He shrugged one heavily muscled shoulder. “Of course. Whoever she is, however she came to this state, she ought indeed to be laid to rest with respect. And, as you say, there is a possibility she may have met with misfortune at the hands of some blackguard and if so, he must answer for it.”
He paused and canted his head, regarding me closely. “Veronica, are you quite all right?”
“I do not know,” I replied. “You are agreeing with me. It is a curious feeling.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I shall not make a habit of it.”
“Don’t,” I begged. “It is distinctly unsettling.”
CHAPTER
4
I ought not to have been surprised by Stoker’s insistence upon embarking on this adventure. He had shown similar sensibilities during a previous investigation regarding an Egyptian princess.[*] Whether he felt protective of comely corpsesonlywas a question I did not consider. (Stoker, I had no doubt, would be equally considerate of the dead dignity of the lowliest gutter urchin. He was one of Nature’s true aristocrats.)
Having decided to undertake the matter properly, I took up a fresh notebook and began a record of our efforts—the culmination of which you hold now in your hands, dear reader. I had used the time between our previous escapades to record them in detail for the purposes of science. Memory is an unreliable, meretricious hussy, and I have always found that setting down events whilst they are fresh is the surest defence against her depredations. These records filled several notebooks, and I kept them locked in a glass bookcase on the upper floor of the Belvedere in an area we referred to with great affection as “the snuggery.” I could view them through the glass panel, each volumehandsomely bound in dark red leather with gilt-edged pages and filled with the carefully transcribed notes from our investigations. I spared nothing in the process, no foible or failure of mine was omitted, but neither was I circumspect regarding the mistakes of others. Scientific observation, after all, includes fact, and although fact must be interpreted through the lens of experience, I thought a few artistic flourishes might engage a potential reader’s attention.
“What reader?” Stoker demanded late the next day as he saw me settling to scribble notes about our waxen corpse.
I flapped a hand. “Any reader. I am making a record of our investigations for the edification and perhaps entertainment of posterity.”
“What sort of record?” he asked, narrowing his gaze.
“An unvarnished account of our actions, hypotheses, stratagems, et cetera. I thought it of interest to anyone undertaking similar activities.”
“Veronica, who? Who butuswould undertake such activities? Do you really imagine London is full of natural scientists repeatedly and relentlessly distracted from their work by felonies and mayhem?”
“It might happen,” I said absently. I dipped my pen into the well and scrawled a title upon the frontispiece in a swirl of violet ink.
He bent forwards to read it. “ ‘The Case of the Sleeping Beauty.’ Veronica, no. I must protest. It is enough that you insist upon keeping a diary of our most sensational activities—” He broke off, an expression of horror spreading over his handsome features. “You do not record ourmostsensational activities, do you?”
“If you are referring to the odd foray into violence, I cannot refrain. They are an essential and inevitable result of our investigative efforts, my dearest. If, however, you are referring to the refreshing and healthful sessions of physical congress in which we frequently engage, I refer to them only obliquely, I assure you.”
“You needn’t refer to them at all!” he thundered.
“There is no call for indignation,” I assured him. “Whenever I amcalled upon to describe your physique or your prowess, I am complimentary in the extreme. Accuracy demands it.”
He made a vaguely scornful noise which set the dogs to howling, and it was some minutes before he settled them again by way of sharing out a pocketful of cold sausages. When he had done, I passed over a fresh tin of Cook’s best peppermint rock, knowing the sweet would have the same conciliatory effect upon him as the meats had upon the dogs.
He took it with ill grace and subsided into a leather porter’s chair, legs slung carelessly over one arm as he pillaged the tin for the choicest bits.
“How should we begin?” I inquired. In past cases, I had often driven our efforts towards justice, but I had to admit that in this instance, I was at a bit of a loss. Without the Raby connection to explore and with no distinctive markings upon the clothing or person of the corpse or the glass casket, there were few threads to unpick. We had scrutinised her from top to toe in an attempt to discover some helpful clue, but there had been nothing. If this were a proper detective story, there would have been a maker’s label pasted beneath the base of the casket or a scrap of letter in the dead woman’s pocket with a cryptic but solvable bit of address leading to her next of kin. But our slumbering victim yielded no information whatsoever. The gown and undergarments were of fine quality but considerable antiquity. Whatever labels or laundry marks they may once have borne, they were long lost. Her body boasted no curious moles or memorable birthmarks, and the casket itself was all it appeared to be—a brass box fitted with panels of clear glass.
Stoker sucked on a piece of peppermint rock and considered. Suddenly, a light kindled in his eyes and he sat up. “Of course. Veronica, put on something warm that you do not mind being dragged through mud and other unspeakable things.”
He snatched up his own greatcoat, scattering dogs as he poundeddown the circular staircase, thrusting his arms into the sleeves as he went.
I snatched up my own cloak. “Where are we going?”
He looked up, gentian-blue eyes gleaming with intention. “To a place I vowed never to return.”
I stopped, my fingers curled around the narrow iron balustrade. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes, my dear. We are going to the circus.”
***
For most people, a pronouncement of one’s intention to visit the circus is a simple and straightforward thing. Stoker, as I hope I have conveyed to the attentive reader, is not “most people.” The third—and least-favoured—son of a viscount, Stoker had run away from his family’s stately home on numerous occasions. During one such excursion, he had joined up with a circus, Professor Pygopagus’ Travelling Curiosity Show. It was called such because the proprietor was a gentleman born with a conjoined twin. (A much nicer twin, which would lead us quite neatly into a discussion of the effects of inherent nature versus nurture, but that is for another day.) The professor specialised in what are unkindly called “freaks,” those folk whose appearance or abilities somehow set them apart from the average human. He commercialised them, touring them from town to town and taking the lion’s share of their earnings, but he also provided them with a family of sorts, the company of others who understood them far better than their own blood kin. It was here that Stoker had worked a variety of positions in the show—rigger, magician, featured fighter. He learnt the intricacies of ropes and legerdemain as well as a considerable fluency with a weapon called a rebenque, a sort of whip commonly used by gauchos in the Argentine. In the course of our first adventure together, Stoker and I had taken refuge in the travelling show although we had, in the end, been forced to flee undercircumstances which left Stoker thoroughly enraged with the professor and considering a little light vengeance should they ever meet again.