The Immorality Engine

CHAPTER
3

Contrary to Bainbridge’s assertion, the journey from Johnny Chang’s passed in awkward, embarrassed silence.

Bainbridge stared out of the carriage window, his face creased in a deep frown, watching the city roll by as the steam-powered hansom clattered noisily over the cobbled roads. He refused to look at Newbury, who was slumped on the opposite seat, his eyes lost in shadow, his chin resting forlornly on his chest. His hair was lank and he looked haggard. He smelled of stale sweat and tobacco smoke.

Veronica tried not to stare, instead shooting furtive glances in his direction. She found herself wishing she could hear his thoughts. It pained her to see him in such a sorry state. She wanted nothing more than to grab him, shake him, and slap him hard across the face, then hold him and tell him that everything was going to be well. But she couldn’t, for a thousand reasons. She could not promise him that. She did not know with any conviction that everything was going to be well.

Newbury’s addiction to the oriental weed had grown steadily more acute over recent months. It had begun with the occasional absence from the office. This in itself was not unusual for Newbury, who was often called away at short notice by the Queen, or found himself tied up in a case with Sir Charles and unable to meet his more prosaic commitments.

But the absences had grown more frequent, more erratic, and more keenly felt by others further abroad than the museum. Veronica had even been hauled before Her Majesty to give account of herself, to explain why Newbury had not attended the Court’s summons and why Veronica was failing in her duty to keep him from straying. The monarch had admonished her gravely and ordered her to bring the errant Newbury to heel.

Sir Charles, too, had called on her on more than one occasion, partly to express his concern for his absent friend and partly to solicit her input on certain cases, which was only too welcome a distraction. Veronica suspected that Sir Charles also felt some measure of responsibility for her in Newbury’s absence, as if she somehow needed protecting and it fell on him to take the place of his friend during this “temporary period of illness,” as he had begun to call it.

She supposed it was a form of illness: a malaise of the spirit, perhaps, and a sickness of the body. Newbury had come to rely on a drug he once told her was a tool, the means by which he achieved the clarity of thought that helped him to solve his cases. But his need had become a physical one, and his body craved the weed. It became so integral to his process-to his daily life-that he now found it impossible to operate without it. And if he knew what a detrimental effect it was having on his health, he refused to acknowledge it.

Sir Charles was wrong: this wasn’t a phase that was going to blow over. And no matter what she told herself, Newbury could not continue in such a fashion. She would have to intervene. But not for the reasons Her Majesty had impressed upon her: for Queen and country and the safety of the realm. She would do it for Newbury, because she loved him, and because she refused to stand by and watch him commit a slow and degrading suicide. He would have to learn to live without the drug. There was no other choice. The only problem, she admitted to herself, was the fact that she hadn’t the slightest idea how to begin.

So instead she joined the two men in their silence, each of them avoiding the only subject that was playing on their minds.

Soon enough, the hansom sputtered to a stop outside the police morgue, and the driver rapped loudly on the roof to inform them that they had reached their destination.

Bainbridge was up and out of the cab before Veronica had even had a chance to gather her thoughts. She heard him barking commands at the driver, which did little to dispel the sense of tension between them. She looked over at Newbury, who was still slouched over in his rumpled suit. “Sir Maurice. We have arrived.”

Slowly, groggily, Newbury raised his head. He glanced out of the window with bleary eyes. “Yes, indeed, Miss Hobbes.” His voice was little more than a dry croak. Veronica was beginning to wonder whether dragging him out of the opium den hadn’t been a huge mistake.

Then, as if digging deep into the reserves of his strength, Newbury pulled himself upright, groaning in protest, before beckoning for Veronica to exit the carriage ahead of him.

Outside, Charles was tapping his cane impatiently on the pavement. Veronica stepped down and took her place beside him, hoping that his simmering temper would soon abate. She didn’t want to find herself in the middle of another row.

Newbury emerged into the searing daylight a moment later, squinting up at the austere building behind her. A smile played momentarily on his lips. “The morgue?”

“Well, of course it’s the bloody morgue!” said Bainbridge, barely containing his frustration.

This appeared to pique Newbury’s interest. He raised one eyebrow, and Veronica caught another glimpse of the old gleam in his eyes. “What brings us to this most dreadful of places, dear Charles?”

“A body. What else would it be?” snapped Bainbridge in a condescending tone.

Veronica rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure this is helping, Sir Charles…” It was clear to her that he was deeply concerned for his friend, but was far too reserved to be able to express it by any means other than frustration. Newbury would understand this, of course, but had always enjoyed baiting the older man. Recently, this combination had proved rather more explosive than was healthy for either of them.

Bainbridge sighed, relenting. “Yes. I need you to see this body, Newbury.”

Newbury grinned. The colour seemed to be returning to his cheeks. “To establish a cause of death?”

“No. To identify the victim.”

Newbury ran a hand over his bristly chin. “Very well. Lead on, then!”

Veronica couldn’t help feeling relieved at the enthusiasm evident in his voice-even if it was enthusiasm for a corpse.

The morgue was cold and unwelcoming. Veronica felt a chill pass down her spine as she stepped over the threshold and through the double doors. Or perhaps it was something more. Trepidation? Fear? Unease? She’d never felt comfortable around corpses and she hoped she never would. She’d seen plenty of them in her time-even taken a life in the course of duty-but something about seeing a human body laid out in such a way filled her with a terrible sense of dread. She hated how a person-a living, breathing, intelligent person-could be reduced to this, to nothing but an unmoving mass of flesh; how all that potential could so easily be invalidated. It was as if everything they stood for, everything they’d experienced or seen or had yet to see were suddenly worth nothing. All their deeds and loves and foibles: all of them amounting to this. A slab of meat on a slab of stone, ready to be butchered. Sometimes, seeing a corpse like that made her wish she hadn’t lost her faith in God. Living in a Godless universe could be bleak and dark, and the reality of death was a black cloud that scared her more than anything else in the world. Fear, however, could not distract her from what she saw as an ultimate truism: that God did not, and never had, existed.

Other times she wished she could be more like Newbury, able to disassociate himself from his emotions, to examine a corpse and see a puzzle there, to look past the dead person to the mystery beneath. But, truthfully, she was glad she was still shocked by such sights, and glad that she had not become so cynical or worn down by her experiences that they were now merely commonplace to her.

This, she mused, was one of those days. She wanted dearly to be anywhere but in the morgue, anywhere away from the stench of death and decay and the sight of bloated, festering corpses and the remains of people who had met untimely ends.

So when the tall, thin mortuary attendant ushered the three of them inside, giving Veronica the most disdainful of looks, she almost wished she could find an excuse to wait outside. But she knew that was out of the question and refused to bow to stereotypes. She would steel herself and press on. It was, after all, only flesh and blood. The dead people themselves had no further need of it.

The mortuary attendant-so pale himself that he could quite easily have passed for one of the corpses-looked down his nose at Newbury, then turned towards Bainbridge, raising a disapproving eyebrow. “Sir Charles. Another most irregular visit. How can I be of assistance to you and your… associates?” His voice was reedy and nasal. He held his hands out before him, his fingertips pressed together to form a spire before his chest.

Bainbridge pursed his lips and Veronica saw his knuckles whiten on the handle of his cane. For a minute she thought the chief inspector might strike the insolent fellow, but he managed to restrain himself. “You can help, my dear fellow ”-he exaggerated those last three words to indicate his impatience with the man-“by taking me and my associates to see the unidentified body that was brought in by my men two nights ago.” He twitched his moustache testily.

“The young man in the suit? The suspected criminal?” The mortuary attendant seemed incredulous, as if he couldn’t quite understand how the three people before him could want to sully themselves with such distasteful business.

Bainbridge glowered but did not respond.

After a moment, the mortuary attendant shrugged. “If you’d care to follow me.” He turned, holding his head high, and strode off into the labyrinthine warren of corridors that sprang from the reception area, his footsteps echoing loudly off the tiled walls.

Bainbridge set out after the attendant, and Veronica followed with Newbury, sliding her arm under his, supporting him as they walked. It was as much for her own comfort as for his, of course-as they wound their way deeper into the building, beneath the acid glow of the lamps and the gleaming, tiled archways, she felt a knot tightening in her stomach.

The place was filled with the stink of blood and faeces, the tang of iron. As they walked, Veronica became aware of the atrocious sounds of the surgeon’s art: the rasp of a bone saw, cutting through the voiceless dead. The sound of fluid spattering on tiles. A man coughing and spitting. The wet thump of an amputated limb dropping to the floor.

She clutched Newbury’s arm a little tighter. For the first time that day, he turned towards her and she actually felt that he was seeing her. He patted her hand, took a deep breath, and seemed to grow in stature. It was as if being needed was somehow enough to rejuvenate him, to refresh him. As if it were the lifeblood that sustained him, imbued him with vigour. Was it neglect, then, that had driven him to such terrible depths? Was it loneliness?

It seemed Bainbridge had been right, whatever the reasons. What Newbury needed was a good mystery, some solid work. She wondered what he would make of the chief inspector’s little puzzle.

The mortuary attendant led them to a quiet corner of the morgue, where the body they had come to examine was laid out on a marble slab and covered in a thin white shroud. It was cool in the morgue, but the cadaver had already started to smell. Veronica wrinkled her nose in disgust. She hoped that Newbury wouldn’t want to do anything more invasive or prolonged than take a quick look.

“If you have no further need of me…?” said the mortuary attendant in his snide, reedy voice. Bainbridge offered him a curt nod in reply, and, with a haughty expression, he turned about and left the room.

Newbury turned to smile at Veronica, then extracted his arm and approached the slab. He hovered for a few seconds by the side of the body. “So, Charles. What’s the story?”

Bainbridge frowned, as if unsure where to begin. “He was found on Shaftesbury Avenue, the night before last. Lying in the gutter. No obvious cause of death.” He shrugged. “There are some… confusing circumstances. Take a look-see if you recognise the poor beggar.”

Newbury wiped his brow with his shirtsleeve. He was sweating despite the chill. Veronica wondered if that had something to do with the opium he’d imbibed this morning, or if his body was already beginning to crave more.

Gently, Newbury took hold of the shroud and peeled it back, slowly revealing the body beneath. Veronica blanched at the sight of the waxy, bloated face, its eyes still open and staring, but now milky and sunken. The corpse had been stripped by the police surgeons and looked pale in the harsh yellow glow of the lamplight.

Newbury walked slowly around the slab, poking and prodding the body, spending a minute or two examining the face, rolling the corpse onto its side so that he could take a look at the dead man’s back. His expression gave very little away.

After a minute or two more, he stepped back from the slab and looked directly at Bainbridge. “Clearly, Charles, this is Edwin Sykes. I’m sure there are a hundred men who could have corroborated that for you. Why drag me halfway across London to see his corpse?”

Bainbridge smiled. “What do you suppose killed him?”

“Confound you, Charles, for dodging my question. I can’t see any obvious cause of death. Probably a heart attack, but there’d need to be a full autopsy to be sure. He’s clearly been dead for a couple of days.” Newbury rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his chin. “I should have thought you’d be pleased, Charles, to know that one of the most notorious burglars in London is on a slab?”

Bainbridge chuckled. “And there’s the rub, Newbury. There’s the rub. You see-as you’ve confirmed-Sykes has been dead for at least a couple of days. We’ve had his corpse in the morgue for two nights, guarded and locked in this room. But last night a burglary was committed on Regent Street that has all the hallmarks-down to the very last detail-of Sykes’s work. So either something very unusual is going on, or Sykes was never our burglar in the first place.”

Newbury looked thoughtful for a moment, before his expression broke into a wide grin. He glanced at Veronica. “Very well. It seems the two of you have my attention. So what next? Regent Street and the scene of the burglary?”

Veronica shook her head. “No, Sir Maurice. Chelsea, and the scene of a bath.”

Newbury looked down at his rumpled suit, clearly embarrassed. He smiled sheepishly. “As you command, my dear Miss Hobbes. But first, answer me this: What of Sykes’s personal effects? Had he been robbed?”

Veronica gestured towards Bainbridge, who pulled a small rectangular object from his trouser pocket and held it out to Newbury. It was a crumpled address card. Newbury took it and turned it over in his palm. It was emblazoned with the legend, PACKWORTH HOUSE.

“That’s all we found on him. No wallet, no jewellery, no papers. Just that card, stuck in the lining of his jacket pocket. Whoever stripped him of his personal effects must have missed it.”

Veronica nodded. “It seems as if it was more than just an opportunistic robbery. I find it hard to believe that someone happening across his body in the street would take such care as to remove all the contents of his pockets. What purpose could it serve them? The valuable items, yes. But his papers? To do so, they must have spent some considerable time beside the body, risking being seen all the while. It seems somehow… unlikely.”

Newbury frowned and handed the card back to Bainbridge, who tucked it away in his pocket once more. “Packworth House. Isn’t that the home of the Bastion Society?”

“Yes,” Bainbridge said. “It seems he was a member of that illustrious set. No doubt bought his way in with all that plundered money.”

“Or not,” Newbury countered, “if, as you say, he wasn’t your burglar after all. The circumstantial evidence certainly suggests not. And you never were able to pin anything on him.”

“Hmmm,” was Bainbridge’s only response.

Veronica approached the slab and picked up a corner of the shroud. She tried not to look too closely at the grisly, staring face of the dead man or breathe in his ghastly scent. “Sir Maurice?”

Newbury took the other side of the shroud. Together they covered the body once again-the body of Edwin Sykes, or someone who looked very much like him.