The Connicle Curse Read online

He snickered as we reached the edge of the woods but got no farther before a small cadre of Yarders came hurtling toward us. Sergeant Evans, looking thoroughly wearied, was at their front. A look of surprise lit his eyes as he pulled up abreast of us, but before he could say a word Colin shoved the court’s paperwork under his nose.

  “Well, Mr. Pendragon.” The sergeant heaved a sigh as he raised his lantern to read the hastily prepared document. “This didn’t take you long at all. The inspector has only just left himself.”

  “Pity,” Colin sniffed.

  “Get on with your duties!” Evans snapped at his men. “You too, Lanchester,” he added to the same young constable who had harassed Colin and me earlier. “I shall see to Mr. Pendragon and Mr. Pruitt.” His men immediately struck off for the house with the exception of Lanchester, who paused long enough to furl his brow at Sergeant Evans before following the others. “He’s a shite, that one. Forever trying to crawl up the inspector’s bum. He’d better come around.”

  “God help you if he doesn’t,” Colin said.

  The sergeant tsked as he turned and headed back toward the trees, his lantern held high out in front for us. “I take it you’ve come to see what we discovered down here.”

  “I’d wager it’s the body of Edmond Connicle.”

  A crooked smile crept across Sergeant Evans’s face. “So it is, Mr. Pendragon. And you’ll be glad to see the body just as we found it, as I can assure you, you have never seen anything like this before.”

  Neither of us pressed him for additional details as we plunged into the stand of trees running along the periphery of the Connicle property. We would wait and see what there was to see ourselves. Beyond that, I doubted this body could be much worse off than the remains of Captain Trevor Bellingham on our most recent case.

  We came out into a small clearing that sloped down toward a gravel road overgrown with scrub and brush, attesting to how long it had been since its last use. Thistles sprouted randomly within the deep ruts left by carriage wheels and the grass covering the center berm had risen to several feet. These details were easily viewable as a result of the multiple stands of electric lighting being run off a portable engine bellowing from the back of a nearby wagon. Buckingham Palace had only been electrified eight years before and yet Scotland Yard was already finding the wherewithal to make use of this expensive new technology. Its value was undeniable considering how the evening sky was lit up like the sunniest day where the lights were focused.

  “We really must look into electric lighting.” Colin voiced my very thought as we made our way down the sloping field. “How extraordinary to banish the night so completely.”

  “We’ll have to save our extra farthings,” I answered as a large black swath midway along the road gradually came into view. It looked like a charcoal-blackened crater left behind after an explosion had torn it asunder. But as we drew closer we spotted charred remains lying at the center of the earthen wound, curled in a fetal position and recognizable only as being human, nothing more.

  “That would be Edmond Connicle,” Sergeant Evans announced as we stopped at the edge of the gouge. “There’s a blackened ring on his finger that matches what his wife described. We haven’t told her yet,” he admitted. “We hear she’s fragile. . . .” he added with a wince. Colin kept silent as he knelt down for a closer look at the remains.

  “Is the coroner here?” I asked with feigned disinterest, though I was loath to run into Denton Ross.

  “Mr. Ross and his assistant have gone back to their wagon to fetch a stretcher. The Yard’s photographer just finished taking pictures, so they’re ready to move the body to the morgue.”

  “May I steal a closer look?” Colin asked as he went ahead and stepped into the blackened depression. Sergeant Evans did not bother to respond.

  “We’re quite a way from the house,” I said to the sergeant. “What made your men come down this far?”

  He grinned as he answered. “The dogs.” He took his hat off and scratched the top of his thinning pate. “The inspector had us fanning out in every direction from that gardener’s shed, but it took the dogs to finally drag us all the way out here. God only knows why he didn’t head for the house.”

  Colin harrumphed. “Did anyone bother to look for signs of a trail while the dogs were mucking about?” He squatted down by the front of the body. “You know . . . drops of blood, bent grasses, broken twigs, the usual sort of tedium?”

  Sergeant Evans laughed. “You really think remarkably little of us, don’t you, Mr. Pendragon?” Colin didn’t bother to answer as he poked at the cadaver’s face with the handle of a small folding knife he’d extracted from his pocket. “I suppose there are times we deserve it, but not today. There’s not a drop of blood outside that shed. No such trail to follow.”

  Colin stood up and moved to the far side of the depression, sweeping his eyes along the nearby ground. “Were there any other signs?”

  “One of our men did finally notice a meandering sort of trail that leads down here. One man’s footprints. As if he had hemorrhaged inside that shed and then wandered all the way down here to be a human bonfire.” His face curled grimly. “None of it makes a bit of sense.”

  “Meandering?” Colin asked as he continued to scan the ground on the opposite side of the body, his every move amplified by the harsh electric lighting.

  “He didn’t come straight down here. It was like he was searching for something.”

  “I see,” Colin said, but it was clear from his tone that he did not. Nor, most certainly, did I. Given the level of trauma evident in the gardener’s shed, it was indeed impossible to believe that the victim of such an attack would go wandering through the woods with his house so near.

  “Hey!” The cold, harsh voice tore up my spine like a streak of lightning. “Get the bloody hell away from there!” It was Denton Ross.

  “It’s all right.” Sergeant Evans waved him off. “They’ve got approval from the courts on behalf of Mrs. Connicle.”

  “I don’t care if the ruddy Queen has given her blessing!” he snarled back as he and his aide reached us. “I’ll not have these prigs fouling my remains.”

  “Watch yourself, Mr. Ross,” Colin replied tightly before stepping out of the ditch. “I’ll not stand here while you slander Mr. Pruitt and me.”

  “Then sod off,” Denton sniped. He and his cohort stumbled down into the trough and set the stretcher they’d brought next to the scorched remains. “And you’d better keep that one on a short leash,” he added, squinting at me with a dour expression. “If he so much as breathes on me I’ll have him back in prison before the moon finishes rising.”

  I rolled my eyes even as I heard Colin chuckle.

  “Just do your job,” Sergeant Evans cut in, “and be on your way. Some of us have been here all day and would like to go home.” He turned back to Colin and me with a wink and dropped his tone. “My, but the two of you can get on the wrong side of people, can’t you?”

  Nevertheless, the comment was enough to finally focus Denton Ross. He signaled his man and the two of them slid on fouled leather gloves before delicately easing the ruins of Edmond Connicle onto their canvas stretcher. I thought the whole of him might snap in half or crumble to the touch, but they treated him with enough care that he was able to survive this additional violation without further misfortune.

  “If you don’t mind!” Denton Ross growled at me as he leaned out of the charred gully to grab a muslin sheet he’d tossed to the ground near my feet. I wanted to chuck some equally caustic reply his direction but knew I would only regret it when the time came to beg his aid again on this or some future case. So I held my tongue and watched as he and his assistant drew the cover over what was left of Edmond Connicle, and hoped I would never have to look upon it again.

  “I’ll be anxious to see your report,” Colin said as he hopped back down to check the place where the body had just lain.

  “You’ll not get it from me!” Denton snapped.

&n
bsp; Colin didn’t even look up as he continued to poke around the nearly unblemished swath of earth. “I’m crushed,” he said amiably.

  Sergeant Evans laughed out loud as Denton and his man moved off with their laden stretcher. I could only shake my head, aware that it would be virtually impossible to get any further information from Denton Ross, magistrate’s order or not. This case was already proving to be a challenge. I turned back to Colin just in time to see him withdraw his folding knife, kneel down, and plunge it into the earth at the spot where the body’s sternum had just been. He scrabbled at the dirt with his knife and bare hands a moment, quickly opening a small fissure from which he abruptly extracted a jagged piece of crystal tied to a leather string.

  “What the hell is that?” Sergeant Evans scowled.

  “Indeed . . .” was all Colin said as he began rooting about in the earth again. A moment later he pulled out a small, white beeswax candle the size of his index finger that had been burned briefly at both of its ends. He handed the two items up to me before squatting back down and attacking the small hole in earnest. Within another minute he had extracted a crude doll made of thatch no larger than his palm, a tiny vial filled with a thick amber liquid, and a small leather pouch from which he poured an assemblage of pebbles, bits of shiny, broken glass, and several teeth.

  “What in the hell is all of that?” the sergeant asked again.

  “Fetishes,” I answered.

  “What?” He swung around and stared at me.

  “Voodoo,” Colin mumbled as he quickly pressed the other things on me before attacking the hole once more.

  “Voodoo?!” The sergeant’s scowl deepened. “You’re talking about that African nonsense with snakes and witchery?”

  “It’s a religion . . .” I started to say.

  “It’s bloody superstitious twaddle,” he shot back. “Good god, it’s almost the twentieth century. If Her Majesty’s government hasn’t managed to lead her various peoples past this kind of rubbish, then I’d say we’ve done a ruddy piss-poor job of integrating her colonies.”

  “Maybe so,” Colin muttered absently as he stood up and brushed himself off. “But whatever the case, Mr. Pruitt is right. These are voodoo fetishes planted beneath Mr. Connicle.”

  “For all you know they’ve been there for months,” Sergeant Evans dismissed him brusquely.

  Colin glanced up with a slim smile as he finally stepped out of the burnt hollow. “It was plain to see that the earth at that precise location had been freshly turned. That’s what caught my eye when they removed the body. I’m sure you would have noticed had you been looking.”

  The sergeant seemed to approve of Colin’s answer as he nodded his head. “Likely so . . . likely so . . .”

  Colin plucked the little thatch doll from me and slowly inspected it inches from his eyes. “The question is, where might Edmond Connicle have come into contact with a practitioner of voodoo?”

  Sergeant Evans pursed his face a moment and then lit up. “I know! He’s got a couple of Africans working for him. Live-ins. I saw them lurking about when we got here this morning. Gave me a bad feeling right off.”

  Colin flicked a displeased gaze my direction. “Yes . . .” he said flatly as he passed the tiny doll back to me. “Make a note of those things, Ethan,” he said as he began to pace around the area, inspecting the ground every few steps.

  I did as he asked, jotting down the items on my pad and making a crude drawing of the doll. It was impossible to tell what, if anything, would have value later, and I couldn’t be sure we would get access to these things again.

  “What do you think, Mr. Pendragon?” Sergeant Evans asked when I finally handed the fetishes to him. “Have we solved the case already? Do you think it’s those blasted Africans from the house?” He shook his head. “Inspector Varcoe will be enraged if you found the solution that quickly.”

  “He should be used to it,” Colin answered with a tight grin. “But tell me something, Sergeant, if you were a practitioner of voodoo and in a murderous state of mind, would you leave such evidence behind?”

  “What? Well . . .” He shrugged vaguely. “Maybe it’s part of their custom. They did have it buried. Perhaps they thought that was clever enough.”

  “Leaving behind a freshly dug bulge in the earth is hardly clever.”

  Evans waved Colin off. “That lot isn’t known for being clever.”

  “That lot . . . ?”

  “The Africans. They’re not exactly Oxford trained.”

  Colin sucked in a breath. “Given the lack of cleverness your Yard was able to summon on that Ripper case, you might want to be more considerate before you disparage an entire continent of people.” He nodded at me and started back toward the Connicle home.

  “You are quite the conundrum, Mr. Pendragon,” Sergeant Evans chortled.

  I smiled as though we had shared a good joke, though I knew Colin had not meant it to be. Nevertheless, if Colin was right about the fetishes being nothing more than a deception, I knew we would need Sergeant Evans to be an ally, magisterial order or not. And I had long ago learned that in matters such as these Colin was nearly always right.

  CHAPTER 3

  The night sky was speckled with an ocean of stars by the time we pounded our way back through the woods to the Connicle house. Police lanterns continued to bob about the area and I noticed three bloodhounds being loaded into a wagon parked next to the gardener’s shed as three more were brought out from another wagon nearby. “Now why would they be bringing more dogs in?” I asked.

  Colin shook his head with a shrug. “I would hope to start searching for somebody else’s tracks.”

  “You don’t think they’ve been doing that all afternoon?”

  Colin’s nearer eyebrow arched as he looked at me. “You do give the Yard such credit.” He chuckled as we watched the dogs blunder about in haphazard directions, their noses held firmly to the ground. “Now let’s have another look at that shed.” And with that he was off, cutting away from my side and charging back to the shed, nearly bowling over the young bobby currently stationed there.

  “It’s all right,” I notified the young constable as I caught up. “We’ve a magisterial order.”

  “I heard,” he replied with a decided lack of interest.

  I mustered what I could of a smile and followed Colin inside. Only two lanterns were lit, leaving the small space mostly dark and heavily cast in shadows. Colin had stepped to one corner and was staring at the fouled wall as though trying to decipher tea leaves. In the dim light the splatters of blood resembled black slashes, as if a bear or some other great creature had attacked the building with a manic savagery. I could still smell the metallic sting of the blood and suspected the building would need to be torn down and burned to purge the stench.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should we tell Mrs. Connicle about her husband?”

  “I’d sooner swallow my tongue. Let the Yard bear that news.” He went back outside and pulled in a deep breath of night air. “I’ll solve the case. That will be my contribution.”

  “And do you have any idea how to do that?”

  “We shall start at once with the African couple,” he said as we headed back across the side yard toward the house. “Once Varcoe hears about the fetishes he’s sure to arrest them without a second thought. This will likely be our only chance to speak with them before they’re put on their guard.”

  “It could be them, you know. It could be that simple.”

  He tossed me an amused look as we climbed the steps to the front door. “What would I do without you?” he asked before reaching out and pounding on the door. It was drawn open almost at once by the lovely young housekeeper, Miss Porter. “I do apologize for the intrusion,” Colin said as he flashed her a quick smile, “but we’ve a need to get a bit of information from Mrs. Connicle about the household staff. The usual sort of thing really—”

  “And how is Mr
s. Connicle doing?” I hastily added in an effort to keep him from sounding completely mercenary.

  Miss Porter shifted her eyes to me and I noticed both exhaustion and worry there. “I’m afraid she’s still up in her room. She’s been there since you brought her back this morning. The waiting is . . .” She let her voice drift off as her eyes slid toward the trees, making her fear obvious.

  “Of course,” Colin muttered, his brow knitting even as he held his tongue against what we knew. “We needn’t disturb her then. Perhaps you might do us the favor of a few minutes of your time?”

  The fatigue that ringed her eyes made me certain she would demur, so I was surprised when she rallied a smile and answered, “Certainly.”

  She ushered us into the same drawing room we’d been shown to that morning and proceeded across it to a swinging door on the far side, which she pushed open. “Letty!” she called out. “Fetch some tea for three of us, please.” She released the door and came back to join us. “Do sit down, gentlemen. Mrs. Connicle would insist on your comfort and care were she able to see to it herself.”

  “You really mustn’t trouble anyone on our account,” Colin said as we settled onto the sofa across from her. “I would only like to know something of the staff here. Names, position, tenure . . . all very routine.” He gave her an easy smile that earned him one in return.

  “Of course,” she answered, her polite grin reminding me how very striking she was with her delicate features accented by a froth of curly brown hair. I determined her to be somewhere in her mid-twenties, which struck me as curious that the Connicles had selected such a young woman to take charge of their home. “We are a rather disparate group,” she acknowledged with some unease. “A few have been with the Connicles from the beginning of their marriage while the rest of us are rather new to their employ.”

  There was a clatter of dishes from the back corner of the room as the fretting girl we’d seen that morning pushed through the swinging door balancing a large silver tray. She had been quite beside herself earlier in the day and appeared little better now. Her face was ashen and she was clearly in some disarray. As she set the tray in front of Miss Porter I noticed that the girl’s hands were trembling, leaving me with nothing but pity for the poor thing.