“They killed her!” Molly slammed her mug onto the table, and a hot spurt of coffee jumped from its rim, scalding her bad hand. “My God, a simple midwife half out of her mind knew more than those boys did about birthing. More than LaValle, when it comes to that. Your great doctor was as eager to slice the girl open as the rest of them.”
Ava studied her coolly. “Do you truly think that you, a girl with as much medical training as the cook, knows more than a man who has studied medicine his entire life?”
“At least I cared. The doctor was more concerned about lecturing than he was keeping that girl alive.”
“You’re wrong.” James Chambers appeared in the doorway. He turned to Ava. “The doctor wanted me to tell you that the rest of the students have left if you’d like to have William over to clean.”
“Sit down.” Ava motioned him in. “Last night was stressful for everyone. A civilized meal in the daylight is a good way to remind ourselves of our humanity.”
James nodded. He had washed himself hastily, but Molly could still smell the metallic stink of the operating theater on him. When he looked at her, his eyes were bloodshot.
Ava buttered another piece of toast and set it in front of him.
“I came to say thank you,” he said, picking at the crust. “For helping us.”
“Helping?” Molly’s lip quivered. “She’s dead.”
“That girl never stood a chance.”
“Maybe if we hadn’t sliced her open like a fatted goose!” She stood, her napkin falling to the floor.
“Molly!” Ava said. “Apologize.”
“No need.” James’s lips curled in an admiring smile. He seemed far from angry. “I like that you think outside the obvious, Molly. And you’re right. Most of those doctors would have been too quick to use the knife. But I assure you that is not the case with Dr. LaValle.”
“He was the one who ordered it done.”
“Yes. But he’d thoroughly examined the girl and knew what was at risk. If he believed that a natural delivery would have had any chance of saving her, he would have done it. She was too far gone. You didn’t see her when she came in. She’d been bleeding for days.”
“What?”
James nodded. “Tried to give herself an abortion and was scared to tell anyone. It was far too late for such an attempt. Whatever she used for the job—probably rusty wire or a dirty blade—only gave her an infection and a fever, then caused her to bleed out. Dr. LaValle was trying to do what was kindest. There was never any chance of saving the girl. He only presented it as a quandary to his students so that they might have a chance to test their ethics. LaValle teaches that a baby’s life always take’s precedence over the mother’s. But he does care. He cares about all his patients.”
“Bollocks he does!”
Ava cocked an eyebrow. “I see you’ve picked up some language working nights.”
“If he cared about her—” Molly started.
“He would have put her out of her pain, which he did,” James said. “With the chloroform. Then he would have delivered the child the most humane way possible, which, in this case, was via an abdominal incision. What you did . . .” James’s eyes squinted. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but making her deliver naturally like that, forcing the baby around, keeping her in labor . . . she suffered far more than if the doctor had removed the child as intended.”
Molly crumpled into her chair as if someone had taken away her legs. “That’s not true,” she whispered.
James winced. “I’m sorry.”
“Then why did you help me?” She flung the words at him. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because Dr. LaValle doesn’t let things happen on that operating table unless there’s a purpose. If he allowed you to question him and try to help the girl, it was so that the other students could learn.” James leaned closer. “You’re quick on your feet, and you care, Molly. Those are rare gifts.”
She felt sick. The small bite of bacon she’d managed was threatening to come back up, and she clapped a hand over her mouth.
“I heard what you said to your aunt,” James said. Despite his disheveled black hair and blood-spattered shirt, his manner was perfectly poised. He might have stepped into any of the city’s finer dinner clubs without remark. “It isn’t up to me, but it’s my opinion”—he held her gaze in a way that made her feel he was taking her seriously for the first time—“that if you wanted to study with us, we’d be lucky. The doctor’s no fool. A smart student is worth a thousand paying ones. Training females as doctors is very rare, but it has been done. There’s momentum—albeit small—to let women train separately in small colleges so that male doctors will no longer have to assist with childbirth. A half dozen students attend a fledgling women’s medical college started by the Quakers, though I must admit they aren’t taken very seriously by many in the profession. And I haven’t heard of any who got clinical training.”
“What about a woman learning alongside the men?” Molly asked. “Being taught more than just how to birth babies.” She swallowed hard. “Training to be an anatomist.”
James gave her an appraising stare. “It would be an unprecedented opportunity, but it seems to me you are a woman without precedent.”
He folded his napkin neatly and rose, plate untouched. “It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for the breakfast.” With a little bow toward Ava, then Molly, he left.
Ava pushed her own plate away. They sat in silence for several seconds.
“This is what you really want?” she asked softly. “To be a surgeon?”
“Yes,” Molly said.
And with that word, something woke inside her. Something wild and hungry and aching to be fed. She had not allowed herself to feel anything like it before.
At the orphanage, the nuns had told her the truth of this world for women. She would always belong to somebody: a man, a church, an idea. She might as well be a slice of bread, cut from the old loaf on the table in its dull cast-iron pan. There was nothing more special about her, nothing destined for anything higher than the fate of wheat ground in the mill, pressed into flour, and served up as sustenance for lips that would always need more.
But last night, she had forgotten all of that. Being in the operating theater had thrilled her in a way nothing else ever had. The human body was an invitation to learn what could never fully be known. An endless book she longed to read. And for once in her life, Molly Green wanted to be allowed to want.
“What about your work for me?” Ava asked.
“I’ll still do it. Every night but Sunday, just as I do now with Tom.” The thought of Tom sent heat rushing across her face, but there was no time for that now.
“It might be useful to me for you to know more about Dr. LaValle’s needs.” Ava frowned, considering.
“And I’d know more about the bodies too,” Molly said, eagerly catching hold of her aunt’s wavering and tugging at it like a dog with a bone. “Sometimes, we leave ones behind that aren’t up to your current standards, but if I knew how they died, I’d know if they might still be worth collecting.”
Ava cocked her head, her face lighting with the idea. “Now, there’s a thought . . . specific cause of death upon request. We’d charge extra, of course.”
“So you’ll talk to Dr. LaValle?”
Ava reached over the table and grabbed Molly’s hand. The grip was vise-tight. “As I’ve said before, everything has a cost. Even this. You must be ready to pay it.”
Molly swallowed. “What is it?”
“Dr. LaValle has a special engagement coming up. A lecture of sorts. It will demand a certain kind of body that is proving particularly difficult to procure. You get that for me, and I’ll allow you to study.” She shook her head. “It won’t be easy.”
“I’ll do it.” Molly didn’t hesitate. She’d handled the doctor’s monkeys. She could
handle whatever new hell he threw at her. “I’ll do whatever I need to be allowed in his classroom.”
If what James had said was true, this could be her one chance to ever become a surgeon.
“So we have a deal?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Ava stood. “There’s no class tomorrow, but if Dr. LaValle agrees, you may start on Tuesday when they resume.”
Molly’s whole body flushed with exhilaration, the hungry want unfurling itself to stretch like a great beast in her belly.
Stuffing the last of the bacon into her mouth, she hurried to the library, wishing that it weren’t Sunday. She couldn’t wait to see Tom and the look on his face when she told him her plans for a new life.
24
It’s a mistake.”
Tom did not look at her when he spoke.
She had worn her blue muslin dress again, the one from the night he’d said she looked like a lady. The night air was damp and brisk, sending a chill shivering down her spine. Pierre had not yet had time to make her a new coat, and she’d left Ma’s old one at home tonight so that Tom might better see her dress.
“It’s not,” she assured him, voice rising in excitement. “I can help people, Tom!”
She waited, eager for praise, for that smile to bloom across his face. It never came.
Her brow furrowed. She knew what he thought of the anatomy boys, but she’d never imagined he’d think it of her.
“I’ll still be here every night as I always am,” she said gently. “It won’t affect my work with you.”
He pulled the wagon to a stop in front of a small pub, wood sign swinging in the wind out front. The place was newer, located in a German immigrant suburb.
“It’s a mistake,” Tom said again.
She’d wanted him to kiss her.
She could admit that now.
For him to throw his arms around her and tell her again that she was wild and brave, and then she would ask him to do it. She had practiced saying it, over and over in front of her little hand mirror, in the bedroom that morning.
Now the words died on her lips, her face burning with shame. “How can you say that?”
He tied the wagon to a hitching post on the street, leaving her still sitting there. She jumped down after him, feet landing in an icy puddle of melted snow. The water seeped into the fine new boots Ava had bought her, staining the dyed blue leather. He did not offer to help.
“All this time you’ve been on about how much you hate the anatomy students for thinking they’re better,” Molly said, “but when I try to show them I’m just as good, you tell me I’m wrong to want more?”
“Wanting is just a game they let you play.” He gave a disgusted grunt and moved to the pub’s door alone.
Overhead, the sky was a festering wound, clotted with clouds. It had been like this for days, the weather refusing to turn one way or the other. The air around her felt heavy, like some giant holding its breath.
Tom’s broad back disappeared into the pub.
Two nights ago, the unknowableness of him had seemed alluring.
Now it infuriated her.
The door to the pub swung open, and a drunk stumbled out. Molly stepped inside. Dim, dusty light spilled over the drinkers. Even on a Monday night, the place was full. The smell of malt and bodies filled the tiny space.
These men were of the burgeoning middle class—craftsmen, not factory workers—and Molly felt their keen eyes land on her as she stepped inside. It would be difficult to take someone from here, she realized immediately. Even the barest foothold above poverty gave people the privilege to take care of their dead.
But Tom was already at the bar. A thin man with a balding head slammed two lagers down in front of him, the beer’s foam frothing over the glass mugs. Tom slapped a quarter on the counter in payment.
“I didn’t come here to drink with you,” Molly said angrily, sidling up beside him.
He thrust the beer at her. “It’s so we have a reason to be here. I’ve got a tip about this place from one of the lads.”
He meant, it seemed, to go on about their business as if nothing had happened between them. She would do the same.
“What is it?”
“There’s a man drinks here most nights,” Tom said. “Sits in a corner and gets so deep into his cups he passes out. The boy cleans peanut shells here for a penny. This fellow likes to tip him on occasion. The kid came through here not more than an hour ago, and when he reached for his tip, the fellow was dead.”
Molly blanched, looking around for the corpse. “And no one noticed?”
Tom shrugged. “Not yet, anyway.”
He said this so matter-of-factly, she shivered.
“Drink your beer,” he said. “There’s folks watching.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
But she lifted the glass anyway. Until two nights ago, she’d drunk nothing stronger than Communion wine. Da had liked a beer on occasion, and she’d certainly tried a sip, but she was not fond of the taste. Now she choked down the yeasty flavor, its malt-laced amber sliding with protest down her throat.
In front of her was a discarded newspaper, and she picked it up so that her hands would have something else to keep them occupied. On the front page was a blaring headline.
KNIFEMAN STRIKES AGAIN?
Molly leaned closer, pulse quickening. An artist’s drawing showed a woman’s headless body laid out on the banks of the Schuylkill. The woman’s left arm was also missing. The rest of the corpse, rendered in unflinching detail, looked much the same as the body she and Tom had discovered in the middle of the road. The skin had been cut away to reveal the organs and tissue beneath. Molly began to read.
In another gruesome discovery, police have recovered the unidentified body of a woman outside the Pennsylvania Almshouse—colloquially known as Old Blockley. The body marks the fifth such corpse discovered in as many weeks, and the police think the madman is far from satiated.
“Whoever he is, he likes his knife,” Police Chief Samuel G. Ruggles said. “My father was a butcher for thirty years, and I never saw him make cuts that fine. Our killer’s preference is for young women, and he takes particular care to remove parts of . . .”
“There he is.”
At the sound of Tom’s voice, Molly set the paper down, but not before she had noted the similarities. Mutilated and thrown in a river, just like Kitty. Her friend hadn’t been skinned like this body and the one in the road, but perhaps the killer had simply grown more bold. Honed his skills with each new murder.
There was no way of knowing if the Knifeman had removed the headless woman’s teeth, but there could no longer be any doubt about his skill with a knife. Molly thought of the loud and blundering manner in which the Tooth Fairy had chased them through his cemetery—not with a knife but a gun. And that first night, he’d shown no sign of a knife either. Only pliers. Molly flinched as she remembered the rough way he’d ripped the dead girl’s teeth from her mouth. It was hard to imagine those same coarse hands making the delicate cuts the paper described.
Reluctantly, she turned to see where Tom was pointing.
At a corner table sat a man, head hunched over his glass. “Are you sure?” Molly said. The patron looked ready to pick up his beer any minute.
“Corner table. Felt hat on his head,” Tom said. “That’s him.”
No one looked up as they made their way over, taking a seat across from the man. He was large, bigger than her da had been, and with a beer belly that unfolded in rolls beneath the table. His cheeks were stubbled with small dark flecks of beard, which looked like pencil shavings against the parchment of his skin.
Steadying herself, Molly reached out to touch him.
He was cold, his skin the familiar texture of rubber that she’d begun to know so well.
“How
the hell are we going to get him out of here?” Molly whispered. “He’s as big as a barn.”
Tom considered.
“Carry him,” he said finally. “The man’s a drunk. Nobody will think twice if he needs a little help on his way out.”
Molly snorted. “You’re insane.”
“You’re strong,” Tom said, meeting her eyes for the first time that night. “We can do it.”
She let the compliment slide off her. It was too little too late. She’d wanted his approval earlier, and not for something like this.
“You can be his—”
“I’m his daughter.” Molly had cut Tom off neatly. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, but a daughter would come looking for her father, no matter what.”
“What if these folks know his family?” Tom asked.
“There is no family,” Molly said with certainty, piecing the facts together. “Look at his clothes. The man’s shirt’s untucked, the collar’s dirty. They’re decent pants, but the button’s missing. An easy fix, but you’ve got to know how to thread a needle. No, he doesn’t have a woman in his life. At least not one that sees to him now. And these men haven’t paid him any mind all night.” She looked out at the crowded room, at the heads buried in their drinks. “Someone would have said hello to him by now if they really knew him, even if he was only a drunk. He’s just a face,” she said quietly. “Someone who might as well already be gone.”
Moving to the other side of the table, she slipped the dead man’s arm over her shoulder. Tom stood and slid between the wall and the body, working his way beneath the other arm. There was an uncomfortable second where she was sure the man had moved, but it was just the flesh settling, the dead weight of a body trying to find its way to the earth.
Squeezing her eyes tight, Molly threw back another bitter gulp of the beer, refusing to allow any thoughts of Kitty and her heavy, cold weight in the grave.
The Corpse Queen Page 17
