Beautiful Freaks (2 page)

Kaspian had
visited Foxglove’s shop
since being a small boy
and
he
was no longer
quite so scared,
or impressed,
by its spooky appearance or its owner
. Before Doctor Heartlock’s accident, they’d always visited together. It was one of the rare occasions that the old man shared any physical affection with his charge.  Kaspian would search out Heartlock’s bear-like paw and grip it tightly, afraid that the strange Mr. Foxglove might kidnap him and cook him for supper.

Mr. Foxglove had always been ancient, and so paradoxically, no longer aged. He
wore a glass eye, but as he’d shrunk with
age
, it had become too bi
g for the socket and now bulged,
giving the impression that the eye belonged more to an insect than a man.
Even now,
Kaspian constantly had to remind himself not to
be rude and
stare
at it because he found it totally
captivating.
Mr.
Foxglove had long lost the ability to
stride
and now shuffled along the stone floor in a pair of velvet slippers.
In all of his years of visiting,
Kaspian had never seen
the man
wear outdoor shoes.

The occult section
of the shop had no windows. Before the client entered, Foxglove would shuffle into the darkness and light the dusty oil-lamps, which filled the room with paraffin smoke and cast dancing shadows over the books. As a child, Foxglove
had taken delight in teasing Kaspian about his fears surrounding the shop, telling him the s
hadows belonged to the book goblins. Both men would laugh
,
and although he knew he was being mocked, Kaspian’s imagination refused
to give up the idea – even now he
found himself looking for
the goblins o
ut
of
the corner of his eye.  

Today, Foxglove had already
bundled and tied the books in readiness and they were sitting
on the counter
waiting
for collection. Kaspian was grateful
for this; not only did it save him time
but
it also meant that he did not have to visit the back room. The books were
heavy  and
twice he had used them as an excuse to stop and rest; once in a coffee shop and once to spy on the strange woman who now haunted the edges of his thoughts.

“Ah, well – patience is a virtue,” said Heartlock
, snapping Kaspian out of his drifting daydream. The doctor’s
face flickered
with disappointment and he started to cough in
reaction to the
early winter air
Kaspian had brought in with him.
Heartlock’s
aging lungs sque
ezed and wheezed; it was
a sound
now
as familiar as the sound of his voice.

The old man
recovered the pile of books from the side table and placed them into his lap before
deftly
turning his wheelchair one hundred and eighty degrees and
wheeling
back towards
his
study.

Kaspian let out a deep sigh. The sight of his patron becoming
so immobile and
decrepit added to the
increasing
sense of heaviness Kaspian believed
was
attached to the adult world.
Even the
house, his home since childhood,
faded and peeled on a daily basis. It was as if the whole place was a projection of its master’s state. The dust layer deepened,
the gloom spread
, and Kaspian felt increasingly like he was suffocating
.

When Heartlock had been a fit man, the house had be
en full of fascinating visitors; t
he sound of hearty
, booming
laughter and
the
tinkling
of whisky glasses filled the study, which was
a hub of academic and scientific progress. It was amazing how quickly a life could decay. 

With each passing month, fewer visitors came. With their absence, there came
a lag in
cases for investigation and Heartlock
faded into anonymity. No longer being
an ‘expert
in his field’ saddened the old man terribly, but his pride was too strong to admit it. Along with all of this, Kaspian couldn’t help but think he added to the old man’s disappointment.

2

DARK TIMES

It was late, almost to the point of being early. The opera houses and gin palaces had closed hours ago. It was
a
cruel time to pull a man from the warmth of his bed and
wife. Inspector Steptree had
grown
used to this –
being dragged
unwillingly from the blissful peace of sleep by an urgent and
heavy knock on his door.

The Whitechapel murders had spread a taste for violence throughout the London populace. And where once the killing took place mostly in the poor quarters of London
,
in the hellhole known as The Rookeries
, no
w violence had become a
fearsome plague
that spread across the city
. Cruel and wicked murders had become an almost weekly occurrence
. And with every killer trying to outdo the last, in some darkly perverse way, murder had become a new art form.

Brown’s distinctive triple
knock
on the front door
had become
Steptree’s new alarm call. Brown paid no attention to ‘respectable’ calling hours and the knock would come at all hours of the night. It happened so frequently in these dark times that the sound now failed to wake Steptree’s wife. Meg slept soundly in the peaceful sleep of innocence.

Steptree pu
lled himself together and gathered
up his trousers, braces
,
and waistcoat as he went. By t
he time he pulled open the door
he was mostly dressed.
Brown stood on the doorstep in his oversized Harris Tweed coat, puffing out clouds of warm breath and stamping his feet against the chill. It gave Steptree the rather comic impression of Brown being a horse.

“Evening Sir, sorry to disturb you,”
Brown
offered a
s a
weak apology, “but it’s an urgent matter – one that couldn’t wait.”

Steptree yawned in response, as if urgency had somehow become the
normal state of things and t
he way of the progressing world.

“What can I do you for,
Detective
?”

Detective
Brown
pulled at his moustache. It was a sign he was struggling for words.
Brown
was far from stupid, but he was a man for whom the English language seemed a
bit of a
riddle.

“A case, Sir
.
A murder, but it’s… it’s…”
Brown
pulled at his moustache again, this time with more frustration. “I think you’d just better come and see for yourself, Sir. It’s not that easy a situation to communicate.”

Steptree and
Brown
made their way
in
to
the
waiting
cab
.
It was one of only two Scotland Yard horse-cabs and its presence informed Steptree that Brown had already been to the crime-scene before being sent on errand to summon him. The cab travelled quickly through the streets at this time of the night; most of London’s inhabitants were now tucked up in bed, dreaming of the bright new world to come. The few who were left stumbling around the streets at this hour were the non-people, the ones who lived under the shadow of darkness and avoided the light of the real world. 

The journey was only a few minutes into the city’s corrupted heart. The cab stopped at the top of Shaftsbury Avenue, the main artery joining the wealthy and respectable Strand to the dark cesspit of Soho. As one of the main thoroughfares of the West End, it cut across from Leicester Square down onto the Haymarket.
‘T
he pe
rfect setting to stage a murder,
’
Steptree thought wryly to himself.
Unlike
Brown
, the English language was a rich plaything for Steptree and he often amused himself with word play. He found it a useful distraction from t
he horrors he often had to face,
as if by converting situations into language and words, it removed
him
from the
barbaric reality of it all.

When Steptree got down from the cab, he saw it had stopped, not because they had arrived exactly at their location, but because the police had cordoned off the avenue. He peered down into the tunnel of early morning smog. It was impossible to see much past the length of his outstretched arm.
The smogs, known to Londoners as ‘pea-soupers’, had become as much
a
part of the landscape as the factories
that
caused them.
He’d often thought the smogs were to blame for the murderous climate. They allowed
criminals the freedom to disappear at the turn of a street corner, as if they were phantoms.

This certainly seemed to have been the case with the Whitechapel Ripper
– a terrifying case of murders,
which
still
remained
unsolved almost ten years on. They had been one of the earliest cases he’d worked on. It had been a bloody way to start a career, but it had at least hardened him against future experiences.

Through the
thick
gloom, three orbs of yellow light indicated the position of the crime-scene.
On their journey, Brown had been more unwilling to talk then usual, and even now he was silent. Steptree took this as an uneasy warning. He followed Brown’s lead, moving towards the scene with a terrible sense of trepidation.

When he saw that a tent had been erected around the crime-scene, Steptree knew that he had been right to be cautious. It wasn’t standard protocol to cover a crime scene from prying eyes – Londoners were used to such sights. If it had been thought necessary to cover this scene, it was because there was something far more sinister than usual going on.

Martin Chester,
Chief of
Scotland Yard,
wobbled over to them, letting out a heavy
sigh
and a low whistle
before greeting
Steptr
ee with a warm familiarity. Steptree had known him from the earliest days of his career when the then
Inspector
Chester had been his mentor.

“P
leased you could make it
,
Steppers!
I need our very best man
on this,
”
he said extending his hand out in greeting.

No one else in Scotland Yard, or indeed in any other part of his life, called Inspector William Steptree, Steppers. Brown allowed the trace of a smile to light his lips under his moustache. It was quickly extinguished by Steptree’s steely glare.

Chester
, usually a ruddy man, looked pale. When he spoke, the words were laced with the heavy breath of one who had either been running, or who was suffering from shock.

“I
’ve never seen anything like it!” Chester exhaled, causing a long plume of warm air to channel into the air. “
I assume
your man here, Brown,
has filled you in on the
situation?
”

Steptree turned to
Brown
before returning his eyes to Chester
. “No, Sir.
He thought it best for me to see
it
for myself.”

“I see,” replied Chester through a strained smile.

He was a man who
appeared to be
holding it
all
together
only
because he was the one in charge. Whatever was under the cover
of the
tent
, it was clear that Chester had had to deal with it mainly
on his own.
He pulled aside one of the heavy canvas flaps and waved the men through, “After you!”

Steptree steeled
himself for the gruesome
sight he was sure awaited him. He let his breath go shallow, a trick he’d learnt to prevent the stench of death from making him wretch.
He’d seen some
awful
violence in his time,
but
despite attending hundreds of murders in his ten-year career, he’d never grown immunity.
However, none of the
sordid and violent ugliness he’
d encountered up to this point could have prepared him for the sight in front o
f him.