Читать книгу Her Dark Curiosity - Megan Shepherd, Megan Shepherd - Страница 10

In the morning, the previous day’s adventures seemed as unreal as nightmares, and yet the flower pressed within my journal was real enough, as was the sleeping dog beside me.

All trace of my bloody coat had burned in the fireplace except for the silver buttons, which I slipped into my pocket. I wasn’t looking forward to telling the professor I’d need a new one. I pulled out Jack Joyce’s newspaper and reread the article again. The familiar names of the victims stared at me from the page, as did another name – Inspector John Newcastle. Lucy’s ambitious young suitor had been chosen to lead the investigation into the Wolf of Whitechapel, and I wasn’t certain whether this news was welcome or not; as much as I loathed the idea of seeking information from the police, Inspector Newcastle might be able to give me more clues about the murderer and his victims. But how could I possibly explain my interest to the inspector? Well-bred seventeen-year-old girls weren’t fascinated by murder suspects, as a rule. If I said three of the four victims had personally wronged me, I’d become the prime suspect.

My fingers clenched the newsprint. If only Montgomery were here, he’d know what to do. He had always been better than me at these things: investigating, tracking, lying. For the longest time I’d thought him a terrible liar, and yet in the end, he’d fooled me well enough. I could still remember his voice: You shouldn’t have anything to do with me. I’m guilty of so many crimes. He’d warned me plain as day, and yet I’d still fallen in love with him, believed we had a future … and now here I was, alone with ink-stained fingers, only a dog for company and an old man who didn’t begin to know the truth about me.

I skipped over Inspector Newcastle’s name and let my gaze linger on the last line of the article, a line that I’d barely glanced at in my hurry yesterday: ‘The bodies are being kept in King’s College of Medical Research until autopsies can be performed to shed light on the exact nature of the deaths.’

King’s College – I knew those dark hallways only too well. I’d scrubbed blood from the mortar there, dusted cobwebs from between skeletons’ bones. That was where Dr Hastings had decided a simple cleaning girl wouldn’t dare refuse his sexual advances, and I’d slit his wrist. I still remembered the crimson color of his blood on the tile.

The last thing I wanted to do was return to those hallways.

And yet the bodies there called to me, promising to tell me the answers buried within their cold flesh.

It was a call I couldn’t resist.

I dressed and came downstairs with a lie prepared about needing to do some Christmas shopping in the market. To my surprise, I heard sounds of arguing and found the professor in the library with a visitor, a stout man with stiff waxed hair and thick glasses whose face froze when he saw me standing in the doorway.

‘Ah, Juliet, you’re awake,’ the professor said, rising to his feet. His mouth was still tense from their argument, but he forced a smile as he pulled me into the hallway.

‘Who’s that man?’ I asked, trying to peek around his shoulder.

‘Isambard Lessing. A historian, one of the King’s Club men. No need to concern yourself with him; he’s here to inquire about some old journals and family heirlooms. Did you need something?’

‘I was thinking of going shopping. This close to Christmas—’

‘Yes, yes, a fine idea,’ he said, herding me toward the stairs. He fumbled in his pocket for some bank notes and pressed them into my hand. ‘I’ll see you back here for supper.’

I muttered a silent prayer of thanks that he was distracted and wasted no time hurrying from the house with Sharkey. I took the dog to the market and firmly deposited him with Joyce, so by the time I got to King’s College – wearing an old apron over my fashionable red dress – classes were already in session for the morning. I entered through the main double doors into the glistening hallway with polished wood-inlay floors and wall sconces bearing electric lights. My boots echoed loudly in the empty hallways. I’d never felt comfortable on this main floor, the realm of academics and well-off students from good families. Grainy photographs lined the walls showing the illustrious history of the university and its construction. One brass frame bore the crest of the King’s Club with the motto underneath: Ex scientia vera. From knowledge, truth. I thought of stiff Isambard Lessing and his red face. I paused to look at the date on the frame’s inscription.

1875. Four years before I was born. The photograph documented the King’s Club membership at the time, two lines of a dozen male faces wearing long robes and serious expressions. Lucy’s railroad magnate father, Mr Radcliffe, was among them, his beard much shorter, standing next to a stout man I recognized as Isambard Lessing himself, and with a shudder I recognized a young Dr Hastings. I also found the professor’s face among them, decades younger but with the same wire-rim glasses and a hint of a smile on an otherwise stern face. On his left was a young man whose face I knew all too well – my father.

I shifted in my stiff clothing. The professor had mentioned they’d met in the King’s Club, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. In the photograph Father had dark hair cut in the fashion of the time, and his eyes were alert and focused, so unlike his wild-eyed, gray-haired visage I had known more recently. The face in the photograph was the face I knew from my earliest memories, when I’d idolized him, before madness and ambition had claimed him.

I tore myself away from the old photograph and hurried for the stairs to the basement, where I felt instantly more at ease. The morning cleaning crew was already hard at work scouring the stairs leading to the basement hallways. I recognized my old boss, Mrs Bell, as her rounded body stooped to scrub the treading. A woman who used to watch out for me when no one else did. When she stood to refill her bucket, I grabbed her hand and pulled her around the corner.

‘Mercy!’ she cried, putting a hand over her heart. ‘Juliet Moreau, is that you? My, but you gave me a fright.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bell. I wondered if I might ask you a favor.’

‘You aren’t wanting your old job back, I hope,’ she said, then cocked her head at the fine dress beneath my apron. ‘No, I suppose not …’

‘It isn’t about that. As a matter of fact, I’ve had a change in fortune, and it’s only right for me to share.’ I fished in my pocket for the silver buttons and pressed them into her hand before she could object. ‘I just need to know if you’ve already cleaned the hallways on the east side.’

The buttons jangled in her callused hand. ‘Heading there next, right after we finish these stairs.’

I bit my lip, glancing at the two other cleaning girls. ‘Could you start on the west side instead? It’s a long story … a student friend of mine thinks he might have dropped some cufflinks there and I’d like to look for them.’

She gave me a stern look, and I half expected her to ask what the real story was, but luckily for me she just threw her hand toward the hallways.

‘Have at it, girl.’

I started past the steps, where a rail-thin cleaning girl was polishing the brass handrail. Her basket sat beside her, filled with a collection of cleaning tools that were all quite familiar to me. How many hours had I spent on hands and knees on this very floor, sleeves hitched above my elbows, scrubbing so hard my knuckles bled? What a lonely life that had been, with only my memories to keep me company. How easily I could be back there if not for the professor.

The skinny girl turned around when she saw me staring at her basket. Her eyes went to the dirty apron that didn’t quite match my fine dress – an incongruity only the poor would notice.

‘Can I help you … miss?’ she asked.

‘Oh no,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.’

She nodded, still looking at me strangely, then returned to work. Once her back was turned, I bent down to pretend to lace my boots and secretly grabbed one of the brushes out of her basket, a soft-bristled one meant for cleaning fabric. If I ran into anyone here, I might need it as disguise. I hid it in my apron and hurried down the stairs into the basement.

The electric lights were on, buzzing and clicking, spilling artificial light over the tiles. Fresh sawdust had been sprinkled on them to soak up any blood fallen from patients or bodies. I wound my way down another corridor and paused at the closed door to the storage rooms where they kept cadavers for autopsies.

I peeked through the keyhole to make sure the room was empty. Unwanted memories returned of a night a year ago when Lucy and I had come here on a dare, only to stumble upon medical students dissecting a live rabbit. My arm twitched, just as that rabbit’s hind leg had, and I clamped a hand over my arm to keep it calm, hoping the rest of my illness’s symptoms wouldn’t soon follow. Through the keyhole, I spied cold tables draped with clothes.

Voices came down the hall, making me jump.

‘Old coot doesn’t know his head from a hole in the ground,’ one said.

Whoever they were, their footsteps were headed my way. I pulled the soft-bristled brush out and stooped to hands and knees on the sawdust-covered floor just as two medical students rounded the corner.

‘You can’t expect him to—’ The one speaking paused when he saw me, but then continued. ‘You can’t expect him to graduate you when he couldn’t even pass the exams.’ The two students stepped over my arm as I pretended to scour the floor. One glanced back briefly, but I made sure to keep my face toward the ground. Cleaning girls weren’t worth anything to boys like them except a quick glance to see if they were pretty.

They neared the corner and I started to let out my held breath, until I heard a third voice behind them, clearly belonging to an older man.

‘Bentley! Filmore! Stop right there.’

My spine turned to ice. I knew that voice, even without looking at its owner. Dr Hastings – the professor who had attacked me last year and caused me to flee London. I fought the urge to panic and forced my hand to move rhythmically over the tiles, pretending to clean the mortar with a useless soft-bristled brush. As his footsteps neared, I cringed.

‘Yes, Doctor?’ one of the boys said, considerably more polite now.

Dr Hastings came to stand beside me. I glimpsed his silver-tipped shoes before quickly looking away.

Focus on the tiles. Focus on the tiles. Focus on the—

‘Don’t think I don’t know about those pranks you’ve been pulling. It’s one thing for boys to have a bit of fun, but quite another to chase me down Wiltshire at night. I nearly broke a shoelace.’

‘It wasn’t us, Doctor, I swear!’ one of them sniveled.

I didn’t worry about being recognized by most professors here – they never bothered to glance at the cleaning crew. But Dr Hastings had always been different. I think he liked to think of us on our hands and knees, cleaning up the messes he made. If he found me here now, he could do anything to me and not a soul would ever know.

I swallowed, wondering if I could crawl backward and scoot away. But to my relief, the two students had his entire attention. He stepped around me and started after them down the hall, chastising them about schoolboy pranks. The moment they were around the corner I leaped up, shoved the brush into my apron pocket, and snuck into the autopsy room.

I waited ten seconds, twenty, a minute, and heard no more voices. A shiver ran down my back as I found a switch on the wall. The artificial electric light snapped to life, bathing the room in a garish glow so much starker than the hurricane lamps my father used in his laboratory.

Eight tables lined the walls, four of which were occupied with cadavers. Each body was covered with a heavy cloth. One was large, over six and a half feet tall – that had to be Daniel Penderwick, the solicitor. In my memory he’d been tall as the devil himself, with just as black a heart. I lifted the cloth and looked at his pale, dead body. His naked chest was gutted open with slash marks now drained of blood. The wounds pulled me to them. They whispered truths – memories – I wasn’t certain I wanted to ever recall.

I approached the next body cautiously, uncertain who I’d find beneath the heavy cloth. Annie’s body would be here, as well as the thief girl’s. But what of the unidentified one? Would it be familiar to me, like the others? Could I still call it all a coincidence if it was?

I pulled back the next cloth with stilled breath and looked upon the body of the thief. Red hair matted in blood, body bruised from a man’s heavy boot that must have trampled her. At the time I had thought her my age, but she looked far younger in death. Thirteen, maybe fourteen. A missing finger was nothing compared to the missing heart now torn from her chest. More blood drained away from my face.

I went to the next table, shakily leaning over the cloth. I could tell from the shape it was another young woman. Annie – or what if it wasn’t? What if it was Lucy’s cold body, or our maid Mary, or someone else dear to me who never deserved this?

Dread scratched its tiny claws at me but the urge to know was stronger, and I pulled back the cloth. Annie Benton, though I was hardly relieved. She hadn’t deserved this. Her light brown hair and fair skin looked so much paler in death. Years ago she’d slept in the bed next to mine, and we’d eaten porridge together at breakfast, and each evening we’d scrubbed our single change of clothes in the boarding-house’s laundry room. She’d shared her soap with me once.

It was hard to concentrate on anything besides the gaping wounds in her chest, almost perfectly slicing her in the middle. The cuts were jagged, furious, nearly beautiful in their destruction, like all the others. Whoever had made them had done so with a passion for violence. Perhaps I should have looked away, but I didn’t.

Eventually I moved on to the last body. The unnamed victim. My instincts urged me not to look in case it was someone dear to me, yet somehow my feet took me there, winding around the bare cadavers, their lifeless eyes watching me. I drew the cloth back and jerked in surprise. My heart stampeded in my chest. I collided with the table behind me, brushing against Daniel Penderwick’s cold, dead hand.

I recognized the fourth body.

It was the old white-haired man from the flower show, Sir Danvers Carew, the beloved member of Parliament who had once abused my mother and me. I’d seen him only days ago, and now … dead. I closed a hand over my mouth as my mind crawled over his pale face, his bloodstained skin, trying to understand. He had the same slash marks on his chest, and bruises all over his body, made with some blunt sharp object. Like a cane. No wonder the paper had declined to name him. Such an important man, surely his family would prefer not to be associated with a mass murderer. It hardly mattered. He was dead either way.

Four. I knew all four victims.

And in turn, I realized, I had been victim to each of them.

The idea made me step away from the bodies, back pressed against the cold metal door. It didn’t matter how I tried to explain it – nothing about it felt right. Four deaths, four people who had wronged me.

Almost as though …

I hesitated, telling myself I might possibly be going mad.

… almost as though someone was watching out for me.

I shivered uncontrollably, as the bones in my hands and arms shifted and popped, threatening another fit.

A premonition that had been growing now gripped me hard, as my mind flashed back to all the bodies on the island. Alice, Father’s sweet maid, dripping blood from dead feet. A beast-woman separated from her jaw. Those wounds, as well, had been lovingly made by a monster.

By Edward.

Edward is dead, I told myself. The dead don’t come back.

And yet the fear kept squeezing my heart, trying to get me to believe in the impossible. My head was already aching. Soon I’d grow faint. In a desperate fury, I decided the only thing that would calm my mind would be to prove scientifically that the wounds were different and therefore couldn’t have been made by Edward. On the island, I had read and memorized meticulous autopsy reports from Father’s files for all of Edward’s victims. Eleven and a half inches long, one inch apart, and two inches deep.

I pulled out a thread from my pocket and measured the length of Annie’s cuts, the spacing between them, even gently pulled apart the wounds to measure the depth. I repeated the process on all four bodies.

They were all the same: eleven and a half inches long, one inch apart, and two inches deep.

I stumbled back against the empty table, stunned. The thread slipped from my fingers, along with a spool of my sanity.

The murderer was the same. Somehow, even though I’d thought him dead, there was no doubt.

Edward had done this.