The Anatomy of Death Read online

  “No, not bad news, it just came sooner than I expected. I need to go directly. Would you mind seeing that my things are delivered safely home?”

  “Of course not, but what is it, where are you going?”

  “I won’t be long. I’ll tell you all about it this afternoon at tea.”

  Had Rupert ever shown the slightest bit of interest in her work, she would have told him long ago the nature of the postgraduate course she’d just completed. Reluctantly, it is true, but she would have told him. Although if he had known the precise nature of what she had been up to in Edinburgh, he might not have been quite so eager to meet her upon her return.

  Chapter Two

  “He’s late,” Superintendent Shepherd grunted, returning his watch to the voluminous folds of his mackintosh. Detective Chief Inspector Matthew Pike stepped further back into the portico, partly to shelter from the mud-splattering rain and partly to distance himself from the dank odours exuding from the mackintosh. Pike indicated the peeling door to the mortuary with a tilt of his head. “When I last checked the basement, sir, they hadn’t finished setting up.”

  “Huh, just as well. Still, I won’t stand for poor timekeeping. Spilsbury should have impressed that upon him. I have enough to do and so do you.”

  “I suppose there was a lot to sort out before he went on leave, and Dr. Spilsbury was left exhausted by the Crippen case.”

  “But not you, eh, Pike? You ex–military men are made of sterner stuff.”

  Pike had learnt long ago to ignore the digs of his superior officer. “My role in Crippen’s conviction was administrative only and not as demanding as that of Inspector Dew or Dr. Spilsbury.”

  “Yes, obviously,” the superintendent said, fixing his small eyes on Pike’s walking cane.

  I set myself up for that one, Pike thought.

  “Indeed,” the superintendent went on, “so demanding that the forensic surgeon’s chuffed off to the Lake District for a holiday, leaving us with some stranger to hold the fort who probably can’t tell an arse from an elbow.”

  “The new man might not be as eminent as Spilsbury, sir, but he cannot be as incompetent as many of the coroner’s medical appointees.” A hacking cough from the mortuary anteroom reached them through the closed door, as if someone were trying to dispute this claim. “He’s an experienced medical practitioner,” Pike went on, “with a qualification in forensic autopsy.”

  Superintendent Shepherd answered with a snort. Pike knew that he had little time for the new forensic sciences and in this he was not alone at New Scotland Yard. Even Pike, who was more open than most to new ideas, found some of Spilsbury’s methods questionable. Pike could still picture the bespectacled Hawley Crippen as he had last seen him, awaiting his execution date—head in hands, sitting on his narrow prison cot, sick with worry for the fate of his lover, Ethel Le Neve. The man was guilty of something, Pike did not dispute that, but he had reservations about whether it was the deliberate poisoning and subsequent dismembering of his wife as Spilsbury’s forensics apparently proved.

  He tried to push away his doubts. “Well, like it or not, we have need of specialist help,” he said to Shepherd. “The cause of two of the deaths is self-evident, the signature of the Home Office pathologist a mere formality. But we do require the autopsy surgeon’s detailed opinion on the third lady.”

  “We’re under a magnifying glass over this—you appreciate that, don’t you, Pike?” Shepherd said.

  “If you mean we are being accused of unnecessary brutality in the suppression of the women’s riot, yes, sir. And of course, the lady was a prominent member of society. The press will be watching our every move.”

  “We can deal with the press, to some extent at least. You weren’t there, naturally”—another glance at Pike’s cane—“but I heard all about it. It was pandemonium, utter chaos. Insane females scratching and spitting like wildcats, yelling like Red Indians. Our lads did their best, though I have to admit, it sounds as if there were a few who were overly zealous.”

  “I will be interviewing several officers from the Whitechapel Division this afternoon, sir. Am I permitted to deal with them at my discretion?”

  Pike caught the look of relief in Shepherd’s eyes. Having risen through the ranks to become deputy head of Scotland Yard’s Detective Division, Shepherd preferred to pass the more distasteful jobs to his underlings so he remained in favour with the men. Pike, on the other hand, had little to lose. Not only was he resented for never having walked the beat, but many envied the apparent ease with which he exchanged the role of army captain for that of plainclothes inspector, followed rapidly by promotion to chief inspector.

  “Yes, yes, Pike, deal with them as you will, though I doubt you will find much to concern you. They are good men, just a trifle zealous.”

  “And the roughs,” Pike went on. “It’s more than a coincidence that there were so many armed layabouts around the place. I think they might have been organised troublemakers.”

  Shepherd pulled at his moustache. “There is an odour of the Fenians about this, Pike, I can smell ’em.”

  The fact that Shepherd still called the Irish Nationalists by their old name, the Fenians, showed how steeped in the past he still was. In an attempt to distance themselves from their own atrocities, the Fenians had changed their name to Sinn Fein. They were still desperate for the end of British rule in Ireland, but at least for now, their violent tactics had been tempered.

  “Special Branch are asking questions in known Sinn Fein hangouts, public houses, et cetera, though personally I feel Sinn Fein involvement unlikely,” Pike said. “They’ve gone very quiet since the Queen Anne Hotel bombing.” Pike ignored Shepherd’s quick glance at him. “And I do wonder why they would involve themselves in a women’s riot.”

  “To foment unrest, of course, get that damned Home Rule Bill passed. If it can be proved that an Irish Nationalist bludgeoned the lady to death, we can all breathe a sigh of relief.” He kicked a muddy boot at Pike’s foot. “And you’d rather like that, too, I imagine, eh?”

  Pike kept his body rigid against the door, his face blank. Whatever Shepherd might think, he was not seeking vengeance against the Irish. The Queen Anne Hotel bombing ten years earlier, in which his wife had perished, had been a terrible end to a distressing period of his life and was well behind him now. His wife’s lover had died with her. There was no one left alive who knew quite how much of a sham his marriage had been.

  Silence hung like a tainted mist between the men. They stirred only when a clopping cab halted in the road adjacent to the mortuary house.

  “Good, he’s here at last.” Shepherd pulled the hood of his mackintosh over his head and stepped from the portico into the rain. Within seconds he’d rushed back under the shelter. “Dash it all—it’s only a woman!” he said through the water dripping down his face. “Where can the bloody fellow be?”

  St. Thomas’s mortuary was a dilapidated two-level structure, for reasons of hygiene situated as far away from the main hospital buildings as the grounds would allow. There were two entrances: the front portico, to which Dody now headed, and an underground passageway where corpses from the hospital were discreetly wheeled.

  They all introduced themselves. Dody spent some time shaking out and folding her umbrella to give the policemen the chance they needed to regain their lost composure. They stepped into the sputtering gaslight of the anteroom where the wheezing mortuary attendant, Alfred, instructed them to hang their coats and hats upon the pegs provided. Dody hung up her travelling cape and hat, but chose to retain her jacket. It was cool in the anteroom, but it would be colder than an icehouse downstairs. She wished she’d had the chance to go home and change. When working, she favoured tailored skirts and jackets, butterfly-collared blouses, and men’s ties. The lace blouse and tweed travelling suit she wore now were hardly appropriate.

  The superintendent slid his eyes down her body and let out a low sigh, which did nothing to alleviate her self-consciousness. She res
isted the temptation to mimic his sigh back. He was hardly a paradigm of professionalism himself in that dreadful mackintosh. A juggernaut of a man with moustache and side-whiskers, he had a bulbous nose and a florid face that suggested a fondness for strong liquor. When the attendant offered to hang the mackintosh up for him, he declined, quipping that when he descended the stairs, he would need all the waterproof protection it offered.

  The other man, Pike, seemed his complete opposite; smaller, clean-shaven, and finer featured. He leaned heavily on a cane as he walked the few steps to the coat pegs. His physique under the worn but well-cut overcoat appeared straight-backed and trim—he had not yet surrendered to the portliness of middle age—yet the antique blue eyes with their dark pouches spoke of a weariness beyond years. Standing next to the anteroom wall, he seemed almost to blend into it. If not for the cane, his unobtrusive appearance and mild manner would have rendered him the perfect invisible policeman, or “defective detective,” as her sister, Florence, was wont to call men of his kind.

  The elderly attendant sat behind his desk and slid a leather-bound register towards them. His request for them to enter their names was interrupted by a fit of painful coughing. Unable to speak for a moment, he rapped himself on the chest and pointed with a crooked finger to the place they were to sign. Upon his recovery, he cocked his head and read aloud the string of initials Dody had written after her name. The policemen, neither of whom had said a word to her beyond that first introduction, looked at each other. A small glow of satisfaction melted Dody’s earlier feelings of trepidation. She could, and would, go through with this. She had the training and she would prove to them that she could do the job as well as anyone.

  “This can’t be a healthy environment for someone with as delicate a chest as yours, sir,” she said to the attendant as she passed the pen on to Pike.

  Alfred gave her a toothless smile. “Goose fat and brown paper, miss, that’s what keeps the chill away.”

  “Well, it doesn’t appear to be working very satisfactorily,” she said, and withdrew a glass bottle from her Gladstone bag. “Here, try this camphoric lotion; you will find it much more effective than goose fat. Rub it on to your chest and the soles of your feet, too. It will tide you over until you get the chance to purchase a carbolic ball from the chemist, which will be better still. You can carry the ball around with you and inhale its fumes whenever the need arises.”

  The old man took the bottle from her, got to his feet, and clasped both of her hands. “Why, thank you, miss, thank you very much. But I’ll ’ave to owe you for this medicine, I—”

  “Please don’t worry about it.” Dody smiled.

  “Then if I can ever be of any extra assistance, you’ll find me ’ere six days a week and sometimes into the night, too.”

  The superintendent had finished signing his name and was pointing to a bleak stone staircase. “Time is of the essence; lead on, if you please, Alfred. After you, miss.”

  “It’s Dr. McCleland, Superintendent,” Dody reminded him.

  His mumbled response was lost on her.

  Dody followed Alfred down the stairs, the two detectives clumping behind.

  Halfway down Shepherd stopped. “You don’t say much, Pike”—Dody caught Shepherd’s loud whisper—“but I can tell you’re as unhappy about this as I am. Impudent creature, answering me back like that. What in God’s name do you think would induce a woman to get herself involved in the Beastly Science?”

  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 odours ceased to bother her. Mortui vivos docent—the dead teach the living. She wondered what the dead bodies awaiting below would teach her.

  At the bottom of the stairs she looked around the small autopsy room. It was a far cry from the facilities in Edinburgh. No amphitheatre here with raised seats on which craning students sat and observed; no benevolent pedagogues and powerful electric lighting, ventilation, and decent drainage. Here she would be a one-woman show, performing in a primitive environment for sceptical men who didn’t believe women should be engaged in the practice of medicine, let alone the Beastly Science. The sudden weight of it hit her as she stepped into the icy cold room.

  Exposed pipes clung to the chipped and dingy whitewashed walls. A stained porcelain sink rested against the far wall between shelves of books and specimen jars. Above the sink there hung a portrait of King Edward VII, black mourning crepe still wound about the frame. There was no portrait of the yet-to-be-crowned King George V. It seemed appropriate somehow: a dead king to rule over the kingdom of the dead.

  The tap over the sink dripped and gaslights spluttered from their brackets on the walls. In bygone years, Dody reflected, autopsies would have been conducted in police stations or public houses; either would have been preferable to this dank, foul-smelling cave.

  A bowler-hatted gentleman in a suit of loud checks stepped forward and introduced himself as Mr. Bright from the coroner’s office. He gave Dody a little bow, doffing his hat to reveal a skull as bald as an egg. Another mortuary attendant, marginally younger than Alfred, appeared from the cadaver keep and told them everything was ready.

  Shepherd fumbled in the folds of his coat and produced a fat cigar. He bit the end off it and spat it onto the sawdust-strewn floor. After lighting up, he gulped down the smoke like he was slaking a thirst. Pike took a silver case from his inside pocket, offered a cigarette to Bright and the attendants, took one for himself, and snapped the lid closed.

  Dody gave him a quizzical look, which he did not appear to notice. From her Gladstone bag she removed the velvet pouch containing her own smoking paraphernalia. Five pairs of eyes converged on her as she expertly packed her clay pipe, swiped the match across the rough wall, and coaxed the tobacco to a gentle glow.

  “How many bodies are there, Superintendent?” she asked between puffs.

  Shepherd was staring at her in undisguised disbelief. A most unbecoming habit in a lady, she could imagine him saying to his colleagues later in the station house. But what did he expect her to use to combat the stench—lavender water?

  “Superintendent …” she repeated.

  “Three, miss, all from yesterday’s riot at Westminster.”

  Good God, the women’s march! Spilsbury’s note had made no mention of that. Now she wished she had allowed Rupert to read her the whole of the article from The Times. She bit hard upon the pipe stem. She would be fair and professional; of course she would. But if these policemen were to find out that her sister was a prominent suffragette and had also been present at the riot, would they have faith in her impartiality? What a way to start a new engagement. But it was too late to back down now; they might think she had no stomach for the job.

  With their combined smoke swirling around the room, she removed her jacket and replaced it with an apron she found hanging on a peg near the sink. Some nurse’s cuffs also rested near the sink, and these she slipped over the sleeves of her lace blouse.

  “The first body, if you please,” she said.

  Shepherd snapped his fingers and Alfred appeared from the cadaver keep, pushing a wooden trolley with a sheeted body upon it. A parcel of personal effects rested at the body’s feet. Dody glanced through them while the attendants heaved the body onto the marble slab.

  She read aloud from the victim’s file. “‘Seventy-year-old Miss Jemima Jenkins. Witnesses say she was complaini
ng of shortness of breath before the riot, then later they saw her clasp her chest and fall to the ground.’” Dody spent another minute reading the case notes provided by Miss Jenkins’s physician and the police surgeon, respectively. She noticed Pike had found himself a spot leaning against the far wall, puffing on his cigarette and apparently listening to a murmured conversation between Mr. Bright and the attendants. Superintendent Shepherd seemed unable to stand still; he glided about the room in his oversized mackintosh like one of Count Zeppelin’s airships.

  But when she drew back the sheet covering the body, the men stopped what they were doing. They are probably expecting me to faint, Dody thought. I have never fainted before in my life and I will not start now.

  There was no need for dissection; the oedematous ankles backed up what she had already read in the notes. Evidence of pink froth on the lips, since dissipated, but reported by the police surgeon soon after the woman’s death, also assisted her with her conclusion.

  “Death due to heart attack, the result of longstanding congestive cardiac failure,” she dictated to Mr. Bright. She stared at the body for a moment longer, wondering what force of passions, now extinguished, had compelled this frail old lady to participate in such a vigorous demonstration.

  The cause of death of Mrs. Margaret Baxter, age forty-five, was also self-evident, but required some thoracic dissection to discover the precise nature of the injuries beneath the gaping chest wound. From the row of autopsy instruments on a nearby bench, Dody took a heavy anatomist’s scalpel and with a few deft strokes performed a Y-incision from armpits to groin. What blood there was—the women had been on ice since yesterday and there wasn’t much—was directed by Alfred into the runnels of the slab, and from thence to the blood bucket below. Dody peeled back the skin, then set to with the bulky rib-cutters, snipping through the bone to reveal the heart where the bulk of the blood had pooled.

  Superintendent Shepherd watched over her shoulder, spilling ash from his cigar into the thoracic cavity. She waved him away with a flick of her scalpel, then used the chest spreader to part the lungs. There was no need to remove the heart; a cursory glance revealed all that was necessary. The railing upon which Mrs. Baxter had impaled herself had penetrated the thorax and diaphragm at a forty-five-degree angle, piercing the left ventricle and the descending aorta. Death would have occurred within seconds. Small comfort to her family, Dody mused, as she finished dictating her findings to Mr. Bright. She rinsed the scalpel and her gory hands under the tap while Alfred repaired the damage to Mrs. Baxter with needle and thread.