by Kaite Welsh
“How did you know she was his sister?” I asked hoarsely.
Fiona smiled, as though this was terribly funny. “You never noticed the resemblance? Strange, I spotted it straightaway. It’s the eyes. They’ve haunted me ever since. In any case, she told me. So proud, she was, boasting of her brother over at the university who would ensure I got what I deserved. She didn’t like me pointing out that he wasn’t at all proud of his whore of a younger sister.”
“Don’t call her that,” I snarled, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. “After everything you’ve done, how dare you call her that? Better a whore than a murderer.”
The slap took me by surprise, and I realized then just how strong Fiona was. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to overpower a slip of a thing like Lucy, malnourished as she was.
“As though you’re any better,” she sneered. I felt as though someone had emptied cold water down my back. “Oh, I know all about you, Sarah Gilchrist. I know exactly why you came to Edinburgh, why you were sent away. The gossip, the scandal, the asylum for rich young ladies who can’t be controlled. What other hospital would offer a job to a woman like that?
“I’d have thought you of all people would have noticed the laudanum, Sarah. You do seem to have developed quite a taste for it. Which makes my task so much easier . . .”
She picked up the bottle again and my blood ran cold. Fiona would not let me go now, not after I had learned every sordid little secret about her double life.
I hadn’t realized until now just how very much I wanted to live. Even without a medical career, even stranded in this city away from my family. I’d rather marry Miles Greene, if it meant getting out of this room alive. I was going to fight.
I had fought Paul Beresford. I’d scratched his face, and his friends had laughed about it afterward, but at the time he’d called me a vicious little bitch and ripped at the neckline of my gown and all my struggling had done me no good.
I was stronger now.
I opened my mouth to scream, but she lunged forward, forcing me to the operating bed. She fastened one wrist to the operating table with a thick leather strap but I managed to scratch her cheek with my free hand. She yanked my arm so hard I felt it come loose of its socket. When she let go of me and moved to the makeshift medicine cupboard I was almost relieved. The pain was excruciating.
She glanced at me. “It’s just enough to calm you down, Sarah. I have plans for you.” I stared dumbly, and she showed me another bottle. Opium. “I’m quite prepared to swear I saw you taking it from the store cupboard at the infirmary, when they finally find you. Your aunt won’t be surprised, will she? I know she thinks you’re no better than you ought to be. First sex, now opiates . . . she’ll wonder why she ever wasted her time with you. Even if you survive, I’ll make sure you have no chance of redemption. I won’t have a girl like you destroying everything I’ve done, all the women I’ve tried to help. You don’t deserve it, but then neither do I.”
My ankles were next, secured so tightly they hurt. I squirmed, trying to kick her, but every movement sent red-hot shards of pain shooting through my shoulder. I cried out, but she carried on talking as if we were having a pot of tea at the infirmary.
“And do men thank us? No, they spit at us in the street and turn from us when we come to ask for funding, when all we do is make their lives easier. We clear up their mess. The diseases, the pregnancies, the bruises, and the botched abortions—we sweep them away and then turn the girls back out onto the street for the next man to spill his seed into. I treat girls from their first dose of the clap at twelve to the final strains of syphilis at twenty-five, and then I move on to their daughters. Don’t look so shocked, Sarah—the men do the same. If you want something fresh and unsullied in this world, you’d better get them young. Innocence doesn’t last long, not in the streets and not in the drawing room. And this is the life you would choose?” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me this isn’t a release. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of this. I can make it swift, Sarah, and I can make it painless. That’s more than most people get.”
“It’s more than Lucy got,” I said through clenched teeth. “I saw the bruises, Fiona, I know she fought you.”
“Till the bitter end.” Fiona smiled sadly. “She had some spirit in her, that one. They all do, at the start. That’s what makes it so hard to watch. Every man takes a little more of a girl’s fight away—you should know that by now.”
I thought of Lucy. I thought of Ruby, bold as brass and twice as brazen, and imagined her at their age. The reformatory girls, ground down by endless penance for the smallest of sins. I thought of the part of me that died a little more with every one of Julia Latymer’s taunts or my aunt’s frowns. Paul had hurt me, given me a vile mockery of my own desires, left me dry-mouthed and shaking at every imagined threat. But no matter what my family said, he hadn’t ruined me.
“I won’t end up like Lucy,” I whispered softly. “And I won’t end up like you.”
Her hand cracked against my jaw and I felt the metallic tang of blood in my mouth. She pinched my nose roughly, and I found myself gasping for air.
“Lie still and take your medicine, like a good girl.”
The opium splashed onto my mouth and chin, and I choked, trying to spit it out. When she was quite sure I had failed, when the room began to shift and surge as though we were on board a storm-tossed ship, she forced the thick leather strap into my mouth.
It had been the favorite tool of the doctors in the sanatorium. Laudanum, chloroform, gags—why was so much of medicine devoted to shutting women up? I had been swallowing my screams for the best part of a year.
“My aunt—” I tried.
“Will think the worst of you, my dear. As everyone does. Do you think anyone you’ve blabbed to will take you seriously when you’re found slumped in an opium den?”
I thought of the foul-smelling den on Fleshmarket Close, and the shame it would bring on my family if I was found there. “Is there anyone in this wretched city who isn’t in your pay?” I asked bitterly.
“I’m the only one who’ll help them. I’ve saved Madame Lily’s clientele from the ignominy of overdosing in a slum, the customers of half the brothels in the city from more doses of the clap than you’ve had hot dinners, and that deviant McVeigh from the sack, the noose, or worse.”
“And Griselda Hartigan?” I asked, although I suspected the answer.
“Oh, Sarah. Where did you think Ruby’s girls came from? I told you they hadn’t lived blameless lives. Thanks to me, the troublesome ones do a midnight flit and she preserves her reputation as the rehabilitator of wayward girls.”
“While you line your pockets,” I spat. “You call yourself a doctor? You’re nothing but a procuress and a butcher!”
“Do you know what butchery looks like?” she asked quietly, her voice trembling with menace and an emotion I could not name. “Butchery looks like waking up in skirts soaked with your own blood and piss and paying half your week’s salary for the desperate hope that you might have spared the workhouse another illegitimate child.
“At least Lucy had a swift death. Who wouldn’t prefer that?” She smiled bitterly. “I know I would have.” She wiped a tear away angrily. “I got engaged only a few years after I finished my studies. We were so in love, but I didn’t want a child! I was working in a clinic in Leeds, and one of the nurses told me about a doctor who helped women in my predicament. I don’t think he’d been near a medical lecture in his life, but by the time I realized that I was half-unconscious. When I came to, I was bloody and sore, but I thought—at least it’s over. I didn’t have to give up my life, my career.” She shook her head angrily. “I’d picked up an infection. My fiancé accused me of taking a lover, but better that than he find out the truth and have me arrested. My family threw me out onto the streets, and if it hadn’t been for the kindness of some friends I might well have stayed there. I got away as quickly as I could and came here to start over again. But that man r
uined my life. I couldn’t let that happen to another girl, and so the first time someone came to me, begging me to help her . . . how could I turn her away?”
I hadn’t thought I could feel sorry for Fiona. The missionary zeal I so admired had soured, and the desperation I had only ever glimpsed beneath the surface was in full force. I had thought her uncaring, but it seemed as though I had been wrong about that as well. I couldn’t fault her for the choices she had made, but nothing justified what she had done to Lucy.
“I leased this room and, until August, everything worked perfectly. I was helping these women in a way I never could at the clinic, not without risking exposure. But one mistake and everything I worked for would have been stripped from me! How could that be fair? How could I let one stupid, greedy girl take away everything I had built here? The infirmary is only running because I can bring in the money to keep it open. If I weren’t here, the place would tumble to the ground. They need me, Sarah, you know that.”
“Then let me leave here, and I won’t say a word. I promise, Fiona. Let me help you. You’re tired. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I’ve been tired for years. But I’m thinking perfectly clearly, Sarah.” She sighed. “Sometimes I think I’m the only one who is.”
“I won’t tell a soul, Fiona, I swear,” I whispered hoarsely, trembling so hard my lips could barely form the words. “But why kill Miss Hartigan?”
“Your aunt saw to that,” she spat. “With her bloody money, there was no need for Hartigan to pay for her more troublesome charges to disappear. She was terrified that she’d be discovered, so when a rich benefactress came along, she was more than willing to sever ties. She even replaced me as their physician! Let that be a lesson, Sarah—every time you think life can’t possibly get more unfair, it does.”
She smiled suddenly and that echo of the woman I thought I knew was somehow more terrifying than her fury.
“You know, she thought you were there because of me. When she heard you were studying to be a doctor, she thought I’d sent you to blackmail her. She would have said something, eventually. And even with her gone, one of those wretched brats she kept half-starved would have said something. A pity, really, I made quite the profit from her and Ruby.” She shook her head sadly. “That stupid bitch. I should never have involved her in the first place. But she paid me such a good price for the morphine I delivered to keep her sluts docile, far more than it was worth. The clinic couldn’t have survived without it, what does it matter if the storeroom was a few bottles lighter than it should have been? And Lucy fetched a good price, as I recall. She paid for a new nurse.” She smiled bitterly. “Morphine and whores, Sarah. That’s what my precious infirmary is built on. Still feel virtuous?”
“Then let me help,” I begged. “Let me leave, and I’ll do what I can. I’ll make it a condition of my engagement if I have to, but we can keep the infirmary open without all this, I promise.”
She stroked my hair gently, and that one small kindness told me that nothing I said now would save me.
“I thought when you came along with your bleeding heart and your rich relatives that you might save us. I really did. But you’re dangerous, Sarah. You could ruin everything.”
There was a movement outside the door. Indicating threateningly that I was to keep silent, she edged toward the door before the wood splintered and a figure came crashing into the room.
From my vantage point what happened next was a blur. All I was aware of was the glint of a blade, the spurt of crimson blood against the wall, and the body of Fiona Leadbetter collapsing into the arms of Gregory Merchiston, and then everything went black.
CHAPTER FORTY
The smell of carbolic soap revived me better than any smelling salts, and as I regained consciousness for the second time that day, I opened my eyes to see Professor Merchiston on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor, frothy pink foam covering his large hands as he washed away Fiona Leadbetter’s blood. With consciousness came the tearing pain from my shoulder. I retched, but little came out besides bile. It was enough to draw Merchiston’s attention, however, and he looked up.
“Thank God,” he sighed heavily.
He sat on the bed next to me, the perfect image of the concerned physician, and unbuckled the straps around my wrists and ankles, massaging my wrists tenderly before taking my pulse. His fingers were cold and wet, but the human contact reassured me that this was no delirium.
“Your shoulder is dislocated—subclavicular anterior dislocation, to be precise. Fiona?”
I nodded.
“At least she kept the place stocked with drugs. Here,” he said, passing me a bottle of morphine.
I shrank back. “Not that. I’d rather have the pain. She tried to . . . I’d rather be conscious, if it’s all the same to you. I won’t scream,” I added dully. Now that my pulse was returning to normal, I realized how sore my throat was, how sore every part of me was. Fiona had prevailed in the end—I had no voice, no fight left.
“You’re a braver woman than I, Miss Gilchrist. I dislocated mine in the ring ten years ago and cried for my mother.” Moving his attention to my shoulder, he ran his hand over it lightly; I whimpered in pain. “This may hurt a little,” he said apologetically.
“Remember, I’m a medical student, Professor,” I said. “I know what that mea—Oh, dear sweet Christ! ”
It hurt a lot more than a little. I continued to curse like a navvy as Merchiston fashioned some muslin from the cupboard into a makeshift sling, biting back another scream as he eased my arm into it. I let out a ragged breath. It hurt like hell, but at least I could move.
We sat in silence for a moment as the events of the past hour caught up with me. I was so tired that when the tears came, I couldn’t have held them back if I had wanted to.
“She murdered Lucy,” I whispered.
“I never saw it,” he said, voice roughened with grief and lack of sleep. “Not until . . .”
“How did you realize I was here?” I asked blearily.
“McVeigh.” He sighed. “He wasn’t so bloody brave when I was interrogating him. By the time he’d told me where Fiona kept her room, you’d already left. I thought I was too late. Here, drink this. It might help with the pain.”
He handed me a flask and I gulped, only to choke as it burned my throat.
“Are you trying to poison me?” I spluttered. “What was that?”
“A Speyside single malt older than you are,” he grumbled. “Remind me not to waste good Scotch on you again.”
I tried to look suitably shamefaced, especially since the jumble of words he had responded with made it sound as though the noxious liquid had probably been expensive, but given that I felt like I had swallowed something out of the university chemistry labs, it probably wasn’t very convincing.
“I thought it might be good for shock,” he explained.
“Isn’t that brandy?”
“I was in a hurry!” he exploded. “Tillie Campbell had informed me that you, fool that you are, had gone off to the slums with a woman I’d just realized was a murderess. I’m sorry if I didn’t stop to choose something more appropriate!”
It was only a fraction of a second, but I saw his eyes dart to a corner of the room. I followed his gaze and stared uncomprehendingly at the object covered by a rough blanket, but when reality dawned on me, I began to scream. He pressed his fingers against my mouth in a desperate attempt to hush me, and I struggled as best I could, despite the hazy effects of the chloroform.
“It was self-defense,” he said, when I quieted enough for him to remove his hand. “I don’t know if you realize,” he said grimly, “but Dr. Leadbetter was bloody strong.” I noticed a deep scratch on his face, and that his torn shirt was sticking to him in damp red patches.
I felt my own bruises gingerly. “She was,” I conceded quietly. Was. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the body of the woman I had thought was my friend. I didn’t know what was harder to believe, that she had been decei
ving me all along, that she had been the one to kill Lucy—or that she was dead. Suddenly, my throat filled with acid vomit, and I emptied the paltry contents of my stomach all over the floor.
Merchiston handed me a relatively clean rag, and I wiped my face and dress as best I could. He was lost in thought.
“Lucy was blackmailing her.” I didn’t want to tell him, but there was nothing to be gained by keeping it a secret, and he deserved to know why his sister had died.
“She needed the money.” Merchiston sighed. “I gave her what I could, but my salary isn’t exactly . . .” He trailed off. “Perhaps if I’d been more generous, she wouldn’t have threatened Fiona. Christ, she should never have fallen into Ruby’s clutches in the first place but she was so bloody stubborn.”
“You did everything you could,” I told him, although I had no way of knowing whether it was true.
