London
“Excuse me? Excuse me, my good sir,” Eric Bunson was used to playing the part of the charming (if thin and sometimes a bit shabby) businessman. In Whitechapel, he stood out as someone who looked too clean and neat to live there permanently. In Pimlico, he looked questionable, which is why he was doffing his hat and bowing to common cabbies as if they were the bleedin’ lord mayor.
The cabbie stopped slapping his reins and slowed. “Where to?”
“I’m here, or at least, I’m hereabouts. I’m looking for a dress shop that’s in Grosvenor Road, but I can’t seem to find it. M’Lady’s?”
The cabbie let out a long, low whistle. “Ooh. If you’d come just a few days earlier, sir. Now, if you’ll go left at the crossing there at the corner, there’s a very good dressmaker and tailor, little husband and wife shop, it is.”
“No, no, it must be this shop. There’s someone— There’s a problem with a dress that I bought, and I need it altered,” Eric put his hand on the neck of the dark bay horse as the cabbie began to flap the reins.
The cabbie looked at him, one cynical eyebrow rising in a sceptical face. “Where is the dress you want altered, sir?” he asked pointedly.
Eric fumed. Common nag-driver. Didn’t have to make him feel so foolish. “Of course I’m not carrying a frock with me all over ! I’ll be sending the dress on, but I want a word with the proprietor before I do as I’m most unhappy with the quality of her work! I mean, my wife is most unhappy.”
“Well, your missus can rest easy in the fact that the shop is closed and get the alterations done cheap elsewhere.”
“Closed? It can’t be. It was just...” Eric stopped to count in his head. When had the mysterious man with piercing eyes and almost inhuman strength appeared with his load of goods from the dress shop? It wasn’t yesterday, but two days ago. He had it in mind to go and hunt the blackguard down at once, but his wards were getting awfully chipper and needed something to sort them out. A nasty “accident” this morning involving a pan of hot fat and some girl’s skirt somehow catching light had been enough to send the older ones into a somber mood and forced the younger ones into their normal, miserable routine simply as a way to avoid thinking about the horrible howls and screams of their little playmate.
She was rather ugly anyway, with her freckles and squashed little nose. Never would have made it into my bed. If she died or went septic—no great loss.
Apparently impatient with his silence, the cabbie suddenly slapped the reins on the horse's neck and set him in motion. “They only shut down two days ago, the way I hear it! Two old maids ran the place, and one of ‘em had a nasty accident. Unbelievable, it was. Fell right out of the window of her little flat above and went splat all over the street, almost like she was a bag of blood that split.”
Eric swallowed. An uncanny similarity to the way his brother’s remains had been described—a bag of skin and bones in a puddle of blood. Middle and meat all gone.
“It was there, on the corner!” The cabbie shouted and pointed as he drove out of sight.
M’LADY’S LOOKED LIKE a quiet, respectable sort of place—an upscale sort of a place where the latest fashions for wealthy matrons or young debs expecting to marry the sons of cabinet ministers or conservative MPs would find adequately stylish (yet modest) fashions. When Eric arrived, he paused for a minute to admire the lavender dress that hugged the dress form in the window, wishing for a moment that he knew a girl who would fill out the dress so thoroughly.
All the current pickings at Bunson’s Home for Unwanted Urchins were thin and scraggly, even the older girls.
Except Polly. Polly had nice big milk bags, even half-starved. A nice shape, but naturally full-breasted. Polly would have looked good in that frock.
She’d look better out of it, and by Jove, he didn’t care if she had killed Robert with her own two hands, he was going to fuck her before he wrapped his hands around her neck and choked the life out of her.
“We’re closed! Permanently!” a thin, frightened voice called out from above, and Eric looked up in time to see a shutter slamming closed on the side of the house.
He crept round the side where the street ended and a boxy row of hedges had been planted to shield the upper-class merchants and shoppers from something as ugly and common as traffic. Eric stopped, foot in mid-air, and froze. The bloody outline remained on the pavement and splattered into the hedge, turning the overwintering bushes a rusty red on one side. The outline... it wasn’t of a human. It was an oval.
A splash. A splat.
Maybe she did fall.
Or maybe she was pushed. Then savaged, as if by wild dogs. That was one theory they tried to palm off on me. Down in Whitechapel, I suppose it might be true, but here? I can’t see wild packs roaming the streets in this upmarket little place.
I wonder... Does this madman travel with a pack of hounds, or is he the one doing the savaging?
“I said we’re closed!” The thin voice was back, this time accompanied by a thin face, gaunt and gray, with the skin hanging in pouches, a telltale sign of someone who has lost weight quickly.
“I’m with the police. A detective,” Eric doffed his hat again. “I’ve got some questions for you, miss.”
“I’ve spoken to them again and again! It won’t bring Agnes back!”
“No, I don’t reckon it will, but if you don’t cooperate, I shall have to charge you,” Eric said, trying to look self-important and mildly threatening, a combination that worked exceedingly well on stupid children.
It worked well on frightened spinsters, too. She slammed the shutter, but Eric soon heard the bolts drawing back from the front door and hurried around to enter the shop.
The sight that met his eyes! It looked like a windstorm had blown through the place, tearing fabric in half, and ripping dresses from their wooden and cloth-covered forms.
“Are they going to listen to me this time? That stupid constable had the doctor give me sleeping powders. I’ve been dreaming the most horrible dreams, and when I wake up—just look! It’s all real, just as I said. And they won’t help clear up, you know. I’m closed until further notice. Permanently. Yes, closed forever, for I can’t do this without Agnes.”
“There, there. I’m in the special branch, sent down from Scotland Yard. I’m thinking there’s a new angle to be discovered,” Eric said with an air of sage wisdom, clasping his hands behind his back.
The little woman nodded eagerly. “Will you have tea, Constable?”
“Detective. Detective Bu—Burns. Yes, a cuppa would be just the thing,” he smiled his best ingratiating smile until the old duck scampered to the back rooms.
Eric’s smile faded. There must be a thousand pounds of bits and bobs lying about this place. Silks and laces, costume jewelry with pearls the size of robins’ eggs... His fingers were quick and silent, stuffing anything small and valuable into his trouser pockets, confident the grieving woman wouldn’t pick it out in all this chaos.
“The kettle is warming up. Now, Detective, I told the constables who came that there was no way Agnes could have fallen out of the second-story window. You see, she wasn’t even upstairs! We took it in turns to count out the till and lock up, and it was Agnes’ turn. Not only that, but she spent a good deal longer than usual downstairs and I had been having trouble with a bunion and was soaking my feet—though I would never say such a thing if you weren’t a detective, of course.”
“Of course,” Eric reassured.
“Well, I called down to her that it was very late for her to be locking up and she told me, ‘Edith, I want to scrub the place properly after that foreign gentleman and his tart were on our premises!’ and I told her, ‘Agnes, they didn’t even try anything on in the store!’ But she would have none of it, Detective Burns.”
“Tart? Foreign man? Can you describe them to me?”
“Oh, he spoke English well enough, even sounded quite well-bred in his tones—but not his words! He slammed his walking stick on the counter and reached right into a box of—” Here the timid Edith dropped her voice, “ladies’ undergarments! He looked clean enough, but he was no gentleman. And the woman with him! She was as common as muck. Hardly knew how to look us in the eye, and she allowed her escort to manhandle her in the most intimate fashion, right in front of us!”
“Horrible. Did you catch any names?”
“Oooh. I can’t recall. Polly, I think I might have heard him say—no, more like a snarl! Ooh, he was a nasty, domineering sort of man. Agnes was livid about his behavior, and he threatened us both. I said, ‘I never saw the like,’ and he came back, sharp as you please, ‘Mind how you speak to this young lady, or it may be the last you’ll ever see.’ And he brandished his cane.” Edith mimed a wild wave and wallop with the walking stick. “He might have hit her with it! But instead... Instead, he came back. I heard wild tearing and shouting, but it was over in seconds. By the time I had dried my feet and put on my slippers, Agnes was gone. It was only—” Edith swallowed and let out a shaky breath, “it was only a few minutes later that I heard a great, heavy thud from outside. And it was what was left of her. The police said she must’ve come up the rear stairs while I came down the front, but we never use those stairs. They said a burglar must have scared her and she ran in a panic to flee from him, and tripped and fell out of the window while trying to get away in the dark. But that makes no sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Eric frowned. Really, how daft the police could be. Oh, well. Their eagerness to make a case closed or accidental had certainly served his family well in the past. “But how do you explain what happened to her, then?”
Edith hesitated. “Have you heard, sir, of the beast called the Spring-Heeled Jack? They say he can fly and shoot out blue flames, and his... his face is pale, and he’s the devil himself!”
“I’ve heard a little bit about that, yes.”
“I wouldn’t normally hold with such superstitious nonsense, but that man... The man who came in sounded English but acted so very odd, and was so very pale and peculiar. I think it was this beast. Oh, I’m sure he’s no demon, but he could have something—a ladder he folds up, maybe, or he could be one of those French balloonists with a balloon made of black silk so that no one sees it go up and down!”
Eric understood why the police had not taken her wild claims seriously.
But, yet...
“Could he have climbed out the window carrying her? My men are already aware of this man, and he is terribly strong.”
“Indeed, he is! I saw him pick up the young lady he brought into the shop with one hand and move her to him as you or I would pick up a cat or dog!”
“Tell me about the young lady. Was she his accomplice? Were they here earlier in the day to view the place before breaking in, do you think?” Is this how Polly’s fine friend gets his money? Robbery? He’s no gentleman! He’s a murderer and a common thief.
But very good at his job, it seems...
“She was a very common sort of girl, flaxen hair, beautiful skin, wide eyes. A nice figure in a dress that was far from suitable.”
Polly! Eric rubbed his hands together as pieces of this thorny jigsaw slotted together.
“I wouldn’t say she was his willing accomplice, for she seemed almost afraid of him at times. Mind you, she did show some ill temper, and we saw the fire in her then. I doubt she was here that night.” Edith jumped when the kettle in the back began to sing. “Oh my! Perhaps we should take the tea upstairs, sergeant.”
“Detective.”
“Yes, perhaps we should if you’d like to look out the window and see— It’s too horrible,” Edith staggered away, muffling her cry of anguish.
Eric grabbed a gold (probably plated) hatpin and jabbed it into the lining of his coat as he made appropriately sympathetic noises.
The fiend probably held the old bag out the window, slit her down the middle like a butcher gutting a pig, and then dropped her. Why? To scare her? Make her think he would drop her? Perhaps he was mad and liked to watch things fall.
Or because... No. Too impossible...
But if these mad stories about a flying demon creature were true, then maybe he didn’t kill her while holding her out of the window. What if he could fly and he simply flew out of the window and killed the old girl on the roof, then chucked the body over? No one would ever check the roof to see if a bloody murder had been committed up there.
But then again, no one in is as clever as I am, Eric Bunson thought to himself, strolling after Edith as he pocketed three more hatpins and added them to his collection.
ERIC BUNSON DIDN’T need to climb out onto the roof. All he did was crane his neck and squint.
Faint drops of blood splattered along the wall going down. She was already bleeding. She didn’t “burst” when she hit the ground. She was already injured, if not dead.
Now, he balanced himself and held his breath, turning and half lying on the window sill, his head at an odd angle as he tried to survey the wall above the window.
It was faint, but it was there. Red streaks. Rivulets. Tiny and scattered drops of blood rained down above the window as if they trailed down from above. From the roof.
But there is no way that Eric could see that he would be able to go from this window to the roof, even if he were the strongest man in the world. “Is there an attic?”
“A small one, but we’ve blocked it up for the winter. So drafty.” Edith moved the tea things around on a small side table, clinking cups and saucers. “Why? What have you seen?”
Eric stumbled as the older woman craned her neck and tried to jostle past him. They both unbalanced, and her hand caught his jacket as she gasped and tried to right herself.
The gasp ended with a sharp cry as the gold-plated hat pins he’d been discreetly lining his coat with pierced her palm. “I’m ever so sorry, Detective! Your wife must have sent you off held together with pins and good wishes. Please, I can sew up whatever—”
“No, that’s fine,” Eric protested, pulling his coat from her hand—but she was surprisingly stubborn. The lining of his jacket, which wasn’t particularly fine even though he cut a respectable figure in it—tore in her grasp, revealing four glinting gold pins and their jewel-topped friends.
Edith backed away, shock and horror on her face. “You... you are no detective! You are some ghoulish sneak thief! You are one of those foul scandalmongers from the papers who wanted to know all about Agnes’ death! I... Police! Police !” Edith tried to push past him, screaming so that her wrinkled jowls wobbled.
Eric reacted without thinking. He must shut the old bat up and vanish from the area at once. No time to look for the strange man and Polly now. The cabbie would know his face and recall that he had been asking about the shop, by name. Damn him for having such a handsome, charismatic face. Entirely too memorable.
With a sudden sidestep and a push, he sent the babbling, screeching Edith through the open window. She was so startled, she didn’t have time to cry out, and the fall was short.
Eric stared down at her for a moment. Her eyes were still open, and she moved feebly. Red was spreading around her twisted and bent limbs—but she was no burst berry of flesh, hollowed out and bleeding.
The police were wrong. Something or someone had mangled Agnes. It had not been a simple fall. Edith’s violent end proved it.
“Science, me old muckers,” Eric whispered with a kind of shaken satisfaction, and then he fled.