Reckless in Red

by Rachael Miles

  “I need to go now.” She tapped her foot in pent frustration.

  “Yesterday, I was too caught up in finding Calder to realize you hadn’t eaten. Today, as a physician, your physician, I will not make that mistake again. We have tea, coffee, or hot chocolate?” He turned back to the buffet, ignoring her with a calm civility. “Which is your preference?”

  She felt thwarted. How he had managed their conflict baffled her. He should have railed back in response to her anger. But he’d treated her with a straightforward politeness, addressing one concern after another. He had taken care that the crew was working at the Rotunda, that her instructions were being followed, that her secret was protected, and that she was being fed. Worse yet, he offered her chocolate. The smell of the rich drink stole away the last of her resolve. “Chocolate, please.”

  “You may, however, have some difficulty dislodging my relatives from a useful task.” He held out the chocolate.

  She sipped the thick warm liquid, then sitting, she spread butter and marmalade on the thick bread. Once mollified, she couldn’t resist the foods Clive offered to her. Somehow he’d selected a plate of her very favorites, and every bite was a delight.

  As she ate, Clive remained attentive, refilling her chocolate when the first cup was done, and, before she’d finished her first plate, providing a second with those items she had seemed to most like. It was a little disconcerting to be pampered so assiduously by a powerful, handsome man, but she wasn’t going to refuse. At least not for now.

  As she ate, Clive placed some paper and pencils beside her. “When you have had your fill, could you sketch your Mr. Calder? That way, while you are at the Rotunda, I can search for him.”

  She stopped short, her hand holding a piece of jam-covered bread inches from her mouth. “What do you mean search? Are you leaving me out?”

  “No, I would not do that. While you are at the Rotunda, I’ll investigate where Calder might be. Then, once you have finished for the day, we will review what I’ve discovered.”

  “Why can’t we search together this evening?” She set the bread down.

  “Yesterday, we found two people dead. Calder’s information may well be vital to stop more murders, and that requires finding him. Besides, I would prefer to do this bit of investigating alone.”

  “More murders.” She paused, realizing he had told her very little about his investigation. “Yesterday you told me that you were chasing a murderer. A murderer suggests a murder, a murderer who was provoked into two more to avoid discovery. But that’s not the case.” She worked through her thoughts aloud. “You expect more murders. How many have there been already?”

  “I don’t know.” His face grew solemn, but his eyes avoided hers.

  She leaned back in her chair, watching him stare into the distance. “That suggests you’ve found a pattern of killings. If Horatio saw a murderer in London that he recognized from some other place, then the killings may have been going on for some time. What do you know? Perhaps I can help.”

  “Not anything I can prove. I was working in the icehouse where we store the cadavers.”

  “Icehouse? I would have imagined a dark and dank cellar—or dungeon,” Lena said, without thinking, then added, “Ice is difficult to paint—all milky and layered.”

  “Ice cellar then.” He nodded acknowledgment. “Ice, even in summer, preserves a body for almost three weeks. I was examining some neck bruises that indicated strangulation. A fellow surgeon recognized the pattern from his work the day before. We kept looking and found others. But since surgeons and students acquire their cadavers independently, we had no record of who might be at fault. If the murderer had delivered the bodies to different schools, no one would have seen the pattern.”

  “If selling a body is a crime, why is buying one allowed?” she wondered out loud.

  “No one owns a cadaver, so neither buying nor selling is a crime. But removing a cadaver from the grave is a misdemeanor, and stealing clothes or other objects is a felony. That’s part of the outcry. Everyone agrees that having cadavers for experiments will produce better doctors, and by extension save lives. But, to avoid the felony, resurrection men must strip a body naked, and that offends sensibilities.”

  “Ah, foolish sentiment impedes progress every time.” She mimicked his tone.

  He raised an eyebrow at her mocking. “No one wants their aunt’s or cousin’s body stolen, stripped naked, sold, and dissected. For that reason, the wealthy buy iron coffins or mort safes, to keep their—as Byron says—‘memory whole and mummy hid.’”

  “Why don’t you want me to help you?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “I deserve to know.”

  “Yes, you do.” He brushed his hand through his hair, clearly choosing his words. “I need your drawing to search the surgery schools for Calder’s body.”

  She felt all her vitality drain to the floor. “You’re trying to protect me. You think Horatio dead.”

  “It’s a possibility to eliminate. If he isn’t dead, we must find him before our murderer does.”

  “I’m coming with you.” She rose, setting her serviette next to her plate.

  “You just argued quite convincingly that you are needed at the Rotunda.”

  “And you just argued quite convincingly that I am not.” She stared him down, watching how the changing light influenced the color of his eyes. “If Lady Judith and Mrs. Mason can supervise my crew for the afternoon, then I can help you find Horatio. I owe him that much.”

  “I’ve spent months investigating these crimes on my own.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve succeeded in compiling a list of bodies we believe were murdered.” He looked at his feet. “But nothing I’ve discovered has put me one step closer to solving the crimes, and every week another body arrives at the surgery school to accuse me of failing them.”

  Lena searched for words to comfort him. But what could she say that would balance his sense of responsibility for so many deaths? She looked at her hands, and then she knew. “You saved me. I’m not gravely injured or dead because of you, because your investigations led to my Rotunda and you are fearless.”

  “It wasn’t intentional.” Clive looked abashed. “I mean it was merely instinct.”

  Lena smiled. “Instinct isn’t all of it. You risked your life to save mine. I won’t forget that.”

  * * *

  Lena had hoped they would take one of the duke’s carriages. If they were alone, there was no reason—now that she understood him a little better—not to enjoy more of his kisses. But all the carriages were being used by the duke’s other relations. Clive offered to hire a hackney, but Lena refused, not wanting him to spend any more money she couldn’t repay. Besides, in London she walked everywhere, and there was no reason to grow lazy now.

  The crowds on the street were too thick for conversation, so they walked in near silence to the surgery school. Even so, she found herself stealing glances at him, noticing the confidence in his stride and the gentle way he negotiated the crowds for her. He continually surprised her. He wasn’t always forthcoming or even tactful, but he seemed to respect her opinions, and he answered each of her questions thoroughly. His presence—so calm—soothed her, even when she didn’t want it to. She found herself wanting to savor each moment with him, so that when their time together came to an end, she wouldn’t be too disappointed.

  Once at the school, Clive greeted the porter with genuine affection. “Good morning, Harner.”

  “Sun’s been up for hours, your lordship. But you lot trade day for night so often, you don’t know the difference.” The old man laughed.

  “True.” Clive gestured toward Lena. “Miss Frost has come to visit the icehouse.”

  “Are you sure, miss?” The old man looked her over carefully. “The dead aren’t a sight for the faint at heart, even when the death is natural.”

  “I have seen my share of death during the wars, and as an artist, I study the human form,” Lena explained.

>   Clive winked at her, and she felt warm with his confidence. “You won’t need to worry about Miss Frost, Harner. She is as unflappable in the face of death as any of our most experienced physicians.”

  “I’m also in search of a lost friend, though I’m hoping we don’t find him.”

  “Ah, I hope so as well. It’s not the same as drawing them, if you know the body, I mean.” The porter led them to the end of the hall and down several flights of stairs. “It’s harder to see a friend dead than a stranger.”

  The air grew colder the farther they descended, and the passage darker. Periodically Harner stopped to light a wall lamp, illuminating the next set of stairs. They grew quiet, and Lena’s mood began to darken.

  “I remember my first cadaver quite well, though I doubt he remembers me.” Clive broke the silence and the growing gloom. “Johns was his name, a pockmarked fellow with a withered arm.”

  “I’m not sure which word troubles me more: first or cadaver.” Lena laughed. “Did you dig him up yourself?”

  “He was a murderer sentenced to dissection and hanging—though not in that order—so his body was delivered to me.” Clive sounded amused at her questions. “The law disallows students from participating in exhumations.”

  “That’s a pity,” she continued, emboldened. “I was already imagining how to paint the scene: you—your back to an ash tree—watching the gravediggers raise a shrouded body from the grave.”

  “Are we robbing the grave at night? If so, how will I see them?” Clive played along.

  “The moon will be full, and its light will illuminate the gravestones and mausoleums, but not so much that it obscures the light of the night watch, entering the scene from the lower right corner. I would call it ‘Clive’s First Cadaver.’”

  “Do you always convert people’s stories into pictures?” Clive asked.

  “It depends on the story. Some lend themselves to pictures better than others.”

  “What about this story: us descending to view the dead?”

  “Except for the bodies, this scene lacks drama. These stairs, for example, are entirely too wide and even.”

  “Students need wide, even stairs to carry the litter up and down,” Harner added, lighting the next wall lamp.

  “Ah, but if I were to paint them, there would be no litter in my picture, and the stairs would be so narrow that the students would have to turn their feet sideways to fit.” Lena warmed to the story. “John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery exhibited a picture much like what I’m imagining.”

  “The scene from Richard the Third where the conspirators carry the murdered princes down the stairs?” Clive asked.

  “You know it!?” Lena was delighted. Typically only other artists recognized her references. Clive, she kept discovering, was an exceptional man. “My scene would be much like that: the medical students, all cramped together into a narrow space, awkwardly passing down their cadavers.”

  “Except with fewer lamps and narrower stairs,” Clive added, and she could hear the amusement in his voice.

  “Is this gallows humor?” She found herself amused as well. “Here I am, going into a charnel dungeon to see if my business partner has been murdered, and all I can think of is how I might paint the scene. How do you do it?”

  “Do what?” Clive slowed before her as Harner’s lamp stopped descending.

  “Take a human body and study its various parts? Is it as the poet Wordsworth says? ‘We murder to dissect.’” At the bottom of the long staircase, Lena inched her foot down to the floor. Her breath misted white.

  “I’ve been told—quite often, in fact—that to be able to do it requires an unhealthy distance from one’s humanity.” Clive stepped to the side and directed her forward.

  Lena glanced at him as she passed. Even in the half-light she could see that his face had shuttered. In an instant she saw her behavior toward him with new perspective. She had been afraid, and that fear had made her suspicious, frustrated, and angry, yet he had treated each change of her emotions with an equanimity her behavior didn’t merit. She touched his arm, gently. “Or perhaps such research requires a man with a more poignant sense of the value of life.”

  He stared at her hand, as if it had just conveyed a great gift, and his face transformed with relief.

  “Why do you do it?” she asked.

  “I assume for the same reason you paint. I have a talent for the research, and using that talent satisfies something deep within me. Without its animating spirit, the body is only a shell, but that shell can reveal much about the nature of life, health, and illness. I treat the body as a gift from the departed spirit.”

  “That’s very philosophical,” Lena observed.

  “More practical than philosophical. To treat an illness, a doctor must know what lies underneath the skin. What is more unhealthy: Learning from a cadaver how blood circulates through a limb? Or amputating a living man’s whole arm, when, with adequate training, you could have stopped at the elbow?”

  “In France, the vivisectionists claim that adequate training requires experimenting on the living as well as the dead.” She’d read Frankenstein and been horrified by Victor’s headlong pursuit of knowledge at the risk of everything dear to him. She needed to know how far Clive was willing to take his experiments in the pursuit of knowledge.

  “I do not—will not—cause such suffering to living animals.” His answer was swift and decisive. “In that, however, I am somewhat alone.”

  “Then I approve—of all your researches.” She smiled, breathing out in relief.

  His returning smile, spreading slowly across his face, warmed her despite the cold of the room.

  Harner held up the lamp to reveal a long, narrow room with sconces down the wall, which he proceeded to light. The room was filled with giant slabs of ice, each one covered in straw and sawdust to keep it from melting. Where the ice was visible, it looked dark and murky. Piled neatly on top of each slab were rows of cadavers (as she reminded herself to think of them). Thirty or more, she estimated quickly. Covered in white linen, the bodies looked like the mummies she’d seen at the Louvre before Napoleon lost at Waterloo and the stolen works of art were returned to their home countries.

  “Where do these come from? Thus far, you’ve mentioned executed prisoners and grave robbers.” She rubbed her hands on her arms to warm them. She made sure her tone was inquisitive, not judgmental. “It’s hardly a reputable group to deal with, before or after death.”

  He ignored her jibe. “It’s not all skullduggery. We receive bodies from families who can’t afford even a cheap burial, or from the poorhouses to save the parish the expense. In those cases, we are actively helping the community—not just with the results of our research, but with the fact of the research itself. That’s why this group of resurrectionists is so dangerous: they steal lives as well as bodies. If their activities became widely known, Parliament could act swiftly to end all dissection. If that happened, we could still do research using dried specimens and those preserved in spirits, but we would have no way to improve our practice.”

  The porter uncovered the bodies, and she stepped forward, not wishing to appear unwilling or afraid. She considered the features of each body, the signs of occupation or dissipation. Some of the bodies gave up the story of their deaths easily, from the failed farmer’s calloused hands to the drunkard’s red-veined nose.

  “It’s not hard to tell how this one died,” she said, almost to herself. “Stabbed.”

  “Knife fight at the docks. He was brought to us by the magistrate.” Clive sounded approving. He pointed to the other bodies. “What else do you see?”

  Lena stepped to the next body. “Poison?”

  Clive nodded, looking pleased. “How did you know?”

  “Burned lips, shrunken body.” Lena walked to the next alcove, with Clive at her side. “I had a teacher once, who made me dress as a boy, and go to the charnel house with him to draw. Some say you can paint a body without knowing how it works. Pe
rhaps that’s true in portraits of the aristocracy where the important details are the face and the clothes. But you must know how the muscles and veins lie under the skin to paint an arm or a torso right.” She looked into his face, trying to read his thoughts. “If we had met under different circumstance, I likely would have offered to pay to attend a dissection.”

  “Then you understand how important it is for doctors to understand how the human body works.”

  “Was it difficult? Being the son of a duke and wanting to work with the dead.” She looked at him with new appreciation, wondering how much his path had cost him.

  He glanced toward the porter, returning from the opposite end of the room. “Let’s say—for now—that the challenges were different than you imagine.”

  “A conversation for later then.” She moved to the next alcove, but was caught off guard. It was filled with the bodies of children, chimney sweeps with their hair and skin blackened by coal dust. She wiped away the tears with the back of one bandaged hand.

  Clive stood by her side. “Suffocation or the coal dust. Chimney sweeps breathe the dust in and swallow it. From the stomach, it circulates through the body, blackening the organs, particularly the lungs.”

  “You should look over here for grown men,” Harner called out, having lit all the lamps. Though still dark in the corners, the room had lost most of its gloom.

  Blinking back tears, Lena walked to where Harner waited.

  Harner pulled the linen back from the faces one at a time, waiting for her determination, then moving on when she said no. They repeated the action at each slab. Every time Harner revealed a face, Clive was at her side, reassuring her. But Horatio was not there.

  “Is your friend recently missing?” Harner asked when they’d finished looking through the cadavers he’d suggested. “This week? Or last? Or longer?”

  “This week, I think.”

  “Ah, then you won’t be needing the bodies over there. They’ve already been examined.” Harner clearly thought she should stop looking.