Cage managed to slip away from the crowd that had gathered in front of the pension. From what he could tell, the police in Absinthia weren’t exactly prepared for crimes of this nature. The IU employed a police force for the colonies, but from what he’d been told, they were pretty much security guards. Certainly not equipped to deal with a heinous serial murder. Maybe he could be of help.
He backed into a tiny alcove and emerged as a black tomcat. No one would notice yet another stray wandering through the crime scene. Besides, the guards were more interested in keeping the crowd behind the little barriers they’d set up while trying to keep up the Victorian charade. He slinked along the sidewalk and leaped easily over the yellow barrier and into the alley.
Cage could smell the blood before he could see it. It made his mouth water. Cops, bystanders, and photographers were tramping through the scene. Within a few minutes, the crime scene was already so contaminated any evidence recovered would be suspect.
A large spotlight had been brought in to illuminate the alley. What Cage could only assume was a body was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. The shape was almost indiscernible because of the damage inflicted upon it. As he got closer, he could make out several fleshy lumps surrounding the body in a ritualistic, concentric pattern. The victim was a woman, middle aged, wearing the tattered finery of an unfortunate. Cage thought it odd that there would be a human playing the part. Usually, the prostitutes on the colonies, especially this one, were cyborgs. But the slick, shining mess all over the ground and walls was most definitely blood.
Scarlet ropes of intestine had been laid carefully around the head like a halo. The woman’s face was frozen in a rictus of terror, her tongue lolling out to the side. There were deep gashes across her cheeks and one of her eyes had been removed, along with one of her hands at the wrist. There was a long, open wound at her midsection that gave her the appearance of a frog laid open for dissection. Evidently the killer had harvested several organs that were used in the grotesque tableau that surrounded the body.
Cage’s first thought was that this was not a random act of violence. Something like this would take time and effort. A common street thug wouldn’t bother, and there was too much blood left behind for a vampire killing. There was also the obvious ritual involved. Perhaps there was some meaning to the position of the organs. Something meant to be viewed from above.
A police officer came through with a large bucket in his gloved hands. He shoved one of the photographers aside and began collecting the organs that lay strewn around and tossing them into one of the buckets. Cage’s eyes widened as he watched them completely destroy the crime scene.
“What are you doing?” one of the men in the shadows shouted, stepping forward. The man was impossibly tall with a large, black overcoat and scarf. He wore a funny hat and walked with the shambling gait of a rusty cyborg. “That’s evidence.”
“It’s a mess,” the officer griped, holding up a hand to indicate that the man should stay back. “And I got me orders to get it out of the street before daylight.”
“What about the victim?” the man asked.
“We got photos. That’ll ‘ave to do for now. Now please, sir. Don’t interfere or I’ll ‘ave to arrest ye. Again.”
“This is ridiculous,” the man stated. “What kind of policeman are you?”
“The kind who does what he’s told,” the cop replied, glopping more of the woman’s intestines into the large biohazard bucket.
“Oy. Out of ‘ere, cat.”
Another cop ran at Cage with a bucket of water and tossed it in his direction. His ears laid back and he hissed at the officer before running down the alley toward the garden that connected the alley and the pension.
Everyone was still milling about out front. That blowhard idiot Brown was still arguing with the police, insisting that they be told what was going on. The cop was trying to be patient, but Cage could see him gripping the butt of his nightstick harder with each passing second. Phoe was standing at the back of the crowd with Eleanor. He slid through the gate and made his way over to her.
Cage mewed from below, trying to get her attention. At first, she dismissed him, barely glancing down. It wasn’t surprising. Stray cats were a staple of London in all time periods. He wove in and out between her ankles, purring insistently. When she still didn’t respond, Cage extended his claws and took a swipe at her knee.
“Ow,” Phoe shrieked.
“Poor thing,” Eleanor said, reaching down to pick Cage up by the scruff of the neck. “Sweet little puss. Did you get abandoned?” She made kissy noises at Cage and scratched him behind the ears. Perhaps he should have chosen a more threatening form this time.
Cage put up with Eleanor’s fawning for a few seconds before yowling in Phoe’s direction. She petted him absently, still not paying much attention. He kept up the yowling until she turned, and he was able to force himself into her arms.
“My goodness,” Eleanor chuckled. “The little thing seems to have taken a liking to you.”
“He certainly has,” Phoe concurred, scrambling to shift Cage into her arms without dropping him.
Cage’s mind raced. He would have to find a way to signal Phoe that it was him before everyone went inside. Surely, she wouldn’t carry a stray cat into the pension, and then he’d be stranded. Unless, of course, he wanted to shift back to his human form, naked, in front of a crowd of onlookers. He began to lap at her hand. His inserted his tongue between her fingers to tickle them, and then licked the back of her knuckles.
“What in the world?” Phoe giggled. She nudged Eleanor. “Look at this cat.”
“You’d think you had opened a can of tuna,” Eleanor said. “Or that he knew you.”
A scrawny policeman in an ill-fitting uniform blew his whistle to get everyone’s attention. “For the last time, folks. Please go inside. We can handle it from here. The detective will be inside shortly to question you. I would advise everyone to stay put for the night.”
Cage glanced up at Phoe and understanding flashed in her eyes. She pulled him close and started in behind the other guests. The horrible Miss Abecrombie started to protest, but Phoe turned a deaf ear and started up the stairs. She rushed into the bedroom and placed Cage down on the bed.
His body contorted and lengthened until finally he lay naked and panting across the bed. “Damn that fucking sucks,” he grumbled.
“What are you doing?” Phoe asked. “Why are you shifting here? I thought we agreed.”
“I needed to get into that crime scene,” he explained.
“Why? They have police here.” Phoe opened the wardrobe and threw clothes at Cage. “Police that are waiting downstairs to talk to everyone in the hotel. Including you, Mr. St. John.”
“Calling those men police is a bit of an overstatement,” Cage huffed. “They’re wearing uniforms with big brass stars on the front, but they are hardly policemen. More like idiots.”
“Why do you say that?” Phoe helped him button his shirt. She knew right after a shift that his muscles were always tense and clumsy.
“They destroyed that crime scene.”
“How so?”
“The body was completely ripped apart. The murderer had taken out several of her organs and arranged them strategically around her body. Except for a hand and an eye, which were missing.”
“Oh my God, Cage. I thought it was a joke. A show for the tourists.”
“Sadly, no. That’s real blood.” He held up a hand. There were streaks of blood left from where his paws had padded over the street. “Whatever is going on here is not theatre.”
Phoe took his hand and examined the bloodstains on his fingers. She tasted it with the tip of her tongue. “It tastes like blood, but it isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it does, but there’s something mixed in. A chemical of some kind.” She offered up his hand and he sniffed. His heightened senses immediately picked up what she was talking about. The coppery scent was there, but it was somehow cleaner, like it had been disinfected. Cage tasted the blood and gagged.
“Oh God. What the fuck?” He coughed and sputtered trying to get the foul taste out of his mouth. “That’s not blood.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m not sure. But it isn’t blood. Not like we know it.”
There was a knock at the door. Both of them gasped. Cage hid his hands behind his back as the door opened. “Come in?”
Eleanor peeked around the doorframe. “You two all right?”
“Yeah,” Phoe replied. “I was a little overwhelmed down there. So, Cage brought me up here for a drink before the police arrived.”
Cage grinned. Phoe had been practicing.
“Oh, okay. The inspector has arrived. He’ll be wanting to talk to all of us. Miss Abecrombie woke the cook and a midnight snack is on the way.”
“I think I’ll bring the brandy decanter,” Cage said. He grabbed the glass bottle and a couple of glasses. “Come now, dear lady. We can’t let them think we’ve absconded.” He took the older woman’s arm and gently guided her from the room with a wink to Phoe over his shoulder.
“I swear, Mr. St. John,” Eleanor began. “You could charm the whiskers off a kitten.”
*****
Cage’s contempt for the Absinthia police force was not assuaged by Detective Inspector Horace Tuggingham. He was the epitome of an inept cop from the movies: completely round with a bright red handlebar mustache, sweaty beard stubble, and male pattern baldness. The wool period suit he wore looked to be at least three sizes too small, accented by two of the hardest working pearl buttons Cage had ever seen. The detective’s physical appearance was not enhanced by his personality. When he entered the parlor of the Alice & Ludwig, Tuggingham immediately began barking out orders. Even the horrible Miss Abecrombie was intimidated.
“All right, you lot. I’ll be needing to speak first with anyone who was awake at the time of the murders.” He pulled out an impressive calabash and began puffing away, nearly choking Mrs. Brown.
“None of us were awake,” Eleanor offered. “It was well after midnight when we heard the screams coming from outside.”
“We were awake,” Phoe called out. “Macijah and me. But we didn’t see anything.”
Tuggingham whipped around and turned an accusatory gaze their way. “Is that so? Might I ask why you were still awake when all of your fellow lodgers lay innocently sleeping?”
“No, actually,” Phoe stammered. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Oh? Something to hide miss…ah…miss…”
“Mrs. Macijah St. John.” She helped the idiot out and sent a glance toward Cage. “Phoebe. And I’m not hiding anything. We were…”
Eleanor cleared her throat and took Phoe’s hand. “Detective Inspector, Mr. and Mrs. St. John are in Absinthia on their honeymoon. For you to ask what they were doing at such a late hour would be improper and terribly dense. Perhaps you should save yourself a bit of embarrassment.”
Tuggingham was visibly both angry and humiliated as it dawned on him what Eleanor had implied. “Oh, well—of course not. I wasn’t implying…”
“Then what were you implying, dear?” Eleanor had a cat-that-ate-the-canary smirk playing on her lips. It was obvious that she was enjoying this.
“I didn’t mean to insinuate that anything here was amiss. I am simply looking for the facts.”
“I think you should begin by giving us some facts.” Cage linked his arm with Phoe’s and led her to a chaise, handing her a glass of brandy. “Given the circumstances, I feel we’re entitled.”
It was obvious that Tuggingham was none too happy to reveal what was going on, but Cage had backed him into a corner. He paused, staring around at the expectant faces of the other lodgers. It was quickly becoming obvious that they weren’t going to let him escape without offering at least a little explanation of why they’d all been awakened in the middle of the night.
Tuggingham sighed and pulled out his notepad with a snap. “At approximately twelve thirty-two a.m. this evening, a Misses Lavinia Norcross was passing by the alley at Wentworth and Mitre Streets after an evening of drink and merriment at the Devil’s Doorbell teahouse. She noticed a group of stray dogs fighting over what appeared to be some old rags. An animal lover at heart, Miss Norcross shouted at the dogs to try and scare them away from the rags before they could harm one another. That’s when she noticed that one of the dogs had a woman’s bloody shawl in its mouth. She walked over to investigate and discovered the body of Misses Carlotta Merriwhether, a known unfortunate that frequents the area around the teahouse.” He closed his notebook and looked up. “Those are the facts.”
“Well,” Mr. Brown began. “It seems pretty obvious what happened.”
“Oh?”
“Of course. Some whore got a little drunk and got herself raped and murdered in the alley. Probably some street gang or maybe a vacationing gent out for a little taste of strange and it got out of hand.”
Mrs. Brown gasped and covered her daughter’s ears. “George. Not in front of our child.”
“I’m not a child, Mother,” Lisa grumbled, inching out of her mother’s grasp.
“I’m simply saying what all of you are thinking,” Brown bloviated. “Besides, it’s my understanding that all of these so-called unfortunates are machines anyway.”
“She wasn’t a machine,” Cage informed the room before Tuggingham could interject. “At least not all machine. There was too much blood. And the dogs wouldn’t have been attracted to the scent of a machine any more than they would a broken mannequin.”
“How do you know about the blood?” Tuggingham asked.
“How couldn’t he?” Phoe replied. “The stench of it was all over the street.”
Before the Detective Inspector could reply, the door opened and the vicar and Professor Pankenthorpe entered behind Miss Abecrombie. “Oh thank heavens, Alfie,” Eleanor exclaimed, rushing to her husband. “I was afraid something might have happened to you.”
“Who might these gents be?” Tuggingham asked, looking the two men up and down.
“Professor Alfred Pankenthorpe,” the professor said, offering his hand to the inspector. “And this is our local vicar, Adolphus Sockersby. And who might you be?”
“This is Detective Inspector Tuggingham,” Eleanor said, leading her husband to the parlor where everyone had gathered around Miss Abecrombie’s tea tray. “There’s been another murder?”
“A murder?” Mr. Sockersby asked. “Here in the pension?”
“No, no,” Eleanor clarified. “In the alley. They think it’s another Ripper case. Don’t you?” Eleanor looked to the inspector with her glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was obviously nonplussed by his skills of deduction so far.
“We can’t be sure of that yet,” Tuggingham huffed. “We can’t be sure that any of these murders are connected.”
“What do you mean?” Cage asked. “From what I was reading earlier, there have been three other murders, all of them women found in alleyways with their insides splattered all over the cobblestones. That seems like a connection to me.”
“Mr. St. John, please,” Mrs. Brown stammered. “My daughter is too young for such talk.”
“Your daughter is fifteen, Mother,” Lisa stated. “And I think I have the right to know if I’m vacationing in the murder capital of the galaxy.”
“Miss, I can assure you that Absinthia is quite safe,” Tuggingham said, puffing out his chest.
“My apologies, Mrs. Brown,” Cage offered. He could feel his blood beginning to boil and clenched his fists at his side. Tuggingham was an idiot. It was fast becoming clear that his place on the police force in Absinthia was not to keep the tourists safe, but to keep any dark underbellies securely covered up. He reeked of the same stench as Derek Machine. “But surely you agree that we must all be aware of the situation if we’re to keep safe.”
“Aye.” Tuggingham cut a sideways glance at Cage. “I’m sure that safety is your biggest concern, Mr. St. John. From what Miss Abecrombie says, you’re a journalist. Looking for a good story, eh?”
“Detective Inspector.” Phoe pushed away Cage’s calming hand on her shoulder. “I can assure you that Macijah’s only interest in this matter is the safety of everyone in this pension. The fact that the murder took place so close to our front door is upsetting at best. And if we’re all to be questioned like suspects, I believe we deserve to know why.”
Cage smiled. To the casual observer, Phoe seemed to be a delicate flower, sweet of scent and pleasing to the eye, but anyone who spent much time with her knew that she had the stinging tongue of a serpent when riled.
Tuggingham sighed. “The victims seem to have no connection, save for the manner in which they were murdered. Misses Merriwhether was an unfortunate, but the previous victim was a restaurant worker and the one before that was—” Tuggingham’s expression fell and he looked away from them. “The first victim was a tourist.”
Everyone gasped in disbelief. A rumble of everyone talking at once grew to a roar.
“Do you think we should leave?”
“I knew coming here was a mistake.”
“This is ridiculous. The IU assured us that the colonies were safe. I’m going to demand a refund.”
“Calm down, dear. Your blood pressure...”
“The killer could be someone here.”
Cage’s heightened senses were normally an asset, but in times like these he cursed them. It was like everyone’s voices and even their thoughts were swirling incomprehensibly in his head until he could feel the beastly DNA lurking in his cells heating up and preparing to explode.
He walked to the decanter and poured himself another glass of brandy. The air had become so close. Perhaps a drink would loosen the grip of the night’s events. As he poured, he glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw Professor Pankenthorpe pull a cigarette case from his jacket. He took a cigarette out and pressed it into the corner of his mouth while he rummaged in his pockets for a lighter. Cage was about to offer his own when the man produced a matchbook. The front was decorated with a tiny red symbol. Probably the logo of whatever watering hole he’d been roused from this evening.
Cage swallowed his drink in one gulp. “Everyone calm down,” he finally shouted over the din. It did the trick, and everyone went silent. “I think the Detective Inspector was right about one thing. Nothing is certain right now, and there’s nothing more we can do tonight.”
Judging by his expression, Tuggingham was surprised that Cage had agreed with him. He kept opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water, stricken speechless. Finally, he cleared his throat and nodded. “Quite so. I trust that all of you will still be here tomorrow. I will come by in the morning to interview each of you.” He gathered his coat and hat from Miss Abecrombie and started to the door. “Perhaps I could speak to you first thing, Mr. St. John.” He tipped his hat to everyone and allowed himself to be shown out by Miss Abecrombie.
The lodgers got up and began milling around, talking amongst themselves in hushed tones. Suddenly, no one seemed so certain that these were bits of theater constructed to entertain the tourists with a giant murder-mystery party inspired by Jack the Ripper.
Phoe stood and wrapped her arms around Cage, insinuating herself under his arm as the others started up the stairs to their beds. He could feel her shiver, but not from the winter chill. “Why do you think he wants to speak to you first?” she whispered.
“I’m not sure,” Cage answered. “But it probably isn’t to tell me he appreciates my insight.”
“You surely don’t think that he’s going to accuse you.”
“Stranger things have happened. Tuggingham is a moron. Nothing would surprise me.”
Phoe nodded. “Do you think one of these people could be the killer?” He could see the uneasiness in her eyes. She liked nothing more than to fret over nothing. “Should we go home?”
“I don’t think we can. At least not until everyone is ruled out as a suspect.” He kissed the crown of Phoe’s head and hugged her tightly. “Come on. Let’s go back to bed. I’m sure that everyone will have calmed down by morning.”