This dear woman would have her wish granted, and I would see to the job personally after I handed the members of the Dales branch their Christmas bonus.
I only hoped her soul could forgive me.
She would be reduced to ashes with a companion.
♥
It was New Years Day before I heard news of the police. I’d been granted much more time than I had anticipated, and yet still, it unnerved me.
What I didn’t expect was that it would be Dorian Gable who would arrive to give me the news. He found me in the mortuary, while Grace was in the house, preparing for her introduction to Mortuary Science, starting the very next day.
“They came to the office. Apparently he hasn’t been seen again since that night,” said Dorian. “With any luck, he’s offed himself, I told them – thug that he was.”
I smiled gently as I tightened Mr Wicks' jaw with themortuary wire to ensure his mouth stayed closed. Eugenie had filled him in, clearly, about Tom.
“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “He was obsessed with poor Grace. It’s better that he’s gone – if he’s gone.”
Dorian watched me working, fascinated one moment, and a little disturbed the next. This kind of work wasn’t for the faint of heart. I could see then, clearly, why Dorian would never have been a good match for Grace. He didn’t share her darkness like I did.
“They were asking if anyone witnessed him leaving the building. I told them he was gone before the evening began, taking Grace with him. That it was you who went after them and rescued her,” said Dorian, with passion in his voice. “I told them you’re nothing short of a hero. Eugenie said just the same.”
“They’ll be paying me a visit this afternoon, then,” I said, tying off the wire. “I’ve three more bodies to tend to, yet. No rest for the wicked, eh?”
Dorian shifted his weight from one foot to the other, pocketing his hands. I could tell there was something else, more than just the body, that was making him queasy. Another dilemma was jabbing at his conscience.
“They mentioned something else. They’re considering whether to escalate it to a murder investigation,” he said, his voice quavering slightly. I noticed he was no longer able to look me in the eye. “They’re not sure it was in his nature to commit suicide. His father didn’t think so. Wasn’t the type, he said.”
“They never are the type,” I said, shaking my head solemnly. “Until the final straw.”
Dorian nodded, nervously, trying to arrange hisface into something less perturbed. As if battling his subconscious to convince himself, rather than indicating his agreement with me. Beads of sweat accumulated on his brow.
“I suppose they can’t be sure what happened to him until they find his body,” he said, finally looking up at the corpse on my table. He stared thoughtfully for a moment, and only looked away as I prepared the trocar with a bottle of cavity fluid.
“Put this on,” I told Dorian, handing him a visor with a respirator attached. I fastened mine, and then helped him with his. “Safety first,” I said, my voice muffled by the mask.
“Thank you,” he said, looking more fearful behind the mask than he did without it. He observed my trocar, and the bottle of noxious fluid, as if I held a strange animal in my hands.
“I wonder what the likelihood is of finding him now, especially if he died somewhere outside, left to decay in all weathers...” he swallowed hard, watching the sharp end of my tool glinting under the mortuary lights.
“Besides, if there’s no body, then there’s neither a suicide nor a murder to investigate,” I said, as I stabbed the sharp end of the trocar beneath Mr Wicks' sternum.
“Quite,” said Dorian, the colour draining from his face, until he was ashen.
Chapter Nineteen
Grace
The divorce, as promised, was finalised in February.
Once the police informed us that they had no further questions, and that Tom’s case would remain open until they gathered more information, we relaxed a little. Tom was scattered on the winds of the Dales, my meticulous fiancé informed me, and there was no information to be discovered. He was lost, forever, reduced to amissing personsentry on a database for all eternity.
When I awoke at night, sweating, a scream caught in my throat, as I remembered Tom and feared for us both if our crime was discovered, Nick reminded me of that fact.No body, no murder, he would whisper; as though it were a mantra he had lived by long before ever meeting me. My skin prickled, the hairs on the backs of my arms standing on end, wondering what he was hiding; what discoveries were still to be made about my husband-to-be. He soothed me with kisses and gentle murmurings that he could never find me now, not ever, and I was free of my Yorkshire life for good. Even my mother, who tormented me the moment I closed my eyes, had faded away like smoke.
Time moved on, and so did we. I slept every night in Nick’s bedroom, proudly sharing his bed, with the bust of the wooden crow watching over us. We dated, spending long evenings in restaurants, before winding our way back through the gardens of Hampstead Heath, completely lost in one another.
We were to be married in the first week of April, in the chapel in our own home – the chapel of rest.
Short marble pillars took up the space where the body of the deceased would usually be laid out, heaving with arrangements of deep red roses and lilies of the purest white. I had become so accustomed to lilies at every one of our funerals that I saw them now as soft, fragrant companions; my little happy ghosts. I simply couldn’t feel that all was right with the world if I wasn’t in the presence of lilies.
