On the Trail of the Scissorman
Copyright 2012 by PoMoCo, Smashwords Edition
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Consulting detectives Bartleby and James have reputations for solving difficult crimes with a combination of steamtech inginuity and deductive reasoning. When the police cannot catch a serial killer turning Victorian London's children into orphans, the brother of its latest victim turns to the duo for help. Despite less-than-forthcoming assistance from Scottland Yard, the pair are determined to stop the menace that the broadsheets have labeled The Scissorman.
Bartleby dropped to one knee next to the recently orphaned boy's bed, hat in his hands, and regarded the child with due seriousness. "Tell me whatever you can recall of the Scissorman."
The child, seated on his bed, back against the wall, turned towards Bartleby and from the doorway I could see in his eyes a sadness beyond reason mixed with a certain dread acceptance. Whatever the boy had witness had carved its impression on his soul as deeply as the killer's blades had carved into his parents flesh. The boy's sole remaining living relative, the uncle that had taken him in and commissioned our assistance, watched with concern.
"He came in through the window." The boy's voice was as flat and empty as his gaze. "He was quiet, but I was awake when he arrived so I saw him. He moved slow and fast at the same time. I don't know how to explain better. At first I thought he was Father Christmas come in July because he was red all over, but then I saw he was thin and curled up. And he smelled. Bad."
"Bad how?" Bartleby asked.
"I don't know. Just bad."
"Alright. Take your time, Henry. Remember what you can." This patience was why Bartleby was the one to interview the child. I would have pressed for data on each of his points – how tall the killer was, what shade of red he'd been, was his smell closer to rotten meat or burning oil – completeness is the basis of soundly constructed research. I'm not good with overly-emotional people, and children tend to be less reserved at the best of times.
The child's voice trembled as he continued. "He looked at me, and I was scared because he had the scissors. Big ones, like daddy's gardening shears. He looked mad, and I thought at first that he was going to get me. But then he just left into the hall. It was quiet for a bit and then mummy and daddy were shouting and I heard it yelling and I ran to see and--"
Bartleby put his arm around the child's shoulder as the boy's voice rose in pitch, pulling him into an embrace. "Shh. Shh. There there, child, it's okay." Tiny sobs emerged as the distraught boy sobbed into Bartleby's shoulder.
"He'd barely even spoken since the police brought him to me," the boy's uncle related quietly. "Never mind the crying. How did your partner get him to open up like that?"
I spoke without shifting my gaze from the pair. "Bartleby is good with children." Bartleby was good with everybody, when he wanted to be. He could manipulate people as easily as an engineer operated a Babbage engine, pulling levers, flipping switches, and bringing forth the outcome he desired. At times I felt as if Bartleby actually saw his fellow man as devices and tools and puzzles, the same way that I approached mechanisms. I didn't know whether that was better or worse than my own social inadequacies.
"Poor boy is in for a rough life." I exited the middle class townhouse and waited on the walk while Bartleby retrieved his waistcoat. "Left alone with a bachelor uncle barely older than he is. A boy needs a father to raise him properly."
"Like the fathers we had, James?" Bartleby asked. "Like my father, a drunken wastrel who squandered the family's fortune until I had him declared unfit?"
"You turned out all right."
"Or perhaps like your father, the brute who exploited you and essentially enslaved your talent until you did an end run around him to get yourself an apprenticeship with the Royal Academy of Engineers and Artificers?"
"Our fathers are poor examples," I pulled the cigar from my breast pocket and clipped the tip off. "But we turned out well."
"Did we now?"
"Considering. And Henry's father wasn't a monster."
Bartleby stopped and looked back at the house for a moment, quietly pensive, while I flagged down a hansom cab. "I wouldn't be so sure."
"Of what?"
"Listen, I'm not saying that the boy is better off orphaned. His family was brutally murdered in front of him, there's no denying that he'd have been best served if that hadn't been. But there was a certain lividity to his face – bruises that hadn't entirely healed where one might cuff a child--"
"Fathers hit," I lit the cigar. "It's what they do."
"Discipline doesn't leave bruises. Beatings do."
I was silent at that, climbing into the cab. Poor child, but beyond the matter of the case – it was best not to become too involved, and with the matter of the father's death, pointless at any rate. I'd have to watch out for Bartleby; the man had the tendency to become emotionally invested when deeply engaged.
"Where to, gentlemen?" the driver asked.
"Scotland Yard." Bartleby entered beside me. "Not that we can expect much cooperation from the Met."
While I share Bartleby's low opinion of the Metropolitan Police, I do enjoy a visit to Scotland Yard. With assistance from a number of local inventors and engineers (including yours truly) the Criminal Investigation Division had rapidly grown into the world's premiere forensics unit. While I enjoyed, of course, seeing the fruits of my labours being put to good use, I always relished the opportunity to examine my peers' creations, even if only to discern how I could improve upon their work.
"Well, well, look who it is, lads," Inspector Abel stood and greeted us as we entered. He was a large man, a good bit taller than Bartleby and as broadly built as I, always dressed impeccably in his uniform. "Bartleby and James, London's darlings, here to do our jobs for us again. Where would we poor Metropolitan Police be without the likes of private consultants like the pair of you to guide us through our investigations?"
I detected sarcasm. The scowls and chuckles from his peers and co-workers indicated that there may have been some resentment building towards us for some time. The Home Office had bypassed the Met in hiring us several weeks ago to deal with an assassin that had been evading capture via conventional investigation, and the local broadsheets had decided to start running angles on the uselessness of the police and on the utility of consulting agencies such as ours. Needless to say it hadn't endeared us with the boys of New Scotland Yard.
"Floundering, probably." Bartleby sounded bored, examining the non-existent dirt under his fingernails. As I've said, he can be good with people when he desires. When he does not he can take a certain sadistic enjoyment in toying with them.
Abel slapped a rolled up newspaper into Bartleby's chest. Our pictures were splashed across the front, along with the headline 'CONSULTANTS TO BAIL OUT SCOTLAND YARD AGAIN'. The sub-heading read 'WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE WHO NEEDS COPPERS'. Vulgar argot aside, I felt the need to mollify the inspector. "We told them that your assistance in the matter of the capture of the Spider was instrumental in--"
"We don't need your charity with the press," Inspector Abel scowled. "Or for you to do our jobs for us."
"Then perhaps you'd better start doing them yourselves," Bartleby said. "We're not here for you, at any rate – just deliver any files pertaining to the Scissorman and we'll be on our merry way."
"Just our files?" Abel snorted. "What, now, is the CID at your disposal, Mr. Bartleby? You're not on the city's dime for this one. I'm under no compulsion to give you a bloody thing."
"You don't have to give us anything, Inspector." Bartleby advanced on the larger man, looking almost puny in comparison. "You're well within your rights to send us away empty handed. In fact, I'd expect nothing less from the likes of you."
"Then I dare say you'll be on your way." Abel grinned, visibly relaxing into a certain satisfaction.
"I've had our hansom wait out front. Its driver is ready to take us to Downing Street. The Home Office – and by Home Office I of course mean Viscount Gladstone – owes us a favour. A favour from the Home Secretary is a valuable thing, not to be squandered on trivialities. Should I find myself forced to waste such a boon for such simple cooperation, you can assure yourself – and your men – that I'll get my pence worth for it by ensuring that the parties responsible serve very short careers."
As Bartleby spoke Inspector Abel's look of smugness had gradually transformed into a grimace, his ruddy face paling. The other officers had very carefully lost interest in the exchange, turning their attentions back to whatever it was they were working on. Abel stared down into Bartleby's eyes for a few tense heartbeats, and for a moment I thought he was actually going to take a swing at him. The big man's fists unclenched and he turned to his desk, returning with a bundle of documents.
"Here," he said.
"Thank you," Bartleby gave a small bow. "That wasn't so difficult, was it? Manners, James. Manners make the world go round. Even a stiff lout like Abel understands the value of a constructive working relationship."
"Let's be off, Bartleby." I hadn't ruled out the possibility of Abel sacrificing his career to choke the life out of Alton Bartleby.
From the increasingly dark gazes Abel was casting him, it looked like he hadn't ruled it out either. "Get out."
"Fare thee well," Bartleby half-waved as I ushered him out the door.
Back in the cab Bartleby handed me a portion of the sheaf of papers. "Here you are, James, good man. These are the forensic reports from the bodies that have been recovered."
I took them eagerly. The broadsheets had been lurid in their descriptions of the bodies' mutilations, but they had zero accountability when it came to accuracy. Bartleby looked a little taken aback at my gusto, but he can't help it. Not everyone can reduce the concept of a body to a mere machine of flesh and blood, stripping from it connotations of humanity.
"While you pore through those I'll go over the incident reports, witness interviews, and crime scene analysis. Such as they are." He flipped through several pages. "Too much to hope, I suppose, that these buffoons would take adequate notes. Still, we'll make do with what we have."
The forensic specialist's reports on the conditions of the remains were as fascinating as I'd hoped. I'm no medical doctor and certainly not a pathologist, but I do have an understanding of how human physiology functions. Each victim had suffered a massive degree of trauma. Limbs had been sheared off, torsos dismembered, heads decapitated with tremendous force. The weapon used had been sharp, but the sheer strength employed was beyond the pale for a normal man.
"Do you suppose we're dealing with another clockwork automaton?" Bartleby asked, setting the tea service on parlour table.
"It's hardly likely. Clockworks are fast and precise, but not typically capable of applying this level of steady force. The specialist's report concludes that the Scissorman literally used his weapon to snip off parts of his victims, some while they were still alive."
"Horrible!" He kept his eyes steady on the cup that he was pouring me.
"Worse yet, it states that the killer kept portions of his victims for some nefarious purpose. About a third of the mass from each murder I'd estimate."
"God, James, when you call it 'mass' like that it sounds so–"
"So much easier to discuss?" I added a precisely calibrated teaspoon of sugar to my cup.
"Vulgar."
"All we are is meat, Bartleby. Flesh and bone."
"What of the soul?" Bartleby poured his own cup.
"Oh, do grow up."
"I'm serious. There's something indefinable that separates man from the animals."
I spoke with a slight singsong while pouring a dollop of cream into my cup. "A sense of pretension about it, perhaps. Delusions of gods, of spirits, of magic and other humbug."
"Good Lord, James." Bartleby looked annoyed, but knew better than to argue. "Your scepticism is dreadfully aggravating at times."
"That scepticism is what makes me a proficient man of science."
"If you insist."
"Let's stick to the matter at hand," I said, bored with ontology. "We know he's tremendously strong. We know he takes trophies."
Bartleby paused for a sip of tea before offering his own thoughts. "We know he knows we're after him."
"We do?"
"The broadsheets," Bartleby reminded me. "We're all over the front pages in connection with the case."
I considered the matter, breaking a cucumber slice in half. "Well, then. Do you suppose he'll come after us?"
"I would."
"Comforting."
"It's plain that the Met can't catch him," Bartleby reasoned. "We caught the Spider. We'll catch the Scissorman. So if he's an adversary worth facing he'll come after us tonight."
"I see. In the case that he's a galvanic clockwork automaton I'll set up the audio device again."
"Better safe than sorry."
"What's our next step?"
"Next we conduct a personal investigation. The Met's reports are next to worthless. I'll proceed to interview the witnesses again. You should revisit the crime scenes. Quite likely that the CID missed something."
After tea I made my way to the East End of London. Up until the latest slayings, the Scissorman's victims had been families in lower-income areas, Spitalfields and Whitechapel, murdered in smaller homes and apartments whose landlords had not bothered to re-fasten the doors after the Met had left. As expected, the first two homes were stripped almost bare by their neighbours, anything of value taken and re-purposed by someone else. This didn't bother me over-much – I'd rather see something scrounged than left alone in an abandoned home, and the Scissorman didn't appear to be interested in interacting with the furnishings.
I took the opportunity to test out one of my latest inventions, Forensic N-Viewers. The goggles' frames contained a phosphorous mercury fluid that refracted off of the lead-treated lenses to create a particular glow that picked up various intensities of N-ray. Blood in particular has a powerful N-ray signature, even after it's been cleaned up, and thus I would be able to get a certain impression of the murder scenes long after the bodies had been carted away. Everything viewed through the N-Viewers was treated with a pale green glow – an unfortunate side effect of the phosphorous in the mercury that meant I would have to remove them should detail work be called for.
My first few investigations followed the same general pattern. The parents' bedrooms were liberally splattered with blood-signatures from the murdered, in patterns indicating that they had been alive and struggling when dismembered. The Scissorman always seemed to enter and leave through the surviving child's bedroom window, as indicated by the N-Ray trail that the bloody limbs had left. A less scientific man would have found the demeanour of these houses – dark, empty, abandoned – eerie in the phosphorous glow of the N-Viewers, but my attention was focused elsewhere. A different sort of N-Ray signature left by the killer. It wasn't an impression left by blood or anything physical, just a strange cloud left in the air where he'd traversed, visible only through my Forensic Viewers. It dispersed into the general background N-ray emanations once I'd left the confines of the victims' homes, but within the walls of the house it billowed like smoke.
It was an energy, but nothing like that left by the living. I would have to ponder its meaning.
The third murder site I visited wasn't a home proper, but instead a workhouse inhabited by a family of Chinese immigrants on the Whitechapel/Spitalfields border. Though it had been temporarily shut down for the duration of the Met's investigation, its owners had had the good sense to lock up in the mean time. Prying off the chains securing the front doors allowed me access onto the workroom floor, a massive chamber housing a number of clockwork looms and dying apparatus. There were small traces of N-Ray emanations dotted among the equipment, though from spilt blood, sweat, or tears I could not be certain. I saw nothing that indicated the site of a multiple murder, so I pressed inward, covering my nose with my handkerchief against the cloying, stinging stench of lye.
The interior of the workshop was nearly pitch dark, and I had nought but the dull green glow of my Forensic N-Viewers to guide me. The storeroom beyond the workroom was cluttered with spare parts for the autolooms, bundles of cloth, bins of thread, and racks of completed garments. It was here that the murdered family had spent their lives, and as I hunted for the tell-tale N-Ray cloud that my quarry had left behind I could not help but feel like a voyeur sifting through the relics of a forgotten people.
As I moved slowly through the green-tinted darkness, manoeuvring between great drop-cloths used as dividers, I caught sight of the Scissorman's trail. I followed his dim billowing N-Radiation cloud through what felt like a labyrinth, until I reached several drop-cloths arranged into what looked like living quarters – a beat up old rug had been placed in the centre of the area, under a discarded table holding a cheap and unwashed tea service. An unlit lantern sat in the corner amongst scattered matches, and what little furnishings remained had been smashed to pieces in the melee that had ended the inhabitants' lives.
The entire area – drop clothes, walls, floor – was splattered in N-Ray residue, and I realised by the intensity of the emanations that the blood itself yet remained. I collected a sample, more out of habit than anything else, and noticed that some of the Scissorman's cloud was particularly dense around one of the dividing drop-cloths. From it I collected another bit of residue, and realised that the killer had to have brushed past when he made his egress. It was slick, and smelled heavily of ammonia... no. Formaldehyde.
A sudden brightness on the periphery of my vision caught my attention. A spot of green, moving through the darkness, visible only through my Forensic Viewers. Whatever it was, was several sheets away still, off in the storeroom. With an N-Ray luminosity like that, it had to be a living being. Was it one of the workers? A burglar? The Scissorman, stalking me to end the danger I presented to him?
I grabbed a pair of fabric scissors, the closest weapon I could approximate, and cursed myself for having left my spanner in my workshop. I crouched and slowly made my way through the drop-cloths, closer and closer to the N-Ray signature, ready to defend myself should the situation require it. As the last cloth parted before my hand I poised to strike, ready to bring the scissors down through yielding flesh with all the force I could muster.
The girl I discovered screamed at me in the darkness, almost paralysed with fear, curled up in the corner behind some baskets. She was tiny, small even for her age, malnourished and dirty. The dressing gown she wore was tattered, and dirt and dust smudged her face. I realised that with the scissors I carried and the green glow of my N-Ray goggles I must have looked a fright, and quickly put the improvised weapon aside.
"That makes far more sense then." Bartleby watched with satisfaction as our guest devoured her third bowl of stew. "The workhouse murder didn't quite fit the killer's pattern; there was no orphan left behind. This girl must have hidden from the police, from the owners, from everyone until you found her."
"She was well hidden," I acknowledged. I sat across from the girl, a little astounded at her gusto. I was aware that she probably hadn't eaten since her family had been killed, but it was a mystery to me where she planned on putting all the stew. "But now, what do we do with her?"
"I haven't the foggiest, James. You're the one who brought her home with you."
"Well, I couldn't just leave her." I poured the girl some tea. She seemed to have gotten over her initial fear now that she could see me in the light.
"謝謝你的茶，老總." She smiled up at me gratefully.
"I doubt we'll get much information from her," Bartleby said. "Unless you've got some sort of Chinese to English translation device."
"Don't be absurd." Though upon reflection I could think of a few ways it could be done with a small Babbage engine to interpret and catalogue phonetic variations and a comprehensive set of wax cylinders to play back samples of speech. It would be a simple enough variation on the Sonic Galvanic Disruptor, though the complexity of the Chinese language would require a significant storage space. Perhaps if we dug out a sub-cellar to my workshop...