take a seat. Tell me how I may help you.”
A benign question, but with matters such as this, where does one begin? I turned to Matilda and Bram, and both glanced back at me, none of the three of us certain where to begin. We took places around the table.
After nearly a minute, Vambéry broke the silence. “During my years on this planet, I have killed seven men, five in self-defense, the other two under, well, different circumstances.”
I stole a look to my right—Bram’s eyes flicked over to meet mine for a moment. Matilda’s mouth had dropped open. She quickly pulled it shut. If Vambéry noticed, he gave no indication, not missing a beat before going on.
“I witnessed crimes far too gruesome to detail in the company of a lady, and I encountered creatures previously thought to exist only in the nightmares of children. I met kings with the brain capacity of a pea, and politicians with more skeletons in their closets than an undertaker’s wife. I have spied on governments and men for other governments and men, and I have been compensated well for doing so. I have seen many things in this world and yet I know there are far more things to see than I ever will see; I embrace each day knowing this and hope to glean something new every day.” He leaned in closer, taking a sip of his tea. “I tell you all this not to impress you but to comfort you. There are no secrets here, nothing you should feel you cannot tell me, for I have full confidence that anything we share will remain between these walls and venture to no one else.” He placed his teacup on the table and leaned back in his chair. “I confessed to murder here in the presence of the three of you. Now each of you must confess a secret here in turn, something you would normally never disclose to another living soul, something that can be held by the rest of us as a key, of sorts, a key to a lock that binds us together from now until the end of our days, for to reveal one of these secrets to another party would open the door to revealing all our secrets.”
Such pacts were common in the Hellfire Club, and I had heard Vambéry’s speech before. Although, I must admit, the last time he confessed to only six murders in total.
I turned to Bram and Matilda. “When I was attending medical school, three other students and I dug up the recently deceased remains of one Herman Hortwhither and transported his body to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Dublin for study. There we spent three days dissecting the poor man, first in an effort to ascertain how he had died, then to study his internal workings. We attempted to do so with the utmost respect and skill, but since this was our first dissection, we failed miserably at both. Frankly, we made an undignified mess of Mr. Hortwhither. Upon completion of our ill-conceived task, his death remained a mystery to us, and although the study of his organs proved insightful, it only left us with more questions. The following weekend, we returned to the cemetery and disinterred the body of one Lily Butler, a local prostitute who died at the age of sixteen from causes unknown. We brought her back to the same warehouse and went about dissecting her as well, this time with steadier hands than our first venture. Sad to say, these forays were conducted for the better part of a year. But we had little choice; the Royal College of Surgeons made few cadavers available, supplying only one for every thirty or so students, and without these additional opportunities for study, learning my craft would have been impossible. I return to the cemetery each year and place a rose upon each grave I desecrated and pray for each soul I violated, hoping they somehow understand that the knowledge I derived from each of them gave me the skills to save lives.”
When I finished, I could not look at my brother or sister; instead, I stared down into the bottom of my empty teacup and tried to block the horrible memories these images visited on me year after year, thoughts I longed to forget.
Matilda spoke next,