A Hunt By Moonlight (Werewolves and Gaslight Book 1) (7 page)

She could do it. He had won his position through the superior education his mother had given him and through his obsessive hard work, but there were still many who would welcome any excuse to be rid of him. And
that
would be the ultimate defeat. This, this was just another of the obstacles life placed in his way. He’d overcome all the other challenges, he’d overcome this one as well.

“You’ve won,” he said. “As you knew you would.”
At least, you’ve won this battle. We’ll see about the war.
He almost wished he believed in the God the vicar was always prattling on about. Then he could believe that somewhere in the afterlife there would be justice against these wealthy bastards who ground the rest of the world beneath their heels.

She smiled, a cold, calculating smile that reminded him of a killer he’d interrogated. “You have made the right decision.” Her face softened. “Please believe I would rather not have had it come to this. I’m sorry for any pain I may have caused you.”

She almost sounded like she meant it. But then she was a good actor, to carry the Foster subterfuge as far as she had.

The glamour was good, good enough that it was hard to think of her in the feminine even though he knew the truth. The voice, though a tenor, was sufficiently masculine not to give her away, and neither the face nor form had that odd sense of not-rightness that betrayed a cheaper glamour. But then, she had the money to pay for the very best.

Royston stepped out into the bright spring afternoon to a world forever darkened by the reminder of knowledge he wished he could unlearn.
 

His mother had told him a tale to rival Shakespeare—young lovers kept apart by the hatred of one family, a handsome young man, noble in all senses of the word, tragically cut down by random violence before he could fulfill his vow. She had believed the tales. Could his intelligent, practical mother have been so deluded?

He would never know how much of the truth she had known, either at the time of her relationship with his father or later. He had clung to the idea that if a woman as intelligent and perceptive as his mother had loved the man, surely he'd had more to him than the record would indicate.

In his line of work, he’d seen even shrewder women—and men—transformed into utter fools by love. Foster, Miss Fairchild, had the confidence of one who had built a case on the most solid evidence.
 

Two young boys, brothers by the looks of them, raced each other recklessly down the sidewalk. Royston stepped aside to let them pass. He’d always wondered what it would have been like to have a brother in blood—Willie Godwin was close, but it wasn’t the same. Now, if Miss Fairchild was to be believed, he had half-siblings that had been left to die in infancy of neglect and starvation. Maybe his father hadn’t known. Did that make it any better, that he hadn’t even bothered to find out the fate of the children he'd sired? A crying child behind him made him spin, half-worrying that he’d lost his mind to delusions of past horrors. But no, it was a child in a pram, well-fed, round-cheeked, healthy and strong if the power of its voice was anything to go by. A nurse in a white-aproned domestic’s uniform paused their stroll to coo and fuss over the child, soothing its discontent.

And still, the child called up the memory of emaciated infants whose cries went unheard, of babies too weak to cry. Royston shuddered.
 

It had been years ago, and still he could recall the stench of urine and excrement and festering sores on babies left to lie in their own filth. The police had been in luck, if anything about the situation could be called lucky. The proprietress had been mixing arsenic into the watered-down milk to hasten the demise of the infants rather than waiting for the slower death of starvation. They found the chemical in the kitchens, and doctors who examined the few surviving infants found symptoms of its effects. The proprietress could not claim their condition as ‘wasting disease’, which was the usual explanation for such deaths—when they were investigated at all.

Royston was among the constables left with the sad task of carrying out the tiny bodies. He remembered picking up one of the pitiful things, nothing but a stretch of translucent bluish skin over a frame of bird-delicate bones. The little girl had been lying on a soiled mattress without so much as a nappy. He lifted her, intending to wrap the body, for decency’s sake, in a ragged scrap of blanket before carrying her out to the coroner’s wagon. When she moved feebly and gave a weak cry he yelped and nearly dropped her.
 

A doctor had moved in and took the child. Later he had heard that she only lived a few more hours.

If his mother hadn’t been so resourceful and so determined to keep her child, he very well could have ended up one of those babies.
 

He shuddered deeply.
 

Dwelling on the past wasn’t going to do anything to save Doctor Death’s next victim. He still had a few leads to follow up on tomorrow. So far, he had lost count of the eccentrics who had come forward with wild, useless theories regarding the killer’s identity and absolutely no solid evidence. He had theories of his own—he was keeping a close eye on two of Blackpoole’s former associates—but no proof to support any of it.
 

“Fish and chips, fresh and hot!”

Had he really made it all the way to the stand where Molly worked? Hopefully he hadn’t bumped into anyone in his daze.

“Good day, Inspector. The cod’s just out of the fryer, hot enough to burn your fingers, but I’ll wrap it well in paper.”

He forced a smile, no point in ruining the girl’s day. “Always looking out for me, my lovely Molly-o.” He’d picked up the line from something a traveling singer from Ireland had sung in a music hall he’d gone to with Willie, and it always made Molly blush. She blushed prettily, a flush of roses blooming in her rounded cheeks.

“Fish and chips today for one of London’s gallant protectors?”

He wasn’t hungry, but the idea of the warm, familiar comfort of the greasy offering appealed. “Put that way, how could I refuse?”

He dug out the requisite coins, and Molly handed him the steaming cone of newsprint already translucent with grease. As always, she snuck in an extra piece of fish and a few more chips than went into the usual order.

He ate as he walked and felt a little better by the time he reached his flat. He read a little of
Othello
by gaslight—oh wondrous modern luxury for a book lover—and was contemplating an early night when Parker arrived to summon him to one of the rougher bars in Camden-town to collect Willie Godwin and soothe the angry proprietor.

That Willie had once been one of their own had carried weight for a while in his encounters with the law. That he was Jacob Godwin’s son won him a little more grace. Not that Godwin would have wanted anyone to show favoritism to his estranged son. But no constable and no inspector wanted to be the one to break the old man’s heart just a little more.

If the bar in question had a name, it was not painted on the door or hung on a sign. No matter, Royston knew exactly where it was. He’d been called there enough times as a constable to break up fights, and more recently, to take Willie home. It stood half-way down an alley that stank of urine. The darkness and narrowness made the hair on the back of his neck rise. Locals did not particularly care for law enforcement, and occasionally constables ended up beaten to death or had their throats slit. Nobody ever saw anything. His Webley British Bulldog, loaded and ready, made a comfortable weight beneath his jacket. Parker, he noted, kept one hand on the billy club at his belt. Good man.

He pushed the rough-hewn door to the bar open and strode with deliberate confidence across a floor sticky with layers of spilled beer. The loud, raucous laughter and conversation stopped as soon as the patrons saw Parker’s uniform. The day laborers and layabouts that clustered around the bar and the two small tables glared. One of them spat on the floor.

The proprietor came out drying his hands on his filthy bar towel. “Ah, there you are, lads. I was just about to send for constables by more official channels. Next time I will, see if I won’t.”

“I’m grateful for your discretion,” Royston said. “I’ll make sure that the tab gets paid as well as any damages.” Even if it had to come out of his own pocket, which doubtless at least some of it would.

He found Willie slumped at a table in the corner, a bruise already starting on his cheek. His bloodied knuckles had doubtless been cut on some brawler’s teeth. “Come on, Willie, home you go,” Royston said with false cheer. “Still living in the same place?”

His childhood friend reeked of alcohol and poor hygiene.

“Yer a good friend, Royston-lad,” Willie slurred. “And a good man. ‘S why m’Da always liked you better.”

Royston stayed in Willie’s flat long enough to ensure that his friend wasn’t going to choke on his own vomit and die. By the time he got home, he had less than six hours before he had to be back at the Yard, and he really, really needed a bath.

Before he could finish stripping, a constable was pounding on his door, telling him that another dead girl had been found.

Five

Catherine sat at her easel, oils drying on her palette. The scent of turpentine mingling with the scent of roses usually put her into a pleasant painter’s trance. Today all she could think of was the headlines of the day’s paper and the grainy photograph of the coroner’s wagon.

Once it might have been her in that wagon.
 

A hand fell on her shoulder. She shrieked.

“Catherine, love…” Her dear Richard’s voice.

She turned to him, and the love and concern in his eyes was almost more than she could bear. She felt uncharacteristic tears burning in her eyes. Richard knelt to be on her level, careless of what the damp soil would do to his trousers. George, his manservant, would be most put out.

He put a hand on her knee. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment then took a deep, shuddering breath.
 

“Damn Blackpoole,” she said at last. “Ever since Pemberton’s ball, I can’t be in a garden alone at night. I can’t even be in my own garden alone unless I am within sight from the house. Damn it, my own beloved touches me unexpectedly, and I scream. Why am I so weak? Nothing happened, you got there in time.
Nothing happened.”

He took her hand. “He grabbed you. He would have killed you. You went through a terrible fright. It’s understandable that certain things remind you of that.”

“I feel like such a coward,” she whispered, fighting a rush of angry tears.

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “You are the bravest, boldest woman I know.”

She laughed, though it came out half a sob. “Most men would not consider that a compliment.”

“Their loss is my fortune.”

“It was getting better,” she said. “I thought that one day I might be able to put it from my mind. But now it’s worse than ever.”

“Because of the new killer.”

She nodded. “And yet, I feel like I don’t even have a right to be upset by it. I’m safe here, as safe as anyone can be. The poor girls walking home at night through the dark streets with no one to protect them are the ones who have to live with it every day.”

He rubbed soothing circles on the back of her hand with his thumb. “One fear doesn’t negate the other, love.”

“The police are no closer to an answer.” She heard things, or Mr. Foster did. The Yard was baffled. Jones, they said, was working himself into a state. Dark circles under the eyes, and he looked like he'd dropped nearly a stone.

She hoped it was just the case. She cringed with guilt every time she remembered their conversation in Foster’s office. Though even if it were just the case troubling him, could he be right that there was some way that she and Richard could help?
 

“We have not heard from that Inspector Jones recently,” Richard said. “Odd." He gave her a quick look. "He didn’t seem the type to give up so readily.”

“Maybe he found himself another werewolf.”

“We both know how likely that is.”

Werewolves didn’t work with the police. But then werewolves didn’t have townhouses in the best parts of London and estates in the country, nor did they marry well-born heiresses. She knew where his thoughts were heading. Selfish to put his safety and their marriage before the safety of those girls, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t bear to lose someone else she loved.

“The police have been over and over the crime scenes. There’s nothing more to be done."

Richard frowned. “My senses
are
keener, especially in wolf form. The Inspector was right. Perhaps I could find something they missed.”

 
“Perhaps you could not. Perhaps you would be risking everything for nothing.”

“But if there’s a chance I could help, isn’t it worth the risk? Those girls, their families, they would surely say it is.” His blue eyes were earnest.

She looked away. “It’s two weeks to the next full moon. Perhaps something will turn up before then.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We’ll have to face that as we come to it.”
 

He took her hands. “I have lived with the terror of discovery for so long that I am weary of the fear. I worry more about what would happen to you were my secret to be discovered. I suppose there’s no chance that you would swear to repudiate me in those circumstances, swear that you didn’t know my nature? You might not escape the taint on your name entirely, but you might lessen it somewhat, and you would escape prosecution for intent to violate the new marriage law.”