Perhaps Christien was right to question his brother’s sanity. Could Sebastien be not only a killer of killers, but of women as well?
She slowed as her eye was drawn up to the plaques on the limestone walls, and memories ran through her mind, back to a late afternoon by a newly purchased steamcar and a locket, given as a gift.
These are dangerous times,
Christien had said, and
I have no idea where this Ghost Club may lead. In fact, it’s probably nothing, simply a Pall Mall club for gentlemen with scads of money and far too much imagination.
She paused, looked around the street. Plaques beside every door announcing all manner of Gentleman’s clubs and it didn’t take her long to find it between the Reform Club and the Athenaeum.
The Ghost Club—London, est. 1862
. She took a deep breath, raised her chin, and pushed open the door.
It was entirely what she would have expected. Wood-panelled walls and golden frames, elegant furnishings and books. It smelled of pipe smoke and brandy and old, old money and she felt a rush of nerves as she closed the door on the street. At the foot of a long, spiral stair, an automaton raised its polished head.
“Welcome to the Ghost Club,” it droned in a clipped Sussex accent. “My name is CHARLES.
Chippendale’s Handy Automated Representative for Licensing, Etiquette, and Service.”
“Hello Charles,” she said. “I was wondering—”
“This is a Gentleman’s Club, I’m afraid. No women allowed.”
She could hear raised voices echoing down the stair.
“I, I’m here to see Dr. John Williams.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“He told me to meet him here,” she lied.
The yellow lights on its faceplate flashed several times.
“Williams, Dr. John. Logged in at 8:20 Greenwich Mean.”
She swallowed. Jolly good luck, that.
“Where is he, please?”
“You may await Williams, Dr. John, in the Red Room. Do follow me.”
And his shiny head turned on his shiny neck, followed by shoulders, then torso, and all the parts of him turned one after the other like a spinning top, until finally the contraptions that served as his feet turned and he clanked away to the right, toward a room decorated entirely in red.
Ivy waited for him to disappear before trotting up the stair. The voices led her down a long hallway filled with the sharp odour of cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. She slowed as she neared a set of doors.
“Dashitall, Bookie,” said one voice. “This is bad! Very bad indeed!”
“Two women, last night! It’s impossible!”
“Now, Westie,” said another. “The truth is almost upon us. It’s not our fault there’s a madman loose in the city. If anyone, it’s Jackie—”
“Here, here,” said a voice that she immediately recognized as Williams’s. “I resent that implication!”
“Tosh,” said the voice called Bookie. “Bertie will see us all cleared if events do surface. He stands to lose the most.”
“Damn that Eddy and his infernal whoring . . .”
The voices dropped down low, and she had leaned in to listen when there was a sound on the stair behind her. With slow, methodical movements, the automaton was making its way up the steps, its head slowly spinning on its neck, a thin beam of red light searching out ahead of it.
With heart in her throat, she pushed open the doors. Through the smoky haze, a dozen men looked up at her.
“A woman?”
“A woman, indeed! Where is CHARLES?”
“CHARLES! CHARLES!”
“Ivy Savage?” snapped Williams. “What the deuce are you doing here?”
“Dr. Williams . . . I . . . I . . .” She froze, suddenly realizing that she had just stepped in over her head and out of her league. “I need to speak with you, sir.”
“Not now, Ivy,” he growled. “We have a situation.”
“Is that the locket?” asked one man, and a charge ran through the room. Suddenly, all eyes fell upon the pendant, hanging sweet and coy around her neck.
She looked across the sea of the gentlemen. Not one of them was younger than her father and they all had the look of academia. These were learned men, scholars and gentlemen and politicians of the Empire of Steam, and she had just turned their world upside down, simply by stepping a foot inside their doors.
These were very strange, modern times indeed.
She raised her chin.
“Ghostlight sends her regards.”
“Come with me, Ivy dear,” said Williams. “We can talk in another room.”
A fellow with a white beard and bushy brows laid a hand on the surgeon’s arm.
“Can she leave the locket, Jackie?”
“Not now, Bookie.”
And Williams took her elbow and escorted her out the doors into a long corridor.
“Ivy,” he said, keeping his voice low. “What are you doing in London? Does your father know you’re home?”
“No sir. I only arrived last night.”
“Don’t tell me you’re here with Sebastien de Lacey?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “We have some questions for you regarding these Whitechapel killings.”
“We?
Is he putting you up to this? Damn the man. Damn him to hell.”
“No, sir. These are my questions and mine alone.”
His grip on her elbow increased as they walked toward an open iron-grilled door. Above it, a clockwork eyeball stared at them, following them as they approached. Williams pulled a card from his pocket, held it up. It blinked and she could hear the groan of interlocking gears as the grille door rattled open. An hydraulic lift, she realized. All the rage in London. She stepped onto the cage floor, could see black and gold cables in the shaft beneath her boots. As Williams closed the grille, the entire platform shuddered and massive hydraulic gears began lowering them down.
“Now Ivy,” he said, over the grinding of the gears and the rattling of the cables. “You’re not writing
that
story, are you? You know what your father thinks about that.”
“I know, sir, but—”
“You are not an investigator, Ivy.”
“Is there a chance that Annie Chapman may have been pregnant?”
He hesitated. Gaslight on the walls cast moving shadows across their faces as they descended, and for the first time, she realized that he had a very grim mouth.
“Now why would you ask something like that, Ivy?”
“It’s a thought I had regarding the removal of her womb. I just can’t fathom a killer taking something like that. Why remove the womb?”
“This Ripper is an ill man, Ivy. Nothing more.”
“But would there be a way of telling, sir? Please, just answer me that.”
He smiled in a fashion that reminded her of Arvin Frankow. Patronizing. That was it. Patronizing.
“Yes, Ivy. There would be a great many ways of telling.”
“So,” she said. “What if she were pregnant but couldn’t keep a baby?”
“Well, she certainly wouldn’t carve herself up like that, now would she?”
“No sir, that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m an obstetrician, Ivy. Many women have need of my services. My ‘extracurricular business.’ Not every baby brings happiness.”
The hum of machinery was growing louder, louder even than the grinding of the hydraulic gears. Steam billowed up from below, hissing in bursts from behind their backs and the entire contraption smelled of metal, oil, and ink.
“So you
are
helping them, sir? In the clinics?”
“I’m one of the few legitimate physicians who care to try, Ivy. You know that.”
“But isn’t it . . .?”
“Illegal? Yes, Ivy dear. Quite.”
She nodded. “And there are others, less legitimate than you.”
“They call it
Restellism
, on the street.”
“I see.” She thought for a moment. “No, perhaps I don’t. But that’s quite expected, given the last few weeks . . .”
“Are you certain Sebastien de Lacey didn’t put you up to this?”
“Quite certain, sir. It is my own belligerence.”
“So you know Remy is a member, then?”
“Yes, sir. It’s one of the reasons I’m here. I want him to quit.”
The lift shuddered to a halt, and he stared at her for a long moment.
“Come this way, Ivy,” he said. “There is someone I want you to meet.”
He pulled the iron grille door onto a room deep underground and she wondered at that. The Infirmary of Lonsdale was underground. The Mortuary of the Royal was underground. It seemed all manner of unnerving operations took place underground. Perhaps it was the seclusion, away from windows and prying eyes. Perhaps it was the air or the darkness or the magnetism of the earth; she had no clue, but there had to be something that drew dark pursuits underground.
The room was dim and gleaming with old gold. As her eyes adjusted, she could see sparks arcing through tarnished pipes and glass tubes along the ceiling high above her head. The walls themselves were lined with machines—flashing lights and spinning shafts and shuttling levers that reminded her of automated weavers’ looms. They were running nonstop, these pipes, drums, and plates, moving with clockwork precision. In fact, it looked like a factory, and workers manned various stations along the wall, inputting cards and punching keys and pulling levers at amazing speeds.
It was an Analytical Engine, she knew, had heard the boys of Leman Street Station talk about the hopes of getting one working for the Met. Hundreds of numbers spun on brass plates and she wondered how information could be communicated to and from such a device. Difference Engines were helpful but Analytical Engines could almost think.
A man with grey hair and grizzled chops marched up to meet them, his shoes echoing on the tarnished floor.
“What the devil is a woman doing here, Jackie?” he growled, thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets. “It’s against Club rules.”
“Henry, this is Ivy Savage,” said Williams. “Remy’s fiancée.”
“Henry Babbage.” He did not offer her his hand. “Can’t say I’m pleased to meet you. Inviting women into the Club is worse than inviting Anarchists. Or the French.”
“Manners, Henry,” said Williams.
“Remy’s fiancée, you say?” His eyes flicked down. “Is that the locket?”
“It is indeed. She’s brought it to London, along with Sebastien de Lacey.”
“Good Lord!” said the man named Babbage. “Explains a few things, wot? Very well. How can I help?”
“I want her to meet Erica.”
Babbage held wide his arms. “And so she has.”
“I don’t understand,” said Ivy.
“ERICA,” said Babbage.
“Engine for Rational Input, Computation, and Analysis.”
“She’s remarkable,” said Ivy. “But why would the Ghost Club have an Analytical Engine?”
“Despite our name, we are a scientific organization, my dear,” said Williams. “And Analytical Engines are the cutting edge.”
“Science
and
socialism,” said Babbage. “This way, girl, keep moving. Don’t stop to gawk.”
Up a set of steps that clanked underfoot and a small man in shirtsleeves turned at their approach. He was a diminutive fellow with kind eyes and a timid air.
“Ninian,” said Babbage. “This is Ivy Savage, Remy’s woman. Shake, boy. Shake.”
Reluctantly, Ninian held out his hand. It was blackened with grease.
“Mathematicians are notorious rude,” grumbled Babbage. “Good thing Lovelace had a hand in
my
raising.
Ahem.
Ninian is a northerner. Comes from Newcastle, don’t you, boy?”
“Yes, sir. I do indeed, sir,” he said shyly. “Ninian Liddell, from Newcastle ’pon Tyne.”
“Your name is familiar, sir.” Ivy cocked her head. “Do you know a young woman by the name of Fanny Helmsly-Wimpoll?”
“Fanny!” Ninian gasped. “She was the light of my sorry life.”
“She still speaks of you, sir.”
The young man dropped his eyes to the floor. “And I still dream of her . . .”
“Does she know of your current occupation, Ninian?”
“Alas, she does not approve of datamancery.”
“Even in Pall Mall?”
His mouth opened and closed. Apparently, he had no answer for her.
“I will be sure to tell her of your improved station when I see her next.”
He smiled shyly. “I would appreciate that very much, Miss Savage.”
“Miss Savage wants to know if we have anything regarding the Whitechapel villain,” said Williams.
“The papers are calling him ‘The Ripper’ as of last night,” said Ninian. “Apparently, there was another letter.”
“And why would a girl want to know about this Ripper?” asked Babbage. “It’s not a romantic topic.”
“I am not a romantic girl,” said Ivy.
“She is Remy’s fiancée. Poor boy works with Bondie. He’s up to his eyeballs in body parts.”
“Two more last night, wot?” grunted Babbage. “One in the back of some foreigners’ club and one in Mitre Square. Does that scare you, girl?”