The Perils of Pleasure (18 page)

“Yes,” was all she said.
A world of meaning in
that
word.
“How are you?” the doctor asked Madeleine, his

voice softening a little, but not enough to eliminate the

threat in it. “I’m well. Thank you, Doctor.” It was an accurate enough response. But Colin almost

laughed. “I’m glad,” the doctor said gruffl y. “But—” “Dr. August, forgive me for interrupting, but might
we have a private word with you?” Colin interjected. “It’s urgent.”

The doctor hesitated. “As I’ve said,
I’ve
urgent busi
ness to conduct. What do you want with me? Are you wounded, Mr. Eversea? I can’t imagine anything else that would persuade me to talk to you. And if you intend to take me forcibly, I imagine I would be quite a hero should I begin shouting your name right now and draw the attention of a soldier or a Charlie.”

The street wasn’t highly trafficked. But if the doctor were to shout, Madeleine and Colin would be in a bit of trouble indeed.

“Four larges and two smalls, Dr. August?” This came from Madeleine, coldly and without hesitation.

The effect of these words on the doctor was pro
nounced. His head jerked back as though he’d been slapped.

“What . . . what do you want?” His voice was hoarse. “You don’t understand. You
can’t
understand.”

Colin decided to apply the balm of exquisite man
ners and an aristocratic accent. Very reasonably, gently, he said, “Dr. August, we only need your help. I swear to you. We’re not here to blackmail or extort or harm. Someone tried to kill Mrs. Greenway yesterday, and I think someone tried to ensure that I was hanged for a murder I didn’t commit, and we think you can help us learn the truth. And that’s all I will say until you agree to speak with us privately.”

The doctor threw a glance over his shoulder, through the bars of the handsome, spiked fence. The large hos
pital courtyard was empty.

“What if I said no?”

By way of answer, Madeleine slowly unlocked her pistol.

It was an eloquent sound anywhere, the grind and click of that mechanism that turned a gun from impo
tent to deadly. It did something to one’s marrow.

The doctor was not unmoved. His own pistol re
mained raised, but he swallowed audibly. He glanced down at Madeleine’s pistol, then into her face, just barely lit by lamplight. And saw only cool confi dence there.

The doctor sighed. “We’ll talk in my surgery.”

The hospital back entrance was beyond the gates and the courtyard, and Dr. August took them through it down a corridor. He unlocked the door of a small examination room, then closed it and locked it behind him again.

No one put pistols away.

Colin watched Madeleine once again quickly take in the lay of the small, dark room, assessing exits, memo
rizing details; a table in the center, shelves holding jars of unidentifiable things, a blinds-covered window that stretched across the far end. She went to it and tested it; it opened outward onto a side street, and a gust of river-scented air came in on a breeze. She pulled it closed again and slit the blinds a very little. The dimmest of streetlight filtered into the room.

Colin remained hovering near the doorway on one side of the table, the doctor across from him, pistol trained in precisely the place that would kill him in
stantly, Madeleine’s pistol trained on Dr. August.

“I’m going to assume that you, Dr. August, like every
one in London, know the details of my story. Succinctly put, I believe someone paid Horace Peele to disappear the night after my arrest, thus ensuring my conviction. We believe whoever paid Horace then
paid
Mrs. Green
way to coordinate my rescue and then attempted to kill
her, and the entire endeavor, on the surface of things, seems to have been financed by blackmail.”

The word “blackmail” had a curiously paralytic effect on the doctor. He seemed unable to speak.

“A mutual friend led me to believe someone might be blackmailing
you
, too, Dr. August.”

The doctor still didn’t answer for some time. And then he turned slowly to Madeleine, who was leaning almost casually against the far wall of the surgery, her pistol trained on him.

“I’m puzzled, Mrs. Greenway. Your husband . . . you had the shop. Your family was respectable. When you lost your husband and baby—”

Madeleine Greenway had lost her husband
and
a baby? For a stunned instant Colin stared at Madeleine, wondering how she would feel about this secret ripped out into the daylight.

Madeleine interrupted the doctor curtly. “I lost the shop, Dr. August, as I was too ill to keep it running. But this is irrelevant now. We’d like to know whether someone was
blackmailing
you for any reason. And I can’t convey the urgency of this matter to you strongly enough.”

Colin still watched her; how on earth did one go from widow to mercenary?

“Why me?” The doctor’s voice was faint. “You men
tioned mutual friends.”

With some difficulty, Colin took his eyes from Mad
eleine, whose gaze had never wavered from the doctor. “Marble Mile?” he suggested cautiously to the doctor. “Harry?”

Silence from Dr. August as he absorbed this and cor
rectly decoded the meaning.

“Oh, God.” Emotion rasped his voice. “So it hap
pened. So they were blackmailed, too? Harry and Elea
nor? I feared it would happen, but . . . were they?”

“Harry was persuaded to act as a sort of messenger by means of blackmail, yes.”

The doctor made a sound of pure disgust, then shook his head to and fro. He smiled, and it was bitter and wry.

“I never meant for it to happen. I never meant to tell. But the only reason blackmail is effective is that much is at stake, and the blackmailer knows it. And so I found myself rather without a choice, or at least it seemed that way in the moment. And since you already know I’ve something of a large secret, Mr. Eversea—Mrs. Greenway—I will tell you: yes, someone did blackmail me. It’s entirely my fault, and it all began because I des
perately wanted Mr. Pallatine.”

He said this with a fervor that made Madeleine and Colin carefully avoid meeting each other’s eyes. Colin knew they were both wondering whether perhaps they had a love triangle of an entirely different sort on their hands.

But if the doctor noticed the eye avoidance, he said nothing.

Instead, pistol still firmly and competently clutched in one hand, one alert eye on Madeleine and Colin, he struck a flint to light a candle and then settled a glass globe over it. Diffuse light swelled into the room. It was enough to illuminate part of the surgery, but not enough to alert any passersby that the doctor was in his surgery. Madeleine strolled over and immediately closed the blinds, just to be certain.

Colin peered about the room. Uniformly sized dark
bottles of things lined counters, clear jars fi lled with powders, stacks of folded cotton wool, shadows of dully gleaming, instruments, and—

SWEET CHRIST
!
There was a ghost in the corner!

A looming, shapeless white mass hovered on the pe
rimeter of the lamplight, and Colin’s spine iced.

Dr. August strolled confidently over to it and began tugging at the ghost.

Ah.
Not
a ghost. A
sheet
. And it was draped over something that towered over the doctor and over Colin, something just shy of ceiling height.

A few tugs later the sheet sagged elegantly to the floor. But what was beneath it was hardly better than a ghost:

It was an enormous, entire human skeleton.

“Mr. Pallatine,” Dr. August said resignedly.

nm

r. Pallatine was a sort of amber-brown, a bit glossy, and suspended from a stand. His toes dangled nearly to the floor; his head nodded so that his chin nearly touched his rib cage. He was, in other words, the typical human skeleton, only much, much taller.

“He was my quest,” the doctor said, studying him the way one might the
Mona Lisa.

The doctor looked up at the two of them, and ac
tually seemed amused. “The two of you think I’m a ghoul.”

As this was patently true for Colin, at least until fur
ther information was obtained, he said nothing.

The doctor sighed. “Let me explain. As a teaching physician, my job is to continually advance my profes
sion, and to do so, we physicians need corpses to dissect, particularly corpses who died of interesting ailments.”

Doctors, Colin thought, inwardly shaking his head. Only doctors found ailments “interesting.”

“For example, I doubt there would be anything terri
bly interesting about
your
corpse, Mr. Eversea. You’re a fine looking man, but on the surface of things you appear
quite ordinary and you seem healthy. You would have been useful in a very general way, but I doubt I would have added much to our body of scientifi c knowledge. Not offense meant.”

“No offense taken, Dr. August.” Colin was as
tounded that his voice was steady.

“I would have been happy to have it, regardless.” A ghost of a smile floated over the doctor’s lips. Gallows humor, indeed, as the only bodies surgeons were legally allowed to dissect were those of executed prisoners un
claimed by families.

And there were far, far more medical students than there were executed felons in London.

“I’m honored.” Colin gave him back the same smile. “I imagine my corpse could have fallen into worse hands.”

Still might, he thought but didn’t add.

“But Jonas Pallatine . . . we
all
wanted him,” the doctor said wistfully. “Every physician in the land wanted him.”

“Jonas Pallatine?” The name was strangely familiar. And then Colin had it. “Would he be Jonas the Giant? He traveled with circuses, did he not?”

“Oh, yes,” the doctor said. “He was well over seven feet tall, Mr. Pallatine, was, as you can see. He died last year. Quite a magnificent freak, and a very pleasant man, but a bit reluctant to do his bit for science.”

His bit for science, Colin assumed, meant donating his remains after death so doctors could poke about his insides and posterity could continue to gawk upon his magnifi cent skeleton.

“Did you ever see him when he was alive?” Dr. August sounded mildly curious.

“I did, as a matter of fact. He traveled with a circus
to Pennyroyal Green when I was a boy. He greeted me quite pleasantly, and after that I dreamed for weeks that all of my brothers were giants and wanted to eat me. Funny, because I grew up to be the tallest.”

He had the pleasure of seeing Madeleine Greenway turn her head incredulously toward him. Colin wasn’t certain
why
he did it, the jesting in the midst of unbe
lievably dark situations. Out it just came.

Dr. August was clearly a man of fact, not whimsy, however. The sort of person Colin typically enjoyed toying with. A bit like Marcus. But the doctor obvi
ously had no tolerance for whimsy at the moment. He gave Colin a mildly puzzled look and continued.

“Well, I’m a surgeon, as you know, and I teach here at the hospital. I’ve worked hard for my excellent reputation”—the doctor managed to make this sound factual, rather than arrogant—“but an excellent repu
tation requires maintenance and growth. You might have heard how I removed a tumor from the Earl of Lydon’s head?”

Colin and Madeleine nodded, as it seemed the thing to do.

“My father was a physician in Marble Mile, and I was sent to Edinburgh to train, and part of my duty as a physician is to make contributions to medicine, to advance it as best I can and share my knowledge. Well, I came to know Mr. Pallatine through his journeys—you do meet the most interesting people at circuses—and that’s how I learned that Mr. Pallatine’s heart, sadly, never was strong. I do believe his heart ailment was related to his great height, as I’ve heard tales of such things before. I wanted to get a look at his heart, you see. I became
obsessed
with getting a look at it. His heart began to fail in earnest, and when it became clear
that his death was imminent—a matter of weeks—I began to watch him closely. I wanted to be the fi rst to claim his body in the name of science, no matter what. And Mr. Pallatine . . . well, he rather resented this.”

Colin imagined the man who had good-naturedly made his living from being tall surrounded by scien
tifically earnest vultures eager to have a crack at his remains.

He suspected he would resent it just a little, too.

“Mr. Pallatine rather set a good deal of store by his body, when really, what need have we of bodies after we shuffle off this mortal coil? And what if the gift of your body would immeasurably improve the lives of people born after you?”

“I imagine not everyone is as capable of being prag
matic about such things as doctors are.” Madeleine said it evenly. She wasn’t
quite
chiding him, but Colin had known her long enough—a whole day and a half—to recognize the edge in her voice and what it meant.

Colin glanced away from the admittedly fascinating doctor and his pistol. Madeleine’s face seemed to fl oat, oddly disembodied, in the dark. It was stark, leached of color. Odd, but he’d thought it would have taken a good deal more than a seven-foot-tall skeleton to unnerve Madeleine Greenway, and he began to wonder whether memories had made inroads into her composure.

“I imagine coffi n makers would object eventually, if everyone began donating their remains with generous abandon,” Colin contributed. “Seems it would rather erode business.”

Dr. August appreciated this witticism with one raised eyebrow. “Well, I imagine I was a bit too zealous . . . Mr. Pallatine rather made it diffi cult for me to get near him, in fact,” Dr. August reflected with rueful irrita
tion. “Barred me from his home. I finally resorted to bribing one of his servants for news of the condition of his health. And when he died . . . this servant alerted me to the fact. I was able to retrieve his body. And as the servant doubtless missed the income she’d acquired from being an informant, she told me about the Res
urrectionists. Seems her man is one of them. Does a decent business selling bodies.”

“Servants. One must be so careful about trusting servants,” Colin commiserated. He wasn’t convinced the doctor wasn’t quite, quite mad.

“Do be aware that I was obsessed,” the doctor re
minded them gently. “I abhor them on principal, the Resurrectionists. They’re the very dregs of a society that already boasts—as no doubt you’ve learned over the past few weeks, Mr. Eversea—many contemptible layers. I do understand the horror people must feel knowing the peaceful eternal rest of their loved ones might be interrupted one night by a Resurrectionist with a shovel. But how . . .” Passion gave the doctor’s voice volume and tension; he paused, and sighed, rubbed a palm over his eyes. “How in God’s name are we ever to improve our craft as surgeons, our knowledge of the human body, or save
more
lives, if our teaching hospi
tals haven’t corpses to practice upon? Think of all the pain that could be prevented or remedied . . . ”

He looked over at Madeleine then. And there wasn’t regret in his expression, or undue sympathy. More of an acknowledgment of whatever had happened years ago. And a search for understanding in her face.

She remained still. She didn’t nod, raise a brow, or sigh. Just waited.

“And if your loved one requires surgery . . . wouldn’t you prefer your doctor had explored or cut into an
actual human prior to the experience, rather than a papier-mâché facsimile of a human? Because this is what our students are often forced to do.

“But we haven’t enough corpses to practice upon, and the laws prevent us from obtaining any more. And God help me if I spread more death simply because I don’t have skill enough. Realize this before you pass judgment on me for buying bodies. Paupers, most of them, with no one to claim them. The truth of the matter is . . . Resurrectionists exist because there is a need for them.”

“We are in no position to pass judgment, Doctor.” Madeleine said quietly. “We only want answers.”

Colin asked, “Did anyone else besides this servant know this about you?”

“Only the servant, Mary Poe, and the . . . ‘gentle-man’”—he gave that word an ironic intonation—“I deal with when purchasing corpses. Critchley, his name is.”

“How did it happen, Dr. August? When did the blackmail begin?”

“I was here in my surgery late one evening when he simply . . . appeared in the doorway. Not a tall man. Stout. Thinning hair, spectacles. He was so shockingly ordinary, in fact, that at fi rst I couldn’t believe my ears when he said . . . when he said the words. I actually laughed. Surprise, I suppose. I asked him to repeat him
self. And then . . . it wasn’t funny. He told me, very reasonably, that he knew all about my dealings with the Resurrectionists. And he said he imagined that if my dealings with the body snatchers were made public, my reputation, my family, my life, would be in ruins.”

“Which is what makes blackmail so
very
effective,” Colin mused ironically.

“Quite, Mr. Eversea.” The doctor acknowledged this with a twitch of the lips. “In exchange for his silence on the matter, this man suggested, very politely, that I give him a sum of money, and he named an extraordi
nary amount. I told him I hadn’t the money to give him. Interestingly, he offered a peculiar alternative: could I give him a secret? As a doctor to kings and earls, he thought I might have one worth a good deal of money. And that . . . well, I did have a secret to share. I care
fully avoided telling the secrets of kings and earls, and those, I assure you, I have as well. But if you’ve spoken to Eleanor—the countess—then you know the secret I told this man. Would you like a cigar, Mr. Eversea?”

Colin didn’t even blink at the change in topic, though inwardly he gave a start. “Yes, thank you. I would like a cigar.”

“Mrs. Greenway, they’re in the humidor behind you, if you would be so kind. I would offer you a brandy, but I need to refill the decanter. It’s empty.”

“I’m all right, thank you, Dr. August, without brandy or a cigar.” She found the humidor and brought forth two cigars, and she did the clipping of them. The doctor lifted the lamp globe, and the two of them lit their cigars over the flame and sucked them into life.

There was a pause to take in the rush of delicious smoke.

“Did you happen to notice this gentleman’s waist
coat buttons, Dr. August?” Colin asked.

The doctor went still. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Eversea?”

It distantly amused Colin that, of all the extraordi
nary topics broached during the past few minutes, this was the one that seemed to startle the doctor.

“He
was
wearing a waistcoat featuring mother-of-
pearl buttons, Mr. Eversea.” Dr. August cast his eyes at Mr. Pallatine, who had a glow of his own, if not a mother-of-pearl sort. “I wondered that a man who could afford such a waistcoat would need to resort to blackmail. I noticed because the rest of his clothing was so somber. His buttons caught the light.”

“Did you notice any other distinguishing character
istics?”

“Apart from what I’ve described to you? No, Mr. Eversea. Only that he seemed to be undertaking his task with a certain amount of . . . pique. Almost reluctantly. I sensed something weighed heavily upon his mind.”

Silence reigned in the wake of that sentence, as this rather described all of them.

Colin sucked in the cigar smoke as if it was oxygen. It tasted like his old life: of crawling home from clubs, and evenings at brothels, and quiet evenings at Penny
royal Green, surrounded by brothers in one room while the women talked about them in the next.