The Immorality Engine

CHAPTER
18

Veronica peered over the lip of the building at the twenty-foot drop and pondered, not for the first time that day, whether Newbury was utterly insane.

They’d come from Chelsea an hour earlier, after collecting an array of equipment from Newbury’s home-lock picks, some small blades, an old revolver-to make a reconnaissance of Packworth House, the home of the Bastion Society. She’d never seen Newbury carry a gun, and she wondered what it was about the Bastion Society that had him spooked enough to arm himself with one now. She hoped he wouldn’t find cause to use it.

Scarbright, dressed in his immaculate suit, had been waiting at the house with a note from Bainbridge. Newbury had read it swiftly in the drawing room before showing it to her. Its contents were minimal, but spoke volumes:

Newbury, Someone is moving against the Queen. Continue with the Sykes matter without me. Yours, Charles

The note had been scrawled in haste; Bainbridge’s handwriting was scratchy and rushed. This, then, was no small matter. It was unlike the chief inspector to be harried. Scarbright confirmed that the note had arrived by courier a little earlier in the evening, meaning that Bainbridge was too busy to call on them in person. This had sparked an hour-long debate between Veronica and Newbury regarding how to proceed. Newbury had considered calling off their plans for the evening and heading over to the palace to assist Bainbridge with whatever was going on over there, but Veronica had remained insistent. She’d argued that they needed to push forward with their pursuit of the Bastion Society. If Amelia’s horrific vision of the terrible things to come-not to mention Newbury’s own predictions-had anything to do with the attacks on the palace, then they needed to work out if the Bastion Society was somehow involved. Bainbridge, Veronica assured him, could handle the Queen.

Besides, by that point, Victoria would already have called in an entire armed garrison to fortify the palace. If she needed Newbury, she would already have sent for him.

All of that was true. But Veronica couldn’t deny that her sister’s plight had played a large part in her steering of the conversation. Amelia needed her. If storming the Bastion Society could provide the answers as to what Dr. Fabian was doing to her, and perhaps even the key to extracting her safely from the Grayling Institute, then Veronica would not be swayed. At that point, she’d already decided that if Newbury had insisted on rushing off to help Bainbridge, she would have continued to execute their plans alone. She wasn’t about to allow the matter to be swept aside-not for Newbury, not for the Queen, not for anyone.

In the end, however, Newbury had reluctantly agreed, and they caught a cab across town, stopping a few streets from Packworth House so they might approach the building more surreptitiously on foot.

Now, they were perched on the rooftop of a neighbouring building, looking down at a balcony a storey below, across the other side of an alleyway.

Newbury came over to stand beside her, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Veronica. I’ll ask you again: Are you sure you want to go through with this?” He sounded concerned, as if he were willing her to say no.

She nodded. She’d done worse, risked her life in more perilous endeavours. All the same, the notion of leaping across from one building to the other very much filled her with dread.

In the preceding hour, they had performed their reconnaissance of the entire building, and short of marching up to the front door and announcing their presence, they could see no better way into the premises. The balcony appeared to be unguarded, and the locks on the French doors would, Newbury assured her, be relatively easy to pick.

Veronica looked at the drop again, and her stomach lurched. Newbury went in for this sort of thing much more than she did. In fact, he seemed to relish it, if his zeal in sizing up the void between the two buildings was any indication. It wasn’t that she wasn’t capable-she’d proved that time and time again, particularly during the matter of the Persian Teardrop, when she’d spent much of her time hopping about on the rooftops of Paris, trying to recover the stolen jewel. No, it was more that she’d much prefer to operate with her feet firmly planted on the ground.

Still, at least the rain had abated. The ground was still wet, but they’d been able to avoid the worst of the downpour. She only hoped the balcony itself wouldn’t be too wet for a safe landing.

She was beginning to feel the chill. She turned to Newbury. “Let’s get on with it, Maurice,” she said, again lapsing into the familiar.

Newbury nodded. “Yes, let’s.” He straightened up, took three or four steps back from the lip of the building, and then dashed forward, leaping off the edge, arms cartwheeling as he hurtled through the air.

“Maurice!” Veronica exclaimed, her hands involuntarily going to her mouth. Her heart skipped a beat.

And then he was over, landing on the balcony with a thump. He skittered on the wet tiles and lost his balance, ending up on his backside. He stood, hauling himself up with support from the railings that ran around the edge of the balcony, and dusted himself off. He looked up at her ruefully. “Are you coming?” he called.

Veronica rolled her eyes. She was about to ruin a perfectly good blue dress. She reached down, kicked off her shoes, and flung them at Newbury, who, surprised, managed to throw his arms out just in time to catch them before they struck him hard in the chest. Then, hitching up her skirts, she followed Newbury’s lead, pacing back four or five steps before charging forward, hopping up onto the stone lip of the building and propelling herself off the roof. She sailed through the air in a smooth arc, coming to land adroitly a couple of feet away from Newbury. He reached out to steady her as she found her balance. Her heart was thumping in her chest, but she felt exhilarated. She looked up at the building behind her. God-had she just done that?

Newbury handed her the shoes. “Let’s hope we can get these doors open, or we really are stuck now,” he said, with a grin.

Veronica slipped her shoes back on as Newbury fished around in his pocket, eventually producing the lock picks. They consisted of a bundle of fine metal rods, wrapped in a roll of black velvet. He dropped to his knees, carefully examining the lock on the French doors, running his fingers over the various tools as he tried to select the appropriate size and shape.

“Have you-?” Veronica began.

“Shhh!” he chided.

Ignoring him, she reached out and tried the door handle. It turned easily, and the door creaked open. “-tried the handle?”

Newbury laughed, getting to his feet. “Oh, very good, Miss Hobbes.”

She shrugged. “Why would anyone lock the French doors on a second-storey balcony? Logical, really.”

Newbury shrugged. “In case someone decides to jump across from a nearby building with plans of breaking and entering?” he replied smartly.

They both grinned. Veronica peered through the opening.

The room beyond the French doors was shrouded in darkness. Veronica gestured for Newbury to remain quiet and slowly edged the door a little wider, wincing as the hinges squealed loudly in protest. She inched forward, stepping carefully over the threshold, listening intently for any sounds of movement or occupation from within. The coast appeared to be clear. She crept into the room, beckoning for Newbury to follow her.

Inside, silhouettes loomed out of the gloom, impressions of furniture and other, indiscernible shapes. Bookshelves, a desk, a tall lamp stand: everything she would expect to find in a typical gentleman’s study. The place seemed relatively normal. Or so she thought until she saw the thing on the wall. She nearly cried out in fright when she caught sight of it: a stuffed lion’s head mounted on a wooden plaque above the desk. It was frozen in a magnificent roar, its teeth bared, its glass eyes gleaming in the reflected starlight from the windows. A trophy, she realised, of someone’s conquest in Africa. It was morbid, egotistical, and entirely unnecessary.

Newbury came up behind her. He leaned close, his voice barely above a whisper. “There’s the door.” He pointed over at the opposite wall, where Veronica could just make out a crack of light seeping in under the frame. “Wait here and I’ll take a look.”

He slipped past her, avoiding a settee in the centre of the room near the desk. Veronica watched as he slowly turned the handle, easing the door open a fraction of an inch so that he could peer out into the hallway beyond. Bright light slanted in through the crack, casting Newbury in sharp relief.

He glanced back over his shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “It’s all clear.”

Newbury stepped through the door and Veronica followed.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the harsh glare of the gaslights she encountered on the other side. She found herself in a hallway, a long, carpeted corridor with five or six other doors radiating off it. A fabulous array of paintings adorned the walls, the work of romantic artists such as Waterhouse and Millais, each depicting scenes of Arthurian knights rescuing fair maidens or charging into battle, or else landscapes of a green and pleasant England, the ramparts of ancient castles in the distance. These were visions of an England that had never existed in anything other than the dreams of a few fantasists, or in myths and legends, passed down through the ages. But here they were everywhere, lining the walls, as if the members of the Bastion Society considered them windows through which to glimpse the glorious past, the secret bygone age of chivalry and magic. Veronica had to admit they did evoke a certain mood, a sense of longing for the romance of a time that never was.

She glanced down the corridor at Newbury. He was testing the doors to see if any of them were unlocked. One of them was, and without hesitation he swung it open and disappeared inside. Veronica rushed along the passageway after him on her tiptoes. Farther down the corridor she could discern the low, monotonous hubbub of many voices chattering away, accompanied by the clinking of glasses and the clatter of cutlery and china. She guessed this was from the level below, the great hall in which they had spoken to Enoch Graves during their last visit to Packworth. It was clearly far busier tonight. She wondered if it was another of their banquets.

Veronica was just about to turn into the room into which Newbury had disappeared when he reemerged, shaking his head. She shrugged, and he motioned her farther down the corridor. They tried each of the doors, finding only one other unlocked.

In here, Veronica found a bedchamber of sorts. There was a small cot in one corner, along with a gentleman’s wardrobe and chest of drawers. Another painting hung on the wall-a knight, clad in shining plate armour, aiding a redheaded maiden to dismount from her steed.

Veronica gathered that the Bastion Society would see symbolism in these paintings, that their members looked to these chivalric heroes of old for their inspiration, their code. She wondered if that was really such a bad thing. Surely it was preferable to the sort of devil-worshipping cults they usually had to deal with?

They left the bedchamber and tiptoed cautiously to the end of the corridor. Here, the noise from the hall below became a dramatic cacophony. It was impossible to distinguish any of what was being said due to the sheer volume and intensity of the chatter, the number of voices talking at once.

The corridor terminated in a wide balcony that circled the entirety of the upper level. Numerous corridors branched off from this central terminus at regular intervals, and a grand, sweeping staircase joined this upper floor with the great hall below.

A waist-high stone balustrade formed a neat parapet that enclosed the balcony, enabling people on the upper level to look down upon the proceedings below. Thankfully, no one seemed to be making use of the balcony at present. Veronica supposed they were all too busy enjoying the festivities with their comrades down below.

Newbury edged towards the parapet as quietly and slowly as possible. He dropped into a crouch behind it and peered between the balusters at the hall below.

Veronica, anxious to know what was going on, dashed quickly across the open space and dropped to her knees just beside him. He looked up at her in surprise, raising one eyebrow as if to enquire what she thought she was doing, and then appeared to think better of it and returned his attention to the men below. Veronica smiled and did the same.

There must have been a hundred men in the hall, perhaps more. It was difficult to tell with so many of them moving about, bustling from table to table, conversation to conversation. They were all dressed in identical attire-dark grey suits and matching bowler hats, each with a red sash tied around their left arm. Each sash bore a different three-figure number, marked in white. She wondered what the numbers could be for. Was it some sort of pseudo-militaristic code?

The men were sitting-mostly-around large circular tables, enjoying what looked to Veronica like a mediaeval feast. Huge platters of roast meat sat in the centre of every table. The whole thing looked like an exercise in gluttony, and the manner in which the men were attacking the meal, feeding themselves with their fingers, stuffing the greasy meat into their mouths, made Veronica feel queasy.

Servants in black suits and white gloves, like the butlers and waiters they had seen during their previous visit, flitted about amongst the tables followed by bizarre eight-legged automata.

Veronica had never seen anything like them. They were waist-high, with multijointed legs and a skittering gait that reminded her of the assassin device that had attacked her and Newbury at her apartment. She fought to repress a brief shudder. These were much larger, and there were at least ten of them running about between the tables, bearing trays stacked high with empty plates and glasses. They were a kind of self-propelling trolley, she realised, each one assigned to a different waiter, who loaded the machines with the remnants of the feast and sent them scuttling back to the kitchen.

She spotted Enoch Graves standing before the fireplace, laughing and carousing with another man. Like the others, he was dressed in a grey suit with a matching bowler hat. His red sash was adorned with the number 001 -indicating his prime position within the strange society, she supposed-and he was still wearing his dress sabre strapped to his belt.

Veronica turned at a gentle tap on her shoulder. Newbury motioned for her to move away from the edge of the balcony. Veronica did so, and he shuffled along beside her.

Veronica stood, keeping her back to the wall, just out of sight-she hoped-from anyone below who might be looking up in her direction. A quick glance at the staircase told her they were still alone.

Newbury stood beside her and leaned in, so close that she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. “Let’s take a look at the hallway on the other side,” he whispered, pointing across the open space at a corridor across from where they stood. They’d have to work their way around the balcony to get there. Together they crept along it, keeping themselves out of view of the people below. The noise of the festivities meant that they could travel swiftly without risk of being heard, so it was only a matter of moments before they were turning down the corridor Newbury had pointed out to her.

More paintings lined the walls here. Veronica realised how much money must have gone into furnishing the house. Each painting must be worth hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. And the banquet wouldn’t be cheap, either. Where were they getting their funds?

Newbury tested the handles on one side of the passageway while Veronica did the same on the other. More bedrooms, more locked doors. They were clearly in some sort of dormitory area, the place where members of the society could take rooms in times of need or inebriation. Some of these rooms appeared to have been recently inhabited, with beds that had been slept in and small piles of belongings on the bedside tables. Others were empty and disused.

The corridor terminated in another door. Veronica realised that the layout of the house must be symmetrical such that the room in front of her corresponded to the study they had used to gain entrance to the house. She tried the door. It was unlocked.

Expecting to find either another bedchamber or another desk, Veronica swung the door open and stepped inside. The sight that greeted her, however, was so grotesque that she immediately rushed back out into the corridor and retched. She leaned both her hands against the wall, hoping to soak up some of its strength, trying her utmost not to swoon.

The room was full of bodies.

Newbury rushed to her side. “Veronica!” he whispered urgently. “Are you unwell? What’s the mat…” He trailed off as he glanced up and saw, through the open door, the same harrowing vision of Hell that had sent her running from the room.

Naked human bodies hung from the ceiling on row after row of meat hooks, like carcasses in a butcher’s shop, a forest of white, damaged hides. The bodies were once men, but they had been so brutalised, so mutilated, that they no longer resembled anything but hunks of pale, bloody flesh.

The stink emanating from the room caused her to retch again, and this time she couldn’t hold back her vomit, a thin, watery stream that splashed on the maroon carpet by her feet. She wiped her mouth and looked apologetically at Newbury, but he was still staring in shock at the contents of the dimly lit room. Mustering her strength, she moved to stand beside him.

“I recognise some of them,” Newbury said, his voice tremulous. He approached the door, hovered on the threshold for a second, and then went inside. Frowning, Veronica followed.

Newbury walked amongst the hanging dead, his expression switching from repulsion to fascination as he examined the corpses in more detail. Flies buzzed around the victims’ heads in thick black swarms.

“These are ritual killings,” Newbury said, his voice echoing. Veronica realised for the first time how big the room really was. There were probably a hundred flayed bodies in there, each of them hanging from the ceiling like fleshy stalactites. The windows had been blacked out with thick drapes, and the only light came from a bright electric strip that arced across the ceiling, humming with power. There was no furniture in the room, other than a small table bearing various implements of torture: a hammer, a saw, a whip, some tongs. The sight of them threatened to turn Veronica’s stomach again.

She glanced up at the pale face of one of the corpses. The sallow, sunken eyes and the manner in which the jaw hung loosely open, clearly broken, suggested many, many hours of torture had been enacted upon the victim before he was finally killed. She noticed that the man’s torso had runes and magical symbols carved on it. She examined another. This one had been tattooed with similar markings. Yet another had a large pentagram branded into his back, just below the shoulders. She could see what Newbury was getting at. Ritual killings. It seemed the Bastion Society was a lot more sinister and dangerous than either of them had imagined.

“Why?” She turned to Newbury, who was still wandering amongst the hanging bodies. “What are they hoping to gain from all this? Surely if they were only interested in murdering their enemies, they’d dispose of the bodies somewhere, rather than stringing them up like this for everyone to see?”

“I rather think that’s the point of all this,” Newbury replied cryptically. He swung one of the corpses around on its hook, stooping low to examine the feet. Veronica blanched at the sight of the metal hook, which had pierced the dead man’s shoulder, rending his flesh around the exit wound. The blood had long ago dried and been cleared away.

Newbury was prising apart the toes of the dead man’s left foot as if this were all quite normal, something he might do every day. Veronica didn’t want to brush against one of them by accident, let alone touch them deliberately. The last time she’d seen death on such a scale was in the wreck of the Lady Armitage, the airship that had crashed in Finsbury Park last year. But it later transpired that those bodies had been victims of the Revenant plague, so in many ways they had already been dead before the crash. But this? Something monstrous was going on here.

“It’s just as I thought,” Newbury said as he let the body swing free again. The hook creaked on its chain, and the cadaver knocked against another with a dull slap, setting that one swinging in turn, so that its head lolled in a semblance of nodding. Veronica turned away.

“In what sense?” she managed to ask, still fighting the urge to gag. Everywhere she looked there was a putrefying eyeball, or a disembowelled belly, or worse. She settled for focusing on Newbury’s face.

“Haven’t you noticed? All the victims are men. There are no women in here. What does that tell you?”

Veronica sighed. Now really wasn’t the time for one of his deductive games. “No. I didn’t notice,” she replied hotly. I’m too busy finding this whole situation rather too appalling for words, she thought, but didn’t add that to her response.

“They’re like Sykes. All of them. Clean. Unused. As if their flesh has never been worn.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “They’re copies.”

“More duplicates? But the scale of it…” She trailed off, thinking once again of Amelia. Somehow, this whole thing was linked, but she hoped beyond hope that this wasn’t what would become of those duplicates she had encountered at the Grayling Institute. That would simply be too much to bear. “You said you recognised some of them?”

Newbury nodded. “The men from downstairs. That’s why there are no women. All of these corpses are members of the Bastion Society. Look here.” He beckoned her over and pointed to a dangling corpse, about three feet away from where he was standing. She recognised the face immediately.

“Oh God! It’s Enoch Graves!” She swallowed, but her mouth was dry. The corpse had been neutered and its chest cavity wrenched open, its heart torn out. “What on Earth are they doing here?” She was utterly appalled, uncomprehending.

Newbury put his arm around her shoulders and she fell against him, burying her face in the crook of his neck. She didn’t want to look anymore.

“The occult symbolism suggests this is some sort of transference ritual,” he said, lapsing into his lecturing voice. Veronica realised his only way of staying unaffected by the horrors they were facing was to turn off his emotional reaction and approach them like a scholar, without passion, like a puzzle that needed to be solved.

“Transference?”

“Yes. It’s all about establishing a balance. You see, some religions and philosophies believe that every act a person commits has consequences, and that the universe finds a means to pay that person back in kind. So if you hurt someone, the likelihood is that you, in turn, would get hurt. Similarly, if you demonstrate kindness, you will be shown kindness in return. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘treat people as you’d ask to be treated’?”

Veronica nodded. “Yes. But where does the transference come into it?”

Newbury clacked his tongue against his teeth. “Dr. Fabian mentioned karmic debt for how he’d helped to provide Graves with the means to carry out bizarre rituals. Perhaps those rituals involve inflicting pain on their doppelgangers in an effort to avoid that karmic settlement? They might think that if their duplicates suffer horribly, they won’t have to.” He paused, and she could feel him sighing sadly as she held on to him, still refusing to look at the dangling bodies all around her. “And if I’m right, that means they’ve committed some terrible atrocities indeed, if this is the result of their efforts to avoid the redressing of the balance. Either that or they’re rather overcompensating.”

“Or putting credit in the bank, so to speak.” The voice rang out, echoing around the large room. It was a voice she recognised immediately, dripping with arrogance and affected refinement. Enoch Graves. His footsteps rang out against the tiled floor as he approached, making no effort to conceal himself from them. “You almost have it, Newbury, and I must admit I’m terribly impressed! Good show! There’s just one thing you’ve got wrong…” He paused as he finally found them, brushing aside one of his dead, mutilated colleagues to clear his path. “They were never alive. We’re not monsters. The machine makes copies, yes, but it never instills the spark of life. They’re just dead husks that look and smell and feel like us, but they’re never conscious. They never feel pain.”

Graves stood before them, resplendent in his grey suit and bowler hat. He appraised them both. Veronica had turned to watch him approach, and was now eyeing him warily, wondering what he was going to do next. Was he telling the truth? If he was, what was going on at the Grayling Institute with Amelia? Those duplicates were certainly not dead husks.

“Then how could the transference ever work?” Veronica was still standing in front of Newbury. He held her firmly in front of him, and she realised that his hand was moving to his trouser pocket, out of sight of Graves. He was reaching for his revolver. “If they never feel pain, the karmic debt is never repaid. It’s all for nothing.”

Graves shrugged. “I suppose we’ll discover which of us is right in the next life,” he said, a sneer on his lips. He held his arms out as if welcoming them. “Oh, it is nice to have visitors. And you’ve saved us such trouble, coming here like this. I had intended to send someone out to kill you, Newbury, but now there’s no need. It’s just a shame you didn’t bring Sir Charles along with you, too. We’ve had to deal with him separately.”

Veronica felt Newbury stiffen. She prepared herself. If she could cause a distraction…

She rushed forwards, swinging her arm up and around to aim a blow at Graves’s jaw. He saw her coming, however, and was ready for her, lashing out in self-defence and knocking her brutally to the ground with a swipe of his arm.

She’d given Newbury the distraction he needed, however, and he swung his right arm up in one easy motion, presenting Graves with the business end of his revolver. He cocked it with his thumb. “What have you done with Charles? Where is he now?”

Veronica kept her eyes on Graves as she pulled herself up from the floor. Her hands were smarting from where she’d struck the tiles in the fall.

Graves, however, had not taken his eyes off Newbury and the gun, ignoring Veronica and acting as if nothing had happened. He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, Newbury. I’d wager he’s in a hundred pieces by now, blown apart on his way to the palace. But my men haven’t returned, so I can’t answer your question. That’s the truth of the matter.” That gave Veronica hope. Perhaps Charles had been able to evade them, or better still, to best them somehow. She willed that to be true.

She glanced at Newbury. His expression was hard, unforgiving. He wasn’t playing along with Graves’s banter. “I’m not feeling very inclined to go easy on you, Graves.” He stabbed the air threateningly with the gun. His finger hovered on the trigger. Veronica wondered what he was going to do. He’d never been the sort to kill someone in cold blood, even for something as world-shattering as murdering his dearest friend. But the glint in his eye suggested otherwise. Perhaps, in this instance, Newbury felt he was the one who needed to mete out that unpaid karmic debt.

Suddenly there was a blur of motion. Newbury buckled, his face contorted in pain, and the gun clattered noisily to the tiles a few feet away. For a moment, Veronica couldn’t figure out exactly what had occurred, until she saw the sabre in Graves’s hand, and realised with mounting dismay that he had managed to draw it and use it to disarm Newbury, all in a matter of seconds.

Graves came forward, the tip of his sabre pressing dangerously against the front of Newbury’s jacket. He looked serious now, all sense of his earlier playfulness banished. “Now, Sir Maurice,” he said in a perfectly reasonable tone, “I think it’s about time you and I sat down together and discussed this like gentlemen.”