Tarnished (16 page)

“You remembered!” he beamed. “Why, now, my pulse is all aflutter.”

Remembered? I met Compton’s searching glance, shaking my head ever so slightly. “Professor, may I introduce—”

Ladies did no such thing. Compton cut in before I could finish. “Cornelius Kerrigan Compton, Professor. Earl Compton. At my side are Mrs. Fortescue and, as you apparently know, Miss St. Croix.”

“Oh, gracious me.” The professor blinked at Compton’s stiff, precise bow, attempted to mirror it and succeeded only in causing his hair to whip back and forth. “Madam,” he said to Fanny, who was looking at him as if he’d sprouted wings from his head. “Cherry—”

“Miss St. Croix,” Compton corrected coolly, and again the man rubbed at his nose.

“Of course, of course, forgive me,” he said quickly. His magnified eyes settled on me, brimming with affection I wasn’t sure I’d done anything to earn.

I found my tongue at last. “You
are
Professor Woolsey?”

“I am!” He paused, hands worrying at his apron, now. Plucking, straightening. “You . . . don’t you remember me?”

I hesitated. “I . . . no, I’m afraid I was rather young when my parents were alive,” I said, keenly aware of Compton’s steady scrutiny.

Woolsey’s weathered features crumbled. “Of course. Of course, well, you were barely knee-high. Truth be told, I only recognize you because you look so much like her, you know.”

My mother. I summoned a smile. “Yes. So I hear.”

“Were you told to come here? I rather thought—well, now!” Following his patterns of speech was equivalent to meandering a narrow maze. “Have you come to view my humble exhibit?” His eyes widened even more, until I had to look away before they swallowed the goggles that already made them appear enormous. “I’m honored! Let me show you!”

“Excitable fellow,” the earl murmured as the gangly professor turned and hurried back into the shrouded darkness from whence he came.

“And . . .” I hesitated. “Apparently someone who knew my parents.”

“You don’t remember him?”

I looked up at him. “I was young,” I said sharply, and flounced away before he could answer.

“Wait, I didn’t—”

Metal ground against metal. The warehouse hummed, and all at once, the dark was chased away as the lanterns brightened. The very air hummed, crackled with a surge of electricity so powerful that I felt the fine hairs on my head lift.

The maze of holding tanks and display cases was suddenly bright as day. Each tank flickered, and I realized they did so in tune with the hum surrounding us.

“They’re all on the same current,” I breathed, awed. How much electricity could be generated by this single exhibit?

“Come in, come in!” beckoned that voice, and I left Fanny and Compton to sort out propriety behind me.

To be truthful, the displays I passed were rather grisly in nature. Single limbs and independent digits floated in large glass urns filled with a greenish liquid. Flesh hung from the severed stumps like miniature flags, and even my stomach twisted as I recognized the tiny curled fingers of an infant.

Fanny moaned behind me. “Cherry, wait.”

“Come on, then,” I demanded, impatient now.

“What macabre artifice is this?” Compton’s voice was low, but sounds carried in the warehouse, and I glanced over my shoulder to find him eyeing an urn with a floating dismembered knee joint hovering at eye level.

“Not artifice. Science,” I corrected.

The professor rounded a nest of tubing and beamed at me, the very picture of a deranged bird. “It’s ghoulish, I know,” he admitted, “but oh, the mysteries we are uncovering!”

I raised my eyebrows. “We?”

He blinked again. “We. The people, the thinkers.” He spread his hands to encompass all of us. “The scientists! Tell me, Miss St. Croix, what do you think?”

I thought that Professor Woolsey was maybe more than a little mad. But I also thought that most scientists were, and so I turned to survey the large square tank he gestured to.

It seemed inoffensive. A round glass window revealed a small organ inset in what looked like glass. Copper tubes had been thrust into the flesh, the ends speckled with dried fluids, and a series of electrical devices appeared to run out of the tank, along the floor and to a switch in the wall.

I frowned. “What is that?”

He smiled. “A heart, miss.”

Fanny groaned.

Compton stepped up beside me, and although I wouldn’t admit it, I was glad for the solid weight of his arm against mine. “An actual heart?” he demanded. He removed his spectacles, folding them neatly and sliding them into a pocket. “From where?”

I silently thanked him for asking. That made my work here so much easier.

The professor’s smile faded, and he scratched behind one ear as he thought for a moment. “I can’t recall,” he finally admitted, sounding more perplexed than anything. “But if you’d like, I could locate the records. My organs come from legal hands,” he added quickly. “All done proper, I swear it.”

“I’d be interested in seeing them,” I said, studiously avoiding both Fanny and Compton’s raised eyebrows.

The professor’s smile once more split the dingy gray stubble at his cheeks. “I went to university with your father, you know,” he declared, as if I hadn’t just said anything at all. “That’s how we know each other.”

I stared at him. “You what?”

“Your father,” he repeated, slower now as if I were dim. Or slow. “Abraham St. Croix. A fine man, your father.” His eyes blinked again, hard and fast. “A fine doctor. A terrible shame about his laboratory. A terrible loss. Your mother was the best of us.”

“She . . . was?”

“Of course,” he said solemnly. “She was a brilliant mind, for all the university wouldn’t allow a woman. That didn’t stop her, you know. Truly the best of us . . .” With mounting horror, I realized tears glistened in his magnified eyes.

I hastened to reassure him with the only thing I knew. “She was much loved by Society,” I said, perhaps a little lamely.

“Yes. Yes, she was. This is her idea, you know.” The man waved at the tank, and I stared at it in surprise. “I mean, certainly the mechanics are mine, and the plans, but the theory was sound. It never would have come to pass were it not for her.”

Compton lowered his head. “Is this man . . . all there?” he murmured in my ear.

“One never knows.” I desperately wanted to ask more, but not in front of the earl. And certainly not until I could speak to the professor on my own, intellectual terms. Eager to distract him, I pointed at the tank. “Professor, what does this do?”

“Oh!” His expression cleared, even as he once more returned to wringing his apron between both hands. “A switch causes the electricity to enter the heart, and then it creates a loop by which the current liquefies—” He paused. “No, no, not liquefy, that’s not correct, but the concept is sound. A better word is—” He stopped again. “Look, I can show you!”

But he didn’t move, and I was left watching him as one would a dog that one wasn’t quite sure was stable. Or toothless. “Professor Woolsey?”

“It’s only. . . .” He shifted from foot to worn foot. “Are you . . . like him, Miss St. Croix?”

“Like who?”

“Your father.”

I didn’t know how to answer that.

“You look just like her,” he said, seemingly unaware that he was repeating himself. “Just like her. It’s just that one never can be too careful,” he said over my sound of disbelief. “There’s a great deal of rivalry in this world. Always has been, you know. Secrets, formulas.” He cocked his head. “Why, I remember at university when I—” He stopped again, then darted to the switch. “Watch your eyes! Sometimes, the flesh catches fire. Just a spark or two, nothing to—”

“Oh.” The sound didn’t come from me.

Behind us, Fanny crumpled to the ground.

Chaos erupted.

Compton darted to catch my chaperone as the professor all but vibrated in place, the switch caught somewhere between on and off. The whole building shuddered; the tank pinged as if warming up. Somewhere in the depths of the warehouse power source, machinery groaned. I heard a terrible clicking noise, like an aether engine on the blink, and pink sparks flashed across the pockmarked organ.

Pink?

I clapped both hands to my face, torn between laughter at this terrible farce and a deep confusion.

A madman, certainly. But decidedly not a killer. I couldn’t picture the birdlike Woolsey overcoming any healthy woman, even a doxy. It seemed this was another case of rumors warping fact. Someone else had to be killing the sweets.

Although, hadn’t the druggist claimed
two
men? But here was only one. I needed to find out if the man worked alone.

“Air,” I finally said, and turned on the professor. “Sir! My chaperone requires air, please.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear.” Woolsey flung the switch fully to the off position and bustled to Fanny’s side. She moaned weakly, pale and stricken as she sagged against Compton’s side. “Please, madam, please, this way,” Woolsey said, not unkindly.

He didn’t walk so much as half scamper, as awkward as a crab with oddly spry legs. Compton followed, and though I made as if to hurry after them, I took a turn that pulled me wholly out of view.

So it wasn’t exactly sporting. But I did come here to learn what I could, and though I doubted that the frail-appearing Elijah Woolsey could be responsible for overpowering healthy women, the man himself had engendered many more questions.

How well did he know my father? Where, in fact, did his organs legally come from? Did he work alone? Why did he say that my mother was the best of them?

With my head ringing with questions, I hastened along the aisles, searching for an office. A storage room. Something.

Unfortunately, I didn’t count on Lord Compton’s determination.

I made it across the warehouse, several empty shelves deep when a shadow fell over my shoulder. “Mrs. Fortescue is in safe hands.” There was censure there. Mild, but apparent.

Caught, I stared into a tank labeled with L
IVER,
D
ISEASED
. The tank, like all of them piled in this corner, was empty. “She only needed a breath,” I said quietly.

“One might consider that she needs the safety of her charge as well.”

His footsteps clicked against the floor, and I turned to frown into his eyes. “You must think me a lost soul.”

“Lost?” He seemed to take this into consideration, easing beside me as I made my way down the aisle. I couldn’t look for anything while he shadowed me, so instead I only meandered. Hoping something would stand out amid the ghoulish bodies dismembered all around me.

There was a statement on my life if ever there was one.

“Not lost,” he finally said. “Perhaps just a little off course.”

I chuckled. “Because I enjoy science and thought?”

“Because when reminded of your parents, your face betrays your emotions.”

I stopped. Slowly, I turned to look up at Compton, bewildered and oddly elated to find him already facing me. My eyes narrowed. “Should I not?”

“Feel?” He tipped his head. “Or reveal that you do?”

“Do I reveal so much?”

“Not to all.”

“Just to you?” I queried, trying and failing to inject levity into a conversation I had never expected. Not from the so proper Earl Compton.

“Perhaps not on purpose,” he allowed quietly. “There is no shame in not remembering them, you know. By all accounts, you were quite young during the . . . incident.”

The words bit deeper than they should have. I must have winced, because he moved forward, taking a single step that closed much of the distance between us.

His eyes sought mine. Held them, as if he’d closed a shimmering cage around my attention.

A steel green net. Surprisingly understanding, and searching. Hesitant.

I swallowed, though my mouth had gone dry. “I . . .” What could I say? That I held no memories of my own parents? That much was obvious. That I had no guilt or shame or sorrow for the deaths of people I didn’t know?

That seemed . . . too honest.

“All of London knows the tale,” he said gently. “The papers carried the details, and of course much of the peerage hold estates in Scotland. There’s no shame in any of it. Not for you.”

“The tale,” I repeated bitterly. “You mean that bedtime story they share when the children are feeling uppity and the dark is closing in. ‘Behave, or Mad St. Croix will come to collect your bones,’ ” I mimicked nasally.

He caught my hand in his, pressing my gloved fingers between his palms. “You mustn’t take it so personally,” he said seriously. “The story is not a common one. People are drawn to the fantastical nature of it.”

“It’s not fantasy,” I said impatiently, pulling my hand away. “It’s science. His laboratory in Scotland caught fire, that’s all. It was . . . it was a trick of luck that trapped them inside. It’s happened to others.”

“It has,” Compton said soothingly. “Although perhaps to no others quite as engaging as you, Miss St. Croix.”