The Untamed Mackenzie

Chapter Three

London was Lloyd Fellows’ home. He knew every street from Whitehall to the East End, from the Strand to Marylebone and all points in between. He’d known them as a boy living in St. Giles with only his mother to raise him. He’d learned more as a constable walking a beat, and even more as a detective sent to every corner of London and beyond.

Fellows knew every street like he knew his own name—who lived where, what businesses, legitimate or illegal, were where, and what people walked the streets and when. He knew every corner, every passage, every hidden staircase. Metropolitan London might be divided into districts by the government, and into cultural areas by the people who lived there, but to Fellows, London was one, and it belonged to him.

This fine April afternoon, he entered a dark passage off Crawford Street, aware of what awaited him at the end. His constables weren’t with him, because the culprit they were pursuing had changed course, and they’d split up to surround him.

Fellows was after a murderer, a man called Thaddeus Waller, who’d been nicknamed the Marylebone Killer. Waller had brutally murdered his brother and brother’s wife, then covered up the crime and pretended grief, even to taking in his brother’s children to raise.

Fellows, recently promoted to detective chief inspector, had investigated the deaths with a ruthlessness that had alarmed his superiors. But he’d uncovered fact after fact that pointed to Waller as the killer. Finally Fellows had obtained a warrant for Waller’s arrest and had gone with his constables to Marylebone to bring him in.

Waller had seen them coming and used his own wife and his brother’s children as hostages. Fellows’ fury had wound higher as Waller had held a little boy out the upstairs window, threatening to drop him to the cobbles if the police didn’t go away. The lad had cried weakly in terror as he’d hung helplessly, high above the street.

Fellows had left his constables to catch the boy if he was dropped, stormed upstairs and kicked his way into the flat, his rage making him not care what weapon Waller decided to draw on him.

Waller’s terrified and weeping wife at least managed to drag the boy back in through the window. When Fellows burst in, Waller had jumped through the window himself to the street one floor below. The constables tried to grab him, but Waller had fought like mad, they’d lost hold of him, and he’d fled.

Fellows had swung himself out the window right after him. He’d chased Waller through crowded streets to the passage where the man now hid. Fellows knew this passage. It was narrow and dark, twisted sharply to the right at its end, and emerged via a shallow flight of stairs to another street.

He sent his constables around to the stairs to bottle in Waller, while he dashed into the passage alone. Waller was going to fight, and Fellows knew his constables stood no chance against him. Although they were good and robust lads, they didn’t understand dirty fighting or what a man like Waller could do.

Fellows had grown up with dirty fighting. He knew about the destructive power of bits of brick in his hand, the various ways small knives could be used, and how to pit an opponent’s own weight and reach against him.

Waller would know the constables waited for him above. He’d make a stand. He’d killed his own brother, for God’s sake, had killed more men in the past, and wasn’t above using a child as a shield.

Fellows was one man, alone. But he knew that if he waited for help, Waller stood a chance of getting away. Fellows wasn’t going to let him.

The passage was dark, shielded from the April sunlight by high, close-set buildings. Fellows couldn’t see much, but he could hear.

Waller tried to mask his breathing, but the heavy intake of it was too thick to hide. The scuttle of rat’s claws on the cobbles also came to Fellows, as well as the clatter of carts on the streets outside, the wind pouring between buildings. Fellows pinpointed each sound, identifying and cataloging it as he moved to the source of the breathing.

The attack came swiftly. Fellows sensed the first swing of a massive fist and ducked. He rose, bringing up his elbow to slam the man in the diaphragm.

Fellows was rewarded with a blow to the head, one that darkened his world a moment. He dragged in a breath, trying to find his equilibrium, before another punch to his skull sent him to his knees. Waller didn’t waste breath laughing or gloating. He slammed his arm around Fellows’ neck and started to choke him.

Fellows shoved himself to his feet and threw his weight forward. Waller grunted and his hold loosened. Fellows dug his hands into the man’s shoulders and continued the momentum of the throw, ending up slamming Waller against the wall of the narrow passage.

Waller grunted and stumbled but swiftly regained his feet. He came at Fellows, roaring, no longer trying to be surreptitious. The constables poured down the stairs from the other end, against orders, their clubs ready.

Fellows and Waller fought, close and desperate, in the confined space. Boulder-like fists slammed at Fellows’ face. Fellows ducked under the man’s reach, came up abruptly, and smashed his fist into Waller’s jaw. The jaw broke, and Waller fell, screaming.

He grabbed Fellows on the way down, and Fellows felt the prick of a knife under his arm. He jerked away and punched Waller full in the face.

And kept on punching. Fellows’ rage was high, with a white-hot fury that blotted out all reason. He couldn’t see or hear—he only knew that this man had caused terror and death, and hadn’t held back from hurting harmless children.

“Sir,” one of the constables said. “He’s down.”

Fellows kept on punching. Waller was mewling, broken hands curled around himself. Blood poured from his nose and mouth to stain the already-grimy cobbles.

“Sir?” One of the younger constables dared seize Fellows’ arm. The touch dragged Fellows back from the dark place he’d gone, and his awareness slowly returned.

Waller lay still, hoarse sounds coming from his mouth. The young constable was eyeing Fellows nervously, hand still on his arm. The boy barely had whiskers to shave, and yet they’d sent him out to chase a madman. The constable at the moment looked as though he wasn’t certain who was more dangerous—the killer or Fellows. Fellows felt a surge of feral delight.

He drew back his square-toed boot and kicked Waller squarely in the ribs. “That’s for the little lad,” he said. He straightened up, wiping his mouth. “Arrest this filth and get him away from me,” he told the constables. “We’re finished here.”

Fellows turned away from a killer who’d slain at least five people and regularly beat his wife and children, found his hat, put it on, and walked back onto his streets.

Before Fellows returned to the Yard, he went back to Waller’s flat to tell his wife Waller had been caught and arrested. He’d waited to see the man securely locked into the police van and trundled away to face a magistrate before he’d gone.

Mrs. Waller, Fellows knew, had nothing to do with the murders; she was a victim as much as any of the people her husband had killed. She’d been the one who’d saved the children, not Waller. Fellows went to tell her she was now safe from her husband.

The residents of the area did not like policemen. They hadn’t much liked Waller, the Marylebone Killer, but even so, they’d been closemouthed when Fellows had questioned them. Now the men and women on these streets stopped what they were doing to watch Fellows pass. Fellows knew his face was bruised and bloody, but his walk and his grim look would tell the others who’d won the fight.

Mrs. Waller was upset, confused, grieved, and relieved at the same time. She promised she’d look after the children and keep them well, and Fellows believed her.

The rooms she lived in weren’t a hovel, but they weren’t a palace either. Fellows handed her a few coins before he left. He also stopped and had a word with her landlord, saying he’d be back if the landlord turfed out Mrs. Waller because her husband had been a murdering bastard. She needed help, not blame.

Fellows left, hearing muttered words behind him. But he hadn’t come here to make friends. He’d come to stop a killer and save a family, and that he’d done.

Now he needed a bath, a thick pint of beer, and a good night’s sleep.

But it wasn’t meant to be. First he’d have to report to his superiors then spend the rest of the day and into the night writing up a concise documentation of the investigation and arrest. The reward for his valor would be paperwork.

Fellows walked into his office to cheers. Word had already gotten around how he’d landed the Marylebone Killer, embellished, no doubt, by the constables who’d been on the scene.

“Well done, sir!” Detective Sergeant Pierce sang out as Fellows entered his inner office. “Fought your way through three men, single-handed, did you, sir? And then dragged out our killer by the hair, him begging for mercy?”

“Exactly,” Fellows said, and Pierce laughed.

Fellows collapsed to the chair behind his desk, drew out a clean handkerchief, and dabbed at the wounds on his face.

“Don’t get too comfortable, sir,” Sergeant Pierce said, annoyingly cheerful. “One’s come over the wire from Richmond. Asking for you specifically, Chief.”

Bloody hell, what now? “I’m on leave, Sergeant. Starting immediately. That is, after I spend all night writing a boring report.”

“Sorry, sir.” Pierce didn’t look one bit sorry, the sod. “Detective Chief Super wants you to take this. Police in Richmond telegraphed. A bishop dropped dead at a fancy garden party in the middle of a load of toffs. They think it’s foul play, and they want a detective from the Yard. They want it handled with kid gloves, and they specifically want you.”

Fellows scrubbed his hand through his hair, finding it stiff with blood. “If they want kid gloves, why do they want me?”

“I suspect ’cause you’re related to a toff—a duke, no less.”

Since the day it had come out that Fellows was in fact the illegitimate son of the Duke of Kilmorgan, he’d gotten hell from his colleagues. They either looked at him with contempt or went so far as to bow to him mockingly in the halls. Laughter was always present.

Fellows decided he could either play superior officer and quell them, or he could look the other way. He’d gained back his respect by making a rude gesture when he bothered to notice the jibes, then completely ignoring them. Fellows also worked hard to show he was damn good at his job, better than most, and did not let his accidental aristocratic blood hamper him.

Sergeant Pierce went on, “I suspect that if we do have to arrest one of the nobs, the Richmond boys would rather it be one of us who does it. They have to go on living there while we can scuttle back to Town.”

“They want us to do the dirty work, in other words.”

Pierce grinned. “On the nose, sir.”

A jaunt to Richmond to clear up a problem among the upper classes was not what Fellows wanted at the moment. He’d meant to finish his report, go home, bathe, sleep, pack, drop in at his mother’s to say hello and good-bye, and then board a train. He had a week’s leave coming. His half brother, Cameron Mackenzie, had suggested Fellows stop in at the races at Newmarket next week. Fellows, though still uncomfortable with his newfound family, didn’t mind the horse races. Any man might enjoy himself at a racecourse. He’d planned to go to the seaside and stare at the water a while, then make his leisurely way to Newmarket for the racing meet next Monday.

But he was a policeman first, and if he had to postpone his trip, then he did. Policemen didn’t get days off.

Fellows rubbed his hair again. His face was already dark with new beard, and then there was the blood all over him. He didn’t feel in any way fit to face a house party of people convinced a man who’d died of overeating and apoplexy had been murdered.

But there was nothing for it. “We go,” Fellows said in a hard voice. “It’s our job.”

Sergeant Pierce lost his grin. “We?”

“I’ll need my dutiful sergeant for this one. Let me go wash my face, and we’ll be off. Fetch your hat.”

Fellows took some grim satisfaction from Sergeant Pierce’s crestfallen look as he headed off to the washroom to make himself presentable.

“He’s dead, all right,” Sergeant Pierce said an hour or so later.

He and Fellows knelt next to the body while a doctor called Sir Richard Cavanaugh stood nearby and gave them his medical opinion in the most condescending way possible.

“Histotoxic hypoxia,” Sir Richard said. “See his blue coloring? Prussic acid, most likely. In the tea, I would think, a fatal dose. Would have been quick. Only a few moments from ingestion to death.”

Fellows disliked arrogant doctors who presumed ahead of the facts, but in this case, the man was probably right. Fellows had seen death by prussic-acid poisoning before. Still, he preferred to hear conclusions from the coroner after a thorough postmortem, not to mention a testing of food and drink the victim had taken, than speculations by a doctor to the elite.

Fellows ordered Pierce to gather up what was left of the broken teacup with the liquid inside, and also the full teacup that stood next to the pot on the table. He had Pierce pour off the tea still in the pot into a vial for more testing. Fellows scraped up cream from a pastry that had been smashed on the ground, and the remains of the plate that had held it, handing all to Pierce.

He left Pierce sealing up the vials with wax and had a look around the tea tent. Unfortunately too many people had trampled in here; the place was a mess. The grass was filled with footprints—ladies’ high heels, gentlemen’s boots, servants’ sturdy shoes—all overlapping one another.

The local police sergeant stood well outside the tent as though washing his hands of the affair. Fellows approached him anyway. The fact that the local police had sent no one higher than a sergeant meant the chief constable wanted to keep well out of the way. He wondered why.

“Your thoughts, Sergeant?” Fellows asked the local man.

The sergeant shrugged, but the man had a keen eye and didn’t look in the least bit stupid. “The doc says poison in the tea, and I don’t disagree. The young lady they think did it is in the house—my constable’s on the lookout up there. She’s an aristo’s daughter, though, so the lady of the house didn’t want the likes of us questioning her. Says we had to wait for you.” The sergeant gave Fellows a dark nod. “Better you than me, if you don’t mind me saying so, guv.”

He meant better Fellows lost his job for arresting a rich man’s spoiled daughter, which was exactly what could happen. Fellows’ Mackenzie connections might be able to save him from a lawsuit by the girl’s father, but his career could be over.

Not that Fellows wanted to go begging, hat in hand, to his half brothers for their charity. An invitation to the races was one thing. Owing a monumental obligation to Hart Mackenzie was another.

“Go help Sergeant Pierce,” Fellows growled at the man. “I’ll need statements from everyone. Who was where and what they saw—in minute detail. Understand?”

The sergeant did not look happy, but he saluted and said, “Yes, sir.”

Fellows left him behind and made for the house and the aristocrat’s daughter. He reflected as he approached the large house that running down a killer six feet three and weighing eighteen stone was much more satisfying than having to face a silly girl who probably didn’t understand what exactly she’d done. She likely felt herself perfectly justified in poisoning a man who’d annoyed her. She’d be highly strung and more than a little mad, or else too stupid to realize the consequences of her actions.

Fellows looked up at the giant brick house trimmed in white, strategically positioned for a view to the river at the bottom of a meadow. The very rich lived here, the sort who existed in their own world, with their own rules; no outsiders need enter.

He climbed the marble steps at the rear of the house and stepped into the dim coolness of its interior. Mrs. Leigh-Waters, the lady of the house, hurried toward him from the front hall. She was a large-bosomed woman with hair pressed into tight, unnatural curls, and was garbed in a gray bustle gown that made her look a bit like a pigeon.

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Chief Inspector,” she gushed. “They’ve always spoken highly of you, which is why I told the chief constable to telegraph you. The local constables can be a bit . . . hasty . . . and she needs a bit of sympathy, doesn’t she?”

“Of course,” Fellows said, forcing his tone to be polite. “I will keep the interview brief.”

“Thank you.” Mrs. Leigh-Waters sounded relieved. “I’m certain she will thank you too.”

She led Fellows through the cool, high-ceilinged hall whose draped window at the end cut out most of the light. Mrs. Leigh-Waters tapped on a door halfway along and opened it to a sitting room with back windows overlooking the garden and the view.

Two women rose from the sofa to face him. Fellows halted three steps inside the room, unable to move.

The features of the two red-haired women were heartbreakingly similar, the younger a little taller than the older. The older wore a gown of bottle green with black buttons up its bodice. The younger woman’s gown had a blue and brown striped underskirt, the blue overskirt folded back to reveal a lining of blue and brown checks. Her bodice was buttoned to her chin with brown cloth-covered buttons. Fellows noted every detail even as his gaze fixed to her face.

The older sister, Lady Isabella, was married to Lord Mac Mackenzie, one of Fellows’ half brothers. The younger sister, Lady Louisa Scranton, had petal-soft skin, lips that could kiss with heat, and a smile that had been haunting Fellows’ dreams since the day he’d met her.

Louisa stared back at him, as frozen as he, her lips slightly parted.

Isabella unlinked herself from Louisa and came forward. “Thank heavens you’re here,” Isabella said to Fellows, both relief and worry in her voice. “They’re claiming Louisa did this, can you imagine? You’ll clear this up and tell them she didn’t, won’t you?”