The Hanged Man (2 page)

Brook put on his hat and touched the brim, and the cab rocked as he climbed up to the driver's seat.

She pulled shut the half doors that would protect her from some of the wet, and heartily wished for a more sheltering conveyance. Sleety wind stung her face as they trotted north along Baker Street, then cut right onto Marylebone Road, heading for the northern end of Harley Street.

London was usually clogged with all manner of vehicles, but not at this hour of night. Their trip was miserable, but brief. Brook pulled the horse up just short of the house. There was a hospital ambulance already waiting in front, and two men hunched in its lee, smoking cigarettes. They couldn't remove the body until she had a look at things.

Even in this weather, a few idlers hung about, hoping for a glimpse of something interesting or to earn or beg a copper. A constable kept them at a distance. Every window with a view of the street had one or more faces in it, taking in the show like theater attendees in private boxes.

How long has this been going on?

She preferred to arrive at the scene of a death as soon as possible, nearly always before the ambulance. Things were easier to Read when the residual emotions were uncontaminated by intrusive traffic or eroded by the passage of time. There were strict rules of preservation in place now, but not everyone followed them.

Investigations had a pattern: discover a body, notify a doctor or a constable depending on the circumstances. If there was
anything
suspicious about the death, clear the area and send for a detective from Scotland Yard and a Reader from Her Majesty's Psychic Service. Tonight, Miss Alexandrina Victoria Pendlebury happened to be the closest.

Lieutenant Brook dropped down, one of his heels slipping on a patch of ice. He grabbed the hansom and kept his balance. This time she accepted his hand as she emerged.

“Have a care, miss,” he advised kindly.

Would that be for the sidewalk, or for what waited inside the house?

She was familiar with the locale, often cycling along Harley Street, taking the air when the weather was temperate. The house was part of a row of impressive structures, each four stories tall with three dormers at the top, each made individual by the use of different colors of brick. They were wonderfully respectable and, despite high rents, much in demand by members of the medical establishment.

This one's wide door with frosted glass panes was very like her own. It was also noteworthy for being between two large bay windows, one for its own building, the second belonging to the neighboring house.

The lower facade of number 138 was of fine white stone with a faux Roman arch trimming the fanlight window. The metalwork screen on the fanlight, the elegant iron fence on either side, and the brass knob in the center of the door were all nearly identical to the front of her own house, but on a grander scale.

The keystone of the arch had a distinctive carved head, like a death mask, emerging from its surface. That was new. She'd have noticed such a thing on her last jaunt here some three weeks ago. Prior to that, the building had been vacant for about a fortnight. So the new tenant had been here less than a month and had money to spend on exterior decorations.

She wanted to ask who lived here, but that could wait. The Service was strict about investigative process and rightly so. They caught more criminals that way.

Inspector Lennon opened the door. Gaslight spilled out, catching on specks of sleet flying past. “Finally,” he growled, looking her up and down. “Get inside and get on with it.”

Despite tangible results that came from Readings, Lennon maintained a broad skepticism tinged with contempt for those with psychical talent, but followed official procedure to the letter. One could not lodge a complaint against that, however poor his manners.

“Good morning, Inspector,” she said, mounting the three steps and entering, unruffled at being addressed like a lazy scullery girl.

“Nothing good about it, Miss Pendlebury, as you'll find out.”

“Please, no information. Just tell me where.” She removed her muffler and cap, stuffing them into her pockets, then took off her gloves.

“Upstairs, last room on the left.”

Unbuttoning her ulster, she had a quick look around, unsettled by the similarity of the house's exterior to her own. The foyer was somewhat different, this one paneled in dark, shining wood, not bold, cheery wallpaper.

To her left was a sizable parlor with chairs and tables along the walls. The draperies on the bay windows were closed. The parlor obviously served as a waiting room. She could assume a doctor owned the premises, and that he might be a bachelor or widower. A framed print on the wall extolling the virtues of Dr. Kemp's Throat Elixir supported it. No lady of the house would have
that
up in even the public receiving areas. It was frightfully common.

“Where are the servants?” Alex asked.

“The whole lot's back in the kitchen.” Lennon nodded toward a door under the stairs that must lead to that area. “We got them clear soon as may be.”

She heard voices and clamor: someone sobbing, someone else clattering about with pots and pans, probably seeking solace in the familiarity of work.

“Inspector, would it be possible to have a cup of tea for me when I'm done?”

He grunted and looked at Brook, who had shadowed her inside. “My men are busy. You see to it.”

The lieutenant might have wanted to watch her at work, but said, “Yes, sir,” and went off. Imagine that: a member of the upper class fetching tea. The Service was a great leveler. To his credit, Brook gave no indication the task was beneath him. Sergeant Greene, born and raised in Whitechapel, would have balked, but only because he'd consider it woman's work.

Alex left her ulster on the banister and climbed the stairs with Lennon a few steps behind. He was a big man; they creaked under his boots. His hard gaze would be on the back of her neck, suspicious for any sign of weakness. She'd heard from others in her department that he took pleasure in intimidating them. He never said a word, letting a hard stare do the job of breaking their concentration. Complaints were lodged, but never went far. What could one say that would not sound like childish whining?

Ignoring his presence, Alex opened to the atmosphere of the house.

It was, surprisingly, buoyant.

Most doctors' offices had quite an awful mix of hope and despair, the latter being the natural result of patients getting bad news about their health. The darker, heavier feelings tended to be stronger, soaking into the walls like a case of damp. Those could be dispelled easily. Sometimes simply airing a room was sufficient. However rare sunshine was in English weather, especially in winter, there was always enough to scour most places of old emotions.

She reached the landing and focused on the left-hand door at the end of the hall.

Move slowly, test the way
.

Sometimes there were nasty emotional jolts lingering near a death, the psychical equivalent of stepping on a nail. So far she picked up a general feeling of shocked disbelief, deep grief … and horror.

She'd encountered those before, the normal residue left by those who found the body. People tended to have the same emotions when death paid a call. While she could not say that she was used to such, they no longer overwhelmed her. On her very first case she'd opened up too quickly and fallen over in a faint. The instructor had been prepared. Alex struggled awake to the burning sting of smelling salts in her nose and was sharply told to show greater care for herself. She got no more sympathy than a medical student fainting at their first anatomy lesson.

Of course, those students made a
choice
to become doctors or nurses. If unable and unwilling to handle the necessary requirements of their art, they could find another occupation. Alex had been born to this particular work. As with others possessing psychical talent, it ran in her family, and she had been blessed (or cursed) with a particularly strong ability. Her choices had been to learn to control it or go mad.

Perhaps I'm mad and no one's noticed yet.

She always thought that just before looking on a corpse. It was a tired observation, long bereft of its feeble humor, its very weariness a comforting affirmation that she was in her right senses.

She paused before the door, which was ajar. The gas was on within and strange shadows swung lazily on the hall floor. She pushed gently forward to see what cast them.

The taint of night soil hung heavily in the air, turning her stomach. In all the stories and books she read for pleasure, none of the writers ever made mention of this noisome aspect that attended the discovery of a corpse. Either they'd never dealt with death themselves, or deemed the subject indelicate.

Alex kept handkerchiefs in a jar of rosewater on her dressing table. Just before leaving on a call, she'd wring one out, tuck it into an oilcloth pouch, and tuck that into a pocket of her waistcoat. She retrieved the one she'd taken tonight, holding it to her nose, then pushed the door wide.

It was a room for a gentleman, furnished with a big bed and a reading chair by the window. There had been a fire in the grate; a few coals glowed but offered no warmth. A window was raised high, and the air was freezing.

Otherwise everything was normal, except for the man's corpse hanging from the gas chandelier in the center of the room. His back was to her, which made it easier. However they died, she avoided looking at their faces. After burnings and drownings, hangings were the worst. The last one, with its bulging black tongue, bloodshot eyes popped wide, and horrifically elongated neck would last her a lifetime.

Alex had no need to look, anyway.

Her job, God help her, was to
feel.

A suicide? The chandelier must be singularly sturdy to hold such a weight. Then she noticed the rope was looped over the same large hook in the ceiling that held the light. The hook had been driven deeply into a support beam hidden by plaster, certainly strong enough to carry out an act of self-destruction like this.

The chief grotesquery was that the gas yet burned. The body, so near to the source of light, cast a deep shadow upon the floor and walls. The man's gray head was against one of the glass globes. While still alive he must surely have flinched from the heat.
Why
had he lighted the gas? Why not that candle on the bedside table?

While death occasionally possessed a macabre humor, it was never kindly, particularly with suicides who hanged themselves. The bowels and bladder had given way, which accounted for the bad smell. The rose scent in her handkerchief could not wholly overcome the reek, but it kept Alex from retching.

His bare feet dangled loose and vulnerable under the blue nightshirt. A draft created by the open door stirred its pale folds; otherwise the corpse was quite still. His slippers were next to the bed, which was rumpled from occupancy. Had he crept under the covers to stare at the ceiling until unrelenting hopelessness caused him to rise and end his torment?

While it was not outside possibility, there was a false note to the terrible scene before her. Several, in fact.

If he planned ahead enough to bring a rope, why bother going to bed? There was no need to mislead the servants; as master of the house he had only to shut the door and attend to his repugnant undertaking in private.

Why undress for bed? While she had encountered suicides who stripped naked to meet their Maker, most kept their clothes on. In one case, the lady put on her wedding dress and reclined prettily on a chaise lounge while a draught of laudanum took her into the next world.

Why choose such a long, painful death by strangulation? If he had been a doctor then there would be better choices in his medical bag. Laudanum, morphine, or heroin were painless and just as effective.

Well, the initial discovery was out of the way, time to get on with the rest of it, and there, perhaps, find answers.

Murder victims tended to be surprised, terrified, or enraged, leaving those feelings behind in the wake of an attack removing them from life. Those who passed due to accident often left nothing at all, if their death was sudden enough. She'd encountered that in the aftermath of a train wreck. A great number of the dead hadn't known what befell them and all that remained were their poor broken bodies. Most of the emotions she'd gotten had been from those whose work was to remove and attend the dead. It had run to ghoulish humor. Ugh.

Suicides, though, had weeks, months, even years of despair and anguish about them. It built up like silt in a river. It bogged them down, trapped them, tortured them until they finally succumbed willingly to end the pain.

But hanging was a singularly agonizing way to die. It always took longer than expected. The pain, shock, and helplessness usually left an imprint of emotion as harsh as any violent murder.

Alex opened herself a tiny bit more, bracing for the worst.

But nothing came.

Which was
not
normal.

She opened still more, eyes shut, and cast about like a hunting hound. There was the discordant rasping shock here in the doorway. That would be from the person or persons who had found the body.

A servant had found him, male, his valet or butler. The horror and sincere grief were profound, but not the same sort one got from a relation or a spouse. A calm fellow, he'd likely seen death before and recognized it readily enough. A relative might immediately take down the body in an attempt to revive it or to conceal the self-slaughter, but this one had been left as found. The man was clearly dead—nothing to do but alert the authorities.

As for the room's late occupant—odd—there was no trace of melancholy at all, which puzzled her. Why, then, had this man killed himself?

No emotional residue presented itself to answer. The only feelings here were of self-satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, anticipation—not at all what she'd expected.