Her Dark Curiosity. Megan Shepherd

pressed them into her hand before she could object. ‘I just need to know if you’ve already cleaned the hallways on the east side.’

      The buttons jangled in her callused hand. ‘Heading there next, right after we finish these stairs.’

      I bit my lip, glancing at the two other cleaning girls. ‘Could you start on the west side instead? It’s a long story … a student friend of mine thinks he might have dropped some cufflinks there and I’d like to look for them.’

      She gave me a stern look, and I half expected her to ask what the real story was, but luckily for me she just threw her hand toward the hallways.

      ‘Have at it, girl.’

      I started past the steps, where a rail-thin cleaning girl was polishing the brass handrail. Her basket sat beside her, filled with a collection of cleaning tools that were all quite familiar to me. How many hours had I spent on hands and knees on this very floor, sleeves hitched above my elbows, scrubbing so hard my knuckles bled? What a lonely life that had been, with only my memories to keep me company. How easily I could be back there if not for the professor.

      The skinny girl turned around when she saw me staring at her basket. Her eyes went to the dirty apron that didn’t quite match my fine dress – an incongruity only the poor would notice.

      ‘Can I help you … miss?’ she asked.

      ‘Oh no,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m sorry. My mind was wandering.’

      She nodded, still looking at me strangely, then returned to work. Once her back was turned, I bent down to pretend to lace my boots and secretly grabbed one of the brushes out of her basket, a soft-bristled one meant for cleaning fabric. If I ran into anyone here, I might need it as disguise. I hid it in my apron and hurried down the stairs into the basement.

      The electric lights were on, buzzing and clicking, spilling artificial light over the tiles. Fresh sawdust had been sprinkled on them to soak up any blood fallen from patients or bodies. I wound my way down another corridor and paused at the closed door to the storage rooms where they kept cadavers for autopsies.

      I peeked through the keyhole to make sure the room was empty. Unwanted memories returned of a night a year ago when Lucy and I had come here on a dare, only to stumble upon medical students dissecting a live rabbit. My arm twitched, just as that rabbit’s hind leg had, and I clamped a hand over my arm to keep it calm, hoping the rest of my illness’s symptoms wouldn’t soon follow. Through the keyhole, I spied cold tables draped with clothes.

      Voices came down the hall, making me jump.

      ‘Old coot doesn’t know his head from a hole in the ground,’ one said.

      Whoever they were, their footsteps were headed my way. I pulled the soft-bristled brush out and stooped to hands and knees on the sawdust-covered floor just as two medical students rounded the corner.

      ‘You can’t expect him to—’ The one speaking paused when he saw me, but then continued. ‘You can’t expect him to graduate you when he couldn’t even pass the exams.’ The two students stepped over my arm as I pretended to scour the floor. One glanced back briefly, but I made sure to keep my face toward the ground. Cleaning girls weren’t worth anything to boys like them except a quick glance to see if they were pretty.

      They neared the corner and I started to let out my held breath, until I heard a third voice behind them, clearly belonging to an older man.

      ‘Bentley! Filmore! Stop right there.’

      My spine turned to ice. I knew that voice, even without looking at its owner. Dr Hastings – the professor who had attacked me last year and caused me to flee London. I fought the urge to panic and forced my hand to move rhythmically over the tiles, pretending to clean the mortar with a useless soft-bristled brush. As his footsteps neared, I cringed.

      ‘Yes, Doctor?’ one of the boys said, considerably more polite now.

      Dr Hastings came to stand beside me. I glimpsed his silver-tipped shoes before quickly looking away.

       Focus on the tiles. Focus on the tiles. Focus on the—

      ‘Don’t think I don’t know about those pranks you’ve been pulling. It’s one thing for boys to have a bit of fun, but quite another to chase me down Wiltshire at night. I nearly broke a shoelace.’

      ‘It wasn’t us, Doctor, I swear!’ one of them sniveled.

      I didn’t worry about being recognized by most professors here – they never bothered to glance at the cleaning crew. But Dr Hastings had always been different. I think he liked to think of us on our hands and knees, cleaning up the messes he made. If he found me here now, he could do anything to me and not a soul would ever know.

      I swallowed, wondering if I could crawl backward and scoot away. But to my relief, the two students had his entire attention. He stepped around me and started after them down the hall, chastising them about schoolboy pranks. The moment they were around the corner I leaped up, shoved the brush into my apron pocket, and snuck into the autopsy room.

      I waited ten seconds, twenty, a minute, and heard no more voices. A shiver ran down my back as I found a switch on the wall. The artificial electric light snapped to life, bathing the room in a garish glow so much starker than the hurricane lamps my father used in his laboratory.

      Eight tables lined the walls, four of which were occupied with cadavers. Each body was covered with a heavy cloth. One was large, over six and a half feet tall – that had to be Daniel Penderwick, the solicitor. In my memory he’d been tall as the devil himself, with just as black a heart. I lifted the cloth and looked at his pale, dead body. His naked chest was gutted open with slash marks now drained of blood. The wounds pulled me to them. They whispered truths – memories – I wasn’t certain I wanted to ever recall.

      I approached the next body cautiously, uncertain who I’d find beneath the heavy cloth. Annie’s body would be here, as well as the thief girl’s. But what of the unidentified one? Would it be familiar to me, like the others? Could I still call it all a coincidence if it was?

      I pulled back the next cloth with stilled breath and looked upon the body of the thief. Red hair matted in blood, body bruised from a man’s heavy boot that must have trampled her. At the time I had thought her my age, but she looked far younger in death. Thirteen, maybe fourteen. A missing finger was nothing compared to the missing heart now torn from her chest. More blood drained away from my face.

      I went to the next table, shakily leaning over the cloth. I could tell from the shape it was another young woman. Annie – or what if it wasn’t? What if it was Lucy’s cold body, or our maid Mary, or someone else dear to me who never deserved this?

      Dread scratched its tiny claws at me but the urge to know was stronger, and I pulled back the cloth. Annie Benton, though I was hardly relieved. She hadn’t deserved this. Her light brown hair and fair skin looked so much paler in death. Years ago she’d slept in the bed next to mine, and we’d eaten porridge together at breakfast, and each evening we’d scrubbed our single change of clothes in the boarding-house’s laundry room. She’d shared her soap with me once.

      It was hard to concentrate on anything besides the gaping wounds in her chest, almost perfectly slicing her in the middle. The cuts were jagged, furious, nearly beautiful in their destruction, like all the others. Whoever had made them had done so with a passion for violence. Perhaps I should have looked away, but I didn’t.

      Eventually I moved on to the last body. The unnamed victim. My instincts urged me not to look in case it was someone dear to me, yet somehow my feet took me there, winding around the bare cadavers, their lifeless eyes watching me. I drew the cloth back and jerked in surprise. My heart stampeded in my chest. I collided with the table behind me, brushing against Daniel Penderwick’s cold, dead hand.

      I recognized the fourth body.

      It was the old white-haired man from the flower show, Sir Danvers Carew, the beloved member of Parliament who had once abused my mother and me. I’d seen him