A Matter of Grave Concern

by Novak, Brenda

  At the curb, they paused to allow a hackney to go by before crossing the street. For the moment, Abigail seemed content to accompany him, which gave him some hope that he was winning a bit of the trust he had demanded from her. But as they drew closer to Jack’s house, her step slowed and, once again, he had to pull her along.

  “You had better hide your gifts,” he told her as they came upon Wapping High Street. “Such items will assuredly draw the interest and attention of Jack and the others.” Then they, too, would wonder why he would spend what he did, given that he had told them he had gambling debts to satisfy.

  She put her mirror and brush in the brown wrapping they had come in and tied the strings.

  “We will slide it under the house until I can bring it up to you later,” he said.

  Although she didn’t seem to like the idea of parting with the package, even for a short time, he knew it was the idea of encountering Jack and the others that gave her pause. He couldn’t blame her for that.

  “I need you to continue to be brave,” he said.

  With a nod, she threw back her shoulders, let him take the brush and mirror and marched on.

  Jack and Tom sat at the table, eating what looked like potato pie with boiled bacon and drinking beer. Both men were wearing the clothes they’d had on the night before, which wouldn’t have been so remarkable to Abby—most people in this part of town had only one set of clothing for every day—but it didn’t look like they ever washed them. Only Tom had bothered to comb his hair.

  As Max dragged her into the house, Jack glared at them with red-rimmed eyes—and Abigail nearly jerked out of his grasp and attempted to flee. So what if Max would chase her down? Maybe, by some miracle, she could elude him.

  Once again, however, he proved cautious and tightened his grip, anchoring her to his side.

  “Trust her enough to take her out, do you?” Jack said to Max.

  Suddenly reverting to the boorish man he had been at the college, Max shoved Abby onto the bench across from Jack and went to the rack to hang his coat. “Didn’t trust her enough to leave her behind.”

  Tom shot Jack a sullen glance. “Or he didn’t trust us. He’s gone sweet on her, like I told ye.”

  “Shut up,” Jack snapped. “I don’t need you to tell me anything when he’s standing right here.”

  “He wouldn’t let me get anywhere near her,” Tom argued despite the rebuke.

  “I can’t say as I blame him for that,” Jack responded. “But he made me a promise, too, and I expected him to fulfill it.”

  “I knocked on your door,” Max said with a shrug.

  Jack slammed his tankard on the table. “That so?”

  “There was no response, but then you were pretty deep in your cups.”

  “I’m wide awake now.”

  Abigail’s nails curved into her palms. She could tell the animosity between the two men wasn’t entirely about her. Not this morning. Jack was challenging Max, testing his loyalties—she was about to learn if the assurances Max had given her were more than mere words.

  Bowing her head, she studied the knots in the wood-plank table while awaiting his response.

  “If you are craving a woman, I would be happy to help,” he said and sat down with them.

  Abigail jerked her head up. He hadn’t even hesitated before giving in! But then he continued, “I saw Victoria and a handful of doxies, all painted and preening while I was out this morning. No doubt she, or one of her friends, would be happy to pay you a visit.”

  Jack fixed his eyes on Abby. “You’d hire me a pinchcock, when—”

  “A pinchcock? You told me yourself that Victoria’s better than the average prostitute. You said she was a ‘toffer.’ ”

  “But the surgeon’s daughter is right here. Why spend the coin?”

  Max crooked an arm around her neck, pulled her to him and slammed his mouth against hers. She had wondered what his kiss would be like, but there was nothing pleasurable about the brutality of this. “Because I’m not done with her,” he said when he broke off the kiss.

  Questioning her sanity for ever trusting Max Wilder in the first place, Abigail twisted to get away but froze when Jack came to his feet.

  “I didn’t ask if you were done with her,” he said. “I don’t much care one way or the other. I expect you to pay me my due and see to it nicely.”

  “Then you don’t know me very well.” Max stood, too, and towered so far over the gang’s leader that Abigail guessed Jack couldn’t be planning to enforce his words with brute strength. A weapon would have to be involved—and there just happened to be one handy. A knife lay on the table, easily within his reach.

  “That’s the point,” Jack said. “I don’t know you very well. And I’m not convinced I can rely on what you tell me.”

  “Then kick me out—of this place, of the gang.” Several pins fell as Max fisted his hand in Abby’s hair and bent to inhale the scent of it. “Because this woman belongs to me,” he said, “and no one touches what is mine. Not even you.”

  When Jack tensed, Abigail caught her breath. As the gang’s leader, he had a reputation to maintain—and Tom was sitting right there.

  But something—the fear of failure?—caused him to hold back. “And what would you do then?” he asked.

  “There’s no telling,” Max replied. “I could join a rival gang—”

  “I’d kill you first.”

  Max came off as unconcerned, but Abby sensed a level of awareness that belied that. “You could try. But I doubt you would succeed. Or maybe I wouldn’t join another gang; maybe I would start my own.”

  “You think I’d let you compete with me? When I’m the one who taught you everything you know?”

  “It isn’t difficult to figure out how to steal a corpse, Jack.”

  “It takes more money to go it alone than you’ve got or you wouldn’t have come to me in the first place.”

  “You think I can’t find someone else to put up the bribe money and split my take? You pay off the sheriff for the remains of any criminal who’s executed. You pay off any sexton who’s willing to alert you to news of a recent burial. You pay off the directors of certain almshouses to look the other way when some poor bugger dies. Did I miss anything?”

  “You’d start an all-out war between us,” Jack warned. “I won’t have you linin’ yer pockets at my expense.”

  “I could always pay a visit to the police instead. They might be interested in hearing about the woman you brought home last night.”

  Abigail screamed when Jack grabbed the knife, but Max was prepared. He caught Jack’s wrist before he could make any kind of slashing motion, and forced the blade out of his grip. It clattered on the table and remained there until he wrestled Jack around and put the knife to his throat.

  “Surely, I make a better friend than foe,” he gritted out. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  Jack’s eyes flared wide. No doubt he could feel the power of the man behind him and knew he was no match for it. “I-I lost my temper is all, Max. You know how I can be. I can be rash when provoked.”

  Max made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I don’t like it when you’re rash, Jack. I don’t consider it polite.” He glanced up. “What about you, Abby? Wouldn’t you say Big Jack here could improve upon his manners?”

  Abby didn’t know how to respond. She had no idea if Max would really hurt him or not, but she got the impression he wanted to—and that was frightening in its own right.

  She backed away, hoping to get out of the house. But Tom came up from behind, slipped both arms around her and licked her cheek. “Relax, I got you,” he murmured. “No matter what happens, you’re not goin’ anywhere.”

  “Can you blame me?” Jack asked Max. “First you want nothin’ to do with the chit. Then you want her all to yourself.”

  “A man has the ri
ght to change his mind,” Max responded.

  Jack lifted his hands. “I see that. It was just . . . I had no idea she meant so much to you.”

  “I haven’t had a woman warm my bed in quite some time and am loath to give her up too soon. You understand.”

  “I do,” he said. “Of course I do. Just . . . put the knife away!”

  Max let him go but held the blade at the ready in case he was threatened again. “Are you going to let a mere woman come between us?” he asked. “Or can I get you a doxy and we call it even?”

  Jack swiped at a small trickle of blood on his neck. “Never do that again.”

  When he answered, Max was far from contrite. “It wasn’t my idea to do it this time. As I have told you before, I need only fall in with you long enough to repay my debts. Then I will be on my way. But if you would rather I make other arrangements, say the word and Abby and I will vacate the premises.”

  “You held a knife to my throat!”

  “The knife you first tried to use on me.”

  “Max isn’t like us,” Tom said, jumping in. “He doesn’t belong here.”

  “Is that what you have to say?” Jack cried. “Because he’s worth two of you.”

  Tom’s voice took on a sullen note. “At least I’m loyal.”

  “You’re only as loyal as you have to be.” Jack jerked his head toward Max. “That makes you no different than him.”

  There were plenty of other differences, though. Even Abigail could name the most important one. While Tom was no challenge, Jack feared alienating Max.

  “You can say that?” Tom cried. “After all we’ve done together?”

  “I can say that.” Jack slumped into his seat and took a long pull of his beer. “So put your tongue back in your mouth, let go of that bitch and finish your damn pie. Or I’ll get rid of you instead of him.”

  Tom released Abby, but he didn’t sit down. He stalked out of the house and slammed the door behind him.

  “He’ll be back,” Jack said with an unconcerned wave. “Who else’ll take him in and make it possible for him to fill his belly? He doesn’t have a friend in the world, besides his brother, and his brother can’t function any better than he does. They’re both sons of a prostitute that left ’em on the street.”

  Abigail might have pitied Tom if she didn’t dislike him so much. Unsure of what to do with herself—she was still reeling from the near stabbing she had just witnessed—she sank onto the bench.

  Jack shoved the rest of Tom’s meal at her. “Have some pie.”

  Chapter 10

  To keep Abby safe and stop her from making another attempt to gain her freedom, Max locked her in his room and pocketed the key. He hated to do that, but he had to do something. At least he could go about the rest of his business feeling assured that she wasn’t going anywhere—and that Jack or Tom wouldn’t be able to reach her. But he knew better than to expect her to sit there alone, and idle, for hours. She would be that much more likely to plot some way to incapacitate him when he joined her later. So he carried up a tub of hot water and put her to work washing and mending his clothes. He was picky enough to want everything done right, and Abby admitted she had little experience with such things. She said her father hired a laundress for a few shillings a month, since they both worked. But any good Englishwoman could sew, and she was smart enough to figure out the rest.

  If he could only get her to be patient long enough, he felt confident he could learn what he needed to know about Madeline. Not three nights past, while they were digging up a corpse at St. James’s Burial Ground, he overheard the sexton ask Jack about the pretty redhead who had been with him the last time.

  Jack hadn’t given a clear answer. He had pretended not to know what the man was talking about. Even when Max asked Jack about it afterward, he claimed that the woman ran away.

  Max wondered if that “redhead” might have been Madeline. His sister had dark auburn hair. She had also mentioned Jack’s name the last time she came to visit, when she tried to convince him that one final purse, a small one, would be all she would ever require of him.

  “I have found someone who wants to marry me,” she had said. “He may not be the most respectable man in London. He is not even a man I could ever respect, let alone love. But he makes a decent living, enough to keep a roof over Byron’s head, and has promised to make us a family.”

  “Are you sure you want to spend the rest of your life with a man you cannot admire?” he had asked her.

  “Those finer feelings are luxuries I cannot afford,” she had responded. “At least I will get to be a mother to my son—at last.”

  “And who is this man?” he had pressed.

  “They call him Big Jack.”

  Because she had responded grudgingly, sparing all but that essential detail, Max had held the money he was about to give her just inches away from her fingertips when he asked, “How does he earn this ‘decent living’?”

  She had hesitated, bit her lip and mumbled something about body snatching being a necessary evil. Then she had grabbed the pouch and hurried out.

  If not for that brief exchange, he would not have been able to trace her to the London Supply Company . . .

  At least little Byron was now being looked after at Max’s own estate in Essex, to keep him well separated from Max’s mother, who lived at the London town house and was so displeased that Max would take him in. If the people Madeline had hired to care for him hadn’t sent word that she hadn’t paid them, that they hadn’t heard from her in the week since they said they would turn her son out, Byron could have ended up in the street.

  Max remembered how grateful he had been when Madeline left, how he had hoped she was right and he would never have to see her again—and chafed beneath the guilt that welled up. If only he had taken some pity on her over the last several years.

  He would have, had he not been bound by the loyalty he felt to his mother—until he learned that loyalty was undeserved.

  “Mr. Wilder. What a pleasure to see you.”

  Max blinked and focused on the man who had entered the parlor where he had been waiting, top hat at his side, after having taken an omnibus to Whitechapel. Ebenezer Holmes was an undertaker who sold coffins he advertised as “burglar-proof metallic grave vaults.” They sported ten massive concealed locks designed to keep even the most determined body snatcher out—but, for a price, Mr. Holmes provided Jack with the key.

  “The pleasure is all mine,” Max said.

  “Where is Jack?” he asked.

  Max couldn’t avoid thinking about Abby, and hoping Jack was far away from her. “I’m afraid he had other business.”

  Ebenezer’s thick black eyebrows knitted together. “I am not important enough that he feels the need to come himself?”

  “He knows that you are a wise man and will see reason, once I lay out our side of the argument,” Max said, managing a placating smile.

  Ebenezer yelled into the hall for someone to bring them tea and closed the door behind him before striding to the chair opposite the settee Max had been using. “What can you possibly say to change my mind?”

  Max slid his hat farther to the right as he sank into his original seat. “You are unhappy.”

  “As I indicated in my letter.”

  “Because . . .”

  “Since Burke and Hare ran amok in Scotland and killed those poor souls, the public has become so agitated, I could face a lynch mob should news of my . . . um . . . arrangement with your company ever come to light.”

  “Burke and Hare did their killing two years ago, and you have done plenty of business with Jack since.”

  “Public sentiment only gets worse. You’ve heard of the riots.”

  Adopting a somberness designed to mirror the concern the other man conveyed, Max leaned forward. “And more money for you will somehow soothe the public
?”

  “It will at least compensate me for the threat.”

  “Depending on gender and size, we already pay you a guinea or more,” Max pointed out. “A guinea for little or nothing.”

  “While you make ten times that.”

  As Max had suspected, it wasn’t the threat of exposure that bothered Mr. Holmes. That threat hadn’t changed enough in the past several weeks to precipitate this meeting. His complaint revealed nothing but greed, which provoked little sympathy on Max’s part. “We are the ones risking a public beating by slipping into the graveyards late at night, trying to break into the vaults you have created,” he said.

  “For which I provide the key!”

  Max folded his hands in his lap to keep from ringing the man’s scrawny neck. He didn’t want to leave Abby vulnerable—couldn’t quit worrying that he had. But he needed to see to Jack’s business, as Jack had requested, or he’d only create more problems. “Ah, but if not for us, no one would need a burglar-proof vault, the sale of which provides the bulk of your income. To be so sought after also lends you a certain . . . respectability, which I know you enjoy. Have you considered the less tangible benefits to your association with the London Supply Company?”

  Ebenezer lifted his pointy chin as if he had been expecting this line of reasoning. “I have. I have also considered that you are not the only resurrectionists in town. If you won’t pay me more, maybe others will.”

  “We may not be the only resurrectionists, but we are probably the most successful.” Jack did all he could to insure it. If competition arose, he took drastic measures to quash it, sometimes even denouncing whomever it was to the police. According to him, in order to put a rival out of business, he once left several empty coffins standing around the cemetery at Abbey Park, the graves from which they had been taken, unfilled. Jack had laughed when he said the borough where he did this was so outraged they wouldn’t go near the cemetery for weeks, let alone bury anyone there.