“None of those things. Which is what makes this so much more interesting than our last outing.”
“And?” Grace prodded.
“Ether,” the doctor said, his face eerily lit by the gaslights of the asylum as they pulled into the drive. “It has a distinctively sweet smell, and she was rank with it. A strong dose would paralyze her lungs and she would float off to her death, much like a deep sleep during which one simply stops breathing.”
“You make it sound almost desirable.”
“It would be, honestly, in comparison to some. But what’s important here is not how you or I—or even she—wishes to die, but how the killer wanted her to die.”
“Quietly,” Grace said. “No marks. No blood.”
“He can almost pretend she’s alive,” Thornhollow said. “Yet she can’t berate or condescend. She can’t even ignore him.”
“No,” Grace said. “All she can do is lie there.”
“An ideal situation for our man,” Thornhollow said, his hand reaching for the carriage door. He handed her down, and Grace pushed the river rock of her voice back down into her belly, to be shared with no one else.
“One last thought, that I’d have you think on later—as I will. As you said, the girl’s clothes were mussed. If she’s a doll, he hasn’t familiarized himself with feminine wardrobe enough to dress her well. He also missed quite a few buttons, which makes me think he was in a haste and flustered. Yet to kill with ether shows planning at work. He intended to asphyxiate someone—maybe even her specifically—yet once it was carried out, his nerves got the best of him.
“And while the ether would kill our victim quietly, it doesn’t do so quickly. Ether has to be absorbed into the lungs, its effects weakening the body but still allowing for movement until a high dosage has been inhaled to render immobility. The girl was taken by surprise, but her killer would have to hold her quite still for a period of time while she struggled. He’ll be a large man, maybe even remarkably so.”
“I saw no one like that in the crowd,” Grace said. “I’m sorry, Doctor, it won’t be so easy as that.”
They climbed the stone steps together, listening to the crunch of the gravel as the driver took the carriage and horse back to the stables. Thornhollow dropped his hand to the front doors but halted Grace with a look before opening them.
“This was likely a first kill, Grace, and a somewhat botched one at that. Whatever his goal, I don’t think it was achieved tonight. And even if it was, this won’t be the last girl we find stinking of ether.”
“And why is that, Doctor?” Grace asked, giving her voice rein in the safety of the shadows.
“Because a killer who plans this kind of ritual never stops at one.”
TWENTY
“It’s a special day when I get to work on a fine head of hair like yours,” Mrs. Beem said as she dug her fingers into Grace’s scalp, massaging soap through her hair. “This is as nice of a mane as I could find down on the plaza, I tell you.”
“I wouldn’t go on bragging about yours,” Miss Chancey called from another chair, where Nell hung over a large sink, hair dripping. “My Irish lassie is as nice looking as any. I pile these black curls up on her head and she’ll look good as any queen.”
“Oh, aye,” Nell said proudly. “This ’ead o’ ’air is the pride o’ Ireland, and I’ll drape the braid over me tombstone when I go.”
“Now there’s a morbid picture.” Elizabeth tutted as she waited her turn, tugging somewhat nervously on her own hair. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?” she asked for the third time. “String gets nervous around the clippers.”
“That’s only natural, dear,” Mrs. Beem said. “How many times have I done your hair and never once cut String?”
Grace peeked out of one eye while the rinse water rushed over her head to see Elizabeth was only slightly mollified. She was the only one of the three not utterly thrilled when the town hairdressers came up to the asylum for a monthly treat, trimming and styling the female patients’ hair. Grace relaxed under Mrs. Beem’s brush and comb, giving in to the ebb and flow. She closed her eyes and saw the girl from the night before, ankles primly crossed though her mussed skirts indicated some violence had been done.
“Our killer was unsuccessful,” Thornhollow had informed Grace that morning as he joined her on a morning walk around the grounds.
“On the contrary. His victim is dead,” Grace had said, pitching her voice low and keeping her face blank even though they walked alone.
Thornhollow cleared his throat. “What I mean to say is that he was unsuccessful in his attempt to rape her. I visited the coroner this morning to see if anything more could be learned. The ether had mostly evaporated at that point so he disagreed with me on cause of death, but I hold to my conclusion. Ether is highly combustible, very tricky to mix. Only the most skilled surgeons and doctors would have access to the knowledge. Given that there are only twenty or so doctors in the city, it greatly narrows our window of suspicion.” He swiped at a clump of grass with his walking stick.
“You seem almost disappointed.”
“It’s too easy,” he complained. “This afternoon we’ll go into the city. I’ll pose as an uncle searching for medicine to mollify his niece’s sick headaches. You’ll meet me in the offices shortly after my arrival. If our killer fits the mold for intelligent killers, he’ll be socially capable with men, at least—as he’d have to be in order to get through medical school and hold a practice. But if he’s incapable of touching a woman who isn’t unconscious, with women he’ll be quite awkward.”
“It does seem simple,” Grace had agreed. “Why involve yourself at all if the ether so clearly indicates a medical man as the culprit? Can’t the police deduce that themselves?”
“One would think,” Thornhollow said, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “But George’s report at the station identified the smell as alcohol. He claims the girl drank herself into a stupor in the park, got herself roughed up—his words, not mine—and then expired in a coma. The death of a migrant kitchen worker is less than interesting to the police in a city such as this. Their police force isn’t large enough to investigate too deeply anything that isn’t potentially lucrative.”
“Lucrative?”
“Certainly. Expired liquor licenses, tax evasion . . . anything that actually brings revenue to the city you’ll see carried out to the letter of the law. Digging into a murder with few clues—again, their words, not mine—requires time, something policemen want to be paid for.”
“But not you,” Grace said, stopping to rest under a maple near the banks of the pond, its wide leaves red with the arrival of fall.
“No. I do it for the experience. The science of the matter.”
Grace had been silent for a moment, watching the ripples of the pond as fish fed on the early morning insects. “What was her name?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You said she was a kitchen worker, so she must have been identified.”
“Ah, yes. Uh . . .” Thornhollow’s brow creased as he tried to recall a fact less imperative to him than others. “Anka. Anka Baran. She was Polish. Something we’ll want to keep in mind as we move forward. Assuming we don’t catch our man today we need to make note that there may be some racial motivation. Perhaps a dislike of immigrants.”
“I don’t think so,” Grace argued. “There was nothing to show hatred. The method he used to kill, it’s almost as if he specifically did not want to hurt her.”
“A very good point. I’ll amend it to add that perhaps he only wanted to hurt her in a very specific way and did not have the time. Or was physically incapable. Either way, we’ll know soon enough. I imagine we’ll be face-to-face with him within a few hours.”
Grace remembered Thornhollow’s prediction as Mrs. Beem’s comb passed near her scar, the feeling of the teeth fading as it touched the numb skin there, then reappearing as it trailed down her cheek.
“Hold still now. No jumping when I work around your face.
Don’t want to mar you any more, do we?”
The last delicate clips were done, her hair dried and curled, Mrs. Beem’s fingers expertly twisting a pile of curls complete with pins holding a few in place to hide the damage at her temples.
“All right, Miss Chancey,” Mrs. Beem said. “Take a look. Doesn’t my pretty quiet one look as good or better than any of the fancy ladies that walk the shops down below?”
“Better,” Miss Chancey said around a mouthful of pins as she worked with Nell’s heavy hair. “With those scars covered she’d pass for normal easy as the rest of us.”
Grace glanced in the mirror and silently agreed. She was ready to go to work.
“You’re turning into a regular criminal,” Thornhollow teased when Grace produced the hairpins she’d lifted from Mrs. Beem’s sink stand.
“A planner, for sure,” Grace agreed, looking at herself in the mirror of his office. “I knew you’d have all the details right when finding me a dress. It’s fashionably cut so that I don’t look out of place, but not too distinctive of a print so as to attract undue attention. You’ve matched the hat, but completely forgotten that I’d need pins to hold it in place. Unfamiliar with women’s garments, indeed.”
“Perhaps I’ve taught you a little too well,” he said, holding out his arm for her as they went to the carriage.
Ned was waiting for them, happy to drive the carriage two days in a row, his bright smile almost bringing an answering one to Grace’s face. Thornhollow produced a list of addresses once they were moving, the clattering of the horse’s hooves hiding their conversation from Ned.
“I made inquiry and came up with a little over twenty doctors in the city. We’ll try to visit them all today while your hair is twisted into this unnatural shape. Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that beauty is pain?” Grace asked.
“I’m much more familiar with the latter.”
“Yes, it does hurt a little. By the end of the day there’ll be no farce involved as we try to procure headache medicine.”
Thornhollow shook his head. “I’ll never understand.”
Grace pulled a hand mirror from her purse and inspected her reflection. “Yet women do these things in order to appeal to men.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t appealing. I said I don’t understand it.”
“Yes, well . . .” Grace put a hand to her unmoving hair, and the pins digging into her scalp. “Sometimes the actions of the sane make no sense.”
“Amen.”
They clattered to a stop on a busy side street, and Thornhollow handed her down from the carriage. “Our experiment today is twofold, Grace. As I explained before, I’ll go into each practice a few minutes before you, to judge the doctor’s social ability with his own sex.”
“And I come along after in the guise of your niece, to see if his demeanor changes around females.”
“Yes. And your free time is to be exactly that. Free. Go about town; you’ll find money in your purse. Shop. Buy things. Do whatever it is you want, but be Grace Mae, not the broken girl who lives on the hill.”
Grace’s face fell, her eyes carrying a shadow that had lifted during their conversation. “I don’t ever want to be Grace Mae again, Dr. Thornhollow. I don’t want pretty things in shopwindows, and I don’t want to playact at being carefree. I am that broken girl. She has a purpose, at least, and it’s hidden in the identity of the man whose address is somewhere on your slip of paper.”
He crumpled the paper in his fist. “Try. For my sake. Your whole life can’t be wrapped up in the endings of others.” He turned his back on her, and she went the opposite direction, assuming the false smile that he wanted to prove true.
Even though she’d tossed his words aside the moment he’d said them, the effect lasted. She caught the reflection of her pretended happiness in a window that she passed, looking every inch like a privileged girl enjoying a beautiful day. But she knew she had never been that, even before the scars on her temples had set her apart from others. Playacting was something she had perfected long before meeting Dr. Thornhollow, and at least the darkness that haunted her now was one she had the power to end.
She entered the doctor’s office to find Thornhollow in deep conversation with a bored-looking man who brightened up the moment she walked in. “Any luck, Uncle?” she asked.
“Not so much,” he said ruefully. “Doctor Maggill here was just saying how he’s about to close for lunch and doesn’t have a moment to help us.”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” Maggill said as he approached Grace. “I can certainly postpone something as pedestrian as lunch to help a lovely young creature such as yourself.” He beckoned for Grace to sit on a stool, but she shook her head.
“No, Doctor, I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your daily routine. We can return later, can’t we, Uncle?”
“Of course,” Thornhollow agreed, putting his hat back on and taking Grace by the arm. “Back in an hour, Doctor?”
“Lovely, and you can make it half an hour,” he said, smiling, showing too clearly that he’d already had lunch and some of it was still located in his teeth. “I hate to think of you suffering for one second longer than absolutely necessary.”
“That was certainly not our man,” Thornhollow declared, once they were back in the carriage. “Though I’d like to give him a sound drubbing anyway. Not interested in treating a girl he’s never seen until he likes the sight of her.” He shook his head, talking only to himself. “A disgrace to the Hippocratic oath.”
Grace rapped his knee with her knuckles as they slid to a halt once again. “Our next stop, Doctor.”
“I’m going to lose my faith in humanity before the day is over, Grace, mark my words,” he said as they descended to the street.
So it continued in office after office, until the dirt of the streets covered Grace’s boots and her plea of a headache was no longer a lie. They played their parts, each dissecting the man they spoke with the second they saw him and comparing notes as the carriage took them to their next destination. Not once did they find a doctor who was noticeably flustered by Grace, and Thornhollow’s patience stretched as thin as her smile.
“Dammit,” he bellowed, tossing the paper on the floor of the carriage as they headed toward home. “A whole day spent trying to prove our theory and all I have for it is twelve doses of medicine I don’t need.”
“I do,” Grace said, hands to her temples.
“I’m sorry for shouting,” he apologized. “I’ve had such a day in town it’s a lovely relief to return to the asylum.”
“It is,” she agreed, pulling pins free and letting her hair tumble loose, scars on display as the wet air from the lake filled her lungs. “It truly is.”
TWENTY-ONE
Grace’s letters were waiting on her nightstand when she went to bed. The pages had been soaked through by Nell’s would-be alligator attack, and Grace had been terrified that they would fall apart in her hands if she didn’t let them dry thoroughly. The pages fluttered in the night breeze as she reached for them, her heart leaping at the sight of her younger sister’s handwriting.
Fair Lily—
The breeze brought me your letter. I don’t know that I would’ve gone looking for it otherwise, it has been so long since we played. I am glad you came back.
Do you remember my sister, Grace? She has died. Mother and Father say that a sickness killed her on a boat when she went on a trip. I miss her. She would always play with me and tell me everything would be all right, though it looks like she was wrong.
Father tries to comfort me. He even let me sit on his lap the other day, although Mother said I’m much too big to be doing that sort of thing now. Mother put my hair up in curls to try to cheer me up, but when Father said I looked very pretty she got angry and pulled it all out again. It hurt and I had to cry, and Mother didn’t let me come down to dinner and I don’t know why.
I miss Grace and I miss you.
Write back—
Grace’s fingers shook as she refolded Alice’s letter, placed it under her pillow, and turned to Falsteed’s.
Dearest Grace—
From one asylum to another, greetings. Enclosed you will find a letter that Reed retrieved for you. I gave it a good sniff before entrusting it to him. Your sister has the smell of innocence about her still, and the whiff of purity that came from your presence may indeed have been due to your close proximity to her. But I choose to believe otherwise.
You say I am a good person who has done bad things. You are a good person who has had bad things done to her, which is a different situation altogether. Do not sell yourself so short in assuming that the darkness inside you cannot be overcome, or that your only path to redemption lies with the footsteps of Thornhollow. There is more to you than beauty. There is more to you than strength. There is more to you than intelligence. You are a whole person, and I would have you treat yourself as such.
Falsteed
Grace’s sob took her by surprise as her tears fell on Falsteed’s declaration that Alice remained innocent. “Thank God,” she said quietly to herself as a night rain began to fall outside. “Thank God.”
Grace slammed her hands over her mouth before she realized that the screams that had awoken her were not her own. Pulse racing, she listened with the rest of the wing’s inhabitants to see if it would happen again. And it did. A piercing wail that floated up through the floorboards, its maker unrecognizable in her grief. Footsteps shuffled in rooms all around her and doors creaked open, hushed voices seeking answers as lamps were lit.
“What’s happened?”
“Who is it?”
“Where’s it coming from?”
Grace lay still in her bed, willing her heart to a steady rhythm before joining them.
“It’s comin’ from down under me own room. Luck o’ the Irish, my arse,” Nell’s voice joined the throng and Grace slipped through her door to see a cluster of familiar faces gathered together.
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