Lips trembling, I managed to pull the cover back over Annie’s face, and the rest of the cadavers. I stumbled into the hallway outside, eyes closed, drawing in a deep breath. The hallways here always had the usual smell of chemicals, along with some traces of lingering cologne from whichever gentleman doctor had last been here.
I couldn’t shake a repeating phrase in my head: He’s alive. Alive. Alive.
I heard footsteps down the hall and spun, expecting to find his yellow eyes in the shadows. Heart pounding, I hurried for the stairs, away from these bodies and what they meant. I threw a glance over my shoulder as I turned the corner and nearly collided with a man coming into the hallway from a side door.
Not just any man. Inspector John Newcastle.
My heart shot to my throat. “Excuse me,” I said in a rush, keeping my head down with the hope that he wouldn’t recognize me. But his hand held my elbow, and he frowned as if trying to place me.
“Miss . . . Moreau, isn’t it? Lucy’s friend. What on earth are you doing down here?”
“Nothing, Inspector,” I stuttered. “Visiting some old friends.”
His eyebrow rose with a touch of irony as he glanced at the cadaver storage room door behind me. “You keep strange company for friends, Miss Moreau.”
“Oh no, that isn’t what I meant. I used to work on this cleaning crew, last year before the professor took me in. I hadn’t seen them in a year, so . . .” I swallowed, watching as his eyes followed my footsteps in the sawdust-covered floor to the storage room. My footsteps contradicted me. He’d know I’d been in there with the bodies.
My heart pounded. He could so easily make trouble for me, being down here where I wasn’t supposed to be, snooping around bodies. The professor’s guardianship could only protect me so far.
“I came to check on the autopsy report for the latest victim of the Wolf of Whitechapel,” he said. “But I would be happy to escort you back to the main floor.”
“That’s not necessary. I know my way. And I really must be going.” I smiled as graciously as I could and turned away, heart pounding, feet unsteady on the tile floor. All I could think of was Edward. All I could feel was a thousand tangled emotions.
“Wait, Miss Moreau.”
My eyes fell closed, only for an instant. I turned around with another shaky smile. The inspector wasn’t smiling now, as he closed the space between us and dropped his voice to a whisper.
“After I met you, I looked up your name. I’m protective of Lucy, you understand, and your name sounded so familiar. I found a police report. . . .” He glanced down the hallway, making sure we were alone. My instincts jumped to attention. A dozen scenarios flashed through my head of what I’d do if he tried to arrest me. All of them ended poorly for me.
“It was self-defense,” I said firmly. “Dr. Hastings attacked me. I was a cleaning girl then; no one would believe me—”
He dismissed that with a wave. “None of that interests me. I’ve no doubt it was Hastings’s fault—it isn’t the first incident of this sort with his name on it. No, Miss Moreau, the reason I recalled your name was because of your father’s crimes, not your own.”
My body froze, afraid to take a single breath.
At my silence, he continued. “I was young at the time, in college training to be an investigator. The case was quite notorious. I went back and read the file on your father, and it seems the case was never closed. He fled England, and no one heard from him again. I hate to leave this sort of thing open, if we can file it away as a solved case. Your assistance, Miss Moreau, would be invaluable to our efforts.”
I stared at him, speechless. After hiding from the police for the last year, now they were coming to me for help? I wanted to laugh, if I hadn’t feared sounding like a madwoman.
“I assure you, you can trust me,” he continued. “We’ll handle the information in the most sensitive manner. It isn’t my intention to cause a sensation, just to solve a long-standing case. It would be a feather in my cap, you see, even lead to a promotion. Together with this Wolf of Whitechapel case, I would be made head of the entire division. Which means I’d be better suited to care for Lucy.”
“Care for Lucy?”
He smiled boyishly. “It isn’t official, of course. I haven’t yet asked her father for her hand in marriage, but I know he’ll give me permission. Any day now, expect to get the news of our engagement.”
There was something undeniably tender about the way he said it. I was quite certain Lucy had no idea the inspector’s intentions were this immediate. My head whirled with the idea of Lucy wed, and Newcastle wanting me to help solve my own father’s case, and among it all, Edward. Alive.
Mrs. Bell rounded the corner and stopped short when she saw us. “Can I help you, sir?”
I took the opportunity to step away from Inspector Newcastle and head for the door. “I’m sorry, Inspector,” I said quickly. “There’s nothing I can help you with. I’ve heard rumors that my father is dead—I might trust those, if I were you.”
Before he could respond, I bid farewell to him and Mrs. Bell, and hurried from the hallways where the electric lights still clicked and sputtered, as if warning me to never come back.
EIGHT
AS SOON AS I left King’s College, I rounded the edge of the building and slumped against the rough brick wall, fighting to calm my erratic heartbeat. The day was clear but bitingly cold. My coat hung open, my hands bare, yet I didn’t reach for my gloves nor do up my buttons. I couldn’t. All I could manage was to slide down the brick wall to the frozen grass and let the cold seep up from the ground into me.