The Constantine Affliction (7 page)

Pimm made a point of treating everyone, from tradesman to villain to beggar, with the same geniality, so he merely chuckled. “Oh, heavens no. I have some interest in criminology, that’s all, and I offered our mutual friend my assistance.”

Mr. Adams didn’t move. “I have heard of you. You worked with Scotland Yard on the Constance Trent case, did you not?”

Pimm nodded. “An ugly business. The death of a child…” He shook his head. “Nothing was ever proven, of course, which makes it all the worse. The murderer is still free.”

“We all suffer for our sins,” Mr. Adams said. “If not in the immediate aftermath, than in the fullness of time.”

“Yes, quite.” Pimm cleared his throat. “Our mutual friend—”

“You may call him by name.” Was Adams amused? With that rasp, it was so hard to tell. “We are both inclined toward confidentiality, I am sure, and thus need keep no secrets between us.”

“Mr. Value, then. He says you can show me the bodies of these unfortunate women?”

“One of them, at least. Follow me.” He led Pimm deeper into the house, through corridors made of stacked crates, some of them ancient and furred with dust. While this combined house was in truth one great open space punctuated by pillars, someone had created the illusion of rooms and corridors by artfully stacking boxes, hanging tapestries, and erecting tents beneath the high dark ceilings. Soon Adams halted at a seemingly arbitrary point, a narrow cul-de-sac made of stacked crates—those on one side bore markings like Egyptian hieroglyphics, and on the other each crate bore the single, rather ambiguous, word “Materiel.” Pimm glanced around the narrow space, and realized where they were going next.

The towering figure crouched—even bent down, his head was level with Pimm’s chest—and drew back the corner of a faded Oriental rug, revealing a trap door with an iron ring set on one end.

“I’m afraid your trap door isn’t very well hidden,” Pimm said apologetically. “The corner of the rug you lifted is more worn than the rest, and the outline of the door is visible if one takes the time to look. If this place should ever be raided by officers of the law, I fear they might discover this door.”

Adams nodded. “I suppose so. But the police will never trouble us here—Mr. Value pays well to see I am undisturbed. And while there are certain unsavory elements who might break in and attempt to discover my secrets…” He gestured at the ring. “Try to lift it, Lord Pembroke.”

Pimm crouched, seized the cold iron ring in both hands, and heaved. He might as well have been attempting to lift the Tower of London by main force—indeed, he began to suspect he was the butt of a joke. “Is the ring just set in solid stone, then?”

“Not at all.” Adams reached down and, with one hand, lifted the trap door open with an air of ease. After it rose halfway, some mechanism was engaged, and the trap door stood open on its own, revealing a set of wooden stairs leading below.

“Is there a trick?” Pimm said, squinting. “A hidden switch of some kind, to release a lock?”

“Perhaps I am just very strong.” Adams started down the steps, and after a moment’s hesitation, Pimm followed. In for a penny, after all.

Adams threw a switch at the bottom of the short flight of stairs, and the long low room beneath the floor lit up, illuminated by strings of electric lights, the bulbs dangling like strange fruit from wires overhead, and banishing all shadows. The strange giant gestured toward the bulbs. “They are incandescent lights, based on the design of the great magician and passable inventor Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, though I have made certain improvements to increase their useful life.”

“The light is marvelously steady,” Pimm said. “Most of the electrics I’ve seen flicker a bit, but these, they’re like suns done in miniature.”

“My studies benefit from light.”

Pimm looked around the laboratory. There were racks holding rounded vessels of clay, a long table covered in glassware, a wall entirely taken up by a huge apothecary’s cabinet, and shelves holding countless books, mixed in with specimen jars full of cloudy fluid and half-glimpsed biological oddities. “You are a natural philosopher, sir?”

“I am principally an anatomist. The human body and its working are my ongoing fascination. Mr. Value is kind enough to send me any dead bodies he discovers, so their misfortunes might at least further the sum of human knowledge.” Adams approached a table covered with a sheet, and Pimm braced himself when the giant pulled the covering aside.

He had seen many dead bodies since taking up his criminological hobby, several of them damaged by terrible acts of violence—poor Constance Trent was probably the most harrowing, though he’d also seen men with their heads smashed in by andirons, a handful of slashed throats, and people with their faces convulsed in the final rictus of death by poisoning.

The woman on the table was the least distressing corpse he’d ever seen outside of a coffin. She was young, red-haired, milk-pale, and nude. That final point might have been awkward, but Pimm had long ago learned the trick of looking at the dead clinically—their souls were fled, and their bodies were merely empty vessels, worthy of respect, but no longer in need of the courtesies he would accord them in life. Pimm instinctively took a handkerchief from his pocket to press to his nose, but there was no odor. “How long has she been dead, Mr. Adams?”

“She was found this morning, on the steps of a house on St. James’s Street.”

Pimm grunted. “My club is on that street. I had no idea Value kept an establishment there.”

“I understand the management is most discreet.”

“It’s quite some distance to transport a dead girl, since she was unlikely to be working in the vicinity. That’s a fair bit of effort—the killer is certainly trying to make some kind of point.” Pimm peered at the victim. “This girl has been dead the best part of a day, yet there is no sign of decomposition. Does that strike you as odd?”

“Mr. Value’s men brought her in a chest of ice. And for my part, I make use of certain… preservative elements,” Adams admitted. “They slow decay, which makes my work more pleasant. You don’t seem troubled by my occupation, if I may say. Most find it off-putting.”

“I had a second cousin who went into the medical profession. He was the despair of the family—until I came along, at least. He told me about his studies, bodies rendered down for their skeletons, cadavers dissected. He explained that the study of the dead could help the living, and ease suffering. It seems a noble enough goal to me, if the poor souls being examined have no families to claim their earthly remains. Not that I expect Mr. Value bothers with such niceties.” He glanced at the giant’s blank white mask. “And you, I wager, are no member of the teaching staff at St. Bartholomew’s?”

“I learned my profession in the old style, as the assistant to a master surgeon, when I was a younger man. I have no formal certificate, nor do I wish for one. I am content to perform my own researches, and my patron finds my work useful enough to fund those studies.”

“You are the one who tested the efficacy of tissue sympathy in victims of the Constantine Affliction, I suspect?”

The giant merely inclined his head.

“Quite clever,” Pimm said. “I do admire such intellectual accomplishment. Do you know what purpose your patron Mr. Value has found for your discovery?” He could not keep an edge of bitterness from his voice.

“Science is a tool, Lord Pembroke. Sometimes it can be used as a weapon, I know. But its intrinsic moral orientation is entirely neutral. The Steel Raja crushes his enemies with steam-powered automatons in the form of war elephants. Yet the same fundamentals of science power the ships that ply the seas, bringing trade to distant shores, and the digging machines that even now chew at the earth beneath the English Channel to connect this island to the Continent. Steam is not evil. Machines are not evil. But their uses can be.”

“An interesting perspective, Mr. Adams. While we are on the subject of evil, let us return to the nature of the murder before us. In your medical opinion, what was the cause of death? The poor girl has not a mark on her.”

“Poisoning, this time. Or perhaps inhalation of ether or some other chemical. Sometimes the killer—assuming it is the same killer—suffocates his victims, but in this case, there are no broken blood vessels in the eyes, as one sees in smotherings, and no marks on the throat, such as one finds in cases of throttling.” He paused. “The victims—there have been five—have all been only lightly marked, each more pristine than the last. When Mr. Value’s men found the first girl, they thought her heart had simply stopped, though no one understood why she’d strayed so far from her preferred neighborhood, to fall dead on the steps of a clockwork brothel. When another girl was found dead at a different establishment belonging to Mr. Value a week later… well. Coincidence no longer seemed likely.”

“Hmm.” Pimm gazed into the poor girl’s blank blue eyes. “If only she could tell us what she’d seen. The best witness of any murder is always, sadly, beyond the reach of questioning.”

“Not necessarily,” Mr. Adams said. “If a victim were brought to me within an hour of her death, say, I might compel her to answer a question or two. Any later, and the brain would surely be too damaged to be revived, but…” He shrugged.

Pimm stared at him.
That
explained why Adams had to work for a man like Value; he was mad. “What you describe… it’s impossible. Necromancy.”

“The body is a machine, Lord Pembroke. I will not address the question of whether humans have
souls
—but they do have brains, and those brains, if nothing else, reveal the pathways and passages favored by the thoughts of those souls. The cells begin to break down and decay soon after death, it is true, but if I could access the brain before decay went too far, who knows what secrets might be recovered?” He shrugged. “The difference between life and death is less clearly delineated than you might suppose. Bring me a fresh dead girl, and she might tell you her secrets.”

Pimm shuddered. “Cutting apart these bodies to learn the secrets of life—that is distasteful, Mr. Adams, but I recognize how it serves a greater good. What you describe now is…. One hates to be overdramatic, but I am tempted to call it
blasphemy
. To speak to the dead must surely be an affront to God.”

Mr. Adams chuckled behind his impassive mask. “Hadn’t you heard, sir? Man has already seized the power of the gods. We have stolen fire, and we bank those fires ever higher. We have eaten of the fruit of knowledge, and been expelled from the Garden, and yet every day we try to claw our way back into that lost Eden.” He took a shining scalpel from a tray of instruments. “Bring me a fresh victim, and you may be able to ask her what Heaven looks like personally. Though you might not like the answer.”

Pimm turned away before Adams made his first incision.

Escape from a
Mechanical Brothel!

E
llie ran, of course, because she knew a threat when she heard one, no matter how genial the phrasing. She jerked the door shut after her and hurried down the hallway toward the stairs. As she ran, several doors along the hallway swung open… and clockwork courtesans stepped out.

She hadn’t realized they could walk, and they probably weren’t often called upon to do so, but they walked now, emerging naked or dressed in bits of lingerie, moving two abreast to block her path to the stairs. Men shouted angrily in a couple of the rooms, their mechanical paramours having abandoned them in the midst of carnal acts. (Though technically to be a “carnal” act, Ellie supposed
both
people involved had to be made of flesh.)

Ellie considered just trying to push through the courtesans, but there were half a dozen of the machines standing, blank-faced and patient. What if they seized her? The thought of being touched by such creatures—especially the ones that had so recently been touched by men—was abhorrent. She turned the other way, though there was nothing at that end of the hallway but a velvet curtain. Though she had no idea what waited behind that barrier, it seemed unlikely that it would be
worse
than a small army of mechanical women. Oddly, Sir Bertram didn’t emerge from his room to pursue her—perhaps he was afraid someone else would discover his presence here? The man widely believed to be the Queen’s unofficial consort—some wags even called Queen Victoria “Mrs. Oswald”—found in a house of extremely ill repute, in the act of tinkering with the mechanical innards of one of the clockwork courtesans… the scandal would be extraordinary!

But there was no time to think of being a reporter now. Ellie dashed for the curtain, pulled it aside, and found a set of stairs. As she rushed upward, she heard human voices shouting in the hall below. Were they merely angry clients, or the rough men who inevitably policed establishments like this? Men like Crippen? The stairs switchbacked, leading up to the third floor, and to another velvet curtain. Ellie peeked around the edge of the flimsy barrier, and saw only another hallway, not unlike the one she’d just escaped. These doors were all closed, except for one on the left at the far end. She raced down the hall and looked into that room. It was furnished in the same style as the other boudoirs, but presently unoccupied by either man or machine. Ellie pulled the door shut behind her and listened intently.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs, and a male voice—not Oswald’s—said, “He must be hiding here somewhere. Check the rooms.”

Ellie rushed to the window, hoping for a ledge she could stand on, but when she threw back the drapes, there
was
no window; it had been boarded up, and the nails were driven too deep for her to pry them loose. She could hear, faintly, doors opening farther down the hall. They would reach her, soon, and when they did…

She closed her eyes for a moment. They were looking for a man. Well, then. She’d just have to make sure they didn’t
find
one.

Ellie tore off her false mustache and stuffed it in her coat pocket, then slipped off the coat, vest, shirt, shoes, and socks, and undid her trousers, finally removing her underwear. She unwrapped the bandages that constricted her breasts—worse than a corset, honestly, and at least unwinding them was a relief—and hurriedly wadded up the clothes and shoved them deep under the bed. Now she could just climb into the bed and try to look like a switched-off machine, with the covers arrayed to hide her modesty—