Imogen Robertson - Instruments of Darkness

“Graves?”

“Here! They have him!”

An exclamation of horror. Suddenly a man appeared in the darkness, half-dressed and holding a flaming torch over his head.

“What in God’s name?”

The torchlight swam in. Miss Chase clutched at the children. Two huge, cat-like creatures were at the throat of the yellow man, tossing him around like a rag doll. Graves, his trunk bloody and eyes wide with terror, was scrabbling away on his back. She saw Clode, grabbing one of the animals by its neck and throwing it bodily back into the cave, then seizing the yellow man’s leg and attempting to pull him free from those teeth. The torch was dropped; the man who bore it leaped forward to help him, kicking the second cat in the throat till it abandoned its grip. Miss Chase scrambled to her feet, picked up the torch and pointed it into the cave.

“Don’t look,” she said to the children, then glancing back saw they had already seen, and could not look away.

The yellow man lay sprawled almost at their feet, his neck a ragged mess of torn flesh. Across his chest the broad even stripes of clawmarks had torn his clothes and fringed them in red. Miss Chase looked at their strange rescuers. The cats were chained at the collar it seemed, their muscular bodies spotted with markings like tiny hoofmarks. They paced forward to the extent of their reach, their speckled mouths red and running, but they could no longer reach any of their guests. Graves slumped against the far wall, his face white and his side bloody and wet. Susan let out a noise between a whimper and a cry and scrambled over to him. He put his arm around her and pulled her close.

“It’s all right, Susan. I’ll live.”

Clode was on his knees at the yellow man’s side, looking as if he had lost his senses in the fight, panting hard, his front covered in blood. Miss Chase had never thought there was so much blood in the world. They all seemed drenched in it. She glanced at her own hands. Saw them scraped and cut by the walls, and floor. The man who had brought the torch stood in the midst of them, looking around with amazement. She looked up at him.

“What are they?”

“They are two male Panthera pardus of the felidae family. Commonly known as leopards. I am John Hunter. This is my home. Now, madam, who the hell are you?”

Clode blinked and looked about him, then reached into his pocket, dropping his bloody knife on the ground in the process, and pulled out the letter he had received in the Caveley parlor. He remained on his knees, but held the paper up toward Hunter, crumpled and dirty, still struggling to find enough breath to speak. Hunter took it from him as Clode managed in a gasp:

“Sir, with the compliments of Gabriel Crowther.”

“Bring them in then.”

Hunter’s voice was muffled behind one of the heavy doors in the back of his house that separated the living areas from those in which he conducted his research, though, in truth, the whole establishment was a monument to his work. Oils of strange animals, meticulously painted, hung around the walls, along with skulls and bones of creatures Susan could not even imagine. Jonathan was transfixed by the skeleton of a snake coiled as if to strike in a glass case by his feet. His sister held tightly onto Miss Chase’s hand as the door swung open.

Hunter was a man in late middle age. His face was rather squashed and red, with a comfortable belly pushing under his waistcoat. Standing next to him, Clode looked very young. He was wearing a fresh shirt, but there were still bloodstains on the skin around his throat. He tried to smile at them, and winced at the pain in his jaw. In front of the men was a huge oak table; on it two forms, bodies under dirty sheets.

“We wanted you to see them before you go to bed,” Clode said. “For the last time. To show he is really gone.”

Susan nodded and let go of Miss Chase’s hand. Hunter turned down the sheet from the yellow face of the body nearest to her, though he kept the throat covered. The children approached and stared at him for a long time. The eyes were open and blank of meaning. The candlelight pooled over the cracked jaundiced skin, and made puddles of shadow swing around the cloth over his throat. The lips were slightly parted.

Jonathan looked up at Hunter. “He is dead?”

“Very.”

“And who is that?” Jonathan pointed across at the other body. Hunter folded back the second sheet to reveal the broad features of Yellow Face’s companion.

Miss Chase saw Clode flinch as the corpse was exposed. So that was your work, she thought to herself. Again the children looked. This time Susan spoke.

“He looks a bit like Mr. Yelling’s son.” She glanced up at Clode, who watched her with friendly concern. “He was a bit simple. It’s not him, though. And I’m glad he’s dead. Thank you for killing them.”

She stepped back, and Clode looked a little embarrassed. The little girl addressed Hunter.

“What will happen to them now?”

Hunter glanced at the younger man, who answered for him.

“The bodies will disappear,” Clode said. “That’s why we wanted you to see them now.”

Jonathan yawned and leaned against Miss Chase’s slender hip.

“How disappear?” he asked.

Hunter grinned at him. “I shall cut them up to show my students. Though I may keep the skulls.”

The boy smiled sleepily. “Good.”

Miss Chase placed her arm around his shoulders. “I must put these children to bed. We are just going to say good night to Mr. Graves.”

The gentlemen bowed, and she led the children from the room, turning back to the strange, froglike man among the candles and corpses.

“Thank you, Mr. Hunter,” she said quietly.

“Delighted, Miss Chase.”

Graves was comfortable, pale from his loss of blood, but neatly bound up and lucid. The children ran to him and buried themselves in his arms as soon as the door opened.

“Steady there! Lord, you’re as much trouble as the man with the knife!” Miss Chase sat at the end of the bed and watched as they burrowed into him like babies. Jonathan looked at him, his eyes shining.

“Mr. Hunter is going to cut them up and keep the skulls.”

“That sounds like a fine plan.”

They talked nonsense to each other for a few minutes, laughing more than would have seemed right to anyone who had not been through the tension of the night, felt it release and wash away from them, till Miss Chase noticed the first wakings of dawn outside, and began to stand, ready to gather them back to bed. The door swung open. Clode appeared, his manner all urgency.

“Good! You are still awake. Look what we found in that man’s coat!” He thrust a handful of paper at them. Graves reached out over Susan’s head to take it. Miss Chase looked at him expectantly. He opened his eyes wide.

“It’s a note: ‘Here is the address. Do him, and any family you find there.’ Well, that’s fairly clear. And this scrap has the address of Alexander’s shop written on it. In a different hand.”

Daniel nodded. “I think I know whose hand wrote the address. Carter Brook.”

“The first man killed at Thornleigh?”

“That’s right. And I bet any money Mrs. Westerman and Crowther will be able to tell me who the other writer is. We have it! We’ll get the vipers out of your house, sir.” He nodded to Jonathan with a wink. “So by the time you come to it, it’ll be fit for you.” He looked around at the faces. “For you all, I hope. But I must go. Hunter will give me horses, and I should get this into Mrs. Westerman’s hands as soon as I may.”

Miss Chase put up her hand. “But Mr. Clode, you’ve hardly slept for days! You are injured! You must rest.”