They’d come to a stop a little way up the street from Bainbridge’s cab. She watched as he flung open the door and hurried down the steps of the cab, fished around in his pocket, withdrew some coins, and paid the driver in a hurry. Then, turning his back on the street, he walked abruptly to his front door and opened it. He stepped inside and the door swung shut behind him.
Why was he in such a rush? Clearly, it wasn’t to get out of the rain. Was he late for an appointment? It was close to ten o’clock, and the night was closing in. Who would he be seeing at this hour?
Veronica opened the door of her cab and stepped out into the cold night. She shivered as the damp breeze brushed her cheek. Once again, she fought an urge to simply get back into the cab and tell the driver to take her home.
“Oi, miss?” said the driver. She turned to see him leaning over from his dickey box, rubbing his thumb and index finger together suggestively. “’Alf a crown, you said.”
She nodded. “I’ll throw in another shilling if you wait there for me,” she said, passing him up the promised coin.
He nodded enthusiastically. “Spying on the old fella, are we?” he said, conspiratorially.
“I said, no questions,” replied Veronica, firmly, turning her back on him and walking slowly up the street towards Bainbridge’s house.
The light was on in the living room, and the curtains had not yet been drawn. She hesitated on the pavement, straining to catch a sight of what was going on in Bainbridge’s house. She almost gasped aloud as she saw Professor Angelchrist stand and turn around. He must have been waiting for Bainbridge to arrive home. She watched as Bainbridge opened the inner door from the hallway and strode in, still wearing his hat and coat. The two men shook hands and exchanged a few words. Then Bainbridge reached inside his coat and withdrew a large cream-coloured envelope, which he handed to Angelchrist. They both laughed. Angelchrist clapped Bainbridge on the back, then they turned and left the room together, Angelchrist still holding the envelope.
Veronica barely knew what to do. She felt as if she wanted to retch. Had she really just witnessed Bainbridge handing the list of agents directly to the professor? Her own words echoed loudly in her mind: Who else beside the Queen and the Prince of Wales might have access to this information?
Clearly, the Secret Service was now privy to the list. What else had Bainbridge given them? Enough to lead them to their first handful of victims?
Almost without thinking, she turned and staggered back to the cab. She didn’t even glance at the driver as she clambered up the steps and slumped inside. Her mind was racing. She would have to tell Newbury. Of course she would. Then, together, they would work out what to do. Bainbridge, it seemed, had betrayed them both.
“Kensington High Street?” called the driver, merrily.
“Yes,” she said, giving an automatic reply. She closed her eyes as the cab lurched into motion, and wished that everything could just go back to the way it had been, before the Executioner and the Grayling Institute, before the Prince of Wales, Dodsworth House, and The Lady Armitage. Just for a moment, she wanted a simple life, but this was now something forever out of her reach.
CHAPTER 25
Newbury stirred.
He rubbed his neck and arched his back, realising that he must have drifted off in his armchair in the drawing room once again. His head was thick with the residue of too much brandy quaffed with Bainbridge, as well as the opium cigarettes he had imbibed upon his guests’ departure. His neck and shoulders ached from where he had lolled insensible in the chair.
He opened his eyes. It was dark, but not yet the witching hour. Pale moonlight slanted in through the window, its silvery fingers probing inquisitively into the room. Everything was quiet, other than the distant rumble of traffic through the fog-shrouded streets.
Veronica had not yet returned. He cursed himself for falling asleep. She was probably even now flaunting his advice, electing to sleep in her own bed rather than under the safety of his roof. He’d have to speak with her again in the morning.
Newbury rubbed a hand across his face and leaned forward, blinking blearily. He had the sense that something had disturbed his sleep. He thought he sensed movement by the door and turned to look, but there were only shadows, gloomy and impenetrable. The moonlight and the dying embers of the evening’s fire were not enough to illuminate the far corners of the room.
“Scarbright?” he said, his voice hoarse. It echoed loudly in the empty house. “Are you there?”
There was no response.
Newbury laughed quietly to himself. Perhaps it was just his mind playing tricks on him, another spectre resulting from the drugs he’d consumed. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d imagined people in the room who weren’t really there.
He stood, a little unsteadily, and crossed to the wall-mounted gas lamp to the left of the fireplace. He turned up the tap and the bulb blossomed with a soft, steady glow. Still, he had the sense that he was not alone. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled with unease.
He turned and caught sight of something shifting in the shadows. His heartbeat quickened, sending a sudden rush of blood to his head. He felt his dulled senses sharpen with fear. There was a dark figure standing in the doorway; the silhouette of a woman, her face obscured in the low light.
She was about five foot two, of athletic build, and dressed in a revealing black bodysuit that clung to the shape of her body, accentuating her curves. Her hair was a ragged bob, hacked short around the base of her neck, and in her hands, hanging loosely by her sides, were the curving blades of twin scimitars.
The Executioner. Newbury had no doubt. This was the woman Aldous had told him of. She was the instrument of death, the killer of the Queen’s agents, the stealer of hearts.
She came at him, a sudden, startling whirlwind of motion, her blades scissoring through the air towards him. His reflexes kicked in and his hand shot out, snatching one of the pokers from the coal scuttle on the hearth. He swung it around in a wide arc so that it clattered against the two crossed blades, parrying her attack and sending painful reverberations along his forearm.
She stepped back, lowering her blades. He could see now that her face was set in a hard, unforgiving expression. It might have been beautiful, if it wasn’t for the cold intensity, the emptiness in her dull, blue eyes.
The bleached flesh of her cheeks and forehead were tattooed with an elaborate sequence of patterns, arcane designs that even he did not recognise. Hints of silver and gold glinted in the reflected light, describing whorls and accents where it had been intricately inlaid into her skin. The effect was entrancing, drawing his eyes so compellingly that he was almost caught off guard when she pressed her attack.
The assassin grunted and came at him again, this time thrusting the blade in her right hand forward whilst the one in her left parried his poker as he raised it in defence, leaving him open and exposed. He stepped back, pivoting on one foot, narrowing her target.
He blocked the blade on the left while the one on the right missed skewering his belly by less than an inch. He saw his opportunity and lashed out in response, but the window was narrow and the poker struck her left shoulder and rebounded with the dull clang of metal upon metal. He had struck her sword guard-or, in fact, what he had taken to be a sword guard, but was actually the housing of a form of primitive machine.
As she circled, not taking her eyes from him, he was granted a better view of the porthole in the machine’s surface, and was surprised to realise that the shrivelled black mass at the centre of it was, in fact, the remnant of her heart. This, then, was the machine that was keeping her alive, working in concert with the occult ritual that preserved her flesh. He could hear the mechanism whirring faintly now, the clockwork components inside it turning as it channelled her blood, feeding it through her veins.