Heaven's Bones (17 page)

Fanny decided it was a handsome face, a little like Holbart's, the overseer. She wondered what had happened to Holbart. She hadn't liked him, either.

From downstairs, from the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, she heard her father cry out: a great animal roar of anger and frustration.

Fanny smiled.

London, 1867

“Penny daily, sir!”

Artemis tossed tuppence to the newsboy and took a
Daily Telegraph
in return, waving away the change. A few steps away he leaned against a pillar, scanning the close-printed, smudged columns for any mention of a girl's disappearance, any call for investigation, any sign that anybody besides the whores of Whitechapel—and himself—was taking notice of what was happening.

Nothing. There was a letter from some Under-Minister of one of the Home Departments commending the actions of a body of reform-minded ladies who had ventured into a tenement,
been appalled at the squalor they'd seen, and forced the landlord to reduce the number of bodies he could stuff in each room. Of course, the result was more homelessness as families were evicted.

But of the three women he knew to have vanished without a trace, not a word.

“Liz would never 'ave gone without telling me,” one of his informants had told him, leaning over the greasy table in the Cat and Whiskers that was his quasi-official office in the district.

“You were such good friends as that?” he'd asked lifting a finger to the barmaid to call for a dark ale for the lady.

She tossed her head and snorted. “That's not why, although I'm fond of 'er as any of the bitches hereabouts. Oh, thank you, love,” she added as her beer was conveyed to her.

“It's 'cause that I owed her a pair of gloves and a 'at,” she continued, after a healthy gulp. “I split 'er gloves last winter, when I went north to visit me sister, and the 'at—well, that was a bet, and I'd rather not tell you the wager and shock your tender nature, Officer.” She giggled coquettishly and Artemis smiled politely—although indeed he had heard of the bet, which involved seventeen sailors on shore leave after rounding the Cape, and indeed he'd rather not hear all the gory details.

“Anyroad, she wouldn't 'ave left town without getting 'er winnin's, or at the very least 'er gloves back. And if she did she would've told me where to send 'em.”

“When did you last see her?” asked Artemis.

“Two night gone—she was stepping out to see if she could rustle up a few quid to pay 'er rent, and I was stayin' with her on account of having a cold. She never came back, and I didn't think much of it because maybe she got a doss somewheres else for the night. But
last night, when she didn't come back and all her stuff still in her room—and a bit o' cocoa left she was saving for the night before—I knew something was wrong.”

She tipped her head back and drained the dregs of her ale.

“You're not a bad sort, for all you're tetched in the 'ed and a copper to boot,” she continued, wiping her mouth on her sleeve and grinning at him, gap-toothed. “And the girls roundabout know you're lookin' out for 'em. And nobody—or precious few, cares if we live nor die nor vanish from creation. So keep an eye out fer my Liz, right? You won't forget?”

He promised to make inquiries, and watched her walk spraddle-hipped out the pub, and knew neither he nor her friend were like to see Liz Stridemore again.

Some children were playing on the sidewalk, a game with jacks and an irregular rubber ball, and as Artemis continued to scan the paper he half-listened to their chatter as he always listened to the sounds of London around him. They broke into a chant as one player bounced the ball in a hard, steady rhythm on the cobbles. Artemis registered the song almost as soon as it began, and he turned his head to watch them.

Two girls and a boy, maybe as old as eight, and no grubbier than one might expect in this part of London. Their eyes were focused on the black rubber ball and the pot-metal jacks and their childish voices chanted with all earnestness:

Artemis folded his paper with a snap. When he heard about the disappearances of Nellie Howard and Liz Stridemore, he'd gone to Crutchly and asked to open an investigation. Crutchly refused categorically.

“There's been no more murders like that other,” he said. “You can't think they've got anything to do with that. The perverted breed who kills as a hobby wants us to find the bodies—it's part of their game. And in all seriousness, you want to spend the Division's time and money looking into—what? A couple whores gone roundabout?”

“Nellie Howard wasn't—isn't a prostitute, sir,” said Artemis, controlling his temper with an effort. “She sells pies down the market, and her friends tell me she was expecting, too.”

Crutchly shrugged. “Unmarried, I take it.”

Artemis sighed. He knew it would do no good to explain that many poorer couples considered themselves wed without benefit of clergy, as a marriage license cost as much as a few good meals, and those were painful to skip.

“Bodies,” continued the Inspector. “Give me some bodies, and I can take that to the Superintendent. Even a Thames suicide. Bodies are evidence. Disappearances—that's anything from taking a holiday to moving to the country to lying drunk in some alley for a few days. We can't waste time on that.”

Artemis knew, with that strange knowing that made him respected and a little bit feared in the halls of the Yard, that there would be no bodies to satisfy Inspector and Superintendent. He also knew these women had not vanished of their own free will.

The children knew. The whores knew. The people who lived close to the street knew that something alien moved among them. He could see it in the new fear in their eyes, the whispers in the doss-houses, the songs the street children sang.

Somewhere out there in the city his quarry was looking for prey in his turn; Artemis could feel him. When he shut his eyes he could almost see him, a figure of the shadows, a cultured silhouette, his seeming harmlessness a weapon in itself.

They called him the Gentleman now, in the streets. There were stories of a great-coated, top-hatted figure looming in the fog when it descended in the night, approaching a woman, luring her with promises of hot food and a warm fire, and then sweeping her away somehow, without a trace of her passing left behind.

Artemis pocketed his paper and walked over to the children. The boy hastily grabbed the ball and tucked it away in some inner pocket while the girls scrabbled up the jacks, as if he had designs on them.

When they looked up and recognized him, their faces relaxed a little, but not completely. He was, after all, a policeman—and worse, an adult.

“I'll not take your toys,” he said. “Nor chase you off. But wait a moment.”

On impulse, he crouched down beside them, seeing them consider whether to flee or to tolerate this strange encroachment into their world. One jack was left on the cobble; absently he picked it up,
careful not to bend the cheap metal, and dropped it into the hand of one of the girls.

“If somebody ever saw the Gentleman,” he said. “Or somebody they might think is the Gentleman—you mustn't go near him, of course. But if you got word out to me, and it turned out to
be
the Gentleman after all, there would be a nice reward in it for you. See?”

He pulled a shilling from his pocket and made it dance between his knuckles. Their eyes shone as they watched. He spun the coin between his fingers and held it out to the boy.

“Mind you share, now,” he said. “Because I'll find out if you don't.”

“Hot pies, Davy!” chirruped one of the girls, and Davy nodded.

With a polite chorus of “thank'ee, sir,” the trio was off round the corner, holding their games and booty. Artemis' practiced eye caught a slight limp in the boy's gait, but then, so few children of these streets were completely whole and healthy.

“Remember what I said!” he called after them, and the limping boy turned and nodded before vanishing down the lane. Artemis could hear them singing as they ran toward the bakeshop and the pasties and the sweet buns.

Artemis shivered. Goose on my grave, he thought. Nothing more than that.

Jory Penhallow was walking the frosty edge of his father's field where the winter fodder grew when he saw the bloody woman lying facedown in a trench. It was lucky it wasn't the rainy season, else she would have drowned.

He though she must be dead or dying when he saw the great gash in her back, but in kneeling by her and examining her he saw that although a blade had obviously slipped between her ribs, there was no bubbling of air and blood that would mean a lung had been punctured.

Crouching by the injured stranger, Jory thought something that only a Recording Angel could know. He thought he was tired, and he didn't want the work of carrying her back, especially when she was like to die anyhow. And there would be questions, and perhaps a Crowner to sit on the matter, and he would have to testify. Best to go home, and leave the body to be found during the plowing.

But decency did out in Jory Penhallow that day, and he heaved her over his shoulder and took her to his mother's house, a stone cottage on the outskirts of St. Agnes.

They saw at once she was a foreigner, a gypsy perhaps, with that dark coloring, and that her face was rather pretty, though streaked with blood and dirt. Then they saw she clutched a knife to her breast, the blade flat against the grimy linen of her dress—a
knife with a long, thin blade and a handle curiously wrought. Something about that knife—the odd patterns on the handle, perhaps, that seemed to swirl and change before her eyes into wicked little faces, and then dissolve again into formless lines, made Mistress Penhallow quite take against it, and she made her son work it away from the woman's clutch before she would bandage her wound.

I can't fault her for this. Even I can't tell you the history of that blade; its life—for it does, and did, and will have life—was long and buried in shadows and blood. Not even the Vistana once named Tibor truly understood what kind of weapon he carried.

When the knife was wrested from her fingers, the woman stirred finally and opened her eyes, staring up at the faces gathered about her. I know that some thought
gypsy
, and others
beautiful
. She muttered something, and although Mistress Penhallow bent close, she couldn't understand.