The Constantine Affliction (4 page)

“Very well, thank you.”

“Still wielding your ferocious pen?”

“Indeed, uncle,” she said, using a term of affection they had settled on long ago. “Your assistance on the article I wrote last year was a great boon to my career.” Mr. James had put her in touch with a few of his clients, who were willing to speak about their experience of the Constantine Affliction on the condition of anonymity. Ellie had also spoken to the close relations—mothers, fathers, children, husbands, wives—of the afflicted. The resulting article had been a great sensation, and a source of great surprise for Ellie personally. She’d known there were some highly-placed figures who’d succumbed to the affliction—everyone knew about Prince Albert, who now languished in the Tower of London as punishment for his infidelity, and no one had much sympathy for him—but she’d spoken with two members of parliament, an Oxford don, and a judge who’d all successfully hidden their transformations. She was not surprised at their subterfuge—their bodies had not become as obviously womanly as some, and Mr. James’s skill was equal to hiding those changes—but at the knowledge that all those men of fine reputation had at some point engaged the services of a prostitute who carried the affliction. That was the beginning of a certain cynicism that had served her well in her chosen career, though it also sometimes made her sad.

The genesis of the disease had been tentatively traced to an English-born gentleman named Orlando, onetime resident of Constantinople—most assumed the disease had its origin there, possibly developing somehow among the eunuchs, hence “the Constantinopolitan Affliction”—and a frequent visitor to one of the city’s more exclusive brothels, where he had infected several employees. From there, the disease had spread through surprising heights of society. Orlando had fled the country long ago, which was a shame. What an interview
that
would be.

“I wonder if you might work your art upon me, uncle?” Ellie said, putting her teacup aside. “Could you make me into a man?”

He frowned. “Eleanor, I am willing to help conceal perversions of nature, but what you’re asking is simply deceit—why would you want me to do such a thing?”

“It’s for a story,” she said, choosing her words carefully. Her uncle would not approve of an undercover excursion into a clockwork brothel. “I need to enter a certain gentleman’s club without being noticed.”

“You’re not out to ruin any reputations, are you?”

“No, uncle. And none of your… special customers… are involved.” That much was probably true. She stood and twirled around. “What do you think? Can you make a man out of me?”

He grunted. “I suppose. There are, ah, certain cloth bindings we can use for your…” He gestured vaguely at his own chest. “Your hips are fairly slim. I have some trousers that would fit you, and a shirt and waistcoat—it’s fortunate the fashion lately is for clothes of a looser fit. A false mustache… but the hair, Eleanor.” He shook his head. “My special customers cut their hair in a man’s style, of course, but you…”

Eleanor touched her hair, which was, at the moment, pulled back and done up in a tight bun. When unconfined, her hair fell past her shoulders. “I’ll cut it, then,” she said after a moment’s thought. “I can wear a wig until it grows back, and I have a fanchon bonnet that covers most of the back of my head anyway.”

“The story is that important to you, dear?”

“It is, uncle, and I would be forever in your debt.

“You said that last time I helped you with an article.”

“Then make it twice forever,” Ellie said, and he laughed.

***

Gazing at herself in the mirror, Ellie could scarcely credit the change. “You’ve made me into the very vision of a respectable businessman, uncle.” She wore a black frock coat and a matching waistcoat beneath, with a white shirt and an elaborate cravat. Her trousers were crisply pressed and high-waisted, and the polished shoes fit well enough once Mr. James shoved some paper into the toes. He had lopped off her hair, not without sighs and lamentations, and what remained was slicked back with pomade. Ellie’s head felt several pounds lighter, a peculiar but not unpleasant sensation.

“Now for a mustache. If I had time enough, I’d create one especially for you from your own hair, but it’s the work of many hours, and I gather you’re in a hurry, so we must make do with a readymade, though it pains me.” Mr. James fetched a black velvet display tray that held a score of mustaches of assorted colors and textures, pinned like the specimens of a butterfly collector, a sight Ellie found rather dreamlike. He held up several mustaches against her face, shaking his head each time, until saying, “Ah ha. This will do.”

Ellie eyed the item with suspicion. “It’s… a bit large, uncle.” Elaborate facial hair was in vogue since the Affliction began to spread, but Ellie feared such an impressive follicular display might appear ridiculous on her.

He grunted. “The Hungarian style, yes. It has certain advantages, in that it will conceal more of your face—which is a lovely face,” he hastened to add, “though that beauty is no benefit in these circumstances. More importantly, however, it matches your natural hair color better than any other option.” Mr. James allowed himself a small smile. “It is a rather…
forceful
mustache, and will draw attention away from your other features.”

“I’ll pass for a man, then?”

“You will, at the very least, pass for a victim of the Constantine Affliction
attempting
to pass for a man. Which, in polite society, is usually good enough.”

Hmm. That wasn’t quite good enough for
her
purposes. Men who’d transformed into women after sleeping with prostitutes were probably not chief among the clientele for a brothel, staffed with clockwork women or not. But with the right hat and enough confidence, perhaps… “Thank you, uncle. How is it to be affixed?”

Mr. James applied a sticky, slightly sweet-smelling substance to her upper lip and carefully pressed on the mustache, holding it in place for a few moments. Ellie felt as if a rodent were attempting to nest on her face, but there was no help for it. “Thank you, uncle.”

“You can thank me best by bringing these items back, unstained and whole, at your earliest convenience. You’re off straight away to your mysterious meeting, then?”

“Not for an hour or two yet.” She was unsure of the protocols, but assumed visiting a brothel after the dinner hour might be more reasonable.

“What will you do in the meantime?” he asked.

Ellie favored him with a smile, though she wondered how much of it was visible beneath the abominable mustache. “I believe I’ll walk a bit and find out what life is like for a man. There could be an article in
that
, too.”

“And a scandal as well.”

“Nothing better when it comes to selling papers, uncle.”

An Offer One Cannot, In Good Conscience, Refuse

H
e means to shock me
, Pimm thought, and did not allow the shock he did in fact feel to show. “
Your
whores, Mr. Value?” Prostitution, long tolerated as a necessary evil, had been made illegal by a special act of Parliament once the full impact of the disease known as the Constantine Affliction, and its most common means of transmission, came to be understood. The clockwork brothels which had sprung up to at least partly replace the need for human prostitutes currently operated in a legal shadow land—officially they were classed as “amusement arcades,” no different from bagatelle parlors and penny-admission showcases of automatons, though they were rather more expensive, and had a more limited clientele—but by admitting to employing human prostitutes, Value was confessing to a serious crime.

“I think we’re past the need for discretion, aren’t we, Halliday? You aren’t a police inspector, though I’m told you drink as much as most of the constables do. I could confess to the murder of an Archbishop in your presence and it wouldn’t matter. It would merely set my word against yours, and I’ve been accused of worse crimes by better men. So, yes:
my
whores. There are still independent operators, of course, women who have no other options making personal arrangements with men who have no better sense, but I’ve been organizing, and plenty of the whores in London pay a certain percentage to me. In exchange for their contributions, I offer them safe places to ply their trade, plus protection from the police—and even more unsavory characters.” He leaned forward, clutching the silver head of a cane he certainly didn’t need to help him walk. “But now the situation has become unbalanced. Those ladies are no longer getting good value for their money. Someone is killing them.”

“Murder is a matter for Scotland Yard,” Pimm said.

“Old Bill is no good to me. The police don’t even know these crimes have been committed.”

Pimm frowned, interested despite himself. “How so?”

“The corpses are left on my doorstep. Figuratively, anyway. They appear laid before the thresholds of my more… exclusive establishments. The legal ones. I’ve chosen not to involve the police. That kind of attention is bad for business, in so many ways.”

“Exclusive establishments? The ones with the clockwork courtesans?” Pimm suppressed a shudder at the thought of such creations. He loved women, or at least, had loved
certain
women, though the one he’d loved most was nearly a dozen years dead. The thought of having intimate relations with what was, essentially, an enormous
doll
was comical at best, and horrifying at worst.

“Yes.” Value sighed. “I do miss the old times, Halliday, when real girls could live off the farms of their bodies without worrying about being persecuted by the police, or getting sick and turning into
men
. The clockwork whores are expensive to produce, too—they don’t just wander into the city seeking their fortunes like ordinary girls do. Admittedly, once they’ve been built, the only costs are cleaning and maintenance, and the clockwork girls never complain, get pregnant, or catch the pox. I’m not saying they aren’t profitable—they are. But even though my clockwork girls are guaranteed clean, plenty of men refuse to achieve release with an automaton, no matter how cunningly contrived it might be. More often, we get men who come once, for the novelty, to see what it’s like, and then never return.” He tapped his cane a few times on the polished floor. “Even with all the… changes… we’ve seen in recent years, most men are conservative. We haven’t gotten to the point where human whores are entirely replaceable. Yet.”

“And so you still have real women working, out on the streets,” Pimm said.

“Of course. Men are men, Lord Pembroke, and they will do what men will do, despite the disapproval of Parliament and the threat of the Affliction. But business on the street has declined terribly as well, recently. There’s a rumor that some men who were transformed into women have turned to whoring, trying to spread the Affliction out of spite, and anyone who’s reasonably sober is being unusually cautious. Of course, plenty of whores were diseased
before
, but risking a weeping sore on your cock is apparently preferable to having your cock disappear entirely.” Value laughed, a sound like a razor rasping over stubble. “Time was, a man paid his penny and took his chances, but the pennies are getting thin on the ground. The last thing I need is someone killing the few women I
do
have out there earning me money.”

“Hmm,” Pimm said, choosing to ignore, for the moment, the essential vileness of Value’s character, and to focus on the crimes at hand. “Killing human prostitutes and leaving them outside houses full of artificial women? It seems like a statement of some kind, wouldn’t you say? Though I confess, the exact nature of the commentary eludes me…”

“The killer’s motives do not interest me. Only his actions. Find out who he is, and bring me his name, and my men will stop him.”

Pimm shook his head. “I don’t deny it’s an interesting problem, and it may even have diverting psychological elements, but I simply cannot work for you, sir. I don’t ‘work’ at all—my family frowns on my hobby as it is, and if they thought I was taking up detection as a vocation…” He spread his hands.

“That’s fine, Halliday. Our arrangement will be a secret. No need for your family’s venerable feathers to be ruffled.”

“You mocked me before, sir, for using too many words to say ‘no.’ I acknowledge my tendency to excessive circumspection, and will endeavor to overcome it, thus: No.”

Value sighed. “Ah, well. It’s a shame, Lord Pembroke, but I won’t try to tell your mind. Still, it’s an ill wind that blows no good. At least your decision will make my friend at the
Lantern
happy. He’s been losing circulation to the
Argus
, but an exclusive scandal like this should sell a few more papers, I wager.”

“I’m afraid I’ve lost the thread, Mr. Value.”

“Hmm? Oh, I just think the editor there will be quite interested to hear about your marriage to Lady Pembroke, who was once Miss Sandoval. She had another name before that, though, didn’t she? Frederick… something, wasn’t it?”

Pimm rose to his full height, which was easily four inches taller than Value, and amounted to rather more as the criminal remained seated. “You dare insult my darling Winifred? I cannot imagine how you think such a slight would aid your case—”

“Use some of that vaunted mental skill, would you, Halliday?” Value said. “I
own the whores
. I know which of my women were unaffected carriers of the Constantine Affliction. I know which men
slept
with them. Some of those men died, some of them went into disgrace following their transformations, and some of them are passing for the men they once were, even now. But only a few of the men simply
disappeared
—it was mostly women who chose that direction. One of the men who vanished was your old chum Freddy Banks. And shortly after he disappeared, you took up with a woman named
Wini
fred. You should have named her something else, Halliday. Rebecca. Caroline. Anything, really.”

“Freddy took a trip to America,” Pimm said stiffly. He was half-tensed, waiting for the short crack of an air pistol. If Freddy felt threatened, Value would certainly fall, even though Freddy was ostensibly armed only in case he needed to save Pimm’s life. Pimm had certain resources and connections, and the police wouldn’t expend much effort apprehending the killer of scum like Value, but it was a bloody ugly business, and Pimm had never been a party to murder before. He didn’t much want to start, especially since Freddy would have to kill Big Ben, too. That man was no angel, but he certainly didn’t deserve to die. “Freddy is in New York, last I heard. I’ve even had a few letters from him, you can compare the handwriting if you like—”