The Anatomy of Death (7 page)

“You will do no such thing; you’ve had enough for one day,” Florence said, her expression torn between anger at the ignorant men and sympathy for the bedraggled victim. “You’ll catch your death of cold. Annie, another cup and saucer, please.”

“Apropos of the police, dear,” Miss Lithgow addressed Florence once Miss Treylen had been settled into a chair by the fire and plied with sandwiches and cake. “Isn’t it time we informed your sister what it is that we require of her?” Florence glanced at Dody. “Dr. McCleland,” Miss Lithgow continued, her voice calm once more, “seeing as through no fault of your own, you have fallen onto the side of the opposition”—she eyed Dody over her pince-nez—“would it be possible for you to at least find out the results of Lady Catherine’s autopsy?”

“I don’t see why not,” Dody replied, looking Miss Lithgow levelly in the eye. Her acquiescence had nothing to do with the other woman’s attempts at intimidation. Having been unable to perform the autopsy, a follow-up was the least she could do, for Florence’s sake. “It would be a professional courtesy for them to inform me anyway. I imagine I will be hearing from them soon.”

“I’m not sure soon is good enough,” Miss Lithgow said.

“We need to know now, Dody,” Florence added. “The Division wants me to accompany you to Scotland Yard to make immediate enquiries before the officers leave for the evening.”

Dody could see no problem with that. “Very well, I am as eager as you to find out the results.”

“Can you tell us the names of the policemen you were dealing with?” Miss Lithgow asked.

“There was a Detective Superintendent Shepherd—”

“The deputy head of the Detective Division—as big a tub of lard as ever I did see,” Molly Jenkins cut in, provoking a smile even on the glacially beautiful features of Miss Lithgow.

“And a Detective Chief Inspector Pike,” Dody added.

It seemed none of the ladies had come across this name before. But after a few moments, Mrs. Slowcroft said, “Actually, I believe I know the name. Miss Hobhouse has spoken of him. An unusual type for a policeman, if it is the same fellow.”

At the mention of Miss Hobhouse, the highly respected welfare campaigner, all eyes became fixed on Mrs. Slowcroft. “There is quite a story. It was during her campaign to expose the appalling conditions inside the British camps in South Africa where the Boer women and children were imprisoned,” she said. “Mr. Pike was an army captain then, a bit of a war hero—received the Distinguished Conduct Medal or something or other. Then he was injured and sent to supervise the running of the Bloemfontein camp. He resigned his commission over what he saw there. Miss Hobhouse approached him hoping to use him in her campaign, but he refused, saying his resignation was all he needed to say on the matter.”

Deeds, not words
, the suffragette slogan—Dody barely managed to keep the thought to herself.

The women exchanged glances. “I think we could suppose he has some sympathy towards the women’s movement, and a sympathetic police officer is worth cultivating, surely,” Mrs. Slowcroft finished.

“It sounds as if he has some principles at least,” Florence said.

“He’s still the enemy,” Olivia Barndon-Brown said, with no trace of humour at all.

A
plainclothes officer showed Dody into the chief inspector’s office. Pike got to his feet and positioned the visitor’s chair in front of his desk for her. Dody looked around the room. There were no pictures on the walls, no photographs or mementos on the shelves. A framed photograph stood on his desk, but of whom she could not tell, as it faced away from her. A tidy row of legal tomes stood on a shelf near a small curtained window set into the internal wall. A bicycle leaned against a heavy filing cabinet. Dody wondered how he managed to ride the old boneshaker with his leg as stiff as it seemed. Observing his gait, she deduced the problem to be his right knee; must be the war wound Mrs. Slowcroft had mentioned. He sat down once she had assured him that she was comfortable and had just had tea, and that no, her sister in the waiting room would probably not want tea either.

“I imagine, Doctor, you would like to view Lady Catherine’s
autopsy report?” he said before she’d even expressed the reason for her visit. “I anticipated as much, and have it here for your perusal.” His voice, which she hadn’t paid much attention to in the mortuary, was refined for a police officer, softened with but a trace of a northern accent. His suit was well cut, if slightly dated, his cravat pinned with perfect symmetry. A dandy he was not, but he had a pride of appearance that Dody took to be a legacy of his time in the military.

He pushed the report across the desk. “This is the only copy. I’m afraid you’ll have to read it here. The notes were dictated by Dr. Mangini to Mr. Bright, the assistant coroner.”

Two photographs had been pinned to the autopsy report. The first was a grainy shot of Lady Catherine lying like a rag doll next to her crushed hat on the cobbles outside St. Stephen’s. Litter and debris were strewn about her person; Dody made out a single boot, bricks, and a piece of four-by-two timber. She pointed to a discarded wooden club. “What manner of weapon is that?” she asked.

“A belaying pin, Doctor—a large club used to tie ships’ halliards to.”

“A common weapon of sailors?”

“Or anyone from the docks.”

Dody thought for a moment. “Any of these objects, other than the boot, could be the instrument of death. I assume they were all tested for human blood?”

“The evidence around the body was collected, but not tested. With the autopsy results as conclusive as they seem to be, I doubt such tests will now be authorised. I’m afraid the budget allocated to forensics is limited.” Dody directed a look at Pike that told him exactly what she thought about his department’s competency. Dr. Spilsbury had told her the police often used the
budget as an excuse. If Spilsbury had been in attendance, Dody was sure he would have insisted upon these basic forensic tests.

The other photograph was of Lady Catherine lying naked on the slab. Neither of the pictures showed the head wounds with any clarity.

The autopsy report was brief and didn’t take long to read.

“You have finished with the photographs?” Pike asked, reaching out to gather them up.

“Yes,” said Dody, “thank you. But I’ll just read through this report again if you don’t mind.”

Pike put the photographs in a drawer then rose from the desk and limped to the waiting room. Through the open door, Dody heard him address Florence. “It’s marginally warmer in my office, Miss McCleland, why don’t you join us?”

Indeed, the cold bleak day had turned into a colder, bleaker evening. Dody glanced up from the report and noticed through the office window the rising river mists, tinged an eerie blue from the line of police lamps along the building’s exterior. As Pike pulled up another chair, Florence caught Dody’s eye. She raised an enquiring eyebrow.

“May I share this with my sister, Chief Inspector?”

“By all means,” he replied.

Dody read the report’s conclusion aloud:

Florence jumped to her feet. “What nonsense is that? She was beaten about the head by a policeman with his truncheon!”

Pike said nothing but observed Florence with his hands folded loosely on the desk, his expression unchanged. He had surgeon’s hands, Dody noticed—long, elegant fingers with neatly trimmed fingernails, not the meat cleavers one would expect of a policeman.

Dody tugged the side of her sister’s dress until Florence dropped back to her seat. “I don’t see your signature here as a witness, Chief Inspector,” Dody said.

“Regrettably, I was called away.”

Florence pursed her lips. “I have a friend who saw with his own eyes Lady Catherine being beaten about the head by a policeman.”

“That is a serious accusation, Miss McCleland. May I ask who this friend might be?”

“The Honourable Mr. Hugo Cartwright, Lady Catherine’s nephew,” Florence said haughtily.

Pike leaned back in his desk chair. “Ah yes, and the heir to her fortune.”

The sisters exchanged glances.

“You were not aware?”

“Now you mention it, I suppose it stands to reason,” Florence replied. “He is her only living blood relative. But this is all very convenient for you, isn’t it, this autopsy result? The police are off the hook and you think you have licence to throw mud around at whomsoever you wish. You are now saying
that Hugo took advantage of the chaos and bludgeoned his aunt to death with a brick in order to receive his inheritance.”

“People have been murdered for less, miss, and this wouldn’t be the first murder committed under the cover of a public disturbance.”

“I’d like to be present when you accuse Hugo of this to his face. He won’t stand for it, you know. I hope you have a good solicitor, Mr. Pike,” Florence said.

It was hard to imagine the pathetic, grief-stricken creature Dody had bandaged in the drawing room having any such fight in him at all. Antagonising Pike with wild threats would get them nowhere. She pressed her foot into Florence’s shin.

“If Mr. Cartwright did indeed witness events as you describe them, he did not report it,” Pike said. “That in itself is a punishable offence.”

“Indeed he
did
report it,
Mr.
Pike.” Florence retorted, her chin raised. Dody knew that by addressing him with his civilian title, Florence wished Pike to know she considered him not worthy of his rank. “But the beastly policeman refused to take his statement or write his name down, even. Hugo tried to stop the attack on Lady Catherine but couldn’t move fast enough on account of his injured foot, which had been callously stamped upon by a charging police horse.”

Dody detected a hastily suppressed flicker of amusement in Pike’s face. Florence must have noticed it, too, for she bristled. “Mr. Pike, you need—”

Pike cut her off. “I have every intention of following the incident up with Mr. Cartwright, and I will personally go through the witness reports again, looking for his name.”

Florence frowned, not reassured at all.

“Then in the meantime, sir,” Dody said, “I would like permission to examine Lady Catherine’s body for myself.”

Florence drew a breath and appeared surprised; this was not something they had discussed.

“Is there something in the report that prompts you to make this request, Doctor?” Pike asked.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, there are several things.”

“First is the evidence of the brick dust. When a body comes to the slab straight from the ice chest, the hair is always damp. Combing it for dust would be difficult, if not impossible.”

“But if the hair had dried?”

“It would also be stiff with blood—how can one expect to remove brick dust from that?” As she spoke, Dody pictured a case she’d studied in Edinburgh in which London police had laundered a victim’s shirt before examining it for bullet holes—a prime example of the lack of cooperation between the forensic and police departments. It would have been no surprise to hear that Lady Catherine’s hair had also been washed before examination.

Pike’s gaze wavered for the first time since the meeting had begun and she wondered if he, too, was reflecting on similar police bungles.

“I’m afraid I didn’t notice her hair. Like you, I had only a brief glimpse of the body before the sheet was replaced,” he said.

Florence had turned quite pale, Dody noticed. Hearing Lady Catherine spoken about in this manner must be distressing. Perhaps it would have been best if she’d remained in the waiting room.

“In any case,” Dody said, “the wounds themselves, not the dust, are what need the most careful observation, and in
Dr. Mangini’s report, they received only a cursory mention. It also surprises me that he makes no mention of the scalp being shaved—how else could the head wounds be thoroughly examined? I need to shave the hair, take measurements of the wounds, and then conduct some tests. A conclusion cannot be made instantaneously in the mortuary.” Dody flicked the document with her finger. “Furthermore, this illustrates to me that Dr. Mangini is one of those old-school medical practitioners who treat coroner’s inquests much too lightly. If he has not assessed the victim’s general state of health through adequate dissection, how can it be proved without a doubt that these blows were the cause of her death? She may have had a long-standing ailment of the brain that the blows merely hastened to conclusion. A defence barrister would make a meal out of Dr. Mangini if he were called upon as an expert witness.”

Pike didn’t respond for a moment, and Dody looked around her as she waited. Her eyes settled on a file lying closed on his desk with the name
Hawley Crippen
inscribed on it. Had he been working the Crippen case with Dr. Spilsbury, too? The flamboyant Inspector Dew was the only member of the police department Dody had remembered the pathologist mentioning.

Pike must have followed her gaze, for he picked up the file and placed it in a desk drawer. Finally he spoke. “I would be the first to agree that coronial enquiries are not infallible, but I will have to ask Superintendent Shepherd’s permission. I’m afraid I don’t like your chances at a second attempt, seeing as you turned down the initial opportunity. But I understand your argument and I will do my best on your behalf. Excuse me for a minute.”

He lifted the telephone receiver, cranked the handle, and
asked the operator to connect him to Shepherd’s office. The sisters listened intently as he stated the case to his superior. Upon replacing the receiver, he told them, grim faced, that the coroner had already released the body and that the funeral parlour would be picking it up first thing in the morning. Dody may have been mistaken, but she thought she saw a reflection of her own thoughts in Pike’s eyes: that he was as doubtful of Mangini’s work as she was, and disappointed that there would be no second autopsy. Perhaps there was a glimmer of hope after all.