The Dickens Mirror (14 page)

“Well?” Battle said. “What, exactly, transpired, Doctor? Would you care to enlighten us all?”

“Not here. My office.” Kramer gestured with the bottle to some point beyond Doyle. “I need to have her moved to a treatment room for the surgeon.”

“And given a bath,” Battle said. “A thorough wash. I
insist
.”

“Leaving aside that she’s been incorrigible and we
have
tried … don’t be so melodramatic,” Kramer said dryly. “You’ve not rescued her from the gutter, Battle. Anyway, what does it matter? Do you …” Cocking his head, Kramer gave Battle a crooked grin. “Do you
truly
care? She’s mad, Battle. Once she’s no longer useful, you’ll move along to the next crisis and the next. But it’s how you cope, isn’t it? Deluding yourself that justice matters at all these days.”

“I won’t even dignify that with a response. But look in the mirror, Doctor, and ask yourself the same questions.” Battle’s tone was as flinty as his eyes. “Now, sir, will you bathe her? Or shall I send round my sergeant’s wife to do the job?”

“No need. I’ll make sure Graves and Meme see to it.” Kramer looked up as the younger attendant—
Bode
, Doyle remembered—and Weber (nose probably out of joint, judging from that broad bib of tacky crimson) came forward with a stretcher. They were
trailed by that pretty young girl with the dark blue eyes and coppery hair. “Take her to the treatment room. Has Graves gone to fetch Connell?”

“Yes, sir.” Bode gave Kramer only a fleeting glance before bouncing his eyes away. His jaw was beginning to swell, and that lower lip looked liverish as a blood sausage. “He’s on the men’s incurables, tending to a few biters.”

Elizabeth was so limp, when they lifted her to the stretcher, her head swooned back. Her hair dragged through blood to paint the worn and dingy carpet a faint scarlet. When she moaned again, Bode put a hand to support the back of her head and murmured something into her ear.

I think he quite fancies her
. Black Dog sounded impressed.
Awful chance he took, don’t you agree? Trying to shield her the way he did?

“All right then.” Kramer gestured toward the floor and the array of bandages and pins still strewn about. “See to my equipment, Meme, and then have another attendant clean the blood, will you? Oh, and Weber, tell Graves to prepare the girl a bath.”

Pausing, a small brown phial in hand, Meme looked up. “I could do that, sir.”

“No.” With a deft movement, Kramer plucked the bottle from her fingers. “You’ll escort the inspector to my office.”

That bottle
. Kramer’s voice dwindled to a buzz as Doyle watched the doctor disappear that bottle into the pocket of a blood-spattered brocade vest.
How to nick it, how to get at that?
Doyle’s jaw was so tight it was a wonder his teeth didn’t explode to pebbly bits. If he could only find a way to get his hands on it, or something similar. The surgeon, perhaps? No, no, that wouldn’t do. If he complained about his arm, then the man
would likely wish to examine both. That he couldn’t afford.

“… take a look at that, Doyle?”

“What?” Startled, he looked up to see both Battle and Kramer giving him an expectant stare. Christ, had they been talking to him? “Ah, sorry, I …” He swallowed and decided to just come out with it. “I’m sorry, sir. Wandered off there. You said?”

“He didn’t.” Kramer’s gaze strafed him from head to toe and back again. That right eye narrowed. From its socket of tin, the left glinted. “
I
said that you were looking rather unwell. A little gray, actually. Your arm pains you?”

“Oh.” His gaze dodged to his left hand, still clamped to that cut. His fingers glistened as if he’d dunked his hand in red paint. “I just need a plaster, is all.”

“You let me be the judge of that.” Kramer looked at Battle. “If you’ve no objection and don’t think I’ll poison the boy, I’ve an examination table in my office. As soon as I’ve finished with Elizabeth, I can tend to him there. I spent some months as a mortuary assistant during my studies, and Meme is very skilled. It will also save you a bit of time waiting on Connell.”

“I wouldn’t want to be trouble.” Doyle didn’t like the way Kramer’s eyes touched him here and there.

“No, you need to be examined.” Turning to Kramer, Battle said, “The constable accepts.”

“Really, sir.” Kramer would make him remove his jacket and shirt. Might as well take his Webley and blow his brains out right now. Or cut his own throat with his
sgian-dubh
. “I don’t
need
 …”

“Oh, do be quiet, Constable, and come along now.” Kramer fluttered his fingers in a
get a move on
gesture. “I’m certain we’ll find
something
that you do.”

That Damnable Nightmare

THE SURGEON, CONNELL
,
was
not
pleased when Bode and Weber delivered Elizabeth, doped to the eyeballs, to be stitched up. Gave them an earful about the sooty light of a solitary oil lamp and didn’t they understand that wounds of this nature required prompt treatment and a lot of other blather Bode only half-heard.

Weber was a worry, too. When the older attendant wasn’t bleating about how he might be dying, his skull had broken open, his head ached, and oh, his
nose
, the looks the arse threw at the girl as they laid her on the surgeon’s examination table in the adjoining consulting room made Bode’s stomach churn. Bode thought the surgeon agreed to tend to Weber first just to shut the man up and get him out the door, but then Weber got all
that poor girl
and
I can wait
.

That decided Bode then and there. Didn’t take a scholar to see that Weber would hang around and
volunteer my services, seeing as how you’re shorthanded
. Bode just didn’t trust Weber’s hands not to wander.

So Bode spoke up about how Kramer wanted Elizabeth
bathed. The surgeon went into a snit:
That will put me even further behind
. And,
Who can be expected to work in these conditions?
And,
It’s not as if she’s the only patient
. Etcetera. After giving them both strict orders to remain in the outer room and away from Elizabeth, Connell finally stomped out to complain. Which was fine. Just so long as Graves got herself in here double-quick.

Once the surgeon was gone, Weber gave a nasty grin that, with the cove’s beat-up mug and a nose the size of a turnip, would’ve looked at home on a gargoyle. “Oh, I know what you’re about. You’re hoping Connell does
me
while Graves puts
her
”—a hook of his thumb over one shoulder toward the inner consulting room where Elizabeth lay—“to rights. Then I’ll have no need to hang round.”

Just so long as I keep
you
out here and away from her
. “It’s not up to me. I was only relaying
Doctor’s
orders.”

“Hmm.” Weber screwed up one blackened eye. “You know, I
do
believe I’m feeling even worse now. In fact, I don’t think I ought to be around patients the rest of my shift. A pity. Means
you
got double duty. Best get cracking.”

Crossing his arms, Bode leaned against a wall. “I’ll wait.”

“Oooh.”
Weber’s lumpy nose twitched. “Worried about your little Guinevere?”

The tips of his ears flamed. “It wouldn’t do for only one of us to stay. Graves’d have my head.”

“Graves.”
Weber said it almost like a curse. He crossed to a high, wheeled wooden stand upon which the surgeon had laid out his box of instruments and a bowl of diluted carbolic acid that gave off a sour fume. There was also a double rank of various phials. Weber plucked up a bottle, tilting its label to the light. “You’re lucky the asylum’s shorthanded. Any other time, Graves’d
press to have you put out. Though maybe Doctor likes to exercise that fist of his.” Replacing the bottle, he picked up another. “I can still get you sacked, you don’t mind.”

Bode said nothing.

“First intelligent thing outta your mouth all day.” Returning the second phial to its place, Weber squinted at the label of another and grunted his approval. Pulling the cork with his teeth, he tipped a swallow, rolled the liquid around his mouth a moment, then sighed. “That’s more like it.
Much
better.”

“That’s for patients.” He should’ve kept his mouth shut, but he couldn’t help it.

“Yeah? Well, aren’t you the pot calling the kettle?”

“Whatsat mean?”

“What I said.” Weber plucked up another bottle and waggled it. “Ah … there we go.” Uncorking the second phial, Weber carefully dispensed more tonic into the first bottle. “Not as if you’ve not blagged your share of what ought to go to the nutters.” After a pause, Weber threw him a quick smirk. “Wish you could see the expression on your dial. I know it was you nicked Graves’s old skeleton key.”

Shite
. His guts turned leaden. Secreted in an inner pocket stitched to his waistband, that iron key was suddenly as cold as an old bone. “That laudanum’s gone to your head.”

“Oh, I think not. We live on the same floor. I know every squeak of every board. ’sides, you’re not the only one with keys. So imagine my surprise when
I
come downstairs and find the kitchen door unlocked. After that, it was a matter of taking myself into a nice dark corner and waiting to see who slithered out. But here’s what I can’t figure.” Punching both corks back in with the flat of one hand, Weber replaced the somewhat depleted
second bottle. “Where you’re hiding all that food. Can’t be putting it all down your own gullet. So you’re hoarding it, or maybe giving it over as barter.”

No, he’d been gathering it for Tony and Rima. “If you were going to turn me in, you’d’ve done it by now. So what you want?”

“You keep your mouth shut about my helping myself here, and I’ll let Connell take care of your Guinevere. Mum’s the word, and we’re all square.”

“She’s not mine.”

“No? Coulda fooled me, what with you so quick to step in, defend your lady love? Although, tell the truth, I always thought you was sweet on Meme.”

More like the other way around. Bode liked Meme all right; she was very pretty. But there was also something about her that bothered him: an emptiness that was hard to put into words. That she was also Kramer’s assistant made him doubly wary. “None of that’s your business.”

“So you wouldn’t mind? If I had a go at Meme? Because
there’s
some sweet velvet I wouldn’t mind tipping.”

“Watch your mouth. She’s not a Judy.”

“Boy, all girls is the same under their knickers.” Slipping the first bottle into a trouser pocket, Weber turned his attention to Connell’s open bag. Rummaging around, he said, “Oh now, this
is
lovely,” and came up with a gurgling silver hip flask. Untwisting the cap, he wafted the open insert beneath his nose and snuffled. “My beak’s off, what with all this swelling, but I
do
believe …” Upending the bottle, he took a quick snort.
“Ohhhh!”
Shaking his head, Weber exhaled and gave a dog’s shiver. “ ’At’s strong enough to peel
paint
.”

Yeah, hope it strips your gullet
. He watched Weber disappear
the capped flask into an inner pocket and then turn to inspect an array of instruments laid out on a velvet cloth from an open, two-tiered case. Weber lifted out the removable tray to reveal a second rank of surgeon’s scissors, forceps, a large bone saw with an ebony handle, scalpels, and a coiled metal chain with two ebony handles. “Oh, lovely.” Tweezing up an ivory-handled scalpel, Weber tested the point. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, tipping velvet and our dear Elizabeth.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Oh, come on. That girl’s petrified. Kramer poured so much laudanum, it’s a wonder her eyes ain’t met above her nose. Big strapping boy like you, don’t tell me you haven’t thought of her, pretty girl like that. Haven’t you never wondered what Kramer
does
during those mesmeric sessions, closeted away, in
priiivate
?”

Bode’s chest simmered.
He’s baiting you
. Never mind getting sacked for stealing; throw a punch and Weber would crack his skull like a walnut, or jam that scalpel in his eye and call it self-defense.
Hurry up, Connell
. He clasped his bunched fists behind his back.
Move your ruddy baby backside
.

“What’s a matter?
Oooh
, now.” A dried half-moon of scant blood formed a rust ring under Weber’s nose. He looked like a mournful bull. “Is it that you’ve never popped a cherry? Or maybe you’re just a bit of a meater.”

“I’m not scared. Just waiting on the right girl, is all.”
Bode, shut your sauce box
.

“Really? From all your ruckus, I’d’ve thought she’s the one. What made you take on Kramer like that?”

Damfino
. He knew Elizabeth, sure. (How long? He couldn’t recall.) They talked; she was nice when she wasn’t raving.
(Actually, she was a sight better than most even when she was.) He wasn’t exactly
sweet
on her.

In truth … he thought the urge to protect her came from the dream: that damnable nightmare.

SNAPPING AWAKE THAT
morning, eyes bugging, sweat pouring. Never had anything like that happen in his life. So much was a muddle, but God, he could still feel it, see it, taste it: the fierce determination in his blood, a bloom of orange light, a wicked blast. Faces of the friends he knew, Tony and Rima, jumbled with others, including a little girl who he actually thought might have been a much younger Elizabeth and … Meme? Yes, but weirder still, whenever he’d seen Meme’s face in the dream, his mind kept whispering,
Emma
. Made no sense.

But what scared him most: he had
died
. In the nightmare. He’d felt it happen in that blast of heat he barely registered before his body simply … went away.

There was even more: explosions and blood and broken bodies. A war waged in steamy heat and a dense jungle. An older man, someone he trusted. (And so very much like the inspector that when Battle appeared on the ward, Bode nearly cried out,
Christ, Sarge, I thought you were dead!
He’d caught himself just in time. What was
that
all about?) There were also tunnels in this other nightmare world, where something black waited.