Grimm's School for the Erratically Gifted: Chapter 14

Leeta and Fairly were reluctant to follow Edmund. Leeta was still weak from her beating, and Fairly didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere Leeta wasn’t. Nevertheless, when Edmund could finally catch his breath and explain what he had found in the dark alley, they both leapt off the sarcophagus where they had been lying and followed him up the steps and out into the streets of Mothburn, Leeta leaning on Fairly the whole way.

When they reached the body, the three of them crouched around it like vultures.

Leeta was in constant motion, though hindered by her bandaged knee and stiff muscles. With a slow and steady pace, she circumnavigated the cadaver, scratching notes on a bound quire she had pulled out of her pocket. She poked the skin, lifted the limbs, and sniffed gently at various parts of the body, making a note each time that she did.

“Right,” she said after filling the quire. “That’s that. Now you two —” she glanced at Edmund. “Fairly, you grab the other arm.”

“Hang about, will you.” Fairly stood up from his crouch. “I’m not keen on joining the Downstreeters side of the law, am I.”

“Huh,” Leeta reached for the corpse. “Never thought of the law separating sides before; always seemed to me the law chose sides.”

“Here, we can’t move the body, can we.” Fairly grabbed Leeta’s arm. “Dragging a dead body from where we found it, that’s Interfering with a Police Investigation, isn’t it. Tampering With Evidence, and Obstructing Justice, isn’t it. That’s a lot of crimes we’d be up for, isn’t it.”

“They don’t need to know,” Leeta waved at the corpse. “They’ve had more than twenty corpses in their custody and not one suspect. What possible use would one more body be to them?”

“This one hasn’t been cut up, has it,” Fairly crossed his arms. “Can get a lot more information off it, can’t they.”

“We’re better suited to do that than the police,” Edmund said.

Fairly’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, it’s we now, is it? There’s no we that includes you, is there. Leeta and I have been we for years, have we. You don’t get to walk off the train from Brackenburg and say you’re one of us now, just because you’re a Moulde, do you!”

As far as Edmund knew, Mouldes were not inclined to associate themselves with any group apart from the Nine Founding Families. Perhaps some of the peripheral families tried to muscle their way into cliques through their shear presence, but a true Moulde never joined in. Others joined them.

“If we’re going to find out anything,” Leeta pointed again, “we need to study the body, and we can’t do that properly without our equipment. You want us to go all the way back and bring my lab here?”

“Or we could let the police do their job, and once they do their work, we dig up the body and do our work, couldn’t we.”

“And how long would that take? This body’s fresh, Fairly! We could figure out who the killer is tonight!”

“Its the same person who killed Master Babbages,” Edmund said.

Fairly sneered. “No, that’s not how we do things, is it. Not very scientific, just making statements like that without the evidence to back it up, is it.”

Edmund pointed at the body’s side. “Look at the wound. It’s the same smooth, clean, well-oiled blade. It’s the same spot too. Leeta, do you know how long ago she died?”

“From what I see…a good hour or two before you found it.”

Edmund looked all over the body, examining joints and portions of the corpse’s physiognomy. It occurred to him that inspecting a woman’s body so closely was not particularly gentlemanly behavior, but doctors and barber-surgeons seemed to be excused from such concerns. He resolved to write a paper about it at a later date.

Something caught Edmund’s eye. Pushing gently, he rolled the corpse’s leg to the side until he could clearly see both the scaly blemish and the small cut that the Ripper had started before Edmund had startled them off.

“What’s that?” he pointed.

“What?” Leeta separated from Fairly and looked over Edmund’s shoulder. “Huh. I don’t know. I’ve seen something similar before, but —”

She reached out towards the body when Fairly gripped her hand again. “Stop, won’t you!”

“Fairly, if you grab me again I will beat you to death with my shovel.”

Fairly let go. “Stubborn as a Lankshire oxen, aren’t you. Recognize that scar, don’t I. The disease is in the blood, isn’t it, and you’re not wearing any gloves are you. Going to have to bloody do it myself if its bloody going to be bloody done right, aren’t I.”

Fairly reached into his pocket and pulled out two thin gloves and a rolled up pouch. “Carry them everywhere, don’t I,” he said to Leeta’s accusing glare.¹ Unrolling the pouch of doctors’ tools, he slipped the gloves on his hands and set to work.

This was the first autopsy Edmund had ever witnessed, though not his last by a significant amount. He had seen the illustrations in medical journals, but he had never seen a liver or a lung in person before.

Edmund was familiar with Leeta’s movements, and they were remarkably different from Fairly’s; the man’s fingers were like dragonflies, darting over the corpse, plucking up utensils and placing them down again when he had finished. Pieces of flesh were peeled away and replaced, organs removed and returned, and careful stitches slowly began to cover the cadaver.

Edmund watched carefully. He had read about everything that Fairly was doing. He knew why he held the scalpel just so and how important it was that he cut here before cutting there. Leeta had perfected the procedures, true, but Fairly had a flair all his own.

Leeta noticed as well, and without breaking stride in their work, they spent the entire time critiquing each other’s technique.

Edmund knew now why Leeta looked at Fairly the way she had. There was an allure to ability, so closely related to power. Fairly wasn’t just a doctor, he was an artist.

It was at once a balm and a frustration. It felt good to know that Leeta’s attention had not been bestowed on Fairly for some ephemeral and pedestrian quality like good hair or smooth skin — Edmund would have been disappointed in Leeta for succumbing to such animalistic justifications — but it also meant Edmund was no longer the obviously superior choice for a companion.

Of course, he was still the superior choice, but it seemed that Leeta was not interested in a superior companion.

Whether this acceptance allowed his mind to focus on something else, or if his romantic inclinations were secondary to his real passions, there is no telling. Nevertheless, as the autopsy unfolded in front of him, Edmund, noticed something else. Seeing the glistening organs, thick muscles, and broad bones, Edmund began to think. When the autopsy had finished, Edmund made his Discovery.

Many still do not believe that Edmund should be credited with discovering what is now considered the holy grail of medicine. They proclaim there is no way a child of twelve could have cracked the secrets of the universe with little more than careful thought and analysis. To those who view the world with open eyes and without the limits of self-inhibition, the phrase “there is no way” tends to illicit scoffs of mockery and eye-rolls of scorn. There is always a way, it is simply that most people are not willing to see it.

In later years, scholars credit watching his two comrades sew up the cadaver with thin thread with giving him his revolutionary Discovery. As all notes regarding Edmund’s work have since been lost, we can neither confirm nor deny this.

He watched as the string moved up and down, stretching as Fairly and Leeta pulled their needles and tied off their knots. Edmund knew about thread. He had used it once, to repair his dear friend Aoide, the automaton in the Moulde Library.

For all the building anticipation that he had developed, his Discovery was remarkably simple, though its implications were not. His discovery began like this: Everything is a machine.

Math, physics, chemistry, the sciences combined to create steam-engines, bubbling elixirs, and brass valves that came together to create trains, crop-pickers, and self-regulating tea-cozies. These machines worked only because the world behaves in accordance with specific natural laws. Heated water will boil, smaller valves increase pressure, clamped veins reduce blood-flow. These rules guided everything along proscribed behaviors and patterns, exactly like a machine.

All the dead bodies he had ever seen — those pale shapes on the marble sarcophagus, drained of blood and ichor — were just machines, with ticking ventricles and unwinding sinews like any other mechanism. They were broken, bereft of the vital spark of life, but machines nonetheless. Living things needed food as fuel, blood as oil, breath as air, and maintenance when things broke down.

Edmund liked machines, even broken ones. Broken ones could be mended. What would it take, he wondered, to mend a dead human? The flesh could be sewn together, yes, and the blood replaced, the vitaes replenished, everything placed in its proper order, but then what?

Once the metaphor had entered his mind, he couldn’t shake it. Everything was in balance in the human body: humours, vitaes, secretions, rhythms…scientists and physicians from antiquity forward all believed that life was on a knife-edge, perfectly measured and balanced to maintain itself.

Once a plate had begun to fall, could it be caught? If it could be caught, could it be spun again?

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“Edmund?”

Shaken from his thoughts, Edmund looked up. “I’m sorry, Leeta, could you please repeat that?”

“Said we were finished, didn’t she,” Fairly shook his head as he rubbed viscous liquid from his gloves. “Should go back to the crypt and figure out what we’ve learned, shouldn’t we.”

Edmund’s thoughts were no less occupied as they left the autopsied corpse in the alleyway to be discovered by a hapless patrolman.²

Edmund knew about fixing broken machines. Aoide now moved only because he brewed a mixture of the long dead Patron Plinkerton Moulde’s design; Mechanus Vitae. He had mixed the concoction after carefully examining and re-threading the statue’s limbs, giving the machine the method by which she could pose and dance and recite the old poems Patron Plinkerton had put inside her. He had spent ages studying and tinkering with Aoide. He had studied her insides and followed the pulleys, cogs, and belts until he knew her insides better than his own.

“Bloody hell,” Fairly grumbled as he climbed down the steps of the Carver Crypt. “Forgot about him, didn’t I.”

Edmund continued to think while Leeta and Fairly conducted their second autopsy of the evening on the cadaver of Professor Babbages. When Aoide had broken down, Edmund had to re-fuel her. Why couldn’t he do the same with a corpse? He could still remember the formula that had fueled Aoide. It would need a little adjustment, certainly…perhaps a lot…

“Oi!” Leeta snapped her fingers in front of Edmund’s face. “Where you off to, eh?”

Edmund blinked; had they finished Babbages’ autopsy already? He surreptitiously stashed the notes he had been writing and addressed his two helpers. “What have you found?”

Fairly’s face was covered with a self-satisfied smile. “Can tell you quite a few things about the Ripper, can’t we.” He began to read from his notes. “The Professor died three days ago under mysterious circumstances, didn’t he. No obvious indication of foul play or misbehavior, save the knife wound in his back, wasn’t there.”

“Miss Pinfort, you said her name was?” Leeta moved to the other body. “She died last night under similar circumstances. No obvious indication of foul play or misbehavior, save the same knife wound in her back.”

“The same wound?” Edmund prompted.

“Bloody waiting to say ‘I told you so,’ aren’t you.” Fairly huffed. “Yes, the same knife made the same wound, didn’t it. Same bloody killer killed Babbages as killed Pinfort, didn’t they.”

“How do you know?” Edmund bristled. “That’s not scientific.” It was disappointing to know Leeta was so willing to suffer such a easily befuddled fool.

“You think there’s a better explanation, do you?” Fairly snapped. “Same blade killed him as killed her, wasn’t it.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh, you think there just happen to be two blades that are exactly alike roaming around Mothburn, do you?”

“Not just two. There could be hundreds.”

Leeta scoffed. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

“Mass-production,” Edmund couldn’t believe he had to explain it to her, of all people. “There are machines that make things exactly the same. There could easily be a machine that mass-produces knives somewhere in Mothburn.”

“Bollocks, isn’t it,” Fairly snapped.

“It’s true. I invented a series of machines that mass-produced pens.” He quickly thought through what he knew of Mothburn’s industrial district before continuing. “I don’t know of any new factories that recently opened, but some knife-maker could be operating their own.”

Leeta pointed. “Look, see the stains around each wound? That’s the same Kingsly Blade-Oil. Even the technique was the same; see here? The wound is low, but the angle is high; through the gap in the super-thoraxian and sub-torsoian rib. There’s only one way to make that work: if the victim has been gripped from behind, lifted, and pierced in the back.” She demonstrated with an invisible volunteer, stabbing her fist upwards like she was stuffing a turkey. “They wouldn’t even need to be much taller. In fact, if they were strong enough, they could have been about the same height.”

Babbages was not the tallest victim; that honor went to the thin and lanky Miss Pinfort. “They could have been on their chest,” Edmund offered the obvious alternative.

“That gives the victim a lot of power, doesn’t it.” Fairly shook his head. “They’d have the leverage to push and twist and maybe get up, wouldn’t they.”

“And there’s no sign of abrasions or grit on the victims palms or knees, which there would be if they had been pushed to the ground,” Leeta pointed at the limbs in turn. “Same oil stain, same location, same size, same angle. What other explanation makes sense?”

There were, in fact, several likelihoods that Edmund could think of off the top of his head. Two people could have bought the same blade, the same oil, even studied the same technique, assuming there was a book on the subject somewhere. After all, lifting a victim by the throat and stabbing in the back was a logically sound method, easily perfected by even the simplest of rogues. If not that, even if the blade were the same, perhaps the Ripper was not the only person with access to the murderous blade. If Edmund were to commit murder most foul, the weapon he would use would certainly be someone else’s.

“Then there’s the fact the Ripper’s a doctor, aren’t they,” Fairly sniffed.

Leeta blinked. “How do you know that?”

Fairly smirked as he walked to the stack of metal plates. “Rippers don’t stitch up their victims afterwards, do they?³ And these are Heismensburg Double-stitches stitches aren’t they. That’s a doctor’s stitch, isn’t it.”⁴

Edmund had seen Heismensburg Double-stitches in books before, but they had been ancient pictures. And these…these stitches looked nothing like the diagrams. They were loose and misshapen. For them to be…no, they were Heismensburg Double-stitches — Edmund could see the tell-tale loop-hitch that curved below the first puncture — but they were awful. The work of an amateur.

Besides, Heismenburg Double-Stitches had long since been supplanted by Portsmin Half-Winsom stitches. Whomever the ripper was, they were a quack of a doctor, using techniques from the 1700s, and poorly.

“Fine,” Leeta’s mouth twisted. “Did you notice this?”

Edmund leaned closer to see what she was pointing at. It was the blemish he had noticed in the alley, a thin scalpel-cut just above it. For all the world, it looked like the Ripper had been about to collect it.

“That’s Syphilis, isn’t it. Seen the scars a hundred times, haven’t I.”

“Not the blemish, idiot. The cut,” Leeta smirked. “Every Ripper victim has had bruises in different places, cuts all haphazard over the body, but every victim has also had anywhere from one to four patches of skin cut off with the same scalpel —” she pointed again, “—with a small nick on the blade.”

True devotees of Edmund’s genius should not be surprised that upon hearing this singular fact, Edmund opened his mouth and said: “The Ripper didn’t kill anyone.”

Leeta and Fairly, who were not fortunate enough to be scholars of Edmund’s life after the fact, much less as contemporaries, were nonplussed at his statement.

“Got knife-wounds that say otherwise, don’t we,” Fairly rolled his eyes.

“No,” Leeta’s eyes narrowed, “you’re saying that someone killed all these people…and then the Ripper found them afterwards?”

“That’s possible, is it?”

“I can’t get that specific with time of death…” Leeta’s brow furrowed. “I suppose the Ripper could have done their butchery…up to maybe an hour after each victim was stabbed?”

“There were twenty victims, weren’t there! The Ripper couldn’t have stumbled across twenty victims all within an hour of their deaths, could they?”

Edmund didn’t answer, because he was already halfway up the crypt steps.

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He’d show her.

It wasn’t her fault, really. Edmund’s proclivities had always steered towards the subtle, the hidden, and the unobtrusive. She hadn’t realized how much better Edmund was than Fairly, and that was mostly his own fault. He hadn’t shown her.

He needed to show her. He needed to show everyone. He needed to be more than just a genius, he needed to put on a massive display of grand scope and scale. He needed to prove to everyone that he was Edmund Moulde, rightful heir to the Moulde Estate, and worthy of the title.

What better way than revealing the identity of the Mothburn Ripper, and bringing the Mothburn Murderer to justice? His name would be in the papers, the dumbfounded police staring at him in bemused amazement, Leeta staring at him with respect.

The walk back to Grimm’s was all the time he needed for his conniving to fathom new and frighteningly plausible possibilities before he fell asleep with notebook at hand.

When he woke up the next morning, he found no less than five separate plans he had written in his sleep. Thankfully, all of them began in the same way, so he set to work at once.

The first thing Edmund did that morning was write a letter.

There was an art-form to letter-writing, and Edmund had been trained by the best. The true upper-class endeavored to communicate as little as possible, and as such needed to convey information succinctly and circuitously. A whole sub-cultural language had developed among the gentry; a language of unsaid requests and tactfully unmentioned accusations. Layers upon layers of meaning were added like coats of paint, making even the simplest responses as rich and intricate as the finest poetry.

Edmund knew poetry.

The goal was simple enough — Edmund needed to speak with the Teapot Coterie — but from there the multitude of options exploded outwards like a recursive shrub. There were topics of conversation that were only to be had during tea, others only before a show, or after a show, or over brandy. There were subjects that could only be broached during white-tie meals, or black-tie, or in outdoor cafes, or during constitutionals, or only when Stopping By. Something as simple as an offhand comment regarding previous engagement could mean anything from a grievous insult to a formal request for marriage depending on whether it was mentioned matter-of-factly at dinner or coyly on a brisk walk around the grounds.

Edmund needed an invitation, but sometimes an invitation wasn’t an invitation at all. Sometimes it was an invitation to be invited, or to ask for an invitation, or to expect an invitation, and sometimes the invitation was self-evident and therefore ignored. Sometimes the purpose of the meeting was expressly mentioned, other times the letter would read like an informational pamphlet, explaining the writer’s plan to be out and about on this date at this time and a casual reassurance that the reader would not be ignored if they happened to cross paths. Sometimes the letter asked to know the reader’s schedule for the coming weeks, and other times they expressly demanded the reader’s presence.

Paper size, shape, quality, edging, handwriting, margin lengths, and above all the signature; all conveyed any number of meanings to the careful reader. For two hours, Edmund carefully wrote out a letter to Lady Tinbottom, sealed it with wax, and carried it to the letter-drop.

When he reached the drop, he paused. Edmund had made a careful study of the grounds-keeper’s routine, and he had likely already come by to pick up the post. If he dropped the letter now, it might be a full week before Tombswell came by to pick it up.

Turning on his heel, Edmund walked outside to the grounds-keeper’s tiny hut close to the front gate.

“Ah?” The old grounds-keeper sniffed when he opened the door. He was half-asleep, a bottle of foul-smelling liquid gripped in one hand, a knobbly old cigarette pinched in the other. “Oh, aye? An’ what do you want? I passed on the message yesterday.”

“You did?” Edmund stared at the letter in his hand. “I’ve only just finished writing it.”

“What?” Tombswell blinked hard, taking a drink from his bottle. “What’r you on about?”

“I…I have a message I’d like to deliver,” Edmund rallied. “Before next week.”

“Aye?” Tombswell hiccuped before leaning hard against the doorway, his head lolling with drink.

“It is important, and private.”

“Ah!” the man struggled to wink. “Them letters I take in my ‘and,” he gestured with the stump of a cigarette. “Whozitfor?”

“Lady Tinbottom of Northsouthington,” Edmund brandished the letter.

“Oh,” Tombswell took another drink. “That toff? What’s she done?”

“Nothing,” Edmund said, then after a pause; “At least, nothing I know about.”

“Then whaddshee want?” Tombswell stared at the letter Edmund held out to him, blinking down his broad flat nose. “Posh git.”

“I want to speak with her,” Edmund rallied, the conversation back on the tracks he wanted. “It’s important.”

“Oh,” after two failed attempts, Tombswell tapped the end of his nose. “I see. Knew the posh git had sommat she didn’t want no one to know ‘bout.”

“Does she?” Why hadn’t Tombswell taken the letter yet?

“Oh aye,” he missed his nose again. “Don’t worry, I won’t say nofin’.”

“About what?”

“Aye!”

Edmund and Tombswell stared at each other for several minutes, while Edmund struggled to find the missing piece of the conversation that was eluding him.

“Could you take the letter?” Edmund tried again.

“She won’t answer, you know,” Tombswell grinned. “Posh git. Never spend no time for t’ likes o’ us!”

“She’s invited students to her balls before.”

“Oh students, aye,” Tombswell smirked as he took another swig. “She’ll spend all the time with them, but you and that little gang…/feh/. She won’t waste ’er spit.”

“What gang?” Edmund asked.

Tombswell missed his nose a third time.

As he found himself needing to more and more often, Edmund paused to look at the conversation from a different angle. Replaying the dialogue in his head, he heard the unsaid words that suggested far more important questions.

“You don’t think I’m a student?” he asked. It was an odd thing for someone to think, since Edmund had been at Grimm’s for almost half a year.

“Not one o’ them, neither,” Tombswell glared at the letter Edmund still held in his hand. “Toffs. Fops. Bloody…nobs.”

“I am a student.”

“S’clever,” he tapped his nose again. “Put a spy in the ‘oney. Sneak around, like…I seen enough of you lot. It’s in the eyes. And the voice. Poise, too. Something in your feet, maybe. I seen enough of you to know you on…on smell.”

“Know who?”

“Orphans.” Tombswell tottered to the other side of his doorframe, colliding hard. “No orphan’s ever get ’nough dosh to come here. S’not in the blood. See, most are given a family, and don’t have to do nothing to keep it. But, an orphan, they doesn’t have a family, cept the one they to find, and they has to work to keep it. Hard work, being an orphan. No family. No place to call your own. No past or future…they…they become ground-kippers.” The cigarette wavered out towards the gate. “Or they stick it out inna streets. Pick it all up, y’see. Everythin’ no one wants, just wants to throw it out…”

“That’s where orphans go?”

“I see it inna eye,” Tombswell’s nose leaned closer, his breath hot and thick. “Glitt’rin there like…like a flame. Like it burns in yer bones. Yer an orphan, an’ that means yer no one o’ Grimm’s students. Not a…a Teapoter… No orphans. Only…only posh folk, n’ prince…pincississess…” His eyes flickered. “An I need ta water the tree!”

With that, the old grounds-keeper hobbled towards the closest tree, leaving Edmund to wait.

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