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

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.

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

T
he 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.

D
ody 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.