None of which even started to answer the question of why.
“Chloroform is tricky stuff,” the doctor continued pointedly. “Hard to administer without killing your patient by way of overdose or having him wake up in the middle of surgery. The dosage is precise and you’ve got to do it continuously. There’s little margin for error.”
“You’re saying the murderer is a medical man.”
“I’m saying he certainly must have trained as one.”
Lily’s thoughts flew back to Hartwell, to Evangeline Ash’s warning—if it had indeed been a warning, and not just a wild coincidence made greater by an overabundance of champagne and the tension of sharing a room with her half-brother.
Dr. Gardner’s revelation did nothing to point to Hartwell as the killer any more than it indicated every other doctor in London.
The revelation narrowed their scope to perhaps a thousand or so possible suspects . . . including Dr. Gardner himself.
It wasn’t enough.
She leaned forward, getting as close to Strangford as she could without falling into the hole in the ground.
“There must be something more. Something else you can tell us about the man in the room with her. Please, Strangford.”
He looked pale and his breath was labored like a man in the midst of a sprint.
“She doesn’t deserve it,” he rasped.
“Of course she didn’t. But we must know more if we’re going to find the man who did this to her,” Lily urged.
“The power,” Strangford ground out in retort. “She doesn’t deserve it.”
Lily’s pulse quickened. Her fingers clenched against the loose earth at the edge of the grave. Strangford wasn’t sensing Sylvia Durst anymore. He was connecting with the thoughts of the last man who’d touched her, the monster who had taken her life. Their imprint was marked into the dead woman’s flesh just as Lily’s memories had lingered in the cold tin of her powder compact.
“Just a fat, stupid housewife. Someone better . . . stronger . . . could do more with it. Great things . . . sweet Christ,” he swore, his voice shaking. “The rot. The stinking rot.”
“Miss Albright,” Dr. Gardner began. Lily cut him off before he could say what she knew was coming.
“You must keep going,” she ordered Strangford. “You’re so close.”
She felt it then—a sharp tug on her skirts. Lily grabbed at them and pulled back absentmindedly, assuming she must have snagged them on some rotten old branch.
The branch yanked back.
She whirled, looking down to see the flat black eyes of a rat staring up at her, her garment caught in its teeth.
It released the fabric and hissed, a sharp and urgent sound.
Then it dashed away into the grass.
One of the blighters tugs at your leg, make scarce.
A warning.
She whirled to face the doctor.
“Hide!” she hissed.
He read the urgency on her face and glanced to the grave.
“Go! I’ll get him,” she ordered.
The doctor’s massive frame disappeared behind an obelisk, lost in the shadows.
“Strangford!” she whispered. “Come!”
“Feel them digging. Under the skin. Too blasted cold,” he muttered in reply. He shuddered, the movement coming from deep in his core.
He couldn’t hear her—or if he could, he was incapable of responding.
Behind her, she heard the crunch of boots on gravel.
Should she try to pull him out?
A flicker of light appeared between the tangled branches, moving along the path.
They were out of time.
Lily whipped off her cloak. She tossed the dark spread of fabric over the grave, covering it and blocking the glimmer of the near-shuttered lantern. She threw a scattering of dry leaves across it for good measure. Then she dove behind the nearest tombstone, crouching in the weeds and the dirt, cold seeping through the now-exposed fabric of her shirt.
The footsteps drew closer, the light bobbing past the slender trees.
Her thoughts shot back to the hole in the ground that lay a few feet in front of her.
What was happening in there?
The frustration and worry gnawed at her as the light swept across tangled branches.
There was a soft moan from Strangford, little more than a gasp, half-choked.
The lamp stopped.
Lily risked a peek from between the vines that spilled over her hiding place.
The watchman stood on the path, just a few yards away. He held his lamp aloft, looking around the jumbled graves.
She held her breath, praying for Strangford to stay silent.
The light shifted and the footsteps continued, moving away along the path.
Lily waited in an agony of stillness until the glow of the watchman’s lamp had receded.
Silence descended. She counted off the seconds until she could bear it no longer and scrambled out of her hiding place.
“Doctor!” she hissed, moving to the grave and yanking her cloak out of the way. She climbed inside, her boots sending little stones rattling off the coffin. She wrapped her arms around Strangford’s solid torso, bracing her feet against the edges of the wooden box and hauling him back.
He fell away from the dead woman, landing against the dirt beside her. He groaned, his breathing ragged.
The physician’s face appeared above them.
“Get him out of here!” Lily ordered.
Dr. Gardner leaned down, his big hands slipping under Strangford’s arms. He pulled the smaller man up onto the surface again.
Lily cast a glance back at the tumbled, bloated corpse of Sylvia Durst.
She had told them so much . . . and yet nowhere near enough.
She grabbed the side of the grave and scrambled back up onto the ground beside Strangford, who remained on his back, staring up at the dark branches overhead.
“Can you stand, man?” Dr. Gardner asked.
Strangford rolled over, bracing himself on his forearms.
“I don’t need you,” he snapped, his voice raw. He crawled to his knees. One of his pale hands fell against the earth, and he snatched it away as though burned.
“In your pocket,” the physician offered.
Moving like an old man, Strangford pulled the gloves from his pocket and tugged them back onto his hands. He tucked them under his arms, keeping them close.
“My lord . . .” Lily began.
“I’m fine.” He cut her off quickly, turning away.
Lily saw the physician give him a sharp look. Then Dr. Gardner shook his head, turning to the grave. He jumped down, grabbed the lid of the coffin and set it back into place.
The seal was far from perfect, jagged ends of nails keeping it somewhat askew. The doctor tried to shift it, then stood back.
“Well, it’s all for dust now, anyway.”
He climbed out, bringing the shuttered lantern with him. He crossed to the heap of earth and pulled one of the shovels free.
The clods of dirt bounced hollowly off the coffin as he tossed them back into the grave.
Lily looked back at Strangford. He stood at a distance, hands still tucked protectively under his arms, his shoulders hunched under his earth-stained shirt.
To the east, the sky was kissed with a rosier light than the ambient glow of the city’s gas lamps. Dawn was coming.
She needed to help clean up the mess she had made.
Lily trudged over and picked up the other shovel.
She was exhausted by the time she tipped the last mound of earth onto the grave. The sky had brightened noticeably overhead. The air was still cold but Dr. Gardner wiped sweat from his brow with his handkerchief.
Lily looked down at her boots. They were caked with grave dirt, streaks of filth staining her skirt.
Dr. Gardner extended a hand for her shovel. Lily let him take it. He swung the pair of them over his shoulder with the crowbar, then picked up the lantern.
“My lord?” he asked.
It was a moment before Strangford responded. He looked back slowly, as though locked in a dream.
“Yes. Of course.” His voice was flat. He turned, moving like man twice his age.
He set off down the path, not looking back to see if the others would follow.
“Come along, then,” Gardner said at last. He moved after the nobleman, leaving Lily to trail along in their wake.
The graves that lined the narrow path were more visible now in the early morning light. They passed through the clearing with the chapel, its ornate windows still darkly shadowed.
The rats followed, skipping along the stones at the corners of her vision.
At the lodge, Gardner set the shovels down and pushed open the door.
Once inside, Lily reset the bolt. Their muddy footprints blended with the dirt already covering the floor.
“Wait,” the doctor said, crouching to look out the small window. He held the lantern against the glass, flicking the shutter open and shut three times in quick succession.
A few moments later, she heard the clatter of carriage wheels.
Sam stopped the coach just outside. The doctor waved Lily through first, Strangford trailing behind her.
“Make it sharp,” Sam ordered as he jumped down from the box. He ran over to the door of the lodge, pulling his picks from his pocket. He was resetting the lock, Lily realized, so that no alarm would be raised when the caretaker arrived later that morning. It was something he would have to do quickly before their presence here drew notice.
She opened the door to the coach to climb in, then paused, some instinct calling for her to look back.
Behind her, Strangford stared into the dark, close interior of the carriage with an expression of naked horror on his face.
The big physician took his arm and pushed him toward the front of the vehicle.
“Get on the box, m’lord,” he ordered.
Strangford snapped into motion, climbing up onto the driver’s perch. The wool muffler was pulled back up over his face and he slumped down, looking like a man half-drunk.
Sam moved past her to join him, mounting to the high seat with practiced ease.
“Miss Albright?”
Dr. Gardner stood at the door of the carriage and Lily realized that she was the one now lingering on the pavement, risking their discovery.
“Of course,” she said automatically and hurried inside.
She had barely taken her seat when the carriage lurched into motion.
Across from her, the doctor leaned back, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
Lily’s mind spun, trying to pull together some coherent picture from the splintered facts they had uncovered.
A man with medical training slipping into houses to steal blood from sleeping women. Carrying it off in bottles . . . for what? What good could it possibly do him to make collecting it worth such extremes?
“Doctor?”
“Yes?” he muttered from under the low-tipped brim of his hat.
“What could someone do with human blood?”
He pushed the hat up an inch, glancing over at her. He considered it.
“In theory, human blood could do a great many things. It could save the lives of patients undergoing surgery or suffering from a violent accident. Do you know how many pregnant women hemorrhage during labor? If there was a safe way to transfer blood from one person into another, a great many lives we currently lose could potentially be saved.”
“But you can’t,” Lily surmised.
“No. There were experiments done nearly two hundred years ago. The results were . . . unpleasant. There is something in human blood that very often reacts poorly to being transferred into another body. It is almost always fatal.”
“Almost always?”
“There are times where the procedure works. The trouble is that no one has discovered a way to reliably determine the difference. Nor does it look likely they will anytime soon, since the experiments themselves are likely to kill the research subjects.”
“Does this have anything to do with Dr. Joseph Hartwell’s work?”
“Dr. Hartwell is a brilliant man. His theories on blood typing are intriguing. But they are still very much just theories. I’ll grant Hartwell more credit when I can apply them in an operating theatre.”
“I see.”
There were other questions she burned to ask. They were questions about Gardner himself and his role in all of this, about Sam Wu and The Refuge.
She did not ask them.
Silence settled back over the interior of the carriage. Gardner closed his eyes. Lily’s thoughts turned to Strangford, hunched above her on the driver’s box.
He would be fine, she assured herself. His current state was likely due to the lingering memory of what he had experienced inside Sylvia Durst’s corpse, coupled with the exhaustion of a sleepless night. A bath, a nap—a stiff glass of brandy—and he would be right as rain again. He simply needed to be left alone in the meantime, she told herself firmly.
And then . . . ?
It was a question Lily could not answer, one that brought her own exhaustion weighing down on her like a cloak of lead.
The city had come to life by the time the coach passed onto the familiar streets of Bloomsbury, rocking to a halt in front of her flat on March Place.
Lily rose.
“Miss Albright,” Gardner said courteously, though his eyes were still closed.
“Doctor,” she replied.
Sam opened the carriage door.
“Thank you,” Lily said to him as she stepped down.
The chauffeur slammed it shut behind her in answer.
“Miss,” he said with bare courtesy, then climbed back onto the box and snapped the reins.
She watched as the carriage rolled away, her eyes on the hunched figure beside Sam on the box.
Then she was alone.
Doors were opening around her, early morning commuters emerging to begin the day. Some fine private carriage was parked at the end of the lane, the horses stamping restlessly, their breath fogging in the cool air.
Lily’s clothes were stained with grave dirt, her boots caked with mud. She must look like a character out of a Dickens novel, wretchedly out of place on this respectable street. If she lingered here any longer, someone was likely to call a constable.
She forced her feet to mount the steps and pushed inside, closing the door quietly behind her.
She had never been so tired in her life.
Her shoulders ached, her wound itching like the devil. She desperately wanted a bath but couldn’t imagine staying awake long enough to fill it.
Mrs. Bramble emerged from the far end of the hall, hands firmly planted on her hips.
“You’ve a caller,” she barked. “I settled him in your parlor.”
“Him?” Lily echoed thickly.
Mrs. Bramble’s attitude toward men in the house was unambiguous and yet this one had been brought up to Lily’s flat—even though Lily herself was not in attendance. What sort of man would possibly impress her landlady enough to be granted those privileges?
And why would such a person be calling for her at the near-ungodly hour of half-past seven in the morning?
“I’ll have the tea ready in a moment,” Mrs. Bramble announced, then turned to march back into the kitchen.
Lily faced the staircase.
She didn’t want to deal with a caller. She wanted to crawl into bed and close the door on the world.
Whoever had come, he would not be there long enough for tea.
She mounted the steps, her leg protesting with each move. It felt like an eternity before she reached her landing and pushed open the door.
He rose from her secondhand armchair next to a cozy fire that Bramble must have set for him. Lily could see the light flickering across his familiar profile—the sharp-cut jaw and patrician nose. It was a face made to be carved in marble and labeled with the name of
a long-dead emperor.
It was a face she saw echoed every time she looked in a mirror—the face of the 12th Earl of Torrington.
“Good morning, Lilith,” her father said.
TWELVE
SHE HAD LAST SEEN him at her mother’s funeral.
The day was beautiful, sunny and clear in a way one rarely saw over London. The breeze was warm with a lightness that made you feel as though it could lift away your skin and carry off your soul.
The little chapel was packed, bodies crammed into every bit of open pew. They lined the walls, spilled out the door onto the path. Many were people Lily knew. There were former stage managers and directors along with the better part of an orchestra. A slew of chorus girls sobbed noisily in the back. Actors both famous and obscure peppered the crowd between ardent fans and onlookers who had never seen Deirdre Albright perform but simply wanted the chance to gawp at the others in attendance.
There were men in mourning gowns and women in trousers and formal coats. There were boas and parrots and hats that defied gravity.
It was a theatrical event as spectacular as any Deirdre Albright had starred in before, though this time she played her part from within a shining ebony box.
Lily knelt in the front row beside her nurse, a thin-faced girl who had been hired only a few weeks before. Lily had heard her audibly grumbling before the service about how she had only been paid through the end of the week.
“I hope no one expects me to stay on with some actress’s brat without wages,” she had announced.
The men and women who shared her row were strangers. There were no family here, no distant relatives from Deirdre’s homeland. They were all dead or emigrated, or had long ago disowned any connection to her.
Lily felt as though she, too, were on a stage, playing a part in a show that had been written for someone else.
The crowd was surely bigger and more demonstrative than it would have been had Deirdre Albright merely died in her sleep. To have anyone of fame, even a slightly tarnished and faded fame, stabbed in the chest by a common thief was bound to bring every sensation-seeker out of the woodwork.
The image of it was branded into Lily’s brain.
She had seen it from the rocking chair in her room, the vision washing over her with more brightness and intensity than life.
The Fire in the Glass Page 17