Page 1 of Disturbing the Dead
ONE
“What are your feelings on mummies?”
I look across the drawing-room table at Annis. We’re in the middle of a brutal game of cards. Sure, I suspect “cards” and “brutal” should never be used in the same sentence, but this is Annis, who could turn Go Fish into a blood sport.
This particular game is écarté, which is similar to whist, except it’s for two people. While playing a card game with my boss’s sister might seem like a reprieve from my housemaid chores, it’s actually the opposite, because those chores aren’t going anywhere. This just means I’ll be stuck folding the damn laundry after I should be done with work and chilling.
But what Annis wants, Annis gets, and if she demands I play cards with her, I don’t have much choice. Okay, yes, I could refuse. After all, I’m not really a housemaid in 1869 Edinburgh. I’m a twenty-first-century police detective who is—for reasons the universe refuses to divulge—trapped in the body of Dr. Duncan Gray’s twenty-year-old housemaid.
Gray knows my story. His other sister, Isla, knows it. But they’re not here, having abandoned me for some secret mission that I’m not pissy about at all. I’m stuck with Annis, who doesn’t know my secret, and if I tell her that entertaining unannounced guests isn’t my job? Well, that isn’t something a Victorian housemaid tells a dowager countess.
So I’m playing écarté, and she’s slaughtering me, despite the fact that I’ve actually been getting good at this game. No one plays like Annis. At least the bloodshed is only figurative. This time.
“Mummies?” She waves a hand in front of my face. “Are you listening to me, Mallory?”
“What are my… feelings? On… mummies?”
“Have you been nipping whisky while my sister is out? That might explain this.” She waves at the cards. “The only other explanation is that you feel obligated to let me win. I expected better of you.”
I ignore the jabs. With Annis, you choose your battles, or you won’t stop fighting until you drop of exhaustion and she declares herself victor.
“I fear, Lady Annis, that I am a poor substitute for Dr. Gray and Mrs. Ballantyne. I do not travel in the proper social circles, and while I am certain there is some custom where one stops in the midst of a card game to ask one’s partner’s feelings on mummies, I do not know the appropriate response. Please forgive me. I am such a dunce.”
Her eyes narrow. “No, you are rude, disrespectful, and sarcastic. Fortunately for you, I find those all admirable qualities in a young woman, so long as she is not my maid. Now, mummies. Your feelings on mummies.”
“You are talking about Egyptian mummies, yes? This isn’t some secret code among the nobility, where ‘mummies’ really means ‘morphine’? I have strong feelings on morphine. It is bad. Don’t take it. There, now, I want to discard these.” I slap down two cards.
“There is nothing wrong with a little morphine under the right circumstances. The problem is laudanum, which dulls the wits. That I cannot abide. But yes, I mean Egyptian mummies. Have you ever wanted to unwrap one?”
I blink. Did I hear that right? I peer at Annis, focused on her eyes, which seem as cobra-bright as ever. No signs of whisky or morphine.
“Have I ever wanted to… unwrap a mummy?” I say.
“And see what’s underneath all those bandages.”
I relax. Right. I remember where I am. Victorian Scotland during the rise of the British Empire, when Egyptian mummies were all the rage. What seems like a non sequitur to me is just Annis making actual conversation. She must have read an article on an excavation and thought it might interest me.
I’m actually flattered that she’d make the effort. That’s not usually Annis’s style. We do get on, though, despite my grumbling about her roping me into the role of companion. Lady Annis Leslie is not a nice woman. But she is interesting, and as long as she continues to repair her relationship with Gray and Isla, I can admit that I don’t mind her company.
“A withered corpse,” I say, as I examine my cards. “That’s what lies beneath the wrappings. A desiccated human corpse without a stomach, liver, lungs, or intestines. Oh, and the brains. They take out the brains through the nose.”
Silence. With most people, I’d presume I’d offended their sensibilities. But the woman across from me is a Gray, born to a father who made his fortune as an undertaker and a mother who shared her love of science with all her children. In this house, no one is going to faint at the mention of pulling brains out nostrils. Instead, it’d be an invitation to a heated discussion of the procedure.
So when Annis goes quiet, I look up, confused.
“Where did you read that?” she asks.
From the way she’s staring at me, I want to tartly remind her that I can read, very well thank you. But then she might insist on knowing exactly where I read it, and I wouldn’t know what to say, so I tell her the truth. “I’m sure I’ve read it somewhere, but I’ve seen mummies, too. In museums.”
“Which one?”
I go still as I realize my mistake. This is the source of her confusion—we aren’t in a world where kids go to museums on school trips, especially not girls like Catriona Mitchell, whose body I inhabit.
I flutter my hand. “I do not recall. Somewhere on my travels.”
“What travels?” She peers at me. “You are a nearly illiterate housemaid who has likely never left Edinburgh.”
“I am not nearly illiterate. I realize that I had presented myself as such, before the injury to my head, but I now suspect that I always knew how to read. I chose not to for some unknown reason. My reading skills are, in fact, excellent.”
