by Ilsa J. Bick
And why was that?
3
“SHE MIGHT HAVE overheard my name from one of the other constables,” he now said to Battle, the lie rolling smoothly from his tongue.
“Indeed.” Battle’s tone suggested he thought that a bit of a stretch. “You’re all in the habit of calling each other by your Christian names.”
“At times.” In truth, he was “Doyle” or “Constable” or crusher, nose, slop, blue devil, pig, depending upon which slammer or fadger or breaker he happened to snag on any given day. These days, and with his needs? One thing positively rum about signing on as a constable: you got to know who all the crooks were. Grease Doyle’s palm with some chink, a little of the old smoke, or, better yet, a phial of seven-percent, and most sneaks never saw the inside of a jail. “At any rate, I suppose you’ll want to leave the doctor to it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Constable.” The quicksilver dart of another careful look. “Are you sure you’re not in pain from that arm? You look a little peaky.”
PEAKY? For a split second, the words were poised to leap from his tongue: You old gob, I need a bloody needle, and don’t nobody CARE about murder when we’re all done for!
“What? Sorry? Pain? No, just …,” he fumbled. Just what, what? “I might need a moment, Inspector.”
“Out of the question. Control yourself,” Battle said, and Doyle thought, Oh yeah? Dump a nice steaming load on that toff pair of leather clamshells you got on your feet, I bet you change your tune. “Mrs. Graves has gone to fetch the surgeon or an assistant …” Battle made a dismissive gesture. “He’ll see to your arm.”
“Really, Inspector,” Doyle said, trying to squash the plea in his voice, “it’s only a scratch. Nothing to bother about.”
“Nonsense. The surgeon will attend you and that’s final.” Planting his fists on his hips, Battle worked his lower jaw in a hard jut. Everything about the man, from his steel-colored bowler to his checked flannel trousers and houndstooth coat, was a study in gray and as obdurate as granite. “In the meantime, I want to know exactly what went wrong, because I will have what’s locked in her mind, Constable.” Battle strode off without a backward glance. “Now, come along and be smart about it.”
4
AT THEIR APPROACH, Kramer half-turned, the flesh-and-blood side of his face showing in profile. Doyle read the man’s annoyance in the splash of high color staining that right cheek and the tiny downward curl of his mouth. No love lost between these two: you could light a fire from the sparks.
“Yesss, Battle?” Distorted by the mask and what it hid—no jaw and probably not much of a tongue—Kramer’s words came in that slithery and strangely guttural lisp and hiss. At the same time, he slipped something into the breast pocket of his long physician’s coat, once grayish-white but now splotchy with the girl’s blood. Spectacles, Doyle thought, with lenses that were … purple? Odd. Kramer had something else he was just now sliding into another pocket: a glass bauble and bits of tin on a chain.
“What is it you want now?” Kramer said. “I should think you’d leave me to more important matters, and my patient.”
“She’s unconscious, Doctor.” Arms akimbo, Battle loomed like a gray vulture. “It don’t look to me that she’ll be the worst for your answering to what’s happened here.”
“I think that depends on how you look at it,” Kramer replied, coolly. “She needs to wake, so she and I can talk about it.”
That necklace, Doyle thought, it don’t tally. Patients weren’t allowed anything with a sharp edge or point. The chain would have been confiscated. Too easy to choke herself with, or swallow.
But he lets her keep it … and only now takes it away? Why?
“She needs to wake,” Battle echoed. “After all the tonic you’ve poured down her gullet. And when shall that be? The next century?”
“Don’t lecture me.” No ordinary man would hiss those words, but Kramer was anything but ordinary and perhaps not much of a man, Doyle thought, depending on what else might be gnawing at his innards. Just because Kramer had managed to have the rot hacked from his face didn’t mean it wasn’t also crawling around the juicier bits inside. Kramer’s hand fell to a small bottle by his knee. “This is my asylum. Badgering the girl will not force memories she doesn’t want found.”
Battle said something else, but Doyle didn’t hear. His gaze nailed itself to that bottle. Oh. A knife of want sliced his chest. A groan slid up his throat. Oh shite, oh good Christ. The sudden buzz in his head was very loud, and so was Black Dog: Oooh, you want that, don’t you? Well, go on, poppet, nick it. Make a scene. Show them what you really are.
No, he couldn’t; he wouldn’t. He pressed an arm to his grumbling belly. Control yourself, Doyle. But, God, he had to get off this ward, and soon.
“So what, then?” Battle asked as Kramer expertly uncorked the phial with a flick of a thumbnail. “Do you at least understand precisely what happened back there?”
“Of course.” Kramer’s grip tightened around the girl curled like a baby against his chest: She’s mine, you; now bugger off. He pressed the bottle to the girl’s mouth. At the touch of ruby-colored liquid (oh, Doyle could smell it, the too-sweet aroma of laudanum cut with passionflower and fortified wine), she tried turning her face aside, but her movements were lethargic and slow. Doyle thought she’d more than enough drug.
Quit wasting that on her. Give it to me, you old fool, give it to—
But look, Black Dog interrupted. Isn’t that odd, poppet? Why would this doctor keep feeding that girl more when she don’t need it? Black Dog paused, and Doyle could imagine it tapping a paw to its chin in thought. If I didn’t know better, I’d wager the prissy cove’s trying to keep her under.
Why, yes, excellent point. Black Dog was always so observant. Why would the doctor want the girl so completely petrified?
“Well?” Battle said. “What, exactly, transpired, Doctor? Would you care to enlighten us all?”
“Not here. My office.” Kramer gestured with the bottle to some point beyond Doyle. “I need to have her moved to a treatment room for the surgeon.”
“And given a bath,” Battle said. “A thorough wash. I insist.”
“Leaving aside that she’s been incorrigible and we have tried … don’t be so melodramatic,” Kramer said dryly. “You’ve not rescued her from the gutter, Battle. Anyway, what does it matter? Do you …” Cocking his head, Kramer gave Battle a crooked grin. “Do you truly care? She’s mad, Battle. Once she’s no longer useful, you’ll move along to the next crisis and the next. But it’s how you cope, isn’t it? Deluding yourself that justice matters at all these days.”
“I won’t even dignify that with a response. But look in the mirror, Doctor, and ask yourself the same questions.” Battle’s tone was as flinty as his eyes. “Now, sir, will you bathe her? Or shall I send round my sergeant’s wife to do the job?”
“No need. I’ll make sure Graves and Meme see to it.” Kramer looked up as the younger attendant—Bode, Doyle remembered—and Weber (nose probably out of joint, judging from that broad bib of tacky crimson) came forward with a stretcher. They were trailed by that pretty young girl with the dark blue eyes and coppery hair. “Take her to the treatment room. Has Graves gone to fetch Connell?”
“Yes, sir.” Bode gave Kramer only a fleeting glance before bouncing his eyes away. His jaw was beginning to swell, and that lower lip looked liverish as a blood sausage. “He’s on the men’s incurables, tending to a few biters.”
Elizabeth was so limp, when they lifted her to the stretcher, her head swooned back. Her hair dragged through blood to paint the worn and dingy carpet a faint scarlet. When she moaned again, Bode put a hand to support the back of her head and murmured something into her ear.
I think he quite fancies her. Black Dog sounded impressed. Awful chance he took, don’t you agree? Trying to shield her the way he did?
“All right then.” Kramer gestured toward the floor and the array of bandages and pins still strewn a
bout. “See to my equipment, Meme, and then have another attendant clean the blood, will you? Oh, and Weber, tell Graves to prepare the girl a bath.”
Pausing, a small brown phial in hand, Meme looked up. “I could do that, sir.”
“No.” With a deft movement, Kramer plucked the bottle from her fingers. “You’ll escort the inspector to my office.”
That bottle. Kramer’s voice dwindled to a buzz as Doyle watched the doctor disappear that bottle into the pocket of a blood-spattered brocade vest. How to nick it, how to get at that? Doyle’s jaw was so tight it was a wonder his teeth didn’t explode to pebbly bits. If he could only find a way to get his hands on it, or something similar. The surgeon, perhaps? No, no, that wouldn’t do. If he complained about his arm, then the man would likely wish to examine both. That he couldn’t afford.
“… take a look at that, Doyle?”
“What?” Startled, he looked up to see both Battle and Kramer giving him an expectant stare. Christ, had they been talking to him? “Ah, sorry, I …” He swallowed and decided to just come out with it. “I’m sorry, sir. Wandered off there. You said?”
“He didn’t.” Kramer’s gaze strafed him from head to toe and back again. That right eye narrowed. From its socket of tin, the left glinted. “I said that you were looking rather unwell. A little gray, actually. Your arm pains you?”
“Oh.” His gaze dodged to his left hand, still clamped to that cut. His fingers glistened as if he’d dunked his hand in red paint. “I just need a plaster, is all.”
“You let me be the judge of that.” Kramer looked at Battle. “If you’ve no objection and don’t think I’ll poison the boy, I’ve an examination table in my office. As soon as I’ve finished with Elizabeth, I can tend to him there. I spent some months as a mortuary assistant during my studies, and Meme is very skilled. It will also save you a bit of time waiting on Connell.”
“I wouldn’t want to be trouble.” Doyle didn’t like the way Kramer’s eyes touched him here and there.
“No, you need to be examined.” Turning to Kramer, Battle said, “The constable accepts.”
“Really, sir.” Kramer would make him remove his jacket and shirt. Might as well take his Webley and blow his brains out right now. Or cut his own throat with his sgian-dubh. “I don’t need …”
“Oh, do be quiet, Constable, and come along now.” Kramer fluttered his fingers in a get a move on gesture. “I’m certain we’ll find something that you do.”
BODE
That Damnable Nightmare
1
THE SURGEON, CONNELL, was not pleased when Bode and Weber delivered Elizabeth, doped to the eyeballs, to be stitched up. Gave them an earful about the sooty light of a solitary oil lamp and didn’t they understand that wounds of this nature required prompt treatment and a lot of other blather Bode only half-heard.
Weber was a worry, too. When the older attendant wasn’t bleating about how he might be dying, his skull had broken open, his head ached, and oh, his nose, the looks the arse threw at the girl as they laid her on the surgeon’s examination table in the adjoining consulting room made Bode’s stomach churn. Bode thought the surgeon agreed to tend to Weber first just to shut the man up and get him out the door, but then Weber got all that poor girl and I can wait.
That decided Bode then and there. Didn’t take a scholar to see that Weber would hang around and volunteer my services, seeing as how you’re shorthanded. Bode just didn’t trust Weber’s hands not to wander.
So Bode spoke up about how Kramer wanted Elizabeth bathed. The surgeon went into a snit: That will put me even further behind. And, Who can be expected to work in these conditions? And, It’s not as if she’s the only patient. Etcetera. After giving them both strict orders to remain in the outer room and away from Elizabeth, Connell finally stomped out to complain. Which was fine. Just so long as Graves got herself in here double-quick.
Once the surgeon was gone, Weber gave a nasty grin that, with the cove’s beat-up mug and a nose the size of a turnip, would’ve looked at home on a gargoyle. “Oh, I know what you’re about. You’re hoping Connell does me while Graves puts her”—a hook of his thumb over one shoulder toward the inner consulting room where Elizabeth lay—“to rights. Then I’ll have no need to hang round.”
Just so long as I keep you out here and away from her. “It’s not up to me. I was only relaying Doctor’s orders.”
“Hmm.” Weber screwed up one blackened eye. “You know, I do believe I’m feeling even worse now. In fact, I don’t think I ought to be around patients the rest of my shift. A pity. Means you got double duty. Best get cracking.”
Crossing his arms, Bode leaned against a wall. “I’ll wait.”
“Oooh.” Weber’s lumpy nose twitched. “Worried about your little Guinevere?”
The tips of his ears flamed. “It wouldn’t do for only one of us to stay. Graves’d have my head.”
“Graves.” Weber said it almost like a curse. He crossed to a high, wheeled wooden stand upon which the surgeon had laid out his box of instruments and a bowl of diluted carbolic acid that gave off a sour fume. There was also a double rank of various phials. Weber plucked up a bottle, tilting its label to the light. “You’re lucky the asylum’s shorthanded. Any other time, Graves’d press to have you put out. Though maybe Doctor likes to exercise that fist of his.” Replacing the bottle, he picked up another. “I can still get you sacked, you don’t mind.”
Bode said nothing.
“First intelligent thing outta your mouth all day.” Returning the second phial to its place, Weber squinted at the label of another and grunted his approval. Pulling the cork with his teeth, he tipped a swallow, rolled the liquid around his mouth a moment, then sighed. “That’s more like it. Much better.”
“That’s for patients.” He should’ve kept his mouth shut, but he couldn’t help it.
“Yeah? Well, aren’t you the pot calling the kettle?”
“Whatsat mean?”
“What I said.” Weber plucked up another bottle and waggled it. “Ah … there we go.” Uncorking the second phial, Weber carefully dispensed more tonic into the first bottle. “Not as if you’ve not blagged your share of what ought to go to the nutters.” After a pause, Weber threw him a quick smirk. “Wish you could see the expression on your dial. I know it was you nicked Graves’s old skeleton key.”
Shite. His guts turned leaden. Secreted in an inner pocket stitched to his waistband, that iron key was suddenly as cold as an old bone. “That laudanum’s gone to your head.”
“Oh, I think not. We live on the same floor. I know every squeak of every board. ’sides, you’re not the only one with keys. So imagine my surprise when I come downstairs and find the kitchen door unlocked. After that, it was a matter of taking myself into a nice dark corner and waiting to see who slithered out. But here’s what I can’t figure.” Punching both corks back in with the flat of one hand, Weber replaced the somewhat depleted second bottle. “Where you’re hiding all that food. Can’t be putting it all down your own gullet. So you’re hoarding it, or maybe giving it over as barter.”
No, he’d been gathering it for Tony and Rima. “If you were going to turn me in, you’d’ve done it by now. So what you want?”
“You keep your mouth shut about my helping myself here, and I’ll let Connell take care of your Guinevere. Mum’s the word, and we’re all square.”
“She’s not mine.”
“No? Coulda fooled me, what with you so quick to step in, defend your lady love? Although, tell the truth, I always thought you was sweet on Meme.”
More like the other way around. Bode liked Meme all right; she was very pretty. But there was also something about her that bothered him: an emptiness that was hard to put into words. That she was also Kramer’s assistant made him doubly wary. “None of that’s your business.”
“So you wouldn’t mind? If I had a go at Meme? Because there’s some sweet velvet I wouldn’t mind tipping.”
“Watch your mouth.
She’s not a Judy.”
“Boy, all girls is the same under their knickers.” Slipping the first bottle into a trouser pocket, Weber turned his attention to Connell’s open bag. Rummaging around, he said, “Oh now, this is lovely,” and came up with a gurgling silver hip flask. Untwisting the cap, he wafted the open insert beneath his nose and snuffled. “My beak’s off, what with all this swelling, but I do believe …” Upending the bottle, he took a quick snort. “Ohhhh!” Shaking his head, Weber exhaled and gave a dog’s shiver. “ ’At’s strong enough to peel paint.”
Yeah, hope it strips your gullet. He watched Weber disappear the capped flask into an inner pocket and then turn to inspect an array of instruments laid out on a velvet cloth from an open, two-tiered case. Weber lifted out the removable tray to reveal a second rank of surgeon’s scissors, forceps, a large bone saw with an ebony handle, scalpels, and a coiled metal chain with two ebony handles. “Oh, lovely.” Tweezing up an ivory-handled scalpel, Weber tested the point. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, tipping velvet and our dear Elizabeth.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Oh, come on. That girl’s petrified. Kramer poured so much laudanum, it’s a wonder her eyes ain’t met above her nose. Big strapping boy like you, don’t tell me you haven’t thought of her, pretty girl like that. Haven’t you never wondered what Kramer does during those mesmeric sessions, closeted away, in priiivate?”
Bode’s chest simmered. He’s baiting you. Never mind getting sacked for stealing; throw a punch and Weber would crack his skull like a walnut, or jam that scalpel in his eye and call it self-defense. Hurry up, Connell. He clasped his bunched fists behind his back. Move your ruddy baby backside.
“What’s a matter? Oooh, now.” A dried half-moon of scant blood formed a rust ring under Weber’s nose. He looked like a mournful bull. “Is it that you’ve never popped a cherry? Or maybe you’re just a bit of a meater.”