Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman’s Daughter #2)(66)
Author: Megan Shepherd

He scribbled some notes on a pad, nodding solemnly. “Very good. Terribly sorry to make you come all this way today, of all days. But we’ve policies, you know.”

I started. “You mean that’s all you need from me?”

He nodded, setting down his pen. “Unless you wanted that tea?”

“No,” I stuttered. Now was the time I was supposed to leave, and yet I still couldn’t shake the feeling something about the professor’s murder wasn’t right.

“I wonder, Inspector,” I asked slowly. “Do you have other leads on the case?”

“Oh, I’m quite certain the murderer is the Wolf of Whitechapel. The wounds were identical.” He cocked his head. “Why, do you have cause to believe someone else might be responsible?”

I balled his handkerchief in my hand, thinking of the Beast chained in the greenhouse.

I didn’t kill the professor.

“It struck me that there wasn’t a flower left in the professor’s study the night he was murdered. Strange, don’t you think?”

He nodded, leaning back in his chair. “We’ve been looking into that, but it means nothing in and of itself. Perhaps the murderer ran out of them. Perhaps they all froze.” He rubbed his chin. “You’re very observant to have noticed.”

“Well, it didn’t occur to me until later.” I hesitated. I might not like the police, but Inspector Newcastle had proven quite different from those constables who had arrested me at the hospital. He’d made his way to the top at such a young age through hard work and ambition. He had every reason to want to solve this case—a promotion, gratitude from an entire city, perhaps even a more favorable chance with Lucy.

My eyes traced over the books lining the shelves. Philosophy, academics, forensics. If I told him that I suspected there might be another murderer, a monster even, would such a rational man believe me? The Beast had said he was innocent, but there was no way to verify that claim except by proving the identity of a second killer.

I tapped my boot against the floor, debating. Inspector Newcastle might think me mad. Or perhaps he might have the tools to help. . . .

“There might be another possibility,” I said slowly.

Newcastle raised an eyebrow. I stood and paced in front of his bookshelf to help ease my nerves. “I’m afraid it will sound a bit far-fetched,” I said.

He smiled. “You’ve no idea how many far-fetched theories I’ve heard of the Wolf’s identity. A girl as observant as you, however, I am inclined to take a bit more seriously, unlike all those other blatherskites.”

I froze at the word. Blatherskite. Not a common term, yet I’d heard it before. I remembered standing with Montgomery in Lucy’s garden the night of the masquerade, eavesdropping on the King’s Club members overhead. One of them had used that word.

I peered keenly at Newcastle. Perhaps it was a coincidence. Like the missing flower, it proved nothing. We had seen the roster of King’s Club members, seen the photograph, and Newcastle wasn’t in it.

“Your theory, Miss Moreau?” he prompted kindly.

I gave him a second glance. He said he trusted my opinion, but what inspector would take anything seriously said by a seventeen-year-old girl? I bit my lip. Perhaps he was only humoring me because I was a friend of Lucy’s. I sat down slowly, trying to make sense of it.

“Yes, my theory,” I started. “It has to do with the missing flower, and why the professor was so unlike the other victims.” My mouth felt dry, and I swallowed hard. Newcastle was watching me intently, seemingly patiently, though his fingers were drumming on his desk.

Why would someone merely humoring a young woman listen so anxiously?

My eyes fell on the brown folder, and I looked closer. Unless I was mistaken, I had seen that handwriting before. I scooted closer, clearing my throat, using my illness as a reason to lean on his desk.

The particular slope to the l’s, the flourish of the g’s. Yes, it was quite familiar. I had seen it only days ago and remarked on it, but where?

The hidden laboratory in King’s College, I realized. The journals.

My insides shrank. The handwriting was the same as that in the journals kept by the King’s Club’s scientist who monitored the water tanks. Inspector Newcastle was that scientist; he had to be. But how had he learned so much about biochemistry? I clenched my fist to keep it from shaking as I looked around the room, at the books, the paintings. The plaque over his desk said he majored in forensics. Forensics was the study both of criminal investigation and medicine. He wasn’t just an inspector, then.

He was also a scientist.

The air in the room started to feel too thin. I did the calculations in my head as fast as I could—Inspector Newcastle was the right age to have been one of Father’s students.

All of it came together in one terrible suspicion.

Was John Newcastle one of them?

I thought back to what I knew of him. When he’d caught me searching the cadaver room . . . hadn’t the door he’d emerged from been the same one that led to the subbasement laboratory?

Newcastle regarded my silence strangely. I grabbed the handkerchief and dabbed at my eyes to cover my shock. Is this why he had asked me so many questions about Father? Why he was so ingratiating to me?

This entire time, he’d played me for a fool.

“I wonder if I might have a cup of that tea after all,” I stuttered. “Thinking of the professor, I find myself quite weak all of a sudden.”

I forced a few tears, which looked all the more convincing given how hard I was shaking.

“Certainly,” Newcastle jumped up, thrown by the sight of a woman crying in his office. He opened the door. “Marlowe? Where the devil did that man get to . . . One moment, Miss Moreau.” His footsteps echoed in the hallway as he disappeared.

The minute he was gone, I practically crawled over his desk. I opened the folder and found pages of notes and letters, but nothing out of the ordinary. I searched through Newcastle’s drawers frantically, finding more letters and journals, but none in Father’s handwriting, none that spoke of an island or experimentation.

I heard a door closing downstairs and was about to return to my seat when my eyes settled on a familiar emblem printed on one of his envelopes. An image of Prometheus bringing fire to mankind, writing in Latin encircling it.

Ex scientia vera. From knowledge, truth.

The motto of King’s Club—I recognized it from the old photograph hanging in the King’s College hallways.