“How did she feed? Perhaps this was a result of starvation?” Hannah asked.
“That is a possibility. Her former employer found her a new situation in the home of another Afflicted. She was fed in lieu of wages, but given the price of ‘pickled cauliflower,’ I suspect she teetered on the edge of starvation.” Sir Hugh put down the scalpel and picked up a pair of long-handled shears, to snip the ribs.
A rap at the door drew their attention. The maid, Mary, hardly ever ventured down to the basement. The staff preferred to stay clear of the place where death was asked to surrender her secrets. Hannah let go of the piece of flesh and wiped her hands on the apron before opening the door.
The maid kept her eyes fixed on Hannah’s face, not daring to look farther into the examination room. “Gentleman here to see you, miss.”
“Oh, not now,” her father grumbled. He hated to be interrupted at his work.
The maid poked her head in a fraction. “Not you, sir—he’s here to see Miss Hannah.”
“Me?” Mary must have slipped and hit her head. What gentleman would call on her?
Mary’s brown eyes widened. “Oh, yes, miss. Asked most specifically for Miss Hannah Miles.”
Hannah glanced back at her father. He shrugged and then waved his shears, as though a gentleman caller were an everyday occurrence in their household. “Off you go, Hannah. Don’t keep the gentleman waiting.”
She took the stairs slowly while her mind raced, trying to determine who the caller could be. She had no gentlemen acquaintances. Perhaps it was a tradesman who wanted to discuss some household business? By the time she reached the parlour door on the first floor, she had convinced herself she would find the butcher within, wanting to discuss what cuts of meat the family would require next week.
Instead, she found the wraith.
Cloaked in black and midnight blue once again, he stood looking out the window at the front garden. He turned upon hearing her intake of breath. His nostrils flared as though she brought a distasteful aroma into the room. Or perhaps he didn’t approve of the rural view out the window? His black gaze fixed her to the spot.
“Viscount Wycliff.” She stared back, etiquette fled her mind in the moment of surprise. Under his glare she found even her ability to blink had deserted her, and she scrambled to think why he could be calling. No one from London society ever ventured voluntarily so far into the rural landscape—except for Elizabeth, on what she called her expeditions.
“Miss Miles.” He bowed.
The act reminded her to drop a brief curtsey and gave her a chance to moisten her dry lips and gather her rampant thoughts.
He gestured to her apron. “I did not mean to interrupt your work.”
Looking down, Hannah found a bloody smear where she had wiped her hands after handling the dead woman’s flesh. No wonder he looked ready to snarl at her. What well-bred woman would greet a visitor in a bloodstained apron? For once she wished for her usual invisible state, so she could escape his piercing regard. “I do apologise, Lord Wycliff. I am assisting my father with a delicate procedure.”
Her father had probably cracked the woman’s ribs apart by now and would need help in weighing and assessing her internal organs. What information would they yield? Never before had one of the Afflicted been given to Sir Miles’s autopsy table for study. They made do with rats and mice, or asked her mother to detail her experiences. Only when Hannah looked up did she realise the viscount was talking.
What had he been saying? “I’m so sorry, my lord, could you repeat that?”
His gaze narrowed and he blew out a sigh. It would appear he had little patience with women, particularly those who weren’t paying attention. “I said, I require your assistance with the investigation of the murder committed last night. Lord and Lady Loburn will only entrust the guest list to you, and it has been suggested your assistance would settle some of the concerns of those involved.”
“Oh.” How odd. Why would Lord Loburn involve her?
He tapped one finger against the top hat in his hands. “I am investigating the matter and must ascertain which women in attendance last night are Afflicted. They must be interviewed about their movements during the ball.” He continued to stare at her, as though he were a hawk deciding whether or not to pounce on the mouse.
“Oh.”
Now he arched an eyebrow. He probably suspected her of being dim-witted.
She must expand her responses to more than a single syllable. “What manner of assistance do you require from me to…allay the concerns of those involved?”
“My superior at the Ministry and Lady Loburn both believe that propriety would be better served if you were present during the interviews. Although I completely understand if such unpleasantness is too much for you to bear.” His voice dropped to a murmur. His hypnotic stare likewise lowered and released her from its grip.
Propriety aside, a murder investigation was no place for a gently bred woman. But if a woman was required to stand beside her noble kind, who better than one with another woman’s blood staining her apron?
Hannah had her own reasons for wanting to discover the identity of the killer. The person responsible had placed a permanent stain on Lizzie’s night. That was unforgivable. All the talk should have been of Lizzie’s grand engagement, how ravishing she looked, and the magical surprise. Instead, tongues would wag about the horrific murder, and her mother and the marquess worked through the night to ensure the newspapers kept silent on that particular topic.
Not to mention the fact that her father would want to study a rogue Afflicted. What had driven the Afflicted to such hunger that she’d broken open a man’s skull with two hundred other people in the house? Would the desperation be curbed now that the offender had fed, or would she strike again in such a manner?
Hannah wiped her hands on her apron again, deliberately drawing Wycliff’s gaze to the bloodstain. “I think I am strong enough to sit through a few interviews. I can fetch the list this afternoon, once I have finished my work in the laboratory.”
He nodded and ground his jaw. An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, before he shoved his top hat onto his head, indicating he was leaving. “I will call again this evening, if that is permissible? I am most keen to further my investigation.”
“Of course.” Hannah made a note to remember to change clothes before he returned, and most definitely to wash her hands.
The maid showed their visitor out and Hannah returned to her father, trying to bring order to the turmoil Wycliff’s presence wrought in her mind. She pushed through the heavy steel door to find her father well progressed in his grim task. The ribs were pulled open, like doors to a devotional cabinet that revealed the secret scene within.
Hannah peered at the empty stomach cavity. People were muted watercolours inside. “It was Viscount Wycliff. He has asked for my assistance in the murder enquiry.”
Sir Hugh frowned. “Odd chap, that one. But the person must be caught, especially if it is an Afflicted with a taste for footmen.”
Which exactly summed up another of Hannah’s reasons for agreeing to assist, even though her mind screamed a warning at having anything to do with the brooding man. The monster responsible must be stopped.
It was one thing for the Afflicted to find nourishment in the minds of the deceased, where the families of the latter were fully compensated for the organ removed, but it was another thing entirely to pluck the thoughts and feelings from the still living. Not to mention that such an act of violence passed on the Affliction to a new host, a fact they strove to keep a secret from all but the highest levels within Parliament and the military.
“Lord Wycliff does seem to dwell under a rather dark cloud.” The viscount carried a foul mood with him, as though he raged at the world. And yet his piercing eyes triggered something deep inside Hannah. A warning that she should heed, mingled with a compulsion that meant she could not stay away from him.
Sir Hugh removed the woman’s liver and waited
while Hannah fetched a bowl to receive the organ. “War changes men. Some for the better. Others, like Wycliff, become angry at the change thrust upon them.”
“How did it change him?” What a strange thing to say. What metamorphosis had the viscount undergone? Or did some men see such horrors that they could never forget?
“A campaign on the Peninsula had a particularly ugly end. His entire regiment was slaughtered and, as the officer, he was held accountable. He was also the only survivor. Many thought he should have died with his soldiers. He took it hard.”
Hannah took a breath, about to ask more questions, when her father fixed his warm gaze on her. “The exact details are his story to tell or not, Hannah. Do not think to go prying into other people’s business.”
He tapped the bowl containing the liver, reminding her that another would soon be needed. Hannah swallowed her questions, placed the bowl on the table, and fetched the next one.
“But that is exactly what I will be doing in aiding him—prying into the business of others.” What questions would he ask, and who would he unmask as Afflicted? Many speculated on who was or wasn’t Afflicted as though it were a ghoulish parlour game. Some were known, but others hid in plain sight. Should they suffer the consequences of being unmasked?
Sir Hugh cut the blood vessels that held the kidneys in place. “You will be prying for entirely different reasons, Hannah. One would be to satisfy that curious mind of yours. The other is to bring a murderer to justice, and perhaps advance our knowledge about what drove the poor sufferer of this plague to take such tragic actions when we have not had any incidents for two years now.”
There was one problem with curiosity—only feeding that hunger would settle it down. Hannah’s questions about Lord Wycliff would not be so easily dismissed. Her finding out the man harboured some tragic history might make suffering his boorish company a little more bearable. Like the brooding hero of a gothic novel who bore terrible scars on his soul. Hannah would just need to construct a tolerable plot around him.
Father and daughter worked side by side all morning, until the woman on the table looked hollow. Her organs were arrayed in bowls after being weighed and measured. Next they would be preserved in alcohol for further study and analysis.
“Shall we look at her heart now? I saved it for last.” Her father had the look of an excited child.
“Of course.” Hannah handed him the rib cracker.
He opened the chest cavity further, exposing the last organ. Hannah gasped and held a hand to her mouth. The sweet odour of putrefaction overwhelmed them as the surrounding caul was pulled free. The heart was no lovely deep red thing, but green and rotten. The outer edges had turned black as it decayed in the woman’s chest.
Sir Hugh hummed to himself as he worked. “How curious. None of the other internal organs show any sign of decay, consistent with the woman’s dying just yesterday. Yet by the heart, one would think she died some time ago, when the original disease struck her down.”
Rotten to the core, Hannah thought. Were all the Afflicted like this on the inside?
Sir Hugh looked up, as though he had heard her thoughts. “Don’t tell your mother. No point in distressing her.”
6
Hannah didn’t only wash her hands when they finished up. She ordered a bath, stripped off her work clothes, and scrubbed every inch of skin she could reach. There was something about seeing the woman’s heart rotting in her chest that clung to her, and no amount of pressure with the short-bristled brush could scrub the memory away.
Dressed once again, she tried to sweep the sight from her mind as she took the spiral staircase to her mother’s tower.
After being advised of the murder on their return from the ball, Seraphina had worked through the night using magic to head off rumours of the gruesome murder and to give the people of London something else to talk about over breakfast.
“Come in.”
“I have been waiting all day to talk to you, but didn’t want to interrupt your work. Did you manage to silence the rumours?” Hannah crossed the floor to the square window.
Her mother sat in a wicker bath chair and watched birds circle over the fields. Hannah placed a kiss on a muslin-covered cheek and then took the armchair positioned next to the bath chair.
“I cannot silence wagging tongues, but I did release a more tantalising rumour for them to gobble up. I crafted the story that the Prince Regent has commissioned a gifted tailor to make him a new suit of clothes fashioned from cloth so sheer some think it invisible. Thrilled with the resulting outfit, he will promenade through the streets today. I set my little creature free a few hours ago to whisper at every door and window. The rumour of a gruesome murder cannot compete with the chance to see the Prince Regent in the altogether.” As Lady Miles spoke, she turned her hands into wings that fluttered away from the tower.
“A shame it has taken the shine from Lizzie’s evening.” Hannah hardened her resolve to find the murderer who had sabotaged her friend’s happiness with such a horrific event.
“Let us have no more talk of that. You need to tell me all about the ball and whether my gift was well received,” Seraphina said.
Hannah couldn’t describe the evening without leaping to her feet. She danced with an invisible partner as she told of Lizzie and the duke stealing everyone’s breath when clothed in crystal butterflies. With events narrated and acted out, from the glorious moment when Elizabeth descended the stairs, to the entranced crowd that watched her magical butterflies, Hannah dropped back into the comfortable chair.
“I much prefer your poetic version of events. While I love your father dearly, he narrates as though he is reading from a textbook.”
Hannah couldn’t see the smile on her mother’s face, but it infused her words and actions and she basked in the glow.
Seraphina clasped her hands together in her lap. “Let us move on to a more mysterious topic. Tell me of Viscount Wycliff and his visit here today.”
“I do not think anyone could be poetic when describing the viscount. He strikes me as something one would find lurking in the pages of a horror story.” Hannah told of his unexpected call and his strange request for her assistance.
“Keep your wits about you with that one, Hannah.” Seraphina took Hannah’s hand and placed it against her cheek.
“He expects me to act as chaperone while he questions the Afflicted who attended the ball last night. We know many of these women and there is not a murderer among them. What greater good is served by unmasking them unnecessarily?” Hannah had seen the crazed beings that could commit such a murder, and certainly no one had exhibited such behaviour at the ball. Viscount Wycliff must be mistaken. It must be a crime made to look as though an Afflicted were responsible.
Seraphina squeezed Hannah’s hand. “Only you can balance a woman’s privacy against the need to stop a killer, but I believe you will do the right thing when the time comes.”
“Is there a way to use magic to discern the murderer’s name? That would save many women from potential exposure.” Magic touched so many aspects of their lives, you would think it would have a more practical purpose.
Seraphina sighed. “I am sorry—my power does not extend to the ability to read the human mind. That remains a mystery, even to me. Now be about your task, lest the viscount declare you tardy or worse, remiss.”
Hannah worried all the way to Mayfair, and only the rapturous embrace of Lizzie relieved some of her concern.
“I have something scandalous to confide before Mother joins us.” Lizzie took Hannah’s hands and drew her toward the front parlour.
As she sat, Hannah remembered the young woman she had encountered in here, crying over the stain on her dress. Where had she gone last night? She couldn’t recollect seeing her among the revellers, but then so much had happened.
Returning to the matter at hand, curiosity sparked in Hannah’s mind. She couldn’t imagine Lizzie doing anything more scandalous than taking two lumps of sugar in her te
a instead of one. “Whatever have you done, Lizzie?”
Lizzie glanced around and pulled Hannah closer. Her voice dropped to a low whisper. “Out on the balcony last night, Francis kissed me. A proper kiss, too, and not a quick one stolen when the chaperone wasn’t looking.”
“Oh, Lizzie. Was it marvellous?” Hannah wanted to interrogate her friend. She had never been kissed, and probably never would. Secondhand information must sustain her.
Just like secondhand love, the tiny voice in the back of her head whispered.
Lizzie’s blue eyes shone like a clear summer’s day. “Yes. My knees went quite weak and only his strong arms around me kept me from swooning.”
At that point Lady Loburn arrived and Hannah was deprived of her chance to bombard Lizzie with questions. That was something to tuck away for another time. Perhaps the night before her wedding, when Hannah would stay over and the two young ladies would talk all through the dark hours.
Lady Loburn had the list that Viscount Wycliff sought, but Hannah decided to whittle his selection further. Of the two hundred people in attendance, the names of one hundred women had been written out in a neat hand. The three women worked all afternoon to reduce it further, a novelty for Lizzie and Lady Loburn.
“If I might enquire, Lady Loburn, how is Viscount Wycliff acquainted with the family that he was invited last night?” After two cups of tea, Hannah had worked up the courage to ask the question nibbling at her mind.
“Ah.” Lady Loburn set down her quill and paused. She rapped a finger on the desk as she gathered her thoughts. “Yes, he was an odd addition, and no acquaintance of ours. You will have to ask your mother her reasons. Sera made a special request to have him added to the guest list.”
“Mother? But she does not know him.” Hannah reviewed her conversations with her mother and nowhere had she offered any hint of an acquaintance with the viscount. What was her mother up to?
Lady Loburn smiled at Hannah. “I have learned over the years not to question your mother when she makes strange requests. There is always a reason buried in them somewhere, even if it is not visible to the rest of us.”
Manners and Monsters, #1 Page 5
