Whispers in the Smoke: Inspector Crowley chases the Joker in a Victorian shadow.
The clock tower above St. James chimed midnight, its mournful toll echoing through the fog-swaddled streets of Victorian London. Inspector Alistair Crowley, a man whose trench coat seemed an extension of his own melancholy, hunched over the body. The victim, Lord Ashcroft, lay sprawled across the plush carpet of his opulent study, a single crimson rose, still vibrant against the pallor of death, clutched in his lifeless hand.
The air hummed with the whispers of scandal. Ashcroft, renowned philanthropist by day, was rumored to be the puppet master of a city's worth of vice by night. Now, the threads of his empire lay tangled, stained with blood.
