A Matter of Grave Concern (3 page)

Judging by the porter’s sullen expression, he was tempted to reveal her duplicity. But she implored him not to with her eyes. Surely, she could count on Bran’s loyalty. He had worked at the college for as long as she could remember. For all his reluctance to participate in her most recent scheme, he knew she had her father’s best interest at heart.

Thankfully, he didn’t disappoint her. “Yes, Miss. I-I believe I scared them away.”

“
Whom
?
” her father demanded again.

“Several men of the lowest character, that is for certain, sir.”

“You have no idea who they were or what they wanted?”

“Until tonight, I had never seen them before in my life.” Bransby gave Abigail another purposeful glance. “But I did hear one of them called
Max
.”

Max?
That didn’t make sense. She had assumed Bran had tried to hide the body. But this . . . Why would the sack ’em up men return when they had already gotten away with so much?

Her gaze shifted to the window, which was exactly like the window in her father’s office. They had been watching her, she realized, assuming she might take the cadaver to the cellar. That was where it would likely be stored, and they could break in with ease. When she didn’t . . . they broke in, anyway.

Only a man like Wilder would be so bold . . .

Leaving her father to fuss over Bransby, she went to stand in the doorway that separated her father’s office from the dissection theatre. “Damn him,” she cursed under her breath. He had stolen her specimen—after taking her entire purse as payment! The miserable wretch probably carried it straight to St. Thomas’s or another college, where he had gleaned an additional nine or ten guineas.
We haven’t got all night
, he’d said when she suggested they sell the body elsewhere.

She was willing to bet they had found the time.

“Did you say something, dear?” her father called. He had just seated Bransby on Mr. Holthouse’s sofa but, hearing her say something, had come to see what she was doing.

“No, nothing.” Abigail pasted a smile on her face to hide the panic rising inside her, and he returned to their porter. But that was when she saw it. The elephant her mother had given her. It was gone from her desk. They had stolen it, too, right out from under her nose, and she had been too caught up to notice.

The anger she felt in that moment instantly built into a fury the likes of which she had never experienced before. And that was when she made herself a promise. Come what may, Maximillian Wilder hadn’t seen the end of her yet.

Chapter 3

“Thirsty work, that.” Jack Hurtsill tossed the elephant he had taken from Miss Hale’s desk into the air and caught it as they hurried through the dark, barren streets. “What do you say, lads? Shall we stop for a pint or two?”

Max resisted the familiar impulse to land a fist in Jack’s face. The man was greedy enough to sell his own mother for a farthing. But now, more than ever, Max needed to exercise patience. He had spent too much time gaining the trust of the sack ’em up men to give himself away too soon.

Hunched against raindrops that rang like coins against the pavement, he continued to stride a pace or two behind the gang’s leader.

“What about you?”

When Jack twisted around to face him, Max managed a pleasant nod. “A pint would suit me fine,” he said, echoing the sentiment of the others.

“Then we are in luck.” Jack turned in at the Lion’s Paw, a redbrick building with long dripping eaves. Inside, a lone barmaid sat at a table, studying her nails. She glanced up when they entered but made no welcoming sign. Instead, she yawned, adjusted her stained frock and shook a man snoring next to her into wakefulness.

“I’ve had just about enough o’ that racket,” she told him.

The stench of sweat and gin pervaded the small, dingy tavern, competing with the tobacco smoke coming from a group of men lingering over cards in the corner. Low, slurred voices hummed on air warmed to a stifling degree by a fire that looked far livelier than any of the Paw’s patrons.

Jack pulled in his stomach, swelled his chest and slapped the bar to gain the serving girl’s attention. “Bring us each a glass of gin, lassie, will you?”

With a sigh, she moved to do his bidding, and they found a table next to the far wall.

“Tonight was bloody beautiful!” Emmett exclaimed as they took their seats. The youngest member of the gang at barely sixteen, he had narrow shoulders, no facial hair and fine-boned hands. His childlike face looked as innocent as an angel’s, but he had grown up on the streets of London and could pick any pocket or lock he came across. “What luck! What timing!” he marveled. “I
still
can’t believe we snatched that stiff right out of the dissection room. That poor porter didn’t know what to do when we came through that window.”

“He wasn’t hard to hold down, but the poor bugger did what he could. I was surprised by that. He even tried to come after us.” Jack’s brother Bill, who was as wide as Jack only shorter, shook his head for the porter’s pluck, then clapped Jack on the back. “But we did well for ourselves, all right. One body, two sales and no one but Hale’s lass the wiser. Like you said, she can’t even tell her father without givin’ herself away.”

Max wasn’t excited, just relieved. As attractive as the doctor’s daughter was—with her large brown eyes and raven-colored hair—she was too willful and impulsive for her own good. And he had no kinder thoughts for her father. Why wasn’t Edwin Hale more aware of Abigail’s actions? She had no business instigating any kind of trade with Jack Hurtsill. He was as unpredictable as a man could be. Had Max been forced to protect her when Jack demanded they go back to take the body, it would have destroyed everything he had worked so hard to establish over the past several weeks.

Jack was beginning to suspect his story as it was.

“I’m in favor of anythin’ that saves our backs from diggin’ another hole.” This came from Tom Westbrook, a weasel of a man born with a cleft in his palate that made his speech difficult to understand. He hadn’t had an easy childhood, and it showed in his behavior as an adult. “I would have liked to see her pretty face when she found it gone,” he added, pulling his chair closer.

“Oh yeah? Well, I doubt she’d like to see
your
bloody face again. What woman would?” Jack placed the elephant he had taken on the table in front of him and slapped the serving wench on the behind as she delivered their drinks.

“Keep your hands to yourself or leave,” she told him, but she spoke in a bored monotone. She was too used to such behavior to get angry about it.

“Come on, Missy.” Jack pointed at Tom. “Least I don’t look like him, eh?”

Unwilling to be drawn into the conversation, she scowled and moved away. The others chortled, and Tom fell into the same morose silence he usually hugged about him like a cloak.

When Tom didn’t provide Jack with the fight he had been angling for, Jack forgot about baiting him and changed the subject. “Maybe we should go back and visit Miss Hale again next time her father’s out. I have half a mind to know her better.” He chuckled as he slid his thick, filthy finger over the smooth finish of her elephant.

Barely able to stop himself from snatching the figurine away, Max hooded his eyes. “Selling cadavers makes us money. Wasting time with the surgeon’s daughter does not.” Neither did stealing essentially worthless objects, but Max let his opinion on the elephant go unstated.

Jack’s smile slid from his face. “You won us a mighty fat purse with that play at Aldersgate College. And the lass was ripe for the pickin’; I’ll not argue with you there. But you weren’t really thinkin’, Max, not of the future.” He forgot the elephant and took a swill of his drink, cradling it fondly in one hand while the others watched. “The bitch offered us a contract and you turned your nose up at it. Now she’ll never do business with us again. She even said as much.”

That was precisely the point. Max had done his damnedest to guarantee it. “There are plenty of other colleges. St. Joseph’s was eager enough to see us tonight. When they heard Hale was dealing with us again, they agreed to a contract. So we got a sizeable purse from Abigail
and
her competitor’s business. You also got your elephant.” He shrugged out of his coat. Fresh gusts of rain-laden air flooded the room with each opening of the pub door, but as the clock approached midnight, the portal remained closed for longer and longer periods of time.

Jack smiled fondly at what he had stolen. “Right, my elephant. A pretty bauble, eh? And one she seemed to fancy. But you need to understand somethin’, Max. You’re feelin’ like a bloody hero, what with all the boys clappin’ you on the back. An’ I’m not displeased myself, overall. Tonight’s was a fancy piece of work.” He set his mug down with a
thunk
and leaned halfway across the table, nearly knocking everyone’s gin into their laps. “I’m willin’ to forgive a mistake or two because you’re new and you’re clever and you don’t understand how everything works just yet. But if you think I don’t got eyes nor ears in my head, you’re wrong. I hear the purrin’ of your voice an’ see the pretty-boy face beneath that black stubble. I see the way the ladies gaze after you.”

He broke off to study Max for an interminable moment, causing the others to shift uncomfortably at this unexpected chastening. “You think you got me fooled. But I know you’re different from the rest of us. I just haven’t figured out how different yet, or what it is you want.”

“I have a degree from Cambridge. I come from the other side of town. And I have been cut off from my family. What’s not to understand about that? In any case, what I want is not very complicated.” Max took a drink of his gin, sorely missing the fine brandy he was more accustomed to drinking. “I want some brass in my pocket like the rest of you.”

“An’ we got plenty of that tonight.” Bill spoke up, obviously hoping to diffuse the situation.

Jack glowered at his brother before returning his gaze to Max. “I know. You told me all about those gamblin’ debts and how they’re catchin’ up with you. And like I said before, you’re welcome to run with us as long as you remember one thing:
I
am the leader of this here gang and always will be. You forget yourself again, like you did at Aldersgate with that little lass, and you’ll find yourself the next bloody corpse we sell for ten guineas. We’ll see what the ladies think of you then.”

With a wink, he sat back to drain his mug. “And as for the Hale bitch”—he punctuated his words with a hearty belch—“don’t be tellin’ me what makes us money.”

Afraid of drawing Jack’s ire, the others buried their noses in their cups.

Max shrugged. “Just trying to make sure you’re not letting your willy do your thinking. Because I don’t want to follow any man who does.”

Alcohol affected Hurtsill in one of two ways: he became either the most generous drunk alive or the meanest. And from one evening to the next, there was no telling which way he would go.

Max tensed, in case his words met with a violent reaction, but relaxed—marginally—when Jack’s face split into an appreciative smile.

“There is more to life than money, Max.”

The man was a pig. Shoving his chair back, Max stood. He knew his limitations, and Jack was pressing him dangerously close to them.

“Where you goin’?” Bill asked.

“Back to the house,” he replied. “My bed awaits and I am eager for it.” Grabbing his coat, he raised his mug in a final salute and hoped the others wouldn’t soon follow. He needed a break from them. He also needed some time to search the ramshackle house he shared with Jack and Tom before they returned.

“Stay for another drink.” Jack motioned to his brother and the boy Emmett, who bawled out an old sailor’s ballad as if to convince him. “Another few minutes and we’ll be singin’ along with ’em.”

Max curved his lips into his best approximation of a smile. Singing he could do without, but the thought of a good brawl once Jack sank a little deeper into his cups proved tempting. He wanted nothing more than to break the man’s jaw and be done with him. But that would have to wait. He wouldn’t jeopardize his search for Madeline.

“Another time perhaps,” he said and slipped into the dark night.

Long after her father and Bransby retired, Abigail paced in her bedroom, thinking about Max Wilder and the other sack ’em up men. She had originally planned to conceal what she spent on the cadaver by padding the cost of beeswax and tinder and everything else she bought over the next couple of months. But the members of the London Supply Company had taken
all
of her operating capital. The college could never get by. And trying to hide such an amount put her at risk of being accused of thievery even if they could manage without more supplies.

Then there was her elephant. Her
mother’s
elephant. It was the only thing Abigail possessed that held any sentimental value.

Pressing her fists into her eyes, she fought hard to keep tears from slipping down her cheeks. Although they still got the best of her now and then, she had learned at a young age that crying didn’t help. There was never anyone she could confide in, no one to comfort her. Providing her father deigned to notice her distress, he would shake his head in disapproval and grimace as he told her that he hated a woman’s tears. He didn’t know how to cope with them, didn’t know how to cope with a woman’s
anything
. If he found out what she had done and how badly she had botched it, she would be shipped off to Aunt Emily for good.

So he wouldn’t find out, she decided. She would make it right.

If only Wilder hadn’t taken so much. And the elephant . . . that meant even more.

When she was a child and missed her mother so badly she could hardly stand the ache in her chest, she would slip into her father’s office while he was teaching in the anatomical theatre or handling patients at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and crawl into the footwell beneath his desk. There, the smell of ink, leather and musty old books would surround her, helping her feel close to him. She would hold her elephant in her lap and let her fingers glide over the smooth ivory planes while the memory of her mother’s voice echoed through her mind.

I love you, my beautiful girl. Why, you are no bigger than a faery sprite! . . . So you think you look like me, do you? Ah, you are far prettier than I, and so beautiful on the inside, where it really counts . . .

Sometimes Abigail would stay under that desk for hours. No one ever came looking for her, other than Bran. And when he eventually dragged her out, she always remembered to put the elephant in its rightful place. Otherwise, her father would know she couldn’t simply lift her chin and carry on without Elizabeth as he seemed to have done.

She wanted that elephant back! She
needed
that elephant back.

But if she involved the police and accused the resurrection men of robbing her, Big Jack would retaliate by producing the letter she had sent requesting a cadaver, and her father could spend the rest of his days in gaol as an example to the whole medical community. If that happened, the college and its professors would suffer, too, not to mention its students.

Abigail pivoted at the window. She could take someone to strong-arm Jack Hurtsill and Maximillian Wilder into returning her property . . .

But who? According to the address she had used for that letter, Hurtsill lived in Wapping. Since the docks at St. Catherine’s had been built, the area had fallen to ruffians and the like, especially at night.

What if she waited until the gang separated for the night and Jack Hurtsill was at home, asleep in his bed? If she had the pistol, she could coerce
one
man if necessary, couldn’t she?