The Immorality Engine (Newbury & Hobbes Investigation) Read online

  Veronica turned at a gentle tap on her shoulder. Newbury motioned for her to move away from the edge of the balcony. Veronica did so, and he shuffled along beside her.

  Veronica stood, keeping her back to the wall, just out of sight—she hoped—from anyone below who might be looking up in her direction. A quick glance at the staircase told her they were still alone.

  Newbury stood beside her and leaned in, so close that she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. “Let’s take a look at the hallway on the other side,” he whispered, pointing across the open space at a corridor across from where they stood. They’d have to work their way around the balcony to get there. Together they crept along it, keeping themselves out of view of the people below. The noise of the festivities meant that they could travel swiftly without risk of being heard, so it was only a matter of moments before they were turning down the corridor Newbury had pointed out to her.

  More paintings lined the walls here. Veronica realised how much money must have gone into furnishing the house. Each painting must be worth hundreds, if not thousands of pounds. And the banquet wouldn’t be cheap, either. Where were they getting their funds?

  Newbury tested the handles on one side of the passageway while Veronica did the same on the other. More bedrooms, more locked doors. They were clearly in some sort of dormitory area, the place where members of the society could take rooms in times of need or inebriation. Some of these rooms appeared to have been recently inhabited, with beds that had been slept in and small piles of belongings on the bedside tables. Others were empty and disused.

  The corridor terminated in another door. Veronica realised that the layout of the house must be symmetrical such that the room in front of her corresponded to the study they had used to gain entrance to the house. She tried the door. It was unlocked.

  Expecting to find either another bedchamber or another desk, Veronica swung the door open and stepped inside. The sight that greeted her, however, was so grotesque that she immediately rushed back out into the corridor and retched. She leaned both her hands against the wall, hoping to soak up some of its strength, trying her utmost not to swoon.

  The room was full of bodies.

  Newbury rushed to her side. “Veronica!” he whispered urgently. “Are you unwell? What’s the mat…” He trailed off as he glanced up and saw, through the open door, the same harrowing vision of Hell that had sent her running from the room.

  Naked human bodies hung from the ceiling on row after row of meat hooks, like carcasses in a butcher’s shop, a forest of white, damaged hides. The bodies were once men, but they had been so brutalised, so mutilated, that they no longer resembled anything but hunks of pale, bloody flesh.

  The stink emanating from the room caused her to retch again, and this time she couldn’t hold back her vomit, a thin, watery stream that splashed on the maroon carpet by her feet. She wiped her mouth and looked apologetically at Newbury, but he was still staring in shock at the contents of the dimly lit room. Mustering her strength, she moved to stand beside him.

  “I recognise some of them,” Newbury said, his voice tremulous. He approached the door, hovered on the threshold for a second, and then went inside. Frowning, Veronica followed.

  Newbury walked amongst the hanging dead, his expression switching from repulsion to fascination as he examined the corpses in more detail. Flies buzzed around the victims’ heads in thick black swarms.

  “These are ritual killings,” Newbury said, his voice echoing. Veronica realised for the first time how big the room really was. There were probably a hundred flayed bodies in there, each of them hanging from the ceiling like fleshy stalactites. The windows had been blacked out with thick drapes, and the only light came from a bright electric strip that arced across the ceiling, humming with power. There was no furniture in the room, other than a small table bearing various implements of torture: a hammer, a saw, a whip, some tongs. The sight of them threatened to turn Veronica’s stomach again.

  She glanced up at the pale face of one of the corpses. The sallow, sunken eyes and the manner in which the jaw hung loosely open, clearly broken, suggested many, many hours of torture had been enacted upon the victim before he was finally killed. She noticed that the man’s torso had runes and magical symbols carved on it. She examined another. This one had been tattooed with similar markings. Yet another had a large pentagram branded into his back, just below the shoulders. She could see what Newbury was getting at. Ritual killings. It seemed the Bastion Society was a lot more sinister and dangerous than either of them had imagined.

  “Why?” She turned to Newbury, who was still wandering amongst the hanging bodies. “What are they hoping to gain from all this? Surely if they were only interested in murdering their enemies, they’d dispose of the bodies somewhere, rather than stringing them up like this for everyone to see?”

  “I rather think that’s the point of all this,” Newbury replied cryptically. He swung one of the corpses around on its hook, stooping low to examine the feet. Veronica blanched at the sight of the metal hook, which had pierced the dead man’s shoulder, rending his flesh around the exit wound. The blood had long ago dried and been cleared away.

  Newbury was prising apart the toes of the dead man’s left foot as if this were all quite normal, something he might do every day. Veronica didn’t want to brush against one of them by accident, let alone touch them deliberately. The last time she’d seen death on such a scale was in the wreck of the Lady Armitage, the airship that had crashed in Finsbury Park last year. But it later transpired that those bodies had been victims of the Revenant plague, so in many ways they had already been dead before the crash. But this? Something monstrous was going on here.

  “It’s just as I thought,” Newbury said as he let the body swing free again. The hook creaked on its chain, and the cadaver knocked against another with a dull slap, setting that one swinging in turn, so that its head lolled in a semblance of nodding. Veronica turned away.

  “In what sense?” she managed to ask, still fighting the urge to gag. Everywhere she looked there was a putrefying eyeball, or a disembowelled belly, or worse. She settled for focusing on Newbury’s face.

  “Haven’t you noticed? All the victims are men. There are no women in here. What does that tell you?”

  Veronica sighed. Now really wasn’t the time for one of his deductive games. “No. I didn’t notice,” she replied hotly. I’m too busy finding this whole situation rather too appalling for words, she thought, but didn’t add that to her response.

  “They’re like Sykes. All of them. Clean. Unused. As if their flesh has never been worn.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “They’re copies.”

  “More duplicates? But the scale of it…” She trailed off, thinking once again of Amelia. Somehow, this whole thing was linked, but she hoped beyond hope that this wasn’t what would become of those duplicates she had encountered at the Grayling Institute. That would simply be too much to bear. “You said you recognised some of them?”

  Newbury nodded. “The men from downstairs. That’s why there are no women. All of these corpses are members of the Bastion Society. Look here.” He beckoned her over and pointed to a dangling corpse, about three feet away from where he was standing. She recognised the face immediately.

  “Oh God! It’s Enoch Graves!” She swallowed, but her mouth was dry. The corpse had been neutered and its chest cavity wrenched open, its heart torn out. “What on Earth are they doing here?” She was utterly appalled, uncomprehending.

  Newbury put his arm around her shoulders and she fell against him, burying her face in the crook of his neck. She didn’t want to look anymore.

  “The occult symbolism suggests this is some sort of transference ritual,” he said, lapsing into his lecturing voice. Veronica realised his only way of staying unaffected by the horrors they were facing was to turn off his emotional reaction and approach them like a scholar, without passion, like a puzzle that needed to be solved.

  “Transfer
ence?”

  “Yes. It’s all about establishing a balance. You see, some religions and philosophies believe that every act a person commits has consequences, and that the universe finds a means to pay that person back in kind. So if you hurt someone, the likelihood is that you, in turn, would get hurt. Similarly, if you demonstrate kindness, you will be shown kindness in return. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘treat people as you’d ask to be treated’?”

  Veronica nodded. “Yes. But where does the transference come into it?”

  Newbury clacked his tongue against his teeth. “Dr. Fabian mentioned karmic debt for how he’d helped to provide Graves with the means to carry out bizarre rituals. Perhaps those rituals involve inflicting pain on their doppelgängers in an effort to avoid that karmic settlement? They might think that if their duplicates suffer horribly, they won’t have to.” He paused, and she could feel him sighing sadly as she held on to him, still refusing to look at the dangling bodies all around her. “And if I’m right, that means they’ve committed some terrible atrocities indeed, if this is the result of their efforts to avoid the redressing of the balance. Either that or they’re rather overcompensating.”

  “Or putting credit in the bank, so to speak.” The voice rang out, echoing around the large room. It was a voice she recognised immediately, dripping with arrogance and affected refinement. Enoch Graves. His footsteps rang out against the tiled floor as he approached, making no effort to conceal himself from them. “You almost have it, Newbury, and I must admit I’m terribly impressed! Good show! There’s just one thing you’ve got wrong…” He paused as he finally found them, brushing aside one of his dead, mutilated colleagues to clear his path. “They were never alive. We’re not monsters. The machine makes copies, yes, but it never instills the spark of life. They’re just dead husks that look and smell and feel like us, but they’re never conscious. They never feel pain.”

  Graves stood before them, resplendent in his grey suit and bowler hat. He appraised them both. Veronica had turned to watch him approach, and was now eyeing him warily, wondering what he was going to do next. Was he telling the truth? If he was, what was going on at the Grayling Institute with Amelia? Those duplicates were certainly not dead husks.

  “Then how could the transference ever work?” Veronica was still standing in front of Newbury. He held her firmly in front of him, and she realised that his hand was moving to his trouser pocket, out of sight of Graves. He was reaching for his revolver. “If they never feel pain, the karmic debt is never repaid. It’s all for nothing.”

  Graves shrugged. “I suppose we’ll discover which of us is right in the next life,” he said, a sneer on his lips. He held his arms out as if welcoming them. “Oh, it is nice to have visitors. And you’ve saved us such trouble, coming here like this. I had intended to send someone out to kill you, Newbury, but now there’s no need. It’s just a shame you didn’t bring Sir Charles along with you, too. We’ve had to deal with him separately.”

  Veronica felt Newbury stiffen. She prepared herself. If she could cause a distraction …

  She rushed forwards, swinging her arm up and around to aim a blow at Graves’s jaw. He saw her coming, however, and was ready for her, lashing out in self-defence and knocking her brutally to the ground with a swipe of his arm.

  She’d given Newbury the distraction he needed, however, and he swung his right arm up in one easy motion, presenting Graves with the business end of his revolver. He cocked it with his thumb. “What have you done with Charles? Where is he now?”

  Veronica kept her eyes on Graves as she pulled herself up from the floor. Her hands were smarting from where she’d struck the tiles in the fall.

  Graves, however, had not taken his eyes off Newbury and the gun, ignoring Veronica and acting as if nothing had happened. He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know, Newbury. I’d wager he’s in a hundred pieces by now, blown apart on his way to the palace. But my men haven’t returned, so I can’t answer your question. That’s the truth of the matter.” That gave Veronica hope. Perhaps Charles had been able to evade them, or better still, to best them somehow. She willed that to be true.

  She glanced at Newbury. His expression was hard, unforgiving. He wasn’t playing along with Graves’s banter. “I’m not feeling very inclined to go easy on you, Graves.” He stabbed the air threateningly with the gun. His finger hovered on the trigger. Veronica wondered what he was going to do. He’d never been the sort to kill someone in cold blood, even for something as world-shattering as murdering his dearest friend. But the glint in his eye suggested otherwise. Perhaps, in this instance, Newbury felt he was the one who needed to mete out that unpaid karmic debt.

  Suddenly there was a blur of motion. Newbury buckled, his face contorted in pain, and the gun clattered noisily to the tiles a few feet away. For a moment, Veronica couldn’t figure out exactly what had occurred, until she saw the sabre in Graves’s hand, and realised with mounting dismay that he had managed to draw it and use it to disarm Newbury, all in a matter of seconds.

  Graves came forward, the tip of his sabre pressing dangerously against the front of Newbury’s jacket. He looked serious now, all sense of his earlier playfulness banished. “Now, Sir Maurice,” he said in a perfectly reasonable tone, “I think it’s about time you and I sat down together and discussed this like gentlemen.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  “Tell me, what did Edwin Sykes do to incur your wrath? Was it the fact he stole from you? Or the matter of bringing unwanted attention to your strange little society?”

  Newbury was seated opposite Enoch Graves at a large round table in a flag-stoned room on the lower level. The chamber was dressed in the manner of a mediaeval throne room, with huge tapestries covering the walls and iron candelabras bearing tall, white pillars of wax to either side of Graves’s elaborate chair. The table itself was a smooth, glossy mahogany, inlaid with intricate zodiacal symbols of ebony and gold. A wreath of stylised ivy encircled an impressive goblet at the centre of the design, which Newbury took to be a depiction of the Holy Grail.

  Newbury grinned. Graves really was attempting to re-create his ideal of Camelot right there in London. Of course, he would be at its epicentre, sitting resplendent on his golden throne. Newbury thought he looked faintly ridiculous, dwarfed by his massive gleaming chair.

  Behind Newbury two men stood guard, dressed in the matching grey suits and hats of the Bastion Society, each bearing swords and pistols. Another two had escorted Veronica to a holding cell, where Graves had assured him that she would remain unharmed, at least for the time being. Newbury supposed that would depend on how the following conversation went, and whether Graves would try to use Veronica’s well-being as a bargaining tool to get what he wanted.

  He was concerned for Charles, though. He knew his friend could hold his own in a tussle, but if Graves really had sent men after him with explosives, the chief inspector would have found himself badly outmatched. If it was too late, if Charles was dead—Newbury shuddered at the very thought—then Graves would pay with his life. More than that, Newbury promised himself. He would pay with his very soul.

  It was clear the premier didn’t yet want Newbury dead, however. If that had been his intention, he would have run the pair of them through with his sabre up in the hanging room while he’d had the chance. No, he wanted something else. Newbury wasn’t yet sure what it was, but he expected it wouldn’t be long before he found out.

  Graves leaned forward in his throne, peering down at Newbury from across the table. “Sykes?” He laughed, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Sykes? No … Although I probably would have executed him sooner or later for the reasons you mention. We knew all about his little crime spree. It couldn’t have been anyone else–he was the expert handler of the spiders, the only one capable of using the machines for such precision work. To be honest with you, Newbury, the entire matter was beneath my concern. He’d ‘borrowed’ one of our machines, but we have many more. And he m
ade sure that at least half of the proceeds from his late-night pursuits were added to the society’s coffers. No, I wouldn’t have killed him for that.”

  “Then why?” Newbury ran a finger around the inside of his collar. He was sweating, and his hands were beginning to tremble. It had been a while since his last dose of laudanum, and he was starting to itch again with cravings.

  “Because he took it upon himself to disregard my express orders. Because he removed one of the duplicates from the growth chamber and employed it for his own purposes, leaving it in a gutter on Shaftesbury Avenue to foil the police. It was a blasphemy against our beliefs, Newbury, and I considered it a sign of his moral inferiority. He simply had to die. So I had one of the men trail him and sabotage the machine. Sykes might have been an expert in handling the mechanical creatures, but he was never intelligent enough to understand what made them work.” Graves looked smug, as if the point of his story was to highlight his own superiority. “I’d have liked to have seen the expression on his face when it turned on him. Besides, he was never truly one of ours.”

  Newbury looked puzzled. “Surely though, according to your philosophy, he’ll simply be born again? So what was the point in murdering him in such a fashion?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Graves replied. “And in the next life he will carry with him the lessons learned in this one. In truth, all we’ve done by ending this stage of his existence was to preserve the integrity of his soul. Next time he might make better choices.”

  Newbury laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. He couldn’t quite believe what Graves was telling him: that he’d ordered a mechanical device to tear a hole through Sykes’s chest for the man’s own good. “That’s a terribly convenient theory of existence, Sir Enoch.”

  Graves looked serious. “Attractive, isn’t it? I can see you’re enamoured by it, Newbury. We’ll come to that.”

  Newbury ran a hand through his hair. He felt a little faint. He pressed on regardless. Graves was so egomaniacal that he seemed eager to answer Newbury’s questions. Newbury decided to take advantage of the fact, gaining as much information as he could while he had the chance. He knew it might prove invaluable later, and he’d long ago learned how to manipulate the arrogance of men such as Graves. His sort, Newbury had found, were always willing to impress people with their assumed intelligence, always looking for the validation of others. “So how does the duplication process work? I understand it has something to do with Lucien Fabian?” There, Newbury thought, let’s see what he makes of that.