The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton

been afraid… but the writer E. Skye loved nothing better than a good story.

Deductions
    “A map,” Abel Value said, and then puffed his cigar with an air of thoughftulness. Pimm wasn’t thrilled at spending the morning in this man’s office, especially given the beastly headache he’d cultivated the night before, but it was better than having the criminal in his own home again. Abel’s lair of the moment was a room above a cobbler’s shop—cramped and crammed with tottering heaps of paper, except for the surface of the large desk, which was peculiarly clean. That neatness made Pimm wonder what papers had been hurriedly swept aside and hidden in advance of his arrival. Big Ben loomed in one corner, seeming to fill about a third of the room’s available space.
    “I don’t know,” Value mused. “Someone could do me harm with that information. It’s not the sort of thing one does in my line of work. Drawing a map for a man with connections to the police.”
    “You sought my assistance,” Pimm said. “I cannot help you without adequate information. If I don’t know where your… female employees… ply their trade, how can I hope to prevent more of them from being harmed?”
    Value grunted, reached behind him, and found a rolled-up map of London. “This is Stanford’s map,” he said. “You’ve seen it? Indispensable for men of industry, shows every railway line, and every street.” He rolled out the map, which filled most of the table, and Pimm leaned forward, his interest piqued despite himself. At first the map seemed just a riot of lines and letters, but the twisting ribbon of the Thames allowed him to orient himself. “The city looks so much more orderly pinned down on paper, doesn’t it, than it does when you’re out walking the streets? Still a messy place, though, streets thrown down every which way, the present built on top of the past, and the future just lying in wait for its own turn. I do love it so. I have business interests south of the river, of course, in Southwark. I also have a few girls working in the West End, late—it can get positively raucous around Leicester Square, you know.” Pimm, who’d stumbled out of the music halls there with a bellyful of gin to join the merry-making crowds on more than one occasion himself, merely nodded. “None of the women have been killed in those areas, though. The one’s who’ve died have all been north of the river.” He tapped the map, indicating a portion of that far-from-respectable region known as Alsatia. Pimm was surprised. He’d heard the area was much improved since the installation of a police station in the vicinity some years previous—but he supposed such improvements were relative.
    Value fished a shilling, a penny, and a few florins from his trouser pocket and scattered them on the map, then began arranging them with deliberate care, leaning close to the intricately-detailed map to read the street names. “Molly.” He put down a shilling. “Letitia.” A florin, perhaps an inch farther away. “Juliet.” Another florin. “Abigail, we called her ‘sweet Abi,’ you’d think she was a choir girl until she put her hands down your trousers.” The penny for her. “And the latest, Theodosia, you saw her remains today.” The final florin.
    “When did the first one die?” Pimm asked.
    Value glanced at Ben. The big man said, “Twenty-seven days ago, m’Lord.”
    “Mr. Value. Five murders in a month? Someone is trying to make a point, and most forcefully.”
    “I can’t say I care what that point might be. I just want the killings stopped. Can you do that?”
    “Have you posted men to keep watch in the area?”
    “Of course. But the girls go off with men, find a nice alley, and… well, we can’t watch all of them, all the time.”
    “Where have you placed your watchmen?”
    “Near the sites of the killings, of course.”
    “Near the site of the last killing?” Pimm said. “Understandable enough, but