Their waiter started forward with a carafe of coffee, but the doctor motioned him away impatiently. He searched for something in her face, eyes running over every inch of it.
Molly did not look away.
Finally, wiping his hand across his mouth, he sat back, slamming the empty wineglass down on the table.
“Nothing. I only wanted you to know that there will be oddities coming your way. Be ready to collect them.”
“Of course.” She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her discomfort.
The doctor raised his hand and the poor waiter hurried over. “We’re finished here.”
The waiter nodded, scurrying away to retrieve their coats.
But before Molly could stand, LaValle reached across the table and grabbed her hand. In the candlelight, the jagged cut on her palm from Kitty’s grave was on full display, the healing skin, where the scab had peeled, puckered and ugly. Coming straight from work, she had not had time to put on Ginny’s gloves. But rather than seeming disgusted, LaValle examined her palm as if studying a particularly interesting specimen.
“You know, my dear,” he said, turning her hand over in his own and tracing a finger up the torn flesh. “I quite wonder what you’re capable of.”
* * *
The rest of the week passed in a blur. Molly taught herself how to play chess, from one of the library’s books, and alternated her time between studying anatomy drawings, stealing bodies, and moving the tiny gold skeletons back and forth across the board of Ava’s unusual chess set. On Saturday morning, a note waited for her, pinned to her breakfast tray.
Thank you for the lovely evening. I wait with great anticipation for the next.
In the meantime, I humbly beg a very small favor . . .
Please collect a special delivery for me. You may find it at the lovely establishment at which we dined. It is being kept for you in the ice chest.
Wear the dress.
Warm regards,
Dr. Francis LaValle
Rather than reading the anatomy books for pleasure, she now found herself seeking all the horrible ailments that a person might suffer and then imagining them decomposing in a freezer. By the time Tom came for her, she was nearly as tense as she’d been on her first night.
It did not help that he’d worn a new white shirt with the button sleeves rolled up along his sinewy arms, which revealed a smattering of freckles across the skin. She did not know why, but she found those freckles exceedingly distracting.
“Figured I wouldn’t be doing much in the way of digging tonight,” he explained, seeing her stare. She thought for a minute that she saw him blush, but she must have been imagining it.
Tom Donaghue never blushed.
“Place like that won’t even let me in the front door.”
“You look nice,” Molly said. She’d worn Ma’s old coat for comfort, wrapping it tightly around her, hoping Tom would not notice what was beneath.
The restaurant began its dinner service at six o’clock, and so when Tom helped her into the wagon, the sun was still hanging on by its last thread of life, bloody rays clinging to the sky.
“Is this where the doctor took you the other night?” Tom asked.
Molly nodded.
“Some women find him quite attractive, I hear.”
Molly was so startled she did not know how to respond. “He’s nearly twice my age.”
“A lot of girls wouldn’t mind about that. He’s still a bachelor, and I’m told he does very well for himself.”
Molly laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “He’s my employer. Same as yours. Nothing more.”
For the first time that night, a grin broke across Tom’s face. In his white shirt, he looked more like a carefree boy than she’d ever seen him. His scarred face was turned away from her, so that in that instant she saw his face as it had once been, before whatever had happened to him.
“The other night,” she began, hesitant.
He stayed silent.
She waited. Perhaps she shouldn’t push. If he wanted to tell her the rest of it, he would do so in his own time.
“You want to know what happened to me,” he said finally. “My scar.” He looked at her fully, and there he was again, that dangerous beauty melded with innocence. Because he was beautiful. She had not fully realized this before. He’d only ever been her partner. But in another light, in another life, he would have been as handsome and well-groomed as James Chambers.
“It’s going to be a bad night.” Tom lifted his gaze to the overcast sky, the sun almost completely gone. “They say there could be more snow before morning.”
She thought he’d leave it there. But then he spoke.
“She was only eight when she died.” He stared straight ahead, guiding the carriage through the darkening streets. “I was thirteen. Old enough to have known better.”
“Your sister?”
He nodded. “Bridget.”
There was so much bound up in that single word it hurt to hear it spoken. The name broke open from him like a wound. She thought of Tom lying down, body pressed against the ground, staring at the dark sky, and imagining he was dead.
“What was she like?” Molly asked softly.
He smiled, and some of the pain lifted. “Ah, she was a wild one.” He gave a whistle as one of the horses pulled too close to a curb. “Reminds me some of you.”
“Me?” Molly said, surprised. “I’m the most boring person you ever met.”
Tom laughed. “You? Boring?” He turned to look at her. “Molly Green, you’re many things, but never boring.” His voice was low. “How many other girls do you know go digging dead bodies for a living?”
“That’s just because I have to,” Molly said.
“Nah. You bring those books along with you too.”
She stared.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Always poking your head into something or talking about the way brains work. And you care more about how the folks we take the bodies from feel than any other grave robber out there, I’ll guarantee you that. You’re clever and you’re brave, and you’re kind. Those things don’t usually go together.”
Molly looked away, ears burning. She’d never thought of herself as anything near to that, and it astonished her that Tom did.
“Bridget was like that. Remarkably smart, just like you. Used to tell me and my brothers and sisters stories every night that would leave us hanging off our seats. Even me, and I was five years older than her.” He shook his head, grinning. “And not flowery stuff, neither. I remember one time she had a pirate fighting an eight-legged creature from the deep, and the only way to defeat him was to climb down his throat and pluck out his heart.”
Molly smiled. “Now, there’s something I’d be interested to see—an octopus’s heart. They have three of them, you know. I saw it in an anatomy book.”
Tom grinned again. “That’s just what I mean.”
He pulled the wagon to a stop outside the restaurant. The dinner crowds were only just beginning to come. “You sure you’re all right to do this on your own?”
Molly wanted to sit with him in the wagon longer. To hear him tell her about Bridget. About herself. Instead, she ran through the list of horrible diseases again, wondering just how bad what awaited her inside would be.
“I think so.”
“If you need me, I’m here.”
Tom came around and helped her carefully down from the wagon. “Thank you,” she said.
Tom looked surprised. “For what?”
“For telling me about Bridget.”
He looked away. He’d never said what happened. To his sister or himself. But he was thinking it. Whatever it was. He was finishing the story for himself now, and she could tell by his face it was a painful one.
“Go on, now,” he said
, voice gruff. “I’ll be waiting.”
* * *
The waiters were just setting up service, and only two tables were occupied, both by portly businessmen who hardly looked up when Molly entered. She saw the man who’d waited on her the other night and made her way to him. He did not look pleased to see her.
“May I take your coat?”
Molly looked sheepishly at its tattered wool. But she didn’t want anyone staring at her in that dress. “No, I . . .”
The man took her arm. “Let’s get you in the back before everyone else sees you. I suppose I know what you’re here for.”
It was astounding, Molly thought, how differently a man thought he could speak to a woman when she was alone. She yanked her arm away. “I can walk myself, thank you very much.”
Grumbling, the man led her back to the kitchen.
The heat was intense. Steam rose from large bubbling pots while cooks stirred and seasoned, sliding past one another in the cramped quarters. The space smelled intensely of rosemary. The waiter led her toward a large ice chest in the corner, steel doors leading up to the ceiling. “Wait here.”
He disappeared inside and returned with a wax-wrapped package, no bigger than a baby doll. Molly’s heart lurched. “What is it?”
The waiter shrugged. “None of my concern. The doctor said you’d be by for this is all. Here.” He shoved it at her, and she took the frozen bundle in her arms. “Now get out.”
She made her way past the restaurant patrons, the disconcertingly small shape of the thing in her hands playing tricks with her mind.
It was far too little to be an adult.
When she emerged, Tom drove the wagon to a secluded spot nearby, where traffic was less.
“We have to look.”
Molly shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
“We have to, Molly. Someone could have stuck a side of beef in there, and we’d be no wiser, the doctor’s money lost. We have to check what it is.”
He reached for it, but Molly stopped him. “I’ll do it. It’s my package, after all.”
After hesitating, Tom finally sat back, crossing his arms.
Molly lifted the package, hands trembling. The smell of rosemary clung to the paper. She began to peel it carefully away.
A pink skull appeared. Then two tiny blue eyes confirmed her fears: she was looking at the body of a child.
She unwrapped the rest of it.
Not one head, but two. Sweet, soft skin, joined in one body, with two heads.
But the skulls were misshapen, and there were bits of fur stuck to the edges. And a long tail.
“Monkeys,” Tom said. “Fetal, probably, and conjoined.”
“Why would he want this?” Molly asked, sickened. She thought of Kitty’s unborn baby. “Is he going to hold a lecture with it?”
“Nah, it’s for a private collector, probably.”
“No,” Molly said, shoving the paper back over the faces, the body still frozen from the ice chest. “He wanted me to see it. To test me. I don’t know why, but he wanted me afraid.”
Tom waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. “Here.” She handed him the package. “You take it.”
He laid it tenderly in the back of the wagon, placing it in a special wood box with a large padlock. They’d used it before, to keep their bribery money locked away.
Turning to her, he took both of her hands in his. Though it was almost March, the air smelled of snow, and it lifted the leathery pine scent of Tom to her nose.
“I have one question left to ask you,” he said.
Her heart began to speed beneath her dress. “Yes?”
“Do you want to quit?”
So that was all. The same question he asked every night. She felt a flicker of disappointment.
“No.”
“Good. Then there’s somewhere I need to take you.”
20
Tonight?” Molly was gripped with a sinking feeling of desperation. After what she’d just seen, she wanted only to go home.
“Last stop,” he promised.
Molly closed her eyes, resting her head against the back of the seat.
The tiny monkey heads flashed through her mind, small enough to crush in a grown man’s palm.
For some reason, the helplessness of them made them feel all the more human.
It was just a body, Molly reminded herself. A stupid monkey’s body.
But Kitty’s child had been no bigger. Smaller, probably, when it had died.
The carriage jangled along beneath her, repeating the claim.
Just a body.
Just a body.
Molly struggled to breathe, the rigid corset beneath her gown squeezing her lungs, her breast, her heart.
“You ready?” Tom’s voice broke through the settling panic, and Molly braced herself for another cemetery.
Instead, they were parked along a busy street downtown. The nighttime crowd rushed past, drunken laughter flickering up to the sky.
The building in front of them was discreet, a faded brass plaque hanging across the front of an otherwise anonymous facade. Only the door, painted a cheery red, suggested that there might be something worth discovering inside.
Molly’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “What kind of body are we supposed to get here?”
“Any kind you want.” Tom grinned, taking her hand. “Come on.”
A man in a top hat and a monocle sat outside. He had a waxed mustache, like the kind newly in favor with Britain’s army. “Password?”
“Lacoddy,” Tom answered promptly.
The man opened the door.
Inside was another world entirely.
At the center of the room spun a large gilded carousel. Beautiful women moved up and down on the backs of brilliantly striped tigers and bejeweled swans. Muscled men with bare torsos swung from the ceiling on twisting ropes in a lithe display of acrobatics, their shining costumes glinting like fish in an upside-down ocean.
Red walls a shade darker than the door were the color of a cinnabar moth’s wings, and large mirrors reflected a hundred scenes of debauchery as the boozy patrons moved through the room. When Molly’s nose began to clear from the cold, she smelled the yeasty scent of hops mixed with tobacco and perfume. Faces of all different colors swam past, laughing, dancing, and making merry.
She followed Tom, trying to take it all in.
On the stage, a woman with very long hair and nothing on but a mermaid tail began to sing.
I loved my darling Billy
And then I loved him twice.
Once when he was living
And then as a dead man’s wife.
Death couldn’t ne’er conquer him
Though he walked straight through its door.
’Cause when the fates did take him
He was stiffer than before!
Tom watched Molly, carefully gauging her reaction.
She couldn’t speak.
“Look, if it’s too much, we can go. I realize it’s no place for a—”
“It’s wonderful,” Molly said fiercely.
It was the strangest place she’d ever been.
And she’d never felt more at home.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” A familiar voice sounded amidst the bustling crowd.
Ginny was dressed in a short gown made entirely of feathers, a live duck on a golden leash at her feet. In her other hand, she held a gemstone-studded whip.
“You look incredible!” Molly said, meaning it.
Ginny spun around, making the feathers dance. Stripped of her proper lady’s gown, she seemed somehow even more beautiful. Her blond curls cascaded from a silver crown, and her eyes were surrounded by blue paint that swept up to her forehead in daring streaks, like she was a mystical tig
er. Her legs were covered in gold tights, and her feet were bare, rings with bells on each of her toes.
“Thanks. Made it myself.” She reached for Molly’s coat. “Now you . . . you look like an undertaker. This is a party!”
Before Molly could stop her, Ginny yanked it off.
Molly blushed, clapping her hands to her chest.
“Oh my God!” Ginny stared at the dress, horrified. “Who made you wear that?”
From the corner of her eye, Molly saw Tom flush and look quickly away.
“An employer,” Molly said, embarrassed.
“Well, it don’t suit you. Not with your figure. Your body’s got lines that need room to move. And your skin needs cool tones, not that red.” She picked up the hem of the skirt.
“What are you doing?” Molly asked, alarmed.
Ginny ripped a small line up the dress.
“Wait! That isn’t . . .”
With a single motion, Ginny tore the skirt all the way to the bodice, removing the top layer of fabric. What was left was only the thin underskirt, but it was cotton, not the crinoline of the top. The skirt fell comfortably about her legs and moved easily as she walked.
Rather than feeling more exposed, she felt, strangely, less.
“Better,” Ginny said, frowning. “Not great, but I’ll make you something that is.”
Molly felt Tom staring. She turned to explain the doctor’s gown.
Just then, a pretty fairy, painted green from head to toe, sidled between them, draping her bangled arms around Tom. “Hello, honey! Fancy some jubes tonight?”
“He’s a very popular fellow around here,” Ginny said. “Especially with the boys in the body business. They want to be just like him.” She motioned to a group of younger boys standing awestruck nearby, each of them with a red shoelace in their left boot.
Molly tried to ignore the sour feeling rising in her belly as the fairy pushed her breasts into Tom’s face suggestively.
Tom whispered something in her ear, and she disappeared, a pout on her face.
“Come here, lovelies.” Ginny pulled Molly and Tom both into a hug, the duck quacking at her feet. “It’s official, then?” She pulled away, looking to Tom.
The Corpse Queen Page 14
