The Murdering Ghost: The Investigations of Marianne Starr, #3

By Issy Brooke

The urchins of Victorian London say that a ghost is murdering young women …

Maybe it wouldn't matter on the chaotic and dingy streets – but these victims are respectable ladies, and when the Chief Inspector asks questions, he's transferred out of the way.

Marianne Starr is asking questions, too. One of the victims was her friend. Asking the wrong questions puts her in the firing line and suddenly she's on the run, hiding out in the very worst rookeries, and the only way to return to her normal life is to expose the truth behind the murdering ghost.

But the truth behind the murderer also reveals some dangerous facts about her dead friend, too, and calls into question everything she thought she knew about women, society and justice.

There is one thing more powerful than justice. And that's money. Marianne has neither. How can she avenge her friend's death – and with her surprising past revealed, does she even want to?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Issy Brooke
• Release date: Jan 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393917069

Book preview

Chapter One

There was no draught in the closed, stuffy dining room of Woodfurlong and yet the curtain around the table moved in an invisible wind. The red and gold fabric that skirted the circular table to hide its legs was heavy, and the whole arrangement was set in the far corner of the room. Marianne watched it intently.

If she were prone to fancies, she could imagine that her own force of will was somehow making ripples in the invisible liquid ether that was said to surround all life, and causing the material to twitch.

Luckily, she was not prone to foolishness. She let the dinner party conversation fade around her as she studied the moving material.

...hidden, quite hidden, right up until the moment of the foul denouement! Sir Harold was saying.

It’s probably Charlie, Marianne murmured, still looking past the baronet.

Marianne! exclaimed her cousin Phoebe in shock. No. I hardly think that my son...

Harold’s wife, a woman with orange eyebrows and plump cheeks, said, "Quite, quite. Murder is not an appropriate topic of conversation. I am so sorry, dear Phoebe. My dear husband spends too much time with his friends and all they speak of is crime, crime, crime."

They are my colleagues, not my friends; and anyway, it is my job, Harold said, but he spoke mildly and smiled at his wife. He was a highly-placed judge. "But still. I shall change tack immediately. Can you guess what our son John took with him on his tour of Egypt?"

No – please tell us. Phoebe spoke to Harold but she was still glaring at Marianne. Marianne tore her gaze away from the covered table, and tried to put on a socially acceptable expression.

It was difficult, because her friend Jack Monahan was also at the dinner table, and he was openly sniggering at her faux pas. Well, he had no right to look so smug, she thought. He had only been invited because he was desperate for a wife, and Phoebe and Marianne had taken it upon themselves to play matchmaker. He ought to be grateful that he was currently sitting next to Adelia Digby, who was charming, witty, independent, and most ferociously New.

Phoebe’s husband Price made up the seventh person at the table. Marianne was unchaperoned and unattached, the token maiden aunt allowed to partake while she was still amiable enough. It caused the layout of plates and cutlery to be unaesthetically uneven, and the butler disapproved sniffily.

A piano! He took a piano on tour with his little party. We must have music, he said. My son! What do you make of that? Harold roared. Everyone laughed.

Our Charlie will have no such ideas, Price said of his own son. Unfortunately, he is as musical as a brick.

"Actually, I can sing, papa."

Everyone went silent when the little voice piped out from the corner of the room. Marianne sighed and put her knife and fork carefully at an angle on her plate, showing that she intended to return. She excused herself and left the table.

She flung back the fabric and revealed an eight-year-old boy hiding in the shadows.

Woo? he said, uncertainly, raising his hands like claws. Woo, woo! I am a ... ghost?

Charlie! What are you doing? Get out of there this instant! Phoebe said, not moving to attend to her child. That was left to Marianne. She reached down and took one of his hands, and half-hauled him out into the open.

Faced with the curiosity, amusement and anger of the assembled adults, he went crimson and muttered, to the carpet, I am the murdering ghost of old London town.

"You are not. I don’t know where you hear such things, Phoebe said with embarrassment. Marianne, please..."

At once. Marianne could not bend to lift him up, with her overly solid corset and yards of material bunched at the back of her skirts, which were fashionably narrow at the front and sides and made her walk like she was in hobbles. Bustles were back in fashion for a second time, and Marianne was not happy about it. But Phoebe had insisted she dress up like a lady, which meant wearing some kind of silky straightjacket as far as she could tell. Instead of lifting Charlie up and carrying him out, Marianne walked with him in front of her, propelling him backwards and out of the room, and then prodded him up the stairs. Nettie, one of the maids, was coming down, and she squealed in horror. She took his hand and dragged him off to bed, scolding as she went.

Marianne paused for a moment in the quiet hall before rejoining the party. Of all the things she did want to talk about, that would indeed be the so-called murdering ghost. And Sir Harold was ideally placed to converse about it, as a judge. He was very well-connected in the justice world, though he spoke rather disparagingly of the police. He favoured Inspector Gladstone, though, and felt he was the best of a bad bunch. Marianne agreed with him. She’d worked with Gladstone herself, but Phoebe had forbidden Marianne from mentioning any of her outside activities this evening. Especially not science. Or murder. It left Marianne’s conversational topics somewhat limited.

Sir Harold is a dear friend of Price’s, Phoebe had said before the dinner, cornering Marianne in her bedroom before she could leave. He is a fine, upstanding man of traditional, firm ideas and morals...

Am I not a person of morals?

Yes, but they are somewhat different morals, Phoebe had sighed. Let us pretend that you are a normal person, for one evening.

The conversation rolled along in a lively fashion in the dining room. Marianne could hear Jack behaving himself very well. He was talking about hats. Well, if he could maintain more than two sentences of interest about headwear, then so could she. She drew in a breath, put the murdering ghost out of her mind, and sallied back into the room.

IT DIDN’T LAST, OF course. The ladies retired to the drawing room, leaving Sir Harold, Price and Jack to start their attack on brandy and cigars. As soon as Phoebe, Adelia, Marianne and Lady Wilkinson were free of male company, the atmosphere changed. Lady Wilkinson was a woman of two very distinct halves, and it was her non-public persona that emerged as soon as she was out of mixed company, and she set the tone for everyone else.

She quickly downed a glass of wine and instructed everyone to call her Eleanor. She arranged herself on a wide chair by the fire, and Phoebe took the chair opposite to her. Adelia and Marianne found themselves side by side on a sofa that had been moved to make a little circle in front of the fireplace.

"Now let me tell you this about the ghost! Eleanor declared, and everyone leaned in. You know my Harold is involved in this and that. She waved her hand airily, dismissing his long career in justice with one flash of a ring. So I hear things. But wait one minute. You, my dear. You’re not entirely trustworthy, are you?" She pointed one jewelled finger.

She was addressing Adelia, who tipped up her chin and stared back at the baronet’s wife quite directly. I know that you are referring to my role in the press. I can assure you that we...

"Have morals and ethics and don’t lie, yes, yes. So I have heard. I have also heard that one can now cheat the Prince of Wales at baccarat and then have his Royal Highness called to court to testify; so the world is a strange place, and perhaps you are honest. But if you report this in your rags, I shall have you ... dealt with. And you know very well that I can."

Marianne met Phoebe’s gaze, but Phoebe looked sanguine and unconcerned at the veiled threat. Eleanor Wilkinson was a dramatic sort of woman. Adelia sighed but she did not reply.

Eleanor continued with her original story, now she had suitably built up the tension. It is commonly put about that the murderer is an apparition, as in some ghostly presence. We all know that it is nonsense, especially you, Marianne.

Marianne nodded. Everyone knew that she investigated fraudulent mediums, even if she was forbidden from talking about it at dinner.

Well, it is all a mistake, Eleanor said. There has been misinformation about the manner of the attack. It was not someone disguised as a ghost at all, but the police are suppressing the true facts so as not to give the masses more loathsome ideas. You know what copycats they can be. No, in fact the murderer used a large white cloth to throw over the victim’s head, and as they were thus confused and restrained, the murderer strangled them!

How horrid! Phoebe gasped.

How unusual, Adelia said.

How interesting, said Marianne, without shame. What other misinformation might you be able to correct? We understand the last victim to be a young woman who was walking alone at night.

Eleanor nodded. "She was a young woman, but contrary to what I know you are thinking, she was relatively respectable and certainly not fallen or friendless in any way. And it was not night, but it was growing dark; these late autumnal afternoons so quickly catch one out."

Why was she alone? said Phoebe.

As to that, I am afraid my sources are silent, Eleanor said. "But no scandal attaches to her person whatsoever."

Marianne was about to ask what was used to strangle the poor woman, but Eleanor began to talk loudly about the dark-haired baby of a light-haired Duchess, with strong references to a swarthy visiting music tutor, and so the gossip mill ran on. Then the men arrived, and Eleanor became Lady Wilkinson once more, demure and polite and merely a decorative support to her husband. Adelia removed herself to a quiet corner with Jack, where they engaged in deep conversation, with Phoebe hovering nearby as a kind of proud chaperone. Marianne ended up talking with Price about microscopes, as he had recently bought one – all the best gentlemen had them – though he had no idea what he might use it for. A friend of his had been looking at insects, apparently, though Price wasn’t quite sure why.

While she listened to his ruminations about moths, she thought about another puzzle in her life. A friend she had made while studying Natural Sciences at Newnham College had recently sent her a note. Mary Sewell wished for Marianne to accompany her to an event to take place the very next evening.

It concerned Marianne for two reasons.

Why would Mary ask Marianne, rather than her intended future husband, the lovely and gallant Percy? She was deep in that period of courting where one had eyes for no one else, and temporarily dropped all one’s friends, usually.

And why on earth would sensible, practical, rational Mary want to visit a public show of stage hypnotism? Marianne had heard of the Great Doctor Bradwell Shaw.

And his reputation was poor, in professional circles. He was nothing more than a charlatan with a lively manner that appealed to an uneducated crowd. He was an entertainer, not a doctor; and he was of no interest to Marianne.

Chapter Two

Other than these two minor questions, however, everything was almost utterly perfect in Marianne’s life at this present time. Her father’s illness was being managed well, and he was lucid for the few hours of the day that he was awake. He had not run away, attacked a chair, sold his trousers to a passing pedlar or tried to trim the housekeeper’s hair with gardening shears for many months.

Marianne was earning money, and managing finally to save it. One day soon, she hoped she would be able to move out of her cousin-in-law’s place, and make a house of her own – without a husband, as other, bold women were doing. Her reputation as a woman of sound good sense was growing. She had written articles that had been published in popular magazines, and she was grateful for the advice about journalism that Adelia was giving her. She continued to work on a private basis for people who wanted assistance in exposing false and predatory mediums. She had been invited to speak at some private functions. She was also engaged on a casual basis with a small group of investigators working with the Society for Psychical Research, who were taking a more rigorous and scientific approach to matters of the paranormal.

For it was not the case that Marianne was an unbeliever of spiritual things.

Far from it. She was sceptical but she was curious, and only a lack of repeatable and quantifiable proof was preventing her from declaring that ghosts, or telepathy, or spirit guides, or ectoplasm existed. And how exciting would it be, if such things could be proven! She lived in hope, and was eternally disappointed.

So, her professional life was a garden of growing success. Her domestic happiness was assured while her father was well. She was alone, certainly, and had no prospect of marriage, but she had never sought such a future for herself. It would have meant giving up her studies and that would not do. So she made a choice early in her life, and she liked to say that she was happy with it.

She was. Mostly.

Anyway, it didn’t matter if she occasionally felt uneasy or unfulfilled in a nameless sort of way. Those gaps in one’s consciousness, she told herself, were where new ideas and new ventures could spring from. If she were perfectly happy she would have little motivation to keep on seeking more from life.

She spent the day after the party engaged in exactly the sorts of things that did make her happy. She wrote a short piece for a lady’s magazine, relating a recent unmasking of a small-town conjurer who was selling people trips to the other side by dint of ether and nitrous oxide and a powerful chant of suggestion. She read a report by a concerned theologian about why he felt people were so drawn to the mysterious, and made some notes on an academic article just published which was exploring the limits of electricity and magnetism combined.

She still had no idea why Mary wanted her presence at the stage show that night, but she was inquisitive rather than concerned. She retained her good mood as she dressed, and smiled to herself as she rode in a second class carriage on the train into London. She hummed happily as she walked the evening streets without care or concern, as these were popular and well-policed thoroughfares.

She was content, and eager to see her friend, right up until she met Mary in the entrance to the theatre, and saw at last her white, tired face and her unnaturally glittering eyes.

MARY! ARE YOU UNWELL? Marianne said, rushing up to her friend and grasping her gloved hands. Mary usually dressed in a showy, fashionable way, a throw-back to her time indulging in private amateur dramatics as an undergraduate at Newnham. She had never publically performed, of course. She was a thorough bluestocking in many regards, but such certain social death was out of the question. This evening, however, she had rejected her usual glamour for a plain grey coat, with dark dove-grey skirts and a matching bodice with the barest minimum of deep purple velvet trim. She almost looked as though she was in mourning.

Or disguise.

I am quite well, Mary said, though her voice was low. She smiled, but it was too late as a greeting, and merely looked forced.

Forgive me, Marianne said. But you look as if you’ve been sleeping in a coffin.

Oh Marianne, how rude! But don’t ever change. Now Mary’s smile was genuine and she squeezed her friend’s hands. I think perhaps I am coming down with a cold. Ah, come along. We need to take our seats.

Marianne was about to ask why Mary had wanted to attend this peculiar event but as she opened her mouth, a small, round, and mostly furious man stepped out in front of her. He could not tower over her so his attempts to dominate were faintly ridiculous.

Miss Starr. Still rejecting any ideas of decency befitting your sex?

Decent men don’t speak like that to ladies.

Ladies don’t act as you do.

Mr Vane, I am here with my friend and we wish only to enjoy a pleasant evening of entertainment. Good day, sir. Marianne stepped around him, and took Mary’s arm.

Who was that horrible little man? Mary whispered as they went up to the first few rows of seats, following an usher, as if they were likely to get lost on a straight path.

Marianne sighed. He is one of my life’s disappointments, she replied. Oh, not in a love-struck sense! Mr Harry Vane was ever a hero of mine, one of the great men in the vein of Maskelyne who has travelled the world working tirelessly to expose frauds and fakes. Yet when I met him in the flesh, earlier this year, suffice it to say that we did not – as I had hoped we might – become the closest of collaborators.

You are speaking very correctly, like a grammar exercise. Tell me what you really think.

Well, then. He’s an odious and stunted inflated pig’s bladder of a man with too much arrogance and hair oil. I would like to kick him down a flight of stairs. Drag him back up. And kick him down again.

And who was the lady he was with? Oh, it must be his poor wife. Mary looked back over her shoulder. No, wait. They have the same eyes and a similar set to the jaw, though she is much taller.

A relative, then, perhaps a sister? Marianne did not look. I had not heard he was married, at any rate. That would be a curse on the poor woman. She wanted nothing to do with the man; she did not even want to think about him. They took their seats in the second row, and all around them, the middling classes of London settled down, the ladies struggling to pack in their dresses and gather in their skirts while the men blocked the views of those behind them with large hats and wide shoulders. Truly, going to the theatre was a tiresome experience, Marianne thought. She would never have come if Mary had not insisted.

"Why did you