Time Rovers 03 Madman's Dance (4 page)

“I do suspect the word
execute
is appropriate here.”

“Absolutely not. He says
she
pulled a gun on
him
.”

That wasn’t what he’d heard from Harter. The bullet in his friend’s chest had been courtesy of TPB’s henchman, though apparently they weren’t aware of it.

“You must recall her and Defoe immediately,” Davis ordered.

“We’ve lost contact.”

“Then perhaps we should amend Defoe’s RFW and make it Open Force. He is as much a threat as the other Rover,” Davies argued.

Morrisey’s temper flared. “Harter pioneered this technology. He
is
time travel. Without him, you wouldn’t have this job, Davies.”

“And I am grateful,” the man replied dismissively. “If you think you’ve gone unscathed, we will be drawing up charges for willfully disregarding our orders. If Defoe and Miss Lassiter return to 2057 immediately, we won’t file those.”

“She still goes to jail?”

“Of course, with time added on for her assault against a TPB employee. She’s up to three years and counting.”

No deal.
“I really do not know where she is,” he repeated.

“Well, then, you’re in it deep, aren’t you?” Davies replied, a note of glee in his voice.

That pretty much summed it up.

~••~••~••~

Wednesday, 24 October, 1888

London

As Alastair neared the archway that led to the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, he felt he was crossing into another world. He always had that sensation. He’d not been in London in ’84 when the Irish anarchists had placed a bomb in the public restroom beneath Special Branch’s office, but he’d read the newspaper accounts. There had been many injuries, though fortunately no one had died. Now, as he walked toward that particular building, he wondered what it must have been like in the minutes after the bomb exploded. “What gall,” he muttered.

Would Flaherty attempt that again? Considering the three wagonloads of explosives the anarchist had stolen, he could bring down the entire building. If not for Keats’ keen sleuthing abilities, Flaherty would still be heavily armed.

In early October, Keats had noticed a wagon in Whitechapel and shrewdly deduced that underneath the casks of rum were hidden barrels of gunpowder. As usual, he’d been too eager. Though badly outnumbered, he’d confronted Flaherty and his men, refusing to wait for additional constables to make the arrest. Alastair could still hear the thud of the punches as they landed on his friend, the shouts from the onlookers, the two-tone police whistles shrilling in the night air.

In the end, the police had secured the wagon, but the cost had been unfathomable. The fight had left Keats with a broken rib and a brutal head injury, which rendered him incapable of shifting form
.
If Jacynda hadn’t treated him with whatever fantastic medicine they had in her time, he could easily have died. Now the Hero of Green Dragon Place, as Keats was once called, was reviled as a murderer. The two accounts did not square.

Once Alastair offered his calling card and explained the purpose of his visit, a constable trotted off to Chief Inspector Fisher’s office. Alastair chose a bench and settled there, resisting the urge to open the parcel and dig into the book. Hopefully, he would not be here long; he just needed to explain the events of the previous night and his involvement in the discovery of Hugo Effington’s body. Scotland Yard would expect such a report, if only to ensure they did not turn their eyes in his direction when it came to the murder.

The last time he’d been here he was full of hope, sure that the evidence he’d uncovered would overturn Keats’ arrest warrant. It had not come to pass, even though he had proved that his friend was too short to have murdered the Hallcox woman. The legal machinery, once in motion, was very hard to stop.

“Doctor?” the constable called, waving him up the stairs.

That came more quickly than expected. Alastair squared his shoulders and marched upward.

“Ah, Dr. Montrose,” Fisher greeted, rising from behind his desk. Keats’ superior was immaculate, his beard and moustache well groomed. He was always that way, no matter the time of day. The instant he saw Alastair’s ravaged face, he winced. “Please sit. We have some matters to discuss.”

The other man in the room wasn’t someone the doctor relished. Inspector Hulme, the local inspector in charge of the Hallcox murder investigation, eyed him glumly.

“Doctor,” he muttered.

Alastair nodded in reply. Fisher leaned forward, his eyes full of morbid curiosity. “You are definitely singed around the edges, Doctor.”

“To be blunt, it was a hellish night.”

“So I hear,” Fisher replied. “I must thank you for coming to us. You were not at your boarding house this morning, and your landlady was unsure of your location.”

“I stayed the night with Dr. Bishop. I was too exhausted to return to my own bed.”

“I see. Do tell us what happened, will you?”

Alastair related the evening’s events, or at least the parts he thought the police might accept. Telling them that Miss Lassiter was actually from the future would only earn him ridicule and render his other testimony suspect. He hardly believed it himself at times.

“What of the fire itself?” Fisher quizzed.

“I have no notion how it began. I went to fetch a constable and when I returned, the building was ablaze.”

“Where is Miss Lassiter now?” Fisher asked.

“I am not sure. She does tend to wander,” he remarked, hoping with all his might that it was true this time.

“Indeed. What were you doing there?”

“I was looking for Keats.”
As you asked me to.

“So why was Miss Lassiter there?” Hulme jumped in.

Alastair had wondered how long the inspector would hold his silence.

“She was particularly interested in Effington, ever since the assassination attempt at his party. She’d heard that he was skimming goods off the top of his customers’ loads and hiding them in one of his own warehouses. She wanted to investigate the claim.”

Hulme scowled. “I suppose it never occurred to her that there is a paid constabulary in this city.”

The doctor swore he heard a chuckle from Fisher.

“Miss Lassiter is single-minded, Inspector,” Alastair explained. “Once she has the bit in her teeth, there is no means of stopping her.”

“I will vouch for that, Hulme,” Fisher added. “I’ve spoken at length with the woman, and she is quite tenacious.”

“So it seems,” Hulme grumbled.

“Is she still residing at the Charing Cross Hotel?” Fisher asked.

“No,” Alastair replied. “She’s staying in a room at Pratchett’s Bookshop in the Strand.”

“Why?” Hulme challenged.

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“From what I gather,” the chief inspector interjected, “they’re still digging through the remains of the warehouse, but they have not found any further corpses.”

“Thank God,” Alastair murmured.

“Did you kill Hugo Effington?” Hulme asked.

Alastair’s eyes widened. “No.”

“Set fire to the building?”

“No. Why do you think I would do such things?”

Hulme only smirked for an answer, making Alastair’s gut churn.
Does he know about what happened in Wales?

“We put these sorts of questions to anyone who may have been at the scene of a crime, Doctor,” Fisher remarked.

“Even when you know what the answer will be?”

“Of course. Sometimes you receive a reply that surprises you,” the senior officer replied. “Who do you think might have killed him?”

“Given his egregious behavior, Effington no doubt had a long list of enemies. I would hazard that it was someone very familiar with human anatomy. As best as I could tell from a brief inspection of the corpse, the blade went neatly between two ribs at the precise level to impact the heart.”

“A doctor?” Hulme quizzed.

Alastair gave him a sour look. “Or a professional assassin.”

“There are a lot more of the former around than the latter,” Hulme replied.

“I requested a copy of the post-mortem results this morning,” Fisher cut in. He offered the doctor a few sheets of paper.

Alastair scanned the notes from the local coroner who had performed the post-mortem. “
Lack of soot in the lungs indicative of death before the fire, pericardium pierced by a single incision.
” He dropped the papers on the desk. “As I expected.”

Hulme extracted his notebook and flipped a page. “I understand that you and Miss Lassiter escorted Hugo Effington’s wife to Southampton on the eighteenth. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Hulme continued, his tone gruff. “You were involved in this woman’s surreptitious departure from England, though you knew I was investigating her supposed suicide.”

Alastair felt like he was in the dock, facing a jury. The questions carried that sort of edge. “I cautioned her on that point, but she refused to go to the police. She was terrified of her husband, and said that was why she made it appear as if she’d killed herself.”

“How convenient that terror has been removed, and she has the perfect alibi—she was on a ship bound for America.”

Alastair opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it.

“No defence of the widow, Doctor?” Fisher asked, leaning forward.

“No,” he replied abruptly. “I do not have enough information to say either way, though I doubt that she would be so bold as to hire someone to kill her husband.”

“Perhaps,” Fisher conceded. “Nevertheless, my years as a copper have taught me many lessons, one of which is that women are a mystery. They appear as innocent as children, though I believe they are the more cunning of the species. They often employ that childlike innocence to rally our noblest male instincts in their defence.”

“So you maintain that you had nothing to do with Effington’s death?” Hulme pressed.

Alastair’s jaw was firmly set. “Yes.”

“I am given to understand that Mrs. Effington has accused her husband of physical cruelty,” Hulme went on.

“There was evidence to support her claim.”

“Bruises?”

“And old scars.”

Hulme’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that Mr. Effington delivered those blows?”

“I accepted her word on that point. How did you learn all this?”

“Mrs. Effington sent me a cable once the ship was at sea. She said you had documented evidence of her husband’s abuse.”

“I do. It’s at the boarding house. I will send it to you.”

“Do so. She also instructed me to speak with her lady’s maid, who provided a few details.”

Alastair couldn’t resist bearding the lion. “Have you questioned Mrs. Effington’s paramour yet?”

“Paramour?” Hulme retorted.

“Mrs. Effington admitted she had taken a lover, a gentleman by the name of Reginald Fine. She said he is a solicitor.”

The inspector’s face darkened. “I’ll track him down and see if he has an alibi, and have another talk with the maid while I’m at it.”

“Excellent,” Fisher said. “Any notion of where Keats is, Doctor?”

Alastair shook his head. “I might as well be looking for a ghost.”

“Or Flaherty,” Fisher replied. “Anything else, Inspector?”

Hulme shut his notebook and stuffed it into a pocket, frown firmly in place. “That’s enough for now,” he said, rising. “Good day to you, sir.” He didn’t bother with the courtesies when it came to the doctor.

Hulme pushed past a constable in the doorway, who then stepped forward to place an envelope on Fisher’s desk. “From Sir Charles Warren,” he intoned gravely.

Fisher nodded. “Ah, yes, the daily missive. Thank you, Constable.” Once the door closed, he grimaced. “These are never good news,” the chief inspector confided, pushing the envelope aside like it was a ticking bomb. “Was there something else, Doctor?”

“Yes. I have learned that one of Effington’s maids disappeared right after Desmond Flaherty stole those explosives. ”

“From what source did you hear this?”

“Miss Lassiter.”

Fisher’s brow furrowed. “Yet you didn’t think to mention this information in front of Hulme?”

“No. There are…mitigating circumstances.”

“Such as?”

“She is Flaherty’s daughter, Fiona. According to Mrs. Effington, a mysterious gentleman named Mr. S. would call at their home to speak to her husband. She said the man wore different
disguises
each time. The girl vanished right after one of those meetings.”

Their eyes locked. “Could he be one of your kind?”

“I fear so,” Alastair replied, though he hated admitting it. Fisher was already leery of the Transitives as it was. “According to Mrs. Effington, her husband was one of Miss Hallcox’s clients. She was blackmailing him. Perhaps Effington knew something about the location of the explosives, which is why she dangled that bait in front of Keats.”

“If he’d fallen into the trap, Miss Hallcox would own him for life.”

“Precisely.”

Fisher walked over to the window and stared down at the street. “Given that the Hallcox woman was involved with Effington, it is quite possible she
did
know Flaherty’s location. Keats should have brought her in immediately.”