The Impossible Girl

by Lydia Kang

  “No. Not a bugger at all. The customer didn’t want John. He wanted you. He knows you’re as female as they come. And you’re never to speak to him during any of the meetings. Never. You follow him to where he goes, keep your squeaks quiet, and go on your way. Understand?”

  I didn’t, but money was money. Madame Beck said I was to cut my biscuit-hued hair, and keep it colored dark by adding a rinse of crushed black walnut hulls after my baths. She gave me a crayon of waxy black to make my eyebrows dark and eyelids longer.

  So, for more than two years, I met him. Sometimes at his dark dungeon of a place on Henry Street, where he had me wear a blue silk dress and raised the hem to do his business on his flat bed, by a starving example of a fireplace. I always ignored the cloth-covered things in the larger room there. Once I’d ventured to peek beneath one, and the swell had hit me so hard that I’d bitten my tongue. I never looked again.

  Sometimes, he had me come uptown to the Grand Anatomical Museum where he made wax images of all sorts of dead limbs and such, but he didn’t care that I saw those. He just pushed me against the wall, pushed my boy’s clothes down, and pushed himself inside me.

  He rarely spoke to me. Only a word here and there.

  Go home.

  You’re late.

  Be quiet.

  Hush.

  The money was worth it. Always worth it. Except for the one strike against me, he seemed nice. Honest, I thought. He paid Madame regular like, and I got to eat an iced cake every week because she was happy with the money.

  He was nice, until he wasn’t.

  He’d asked me to visit, only this time it was a letter he’d written to me directly, not to Madame Beck. A time, a date. And his studio, on Henry Street. There would be twenty dollars waiting for me. So, I went.

  I didn’t say anything to Madame Beck. Why should I? This was money without any skimming for the house, and I was happy to oblige. So, I came, and he had me take off my clothes, and I did, though he’d never asked me to remove my garments before. And he’d said, “What’s your name?”

  He’d never asked. I always assumed he knew, but I suppose he didn’t.

  “Audrey,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  He didn’t answer. He seemed disappointed at hearing my name. Or my voice, I’m not sure. I reached to unbutton his blouse, but then he hit me, hard, across the temple. It hurt so much that I doubled over, and before I could hold out an arm to ward off another blow, his hands were around my neck.

  No words.

  Not even a grunt of pleasure or displeasure.

  I was seeing stars within a few seconds. I fought, but he pitched me backward and sat on my rib cage as he subdued the life in me. And then I was gone. I’ve been here on this cool slab of wood for nearly two days. My body has yet to bloat, but it’s no longer stiff, and I’m less here than I was before. The sunlight has grown dimmer; the dark is yet darker. Then someone takes the sheet off me, and there’s this girl staring, staring, staring. Why, she looks just like me. And when she touches my cheek, I think—oh.

  Oh.

  I understand now.

  She probably knows, now, what kind of creature he is. I don’t even need to be alive to say to her, Be quick, girl. Run.

  Because she does.

  CHAPTER 31

  Cora opened her mouth to scream.

  She began to breathe so hard, so fast, she felt dizzy. Her hand holding the candle shook, so that scalding wax dripped off the edge and spilled onto her skin, though she hardly noted the pain.

  It was a body. A real body. A girl, so very human, and who looked so very much like Cora. She clamped her free hand over her mouth. She had to be quiet. She didn’t exist anymore, did she? What if someone blamed her for the death of this girl?

  Who was she? Had Alexander brought her here? Had he killed her?

  The questions were too horrid to ask. But Cora had to know. She leaned forward. And then she placed one of her hands about the girl’s neck. Her hands were too small to cover the bruises around her neck—someone with larger hands, man’s hands, had strangled her.

  Cora cocked her head and looked at the girl again. She was so very familiar, but with the facial bruises and swelling, she was hard to place. Cora stooped to look beneath the bench, and saw several items of clothing bunched up.

  Trousers, torn. A dirty shirt that was too damaged to wear. Galluses. A long, winding piece of thin gauze. So very ordinary, and familiar. They were clothes that she might have worn as Jacob. And then recognition widened her eyes. She knew this shirt, these trousers. They were exactly the ones worn by the young man that Alexander had trysted with.

  And then, as if the tumblers of a finely oiled lock had suddenly turned into place, she understood.

  It wasn’t a boy whom Alexander had been having relations with, or who he’d admitted was his lover. It was the girl, Audrey, whom she’d spoken to at Madame Beck’s.

  I only have one patron, and he’s very particular about what I do, and who I do it with.

  Not Duncan. Alexander.

  And Alexander didn’t have trysts with men; he had trysts with a fake Jacob. Possibly a fake Cora, too, if this girl had put on a dress and a wig.

  He’d been lusting for something that was at his fingertips all this time.

  “I have to leave,” Cora said, backing away from the corpse. But to where? Her house on Irving Place was no longer a sanctuary. She couldn’t go to Suzette—the rest of the family thought she was dead, and all her efforts to conceal herself would become worthless. She’d nearly died to disappear—she refused to sacrifice what she’d earned for herself.

  “I have to leave,” Cora repeated, as if her voice knew better what needed to be done. She made her way through the dark passage to the front door. It was thick and riveted with brass. And it was locked.

  She padded quickly down the corridor back to the tiny room where she had slept. Inside the room, she looked for her old dress, but it was nowhere. She couldn’t wear Audrey’s clothes—they were too torn to be wearable. Another dress hung from a peg on the wall behind a curtain. The gown was beautiful, short sleeved and oddly out of fashion. It was an ice-blue silk, with a high waist under the bust, and festooned with yellowing lace and real pearl buttons dotted about the neckline and trim. Something Empress Josephine would have worn. She pulled it on, unable to fully button it without Leah behind her.

  She didn’t even know where she would go. She only knew she had to leave this place. If Alexander had a reason for this, he could explain it in the light of day. Cora’s borrowed slippers from Suzette were missing, but there were the men’s boots under the bench where Audrey’s corpse lay. She laced them on quickly. Her dress would hide them in public.

  Cora went to the thick front door. Like the bedroom door, it had a keyhole for the lock, but this time she could see through the keyhole that the key was missing. No doubt Alexander had it, but sometimes there were duplicates. She went back to the bedroom, searching under the thin mattress and rummaging along the few objects that sat on the little table. As she turned quickly, her skirts knocked over the table, and Cora saw a stack of ledgers that had been slipped beneath it. The thin ledger on top looked familiar. She picked it up and flipped through the pages. She saw her own handwriting, her list of anomalies. But several of the names had been crossed out. And scribbled along with them were notes she had not written.

  Randolph Hitchcock III / Dr. Smyth / abdominal aortic aneurysm

  40 Waverly Place

  Work: 21 Broad Street

  Last check with Dr. Smyth, July 30. Note sent August 10 with reply August 15, no new symptoms. (Always wears red vests; dislikes opera; prefers plays)

  Supper 6–8 p.m. in Trent’s Oyster Café/Marsden’s Eating House/Mercer Dining Saloon/Wilson Oyster Saloon

  Frequents Madame Emeraude’s Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, after supper (Belle is the favorite, ofttimes Mary or Victoria)

  Cora flipped the page.

  Ruby Benningfield/Dr. Goossens / ve
stigial tail

  28 Greenwich Lane

  Letter sent March 18, no new symptoms. Unlikely to progress. (Likes ices; favorite colors are pink, peach, and orange.)

  Home most days. Occ visit Stewart’s, walks at the Battery. Always accompanied. No dining out. No visitors.

  “Ruby,” Cora said, and touched the ink struck through her name. She turned the pages, speaking the names aloud, as if in prayer. “William Timothy. Ida Difford. Conall Culligan.” There was Jonathan Fuller—several pages back in the ledger, and unmarked. But all the others were struck through, with notes in Alexander’s hand regarding the places they frequented for food and for pleasure, and whether they were often accompanied.

  Alexander.

  There was yet another journal beneath her ledger, and she pulled this one out too. The inside bindings had come loose, and the pages fell to the floor.

  On the first page was written:

  The Journals of Thomas Grier ~ Vol. III, 1831–1840.

  Alexander had taken the diaries. He was the person who’d signed the register with the false name, Davey Swell, flash for “a gentleman witness.” Of course. The proper gentleman who saw all the crimes being committed, only he was committing them himself. Had he taken the diaries with the same goal as hers—to protect her identity? But then, why not tell her so? That bothered her less than her stolen ledger, and the names crossed out. Only Fuller had died naturally, and his hadn’t matched the pattern of deaths. She grabbed the candle and went to the studio, assessing it in a way she hadn’t when she’d first emerged from the room.

  There were lengths of ribbon sitting in a box at one of the worktables. She remembered that occasionally Alexander’s work might have a piece of real ribbon around the neck of a sculpture, to add more realism. But she’d never considered that a ribbon might be used as a weapon. Could it have killed someone like Ruby? There was the clay wire, and she recalled how Conall Culligan’s neck had nearly been severed with something thin and fine. Had he given these to Puck? She went to the other side of the room and examined the paints. The green one was capped, and she read the side.

  PARIS GREEN

  It had the same hue as Hitchcock’s tongue. On the other side of the bottle was a skull and crossbones symbol. Poison. How much had he put into the food that Randolph Hitchcock had eaten? Enough to dye his tongue and stomach bright emerald green. And to kill him quickly. And after another half hour of searching, Cora found two small bottles, one empty, one half-full in the kitchen.

  BATTLE’S RAT POISON

  POISON!

  BEST STRYCHNINE FORMULA

  QUICK AND EASY

  The rats. There were always rats in the studio, eating the wax, or so Alexander had mentioned.

  Everything he’d need to strangle or poison someone was here in his studio. Her ledger . . . It was a sort of macabre wish list, wasn’t it? But her targets hadn’t been dying fast enough, and Alexander knew she needed the money. And she steadfastly refused to accept money from Alexander himself. It made sense. She had known for some time these men and women had died from causes not directly attributable to their ailments. And right when she needed the money more than ever, the bodies started showing up. Murdered, conveniently so.

  Behind her, the doorknob to the street rattled. She felt the air shift, and the door open, then close. Cora ran back to her room, quietly shut the door, pushed the books hastily back underneath the table, and sat down on the narrow bed. She hid her booted feet under the dress—if he saw them, he’d know she’d found Audrey’s body.

  In a minute, she heard footsteps approach, and Alexander’s tall, spare form filled the doorway. He’d lit a lamp and held it low, where it cast warped shadows above his eyelids and nose. His silvering hair looked like silk and wire mixed together, and his clothes were ever so slightly nicer than before. Broadcloth trousers, well fitted, and a fine muslin shirt beneath a dark jacket. He smiled. It was odd to see Alexander smile so readily.

  “Well! You’re up. And I see you’ve found the dress.”

  Cora smiled. She made a decision not to say a thing about the body, or the two journals. She would wait to see how Alexander reacted—and if she could steal away without him knowing. In her weakened state, she would be unlikely to overpower him. Much of Jacob’s strength had diminished with only one bout of being ill.

  “Yes. I only just woke up and put it on.” Cora adopted a sweet smile. “I can’t thank you enough for helping me, Alexander. I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you find out anything about the Duke?”

  “What?” He seemed confused for a moment, then added quickly, “I couldn’t find him. No word. I’m sorry, he must have died as well.” He produced a package from inside his jacket and handed it to her. Several plain buns from the bakery. “I brought you something to eat.”

  Cora nodded, but nausea began to overwhelm her. She was an excellent actress, but the little child within her cared not for such things. An empty stomach and all the physical trials of the last two days were taking their toll. She bit into one of the soft-crusted buns. Alexander’s eyes glittered, watching her.

  “I ought to write to Suzette,” Cora said, trying to keep her voice reasonably bright. She had a bad habit of talking and eating, born from being Jacob all the time.

  “I already wrote her,” Alexander said. He sat down next to Cora but hesitated. “I told her you had died. That we were too late, retrieving you from the casket.”

  Cora swallowed and tried to keep her voice even. “I wanted to tell her I was all right. Why would you say that?”

  “To keep up the ruse, of course. It’s best for now that everyone thinks you’re dead. And then later, when all is safe, you can write to Suzette again. But now, we cannot, not for years.”

  She cringed, inadvertently, at the word we. And then just as quickly, she purged the evidence of her disgust from her face.

  Alexander blinked, as if he’d lost sight of Cora for a second, then seemed to recover. “Anyway, I should be on my way. I have work to do.”

  “I’ll need new dresses,” Cora said. “Perhaps I could visit the dressmaker when you’re out. I can wear a bonnet to disguise my hair.”

  “No!” Alexander yelled. It was shot in the dark, so loudly and so vehemently that even Cora shook on the bed where she sat.

  “It’ll be all right,” Cora said. She put a hand on his sleeve, and he calmed. She had never had to calm Alexander before—it made her feel as if she had entered a foreign land. “At some point, we’ll have to leave this studio, and when it happens, I’ll need a disguise.”

  “Of course you will. But let me take care of that. You can’t take the chance of leaving now.”

  She smiled. “Of course. I understand.” Alexander stood. As he exited the room, he touched the doorknob and paused.

  Oh no. The key. It was still on the inside of the door. He carefully pulled the key out, turned it over in his hand, and looked at her.

  “Oh, that. I let myself out,” Cora said with a light laugh. “I was looking for a chamber pot.”

  Alexander frowned and glanced at the corner of the room, where a chamber pot lived rather obviously.

  “I meant . . . I was looking for . . . the . . .”

  Alexander didn’t even wait to hear the rest of her second lie. His booted feet strode quickly and purposefully down the hallway, into the studio, where the body of the mab, Audrey, was lying exposed, her shroud in a pile on the floor because Cora had forgotten to replace it. Holding his lamp aloft, Alexander turned from the corpse to Cora, who stood in the doorway of the studio.

  Silence stretched between them, so tight and thin that Cora thought it might snap and make her bleed. She had to say something. If she could leave this place, it wouldn’t be by fighting. Her limbs still felt weak and limp. Alexander’s gray eyes stared at her. His hands were at his sides, but she could see them in fists, slowly uncurling. Ready to grasp at something. Unhurriedly, he hung the lamp fro
m an iron hook above a table.

  “It’s brilliant,” Cora said quickly. And then she waited a beat and stepped forward, decisively. “What you’ve done, Alexander. Brilliant. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  His expression thawed, and his hands relaxed at his sides. He studied her. “Do you mean that?”

  “I found the ledger. I saw what you’ve done.” She softened her tone. “You did all this for me, did you not?”

  Alexander reached out a hand and leaned against the dusty wall, and Cora drew closer because she knew he wished it. He seemed suddenly very tired. “I have. To keep your business alive—” He paused after his last word. “Solvent, I should say. You kept refusing my help directly, so I did what I could do.”

  “Puck?” Cora asked. “You had him kill the people on my list for me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, and no. Only a few. I needed help, but Puck was a blundering idiot. I gave him some clever methods to dispatch them with, to make the dissections more interesting. He was instructed to leave the bodies be, so you could dig them up and sell them like normal. But one he sold directly to Duncan, and the other he lost to the police.”

  Ruby, and William Timothy. The ones she never got.

  Alexander drew a finger from Cora’s left collarbone to her right. She shivered, but not for the reasons Alexander hoped. “He was sloppy,” he said. “Greedy. So, I started sending you letters to make sure you found out about the bodies, before Puck did.”

  Oh. That would explain the torn-off letter about Conall Culligan. And what he said was true—after that, they’d never had another body stolen from them before they could do the resurrection.

  “I knew you were a clever man. A thinking man. But this is beyond my imagining.” Cora smiled again. “All of this to protect me. To provide for me.”

  “Yes.” He put a single finger to her chin, lifting it. “Yes. Since you were a child, everything I’ve done has been for you.”

  “I thought you loved Charlotte,” she said in a small voice.

  “I thought I did. But you eclipsed her, utterly. Even as a child, you were my sun.” He leaned forward, his face close to hers.