Page 84 of Molly Boys

“Robert, how are you?” Archie rose from his seat and closed the door behind Dr Shaw as he lowered himself into the chair opposite Archie’s desk with a grunt.

“These blasted things are a damned inconvenience.” He indicated the crutches with a sour look. “I had to escape the house. Peg and Lowcroft were flapping around me like a pair of moths. It was driving me to madness. Made me wish I’d broken my ears instead of my leg.”

Archie lowered himself back into his chair gingerly, the bruises peppered along his ribs protesting the movement.

“You look like an old man,” Shaw remarked, taking in Archie’s drawn face and the dark circles under his eyes.

“I feel like one,” Archie smiled self-deprecatingly. Opening one drawer, he retrieved the quart of whiskey he kept in there and placed the bottle down on the desk. “Fancy that drink now?”

“God bless you.” Shaw chuckled as Archie set two glasses on the desk and filled them. “To monsters and maniacs.” He lifted his glass. “May they rot in hell,” he concluded before taking a deep swig.

Archie took a slightly more reserved sip and set his glass down, his brow furled in thought.

“Amen to that,” Archie murmured.

Shaw drained his glass and reached for the bottle. “Seriously, Archie, you look like hell.”

“Thank you, Robert,” Archie said dryly, raising a brow when Shaw filled his glass to the brim and lifted it to his lips once again.

“It’s for the pain.” He pointed to his heavily bound leg. “Throbs like a bitch in heat.”

“Charming,” Archie muttered.

“You’ve been stewing over last night like week-old mutton, haven’t you?” Shaw set his half-empty glass down.

Archie huffed lightly in amusement. “Am I that obvious?”

“You look like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.” He scratched his smooth, freshly shaved cheek. “I’ve been thinking about it too.”

“I have so many questions my mind is filled to bursting,” Archie admitted. “I thought once we found Edmund Baxter and proved he was the killer that would be it, case wrapped up. But instead of answering my questions, it’s only raised more.”

“I know what you mean. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed it. Whatever Baxter’s serum was it caused a physical manifestation in his body. It shouldn’t be possible… it’s not possible.” He stared at his glass, puzzled.

“And yet we both witnessed it.” Archie frowned. “The problem is no one will believe us. The proof is gone along with Baxter, and we have no idea who this Elias is and where this place—The Underside—is. The Home Office and the chief commissioner are demanding answers and I don’t have a killer to hand them.”

“Yes, you do,” Shaw said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“You have the perfect answer laying in the mortuary right now.”

“Harold Baxter?” Archie scowled.

Shaw let out a resigned breath and shrugged. “You happen to be right on all counts. No one will believe us, not without proof. They want a killer, so hand them Harold Baxter. With his burly physical build, it’s entirely plausible that he could have incapacitated Wakefield and Perkins. He was desperate, on the verge of ruin, obsessed with finding a cure for his son’s condition.”

“But he wasn’t,” Archie murmured. “It seems wrong somehow to ruin the reputation of a dead man to cover up the sins of his son.”

“Harold Baxter was far from innocent.” Shaw shook his head. “You’re forgetting he covered up what Edmund was doing at the Royal College all those years ago. If he’d been caught and punished back then, twelve men wouldn’t have died.”

“It still feels wrong,” Archie grumbled. Restless, he rose from his chair and paced to the small window that looked down onto the darkening snow-lined street outside. “Even if I serve a dead man up as a sacrificial lamb, that still doesn’t change the fact that Baxter is out there somewhere,” he muttered as he stared out at the falling snow.

“That’s true.” Shaw nodded. “However, as much as I hate to admit it, that man… Elias… had a point. Edmund Baxter may have started out as a man but what he became was something else entirely. If there is a whole other world out there that we don’t know about and we go on about our lives, not realising it exists right alongside us? Then we don’t see it, we don’t hear it, and our system… our laws are ill-equipped to deal with it.”

Archie turned to regard Dr Shaw, impressed with the man’s insight. His eyes narrowed curiously. “What are you suggesting, Robert?”

“Give them Harold, let them sleep comfortably in their beds at night knowing that a killer was stopped.”

“And then?” Archie prompted.