Clockwork Killer (Steampunk Detectives: Book 1) Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead or undead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Ian Hall. Hallanish Publishing, thru Smashwords Inc.

  Published by Hallanish Publishing at Smashwords Inc.

  ISBN; 9781311152664

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  Other Books by Ian Hall

  Connecticut Vampire (the continuing Series)

  Vampires Don’t Cry (a multi-book series)

  The Zombie Bible

  Caledonii; Birth of a Nation (Roman Scotland)

  The Jamie Leith Chronicles

  And much more…

  Look out for news at;

  www.ianhallauthor.com

  www.vampiresdontcry.com

  The Clockwork Killer

  Steampunk Detectives: Book 1

  Chapter 1 Murder Most Foul

  Chapter 2 Coming to Terms with Guilt

  Chapter 3 New Pistol, New Calling

  Chapter 4 Off to Chicago

  Chapter 5 Harvard; Firmly in the Far East

  Chapter 6 Detectives at Work

  Chapter 7 Harvard’s Best kept Secret

  Chapter 8 Falling in Love with Emily

  Chapter 9 Emily Joins Pinkertons

  Chapter 10 Trolling in Jacksonville

  Chapter 11 We Have a Name; Frederick Whiteman

  Chapter 12 To Tread the Boards

  Chapter 13 The Noose Tightens

  Chapter 14 In Recovery

  Chapter 15 The Confederate Falls

  Chapter 16 Leaving Sangamon County

  Chapter 17 Settling for a Peaceful Life

  Chapter 18 Decatur, Redux

  Chapter 19 They Think it's All Over

  Murder Most Foul

  Francis Smalling, Smalling Apple Farm, Sangamon County, Illinois

  April 14th 1866

  I awoke to a feeling of restriction. As I opened my unnaturally heavy eyelids, I found myself bound to a chair in the bedroom I shared with my two elder sisters. My mouth was full of some kind of rough cloth, tied in place with oily rope. I felt the coarse cord as it bit into the corners of my mouth.

  I could smell he unmistakable aroma of ether alcohol; I had used it often enough in my experiments. I knew I had been drugged.

  My eyes slowly focused on the room around me. I looked down to see my wrists and forearms tied to the arms of the chair, and felt my ankles similarly secured to the carved wooden legs. I tried to flex my arms, but could not move them one fraction of an inch.

  At seventeen, I had been due my own room for a while, and we had both the money and room to build on, but mother wanted the house unchanged for father when he came home from the war… and with the surrender of the Confederacy already almost a year old, father’s arrival was overdue.

  In the yellow glint of the coal oil lamps in the bedroom, I saw my elder sister Rebekah, bound on top of her bed, her arms tied above her head onto the spars of the headboard. Her legs were held apart by a wooden stake at her ankles, ropes at either end. She was similarly gagged, her terrified eyes bored into mine across the room.

  “Hmm,” I heard a sound from my side, and turned my head to see Margaret, the middle child of us three, similarly bound to a chair. Her wide eyes looked animated and frightened. I shook my head, and tried to exude as much confident assurance as I could under the circumstances.

  Thick rough cord held a hessian gag deep in her mouth, the rope cutting hard into her cheeks. The knot behind her head looked tight, neat and precise.

  A dark figure appeared from the unlit passageway. “Good evening my lovelies.” The man said quietly as he approached. “I have just ensured that Mother will not interrupt us.” He held up his hand to stifle our impossible protests. “Don’t worry; she’s just having a nice nap.” He placed a thick glass jar on the nightstand, its clear contents swilled for a moment before coming to a rippled rest. I now knew where the smell of ether had come from, the thin liquid swilling round the thick glass walls, its contents held firm by a large glass stopper. “Welcome to the main show of the evening.”

  His voice held a southern edge, confirmed by a long grey army greatcoat. It looked worn, almost lived-in.

  A Confederate had done this to our family, a dirty yellow-bellied Johnny Reb.

  He wore a wide-brimmed grey Stetson, army issue with yellow twisted cord, his thin face lying in its shadow. I could see red whiskers curling over his upper lip, and below a small fashionable goatee beard. His hair fell in rivulets behind his ears, light brown, almost ginger.

  Slowly he drew a curved sword from a sheath at his belt; an officer’s sword. The scraping of the sharpeners filled the room, and Rebekah tensed on the bed, her eyes wide and terrified, sensing that she would be somehow involved in the evening’s ‘main show’.

  Siting himself on the far side of her bed, the soldier ran the flat edge of the sword over Rebekah’s trembling throat.

  “How are you, my dear?” he sneered, leaning over her.

  Margaret and I strained against our bonds, and moaned in unison against our gags.

  “Enough now!” the stranger hissed, his eyes on Margaret, then suddenly on mine. He brandished the sword in the air between us, its edge catching the light of the lamps. “Any more out of you two, and I will slice your older sister into pieces small enough to feed to the pigs!”

  I looked anxiously at Margaret, and nodded my head, trying to tell her to follow the madman’s instructions.

  Johnny Reb again placed the sword across Rebekah’s throat, and began to run his hands over her thin chemise. As he caressed her neck and shoulder, I realized for the first time the state of her disrobement. I gasped guiltily into the hessian gag. Forced by the man’s movements, I looked at my eldest sister with new eyes. Gone was her usual nightgown, gone her thick over-shirt. She lay almost naked, her skin glistening in sweat, her gossamer chemise tented and taught between her erect nipples.

  Despite the fact that we shared a bedroom, I had never seen her so uncovered before.

  I gave an internal curse as I found myself unable to stop staring at her.

  He gripped both of her breasts in turn, pulling roughly through the thin chemise, manipulating her hardening nubs with his fingers. Whilst I sat, bound and irate at the violation of my sister, I realized with horror that I could not help the growing of my manhood. Deeply embarrassed, I tried to bring my hands to cover myself, but being bound to the arms of the chair, I sat helpless. With tears in my eyes I looked down at my lap, and there, seemingly for anyone to see, stood my penis, straining upward against the folds of my long nightshirt.

  I squinted, yet resisted the temptation to keep my eyes closed; I needed to keep an analytical mind. If I were to survive the night, I would do so with as much information of Rebekah’s assailant as I could, and one day I would use that to bring him to justice.

  I glanced at the doorway and recalled his entrance to the room, so the man stood six foot or so in height, perhaps six foot one.

  His movement at the bed caught my eye. He lifte
d the bottom of Rebekah’s chemise and ran a hand up one glistening leg to their joining, I realized that he would be right-handed. The left hand, now holding the sword’s sharp edge against her throat looked awkward, as if not used to handling the weapon. The man’s eyes were now firmly looking at her pubis, caught in the lamplight.

  Rebekah gasped into her gag as he roughly rummaged his fingers against her.

  A gold ring shone on his finger, but not on the proper finger; not a wedding ring then, perhaps for dress, or show.

  From my viewpoint, I could see the violation of the man’s fingers, as they forced themselves deeper. Annoyingly Rebekah’s moans answered his thrusts as he began a regular rhythm between her legs.

  “My, it seems your sister is enjoying this part,” he said, although her clenched teeth belied his words. Johnny Reb shifted the angle of his hand, and seemed to dig even deeper; straining to push higher inside her. “She is no maiden, her barrier has been broken.” He did not sound disappointed.

  I thought of her dead husband, slain at Gettysburg three years before, their marriage only weeks old. She had spent those few nights with her husband in the summer house that now contained all my equipment; the only facet of the farm that Mamma had allowed me to make any alterations to.

  Those few nights in the summer house before he marched away.

  Johnny Reb withdrew his invading fingers and brought them to his nose. He gave a wicked smile as he sniffed the glistening digits. With surprising speed, he rose from his chair and quickly walked round the bed, bringing them close to my face. Before I had a chance to move my head, the man wiped his fingers above the gag, over my thin moustache and nose, coating me with my sister’s juices.

  I could not help but infuse her aroma, and I found myself stiffening further in my nightshirt.

  I shook my head in frustration as he did the same to a struggling Margaret, wiping away the remainder of Rebekah’s nectar. With a final sneer in my direction, he returned to my sister on the bed, yet now standing on the other side.

  But as he had turned, I noticed that he had twisted his left leg ever so strangely. Perhaps an old wound: I would pay it more attention.

  As I catalogued the facts, I silently cursed him, promising that when I eventually caught him, I would attach his testicles to my bell-jar batteries. I had thirty of them. Linked together in a line they would give me thirty-two volts; enough to make him squeal like the pig he was.

  He leant over Rebekah’s face. “If you promise not to make a sound, I’ll take your gag off.” he said, using his clean hand to tenderly move some of the curls from Rebekah’s forehead. “Would you like that?”

  Looking up into his eyes, Rebekah slowly nodded.

  He took the sword into his right hand, confirming my earlier supposition, and slid it carefully between her cheek and the rope. With an outwards slice, the sword cut the rope easily, indicating its razor-sharpness. He quickly pulled the ball of hessian from her mouth, and as she gasped gulps of clean air, he placed his hand over her quivering lips.

  I imagined the thirty-two volts on his manhood, surging into his body, making him writhe in the most despicable agony.

  “Remember now,” he hissed onto Rebekah’s face, pushing on her mouth with his soiled hand. Definitely right-handed; I settled the fact for future recall. “Not one sound, or you die. I know there are men in the barn, and they’d be here pretty quick, but your throat would be open to the world long before they arrived.”

  “I will be quiet.” Rebekah rasped.

  Leaving his sword resting on her neck, he moved his right hand between her legs, and his fingers resumed their probing, Rebekah gasping, and biting her lip. The man used his free hand to rip her chemise, baring both breasts to my gaze. I tried to look away, but these hardened nubs were my first glimpse of womanhood. I looked on in shame and wonder as he roughly pulled them this way and that.

  And I looked at Rebekah’s face, her gasps now louder in the room, responding to her anything but tender treatment.

  Then, seizing the sword, he walked quickly round the bed to her other side. Reaching into his open coat, he unbuttoned his pants, and pulled his erect penis from the dark grey material. “There you are, my sweet.” He leant low, almost enough to kiss her, his left hand now between her legs. “We’ll both have our fun, and I’ll be on my way.” To my horror he began to masturbate.

  With his left hand now between Rebekah’s legs, the stranger quickly managed both motions with equal ferocity, and I saw my sister’s face slowly change from alarm to some modicum of unnatural pleasure.

  “Come for me, my sweet.” He stroked himself furiously, then, without warning, Rebekah raised her head from the bed, and gasped, her body convulsing despite her bindings and the presence of the sword lying across her neck.

  “Wonderful!” the man grunted as he ejaculated over her chemise and bare breasts. “You are truly an artist.”

  Rebekah’s head dropped back to her pillow, panting, then he wiped his penis on her chemise, and tucked it roughly back into his trousers.

  I looked at my ravaged sister, and felt deep shame in my inability to help, but felt some relief that the ordeal seemed finally over.

  “I thank you madam.” He said as he lifted the sword from Rebekah’s throat. Then, to my shock and horror, with a gentle smile he pressed hard on the handle with both hands, and began to saw it back and forward across Rebekah’s gullet.

  I knew she would die after the blade made its initial pass, it had already sliced so deep; no surgeon alive could repair the damage of that first deep cut.

  I strained once more at my bonds as her lifeblood coursed from her gullet down onto her bare chest.

  As the sword cut through her windpipe, he silenced Rebekah’s intended roar, her scream of betrayal. It became a gurgle in her throat, a bubbling of blood. In two strokes the blade sank past the surface, severing her neck to her backbone. As she convulsed feebly against her bonds, blood surged onto her chest, and poured, black in the lamplight, down between her breasts.

  I roared against my gag and strained at my bonds, but to no avail. I cursed and vowed vengeance as the stranger calmly wiped his sword clean on the bottom of her chemise.

  I had not yet performed an experiment to the degree that I promised this man. He would die at my hands, and he would die slowly; far more slowly than he had allowed my sister.

  With that realization, I looked at my poor sister’s now inert body.

  “Thank you.” Johnny Reb smirked as he closed on Margaret. “You have both been a lovely audience.” He touched Margaret’s cheek with bloody fingers. “I’ll be back for you later, my lovely. I will save the last curtain call for you.” She flinched away from him, her head shaking.

  I could do nothing but watch as the smiling man left the room.

  Somewhere, deep in my violated mind, I hoped that mother would not be the first into the room the next morning.

  Paul Chapman, Pinkerton National Detective Agency, 6th Street, Chicago

  18th September, 1865 (Nine months earlier)

  “Paul, the very man,” Allan Pinkerton waved me inside and slipped a couple of papers across his huge polished oak desk. “This case is for you.” His broad Scottish accent flowed over his thick beard. Dust hung in shafts of light from the bright afternoon sunlight beaming through the large office windows. “Read up on it an’ give me your ideas.”

  “Yes, Mister Pinkerton,” I said, lifting the papers carefully from his desk. There was no need to wonder if I’d been dismissed, the tone of his last words had said ‘get out’. I knew the man, I’d spent the last three years of my life under him, learning, becoming a detective, a spy, a saboteur. A mere four months ago I’d have saluted him as a full major in the Union army, head of President Lincoln’s personal spy service, and addressed him as ‘sir’. Now, in a hurriedly formed company, we’d left the army behind us, and forged in new directions.

  I closed the door firmly behind me and quickly found my own desk, one of twenty in our
main office. A small carved wooden piece of wood sat on the edge.

  Paul Chapman

  Only three other desks were occupied, men, their heads down, studying their own cases. Allan Pinkerton’s visions were never small, when we’d rented the building, just weeks before, he’d insisted on space for expansion.

  I carefully spread the papers on my desk. Pinkerton had added some notes in red ink. 16th October 1874. I read, just eleven months ago. The muted noise from the busy Chicago street two floors below did not dull the annoying pencil scratching from the nearest detective.

  I didn’t have to look for the type of crime. Allan Pinkerton knew that murder seemed to be my forte. I’d solved a few. He called my department, Homicide; the act of a human being killing a fellow human.

  In the notes I found the victim’s name; Annabel Joyce, Taylor County, Wisconsin.

  I looked for a town, but the notes didn’t supply it. Farmland then, maybe out in the country.

  Death by a lethal cut to the neck.

  I couldn’t believe the hap-hazard way the notes were written, the details sketchy. My mind tried to join the facts. A farm incident? A vengeance attack?

  I walked to the closet and pulled a new notebook from the shelf.

  I opened it to the first pristine page and reached for a pen.

  16th October, 1874.

  The most important information, the date; the day it had actually happened. If we didn’t have a date, we couldn’t work the timeline. And if we couldn’t work the timeline, we couldn’t investigate the case.

  October 1874. I knew from memory that I’d been near Lexington at the second battle there. I shook my head, trying to rid the memories. I looked back to the notes on my desk. Taylor County, Wisconsin, the place, the crime scene. I left a space to add the name of the nearest town. Annabel Joyce aged 18 years, the victim. I looked at the other papers; words from the sheriff, the coroner; probably the funeral director. Death by a lethal cut to the neck. I found the murder weapon in the next detail. A sword.