Easter Pinkerton and the Case of the Heretic Blood: Easter Pinkerton, #1

By Evan May

The year is 1883, and Easter Pinkerton is one of the most secret agents in the Crown's service. The greatest constant in her life has been her duty to the realm: She knows its secrets, safeguards its interests, and kills its enemies. Pinkerton's world of shadows, lies, and hidden motives is a battlefield where she expects to find few surprises, but her latest investigation has uncovered something beyond a fresh nest of treason. The trade of blood for power is a familiar enough transaction, but not when that power includes raising the dead or death, delivered invisibly at a distance. Pinkerton will have to prepare to fight enemies she could not have imagined, rely upon allies she would never have contemplated, and above all, decide where her duty truly lies. The threat is one that she would have once insisted was imaginary, and so Pinkerton may have to consider an alternative she would have likewise declared to be impossible, and become a traitor herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Renaissance Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990086410

Book preview

Prologue

Whitechapel, 1883

The night was clear, though cool for the time of year. It had rained earlier, leaving the cobblestones and pavement with a light sheen of moisture, but the clouds had mostly scudded off and the slight breeze cleared away some of the stink of the place. Even at this time of night, the streets of Whitechapel were busy enough, filled with those who weaved their way to and from bars and gin palaces, men who had lost their money gambling or who went now to do so, prostitutes plying their trade, hucksters, hustlers, shills, and victims. Into this place came a man; he had been here once or twice before when he was young and seeking adventure. Now he came for another purpose.

He wore his best new hat, a bowler of plum velvet, his finest suit, and tried to carry himself with an air of jollity and amusement. The man knew there was some degree of danger to be attired thus in such a neighbourhood, but he wanted to create the impression of a man of means come to one of London's slums to take his illicit pleasure in these streets' vices and their chaos. Such things were not unusual, and the man hoped he would go unremembered and unnoticed while he completed his true errand here.

The man came to this neighbourhood to give up his country's secrets. In the leather folder he clutched were the plans to Great Britain's latest submarine design, and to the naval guns that would arm her new battle cruisers. Arthur Streatham was a draftsman at Woolwich Arsenal, and over the past several weeks he had stolen moments each work day to create copies of these plans with which he was entrusted, and then to smuggle them out of the building. This done, he believed he had completed by far the most difficult part of his work and had now only to pass them on to his contact and receive his reward.

He came searching for Nicolas La Rothiere, an agent of the French government and another cause to which Streatham found himself aligned. They had communicated with infinite caution, using anonymous messages in agony columns and lonely-hearts advertisements, until this place and this evening had been agreed for their transaction. To Streatham, it had seemed as good a place as any. Whitechapel was, after all, a place where many illicit deeds were done and much went unremarked. Most who lived here, or came frequently, knew better than to ask questions about anything that they saw, and those who came infrequently would probably be loathe to admit their presence here at all. Certainly, it was safely outside his usual society, and Streatham was confident that no one here would know his face and wonder what business a respectable man, with an honourable post in government service, transacted with a foreigner on a street corner. Or in this poorly lit, malodorous passage between two ramshackle Whitechapel buildings.

There was but one other person in the alley when Streatham arrived, almost exactly at the appointed hour, carefully timed by his watch. The person was slightly built but tall, dressed in a long coat and leaning on a handsome stick with a large silver head, smoking a cigarette beside a wall where bills for prizefights and patent medicines had been plastered over each other. Streatham approached cautiously, cast a glance behind him to confirm that they were quite alone, and then quietly spoke.

Mr. La Rothiere, I believe? This was even an introduction from which it was possible to extricate himself without suspicion, if he was mistaken, and Streatham congratulated himself. La Rothiere, if it was he, was also finely dressed, if in more sober clothes than Streatham had selected. The face, shadowed by the brim of a rather more modest hat, was slender, and remarkably clean-shaven. The lips twitched, and the head was inclined slightly. La Rothiere dropped the cigarette to the pavement and ground it out with the toe of one immaculate shoe.

Mr. Streatham, his contact replied softly. You have our merchandise? Streatham nodded solemnly. There was just the slightest hint of the Continent in the man's voice, he fancied, some subtle flavour that he could not entirely conceal. Very good, La Rothiere went on, and you are quite committed to this course?

Streatham was most surprised to find himself questioned at this stage of their curious relationship. It was true that he had never seen or spoken with La Rothiere before tonight, but their correspondence had been lengthy, and Streatham had been certain that he was trusted. Sir, he managed to say, I wonder that you would ask such a thing of me. Some words about honour died on his lips; the ideal could hardly apply, and yet Streatham was sure he had at least demonstrated constancy.

Ah, you must not take offense, La Rothiere said lightly. I merely find that, at this moment, many with whom I transact find themselves stricken with sudden doubt. The moment at which one steps from what we might call impropriety, indiscretion, into betrayal. It weighs heavily on some, at the last. There is sometimes an untidy scene. I would avoid this, and make sure we are both certain in our purposes before putting ourselves in each others' hands. It was true that once La Rothiere had the plans in his possession, he could be proved a spy and very likely hung or shot, Streatham reflected, and of course the completion of the exchange would brand him a traitor, should it ever be revealed. Still, these were thoughts he had wrestled with long ago, and he steeled himself.

I betray nothing, said Arthur Streatham. My loyalty is given to the goals we both share, sir, and not blindly to a flag or a monarch.

La Rothiere nodded once, slowly, and they extended a right hand companionably. Streatham reached to take it, and then La Rothiere's left hand, unnoticed, lashed upwards, and the gleaming knob of the stick thudded into Streatham's head. The draftsman toppled to the alley cobblestones without uttering a sound, and his contact quickly crouched over him and laid the stick down. They had come prepared with a small pistol, had it proved necessary, but a gunshot, even in a place such as this, would inevitably and immediately attract attention and a silent knife was far better.

La Rothiere’s hand vanished into the long coat and came out with a knife, balanced for fighting, although there was no resistance here. The left grasped Streatham's tie and pulled him up onto the point of a blade sharp enough for surgery, piercing him to the heart as one last breath gurgled from between his lips. The splendid hat sat upended near his waist, and a pool of deep red blood began to explore the joints between the cobbles and the detritus of the alley floor.

Streatham's contact glanced up and down the alleyway but no one had seen the death. Good, that allowed for things to be arranged. Streatham's body was hastily searched; a heavy purse was found, a fine silver watch, and a small pocketbook held closed with a band of elastic. All these things were taken, which would help create the appearance of a robbery, and impression that might baffle the detectives of H Division for a time. The knife was wiped clean on Streatham's checked trousers.

The leather folder, with the naval plans, was gathered up, and the person who had pretended to be Nicolas La Rothiere stood up and lit a second cigarette as they left the alley, and tugged the brim of their rather more plain hat at a drunk who would presumably remember nothing of the person they had staggered past, but it mattered very little, for almost all the details of that person were fraudulent. The person who had claimed to be Nicolas La Rothiere was not an agent of a foreign power, not a Frenchman, and indeed not a man at all.

Instead, this was a woman who had come wearing what she thought of as her 'walking clothes' and thus in male disguise—because, in her considerable experience, the easiest way to entrap and eliminate Arthur Streatham was to convince him he had come to a rendezvous with his fellow conspirator—her target suspected nothing until the very moment the trap was sprung. The woman was a great believer in the precision and effectiveness of her tools, from the tantalizing hint of an accent that had helped sooth and trap her prey to the obsessively honed knife that had taken his life. All were equally vital parts of successes such as tonight's operation. Her name was Easter Pinkerton, and she was of somewhat vague employment in the British government. Her duties in that capacity would be hard to describe with any precision, but she thought of herself as a sword and shield against the Queen's enemies, two of which had been thwarted tonight.

The Arthur Streathams of the world could be left to bleed out their life in a pestilential Whitechapel alley, but La Rothiere lived, his death a diplomatic impossibility. At least he would not send the Royal Navy's secrets back to his masters on the Continent, Pinkerton reasoned, and once he escaped the bureaucratic meshes that had prevented him keeping tonight's appointment, she could not imagine either his reputation in their shadowy world nor the efficacy of his operations would be improved by the death of one of his better agents.

Once she had travelled a prudent distance from the scene of Streatham's demise, Pinkerton stood under a streetlamp and inspected the items she had retrieved from his person more closely. At least he had had the wit to make copies of the plans, rather than stealing originals; these could simply vanish and there would be no outcry, and no need for news of a traitor in the defence industry to destabilize the government. She clicked open his watch, wherein inscribed was 'My love to you always, H', and immediately snapped it closed again.

Pinkerton had given him his chance to step off the path he had chosen for himself, he had not taken it, and such betrayals had their price. If it had not been her knife in the alleyway it would have been the noose on a gallows, and at least now he died as a thief's victim, honour intact, rather than an exposed traitor with a name slathered in filth. Pinkerton wondered if that would comfort the 'H' who had given the watch, and then pushed the imagining aside impatiently. He had chosen his course, and she had little time for frivolities.

She noticed, now, under the gaslight, that the head of her stick carried a smudge of Streatham's blood on it. The silver knob had once been removed, the wood drilled out, and lead poured in to make it a formidable weapon that had served her well on many occasions. She wiped the stain away with a handkerchief that would disappear into the fire of the townhouse once this night's business was done. The chances of many questions being asked about this particular death were small, of the right ones being asked vanishingly so, but Pinkerton survived by attention to detail, as well as a willingness to occasionally do things that others balked at. 

Finally, Pinkerton opened the pocketbook, finding pages of writing, some with dates and some without, some neatly composed and others covered in wild scrawls and diagrams. It might be a journal or diary of some kind, and would bear closer study. She glanced through it, then looked at the flyleaf, on which someone had drawn a cross, but one of curious design. The cross' arms were formed by the connection of several curves, and at each intersection there was a little ball.  It was a design Pinkerton had half-expected to find, even as she hoped she would not, and now she cursed softly, surprising a passerby, closed the pocketbook, and thrust it into her innermost pocket.

The traitor Arthur Streatham was dead, and the plans of the foreign spy Nicolas La Rothiere at least temporarily thwarted, but Easter Pinkerton had now found the spoor of another enemy, which told her that there was more at work here than espionage between nations, and that her work on this case was perhaps closer to its commencement than its completion. She began to walk, away from a cooling body in an alley, towards a slightly more salubrious neighbourhood where she might hail a cab, and towards the next moves in the subtle, shadowed, lethal game she played.

Chapter One

Pinkerton stepped down from her carriage in front of a sternly-appointed Whitehall building that bore no plaque on the wall outside or sign over the door that might explain its function or purpose. Her errand here was not one she expected to enjoy, but it was part of her duty and to avoid it would be unthinkable.

Today she was dressed in one of her more usual public faces: a stormcloud-grey dress that matched the solemn mood of the building she was about to enter, a sober lady's chapeau, and a pair of black silk gloves she tugged into place as she alighted onto the pavement. Pinkerton glanced up at her coachman. Thank you, Williams, I shan't need you until this evening, she said and briskly mounted the steps leading to the dark-wood door.

She crossed a room, bright with polished wood, saying nothing to the functionaries at their desks and ignoring the eyes that would inevitably have followed her. These people's judgments had formed long ago and set hard. And while she dressed 'respectably' on errands such as these to smooth over their sensibilities, pretending not to see disapproving expressions or hear whispered comments, there was at least the comforting private knowledge that both her knife and her pistol could be to hand in an instant, should there be any offence against her that rose above the trivial, the tawdry, and the banal.

Pinkerton opened another heavy, dark, wooden door without pausing to knock. She was certain her arrival was expected and had made this visit often enough to dispense with ceremony. She stepped into an expansive office that became eerily silent the moment it closed behind her, save for the slow, slow ticking of a huge and ancient clock that served as the room's only decoration. A desultory fire flickered in an iron grate to her right, the dim morning light streamed in from a window to her left, and directly across from her was a massive desk. Behind the desk sat a stocky man in a coal-black suit. His face was deeply furrowed by age and his head mostly bald, for which he had compensated by growing an immense handlebar moustache.

She crossed the room, the report of her brisk steps loud in the room's deliberately oppressive attitude. She set herself precisely into one of the pair of hard-backed chairs that sat in front of the desk and waited. The man continued to write in a massive leather-bound tome on the desk in front of him; Pinkerton simply waited. She was well-used to this performance from the person who was, in some vague sense, her superior, in the same way that she, in some vague sense, was employed by the arm of government that occupied this building. Lord Castlemere reached the end of the sentence he was writing, laid down his pen, and finally looked up at her with a pair of startling green eyes.

Pinkerton, yes, he said, as though her arrival was the latest item on a long list of tedious tasks for which he was personally responsible. Perhaps it was, she considered. I gather you have a report for me, Castlemere went on, pushing a neatly-folded copy of the Times towards her over the desk. He picked up his pen and went back to writing in the ledger, precise penmanship racing over a creamy sheet of paper.

Pinkerton flicked a glance down at the newspaper. She had already seen it with breakfast, had calculated that Castlemere would not be pleased. She knew that there was nothing to be done about it, and knew also that she had acted for the best. To offer an insincere apology would be dishonest and a waste of time, although it was probably expected. Instead, she let the silence stretch and waited for her superior to speak again.

Castlemere sighed, crumpled his face into a scowl, and set down the pen again. Murder in Whitechapel, he said grimly. Civil servant dead. Quite a stir in the press, of course.

There was no question there, but Pinkerton answered it anyway. A murder reported universally as a robbery, she said, with not a suggestion otherwise. No mention of espionage, submarines, or the Defence Ministry. No delicate questions to answer in Parliament. The traitor at the Arsenal is removed, and now no one need ever know he even existed.

Castlemere made a noise deep in his throat. Yes, well, even so, surely the man might have been made to answer questions. His fingers twitched towards the pen, were drawn back, and the hand was laid flat on the desk.

Streatham, Pinkerton replied evenly, deliberately giving the man the dignity of his name at least, knew La Rothiere and little else. That is how these things are arranged.

Lord Castlemere made another impressive frown. No doubt you'd know, he allowed. Well, Pinkerton, although the matter was perhaps not handled exactly as we might have chosen, the results are satisfactory enough. Case closed, I suppose, all that, and on to new business. He began to turn pages in the ledger.

I fear not quite, my lord, Pinkerton said.

Castlemere looked up, evidently taken aback. I beg your pardon? he finally replied.

I fear the matter is not quite settled, Pinkerton said firmly.

Castlemere looked briefly confused, an expression that Pinkerton found unfamiliar on his face, before it deepened into the much more well-accustomed scowl. La Rothiere, he said darkly, has of course lodged a complaint via his embassy. Someone is composing a suitably devout apology that I expect will be delivered shortly after lunch. Beyond that, you know there is very little that can be done regarding a man with his diplomatic credentials. Unless the French withdraw him as an embarrassment, I fear M. La Rothiere must be tolerated.

No doubt, Pinkerton replied, but as he is known and watched, the actual threat he presents is minimal. If that ever changed, there were a variety of solutions to the problem that she had already rehearsed; La Rothiere's fondness for boating provided a particular opportunity. However, my lord, that is not what I am referring to.

Castlemere fixed her with a searching look for a few moments before she saw realization dawn across his face. Oh blast, he said resignedly, not this again. Pinkerton, my regard for your skills is really second to none, but this fixation of yours becomes most intolerable. Heaven knows I have enough problems of real gravity to handle, he riffled the pages of the ledger as he mentioned this, without adding fancies and moonshine to them.

Pinkerton swallowed a sharp reply and responded with care. I'm afraid there's not much room for doubt in this case, my lord, she said. You've asked for clear evidence in the past and this time I have it. She opened her handbag, drew out the little book she had taken from Arthur Streatham's corpse, opened it to the relevant page, and set it on the desktop beside the Times. It's the Cathar Cross, Sir, she went on. It could be nothing else.

Castlemere stared at the design for a long moment. Do you mean to say, he demanded, that you took this from the Ministry man last night? Good Lord, Pinkerton, it's identifiable. It would be monstrously incriminating, if it was found on your person.

This time, Pinkerton believed she didn't quite succeed in suppressing a roll of her eyes or in stifling an impatient sigh. Sir, I think you'll find that I'm usually quite successful in not having things found on my person, and in keeping my person from entering into the question at all. That is, after all, part of why you employ me. It is one area in which I do have certain advantages.

Castlemere made another uncomfortable noise in his throat. He was more or less at peace with having a woman as his finest agent, or at least resigned to it, but certain implications of the arrangement could still make him uncomfortable. Yes, well, he said, You know your business, I'm sure. Still, if this book is found to be missing from his effects...

My lord, the people who might note its absence are also the very last people who will mention it, Pinkerton replied impatiently. I have explained to you before their desire for secrecy. They cannot seek after this book without risking exposure, and this they will never do. She said this last part with a touch more confidence than she actually felt, but she had long learned that meetings with her superior went considerably better if he was presented with explanations and alternatives that were as clear cut and sharply defined as possible.

Yes, this secret society of yours, Castlemere said dubiously. It all seems rather vague, to me. This, he waved a hand dismissively toward the notebook, might be no more than an idle scrawl, after all.

Pinkerton squashed another impolitic response. When I have seen this emblem associated with spies and criminals across England, she said tightly, and then find it among the personal effects of one of the most dangerous traitors the kingdom has ever faced, I find it hard to call it an idle concern, or a fancy, or moonshine. She was dangerously close to shouting and made herself stop speaking there.

Castlemere opened a desk drawer, extracted a cigar, and took his time lighting it. This was another familiar performance, and Pinkerton waited it out. Yes, well, he said, puffing the cheroot into life, Of course your instincts on these matters are not to be dismissed, not at all. Say you're right about this society of yours, what do you imagine their purpose to be?

I imagine nothing, Pinkerton shot back. She opened her handbag again, took a cigarette from a worn and dented silver case, and lit it by striking a match on the edge of Lord Castlemere's desk. She enjoyed the tiny flicker of annoyance that he allowed to show around the edges of aristocratic propriety. My lord, I know very little about the designs and intentions of these people, she continued, except that they include among their number many of the worst enemies of the Crown and the populace, including Nicolas La Rothiere and the late Arthur Streatham, and I conclude that this is unlikely to mean anything good. Beyond that, and the emblem they have chosen for themselves, we are dangerously ignorant, and I should like your permission to investigate further.

Castlemere pursed his lips and stared down at his ledger. Yes, well, he replied, and what about this emblem? The Cathar Cross, you've said. That seems familiar, somehow.

Perhaps, my lord, Pinkerton said. As I'm sure one of your tutors will have told you, the Cathars were a sect of heretics in the Middle Ages, primarily from the 12th to the 14th centuries. They were concentrated in Southern France, but spread quite throughout Europe, for a time.

Yes, quite, said Castlemere. But what are Dark Age heretics to us then, Pinkerton?

That is what I believe we urgently need to discern, my lord, she replied smoothly. At the moment I can tell you very little except that the Cathars believed they had discovered the true nature of the world, and the forces controlling it.

Had they indeed, Castlemere said wryly. And what was that?

They believed that Creation was the work of an evil god, she said, and the world merely a trap for the souls of the righteous.

The clock ticked loudly into the silence. Yes, well, Castlemere said eventually, it sounds a damned strange business to me, Pinkerton, but I can't imagine it wise to ignore your concerns. You'd better look into it, but quietly, I beg you. If it became known that the government was inquiring after 12th century heretics, you can imagine...

Most embarrassing, Pinkerton said briskly. Yes sir. I shall begin at once, my lord, and use all my customary discretion. She rose to leave, and chose to ignore the slight cough that had escaped her superior after her final comment. There was a time and place for discretion, she told herself, and that time was rarely at the moment of crisis and the place generally not the front lines of a battlefield, but if she was right about what the Cathar Cross meant, it was a battlefield she would shortly find herself on, and discretion be damned.

Chapter Two

Pinkerton had long found that walking was a most useful stimulant to clear thinking, and furthermore, she enjoyed the reactions she provoked on the street. With her brisk, confident stride, she could usually rely on watching earnestly respectable men attempting to combine touching their hat brims with stepping hastily out of her way, while ruffling the countenances of their earnestly respectable ladies. Sometimes, in a particular mood, she would aim herself directly at some especially pompous specimen, secure in the knowledge that colliding with a lady would be unthinkable, and at the final moment, there would be a hurried scramble from her path, with nothing more than a suggestively disapproving cough offered in protest.

Pinkerton also knew that part of the reason she played this kind of game with herself was that she had long accepted that she lived her life in a way that would never be favoured with real approval from the proper, the upright, and the appropriate tiers of society. If causing scandal was inevitable, she might as well enjoy it. Pinkerton shook her head to marshal her drifting thoughts; this prompted an expression of helpful inquisitiveness from a young bowler-hatted man that she dismissed with a sharp gesture.

This was no time for idle meanderings of the brain; there was a problem at hand that required a solution. The first impulse was for action, to strike vigorously against the enemy that threatened. However, a stroke needed to be precise to be effective, and Pinkerton doubted she knew enough to make her efforts deadly. She had several names of people that she knew, or suspected, to be involved with the Cathars, but most were figures that it would be difficult or impossible to act against, like Nicolas La Rothiere. More information, and solid proofs, were required to mount an intelligent campaign, and Pinkerton now had three ideas of how to begin obtaining it.

She briefly considered a side trip to the townhouse, to change into her walking clothes again. This would provide a certain added latitude to her actions, but in truth, there was nothing that needed to be done presently that could not be accomplished in her current guise. Besides, the more often she used any of her stable of alternate identities, the more she risked their exposure, and thus the loss of their usefulness. Moreover, getting caught would generate a scandal that she would be entirely unable to enjoy. She raised a hand and hailed a cab.

The driver affected surprise and concern in being told his destination; Pinkerton simply repeated the address more slowly and clearly. He then attempted genial conversation with his fare, which collapsed in the face of stony silence. They drove the rest of the journey quietly, which gave Pinkerton time to consider her approach. Directness would probably be the simplest, and also one of the best deterrents to the predators that populated the neighbourhood to which she now travelled.

Her first stop was a dingy shop in Southwark, which had an old wooden sign painted with three gold balls, indicating a pawnbroker, but nothing to indicate the name of the proprietor. Pinkerton pushed open the dilapidated front door and entered without pause; she was quite familiar with Silas Wagener, the man who ran the shop and, incidentally, owned the building. Although, she rather doubted he would recognize her in her current attire.

The inside of Wagener's business was cluttered and filthy, piled with the detritus of the unfortunate and down on their luck. There seemed little to attract a customer to purchase any of the tools, jewelry, and furniture that were haphazardly arranged around the shop's cramped interior, and a respectable person would probably not linger for long. That was, however, unlikely to bother Silas Wagener, as Pinkerton knew that his pawnbroker's trade was almost entirely a sham. He was a fence and a fixer for thieves from the lower tiers of London's villains, and—more importantly for Pinkerton's purposes—had connections throughout the great city's underworld; contacts that Pinkerton was hoping to exploit.

He had also, evidently, started to employ a bodyguard. At least, that was what Pinkerton assumed the purpose of the massive slab of muscle awkwardly crammed into an ill-fitting and poorly-made suit leaning in the corner to be. The man fixed her with a flat stare from his station next to the doorway that led to Wagener's office in the back, and set his features into what was probably intended as an intimidating glower. Pinkerton appraised him with a brief glance, dismissed him, and focused on Wagener, bent over a glass-topped counter, rummaging through his stock of pocket watches, most of which Pinkerton assumed to be of dubious provenance.

Wagener looked up for a perfunctory moment, and then back down to his search through the watches. Help you, miss? he asked, the words nearly blending together into a single