Corpse & Crown Read online

  When she caught sight of her building, she said, “Thanks for walking me.”

  “Of course,” said Byram. “You never know when some ruthless maniac might jump out of the shadows.”

  She shot him a sideways glance. “And you would put your life on the line to protect me?”

  “Not my life, but I would certainly do my best to alert the constables in as expedient a manner as possible.”

  What was Byram playing at? Months of silence, and now this demented attempt at flirtation—or whatever it was. “Be still, my foolish heart.” They had reached the row of small terraced buildings where she and the other Ingold students had their rooms.

  “All joking aside, it really isn’t safe to walk on your own,” said Byram. “According to Wiggins, two bangtails were found with their skirts pulled up and their legs missing.”

  Aggie took this in. “Wiggins?”

  “The night porter. He was on duty when the constables found them.”

  “Byram,” said Will, in a chiding tone. “She doesn’t need the lurid details.”

  Byram ignored him. “One also lost an arm.”

  Will looked pained. “Byram.”

  “A very tidy amputation, according to the badges. There’s a thought the culprit was a medical student, or a doctor.”

  Irritated by his attempts at shocking her, Aggie found herself saying, “Or a garden variety pervert.” She had spoken without thinking, but something in her tone had struck a chord; Byram’s bad foot shot out from under him, and then, with a sharp huff of air, he was lying on the slick cobblestones as Will gave a shout of alarm.

  “Byram! Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly fine. Leave me alone, damn it. I can get up on my own.” He met Aggie’s eyes, and she was surprised to see a flash of real anger.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wishing that she had never agreed to let them walk her back.

  “Not your fault, unless you painted these cobblestones with grease,” he said easily as he got to his feet and brushed off his trousers.

  Will held out an arm. “Is your foot—?”

  “I said I was fine. I do not require an examination. Unless, of course, Aggie wants to undress me and check all my vital signs?”

  The nerve of him, flirting with her again, as though last semester’s interlude in the tunnels had never happened. “You had your chance with me,” she reminded him. “As I recall, you chased me like a dog running after a carriage—and then seemed at a complete loss when you actually caught me.”

  Byram looked discomfited and Will made a choking sound.

  “Sorry,” said Will. “Forgot how to swallow.”

  “Aggie,” said Byram, “about last year... I enjoyed spending time with you, but if you thought that meant something more—”

  “Then I’m five kinds of foolish,” Aggie said, relieved to see that they had reached her boardinghouse, which meant an end to this exquisitely awkward conversation. “Don’t worry, luv, I’ve got your number. You’ll never give your heart to any girl.”

  For some reason, this made Byram look even more uncomfortable. “If I could choose to give my heart,” he said with uncharacteristic seriousness, “I would give it to you, Ags.” Then he turned abruptly and began heading back toward the hospital. Will shot her a quick look of apology before hurrying off to accompany his friend.

  Well, that had been a masterpiece of awfulness, and now the pain in her ribs was a steady, throbbing ache. At this moment in time, a visit from some new Jack the Ripper might actually have been a blessing. At least, if something truly horrible happened to her, she wouldn’t have to face Byram tomorrow.

  Reaching into her apron pocket, she felt around for her skeleton key and fumbled it into the lock. An hour ago, she had been hungry, but now all she wanted was to lie down in bed and close her eyes for an hour or twelve. She opened the main door to the lobby and then walked as slowly as an old woman up the stairs to her room. The door opened with a creak, and there was a sharp squeak, a scuffle and then the muffled sound of laughter. The room was dark, but she could see furtive movements in the shadows.

  Stifling a curse, Aggie rested her forehead against the door for a moment. “Sorry, Lizzie, but you’ll have to relocate your anatomy lesson.”

  6

  There were whispers in the dark, the rustle of clothing and bedsheets, and then Lizzie adjusted the gas lamp on the wall. It cast the room in soft golden light, revealing two identical brass beds, two white-painted pine dressers and two small oval-backed chairs. The differences between the two living spaces lay in the decoration: Aggie’s side of the room boasted a white crocheted bedspread, a lace doily on her dresser and a decoupage knickknack box with shellacked images of various artists’ models admiring themselves in mirrors while they used Pear’s soap or Dr. Benton’s dentifrice. After a day of cleaning up bedpans and mopping up blood spatters, she liked a bit of order and prettiness about her, and since she couldn’t afford art, she selected the adverts that used the new European style, art nouveau, with its curved lines and jewel-like colors that made women look as mysterious as stained glass windows.

  On Lizzie’s side of the room, by contrast, there was an untidy jumble of textbooks, papers, wool stockings, hairpins and microscope lenses, and a chipped china cup overflowing with loose coins. In lieu of a bedspread, her bed was covered with a gray wool blanket purloined from the hospital—and by a strapping, six-foot-one male.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” said Aggie, putting her umbrella in the stand and untying her bonnet strings.

  Lizzie pinned up a piece of unruly chestnut hair, which promptly fell back down again. “Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?”

  “Maybe you should’ve hung something on the doorknob, so I knew we had a male visitor. That’s what the working girls do.”

  “Victor just stopped over for a few minutes on the way back to his room.” Lizzie’s cheeks were scarlet; Lizzie blushed more like a redhead than Aggie did. “And we weren’t doing what you seem to think we were doing.”

  Aggie hung her cape on a hook. “You mean hugging the bear? Playing bread and butter? Making faces?”

  “You’re disgusting. What does that last one even mean?”

  “Elizabeth was giving me a treatment,” said Victor, sounding thoroughly offended. “With the magnetometer.”

  “Fine, have it your way.” In all fairness, though, the wand-like device her roommate had invented to realign the body’s electromagnetic fields was sitting on its cradle, and she didn’t look as though she’d been tumbled—her wild mane of hair with its distinctive streak of white was more or less contained at the top of her head, all the tiny pearl buttons of her shirtwaist were still fastened, and her long skirt relatively unwrinkled. As the school’s only female medical student, Lizzie did not have to wear the standard uniform of lavender dress, long white apron and white cap. Her shirtwaist blouse and skirt were impossibly smart, made of much better fabric than Aggie could ever afford and expertly tailored.

  It was Victor who looked thoroughly disreputable. He was wearing neither jacket nor waistcoat, and his shirt was gaping at the neck, revealing a generous amount of masculine skin and the gleam of the brass plate fused to the flesh over his heart and the two electrodes at his neck that marked him as a Bio-Mechanical.

  “Far be it from me to give you a lecture on how to behave, Lizzie,” said Aggie as Victor searched for some missing article of clothing, “but you might want to treat Victor in one of the wards next time.”

  “I did suggest that,” said Victor, pulling his sleeve down over his left arm, which was grafted from another body and reinforced with brass implants.

  “The wards are too public,” said Lizzie. “We might as well just announce that Victor’s a Bio-Mechanical.” Lizzie pulled a cuff link out from beneath her pillow and handed it to him. “Here. We could come right out and explain that
you weren’t away for a year in a spa town in Germany, you were skulking about belowstairs and communicating in grunts. Of course, as a Bio-Mechanical, you would be a possession of the school with no legal rights, but hey, at least there would be no more secrets to keep.”

  Victor had been the school’s star pupil, back in its old location in Yorkshire, until he had discovered a stunning secret about the old Queen—which had led to his waking up to find himself completely paralyzed and staring up at the ceiling of an operating theater. Believing him dead, Grimbald, the school’s head of surgery, had turned his former protégé into a Bio-Mechanical. It had taken the faculty some convincing to accept that Victor was not just a mindless “corpse walker,” but in the end, Lizzie had convinced them to allow him back into the school. It was probably petty to think it, but Aggie was certain that a less well-born and well-connected student might not have been as welcome. There were always exceptions made for those with money and connections that were not available to the likes of Aggie.

  “You don’t need to worry so much,” said Victor, searching under the bed. “Ah, there it is.” He draped his crumpled cravat around his neck. “Grimbald’s in my corner now.”

  “You didn’t hear Moulsdale last night,” said Lizzie, placing the etheric magnetometer back in its case and closing the lid. “He promised the prime minister a Bio-Mechanical as advanced as the one the kaiser has supposedly got. That’s a hell of a rabbit to pull out of his hat in less than three months.”

  “I have to admit, that worried me, too,” said Aggie.

  Victor pulled his cravat into an even knot, then pulled it apart again. “Grimbald has a theory that the critical factor is the freshness of the body, but the unvarnished truth is, I was still alive when they transformed me. Accidentally, of course. I can’t see Grimbald agreeing to intentionally turn a living man into a monster.” Victor made another unsuccessful attempt to tie his cravat correctly. “Blast.”

  “Here,” said Lizzie, stepping in to help. “Let me do it.”

  “Sorry. When I’m tired, my left arm still operates a bit independently of my right.” Most Bio-Mechanicals had no personality or memories intact from their former lives. Victor had two sets of memories, and two distinct personalities: his own and those of Jack, the original owner of the left hand and arm which had been grafted onto Victor’s body. Jack’s memories, though, usually took a back seat.

  “There,” said Lizzie, finishing the knot and giving her fiancé’s cravat an approving look. “That should do.”

  Victor smiled down at her. “What would I do without you?”

  Ugh. Aggie unscrewed her flask and took a quick swallow of her mother’s sloe gin. There was nothing lonelier than standing in the force field of a couple’s mutual attraction. The same force that drew them together pushed others away, and it was difficult not to feel as though they were the romantic leads in some dramatic play while she was cast into a background supporting role—the comic relief, or a sympathetic ear so the heroine could talk about her conflicted emotions and difficult choices, or a convenient plot device.

  Best to aim for comic relief, then. Aggie took another swig of gin as Victor and Lizzie continued to argue about how monstrous he was or wasn’t in soft, intense voices. “All right, I’m calling time. Say good-night so I can get ready for bed.” Aggie replaced her flask in its hiding place. She hoped she sounded wry and halfway compassionate, when what she was really feeling was sorry for herself. The gin was burning a lovely path of numbness into her belly, but it was no substitute for having someone to hold her close and stroke her hair. You know where that leads, she reminded herself. That didn’t stop her from wanting it, though.

  “Sorry, Aggie,” said Victor. “We didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Then scoot so I can take off my damn corset.”

  Victor gave Lizzie a last, lingering look before opening the door a crack, glancing down the hall and then slipping out as Lizzie shut the door behind him. Turning to Aggie, she said, “You all right?”

  “Just tired and cranky.” Tired of keeping her own urges in check and cranky that Lizzie wouldn’t do the same, at least in their shared quarters. Suddenly she remembered something. “I can’t believe I forgot to mention it while Victor was here. I saw Henry Clerval when I was walking back.”

  “Are you sure?” Lizzie walked over to the window frame and tried to lift it.

  “Pretty sure. I thought he was expelled last year.”

  “Actually, I think he took a leave of absence. I’ll need to speak to Moulsdale about this. There’s no way we’re going to put up with allowing Victor’s would-be murderer back in the hospital.” Lizzie strained to lift the window again, but the wood was swollen from the radiator’s heat.

  “Here, you’re going to break it. Let me do it.” Aggie jiggled the frame and it gave way with a shower of small paint chips, letting in a gust of night air. She stood there for a moment, looking out at the other houses on the street. Jenny was out there in one of those buildings or one just like it. Poor girl.

  “Okay, so what’s really wrong?” Lizzie sat down beside her. “Spill.”

  Aggie waited until she had pulled her dress over her head before speaking. “My ribs hurt. Difficult patient.”

  “Do you want something for the pain? Willow bark tea?”

  “That’s all right. Just need to sleep.” The gin had done its work, and Aggie felt as though she were a spring finally beginning to uncoil. Unhooking her front-lacing corset, Aggie breathed a sigh of relief as her tummy expanded to its natural shape. Whatever fashion genius had decided that all women needed to have breasts like swans and waists like weasels deserved a special place in hell. “Can you turn out the light?”

  “Hang on, I just need to get my nightdress on and brush my hair.”

  Aggie closed her eyes and tried to sink into sleep, but vexing thoughts kept bobbing to the surface, keeping her awake. After a moment, she said, “Lizzie—there are other things that can happen, if you keep meeting Victor alone in the room.”

  “We’re not stupid, Ags.”

  “Everyone’s stupid when they’re in love. I just... I don’t want you throwing your career away.”

  “I don’t intend to. Look, I’m a medical student, remember? I know about biology. And I’m not going to—what was it you said? Make faces. At least, not without taking some precautions.”

  Aggie laughed, trying to conceal her surprise. “Well, well, well. So you’re taking precautions?”

  Lizzie’s blush was so fierce her face was glowing. “I said I would. If I needed to.”

  “Condoms? Vinegar-soaked sponges? Imagining Shiercliffe’s face at the critical moment? Some methods are more effective than others, you know.”

  Lizzie dimmed the lamp. “I thought you wanted to sleep. So sleep.”

  The truth was, for all her bawdy talk, Aggie had never actually discussed birth control with anyone. She knew about condoms and sponges from eavesdropping on her mother, who used to advise married women desperate not to get pregnant again. It would never have occurred to Aggie’s mother to tell an unmarried girl how to avoid getting pregnant.

  As she drifted off, she thought hazily about what it might be like to touch a boy who didn’t lose interest the moment the touching was over.

  “Aggie. Aggie. Aggie.”

  She opened her eyes with a start to see one of the laundresses leaning over her, her face pinched with worry. There was a shiny burn mark on the girl’s cheek, and Aggie struggled to recall her name. Clara. “Is it morning?” Her mouth felt dry.

  “No. It’s Jenny.” For a moment, this response made no sense, but then Aggie realized what Clara meant, even as she said the words: “She’s been hurt.”

  7

  There was a trick to staying out of trouble when you were passing through a troubled place, especially in the small hours of the morning, when the
streets were still shrouded in shadows and fog. Walk with a purpose, but not too brisk or it would look like someone was chasing you. Stay alert, but don’t tense your shoulders. Don’t smile when there’s nothing to smile at but don’t scowl, either. Above all, don’t second-guess yourself and look back the way you came. Do that, and you wouldn’t see what was coming at you until it was too late.

  The buxom redhead was doing just fine, watching her step in the muddy, cobbled street, remembering to glance up in time to avoid the costermonger’s rattling pushcart—no jellied eel for her today, ta very much, she’s got places to be. She carried her carpetbag like she had some muscle under that black wool cape, but her small, beribboned hat was a good twenty years out of date. From the hang of the cape, she also had a hidden pocket on the left side—probably sewed her valuables in, because London, the East End, hotbed of vice, can’t be too careful.

  Dodger put his boot up on a low wall so he could buff it with the sleeve of his jacket, watching out of the corner of his eye to see if Red would trip over the street urchins playing marbles on the stoop of the narrow wooden building, their hands and feet wrapped in rags to keep out the chill of the winter night. Most of London’s children would be abed at 3:00 a.m., but these lot were waifs and strays, and no one told them what to do.

  Red navigated the guttersnipes like a pro, flicking her skirts out of the way of a bright blue toe-breaker that went wide. Dodger nodded at the kinchin as he followed the redhead’s progress down the lane. Interesting—she didn’t bat an eye at the rancid wagtail leaning against a streetlamp, her haggard face ghastly under the flickering gaslight as she muttered sibyllic curses under her breath. Red might be lost, but she didn’t look lost, and that was half the battle won right there.