Chapter Nineteen
The next morning, Jack stepped outside onto the front entrance of her terrace, having arranged to meet Tobias there to attend the mortuary together to see if Dr. Morton had any news after examining the scene and the murder victim from yesterday.
She glanced over at the two constables whom Tobias had insisted be stationed in front of her residence until they caught the killer.
They nodded over to her from across the street, and she in turn narrowed her eyes at them.
The last thing she’d wanted was two constables right in front of her house.
But no matter how Jack had argued with the inspector, adamant that her own security was robust, Tobias Flint had looked at her with those steely-gray eyes of his and had been equally as adamant that he would not budge on the matter, and unless she wanted to live in New Scotland Yard until they caught the killer, having two constables on a rotating shift day and night guarding her residence was his only compromise.
Not much of a compromise at all, in Jack’s opinion.
But when he’d mentioned that having the police visibly stationed there would at least deter the killer from potentially hurting any of her staff, she’d relented.
After all, as much as she disliked having two bobbies at the front and back of her residence, the inspector was right.
It would deter the killer. It would also deter potential clients too, but if it helped keep her agents safe, then she’d put up with the painful arrangement.
Though she had insisted that they be positioned at least across the road from her residence rather than on its very doorstep.
She pulled out her pocket watch and noted that it was still a few minutes until eight, the time when Tobias had said he’d arrive, so she breathed in the crisp morning air and tried to gather her thoughts.
After they’d left the theater yesterday afternoon, Jack had spent the rest of the night thinking about her past. Seeing Caleb and being back in a theater surrounded by magic props and stage lights blaring overhead had brought that time of her childhood back to vivid life.
A past she’d tried to forget but never quite could.
She could see her mother and father dancing up on the stage after a show, once the audience and stagehands had left.
The sound of her mother’s laughter while her father had whispered something in her ear as they’d twirled about the room echoed in her memories.
It had been all so magical… a time when Jack had been happy and felt safe.
But fate had yanked that from her like a cruel master.
Her mother taken away at the hands of a madman, and then her father exactly five years later, to the day of her mother’s death, in an inferno, the ferocity of which she still sometimes had nightmares about…
Most people thought her father had set the fire himself, either to claim the insurance money on the building to pay off his debts, or to join her mother in the afterlife, no longer able to suffer in life without her.
But Jack knew he would never have left her alone.
She had been his Jack of Hearts, and after her mother’s death, it had been Jack and her father together against the world.
Jack knew in her heart he wouldn’t have ever left her. Not on purpose, anyway.
A tingle shivered along her spine and she glanced across the street to see Tobias striding down the road towards her, his eyes locking on her own.
“Good morning,” he said, crossing the road and coming to a halt just below her front steps.
“Good morning, Inspector,” she replied, thinking she had to maintain the formalities with this man, to whom she seemed unusually attuned.
“Shall we walk to the mortuary?” he asked without commenting on her continued use of his title. “I thought we might use the time to discuss your observations from yesterday?”
“Yes, that’s fine.” A walk would be just the thing to clear her head.
They began walking down the street to the main thoroughfare, their pace matching each other’s.
“Are all magician like Caleb Dodd?” Tobias said after a moment.
“What? Self-serving, conceited, and vain?” Jack replied, glancing over to him on her right.
Tobias grinned. “Yes, exactly that.”
Jack returned his smile with one of her own.
“Unfortunately, most are. It does take a measure of arrogance and confidence to be a successful magician on stage. Though both traits are usually well earned, given the years required to perfect the skills necessary to be a magician. But Caleb is in his own sphere.”
“That he is,” Tobias agreed before he broke eye contact and glanced down the street. “Are you still sure you wish to visit the mortuary with me? You don’t need to, you know. No one would expect a lady to attend.”
“Lucky, then, I’m not a lady,” Jack replied, raising her chin and staring over at the man. “There’s not a drop of aristocratic blood in my veins.”
“You know what I mean,” came his dry reply. “You’re a woman and there are dead bodies in there—”
“I’m well aware of what a mortuary is, and I don’t see how me being a woman has anything to do with it.”
“I suppose not,” he agreed. “Very well, then, if you think you can handle the dead bodies and the smells.”
“Of course I can.” She’d never actually been to a mortuary before, but surely, it couldn’t be that bad. “Where is it located?”
Tobias stared at her for a moment longer and then he slowly nodded. “Next to the Coroner’s Court, just over the bridge from New Scotland Yard. The location of which you should know well after your visit the other day.”
Jack merely arched her brow before striding down the street heading west towards the location, with Tobias’s long strides effortlessly keeping up with her brisk pace.
“The remaining illusions,” he said after a minute of walking in silence next to each other. “Should I be worried?”
She pressed her lips together, a ball of dread forming in the pit of her stomach. “We all should be.” This killer could not be allowed to carry out his plans. Four more lives depended on them stopping him.
“Do the illusions themselves offer any insights into potential victims, or where he might stage them?” Tobias asked.
She’d been wondering that herself. “Each of the remaining acts involves a woman as the assistant. So the next victims should be women, but in terms of specific women he might target or locations he might use, then no, they don’t offer many insights.”
“Is there nothing else about them that gives you pause?”
“Well, given that the order of the first two illusions the killer used were in the same order that my father followed in some of this shows, I’d guess that the next would be the Vanishing Lady, or at least my father’s version of it—”
“Your father didn’t create that one?”
“No, a magician by the name of Buatier de Kolta did, though many others have adapted the trick with their own macabre twists, my father included.”
“No offense to your father or magicians in general, but why do they have to add more macabre elements to their illusions?” Tobias asked, his voice sounding genuinely perplexed.
“Can’t they just do the magic without the gore?
The last thing I find entertaining is seeing death, even if it’s an illusion. ”
“Yes, but you see death on a daily basis, Inspector—”
“Tobias,” he interrupted. “You keep calling me ‘Inspector,’ but given we’re in private, and hopefully you’re starting to trust me a little by now, can’t you call me ‘Tobias’?”
She glanced over at him. Using his first name seemed far too intimate, but in a way, this whole investigation involved a level of intimacy and trust she was already feeling uncomfortable with, so using his first name probably wouldn’t hurt.
“I rarely trust anyone, policemen least of all. But given the nature of our investigation, I suppose I can call you ‘Tobias.’ Only when we’re alone, though,” Jack clarified.
“But back to your original question, most people never see death, let alone the goriness of a murder, leading to a curious desire to see such a thing. Which is why there’s regularly an element of the macabre in magic—it satisfies the audience’s bloodlust and brings in sales. ”
“People make no sense to me sometimes.”
“Me, either.” Jack shrugged. “But people seek out that sort of entertainment, and when they see what looks like death and murder on stage, they feel terrified but equally thrilled knowing it’s all going to be fine, given the unspoken promise between the magician and the audience.”
“Which is?”
“That the horror will turn into wonder, and what seems to be a hideous and gruesome death will actually transform into a miraculous resurrection, without anyone being hurt. That’s the silent promise a magician makes to his audience.”
“So, whoever this killer is is breaking that promise.”
“He’s destroying it and will continue to do so if he carries out these illusions,” Jack replied as they both paused at the end of the street, then navigated through the flow of carriages, horses, and people until they got to the other side of the road and turned right.
“What does your father’s version of the Vanishing Lady Illusion entail?”
“It stays fairly close to the original, which is already macabre enough on its own, though my father wanted to add his own spin to it, so he adds a skull with gold dusted over it on top of the pile of bones.”
“‘The pile of bones’? It already sounds hideous.”
“The illusion takes a woman, dressed in a white, silk Grecian gown, trimmed with gold lace and a long, yellow cloak hanging from her shoulders. She then sits in a chair that’s been placed in the center of the stage and is given an elixir that puts her into a deep sleep.
The magician throws a large, red silk shawl about seven feet square over the lady, who then disappears.
When the magician pulls away the red silk, in the woman’s place is a pile of bones.
My father added the gold-dusted skull that sits on top of the pile of bones, which shines brightly under the stage lights, making the audience scream. ”
“It sounds wonderful,” Tobias said, following next to Jack as she headed left to cross over the south bridge of the Thames. “How does the woman reappear, then?”
“She reappears sitting next to someone in the audience, miraculously alive and awake again.” They crossed over the bridge and Jack saw the Coroner’s Court farther down the street.
“One can only imagine what the killer has in store for such an illusion,” Tobias said. “Are the other tricks all as equally morbid?”
“Yes, they are.” Jack was having waking nightmares thinking of what the killer intended to do with all the illusions.
Each of them entirely able to be turned from merely the ghoulish to the infinitely grotesque.
“We must stop him, Tobias. He cannot be allowed to continue this horror show, making a true mockery of all that my father created. Is there anything else you’ve found in your investigation that might assist? ”
She listened as he quickly ran through what he knew from both murders as they walked closer to the building.
“We’ve run into dead ends regarding the props and equipment the killer’s left at both scenes,” he continued, “and the first victim had nothing to do with magic. She hadn’t even been to a magic show.”
“So, there’s probably nothing linking her to Jeremiah,” Jack said as they crossed the road to the Coroner’s Court, and Tobias pointed out the building to the right of it.
“That’s the mortuary,” he said as they headed towards the entrance. “And, no, there doesn’t seem to be anything linking them. However, I did ask my men to make those inquiries and they might have an update.”
“So apart from using my father’s illusions and bastardizing them, and us possibly knowing what the next illusions he’ll try to use are, the killer has left no other clues?”
“No, none. He doesn’t seem to have made a mistake thus far.
Both scenes were staged differently, so the material used for each were different, but all were generic in nature and unable to be traced back to any particular supplier.
” Tobias paused at the entrance to the mortuary.
“The only thing that was the same for each scene were the cards he left with each victim. The exact same cards as the one you were sent. All identical fronts and backs, apart from the words written on each of them.” He pulled out all three cards from his jacket pocket and handed them to Jack.
“They are identical,” she agreed, fanning them out. “And not only are they identical, but they’re the exact same type of cards my father used too. A special edition of the De La Rue brand.”
“Could we trace these cards back to a specific supplier?”
Jack slowly nodded. “Yes, I believe we can. You see, these specific cards are extremely rare nowadays. If we can find where the killer sourced them, we might very well be able to trace them back to him.”
“This could be the clue we need to find him,” Tobias replied.
“It could,” Jack enthused, finally feeling as if they might be getting somewhere. “In trying to replicate my father’s illusions by using the exact same type of playing card, the killer might have made his first mistake.”