Free The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman Page B

firmly.
    “We have no need of the constables, Mrs. Scurr,” Clanny says, stroking Gustine’s damp blonde hair more confidently now. “Let them get on with the business of arresting the thieves and prostitutes of this city. I’ll release this body upon my own authority.” With a little reluctance, he detaches Gustine from his frock coat and offers her a clean linen handkerchief. As Gustine gratefully blows her nose, Dr. Clanny reaches for the death certificate he was drafting when she arrived and dips his pen in ink. “What was your father’s name?”
    His name? Gustine looks over at the corpse. Mag Scurr has discreetly positioned his hands over his private parts; stiff, swollen, filled-with-cold-black-swamp-water fingers and two huge padded thumbs eclipse whatever he might have had down there. But look at that hideous tattoo. Jack Crawford, British Hero, with his legs wrapped around a thick black pole. If Gustine knows anything about men, she knows what an oversized tattoo means.
    “Dick Liss,” Gustine says without even the shadow of a smirk. Dr. Clanny dutifully writes it down.
    Henry has made four trips to his rig and back, determined each time to abandon Gustine to her fate. Of al! the bloody luck, to nearlv run headfirst into his uncle Clanny. To have his respected uncle learn how he spends his time——cavorting with prostitutes and sniffing around back alleys for corpses like, a pig after slop. What if Audrey found out? He paces feverishly up and down the wet, cobbled street. He must have been mad to put his school, his reputation, the reputation of his innocent fiancee in Gustine’s filthy hands.
    Calm down, my boy, calm down. Lean your head against the wall, take a deep breath. Henry closes his eyes and tries to still his furious, unreformed heart. This pounding monster in my breast is nothing but an organ; knowable, controllable. Look, now I enter the great venous system bound for the right auricle of the heart. 1 move to the ventricle, from the ventricle to the lungs, from the lungs to the left side of the heart, and from thence to the general arterial system to be elastically sped through the entire body. Uncle Clanny did not see me, he thinks, flushing his panic down a million tiny capillaries until it is so broadcast and attenuated it is easily absorbed. Gustine will not betray me. All will be well.
    That is better, he thinks after a few minutes, feeling his agitation drain until he is calm enough to crave a cigarette. He strikes a friction match and cups it around the hand-rolled tobacco paper he’s removed from the case Audrey gave him as an engagement present. It is awkward with his bandaged hands; his fingers are bound tightly together like flippers, and twice he drops the match. He flings the cigarette to the ground and unwraps his left hand, unfurling a long white streamer of gauze. His palm is pink and tender, but the blisters healed weeks ago. He’d only continued to wTap his hands as a precaution, and now, he realizes, as an excuse. If he could not hold the scalpel, he could not cut. If he could not cut, he would have no need of a body. Impatiently, he releases his other hand from its soft prison. Tonight, perhaps. Tonight will decide it.
    He lights another cigarette, leans against the wall, and slowly smokes it. He can only imagine what Gustine is saying to his uncle Clanny. He knows he should have turned to his uncle months ago, when the trouble
    first began, but he could not bear to do it. Uncle Clanny has been so generous already, and Henry is not even his flesh and blood. He is Dr. Clanny’s wife’s sister’s son, the fearful, introverted only child of a widowed mother. He wants—no, he needs—to prove to his uncle (and to Audrey and to all of Sunderland) that he can make it without assistance. He wants to prove it so badly, he has thrown in his lot with this bold, blue prostitute. She is in there now, doing what he was not man enough to do.
    He extinguishes his cigarette and flexes