A Scandal in Battersea Read online

  “Wretched hall was closed,” he said crossly, cutting himself a bite, then savoring it. Alf might not be a master cook, but he did make a masterful rarebit. “Some Brotherhood or other hired it for a Christmas party, if you please.”

  Alf tsk’d. “Them gels won’t be well pleased,” he opined. “Them lads’ll all hev their famblies there, like as not, so them gels’ll be workin’ just as hard, with no chance fer a nice dinner or gennelmun what has the notion fer some company arterwards.”

  They ate a few more bites in silence. “Chrismus Eve’s moon-dark,” Alf observed. “Anythin’ ye’ll need?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Alexandre admitted. “I’ve been researching, but I haven’t come across anything that will advance my powers that calls for that specific combination.”

  That was not quite true. The actual truth was, Alexandre didn’t exactly . . . research anything. He was more like a butterfly, flitting from one potentially attractive occult or magical flower to another, but never staying long at any of them.

  But Alf just shrugged. “Early days yet. Happen ye’ll run acrost somethin’. An’ happen ye don’t . . .” he lifted his beer glass in Alexandre’s direction. “. . . then Chrismus Eve’s a desperate thin noight fer workin’ wenches. Eh?”

  “There is that.” Alexandre cheered up a trifle. The rest of the meal proceeded in silence; when they were done, Alexandre took his seat in his easy chair by the fire; Alf put the dishes on his tray and took them to the kitchen, where the housekeeper would deal with them in the morning. Unless Alexandre summoned him with the bell, he’d return to his room, and do whatever it was he did to amuse himself. One thing Alexandre knew he did from time to time was go out after his master had gone to his own bedroom and get a woman just for himself. Sometimes two. Alexandre admired his stamina. They were always gone long before morning, and nothing in the flat had ever gone missing, so as far as he was concerned, Alf could do as he liked.

  As for Alexandre . . . he had intended to leaf through that pillow-book, but that was only going to lead to a certain level of frustration—and he felt too burdened with ennui to send Alf out for a wench to relieve that frustration. He reached for one of the French novels, but his hand fell on that odd little occult book he had picked up instead.

  Well, why not. He opened it, and looked at it more closely, and before long he realized that thanks to the ruined spine, it was more than a few pages that were out of order. Intrigued now by the puzzle, he plucked all the loose pages out and slowly began to piece the book together.

  He startled himself with a yawn, and looked at the clock over the mantle, realizing with a start that a good two hours had passed. And his neck was feeling a bit stiff. He put the book down on top of the stack of pages that had yet to be inserted, weighed it down with another, heavier tome, and picked up the French novel, pouring himself a brandy from the bottle on the side table that held the books.

  As he read, he was aware of a nagging discontent. This was not how he would have chosen to spend his evening, if he had had a choice. This was . . . cloyingly domestic. Except for the subjects of his reading, it had been an evening even his mother would approve of, if she had a moment of sobriety in which to do so.

  His father, thank the devil, had died while Alexandre was still at Oxford . . . and thanks to careful management on Alexandre’s part, the only thing that the old Puritan had been aware of was that his son did not share his obsession with religion.

  Then again, there probably wasn’t anyone at the entire University, including the clergy, who could have been as obsessed with religion as the elder Harcourt had been.

  Alexandre had, fortunately, been able to evade his father’s eye because he was only the second, or “spare” son, a fact his father had often reminded him of. His older brother, the pride of the house, the ever-so-perfect Victor, was everything Andrew Harcourt desired in his son. Just as religious, impeccably obedient, never once, in all of Alexandre’s life, had Victor ever done something for which he had been chided. Whereas Alexandre had seen the business end of a cane more times than he cared to think about, at least until he learned to be so sly and cunning in his misdeeds that, while there might be suspicion about him, he was never caught.

  Eventually he became so good at deception he even evaded suspicion. When the odd half crown went missing, he made sure evidence pointed to someone who was already guilty of petty theft. And later, girls who might have looked for him to make good on his promises were always looking in the wrong town, for a young man of the wrong name at the wrong address. And later still . . . well his deceptions were aided by magic, so that even his face and voice were muddled in their minds, and they could, and often did, pass him on the street without recognizing him.

  That was all while he was at Eton, following in the ever-perfect Victor’s footsteps. A foray into a secondhand shop on one of his clandestine visits to the town had netted him a peculiar book that he was quite drawn to, even though he had been looking for something else entirely.

  Handwritten, between two soft leather covers, it was nothing he would have picked up even to look at under ordinary circumstances. But he couldn’t help himself, and he took it to the proprietor as if he was under a spell and paid the sixpence he was asked for without haggling.

  He knew now of course that it had been a spell: a spell designed to find someone exactly like him, and induce him to purchase the thing. The spell had been written on the inside of the leather cover, although he hadn’t known that at the time. All he knew was that he must have this thing, and deciphering it became his obsession.

  An obsession that had quickly paid off, as he learned things that allowed him to manipulate his fellow students, and even, occasionally, the masters. All small things at first, but as his mastery grew, so did his power. By the time he was ready to enter Oxford . . . he was ready for much more.

  But first, there was a little matter he needed to attend to.

  No one could understand it when the ever-perfect, ever-earnest, over-achieving Victor Harcourt one night in midwinter rose from his bed, dressed carefully, and walked out of Magdalen College down into the Cherwell onto the ice. The ice broke under him, and despite the shallow water, he didn’t seem to have struggled or attempted to save himself at all, but simply died of cold, or drowned, the coroner was unsure which.

  Alexandre’s parents were heartbroken, so much so that they paid no attention to Alexandre at all. His father put all of his business into a manager’s hands (the manager, being unswayed by trivial matters of the piety of the investment, made a better job of it than Harcourt Senior had) and spent all his time pouring over Victor’s papers, trying to find a reason why his beloved son should have done this. Within the year, his heart literally broke; he was found dead in his office, still with some of Victor’s essays in his hands, and the doctor opined he had died of sorrow. And Alexandre’s mother took to the comforting arms of some patent medicine that was half alcohol and half opium. Her maid managed her, the housekeeper managed the house, and the business manager managed the business and the household finances. Sometimes old friends attempted to draw her out of herself, but she was much happier in a half stupor in a sunlit window like a cat. Dreaming, perhaps, that her beloved son was still alive and would come home any day. Alexandre she barely acknowledged.

  Which was exactly the way he wanted things.

  He had cast that spell over his brother to send him out into the midwinter night. He’d intended for Victor to lie down to sleep in some remote place and freeze to death, but the fact that he went into the river was ever so much more convenient. It hadn’t taken much occult nudging at all to turn his father’s already-obsessive nature into an obsession with his dead son; late nights, poor sleep, and eating little had done for him without any other means necessary. And as for his mother, well, a mere suggestion that the tonic would “help,” and the constant replenishing of full bottles, took care of her. And as lo
ng as she was content to dream away her days in the hands of her maid and housekeeper, Alexandre had no inclination to meddle with her further.

  This left him in control of a very nice income—the business manager was a sharp, clever, calculating man, honest to a fault, with an entire law firm behind him. Alexandre knew better than to try to meddle with him, and really, there was no need for any of that. He was comfortable, he was let to do what he wanted as long as he didn’t run through his allowance, and for the most part he was contented.

  Except on nights like this one, where nothing had gone right. When he glanced out his window and saw people in expensive carriages making their way through the snow to the sort of parties and dances he would never be invited to. When he looked around his flat, he noted with discontent that while it was comfortable, and suited him very well, it was . . . slightly shabby, a bit shopworn. He would have no compunction in bringing people from the artistic set here, since most of them lived in far shabbier circumstances—but it was not the sort of place he’d have felt comfortable inviting anyone with a title to.

  Not that he knew anyone with a title, except a few fellows from Oxford. And in all probability, if he brought himself to their attention (and he was wearing his school tie) they’d vaguely acknowledge him, issue an even vaguer invitation to “a drink sometime at my club” and fail to give him a card.

  Not that he ever would know anyone with a title. Even the occult circles he moved in did not boast men with titles. He knew what circle did—the famed White Lodge of Elemental Magicians and Masters, led by the redoubtable Lord Alderscroft. This, of course, was scarcely common knowledge even among those involved in magic and the occult, but one of the things he had mastered was the ability to see things from afar by way of crystals and bowls of water, and he had overseen and overheard enough to put all the pieces together. He himself would have been counted as a Water Magician, he supposed. Scrying by water . . . sending his brother to his death by water . . . even the nostrum he’d gotten his mother addicted to was a form of water . . .

  He had been able to see and command—or rather coerce—the Elementals of Water as a child, though they avoided him in order to avoid being ordered about. But he preferred other magic, things that worked on other people, and made them do what he wanted them to. He was not a Master, but then . . . given the things he had done, he really did not want the attention he would have gotten if he’d been a Master.

  Better to avoid the Elemental Magic altogether.

  He stared out the window at the snowy street. It looked as if it was finally thinning out, so the toffs would have easier going coming home from their parties. It looked as if Alf had decided to stay in for the evening, however, which was probably wise. If he’d decided to go get a bit of skirt, he’d have come round to see if his master wanted a bit of his own—because with Alexandre’s ready, he could go for a cut higher than he could on his own. With the snow this thick, girls would be trying to solicit from inside four walls, not out in the street, and Alf had probably taken refuge in sleep, gin, or both.

  I need a better source of power.

  The idea seemed to come into his head from out of nowhere, although now that he’d had the thought, it seemed so blindingly obvious he was amazed he hadn’t thought of it before.

  He knew all about using himself as a source of power, that was the first thing the book had taught him. The second thing it taught him was how to siphon power away from others. But the kind of people he could get drunk enough that they did not notice him performing incantations over them were not the sort that offered him a great deal of power, so mostly he had been limited to himself.

  But what if there was a better way? He had not been paying a great deal of attention to the content of the pages he had been sorting through—just enough, really, to make sure he was getting them in order—but now that he thought about it, the obtaining of vast quantities of magical power had been a theme running through them.

  For a moment he was galvanized by the thought. But his bed was warm and the sitting room was undoubtedly cold by now, and he could not quite muster the energy to go and look through it properly, peering at the crabbed writing in lamplight. It could wait until tomorrow. It wasn’t as if the book would be gone in the morning.

  But what if he had been drawn to this book, as he had been drawn to the first book that started him down the road to occult power? It made sense. He had always had the feeling that there was some greater destiny in store for him than anything his background would allow, and that he had to break free of it in order to achieve that destiny.

  For a moment, it also occurred to him that this book, and even the first one, could have been some sort of baited trap—

  But what would be the purpose of such a thing? It wasn’t as if the authors were still alive to profit by trapping him.

  Don’t get your hopes too high, he reminded himself, as the urge to rise and try to make sense of the book took hold of him again. Not everything old and handwritten is valuable.

  That was enough to send him back to his novel, and after a moment, a glass of whiskey he poured from the bottle he kept at his bedside. Eventually the whiskey did its work; he turned down the lamp and went to sleep—to dream of sitting on a throne-like chair with the Elemental Masters of the London White Lodge serving him like slaves.

  3

  NAN bundled herself into her sable cloak; Sarah was all ready to go. “I’m sorry to drag you out into the snow like this,” John Watson said apologetically, as he held the door of their flat open for them. “But one of my medical colleagues who knows that I am not inclined to dismiss the outré as mere faradiddle sent me a message last night. He has a patient he thinks might be something other than mad, and last night she took a bad turn. He doesn’t know what to make of it.”

  “And he thinks we might,” Sarah stated, preceding him down the stairs to the front door. “Well, Mrs. Horace has Suki all day; Suki is going to learn how to make gingerbread and how to set a proper tea tray, serve, and pour, and they’re making Christmas decorations as well. I’ll just pop my head in her door and make sure it’s all right if we leave for a few hours.”

  Nan made sure the birds were going to be warm and safe while they were gone; this did not seem to be the sort of situation where they were going to be needed. By the time she came down the stairs, it appeared that Sarah had already confirmed with their landlady that Suki could remain with her until their return. Sarah was waiting at the door, next to John Watson. “I hope you got a conveyance of some sort,” she said to the doctor. “Getting anything big enough for all of us in this weather—”

  “Mary is waiting in the growler outside,” John replied reassuringly. “We’ll be going almost all the way to Hampstead Heath. I’ve made sure the cabby will wait for us; I don’t fancy trying to get another way back.”

  Sure enough, waiting outside the door was one of the larger cabs, a two-horse “growler” that could seat four in spread-out comfort—or more at a pinch. Nan had no idea how John had managed to get one in the first place; they were usually all pulled up at the railway stations or major hotels to convey passengers and baggage.

  Mrs. Horace must have paid a street-sweeper to clean the snow off this morning; the street and sidewalk in front of the building were both clean. At least they could go dry-footed to the cab.

  The girls took the rear-facing seats; neither of them had ever had any problem with riding backward. John got in beside his wife and banged on the roof of the cab with his walking stick, and the cab lurched into motion. “Here is what I have,” John said, taking a small sheaf of paper from his pocket and unfolding it. “This patient was consigned to our care by family. I was told, and the patient confirmed, that she had asked for consignment, due to increasing hallucinations. Patient appeared rational, and was intelligent, articulate, calm, and able to reason. Three days after consignment to our care, patient was struck with an apparent fit, during whi
ch she remained rigid and unresponsive, although she spoke during this fit, and described a scene of great tragedy in minute detail. I had the presence of mind to take down her words in shorthand. On recovering from this fit, she was in great distress, not only on account of her emotional reaction to the scene she had described, but because of succumbing to the fit itself. I had cause to be grateful I had taken down her words, because not two days later, an acquaintance of mine who happens to work as a London coroner described a pair of bodies brought in to him in a pitiable state that exactly matched the murders my patient had described. Nor could she have known of this from newspapers; the crime must have taken place even as she fell into her fit, at least according to my friend’s judgment of the time of death. Over the succeeding months, this happened again and again; she would fall into one of these fits, describe an horrific crime, and I would later find she had described something that had actually taken place in London or its environs. I began to see a pattern; the victims were all innocent, often lower-class children, and the murders were unsolved and particularly heinous. No one had ever bothered to verify her visions before. I did my best to reassure the poor woman, and it did come as partial relief for her to discover she was not mad, but what could we do? We could not pass on pertinent information to the police for how would we explain where our information came from? At length, with her consent, I began experimenting with drugs to attempt to suppress these visions, since there was nothing we could do with them. I seemed to be having success until two days ago, when she was found in her room in a state of collapse and utter terror. She has not slept since. I then confessed what I had been doing to my friend the coroner, who listened with every evidence of belief, then suggested I contact you, with whom I have a speaking acquaintance. I pray if you can help, please come at once.”