The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree: Stoker & Bash, #2

by Selina Kray

  “I cannot say for certain,” Tim replied, considering his words as he spoke them. “But know this. If there is a snake among you, it is no man. The body is too withered to have been a recent death. The good Father and I have been watched from the moment we entered the compound. The killer must be among you.”

  “From a woman this child was born,” Hiero echoed, “and by a woman’s hand he died.”

  Tim almost chuckled at the shiver that ran through them all. Few could resist the effects of Hiero’s dramatic pronouncements; he certainly couldn’t.

  Sister Juliet shut her eyes, glided over to the base of the tree as if guided by a divine presence. She pressed her palms into the aged wood, bent her head. They waited, rapt, for her to emerge—all but Callie, who looked to the sky, arms open wide.

  “Very well,” they said in eerie unison. “Cut this serpent out and squeeze the blood from its heart.”

  Hiero drew Callie and Shahida aside, away from Sister Nora’s prying ears, while the Daughters closed ranks. Kip had instructed them to gather on the lawn and take roll, accounting for every one of the compound’s residents in case someone had fled. By the tension in Kip’s jaw and shoulders, Hiero saw he already felt the weight of his burden as sole investigator. Even one as indifferent to city crimes as he knew that normally a team would be assigned to a case involving so many suspects and such expansive grounds. But for reasons of his own—reasons Hiero would wheedle out of him by day’s end—Kip had chosen not to consult his Yard colleagues. Hiero quietly vowed to support him in every way he could.

  “You will not keep me out of this,” Callie insisted, though her face remained contorted in a semblance of beatitude.

  “Oh, we’re up to our necks in it,” Shahida scoffed, “and it reeks. Let’s grab ol’ Lil and be gone.”

  “As soon as we spot her, you’re free to do just that.” Callie fixed Hiero with her sternest glare. “I’m staying.”

  “As well you should,” he agreed. “Don’t spoil our dear Kip’s fun, but this murderer won’t be outed through interrogations. Where there’s silence, there’s conspiracy, and where there’s conspiracy...”

  “There’s some unhappy snot willing to blab.”

  Hiero flinched at Shahida’s blunt way with words, but he couldn’t disagree. “Infiltrate. Insinuate. Gather information. Other I words.” He couldn’t resist a scapegrace grin at Callie’s sigh of frustration. “You must do what we cannot: learn their deepest secrets.”

  “What they’ll only share with their best gals.”

  “And those they’ll take to the grave.”

  Callie nodded, mollified. “Find me afterward.”

  “In the infirmary. With Sister Zanna.” Hiero gave their hands a squeeze before shooing them off. “A sharp pain in your side, I think, around... five o’clock?”

  He heard Shahida cackle, “Is he always this crafty?” as he wandered back toward Kip.

  A few of the Daughters waited for Callie and Shahida at the bottom of the hill, including their escort, Sister Nora. Hiero watched them flutter across the grass, a flock of doves in mourning formation. He found his flask again, took a bracing gulp. Offered it blindly to Kip, as yet unable to turn back in the direction of the body. Instead he contemplated this second Eden, once again spoiled by... well, that was the question. Hiero had known darkness, true darkness, in his time, but this monstrous act scrambled the order of things in his already scrambled mind.

  A soft press to the small of his back startled him.

  “If you’d prefer not to linger,” Kip murmured, “I can manage this part alone.”

  Hiero took a final sip, then stowed his flask. “Not your first, I take it?”

  “No. Nor the worst I’ve seen.”

  That sent Hiero’s thoughts spiraling down deeper and danker wells of possibility. He struggled to keep his head above the surface. He’d never before considered what Kip might have witnessed in his line of work, or what it might have cost him.

  Kip exhaled a long breath. “The killer, or whoever staged the body—I’m not convinced they are one and the same—thinks of the babe with a certain reverence—”

  “Reverence!”

  “Yes. The makeshift bed, the petals, the location... They wanted to pretty it up. To lay the babe to rest where it will be sheltered, its soul cared for. This was no sacrifice to an unconventional god.”

  “You think his death was unexpected?”

  “It’s possible.” With a patient nudge, he guided Hiero back to the boy. With Kip at his side, he found the courage to confront the body anew. “There are signs of severe neglect. Starvation, unsanitary conditions. But given how our city treats its poor...”

  “That in itself is not evidence of murder.”

  “No. But this scarring around his neck is.” Hiero followed Kip’s hand—a man’s hand, large and thick—remembered how gentle it could be. Tried to ignore the direction in which it pointed. “A cloth or some kind of kerchief, cinched.”

  “To stop him wailing.” Hiero shut his eyes, wished he could shut the information out of his brain.

  “Normally consistent with an impulse killing. However...” Kip sighed. “What do you know of baby farming?”

  “As little as possible. Aim to keep it that way.”

  “If only there were a way to test...” Kip scrutinized every detail of the scene, his green eyes shining with compassion. For the little one, for the shell-shocked Daughters earlier, for Hiero when he shied away. “Really, you don’t have to stay. Take advantage of their distraction to find Mrs. Pankhurst and make a swift retreat. Having her near this would only compromise things further.”

  Though Hiero knew Kip only meant to excuse him from an upsetting situation, the suggestion stung.

  “Might the babe’s death be related to your original case?”

  To his credit, Kip didn’t lie. “I won’t be certain until I can identify him, but... I suspect yes. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

  “You were searching for this boy on someone’s behalf?”

  Kip huffed in annoyance. “You know I can’t say.”

  “I know you would be rid of us.” Hiero straightened his posture as he moved toward him, for the first time deploying the difference in their heights against him. “That you refuse to confide in us. What defies my own admittedly inferior deductive skills is why?”

  “My client—”

  Hiero waved away his excuses. “Do you really think us so incapable of keeping his secret?”

  He saw the moment Kip’s expression flipped from understanding to anger. “On the contrary. I am intimately acquainted with your ability to obfuscate and... and adorn yourself in an armor of half truths. Baring not a peek of skin.” Hiero adjusted his collar, which had grown scratchy and hot. “But my client is not a man to be trifled with, and this, as you can well see, is no longer a trifling matter.”

  “How noble,” Hiero quipped in his most mocking tone. “You mean to protect us by shooing us away.”

  “I mean to avenge this child’s death, no matter who he is.” His green eyes flashed with defiance. “Given that, in my dallying, I could not prevent it.”

  That statement salved over much of Hiero’s irritation. Of course Kip would see this as his failure, not the work of a twisted mind. Hiero hadn’t missed his Kip’s tendency toward self-persecution. Why stick to flagellation when a hair shirt doubled your torment? He was surprised Kip hadn’t contrived a way to pluck out his own fingernails.

  “This babe’s destiny was writ long before you took on the case.”

  Kip scoffed. “Finally found religion, have you?”

  “Call it divine intuition.” After a quick glance around to assure they were not observed, Hiero slid a hand around the nape of Kip’s neck, kneading at the knot of tension that always coiled there. “Wait! The goddess sends another message. Oh, yes...” He was relieved when Kip met and matched his smirk. “You won’t solve anything without our help.”

  “Oh? How so?”

>   “My dear Kip, how has one of your vast and deep intelligence missed the fact that we are the feather against which your heart is weighed? The jam to your clotted cream. The Albert to your Victoria. The Marlowe to your Shakespeare...”

  “You’re silky, tangy, and will die young?”

  Hiero gave a lock of his hair a sharp tug. “We balance the scales.”

  “Ah.” Kip considered this. “I don’t see.”

  “You will.”

  Kip chuckled. “In any case, it’s clear I won’t be rid of you.”

  Hiero gazed down into his pale, freckled face, marveling once again at how someone so unremarkable could stir such wild emotion in him. The impulse to peel back his own layers—of clothing, of skin, of secrets upon secrets upon secrets—tugged hard at his heart. But would Kip still hold him in soft regard once exposed to Hiero’s skittish, shriveled core? He was not the only one who had yet to prove himself.

  “Perish the thought.” Hiero remembered where they were, took a step back. “Now how do we go about our vengeance? Callie awaits our—or rather, your—deductions.”

  “Quite.” Kip confronted the scene anew. He picked up a fallen branch still heavy with leaves, circled around the body. With a sweeping motion, he brushed some of the petal blanket off one side, careful not to disturb the ground beneath. He frowned when this revealed nothing but grass. “Tell me how he was discovered. Were you present?”

  “Chatting with Sister Merry and her brother by the garden shed. The ladies had gone ahead with Sister Nora. I believe it was Miss Kala who first sounded the alarm.”

  Kip looked up at this. “They permit a man to reside on the property?”

  “He’s not...” Hiero wiggled his fingers to mask his shudder. He thought of Brother Amos’s scar and felt the strange urge to cross himself. “He’s known some hardship. He’s no rooster in the henhouse.”

  Kip’s brow crinkled. “It’s unlike you to trust someone so readily.”

  “I would be more suspicious if there were anyone there to suspect.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s rather more complicated.”

  Kip inhaled a breath as if to query him further, then thought better of it. His incisive gaze bore into Hiero, waiting, watching. Learning him in a way that had never felt uncomfortable before.

  “What have you found?” Hiero asked in a bald attempt to divert him.

  To his surprise, Kip smiled. “This.” He reached down to pluck something out of the debris surrounding the body.

  A paper wing.

  Hiero crouched beside Kip as he cupped it in his hands. Someone had taken great care in folding and decorating the little wing, on which was inscribed B371DOE-M-01-10-74. A metal clasp punctured one of the edges, around which looped a few threads of blue yarn. They found its match tied around the babe’s wrist.

  “Was he catalogued in some way?” Hiero wondered aloud.

  Kip nodded. “A standard classification system. Baby number 371, Daughters of Eden, male, born January 10th, 1874.”

  “Not politic, I suppose, to paint the names of the child’s parents for everyone to see.”

  “Or his origins were of no consequence.” Kip tucked the wing into an inner pocket, then delicately slid the thread over the boy’s tiny fist. Hiero once again had to look away. “In our interview I thrice pressed Sister Juliet on what becomes of the children no one cares to adopt. She evaded each time.”

  “You think they shuttle them off to local orphan asylums despite their claims?”

  At Kip’s long pause, Hiero’s heart sank. “Perhaps.” He patted Hiero on the leg, resumed his sweeping.

  “You must be all a-tremble at the chance to rifle through Sister Juliet’s ledgers,” Hiero quipped in a vain attempt to reinvigorate himself.

  “I rather think Sister Nora mans the books, don’t you?”

  “I trust your instincts as a renowned paper-sniffer. You know I have no affinity for organization.”

  “You forget,” Kip teased as he cleared the last of the leaves and petals. “I’ve seen your closet.”

  “Yes, well, every collection of objets d’art needs a curator.”

  “Curator, artist, and muse, in one svelte package. Remarkable.”

  Hiero stood, stared down at the sylphlike babe, a caterpillar crushed in its chrysalis. While he appreciated Kip’s efforts to cheer him, everything felt wrong about flirting over a corpse. He thought of Ting, his little bun-headed sprite, and how desperate a pregnant Jie had been when Han first happened upon her. What might have become of them and Angus if Hiero hadn’t been so drunk with grief that Han went out to consult a healer friend in Limehouse and came back with the small family?

  He saw them every day as he travelled around the city, children who had escaped a similar fate, only to be condemned to a life of extreme poverty. Women of lower means than the servants the Daughters sheltered, cast out by families who could barely scrape by, begging to stay out of the workhouse or selling themselves until they began to show. If they didn’t throw themselves in the river. He blocked out their voices, their gaunt, pleading faces and wounded eyes, because he couldn’t save everyone. Because he’d only just clawed his way out of the muck.

  But this little one... Hiero would amplify his voice into a scream heard round the compound, if not London entire. He would do everything in his power to see he rested in peace.

  “Perhaps we should give him a name.”

  Kip glanced up from his work. “A name?”

  “Between us. When we discuss him, as we must. It won’t do to refer to him as B371.”

  “No, I see,” Kip said. Hiero wanted to shrink away from the kindness that lit his face. “I only wonder if his parents might object.”

  “They are hardly present and accounted for.”

  “His mother has fled, true, but his father... Well, if he proves to be his father.”

  “And who’s that now?”

  Kip chuckled. “Still not telling, clever boy.” He appeared to give the matter some thought. “How about... Little Bean? He rather looks like one.”

  “I suppose Ginger Curls would rather give the game away.” Hiero tried to laugh, but it caught in his throat. “Forgive my ignorance, but what will become of him once...”

  “A potent question.” Kip surveyed the area as if the trees had ears. “I don’t care to surrender him to the Daughters or see him buried here, in the place that wronged him. If this is indeed my client’s child...”

  “He’ll want some say in where he sleeps.”

  “But where to keep him in the meantime? And can we sneak him out without upsetting the Daughters?”

  “We must call upon a higher power.” Hiero moved to the summit of the hill, let out a series of long, low whistles.

  A few minutes later, Han dropped in over the edge of the closest wall.

  Chapter 7

  A kick to her ankle woke Callie with a start. The discordant screech of a hymn—the Daughters were no Viennese choir—helped smack her into the present. Head still dropped as if in deep reflection, she surreptitiously glanced around the Daughters’ shrine. For hours they had been praying the murdered babe’s soul up to heaven, watched over by an enormous unbecoming portrait of Rebecca Northcote and the lump of coal that was her fabled box. Callie had endured reading after reading from Mother Rebecca’s inane prophecies, recitations of her twist-tongue prayers, and testimonials. Testimonials about the life of a baby! She’d chewed the inside of both her cheeks raw from boredom.

  And all this while stuffed into a small front pew beside Miss Kala, whose curvy body proved to be a pillow-soft incubator and whose perfume reminded Callie of the floral soap Jie used on the bed linens. Little wonder she’d sailed off to dreamland.

  The hymn ended with a sour note on the organ. Sister Juliet, who some of the Daughters cleaved to like pups at the teat, rose to speak once more. Callie knew she should take this opportunity to display some of her character’s “powers,” but the will to live ha
d been drained out of her by the endless dirge of mourning. Better to devise some means of escape.

  A glance at Miss Kala revealed her to be pert as a march hare. She listened, rapt, to Sister Juliet’s every word, the smile that stretched her face so sickeningly infectious Callie repressed the urge to spit. With nowhere to stow a pocket watch, she couldn’t guess at the time; sneaking a hand into Miss Kala’s skirts would be, at best, misinterpreted. Too many pairs of eyes strayed in her direction, curious about the newcomer, for Callie to get away with sticking a finger down her throat. A bit of vomit always expedited things.

  When they raised their voices in some bizarre chant, Callie used the moment to curse Tim for keeping her out of the investigation, curse Hiero for inventing this absurd part for her to play, curse Han for forcing his pet Miss Kala on her, and, most of all, curse herself for convincing them her infiltration of the Daughters was a good idea in the first place. Instead of hunting down their very first murderer, and of a child no less, she’d stuck her hand in a basket of asps too stupid to bite her.

  Anger roiled in her stomach, which reminded her she had not eaten since breakfast. Hiero had taught her to harness whatever emotion she was feeling toward her performance, so she repeated this litany of curses over and over. Thought of these fiends who’d kidnapped her mother. Tim’s look of relief as she left the crime scene. Han’s hand on Miss Kala’s arm. The women she met that day, forced into these circumstances by laws and the hypocrisy of men, shunned and maltreated and ostracized till they bore their bastards—

  She lurched forward, coughing. Acid scorched her mouth. With a moan, she fell to her knees, retching. A dozen hands reached for her; Miss Kala barked them away. Callie cowered against her, surprised by the strength with which she was lifted, supported, the diminutive Miss Kala acting as a crutch all the way into a private examination room in the infirmary.

  Sister Zanna ordered her to lie down, tea and a compress fetched. Dimmed the lights, then set off to gather a few supplies. The door latch clicked, locked. Callie didn’t care about being imprisoned so long as she was, blessedly, alone. After a few deep breaths, she stretched, sat up.