, not yours,” Tom snapped. “And if that’s truly the last thing you remember, it only shows how rarely you visited him. He hasn’t done digestive experiments for years.”

  The carriage gave a sudden lurch. It had been some time since the family had been able to afford a matched team, so for this long and heavy journey to Rosemoral, a short-legged pony had been yoked to an aging horse, resulting in a remarkably uneven ride. Just one more indignity in a series of indignities, Cecil thought, shifting towards his younger brother, who’d nearly been unseated by this most recent bounce. “Naturally, you and Leanna would defend anything Grandfather chose to do in his dotage, even if it did involve displaying the remains of farm animals on priceless antiques.”

  “This is neither the time nor place for this discussion,” Gwynette said, pulling aside her veil to reveal eyes of such a supernaturally pale blue that they never failed to elicit comments from anyone meeting her for the first time. Gwynette had been a beautiful woman when she married Dale Bainbridge – the portrait in the upper hall attested to that – but thirty subsequent years of struggle had left their mark. Her beauty was not the kind to age well, and, since her husband had finally drunk himself to death five years earlier, her eyes had seemed to get lighter and lighter, giving Tom the uneasy impression that his mother was fading away. “I won’t have this squabbling,” she said. “Especially now, when we’re coming to the end.” Whether she meant the end of the family’s genteel poverty or merely the end this particularly unpleasant carriage ride wasn’t clear, but none of her children requested further illumination, and for a moment the group fell into silence.

  “A lovely speech, Mother,” Cecil finally said, yawning and stretching out his legs. He was the only o
ne who looked at all like her, the only one to have inherited her unusual eyes. “But cast a glance around. Bainbridge blood in every vein and yet here we sit in a broken down carriage I’d be ashamed to haul hay in. It’s being pulled by a borrowed pony and a horse that should have been shot a decade ago, and all this time we’ve struggled, Grandfather has lived in an estate fit for a duke. You can’t honestly say you aren’t relieved that the day is finally here when William is going to inherit.”

  “We’ve managed to support ourselves at Winter Garden well enough.”

  “Managed to hold on, isn’t that more like it? Creditors are at the door every week and they’d have closed in by now if they hadn’t known that grandfather would surely oblige us all by dying sooner or later.”

  “Enough, Cecil,” Tom said. “Leanna’s here. Have you taken leave of your senses?” The whole family turned their chins slightly toward the silent figure in black, but the girl still didn’t move. She was normally the family chatterbox, so her refusal to speak had the odd effect of dominating the conversation.

  Her grief is so damn ostentatious, William thought, as Tom and Cecil fell into another pointless debate. Of course, she loved Grandfather and probably spent more time at Rosemoral than any of us, but all the same... Ever since the telegram had come announcing that Leonard Bainbridge’s heart had at long last given way, William had indulged a private fear. Was it possible his grandfather would have ignored primogeniture and divided the estate among them all? Such a stunt wouldn’t have been unprecedented in Bainbridge family history, for Leonard’s own father had settled a startling amount on his daughter Geraldine. Not just enough to allow the girl to marry well, which was prudent, but enough to allow her to not marry at all, which was lunacy. The woman had spent her life tearing about the world from India to Chile, throwing family money into any number of crackpot causes, and Leonard – far from being upset that his own inheritance was diluted – had always seemed amused by his sister’s exploits. William knew his grandfather would leave Leanna money, and undoubtedly funds would be set aside for shrewd baby Tom, who had paid the old man the ultimate compliment of following his footsteps straight to medical school. A share for Cecil on general principle, enough for his mother to make the much-needed repairs to Winter Garden….

  But he wasn’t liberal enough to cut the estate into quarters, was he? The question had been tormenting William for the past eight days. Estates passed to first born males for a logical reason, to hold family fortunes intact rather than allow them to be frittered away across generations, and on one hand, Leonard Bainbridge had been nothing if not logical. He respected the traditions that had preserved Rosemoral for centuries, ever since it had been granted to a Lancaster loyalist during the War of the Roses, and he would not likely make any decisions that would put it into jeopardy now. William loved the property too, and was prepared to devote his life to being a fit custodian for the land. He and he alone understood the smell of the dirt, the calm of the trees, the silence of the upper rooms, the patina on the leather chairs in the library. Leonard must have known that William was the one who would protect Rosemoral with his last breath.

  But, on the other hand - and this is what had kept William from a week of good sleep - Leonard had occasionally looked up from his scientific experiments to express interest in the same sort of political causes that consumed his sister. Socialism. Decolonization. Even women’s rights, a subject William held to be on an equal par with experiments on the digestive tracks of farm animals. William stared at the limp form of his sister. Surely Leonard would not have left her a full share, knowing that a twenty-year-old girl would likely take any inheritance into a marriage and thus out of the family. Leanna or Rosemoral? His grandfather loved them both. Which was he thinking of at the end?

  “Besides,” Tom was saying to Cecil, his voice rising to a pitch that pulled William from his thoughts. “You could have sought some sort of profession other than the social circuit. And what of William? He’s twenty-eight and hasn’t turned his hand to anything.”

  “Professions aren’t for eldest sons,” William said, relaxing his grip on his cane, and feeling suddenly sure of himself. “Professions are for youngest sons, like yourself.”

  Tom wasn’t going to let it go. “Grandfather was an eldest son, and an heir, and he still did something useful with his life.”

  “Please, dear Tom, we’ve spent a week hearing Grandfather eulogized to the skies,” Cecil said. “No further accolades are necessary, or we’ll have to send to Rome posthaste to have the man canonized. It’s certainly bloody hot in here, isn’t it?”

  Leanna jerked a gloved hand from the folds of her skirt and pushed open the carriage window. Cooler air rushed in, bringing the road dust and flies with it, but the rest of the carriage occupants didn’t protest. They merely sat staring at Leanna as she settled back into her motionless state.

  “So if elder sons inherit and younger sons find professions, what happens to middle sons?” Tom asked.

  “They marry well,” Cecil said promptly. “What about it, William? Hours from now when you’re firmly in the money, will you remember me? Enough at least for a new suit of clothes and a decent carriage so I can win the hand of Hannah Wentworth? So far I’ve been able to offer her nothing but charm, which I luckily have in abundant supply, but we all know that if I actually propose marriage, her father is going to expect to see more than a winning smile. I overheard him at the track saying I was all blue but no green.”

  “Meaning exactly what?” Gynnette asked testily. At one time gossip had obsessed her and she still maintained a certain reflexive interest in the social standing of her family, even if she was powerless to stop its slow decline. The remarks she had overheard during the last few years were rarely pleasant, but she catalogued every snicker and sarcastic comment, rolling them over in her mind the way a tongue compulsively prods a sore tooth.

  “Meaning we’re all of the right class, hence the blue blood, but we haven’t any cash, hence the deplorable absence of green,” Cecil said. “Meaning, to be a bit more blunt, that we’re acceptable enough to ask to tea but not suitable to marry the daughter of the house. Is that clear enough?”

  “Yes,” she said shortly, and dropped her veil back over her face.

  “But now,” Cecil said, “I have the next best thing to money, which is a brother with money. So William, you’ve never answered. Can I count on you for enough cash to court Miss Wentworth and reassure her father?”

  “Of course,” said William. “It would be a smart move to align with the Wentworths, even though I can’t see why you’re so determined to marry that girl. She has a face like that horse you keep threatening to shoot.”

  “True enough,” Cecil said agreeably. “But second sons have to take care of themselves. “

  “Not like this,” Gynnette said. “As long as we still have that blue blood you find so amusing, I won’t have you sully the family name by chasing wealth.” Her hand fluttered nervously to the opal and diamond brooch on her chest. It was the only thing left from the early years with her husband, the good years, and with the mention of the Wentworth fortune, her mood must have shifted, because Gwynette tended to fiddle with the brooch whenever she was anxious. It’s her talisman, Tom thought, something she touches whenever she needs to bring back a bit of her old power. “I remember when Silas Wentworth was nothing more than a dairy farmer. And why do you insist on going to that racetrack? It’s what killed your father.”

  “Is it my imagination,” Cecil said, “or is this an exceptionally tedious conversation?” He settled back into the cushions and closed his eyes.

  Tom leaned back too and wondered if it would be possible to sleep, to clear his mind for the ordeal ahead. Cecil, for all his crudity, was quite right. Older sons inherit, second brothers marry well, and youngest brothers seek professions. William would be master of Rosemoral by sunset today and Tom only hoped that his grandfather had left an adequate allowance for his final years of medical school. Leonard
had been proud that at least one of his grandchildren inherited his love of science and had been more than happy to pay Tom’s tuition, just as he had paid for Leanna to continue at boarding school after their father was killed. Otherwise, Tom suspected Leanna would have been shipped back to Winter Garden the minute their mother had grasped the true enormity of her late husband’s debts.

  Leonard Bainbridge had always made it clear that Tom and Leanna were his favorites and had been extraordinarily generous with them both. But a single term at Cambridge had taught Tom that academic men were often disastrous judges of human character, unable to accept that not everyone was similarly ruled by logic. Tom knew his grandfather’s motives were pure, but he only prayed that provisions for him and Leanna had been spelled out specifically in the will and that their grandfather hadn’t left them dependent upon William’s unsteady sense of justice. Grandfather wasn’t a fool, Tom thought, as he began to drowse. He would have left Leanna a significant dowry, certainly, probably enough to help her form a good alliance when the time came. Otherwise, it would fall to her brothers to arrange her marriage, and Tom cringed at the thought of what William and Cecil might consider a suitable match for their sister.

  3:26 PM

  Within another hour they were at the gates of Rosemoral, and as Leanna peered out at the familiar entrance, her spirits lifted. Her mother had pushed aside her veil too, but seemed oblivious to the beauty. Leonard, who’d dabbled in botany as well as zoology, had taken pride in the fact his gardens had color from April through November, a not insignificant accomplishment for England. Leanna turned in her seat, leaning her face out of the window and relaxing for the first time in days. There had been so many times in the past she had impatiently ridden past these gates, had bounded from the carriage and run squealing through the foyer and into her grandfather’s study, certain of the welcome she would find there.