Veronica glanced around to get a measure of the room. She was deep underground, in a basement or cellar. Flickering gas jets danced in a series of glass bowls mounted at intervals around the walls. The walls themselves were bare, constructed from blocks of ancient grey stone, and the floor was composed of red clay tiles, laid down in a neat herringbone pattern. They were cold and damp beneath her, and she shifted slightly, swaying from side to side as she almost lost her balance.
The drug had affected her more than she had initially imagined.
Near to where she was sitting, a long wooden workbench had been laid out, fil ing much of the room. It was covered in a scattering of papers and other unusual ephemera. Beyond that, against the far wall, was a strange-looking chair, covered in a spidery assortment of brass arms and surgical instruments. She tried to focus on it, but her eyes betrayed her, and she closed them for a moment, almost slipping back to unconsciousness. She snapped them open again with a start. Nervously, she glanced from side to side. She appeared to be alone.
Hauling herself into a more upright position, she turned lick to examine the wooden casket she had tumbled from. This was clearly the room in which the "disappeared" girls were deposited during the show, after Alfonso had triggered the mechanism on the stage, causing them to fal into the box.
It was ingenious. The girl was carefully selected from the audience by Alfonso to ensure the correct size and shape, and when her weight was introduced to the casket it was enough to cause the device to begin rolling down an incline beneath the stage, on rails or metal castors. The girl was trapped, of course, but her cries would be muffled by the shouts of the audience, and soon the rags soaked in chloroform would be enough to sedate her, putting her to sleep for – potentially – a number of hours. Until, Veronica supposed, either Alfonso or some secret aide could collect her from the casket and rouse her, or worse. The girls who were set free would be so confused by the drug that they would never be able to accurately recal what had happened to them, and their theatre-going companions would undoubtedly coax them into forgetting the matter, with talk of their bravery and the mysterious nature of their disappearance. The woman would briefly become the talk of her social circle, and for that alone, she would make a point of dismissing any temporary discomfort she may have suffered. After all, she had come to no discernible harm.
That wasn't the case, of course, for all of the girls. Veronica still had no notion of what fate Alfonso had in store for those young women he decided not to set free. Perhaps this room would reveal the truth.
Shakily, Veronica climbed to her feet and approached the workbench, resting her palms upon it whilst she waited for a momentary spell of dizziness to pass. Clearly, because there was no show that evening, there had been no one waiting to receive Veronica upon her impromptu arrival in the room. She wondered what had become of Alfonso. The man had had every opportunity to finish her off whilst she lay there drugged and incapacitated. Perhaps he had lost his nerve, or else he had assumed the chloroform would keep her sedated for longer and was busy elsewhere in the building.
Whatever the case, she was grateful to be alive.
She glanced down at the workbench. It was littered with bizarre paraphernalia. Large sheaves of paper, covered in an elaborate scrawl she did not recognise; vials full of a thin brown fluid, stoppered with bulbous corks; medical equipment; scalpels; a pair of tan-coloured, elbow-length leather gloves; pencils, and an assortment of small, Ancient Egyptian artefacts. She gasped in surprise. Ancient Egyptian. She swept up one of a number of little statuettes. It was an effigy of a mummified Pharaoh, made of clay and impressed with three neat rows of hieratic script, of which she had no understanding. It was certainly original, of that much she was sure. She dropped it to the table. Nearby, another, similar statuette had been broken in half. She leaned closer. The two pieces lay side by side, and it was clear that the idol had once been hol ow. She supposed that whoever had broken the ancient artefact had removed something from inside.
"My goodness," she whispered under her breath, realisation dawning on her. She was certain this could be no coincidence.
This had to have something to do with Sir Maurice's investigation of the murder of Lord Winthrop. Did Alfonso have a hand in that, too?
She edged around the table, studying the other artefacts on the workbench. There were a number of similar ushabti figures, each of them broken, their hidden contents now removed.
Someone – Alfonso, she presumed – had been conducting a detailed study of the objects, for many of the papers contained scrawling that deciphered the inscriptions, as well as strange mathematical drawings: stars within circles and other pictograms that reminded her of the contents of Sir Maurice's Chelsea library. She drew a deep breath and wiped her brow. She shook her head, trying to clear the drug-induced fug. It occurred to her, then, belatedly, to check for any escape routes from the room, any means by which she could quit the theatre and get away. She needed to find Sir Maurice.
She glanced around. Her vision was still hazy. Across from her, on the other side of the room, was a door. She began edging around the table towards it, and then stopped in horror. There, in the corner, a few feet to the left of the door, was one of the most ghastly sights she had ever encountered: a pile of female corpses, cast against the wall and left to rot.
The women had been piled up haphazardly like discarded marionettes. Flies buzzed chaotical y around their slack-jawed faces. Veronica felt bile rising in her gullet. There were five, perhaps six corpses. She'd had no idea the situation was this severe. Only two women had been reported missing in the area, to date, but Alfonso had clearly been much busier down here in his secret slaughterhouse. She was appal ed by the sheer magnitude of his perversion. What had he done to the women? How could he continue to work down here with their dead, unseeing eyes fixed on his every movement? And the smell!
Veronica fished around in her jacket pocket for a handkerchief. Finding one, she held it over her mouth and nose, and hesitantly stepped towards the sickening heap of bodies. She could not believe the lack of respect with which the women had been treated, even in death. They remained ful y clothed, at least, although whatever had been done to them had clearly been appalling. What she could see of their faces showed the frigid signs of terror. These women had stared death directly in the face.
Veronica crouched low beside the nearest corpse. The girl was young – twenty, possibly – with pretty long curls of strawberry blonde, and ful, pink lips. Her eyes had once been blue, but were now a grotesque shade of milky grey. She was on her front, partially buried beneath the corpse of an older, brunette woman. One of her arms was dangling free. Veronica grimaced as she turned the head slowly from side to side. A line of dry, dark blood ran from the girl's forehead down the side of her nose. Veronica followed the line of this bloody trail, finding, with dismay, the origin was a small hole that had been burrowed in the girl's forehead. Flinching, she probed it with the end of her finger. It was about the size of a pen nib and was located at the very centre of the woman's forehead. Veronica frowned, checking another of the girls. The marking was exactly the same. A neat bore-hole dril ed for an unknown purpose, directly through the bone and deep into the skul cavity itself. Clearly, Alfonso had been intent on extracting something from inside the women's heads.