City of Darkness

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

1:20 PM





“So we can have use of the mortuary?”

“Certainly,” Phillips said. “Take the front table, but I don’t understand precisely what you plan to do with the space.”

“It’s the beginning of my forensics laboratory,” Trevor said. “Davy’s off sending a wire to Paris requesting copies of their latest procedure papers and I intend to try to reproduce their experiments here. Eatwell doesn’t have to know –“

Phillips waved his hand. “And he shan’t. Would you like to take a final look at Stride? She’s going in the ground tomorrow.”

Just part of the job, Trevor thought, walking resolutely toward the small room at the back of the mortuary where the mortuary assistants were beginning the embalming process. The body lay on the table, wrapped in its muslin shroud but Trevor noted that burial clothes were draped over the camera tripod. Presumably after her blood was drained and the embalming fluid was pumped into the woman’s veins she would be dressed, lowered into her coffin, and photographed.

“Stride is coming along smoothly enough, but Eddowes took us half the morning,” Phillips said, coming up behind him, a cup in his shaky hand. “Even after we stitched her up tight, her wounds were so numerous and profound that the embalming fluid continued to leak. She went into the box rather wet, I’m afraid. Would you like tea?”

Any number of graceless jokes sprang to Trevor’s lips, but he bit them back. Detectives thrived on dark humor, and he considered their sarcasm and perversity a defense against the horrors of the street, and thus necessary to their calling. Upstairs, the Yard was a bit of a boy’s club, and, if unchecked, the boisterous spirit among the bobbies could lead to disrespect bordering on the edge of desecration. Trevor made it a point not to think of what had happened to one girl, by the looks of her likely no more than fifteen, whose naked and violated body had been found on the outskirts of London last Christmas morning - and who then had the additional misfortune of traveling to the morgue by means of a paddy wagon full of coppers angry over having drawn a holiday shift. Inspectors turned a blind eye to certain matters. The policy of releasing minor offenders “at the discretion of the arresting officer” had led to thieves bribing their way out of jail with the very goods they had just stolen, or prostitutes who, with a few minutes on their knees before a bobby, found their way back to the streets almost immediately.

And so it was an imperfect system, one created and maintained by imperfect men. Trevor did not consider the police force especially corrupt or particularly blameworthy and instead viewed this myriad of small lapses as the natural resort of a group of men left entirely too much on their own. Men deprived of female company quickly became fearsome creatures, and Trevor believed you could argue that civilization was in fact the invention of women, or at least the invention of the men who wanted to please them. If it were not for the ladies, Trevor often proclaimed, especially after a few beers, humanity would doubtlessly still be roaming the forests in animal skins.

But here, here in this small brightly lit room far below the surface of Scotland Yard, things were different. The atmosphere was as hushed and decorous as a classroom – no, Trevor decided, as he seated himself in the lone wooden chair in the corner. No, it was more like a chapel. The young assistant named Severin treated the long thin body of the woman beneath the shroud with a palpable dignity, careful to cover the parts not necessary to his work, lifting and lowering each limb with a gentle touch. He had slipped needles into various veins at her ankles, throat, wrists, and somewhere between the strips of cloth draped about her torso while the even-younger lad, whose name Trevor could not recall, was moving from one spot to another, checking the tubes. The blood was flowing out of her, flowing fast, and since this was the one that the Ripper didn’t have his fair time with, there was plenty left to give. Severin and the assistant circled around the table in a ritualistic manner that reminded Trevor of a priest and altar boy.

Could he work in this room? Or would the very solemnity drive him mad? He would have to remember to tell Davy there could be no laughing down here, deep in this inner sanctum, no tobacco or belching or scratching, no whistling or passing of gas. The tubes running from the woman’s body were changing from red to pink and her slender white feet, poking from beneath the shroud, glowed like marble. Severin removed the needle from her ankle and pulled the sheet over that part of her body too, hiding her soles from the insolent eyes of men. Something in his manner made Trevor ashamed of himself.

The insertion of the embalming fluid seemed to go well enough, although it did require a towel to be tightly tied around the woman’s throat to make sure that everything that was flowing in did not just as swiftly flow back out. Severin asked if they needed photographs and Phillips said “Not now. When she’s dressed.” Glancing back at Trevor he added, “I thought it would be prudent to record the full extent of the wounds exhibited by Eddowes.” Trevor nodded automatically, although it took him a moment to understand the doctor’s meaning. They must have photographed the Eddowes woman’s naked form. Trevor guessed she lay in the other coffin in the room, the one that had already been nailed shut.

Once the fluid was in, Severin began unrolling the cloths that bound the body. An arm tumbled free. It was strange - an abrupt, spontaneous gesture, as if the woman had moved of her own accord, and Trevor abruptly stood, wavering uncertainly on his own feet. It seemed vulgar to remain to see them bare her and dress her and the complete silence of the room was beginning to unnerve him. The clank of the hypodermic needle against the steel tray sounded as loud as a scream. Phillips approached the table, glancing over at him again.

“What exactly did you need?”

“Hair samples. A scrape of skin and fingernail cuttings.”

Phillips did not ask him what he planned to do with these things, which was lucky since Trevor could not have answered. He had read that the French police used samples from the victims as well as the suspects, so he wished to have them at the ready.

“From both women?” Phillips asked.

Trevor nodded, although he knew that his request meant prying the nails from the coffin in the corner and revealing what he could only assume was the horrifying visage of Catherine Eddowes. Her hollow-eyed face had visited his dreams for two nights as it was, but considering what Phillips and his assistants went through on a daily basis, he supposed he could muster up the courage to pull a strand of hair and clip the woman’s fingernails.

“I’ll get them,” Severin said quietly. Was it just Trevor’s imagination, or had the younger man looked at him with sympathy? I haven’t fooled them at all, Trevor thought. This is a fine business, for the chief coordinator of the Ripper case to sway on his feet at the sign of a woman’s bare arm, for the man in charge to show such weakness in the presence of subordinates.

“Excellent,” he said briskly. “Hair, skin cells, fingernails, and if you’ll fold them in paper and mark them with each victim’s name, I’ll be in my lab.”

It was a rather grand statement, since his lab consisted of a bare wooden table, and Trevor turned back into the main mortuary filled with doubt. As he heard the unmistakable groan of nails being pulled from a pine coffin he sat down in a chair and stared straight ahead at the empty chalkboard. Ah, but wouldn’t this be the ultimate joke? If a man moved heaven and earth to get a forensics lab, only to find he didn’t have the stomach for the job?