“What will you tell your father?” Max asked, as if that alone was an insurmountable obstacle.
“In the letter? That I’m fine. That I will return soon. That I’m sorry about publicly humiliating him and causing him to worry. That’s all he needs to know. Anything more will cause bigger problems. And we will have it delivered by a messenger that can’t be traced back here. At least then he will have some word from me, and the money the college needs to get supplies this month.”
Jack seemed to view her with fresh suspicion. “I didn’t agree to return the money.”
“You have to return it, or I won’t stay,” she said. “With my help you could easily double that amount. You heard me a moment ago—that’s only three or four corpses.”
“Three or four corpses ain’t as easy to come by as you think.”
“We could easily do that much additional business every week,” she insisted.
Although he took a second to think about it, her reasoning seemed to penetrate his greed and resistance. “Would you listen to that?” he said. “The chit wants to join up with us. I say she’d be a good investment.”
“You’re making a mistake, Abby,” Max warned.
Maybe so, but she felt better about staying than confronting her father’s disappointment and displeasure—and then her aunt’s. “If it doesn’t work out—if I’m not as much help as I have promised, I’ll leave,” she told Max. “Fair enough?”
Hoping to avoid another refusal, she added, “Sometimes a woman can see or hear things a man may not.”
She wasn’t talking about locating corpses; she was talking about Madeline, and she hoped he realized it.
Either he was afraid she would say more and give them both away, or he caught her meaning, because he finally relented. “You will stick by my side at all times.” He pointed a finger at Jack. “And if you so much as touch a hair on her head, I won’t be responsible for what I do to you. I swear to God. Understood?”
Jack didn’t take easily to being threatened. Abigail feared Max had once again stirred the other man’s jealousy and ire, feared that they might erupt in violence just as they had at the kitchen table the day before. But Jack managed a slight shrug.
“I won’t touch her,” he snapped and stomped out.
Max regretted giving in almost the second he did it. “Abby, do you realize what you have done?” he asked after he closed the door and turned to confront her. “If I have to protect you, it could compromise everything I have established here so far, make all the risks I have taken pointless. It could also—”
“Be a great benefit,” she broke in, lifting her chin. “For all you know, I could end up protecting you. At least you will have someone to watch your back, and to get help if you need it.”
Although he appreciated her courage and confidence, he would hate to see her hurt, especially while trying to help him. And there was that other matter. He couldn’t let her sleep anywhere besides his bed for fear of what might happen in the night, but he couldn’t trust himself to lie with her, either.
“Jack might insist that we won’t ever get arrested, but we could,” he said. “If we happen to steal the corpse of someone attached to a powerful family or someone with powerful friends, the backlash could be severe.”
“I understand that.”
“And what of your reputation? What of your father’s reputation?”
“My reputation has to be damaged beyond repair already. I’m sure Bransby told everything as soon as he learned I was missing.”
“He did,” Max confirmed. “The constable said as much.”
“Then I’m probably the talk of the whole college by now—and St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, too, since it’s so close and so many of the doctors and surgeons that lecture at Aldersgate work there. It won’t take long for the news to spread through the entire medical community and maybe beyond.”
“That could ruin any hope your father had of achieving a knighthood.”
“Which is exactly what I was trying to avoid from the beginning. But there will be less chance of my actions reflecting poorly on him if I stay.”
“You would rather be perceived as a willful, rebellious daughter?”
“Yes! At least then what has happened here will be my error and not something he can be faulted for. Being accused of failing to control me is hardly the same as being accused of charging me with the task of acquiring a specimen for the college, which is what some would assume. Not many people would expect a daughter to involve herself as I did.”
Although Abby was different from most women, not everyone would know that. Max had to agree that most would blame Edwin for what she had done, since he stood to benefit the most, had it gone well. “But will your father hold this against you when you do go back? Almost every move you have made has been designed to help him and the college, but will he see it that way?”
She would no longer meet his eyes, which told him the answer before she could even speak. “Would you want your daughter involved with resurrection men?” she asked.
Max didn’t respond. It was a rhetorical question, and one he didn’t care to think about. But he was looking at her stay a little differently. “Then you are determined.”
“For now. I say we see what we can come up with on your sister over the next few days and then reevaluate. Can you agree to that?”
“You promised Jack much longer, said we could steal three more corpses per week with your help.”
“I had to convince him, but we will stay only as long as we have to, of course.”
Somehow such a short timespan made her continuing on at Farmer’s Landing more palatable. It would be a struggle to keep his hands to himself, but at least he now had a noble reason for continuing down the path of temptation. Maybe they would be able to preserve her father’s reputation, as she was hoping. And having her help could prove beneficial. She might get more out of Jack and the rest of the gang than he could. It was even possible that he would be more fully assimilated into the group, thanks to her credibility.
Anything he could do to get Jack to lower his guard would be wise.
“Then you had better put on your other dress. We have people to see.”
When she grabbed what she had sewn from his clothes, he couldn’t help frowning. “I can’t believe you destroyed my coat.”
“I told you I wasn’t a worthy laundress.”
“I see you are, however, a talented seamstress.”
“Mrs. Fitzgerald saw to my education on that. She’s quite accomplished with a needle. There was no way she was ever going to send me to my aunt without the skills befitting a good English girl.”
“And Mrs. Fitzgerald is . . . ?”
“The housekeeper at the college,” she reminded him.
He felt a fresh dose of curiosity about what her life had been like before. “Are you close to her?”
Abby shrugged. “Not particularly. She’s rather . . . stern, definitely more in keeping with my aunt’s approach to life than my father’s, but she means well.”
He fingered the fabric that had been his coat. “You could never tell she was stern by how easily you assumed ownership of my coat and whatever else you used to make that dress.”
“It’s a good thing I took the initiative,” she said. “Otherwise, I would have nothing to wear.”
“I could have bought you something.”
“And how would you explain to Jack having the money for that?”
“I’m not a pauper, even as a resurrection man,” he grumbled.
She gave him a sheepish look. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. It will be easier to replace my coat.”
When she smiled at how quickly he had softened, he rolled his eyes and walked out before she could disrobe. There was no way he wanted to be buried in another wave of the frustration he had suffered f
or most of the night.
A few days, he told himself. I can last a few days.
Chapter 16
The morning after she joined the London Supply Company, Abby wrote her father to let him know she was safe. She hated the thought of causing him pain, and she didn’t want Bransby to worry, either. Chances were, the aging porter blamed himself for not telling Mrs. Fitzgerald about Abby’s plan to buy another specimen, as he had threatened to do. Before everything went so horribly wrong.
Abby also returned the college’s money—minus Tom’s share. Tom had wisely not returned to the house. Although she felt better where her father was concerned, she was beginning to wonder if she had made an even worse decision than she had thought by choosing to remain in Wapping. She had told herself that staying with Max and Jack increased the chances that she would be criticized instead of her father. She had also told herself that it would give her a window of freedom before he could react to what she had done. Both were true. But, deep down, she knew that Max was the real reason she stayed.
If only he wasn’t suddenly acting so . . . remote. The night before, as soon as they went to bed, he faced away from her and remained in that position even when she slid a little closer, hoping he would turn and curl into her as he had the two nights previous. She missed having him hold her. Those hours constituted one of the few times in her twenty-one years that she hadn’t felt as if she were drifting through each day on a one-man raft, bumping up against others but never really connecting.
“Steady . . .” She was stirred from her thoughts and brought back to the present when Max whispered in her ear. Somehow she had just swayed toward the hole he and Emmett were digging. It was bad enough that she was standing in a cemetery in the middle of the night. Add the fog that had rolled in an hour or so earlier, and being there for the unsettling purpose of disturbing the dead, and it became a positively unnerving experience. She was so busy peering around she hadn’t noticed that she had inched so close to them they scarcely had room to work.
Hauling in a lungful of the moist, chill air, she stepped back and nodded. Fortunately, Max and Emmett were the only ones at St. George’s with her, so she didn’t have to deal with Jack. Jack and his brother, Bill, had gone elsewhere. Jack had said they were meeting a gravedigger who had a lead on another corpse, but she had heard Emmett mumble to Max that they were going after Tom.
She wondered if they had found him—and what they might be doing to him if so. The images her imagination offered up further unsettled her.
“Why don’t you go sit on the church steps while we finish?”
Max sounded concerned. Although he had ignored her the night before, he had been friendly enough once they left the house that morning. It was Max who had taken her around to the various cemeteries they monitored. Max who had pulled her aside to warn her to stay away from any other burial places for fear she would anger rival gangs. Max who had told her to never allow herself to be caught out alone after dark.
Following that bit of training, he had sent her into St. George’s cemetery and stood at a distance while she joined her first mourning party. Knowing he was watching over her proved comforting—except that he showed no special interest. Not like she wanted him to.
Perhaps she should have gone home. Body snatching was even more disgusting and gruesome than she had imagined. The cemeteries were so overcrowded that a corpse barely had time to decompose before another corpse was placed on top of it. Most graves were stacked four or more deep, making some cemeteries higher than the street!
But without joining the London Supply Company, she would never have talked Jack into returning the college’s money, and she could not have gone back empty-handed. She had far too much pride for that. Her father would take such a loss and have the proof he needed that a woman shouldn’t meddle in a man’s workplace.
“Abby?” Max prodded.
She must have pressed closer to them again. “I’m fine.”
He had told her to stay at the house. She probably should have. But Jack had said that her father went to the house while they were out that afternoon. Although he let Edwin in to search the house and named a local prostitute as the woman the constable saw, she feared that wouldn’t be enough to keep her father away. Maybe the letter she sent would help. If not, he could come back, and she didn’t want to be home alone when he did. So she had insisted on changing into her gypsy rags and tagging along with Max and Emmett.
“You’re about to keel over,” Max said. “Set down that lamp and take a break. We don’t need you for this.”
“Max, quit worrying about her!” Emmett snapped. “Do you want to get caught?”
To Abby’s infinite relief, the younger man paused in his work. They were using wooden shovels to mitigate the noise, but every scrape and plop seemed to echo against the stone church that cast an invisible shadow across the ground.
“Mind your own business,” Max growled.
“You need to let that bit of fluff take care of herself,” Emmett responded. “We don’t have time to coddle a woman.”
Abby didn’t appreciate how dismissive he was being, and she definitely didn’t want to be the weak link. So she summoned what strength she had left and held the lantern closer to the head of the grave. They had done this without her before, but the fog was so thick they wouldn’t be able to see if she didn’t angle the light exactly right.
“This isn’t helping?” she asked.
Max hesitated but ultimately went back to work, and Abby shivered as she watched the loose dirt they were piling on top of a sheet grow into a large mound.
“How will you get the body out if you don’t uncover the entire coffin?” she whispered, surprised by the small size of the hole, which was more of a tunnel.
Breathing hard from the exertion, Emmett stopped long enough to wipe the sweat from his brow. “We break the lid, tie some rope under the arms and haul the bugger up. What do you think?”
The bugger. This was so disrespectful.
Once again Abby’s eyes strained as she did her best to see beyond the small circle of her lamp. She thought she heard voices. Were they real—or only imagined?
The funeral party had been subdued and had made no mention of an all-night vigil or other attempts to protect the body. She got the impression, poor as they were, they didn’t have the time, the coin or the energy. But that was partly what made her so nervous. It shouldn’t be this easy to do what they were doing—not since Burke and Hare had made entering a graveyard at night such a dangerous endeavor.
Feeling extremely out of place, Abby adjusted the light yet again. Body snatching felt so much worse when she was participating in the procurement instead of waiting at the college. She had been among this man’s family and friends, had witnessed their grief and distress. No one had seemed to suspect she might double-cross them; they weren’t even leery enough to question her presence. Although several had glanced up when they saw her walking or standing nearby, they had ultimately assumed she was there to pay her respects, just like they were. She looked respectable, as she had told Jack she would.
She was about to say that she couldn’t go through with their plan any longer when Max’s shovel struck something besides dirt.
“There it is.” Emmett, too, had heard the solid thud. Tossing his shovel on the damp earth, he said, “Let’s hurry. Somethin’ doesn’t feel right.”
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one ill at ease. But Abby got the impression it was her presence that was making young Emmett uncomfortable. From the beginning, he hadn’t been happy about having her accompany them. Despite the fact that she was the one who had scouted this particular grave, he seemed to consider her involvement a bad omen.
The wind whistled through the trees, stirring the thick fog like an invisible hand as they dragged the “adult male” to the surface. This part of the theft was nerve-racking, but at least they were finished
with the telltale digging.
Emmett removed the shroud and stuffed it back into the grave. Then Max helped him load the body in the cart they had brought with them and they all three replaced the dirt.
“That’s good enough, ain’t it?” Emmett said before Max could even finish tamping it down.
Max didn’t argue. He seemed equally anxious to be gone. But just as they grabbed hold of the cart, the voices Abby thought she had heard grew far more distinct.
“I told you I saw a lamp!”
“They’re in the blasted cemetery!”
“Joseph’s funeral was today.”
“It’s gotta be the damn resurrectionists, after his bloody corpse!”
“Go to his house and wake his son! Hurry!”
“Douse the light,” Max barked.
Given the impatience in his voice, he might have said it before. Abby couldn’t be sure. She’d had ears only for those who were coming. But she didn’t get the chance to remedy her lapse. The next thing she knew, Emmett had blown out her lamp.
As the dark and fog closed around her like a fist, she had no idea how they would escape. Without a lamp to guide their way, they wouldn’t get far without running into each other, a headstone or a tree. But they had to do something.
The meager light of someone else’s lamp appeared, fuzzy and indistinct, at the entrance of the graveyard. As the fog shifted, she caught glimpses of the dull black mourning clothes of those who were coming—and various faces contorted with rage.
“Stay here,” someone called out. “Whatever you do, don’t let the bastards out!”
“If you catch ’em, hold ’em tight,” someone else responded.
“They’ll never steal another corpse as long as they live, not once Joseph’s son gets through with ’em.”
A Matter of Grave Concern Page 17