While grave robbing is one way to get bodies, this would be another one: use the corpses of those who won’t be missed. Gray’s police friend finds a drunkard dead in an alleyway and brings him to his funeral parlor, as if delivering a body for a pauper’s grave. Gray pays a few shillings and passes the cadaver along to his medical-school friends.
I won’t question the ethics of what he’s doing. I’d never condone it in the modern world. We already treat the indigent as disposable. Here, though, if advancing medical science requires corpses, I’ll cut them some slack until we reach the day where people can choose to donate their bodies to science.
I’m not hiding to judge Gray by confirming my suspicions. I’m hiding because he isn’t the only one who likes a puzzle. I think I’ve solved this one. Now I’m flipping to the back of the book to double-check my answer.
Gray helps lift the body. Just rolls up his sleeves and does the work, which would have surprised me for another man of his station, but doesn’t surprise me for this one.
They carry in a man’s body through the courtyard door, then the staff door and finally through that locked door. I would think one would want a direct door from the funeral parlor to the courtyard, but I suppose that hadn’t been possible, when they were retooling a family home to accommodate the dead.
After Constable Findlay helps, McCreadie claps him on the back and tells him to take the rest of the night off, joking that there’s time to get a pint before the public houses close. He might also palm him a shilling—or whatever a beer costs. I only know that the young man thanks McCreadie and leaves without hesitation.
McCreadie waits until Findlay’s gone. Then he says, “I think the body put him off, poor lad. I do hope not. He has promise, that one, but this isn’t a job for the squeamish.”
Gray only grunts in response, and then there’s a click, as if he’s locking the door.
McCreadie’s heavy footsteps cross the floor. I wait for the click of him closing the preparation room door, but it doesn’t come, and when I poke my head out, I see the door half open, the light from inside flooding out.
Thank you, Detective.
I wait for McCreadie to speak, to be sure he’s in that room. When he murmurs something, I creep out and take up position behind the door, where I can peer through the crack. It isn’t a perfect sight line. I see the legs of the body, which are oddly drawn up, as if the corpse stiffened in a seated position. The two men block the corpse’s upper half.
“In my expert opinion,” Gray says, “the cause of death is murder.”
McCreadie gives a sharp laugh. “You always were the clever one.”
Murder? That surprises me. Yet McCreadie had mentioned an intellectual puzzle. Is this more than a body snatching?
“Have you notified Addington?” Gray asks.
McCreadie grumbles something unintelligible and definitely uncomplimentary about this Addington fellow. Then he says, “I’ll need to fetch him within the hour, so you need to work quickly.”
Gray only grunts. A tap of metal. I peer through to see him leaning over the body, prodding at it.
“My preliminary assessment is that this part seems to have been inflicted postmortem.”
“You’re certain of that?”
A low growl from Gray. “No, Hugh, I’m not certain at all. That’s why I called it a preliminary assessment. You will get a proper ruling from Addington.”
“If I expected a proper anything from him, you wouldn’t be here.”
“I would certainly be here. It is my laboratory.”
“Laboratory”? That must be the Victorian word for an undertaker’s preparation room. It still makes no sense. McCreadie brought a murder victim to an undertaker, and then he’s bringing the coroner here for the autopsy?
“I would agree all this seems postmortem,” McCreadie says. “What I want is your professional opinion.”
“You lack faith in your own judgment,” Gray says. “It is a poor quality in a criminal officer.”
“I lack faith in my medical expertise, because I am not a medical officer, Duncan.”
“It doesn’t take a doctor to realize how much simpler it would be to do all this if your theatrical property is already dead.”
“Theatrical property?”
“A ‘prop’ as they call it these days. Yes, that is disrespectful to the young man, but there is not anyone here to judge me for my callow phrasing.”
“I meant, why do you call him a prop?”
“Because all this is clearly staging. One does not do this to a body unless one has a message to convey.”
“Or unless one is a madman.”
“Madmen still have messages, perhaps more than those in possession of their faculties. I have no opinions on the mental state of this killer. My interest is the body, which isn’t all that interesting.”
McCreadie sputters. “How can you call this ‘not interesting’? It is the most bizarre murder I have ever seen.”
That has me twisting and craning to see more.
“The staging is interesting. My concern is the murder, which is terribly pedestrian. Simple strangulation.” Gray lifts something out with what looks like tweezers. “You’re looking for woven rough cord. Hemp, I believe. Likely rope.”
McCreadie lifts something. “Like this?”
Dangling from his hand is a length of old rope. Exactly like the one used to strangle me.
SEVEN
I stare at that rope. I don’t hear what they say about it. I just stare until a word snaps me out of it.
Beak? Did they say something about a beak?
I’ve obviously misheard, but that incongruous word is enough to bring me back to myself, and with that, I almost laugh. The victim was killed with an antique-looking piece of rope. Uh, because we’re in 1869? It’s just regular rope here. Old, yes, but otherwise, not nearly as incongruous as it’d been in my time.
Gray is saying something about wanting to remove another rope from the victim’s legs to determine whether they’re seized in that position. That has me craning forward again, still unsuccessfully. I can see the knees, which are drawn up. I squint until I can make out a length of rope wrapped around the victim’s ankles. So he didn’t go into rigor while sitting. That would be difficult—he’d need to die seated and somehow not fall out of the chair. Rigor mortis is a temporary condition, starting about six hours after death and dissipating around forty-eight hours.
Yep, I may not have been on a date in over a year, but I am intimately acquainted with the principles of forensic science, having spent far too many nights snuggling with textbooks, hoping it’d help get me into the homicide unit someday.
As Gray cuts the rope, he holds it steady, and I rock forward, wanting to warn that he’s getting his fingerprints on it. Or is fingerprint analysis not a thing yet? One area I haven’t studied is the history of forensic science, seeing no practical use for it.
Well, that’ll teach me.
Gray cuts the rope, and the victim’s legs stay in the same position, indicating rigor. He massages one and then the other.
“Death at least eight hours ago and less than thirty-six. I’ll let Addington take the core temperature—he can handle that much.”
McCreadie mutters something uncomplimentary, presumably about the coroner again. Would it be a coroner? Medical examiner? Or just a doctor with a basic knowledge of pathology?
“Tell Addington you had to cut the rope to move him,” Gray says. “I’ll leave the hands where they are.”
I squint to see the victim’s hands, but McCreadie stands between my sight line and the upper body.
“The feathers were intact?” Gray asks.
Feathers?
“There were a few more of them,” McCreadie says. “Dislodged when we transported him.”
“Hmm. I don’t suppose it matters. I have no idea what they signify, but that would be your job. Lack of bleeding suggests they were also inserted postmortem.”
Inserted? Feathers? I’m barely able to stand still now, and I keep reminding myself that this has nothing to do with me. I’m a housemaid in this world, which I hope to exit tomorrow.
Forget feathers and beaks and bizarrely posed corpses. This does not concern me, and like Gray, I will deem it quite ordinary. Mundane. Not worthy of my attention.