Bainbridge smiled. “What do you suppose killed him?”
“Confound you, Charles, for dodging my question. I can’t see any obvious cause of death. Probably a heart attack, but there’d need to be a full autopsy to be sure. He’s clearly been dead for a couple of days.” Newbury rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his chin. “I should have thought you’d be pleased, Charles, to know that one of the most notorious burglars in London is on a slab?”
Bainbridge chuckled. “And there’s the rub, Newbury. There’s the rub. You see-as you’ve confirmed-Sykes has been dead for at least a couple of days. We’ve had his corpse in the morgue for two nights, guarded and locked in this room. But last night a burglary was committed on Regent Street that has all the hallmarks-down to the very last detail-of Sykes’s work. So either something very unusual is going on, or Sykes was never our burglar in the first place.”
Newbury looked thoughtful for a moment, before his expression broke into a wide grin. He glanced at Veronica. “Very well. It seems the two of you have my attention. So what next? Regent Street and the scene of the burglary?”
Veronica shook her head. “No, Sir Maurice. Chelsea, and the scene of a bath.”
Newbury looked down at his rumpled suit, clearly embarrassed. He smiled sheepishly. “As you command, my dear Miss Hobbes. But first, answer me this: What of Sykes’s personal effects? Had he been robbed?”
Veronica gestured towards Bainbridge, who pulled a small rectangular object from his trouser pocket and held it out to Newbury. It was a crumpled address card. Newbury took it and turned it over in his palm. It was emblazoned with the legend, PACKWORTH HOUSE.
“That’s all we found on him. No wallet, no jewellery, no papers. Just that card, stuck in the lining of his jacket pocket. Whoever stripped him of his personal effects must have missed it.”
Veronica nodded. “It seems as if it was more than just an opportunistic robbery. I find it hard to believe that someone happening across his body in the street would take such care as to remove all the contents of his pockets. What purpose could it serve them? The valuable items, yes. But his papers? To do so, they must have spent some considerable time beside the body, risking being seen all the while. It seems somehow… unlikely.”
Newbury frowned and handed the card back to Bainbridge, who tucked it away in his pocket once more. “Packworth House. Isn’t that the home of the Bastion Society?”
“Yes,” Bainbridge said. “It seems he was a member of that illustrious set. No doubt bought his way in with all that plundered money.”
“Or not,” Newbury countered, “if, as you say, he wasn’t your burglar after all. The circumstantial evidence certainly suggests not. And you never were able to pin anything on him.”
“Hmmm,” was Bainbridge’s only response.
Veronica approached the slab and picked up a corner of the shroud. She tried not to look too closely at the grisly, staring face of the dead man or breathe in his ghastly scent. “Sir Maurice?”
Newbury took the other side of the shroud. Together they covered the body once again-the body of Edwin Sykes, or someone who looked very much like him.
CHAPTER
4
“For God’s sake, Newbury! Look at the state of this place.”
Bainbridge thumped into Newbury’s drawing room with a thunderous roar, like a bear with a proverbial sore head. He strode first towards the sideboard, which was heaped with dirty wineglasses and plates, then to the fireplace and Newbury’s favourite armchair, around which thirty or forty newspapers had been discarded haphazardly on the floor. He knocked a heap of tobacco ash off the arm of the chair with his cane.
Veronica sighed. Just when she thought he’d finally begun to calm down.
“Mrs. Bradshaw!” Bainbridge continued to bellow at the top of his lungs. He charged towards the door, flung it open, and shouted down the stairs, calling for Newbury’s housekeeper. “Mrs. Bradshaw! Get up here at once!” He turned to Newbury. His voice lowered a fraction, but his tone was still harsh, critical. “I know you’re no disciplinarian, Newbury, but this really is unforgivable. What happened here?”
Veronica tried to take in the situation. Bainbridge was right: The place was in a miserable state. The curtains were still drawn, even though it was now midafternoon, and the room smelled of stale tobacco smoke and sweat. It clearly hadn’t been aired for days. Worse were the stacks of dirty plates and unwashed glasses and the smaller piles of tobacco ash from Newbury’s pipe, left spotted around the room in various bizarre locations: the windowsill, the coffee table, the arm of his chesterfield. It was as if Mrs. Bradshaw had given up trying.
“Mrs. Bradshaw!” Bainbridge was beginning to grow red in the face.
Newbury crossed the room and put a placating hand on his friend’s shoulder. “She’s gone, Charles.”
Bainbridge looked flustered and confused. “Gone? Where? Have you granted her leave?”
Newbury shook his head, and Veronica felt a pang of sadness as the gravity of his situation sank in. She really had gone. He’d chased her away. “She gave up on me, Charles,” Newbury continued, “and I can’t say I blame her. I kept unsociable hours. I had the most irregular habits…” He trailed off. Veronica knew that he wouldn’t be able to give voice to the real reason Mrs. Bradshaw had left his service, but they were all very much aware of it. She could not watch his descent into addiction, or what it had made of him.
Something seemed to break, then, inside Bainbridge. His expression softened. All the rage, all the disdain seemed to pass out of him, and all that was left was the deepest concern for his dear old friend. Veronica watched as he placed his arm around Newbury’s shoulders. “Buck up, old chap. We’ll put it right. We’ll get things back on track.”
Newbury sighed. “Pop the kettle on, Charles. I haven’t had a good pot of Earl Grey for some time.”
Bainbridge gave him a hearty slap on the back. “I’ll get to it, Newbury. Right away. I’m sure Miss Hobbes here will run you a bath in the meanwhile.”
Newbury smiled thankfully. “And Charles?”
“Yes, Newbury?”
“I fear you may have to wash a few cups and saucers.”
Bainbridge chuckled, but Veronica could hear the undercurrent of sadness in the laughter. “Good God, it’s a few years since I’ve had the pleasure.” He set off in the direction of the kitchen.
Veronica stared at Newbury, and he looked back, his eyes filled with the apology he couldn’t offer. “He’ll be alright, you know,” she said. “He just doesn’t understand.”
“Do you?” Newbury looked away, staring into the cold, open grate of the fireplace.
“No. But I’m trying to.” She became aware that she was bunching her hands into fists by her side. She inhaled deeply to steady herself. “Right. A bath. And then Regent Street.”
Newbury nodded. “Quite so, Miss Hobbes. Quite so.”
Veronica eyed the object on the table and tried unsuccessfully to suppress a shudder. She wished she hadn’t seen it, and now that she had, she wished she could simply ignore it. But things were never that simple where Newbury was concerned.
She hadn’t known where to start. The drawing room was an intolerable mess, but she didn’t have the time-or, if she were truly honest with herself, the will-to clean it up. Instead, she had resolved to discuss the matter with Bainbridge and plot a means by which to recover Mrs. Bradshaw-or, if that proved too difficult-to make alternative arrangements on Newbury’s behalf. But then she had realised that there wasn’t even a place to sit, her sense of duty got the better of her, and she began to tidy up regardless. She’d started with the landslide of discarded newspapers beside Newbury’s favourite armchair, collecting them up into a tidy stack. And that’s when she saw it: the thing resting on the coffee table, as if it had always been there. A human hand, dismembered at the wrist, fingers in the air like the legs of a dead spider. It had been carefully dressed and arranged, the pale flesh inked or tattooed with a variety of arcane symbols.