The Immorality Engine (7 page)

“No, Miss Hobbes, that’s the clever part.” Bainbridge tugged at one corner of his moustache. “As we understand it, the spider does the lion’s share of the work. It’s a sort of automaton device, with limited intelligence. Once it’s cut the entry hole, it crawls inside and picks the locks. As many of them as are necessary to clear a path. All Sykes had to do was stand back and wait for his miraculous toy to grant him access, then stroll right in to the treasure inside.”

Veronica looked at the hole in the door with some admiration. “A remarkable device indeed.” She searched Bainbridge’s face. “Why did you never put Sykes away for his crimes?”

Bainbridge sighed. “There was always too much doubt. A watertight alibi. No evidence. We all suspected he was guilty, but had no way of proving it. We tried laying traps to catch him, but he was always wise to them. We investigated his financial situation, but the paper trail appeared authentic. Even searched his property once, but found nothing incriminating whatsoever.”

“So how did you know it was him?”

“Oh, he was guilty. I’m sure of it. Intuition, whatever. He was our man.”

Veronica smiled. She had come to trust Bainbridge’s instinct almost as if it were her own. “We’re all guilty of something, Sir Charles. Are you sure that Sykes was guilty of exactly what you’d pinned on him?”

Bainbridge glanced uneasily at Newbury. “I was … I was
certain
of it. But now … Well, you’ve both seen the body in the morgue. And then this—” He gestured to the door. “—well, it throws everything out of the window. Wait until you see inside.”

Newbury stepped forwards and grabbed the edge of the wooden door, swinging it open towards them and revealing the full extent of the metal grille inside. It was forged from heavy iron bars and filled the doorway completely, and it was also hanging open, the lock picked. “Well,” he said, still clearly riveted by the unfolding mystery, “After you.”

Bainbridge stepped up and pushed the grille aside. “If you’ll forgive me, Miss Hobbes—in this instance, I should rather observe safety than etiquette.”

Veronica strode forwards and bustled past him into the dark interior of the shop. “In that case, Sir Charles, I should absolutely go first.”

Bainbridge raised an eyebrow at Newbury, who patted his friend on the arm as he followed her inside. “No point arguing when she’s made up her mind, old man.”

“Less of the ‘old,’ you darn fool,” he said, with mock offense, but Veronica could hear the relief in his voice. They were working together again, just like old times.

Veronica heard the grille clang shut behind them. Bainbridge’s voice was disembodied in the darkness. “Just a moment … Ah, there!” The dull glow of a lantern filled the room, casting everything in a warm orange glow. It took her eyes a minute to adjust after the harsh sunlight.

“Open those shutters, will you, Charles? It’s awfully dark in here,” said Newbury.

“Sorry, Newbury. We’ll have to make do with lantern light. The shutters are locked and the darn keys are missing,” replied Bainbridge gruffly.

Veronica glanced around. The place seemed to be opulently furnished: polished glass display cases of various shapes and sizes made a maze of the layout, and large gilt-framed mirrors adorned the walls. A fine mahogany counter stood in one corner, out of the way, as if the owner was embarrassed to remind his customers that the establishment was, in fact, a shop, and that the items within were for sale. She wondered where the owner was. Probably down at the station filling out reams of paperwork.

Her first impression was that nothing appeared to be out of order. Unlike many of the other crime scenes she’d attended in her time, the place seemed untouched. None of the glass cases had been shattered for easy access to the jewels, no paperwork was scattered over the floor, no safe hanging open on the far wall.

Newbury had crossed to a low rectangular cabinet and was stooped over it, examining something on its surface. She went over to join him. The cabinet was entirely devoid of jewellery. All the display trays were still in situ, but there was not a precious stone or a gold band to be seen.

“Look.” Newbury pointed to a spot on the surface of the cabinet. A large disc had been cut out of the glass, identical in size to the hole in the door. The removed panel had been neatly placed to one side, right beside the hole. The rest of the glass pane was entirely unblemished.

Veronica gasped in awe.

“Exactly,” said Newbury. “There are very few tools that could cut a hole like that through a glass case, especially so quickly.”

Bainbridge strolled over and placed his lantern on the cabinet. “And the other cases are all the same. Whoever did this worked the entire place over in the space of a couple of hours last night.”

Newbury frowned. “It had to be Sykes. No one else could have pulled this off. It bears every hallmark—”

“But Sykes is dead. You saw his corpse this morning, with your own eyes! We must have gotten it wrong, Newbury. We must have had the wrong man all along.”

Newbury shook his head. “No. I can’t believe we’d be that off the mark. We’ve had him in our sights for months, if not longer. There has to be more to it!”

Veronica watched the two men as they tried to fathom their next move. “Have you been to visit Sykes’s apartments, Sir Charles?”

He nodded. “Yes, yesterday, before all of this happened, when we discovered he was dead.”

“And…?”

“And there was nothing out of sorts. Clean as a whistle. His housekeeper was still there, frantic that something might have happened to him. We found no evidence of any crimes, nothing that linked him to any of the previous burglaries. No sign of any mechanical spider, no hidden chambers on the premises.”

Newbury shook his head in dismay. “Just like the last time you searched his rooms.”

Veronica rapped her fingernails on the glass surface. “But we still have a mysterious death on our hands. And a burglary. Do we have any leads whatsoever?”

“No! That’s what’s so damn infuriating. Nothing makes sense. It seems like too much of a coincidence for the death and the robbery not to be linked, but there’s no sign of any evidence, and no leads to show us where to even begin looking!” The frustration was evident in Bainbridge’s voice.

“We do have one possible lead.” Newbury’s words were delivered quietly, contemplatively. “I admit it’s not much, but the address card you found on the body, Charles. What of the Bastion Society?”

Bainbridge leaned forward so that his face was lit by the glow of the lantern. Veronica saw he was grinning. “Yes. By Jove, Newbury, yes! It’s not much, you’re right, but it’s something! Let’s pay them a visit this afternoon. What do you say?”

Newbury reached for the lantern. “I’ve always wondered what that lot gets up to in that big house of theirs. I say we go poking around.”

Veronica smiled. “Isn’t that, Sir Maurice, exactly what we do best?”

He laughed, then scooped up the lantern and disappeared into the darkness near the door, leaving the others to find their way behind him.

CHAPTER

7

Dr. Lucien Fabian hated rushing. And today, he felt nothing but rushed.

He had arisen early, taken rounds with his patients, and then administered another battery of treatments to the Hobbes girl, all before lunch. Then Mr. Calverton had appeared with a note card from the palace, and all of a sudden he had to abandon his half-eaten beef Wellington and his half-drunk glass of merlot, get in his carriage, and head off at a phenomenal speed to see the Queen. He clutched the seat, fearful that the driver was going to lose control of the vehicle at any moment—or, perhaps worse, plough directly into the path of an oncoming ground train. They bounced over the cobbles, almost dislodging the glasses that perched precariously on the end of his nose. The engine was raging, and black smoke billowed around the carriage like a dark smear across the windows. He wondered if the driver could even see where they were going. The day had not exactly worked out as he’d anticipated.

Then there was the Queen herself to contend with. What could she possibly want? What was more important than his work? The message had been clear—this was no medical emergency. The life-giving equipment he had cocooned her in was still in perfect working order, breathing on her behalf, pumping the blood around her veins, feeding her. So what was it? Why had he been so rudely torn away from the Grayling Institute? He hated the notion that he was permanently available for her every whim, on call like a lapdog. Was it like this for her other agents?

Of course, Victoria refused to acknowledge his true standing at her Court. She acted as if he weren’t important in the least, like she could operate perfectly well without him. At first he’d wondered if this was a sign of her embarrassment, her way of disguising the fact that he was, perhaps, the man who now knew her most intimately of all, at least medically speaking. But he had come to alter this opinion, realising that she was simply a heartless witch.

He chuckled at his own joke, quite literal in this case. Victoria’s heart was now nothing but a series of brass cogs and elaborate timing mechanisms, ticking beneath her rib cage like a secret, buried clock. He had constructed it for her, and placed it in her chest with his own hands. That heart was, perhaps, the finest piece of work he had ever crafted. It was a shame he hadn’t given it to someone more deserving.

Fabian sighed and stared out the carriage window. He supposed that her attitude towards him was to be expected. She was, after all, the ruler of the biggest empire in the world. She was bound to feel the need to assert her will. But it did nothing to alter his mood as they charged on towards Buckingham Palace for an interview that he neither needed nor desired.

*   *   *

Sandford, the agent’s butler, had proved his usual accommodating self. He’d ushered Fabian in through the private entrance, taking his cloak and offering him a stiff drink. From the look on the old man’s liver-spotted face, Fabian had gathered he might need it, so he accepted it with grace and downed it quickly, thankful for the fortification.

Now he was standing before Queen Victoria herself, resplendent in her mechanical glory.

The audience chamber was kept shrouded in a permanent gloom, the heavy drapes pulled shut over the curtains. The reasons for this were twofold: both to keep prying eyes from seeing in—the world outside the palace knew little or nothing about the Queen’s current condition—and to protect her from the sunlight, as light sensitivity was an unexpected side effect of his treatment regime. Anything stronger than a dull glow would cause her to recoil in agony, so she mainly inhabited this one room at the palace, wired into her life-support system, hidden away in the darkness.

The Queen rolled forward in her wheelchair to greet him. She looked old and tired. Fabian moved to inspect the machinery that encased her. She was lashed into the chair, held in place by two large tubes that jutted from her chest, feeding her collapsed lungs with oxygen from the tanks that were strapped to the rear of her device. Humming machines pumped fluid around her body, a pinkish substance created by the Fixer, distilled from the essence of rare plants he had obtained in the jungles of South America.

“How are we today, Majesty?” Fabian bustled around her as he checked the connections and levels of the machines.

“We no longer sleep, Doctor. We pass the nights alone in the darkness while the Empire rests. We have the most lucid waking dreams.”

“Of what do you dream, Majesty?”

“Of Albert. Of a decaying Empire, fading as the light of England fades. Of everything we have built becoming dust without a firm hand to guide it.” Her eyes were glazed and she was staring away into the distance, as if seeing something else other than the shadowy interior of the audience chamber.

He stood back, inspecting his own handiwork. “Fascinating.”

Victoria’s head snapped around to regard him. Her eyes flashed with anger. Her tone changed seamlessly from whimsical to commanding. “We are not one of your little experiments, Fabian. You’d do well to remember that.”

Fabian bristled. He felt little beads of sweat form under his hairline; it was
hot
inside the audience chamber. “Yes, Your Majesty. Of course. I merely seek to understand so that I may help—”

Victoria waved her hand dismissively as she cut him off. “Prattle and poppycock. We know how your mind works, Doctor. Do not dare to attempt to placate me with platitudes and fabrications. My body may be faltering, but my mind is not. You consider me a puzzle, a medical aberration to be solved. On occasion that perspective has proved beneficial to one’s situation. But you must never forget we are also your Queen, and we demand and insist on your respect.”

Fabian offered a tight-lipped smile. “You command and always will command my enduring support, devotion, and respect, Your Majesty.”

Victoria almost spat at him. “More platitudes. We fear, Fabian, that your opinion of your own importance has become somewhat overblown. You are a physician. Nothing more. Remember your place.”

Fabian took a deep breath and fought against the rising tide of anger that pushed at the limits of his patience. The woman was insufferable. He had saved her life! He had constructed the life-support system that had single-handedly ensured her survival. The only one who understood how to keep her breathing. The one who had given her a clockwork heart. The Victorian Empire endured because of
him
. She would do well to remember
that
.

It was within Fabian’s power to end Victoria’s reign with the flick of a hidden switch that he had incorporated into her life-giving chair during its construction. A safety measure, he had told himself. A means of ensuring that if it all went wrong, there was a way out. He’d initially considered this a precaution in case the surgery that had welded her to the chair had failed, but now he dreamed of the day he might trip that switch, and smiled secretly at the notion that it was he, not the Queen, who held the real power in the room.

Outwardly, however, he bowed his head and mumbled an apology, allowing the Queen to consider him admonished. Now was not the time to reveal his secrets. But there would come a point when it would prove necessary for him to assert that power. The thought galvanised him.