Heaven's Bones (37 page)

Hamish, who was still fairly breathless at the speed with which he'd run from the Cat and Whiskers, hard on Artemis' heels, stood in the doorway, goggle-eyed at the sight. Belatedly it occurred to the detective that the boy was too young to see this. But many a child of the streets had seen this and worse: Life in London could be nasty, brutish and short, and he couldn't be guarding the sensibilities of every overgrown messenger boy.

“Chloroform?” echoed the woman—Lady Cecelia, she must be, sitting on the edge of Sophie's desk. Beside her was a huge brute of a man, with gorilla-like arms and a thick neck, incongruously dressed in neatly-pressed coachman's attire. “He was drugged first?”

Tears streaked her face and her lips were pale and compressed; she was composed, however, although her chin trembled.

“Not he,” said Artemis, with a calm he didn't feel. He crouched beside the victim's head. Beside the pool of semi-congealed blood there was a mark, also in blood—the triangular apex of a woman's shoe, a woman with a small foot.

Small feet like Sophie.

He forced himself to concentrate. Next to the first print was a second, the same triangular shape but this time twisted on itself, as if the subject—
Sophie
—had turned suddenly.

There was a third bloody print, just a thin, wavering line, as if the owner of the shoe had been dragged some few feet's distance.

“My guess—my belief is that Doctor Huxley was chloroformed, and conveyed elsewhere. Fortunately I don't see any sign of her being injured.”

Not yet, anyway.

He must remain calm and detached. If he had any hope of helping her, he must stay cool as ice.

Artemis looked up at Lady Cecelia. “Do you have any idea why this Robarts would attack Doctor Huxley?”

“Doctor Robarts is … was … my brother-in-law, Detective,” returned Lady Cecelia. “Since the tragic death of my sister his behavior has been profoundly affected; I can't deny it. But he had just returned to England after an extended exile, and was beginning to practice again, to assist Doctor Huxley in her work. She and Bartholomew …”

A spasm passed across her mouth and she covered it with a gloved hand. Mastering herself, she continued.

“I can't imagine he could have done such a thing.”

A doctor, thought Artemis. A doctor would have ready access to chloroform, and the knowledge of how to use it.

“How long ago did your sister pass away?” he asked, almost absently.

“Fifteen years now. It was the spring of 1867. Whatever is the matter, Mr. Donovan?”

For Artemis was looking at her as if she'd uttered some unspeakable horror.

“What did Janet say, exactly?” he said, brusquely.

Lady Cecelia simply stared at him. It was Alexander who spoke.

“She said to tell you that Doctor Robarts was the Gentleman. She said you'd understand.”

Artemis shut his eyes. A dizzying swirl of images went through his mind—the girl, laid out so carefully in the alley; the children
playing at jacks and singing that song; that dreadful plunge into and chase through the fog, with the sensation that some malevolent, inhuman force was hunting him down.

When he opened his eyes Cecelia started away from the intensity of his gaze.

“Is Janet fit to be seen?” he asked.

“I don't know—I doubt it. She was badly hurt, Mr. Donovan. I don't know how she made it as far as she did.”

I do, thought Artemis.

“It's worth a try,” he said, taking a notebook and pencil stub from inside his coat. He scribbled something down and beckoned Hamish over.

“Do you know your way around the streets? All right then, you don't have to tell me all about it. Take this to that address, you see, and ask for Clarkson—Henderson if he's not available, and be prepared to show him here posthaste, understand?”

He looked up at Alexander. “Can you be persuaded to stay with the body until they arrive, while Lady Cecelia takes me to Janet?”

The big man shook his head. “I stay with
her.”

Artemis shrugged. “Understood.”

The apothecary shook his head at them. “I don't like it. I've patched her up as best I may, and she's sleeping now, which is the best we can hope for at the moment. I don't want her disturbed.”

“For a minute only, and only if she'll wake,” insisted Artemis, and the apothecary reluctantly led him to where Janet lay on the sofa.

She did stir when he leaned over her, and opened her eyes. Recognizing him, she smiled.

“I knew you'd go after her,” she said faintly.

“Robarts—are you sure?” he said.

“The other—the killed man, McPherson—he said so,” she gasped. “And I remembered, so long ago, in the fog. He's been looking at her, I know—as if he had hope again, some mad hope.”

“I'll find her,” he said, straightening.

She closed her eyes. “You had better, Mr. Donovan.”

“Bryani House,” said Lady Cecelia immediately, when Artemis asked her where Robarts might flee. “His family's estate, in …”

“… Cornwall,” he said. At her surprised expression, he said. “I'm originally from St. Agnes, about a mile away. I know the area well.”

“I need to get there, and quickly,” he added. “Your carriage?”

“Certainly,” she replied, briskly. “So long as you understand that I must come along.”

She hurried down the stairs, Alexander in her wake, and he followed.

“Lady Cecelia, I really don't think it's safe …”

She whirled on him, bringing him up short at the bottom of the stairs.

“I don't know—and I can't really believe—if Sebastian is the cause of this. But if something's happened, and if he's in distress—he's still my brother-in-law. If you're to have my carriage, you must take me as well. Am I understood?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Artemis. He suppressed a wry smile as Alex flashed him a sympathetic look.

“On the way,” he said, as he handed Lady Cecelia into her carriage and mounted up after her, “you might tell me all you know about Doctor Robarts. I'm especially interested in the last fifteen years.”

As the door shut upon them and the bays gathered themselves and trotted away, a wisp of fog drifted after them, yellow in the lamplight. It was odd; thus far it had been a very clear night, unusually clear for London.

Sophie woke with a headache and the sickly-sweet taste of the chloroform still in her throat. She rolled to her side and sat, her head bent close to her knees, until the nausea receded.

When she could, she looked around. She was alone in a room, with what little furniture there was shrouded in sheets. She sat on a small bed piled with blankets and pillows. The room had the odd anonymity of Lottie Barnes' boarding house, and for a second Sophie wondered if she'd been conveyed there.

But there'd be noise outside at Lottie's: girls giggling, occasional catcalls. This place was utterly silent.

“Hello,” someone said.

Sophie sprang up and almost doubled over again with nausea. When her vision cleared she saw a girl—a young woman, really, standing against the opposite wall. She was oddly clad in what looked like a shift, and she wore a strange, leather-looking cape over her shoulders.

“I didn't mean to startle you,” continued the girl.

“How—how did I get here?” Sophie's mouth tasted vile.

The girl cocked her head. “Doctor Robarts brought you here. He brought all of us here,” she said, as if explaining things to a child.

Robarts. Sophie raised her hand to her mouth. Now she remembered—Dr. McPherson, horribly still on the floor of her office …

“I see we've awakened,” said Sebastian Robarts from the doorway.

Sophie barely bit back a shriek. Robarts looked cheerful, like a child anticipating a Sunday treat, not at all as if he'd smashed a man's head in and kidnapped her.

Oh God—Dr. McPherson, his head crushed, lying on her office floor. Such a kind man, how could anyone possibly have wished him harm?
Sophie choked back a sob. There would be time to mourn him later, after she'd gotten through this nightmare.

“You've met our Seriah,” continued Robarts, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

The girl nodded and walked past Sophie to the door, and as she did Sophie realized with a dull shock that her cape wasn't leather at all.

But it was, of a sort. The skin of the girl's back had been peeled away in two great sheets and left to hang free, like a mockery of wings.

Wings. Hadn't Henry told her at the teashop, something about wings, that Robarts was obsessed with making a practical wing, for human transportation?

Robarts couldn't possibly … no one was that mad.

Sophie faced her captor.

“You killed Doctor McPherson,” she said, knowing it was a dangerous thing to say but not caring overmuch. Hot tears welled at the back of her eyes.

Robarts looked—of all things—a little sad.

“I had to, my dear. He was trying to keep you away from me, you see. He shouldn't have done it, because Margaret sent you to me.”

The sane, reasonable voice made the words even more insane.

“Sent me …”

“To help me in my work!” He beamed. “She knew I'd need assistance—professional assistance—Trueblood is all very well and good, but there's nothing like a doctor's touch, is there, my dear? And she prepared you, by sending you that medal, St. Margaret with the
Wyrm, you know. She was always very clever, my Margaret. Clever and considerate.”

He paused and sighed.

“I miss her very much. But now,” he said delightedly. “Now I have another Margaret, clever and considerate.”

“Doctor Robarts,” she said, between clenched teeth. “Doctor Robarts, I must go.”

Something shifted in his gaze.

“Oh, I don't think so, my dear, at least not for now. There's so much work to be done. But come,” he backed away and beckoned her to follow. “Come and see!”

Tense and ready for any opportunity of escape, Sophie reluctantly obeyed.

She followed him down a hallway, which opened onto a great central staircase. Sophie realized that he'd brought her to a manor house, three stories at least, with halls that led, mazelike, from the central stair.

Was this his estate that she'd heard Lady Cecelia mention? Brian House, or some such?

And if so, was she in Devon? Or was it Cornwall?

Panic shot through her. How long before anyone thought to look for her? And who would suspect Robarts?

Still, she followed Robarts down the stairway, barely listening to him babble. There were more people in the foyer—could they help her? And what about that girl with the dreadfully flayed back?

At the sight of her and Robarts the people in the house stilled, watching them with particular gravity. They were all women, and they were all …

Sophie had rarely come even close to fainting. But now she felt her knees start to buckle, and she grasped the railing for support.

That one, with no lower jaw or mouth, just a smooth hollowed curve of skin from throat to cheek. That one, with great black eyes, shiny like those of an insect,
and placed too low in her face. That one, normal of face and body but behind her, coiled casually on the polished oak floor—could that possibly be a tail?

Women, all mutilated in varied and unimaginable ways, staring at her in calm fascination as if she were the freak. And they all, all of them …

They all had wings, curving above or neatly folded against their backs. She looked them over with a clinician's eye, fighting to maintain control of herself. None of the wings were exactly the same, although they were generally bat-shaped.

One of the women shifted from one foot to the other and Sophie saw the gleam of metal along the arched edge of one of the wings. There was nothing feathery about them, nothing natural, as an angel in a painting seems natural. These were all rooted in their backs, as if some catastrophic accident had melded the fleshly and the mechanical.