Mercy Me

by Tracy L. Ward

  “It’s true,” she said. “I’ve known about it since I was seven years old.”

  MacNeal shot an unnerved look to Walker, who grew even more stern as the seconds passed. “How…?”

  “I hold their hands. Skin to skin contact works best,” Mercy explained, matter-of-factly.

  MacNeal kept looking between Mercy and Walker. “How soon after…?”

  “As soon as possible,” Mercy said. “I’m not too particularly fond of decomposition.”

  Realizing the absurdity of his question and the wit used in Mercy’s answer, MacNeal smiled. “Goodness mercy,” he breathed, and then smiled again at the double entendre.

  “You lie.”

  Mercy looked to Walker and saw that he was even more disagreeable than he had been ten minutes prior, a condition she wouldn’t have believed possible were she not seated two feet from him.

  “It is not a lie,” she said. How many times had those exact words passed her lips in conversations as similar to these? A dozen such discussions flashed to the forefront of her mind, a vast majority of them with people who no longer saw fit to keep her in their acquaintance.

  “You lie to your clients about being able to contact their loved ones,” Walker pointed out.

  “Yes, but it’s not as if my true abilities are a marketable skill. I could never make a living reading the souls of the departed.”

  “Truly?” MacNeal appeared genuinely fascinated by her confession.

  “I’ve been able to use it here and there but”—Mercy shook her head—“it would never be enough to support myself and my daughter.” She looked to Walker and saw the doubt in his eyes. “You wanted to know how I knew about Maggie, the laundry basket, the pearls, the warehouse? It was in Louis Bolton’s touch.”

  “But Bolton wasn’t dead,” MacNeal pointed out.

  Mercy nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that,” she said, giving a quick glance to Walker, who still looked as if he held a lemon in his mouth. “I believe he was dying in the instant he touched me. I could feel his pain—”

  “Does that happen?” MacNeal asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  Mercy would rather not recall the handful of times in her life when the pain felt by the deceased was channelled through her. It could be excruciating, more so than what the living experienced because at least they had context. Due to the nature of Mercy’s intrusion, she was often thrust into the scenario without prior warning or warm-up. The pain could be so rich and full, it sometimes felt as if it would kill Mercy just for having experienced it.

  “My point is, Detective Walker, I know about Louis Bolton not because I know him personally, but because he grabbed for me and begged me for help. He kept saying Maggie, Maggie and… I saw what I saw.”

  The carriage remained quiet for some time. Walker studied her, perhaps trying to decipher her credibility, taking her current confession and overlaying it against what he already knew about her. Mercy knew he’d be difficult to convince if she could succeed in convincing him at all.

  “All right, Ms. Eaton,” Walker said. “Prove it.”

  She looked up, surprised. “Prove it?”

  Walker and MacNeal exchanged glances. After a moment, MacNeal nodded and flashed a wide smile at Mercy. Walker poked his head out of the carriage window to shout instructions to the driver. Mercy couldn’t contain her alarm as soon as she realized they were taking her to Duchess Street. They were taking her to her sister and brother-in-law’s funeral home.

  Chapter 16

  Jeremiah bounded from the carriage even before the conveyance had enough time to come to a complete stop. He had done well at containing his excitement at the thought of finally catching her elbow deep in her deceptions but now, with the funeral home merely steps away, he allowed himself to smile. His delight only deepened when he saw the look of desperation on her face as she leaned out the open door and saw where he had taken her.

  “Is this truly necessary?” she asked.

  “I believe so,” he answered, offering his hand to assist her down the iron step. “We shall end this charade once and for all.”

  She refused his hand, and clamoured down somewhat awkwardly, a look of annoyance pasted on her face, or was it fear?

  Once MacNeal stepped down from the carriage, Walker clapped his hands, rubbed them together gleefully, and went for the door. He ushered Ms. Eaton inside and removed his hat before crossing the threshold. The three of them were greeted by Mrs. Doyle, who had just then been making her way down the staircase to the foyer.

  “Good day, gentlemen.” Her pleasant greeting morphed into suspicion once her eyes met her sister. She was quick to lift her gaze to Walker and tried to mask her confusion. “To what do my husband and I owe this pleasure?”

  “They wish to test me—”

  Jeremiah cut off Mercy’s words with a sharp hissing noise. He lifted his finger to silence her, and raised his eyebrows in warning. “That will be all, Ms. Eaton.”

  “Ma’am, if you wouldn’t mind indulging my partner, Detective Walker. We’ve only just now learned of your sister’s abilities”—MacNeal searched about the circle of people for the correct words—“with the dead.”

  Mrs. Doyle’s face alighted with understanding. “Follow me then.” She turned on her heels and headed down a long hall toward the back of the building.

  The room she led them to was one both MacNeal and Walker were familiar with. Countless times they had transported bodies to this particular funeral home and interviewed grieving family members in the next room. Mr. Doyle had assisted them numerous times over the years by providing them with contact information of family members as well as plot locations where particular people had been buried. Jeremiah had been surprised when he learned the day before that the Doyles were related to Ms. Eaton.

  Three occupied stretchers took up much of the space in the room, forcing the party of four to fan out in different corners so they could all be accommodated. Along the far wall was a long counter, sink, and cupboards above. A prehistoric-looking embalming machine, with its sizable crank wheel and rubber hose, sat in the corner on a cart with large casters.

  From across the room, Jeremiah saw Mercy hovering nearer her sister, eyeing the corpse closest to them.

  “Not that one,” Jeremiah said. He turned to the one at his side, which also happened to be the one furthest from the door. “I would like you to read this one.” He emphasized the word read because it had been the one Ms. Eaton had used herself. It made little if any sense to him. One cannot read the dead like one would read a book. Information cannot be gleaned from humans in such a way, can it?

  He saw Ms. Eaton give a sideways glance to Mrs. Doyle. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t relay any information to your sister, Mrs. Doyle,” Jeremiah said. “We don’t want to spoil our little experiment.”

  “I haven’t said a word, Detective,” Mrs. Doyle answered, taking a step back and raising her hands as if to prove her innocence.

  MacNeal came promptly to the side of the stretcher and moved toward the feet. Mercy edged toward them slowly, her eyes burrowing into him unflinchingly as she made her way across the room. For a second he believed she was mad at him, perhaps angered by his insistence of testing her, but as she drew closer he could see she was merely meeting his challenge.

  With her hands folded in front of her, she stopped one pace short of the stretcher. “How would you like your little experiment to proceed?” she asked.

  The delusions ran deep, it seemed. Ms. Eaton had more than enough opportunities to confess her deception, in the carriage ride over, on the pavement outside and now in this room, and yet she stood there so self-assured and unwavering. Jeremiah found himself, even as he plotted her downfall, admiring her tenacity and spunk.

  When no immediate answer came from Jeremiah, Mercy looked to MacNeal, who was even less certain. “Well, I guess…” MacNeal’s words trailed off as his shoulders came up into a shrug. He looked to Jeremiah, who suddenly realized he had
been lost in his adoration.

  “You tell us,” Jeremiah said. “How is it you come by your information?” He gestured to the body in front of them, the woman they had found on Elm Street earlier that morning.

  “I don’t see how any information I get can be verified.”

  Jeremiah shook his head in annoyance.

  “Her family would have to be here to confirm anything I say.” She looked to Mrs. Doyle, who almost spoke but then stopped herself once her eyes met Jeremiah’s.

  “You let us worry about that,” he said. He nodded to the body and stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest in near triumph. It would be interesting to see how she would discover this woman’s information. There would be no body language to read, no leading questions answered. There hadn’t even been a single report published in the papers. Ms. Eaton was entering uncharted waters and was quickly running out of time and excuses.

  Jeremiah watched intently as Mercy pulled up on the sheet to reveal the dead woman’s hand.

  “That’s far enough,” Jeremiah said.

  Mercy pulled back the sheet only so far as the woman’s wrist. She paused for a moment, licked her lips and then brought her hands together as if to pray. Only she wasn’t going to pray; instead, she rubbed them together quickly, sending a swishing sound into the silence of the room. Jeremiah glanced to Mrs. Doyle at the door and found her looking on with interest and apprehension. When Jeremiah looked back to Mercy he saw that she had already taken up the dead woman’s hand and was holding it gently, as one would hold the hand of a dying loved one not yet departed.

  Mercy’s eyes were closed and her head bowed slightly. For a moment nothing happened, but thanks to the sunlight streaming in through a slit of a window, Jeremiah could see Mercy’s eyes tossing back and forth beneath her closed lids.

  A few seconds passed before Mercy let out a grunt. She doubled over slightly before crying out again. The noises she made sounded real, as if Ms. Eaton were actually being physically affected by the reading. Another scream escaped her before Mrs. Doyle pushed forward.

  “You have to stop her—”

  Jeremiah prevented Mrs. Doyle from going any closer to Mercy.

  “She can end it on her own,” he said, unsympathetically.

  “No, she can’t. Not when it’s like this.”

  Jeremiah had never heard Mrs. Doyle utter an unkind word but in that moment she looked prepared to rip him to pieces.

  “I think we should stop it,” MacNeal said, still at the dead woman’s feet.

  “Nothing is happening,” Jeremiah said, indicating the scene before them. “This is all Ms. Eaton’s own doing. Like her parlour tricks.” When he looked to her again he wasn’t so sure of his own words. Mercy was doubled over, using the stretcher to keep herself on her feet. If Mercy was an actress, she was a mighty fine one, to be sure.

  Mercy began to convulse. From the back of her throat sprang a gurgling sound, followed by a nearly inaudible hiss as if air were being sucked out of her. A trail of blood trickled down from her nose as her body became rigid. Then, as quickly as the episode began, her body collapsed, bouncing off the stretcher before hitting the floor.

  “Mercy!” Mrs. Doyle stepped forward but Jeremiah was quicker. He was at Mercy’s side before anyone else had moved and was pulling her up from the cold floor.

  She felt dead in his arms, limp and unresponsive. With his free hand he grabbed her chin and moved her face toward him and then touched her neck searching for a pulse. Mrs. Doyle stood back, both hands clasped over her gaping mouth.

  “She’s still breathing,” Jeremiah said. He motioned for MacNeal to come to the side.

  “Help me get her up off the floor. Mrs. Doyle, is there a room with a couch we may use?”

  Constance nodded and backed away as the two police officers gathered Mercy up. “Upstairs,” she said.

  Once standing, Jeremiah pulled her completely into his arms and walked her from the room. Mrs. Doyle grabbed Mercy’s hat and gloves from the counter at the door.

  “Both our parlours are staged for viewings,” Constance said as they neared the bottom of the stairs. “But we can take her to our private withdrawing room.”

  Jeremiah nodded, adjusted Mercy in his arms, and charged up the stairs behind Mrs. Doyle. They placed her gently on a floral print sofa, positioning a pillow behind her head.

  “What the hell was that?” MacNeal asked, leaning into the back of the sofa. His eyes refused to focus and Jeremiah could tell the young sergeant was unnerved by what had just happened downstairs. “Has anything like this happened before?” he asked sharply, looking after Mrs. Doyle, who tossed Ms. Eaton’s hat and gloves to a chair set against the wall and jogged from the room.

  Jeremiah could feel a lump forming in his throat as he looked to her, still out cold. Mrs. Doyle appeared with a damp cloth, knelt next to her sister’s head, and began wiping the blood from Ms. Eaton’s nose.

  “She didn’t hit her face,” MacNeal said, pointing out the obvious. “How can she receive a bloody nose when nothing came in contact with it?” He turned from his partner and Mrs. Doyle and ran both hands through his hair.

  “What happened just now?” Jeremiah asked quietly, from his kneeling position farther down the sofa.

  Mrs. Doyle shook her head but the words came slowly. “I’ve never seen… anything this bad.”

  Jeremiah watched as Mrs. Doyle cleaned up her sister’s face. It looked as if the bleeding had stopped, thank goodness. Then he realized he was still clutching Ms. Eaton’s hand at her stomach and promptly released it.

  “She feels it sometimes,” Mrs. Doyle said, pulling the bloodied cloth away. “Especially if the events are particularly traumatic.”

  Jeremiah closed his eyes and turned his face away, angry with himself for having placed her in such a predicament. How was he supposed to know the experiment would end as it had? He had been certain her assertions regarding her abilities were a complete fabrication, without even a hint of truth, or at least that is what he believed up until a few moments ago.

  “How does this happen?” MacNeal asked, still hovering on the other side of the sofa as if it were a means of protection from Mercy. “How can one touch a dead body and feel what they feel?”

  “She doesn’t just feel what they feel,” Mrs. Doyle corrected him. “She sees what they see. Tastes what they remember. It’s a gift she’s had since we were children.”

  “It’s my fault,” Jeremiah said suddenly.

  Mrs. Doyle met his gaze. “Yes, it is.”

  Her words were direct but Jeremiah knew he deserved nothing less. “She did not tell me any of that. Had I known—”

  “You would have behaved more like a gentleman?”

  Jeremiah turned his face away. “How was I supposed to know?” He could hear the bite in his words but he could not stop it.

  “You could believe people instead of subjecting them to such idiotic tests,” Mrs. Doyle suggested. “You could have asked me or my husband and we would be able to verify it all to you.”

  “I could not be sure you both wouldn’t lie on her behalf.”

  Mrs. Doyle nearly laughed at this. “I could see why you would fear such a reaction out of me but my husband bears no love for my sister and would have relished the chance to set things straight. He’d embarrass her thoroughly were that the truth of it. As it is, Detective, you’ve merely succeeded in embarrassing yourself in addition to knowingly placing my sister in harm’s way.”

  “Knowingly?” Jeremiah bristled at the suggestion.

  “Yes, knowingly!” Mrs. Doyle fought back tears as she spoke. “You knew that young woman down there met with a tragic end. That’s why you specifically requested Mercy read her. And you knowingly subjected my sister to the experience of it.”

  Jeremiah sat in silence. Everything Mrs. Doyle said was the truth. He knew the woman’s life had been cut short but had given no thought to the effects such a revelation would have on Ms. Eaton. He deserved all the adm
onishments she wished to give him, and more. “Should we summon a doctor?” he said suddenly.

  “Heaven’s no,” Ms. Eaton said from her reclining position. “Do you have any idea how much doctors charge for house calls nowadays?” She raised a hand to her forehead and tilted her head slightly so she could look at Mrs. Doyle. She smiled when her eyes focused on her sister. “Thank you, sister, for rising to my defence.”

  MacNeal and Jeremiah looked on in stunned silence as Mrs. Doyle waved a dismissive hand at her sister and gathered herself from the floor with the bloodied cloth in her hands.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Mercy! I wouldn’t have to come to your defence if you would do a better job of staying out of trouble.” Constance left the room to dispose of the cloth.

  “There is absolutely no fun in that and you know it,” Mercy called out after her. With her head still on the pillow, Mercy smiled to herself, but her jubilation faded when she met Jeremiah’s gaze.

  “This is all just sport to you,” he said sternly. He stood, turned his back to her, and paced to the window.

  “Certainly not,” she said quickly. “One must be allowed a little fun after the experience I’ve just had.” Mercy used the back of the sofa to pull herself up into a seated position. She paused momentarily and closed her eyes. “Excuse me,” she said, “the room won’t stop spinning.”

  “Did you hit your head?” MacNeal asked, deeming it safe to step closer. Jeremiah was quick to turn, eager to find out what ailed her.

  “No, I don’t think it’s that.” She looked up to MacNeal then. “May I trouble you to fetch me a glass of water?”

  The sergeant was quick to nod and promptly left the room. With the room to themselves, Jeremiah found it difficult to look at her. He felt his jaw tighten as he stood by the window. Had he just been tricked, as all her clients had been at one point or another?