A Scandal in Battersea Read online

  “But why would someone in London go about abducting girls, turning them into these creatures, then turn them loose again?” Sarah demanded. “I can see many reasons, most of them heinous, for the first two—but why set them free to wander the streets? And if an immoral and unscrupulous person had such creatures at his mercy, why were they not interfered with in any other way?”

  “Well, that’s the sticking point,” Watson admitted. “And if the intention was to have helpless women that would satisfy one’s carnal desires, poor Cynthia is a terrible selection for that purpose. She is . . . exceedingly plain.”

  “Perhaps she was the only one he could separate from the herd,” Nan pointed out. “And where I come from, it isn’t a woman’s face that men care about when they intend pleasuring themselves. I’ve often heard them tell each other Don’ matter if she looks loik a monkey. Jest put a bag over ’er ’ead.”

  Sahib and Memsa’b were used to Nan’s occasionally earthy and utterly honest pronouncements, but Selim coughed, Mary blushed, and Watson grew quite red in the face. Nevertheless he acknowledged the truth of her words. “Fair enough, Nan—but Sarah is right. Remember that neither girl was outraged, and the first one was quite a pretty young woman.”

  “And at some point his power over them faded, and he needed to restrain them conventionally before he rendered them into what they became,” Mary reminded him.

  “Ah, yes, that’s correct,” John agreed. “Both had ligature marks on their wrists and ankles, and the signs that they had been forcefully gagged.”

  “So at the moment, it looks as if the same man took them both,” Sahib concluded.

  “Exactly. And since he did nothing physical to them that we could discover, one can only conclude that either he is performing some sort of occult or chemical experiments on them, or—” John paused. “Well, I am at a loss for the or. Sherlock is going to explore the zombie theory; he’s looking for young men—since the last person Cynthia was seen with was a young man—who have recently been to Haiti, Jamaica, or the Bahamian Islands. He is also making enquiries about mesmerists, but that will be a great deal more difficult to track down. We, of course, will explore the theory that they have had some sort of dreadful encounter with the occult.”

  “If this man has his own carriage . . . it would have made the first abduction that much easier, not to mention the second,” Nan mused.

  Sarah’s expression darkened. “You do realize that these two girls may only be the ones we found, don’t you?” she asked. “He could have abducted more—girls vanish from the streets of London every day, and in places like West Ham and Battersea the police assume they have run off with lovers—and in worse places, the police don’t look hard for them at all.”

  Mary nodded. “He could still have other girls—or he could have told them to walk into the Thames.”

  “He deserves the death of a thousand cuts,” Selim said, a growl in his voice. “Whoever he is, even if he were my brother. I would deliver him to his destiny with my own hand.”

  “We have to catch him first,” Sarah reminded him.

  “We have to prove it’s a him, first,” Nan pointed out. “Cabmen were only asked about a young man with a girl. They weren’t asked about a woman with a girl. And Cynthia wouldn’t have many qualms about going off with a woman who struck up a friendship with her, especially if she’d been subjected to snubs all day by her cousin and her cousin’s friends.”

  “By Jove . . . you’re right about that,” John Watson said, looking stricken. “That never occurred to me.”

  All four of the women exchanged a telling look. I’ll bet Sherlock has already thought of that, Nan thought to herself. I don’t think he will ever underestimate a woman. Not these days, anyway.

  They all dove into the school’s occult library—paying particular attention to the “restricted” books kept in Sahib’s study. They didn’t find anything by the time teatime came around and they needed to move to the greenhouse to meet with Robin.

  Then again, they hadn’t really expected to. The Hartons had already gone over those books, and they generally dealt with the occult in the East, India specifically, or in Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man. There was nothing about the Caribbean Islands at all. And not a hint of anything in any of the others that could leave someone mindless . . . or soulless.

  Robin was already waiting for them in the greenhouse, very sober, very adult, with no trace of his regular humor. In fact, he looked and acted like the Great Elemental that he was, a prince among his kind, even though he was wearing a quite simple tunic, trousers and boots. When each of them had finished expounding what he or she knew to him, he shook his head.

  “The City confounds my magic,” he said. “I can’t watch over it as I can a stretch of woods or fields. I’ve not sensed anything, because there’s too much to sense, and I have tried, oh, I have tried. I fear I’ll be of more use to you when you find the cause, not in finding the cause itself.” He looked into their faces, mournfully—Nan had never seen him sad. Angry, yes, furious in fact. Somber. But never sad. “I feel as if I am failing you, and failing England.”

  “Well, have you got any notion as to whether any of our theories is the right one?” Mary Watson asked, finally. “Because that would at least give us somewhere to start.”

  He licked his lips thoughtfully. “If I were to say anything, it is that I think Nan has the right of it. But . . . that could be because I am what I am, and I see things directly.” He shrugged. “The hospital is at Hampstead Heath, aye? That’s an easy place for me to go.” He fished in a pocket and pulled out a talisman of twigs tied together with red thread and handed it to John Watson. “When next you go to have a look at those girls, put this someplace in their room where it won’t be cleaned away. I’ll come and look in on them myself and see what I can see.” He tapped his temple with his finger. “After all, I can see farther into a millstone than most.”

  “So you can,” Watson agreed, and pocketed the talisman. “If you would do that, I could at least be certain we’d left no stone unturned.”

  Robin made a little half bow. “Then I’ll do my best.” He straightened. “And for now, since there’s little enough I can do, I’ll be gone. I’ll be having a word with those creatures that can still dwell in Londinium; especially the ones in the places where the girls were lost and the girls were found. We’ll at least have a few more eyes about, and ears to the ground.”

  And before they could thank him, he faded into the grapevines and was gone.

  Mary Watson sighed. “I wish our Elementals were of more use. My sylphs would be willing enough, but I doubt they would be able to remember what it was they were to watch for for more than a day. I could put a compulsion on them to remember—but that would be a compulsion, and they’d rebel, as rightly they should.”

  “Well, I will be the last person to tell you to violate their trust with such a thing,” Sahib told her. “You have a covenant with them; breaking such a contract is a terrible thing to do.”

  “And my water creatures are fundamentally useless in this case,” John admitted. Then he got a thoughtful look on his face. “I could try scrying—but into the past. I know where the girls were last seen—I could see if I can find them at that point, and follow them.”

  “Have you ever done that?” Nan asked him.

  He shook his head. “No, but I know it can be done, and I can at least try.”

  Sahib looked at each of them in turn, thoughtfully. “All right, then. Let’s try that first, in controlled conditions, with all of us guarding you. If you can’t manage this, we’ll know. And if you can—you’ll be well protected.”

  “To your study, then?” Watson asked.

  Sahib nodded. “Indeed. And if nothing happens, we’ll try to think of something else.”

  We’re going to have to think of a great many “something elses”
Nan thought as they all headed back to the study. Because so far we have a history of running into a great many brick walls. . . .

  12

  AS expected, the entity—whose voice had become disturbingly strong, although it was still laconic—gave Alexandre another seven days to produce two more victims. But now that he knew just how easy it was to get what the thing wanted (at least with the entity’s help), Alexandre intended two things. The first was to take his time about it. There was no point in rushing right out and obeying the damned thing when it always gave him the same seven days. He’d worked hard, and by Jove he deserved some time to enjoy himself.

  The second was that from now on, he needed to be especially careful. By this point the police had certainly taken notice. Four abducted girls in the course of two weeks, two still missing and two turning up witless—that was certainly going to wake up even the sleepiest police. And that gaggle of idiot girls in the gallery would certainly have told their papas that the ugly wench had last been seen in his company. He doubted they remembered the false name he’d given—they seemed to have more hair than wits—but the authorities would be looking for someone like him at the Grosvenor Gallery by now. And given how rapacious that lot had been, the one thing they would remember was that he had said he was in trade.

  So, he should definitely change his hunting ground, and possibly his style. Alf had suggested the opera, and it occurred to him that although young ladies were unlikely to be allowed to attend the theater at night unchaperoned, they were very likely to be permitted to attend a matinee, which were usually Thursdays and Saturdays. Armed with that, the day after the second hunt, he perused the theatrical advertisements.

  There were, on offer, only two productions he thought likely to attract the sort of prey he was hunting: the latest Gilbert and Sullivan production, and a production of Hamlet. Of the two . . . he rather thought Hamlet was the better choice. For one thing, it was likely to attract Very Serious People, and judging by the favorable reception the entity had given the odious Cynthia, the hunting would probably be very good there. The entity had so far preferred a hideous wench with pretensions to intellect over a pretty girl of ordinary intelligence. For another, having passed himself off as a man in the trades on the last hunt, it was time to put on a different guise, and he was, after all, an actual poet with a published book. He just had to remember not to mention the name of the book to anyone but the potential victim.

  And to clinch things, there were plenty of tickets still available for the Shakespeare; not so many for the operetta.

  So, now he had a hunting ground and part of a plan. Things were going very well.

  The second day after the last hunt, he got a note from the solicitor that he opened over breakfast, thinking it was some trifle about his mother’s estate.

  Instead, it was a note congratulating him. The solicitor had caught Alexandre’s landlord in a moment of weakness. The note informed Alexandre of the speedy purchase of the house entire, and at an exceptionally good bargain. The key to the flat upstairs was enclosed.

  He now owned the property. He would never again need to fear a landlord’s inspection, or someone spying on him from the flat above. Potentially . . . potentially if he was able to round up more than two victims, he could store them in the flat above. Or . . . he could outfit the flat above to suit his particular fantasies, and never again concern himself that a casual visitor to his flat might stumble over something incriminating.

  Alexandre stared at the note in astonishment. Alf noticed his slightly stunned gaze after a moment. “Wuts that, guv?” Alf asked at last.

  He uttered a shocked laugh. “It’s the key to the upstairs flat. I own the entire house!” He reread the short note, shaking his head. “This is . . . well frankly hard to believe. I didn’t even know it was possible to purchase a house in so short a time. It seems—”

  “Loik magic?” Alf asked shrewdly. “Moight be. Thet ald toad wut use’ta come check up on yew’s gone. An yer old mum popped off. Ever think hit moight be—” Alf nodded at the floor, and emphasized the nod with the poke of his fork downward. “Ye niver know.”

  “I . . . suppose it could be . . .” If so, the entity was granting what he needed even before he could ask for it, which, on the one hand, was extremely gratifying, and on the other . . . a bit worrisome. How had the thing been able to influence his mother, or that solicitor, or the landlord? It couldn’t physically move beyond the basement—and as far as he knew, it couldn’t exert any mental control if he wasn’t the medium for it.

  “Or, could be co-inky-dink,” Alf continued with a wink. “Landlord ain’t bin hable t’rent thet flat fer over a year naow, an’ we both know ’e’s got a weakness fer gin, ’orses and ’ores. Yer mum coulda popped off any time, wut with all the patent medi-cines. Them things is ’alf poison. An thet old toad coulda been robbed an’ rolled inter Thames. All perfukly normal, aye?”

  “True enough.” He shook off his feelings of vague alarm. “Alf, I want you to scout out the Palace Theater for me for the next couple of days. That will be our next hunting ground. I want you to find a place to park the coach where it won’t be out of place but also won’t be easy to see. We’ll be hunting at the afternoon matinee, so like the gallery, we can’t count on shadows to conceal what we’re doing.”

  “Sure ’nough, guv,” Alf said agreeably. “What say to I bring back a couple girls?”

  Alexandre grinned, all concerns about the entity forgotten. “I’d say you were reading my mind.”

  Alexandre had carefully dressed in his best “poetic” clothing; a velvet brown jacket, shirt with a soft, floppy collar rather than the stiff, starched object so de rigueur for a businessman, a soft garnet-colored silk scarf instead of a tie, brown corduroy trousers, and a hat with a wide brim, as Tennyson was known to wear. Over it all, instead of a coat, he flung a beaver-lined cape. And off he went to the theater.

  He had Alf let him out about a block from the theater and strolled the rest of the way, making sure he looked unhurried. It occurred to him, as he attempted to survey the faces of his fellow theatergoers without looking as if he was staring, that it would not be a bad idea to invest in some false moustaches and beards. Perhaps even a wig or two. The more he changed his appearance, the easier it would be to elude scrutiny. And of course, there were several starving young actors among the habitués of Pandora’s Tea Room; it would not be hard at all to get them to talk about roles, lead that into a discussion of preparing for the role, then laughingly ask them where they found such things as moustaches and wigs, as if one were more likely to find a roc egg or a phoenix feather than false hair in this city.

  He dragged his attention back to the task at hand. He had decided that he would take his ticket up in the first or second balcony; he was just as likely to find a bookish girl up there as down in the more expensive seats, and far more likely to find one that was here by herself.

  The one thing he didn’t want was another bohemian. He was under absolutely no illusions as to the probable state of their “purity.” But it was vanishingly unlikely that a musician, painter, or writer would turn up at a Shakespearian matinee performance in a normal gown. Half of the fun the bohemian set got out of turning up in public was in scandalizing people with their wild, unfashionable garb.

  So he took a seat at the back of the first balcony, the end of the middle row, where he got a good view of everyone else in it—and since he had arrived as early as possible, he could observe them as they came in and took their seats.

  There was a party of half a dozen schoolchildren with what he assumed was a teacher. They were wildly excited and at the same time on painful best behavior—he assumed this must be a treat for good behavior or good marks in their literature studies. They took the middle of the first row and draped themselves over the balcony rail, absorbing everything.

  I shall have to be careful of them, he decided. I should do nothing to attra
ct their attention. If police track my victim back to this theater, and come to find out about a gaggle of children, they might remember me better than an adult would.

  After that came a fairly steady parade of the usual sort of theatergoers for a Saturday matinee: one or both parents with child or children, older couples without children, young couples without children, old men alone, old ladies alone, a handful of Serious Young Men by themselves, and to his relief, a handful of Serious Young Ladies who also arrived on their own. He concentrated his attention on these, considering what (if anything) of their personality was on display.

  Finally, just as the house lights dimmed, he made his selection. Getting up silently, he paused at the back of the balcony for a moment, then made his way down to his victim, who was sitting on the aisle of the right-hand row, halfway down the section. Tapping her on the shoulder, he whispered, “I beg your pardon, but I believe I have a seat just past you, miss. If you would like, I can switch with you to avoid any inconvenience.”

  She got up, all aflutter, but moved down two seats. He took the one she had vacated. And there they sat, all through the first act.

  The Hamlet was an understudy, and apparently he was under the impression that a good Shakespearian actor chewed as much scenery as he could, because his overacting was—at least to Alexandre’s practiced eye—appalling. He rolled his eyes so wildly in the Ghost scenes that they could even see the whites of his eyes in the balcony. And while it was certainly easy to hear his lines, he bellowed them so, he had so much vibrato at the ends of his words that he sounded more like an opera singer than an actor.

  He knew he had a hook with which to catch this little fish when he heard her stifling giggles after the first ten minutes or so. When the house lights came up at the end of the first act, and she didn’t immediately rise, he leaned back in his seat and groaned.