The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 1 MURDER MOST ’ORRIBLE

A murder. Something nasty. Something twisted. Something baffling and bizarre. Why else would the police have sought me out?

Such thoughts rattled through the mind of Arthur Conan Doyle as he watched Detective Blenkinsop of Scotland Yard step into the Palm Room of the Tivoli restaurant and sweep his blue-eyed gaze across the crowded tables, searching for something.

Searching for him.

Go away blast you! Not now. Not tonight!

Thanks to the fame Sherlock Holmes had bestowed upon him, Scotland Yard often consulted Conan Doyle on crimes that confounded all conventional means of detection. They dragged to his door the most difficult cases. The inexplicable ones. The conundrums. The impossibly knotted yarn balls the clumsy fingers of the police could not unravel. Ordinarily, he was flattered to be consulted on such cases. But on this occasion, he wished he could throw a cloak of invisibility about his shoulders.

Determined not to make eye contact, he reeled in his gaze from the detective and lavished it instead upon his dinner companion. At just twenty-four years of age, Miss Jean Leckie was a ravishing beauty fourteen years his junior. The two had by happy accident occupied adjacent chairs at the November meeting of the Society for Psychical Research. In conversation it fell out that Miss Leckie shared Conan Doyle’s fascination with Spiritualism and all things occult. After the meeting adjourned, she accepted the older man’s invitation to supper, where she had just revealed — over a sumptuous repast of boiled fowl a la béchamel, braised parsnips, and crab-stuffed courgettes — that she herself was an amateur medium who had conducted a number of successful séances.

Throughout their conversation, Conan Doyle fought the urge to stare, but when he gazed into those hazel-green eyes, sparkling with fire and intelligence, his knees trembled like a schoolboy’s in the throes of his first crush.

But it wasn’t just Conan Doyle who found himself under the thrall of Miss Leckie’s beauty. She was a radiant presence that coaxed furtive glances from dinner patrons sitting at adjacent tables. Under the Tivoli’s electric lights, her dark golden hair shone. Her long face, with its high cheekbones, strong chin, and aquiline nose, evinced the classical proportions of a Greek bust. In their initial conversation, he had been struck by the musicality of her voice, and was thrilled to discover that she was a classically trained mezzo-soprano. And so, with every revelation of her wit, character, and accomplishments, Conan Doyle was drawn in deeper. By the time the bread pudding arrived at the table, hot and steaming in its tureen, he was utterly smitten.

For her part, Miss Leckie seemed as equally attentive of him, for she caught the look of discomfort that flashed across his face when he glimpsed the arrival of Detective Blenkinsop.

“Are you quite well, Doctor Doyle?” she asked. “You seem suddenly quite distracted.”

Conan Doyle chanced to dart a quick look across the dining room and locked eyes with the young detective, who now steamed toward them with the dread determination of a mechanical homing torpedo.

“I’m afraid I have just seen someone I know.”

A frown upset her perfect features. “Oh? Someone who shall be joining us?”

“Quite the opposite. Someone, I fear, who shall be tearing us apart.”

Conan Doyle snatched the linen napkin from his lap, crumpled it in his fist, and tossed it down on the table. It had been a delightful meal, but the intrusion of Scotland Yard meant the evening had just crashed to an abrupt and unwelcome end. He watched Detective Blenkinsop’s approach with dour anticipation, the food already curdling in his stomach.

He was not alone. Other diners recoiled at the officer’s approach as a wave of shock and horror surged through the room. Women shrieked. Men shouted in outrage and lurched up from their seats. A string quartet had been playing a subdued air in a quiet corner, but now the despairing cellos groaned into silence. A matronly woman clutched her throat and half rose from her chair before swooning to the floor. Several chivalrous gents jumped to their feet to assist the lady, only to leap back as Blenkinsop swept through their midst like a nightmare torn loose of its moorings. When the detective drew closer, Conan Doyle took one look and understood why his approach elicited so much dread.

Blood… Blood… Blood…

… and so much of it: an angry, violent crimson under the Palm Room’s cheerful lights. The detective’s regulation dark blue rain cape was drenched in pints of it, runneling fresh and sticky down his front and dribbling a crimson trail across the elegant marble floor.

As Blenkinsop arrived at their table, Miss Leckie stifled a shriek behind her hand, averting eyes rolling with horror.

Conan Doyle leapt to his feet, outraged. “Detective Blenkinsop! What on earth is the meaning of this? What are you thinking, coming into a public place in such a state? Are you mad?”

The young man stood before the table. Wavering. Unsteady on his feet. His eyes held the stunned look of crushed glass beads. It took a moment before he registered Conan Doyle’s words and stammered out: “B-beg pardon, sir b-but I–I require your assistance, sir. I… I mean I ain’t never… I ain’t never seen nothing so…’orrible…”

As a physician with years of medical training, Conan Doyle recognized the signs of a man going into shock — the ghastly pallor, the sweating brow — and concern swept aside his anger. He sprang from his chair, gripped Blenkinsop by the shoulder, and eased him into the vacated seat.

But the uproar the young detective had caused was far from over. Diners abandoned their tables and milled in confusion. Waiters scurried hither and yon, uttering soothing words to calm frantic diners and coax them back into their seats. The Tivoli’s maître d’ bustled up to Conan Doyle’s table, jabbering hysterically. Instantly, the Scottish doctor became the calm eye in a swirling vortex of emotion. He was at his best in a crisis, and now he took command. Barking orders, the maître d’ was chivvied off to fetch a large snifter of brandy. He had the detective’s blood-drenched rain cape bundled up in an old potato sack from the kitchen and hauled away to be tossed into the furnace. And then he corralled two passing waiters: the first was sent to fetch Miss Leckie’s hat and wrap; the second he dispatched to alert the driver of the hansom cab waiting for them outside. Poor Miss Leckie, rather overwhelmed by it all, said little as a waiter eased her into her coat, and then Conan Doyle escorted her to the waiting cab.

The doormen held the door for them and they stepped from the light and warmth of the Tivoli into a chill November night miasmic with swirling fog.

“I am so sorry our lovely evening must end in such an ugly way,” the Scottish author apologized.

Miss Leckie smiled. “I, too, am sorry that our most elucidating conversation was interrupted.”

“Perhaps you would allow me to invite you to another dinner, to make amends?” Conan Doyle blushed as he spoke the words, which had surged from him in an unrestrainable rush of emotion. The first dinner invite had come spontaneously. The two had struck up a conversation during the SPR meeting and the invitation to continue the exchange over supper seemed natural. But a second invitation smacked of an ulterior motive. He quailed, fearing he had overstepped the bounds of propriety. What he was doing could be seen as highly indecorous. Even scandalous. He was a married man with an invalid wife. Miss Leckie was a single lady much younger than he. But when he looked into those doeish eyes, a trapdoor in his chest dropped open and his heart plummeted through it.

A brief look of uncertainty crossed her face, but then the corners of her mouth curled in a coquettish smile. “That would be delightful.”

He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, snatched free a calling card, and presented it to her. “Here is my card. Please let me know of a convenient time we might meet again.”

“I look forward most anxiously,” she said, plucking the card from his grip. And then, in an unambiguous sign of affection, touched a hand to his forearm. The press of her slender fingers, elegant in elbow-length gloves, lingered a moment longer than necessary.

“Until then,” she said, smiling sweetly, “au revoir.”

Crinoline rustled as she swept up her skirts and climbed into the hansom. Before the cab door folded over her legs, Conan Doyle checked to ensure that none of her skirts were trapped, then called up to the driver, “Blackheath, Jim, and drive carefully. The fog is worsening and you convey a most precious cargo.”

The cabbie nodded. “The worst I seen this year, Doctor Doyle. But don’t you worry none, she’ll be safe as houses with Iron Jim.”

Conan Doyle handed up a sovereign coin, scandalously overpaying. The cabbie tugged the brim of his rumpled bowler in salute, then shook the reins and clucked for the horse to pull away. Coach lights blazing, the hansom plunged into the murk and vanished from sight before it had gone thirty feet, but the image of her smile hovered eidetically on the roiling gray fog.

And then, gallingly, Conan Doyle remembered he had forgotten to ask for Miss Leckie’s calling card in return. Apart from the fact that she lived with her parents in the London suburb of Blackheath, he had no clue as to her address.

The hansom’s departure revealed another carriage waiting at the curbside: a Black Mariah, a hulking, four-wheeled coffin used by the Metropolitan police to haul criminals to jail and condemned prisoners to the gallows — evidently the means by which Detective Blenkinsop had arrived. Two uniformed constables hunkered on the seat, mouths and noses muffled with thick woolen scarves to filter the choking air. Even though two large coach lights burned bright on either side of the Mariah, the blinding fog also obliged two additional officers brandishing flaming torches to lead the horses and light the way.

A convulsive shiver shook Conan Doyle’s large frame as the fog ran an icy finger down his spine. The November night was too bitterly cold to tarry long without a coat, and so he slipped quickly back inside the restaurant.

In the welcome warmth of the Palm Room, Conan Doyle dropped into his dinner companion’s vacated seat and waited patiently until Detective Blenkinsop finished sipping his brandy, the color flushed back into his face, and the spark of intellect burned once again in his eyes.

“Obviously it’s a murder,” Conan Doyle ventured. “An extremely bloody one judging by the state of your raincoat.”

The hand holding the brandy snifter tremored visibly. “It’s a murder all right, sir. But not like nothing I ever seen before.”

“It must be something truly dire to have distressed a detective used to witnessing the worst of humanity’s deeds.”

Blenkinsop shook his head. At just twenty-six, he was alarmingly boyish-looking. He had been promoted to detective just six months previously, in recognition of a feat of bravery: a deranged gunman walked into the crowd gathered outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and began firing his pistol at random. Two people had been shot dead as other constables looked on helplessly. Blenkinsop single-handedly tackled the madman to the ground and disarmed him. In recognition of his valor, he had been promoted to detective, the youngest ever on the force. Although he had grown the wispy suggestion of a moustache in an attempt to look older, he still more closely resembled a fresh-faced schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s office to receive a caning.

“I’d rather say as little as possible,” Blenkinsop said. “I figured to fetch you so you can see for yourself.” He tossed back the dregs of his liquor, nostrils flaring as he exhaled brandy fumes. “You might have a stiff ’un yourself, afore we go. I reckon even a doctor’s nerves will need steadying.”

Stepping into the chill night was like an open-handed slap across the face. For days, a pestilential fog, known in the popular vernacular as a “London Particular,” had suffocated the capital city beneath a yellow-green blanket. Appearing each evening at the mouth of the Thames, the fog oozed up the river and spilled over onto the surrounding streets, submerging all but the tallest church spires. Fogs were common at this time of year, but rather than abating after a few days as most fogs did, the mephitic cloud seemed to worsen with each evening. After a full week of such fogs, the night air was cold and abrasive, a gritty cloud of pumice swirling with ash, soot, and firefly-like embers that burned the lungs and needled tears to the eyes. The fog muffled sound and shrank the sprawling metropolis to a murky circle of visibility, scarcely twenty feet in any direction.

Detective Blenkinsop snatched wide the battle-scarred rear door of the Mariah and gestured for the Scottish author to step aboard. “Forgive the means of transport, sir. Uncomfortable, I admit, but she’ll get us there, no bother.”

As Conan Doyle climbed into the boxy carriage, a strangely familiar smell assailed his senses — Turkish tobacco smoke — and he was surprised to find that the Mariah already had an occupant.

“Ah,” spoke an urbane voice, “it appears I am not the only prisoner tonight. I bid you welcome, fellow riffraff.”

It was only then Conan Doyle realized that the shadowy shape he had at first mistaken for a small bear was in fact a large Irishman.

“Oscar!”

Oscar Wilde wore a gorgeous fur overcoat with an enormous fur collar and cuffs. Atop his head perched a muskrat hat — a trophy fetched from his North American travels. Conan Doyle had ridden in Black Mariahs before, which invariably bore an aura of abject despair and reeked like public urinals in the worse part of London, but Wilde’s expensive cologne and piquant tobacco smoke bullied the air of its malodorous stink while his insouciant gravitas commandeered the space and made it his own. A small oil lantern swung from a hook in the ceiling, and in the wan pulse of amber light the Irish wit resembled the sultan of some exotic country being carried to his coronation in an enclosed sedan chair.

Conan Doyle slid in beside his friend, and Detective Blenkinsop dropped onto the bench opposite. The door of the Mariah banged shut and a constable standing outside locked them in. The horses were gee’d up and the Mariah rumbled away on wobbly axles squealing for a lick of grease.

“I am always happy to see you, Oscar,” Conan Doyle said. “But I confess you are the last person I would expect to meet in a Black Mariah.”

The hot coal of Wilde’s cigarette flared red as he drew in a lungful and jetted smoke out both nostrils. “Scotland Yard’s best have been combing the city for you. Detective Blenkinsop recruited me to assist in the search. We stopped at The Savoy, Claridge’s, and then your club. When you were discovered at none of them, given the hour, I plumped for the Tivoli and am gratified to see my guess was correct.” Wilde swept Conan Doyle’s dress with an appraising gaze and his full lips curled in a supercilious smile. “And now I understand why you were avoiding your usual haunts.”

Conan Doyle stiffened in his seat. “I, ah… I was supping with a friend. A fellow member of the Society for Psychical Research.”

“A fellow member, but not a fellow, per se?” Wilde remarked in a deeply incriminating voice. “You are quite the dog, Arthur. I suspect you were entertaining a lady!”

Conan Doyle blanched as Wilde pierced the bull’s-eye with his first arrow.

“I… how on earth did you know that?”

Had it not been so gloomy, Conan Doyle’s companions would have seen him blush.

“Your dress reveals much, Arthur. You are wearing a very fine bespoke suit — beautifully tailored might I add — rather than your work-a-day tweeds. You sport a beaver top hat, a fresh boutonniere, and have obviously spent a great deal of effort on your toilet, including taking the time to wax your extravagant moustaches, which I must confess positively coruscate in the light. Were we actually heading to jail you would be the talk of the prison yard. A man as practical as Arthur Conan Doyle does not take such pains with his attire to dine with an old school chum or a chalk-dusted academic. You have clearly dressed for a lady friend. A young and fetching lady, I would wager. Another good reason to dodge your usual haunts to avoid wagging tongues—”

“Yes, thank you, Oscar,” Conan Doyle interrupted. “And I think that’s quite enough. I assume you were carousing at The Savoy, as usual?”

The Irishman trilled with laughter. “Au contraire. It is scarcely ten o’clock. Oscar Wilde does not begin to carouse until midnight at the very earliest. No, I was visiting the Haymarket Theatre. My new play is in its third week. I look in on the production from time to time. To boost company morale. To thrill my audiences with a personal appearance… and to count the box office receipts. Plus I am a great aficionado of my own work. I love the sound of my own voice. And I love to hear the sound of my own voice coming out of someone else’s mouth. It is the primary reason for my connexion with the theater; it ensures I am never far from the thing I love most.”

“Well now you’ve found me,” Conan Doyle said, and turned his attention to the policeman sitting opposite. “Can you reveal, Detective Blenkinsop, what has prompted Scotland Yard to search for me so diligently?”

Blenkinsop drew the homburg from his head and held it slackly in his hands, turning it slowly by the brim. “There’s been a murder — no, not a murder. That ain’t right. I guess you’d properly call it… an assassination.”

Conan Doyle and Wilde exchanged stunned glances.

“Are we permitted to know whom?” Wilde asked.

The young detective’s expression grew tragic. “The whole world will know soon enough: Lord Howell.”

Both Wilde and Conan Doyle grunted as if gut-punched.

“The prime minister’s secretary for war,” Conan Doyle muttered in shocked tones.

Wilde leaned forward, his expression tense. “An assassination, you say? Do you suspect the party or parties responsible for such an act?”

Blenkinsop shook his head. “Not a clue. Right now all we got is the body. But it’s not just the murder. It’s how he was murdered. The murder scene…” A gasp tore loose from Blenkinsop, whose eyes lost focus as he stared blankly into space. “I can’t tell ya no more. I can’t describe it. I seen some dark doings in me days as a copper. But I ain’t never seen nothing like this. When I shut me eyes, I can still see it.”

With Blenkinsop unwilling to reveal more, the men fell into a tense silence for the rest of the journey. Held to a slow walk by the fog, the horses clop-clopped through deserted streets, at times narrowly avoiding horseless, abandoned carriages that loomed like shipwrecks in the fog. And so the Black Mariah took thirty minutes to travel less than a mile to reach its destination. When Conan Doyle and Wilde finally climbed out, the fog had grown thicker still, caging the streetlamps in tremulous globes of light.

Conan Doyle, who knew London intimately, looked about, utterly lost, and asked in a baffled voice, “Where the devil are we?”

“Belgravia, sir,” Detective Blenkinsop answered. He nodded toward the limestone façade of a handsome residence where two constables stood guard on either side of the front gate. “That there is Lord Howell’s residence.”

As he spoke, a third constable came staggering out of the house. He wobbled a rubber-legged path to the pavement where he doubled over and vomited explosively into the gutter. Conan Doyle and Wilde jumped back to avoid having their shoes splashed as a second wave hit and the officer gargled up the remainder of his dinner. As he sagged to his knees, clutching the railings for support, the young constable looked up at them, his face wretched with horror, and moaned, “Don’t go in there!”

Conan Doyle shared a look with Wilde, whose eyes were saucered, his complexion waxen and ghastly in the otherworldly throb of gaslight.

“Oscar, perhaps it would be better if you remained outside. As a medical doctor, I am used to such sights—”

“No,” Wilde shook his head. “If I do not see for myself then you shall be forced to describe it to me, and I fear my imagination excels when it comes to fathoming horrible things from nothing.”

“Right then,” Conan Doyle said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Boyle! Jennings!” Blenkinsop called to the two officers posted on either side of the gate. Lend the gentlemen your rain capes,” he fixed the two friends with a dire look. “You’ll be needin’ them, I reckon.”

With their fine clothes protected beneath long police rain capes, Conan Doyle and Wilde cautiously stepped up to the front door — or rather, what remained of it. A solid chunk of milled and planed English oak, the door had been smashed violently inward, tearing the mortise lock completely through the doorframe and wrenching two of the three hinges loose. Once painted ivory, the door gleamed crimson with spattered gore. The two friends stood goggling at the site, which bore mute testament to an act of extreme violence. Although the door had been solidly locked — they could see the exposed brass tenon — something with the force of a steam locomotive had smashed straight through it. They entered the house and found the marble tiles of the entrance hall slippery with blood. The footprints of every police officer that had entered the space tracked in all directions, like macabre steps in a dance studio from hell. Conan Doyle cast a doubting look at his tall Irish friend. “Really, Oscar, I don’t think there’s a need for you to see this.”

Wilde, who had yanked a scented handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it over his nose and mouth, shook his head. “No,” he said in a muffled voice. “Proceed. I have witnessed the dreadful prologue. I must see how the act ends.”

Their feet slithered across blood-slick tiles to a front parlor where the same maniacal force had also ripped the lighter parlor door to splinters. Inside the room, toppled chairs and broken furniture testified to a dreadful struggle. The tepid air of the parlor roiled with the ferric tang of blood. Beside an overturned divan, a body lay on the floor. Conan Doyle stepped around a broken end table to inspect it.

The corpse had a face both men recognized from the newspapers: Lord Montague Howell, hero of the battle of Alma and the siege of Sevastopol — amongst a score of Crimean campaigns. Miraculously, the handsome features had escaped unscathed; the blue eyes retained a calm gaze, the lids drooped slightly, a rictus-smile drawing back the lips, showing strong white teeth beneath a scrupulously groomed brown moustache. However, Lord Howell’s head was unnaturally kinked upon his neck.

With his years of medical experience, Conan Doyle was used to blood and death, but as he stepped closer, his gorge rose and invisible needles tattooed his face as he saw, to his horror, that the body was lying chest down.

The head had been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees, so that it pointed in the wrong direction.

“Dear God!” he gasped. “His neck has been wrung like a pigeon’s.” He crouched down to examine ten finger-sized bruises, five tattooed on either side of the neck. “And by someone with a demon’s grip.”

Wilde made a dry heaving sound and gripped a drinks cabinet to steady himself. “I think I shall look for clues outside,” he said in a squeezed-tight voice.

“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed. “Detective Blenkinsop, please help Mister Wilde.”

The young detective took Wilde firmly by the arm and walked him out of the room.

As they left, two new constables crowded in through the parlor door, gawking at the corpse.

“Lumme! What’d I tell ya, Alfie?” the first said, elbowing his companion.

“Yer right, Stan. Won’t nobody be sneakin’ up on him from behind now!”

The prospect of the horrifying tableau becoming a macabre attraction struck a nerve with Conan Doyle. He rose to his feet and bellowed at the young constables: “Show some respect, damn you! This man was a hero of the British Empire. He was at the Charge of the Light Brigade and earned the Victoria Cross for valor!”

Detective Blenkinsop stepped back into the room just in time to hear. He threw a scowl at the two constables and jerked a thumb at the door, saying, “Right, you two, hop it!”

The young constables skulked out, heads lowered in shame. Conan Doyle took in a deep breath, bracing himself, and then dropped to his knees and rolled the body over. Once turned upon on its back, he took the noble head in both hands and turned it the right way around. The corpse wore evening dress, the once-elegant tuxedo jacket glutinous with congealing blood.

“Dressed for dinner,” he noted. “Lord Howell was evidently about to go out.”

He paused and sniffed in deeply. A bitter tang of cordite spooled in the air. He looked down to see the fingers of Lord Howell’s right hand still curled about the trigger of a revolver — a Webley Mark IV. Conan Doyle eased it from fingers stiffening with rigor and snapped open the barrel with a practiced flick of the wrist and dumped out a handful of spent shell casings into his palm.

“All six rounds have been fired.”

Conan Doyle gripped the corpse’s wrist. The body was cold and when he lifted the arm, it bent like a strip of India rubber — the bones had been smashed to fragments. He unbuttoned the tuxedo jacket and peeled open the blood-soaked fabric. A moment’s palpation revealed that the sternum and every rib were broken. He concluded his examination by patting down the stomach and legs, searching for bullet wounds. To his astonishment, he found not a one.

And then he looked up and his mouth dropped open in astonishment. One wall bore the bloody imprint of a body. He rose and stumbled closer. Something had hurled Lord Howell’s body at the wall with tremendous force, leaving a man-sized dent in the plaster and a ballistic spray of blood.

“What on earth could have done this?” Conan Doyle breathed.

Blenkinsop shook his head, baffled. “Now you know why I fetched you, sir. I can’t fathom none of it.”

The Scottish doctor finally turned away from his ghoulish task, wiping sticky blood from his hands on a handkerchief. He flashed a grim look at Detective Blenkinsop. “I can find no bullet wounds. Not a single one. That can only mean—”

“All this blood?” Blenkinsop interjected. “It’s not his?”

“Unbelievable, but yes.”

“There must have been multiple assailants,” Conan Doyle speculated. “Lord Howell fired six shots, many of which clearly found their target. If a single man lost that much blood he would have died on the spot.”

“If it was something human what killed him.” Detective Blenkinsop spoke aloud what Conan Doyle had secretly conjectured. The smashed front door, the demolished parlor, the body hurled against the wall and then beaten to a bag of broken bones — all after six shots spilled pints of blood everywhere — defied rational explanation. It seemed more like the attack of a raging monster than a man… or men.

“Pardon, Detective, but I must step outside to clear my head.”

When Conan Doyle emerged through the ruined doorway, Wilde was lurking by the front gate, smoking a cigarette. The Irishman saw Conan Doyle approach and drew him farther away with a nod.

“What is it, Oscar?”

“I believe I have spotted what your fellow Sherlock Holmes would have referred to as ‘a clue.’”

Conan Doyle’s eyebrows rose. He leaned close and whispered, “What?”

“Look at the gatepost on the right.” Wilde drew out his silver cigarette case, opened it with a practiced flick, and held it out to the two constables standing guard. “Care for a cigarette?”

The nearest constable turned his head, sneaking a subtle look-around. “Very decent of you, sir. Don’t mind if I do.” As he stepped forward, the gatepost he had been shielding came into view, giving Conan Doyle clear sight of a figure scrawled in chalk:

“Much obliged, sir. I’ll smoke it later.” The constable grinned as he tucked the cigarette in a pocket and stepped back to his post, hiding the chalk scrawl once again.

Conan Doyle and Wilde casually stepped away, leaning their heads together to confer.

“Just random graffiti?” Conan Doyle pondered.

“We are in Belgravia. A place where the idle scribbler and his ball of chalk seldom make an appearance.”

“Quite right.”

Something caught Conan Doyle’s eye, and he tugged at his friend’s sleeve, nodding at the road. “If you look at just the right angle, you can see a trail of bloody footprints leading off into the fog.”

The Irish wit peered down, eyes asquint. “Ah yes, I see them now. Should we inform your detective friend?”

Conan Doyle shook his head. “Not just yet. Perhaps you and I should investigate before the London constabulary has a chance to tramp all over them with their regulation size nines.” He stepped onto the road and nodded for his friend to follow. “Come, Oscar. Let’s see where they lead.”

Wilde’s face plummeted. “Ah, you expect me to accompany you? I had rather planned on standing sentinel at the front gate.”

“I need you to watch my back.”

Wilde’s expression betrayed a decided lack of enthusiasm. “Which begs the question, who shall watch mine?”

Conan Doyle stepped from the curb into the street and Wilde reluctantly traipsed after. In less than ten strides, the house, the Mariah, and the police officers vanished from sight.

“I do not think we should stray too far,” Wilde worried aloud, “lest we become lost in the fog.”

Conan Doyle did not reply. He had his head down, eyes scouring the pavement for footprints. They reached a low garden wall daubed with a bloody handprint.

“Look! He put out a hand here to steady himself.” Conan Doyle looked at Wilde and spoke in a voice coiled tight with urgency. “Come, the assailant cannot be far ahead.”

“That is precisely what I am afraid of.”

“Judging by the staggering gait, if the murderer is still alive, he’s badly wounded and unlikely to be a danger to us.”

They followed the trail of fading footprints as they reeled around a corner into a side street. But instead of petering out, the footsteps carried on. And on. And on. Until finally, in a circle of light beneath a streetlamp, they found the bloody corpse of a large man slumped facedown on the pavement, the staring eyes opaque with death.

“Riddled from front to back with bullet wounds,” Conan Doyle said. “I count at least five.” He fixed Wilde with an urgent look. “Guard the body, Oscar, I must fetch Detective Blenkinsop at once.”

Distress flashed across Wilde’s long face. “Come now, Arthur,” he laughed shakily. “Dead bodies require little guarding. Who would wish to steal one? I have seen my share of wakes and lyings-in growing up in Ireland and I have found that the dead seldom make for good company. They are poor conversationalists, and should one actually speak, I am sure it should have nothing I would like to hear.”

“Very well. You fetch Detective Blenkinsop and I shall remain behind.”

Wilde took one step away from the pool of light beneath the streetlamp and recoiled. It was clear he realized that becoming lost in the fog was a real possibility.

“On second thought,” he corrected, “you are quite right. It would be better if I remained here whilst you return for help.”

As Conan Doyle moved to step away, Wilde death-gripped his arm. “This would be an appropriate time for haste, Arthur.”

“I shall not dilly-dally.” In just three steps the fog swallowed the Scottish author. Two more and it suffocated even the sound of his footfalls.

Instantly, Wilde found himself totally… utterly… alone. A solitary figure marooned on an island of lamplight, his isolation was palpable. The street. The houses. London… no longer existed.

It was a bitter night. He squirmed his shoulders deeper into his fur coat, large hands rummaging for warmth in his fur-lined pockets. Cold radiated up from the pavement through the soles of his shiny leather shoes. He stamped his feet, setting frozen toes tingling. Reluctant to look back at the bullet-riddled corpse, he gazed instead into the seething grayness, shivering from more than the November chill.

Long… long… long minutes passed.

“Really,” he said aloud to keep himself company, “what is taking Arthur so long?” He finished his cigarette and tossed the glowing fag end away, then fumbled his silver cigarette case from his pocket, flicked a lucifer to life with his thumbnail, kindled another cigarette with shaking hands, and gloved them in his pockets once again. He drew in a comforting lungful of warm smoke and let it out. Then, from somewhere, a faint noise caught his ear: wisssshthump… wisssssshthump… wissssssshthump…

It was a noise somehow familiar. He looked around, straining his eyes. The fog curled into arabesques, as though stirred by invisible shapes moving through it. A nervous glance confirmed the body was still there. But then, as he watched, the fingers of the left hand twitched.

Wilde’s eyes widened.

The left leg shivered and kicked.

The cigarette tumbled from Wilde’s lips.

The corpse heaved; the chest rose and fell.

Wilde’s head quivered atop his neck, but he could not look away.

And then, the arm flexed. Shifted. Drew back. A bloody hand grappled for a handhold and the corpse began to push itself up from the pavement.

Wilde took a step backward.

A plume of steam shot out both its nostrils with a pneumatic hissssssssssssss.

Wilde stumbled backward several steps, unaware of the shape looming in the fog behind him.

The arm suddenly buckled and the corpse slumped facedown to the pavement with an expiring wheeze.

Wilde shrieked as a hand clamped upon his shoulder and a ghastly glowing face swam up through the fog. “It’s me, Oscar.” Conan Doyle was holding a police officer’s bull’s-eye lantern that lit his face eerily from below. A second wraith materialized beside him: Detective Blenkinsop.

“It moved,” Wilde said breathlessly. “It groaned and moved.”

“That happens,” Conan Doyle reassured. “Dead bodies are filled with gases. They gurgle. They twitch. Sometimes sit up. I have experienced it myself, working the morgue as a medical student. It’s simply—”

“No, you fail to understand. It struggled to rise—”

“Oscar, I assure you, the fellow is quite dead.”

But despite the reassurance, the Irishman was reluctant to approach any closer. Conan Doyle and Detective Blenkinsop stepped to the body, hitched their trouser legs, and dropped to a crouch for a closer examination. Lit from below, the glare from the bull’s-eye lanterns stretched their faces into black-socketed fright masks.

“I count five bullet holes,” Conan Doyle said.

“Lord Howell was quite the marksman. He only missed once.”

“How on earth did the man stagger this far after taking five bullets? It’s almost as if he walked until he ran out of blood.”

Blenkinsop shook his head. “Like I said, something awful queer…”

Conan Doyle did not respond. The night. The fog. The grotesque murder. Everything conspired to twist minds in an eldritch direction. Determined not to lose his grip on rationality, he asked, “When do you estimate this happened?”

“The neighbors said they heard a row about six o’clock. A lot of shoutin’ and yellin’. Then shots. Five or more. A footman from the house two doors down was sent to run and fetch the police. But it took a while for a constable to arrive — what with the fog and all.”

“Six o’clock?” Conan Doyle repeated. “That’s nearly four hours ago!” He touched a hand to the dead man’s throat and looked up at Detective Blenkinsop in amazement. “Impossible! Lord Howell’s body was quite cold. But this body is still warm. Very warm. Burning up, in fact, as if the man had a fever!” He grabbed the heavy arm and lifted its dead weight. “No sign of rigor; he could not have died more than half an hour ago.”

Detective Blenkinsop leaned closer, sniffed the corpse, and recoiled. “Ugh! He pongs something ’orrible. Like he’s been dead a fortnight!”

Conan Doyle had also noticed the distinctive stench of corruption. “Maybe that’s a clue: he could be a tanner… or an abattoir worker… or a resurrection man.” He dragged the beam of his lantern across the body. The corpse was dressed in a motley of tattered clothes picked from the bottom of a rag bin. Clothes too shabby even for a casual laborer. The lank mop of black hair was greasy and matted. The lantern beam swept across the exposed back of the neck and paused.

“Look,” Conan Doyle said, pointing. “He has a tattoo of some kind. Let’s see if we can’t get a better look at it.” He scrunched down to turn the head further toward the light.

The young detective leaned closer and shone his own light in the murderer’s face, but then let out a shout of surprise and sprang to his feet, backpedaling several steps.

“What is it?” Conan Doyle asked. “Do you recognize him?”

Blenkinsop nodded manically, never taking his startled eyes off the corpse. “Yeah, I know him. I’d know him anywhere. But it ain’t possible. It ain’t possible!”

“What is it? Speak up, man. Who is this fellow?”

“I know the face. A-a-and that butterfly tattoo on his neck. I only seen a tattoo like that once before. It’s Charlie Higginbotham, that is. And no doubt about it.”

“A criminal you are acquainted with?”

“Charlie’s a petty thief. A dip. A cracksman. Strictly small time. It’s him. It’s definitely him. But it can’t be… it just can’t.”

“What do you mean? Why ever not?”

Detective Blenkinsop fixed the Scottish author with a demented stare. “Two months ago, I collared Charlie for the murder of his wife. I even testified against him at the trial.” He paused to lick dry lips. “I watched him take the drop last week at Newgate Prison. Hanged for murder. The last time I seen Charlie Higginbotham the hangman was digging the rope out of his neck. And he was dead. Very dead!”