The Wages of Sin

by Kaite Welsh

  I pressed my fingers against the cool skin of Miss Hartigan’s wrist. There was no pulse, nor from her pallor did I really expect to find one. There was a horrible bluish tinge to her complexion, and a dark trickle of dried blood crusted her nostril.

  “Someone should call the police,” I said grimly.

  “Someone already has,” Aunt Emily informed me. “One of the girls has been dispatched to find a grown-up and a policeman in that order. Until then, we shall simply wait until they arrive.” She paused. “I don’t suppose you can . . . do anything, can you?”

  “I’m a first-year medical student, Aunt Emily. We don’t study resurrection until our final year.”

  “Well there’s no cause for blasphemy.” She sniffed. “I wonder if we can get a cup of tea. Do let me know if you see any of the girls loitering, Sarah. I’m absolutely parched.”

  I gazed at her in amazement. She could fall into a swoon if you used the wrong knife at dinner, but here she was standing over a corpse, ordering a pot of tea as though she were at home in the parlor.

  I leaned against the wall, feeling suddenly dizzy. My heart pounded, my palms were clammy, and I stared at the second suspicious death to cross my path. Was this how Lucy had looked when she died? Or was her body bundled off to the morgue while she was still warm? But Lucy had been frail and malnourished, and Griselda Hartigan wasn’t tall but she was well built. Subduing her would have been no easy task, and I realized for the first time that the room was in a state of disarray. The inkwell had been turned over, dripping a dark pool onto the floor, the desk drawers had been left hanging open, and the lamp was crooked, as though it had been knocked in a struggle. She had fought back, and hard. I looked down at the woman at my feet. I hadn’t particularly liked her in life, but I had to admire her courage.

  The clatter of feet made me turn. Miss Hartigan’s deputy, Miss Dawson, hovered in the corridor, wringing her hands anxiously.

  “Is it true?” she asked tremulously. “That Miss Hartigan is . . . is . . . indisposed?”

  “She’s a little more than that,” Aunt Emily said.

  The local constabulary were nothing if not prompt, and by the time Aunt Emily and I had soothed Miss Dawson’s paroxysms of hysteria and shooed away half a dozen morbid girls, the girl puffed up to us, seemingly recovered from her shock, announcing that “the police is here, ma’am.”

  “It’s Sergeant Lester, who came when Kitty Ross tried to set fire to the schoolroom,” another girl announced breathlessly. Clearly looking after a houseful of mob-capped delinquents had its fair share of problems.

  Sergeant Lester and Miss Dawson were clearly acquainted, although quite how closely her blush only allowed me to speculate. He reassured us that his medical man was coming, clearly discomfited at Aunt Emily’s unflappable demeanor and my medical knowledge. Once he had asked the requisite questions, we stood in awkward silence. It was clear that he couldn’t wait to be away from us, in less intimidating company. A gang of thieves, perhaps, or a nice murderer.

  “He’ll be here in a moment,” he said, as much to reassure himself as us. “He’ll only want to ask a few questions and then he’ll take care of . . . ah, here he is now.”

  As the policeman struggled to find a word for corpse that would be suitable for ladies, his medical examiner arrived.

  “Don’t move anything, Lester, I’ll need to examine the body in situ. Ladies, thank you for waiting, I’m sure this must have been a terrible . . .” He trailed off, staring at me. “Shock.”

  “Aunt Emily”—I sighed—“this is Professor Merchiston. He lectures at the university. Professor, Mrs. Hugh Fitzherbert, my guardian.”

  He bowed deeply, but I caught something glinting darkly in his eyes.

  “Mrs. Fitzherbert, it’s a pleasure. I’m sorry that we’re meeting under such unfortunate circumstances.”

  It was unnerving. I had seen Merchiston drunk, stern, stripped naked to the waist, and cold with fury. I had never seen him charming.

  “Professor,” she said coolly, inclining her head in acknowledgment. “I had no idea that the University of Edinburgh selected their tutors from the local constabulary.” Her tone implied that the city’s policemen were little better than the criminals they caught.

  “This is a charitable effort on Professor Merchiston’s part.”

  He raised his eyebrows as I interjected. I had no idea which one of us was more surprised at the speed with which I rushed to his defense. “Many of the faculty engage in philanthropic efforts as well as their teaching and research.”

  “Quite so,” he agreed smoothly. “Much like Miss Gilchrist here likes to involve herself in all manner of good causes. Quite the angel of mercy, your niece.”

  I watched with trepidation as he knelt down next to Miss Hartigan’s body with an unreadable expression on his face.

  “Ladies,” he said finally, “I don’t want to keep you longer than necessary at such an upsetting scene.” He’d be lucky, I thought. Aunt Emily would be dining out on this for weeks, she wasn’t going to miss a second of potential gossip. “Is the body exactly as you found it?” He glared at me. “No extracurricular examinations, Miss Gilchrist?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied sweetly. “But since you asked, might I be of some assistance, Professor?” Despite his protestations, I had not entirely dismissed the possibility of Merchiston as a killer. I wasn’t letting him have unfettered access to yet another murder victim, if I could possibly avoid it, no matter how much it offended Aunt Emily’s sense of propriety.

  “I hardly think . . .” she choked out.

  “What an excellent idea, Miss Gilchrist,” he replied. I gazed at him in dumb wonderment. His smile did not reach his eyes, but it did show plenty of teeth. I gulped. “Do forgive me, Mrs. Fitzherbert, but I would find your niece’s excellent observation skills most useful if you can possibly spare her. Provided,” he added through gritted teeth, “that she keeps her imagination in check.”

  “Well,” Aunt Emily fluttered, caught between respectability and morbid curiosity. “If you’re sure she can be of use . . .” She allowed herself to be led away by Sergeant Lester, glancing over her shoulder at me with a mixture of apprehension and envy. I had never guessed that beneath the prim propriety lurked a woman with a taste for death.

  Merchiston ran a hand through already unruly hair and stared at me.

  “Why is it, Miss Gilchrist, that whenever there is a hint of trouble lately, I seem to find you at the center of it?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” I replied frostily.

  He took a step toward me, and I found myself inching backward instinctively. No. I would hold my ground against this man, no matter what I thought him capable of.

  “Don’t play the proper young lady with me, Gilchrist. First, I find you wandering the slums entirely unchaperoned. Then you accuse me of murder. And if that wasn’t enough, I am called to the scene of a crime only to find you standing calmly over a dead body, drinking tea!”

  “My aunt and I were visiting Miss Hartigan,” I said coldly.

  “Well, I’m afraid she isn’t receiving callers at present.”

  “You callous, unfeeling bastard,” I whispered. “Does a woman’s life really mean so little to you?”

  His eyes darkened. “I can assure you, madam, that it means a great deal to me. And at least I am here on official police business rather than skulking around playing lady detective.”

  “Miss Hartigan should be grateful that you show such an interest,” I snarled. “It’s more than Lucy ever got. Or perhaps your interest waned and you needed to dispose of her.”

  Had I been a man, I think that Gregory Merchiston would have hit me. His whole body shuddered with an emotion I could not identify.

  “One more word out of you, Gilchrist,” he said in a low voice. “One more word, and I swear I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

  “You never are, are you?” I said quietly. “Men like you. You hide b
ehind your position, your title, claiming morality. And then if you go too far . . . well then, it was her fault. She tempted you. She asked for it. And you walk away blameless while her life is in ruins.”

  His eyes softened with understanding. I looked away. I could live with his anger, his self-righteous fury, but I couldn’t bear to see his pity.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “For goading you and for . . . well. No woman deserves to go through what you have. And no man should ever escape justice because he has a spotless reputation and a position in society.”

  “What about Lucy?” I asked. I was shaking, I realized, and I didn’t know if it was from fear, the unwanted memories, or his closeness. He was unnerving in anger but his sympathy was positively terrifying. How did he know so much about me? Gossip was one thing, but how could he know the truth?

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  I wanted to believe him, I realized. More than anything, in this moment I wanted Merchiston to be innocent.

  “But you knew her. What was she to you? Your mistress, or just another whore you bought for your pleasure?”

  “Don’t you dare call Lucy a whore!” His spittle hit my face. I didn’t move, not even to wipe it off. I wouldn’t budge an inch until I got my answer.

  “Then tell me what she was,” I insisted.

  He ran his hand over his stubbled jaw, looking tired and defeated.

  “Lucy is . . .” His voice broke. “She was my sister.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  My father died when Lucy was just wean,” he explained, his voice raw. “She was an accident; they thought my mother was long past childbearing age and my father wasn’t in the best of health. He worked in the cotton mills, and they had sent stronger men than him to an early grave. I was in Glasgow by then, trying to carve out a life for myself. Really, I was just living by my wits and my fists, but I got by, and some months I even had enough money to send home. But after my father died, I knew Ma couldn’t handle things by herself, not with Lucy to look after. So I moved back home, became the man of the house. I had some brains and my father was well loved by our neighbors, so when I was looking for work, the village doctor took me on as an apprentice. He was an old sawbones, but he cared about his patients and he taught me well. He was the one who encouraged me to go to university, even lent me some money to get me started.

  “Lucy was in school by that point, and Ma was taking in some extra sewing work. I wish I could say I came home every chance I got, but that wouldn’t be true. Some weeks I didn’t even write. I was lost in my studies, in the freedom I’d tasted once before and then sacrificed. I tell you something, if you think the young men at the medical school are bad now, you’d have had a shock if you’d seen us.” He shook his head ruefully. “I wasn’t as wild as some of the others—perhaps if I hadn’t met Isobel when I did, I might have sown a few more wild oats. But we were married as soon as I graduated, and then Theodore came along soon afterward.” He shot me a sidelong glance, and I understood that his son’s arrival had been something less than the nine months one would have reasonably expected. So he had retained some of his former ways, then.

  “I stayed in Edinburgh, doing a little teaching of my own but mostly building up a small private practice in Newington. I was a long way from the country bumpkin that came up to Glasgow at nineteen, and further still from the rough bastard who left it. I was so pleased with myself, with my shiny silver pocket watch and my long list of patients. I had a beautiful wife, a bonny boy, and money in the bank. I still sent some of it home every month, but it never occurred to me that they might have needed more than money until Lucy showed up on my doorstep one night, soaked to the skin. It turned out that this wasn’t the first time she’d run away from home—she’d been living with her schoolmaster for six months, but when she told him she was pregnant, he turned her out onto the streets and went back to his wife. She was fourteen.” He led her outside to the coroner’s carriage. “She wanted me to take her in and do something about it, and damn near smashed up the parlor when I refused. But she was malnourished and she’d walked for miles and hitched the rest, paying her way God knows how. A few days later and the problem took care of itself.”

  I covered his hand in mine. The coroner’s carriage bounced over the cobbles, and I tried to block out the thuds as the body of Griselda Hartigan was jolted from side to side. Merchiston was so lost in his memories that I doubted he even noticed.

  “Our mother wanted her to start at the mill, but she refused. She wanted to live with me and move in society—she didn’t realize that a doctor was little better than a tradesman in the eyes of the gentry. Isobel had the idea of sending her into service, but she didn’t make it through the year. I tried her as a nurse in the hospital, but there was easy access to alcohol and opium and more than a few young men, and eventually she lost that job as well.

  “Then cholera ripped through the city, and I had my hands full. There was barely time to see my family, let alone a sister who wanted nothing to do with me. I didn’t even notice Isobel’s symptoms until it was too late and by that time . . . William didn’t have a chance. There’s a saying, isn’t there, that cobblers’ wives always go barefoot and doctors’ wives die young? Perhaps if I hadn’t been so obsessed with bolstering my own reputation, singlehandedly saving the poor and downtrodden of Edinburgh, I might have been able to save them.”

  I shook my head. “How could you? So little was known about cholera—so little still is—you couldn’t have done anything.”

  “Tell that to Lucy,” he said quietly.

  “It seemed best to send her to school, but she was so wayward . . . Hartigan’s prison is the only place that would take her. She ran away almost a year ago.”

  “And ended up in Ruby’s employ,” I finished.

  “She’s not the only one,” he said. “I recognized a few of the girls when I called on Lucy. I assumed they’d run away together, but then another girl arrived a month later . . .”

  “Is that where Ruby’s recruiting them from?” I asked, shocked. “You mean Miss Hartigan had some sort of . . . of . . . trade?”

  “In girls no one would miss,” he said in a leaden tone. “Before she ran away, I hadn’t visited Lucy in two months. I’d been in London, presenting a paper, and then a few weeks in the Highlands on a walking tour. Lucy could be difficult; she was never going to be one of the reformatory’s successes. Perhaps Miss Hartigan thought it was the lesser of two evils—remove a troublemaker and say she ran away of her own accord. And I believed her, until my own bloody sister showed up in the cells for offering what they politely term criminal conversations before Ruby bailed her out.”

  “But why would Lucy stay there? Once you returned to Edinburgh, once you found her—why not just come home?”

  “Ruby kept her girls well medicated.” He grimaced. “Gin, laudanum . . . God knows where she was getting it from, she had an entire chemist’s worth last time I checked. Addicts, every one of them, and she’s their chief supplier.”

  I frowned. “So that’s why you went to the opium den? To find out where Ruby was getting it from?”

  He sighed. “Madame Lily told me about that. Is there anywhere you haven’t followed me, Miss Gilchrist?”

  Remembering the bare-knuckle fight I had witnessed, I blushed to the roots of my hair.

  “Randall was making some inquiries on my behalf,” he continued. “He was the only one who knew about Lucy—bad enough I don’t come from a distinguished family like my colleagues, having a prostitute for a sister would have finished my career. I asked him not to tell Elisabeth.” He swallowed. “I was too ashamed. I know what people say about me. The Scotch verdict. The murderer who escaped with his life and whatever shabby reputation he had. I barely got this position, do you think I could find another if they found out that Lucy was . . . ?”

  “The police employ you, knowing about your past,” I said curiously. “Why do they do that?”

  He looked almost embarrassed.
“I have certain . . . contacts. They knew of my methods. Let’s just say that doctors with deductive training will always be in demand.” My interest was piqued, but after the day’s revelations, I felt he deserved to keep some secrets. “I didn’t do it,” he said, and I found that I believed him. “They couldn’t prove it was me, but they couldn’t prove it wasn’t either, and so they left me hanging metaphorically rather than literally. For which I suppose I should count myself lucky.” He didn’t sound as though he did.

  “With your detective work, I’m surprised you couldn’t clear your own name,” I said with an attempt at levity.

  “I had my reasons,” he said quietly. “Maybe I’ll tell you about them one day. For now, can we stick to the murder in front of us?”

  We lapsed into silence, and he drummed his fingers on the leather upholstery, lost in thought.

  “Miss Hartigan was suffocated by someone who wanted it to look like a burglary,” he said slowly. “Early this morning, by the looks of it. But why not in the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep? Did she have a caller?”

  “They could have been looking for money,” I suggested. “Or perhaps it was a relative of one of the girls. It could even have been one of them.”

  “It was an adult,” he said thoughtfully. “An adult, but not a man. Someone her height, and if the scratch beneath her ear was anything to go by, a woman.”

  “Rather detailed for someone who hasn’t had a chance to examine her properly yet.”

  He shrugged. “I had a good teacher.”

  A thought occurred to me. “One of the girls knew Lucy, and she mentioned Ruby. You don’t think . . .”

  Before I could finish he was on his feet, banging the carriage roof with his fist.

  “Driver! Mackenzie’s Wynd, as fast as you can!”

  The carriage swung into the Grassmarket and pulled up outside the wynd where Ruby’s brothel was located.

  Merchiston turned to me. “Don’t even think about getting out. You’ve spent more than enough time in pits like that. In any case, the dean frowns upon professors taking their male students into dens of iniquity—I dread to think what he’d say if he knew I was accompanying a woman.”