Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (17 page)

"Where would they learn this kind of information?"

"Servants gossip, even years later." Bartleby said, handing me the book. "But look, here -- a name and address written in the back, and what looks like a ledger of accounts paid. They may have been purchasing information."

"Nyle Abbot. The address is in Whitechapel?"

"Underworld, most likely. Connected, but low-level if he's dealing with newcomers like Buckley."

I thought about it. "He won't want to talk. Not to us."

"Have faith, James. I'm sure you can be properly convincing."

I grinned, perhaps a little too broadly.

***

My first punch drove the wind from Nyle's gut. My second bloodied his nose. The third fractured one of his teeth.

"How go the negotiations?" Bartleby was leaning against the exterior wall of the pub, making sure nobody interrupted our discussion, idly filing his nails.

"Well, I should think," I panted, watching Nyle try to scramble to his feet. I tossed the man's knife aside into the gutter, glancing down where he'd slashed a shallow laceration into my thigh. "He had some reservations but I think I'm getting through to him."

Nyle had turned himself onto his back and was scrambling away as best he could while I closed on him.

"Ready to talk yet?"

"Oh god," he moaned, feeling his back up against the alley wall. I slammed a fist into the crumbling plaster next to his head, dusting his shoulder with debris.

"Do you need a little more convincing?"

"Saints preserve me," he muttered.

"Irish, are you?" Bartleby asked, drawing near, peering down over my shoulders. "A compatriot of Buckley's?"

"Never met him," he stammered. "My contact was that Fortier girl."

"Fortier?" I asked. "The Russian?"

"Not Russian, French," he explained. "Though yeah, she looked a little Russian. Could pass. But she was from Paris."

Bartleby stood upright. "Paris? Is she... connected?"

"Dunno," Nyle winced. "She had connection enough to make a deal with me."

"For what, exactly?" I let him sit up, passed him his handkerchief.

He pressed it to his bloodied nose. "Information. Gossip on prominent families. I put the word out to the local servants, they sell to me, I sell to Trinette at a sharp mark-up."

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"Four nights past."

The day before she'd gone missing. After she and Buckley had moved in with Mrs. Lakewood -- when supposedly she'd locked herself in her room. "Where did you meet with her? At the Lakewood estate?"

"Nah, no. Different places. Pubs. She'd put the word out when she wanted to buy, and I'd meet her on her terms."

I stood up, straightening my vest.

"You know, Mr. Abbot, this was nothing personal." Bartleby leaned to take my place.

"Aye. Business. I get it. A little rough, but no worries."

"Mr. Wainwright and I," he continued, "may have use for a man who can gather certain types of information, if he can be discrete."

"Oh, I'm quite discrete, Mr. Bartleby."

Bartleby stood, dropping a few pounds into Nyle's lap. "Good. Consider this a retainer. Go see a dentist about that tooth."

"God's blessing on you both, sirs."

We left him there then, returning to Whitechapel's narrow streets.

"Assuming Nyle's telling the truth it would seem that Miss Fedorovna... Fortier, sorry... had some way of getting out of her room," I said.

"And that the kidnapper had a way to get in to grab her."

"Assuming that she didn't just abandon Buckley."

"Either way, there's got to be some way in and out that we didn't see."

I nodded. "The Curate arrived before we could fully investigate the room."

"Not that you were inclined to. Still, back to Knightsbridge tomorrow."

***

The old servants' quarters weren't very large, and it didn't take us long before Bartleby discovered a sliding panel in the closet revealing a staircase down into the ground. We borrowed a lantern and followed it to a tunnel running under the estate's grounds.

"This must date back to the older construction," I said.

"Some information that Miss Fortier was able to glean. Mrs. Lakewood probably didn't even know about it."

"She didn't seem the sort to have gone exploring as a girl," I agreed.

There was a crunch underfoot and Bartleby stooped to the ground, lantern in hand. "Beads."

"Beads?"

"Rosary beads." He rose, a small string of beads attached to a cross in hand. The string had snapped and several had spilt out onto the floor.

"Broken in a struggle?"

"Probably not Miss Fortier's. Buckley?"

"Catholic but not religious."

Bartleby rolled the beads in his hands thoughtfully. "The Curate."

"Mrs. Lakewood's son?"

"He might have discovered the passage in his youth. The other night he waited for Miss Fortier here, they struggle, he takes her."

"But why?"

Bartleby held the crucifix up to his lantern. "You heard the man after we spoke to the Vicar. A zealot obsessed with the supernatural. And look, here, on the back. Some sort of Oriental characters."

"Let's confront him, see how he reacts. To St. Barnabas."

***

"You come here – to my parish – and accuse me of... of what, exactly?" The Vicar was red faced with rage.

"We're not accusing you of anything," Bartleby said. "We're simply telling you–"

"The implication is clear, young man. I've no patience for honeyed words. You may be popular among some important families, but don't think you're free to go lobbing accusations at the Church freely. You think your modern secular natural philosophies free you from the responsibility to respect God by slandering His servants? You'll discover that the Church still has temporal power to protect itself."

I'd just about lost my temper. "'A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.' Sound familiar, Vicar?"

"Metaphor! I told you. I'll not stand idly by and let you accuse me of–"

Bartleby wordlessly placed the crucifix we'd found on the Vicar's desk. The old man's eyes seemed riveted to it.

"Where did you get this?"

"Found. In a secret tunnel leading from the Medium's chambers to the grounds of the Lakewood estate."

The Vicar's face paled and he sank into the chair behind his desk, looking all the world like a deflated zepplin. "That's his. That's William's. Oh, God forgive me. I should have known."

Bartleby glanced in my direction briefly. "Perhaps you had best start at the beginning."

"This... it's an internal church matter."

"A woman's life is at stake, man."

The Vicar nodded and swallowed. "William... he's always been superstitious. Religious, yes, but beyond that... he honestly and earnestly believes that the forces of good and darkness are fighting a constant war around us at all times. He believes in angels, and demons, and the devil, in a very literal and definite fashion."

"And you don't?" Bartleby asked. "Last time you came around you were lamenting people's lack of belief in these things."

"In the allegories they represent! In their moral and ethical meanings, not in the literal sense of actual demons walking the earth. I believe these things have weight, have definite consideration, but only as metaphor. William has believed in the stories, in spirits and angels and demons, since he was a child. And these literal convictions only worsened when he took his mission work in Japan."

"What happened in Japan?"

"He somehow came to the conclusion that his parish was haunted by demons," the Vicar continued, glancing towards the window. "Performed a host of exorcisms without the church's consent, and several men died. When he confessed his deeds to the Vicar he served there the Church covered things up and sent him back here."

"That was it?" I asked, incredulous. "He committed multiple murders and got away with it?"

"It was a religious mania." The Vicar seemed to be pleading that we accept this as a truth. "What good would an international incident have done?"

"Brought peace to the families of the men he killed," Bartleby replied coldly. "Even if criminals, they were still men."

"God save us," the Vicar moaned. "And if William is still at it -- God forgive us."

"Vicar Elmwood," I spoke quietly. "Where is the Curate now?"

"I don't know. Off. Gone. If he's taken the girl then he's been depriving her of food and water these last few days. Somewhere sanctified and isolated."

Bartleby stood abruptly. "Come along, James. If we hurry, we can save her from his zealot's mercies."

I followed him out into the hall, haunted by the Vicar's revelations. "He could be anywhere."

"Not just anywhere. He needs somewhere sanctified and secure."

"Any number of the disused chapels in London."

Bartleby stopped, staring up at the soot-colored sky. "Hold on. Consider his mental state. His psychotic break began during his mission work in the Orient. He'll gravitate towards similar features."

"There are some Buddhist temples in the East End."

"Close, but no. The immigrants there are Chinese. The Curate's mission work was in Japan."

"The Japanese Village?"

"That's our best bet. And it's close, here in Knightsbridge."

***

When Bartleby and I arrived at Humphrey Hall, where the village was housed, we found that the chains sealing the grand front doors had been cut. Our lantern did little to illuminate the gloom of the interior, or of the darkened homes and hovels of the mock-up. I held it in one of my hands, a pry-bar in the other. Bartleby held his pistol.

We made our way through the maze-like structure of the buildings, past homes and tea-halls, looking for the temple. As we progressed we could hear the chanting, indistinct at first, then resolving itself as Latin.

Exorcism
, Bartleby mouthed.

We pressed on, past stores and workshops, the quaint medieval decor painted with an eternal night. The temple sat alone in the middle of an open square, sallow light flickering from within. The chanting was louder, and under it we could hear a low moaning. We crept inside, careful to avoid making too much noise, past foreign statues of angry looking gods and bright murals so different from the sombre trappings of our own churches.

At the centre of the temple was a great chamber dominated by a large golden statue. Furniture from some of the other buildings had been broken up and fashioned together to form a large cross, to which a young woman had been lashed. She hung limply, her clothes in dirty tatters, head hung. Curate Lakewood stood before her, dressed in a cassock modified to the Japanese fashion, a blank white mask covering his face. The voice coming from behind it was ragged and hoarse, as if he'd been chanting for hours.

We didn't make any noise entering, but the Curate must have heard us. His face cocked towards us, and the long curved Oriental blade he held in his hand came into view.

"Let her go, Lakewood," Bartleby demanded, raising his pistol. "Drop the sword and surrender yourself."

"You don't understand!" he cried, his voice cracking. "She's possessed! This is the only way I can drive the evil from her body and save her immortal soul!"

"We know about the murders in Japan, Lakewood." Bartleby judged the light and his ability to drop the Curate before he harmed Miss Fortier, he then lowered his pistol.

"Murder? No. Not murder. A murder is an unlawful killing, Mr. Bartleby, and I obey the laws of God." He slipped in next to the girl, blade's edge to her neck. "A common error in translation, the commandment. 'Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder.' The gangsters that I... in Hokkaido, they were like this girl, here. Possessed by foreign demons. I... I could not drive the evil out, their barbs sunk in too thick. I had to release them the only way I could."

"So you killed them."

"I had to!" His voice entreated us to forgive, to absolve, to understand. "The first... I didn't know what he was. I thought he was just another gangster, coming to extort the church as they do their own temples. When I refused him he came at me. We struggled and he fell and... and at first I was afraid that I'd accidentally killed a man. No matter his earthly crimes, he was not beyond salvation. But then, as I rushed to his side, I saw... I saw the marks, the ink upon his flesh as if the demon inside him was bubbling to the surface. His arms, his back, his chest... it was then that I knew –
knew
– that he was hell-spawn."

"It didn't stop there, did it?" Bartleby asked quietly, stepping around the temple's interior, circling around the Curate and his hostage.