Had he not spent so long watching Miss Bannon smooth over misinterpretations, he might have unwittingly made the situation precarious.
Aberline took no notice of his expression either way. “And the Crown has now seen fit to muddy the waters by bringing pressure to bear on the Yard. I confess I am rather disheartened by the fact, since said pressure will inevitably make it more difficult to pursue a single murderer through the worst sinks of Londinium. Disturbed silt does not permit clarity in a pond, so to speak.”
“Ah.” Clare cogitated upon this set of statements for a few moments. “I say, Detective Inspector, you very much seem to view these deaths as a personal affront.”
The man had the grace to cough slightly, and redden a bit. “Some cases, Mr Clare, become so.”
“Indeed they do.” Clare settled himself more firmly in the chair. “I believe the file you hold contains the information you deem particularly worthwhile, and also particularly damaging to public order. I further believe you have every reason to be as cautious as you are. This has all the marks of an affair that could end very badly. And Mr Pico, do come and have a seat. I believe you may be of some use to us.”
“Glad to become so, squire,” was the cheeky reply, and Clare found, much to his surprise, that he was almost agreeably irritated with the lad.
Perhaps Miss Bannon had not been so wrong to engage him.
No doubt there was a sorcerous component to this case, but vanquishing it with pure logic–and the resources of the Yard, no matter how muddied the waters had become–might indeed be possible.
The question of why such a prospect could warm him so agreeably was one he decided to set aside for the nonce.
“These are murders Lestraid and I believe fit the pattern.” The redrope was distressingly thick, and the small table dragged to suit Clare’s perusal of it was rather overwhelmed by its bulk. “Tea, while you read?”
“Quite welcome, thank you.” Clare’s brow furrowed as he opened the file, and his faculties woke even further.
He settled himself for a long afternoon’s work.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thin Meg
Kendall, two streets over, turned out to be somewhat misleading. Perhaps the man hadn’t meant to be deceptive, but the fog was thickening and Emma’s thoughts were of a similarly impenetrable nature. She rather wished Clare was about, for he had the most wonderful way of clarifying matters. At least, he did when those matters did not involve his own tender sensibilities.
In any case, it was the rank narrow reeking of Blightallen, the Scab thick and resilient underfoot–sunlight didn’t reach past the sloping overhead tenements, leaning together to confer on business best kept low-voiced–that held their quarry. Or, more precisely, his stinking domicile, which was one low-ceilinged room, with a door that had been shivered to pieces.
There had been more than one murder in Whitchapel last night. The closet was thick with an ætheric tangle of violence. A small, blood-soaked bed, a strongbox that had been rifled–by murderer or by neighbours was an open question–and torn, faded wallpaper; one sad, frameless painting of a woman with dark eyes and a decided downturn to her mouth, dressed in the fashion of the Mad Georgeth’s early reign, powdered curls and a plaid beauty-mark high on her left cheek. The painting was varnished to the wall at least twice, which solved one mystery, while a round of questioning the foul-haired, slattern of a landlady solved another.
“I runs a respectable house, I does,” she repeated, tightening her dirty shawl about her consumptive-thin shoulders. Her skirts were patched, and two of her corset stays were missing; it could have produced unsightly bulges had she not been so wraithlike. “Owner’s a Westron End gent, high and mighty as yourself, Missy.”
“No doubt.” Emma pointed at the bed. “And where was his body removed to?”
“Body? Warnt no body, Miss. This morning there’s an uproar, our sorcerer gone and his bed all drenched. Nobody heard a thing but, says I, we’re Blightallen, of course nobody hears a sodding thing. Still, he’s a magicker, and who can tell? His idearn’a joke, p’raps.”
Not likely. Emma absorbed this. “Is he much of a prankster, this Kendall?”
“Dour as the Widow, Miss.” The slattern’s mouth pulled against itself, a tight compressed line. Emma nodded, and Mikal produced a shilling. He offered it, and the landlady reached… but his fingers twitched and it vanished.
“Are you certain nothing was heard?” Emma enquired, sweetly.
The woman drew herself up, wrapping the shawl even more tightly. She darted a glance back down the darkened hall, and Emma was suddenly aware of the confining space. There was no window, and with the door shut it must have been oppressive. There was no space for even a Minor Work, and the walls held little trace of ætheric defences. Of course, the reverberations were so complicated and snarled, there was little she could tell without adding to the problem.
To compound the oddness, there was not a single fly to be found on the mangled, shredded, blood-soaked bedding. With no window for them to find their way in, it was not quite out of the ordinary… but still.
“Nuffink.” But the landlady’s voice had dropped. “I ent had time to come up and change the sheets neither–none of the drabs’ll touch it even for forgiving their doss-money. None heard a thing, mum, and first I knows of it was that sot Will Emerich come down to kitchen rubbing his eyes and complaining on the splinters in the hall. I’d’ve said he was dead drunk only Black Poll Backstearn’s room is next door, and she don’t sleep well. She ent been on gin for a month, and it shows. Whatever happened, was silent as…” She made the avert gesture with her left hand, tiny eyes almost lost in their pouches of darkened flesh narrowing further. “An’ that puts us all fair off our mettle, mum. Silent it was, and Kendall gone.”
Emma nodded again, and Mikal handed over the shilling. The woman bit it with her rotting teeth to test its truth, then glanced back over her shoulder again. “And now you visit,” she continued, “lady high and mighty, go straight for his room. It’s bad business, it is. Bad business all way round.”
“You may tell anyone you like that I appeared as a bird of ill fortune, madam.” Emma lowered her veil. A snap of her fingers, more for effect than for actual utility, and her jewellery warmed as she drew on its stored force. The blood-soaked bedding leapt into thin blue witchflame, spitting and hissing like a cat as the landlady shrank back against the shivered door.
“As a matter of fact,” Emma added dryly, “I would take it as a kindness if you would tell everyone that a woman in mourning was here, and what she did.”
With that, she brushed through the door as a burning wind, speaking the minor Word that would confine the flames to the traces of blood–and not so incidentally, sensitise her to the remainder of that vital fluid, wherever it might have been shed or come to rest.
Several unphysical strings tugged at her attention, most of them probably attached to a trap.
She was beginning to have a healthy respect for the canny nature of her quarry.
Mikal’s hand was at her elbow to guide her in the sudden gloom of the rickety hallway, and Emma realised she was shaking.
The Chapelease Leper was now a peeling crumble, clotted with whitewash applied indifferently every so often. Around it, the busy thoroughfare of Whitchapel Road throbbed, the Scab sucking at cart wheels, verdant even under the lash of fogbound sunlight as it crawled up pale walls.
Some held that it was here the Scab had been birthed, but not too loudly.
You never knew what she might take offence at, or catch wind of.
It wasn’t the peeling or the scabrous clots on the walls that made all give the Chapelease as wide a berth as possible, and had made the road divide around it as a rock divides a river. It wasn’t even the way the gaslamps that had been erected near it were warped and blasted by some unimaginable fury–or simply by a slow steady exhalation of malice.