The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton Page B

rose stiffly. “I will attempt to apprehend this killer, Mr. Value,” he said. “After that, I wish to have no further involvement with you.”
    “Then you had best hope I never need your services again,” Value replied.
    “Call on me at home this afternoon, Benjamin,” Pimm said. “We’ll make our arrangements then.”
    “Consider it done, sir,” Big Ben said.
    Pimm went down the cramped stairs, nodded at the cobbler working at his bench, and stepped out onto the street. He walked briskly along through the warm spring afternoon… and a young woman hurried across the street to intercept him. She wore a dress of severe gray and rather dowdy cut, though her face was younger than her matronly garb would suggest, and she wore a rather fashionable little bonnet on the back of her head, just above a shower of curls. “Excuse me,” she said, and Pimm looked around for her escort. She seemed to be a woman on her own, which made her accosting him in the street even stranger.
    “Miss? May I be of some assistance?”
    “I do hope so, Lord Pembroke. Forgive me, but I recognize you, from the Argus , the coverage of the Trent case—”
    Pimm nodded and forced a smile. His head still pounded, and meeting with Value had done nothing to improve his mood. “Ah, of course, they put my likeness in the newspaper. Silly, really, I was only assisting Detective Whistler—”
    The woman covered her mouth. “Oh, dear me,” she said. “I have not made myself clear. I recognized you, not from a likeness, but from your visit to the offices of the Argus . My name is Eleanor Skyler. We did not meet on that occasion, but I was in my editor’s office, and he pointed you out to me.”
    Pimm’s mind underwent a ferocious reorganization. “You are a journalist, Miss?” She couldn’t be more than twenty-five, half a dozen years his junior. Of course women did write, Freddy had taken a subscription to the English Women’s Journal until it ceased circulation earlier in the year, and now had a fondness for the Alexandra Magazine and Englishwoman’s Journal . (Freddy, whose interest in women had once been limited to whether they’d overlook his coarse manners in favor of his fortune, had become quite the advocate of women’s rights lately.) Pimm hadn’t realized the rather staid Argus had a woman reporter on the staff. But, wait, Eleanor Skyler—ah, yes. Mr. E. Skye. Mystery Skye? How droll.
    “I am indeed a journalist,” she said. “Currently investigating a story that, to my surprise, appears to concern you.”
    Pimm gave his most self-deprecating chuckle. “Miss Skyler, I am of course delighted to assist in any manner that I can, but I’m afraid the Trent case was my last endeavor into criminal matters—”
    “Really, sir?” She blinked at him, and he couldn’t help but notice her long lashes, her eyes the dark blue of a still Scottish loch on a summer’s day, and so what if her nose was a bit long? It suited her face. She cocked her head, a gesture of innocent curiosity, and said, “Then may I ask why you were meeting with the notorious criminal Abel Value just moments ago?”
    Pimm’s smile froze on his face. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean…”
    “Please, Lord Pembroke. I mean you no harm. If I wished to embarrass you, I would have followed you clandestinely—”
    “It seems that is precisely what you’ve done.”
    She shook her head. “Not at all. I was watching Mr. Value. Imagine my surprise to see you , a man known to be a friend to the police, a man who recovered a baroness’s stolen black pearls, a man who proved the ghost of Hodgson Manor was no spirit but actually a madman who’d lived for all those years hidden in the walls of the house—what business does a man like that have with Abel Value?”
    Pimm was glad he hadn’t allowed himself to drink this morning. Well, he’d had the one, but one hardly counted—it was practically medicinal. He needed his wits about him now. “Miss, I am