The Woman in the Coffin

by Nathan Long

  Hope flooded Nellie’s heart. “Yes!” she said. “That’s exactly what Aurora needs! Where do we get one?”

  Lady Helia smiled and turned to her wall. “As it happens, I have one. The imago of Clodia Metelli, a notorious woman of ancient Rome who inspired both poetry and scandal.”

  She took a mask off the wall that appeared to be made of white plaster. It was cracked in places and missing part of the chin but still beautiful, with strong features and a calm expression.

  Nellie gasped at Lady Helia turned it fully toward her.

  It looked almost exactly like Aurora.

  10

  Murder at One Remove

  “I wish I could go with you,” said Lady Helia as she wrapped up the Roman imago in an old shawl. “But, as homey as I have endeavored to make it, this awful place is still a prison, and I still an inmate. Perhaps I can find someone to assist you. I will see what can be done.”

  “Thank you, m’lady. Yer most kind,” said Nellie, but then frowned. “Er, please be forgivin’ me for sayin’ so, but y’do not seem at all...er, mad.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” said Helia. “At least, I don’t believe I am. But I’m afraid my father thought rather differently when I told him I had a demon nesting behind my left eye.” She tapped her eyepatch. “Just there.”

  Nellie didn’t know where to look suddenly. It did sound a mad thing to say, though, if Malignita’s magic was real, who was to say demons weren’t as well?

  “Er, I see” was all she managed to say.

  “Ah, now I’ve made you uncomfortable. Forgive me.” Helia tied up the old shawl with a bit of ribbon from a notions box and handed it to Nellie. “There you are. If you can manage to get your Aurora to wear dear old Clodia Metelli, she will hopefully find herself free of the Doctor’s evil influence.”

  “Thank you, m’lady,” said Nellie, and ducked her head.

  “And do come back and tell me how it all comes out,” said Helia. “I... I do like to hear about things beyond this place.”

  “I will, m’lady. Thank you.”

  Nellie turned to the door, then back again. “Sorry, m’lady. May I ask one more thing?”

  “You may.”

  “What you said earlier. Are you really the one who writes the adventures of Ghost and Skull?”

  Helia laughed and hefted the manuscript she had set aside earlier. “The Affair of the Hungry Coffin, to be serialized in ten parts starting Thursday next, if I can sort out the damned ending by then.”

  “Oh, m’lady! I’ve read every one. They’re my favorites.”

  “How very gratifying to hear,” said Helia, bowing. “Thank you, my dear.”

  “And...” said Nellie, hesitant. “And are they real? Ghost and Skull, I mean.”

  “I’d be careful if I were you, O’Day. Keep saying things like that and you could find yourself in here with me.” Helia grinned, wide and wicked. “Only a madwoman would believe that an ectoplasmic Quaker amazon and a talking skull who defend Her Majesty’s Empire against occult menaces were real!”

  ***

  The difficulty now, thought Nellie as she again watched the Clarendon from across the street, was how to bring the Roman imago to Aurora when the police were watching both the hotel and the theatre. She’d be stopped on sight if she tried to go up the front steps, and even if she managed to sneak in through the servants’ entrance in the back, she’d likely be seen before she reached Malignita’s room. Could she perhaps dress as a maid? That was a possibility, though she wasn’t sure she could remember how to walk like a maid after all these years in trousers. Even then, could she enter Malignita’s room? Would he believe her if she said she was there to change the linen? She certainly couldn’t overwhelm him. He was as big as Sandoz the Strongman.

  Nor did she have much time. It was almost the hour when the hearse arrived to take Malignita and Aurora to the theatre. But maybe that was a better place to try, anyway. She knew the old place like the back of her hand. Of course, she’d be spotted there, too. What to do? What to do?

  A blot of black appearing from the Clarendon’s front doors drew her attention. It was Malignita, but not wheeling Aurora’s coffin. Instead, he was escorting a veiled woman down the steps. For a moment, Nellie thought it was Unwin’s widow, she who the doctor had had his way with the other evening, but then she knew it was Aurora. Even in a puff-sleeved and full-skirted dress, there was no mistaking her broad shoulders or acrobat’s strong, graceful walk.

  Nellie stared. What were they doing? The hearse would be there in moments, and yet Malignita was leading Aurora to a hansom cab. Was the night’s performance canceled? Had Malignita given his notice?

  The doctor handed Aurora up into the cab, but instead of getting in after her, he paid the driver, then stepped to a second cab and entered that one instead. What was going on? Where were they going?

  The cabs turned out into the street and then went opposite directions—Aurora’s east and Malignita’s west. With a yelp of excitement, Nellie ran across the street to the next cab on the stand and pointed after Aurora’s.

  “Hoy! Follow that cab!”

  The driver looked at her askance. “Are you good for it, Irish?”

  Nellie growled and pulled a pound note from her waistcoat pocket. A week’s rent! But just now, she couldn’t go home, anyway. She held it up to him. “There’s another for you at the other end of this if you keep her in sight.”

  He swiped it, then took up the reins. “Hold on to your hat, then, boy.”

  ***

  When Aurora’s cab finally stopped, it was on a quiet street in Bloomsbury, in front of a modest brick-faced townhouse. Nellie couldn’t imagine who might live here. It was certainly not the sort of place Sir George Childers, the last man on Malignita’s list, might live, so perhaps this wasn’t another assassination attempt.

  Or perhaps it was, for when Aurora stepped out of the cab, she had shed her respectable dress and was wearing instead her black acrobat’s outfit. And she didn’t go to the front door of the townhouse but to the gated walk between it and the next.

  “Oh, no!” moaned Nellie, and hopped out of her cab to go after her, clutching the bundled mask tight.

  “Hoy,” said the cabbie. “You promised me another pound.”

  Nellie grunted with impatience but turned around and held up a second pound. “So I did. Here you are, sir. And my thanks.”

  But as the driver reached down to take it, he paused, and only stared at her instead.

  “Go on,” said Nellie. “Take it. I must be off.”

  The cabbie grabbed her wrist. “Hang on a minute. Weren’t that the one they call the Sleeping Beauty, from the Alhambra? The one who never opens ’er eyes?”

  “Let me go!” barked Nellie.

  “Then that makes you the little ‘impersonator’ I read about in the papers. The one with designs on ’er. There’s a reward for catchin’ you, sunshine.”

  “Please,” gasped Nellie. “Just let me be. I can’t let her—”

  A woman’s scream came from the townhouse, and both Nellie and the cabbie looked toward it.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  Nellie responded by cracking him on the crown with her shillelagh, then darting for the walk as his grip loosed.

  Another scream greeted her as she ran along it, and she hurried for an open gate leading to a back garden. “Jonathan! Jonathan! Oh, what have you done to him?”

  Nellie charged through the gate and found herself in a neatly kept back garden, planted with herbs and flowers, with a wooden porch attached to the back of the house. The kitchen door was wide open, revealing a scene of horror.

  A woman in shirtwaist and pinafore was backed against the wainscoting as Aurora, holding a dripping stiletto, stood over the prostrate form of Professor Tomlinson. He was writhing and gasping on the floor, trying to stop the blood that gouted through his fingers from a wound in his neck. The kitchen floor was puddled with it.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t
come back?” Aurora was intoning. “Did you think my vengeance could be so easily deterred?”

  It was, of course, Malignita, speaking through Aurora, which should have somewhat reassured Nellie that, despite the evidence of her eyes, Aurora was not Tomlinson’s murderer, but it did little. Her heart was still sickened by the scene, and she was more determined than ever to free Aurora from her magical bondage. She crept toward the porch, shillelagh tucked under her left arm and fumbling with the ribbon that tied her precious bundle as Aurora spoke on.

  “None of you will escape me,” she said. “Do you hear me, Tomlinson? None of you!”

  At those words, Tomlinson’s struggles slowed and finally ceased. Seeing this, his wife uttered a heartbreaking wail and fled for the front of the house. Aurora did not note her exit, only turned toward the garden and sheathed her blade in her sleeve.

  Nellie ducked out of sight beside the kitchen door and freed the mask from the shawl at last. Silk cords were attached to each plaster cheek so it could be tied over the ears and around the head, but they were loose. How stupid she was. Had she tied them, it would have been easy—well, easier—to slip it over Aurora’s head. Now she didn’t know how she would do it at all. Still, she had to try.

  Aurora stepped out of the back door, again moving with her sleepwalker’s grace. With her left hand, Nellie grabbed her eyeless velvet mask and whipped it off. Aurora spun to face her, her closed eyes staring, her cheeks wet with tears.

  “You again,” she said. “This time you will die for meddling in my—”

  Nellie shoved the Roman imago at Aurora’s face like she was a clown hitting another clown in the face with a pie. The moment the mask touched Aurora’s skin, Malignita’s words cut off, and Nellie saw Aurora’s eyes flash open behind the plaster eye holes.

  But if Nellie thought that the mask would calm her, she was sadly mistaken. Instead, Aurora jerked back, a great howl of horror and anguish erupting from her throat.

  “The blood!” she shrieked. “The blood. What have I—”

  And then the mask fell off.

  11

  Innocence Lost

  Nellie bobbled the mask, dropping her shillelagh in the process, then caught it, only to feel Aurora’s strong hands clamping around her neck.

  “What trick is this?” Aurora growled, eyes closed again. “What have you got? Give it—”

  Choking and kicking as her windpipe closed, Nellie raised the mask again. Aurora twisted away and let go of Nellie’s neck with one hand to try to grab it, but Nellie pressed it home, and again, as soon as she did, Aurora’s eyes flew open and she released Nellie. And this time, instead of wailing in horror, she held the mask hard against her face.

  “I’m free!” she gasped. “How did you do this? What is this mask?”

  “I—” Everything Lady Skycourt had told her had gone completely out of Nellie’s head. “I don’t remember. All I know is it hides you from him. From Malignita.”

  “Incredible. I... I have my mind to myself. I can’t believe it.”

  “Here,” said Nellie. “Let me tie it on.”

  Aurora turned and bent at the knee, and Nellie tied it tight, with a double knot at the bow.

  “You are a wonder, angel,” Aurora said as she faced her again. “I never thought you would actually find a way.”

  “It...” Nellie looked toward Tomlinson, and then away again, ashamed. “It was him that helped me. He sent me to a lady who knew what to do. I only wish I’d found you sooner.”

  Aurora moaned and put a hand to her mask. “The things I have done. I cannot bear to think of them.”

  “It wasn’t you!” Nellie took her arm. “It was him!”

  “Was it? Could I not have been stronger? Could I not have fought—?”

  A voice came from the side of the house. “She went down the alley, guv. But be careful. She’s mean with that stick.”

  Nellie and Aurora edged back, staring at the garden gate.

  “The police,” said Nellie. “We better run.”

  “The back fence,” said Aurora. “Hurry.”

  Nellie followed her as she started across the garden, but slowed as she sized up the fence. It was higher than she could reach.

  “I don’t think I can—”

  “I’ll help you. Don’t worry.”

  Aurora leapt to the top of the fence as if she were a cat, then perched there and held down a hand. Nellie reached up and caught it, and before she knew it, she was being lifted up and over the fence and set down on the other side.

  “Faith! What strength!” she said.

  “Hush,” whispered Aurora, hopping down beside her. “Now—”

  She staggered and fell against Nellie, who caught her awkwardly and barely held her upright.

  “Aurora! What’s the matter? Is he—?”

  “No. I... I am just unused to being in command of my own self. It is like a yoke has been lifted from my shoulders. I am just...dizzy from it.”

  Through the fence Nellie heard men coming into the back garden. She put a finger to her lips and led Aurora down the lane.

  “Come on. Come home with me. You can rest—”

  “No, no! We must find Malignita!”

  “But you don’t want to get near him. He could—”

  “Can I wear this mask for the rest of my life? No. If I want to be free, I must...end this.” She hung her head. “Another murder, I know, but—”

  “No,” said Nellie. “Not another. You ain’t killed no one yet.”

  Aurora looked at her for a long moment through the eyeholes of the mask, then flung her arms around Nellie and held her tight. The warm, firm press of her curves was like an electric shock, and when she let go, Nellie’s knees buckled a bit.

  “Come,” said Aurora. “We must get to Belgravia as fast as we may. That is where his last victim lives.”

  Nellie tottered after her like she’d had one glass too many. Her blood was fizzing like champagne.

  ***

  “So, it was all malarkey?” Nellie asked a while later, as they hurried through a shadowed mews. “What Malignita said? About you being his niece and catching a tropical disease and never waking up again?”

  “I do not know this word malarkey,” said Aurora. “But if you mean was it lies, yes. All of it. He found me in Budapest. My family and I are circus people there, tumblers. We performed in the squares and parks. Last summer, we noticed a large Englishman coming all the time to see us—to see me.”

  They crossed a busy street into another alley.

  Aurora continued. “I was afraid of him, how he looked at me, but my father liked how much money he put in our case, so he told me to bear it, and he would protect me.”

  She shivered. “Sometimes, the man would come with another man, older, and very stooped and sick-looking, and sometimes with a wealthy Austrian lady. I would see them whispering to each other as they watched me.”

  “Then, one night after our evening show, my mother sent my brother and me to the tavern, as she often did, to get wine for dinner. We always took a shortcut through an alley, but this time, a carriage blocked the way. We waited for it to pass. Instead, Malignita stepped out with the stooped man. He looked at me with eyes like blue marbles and said a word, and suddenly I was frozen. I could see, feel, and hear but not move. Even speech was taken from me. I could not scream.”

  “My brother charged the man, shouting, but Malignita struck him down with his cane, then reached for me. As I fought to move even a finger, he and the stooped man put me in the carriage and drove off. I haven’t seen my brother since that moment. Nor any of my family. I... I don’t even know if they still live.”

  “The brute,” Nellie snarled. “The kidnapper.”

  The crossed a street and walked along the wrought-iron fence of a park. Aurora’s eyes were lost in the past.

  “The carriage didn’t stop until morning, and only so we might change to another. This kept on until we reached Vienna. That... That was when the true horror beg
an.”

  Nellie looked at her, fear tightening her throat. “Did he... Did he...”

  “He... He wished to; I’m sure of it.” Aurora flushed. “He would have me rehearse undressed, and follow my every move with his horrible eyes, licking his lips, but he did not touch me. Not like that. I think perhaps he feared I would kill myself, like the girl Ruth.”

  “Y-You know about her?” asked Nellie.

  Aurora nodded, then shivered. “Sometimes, I could see his memories when he was in my mind, though less and less as he became more skilled at using me. And that was what we were in Vienna to do. The stooped man, he tutored Malignita to move my limbs, to see through my eyes, then through my mind with my eyes closed, then practicing to keep me under his power at greater and greater distances. And when his schooling was done, mine began. He rehearsed me in our stage act, but not just that. He taught me to climb walls, force windows, use a knife, a garrote, poison. For the entertainment of the stooped man and his circle, and to prove his absolute power over me, he made me fight other sleepwalkers. Slaves of his friends. I beat them mercilessly—men, women, girls.”

  Her voice shook. “I tried to stop. Tried to spare them. I couldn’t. I couldn’t!”

  Nellie balled her fists. Her head was as hot as a poker. “I’ll kill him! Him and the rest of his dirty crew! I’ll stave their heads in! I’ll—”

  “No, angel!” Aurora stopped and faced her. There were tears in her eyes. “You mustn’t! You—”

  “You think I couldn’t do it?” Nellie drew herself up. “For you I’d—”

  “I know you would.” Aurora took her hand. “But I don’t want you to. You have not crossed that terrible threshold as I have, and I pray you never will. The weight of it never leaves your heart. Never.”

  “Well...” said Nellie. She stuck out her chin. “Well...you won’t stop me from fighting him! Not if he’s hurting you. I won’t stand for it. I won’t!”