The Curse of Christmas (31 page)

“Yes, why?”

“I think he went to pay a visit
to Mrs Kronski at the baby farm. He couldn’t risk being seen going
into the brothel but he was safe at the baby farm. If anyone saw
him he could pretend to care. I believe he paid Mrs Kronski for the
girls with red hair who came his way. I don’t think she killed them
on demand, although I think that was the case with Mims because of
her association with the heir apparent, and Pennyrose would have
been the next victim to find herself down here, but it is handy
having a lot of sickly girls on hand that she can turn a profit on
even after death.”

“Are you saying the Ripper was
Mrs Kronski?” He sounded horrified, appalled – not only at the
rottenness of men but the rottenness of women too.

“Yes, I think it’s a fair
deduction. While we were at the blessing, Xenia sneaked into the
brothel to search for a garment stained with blood or paint – a
dress for the lady and a cloak that would have belonged to a man
who gave the lady his cloak to cover her guilt lest anyone come
past. We will know shortly if she was successful or not. I sent
Fedir to the brothel to look for his sister since she has not yet
returned. In fact, I grow uneasy at the delay.”

“Let’s get out of here. I feel
nauseas. The smell and the thought of this place make me sick to
the stomach.”

They removed themselves to the
church and Reverend Paterson knew by the looks on the faces that
they had discovered his secret. He seemed to shrink.

Lestrade was still waiting for
his men to scour the vestry and the storerooms. “Find anything?” he
said none too hopefully.

“Yes, we did. The can of paint
Miss Quilligan was using is down in a second crypt where a doorway
was concealed behind a bookshelf built into the stairs,” said the
Countess. “There’s something else down there too. Are you familiar
with the term necrophilia?”

“Bloody hell!” cursed the
hardened man from the Yard.

Reverend Paterson fainted.

Lestrade glared at one of his
underlings. “Make she he doesn’t escape when he comes to or your
life won’t be worth living, laddie.”

Dr Watson returned with Lestrade
to explain what he knew about the matter. The other bodies would
need to be dug up. While the two men were down in the crypt, Fedir
and Xenia arrived. Xenia was carrying a bundle of clothes. The
Countess smiled.

“You found something?” she
said.

Xenia nodded. “I find dress in
laundry room, soaking in tub of cold water, and two cloaks with
blood and paint in coal room. But just as I am making to go the
women they come back. I hide in closet with brooms. Fedir find me
and I never feel so happy as when he come.”

“Let’s have a look at them. Lay
them out here on the floor.”

The dress was soaking wet but it
still had tell-tale stains of blood on the skirt. The hem had been
roughly chopped with scissors, probably because the blood would
have been thickest there when the killer knelt or leaned over the
body. The blood would have resisted all attempts at removal. A new
hem could have been added to the dress once it had been thoroughly
washed.

The woman’s cloak was stained
thick with blood and paint that was indelible. Someone had tried to
wash the stains out to no avail. They were probably going to be
burned in the furnace at the first opportunity. Their tardiness,
and possibly confidence at never being caught, was their
undoing.

The man’s cloak was not stained
with blood on the outside, only on the inner lining. It supported
the theory that Reverend Paterson was not the killer. He had given
his cloak to Mrs Kronski and she had put it over the top of her own
clothes to disguise the fact she was a murderess. He took the can
of paint because he had a basket. She would only have had her
reticule.

The Countess left the
blood-stained garments on the floor for the inspector to view.

Reverend Paterson revived from
his fainting fit and moaned horribly at the sight of them.

“I didn’t murder Miss
Quilligan,” he gurgled, sick with fear.

“I know,” reassured the Countess
in order to gain his trust. “You were at the baby farm paying Mrs
Kronski for the latest girl, probably Annie. The two of you shared
a hansom and alighted at Southwark Street where it meets Redcross
Way. Is that right?”

He nodded weakly but didn’t
speak.

“For some reason she was walking
ahead of you, oh, yes, you probably stopped to pay the cabbie,
fumbling for change in the dark, and she walked on briskly to keep
warm, intending to stop and wait in the shelter of the viaduct. But
she came across Miss Quilligan writing graffiti on the wall and the
term: Angelmaker must have triggered a furious rage. She probably
carried a dagger for protection, in her line of work it is common,
and before she knew it she had stabbed the young woman who meant
her no harm. Once she started the stabbing she couldn’t stop. She
was enraged. Perhaps terrified an investigation into nearby baby
farms would be carried out or the graveyard checked, where, of
course, Joff and Crick had been burying infants in secret for
months and possibly years. Each time a fresh corpse was buried they
could inter a baby without anyone guessing. The earth was freshly
disturbed already. The graves packed full anyway. All they had to
do was jump up and down and pack the bones in. Am I right?”

Again, he nodded.

“Unfortunately for Miss
Quilligan, the term Angelmaker may have related to Viscount
Cazenove’s Angel Embankment and not the baby farm at all. She had
sympathy for women who took in infants. Her mother was charged and
acquitted of being an Angelmaker. But the awful deed was done. You
came upon the scene a moment later and, horrified at being named as
an accomplice or having your nefarious business scrutinized, you
covered for her by giving her your cloak and taking the can of
paint. Is that close enough?”

“Yes, yes,” he gibbered,
wondering how she could possibly know it, as if she was there the
whole time, watching them from the shadows. He had thought at the
time he was being watched as he hurried home with the basket, but
he put it down to a guilty conscience.

“Mrs Kronski then went a
different way home. Probably taking the footway and coming out on
O’Meara Street, before slipping into Union Street so that the two
of you would not be seen walking together. But these blood-stained
garments will hang Mrs Kronski and as for you, well, a long stretch
in prison is a certainty. I’m not sure if there is a law against
necrophilia but I daresay the very nature of the act will go
against you at your trial.”

He hung his head, not from shame
but self-pity. “God help me. God help me,” he gibbered over and
over.

The Countess was about to leave
him to his fate when she spotted the dead man on the dais. “Did you
know Deacon Throstle was dressing up as the fetch?”

“Yes,” he confessed miserably.
“He was…”

“A Peeping Tom,” she finished
for him.

He gasped. “How did you
guess?”

“It stands to reason. The fetch
prowled the streets freely, he owned the night. All those who saw
him fled in terror for their lives. No one had the courage to
confront him. No one dared challenge him. He looked through windows
to see what he could see. It was a good lurk. Any time he was
spotted, it was as a fetch, not a Peeping Tom.”

“I don’t believe in spirits,” he
said when she turned to go, “but you must be a female demon. To
know all that is not natural, not natural for a woman. It is
unnatural, mystical and supernatural. It is witchcraft, the work of
the devil, and you are his dark angel.”

“It is deduction – pure and
simple. Anyone can do, even a man.”

The Countess placed the
Christmas wreath on the unmarked headstone in the heart of the
cemetery where often there sat a solitary crow. Crow had made a
nest in the roof of the viaduct but the cemetery was his second
home.

Tomorrow she would organize for
Miss Pike to take the girls from the brothel under her capable
wing. She would be handsomely rewarded for arranging suitable
accommodation and educating the girls to future employment. Some
would fail, that was inevitable. Some would fall back on the old
ways because it was easier and it was all they knew. But some would
succeed. They would raise themselves up and eventually raise their
families up too.

Miss Pike would need some help
to do it all, of course, and an account at the bank would take care
of any expenses. It might even be the start of bigger things for
Miss Pike. A school for young ladies was not out of the question.
Shops were opening up by the score and there was talk of something
called a department store that employed hundreds of women in
separate departments that sold perfume, clothing, hats, shoes, and
more, all under one roof!

The new century would be
marvellous!

Fedir and Xenia took a hansom to
Ye Olde Cock Tavern where they would spend the night. In the
morning they would supervise the delivery of Tudor furniture from
Bonhams to The Buttery and place the sideboards and gimcracks where
they thought best. They knew her taste and her wants.

Dr Watson took his own hansom
and went home to 221B Baker Street exhausted but happy the
Crossbones business was over before Christmas. He could relax and
enjoy the Yuletide. He didn’t say where he would be spending
Christmas Day but the Countess knew he would be spending it in
Sussex. It pained her not to be invited but she couldn’t force
herself on Sherlock if he didn’t want her in his life. It was one
thing to travel with Dr Watson and coax him onto the next
adventure, but another to inveigle herself into someone’s company.
She might be vain, confident and full of herself, but she was never
crass, insensitive or asinine.

It was two o’clock in the
morning on the twenty-fourth day of December when the carriage
returned her to Mayfair Mews.

Weary to the point of dropping,
she hurried inside and did not see the man standing in the shadows,
watching patiently for her return as a wolf watches for that
perfect moment to go in for the kill.

He knew she hadn’t been with
Freddy because Freddy had spent the night at his usual seat at the
baccarat table of the exclusive establishment of Madame Gingembre
on Northumberland Avenue. He knew she wasn’t with General de
Merville because the general had spent the night at his club on
Pall Mall. The Diogenes wouldn’t let him in to confirm it but the
general’s butler had said so and that was good enough.

He was none the wiser and it was
eating away at him. Who was her secret lover?

Numb with cold, too tired to
walk all the way to Soho, he opted for the first lodging house with
a vacancy on Piccadilly, intending to return first thing tomorrow
morning and confront her.

He slept fitfully, going over
and over what he would say and how he would handle himself - a
touch arrogant perhaps, but in masterful control of his emotions.
He should have been in Ballyfolly days ago. There were things to
do, tradesmen to pay. Tomorrow was Christmas Day. The men would be
wanting money to buy food and presents for their families. He woke
feeling tense and anxious and annoyed with himself. He decided to
skirt through Green Park to settle his nerves and give her time to
complete her toilette.

It was nine o’clock when he
arrived at number 6 Mayfair Mews to find an unmarked black carriage
parked at the front. He was wondering who owned it when the front
door opened and he stepped back quickly into the recess of a
projecting bay window to avoid being seen. A few moments later a
tall, limber, fair-haired man emerged, leapt into the carriage and
disappeared.

Nash! He hadn’t seen Nash for
years, not since Gibraltar. They had been at military college
together then Nash seemed to fall off the end of the earth. Someone
said he was in the Suez, someone else said Khartoum; he heard next
Nash was seen in Cape Town and then Bermuda. There was a rumour he
had been promoted to Major and had taken up a lucrative post with
someone high up in the government. He never really paid any
attention; he wasn’t really interested. He was interested now!

Inigo Nash was a penniless
baronet. His father had gambled away the family fortune and then
shot himself. It caused a scandal at the time but things were
hushed it up fairly quickly by people who mattered. Inigo had
inherited the title of baronet and had the right to be addressed as
Sir, but he never played on it. They had been chummy at military
college, both too poor to keep up with the flash lifestyle of their
richer cadres; paying for commissions had been abolished and
appointments were by merit but huge sums of lucre were still
required to make the right impression. Nash had inherited a rundown
pile of rubble somewhere in Kent - Crowditch or Cowbyre; something
that recalled a half-timbered, wobbly-walled Tudor barn.

Feeling gutted, he turned his
back on number 6 just as the first snow of the season was beginning
to fall unaware the Countess at her bedroom window was watching the
snowflakes settling gently on the masonry, softening the hard edges
of the red brick mansions.

Before he reached the end of the
cobblestones that guttered into Old Park Lane a liveried footman
caught up to him. It was the same man he’d given a good kicking to
the night before. Bracing for the inevitable flurry of fists, he
was surprised when the flunky issued an invitation.

“Countess Volodymyrovna would
like you to join her for breakfast.”

He wanted to say: Tell her to go
to hell! Irish pride demanded it but he couldn’t get the words out.
Everything he planned to say fell by the wayside. “How are your
ribs?”

“My ribs are fine, thank you,
sir, and the extra ten pounds for my trouble will put a smile on my
mother’s face this Christmas.”