39
Trays of the finest champagne floated about the room on the wings of perfectly attired servants. Pheasant, ham, tongue, trifle, jellies—the delicacies continued for what looked like miles, on perfectly laid-out tables stretched with white tablecloths, the meat resting in jeweled buckets of ice. Onstage, a full orchestra played while the partygoers danced below.
The youngest, most beautiful women wore impeccable gowns of white so finely tailored as to look like clouds, needing no additional adornment but a perfect flower in their carefully arranged hair. A single pearl or diamond might grace their innocent breasts, but more often than not, the delicate flesh itself served as enough of an enticement to the eye. The other, less naturally blessed women swirled about in dizzying arrays of color.
Molly wandered through the crowd nervously. Ava had planned this event to make the doctor’s career, and she was going to destroy him instead.
“Miss Green!” Maeve appeared as if from nowhere, a horrified expression on her face. “What happened?”
Molly looked down at her dress. It was ripped and covered in splotches of mud. “It doesn’t matter. I’m fine,” she said.
“Please,” Maeve begged. “You can’t be seen like this. Let me tidy you up.”
Beside her, Tom leaned in to whisper, “Perhaps you’d better go.” She followed his gaze and noted that they were receiving several curious stares.
She hesitated. As ridiculous as such a thing as her appearance seemed at a time like this, she knew that it mattered. In this world, it did. She could not have these people thinking her a madwoman when she told them the truth about LaValle.
“What about you?” She looked at Tom, worried. They’d stolen a jacket from the coat closet on their way in, and now she thought he could almost pass for a guest. But though Tom wore his usual devil-may-care smile, she could read the nerves beneath. She realized he’d never been anything but a servant in this house.
“I’ll be fine.” He landed on the last word with a glint of mischief. “Go on. I’ll be here when you get back.”
She went.
The maid sighed in relief and spirited Molly away to a bedroom on the first floor.
Molly’s hand slipped into the pocket of her gown, finding the needle there that she’d meant to use on the Duchess. She thought of LaValle in his garishly bright uniform, the rest of his students gathered around the dying dog as he’d expounded on his own importance.
The doctor cared only about one thing—himself. And he didn’t just believe he was the best—he believed he deserved the best. The best hospital—the best specimens.
The bodies the police were finding had been dismembered and cut beyond recognition. They didn’t understand why the killer had taken pieces from the corpses, but Molly did.
She thought of Kitty’s tail floating in the church’s attic and shivered.
If the Tooth Fairy was no longer selling LaValle anomalies, Molly had no doubt the doctor would do whatever it took to get them himself.
And LaValle never did anything without an audience. The pig’s head, the giant, the lecture hall. The doctor’s vanity craved attention. He wouldn’t be content simply to take his prizes in the shadows. It would be far too tempting to seek recognition for the many ways he could carve up bodies so perfectly that they appeared as if they were straight out of a drawing in an anatomist’s textbook.
And as the Knifeman, he’d had the whole city watching.
The room Maeve led her to had been converted into a ladies’ dressing room for the occasion, and women and their servants were scurrying about inside in a cloud of perfume. Mirrors and vanities, complete with pins, powders, and lotions, surrounded the room in a semicircle. Maeve ushered Molly to an empty one.
“It’s urgent, Maeve. Please hurry.” She needed to time this right. To take the stage before the doctor had a chance.
If she failed tonight, the Knifeman would have an entire hospital as his playground.
LaValle may have lost the giant’s body, but if he was allowing the party to continue, it must be because he believed he could still convince the senator to give him the hospital.
She had to make sure that didn’t happen.
Her accusations would certainly be refuted. But once she’d said the words, they could not be unheard. Whatever else happened, people would begin talking about the doctor. Looking. And when they did, they’d find the truth. If she was right, the police need only look at the doctor’s hideous collection to match some of the pieces in those jars with the city’s dead girls.
The Knifeman’s victims looked like they’d been cut up by the best blade in the city because they had. It was never a student; it was the teacher. All he’d had to do was follow Ava into the free clinics and poorhouses, then choose his ideal victim. His perfect “specimens,” just waiting to be collected. He’d all but shown the students how he killed them, that day of the lecture with the dog. His unique mix of ether and chloroform, perfect to stop a moving animal—or a heart.
Molly shivered, thinking how close she’d come to using the lethal injection on the Duchess.
LaValle had used his needle on women all over the city. Molly could only hope they’d been dead when he began to use his knife.
She forced herself to endure Maeve’s poking and prodding, but as each second passed, Molly’s unease grew.
LaValle wasn’t just a good performer; he was the best. He’d been persuasive enough to convince Ava to go to the police and accuse the Tooth Fairy in his stead.
What if tonight he used his powers to convince everyone that Molly was simply insane? A silly girl gone wild, with her work cutting up bodies. She’d told Tom her suspicions, and he’d believed her, but that was because he cared about her. These people didn’t know her at all.
Snippets of conversation made their way over from across the room. Most of the talk was about dance partners and gowns, but here and there, Molly caught secretive whispers about the lecture.
“My husband said it’s to be very detailed,” one woman said, leaning in to her scandalized friend. “I brought smelling salts for the grisly bits!”
Molly felt a knot forming in her stomach. Surely, by now, Dr. LaValle knew there was no body. Why hadn’t he told the guests?
Maeve gave a hard yank to her hair as she picked loose a final tangle, causing Molly to cry out.
“That’s good enough.” Molly stood, giving her reflection a hurried glance in the mirror. The mud from her face and hair was gone, and a pair of white gloves now hid the scratches on her arms. Her dress had been wiped mostly clean, though the rip was still there. It would have to do. She couldn’t wait any longer.
Backing away, she nearly collided with the woman behind her.
Beautiful eyes narrowed into catlike slits.
“Ursula!”
She wore an icy-lavender dress that turned the violet of her eyes into sparking amethysts. Molly tried to step around her, but Ursula moved to cut off her path.
Molly tried to push past, but Ursula stepped in her way again. “I thought you should know I told Dr. LaValle you were visiting brothels.”
“Ursula, please!”
“He seemed very interested to know exactly what sort of women you were hanging about.”
“The doctor hasn’t said a word about it to me,” Molly said, exasperated.
The tension dropped out of Ursula’s shoulders. She looked relieved. “Good. I suppose I hoped he would make you quit your classes with James. But I didn’t snitch to James. He can make his own decisions.”
A woman in an azure gown with far too much rouge on her cheeks elbowed impatiently past, sending Molly flailing. Ursula caught her in a strong grip. Molly could smell perfume—lavender and a cloying rose, much like the flavoring Ursula added to her candy.
“Cady liked you,” Ursula said, her face close enough that Molly could see the powder settling into its fine lines. “Even if you are wild, roses shouldn’t waste their thorns on each other. The world already has plenty of pain.”
Before Molly could respond, Ursula let go of her arm and turned, making her way back through the crowd and out of the dressing room.
Rolling her eyes, Molly followed. She had no idea what to make of the encounter, but right now Ursula was the least of her worries.
Steeling herself, Molly went to unmask a monster.
Tom waited for her just inside the ballroom, a punch glass held awkwardly in his hand. She hurried toward him but stopped short when she saw James nearby. She changed direction and saw Tom frown, but she needed to ask.
“James,” Molly said, approaching him. He looked even more elegant than usual, wearing a coat with tails and a black top hat. Patent leather shoes gleamed on his feet. “Have you talked to the doctor? Has he said anything about the lecture?”
She did not understand why the party was still happening at all. What was the doctor playing at?
A hurt look crossed James’s face. “He’s told me nothing. I thought he might at least need my help moving the body. Perhaps he’s asked someone else.”
In the distance, Molly could see Ursula catch sight of them and begin to hurry over.
“That’s just it, though!” Molly said. “There is no body. The giant’s gone.”
“James!” Ursula’s voice tinkled gaily as she appeared at his elbow. “I’m so glad to have found you. Molly and I were just talking about you.”
The clang of a loud bell cut off his response.
The room grew instantly silent as the orchestra stopped playing and Dr. LaValle walked onto the stage. Tom stepped up beside Molly.
She was too late. She’d have to speak after him now. To take her chances that the crowd would listen even after they’d been dazzled by his showmanship.
The foursome swung as one to watch.
“I would like to thank you all for coming tonight.” Unlike the other men in the room, who wore the customary party dress of black and white, the doctor wore another ostentatious outfit, this one a devil’s red. “We have a very exciting treat in store for you. But first, I want to introduce you to someone.”
Breathless, the crowd leaned forward. Molly’s heart sped. She studied the lines of the doctor’s face, finally seeing him as the murderer he was.
LaValle motioned to someone waiting just off the stage. “We have an especially important guest here with us tonight.” His face beamed with satisfaction. “The Honorable Senator John David!”
A man with a bald head and the kind of baby face that ages quickly moved to stand beside him. The applause was deafening. The senator held up his hand for silence.
Molly pushed toward the stage.
“Dear people of Philadelphia.” His voice was well-oiled, as smooth as his skull. “I am so honored to be here tonight in this great city. As many of you know, I was born here. And though I have left, I will never forget where I came from”—he nodded to Dr. LaValle—“nor the treasures it produces.”
Dr. LaValle smiled modestly in acknowledgment, but there was a gleam in his eye.
“After tonight’s lecture, I hope to give this city a new treasure.” The senator grinned. “A research hospital to rival those of anywhere in the world!”
Roars ascended from the crowd, and Dr. LaValle moved forward to speak again.
“Tonight you were promised one of the world’s great wonders,” LaValle said. “A giant of a lecture!”
Molly’s heart beat faster. Here it was . . . He was to tell everyone of the giant that was not there. And then she would slip in on the tails of their disappointment to tell them what a monster the doctor really was.
The room grew so silent that each rustling gown was magnified as loud as a bevy of birds’ frantic wings.
Dr. LaValle shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid there is no giant.”
There. Now. She pushed through the murmuring crowd.
On the stage, the doctor stood calm and composed, his wide smile as eager as a boy’s at his birthday party. He waited for the crowd to quiet before going on.
“There is no giant . . . but I have something better.”
Molly froze.
If there had been excitement before, the crowd was now so fully under LaValle’s spell as to be hypnotized. Not a single limb moved.
“A wonder to surpass all wonders! A beauty unmatched by any this world has ever seen. She has been courted by kings and noblemen.” He waited, drawing it out. “But she is no normal princess . . . This woman had been tattooed with the devil’s own mark!”
A lady’s gasp sounded.
“Tonight, I give you something far more interesting than a giant . . .”
He waited, letting the crowd hang on his every word.
“Our city’s very own Jezebel!”
Molly felt her vision blur. She stared at the stage. On it was no longer a man, but a rat.
“Are you all right?” Tom reached for her, concerned.
But Molly’s feet were already racing toward the church.