Shadow of Justice

By Jess Faraday

Constable Simon Pearce doesn’t believe in love. It’s a dangerous proposition for many people in 19th century London, but for an ambitious copper climbing Scotland Yard’s greasy career ladder, it’s out of the question.

He doesn’t believe in monsters, either, though there seem to be a lot of them about. Whether it’s a ghost haunting a London churchyard where men seek men’s companionship, a phantom hound in Edinburgh that’s hell-bent on revenge, or a murdered businessman on a cross-country train who just won’t stay dead ― the mysterious has a way of finding Pearce, whether he wants it to or not.

But are these happenings truly supernatural? Or is something worse ― something thoroughly human ― to blame?

Pearce has his theories ― about crime, about monsters, and about love. But life has a way of testing even the most carefully considered ideas. And as he chases mysteries from one end of Britain to the other, he may just have to reconsider his ideas about all three.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blind Eye Books
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781935560715

Jess Faraday

Jess Faraday is the author of several novels, including the Lambda-shortlisted The Affair of the Porcelain Dog, and the steampunk thriller The Left Hand of Justice. She lives and writes in the American west.

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Shadow of Justice

By Jess Faraday

Copyright © 2020 by Jess Faraday

Published by One Block Empire

(An imprint of Blind Eye Books)

1141 Grant Street Bellingham, WA. 98225

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

Edited by Nicole Kimberling

Proofreading by Dianne Thies

Ebook design by Michael J. DeLuca

Cover illustration by Selene Volturo

Cover design by Dawn Kimberling

First Edition March 2020

ISBN:9781935560708

Library of Congress Control Number:2019952186

For my Family.

THE GHOST OF ST. SEBASTIAN’S

January 1887

London

So there we were, Fitzsimmons and myself—and the driver, of course—careening through the narrow, crumbling streets of the Spitalfields rookery on the hard wooden bench above a Black Maria. My breath was a series of white puffs in the chill night air. Fitz had jammed his bare hands into the pockets of his police-issue coat. His smooth cheeks were red, and his eyes glittered with excitement.

In the two years I’d been walking the midnight beat, this was the first time I’d sent for the wagon. It’s mostly drunks we deal with. Sometimes there’s a fight. Nothing that can’t be sorted out with a few stern words or, failing that, the baton. The Maria was an expense and a bother, and if my new partner was to learn anything from me, it would be to use this resource, exciting as it was, with restraint.

The woman locked in the wagon below us had committed no crime. At least not that night, though I can’t speak as to what might have happened had we not turned up when we did. We were taking her in for her own protection, even though she was the one who had started the fight.

Can’t you go a bit more carefully? I asked the driver. A grizzled man in his fifties, he was built like a pillar box—cylindrical and heavy—but he could drive like the wind. And he was. All the same, even traveling at speed over sludge-choked, broken cobblestones, the passenger shouldn’t have been banging against the walls like that. The Maria was swaying a bit, but the horses weren’t stumbling, despite the fog and the stones slick with ice and mud and God only knew what. And yet our charge sounded like a coin rattling around in a beggar’s tin cup.

And then she cried out. A few muffled words that I strained to understand.

Think she’s having a fit in there? Fitz asked.

I shrugged. I won’t say he was naive, Fitz, but he was young, like a puppy in a grown man’s body—all loose limbs, floppy brown hair, and undirected enthusiasm. Not unattractive for that, but definitely not my type. He’d have been mortified, actually, that the thought had even occurred to me. He was a simple man, and his upbringing had been, at least comparatively, sheltered. As for Sarah Goodfellow, our prisoner, well, she might have been having a fit, or it might have been something else. She hadn’t smelled drunk, but there were a lot of things a person could put in his—or her—body that weren’t drink.

I’d seen Sarah Goodfellow around St. Sebastian’s before. She hadn’t recognized me, which was for the best. St. Sebastian’s churchyard was a known meeting place for a certain sort of man, and the night station inspector, Crowther, could live a long, happy life never knowing that I was that sort.

One could also find female companionship at St. Sebastian’s. Sarah Goodfellow wasn’t there for that, either, though. She was a thief, and could cut a purse with the best of them. It was this combination of thieving, prostitution, and other low behavior that had caused St. Sebastian’s to hire a night watchman.

When we’d come upon Sarah Goodfellow that night, she’d been engaged in an altercation with said watchman, a man by the name of Timson.

Timson wasn’t inclined to argue, no less with women. War makes some men hard, but gentles others—as if they want to protect folk from the horrors they’d seen. Timson was the second sort. Always had a cigarette to share, or a kind word. But he did keep order. He’d been back from Afghanistan for a few years, but hadn’t lost his soldier’s brawn. Even if he did walk with a limp, I couldn’t imagine what might possess a pale, scrawny thing like Sarah Goodfellow to pick a fight with the man.

It was for her own protection that we took her in, as I said. She was going at Timson like a rabid cat, and she wasn’t going to stop just because we told her to. I’d seen it too many times before. We’d break up the fight, then the minute we turned our backs, she’d be back again, harrying Timson until Timson lost patience, and Sarah Goodfellow lost a few teeth—or worse. Did she have a legitimate gripe with the watchman? Did she have a screw loose? Either way, we were within our rights and duty to hold her somewhere for a bit until she calmed down.

Which might be quite a while, considering how she was thrashing around down there.

What’d she say to you? I asked Fitz. Fitz had taken down the prisoner’s side of things, while I’d talked to Timson.

Something about a ghost in the churchyard. There was a light in Fitz’s eyes, an excitement in his voice. He liked ghost stories, gruesome legends, and tales of ladies in distress, in which he could imagine himself the hero. She said Timson’s in charge of it. Said he sends it after folks he don’t like. Said the ghost already killed two others what prowl the churchyard. The lady reckoned she’d put a stop to it.

Is that so?

I like to read too, but my taste runs more to the factual. I’ve read some about ghosts, and they seem to cause a lot of bother, making scary noises and tossing objects about, but I’d never heard about one actually hurting people. Too difficult for the spirits to pierce the veil to that degree, is what they reckon.

It got two friends of hers, as a matter of fact, Fitz continued. One last Saturday, the other the Saturday before that. Beaten to death.

My stomach dropped. It was a rough life on the back streets of East London, and I’d seen more than a few denizens of these streets come to a violent end. A lot of my colleagues pretend death doesn’t bother them, but the truth is, that sick feeling never completely goes away. Especially when a fellow realizes how few twists of fate actually keep him from a similar path.

Not uncommon on this side of town, I said after a moment.

No, Fitz agreed. The uncommon part is, them men was found, each in his doss, alone, with the door locked from the inside.

I frowned. From the inside? How’d they manage that?

That, Fitz said, his eyes wide and bright, was how the lady knowed the ghost done it.

I wasn’t convinced, not by a mile. Still, I could feel the question burrowing under my skin like a mite, and I knew it wasn’t going to stop bothering me until I gave it a good scratch.

Did she tell you the names of her friends? I asked.

The driver was slowing down, now, pulling up to the station. Fog had gathered around the Maria, and when I descended into the thick clouds, I had the strange sensation that we were being watched. I shook it off.

One was named Fisher, I think, Fitz said—a disembodied voice in the night, until he stepped through the wall of fog on the other side of the Maria’s back door. The other was Woods.

Did she say where they were found? Which houses? The East End was riddled with doss houses, though few, I imagined, had separate rooms, no less with locking doors.

Fitz shrugged. The driver joined us behind the Maria and took out his ring of keys.

You’ll have to ask her, Fitz said.

I opened my mouth to respond, but the minute the driver opened the back of the wagon, the remark died on my tongue. Sarah Goodfellow was lying on the floor of the wagon, covered in cuts and marks she hadn’t had when we put her inside—marks that didn’t look like anything one might expect a person to sustain during a short trip in a secured police wagon.

Miss? Fitz asked cautiously.

Sarah Goodfellow, I said sternly. This is Constable Simon Pearce. It’s time to stop playing around.

I gave her shoulder a shake. Her head lolled to face us—long hair sweat-stuck to her face and neck. A spot of blood the size of a shilling coin glinted on her skull beneath her hair, in the light of the streetlamp behind us. She stared at us with sightless eyes.

The driver gasped. Fitz crossed himself, and I could see from his expression exactly what he was thinking. Beaten to death, alone in the back of a locked Maria, with two constables above. Silenced by the Ghost of St. Sebastian’s.

It wasn’t a ghost, I told him.

He nodded. He heard me, but he wasn’t listening.

There’s no such thing, I said.

He nodded again, but from the daft smile spreading across his face, I knew it was only a matter of time before he shared his enthusiasm with his mates at the station, and the Ghost of St. Sebastian’s made us a laughingstock.

Not a word in there. I grabbed Fitz’s arm. Not until we find out what really happened. Promise me.

That, he understood. And he didn’t like it, but he wasn’t, thank God, the type to make a fuss.

It goes without saying that the richer or more important a person is, the more attention his—or her—death will command. If that death is suspicious, the Yard will put the best men on the case, and those men won’t rest until a responsible party is found. And then that party will pay. Most people who die, though, suspiciously or not, are neither rich nor important, which means that, as far as Scotland Yard is concerned, the sooner their cases can be filed away, the better.

No one was going to investigate the death of a twenty-two-year-old who made her living picking pockets in the shadows of St. Sebastian’s. That went double if she’d died in police custody. No moneyed relatives would offer a reward. There wouldn’t be any sensational newspaper stories immortalizing the investigators as heroes. There wouldn’t even be a trip to the new police mortuary in one of the new hand-operated ambulances that looked so disconcertingly like prams. No, the best Sarah Goodfellow could hope for was a brief rest stretched out on the table in a back room until someone arrived in the morning to take her to a shared pauper’s grave at St. Bride’s.

Just my luck that Station Inspector Crowther had shifted his bulky frame from its usual position behind his desk, and was lumbering about, poking his bulbous red drinker’s nose into my case. He’d overseen Sarah Goodfellow’s arrival and had demanded statements from Fitzsimmons and myself, as if he’d been the one to bring the prisoner in. It had taken him exactly thirty seconds to declare the death an accident—a bump in the road that had caused an unrestrained prisoner to land awkwardly and break her neck. When I’d insisted there’d been no significant jolt, he’d warned me to restrain all future prisoners.

I argued that a bump on the head might account for Sarah Goodfellow’s broken neck, but not for the bluish tinge around her lips, or the cuts and abrasions on her skin.

Crowther, apparently assuming that we’d accidentally killed her while forcing her into the Maria, seemed confused as to why I was arguing to incriminate myself. More to the point, he said, if my questions caused him to stay late filling out paperwork, he’d be happy to make the report reflect my guilt. Fitz wisely kept his supernatural speculations to himself. When it was all over, though, he slipped away with a few of his mates, no doubt to exchange ghost stories for a pint or two, despite his earlier promise.

As for me, once Crowther had returned to his corner of the room, instead of going home, I went to visit Sarah Goodfellow.

I’d seen a few corpses in my short tenure with the Yard. It’s always horrible—the shock of a face with the light gone out of the eyes, the knowledge that this inert thing had once been a person, with hopes and dreams. Even if Sarah Goodfellow’s life had been one which a lot of people might have considered themselves lucky to avoid, she had still been someone’s child—and a good enough friend to want justice for her fallen comrades. Comrades who, like her, had died alone, apparently battered to death, behind locked doors.

Her present chamber was not locked. No chance of her getting up and picking pockets now, and even less chance that someone might tamper with her shoddily dressed corpse. I eased open the door and turned the knob on the wall. The gas sconces came alive with a faint hiss, throwing my shadow and hers against the opposite wall in sharp relief. I turned the gas up to its highest setting and approached the table.

Sarah Goodfellow’s lips still held a faint blue coloring, though it had faded since we’d removed her from the back of the Maria. This coloring was distinct from the nascent bruise on her cheek, which might well have happened when she fell. A bluish tint, I’d read, could result from asphyxiation. But how could she have been asphyxiated in the back of the Maria?

As I’ve said, I enjoy reading—something I don’t admit to many people. And though it was tempting to indulge in frivolous things in order to escape from my morbid line of work, what I really enjoyed was scientific monographs, particularly those that shed light upon the mysteries in my field.

At present, I was working my way through a series of monographs by a Dr. E. Bell. Bell wasn’t a police surgeon, as far as I knew, but he seemed to have a keen interest in the mechanisms of unnatural death, as well as an aptitude for reconstructing crimes. His writings intrigued me. Most of my colleagues carry out their work to the best of their abilities, but few of us have time to give our cases much detailed thought. More times than I care to admit, a person is found, arrested, and tried because he—or she—is the most convenient suspect. Many suspicious deaths are deemed accidental, because it would have been too difficult to prove either who had done the deed, or how they had accomplished it. I’ve often remarked to my superiors that it would be beneficial to invite Dr. Bell to speak at the Yard—to summarize those of his findings about wounds, poisons, or other evidence that might prove instructive. Needless to say, they dismiss the idea as wasteful of both time and money.

Still, hadn’t we all chosen this vocation to serve justice and make London safer for everyone who lived here? Raucous laughter echoed down the hallway—some rude joke between my colleagues, no doubt. Perhaps not everyone considered this work his highest calling. And yet serving justice was at least part of the job, and even the lowest citizen deserved some small measure of it.

What happened, Miss Goodfellow? Her thin, brown hair, which she had tied back in a long plait, had come loose. I smoothed it away from her forehead. She wore trousers and a man’s shirt. I doubted she’d meant to pass as a man, because she’d used her Christian name. I imagined her choice of garment was pragmatic, since the burden of female clothing would have substantially limited her stealth and agility. Fresh scratches on the back of one hand traveled up beneath her dirty sleeve. I turned the cuff back and examined them more closely.

No specter had made these. They were self-inflicted. It was obvious from the blood beneath the grimy fingernails on her other hand. Similar scratches stood out along her neck, and even on one cheek. I thought back to the scene Fitz and I had encountered upon arriving at St. Sebastian’s. Sarah Goodfellow had been arguing with Mr. Timson—accusing him of sending the Ghost of St. Sebastian’s to murder Woods and Fisher. But this didn’t fit with either what I knew of Timson or what I’d read of ghosts—even if ghosts did exist. Whatever Fitz might think, this was not a reasonable conclusion.

Which meant that Sarah Goodfellow had not been in a reasonable frame of mind when she’d made the accusations. The few times I’d seen her around St. Sebastian’s, she’d moved with swiftness and silence, evading me with alacrity. I’d never seen her talking to herself, no less ranting. The one time I’d caught up with her—she’d, of course, disposed of the evidence by then—she had acted more cocky than belligerent. This suggested tonight’s derangement had been temporary in nature. But was it due to some defect in her mind? Perhaps superstition taken to its extreme? Or perhaps, as I’d suspected, her derangement had been chemical in nature. As I’ve mentioned, there was no smell of alcohol upon her. Her movements had been quick, and her speech clear—as opposed to the slurring torpor one might expect from either drink or opium in any of its popularly consumed forms. But these two were far from the only intoxicants available to people in search of temporary escape.

I jumped at a sudden screech behind me—a sound like a knife scraped on glass. I dropped Sarah Goodfellow’s hand and turned to see a plump rat scuttle along the wall and disappear into a hole in the baseboard. I shuddered. Filthy things. At the same time, I felt sorry for them. A constable’s salary is hardly generous, but it’s a damn sight better than hiding in the shadows and scrabbling for crumbs.

The clock struck two. Suddenly the familiar end-of-shift fatigue came upon me, and the burn behind my eyes that came from working into the wee hours. I shook it off. I should go back to the section house, have some rest, and arrive fresh for my shift the next evening, but my mind was on fire with ideas. There would be no sleep until they were satisfied. I gave Sarah Goodfellow’s shoulder an awkward pat, put our the light, and shut the door.

Checking quickly to make sure Crowther was safely ensconced in his lair, and the records clerk soundly asleep at his post, I ducked into the room where reports were kept until it was time to take them away to their final resting place in some dusty basement crypt.

In addition to the physical details of crimes, I’ve found it instructive to consider the details of the lives of the people involved in them. Though Sergeant Crowther says it’s a waste of time to think too deeply about these things, I’ve surprised him more than once with conclusions based on my analysis of information no one else thought important. I didn’t anticipate the files would contain a lot of personal information. But if any of the victims had a criminal history, it might shed some light upon the circumstances of their deaths.

The deaths of Woods and Fisher were recent, so it didn’t take long to find their files. Fisher had been questioned before on suspicion of prostitution, but no arrest had been made. Woods had received a caution for fighting a few days before his death. Reading between the lines, it appeared the fight had been over a woman’s affections. Sarah Goodfellow was the only one of the three who had seen the inside of a prison, at Holloway, for petty theft.

Two men and a woman. One man who enjoyed female company, one who preferred the company of men—or at least provided it for money—and one who was after cold, hard cash. They knew each other. Sarah Goodfellow considered the others her friends. And they all spent time in the churchyard of St. Sebastian’s.

Initiating an investigation is above my pay grade, never mind that Crowther had told me to let it be. I’m sure he’d have appreciated my pulling closed cases into it all as much as he’d have appreciated a toothache. But something—or someone—was picking off the people trying to scratch out a living amid the bracken and headstones of St. Sebastian’s Churchyard. And if I didn’t take the initiative to figure out what was happening, no one would.

The next morning, I set off to investigate the first victim, Thomas Fisher, who had died the Saturday before last. If Crowther’s report were to be believed, Fisher had died after receiving a lethal beating while alone inside his locked room at Mother Harris’s doss house on Flower & Dean Street.

The men’s lodging house, which was a brisk twenty-minute walk from St. Sebastian’s, was one of the better ones. The building’s brick face was in good repair. The windows were clean. The pavement in front of the house had been swept, and the front step scrubbed. A sign in the window indicated there was currently no vacancy.

When I arrived, I was greeted by an efficient-looking middle-aged woman with a heavy knot of gray-shot dark hair pinned up at the back of her head, and the sleeves of her shirtwaist rolled up over bowling-pin forearms.

Morning, Constable, she said, filling the doorway with her stout frame. What can I do for you?

I had to bite back a smile. My shift didn’t start for several hours. I hadn’t introduced myself, and I wasn’t wearing my uniform.

Good morning, Mrs. Harris. She didn’t wear a wedding ring, but many women in her position used the title. My name is Pearce. I’m investigating the death of a former lodger of yours, Thomas Fisher.

I already talked to the police two weeks ago. Her mouth crinkled with distaste. They called it an accident.

She didn’t believe it, and neither did I. Still, caution was of the essence. I hadn’t come in an official capacity, and if word got back to Crowther that I was nosing around a case he’d declared closed, he wasn’t likely to take it well.

Some new factors have arisen that are calling that judgment into question, I said.

Good. Interest lit her eyes. I told your friends Mr. Fisher’s death wasn’t no accident.

What did they tell you? I asked.

She frowned. The one asked if my license was up to date.

Was his name Crowther, by any chance? Using a threat to shut down an inconvenient line of questioning seemed to be his favorite suppression technique. He’d used it on me only one night prior.

Yeah, that’s the one. Something in my expression amused her, and she gestured for me to enter.

She directed me into a parlor, to a straight-backed chair with upholstery that looked older than I was, and a couple of lifetimes’ worth of nicks and scrapes on its wooden legs. There was a battered wooden coffee table in front of the chair, and on the other side of the table, a dispirited-looking sofa. Still, the walls and floor were spotless. A very small coal fire burned in the grate. The receptacle beside it, which would have held more fuel, was empty. I expected she kept the remaining coal under lock and key.

Mrs. Harris lowered herself onto the sofa, perching on the edge of the seat with surprising delicacy.

You want some tea, Constable?

Thank you, I said.

She clapped her hands, and a girl of about fifteen appeared in the doorway at the rear of the room. I’m not a great judge of ladies, but she had a pinch of color in her cheeks that was rare for doss house denizens, and large, dark, intelligent eyes that seemed to take everything in.

Tea for the constable, Martha.

The young woman nodded then disappeared back into the hallway.

My niece, Mrs. Harris said. Her parents passed on three years ago. She’s lived with me since.

A beautiful young lady. You must choose your tenants carefully, I said.

A thoughtful look crossed Mrs. Harris’s face. I’m a good judge of folks. You have to be around here. There’s a lot of men I wouldn’t trust within ten feet of my Martha, and there’s other men… She narrowed her eyes. Men of a more gentlemanly disposition. Them’s the only type I allow here, for the reason I just told you.

Very sensible, I said.

But I don’t allow no nonsense from them.

Of course not. I didn’t doubt that between her steely resolve and her stout musculature that Mrs. Harris possessed both the will and the brute strength to punish any infringement of protocol. I wondered if Thomas Fisher had crossed her in some way.

Please, tell me everything you can remember about the night he died.

I locked up at two o’clock that morning, as I always do.

That’s quite late.

If the men are rowdy, it’ll be at night, she said.

She went on to say that Mr. Fisher had returned an hour earlier, and at the time he retired to his room, nothing had seemed amiss. Some time later, Mrs. Harris had awakened to a terrible noise coming from Fisher’s room. She was certain that someone was inside with him, and that there was a fight. She tried to open the door, but it was locked. She roused the other men and tried to get Fisher to open the door.

When they finally removed the door from its hinges, they were surprised to find him alone—but having been beaten to death.

Was his neck broken? I asked.

She frowned. Couldn’t rightly say. He was banged up, though, that’s for certain. It’s a pity. He was a good one. Clean, quiet, no trouble at all—at least up until that night.

Did he stay with you often?

She nodded. Usually paid a couple nights in advance. My place is always full. It’s hard to get a bed, if you don’t have one already. And I’m partial to my regulars.

How many men are here on any given night? I asked.

Five. I have two double rooms, and one private. Mr. Fisher always had the private.

And he was a quiet tenant, you said? No problems? No noises or disturbances?

She lifted her chin again. I’ve already told you, Constable. I don’t put up with no disturbances. I can show you the room.

I followed her up the stairs to a room at the end of a short hallway.

I’d be surprised if you found anything, she said apologetically. It’s been two weeks since they said I could clean the room and start letting it out again.

Is someone staying here, now? I asked.

There’s been a couple.

And Mr. Fisher didn’t leave behind any possessions?

Just one suitcase. I’ll have Martha fetch it here. She leaned into the doorway and called to her niece with a voice like a foghorn.

There wasn’t much in the room to see—a small but clean bed; a table beside it with a lamp and a Bible. If there had been any signs of struggle, Mrs. Harris had scrubbed them clean.

Martha arrived with the suitcase, the tea apparently forgotten. Oddly, she didn’t leave but hovered at my elbow as if worried I’d pinch something. The suitcase contained a pair of trousers and a shirt, which I assumed were Fisher’s, and numerous filmy, diaphanous, and feminine pieces of clothing that clearly were not. At the bottom of this all was a paper envelope tied shut with string. I opened it. And then I reassessed my original evaluation of the ladies’ garments in the suitcase.

Is that…? I asked.

Them pictures is art, Martha whispered. She glanced over her shoulder at Mrs. Harris, who was standing guard in the doorway. Mr. Fisher was a photographer’s model, but don’t tell no one.

I suddenly felt hot all over and, had I been alone, I’d have unbuttoned my collar. In one of the photos, Fisher was wrapped in something silky and draped across a divan like that famous portrait of Sarah Bernhardt a few years back. In another, Fisher was St. Sebastian himself—naked except for a loincloth, and tied to a tree, writhing in ecstatic torment. I had never seen anything so perverse and yet so strangely beautiful. I felt dizzy, nauseous, and unmistakably aroused. My heart pounded so loudly I was certain the two women could hear it.

What’s that, then? demanded the eagle-eyed Mrs. Harris. Hastily, I shoved the photos back into their envelope, and the envelope into my coat pocket.

Evidence, I said. I cleared my throat. I should definitely take these. Yes. Can you remember anything else about that night? I asked Martha, trying to hide how much the photos had unsettled me.

She thought for a moment, pulling her eyebrows together across her smooth brow. Yeah, actually. When they brung Mr. Fisher out, his face had gone all blue.

My embarrassment drained away, and my head cleared. Whatever had happened to Sarah Goodfellow, it sounded like Fisher had met a similar end. But what was the nature of that end?

Does that help? she asked.

It does. I paused, wondering how best to frame my final question. Then I gave up and asked, Mrs. Harris, have any of your tenants ever mentioned seeing a ghost?

Her face crinkled in an expression that looked part distaste and part amusement. She barked a haughty laugh.

A ghost? Certainly not. As I’ve said, I don’t allow no nonsense here.

Thomas Fisher had met his end in a respectable, or at least well-run, establishment. Where Jeremy Woods had met his was anything but. The place was perhaps a mile and a half from St. Sebastian’s, and in the other direction from Mrs. Harris’s, with an entrance on the far side of a dank tenement courtyard.

It was close to noon when I arrived, and the courtyard was livelier than one might expect in the middle of a working day. But the people who lived here didn’t work, at least not during daylight hours. Instead, they slouched in the corners and under the staircases, smoking and sharing off-color jokes, while women traded gossip and insults through open windows, and children scratched out games in the black, slushy snow with sticks.

I found the proprietor in the front room of his doss house, leaning back in his chair against one wall, enjoying a cigarette. He was a thin man of about thirty, all angles, with greasy dark hair and brown rings under the arms of a shirt that could have used a dip in a washtub. His waistcoat was unbuttoned, though he wore a ratty scarf tight around his neck in deference to the cold. The remains of his luncheon sat on a chipped plate on the table in front of him. A penny paper lay on the floor near his feet, though the boot prints that crisscrossed the faded ink showed how interested anyone had been in reading it.

This was an entirely different kind of establishment from Mrs. Harris’s. Here, the beds were two ropes hung in parallel across one side of the room,

Reviews for Shadow of Justice

[Gabriella · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We follow Simon through his adventures, he is the constant in these stories. While these are separate mysteries (8 in total), there's a continuous storyline and they cannot be read as standalones. One has to read the entire serial to get the full picture.

After the first story I didn't think much of Simon. But with each instalment he revealed more of himself. And I even think I may have misjudged him at one point.

There is a romantic story arc which basically carries over from one story to the next and stretches to the end and final conclusion. It is not necessarily the focus, at least not at first. If I have to sum it up I'd say this is about Simon's evolution, it just happens to be that Simon is gay and he stumbles upon someone who is also gay and then things happen between them. I, for one, felt satisfied with how that turned out.

The mystery and investigation part was enjoyable for me, even though the cases are not hard to crack, usually the culprits give themselves away pretty quick, or give themselves up out of guilt. Another interesting thing is that Simon did not get these cases assigned to him, he just happened to be at the right place at the wrong time. :)

Lately, whatever I read I end up disappointed by the conclusion. I'm starting to think that might be on me. The lead-up was great, the 3 stories before the last one filled me with anticipation and a bit of dread, but I also felt content. And that's all part of the package. But the ending felt too easy and neat.

Historically (I think) this era is well represented, both in speech and manners, and even the police investigation process.

The writing flows nicely. I had one qualm about it, but even that got better after a while. For example, during each investigation when Simon asked the witnesses to describe the events, that didn't happen in a dialogue format. Instead Simon himself summed it up for the reader what he learned from the witness. Another example, when Simon met someone new (either friend, colleague or lover), again we didn't see them conversing, instead we learned through Simon's narration what there is to know about that person.I wonder if this kind of style is how the author usually writes or it's because these are short stories. Would it be different if I were to read a longer novel? I will find out.

After my initial hesitation I got more and more invested with each story and maybe like-minded Capricorns are drawn to each other, as Simon certainly got me on his side quickly. I wanted him to have a happy ending in whatever way he got it.

3.5 stars