The Lazarus Engine – Chapter 4
The First Victim
Dr. Percival Hale lived in a Georgian townhouse on a quiet Bloomsbury square. The fog was thinner here, the gas lamps brighter, the cobblestones cleaner. Wealth had its privileges, even in death.
Thorne knocked on the black enamel door. A moment later, it was opened by a butler so old he appeared to be carved from the same wood as the doorframe.
“Dr. Thorne,” the butler said. “Master Hale expected you. Please come in.”
Gray shot Thorne a look. “Expected us?”
Thorne’s face was unreadable. “I sent word ahead. While you were questioning Crowne.”
“You sent word to a man who might be the next victim?”
“I sent word to a man who might be the killer.”
They stepped inside.
The townhouse was a museum of death. Every surface held a memento mori: skulls carved from ivory, hourglasses filled with dried blood, paintings of shipwrecks and plagues. A grandfather clock ticked in the hallway, but its face was a skull, its hands two tiny bones.
“Hale always had a sense of humor,” Thorne murmured.
A door opened at the end of the corridor. A man’s voice called out: “Aris! Come in, come in. And bring your charming constable.”
Dr. Percival Hale was seventy years old, thin as a rail, with a face that looked like it had been ironed flat. He wore a velvet smoking jacket and held a glass of sherry in a hand that trembled slightly. His eyes, however, were sharp. They missed nothing.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to two chairs facing his desk. “I’ve been expecting you since I heard about poor Wells.”
Thorne sat. Gray remained standing, her hand near her truncheon.
“You knew Wells was dead,” Thorne said.
“Everyone in the Order knows. The killer isn’t hiding. He’s announcing.” Hale set down his sherry. “The engine in Wells’s chest. You have it with you, I presume?”
Thorne pulled the brass device from his satchel and set it on the desk.
Hale didn’t touch it. He stared at it as one might stare at a snake.
“March’s work,” he whispered. “Finalized. Perfected. God help us all.”
“March is dead,” Gray said.
Hale laughed—a dry, papery sound. “My dear constable, Victor March has been dead for ten years. But his ideas never die. Someone has inherited them. Someone with his notes, his tools, his obsessions.”
“Who?” Thorne asked.
Hale picked up the engine with a pair of silver tongs. He turned it over, examining the engraving.
“This symbol—the snake eating its tail. It was March’s personal mark. He carved it into everything he built. But look here.” He pointed to a tiny scratch beneath the serpent. “A second mark. A stylized ‘C.'”
Thorne leaned closer. “C for?”
“Charlotte. March’s daughter. She was fifteen when he died. She vanished the night of the funeral. No one has seen her since.”
Gray frowned. “A fifteen-year-old girl built this?”
“A fifteen-year-old girl who was her father’s apprentice. Who had access to all his notes. Who watched him die—or perhaps failed to watch him die.” Hale set the engine down. “I was at March’s funeral. I saw the body. But I did not see the face. It was covered. The family requested a closed casket.”
Thorne’s jaw tightened. “March isn’t dead.”
“March is dead. But his daughter may have found a way to finish his work. To prove that death can be reversed. To bring him back.” Hale looked at Thorne. “You understand, don’t you, Aris? You tried the same thing. With your patient. The one who opened his eyes.”
Gray turned to Thorne. “What patient?”
Thorne’s face went pale. “That’s not relevant.”
“It’s entirely relevant,” Hale said. “The constable should know what kind of man she’s working with. Should know that Dr. Aris Thorne was expelled from the Royal College of Surgeons for conducting unauthorized experiments on the recently deceased. For reviving a dead man, if only for a few seconds. For proving that the line between life and death is thinner than we think.”
Gray stared at Thorne. “You brought someone back to life?”
“I restarted a heart,” Thorne said quietly. “The man was dead for four minutes. Brain damage was extensive. He didn’t live. He merely… persisted. For thirty seconds.”
“And then?”
“I stopped the current. He stopped breathing. I killed him again.”
The room was silent except for the ticking of the skull-faced clock.
Hale picked up his sherry. “We are all complicit, Constable. The Order, Thorne, Crowne, March. We all wanted to cheat death. And now death is cheating back.”
He looked at the engine.
“Charlotte March will come for me next. I am the last of the original members. The one who performed the autopsy on her father. The one who signed the death certificate.”
“Then come with us,” Gray said. “Protective custody.”
Hale smiled sadly. “Where would I go? She can stop a heart from a distance. She can lock a room from the inside without ever entering it. She has inherited her father’s genius—and his madness.”
He stood up.
“Go. Find her before she finds me. I will leave the door unlocked. If I am alive tomorrow, I will answer your questions. If not…” He gestured to the engine. “You already have my confession.”
Thorne rose. “Hale—”
“Goodbye, Aris. Tell Eleanor I’m sorry.”
Gray and Thorne walked to the door. As they stepped into the fog, they heard the skull-faced clock strike the hour.
Behind them, the door clicked shut.
And inside, Dr. Percival Hale poured himself another sherry and waited for death to arrive.