“Are we gonna see the dead bloke?” asked the younger boy. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Daniel couldn’t tell whether it was from excitement or fear.
“Nay. ’E’ll be buried in a shroud, ye daft whelp. Don’t ye know anythin’?” Elias snapped.
Daniel and Elias used the crowbars to pry off the coffin’s lid. With a grunt, Daniel hauled himself out of the grave, then waited while Elias lifted the coffin’s lid up to him.
He nearly had a heart attack when the boys shrieked, their faces ghostly white in the moonlight.
“Shut yer blasted mouths!” Daniel whispered. “Do ye want ter be sent ter Newgate?”
“That ain’t no bloke!” gasped the older boy.
“W’ot?” Elias glanced down, and nearly jumped. “Bloody ’ell!”
Daniel had thought graverobbing had cured him of any superstition, but now horror rose up inside him as he stared into the open coffin. The man who’d died and had been buried only yesterday was there, his big body sewn into a shroud. But he wasn’t alone. Lying on top of him was a woman, naked as the day she was born. And her eyes . . .
God in heaven,she had no eyes.
Daniel fought the urge to turn tail and run. “What the bleeding hell is this?”
Elias said nothing for a moment, then glanced up at Daniel. The gleam in his partner’s eyes wasn’t fear. Elias’s mouth curved in a wide smile, revealing his broken, tobacco-stained teeth.
“I’ll tell ye what this is, Danny-boy. It’s a two-fer: two bodies fer only one hole dug!”
Chapter 22
By the time Kendra stood in front of the slate board the next morning, the sky was a dazzling blue, clear of both clouds and smog —a rarity in London. Sunshine streamed through the library’s windows, reflecting off the many silver domed trays hat had been brought in by the servants, supervised by a stoic Wakely.
“Will that be all, madam?” the butler asked.
Kendra noticed how his gaze strayed to the slate board. Except for the small flicker in his eyes, she couldn’t guess what he was thinking. Probably wondering who the hell his master had married.
“Yes, thank you.”
She waited for Wakely and the staff to file out of the room before she poured herself a cup of coffee, then walked back to the slate board to review her notes. She was savoring her first sip when she heard the clump of boots and swish of skirts. A moment later, Rebecca and the Duke came through, and with them the scent of fresh, cold air and horses—the latter explained by the riding habits that they wore.
“Good morning,” Rebecca greeted cheerfully. She walked to the side table and helped herself to a cup of tea. “Duke and I met Sutcliffe in the park on our way over, and we had a lovely gallop. You must learn to ride, Kendra. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Broken bones, probably. But Kendra kept that opinion to herself.
Rebecca and the Duke spoke of the previous night’s ball as they piled their plates with the classic English breakfast. They had just sat down at the table when Alec arrived with Sam and Muldoon. More greetings were exchanged, more plates filled. Kendra had to admit that having a briefing during breakfast was vastly better in the nineteenth century than in her own time.
“Dr. Munroe is not coming?” the Duke asked, glancing at the empty chair at the table.
“I invited him,” Kendra said. “We can catch him up when he gets here.” Her gaze roamed around the table and settled on Muldoon, who was slathering freshly churned butter on his bun. “Let’s start. Muldoon, did anyone at Bowden Theater think the description of the woman from the Thames matched Clarice?”
“I got something even better.” The reporter grinned as he set down his knife and bun. He yanked from his pocket a neatly folded piece of paper. He unfolded it several times, then flipped it around to reveal a poster forThe Merchant of Venice. Below the title and performance dates was a black-and-white illustration of a beautiful, dark-haired woman. The artist had drawn her looking over her shoulder, head tilted, a coquettish half-smile curving her lips.
And a mole in the shape of a heart on her left cheek.
“Prudence said they printed these up two weeks ago,” Muldoon explained. “They were supposed to go out this week. ’Tis one of the reasons Mr. Myott is so vexed that Clarice took herself off.”
“This woman certainly matches the description in the newspaper,” Kendra said.
“I found out something else.” Muldoon paused—purposefully dramatic, Kendra thought.
Sam must have thought the same, because he narrowed his eyes and snapped, “Out with it, then!”
“Clarice isn’t the only actress to have gone missing from Bowden Theater.” Muldoon smiled at their surprise. “Prudence told me that an understudy by the name of Isabella Russo disappeared a couple of months ago. No one thought anything of it; actors come and go in theater companies all the time, you understand. Especially understudies, who grow weary of waiting for their turn on stage. But Prudence said that Isabella left without telling anyone. And no one has heard from her—or about her—since.” His smile fell away, leaving his expression grim. “Rather ominous, don’t you think?”
