Free Newbury & Hobbes 04 - The Executioner's Heart by George Mann Page B

owl chirruped noisily, as if giving a satisfied laugh at Bainbridge’s expense. He waved his hand at it in annoyance, attempting to shoo it away, but it simply shifted its position on his shoulder with an accompanying chirp, its tiny clawed feet gathering up little folds of his overcoat.
    “I think he likes you,” Newbury said, laughing.
    “I don’t know why I ever agreed to let you keep this damnable thing,” Bainbridge said, although Newbury could tell he wasn’t genuinely aggrieved. The clockwork owl was a trophy from a previous investigation, the former property of Lord Carruthers, who’d been poisoned by his estranged sibling at Christmas a couple of years earlier. The owl had been instrumental in helping to solve the case, and Bainbridge had allowed the “evidence”—with the permission of the family, of course—to be rehomed with Newbury. It had been a fixture of his drawing room ever since.
    The bird trilled merrily, spread its gleaming wings, and hopped down from Bainbridge’s shoulder onto the arm of the chair. It stamped its feet a few times—puncturing the leather covering of the seat with its claws as it did so—then turned to regard Bainbridge, watching him intently. Its eyes blinked as Bainbridge held its gaze for a moment, before shaking his head and offering Newbury an exasperated look.
    “I take it there have been no further developments in the case?” asked Newbury, changing the subject.
    Bainbridge shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m damned if I can find a link between the suspects, let alone a motive for the killer. I keep coming back to this ritualistic nonsense, hoping that your friend Renwick is going to turn up something useful.”
    Newbury sat forward, stifling a groan as his tired muscles pulled in protest, threatening to mire him there in his comfortable armchair before the fire. He placed his hands on the arms of the chair, planning to lever himself free. “If there’s anything to be found, Charles, Aldous will find it,” he said, hauling himself upright. “I sent word yesterday, and Miss Hobbes took charge of delivering the letter.” He stood there for a moment, a little unsteady on his feet. “Look,” he said, “I need to make myself presentable. Give me half an hour. Scarbright will make tea, if you ask him nicely.”
    Bainbridge looked up at him, his expression softening. “It’s only because I couldn’t stand it if you killed yourself, Maurice. You realise that?”
    “I do, Charles,” replied Newbury, quietly, placing a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I wish you could understand.”
    “As do I,” said Bainbridge, morosely.
    Newbury sighed, leaving the chief inspector by the fire so he could make himself look a bit more respectable before heading out to see the monarch. It wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience—it rarely was, these days—but he’d been putting it off long enough. It was time to face his demons.
    Or one of them, at the very least.

 
    CHAPTER
    8
     
    The girl never knew her parents.
    She had been told that her father had been trampled by a horse two months prior to her birth, and that her mother had died in the throes of bringing her into the world, in the dank, underground cell of an asylum somewhere on the outskirts of Paris.
    She had erupted into the world in an orgy of agony and anguish—or so she’d been told by the crooked-backed old woman in the orphanage, who seemed to delight in describing the young girl’s misfortune, cackling mercilessly and exposing the blackened stumps of her teeth.
    Later, she would understand this for what it was: the old woman’s attempt to rationalise the unfathomable ways of the world, and perhaps to remind herself that there existed people whose circumstances were far worse than her own. The old woman consoled herself in this manner, by averting her own face from the looking glass and turning its scrutiny upon the young orphan who had never known anything better. It allowed the