And They Called Her Spider, Part 3
This is the continuation of the serialization of the Galvanic Century steampunk mystery novelette, “And They Called Her Spider”. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 is here. If you’re impatient like I am, you can download the entire book for free from Amazon.
The church the magician had spoken of was in similar condition to the rest of Southwark — old, run down, largely abandoned, and bearing the legacies of multiple fires. Though in heavy disrepair, its structural integrity appeared to have suffered the ravages of time admirably, its steeple bowed and slanted but unbroken, most of the windows in its facade unbroken. A brass placard set next to the chapel doors bore the name “Henry Dobbson, R.G.E.A.”
“He’s Guild, then?” Bartleby asked.
I grunted in reply. It wasn’t exceedingly difficult to proclaim yourself a member of the Royal Guild of Engineers and Artificers, and many second-rate machinists had done so without hesitation. It diffused the actual credit owed those of us who had actually completed the Academy’s rigorous curriculum. There was no real enforcement because no true Guild member had the patience for administrative busywork, and the banking firm we contracted to handle mundane matters for us sold RGEA associate memberships to any dilettante who could afford the hobby and pass a correspondence course.
Bartleby gave the door a quick rap. After a few moments it was opened by an older gentleman, stooped with age.
I immediately revised my opinion of him. His hands, gnarled and callous, were stained with ink and dye. Heavy concentrations of grease had collected under his fingernails, and his glasses were smudged with soot and steam. Distaste and annoyance showed on his face at having to greet potential customers or clients, and his leather apron stank of sulphur and lye. This, gentle readers, was an engineer.
“Mr. Dobbson?” Bartleby asked, covering his nose with his kerchief against the sulfuric odor.
“Did you make greasepaint with mica for the stage magician D’Agostino?” I asked, quick and to the point, before Bartleby started with the small talk. He was my people. I could speak to him.
“What? Yes. I think so. Possibly.” Suspicion crept into his voice. “Why? Who are you?”
“Do you still make it?”
With any luck, he’d think us potential clients and let his guard down. Strangers asking questions were cause for caution. Customers could be safely dealt with and forgotten.
“Only had one man want that slop. Idiot. He insisted on using a white lead base, despite my warnings. The poor girls he coated with it all died of lead poisoning.”
“He didn’t care?” Bartleby asked.
“Men like him never care about what their subordinates go through.”
“Do you have any left?” I asked.
If he hadn’t been making any recently, it was possible that the Spider was one of D’Agostino’s old assistants with a supply of the paint. We’d have to compare samples to be sure, but it was a starting point, at the very least.
“Are you hard of hearing or just simple-minded?” Dobbson asked. “I just told you that it was toxic. Or don’t you care about the poor girl you’ll have wearing it either?”
“It’s not for use,” Bartleby said. “We’re investigating a matter for the police.”
His thin frown vanished. “Well, then, you should have said so. If you’ll follow me.”
Dobbson stepped back, letting us into the old church’s chapel. The pews and other furnishings had been removed, replaced with a number of racks holding commonly available alchemical concoctions for sale. Make-ups, purgatives, abortifacient, exfoliants, analgesics. Along the opposite wall hung a number of sophisticated clocks and novelty clockworks.
“You’re a tinkerer and an apothecary?” Bartleby asked.
“And author, painter, sculptor, and engineer,” Dobbson replied. “The working class likes to keep busy, good sir.”
I chuckled at Bartleby’s discomfort. It was a rare thing to see him unbalanced.
“Wait here. I’ll fetch what’s left of the magician’s greasepaint.”
Bartleby and I busied ourselves looking through the old man’s wares while waiting for his return. Most of the clockworks he had on display were toys and gimmicks — idle fancies that perform no useful functions and serve only to entertain the easily bored. The sort of use of mechanics I despise, so after a brief glance I left Bartleby to it and examined the medicinal goods for sale. Alongside the apothecary staples– the aloe vera, the chamomile, the fennel, the hemp– were substances of more dubious use. Wormwood and aconite, hemlock and nightshade. There were some jars that went unlabelled, and I’m not enough the chemist to hazard at their contents.
“Bartleby?” I asked.
“Mmm?”
“D’Agostino seemed to have an odd reaction to your mention of the Queen. Instant obsequious compliance beyond normal, healthy patriotism. I’ve seemed to notice that quite a bit lately. Is this some sort of recent nationalistic trend I’m unfamiliar with?”
Bartleby gave me an odd gaze. “My friend, you need to step out of your workshop more often.”
Something in his tone compelled me to drop the subject.
First five, and then ten more minutes of idle browsing passed before Bartleby glanced towards me with a questioning look. I nodded, and we left the clockworks and herbs behind, heading to the back of the chapel where Dobbson had disappeared to. There were no other exits, save a ladder heading up into the steeple tower above us. Bartleby stood aside as I began to climb, spanner in hand.
“Dobbson?” I called, ascending into the space above, which apparently served as his bedroom. A simple box mattress sat against the wall, barely leaving enough room for the small wardrobe next to it.
© Collette J Ellis
A streak of red and black fell from the bell tower above before I could climb into the room, breaking my grip on the ladder and sending me crashing down to the chapel below. Sharp knees dug into my abdomen as a rain of powerful fists fell upon my brow, each blow knocking my skull back against the chapel’s wooden floor. I managed to get a forearm up to guard my face in time to see a girl— the Spider, a slight thing dressed in a red and black Jester’s motley— spring back from her kneeling position atop my torso. My face felt raw and numb from her vicious attack, and my lower back screamed as I scrambled back into a half-standing crouch.
The girl’s leap away took her towards the wall beyond the ladder. Her legs folded again as she hit the wall, whatever purchase she managed there sufficing to spring off and away at an angle that carried her past the shocked Bartleby and towards the narrow window. It was thin– too thin for even the slender girl that had attacked me– but somehow she slipped through it effortlessly, and was gone into the night.
Bartleby ran up to me. “Oh god, James, are you alright?”
“Don’t worry about me, go after her!” The fingers I put to my face came away red and sticky. She’d split my lip at the very least, and it felt as though one of my eyes was swelling shut. Thankfully all my teeth were in place, and it didn’t feel like my skull had been cracked.
Self inventory complete, I ran after Bartleby.
***
A few hours later we were back at the church with a small army of Metropolitan Police, searching the place by gaslight.
Inspector Abel approached with a frown. He had been against hiring outside contractors to assist with a police matter, but when the order came down from the Home Office, he’d had no choice but to comply. “No sign of the old man or the girl. We did find, in his apartment, schematics and drawings of the parade route with a number of choke-points indicated.”
“He’s smart,” I begrudgingly allowed. “He’ll have changed his plans.”
“No he won’t,” Bartleby disagreed. “It’s all the spectacle of the thing, yes? Choosing hard targets, dramatic entrances, the attention-getting greasepaint. He knows we have his plans, and he’ll have the girl do her work in spite of us. Imagine the publicity he’ll garner if he pulls it off.”
“I didn’t think engineers cared about that sort of thing,” Inspector Abel said.
“We don’t,” I replied.
“He won’t pull it off.” The Inspector was adamant. “If you don’t manage to catch him, my boys will stop this Spider of his in the act.”
Bartleby and I glanced at one another, not sharing his enthusiasm.
***
The Home Office didn’t appear to, either. The next day we were called into a meeting with the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone.
“The Queen’s Jubilee is rapidly approaching, gentlemen. The spectacle is vital to the mental and economic health of this Empire.”
“More so than Her Majesty’s life?” Bartleby asked.
Gladstone’s face darkened. “Cancelling the parade is an admission of weakness, of fear, something I cannot tolerate even if the Queen were to allow such a craven response.”
“Seeing the monarch gutted on a parade float would be a good deal worse for morale, I’d imagine,” I said.
Gladstone and Bartleby stared at me in abject horror before doing the respectable thing and pretending I’d never said it.
“It is imperative that the two of you catch this Spider before the parade.” Gladstone set a doll atop the desk. Garbed in red and black with a porcelain face it was the very image of the assassin.
“What’s this?” Bartleby asked.
“Blast if I know. The Scotland Yard found it in the church after you two departed for the evening. It’s some sort of clockwork– see if it gives you some insight into the killer.”
To be continued next Friday
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