The Anatomy of Death Read online

  She struck out along the wide pavement of the main road, allowing her senses to guide her. Streetlamps were few and far between. There was still the chance of a cab, though in her heart she knew it was unlikely. No cabbie in his right mind would be looking for a fare here, especially not on such a miserable night. A few motorcars passed and she tried to signal for them to stop, but they travelled at such speed she doubted she was even seen. A distant clock chimed eleven. Any omnibuses would be stopping for the night now.

  It began to drizzle and she opened her umbrella and forced her heavy legs to keep on moving. A drooping hat feather tickled her face. She ripped it from her hat and threw it to the ground.

  After a few minutes she became aware of a group of men following not far behind. One of them whistled and called out to her to stop. Another begged for a kiss. More motorcars sped by. Just as she was contemplating throwing herself in front of one to force it to stop, she became aware of a low rumble, a jangling harness, the creak of leather, and the grind of heavy wheels. At last something slower was crawling up on the other side of the road—a brewer’s dray if its bulky silhouette was anything to go by.

  She crossed the road, but the horse-drawn vehicle proved speedier than she had estimated and she had to jog to keep up with it. She called out to the driver to stop, but he acted as if he had not seen or heard her, his head nodding over the reins. She discarded her umbrella and ran alongside the wagon as fast as she could, past factory walls rising like cliffs from the pavement. She was screaming out to the driver to stop, the first tears of the evening running down her face. Fear and exertion snatched at her breath and turned it into choking gasps. The group of men might cross the road at any moment, do unmentionable things to her under the driver’s very nose, and still he wouldn’t notice. Or would choose not to.

  Then came a narrow break between the factory walls. Giving up on the wagon, she slipped into the alleyway, praying it would be a shortcut to the river.

  She found herself in a narrow maze of twisting alleys, dark tunnels, and tiny cobbled streets, the dwellings on each side almost meeting above her head in places. Her breath rasped as she ran, dodging barrels outside ramshackle lantern-lit shops and decrepit public houses, and homeless men huddled around braziers. Every now and then she stumbled into small, crooked courtyards where she stopped to catch her breath, the air rank with the smell of human waste. And each time she stopped, above the gasping of her breath, she thought she detected the ring of hobnailed boots behind her.

  After the third time, she knew the footsteps weren’t imagined. Fear gripped her heart. There was nothing character building about rape.

  At last she broke free from the alleyways and found herself in the open grey light of the riverside. The Tower rose majestically ahead, and just around the bend on its waterside she could see the tangled forest of masts and cranes of St. Katharine docks.

  Florence drew in great draughts of stinking river air—no odour ever seemed sweeter—and pushed her exhausted limbs along the embankment wall between the Tower and the river, heading for the comforting hum of traffic from Tower Bridge.

  The tide was out, leaving small, clinker-built vessels stranded on the reeking mud flats. Larger ships were moored in the central river pool, dirty brown water slapping against their hulls before curdling its way on to the sea. There were no people about the place, but lights glowed on some of the ships and there were noises from the docks: the clank of chain and winch, the thump of heavy loads. Respectable noises made by hardworking men. No danger here of the catcalls and innuendos from the predators she had left behind.

  Or had she left them behind?

  Again she heard the clack of hobnail boots. She had no energy left; she had no choice but to turn and face her attacker. When she reached the handrail at the top of Queen’s Steps leading down to the river, she sensed someone behind her. She whirled around, then grabbed the rail to stop herself sinking to the cobbles in relief. A policeman stepped out from the murky gloom.

  The publican called time and Dody found herself jostled on all sides as people spilled from the public house and into the street.

  Outside the White Hart, Pike finally managed to flag a hansom, waving his warrant card at the reluctant driver. Dody would have preferred a motor taxi but she knew they had to take what they could get. It was a tight fit. She was crammed into the cab between Pike and Derwent while Patrick hung on behind the driver, an unenviable position leaving him exposed to the chill wind and drizzle.

  Pike thumped his cane against the roof and they were off, thundering down the Whitechapel High Street as fast as the overburdened horse could take them. The publican had arranged for Florence to be taken to Aldgate Station—they had at least managed to find out that much. For a few exhilarating seconds Dody rejoiced at the thought that her sister was probably at this very moment sitting safely on the tube—until Pike looked at his watch and broke the news that it was eleven o’clock and the station had been closed for more than an hour.

  Dody felt numb. Even though the London she knew was only a few miles to the west, it was a world away from this den of poverty and vice, where gangs of cutthroats ruled the streets at night and homeless children and prostitutes slept in churchyards by day.

  “We should try Mark Lane,” Derwent O’Neill said. “I told her it stayed open later.”

  “How could you have let her go out alone? What kind of man are you?” Dody cried.

  “She insisted she’d walk alone. I’m sorry I didn’t insist more.”

  “We’ll find her, Dody,” Pike said. “We might still catch her on the High Street—unless she managed to flag a cab or omnibus, in which case she may be turning her key in your front door at this very minute.” His words rang empty. Dody could tell by his grim face that he did not believe them.

  The hansom slewed around the water pump in the square and stopped in front of the station steps. There was no sign of Florence. Patrick jumped down from the cab and stamped his legs. “Come on, Derwent,” he said between chattering teeth. “It’s time we swapped places. I’m frozen stiff, man.”

  “Ah, it’s good for you, brings out the roses in your cheeks,” said Derwent.

  Pike leant over Dody and opened the door. “Out,” he said, prodding Derwent with his cane. He turned to Dody. “I propose we head to lower Thames Street and then the river.”

  She nodded glumly, unable to speak anymore.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  This must be a trick of the light, Florence thought, blinking her eyes. She could not believe what they were seeing. She had left Olivia only a few hours before, exhausted and recuperating from her ordeal at the prison. “Olivia, is that you?”

  Olivia removed the beehive helmet and stepped under the sallow glow of a streetlamp. “Hello, Flo. I hardly recognised you, either. You’re a mess. Where’s your hat?”

  Florence absently touched her tangled hair. “My hat? It must have blown off in the alley. Oh, I’m so glad to see you, Olivia. I was being chased, you see. I’ve had the most awful time …” She broke off, trying to make sense of her muddled thoughts. “But why on earth are you dressed like that?”

  “Oh, you’d be amazed what one can get away with when one is dressed like a bobby. Unlike you, I can walk the streets of Whitechapel quite unmolested.”

  “You dress this way so you can walk here freely?” Florence seized and ran with the absurd notion. “To see what life is like for the women of the streets? What an amazing idea, why did you never tell me? I would have come with you.”

  “No, Flo, that isn’t what I meant.”

  Florence forced an uneasy laugh. “You’ve been to your soup kitchen then?” Keep her talking. Let her think you are a naïve fool, Florence thought desperately. “But you should be resting…I wouldn’t have thought you were well enough.”

  “No, Flo. No soup kitchen.”

  Olivia pulled the truncheon from her belt and turned it over in her hands.

  “What do you need that thing for?” Fl
orence asked, indicating the truncheon with a stiff wave, sensing there was no going back, that Olivia had seen through her ploy.

  “It’s very useful, Flo, believe me.”

  “Look, it’s awfully cold, come with me to the bridge for a cab. We can talk about this over cocoa once we get home.” Florence’s teeth were chattering, but not only from the cold. There was something in Olivia’s eyes, a fixed and feverish look, so utterly unlike her friend. And then she remembered; she had seen it before, briefly, in the street outside the WSPU breakfast. Olivia had worn that same expression when she’d attacked the man who had been harassing Daisy. Olivia had scratched his face like a wildcat. She would do anything for Daisy.

  “Besides, if I had let you return it, you would have discovered it was not the one you and Dody had borrowed. Did you tell your sister about finding it in my wardrobe?”

  “No, no, I never thought to,” Florence lied automatically. She attempted to swallow, but failed; her mouth was too dry. “If this wasn’t our truncheon, then whose …” She broke off and backed away to stand once more at the top of the stone steps leading from the embankment to the river.

  “Come, come, Flo, you’re usually quicker than this.”

  “I’m cold, I just want to go home,” Florence said. “I don’t understand why you’re here.” With shaking fingers, she attempted to loosen the drawstring of her reticule. At the bottom of the steps, river mud, the consistency of thickened cream, gleamed under the embankment lights and reflected their shadowy movements above.

  “I followed you. Once you told me you’d seen the truncheon, there was nothing else I could do. It was I who killed Catherine. You know it. I can see it in your face. I’ve had the uniform and truncheon for years, bought them from a dodgy market stall. I knew they’d come in handy one day; the police are our constant opponents. I took them with me to the demonstration, and when things started getting out of hand, I changed in the alley, out of everyone’s sight.” Olivia slapped the truncheon in her hand and took a step closer.

  “That’s ridiculous, I don’t believe it,” Florence said, believing every word. They had been separated during the riot, and not reunited again until the evening. “You can’t have killed her. It makes no sense at all. Oh, Olivia, please stop this nonsense and come home.” Her fingers closed around the bottleneck.

  “Think of the publicity, think how bad it would have looked—a policeman murdering a suffragette! It’s unfortunate that things have not yet eventuated as I had hoped, but there’s still time.”

  “You could never be so hard and callous. Why would you choose Catherine? She was our friend, she loved you.”

  “Nonsense, Catherine loved nothing but her cause. Catherine found Daisy and me in flagrante delicto at my house when we were supposed to be folding leaflets. She threatened to expose us, to tell you. You always said you never wanted those kinds of women in the group, don’t you remember?” Her voice rose. “We should have the right to live as we choose.” She paused, poked Florence’s reticule with the tip of the truncheon. “What have you got in there? Let me see.”

  Florence held up her hands, praying that Olivia would not see the glinting glass. “Rules are made to be broken,” she stuttered. “I wouldn’t have minded. I know what Catherine was like …”

  “She said I was corrupting an innocent young girl,” Olivia said, now with a hysterical edge to her voice.

  “Not if Daisy was consenting. She was old enough. Love between women is not illegal, no one cares.”

  Olivia raised the truncheon.

  “Olivia, don’t do this! I’m your friend. You are feeling unbalanced by the terrible treatment you suffered in Holloway. Come home with—”

  With a splintering snap, the truncheon slammed down on Florence’s arm. The bottleneck fell from her grasp and she collapsed onto the stone steps, dizzy with pain and fear. “Please, Olivia, no,” Florence sobbed, clutching her shattered arm, desperately searching for a means of escape.

  But with Olivia above her and the mud below, there was no way out. When Olivia descended the steps, Florence began to scream.

  The cab slithered to a stop on the macadam just outside the Tower. Terrible screams reached them before they had stepped from the carriage. “That’s Florence!” Dody cried, scrambling over Pike and onto the street, hitching up her skirts as she ran across the cobbles towards Queen’s Steps. She was soon overtaken by Derwent and Patrick, pelting towards the figures she could now see, grappling at the river’s edge.

  At the sound of the men’s shouts, Olivia looked up briefly. The police buttons on her uniform glinted under the lamplight. Florence took advantage of Olivia’s distraction and lashed out with her elbow, knocking Olivia to her own level at the bottom of the steps. When Dody arrived, breathless at the top, it was hard to distinguish who was who as one shape pushed and the other grabbed. Then, in an instant, both figures rolled from the steps and plunged several feet down, into the river mud.

  Dody moved to follow, but found herself struggling against Derwent’s strong grip. “Where are they? I can’t see them!” she cried.

  “Stay put, woman. There’s no point any of us leaping in until we can see where they are.”

  “Down there.” She pointed into the sucking murk. “There’s movement over there, can’t you see it?” The mud bubbled some distance from the steps. Dody saw Olivia, struggling to hold Florence under the mud.

  By now, Pike had caught up with the group at the top of the steps. “Patrick,” he panted, ripping off his coat and jacket. “Run to the docks and get help.”

  Patrick dashed away in the direction of the lights, some two hundred yards in the distance, and Pike made for the steps. Derwent was quicker. He pulled Pike back by the collar and shoved him to the ground, Pike’s cane clattering on the cobbles.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Derwent said. “That muck’s like quicksand, you haven’t a chance.”

  Then Derwent was on the bottom step, launching himself as far as his long legs could take him, landing waist deep in the viscous, stinking mud.

  “Where is she, where’s Florence?” Dody heard him cry as he waded towards Olivia, his arms outstretched. He reached out to grab her, but she slipped from his grasp.

  Then a gunshot rang out in the fog.

  Dody covered her mouth with her hand. “My God, she has a pistol!”

  “O’Neill’s still standing. She must have missed,” Pike said.

  The two slippery forms came together and it was unclear who had the advantage until another shot cracked the air, followed almost immediately by a high-pitched scream. Then Olivia was gone and the only sound was the gentle slap of the tide.

  Derwent disappeared, too.

  “It’s all right,” Pike said to Dody, “he’s looking for Florence.”

  “She’s been under too long, let me go, I have to try—”

  “You need to stay dry and ready to attend to her when he brings her out,” Pike said, holding fast to her arm.

  “Please let—”

  “Wait! I see her. He’s got her—look.”

  Dody saw Derwent heaving to lift Florence, her clothes weighted down by the mud. Dody’s heart leapt.

  “He’s struggling—he needs a hand.” Pike let go of his hold on Dody and started down the steps. He lowered himself into the mud and waded laboriously out towards Derwent. He was still yards away when Derwent stumbled and dropped to his knees, holding only Florence’s head above the mud.

  Pike edged closer. He was agonisingly slow. If he slipped like Derwent had just done, Dody knew he would not have the strength in his knee to push himself back up.

  When he was close enough, Pike thrust out his cane. “Grab this!” he called.

  Derwent closed one slippery hand around the cane and hauled himself to his feet, while with the other he struggled to lift Florence further out of the mud. Dody saw no signs of life. Florence’s head was flopped against her chest. Pike approached her other side and took some of the burden, and they began to make t
heir slow way back to the steps.

  Dody dropped onto the bottom step and lay on her stomach with her chest extending out over the steps and her feet towards the embankment. As soon as the sodden trio came close enough, she reached out to Pike and entwined her hand with his.

  The clatter of running footsteps reached her and she knew it must be Patrick returning with help from the docks. Firm hands grabbed her ankles; someone helped her with Pike’s hand. The human chain tugged and pulled until, with a sucking squelch, the pressure suddenly eased. To the sound of cheers from the men who had just arrived, Florence was dragged to the embankment and up onto the steps.

  “Put her down. On her back,” Dody instructed. She knelt at the side of the still form of her sister. “Please God, please God.” She prayed as she had never prayed before. Pushing away clumps of mud-caked hair, she placed two fingers on the side of Florence’s neck, desperate to feel the pulse of her sister’s life.

  Nothing.

  She prised open Florence’s mouth and forced her hand into her throat, scooping out gobbets of mud with her fingers. There was still more lodged in the pharynx, she could feel it but not reach it. She withdrew her hand and slammed her flattened palm onto Florence’s chest. A spray of mud burst from Florence’s lungs and the paroxysms of coughing that followed were the most joyous sounds Dody had ever heard.

  “Get us a cab from the bridge,” Dody heard Pike say to one of the onlookers. He knelt by Dody’s side and tucked his coat around Florence’s shuddering form, as tenderly as if she were his own daughter.

  “Is she going to be all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, I think so.” Dody looked around at the sea of anxious faces. “Thanks to all of you. Thank you.”

  Pike got up and went over to where Derwent O’Neill was standing. Both men were shivering and dripping mud as they huddled together in earnest conversation. Dody wrapped her body around her sister’s to infuse warmth into her and stroked her muddy face with the edge of her skirt.

  After a minute or two Florence’s eyes opened. She tried to speak.