Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper (5 page)

“Very good, sir,” said Ayres. He closed his notepad and glanced up. “Now … get rid of the Great Detective, don’t speak to Aloysius Bent, and coffee.”

“Just the coffee, Constable,” said Lestrade wearily. “I’ll attend to the others myself.”

*   *   *

“Doctor Watson,” said Lestrade. The Great Detective was hopping from foot to foot, lunging forward, pulling his thin frame back, dancing around as though taken with the mania. “Perhaps I dreamed our conversation in my office just this morning. The one in which I could have sworn I expressly forbade you from allowing your patient to have anything to do with any criminal investigations in Whitechapel or its immediate environs.”

Watson wrung his hands again, as the hook-nosed detective glanced over sharply at Lestrade’s use of the word “patient.” “Please, Inspector,” whispered the doctor. “His continued wellbeing relies—”

“His continued well-being relies upon you getting him the blazes out of my crime scene before he contaminates it and I roll up my sleeves and evict him myself!” roared Lestrade. There was a momentary silence as everyone glanced over at the uncharacteristic outburst, then continued with their activities. Lestrade coughed. “Just … just get him away, John. Stop him dancing like that. What is he doing, anyway?”

“I have an insight!” announced the Great Detective imperiously. “Inspector … you see those footprints?”

Lestrade peered at the ground before the cloth-covered body of Emily Dawson. There were indeed scuffed boot-prints, rapidly filling up with fresh snowfall. He hadn’t noticed them, as a matter of fact, but if one of his constables hadn’t already gotten drawings of them there’d be the devil to pay.

“Watch,” instructed the detective, and began to dance and prance again.

Lestrade glared at Watson. “Away. Now.”

“Come along, old chap,” said Watson gently, leading his charge by the bony elbow back toward the bunting cordon. As a constable lifted it for them to pass, another figure bustled through, a large man with a bushy beard and a thick fur coat that gave him the appearance of a bear. A particularly angry bear, at that.

“Who is in charge here?” bellowed the bear, casting around. Several fingers pointed in Lestrade’s direction and the man stalked down the alley toward him, glancing at the sheet covering the body and faltering. “Oh! Oh, tell me that is not—?”

Lestrade rapidly went to meet trouble halfway, glancing at Aloysius Bent at the top of the alley. The journalist seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, availing himself of what appeared to be another pasty and a small bottle of what looked like gin.

“I am Inspector Lestrade of the Commercial Road police station. I am in charge of this investigation. And you are…?”

“Professor Stanford Rubicon,” rumbled the man, taking Lestrade’s proffered hand and squeezing the life out of it. “Is that … is that Emily, my housekeeper?”

Lestrade took the professor’s elbow and steered him away from the cordon. “I’d be grateful if you could give us a positive identification, Professor Rubicon, but I am sorry to say that it appears so, from papers about her person. Can you tell me when you saw her last yesterday?”

“Didn’t see her at all yesterday,” said Rubicon, rubbing his beard. “I’d gone off to my club before she came to clean the Bishopsgate rooms.”

“And you will certainly have people who can vouch for you at the club?”

Rubicon glared at him. “Sir, are you suggesting I did for my own cleaning lady?”

“Just to eliminate you from our inquiries,” said Lestrade soothingly. He changed tack. “I believe there had been a burglary…”

Rubicon nodded. “Found it when I came to open up early this morning. One of the laboratories … wrecked. Your boys have already been round.” His eyes narrowed. “You think it might have something to do with…?” He nodded his head toward the body.

“What was taken, Professor?”

Rubicon rubbed his beard again with a big hand. “Looks like damage, more than anything. I had a few … scientific samples there. Not completely sure what’s gone missing, all told.”

Lestrade nodded. The professor was suddenly shifty about something. He said as conversationally as he could, “What is the nature of your current work?”

Rubicon tugged more forcefully at his full beard. “Much of it’s top secret, Lestrade. You know. Government work. Catching up, a lot of it, after … well, you read the papers, no doubt.”

Lestrade did read the papers, and knew that only three months ago Rubicon had been saved from a shipwreck on some lost island in the Pacific, where he had been marooned for half a year with Charles Darwin. Saved by Gideon Smith and Aloysius Bent, he remembered, casting another glance over at the journalist at the fluttering cordon.

“My constable mentioned a quantity of blood present at the laboratory,” said Lestrade.

“Emily’s?” asked Rubicon, almost tugging the hair from his beard. Lestrade made a mental note.
Pulls at facial hair when uncertain … or lying, perhaps?

“We don’t think so. There don’t appear to be injuries other than … well. Perhaps if you go with my constable to formally identify the body, we can discuss it later?”

Constable Ayres had appeared at Lestrade’s elbow again, with a small flask of coffee. And yet another newcomer, tramping through the crime scene. Lestrade looked at him with as much of his weariness as he could manage hidden behind his ferrety eyes.

“Sir, this is…” Ayres glanced at the man, neatly bearded and with sad eyes in the shadow of his hat brim, an expensive-looking woolen overcoat keeping the snow off his immaculate black suit.

“Friedrich Miescher,” said the man in a clipped accent, inclining his head.

“German?” asked Lestrade.

“Swiss.” Miescher dug into the inside pocket of his overcoat. “I have a letter of introduction from Sir Edward Bradford…?”

That made Lestrade perk up a little. A letter from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police? Who
was
this Miescher? Lestrade took the folded vellum from the man—noting it had been opened and re-folded several times recently—and read from it. Miescher was some kind of scientist, and he had been given free rein to blunder into any murder investigation in London as he saw fit, the gorier the better from what Lestrade read. He handed back the letter.

“I came as soon as I heard,” said Miescher, pocketing his folded paper. “Is it true…? Is this a Jack the Ripper killing…?”

“Not so loud, sir,” admonished Lestrade. “The gutter press is out in force behind the cordon. What exactly are you looking for here?”

“I apologize,” said Miescher, tapping his ear. “I am somewhat deaf from a boyhood attack of typhus. As to what I am looking for, Inspector Lestrade … blood.”

Rubicon uttered an oath, and Lestrade murmured to Ayres, “Take the professor to formally identify the body, would you? Give me a minute with Miescher.”

When Rubicon had been led to the sheet covering Emily Dawson, Miescher said, “What do you know of nuclein, Inspector?”

“Less than I know about the moon, Miescher. I’ve seen the moon umpteen times; never heard of your … what did you call it?”

“Nuclein,” said the Swiss, rubbing his hands together. Lestrade had the sinking feeling the man was warming to a subject that was about to shoot right over his head.

Miescher said, “As a doctor I was worried my deafness would inhibit my profession, so I chose to study the things that we are all made of, the cells and their nuclei. Can you imagine the nucleus of a single cell, Inspector? Imagine how minuscule it is?”

“I am well used to finding needles in haystacks, Dr. Miescher, so I suppose I can.”

Miescher nodded. “I began my research into lymphocytes but found them difficult to obtain, so switched to leukocytes—”

“You’ve lost me already, Doctor,” said Lestrade. “And I really must be getting on … I have a murder investigation—”

Miescher raised his hand. “Forgive me. They are both types of white blood cell but the latter is somewhat easier to obtain … I used bandages from the hospital and was able to isolate leukocytes from the pus stains.”

Lestrade made a face. “I still don’t—”

“I will cut my story short, Inspector Lestrade. Suffice to say, my research has thrown up some fascinating results. From the nuclei of the white blood cells I managed to extract and study what I call nuclein. We all carry nuclein in our bodies, Inspector, in wonderful spirals that would take your breath away were you to behold them through the lenses of my powerful microscopes. Beautiful … and every single one is different. As different as our fingerprints.”

Lestrade opened his mouth to dismiss the Swiss physician once and for all and then paused, screwing up his eyes. “Different, you say?”

“Like a signature buried deep inside our most microscopic parts.” Miescher nodded enthusiastically. “So you see…”

Lestrade rubbed his chin. “So the blood of poor old Emily Dawson could be proved to be different from mine, or yours. I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

Miescher’s eyes widened. “I could help you, Inspector. I could help you catch Jack the Ripper. If only there is a single white blood cell…”

“There is plenty of blood, Doctor, but I fear it belongs to his victim.”

“Ah, but perhaps she fought back, Inspector. Perhaps she raked her nails along his face. Perhaps there is a tiny fleck of blood beneath those nails, or perhaps a few flakes of skin.”

Finally, the penny dropped. “So with this … this blood signature, you could identify the killer?”

“We could if we can match it with another sample,” agreed Miescher.

Lestrade sighed, deflated. “You do know how many people there are in London, Doctor Miescher? Are you proposing we go and—what? Obtain blood samples from all of ’em?”

“The process is in its infancy,” admitted the doctor. “But from what I read in the newspapers this morning … you can use all the help you can get, eh?”

Lestrade stared at the body for a long moment as Ayres and Rubicon began to walk back toward him down the alley. Finally he said, “All right, but not here. Don’t want to give the vultures too much to crow about. We’ll transfer the body to the morgue when we have finished here, and you can do your trickery there. In the meantime…” An idea had struck Lestrade, one that almost made him smile.

“Constable Ayres,” he said. “I believe your earlier report was of a quantity of blood at Professor Rubicon’s laboratories.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Constable, please take Professor Rubicon and Doctor Miescher to Bishopsgate, where our Swiss friend will be very interested in those blood stains. And Ayres … make sure you talk about this as loudly as possible as you pass Mr. Aloysius Bent.”

“But sir, I thought you said—”

“I know what I said, Constable, but I’ve changed my mind.”

Lestrade watched the three of them head off through the thickening snow toward the mouth of the alley. That should keep them all from getting under his feet for a while, all the scientists and adventurers and journalists. He turned back to regard the sheet-covered body of Emily Dawson. Get them all away, let him do what he did best without interference: good, old-fashioned police work.

4

“Y
OU
’
RE
THE
H
ERO
OF
THE
E
MPIRE
, M
R
. S
MITH
”

Aloysius Bent declined the well-telegraphed offer to follow Professor Rubicon, the young constable, and the earnest bearded fellow from the scene of the crime, opting instead for a quick gin in the Golden Ball and a steam-cab back to Grosvenor Square. He would visit Rubicon, of course, but at his convenience, thank you very much, and not following the clumsy trail set by Lestrade and his boys as though he were some hound to be set after a rabbit.

Besides,
he thought as he paid the driver,
I’ve had enough of standing out freezing my effing balls off for one morning, especially after the morning’s news.
The snow was all well and good if you could find a nice, warm pair of titties to bury your cold nose in, for the price of a couple of farthings. This prostitutes’ strike … he didn’t quite know what to make of it, nor where his next tumble was going to come from.

It was then he noticed the man, tall, in a heavy overcoat and with a bowler on his head, furtively lurking around the gate to the house.

“Oi,” Bent shouted. “What you after?”

The man, still a dozen yards away, looked up and squinted at Bent through the snow, then turned on his heel and hurried away. Some autograph hunter, no doubt, or a snooping reporter Bent didn’t know. He let himself into the house, stamping his feet on the rough mat and closing the door against the flurries of snow. As he unwound the muffler from around his bullish neck, Bent sniffed the air. Smelled like the housekeeper, Mrs. Cadwallader, had been baking. He could just taste one of her dainty little cakes—or maybe three or four, washed down with a gallon of tea. Or ale. He rubbed some feeling back into his spadelike hands. Oh yes, a big pitcher of ale, a plate of cakes, and his feet up in the study in front of a roaring fire, to mull over the events of the morning.

“Mrs. C!” roared Bent from the beeswaxed, wood-paneled hallway. “Where’s young Gideon? And is Miss Maria back yet?”

Mrs. Cadwallader, all bustle and apron and starched white blouse keeping her vast bosom in check, emerged from the door to the kitchen like the ruddy-faced figurehead of some proud ship, the sails of her skirts buoyed by the warm scent of freshly baked cinnamon cakes. Not for the first time, Bent thanked his lucky stars for the way he’d fallen on his feet the way he had. He wouldn’t have fancied another winter in the hovel in the East End where he’d spent the last ten years—wasn’t sure, to be honest, he’d have survived it. This little place, though … never in his wildest dreams had Aloysius Bent thought he’d ever have a Mayfair address. The place had belonged to Captain Lucian Trigger and Doctor John Reed, and as they were a pair of homosexuals, there’d been no family for it to pass on to once they took a dive off the top of that brass dragon hovering above Hyde Park, ready to rain fiery death upon Buckingham Palace and all in it. Bent found it hard to believe all that business—hooking up with Gideon and the mysterious mechanical girl, Maria, scrapping with mummies on the Embankment, discovering lost pyramids in the shifting sands of Egypt—was only five months ago. A lot had happened since July, and the best of it was when they all moved into the Grosvenor Square house, so that young Gideon was fully able to succeed that old fraud Trigger as the official Hero of the Empire.