The Corpse Queen

by Heather M. Herrman

“Was that some kind of a joke?” she choked out in a thick whisper.

  He looked shocked. “Of course not!”

  “Then what was it?”

  He got in behind her, closing the door, and tapped on the window for the driver to start. “Hydrocephalic adult. Very rare. That head is worth a small fortune.”

  Molly felt her insides heaving. “It stank.”

  “We don’t usually take them that far along. But this was a special find.” Instead of disgusted, his voice sounded proud. “Half the sackmen in the city were out lookin’ for that head tonight! Which is why your aunt had it sent here. Quite clever, really.”

  “Why would she want a head?” Molly whispered, unsure if the driver outside could hear her. She commanded herself to breathe. Small, shallow breaths that would keep away the threatening blackness.

  “Come now,” Tom said. “Surely you’ve figured that bit out.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “Your aunt. She’s the Corpse Queen.”

  5

  I didn’t agree to be your body snatcher!”

  Molly burst through the library door, the hand in her pocket clenched around her knife. Finally, the garish statues at the entrance made sense. She was entering the lair of a monster.

  A woman sat by the fire, a bone china cup in hand. She did not turn around.

  “Tom said you did rather well.”

  Molly wanted to pluck the cup from her grasp and smash it against the wall. She was shaking from anger. Tom had left her waiting outside for twenty minutes while he and her “aunt” discussed her performance. Whatever kind of devil this was, Molly would not allow herself to be used like an animal. More than the procuring of the head, it was the disrespect that needled her.

  “Why didn’t you have Tom tell me what I was collecting? If you’d prepared me better, I would have known how to handle myself.”

  “Ah, but you see, I wanted to know how you handled yourself when you weren’t prepared.”

  The woman turned.

  Molly found herself staring at a ghost.

  Even as she had the thought, she knew it wasn’t right. The hair was a perfectly matched corn silk, the eyes the same sparkling blue. The face held similar lips and a familiar delicate upturned nose. But whereas Ma had been sweet and round, this woman was a single sharp line accentuated by shadows—the moon to Ma’s sun.

  “You’re Ma’s sister,” Molly whispered, stunned.

  “I suppose I am.” The woman nodded. “My name is Ava Wickham.”

  “Ma said all her family was dead.”

  Ava let loose a laugh, but it was brittle, like a fork cracking against a glass. “That sounds like her. Your mother didn’t like to dwell on sad things.”

  “Ma was a good woman.” Molly’s head began to clear, and she felt suddenly defensive. “Kind. More people could stand to be like her.”

  “Are you like her?” Ava asked the question as a curious child might pull at a fly’s wing.

  Molly’s heart sped—though from anger or nerves, she didn’t know. “Well, I’m certainly not like you. Collecting heads? You’re disgusting.”

  A wrinkle creased Ava’s perfectly smooth forehead. “I’m sorry you feel that way.” She motioned to the armchair across from her. Its sumptuous outline was finer even than anything at the hotel. “Please, sit. We have much to discuss.”

  “No.”

  “Sit down.” A command this time.

  “Why did you send me to collect a head before you’d see me?”

  Ava eyed her coolly. “I had to know what kind of girl you really were.”

  “And what kind of girl am I?”

  “One I’d like to offer a job.”

  Molly laughed. “Stealing bodies?”

  Her aunt smiled. “A body is the only way a woman can make a living in this world. I just choose not to use my own.”

  “Do you kill them too?” She clenched the knife and thought of Kitty, the tail sliced clean from her corpse.

  Ava poured a fresh cup of coffee from a gold-rimmed carafe, offering it to Molly. “My dear, I fear that you are confused. About what I do, why I do it.”

  “You’re the Corpse Queen. The nuns used to scare us with stories about you. Said you’d dig us up from the ground and we’d never get into heaven.”

  Ava laughed. “I am simply a businesswoman, albeit one who must operate on a higher level of secrecy than most.” She uncoiled her body, leaning forward in her chair with the cunning laziness of a snake.

  “My mother sent me to an orphanage rather than live with you. Did she know what you did for a living?”

  Ava sighed. “No. Your mother and I had a falling-out long before all of this.”

  “What happened?”

  “If you stay, perhaps I’ll tell you. But before you know who I was, I want you to understand who I am.” Her eyes narrowed. “Who I really am. None of this Corpse Queen nonsense.”

  Molly hesitated, intrigued now, despite her horror. Ava had the power, it seemed, to draw people into her orbit, whether they wanted to be there or not.

  “Why didn’t you collect me sooner? I spent four years at that orphanage, while you sat here in the middle of all of this.” She gestured at the wealth around her.

  Ava lifted her cup and took a delicate sip. Molly wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but she thought she saw a faint tremor in her aunt’s hand. “I tried to find you for a very long time. Unfortunately, your mother made that impossible.”

  “You mean she tried to protect me from you.”

  Ava shrugged.

  “If Ma didn’t tell you where I was, how did you find me?”

  “I was at the orphanage a month ago to meet girls willing to train as maids.”

  “I was never at any of those meetings.”

  “No.” Ava smiled. “You wouldn’t be, would you? I saw you cleaning the stables and asked who you were.” Her face grew still. “You look very much like your father.”

  She and Da had the same red hair, but Molly had never been told she looked like him.

  In the fading glow of the fire, its logs half-eaten and burned down to coals, Ava’s face took on the deathlike qualities of a mask, so that she might have been a corpse herself. When she spoke again, the flesh stretched tightly across the planes of her skull. “Most girls who were asked to do what you did tonight would have run.”

  “They’d be right to.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Molly flushed. “I . . .”

  “There’s no need to explain. I find it an admirable quality. You’re unusual. I like that.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Oh, but I do. Molly Green, seventeen the first Sunday of next month. You are notoriously hard to work with, refuse to do your chores when the nuns ask, have been locked in solitary confinement twice for unholy behavior, and, in short, are a rather difficult girl.”

  “You were watching me,” she whispered, shocked.

  “Only for a little while. I needed to make sure you were worth the trouble.”

  Molly had had enough of this woman’s games. “Why am I here?”

  The dying flames spiked a few desperate fingers into the air as the last log fell with a sputtering crack.

  “I’d like to have someone I don’t have to lie to.” Ava met her eyes, and Molly thought it was the first true thing this woman had said all night.

  “Did you lie to my mother?”

  A wound, as real as if Molly had struck her, opened on Ava’s face. “I loved Elizabeth,” she whispered. “My little sister was kinder to me than anyone in the world.”

  “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you didn’t lie.”

  Molly felt an ache in her breast, and in that moment it was not Ma she thought of but Kitty.

&nb
sp; “No.” Ava sighed. “Sometimes it means you must.”

  * * *

  Molly looked furtively toward the door.

  “You are, of course, free to leave at any time,” Ava said, as if reading her thoughts. “However, I think to do so now would be rather foolish. At least hear my offer.”

  “I think the devil said much the same thing.”

  The corner of Ava’s mouth lifted slightly.

  Molly glanced again at the finery around her. Even the sterling silver candlesticks on the mantel were valuable enough to buy a year’s worth of meals at the orphanage.

  Her aunt was right. Leaving now would be foolish. “All right. Tell me.”

  Ava clapped her hands together like a little girl. “Now, I’m so pleased you said that.” She stood. “But before you know the job, I want you to see the kind of life it can bring.”

  An ancient butler appeared seemingly from nowhere. His all-black suit and expressionless face made him look like an undertaker. Bowing deeply, he opened the library’s door. Ava moved gracefully through it. Hesitating, Molly followed.

  They emerged back in the large foyer Molly had barely noticed in her earlier indignation and rush to talk to Ava. Its twelve-foot molded ceilings were papered in a hand-painted peacock pattern.

  “Wealth can hide a thousand sins,” Ava said. “And my house, my parties—my reputation—are the most expensive in the city.”

  They passed by a morbid chess set, its pieces fashioned out of gold into lifelike skeletons with eyes and crowns of rubies.

  “This is where I receive guests three times a week,” Ava continued, nodding toward a lavish flower basket of calling cards by the door. “It is—how shall I put it—my proper face. The one that I show to the world. In it, I am Mrs. Ava Wickham, widow.”

  “You were married?” Molly asked, surprised.

  “No, thank God. But it is the only way to explain my wealth. If they knew I’d made it myself, you see, there’d be no end to the questions.”

  “What do you say happened to your husband?” Molly felt her interest piqued despite herself. Ma had never told a lie in her life, and this woman seemed to live by them.

  “He was a merchant. Drowned at sea.”

  “And nobody checks?”

  “Whyever would they? I have the right clothes, the right house, the right parties. Times are not as they were, Molly. There is plenty of new money in America, whether the blue bloods like it or not. Half the down-on-their-luck aristocracy in Europe is looking to marry a rich American. I’m just another name.”

  She moved to the imposing double doors to the left of the entrance, pushing their carved mahogany fronts open to reveal a cavernous dining room. The walls were covered in silk the color of blood. “In here is where Mrs. Wickham has her dinner parties. I’m part of several ladies’ societies, with which you will certainly become more acquainted should you choose to stay.”

  Since the room was unlit, Molly could not make out all the details, but she could see enough. The room was bigger than the orphanage’s entire bedchambers. Its table was mammoth, the gleaming black surface large enough to seat twenty. Beside it, a matching sideboard’s beveled glass reflected the outline of a dozen richly hued paintings, many with subject matter as grisly as the statues outside. Here again was Hades, his bearded face presiding over tortured figures as they tried to crawl out of hell. Beside him a screaming Fury reached out, her eyes tracking their exit through the dark.

  The butler shut the door behind them, his bent back looking as creaky as the old wood. He guided their way to the next room, holding aloft a candle of odorless, costly spermaceti wax.

  “We weren’t even allowed to burn the candles we made at the orphanage,” Molly whispered. “We sold them, a penny a prayer.”

  The confession flew from her as unexpectedly as a clothes moth from a trunk. “It was nothing like this,” she said angrily, motioning to the house around her. “I had nothing!”

  “Which is why you should have it now,” Ava said softly. “Let me give it to you.”

  Gently taking her arm, she pulled Molly deeper into the house.

  Each room was grander than the last. Wallpapers in rich ruby and sapphire united the formal areas, matched by fabrics on furniture that looked too pretty to use.

  Everything shone with polish and good care, not a speck of dust anywhere.

  As Molly followed her aunt, drinking it all in, she had the uncomfortable realization that she was beginning to enjoy herself. She and Kitty used to mock women who lived like this, the ones whose houses Kitty cleaned, but it was only because they’d never thought they could have all of this themselves.

  Not until Kitty met Edgar, anyway.

  Molly’s nails bit into her flesh.

  “This is where I host my parties.” Her aunt smiled as they stepped into an enormous ballroom. “I’d much rather attend someone else’s than manage my own, but one must feed the lions every now and again. I give them the best parties in the city, and they don’t ask where I get the money to throw them.”

  She gestured around the room, toward the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. “Cost me a pretty penny to have these shipped from Paris, I can tell you that. And the crystal chandeliers from Prague, handmade. They notice these things, the lions. My newest acquisition is the carpets. Five hundred dollars apiece for hundred-year-old rugs.”

  Molly looked down, agape, at the jewel-tone emerald and rose swirls twined in an exotic pattern of rich silk, like something out of a fairy tale. It was more money than Da had earned in his entire life.

  “I could just as easily do with rag rugs, to be honest,” Ava said, smiling. “Easier to clean. But to have more, one must have more.” She shrugged. “It’s the way of new money.”

  “It’s . . . so much.”

  “Yes. Don’t you think I deserve it?”

  The question surprised Molly. “Does anyone deserve this much?”

  “The simple fact is that some people will always have more and others less. Which do you want?”

  Molly knew the correct answer. The priests’ answer. To have too much was a sin. To indulge greed was unforgivable. But then she thought of Kitty, her life thrown away like so much trash just because she was too poor for her lover to meet in daylight. Perhaps her aunt was right. Others had this much—why shouldn’t she?

  They ascended a staircase, more hellish paintings gracing the walls, and stepped onto the second floor. Ava glided past two rooms before stopping at a third. She pulled a key from beneath her dress and showed it to Molly. It hung from a pretty blue velvet ribbon around her neck. “This is my room. I keep it locked because it’s the one place I can really, truly be alone. Every woman needs that, a room of her own.”

  She did not open the door. Instead, she moved on to the next room.

  Molly peered inside and gasped.

  Unlike the rest of the jewel-tone house, this room was covered in iridescent whites and grays. A crackling fire lit up the sumptuous fabrics with the sheen of a pearl.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s yours.” Ava led her inside. “I don’t have any family, Molly. Just you. Now that I’ve found you, I’d like to give you what I can.”

  And be it a sin, in that moment, Molly wanted it.

  To never again walk through the snow with rags wrapped around her feet or be forced to ride amongst the luggage. To have a roof over her head that was her own, that could not be taken away by the nuns, like a sweet from a misbehaving child.

  Ava led Molly out of the room and to the end of the hall. A servants’ staircase descended back to the first floor, and Molly followed her down it. The narrow silk-lined walls like being inside a heart.

  “Now,” her aunt said, “allow me to show you the price.”

  “Price?”

  Molly’s lips pursed. Of course. She had not thought such a wom
an as Ava would give something so precious away for free.

  “Yes. Such things must, of course, be paid for. I’m offering you all of this, for a price.”

  The butler silently reappeared. Taking out a key, he unlocked a small wooden door, half-hidden and painted an unobtrusive black. When she stepped through, Molly found herself standing outside the back of the house. The snow had stopped, and now the night sky twinkled with stars.

  Most women of Ava’s station would have used such a space for an elaborate garden or gazebo.

  Instead, Molly found herself staring at a church. Its neat, clean sides were made of whitewashed pine, and a single spire spiked into the air.

  Ava walked briskly over a gravel path leading toward it. A small iron fence separated the church from the house’s back drive. Ava opened the gate, and together they mounted the steps to the church’s cathedral door.

  Lanterns flickered on as the butler made his way around the perimeter, lighting them. The church smelled of dust and incense, and something else. A sharp, metallic smell that Molly could not place.

  “This,” said Ava, “is where I make my real money.”

  “In a church?” But even as she spoke, Molly knew that wasn’t right.

  “Not anymore.” Ava smiled. “Can’t you guess?”

  And as another lantern flared to life, Molly found that she could. Tables filled the room in orderly lines, and there at the front, beside the remaining pulpit, rested a large blackboard.

  “A classroom,” she said, surprised.

  “Yes. This is where one of the greatest anatomists of our time teaches his students. He rents the room, and the . . . material, from me. We are also business partners in various ventures of export.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name is Dr. LaValle.” Ava’s voice caught on the name and then slipped smoothly over it. “He’s a dear friend, and one whom you shall meet shortly. If, of course, you decide to stay.”

  “A doctor.” The word sent a chill up Molly’s spine.

  Edgar’s studying to be a doctor, Molly. He’s a good man. Kind.

  She moved around the room, fingering the long, narrow tables. Beside each of them rested a small tray, lined neatly with knives and scalpels laid out on white cloths.