The Bone Garden: A Novel

— What're you doing, taking it all? Are you mad? — asked Fanny.

— I'm leaving. —

— You can't take it all! That's mine, too! —

— You don't have a noose hangin' over your head. — Suddenly his chin shot up and he froze.

Someone was pounding downstairs, on the door. — Mr. Burke! Mr. Jack Burke, this is the Night Watch. You will open this door at once! —

Fanny turned to go downstairs.

— No! — said Jack. — Don't let them in! —

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. — What'd you do, Jack? Why've they come for you? —

Downstairs, the voice yelled: — We'll break down the door if you don't let us in! —

— Jack? — said Fanny.

— She's the one did it! — said Jack. — She killed the boy, not me! —

— What boy? —

— Dim Billy. —

— Then let her go to the gallows. —

— She's dead. Picked up the gun and shot herself with the whole world watchin'. — He rose to his feet and slung the heavy saddlebag over his shoulder. — I'm the one'll be blamed for it all. Everything she paid me to do. — He headed for the stairs. Out the back way, he thought. Just saddle the horse and go. If he could get a few minutes' head start, he could lose them in the dark. By morning, he'd be well on his way.

The front door crashed open. Jack froze at the bottom of the stairs as three men burst in.

One of them stepped forward and said, — You're under arrest, Mr. Burke. For the murder of Billy Piggott, and the attempted murder of Rose Connolly. —

— But I didn't? it wasn't me! It was Mrs. Lackaway! —

— Gentlemen, take him into custody. —

Jack was hauled forward so roughly he stumbled to his knees, dropping the saddlebag on the floor. In an instant Fanny darted forward and snatched it up. She backed away, hugging the precious contents to her breasts. As the Night Watch yanked her husband back to his feet, she made no move to help him, said not a word in his defense. That was his last glimpse of her: Fanny greedily cradling his life's savings in her arms, her face calm and impassive as Jack was led out the tavern door.

Sitting in the carriage, Jack knew exactly how it would all turn out. Not just the trial, not just the gallows, but beyond. He knew where the bodies of executed prisoners invariably ended up. He thought of the money he'd so carefully saved for his precious lead coffin with the iron cage and the gravesitter, all to defeat the efforts of resurrectionists like himself. Long ago, he'd promised himself that no anatomist would ever cut open his belly, hack at his flesh.

Now he looked down at his own chest and gave a sob. Already, he could feel the knife begin to cut.

It was a house in mourning and a house shamed.

Wendell Holmes knew that he was intruding upon the private agonies of the Grenville home, but he made no move to depart, and no one asked him to. Indeed, Dr. Grenville did not even seem to notice that Wendell was in the parlor, sitting quietly in the corner. Wendell had been a part of this unfolding tragedy from the beginning, and it was only fitting that he should be present now, to witness the end of it. What he saw, in the wavering firelight, was a broken Aldous Grenville hunched deep in a chair, with his head bowed in grief. Constable Lyons sat facing him.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Furbush, timidly entered the parlor with a tray of brandy, which she set down upon the end table. — Sir, — she said quietly, — I gave young Mr. Lackaway that draught of morphine you requested. He's asleep now. —

Grenville said nothing, merely nodded.

Constable Lyons said to her: — And Miss Connolly? —

— She won't leave the young man's body, sir. I have tried to pull her away, but she stays by his coffin. I don't know what we'll do with her when they come to take him in the morning. —

— Leave her be. The girl has every reason to grieve. —

Mrs. Furbush withdrew, and Grenville said, softly: — As do we all. —

Lyons poured a glass of brandy and put it into his friend's hand. — Aldous, you cannot blame yourself for what Eliza did. —

— I do blame myself. I didn't want to know, but I should have suspected. — Grenville sighed and drank down the brandy in one gulp. — I knew she would do anything for Charles. But to kill for him? —

— We don't know that she did it all herself. Jack Burke swears he's not the Reaper, but he may have been involved. —

— Then she most certainly instigated it. — Grenville stared down at his empty glass and said softly, — Eliza always wanted to be the one in control, ever since we were children. —

— Yet how much control does a woman ever truly have, Aldous? —

Grenville's head drooped, and he said softly: — Poor Aurnia had the least of all. I have no excuse for what I did. Only that she was lovely, so lovely. And I'm nothing but a lonely old man. —

— You tried to do the honorable thing. Take comfort in that. You engaged Mr. Wilson to find the child, and you were ready to provide for her. —

— Honorable? — Grenville shook his head. — The honorable thing would have been to provide for Aurnia months ago, instead of handing her a pretty necklace and walking away. — He looked up, torment in his eyes. — I swear to you, I didn't know she was carrying my child. Not until the day I saw her laid open on the dissection table. When Erastus pointed out that she'd recently given birth, that's when I realized I had a child. —

— But you never told Eliza? —

— No one but Mr. Wilson. I fully intended to see to the child's welfare, but I knew Eliza would feel threatened. Her late husband was unlucky with his finances. She has been living here on my charity. —

And this new child could claim it all, thought Wendell. He thought of all the slurs against the Irish that he'd heard from the lips of the Welliver sisters and Edward Kingston's mother; indeed, from almost every society matron in the best parlors of Boston. That her own darling son, who had no talent for earning a livelihood, would now have his future threatened by the spawn of a chambermaid would be the ultimate outrage for Eliza.

Yet it was an Irish girl who had, in the end, outwitted her. Rose Connolly had kept the child alive, and Wendell could imagine Eliza's mounting fury as the girl managed to elude her, day after day. He thought of the savage slashes on Agnes Poole's body, the torture of Mary Robinson, and he understood that the real target of Eliza's rage was Rose and every girl like her, every ragged foreigner who crowded the streets of Boston.

Lyons took Grenville's glass, refilled it, and handed it back to him. — I am sorry, Aldous, that I did not take control of the investigation sooner. By the time I stepped in, that idiot Pratt already had the public in a blood frenzy. — Lyons shook his head. — I'm afraid young Mr. Marshall was the unfortunate victim of that hysteria. —

— Pratt must be made to pay for that. —

— Oh, he will pay. I'll see to it. By the time I'm finished, his reputation will be dirt. I won't rest until he's hounded out of Boston. —

— Not that it matters now, — said Grenville softly. — Norris is gone. —

— Which offers us a possibility here. A way to limit the damage. —

— What do you mean? —

— Mr. Marshall is beyond our help now, and beyond further harm. He cannot suffer any more than he already has. We could allow this scandal to simply die quietly. —

— And not clear his name? —

— At the expense of your family's? —

Wendell had been silent up to this point. But now he was so appalled, he could not hold his tongue. — You'd