The Anatomy of Death (24 page)

The body had been cut down, and lay stretched out on a narrow iron-framed bed. Next to the bed was an overturned chair, and above this, a cord, possibly from a dressing gown, dangled from a ceiling beam. The cord had been cut through, leaving the noose embedded in the soft flesh of the woman’s throat.

Suicide seemed to be the most likely explanation; regardless, Dody pushed away the pen and paper Shepherd thrust under her nose. “I am not ready to sign the death certificate yet, Superintendent. I must cover all possibilities first.”

Shepherd heaved a sigh and stepped back towards the small window.

Dody had learned much from Dr. Wilson at the Crippen autopsy and was keen to practise some of her newly acquired skills. Despite her eagerness, first she gazed respectfully at the body for a full minute, as was the custom she had developed in Edinburgh. Shepherd probably thought she was praying, and indeed it could be argued that this ritual was the closest she ever got to prayer these days.

She made a mental note of the blackened face and the bulging, bloodshot eyes. She tried to read their silent story—terror and despair, almost certainly. This had been a slow death through strangulation, nothing like the quick snap of
the neck of a legal execution. Dody removed her gloves and gently pressed down the eyelids, holding the pressure until she could be sure they would not spring back open.

Miss Treylen wore day clothes: a black pleated skirt, shiny with wear; a woollen shawl pinned with a cheap brooch; and a plain white blouse with its stiff collar removed. Dody took a scalpel blade from her bag and sliced through the noose, careful not to inflict any more damage to the disfigured neck. The knot had been positioned at the back, she noticed. In a judicial hanging it was on the left side. With the constable’s help, she turned the body onto its side, pulled back the neck of the blouse, and pointed out the inverted V-shaped bruise to him.

“But couldn’t someone have knocked her out or strangled her with his hands before stringing her up?” Blunt asked.

Shepherd gave an exasperated sigh as if to say,
Let her get on with it, man.
But it was a reasonable question and one Dody felt deserved a reply. “If she was manually strangled,” she told him, “there would be more bruising around the neck, possibly even a handprint visible.” She allowed the body to fall back, unpinned the dull brown hair, and ran her fingers over the scalp. “I can feel no lumps, and there appear to be no other injuries to the head. Unfortunately I can’t at this time rule out the possibility that someone may have put the noose around her neck and strung her up while she was alive. The scene might easily have been manufactured to imitate suicide.”

Shepherd turned from the small window. “At what time did the lady expire?”

Dody spent a moment manipulating the corpse’s lower jaw, examining the fingernails and limbs. “Rigor mortis has not yet started to wane. I estimate that this lady met her death in the early hours of the morning.”

“Well, at least she did it properly. Unlike some.”

“Yes, I suppose she has saved you some extra paperwork, Superintendent. Failed suicides must be extremely tiresome for you.”

Agatha Treylen’s limbs showed no signs of bruising. Dody undid the woman’s blouse and continued to look for evidence of a struggle.

“Not just paperwork, there’s court proceedings and jail expenses, too,” Shepherd said.

“Shall I start questioning the neighbours, sir, see if she had any visitors last night?” Blunt asked. The lad must have felt the mounting tension and wanted to distance himself from it.

Shepherd held up his hand to silence the constable. He kept his eyes fixed on Dody as she went about undoing the dead woman’s corset. At the last of the fastenings, Dody felt the crinkle of paper beneath her fingertips. Reaching between the layers of clothing, she removed a folded square of paper. Barely had she read it before Shepherd snatched the note from her hand and waved it at the constable.

“Don’t bother with the neighbours,” he said with an air of satisfaction. “This note will tell us what we need to know.”

F
lorence declined Annie’s offer of soup and fell silent. She had not touched a morsel since her arrival home at daybreak. She waited until Dody had been served and the maid dismissed from the dining room before continuing to talk.

“I telephoned Jane’s and Olivia’s solicitors while you were out,” she said. “All three have been charged with criminal damage and sentenced to three months’ hard labour at Holloway Prison.”

“Are they all in the same division?”

“Jane and Olivia have been classified as first-division prisoners—political prisoners—while poor Daisy has been put in the third division.”

“Because of her class?”

“The magistrate maintained it was due to the nature of her crime, which he saw as manual labour. He must have considered the other crimes to be more genteel, I suppose.
Goodness only knows what would have become of me if I had been caught—the gallows, probably.”

Dody suppressed a shudder. If Florence had witnessed what she had at Pentonville Prison, she might not be so flippant. “Which means Jane and Olivia will be spared the indignity of broad-arrow uniforms, receive better quality food and less arduous labour, while Daisy will suffer treatment of the worst kind. I thought Lady Lytton had put an end to that kind of discrimination.”

“Obviously not.” Florence lowered her gaze to her empty table setting.

“Did you manage to get some sleep this morning?” Dody asked.

“My body was tired but my mind wouldn’t stop. I awoke not long after you left and started making telephone en-quiries.” She paused. “You do know what this means, don’t you, Dody?” Her sister’s earnest look made Dody reluctant to ask for fear of hearing the worst. She lowered her eyes to her soup.

“Olivia will go on hunger strike,” Florence said. “Her solicitor said she announced from the dock that while incarcerated she would refuse all form of food and drink until all imprisoned suffragettes, regardless of social status, are treated as political prisoners.”

“Are the others striking, too?”

“I don’t know, not sure if the others have the same kind of pluck.”

Annie and the scullery maid slipped into the dining room with their dinner of gammon steaks and parsley sauce. Dody insisted that Florence eat something. “It’s not you on the hunger strike,” she said.

Florence shivered, but took a small mouthful. “I do wish Cook would not serve such heavy meals when there are only the two of us at home.”

Dody waited for Florence to push her half-finished meal away, then asked Annie to leave them. “I have some distressing news, Florence. I was called to a suicide this morning, a young woman from Whitechapel.”

“Oh, poor you, how terrible,” Florence said absently.

“I’m afraid it’s someone you know. Agatha Treylen.”

Florence straightened, giving Dody her instant attention. “Whom did you say? Miss Treylen?”

Dody outlined the circumstances of the woman’s death, but did not reveal the contents of the note. She wanted to make sure Florence could cope with the news before adding the twist at the end of the tale. “But what I don’t understand,” she said as she concluded her narrative, “is how a reasonably educated, apparently respectable woman like Miss Treylen could end up living in a place like that.”

“I’ll tell you why,” Florence said with a flush to her cheek. “It’s what this whole fight is about—that men and women should be treated as equals. It was Miss Treylen’s circumstances that prompted her to join us in the first place. Miss Treylen is”—she took a sip of wine to calm herself—“
was
a married woman unable to obtain a divorce from her husband.”

“I thought divorce was easier for women now.”

“The laws are better than they were, but still men can obtain a divorce if their wives commit adultery; women if their husbands commit incest, or adultery coupled with desertion, cruelty, or unnatural practices. Agatha’s husband frequently beat her. She thought that was a good reason to leave him, but the law did not. Not only has she been unable to divorce him,
but she has not received a penny from him either. And to add insult to injury, when he discovered she’d found an office job at the docks—employment which pays only half that of her male counterparts, I might add—he demanded she contribute towards the welfare of their child, whom he took from her.”

“But surely no law would expect her to do that?”

“He claimed she owed it to him because she deserted him. And she believed him, because—you may not believe this, Dody—he’s a lawyer. A lawyer who earns one hundred times as much as she does.”

That a professional man should beat his wife did not surprise Dody. From her work at the hospital she knew that, contrary to popular belief, it was not only the working-class man who used physical force against women.

“Christabel Pankhurst, who has studied law, but is not allowed to practice—”

“Because she is a woman,” Dody finished for her.

“Don’t mock me, Dody.”

“I’m sorry. Please continue.”

“Christabel was going to see what she could do to help, but the pressure for Miss Treylen was obviously too much to bear.” Florence dabbed her eyes with her napkin.

“Poor Miss Treylen,” Dody said and meant it.

“I’m glad you feel sympathy, Dody, but can’t you see, the system has to change!” Florence banged her fist upon the table to emphasise these last words.

That’s more like it
, Dody thought, surprised that the table banging had not come any earlier. “Of course I see,” she said. “My dear, you are preaching to the converted.”

Florence turned her head away. “Sometimes I wonder about you, after everything you went through to study medicine …”

“Florence, that is enough, we are slipping from the point. Please let us not get into our methodology argument again. There is something else I need to tell you. Miss Treylen left a note addressed to the Bloomsbury Division, which I’m sure you will be given when the police are finished with it. In the note she confessed to telling the police about the golf course sabotage in return for payment. She begged you all to forgive her.”

The angry flush left Florence’s cheeks, and she became deathly pale. Dody left her seat and put an arm around her sister’s shoulders.

“That explains everything, doesn’t it?” Florence said. “I don’t blame Miss Treylen at all, and of course I forgive her. It’s the police I cannot forgive, those scavengers who prey upon the weak and the helpless. I could so easily have pressed that plunger when they were gathered about the clubhouse entrance. Derwent wanted us to kill police, I’m sure of it. Even though he never said anything outright, he hinted—he hates them even more than we do …” Her voice trailed off as if she could not face the direction her mind was taking her.

“I cannot tell you how glad I am that you didn’t,” Dody said, closing her eyes to try to hide the horror she felt. Had her sister acted on the impulse, she would have crossed the line from the obsessively passionate to the deranged fanatic. Once that line had been crossed, no psychiatrist on earth could pull her back.

Not wishing to upset Florence further, Dody said no more on the subject. Agatha Treylen’s suicide had caused her to miss her morning duties at the hospital, and she told Florence she would be out for the rest of the afternoon.

“I have to go out also,” Florence said, leaving her chair and hobbling over to the bell to summon Annie to clear the table.

“I would much rather you didn’t. You should stay at home and rest with your foot up. You have had quite an ordeal.”

“My mind will not let me rest. And anyway, I promised I’d call on Lady Lytton to discuss the golf course disaster.”

D
ody put down her pen and paused for thought. She was in the habit of updating her diary every evening, but had returned from the hospital late the previous night too exhausted to do anything. Her watch had been even grimmer than usual. Upon her arrival she had been required to sign two death certificates, septicaemia cases brought in during the night, both the result of criminal abortion. Next she’d assisted the house surgeon in repairing the prolapsed uterus of a woman who had recently given birth to her tenth living child. After that she’d seen to the admission of a malnourished fifteen-year-old, pregnant to her father. Between then and the night locking of the hospital doors, she had treated two babies with diphtheria and organised a young girl into isolation with a suspected case of poliomyelitis.

Her watch had at least ended on a high note, with the successful delivery of abnormally presented twins. It was the euphoric
look on the father’s face she’d carried into her dreams that night, and not the misery of those unfortunate others.

She yawned, put a full stop at the end of her diary entry, and was about to pull the bell for some morning coffee when the door flew open and her sister blew in amongst a whirlwind of rustling pink silk.

“Oh thank goodness, you are still here,” Florence said, one hand over her breast as if to calm a fluttering heart. “I wasn’t sure if you were at the hospital today or not.”

“I only work three days a week at the hospital. Today I plan on studying at home.”

“Of course, you can choose your own hours, can’t you? Considering the amount of time you’ve spent there, one would think you were getting paid for it.”

With so few hospitals willing to employ female physicians, the only alternative to being labelled an incompetent “shilling” doctor was to give one’s services for free in order to gain experience. In this respect Dody was lucky; she was of independent means and could afford to give her time gratis, though there were still plenty of other obstacles to overcome that no amount of money could smooth.

“What is it, Florence? Do you really care whether I am paid or not?” She pointed to the jumble of textbooks on her desk. “I have much to get done here.”

Florence was pacing the room, her dress rustling with every step. “They have started force-feeding Olivia. Dody, I beg you. Please do something!”

Dody sighed. “There’s nothing I can do to stop it. These measures are ordered by the court and enacted by the prison physician.”