Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper (28 page)

She blinked at him. “It has a most pleasing effect on my human brain, I have discovered. And I believe people imbibe during times of stress. That seems entirely appropriate.”

“Where have you been?”

She looked at the book open in front of her. There were pictures on the page, diagrams of a figure adopting different positions, holding out a thin sword. Of course. That was why it had seemed so familiar, the man’s black costume in the alley.

Of course.

“Why are you looking at this, Aloysius?”

He gestured impatiently. “It’s called
destreza
. It’s a Spanish technique of swordplay, fencing. Something I picked up from that idiotic detective from Marylebone, maybe to do with the Jack the Ripper killings. It isn’t really pertinent right now. For God’s sake, girl, where have you been?”

She continued to stare at the diagrams. “Oh, I think it is pertinent, Aloysius. I think it is very pertinent indeed.” She looked up. “I went to the theater. I found out what happened to Gideon. I rescued Charlotte Elmwood. And I think I might have been attacked by Jack the Ripper.”

Bent opened his mouth, but all that came out was a tiny, strangled “eff.” He cleared his throat, poured himself a large brandy, and said, “I think you’d better start from the beginning.”

*   *   *

“So Charlotte Elmwood did not come here?” asked Maria with a groan after completing her summary of the evening’s events. “I had her in the palm of my hand … had that horrible man not been at the door I would have escaped with her, but I feared if he found the room empty he would raise the alarm and we would be recaptured immediately.”

Bent stared at her, his hand over his mouth. “You fed Henry Savage his own effing bollocks? Jesus Christ.”

Maria met his eyes. “I fear I have killed him, Aloysius,” she said levelly. “I was somewhat … enraged. I am afraid I might have made him a scapegoat for all the ills in modern society.”

Bent shrugged. “Better than he deserved, Maria. He was a bad lot all around, Henry Savage. He was always going to meet a rough end.” He chuckled. “Bet he wouldn’t have seen that coming, though. Choked on his own balls. Dearie me. Nobody can say you’ve not got a sense of effing irony, love.”

There was a noise from the hallway, and Mrs. Cadwallader appeared at the door, dropping her umbrella to the polished floor with a clatter and throwing her hands up in horror. “Land’s sakes! Miss Maria! You’re covered in blood!”

Maria smiled. “I also have a number of bullet holes in my back that could benefit from your invisible mending skills. And I really should give that broken pipe some more attention.”

“I’ll send a telegram to the Elmwoods, see if they’ve heard anything,” said Bent. “I won’t tell them we’ve seen her. Don’t want to get their hopes up in case she hasn’t made her way there. Then we need to share our information about Jack the Ripper.” He held his forefinger and thumb half an inch apart. “We’re this close, I can feel it. This effing close.”

Maria stood. “I shall effect my repairs and clean up this blood, then we shall speak again.” She picked up a scrap of paper from the table. “What does this mean?”

Bent looked up. “Hmm? Oh, that. Gobbledegook, I think. Apparently the final words of the Ripper’s last known victim.”

“Lost yon toe,” said Maria, making a face. “Lost yon toe?”

Mrs. Cadwallader laughed. “
Lo siento,
more like. It means ‘I’m sorry.’ In Spanish.”

The housekeeper frowned as Maria and Bent both stared at her. “What?” she said crossly.

Maria looked down at the book of Spanish fencing positions, thought of why the man in black’s outfit seemed so familiar, remembered his final words to her in the alley, and met Bent’s eyes.

“You speak Spanish, Sally?” said the journalist. “You speak effing Spanish?”

*   *   *

“Before I came to London,” said Sally Cadwallader, “I harbored dreams of a more cultural life than the one I eventually fell into. Oh, do not get me wrong; I would not swap my time keeping house here at Grosvenor Square for all the tea in China.” The housekeeper paused, gazing into the flames of the fire that crackled in the study hearth. “My family was by no means affluent, but my father always ensured there was enough money from his job down the pit so that I could attend an operatic society in Aberystwyth on Saturday afternoons. We used to put on all kinds of productions, and we went to see all the visiting professional operatic companies in Cardiff and Swansea.”

Bent looked at her curiously. “Sally. I had no idea.”

Mrs. Cadwallader blinked and waved her hands, as though flapping away the memories. “The point is, we spent a season one year doing
zarzuela
. That’s like … Spanish opera.
Pan y Toros
was the production. It was my first big part. I learned a lot of Spanish. I liked the language. So … poetic. So passionate.” Mrs. Cadwallader reddened and stared at the fire. “I kept my hand in, as they say. I know enough to get by. It’s amazing where you can pick bits up. Why, in your former newspaper, Mr. Bent, there have been of late these rather odd advertisements.…”

“What was it he said to you?” Bent asked Maria. “Our evidently Spanish friend in the alley?”

Maria closed her eyes, putting herself back in Hoxton Road.
“Por fin te he encontrado,”
she said, opening her eyes and looking to Mrs. Cadwallader.

Mrs. Cadwallader frowned. “
Por fin
is ‘at last.’ At last … I found it? I have found you.” She smiled. “At last, I have found you.”

*   *   *

While Maria was in the corner of the basement armory that she had converted to a workshop, effecting her repairs—he didn’t like to think too much about what that involved; it quite made him queasy—Bent had dragged out his carefully filed notebooks filled with shorthand notation, specifically the ones from their American adventure when they had all traipsed off to recover the brass dragon Apep from the Texan slaver-warlord to whom poor old Louis Cockayne had been trying to sell it—and Maria—for a quick profit.

By the time Maria and Mrs. Cadwallader emerged back into the study, the girl all cleaned up and in a fresh frock, Bent had spread out several sheets of plain foolscap paper on the table, on which he was rapidly writing names, dates, and places and connecting them with a spiderweb of lines and circles.

Mrs. Cadwallader tutted at the mess, but Bent shushed her. “I think I’m on to something here,” he said, jamming a pencil behind his ear and standing up straight to admire his handiwork, rolling a cigarette between his nicotine-stained fingers. He patted his pockets for his matches and said to Maria, “What did it put you in mind of, this outfit Jack the Ripper was wearing?”

“If it truly was him,” said Maria.

“Let’s assume it was for a minute,” said Bent, cupping the flaring match in his hands then sucking hard on his roll-up. “All in black, you said?”

“El hombre de negro,”
said Mrs. Cadwallader softly. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

Maria shrugged. “Boots, up to his knees. Sturdy cotton trousers. A shirt, silk or expensive cotton, perhaps. A black woolen jacket. All in black.”

“And the mask, of course,” said Bent. He pushed a notebook toward her. “Like this?”

Maria glanced at the rough pencil sketch surrounded by notes. “Yes, exactly like that.”

Bent sat down heavily in his chair. Maria said, “Exactly like the one Inez wore.”

Mrs. Cadwallader reappeared with a tray of coffee and a folded newspaper. She said, “Inez?”

“Inez Batiste Palomo,” said Bent. “She was the daughter of the governor of Uvalde, a one-horse town on the border between New Spain and Texas. She fell in love with an Indian boy from the Yaqui tribe, and together they were instrumental in setting up the town of Freedom. She was also a pretty effing nifty swordswoman.
Destreza,
she called it. It’s more of an art than a way of fighting. I watched her at it … it was like ballet. That’s what got me thinking, with those footprints in the alleyway at the last Ripper killing, and that idiot Great Detective prancing about, replicating them. I knew I’d effing seen them before.”

Maria sat down at the table, looking at Bent’s notes. “She took to wearing a black costume and a cowl,” she said. “There had been some … masked champion of the downtrodden New Spanish border peoples.”

“El Chupacabras,” said Bent, reading from his notes. “Means ‘goat-sucker,’ if you can believe that. He’d defended the New Spanish against incursions by the Texan slaver-gangs. He was something of a folk hero. But he’d disappeared a few years before. Inez sort of took up the mantle.”

Maria stared at him. “You don’t think … Jack the Ripper is this El Chupacabras? But how did he get from New Spain to London? And why?”

Bent took a thoughtful drag of his cigarette. “Do you remember, though, it turned out that Inez’s father wasn’t her real dad. She was the illegitimate daughter of the previous governor of Uvalde.” He consulted his notes. “Don Sergio de la Garcia. Her father had taken on the mother and de la Garcia’s bastard as his own. And then…”

Maria gasped. “Sergio de la Garcia was called back to Madrid!”

Bent smiled. “About the same effing time that El Chupacabras hung up his mask, for reasons never really explained. I did wonder about that, but to be honest we were so knee-effing-deep in steam-powered warlords and mechanical giants and dinosaurs, I never gave it too much thought.”

“You think Sergio de la Garcia was El Chupacabras?”

Bent shrugged. “Very coincidental, the masked champion disappearing at the same time as the governor is called back to the old country. And the way Inez handled a sword … maybe it was in the blood. And maybe it wasn’t just de la Garcia’s blood in her veins. Maybe it was El effing Chupacabras’s, too.” He stubbed out his cigarette on a saucer, ignoring Mrs. Cadwallader’s gasps, and immediately began to roll another. “But as to how he got here, and why … I’ve no effing clue.”

“I have,” said Maria. “He’s working for Markus Mesmer.”

Bent gaped at her. “How the hell do you know that?”

It was Maria’s turn to smile. “When I was … encouraging Mesmer to tell me what had happened to Gideon, and I revealed my true nature to him, he told me that his masters had dispatched an agent to find the Atlantic Artifact. He has not had much success, though he has looked inside many heads, he said.”

Bent puffed hard on his cigarette. “But we can’t be sure he was talking about Jack the Ripper.… It might have been a figure of speech.”

“If I might interrupt?” said Mrs. Cadwallader. She brandished the newspaper she had brought in with the coffee. “I have been trying to tell you, Mr. Bent, about some advertisements that have been running in the
Illustrated London Argus
this past week.”

“This isn’t the time for talk of a new washing mangle, no matter how much of a bargain it is,” said Bent, but when he caught her glare he said sheepishly, “Ah, sorry, Sally. Do go on.”

“It’s in Spanish,” she said, arching an eyebrow at Bent. She passed it over and he looked at it.

El Hombre de Negro! Usted debe ponerse en contacto con nosotros inmediatamente para ponernos al día sobre su misión. Tenemos que reunirnos con usted urgentemente. Puedes dejar un mensaje para nosotros en el teatro Britannia. Su compatriota, el señor Cerebro.

“Um, you couldn’t read this for us, could you?”

She took the newspaper back. “Very roughly speaking … ‘The Man in Black! You must contact us immediately to inform us how your mission proceeds. We must meet with you urgently. You can leave a message for us at the Britannia Theater. Your compatriot, Mr. Brain.’”

“Sally, you’re a marvel,” said Bent. “I could kiss you.”

“Please don’t, Mr. Bent,” she said, making a face.

“Mr. Brain,” said Bent, cackling. “He’s not going to win any prizes for effing modesty, is he?”

“But undoubtedly Mesmer,” said Maria.

Bent noisily pushed the coffee pot and cups to one side and spread out his sheets of paper on the table. “I have been trying to put a timeline together. But one thing I can’t work out … Mesmer and his gang only kidnapped Professor Einstein a year ago. If de la Garcia is really Jack the Ripper, and it’s all been a search for what’s in your pretty little noggin, how come he’s been slicing heads open since 1888? How did they know about you?”

Maria said quietly, “When I went to visit the Elmwoods, they told me something of which I have no real memory. Shortly after Professor Einstein installed Annie Crook’s brain within me, he decided to show me off at a club of which Mr. Elmwood was a member. I … in their words, I ran amok. I was found some time later, in Cleveland Street.”

Bent put his hand to his mouth. “Then word could have gotten out, somehow,” he said. “And with you fetching up on Cleveland Street, probably scaring the effing life out of people, claiming to be dead old Annie Crook … anyone who might have some prior knowledge of the Atlantic Artifact and what it did, coupled with an understanding of Professor Einstein’s work … they might have put two and two together and come up with five, thinking that Einstein had put the Artifact in the brain of a street girl.” He took a long slurp of coffee. “Jesus. All this time, they’ve been looking for you, Maria.”

She met his eyes. “All those women dead, because of me.”

Bent didn’t know quite what to say to that. She was right, of course, but it was hardly her fault. “At least we know who he is, now. At least we can try to stop him.”

“But we have no idea where he is,” said Maria.

Bent stretched and yawned. “We’ll come at it again in the morning.” He slapped his head suddenly. “Oh, effing God! I almost bloody forgot about Rowena!” He looked at Maria. “I’m going to have to go to the Old Bailey tomorrow. Her trial’s starting properly. I want you to stay indoors, do you hear? And if you have to go out, don’t go anywhere near Whitechapel, for God’s sake. Sally, can you watch the newspapers, look out for any more of these advertisements?”

Mrs. Cadwallader nodded. “I think we could all do with some sleep now.” She smiled kindly. “Come, Miss Maria. Things will look better in the morning.”

Maria nodded. “Perhaps,” she said, with a smile Bent could see was forced. As he stood, stretched again, and headed for the door, he heard her say, in the tiniest of voices, “And perhaps not.”