Painted Trust_Edith and the Forensic Surgeon

by Elsa Holland

  Cox finally walked over and sat down again. He was close enough. Vaughn slowly reached into his jacket.

  “I liked our private viewings best,” Cox said conspiratorially. “I’d make her open her legs, and look at her tattooed cunt. She was such a tease, never gave me anything . . . until just yesterday. Have you fucked her in the ass, Vaughn? It’s a wild ride.”

  Vaughn lunged, scalpel in hand.

  Cox flung himself back, rolled on the ground and came up, his own scalpel in hand. Cox laughed, “Nice to see we have another thing in common than lusting after her painted cunt. Let’s see who has the best knife skills shall we?”

  CHAPTER 68

  Edith pushed the sparrow mask off her head, letting it fall and roll away. Fear squeezed tight across her chest as she worked the collar off and watched Vaughn and Cox circle and lunge at each other, slashing out wildly with their weapons. Neither would want the sound of gunshot to bring people running, each had planned on stealth.

  “Lila,” Edith called. Lila was still swinging, performing her routine. She was drugged again, seemingly unaware of what was going.

  Edith stepped closer to the circling men, heart pounding. She needed to help. She scanned the room, the table, the sideboards for a possible weapon, there were only the dinner knives, she grabbed one. Vaughn reached into his coat and pulled out another scalpel and threw it in her direction.

  Edith chased the silver beast as it skittled across the floor and into a cluster of potted palms. She bent down and reached between the massive pots, her fingers touching it and working it closer and closer until she could wrap her fingers around it.

  “Edith.” Arms wrapped around her. “Edith, I’ve missed you so.” Edith stood awkwardly with Lila wrapped around her. “Where have you been?” Edith lifted Lila’s chin. Her eyes were blown and she could hardly stand. How she managed to stay on the hoop in that state was always a mystery. ‘I don’t care if I die.’ Lila had once confided. ‘Maybe then I’ll be reborn a bird and could fly away whenever I wanted.’

  “Lila, can you sit and wait for me?”

  “I’m going to dance.” Lila started to twirl, oblivious of the fight between Cox and Vaughn.

  Platters clattered to the floor, Edith looked over to the men, leaving Lila to fend for herself as she hardly danced too close to them. Vaughn was pushed against the buffet table and lost his footing. Cox, lunged and sliced, cutting through Vaughn’s coat. Vaughn tried to roll away and Cox stood on his coat tails and grabbed Vaughn’s hair pulling his head back exposing his neck. It was a death position as Vaughn twisted and turned, to get out of it, finally stabbing Cox in the leg.

  Edith moved before she thought; each micro second flashed images of one degradation after another Cox had subjected her to, the pain as he’d finally raped her. But more over unthinkable horror if Vaughn were to die. She ran then leaped onto Cox’s back as someone screamed like a banshee. A sound of fury. Her legs wrapped around him and squeezed. The hold enabled her to rise her body as she grabbed Cox’s hair mimicking the hold he had on Vaughn and stabbed the blade into his neck with all of her strength, ripping it out and slicing as hard as she could towards the front of his neck. The wild scream grew even louder as she felt the blade cut through his trachea. Warm liquid ran everywhere.

  Cox collapsed under her, his blood gurgling and bubbling as it was sucked down into his lungs while he tried to breath. Edith sat on his crumpled body and realized the screaming was coming from her.

  Vaughn sprung to his feet, his strong capable arms wrapping round her as he lifted her off Cox, then she was up, and in his arms, arms which held her so tight it hurt. Behind them, Lila still danced between the palms.

  CHAPTER 69

  “I have to disappear. We—” Edith motion to herself and Lila, “—have to disappear.” Edith looked at him, yet all he could see was her fearless leap, his lithe beauty risking all in a fit of primordial rage.

  “If we are known to be alive we will not be for long. We have to disappear.”

  “Already worrying and planning. There will be no more disappearing,” he growled, despite himself. Vaughn wrapped her in the table cloth. “I have an idea. We need two female cadavers—we’ll plant them with Cox’s body and burn the building. Cox said no one comes out to the croft, and the servants have been dismissed. We should be able to get the bodies here in a few hours then set the place alight. The bone structure will confirm a male and two women. People will think he died a happy man.”

  In the early hours of the morning Vaughn stood watching the flames with Morrison and his assistant.

  “What are we going to find in the ashes?” Morrison asked.

  “Cox and two women.”

  “Would one of them be Miss Edith Andrews?”

  Vaughn nodded. “And a Lila De Moria.”

  “You know I’m a law man, Vaughn. I catch men who kill people.”

  “And I am a medical professional, I save lives.”

  “So, is your fiancée around?”

  Vaughn held Morrison’s gaze. “Miss Appleby . . . she’s at home, in bed. Have you looked around the house? Did you see his collection?”

  “Fucking sick bastard.”

  CHAPTER 70

  Camouflaged by the tree line, Mr Goldbloom scanned the burnt wreckage, the croft that had once been Dr Cox’s play rooms. The buzz of bobbies was gone, and the bodies off to the Edinburgh coroner. They’d find—as the astute Dr Vaughn had intended—Dr Cox and his two women, burnt to death in an accidental fire while undertaking activities that most men fantasized about.

  The Inspector Morrison and a young man were still milling about. The Inspector now had a boon with the brave and astute Edith as a witness and Painted Sister, so many stories she could tell. But there was plenty she didn’t know.

  Clever Edith. He had no one to kill her for now Dr Cox was dead.

  Goldbloom made his way up to the main house, he was dressed like the local police enforcement and had a passable Scot’s accent to use. He unlocked the terrace French door with the key he had taken when he’d met with Dr Cox about his commission to skin Edith. The telephone, a rare and privileged item sat on a side door next to the parlor’s internal door. Goldbloom called the emergency number and stayed silent as it rang until it was answered.

  Given the exchange pathway, there could be up to two operators still listening to the call. However, the protocol was clear. At the death of a Collector, at any serious change in circumstances the number must be called, and the code used.

  “I am sorry to bother you this late Captain, however the rowing team has just lost its cox. He has two associates I could contact.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line, a cough, then. “Best leave the team to withdraw, let them sort themselves out,” the Nameless man said.

  Step back and let Edith go? Goldbloom liked her, would have been proud for her to have been his first but she was saved back then in London, and saved again now.

  He’d watched the conservatory through his eyeglass from the tree line. The lights making the interior a blazing beacon in its wooded alcove. He’d seen Edith jump on Cox’s back, had seen the kill stroke and heard her fierce battle cry, magnificent. In a way, it pleased him that she’d won her game with him and most certainly with the irreverent and cruel Dr Cox. Bravo to the Sparrow.

  So, he’d stepped back from Edith but what of the other?

  “That frees up one of the team members, perhaps another team would be interested.”

  Lila. A woman who gladly took the drugs she was supplied to forget the humiliations of her life of comfort. He’d met her on that fateful evening, before Vaughn arrived and Edith had her revenge.

  “Where would you go, if you could run away?” he’d asked after she’d stumbled. “The Circus,” she’d slurred, and pointed to a small poster slipped under the rim of her dressing table mirror.

  The nameless man stayed silent, coughed again and said, “I’ll make some enquiries.” Then the line went dead
.

  CHAPTER 71

  “Pup,” Morrison called out to the lad in the other room. In a few moments, there was movement next to him. “Need you to get a message to your girl, Agatha.”

  “She’s not my girl.”

  He stood, and the kid stepped back, always that wariness in the pup’s eyes when they were close.

  “Give me her contact details and she can be my girl.”

  The kid’s face tightened.

  “Will you talk to her?”

  The kid gave a single nod.

  “I have written down everything Miss Appleby gave us. Fucking dark. I need her to tell me what she found at the scene at the Hurleys because I know she would have investigated it and written a report, even if only for herself. Why will she talk to you and no one else? What’s wrong with her?”

  The kid scowled, and Morrison hid a smirk. Despite his growing tolerance of the kid, he still enjoyed getting a rise out of him. Morrison pressed the envelope against the pup’s chest as he leaped out of reach, and the envelope dropped to the floor.

  Morrison looked to the ceiling. Really?

  “For God’s sake, what do you think I am going to do to you?”

  “Nothing,” the kid bent down and picked up the envelope.

  Morrison looked back as the pup moved around on the floor to pick up the contents, and saw a small stain on the kid’s trousers, between his legs. As the kid reached out and slipped the papers back into the envelope, Morrison walked around him and stepped closer, then bent forward. Between the boy’s legs was blood.

  An inexplicable fire flashed through his body as his hand reached out and dragged the boy up. Morrison shook him.

  “Do you take men inside you, boy?”

  The kid’s face drained to ash. A veil of secrecy slammed down over his gaze. “Tell me, boy.”

  “No! No.” The pup tried to pull out of his hold but had no strength. The possibility that the kid was held down by a brute and buggered made Morrison see red.

  Morrison pressed his hand against the boy’s ass. The boy screeched and fought to get lose in earnest. Morrison ignored him and had no trouble holding him as he rubbed the slight dampness between his fingers, sticky and red. It was definitely blood. The kid was bleeding from his ass.

  “You’ve been buggered. Were you raped?”

  “No. Let me go.”

  “No? Tell me, boy, I’ll protect you.”

  “I said no.”

  “Is that what you like? You getting paid to let men take you?”

  The kid was frantic “No! It’s nothing like that, Inspector, I swear.”

  “Then why have you got blood coming out of your ass?”

  Morrison let him go. The pup lurched himself to the other side of the wingback chair, his back facing towards the bookshelf.

  “Come on, I’ll take you to the quack.”

  “I can take care of myself.” The stubborn set of the pup’s jaw a battle cry Morrison wasn’t in the mood for.

  “I get blood when I shit sometimes. It hurts. It’s a hemorrhoid, it’s been bothering me.”

  The pup just stared at him.

  “You need to do something about the fiber in your diet or you are going to bleed to death—that’s a lot of blood.”

  “I said I’ll take care of it.”

  Morrison bent down and picked up the envelope. It was somewhat worse for wear as they had both trodden on it in the scuffle.

  He walked over to the kid, who looked petrified.

  “Hemorrhoid, my ass.” Morrison slapped the envelope against the kid’s chest. “If you weren’t my only link to Agatha, you would be out. Smarten up kid. And if I ever—,” Morrison paused as he poked the kid in the chest, “—find out you sell your back passage to men you will be out faster than you could fall off a cliff. Now get out of here.”

  The kid grabbed his coat from the hall and jogged down the hall. “We are on a train eight am tomorrow!” he called out as the back door slammed.

  CHAPTER 72

  With every step the dampness pressed against skin. There must be a flood of blood. Heat pinched and flamed at already blazing cheeks all the way back to the apartment, the long tweed cloak was wrapped safely around the embarrassing bleed.

  Coat left in a heap on the floor, the first thing was to examine the extent of the damage in front of the full length oval mirror. It felt worse than it was; a small patch of blood was visible from the back but nothing at the front. It wasn’t so bad as it felt on her legs.

  Agatha dropped the trousers she wore as Inspector Morrison’s disdained pup. She tugged at the shirt and undershirt and unwound the copious layers of binding that kept plump breasts pressed down and gave her the little pigeon chest.

  ‘You deformed boy?’ had been Inspector Morrison’s first question when she’d arrived and presented herself as Brody Smith aka kid, pup, boy. The inspector had not once called her by any address that would show even a modicum of respect. They both knew he was accepting ‘Brody’ because the Hurleys had asked him to and they paid well.

  The mirror reflected her body back to her, an athletic figure with full breasts, a challenge to tape down when transforming into Master Brody. It was the tattoos that always struck her as grotesque. No color, just blue indigo ink in shaded images and line drawings of esoteric symbols, sacred geometry and hermetic shapes. There were astrological symbols and charts, tarot, alchemy; everything a Freemason launching deep into the Golden Dawn wanted to see.

  Unlike the other Painted Sisters, she didn’t belong to anyone. She had been a one-time commission, her virginal blood and sex required for a ritual, the tattoos consecrating them. The Hurleys had tried to find her a Collector after that, but there was no way this side of hell she would belong to anyone again, would be powerless again, or give her body to a man again. Her investigative skills made sure that every Collector that showed the slightest interest in her soon lost it as she revealed what they thought was hidden. No one was comfortable around people who had that power. Except for the disturbed Inspector Morrison, who seemed set on doing the same unveiling to everyone and every situation he came across.

  Agatha walked over to the wash basin and pitcher, poured out some cold water and washed herself clean. The inspector thought she’d been buggered, was bleeding from the act. He wasn’t sure if she wanted it or if it was forced on her. And he clearly disapproved.

  Heat filled her face again.

  The man was far too astute, he would not let this incident be. He already thought she was an odd young man, but as yet he’d given no indication that he thought she was a woman, let alone Miss Agatha Wood.

  A half hour later she was dressed, with a pot of tea laid out on the desk, along with the letter, notes and images that Morrison wanted Agatha to comment on. The irony.

  It was her role, as Brody, to stay as close to the Inspector as possible and, when they had a lead on the Skinner, she would take the necessary steps to stop him.

  The blood draining had been done as per the outlawed sect’s ritual of 200 years ago. But the body was to be wrapped in anointed bandages. It should have been burned on an altar with the sect members present, as they should have been for the skinning.

  Why wasn’t the full ritual being completed? Was this really the outlawed sect revived, or something else entirely?

  EPILOGUE

  Vaughn adjusted the sketching board, leaning it against his raised knee. He sat in the big armchair in his bedroom facing the bed, Edith was fast asleep on a bed tussled from her restless sleep, from dreams which made her cry out and wake a few times through the night. She now lay on her side, pillow held tucked under her head, her remarkably adorned body exposed with only her legs partially covered by the sheet.

  He’d completed the full body sketch of her and was now drawing in the designs of her tattoos. Every time he drew her, he saw something new, some subtlety the artist had done, a man he still wanted to maim. The drawings were for her. He wanted her to know how beautiful she was. Cognitively, r
ationally she knew she was beautiful but deep in her own skin she didn’t feel it. He understood why she had tried to damage the design with the metal brush. That was survival and that wasn’t the reason he drew her. It was all the small signs, the overwashing of hands, the avoiding looking in the mirror. The tattoos had led to many experiences, the last of which had generated enough fury to kill a man. It was his task as the man who loved her to repair the damage, to help her heal slowly and with care.

  “Are you doodling again?” she said groggily from the bed but not moving.

  She was one of the most resilient and determined people he had ever met, and courageous. She would heal. It was in her very nature to do so, but she didn’t have to do that alone.

  “Mmmm, don’t move.” Vaughn drew the petals of a hydrangea which wrapped over her shoulder.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she grumbled.

  Vaughn lifted the sketchboard and placed it down next to the chair and rose, helping her out of bed. It had been a week since they’d burned down Cox’s conservatory. Edith’s friend Lila had left with the surgery’s supply of laudanum and morphine but not before finishing off his liquor cabinet and starting a fight with every member of the household.

  He’d married Edith by special license the morning after the events. His close ties with law enforcement and the courts had made impossible things possible and he had the license within hours of his request. She was now wholly his and under his protection, any law enforcement and any other person on the planet would have to go through him to see her.

  Mentally and emotionally Edith had gone to ground, closed into herself and slept. He stayed with her. Treated the wounds she had inflicted with the brush and those from Cox’s mishandling. Remembering how the light had leaked out Cox’s eyes never felt enough.