Cold Stone and Ivy Page 7

  Ivy felt her throat tighten, so she looked back out the window as finally the carriage rattled to a halt at a wrought-iron gate. There was no gateman. There was, however, an impressive set of gears set in a rusted archway over their heads. She watched as Castlewaite climbed down from the dickey to punch in a sequence of numbers on an antiquated set of hex-nut keys. She could hear the punch and click as each number was entered, and she marvelled at how a simple coachman could possibly know the code for such a place.

  Suddenly, there was a shudder as the mechanism sprang to life. The articulating gears groaned overhead, and wheels inside the gate lintel began to spin. Slowly, the wrought iron moved, swinging open to allow the carriage passage. Castlewaite urged the horses through and Ivy watched through the window as the wide black gate swung closed behind them.

  Datamancery, she thought. What a remarkable science.

  The grounds were vast enough to boast a small farm, residences for the staff, and a chapel. As they neared the Abbey, she could see weathered red brick and limestone dressing over doors and windows. Three large stacks puffing smoke and steam into the grey sky. This was the Gothic ghost house of her imagination. She dreaded what she might find inside.

  The coach rattled to a halt, the door swung open, and a hand was presented. With a deep breath, Ivy stepped outside and into the damp grey air of Wharcombe Bay.

  Two men snapped heels at her approach. They looked like bellhops from fancy hotels. Two women stood dressed in nursing whites, their black cloaks and large winged caps reminding her of swooping birds.

  “Miss Savage?” said one of the men. He was holding a wheeled chair. “We will take you to see Dr. Frankow presently. Would your mother care to sit?”

  “I think that would be fine. Mum?”

  Naturally, Catherine Savage did not respond but she moved when Ivy moved her and allowed herself to be seated. At once, the chair was spun and the man disappeared up and into the sanitarium.

  The nurses followed.

  “Ah’ll wait ’ere, miss,” said Castlewaite. He sprang from the dickey and began to help the second man with the bags.

  Leaving Ivy to walk alone into the mouth of Lonsdale Abbey.

  THE SURGICAL THEATRE was dark, illuminated only by a single gas lamp over the table. A sheet had been pulled across the body, the organs carefully replaced inside. Everyone else had gone home after the necroscopy, leaving him with the cleanup. He didn’t mind. The silence was good for thinking.

  The lab smelled sharp and sweet, though not quite clean. In the mortuary of the London Royal Hospital, “clean” was a subjective thing. Carefully, he sprayed the last of the tools with the carbolic acid, began the slow, methodical process of wiping it clear of blood. It was the Lister knife, a fine piece of ebony and metalwork. It cut through both muscle and connective tissue with ease. Detail and precision—that was the name of the game in the police surgeon’s department. Christien loved the lab. It was more a home than Lasingstoke or Hollbrook could ever be.

  He was in the process of wiping the Lister and lost in thought when a man with a thick grey moustache entered the room.

  “Remy?” said Dr. Thomas Bond, surgeon for the Metropolitan Police. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thought Rosie was on this morning.”

  “His mother’s down with the Soup, sir,” he lied, pulling his goggles under his chin.

  “Ah damn,” said Bond. “I do hope he’s not drunk again . . .”

  “We have an exam later on today, sir. I’m sure he wouldn’t drink before an exam.”

  Bond studied him for a long moment before moving to the body and lifting the sheet.

  “Fine job, Remy. You’ve stitched her up nicely. Very neat.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Terrible business, this. Are you certain you are fine with it?”

  “I’m fine, sir,” he said as he laid the blade on the cloth that held the bone saw, the chisel, the clamps, and the scalpels. Set the threads back in their cases, dipped the needles in the acid, collecting his thoughts. “But I do have a question.”

  “Ask away, boy. It’s our job to ask the hard questions.”

  “The blade that made those incisions . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “This is no butcher, sir. I fear this is a very different sort of character.”

  “Ah ha. Are you speaking of forensic pathology or psychology, boy?”

  “Pathology, sir. I’m not nearly so skilled in psychology.”

  “Top of the class, I’m told.”

  “Motivated, sir.” He smiled. “Madness runs in the family.”

  There was a twitch of Bond’s thick grey moustache. It was unnerving, thought Christien, Bond’s quiet, intrusive ways. He was changing things with his character analyses and villain profiles, giving the Bottle a run for their money, making them work harder, think better. Thomas Bond was a brilliant man, and Christien knew he was lucky to be here.

  “Very well, Remy. Defend.”

  “There have been at least eight murders in the East End since April, sir, but with the exception of this one and the woman from Buck’s Row, I can see no similarities in the acts, regardless of what the presses are reporting.”

  “The one from Buck’s Row,” Bond repeated. “Mary Ann Nichols?”

  “Yes, sir. Called Polly on the streets. According to Dr. Llewellyn, the cuts on her throat were savage and deep, almost down to the vertebrae, just like these. Secondly, her abdominal mutilations were violent and concentrated in the lower regions. And thirdly, his report indicates a single, sharp, long-bladed knife, just like we see here.”

  “Have you spoken with Llewellyn, Christien?”

  “No, sir. I have not. But I have read the reports as you asked us to. And those three elements are repeated here, in this unfortunate.”

  They both looked at the body under the sheet. Anne Chapman was her name, called Dark Annie, an old prostitute living and working the streets. There was no need for the sheet, other than propriety and English manners. The boys would often joke that the French version of a necropsy involved suspending bodies on dartboards and tossing the scalpels.

  “But why not a butcher, son? Or a craftsman? The papers are all calling him Leather Apron, you know. It’s a catching title.”

  “They should be calling him the Surgeon, sir, or perhaps the Ripper. But not Leather Apron . . .”

  “The Surgeon?” Bond raised a brow, and Christien steeled his nerve. Bond was both baiting and encouraging at the same time, drawing him out and causing him to elaborate his thought process. It was an exhilarating, terrifying experience.

  “Well, sir . . .” Christien began. “The anatomy of a human woman is different from that of an ox or a pig. And the length of blade, being easily six to eight inches, is consistent with a surgical blade, not a tradesman’s.”

  He reached down and selected a blade, held its long blade in both hands. “The Lister, for example, could remove the organs in one swift slice . . .”

  “You think this Ripper is a medical man, Remy?”

  “I think we should not be so quick to rule it out, sir.”

  Bond’s gaze remained on him before his moustache quirked again. “You are a brave one, my boy. I have reported the very same to Anderson downtown.”

  Christien managed to keep rein on a smile. Understatement was a British life skill and Bond a master player.

  “But remember, we are not official on this, Remy. It is Phillips’s division. And Llewellyn—”

  “—is not you, sir. Nor is Phillips.”

  “And neither are you,” Bond said wryly. “Although one day you may very well surpass me if that bludger Williams doesn’t snare you in his obstetrics trap.”

  “Not likely, sir.”

  He clapped a hand on the young physician’s shoulder. “Come on, my boy. Scrub off and I’ll buy you a pint. The Britannia is calling.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Christien as he turned back to the post-mortem kit, began wrapping it back in the cloths. “
But I must warn you, Dr. Williams bought me dinner the other night at a club on Pall Mall. And he has promised me a weekend at Sandringham.”

  “Upping the ante, wot? Damn him to hell.” Bond laughed and headed toward the door. “I’m just a lowly surgeon working for the Beak. My pockets aren’t so deep.”

  “I’ll meet you upstairs, sir,” said Christien, and he reached for the carbolic soap to clean his hands of the blood.

  THE FOYER WAS enormous, with high ceilings arched in Gothic fashion. The walls were stained wood, the floor black and white tile, and elaborate lanterns hung from the ceiling, pouring gaslight down onto them from above. There were a few potted palms, and a large marble fireplace was burning at the far end of the room. Halls and doorways led off deep into the Abbey like burrows.

  There was no one else in sight. Not another nurse, not a doctor, not even a patient in the great arched foyer of Lonsdale. And, now that she’d come to think of it, she’d not seen a single soul on the grounds either. To make matters worse, the two men had immediately disappeared, leaving Ivy, her mother, and the bags in the company of the nurses. She turned to one, an older woman, stout, with a shiny brass pin on her uniform. A name was engraved—Amelia Dyer. Ivy smiled.

  “How long have you worked here at the Abbey, Mrs. Dyer?”

  “Shhhh,” said the woman and scowled at her.

  Ivy closed her mouth, saying nothing more.

  After a very long wait, she heard a sound, a very faint sound, as if from a long way away. It was tap, clank, and hiss, tap, clank, and hiss, and growing louder. The sound echoed throughout the foyer, and Ivy felt an irrational urge to flee. Soon, a figure appeared under one of the doorway arches, and she swallowed.

  It was a man of perhaps sixty years, with thinning white hair, beard, and thick spectacles that made his eyes look huge. He was dressed in a fine wool three-piece suit under a laboratory smock. But her attention was drawn, most inadvertently, to his legs. They were clothed to the knee and ended there.

  Shafts of copper made up his bones, and pulleys of corded wire served as tendons. Cogs and gears were joints and he moved slowly but deliberately across the tiled floor toward her, a cane tapping the ground as he walked. She had heard of such amputees, had once seen a photochrome of Edward, Prince of Wales with his miraculous clockwork arm. And of course, there was Castlewaite with his mechanical eye, but this was truly a marvel of engineering.

  He stopped immediately before her, and she could smell ammonium and pipe smoke. His cane was black with a silver mallard’s head for a grip.

  “Miss Savage. Mrs. Savage. Welcome to Lonsdale.”

  German, Ivy thought, or Austrian or something European. She held out her hand.

  “Dr. Frankow?”

  He ignored her, and immediately, his huge eyes darted to the woman in the chair. The spectacles had reticulating lenses, and she could see them slide over each other automatically as he focused.

  “She has been like this for how long?”

  “Seven years, sir. Since the death of my youngest brother.”

  “Ah. You have a letter from de Lacey?”

  “A letter?” She blinked. “I have no letter. Christien simply told me to come.”

  “Not Christien de Lacey, child. Sebastien. He has seen her, yes?”

  “Lord de Lacey?” She was confounded. “No sir, Lord de Lacey has not seen my mother. Why would Sebastien de Lacey see my mother?”

  The huge eyes rolled back to her, held her captive in their intense, slightly bug-eyed gaze. Then he sighed, shook his head, and began to walk away, the metal creaking and the cane echoing as it tapped along the stone.

  “Wait,” she called after him. “Dr. Frankow, I have come all the way from London to see you, on the urging of Christien de Lacey, brother of His Lordship. He said nothing about a letter, just that I come. And the baron, well, the baron has barely been home.”

  “You are wasting my time.” And he waved a hand behind his back, dismissively.

  “Please, sir. Christien highly recommends you, as does Dr. John Williams of the London College of Physicians.”

  He kept walking. She took several steps forward, suddenly angry.

  “Are you telling me that, in this grand facility of yours, there is nothing you can do for my mother? Or is there perhaps, sir, nothing you will do?”

  The doctor paused, and she cursed her tongue. Honestly, she could never keep it in her head. Far too brash for a woman, her father had said, and she knew it was true. She wondered how Christien had put up with it for so long and if that too would have to change after marriage.

  With a whir and a click, he turned round. He seemed to study her now, not her mother, and the lenses spun again, causing his eyes to grow larger and larger still. After a few very long moments, he tapped, clanked, and hissed back again.

  “Williams recommends me?”

  “Yes, sir. He says you are a leader in your field.”

  “Interesting . . .” His mouth quirked, and she thought it was a smile. A patronizing, condescending, self-righteous smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  “I can do many things for your mother,” he said finally. “But it may not be what you wish.”

  “Please, sir. Any help would be most welcome.”

  He studied her some more.

  “You are engaged to the young one, Christien, yes?”

  “We are to be married in the spring.”

  “And you love him?”

  “Why would I marry him if I didn’t love him?”

  “It is just a question, Miss Savage. People do many strange things.”

  She raised her chin, and the lenses whirred some more. With his metal legs, he almost seemed more automaton than human.

  “I will do this,” he said finally. “But I need Sebastien to come. Tell him that for me, Miss Savage, if you will.”

  He looked up, barked orders to the women, and turned one last time to cross the foyer’s floor. One nurse scooped Catherine’s bags, the other pushed on the chair, and suddenly, her mother was being wheeled away without even a kiss goodbye.

  And Ivy was left very alone, standing in the haunting Gothic entrance of Lonsdale Abbey.

  When the tears finally came, she whirled and fled in the direction of the carriage.

  “THIS WAY, PENNY,” said her father, and Penny followed him into the storage vaults deep beneath Lancaster Castle. It was a dark place, filled with dripping water and flickering gaslight, and she wondered how something as marvellous as a Clockwork Heart could be stored in such a cold, inhospitable place.

  First one door, then another wheeled open for her on great cogs overhead, and the noise made Penny wonder how anyone could steal something from such a vault. The sound alone would surely trigger an alarm. Finally, they stopped in front of a wall of steel, and a man in a laboratory smock turned toward them.

  He was a clockwork man.

  One side of his face was entirely metal, and both eyes were coiled copper. His lower jaw and teeth were likewise made of copper and white hair poked through his skull like cloves on an orange. His ribcage was iron, his left arm and leg composed of gears and pulleys and wire.

  He was the most fearsome thing Penny had ever seen.

  “You must be the investigators from London,” he said, and Penny was certain he was of German descent. While she put little stock in nationalism, she took an instant dislike to this small, mechanical man.

  “Yes, yes, we are,” boomed her father, and he thrust out his hand. “Charles Dreadful. This is my daughter, Penny.”

  “Dr. von Freud,” said the man. “Siegfried von Freud.”

  “Please to meet you, sir,” said Penny, and she shook as well. “How could the Heart have been stolen from such a place as this?”

  The doctor turned on her, and his copper eyes whirred and clicked.

  “That is the mystery, Miss Dreadful,” he said after a moment. “It couldn’t have. Only I have the key and the key is with me at all times.”

  “And where w
ere you when it was stolen, sir?”

  “You see, Miss Dreadful, it was the key that was stolen.” He pulled a long brass key from his pocket, held it up so it caught the light. “But it was put back. And that, perhaps of all things, is the greatest mystery . . .”

  Penny looked at her father and smiled. This was proving to be better than she could have hoped.

  Chapter 8

  Of Newspapers, a Great Many Letters,

  and the Threat of Scandal

  STEAM TIMES

  LONDON, WEDNESDAY

  The Thames Police were engaged for several hours this afternoon in dragging the river between Pimlico Steamboat Pier and London and Brighton South Coast Railway Bridge, between which points the arm of a woman was found just days ago. A careful examination was also made of the timber rafts floating in the river, but no discovery of human remains was made. It is the opinion of the River Police that the arm was dropped over the embankment, which at night is darker than most thoroughfares and little frequented. The arm is still in the mortuary, and will be further examined by surgical experts.

  In regard to the theory that the arm might have been thrown into the river by a medical student with a view to create a scare, our representative called at one of the chief London hospitals today. He was assured that the arm could not possibly have been removed by a student from any hospital dissecting room. Students are allowed to dissect only in the room set aside for that purpose. Under the Act of William IV, hospitals and medical schools are allowed to receive unclaimed bodies for the purposes of dissection, but 48 hours’ notice has to be given after death to the Inspector under the Act before the body can be removed from the place of decease, and then only after a certificate of death has been given. The bodies, after being dissected, must be buried in consecrated ground and within six weeks a certificate of burial must be forwarded to the Inspector. Under no circumstances are students allowed to take portions of bodies to their own homes; in fact, they would be liable under the Act to heavy penalties for doing so.

  Police are not saying whether or not they believe this incident to be connected to the ghastly events that are occurring in Whitechapel and are continuing to investigate.