The Anatomy of Death (2 page)

“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.

“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.

“H
e’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?”

S
t. 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 resisted 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.