Authors: Sharon Joss
Simon stood on the cobblestone street outside the Steam Dog
Tavern, huddled against the sudden chill. A few moments later, the lights downstairs
went out, and the street turned darker and chillier still.
He sighed. Not one of his finer moments, surely. He’d offended
her. He’d been gone from England far too long. Of course, a woman like that
would be married. The memory of her shocked expression cut deep. The gleam had
faded from her laughing eyes in an instant.
He’d insulted her without meaning to. In Italy, his suggestion,
even to a married woman, would never have been received so poorly. He felt like
a foreigner in his own country.
There was something about her. A spark. He couldn’t leave now; not
like this. For the first time in his adult life, he’d found it difficult to
control his flames around another person.
She wasn’t a great beauty—at least not in the traditional
sense. Perhaps it was the freckles. Not many freckled women in Italy. Whatever
it was, she had something about her that was so incredibly familiar and
appealing; almost as if he already knew her.
She’s a latent.
That’s it. Air, I think.
Like Arvel. A bit of latent air magick that calls to mine. That’s what makes
her seem so familiar.
On the second floor, the last light dimmed. A heavy mist began to
blanket the street. He turned and walked slowly up the road that would lead him
back to the hangar.
I’ve got to find a way to apologize—to convince her I didn’t
mean anything by it. I can’t have her thinking I’m some sort of cad.
The mist settled quickly into a thick fog. After the jovial
laughter and warmth of the pub, the sudden gloom had him more than a little
uneasy walking back to the hanger. He paused to listen, but heard only the
sound of the river.
He stepped off the road to relieve himself. Except for the low rise
where the hangars had been built and on the dock walls, the whole island was a
seemingly flat and barren of much of anything except grass and a few bits of
shrubbery. Beyond the shadows of the buildings clustered around the ferry, only
a few spindly, wind-bowed trees lined the road. This island was so different
from his memories of Wight, which had lush forests and fascinating changes in
the geography. Everything from smooth sand beaches to dense forests and rocky
promontories. Here was nothing but a sea of waist-high marsh grass and
wind-stunted shrubbery.
The sound of horses coming at a fast gallop echoed eerily through
the fog. Instinctively, he shrank into the shadows, fumbling to straighten his
clothes. The coach was nearly upon him before he saw it. The driver, intent on whipping
a pair of matched horses to top speed, did not see him, and the carriage passed
so close he smelled their sweat.
And running along behind, ran two dogs. No, not dogs. Too big for
dogs; these were as large as ponies. They loped behind the coach, panting
billows of steaming breath. As they passed, he caught a whiff of blood and
rotting flesh.
He froze, his heart pounding. Within moments, the carriage
disappeared into the gloom and Simon was again alone in the darkness.
He shuddered.
Crikes
. Never
seen dog wights before. Glad they didn’t see me. He checked the road in both
directions, then trotted across and up the hill to the airship hangars.
When Roman awoke the next morning, the first thing he noticed was
the little brown terrier asleep at the foot of his bed. The pup yawned and
stretched, then wiggled itself up toward him for a cuddle. Nice little dog, that.
At the end of the row of six beds, PC Yancy snored loudly. Roman
checked the hour on his pocket watch, laying on his bedside table. Ye gods,
almost seven-thirty. Stackpoole was already up and out and he hadn’t heard a
thing.
He washed and dressed quickly. The mutt watched him with a solemn
expression. It followed him downstairs to the dining room like he’d been doing
it every day of his life.
The aroma of bacon and saussies brought him fully awake. Sergeant
Loman was finishing up the last of his breakfast of mushrooms, tomatoes, fried
toast, and eggs. Roman gave a nod to Stackpoole, who was still eating and crossed
the narrow hallway to the kitchen, to pour himself a cup of tea.
At the stove, Sergeant Loman’s wife bustled, making up a plate for
him. She cooked breakfast for the men seven days a week, and supper on
Wednesday and Sunday nights.
She beamed delightedly at the dog. “What ‘ave we ‘ere, Inspector? Freddy
told me you ‘ad a new recruit. What a bright-eyed little fellow you’ve got
there.” She offered the dog a bit of sausage and he took it oh-so-gently from
her fingers. “An’ what a little gentleman!”
She followed Roman back to the dining room, where her husband put
his dirty plate on the floor for the dog. “You decided to keep him?”
“I think he’s the one
decided. Slept on the bed last night. I didn’t even know he’d come upstairs.” Roman
took his usual seat at the table and the dog settled itself beneath his chair,
just as if he’d been doing it all his life. Quite flattering, really.
Stackpoole tossed the dog a chunk of bacon from his plate. “Not a
bit shy of our boots and clanking gear an such, you notice? Maybe he belongs to
a constable in another station.”
“Maybe he’s lost,” offered Mrs. Loman.
“What’s ‘is name, then?”
Roman leaned over and gave the dog a pat. “
Henry,
I think
. He
looks like a Henry.” He nodded to Stackpoole. “What say we have another go at Twitchell
Crisp this morning? See what he has to say about that knife?”
Stackpoole nodded. “No doubt Missus Loman’s cooking will have put
him into a right chatty mood.”
Constable Roper, who was working out of Millwall for this rotation
wiped the egg off his moustache. “Superintendent Wickes caught me on the road
as I was coming in this mornin’, asked me to pass on the news.” Roper had a
lady friend in Millwall, and did not always sleep in his cot upstairs at the station
house. “Constable Billings was run down by a carriage last night out on Ferry
Road, near the Charcoal Works. He’s got a cracked skull, broken collar bone, and
possibly internal bleeding. Wickes asked me to have a word with you about your
lanterns. Especially when you’re out on the roads at night.”
The breakfast room had fallen silent; forks and knives held
motionless. The only sound came from sausages and bacon spitting in the fry pan
on the stove.
“It’s not enough just to carry the lantern. You’ve got to listen,
too. Be prepared to jump out of the way if the weather’s too heavy or their
brains are too thick with drink to see you. When they reach that end of the
Island, those lads get it into their heads that’s they’re all racing chariots.
Finn McGann found him early this morning. He was out there all night. Billings
survived the trip to the hospital, but it doesn’t look good.”
Roman studied the men at the table. He knew most of them didn’t
like patrolling that stretch of road. It was dark and bleak; an overlander’s
mind played all kinds of tricks on him alone out there at night.
Mrs. Loman went back into the kitchen, and gradually, the room
returned to its normal state.
“On that note, let’s get to the day’s assignments.” The day and charge
rooms were too busy and noisy for general meetings and duty assignments, so Sergeant
Loman usually addressed them at the table in the mess.
“Inspector, there was a possible knifing last night out at the airship
hangars. No victim or perpetrator found, but witnesses heard the attack, and
there was a good deal of blood at the scene.”
Immediately, Roman thought of the pool of blood found earlier at
the docks and the knife he’d confiscated from Twitchell Crisp. No chance it
could have been used in this case, as both the boy and the weapon were in
custody.
“Soon as I release the boy, I’ll go up and have a word with
Figgsy.”
Not even two hot meals and a warm bed for the night was enough to
shake the story out of Twitchell Crisp. The boy still wasn’t talking. It would
take more than Mrs. Loman’s lamb stew to ease that boy’s hunger—he was
nothing but rags and bones. After another dead-ended conversation, Roman let
the boy go, but kept the knife. Twitch knew more than he was saying.
#
Stackpoole accompanied him to the air hangars, where Figgsy was
waiting for them, standing in the drizzle, wearing a black oilskin.
“Glad ye came, lads. I thought you might want to take a look.”
The hangar master led them to a muddy, churned-up spot outside one
of the hangars. “Not much to see now, the rain’s washed most of the blood away.
A real mess, it was.”
“Maybe a brawl,”
suggested Stackpoole. “Couple of blokes letting off steam.”
“Well, there’s some pretty bad feelin’s between the Italians and
the French crews,” Figgsy admitted, scratching his jaw. “Could be they decided
to have a go at it, but that was far too much blood for a bit of boxin’, in my
opinion. More like a bit of malfeasance, you ask me.”
Roman squatted, careful not to drag his overcoat in the mud.
“Ground’s not churned up enough for a real fight.” He glanced up at Figgsy.
“You say the witnesses heard screaming?”
Figgsy nodded. “Aye. And dogs growling. But says there was no one
here when they came runnin’. Just the blood.”
“A stabbing then? Or robbery,” Stackpoole offered.
Roman peered up at the constable. “Then where’s the victim? Think
again. Imagine this area still splattered with blood. Doesn’t it remind you of
something?”
Stackpoole’s eyes widened with understanding. His lips trembled.
“You mean that grody bit over at the West Docks.”
He blushed, a momentary flash of crimson against the pale
freckles. “Or, maybe….”
“What is it, Constable?”
Stackpoole looked sheepish. “You’ll think me a fool, but my Gran
used to tell stories about how people in the old country put up fey cairns to
ward off the Viking dead. Draugs, they called ‘em. Corpse creatures made of
earth and water. Silly, I know, but that’s got me thinking—maybe there’s
draugs around here, too.”
Good lord, save me from
overlanders.
“Constable—,” Roman began.
“I see ‘em you know. Those wraiths you told me about. Out on the
marsh near the ferry dock.” There was a note of panic in the patrolman’s voice.
Figgsy rolled his eyes at that one. “Wraiths don’t growl, last I
heard. The witnesses heard growling.”
“Maybe it was a wraith dog.”
“Get a hold of yourself, lad,” Roman scolded. “Wraiths can’t hurt
you.” Better have a private word with him about saying that sort of thing in
front of other people. Even an islander like Figgsy. Didn’t matter what
Stackpoole's granny or anyone else called them; no wraith could inflict harm on
a living man. Much less a wraith
dog
.
He stood and looked up and down the alley formed by the two side-by-side
hangars. Even on a moonlit night this area would be dark as the inside of a
coffin. “Better I have a word with those witnesses, Mr. Figgs.”
“This way inspector.”
#
An hour later, Roman finished interviewing the witnesses: the
Italian Captain, Paretti, Gregorio Abruzzi, his engineer, and one of the German
crewmen. Captain Fornier of the French ship informed him that Monsieur Emile
Martens, one of the passengers for their return trip, had gone missing.
“Perhaps he has made other arrangements,” Roman said.
“
Non
, Inspector; he
would not. Monsieur Martens is an airship navigator, hired by Captain Paretti
for the trip across the channel. He is the twin brother of
my
navigator, Hector. The men often travel together, and neither
would leave the other without informing him. Emile has not been seen since
dinner last night, and was not on board the ship this morning.”
“Perhaps he found accommodations elsewhere?”
Captain Fornier, gave a small shrug. “It is possible. He has quite
an eye for
les femmes
. It would not
be out of character for him. But I do not believe he would dally so late. I
believe it far more likely that Hector’s suspicions are correct, and his
brother has suffered at the hands of Captain Paretti and his crew. Arrest
them!”
Roman held up his hand for calm. “It’s far too early to jump to
conclusions, Captain Fornier. I assure you I will investigate this matter
thoroughly and take action based on whatever the evidence tells me happened.”
A man gone missing was not proof of a crime, no matter suspicious
it might seem at the time. The so-called blood spatter had been largely washed
away by the rain. It could have been anything, or nothing at all. Roman soaked
up what little was left of the blood from the corrugated iron on the side of
the hangar, but doubted whether the sample was good enough to test. The three witnesses
had not actually seen anything; only some screams and possible growling. Loose
dogs had been a real problem of late. The victim could have been a sheep or
goat. He’d been fooled more than once by a goat bleating in the fog, and
thinking it a child crying.
He could not completely dismiss the idea there might have been
some sort of retribution for the collision between the two ships, but it didn’t
seem likely that the navigator brothers would have colluded to intentionally
cause such an incident, when by all accounts, it had been sheer luck that
neither ship had sustained devastating damage. The Italians seemed far more
upset about the damage, and rightly so, even as they acknowledged that the fog
had been very thick, and it was possible that since they had been above the
French ship at the time of the collision, that the French Captain
might
have been unable to do anything to
avoid it.
At that point, the Frenchman, Captain Fornier butted into the
conversation to say that Captain Paretti’s ship and crew were far too
delicate
to be considered
real
airships. Roman and Figgsy had had
to forcibly keep the two men from coming to blows.
Clearly, there were bad feelings between the captains and their
crews, and neither was above blaming the other for the missing man. Even Figgsy
noted that the pool of blood he saw was not nearly as large as Captain Paretti
and his engineer initially described before it washed away.
Frustrated, he could only ask Figgsy to let him know immediately
if the missing man showed up, and made a mental note to ask Superintendent
Wickes to assign an additional officer from Poplar division to supplement the
watch at the hangars at night. The extra officers allocated for the air show
were supposed to be assigned strictly for crowd control. But now. with PC
Billings laid up, and this bit of funny business outside the docks and hangars,
they were now two men short for regular patrols.