The Anatomy of Death
THE DEAD TEACH THE LIVING …
What indeed, Dody thought, other than the lack of any other specialist surgical positions available to her. She remembered all too well the revulsion she’d felt for the dissecting rooms as a raw medical student and how those feelings had returned during her first few weeks in Edinburgh. But it was amazing what one could get used to, especially when there was no choice. Of course she would rather be working with the living than the dead, but she had soon discovered that her talent for detached observation put her in good stead for such a profession. Irrespective of the gore in which she was sometimes steeped, the wonder of the science and a natural inclination to solve a mystery had soon put an end to the horrors she once had. After a while, even the odors ceased to bother her. Mortui vivos docent—the dead teach the living. She wondered what the dead bodies awaiting her below would teach her.
The Anatomy of Death
Felicity Young
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2012 by Felicity Jane Young.
Cover illustration by Alan Ayers.
Cover design by George Long.
Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.
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PUBLISHING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / May 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Young, Felicity, 1960-
The anatomy of death / Felicity Young.—Berkley trade paperback ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-58075-2
1. Women forensic scientists—Fiction. 2. Suffragists—Violence against—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. London (England)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.Y674A53 2012
813’.6—dc22
2011051705
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am very lucky to have a team of supportive friends and colleagues behind me. First, I’d like to thank Patricia O’Neill, Carole Sutton, and Christine Nagel for their literary skills and valuable friendship and Janet Blagg and Deonie Fiford for ironing out the editorial creases. Many thanks also to Emily Rapoport from The Berkley Publishing Group for believing in this project; to my agents, Sheila Drummond (Australia) and Lisa Grubka (U.S.), and to my cousin Peter Stone for passing on our grandmother’s memoirs.
To Mick and my father, Nial, with love
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Author’s Note
Prologue
The protesters marched under the bare winter trees, the smoke of a thousand London chimneys spiralling above their heads. Motorcars jostled for right of way with carriages, and petroleum fumes overpowered the sweeter odour of horse manure.
A three-wheeled motorcar slowed to take in the sight, and its occupants, male and female, leaned out of the car and cheered the marching ranks on. Violet waved back. Violet and her friend Marjorie were no longer schoolgirls; they were part of a victorious army marching into a newly taken city to liberate the women of Britain from slavery and oppression. It was less than a mile to the Houses of Parliament, but she wished it were longer; she wanted this glorious moment to last forever.
As the Houses of Parliament neared, however, the atmosphere began to change. There were fewer motorcars on the street and more pedestrians, roughly dressed people who shouted and heckled. Near St. Stephen’s entrance, the marchers were jeered and pelted with rotten fruit by groups of men and woman carrying placards saying A WOMAN’S PLACE IS IN THE HOME and GO BACK TO YOUR FAMILIES. The marchers waved back their own banners and chanted, “No more shuffling, carry the Bill! There is time if they’ve the will!”
“Can’t you see we’re doing this for the good of all of us? Women have got to be given the vote!” Marjorie cried to a woman who stood amongst the hostile mob, shaking her fist.
“Go home and make your husband’s tea,” the woman shouted, her face red with anger.
“Perverted lesbians, the lot of you!” a man yelled. Marjorie and Violet exchanged looks; the expression on the man’s face suggested he meant something lascivious by the remark. Violet made a mental note to look the word up when they returned to Marjorie’s house.
At the steps of the House of Commons, lines of police were waiting for them. They were big men with hard faces, not at all the type of policeman Violet would approach if she were lost. She had not thought of there being policemen present and felt cold with the thought, the stamping hooves of the mounted policemen making her especially nervous. The other marchers seemed uneasy, too.
The banner bearers, grouped at the head of the march, presented an irresistible target, and the police made a
sudden charge at them. There was an immediate scattering as banners were snatched and hurled to the ground or shredded like sails in a storm. A working-class woman linked her arm through Violet’s as they all surged forward toward the Commons steps. There were people everywhere, and Violet noticed crowds of rowdy men wearing rough clothes join the police lines, many of them armed with clubs and bricks. She looked around for a means of escape, but found none. The crowd was hemmed in on all directions.
The men and the police shoved into the line of marchers and women began to scream. The effect upon the men was like the cries of a distressed animal to a hungry predator. A bobby lunged at Marjorie and forced his hand up her skirt, tearing at her drawers. Another went for Violet’s breasts. As he twisted her flesh, she felt his gin-drenched breath upon her face and caught a tirade of foul words. “You’ve been wanting this for a long time, haven’t you, love?” and then she heard that word lesbian again.
She knocked the helmet off his head and broke free, turning in panicked circles as she tried to find Marjorie in the mêlée. Amongst the chaos she glimpsed a woman she’d spoken to earlier, then in a wide-brimmed hat with purple plumes—now hatless—flaying out at a bobby who was beating her about the head with a truncheon. Violet felt sick; policemen should not behave like this. She tried to enlist the help of a young gentleman marcher, but he shook her off and ran away with panic in his eyes. Then she spotted Marjorie, sprawled on the cobbled street, in danger of being trampled by a policeman’s horse. For a moment she panicked, not knowing which way to turn. She found herself running towards her friend first. As she was about to haul Marjorie to her feet, however, she felt herself grabbed roughly by her hair from behind and flung to the ground. Then someone kicked her in the ribs. She had never felt such physical pain before, and desperately hoped she would not faint. “Asked for this you did, disgracing yerself in public, you orta be ashamed of yerself,” a coarse voice shouted, as if she were the most hateful thing he had ever laid eyes upon.
Violet turned on her side and drew up her legs and pressed her cheek into the greasy cobblestones. As she gritted her teeth and waited for the next blow, she glimpsed the broad-brimmed hat with its spray of purple plumes crushed into the cobbles by a pair of hobnailed boots.
Chapter One
Dody McCleland was the last passenger to alight from the Edinburgh train. After hauling her luggage from the railway carriage, she remounted the step and scanned the milling crowds. She did not spot him immediately. And then, in a gap through the hissing steam, there he was, one of the few figures not engaged in the mad scurry that Euston Station seemed to demand. He stared right through her, then turned towards the exit.
“Rupert!” she cried, waving wildly, “Don’t go, I’m here!”
The tall figure stopped, swivelled. The Honourable Rupert Sotherby took off his cloth workingman’s cap as if he might see better without it. Dody smiled to herself; had he not changed at all in the last year? With the looks of Adonis (a widely held opinion) and the bearing of an Officer of the Guard, he would have looked less incongruous in the station if he had dressed in white tie and tails.
Then he was rushing across the platform towards her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her from the ground. “My dear,” he said, beaming, “I thought you must have changed your mind and decided to stay on in Edinburgh.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasped through his bear hug. “It took me a while to gather my things together.” When he finally put her down, she pointed with her rolled umbrella to the trunk, portmanteau, Gladstone bag, and assorted hatboxes strewn upon the platform floor. “You see?”
“You should have called a porter,” he said.
“I lugged it on myself, I was quite capable of lugging it off myself.”
“Well, I hope you don’t expect me to do the same, it looks far too heavy.” He winked at her, replaced his cap, and looked around vainly for an unoccupied porter. “So, are you home for good this time?”
“For the time being. How are Mother and Poppa? Have you seen them recently?” She already knew the answer. He adored her literary critic mother and had been practically living at her parents’ home in Sussex near Tunbridge Wells.
“They are both in fine fettle. Your mother is all for purchasing a new Daimler, and your father is against having anything to do with motorcars, all resulting in a series of somewhat lively conversations around the dining table.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“But I’m afraid they are united in their worry about Florence.”
Dody laughed. Her parents were hardly conventional members of their class; some even saw them as radicals. So the fact that the rebellious Florence was giving them cause for concern was an irony Dody could not help but find amusing—her sister was only following in the family tradition. “Why, what has the young madam been up to this time?” she asked with a smile.
But Rupert’s expression was serious. He nodded towards the paperboy standing next to a Times billboard. “You haven’t heard?”
“Rupert, I’ve been on the night train from Edinburgh; I haven’t even seen a newspaper—what are you talking about?” As she spoke, she got out her purse and moved towards the boy, handing him threepence for a paper.
“Page ten, I think,” Rupert said, taking the paper from her. He riffled through the pages. “Here it is: ‘Disorderly Scenes and Arrests at Westminster …’”
“Oh, no—is Florence all right? Has she been arrested? No? Thank heavens. Rupert, you must take me to her at once! Is she all right?” Hastily folding the paper, Dody slid it into the pocket of her portmanteau. She would read it later in the comfort of her own home.
“Don’t worry, she’s fine, although quite a few aren’t, so I’ve heard. But as for going home, I’d better warn you that, since you left, your home has become less of a townhouse and more of a military headquarters.”
Dody sighed. “I hope she hasn’t let any of her rabble into my rooms. When I was last home, I found my microscope slides covered in sticky fingerprints.”
But Rupert wasn’t listening. He had caught the eye of a porter who’d just returned to the platform with an empty trolley. He beckoned the man over with an impatient wave. “Come on, Dodes, let’s get your things stowed away.”
They followed the porter merging with the crowds under the coffered ceiling of the Great Hall. Outside the shelter of the station the wind was bitter, the warning pricks of an imminent cloudburst cold upon Dody’s cheeks, and she pulled her cape tightly around her shoulders.
Hansom cabs rattled up and down Drummond Street, jostling for space, and more motor taxis than she’d seen during her whole year in Edinburgh. As Rupert seemed in no hurry to hail a driver, she raised her own hand, eager for the comparative warmth of a cab. She was tired. She never slept well in strange beds, and the bunk on the train had been narrow and hard. All she wanted to do was get home, kick off her travelling boots, and settle in front of her hearth in her own private rooms. Much had happened in the year she had been away; decisions had to be made and she needed time to think. Alone.
Unfortunately it appeared that Rupert, one of her chief decisions, had other ideas. To her consternation, he waved away the slowing hansom and took her hand. “Dody, we need to go somewhere and have a long talk. Speaking across the country over the telephone just isn’t the same.”
Dody squeezed his arm. “Rupert, I …”
“I have exciting news. Your mother thinks my new play has great potential—she wants to show it to Mr. George Bernard Shaw. This could make my name, Dody, set me up as a writer. It will need funding, of course, and your father seems a bit reluctant. But with you and your mother’s encouragement, I think we might be able to turn him around. I told your parents we would be seeing them next weekend.”
“That’s wonderful, Rupert. I’m very excited for you,” she said as she scanned the street for another cab. “I intend on seeing my parents soon, of course, but I don’t know if it will be next weekend. You will have
to give me a few days to settle back home first.”
“Well, there’s something else, too, and it doesn’t involve travelling down to Sussex. Dody …” Rupert loosened his coarse wool scarf and cleared his throat. “I was hoping we might take tea together this afternoon. Now that I am getting established, there are other matters to discuss that are of equal importance. There’s a new teahouse opened down the road from you, the Copper Kettle, they make a splendid teacake. I could pick you up at about four—does that give you enough time to rest and unpack?”
Dody tore her gaze from the street, back to his pleading puppy eyes. How could she refuse? She swallowed down a sudden feeling of trepidation. “Certainly, if that is what you wish.”
He looked delighted, and very much as if he might attempt to kiss her. Oh Lord, please don’t try, she willed silently as she drew back. A year ago she’d have been eager for his attentions, and the strength of her feeling now surprised her; but this was a good sign, she decided. Now she knew how she felt. Really, her decision was made. It just had to be told. She looked again for another cab; there was one drawing near.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, patting the pockets of his threadbare overcoat and reaching into one of them. “I was asked to give you this note. It was delivered to your house this morning and Florence forwarded it to me.”
Her name on the envelope—Dr. Dorothy McCleland—was written in the unmistakable scrawl of Dr. Spilsbury from the Home Office. Her breath caught in her chest, her search for a cab temporarily forgotten. She removed her gloves and handed them to Rupert, the trembling in her fingers having nothing to do with the cold now. After reading the note, she attempted to speak, but it was as if she had been struck mute. How could she explain its content to Rupert?
“I say, Dody, you’ve become quite flushed. Not bad news, I hope?”
He attempted a glance at the note, but she dropped the hand that held it, pulling it into the warmth of her cape.