The Ripper Affair

As a sop to his conscience, it was not quite all Clare could have hoped for. As Emma Bannon sometimes remarked, conscience was a luxury those in service to Crown and Empire did not often possess.

“Quite so, quite so,” the judge bugled, and fetched a handkerchief from some deep recess of his robe. He sniffed loudly, affected to dab a patriotic tear from his deep-set eyes, and launched into upbraiding the young Eirean.

Clare turned his attention away. He was not given leave to go quite yet, but experience told him this particular judge would not ask anything resembling a question for a long while. Mr Spencewail had no solicitor: he might as well have been a sullen lump, voiceless and inert.

Miss Bannon would have been watching him with bright interest, though, ever unwilling to let a potential danger go unobserved.

Upon Clare’s thinking of her, the small crystal and silver pendant tucked under his shirt on its hair-fine chain–a Bocannon’s Nut, meant to warn the sorceress when Clare was in dire danger–chilled sharply. Wearing it while engaged upon investigations of a somewhat dangerous nature had become routine, even if the thing seemed to have some variance of temperature even when he was not in any difficult strait. He had not yet had a private moment to take the necklace off, or sleep. It was a bloody miracle he had possessed a few spare moments to wash his face and shave said countenance before appearing here, and once he was excused there was more work to be done.

As far as the authorities were concerned, the culprit was caught and further danger averted, but Clare was not so certain. He would not rest until he was. His faculties–and his quality of thoroughness, however inconvenient–would not allow it.

The courtroom, packed to the gunwales as it was, positively wallowed every time a fresh piece of evidence was introduced or a rise in the judge’s voice denoted something of interest. Somewhere in the high, narrow, stone-walled room–a leftover from the Wifekiller’s time with the rose of his royal dynasty worked into chipped, cracked carvings near the ceiling–was Valentinelli, who had flatly refused to cool his heels in Mayefair or at Clare’s often-neglected Baker Street quarters. Mrs Ginn, redoubtable landlady that she was, sometimes complained that Mr Clare kept the rooms so as to gather dust, but allowed that a gentleman was sometimes allowed to live as and where he pleased, even if he was one of her blessed lodgers.

Another ripple ran through the crowd. Were they bored with the lord justice, as he was? Did they think his refusal to speak outside his purview as a sign of support for their Cause? Did they have anything so concrete as a Cause, or was their dissatisfaction that of the mute beast?

What is this? Feeling, in place of Logic? It was not merely the press of the crowd; for a moment Clare’s collar was far too tight. He did not lift a finger to loosen it; the Bocannon was a chip of burning ice. The curious internal doubling a mentath was capable of held the crowd in a bubble of perception, while his faculties raced under the surface of his skull to pinpoint the discomfort.

What is amiss?

Observe.

Sweat. Beads of sweat, a slick brow under the brim of a wool hat; far too flush even for a man caught in this press. High colour on scrape-shaven cheeks, but a pale upper lip told Clare the young man had possessed a moustache just this morning, and the line of his jaw was very familiar. His cloth was wrong as well–the coat was ill fitting, and too rough for the shoulders of a clerk unaccustomed to a drover’s work. Besides, there were traces on the sleeves, smears of familiar blue chalk, and the connection blazed into life.

Ah. So Spencewail does have a brother!

The satisfaction of having his deduction proved correct was immense, but at the moment Clare could not luxuriate in it, for the man in the chalk-smeared coat undoubtedly had explosive sticks strapped to his torso.

The man ripped his coat open with blistered fingers, a single horn button describing an arc as it fell. A familiar brass dial attached to strips of leather gleamed against his sunken chest and the stained cloth of his workman’s shirt.

Spencewail, standing in the dock, had not yet realised what was afoot. He still glared at Clare, who had already begun to shift his weight. The blast would be quite vicious if they had solved the problem of sputtering in the catch-dial—

“Bastarde!” A familiar cry, Ludovico Valentinelli’s voice catching halfway, and the Neapolitan assassin appeared from the crowd, his pox-pocked face alight with fury, his lank hair still plastered down from his morning’s hurried ablutions.