Sometime after 2:00 a.m.
Inspector Thomas Hill leaned against the gas lamppost and tried to choke down the bile that was attempting to rise in his throat. The scene laid out before him had already brought up the lunches of the two bobbies that found the body. But, as Scotland Yard’s youngest inspector, Hill couldn’t afford to look weak in front of his subordinates, especially those that were his elder. Most of the Yard already felt that he held his position only because his late father was a golfing acquaintance of Colonel Thomas de Veil, whom everyone knew was not morally opposed to accepting the occasional bribe. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, and Inspector Hill intended to earn the reputation of his peers, one way or another. One way, certainly, would be to catch the monster that had done … whatever this was.
It was the second body found west of Arlington Street in as many weeks. The previous victim was found in an alley near Berkeley Square, this one in Hyde Park. Much like the first victim, there appeared to be some type of … machinery implanted in the poor soul’s chest. Unlike the first, which had been found face down, this one was lying face up, with a shower of gore surrounding her body. Bits of flesh, bone, and copious amounts of blood soaked the grass in all directions within ten feet of the lifeless figure. A slight drizzle had begun sometime during the night, causing the red liquid to leech into the grass.
Inspector Hill placed a handkerchief over his face and knelt close to the prone woman, careful not to disturb his surroundings. The first thing Hill noticed, besides the gaping hole in the middle of her chest, was the victim was young, probably no more than eighteen, and beautiful. The second thing he noticed was that the heart, for that is clearly what the mechanical contraption implanted in the girl appeared to be, was emitting a faint humming sound, much like one of Tesla’s newfangled lamps emit after they’ve lost their charge. The device had a hole directly in the front of it surrounded by twisted metal and brown scorch marks. Hill wished he could say it was first time he’d ever seen something like this. But, similar to the mutilated body that was found a week ago, this victim’s original heart had been removed. A thorough search of the previous crime scene had not revealed the missing organ. Thomas had no doubt the same would be true again.
Against his better judgment perhaps, Inspector Hill removed the leather glove from his right hand and reached slowly toward the metal heart. As soon as his skin made contact, a blue spark shot from the mechanical body part into his finger, causing him to yelp and stumble backward, landing unsanctimoniously on his backside. So much for not disturbing the scene.
“Easy, Inspector. Those things pack a punch. The same thing happened to Officer Harvey with the other one when he tried to touch it. It took about an hour for the thing to lose its pop. Couldn’t even remove it from the victim until it cooled down. They’re bloody hot too. We took turns seeing who could hold their finger on it the longest once we’d gotten her down to the morgue.”
The scratchy voice belonged to John Foster, Hill’s assistant Inspector. Hill never ceased to be amazed by the man. While seemingly every other cop on the force was crooked, Foster was honest, loyal to a fault, and probably the only cop in the Yard who believed that Hill had earned his stripes through simple hard work. While Hill would trust the man with his life, there was a distance between them that went deeper than merely those found between supervisors and their subordinates, a distance based upon society, class, and upbringing. Foster was so crude he never even considered that he shouldn’t be placing his grubby hands into the chest cavity of a dead woman, not to mention informing his superior of the incident. John reached a thick-fingered hand down to his boss, who took it appreciatively, hoisting himself up.
“I remember, Assistant Inspector,” Thomas responded once he was firmly planted back on his feet. “If I’m not mistaken, Dr. Adams gave you quite a tongue lashing for your antics.”
“Ah, well, what do ya expect from someone who gets his kicks from cutting open dead bodies?” Foster shrugged. “He’s no sense of humor, that one. You remember when I put that bucket ‘a water over the door to the rot room? He actually had the bollocks to tell the captain. I had to work Jacob’s Island for a month. You know what that place is like. I got a beer bottle over the head once and almost got stabbed twice. And that was just the women.”
Inspector Hill just shook his head. No self-respecting doctor likes being doused with water in the middle of his shift, much less hearing his examination room referred to as a ‘rot room.’ Though they’d developed somewhat of a friendship over the past few years, times like these reminded Thomas just how different he and John actually were. Growing up as the son of a financier, Hill was taught a much different standard of behavior than Foster, whose father was a bricklayer and whose mother was a seamstress. Despite his rudimentary nature, John Foster had a brilliant investigative mind that Thomas had grown to rely on. Crudeness could be overlooked in an assistant inspector; incompetence could not. In addition, owing to that same upbringing, Foster was sometimes welcomed where Hill was given the cold shoulder. Foster knew how to get information. He could make fences show their wares, harlots reveal the names of their customers, and informants sing like canaries. It didn’t hurt that the man was well over six feet tall and built like a steamship. In spite of his bulk, he had an honest, handsome face and a hidden charm that the women of London seemed to melt under.
“Seeing a pattern, John?” Hill finally asked his assistant, bringing the man back to the present. Both detectives were staring down at the figure, contemplating the implications of another bizarre corpse. The body itself lay in the grass, a look of confusion on its smooth, clean face, a stark contrast to the mangled chaos being displayed from the woman’s center.
“I’ve seen girls cut up, boss, almost always pretty ones, but nothing like this. Why take out the hearts and put in the motors? I don’t get it. People are crazy, that’s what my gram always said.”
“Indeed,” sighed the Inspector. “Do you know if Adams has filed his report yet? I’m curious to know if our original victim suffered any kind of sexual assault.”
“Yep, just read it this morning.” Foster nodded, his shaggy auburn hair swaying, threatening to unseat his bowler hat. “She was all clean down there. Just the heart’s what was weird.”
“Stranger still,” replied Hill.
“Madness, I say,” responded Foster.
“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion so readily, Assistant Inspector Foster. We’ve no evidence our killer is insane. Gruesome? Yes, but not insane.”
“You don’t know mechanics like I do, Thom. I served wit’ ’em in India. People always say it’s the suicide jumpers that’s messed up in the head. Might be. You got to be a bit nuts to jump from those dirigibles, especially carrying all that dynamite. But I never met a mechanic weren’t a tick away from losing his marbles. It’s the pressure, see? Always having to be so precise. You know what happens if they make a mistake with the plasma torch when they’s cuttin’ a crystal?” John spread his hands and mouthed the word ‘Boom.’ “They’re brilliant. Don’t get me wrong. Not just anyone what can call out the magic in the crystals. But they all got a touch o’ the madness, I say.”
“And what make you think it was a mechanic?”
“Are ya blind, man? Or perhaps you got no feelin’ ya fingers? What do ya think that was that just sent you sprawlin’ on yer backside? That was flux crystal power if I ever seen it.”
“Well, then where is the crystal?” Thomas bent down again to examine the mechanical organ lodged in the yet unidentified victim’s body, this time keeping his hands carefully to himself. “All I see are gears and metal.”
“Don’t get me ta lyin’, Inspector. I recognize that blue zap you got, but that don’t mean I understand how it works, does it? I’m no guild member.”
Thomas was silent for a moment, rubbing his chin. He finally breathed “I confess I don’t know as much about Mr. Tesla’s amazing lasers as I would like. I checked with the Chief Inspector after we found the first heart. I wouldn’t say he exactly stonewalled me, but he encouraged me to eliminate all other possibilities before pursing any official inquiry into the mechanic’s guild. Do you still have that contact in the guild? We are going to need an expert on this one. I want to know if he has seen anything like this before.”
“Yea, Zachariah’s still there, far as I know. I’ll pay him a visit this afternoon. Don’t expect him ta be bendin’ over backward to help us though. He doesn’t have the best relationship with the Yard, if you know what I mean. Not to mention they are all sworn to secrecy. Even if they wanted to talk about stuff like this, and most of ’em don’t on account of being afraid someun else’ll steal their ideas, Tesla makes sure they stay tight lipped. Any of ’em caught spilling guild secrets is chucked out immediately.”
“Perhaps his professional curiosity will be piqued. Don’t give him any details, of course. Just tell him that whoever made this … thing must have a good degree of knowledge of the crystals. At the very least, we might be able to widen our pool of potential suspects. Our killer must have some connection to the mechanic’s guild. No one else would have the resources or the know-how.”
“If that’s the case, we may as well give up now,” John responded grimly. “Lord Grey’s so snugly in bed with the guild, they might as well be spoons in a drawer. You’d be better off accusing your own mother as one a them.”
“Still, we must do our duty,” Thomas replied. “If that means investigating Old Greybeard’s weapons makers, then so be it. How do you think she got here?”
“I believe she walked,” replied Foster. “Look there.”
Foster indicated a faint depression in the damp grass that led from the cobblestone walkway to the place where the girl now lay. The walkway began at Park Lane and continued throughout the park.
Hill surveyed the scene for a few moments. “It appears that a few feet inside the gate, she stepped off the path and walked to the spot where she fell. I don’t see any other tracks, do you?” asked Thomas as he scanned the immediate area.
“No sir,” said John, “and no drag marks. Which means she walked here on her own. But look at the grass. These footsteps aren’t evenly spaced. Looks like she mighta been strugglin’ to walk.”
“Agreed, which means that she was likely incapacitated in some way before she fell.”
“That hole in her chest would be quite the incapacitation.”
“But she couldn’t have had that before she got here,” observed Inspector Hill. “Could you imagine walking across the park with that in your chest? Not to mention that gore spatter. No, I would guess that she stumbled across the park, trip and felled, either on her back, or onto her stomach and then she subsequently rolled onto her back. Then … well, you see what happened next.”
“But how could that have happened?” asked John, absentmindedly rubbing his own chest.
“No idea. Like you said, Foster, you’re no mechanic and neither am I.”
The men turned as they heard the clatter of hooves on the cobblestone street. The hansom cab had finally come to take the body to the medical examiner’s office.
“Meat wagon’s here,” Foster remarked offhandedly.
“Please, man. A woman is dead. Show a little respect,” Thom reproved.
“Think she cares, does she?” John chuckled, unflappable as always.
“I’ll ride with the body,” said Thom, ignoring his assistant’s question. “I’m sure Dr. Adams is going to be in a foul mood when he sees this, and I don’t want you making it worse. You round up a couple of officers and start knocking on doors. Someone had to have seen something. If this one was thrashing about like the last one, the whole neighborhood would’ve heard her.”