The Diabolical Miss Hyde Read online

  “Mrs. Maskelyne, if you need help, I can get it for you. There are places where women can . . .”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Mrs. Maskelyne patted her hair, self-conscious. “I just want this over with. The lad’s name is Geordie Kelly. Medium height, dark hair, about twenty years old. I should say he has some decent living, from the cost of the gifts he sent her. That’s really all I know, Doctor. I must go, my husband will be wondering . . .”

  “Do you believe Ophelia was in love, Mrs. Maskelyne?” asked Eliza softly.

  “I believe she was.” The woman gave a faint, haunted smile. “Life’s cruel like that, isn’t it? Good day.” And she gathered her bright skirts and hurried away.

  Eliza turned to Griffin, who lurked by the yard’s wall, eavesdropping. “Did you get all that?”

  Griffin grimaced. “Not exactly. She was too far away—”

  “Every word,” cut in Lafayette, striding over from the corner. He finished scribbling in a notepad, which he’d evidently commandeered from a reluctant Sergeant Porter, and tore out the page to wave it in the inspector’s face. “Honestly, Griffin, pay attention next time.”

  “Pay attention,” echoed Hipp importantly from the refuse pile.

  Griffin took the paper. “Thank you,” he said through a clench-toothed smile. “I shall inform the Royal how pleasant and helpful you’ve been.”

  “Don’t mention it.” A smoldering Lafayette smile. He’d been standing much further away than Griffin.

  Griffin swept his sharp gaze over Lafayette’s penciled notes. “Your handwriting is a tragedy,” he accused. “That ‘T’ looks like an ‘F.’ Don’t they teach you properly at Eton, or wherever?”

  “Harrow, actually. And truthfully? I’ve no idea. I was absent the day they taught anything other than cricket and thrashing smaller boys.”

  “Useful skills, to be sure.”

  “Foundations of the British Empire, old boy. Nothing more one needs to know.”

  “Careful, Captain. Your radical side is showing.” Griffin frowned at the page. “So ‘G’ is for ‘Geordie,’ is it? Interesting. Was she convincing?”

  “Very,” admitted Eliza.

  “Or a consummate actress,” murmured Lafayette, abstracted.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hmm?” He glanced up. “Oh. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just accustomed to being lied to—”

  “Say it isn’t so,” interjected Griffin swiftly.

  “Appalling, I know.” A flash of amused blue eyes. “But downtrodden wives, domineering brothers, secret assignations between innocent young lovers? All very convenient. We’re in need of a suspect, so she gives us one. A tidy, uncomplicated one, who’ll be easy to find.”

  Griffin shrugged. “This ‘Geordie’ could be an invention. Wives lie to protect their husbands all the time.”

  “Or to protect themselves from their husbands,” suggested Eliza. “He could be forcing her to lie for him.”

  Lafayette grimaced. “Or maybe our timid Mrs. Maskelyne is the killer. Devoted wife, jealous of husband’s beloved sister, defends the business at all costs, that kind of thing.”

  “Unlikely, surely.”

  That’s what they all thought, whispered Mr. Todd in her mind.

  “In my experience,” said Lafayette, “it’s the unlikely suspects who get away with murder. In any case, something doesn’t smell right. And,” he added slyly, “it isn’t just that pile of electrical detritus by the fence.”

  Eliza’s pulse quickened. “Burned aether? The same as Miss Pavlova?”

  “Down to the melted stone.” He grinned. “Admit it, you like me a little.”

  “How inappropriately fascinating.”

  “Thank you. Do I get the first name treatment now?”

  “I meant the clue,” she said coolly. In my experience, he’d said. What exactly was his experience of murder investigations? “But how telling, that you should think ‘inappropriately fascinating’ a worthy compliment.”

  A sidelong glance. “From you, my clever lady? I’ll take what I can get.”

  Inwardly, she rolled her eyes. Charming, she’d grant him that. Pleasant to look at. His breezy over-confidence made her laugh. But she was no weak female, to be melted by a gentleman’s smile. Especially not a man with the power to lock her up forever—or worse—with a single word.

  Oh, don’t trouble yerself, murmured Lizzie, with a dark giggle. Sensible Eliza won’t melt for a handsome smile. Hell, no. That takes love poetry and a straight razor . . .

  She forced a cool smile, but inside she was warm. “Wise of you, seeing as it’s all you’ll get.”

  “Famous last words, madam.” Lafayette gave her the bright, unflinching version of his stare. A challenge?

  Then, cheerfully, he clapped Griffin on the shoulder, knocking him off balance. “Unorthodox practices, Griffin old boy. Sounds like a matter for the Royal after all. You’ll just have to put up with me a while longer.”

  Griffin sighed and straightened his hat. “Wonderful,” he muttered.

  THE EXCHANGE PRINCIPLE

  LATER THAT SAME AFTERNOON, ELIZA STEPPED OFF the Electric Underground at the new Covent Garden Station. The platform was crowded, the tunnel drenched with the stormy stink of hot metal. The tiny wood-paneled train carriage had been packed, its benches full and people standing in the aisles. The embarking and alighting crowds met and mingled, jostling her, and Hipp squawked in alarm and jumped into the crook of her elbow.

  The doors slapped shut behind her, and with a deafening bang! and a shower of blue sparks, the train abruptly accelerated and speared away at top speed. Sky-blue lightning zapped along the tracks in its wake.

  Her mind still tumbled with the details of the strange murders. Captain Lafayette was right about one thing, at least: no one’s story rang quite true. But science never lied. Facts were facts. Both dead women had been drugged, both had their limbs severed by the same weapon. And both scenes featured this curious electrical detritus: a pile of burned aether and signs of extreme heat.

  Like the electric train that just departed. Almost as if the sites had been struck by lightning. But there’d been no electrical storm in London for a month or more.

  She’d collected samples of the aether, of course, now in little glass tubes in her bag. But she little knew what further tests to conduct. Perhaps her textbooks would enlighten her. She had a small library, tucked away in her study. All strictly orthodox, of course. The naughty books were hidden safely in Lizzie’s closet, though Lizzie herself would have no use for them.

  She recalled her father’s laboratory, the bubbling flasks, the big coils glowing in their vacuum-sealed bottles. What would Mr. Faraday have had to say about this? Was the grit she’d collected really de-phlogisticated aether? Or would he have made some better, heretical explanation?

  No point racking her brains about it now. She had more pressing matters to attend to.

  Matters like Billy the Bastard, lying on a cold slab in the police morgue. Last known alive in the company of Miss Lizzie Hyde.

  The irony was palpable. The ludicrous verdict at Billy’s trial left Eliza in no doubt that he was a snout, a police informer. It was the only reason Billy lay in the morgue right now, his death being properly investigated, instead of left to rot in the dirt like every other corpse in Seven Dials.

  Whoever killed Billy had, as Lizzie might say, really gotten someone’s goat. But who?

  Eliza’s stomach quailed. She didn’t want to know what had happened. But if Lizzie was guilty . . . what then? Could she cover up the evidence? Falsify clues? It was unthinkable.

  Wasn’t it?

  She held Hippocrates tightly to her hip, lest he get trampled in the crowd, and he clucked nervously and clamped his spindly legs in. She let the crush wash her towards the stairs. Covent Garden Station had opened only recently, but already the tiled walls were grimy with soot. Electric lights buzzed and crackled in smoking sconces. Her tightly pinned hair tingled on end as s
he gripped the iron banister, the air bristling with static charge.

  At last, she emerged onto Long Acre and gratefully sucked in the cold gritty air. Afternoon sunlight dribbled weak as water through the yellowish gloom, and fog wisped like lace around brass lampposts and the resting hooves of idle cab horses. It was nearly close of business, and commuters marched to and fro, satchels and leather cases under their arms.

  Paper fluttered, a rain of printed leaflets like autumn leaves. She glanced up, but the fellow who’d dropped them from a rooftop had already vanished. The pages blew gently over the gutter, landing in puddles. The heading read THISTLEWOOD CLUB and A MEETING TO DEBATE PARLIAMENTARY CONCERNS.

  Such seditious gatherings were banned. No one dared pick one of the leaflets up, but around her people muttered and whispered darkly to each other. Thistlewood Club, there’s no such thing . . . damned Jacobin rats, can’t they just . . . the Lords rejected their petition again . . . must have a death wish . . . they’ll shoot the poor bastards down like Peterloo . . .

  “Murder! Gruesome murder in Seven Dials! Killer on the loose!” A little boy in a peaked cap hollered on the corner, brandishing a pamphlet entitled THE BLOODY DEATH OF BILLY BEANE. Another of Mr. Temple’s masterpieces. The cover was illustrated in garish detail, complete with knife-wielding hunchback, cringing victim, and gouts of blood. Another was entitled THE DYING DANCER, and featured a woman in ballet skirts swooning in a pool of gore.

  “Murder,” agreed Hipp gloomily from under her arm, and Eliza frowned, a sour taste in her mouth. She turned right along Bow Street, past the Royal Opera House, like a Grecian palace with its gabled façade and marble columns, and the domed glass pavilion of the Floral Hall. Men like Temple gloried in murder, the gorier and more detailed the description, the better.

  But there was nothing glorious about death, about finding your loved ones discarded in the mud like garbage. No one had loved Billy Beane. That didn’t make his death worthy of celebration. Did it?

  The hell it don’t, whispered Lizzie. Why do you think your Mr. Temple’s so popular? He’s just speaking aloud what we’re all thinking. Some folks deserve to die . . .

  It wasn’t right. There was no excuse for murder. Eliza would bring Billy’s killer to justice. And if Lizzie was involved . . .

  The Bow Street police station loomed across the street, a dramatic four-story fixture in carved white stone. The Queen’s symbol, with the ornate letters V.R. for “Victoria is Queen,” stood in proud relief above the entrance, and white arc-lights glared in glass globes on either side of the door. Blue lights had been the norm for police stations until the Prince Consort died in agony in a blue room and Mad Queen Victoria had forbidden any reminder of her grief, especially en route to her beloved Opera House. So the lights at Bow Street were changed to white, and had been white ever since.

  So were traditions born, at the whim of a grief-crazed widow. No one outside the inner circles of the palace and the Royal had laid eyes on the Queen for almost five years. She hid in her palaces, traveled in curtained carriages, concealed herself behind screens. People blamed her ersatz rulers—anyone and everything from Parliament suspending habeas corpus to the Royal Society’s treason trials to the seemingly interminable Prime Minister, that senile Duke of Wellington, in his electric lung machine—for everything that had gone wrong. God save the Queen! had become an ironic catch-cry for radical reformers as well as royalists.

  Perhaps the Queen was dead. Or kept as a lunatic, like so many unwanted women. Locked in a cold cellar on starvation rations, her screams unheeded.

  Eliza strode up the steps, skirts whispering. The constable behind the entry desk was laboriously consuming THE BLOODY DEATH OF BILLY BEANE, running his finger beneath each line and mouthing the words under his breath. Like many of the Met’s officers, he’d likely grown up in the slums, amongst the very people he now policed. A job was a job. Probably pure luck he hadn’t ended up a criminal himself.

  It didn’t increase her faith in the justice system.

  Hastily, he hid the pamphlet beneath his papers as she approached. His buttons were meticulously polished, his chin shaven clean. “Yes, madam?”

  She flashed her police credentials at him. “I just spoke with Inspector Griffin. I need to examine a cadaver.”

  Not a lie, precisely. But the other inspectors weren’t exactly her allies, and Griffin needn’t discover her interest in the Beane case, not yet. Not until she’d established beyond doubt that Lizzie wasn’t involved.

  Or otherwise.

  “Right you are, Doctor.” The constable smiled uneasily. Like many people, he didn’t understand the concept of a female physician, let alone a female police doctor and crime scene investigator. Possibly, he thought her a little crazy.

  She gave her best maniacal grin and plonked Hippocrates down. “Come along, Hipp. Let’s slice up some meat.” And she flounced away before the constable had time to react.

  The morgue lay downstairs, in a cold room lit only by electric coils. She shivered as she descended, Hipp’s brass feet clanking on the stone steps. The door creaked open, and she was alone with the dead.

  Two rows of slabs, six on each side. The bodies lay covered with pale sheets, all but a few of the slabs occupied. Harsh lights flickered, bzzt! bzzt! The sickly sweet scent of death wormed up her nose.

  She lifted four sheets before she found Billy Beane.

  There he lay, unclothed, his trademark green coat and hat removed. His thin body was pale, with dark patches of hair. His face was slack, untroubled in death. He looked smaller. Skinnier. Not so monstrous.

  Arsehole, spat Lizzie coldly, and Eliza’s lip curled, the shadows in her heart muttering black mutiny. Appearances meant less than nothing. Billy deserved to be dead. No one would miss him . . .

  She shook herself, fighting the dark cloud that threatened to swamp her. Lizzie, what did you do?

  But Lizzie just muttered dark curses and didn’t answer.

  Eliza pulled on her white gloves. The body had already been hastily washed, the trace evidence probably wiped away. The police had already seen whatever clues they could be bothered to look for. No time to lose. “Post-mortem examination, Hipp. Take a recording.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” His little electric voice buzzed, fussy.

  “Billy Beane, about thirty years old, dead since six this morning at the latest, probably longer.” Hippocrates clicked and jittered, recording her words. “Visual examination. Our Billy appears to have been stabbed in the throat. Large bloody wound under the left side of the chin, angled towards the base of the skull, flesh sliced downwards on exit, not torn. The weapon stabbed upwards, then withdrew, probably releasing a large gout of blood. I’d say an edged blade.”

  Potentially not Lizzie’s stiletto. So far, so good. And she’d noticed no voluminous bloodstains on Lizzie’s dress. Still, it wasn’t proof.

  “In addition, three . . . no, four . . . more. Multiple stab wounds to the abdomen and chest. Some shallow, some deep, maybe three inches. Narrow weapon, sharp point. Bruises on the temples and ribs. Also the belly and private parts. He seems to have suffered some pain. What a shame.”

  She picked up Billy’s hand. “Body stinks of gin, despite partial washing. Defense wounds, deep scratches on the palms and wrists of his left hand. He fought back, but with one hand only. The killer stabs; Billy clutches his bleeding throat with his right hand, fends the killer off with his left . . . Oh, hold on. Something’s caught beneath his nails.”

  She peered closer, angling the dead fingers to the light. Billy’s nails were disgusting, chewed ragged and stuffed with dirt. She popped on her optical, gazed through the magnifier, pulled out her tweezers, and carefully extracted . . . “It’s hair. Coarse, yellow-brown in color, torn out by the root. Not the same color as Billy’s.”

  She opened a brass flap on top of Hippocrates’s head and slipped the hair onto the glass slide within. “Hair sample, Hipp. Identify.”

  Hippocrates flashed his lights, acc
essing his records of her sample collection. “Inconclusive,” he reported. “Closest comparable specifications: canis lupus familiaris.”

  “This is dog hair? Are you sure? Could it be human?”

  “Inconclusive. Require further data. Information please.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps his body was savaged by a starving animal. Even better than I thought.” She popped the hair into a tube. “Moving on. Two long narrow wounds across the left shoulder and chest, probably the same blade . . . actually, no.” She frowned. “These look like . . . ah.” She brandished her tweezers again. “Another hair, similar in appearance, caught in one of the chest wounds. These have bled freely, their edges ragged. Not post-mortem.”

  She frowned. “Conclusion: Billy Beane was beaten, then stabbed to death. But before he died, he was clawed across the chest and hands by an animal. Through at least one layer of clothing, probably two.”

  How bizarre.

  What did this mean? Did the murderer use an attack dog? Perhaps a fighting animal from the pits, or a ratter. Stranger things had happened in Seven Dials. And there’d be plenty of people who’d relish the idea of setting a dog on Billy the Bastard.

  She bent to pick up the hessian sack that lay in shadow beneath the slab. “Billy’s effects, put into a sack by the police. One black hat, squashed.” She laid it aside, the greasy odor wrinkling her nose. “One shirt, one famously smelly green coat, both torn and bloodied, with other organic stains. Small puncture marks in the shirt, possibly matching the multiple stab wounds, measurements required. Small size of bloodstains suggests stabbings performed—”

  The mortuary door banged open, and a short man with bristling mustaches and a bowler hat barreled in. “What the devil are you doing?”

  She jumped back, and cursed inwardly. “Detective Inspector Reeve,” she said calmly, though her heart was thumping. “How nice to see you again.”

  Reeve strode up, left thumb tucked in his braces, and chewed on his cigar. Just a little man, with a little man’s inflated self-pride, and it irritated him to no end that Griffin had the Commissioner’s ear. Griffin was younger, better educated, and well regarded by his superiors, which in Reeve’s mind were three perfectly good reasons to hinder him at every turn.