The Diabolical Miss Hyde (22 page)

I know what Todd is, see. The Greek bloke in the painting was the clue, tied to the mast with that heartbroken look in his eyes.

Mr. Todd is what happens when you jump.

Or if you fall.

I stride through the barrows and rickety stalls of Covent Garden Market, dodging jugglers and fish-sellers and fey-faced fire-eaters, children selling piles of bread crusts, old fruit, pans of dripping, eel skins they've scrounged from middens. The rotten stink invigorates me. This place I know. This place I understand. Prostitutes wink and swagger in dirty
skirts, buttons undone and poxy flesh on show. In a corner, two greasy blokes are kicking a third bloke senseless, blood and teeth in the mud. Somewhere, an accordion plays a raucous Irish tune, and a pair of dwarves in little frock coats and top hats dance a tipsy jig.

Cold fingers whisper over my shoulder.

I whirl, fierce. No one. No pickpocket, no lumbering fey idiot with a sloppy grin and a magic trick, no greasy customer who thinks I'm for sale.

Only shadows, and the smell of thunder.

But my breath is tight. My senses scintillate like angry fireflies. I can't help feeling that someone's following me.

“Follow away, whoever you are,” I mutter, and stride on, skirts flouncing. I've got business tonight.

The Strand is a dark throng of carriages and omnibuses, electric lights glittering bright amongst gas lamps and torches. Horses snort and kick in their harnesses, disturbed by the relentless tick of clockwork. It's only early, and shop windows shine like wreckers' beacons through the dark, their fashionable wares luring folk to ruin. Well-dressed gents and their ladies promenade up and down, snotty noses in the air.

A line of god-rotted clockwork Enforcers strut along the middle of the street, and everyone makes way for them as if they've got the Black Death. Boxy brass soldiers, their gemstone eyes a-glint. More of 'em every week, the way things is. One pulls a big brass cage on wheels, and inside it, a skinny fey girl lies sobbing and howling. But Enforcers don't never listen or show mercy. Whatever spellwork she's done, it ain't helping her now.

Compelled, I scrape up a handful of horse dung and hurl it at them. “Nice work, chaps,” I yell. “The streets sure is safer now. I feel so much better.”

They don't stop. One turns its blank white face to look at me. I give it a rude gesture. Its red eyes flash, and it turns away once more.

“Heh,” I mutter, hot-faced at my own stupidity but still feeling good. “Shows what
you
know.”

I make my way through the clatter, keeping a sharp eye. The crowd is massive, surely I'll never find Sally Fingers amongst this lot, but in truth it don't take me long to single her out. I've an eye for the swell mob, so I do. I know their formations, one in front, one behind, a lookout off to the side, and here's Tom o' Nine Lives and Jimmy the Chink, sailing along in fine coats and cravats, nice as you please. Jimmy's even got a cane, and he flourishes it like a dandy, tipping his ridiculously tall hat to some simpering lady, who eyes his dusky half-Oriental skin and practically pops a rivet in her corset.

A yard or two away in the crush ambles a thin woman in a pale green dress and matching hat. She's familiar. Sharp nose, pinched face, long hands in lace gloves. Greasepaint is plastered over a blight of pox scars on her cheek.

Sally Fingers, moll buzz and Beane-thief extraordinaire.

Tom o' Nine Lives—so called because with that handsome face, he can talk his way out of anything—Tom halts abruptly, peering into a window, and the lady behind bumps into him.

She stumbles, her creamy crinoline bouncing. Handsome
Tom apologizes, so sorry, madam, forgive me, la-di-da. And light as a brothel girl's feather, Sally Fingers lifts the purse from madam's belt and passes it to Jimmy the Chink, whereupon they each drift off into the crowd in different directions, while Tom's still steadying blushing madam's elbow.

Simple, but it pays. I ease into the crush and fall into step beside Sally. “Nice pull.”

Sally spears me on a leaf-green glance, but she's too experienced a hand to reply. She ain't pretty or clever. Ain't even fey. Just a girl, faded brown hair twisted up under her fancy hat, and I can see the ragged ends where she's once hacked it off, to sell or to rid herself of lice. She smells of stolen perfume, a rich lady's scent.

“I ain't no snout, Sally Fingers. Wild Johnny sent me.”

“Who?” Casually, she gazes around, like we're not talking. Informants are everywhere. You never know who's watching, or what they'll tell they seen.

“Billy Beane's watch. You fenced it on Johnny this morning.”

“Was that Billy's? Well, I never. I picked it up out of the dirt. Sold it fair and square.” She smiles, nods at some imaginary acquaintance, glances in a window. Changes her story without a blink.

“And now Billy's dead.”

“Is he? Hadn't heard. Cholera, was it?”

“Oh, I think you heard.” I link arms with her, easy, two friends on an evening stroll. “He's murdered, Sally. Stabbed in the neck like the bag of offal he was. But you knew that.”

“Don't know what you're on about.”

She pulls away, stiff. But I squeeze her forearm hard enough to grate the bones. “Word is that Billy was on your shit list. What, did he shove his hand up your skirt?”

“None of your damn business—”

“I think you killed him, Sally Fingers. Stabbed him and left him dead in the dirt. What do you say to that?”

“Don't know nothing.” She struggles, wild. “I seen you that night. You're the skirt from the Cockatrice. Lemme 'lone, okay?”

“How did it feel, Sally, jabbing your knife into his skinny neck? Did he squeal? Did the light in his eyes die while you watched?” My breath shortens, I'm sweating. God help me, I'm enjoying thinking about this. “Was his blood warm on your face? Did he shit himself, when you twisted that blade—”

“He was already dead, all right?” A flush rises in her cheeks. “I went for him but the arsehole was lights-out on the ground when I got there. So I snaffled his coin and his watch, and scarpered.”

“Don't believe you.”

“Don't care. It weren't me.” She's crying now. Real swollen-eyed tears, not the crocodile kind you shed to play the helpless girl for the crushers. “I wish it was, but it weren't, so just fuck off and lemme 'lone!”

Startled, I ease my grip. It's the look on her face, hate and frustration and empty anger that'll never be satisfied. I know that look . . . and with a jolt, I recall why she's so familiar.

Billy's trial. In the gallery, throwing fruit and weeping while he laughed. Sally were stalking him, all right. Someone else just got there first.

“What'd he do, Sally? Did he . . . ?”

“Not me.” The electric streetlamp washes her face green. “My little sis. She's five.”

“Bleeding Christ.” Red mist sparkles before my eyes, and I close my fists on empty air. My palms sting. Now, I wish even harder that I'd killed him. “Did you see who done for him?”

“No, I told you. He were lyin' on the ground when I got there.” She swipes smudged eyes. “I got mad. Might've stabbed him a few times, just to make sure the scum-fucker was dead.” Her chin trembles. “All right for him, innit? He don't have to suffer no more. I shoulda raped his stinking corpse with a stick. There. Happy?” And she grabs up her stolen skirts and hustles away.

Uh-huh.

I weave my way back through the crush, thoughts spinning over and under like a broken clockwork toy. Sally didn't do it. Sally didn't see it. And Sally didn't see me.

So what happened?

Do I even care?

I duck around a snorting horse and his carriage full of quality—Mr. Horse's tail quivers, and the fine fellow lets loose with a glistening pile of turds, thank you very much—and I wonder if I shouldn't just let this be.

Billy ain't touching no more little girls, and good riddance. If hell's real, he's in it. As Johnny said: a win's a win.

But the coppers are hunting me, the lady in the red dress. I've no alibi, no defense. Just a pub-full of folk who seen me slink out to the loo game, and jealous Jemima Half-Cut turning Queen's evidence. What they used to call “telling the Royal,” before that came to mean something worse.

I am, as they say at St. James's Palace, screwed. And I'll need to do better than
Gosh, Constable, it weren't me, I swear!

I don't give a damn that Billy's dead. I do care that I'll hang for it. And so will Eliza, who never hurt no one in her life, not even scumbags like Billy who deserve it.

Not even crimson-haired crazy men who've killed seventeen people already and won't never stop, not so long as they're alive and free.

I slip from the crowd, into the darkling side alleys where folk are wild and the dogs hungry, down shadowy Southampton Street back towards Seven Dials. So now what? How will Miss Lizzie wriggle out of this one?

Eliza would know what to do. Eliza would stick to the facts. Someone stabbed Billy Beane in the neck that night. Was it me?

Seems to me I'd remember ripping out a man's throat, no matter how much gin I'd sucked back. Seems to me my clothes would remember, too, and I know that no blood ruined my dress that night. And I've got Johnny to back that up.

Look at me, eh? I can read them clues, just as good as Eliza. And the clues say Miss Lizzie didn't do it.

So who else wanted Billy dead?

I skip over a piss-stinking puddle and chortle. Big help
that
is. Everyone, that's who. Man like that keeps a lot of enemies. Folk from St. Giles to Covent Garden have riper reasons than mine to off the Bastard.

A creditor, waiting for him to get out of Newgate so they could hush him. A rampsman, craving Billy's coin. Someone who found out he's a snout. Someone like Sally Fingers, who don't like child-rapers.

Someone who wanted to kill Billy so bad, they swiped me out of the way . . .

I halt, my breath sucked dry.

What if I'm chasing down the wrong rabbit hole? I wanted Billy dead: he's dead. What if this mysterious cove didn't kill Billy instead of me?

What if he killed Billy
for
me?

Someone who didn't want me to dirty my hands. Someone protecting me. Watching me.
Following
me.

Like Mr. Shadowy No-One-There from earlier this evening. Like the shiver under my skin t'other night, when I snuck out of Eliza's fancy town house. Like . . .

The dirty old man's voice slithers back to me, glittering with Eliza's romantic notions but steeped in dark-bitter threat.
No one wants a scene. If I have to protect you, I will.

Jesus in a jam jar.

Well, screw it. I ain't gonna find out who killed Billy by
thinking
. Stick to the facts, says Doctor Eliza, and Lizzie can dig them little bastards up just as fine as she can. Sort of. I ain't got her fancy opticals and swabs and bottles of goo. But I've got eyes, and attitude. Those'll have to do.

Beneath scudding clouds, I cross the Dials, where the usual trade of drug-sellers, footpads, and gin-soaked dollies parade like circus beasts. Flitches of moonlight slant though gaps in the smoke to caress my face, and my pulse quickens, that warm tide tugging deep.

I slink in behind the Cockatrice, towards the yard where Billy the Bastard met his deserved end. Flames flicker against one wall of the pub from a burning pile of rubbish, and two spindly-fingered urchins shiver and warm themselves. Twigs
grow in their tangled hair. One has webbed feet, his green toes spreading like a frog's in the mud. Right Rats' Castle material, they is, if that place were real, which it ain't.

The yard's fence is low, with broken planks, and it ain't much to vault over the top. My skirts billow as I land, and black puddle-muck splashes my velveteen. The yard stinks of piss and kitchen refuse. It's dark, but I can make out the spot where Billy and me had our romantic rondy-voo. I poke the scuffed dirt with my foot. It crumbles, crusted with blood. Here lies Billy, child-raper and all-round arsehole, sorely missed by precisely no one.

I squat and poke at the ground. The yard's empty. If there were a murder weapon, a knife or sommat, it's long gone now, stolen and sold. Sally Fingers took Billy's watch and his coin, and his moldy boots wasn't in that bag at the mortuary, but not even corpse-robbers wanted his louse-stinking green coat . . .

Aha. The tortoise to Eliza's hare. I'm slow, but I get there.

The killer left Billy's goods behind. So whoever offed Billy weren't in it for profit.

I sniff, a sharp scent freshening my nose. What's that? Smells like the Electric Underground. Hot metal, sparks, a whiff of singed skin . . .

Cold iron kisses the back of my neck.

I jerk, chilled to the spot.

Zap-click!
An electric pistol primes, and now the barrel's warm against my skin. Eerie purple light wells. My new friend's shadow leaps on the wall, lean and hungry, and I curse inside that I never seen him coming. Beneath my skirts, my stiletto buzzes angrily, but what can I do? He's got me
dead to rights. Copper or killer, it don't matter. What a dumb-arsed way to go.

I hold my breath and wait for the light.

But what I get is an easy male laugh.

“The famous lady in red,” says he, and my blood sparkles alive. “We meet at last.”

I
LIFT MY HANDS, TO SHOW THEY'RE EMPTY, AND RISE.
The pistol follows me, singeing the back of my neck. Carefully, I turn, edging away.

Rough-spun coat, dirty shirt revealing an ungentlemanly expanse of tanned throat. Strong chin, hair curling over his collar, a smudged hat tipped to shade his face. But I can still see his bright hunter's eyes. Stained with midnight madness now, by the pistol's purple glow, but I happen to know they're cry-to-heaven blue.