“Could I borrow a pastel stick and some of your sketch paper?” she asked Rebecca.
Even though the other woman’s eyebrows rose questioningly, she handed over the requested supplies. “What are you planning, Miss Donovan?”
“I need to view the body again. Make a record of the wounds inflicted. I should have done it before the autopsy, but . . .” She’d still been reeling over the fact that she was in the nineteenth century. “I’ll need some assistance turning over the body.”
“I will stay with Miss Donovan,” Alec volunteered.
The Duke hesitated, looking as though he would’ve preferred to stay as well. But then he took Rebecca’s sketches and box of pastels and ushered her from the room. The woman shot them a departing look that was impossible to interpret before the door closed behind her.
Ignoring Alec’s presence, Kendra concentrated on drawing two crude outlines of the female form, front and back.
“Perhaps Rebecca ought to have stayed. Your artistic skill leaves much to be desired,” Alec observed, seeing the results of her handiwork.
She made a face. “Likeness isn’t important here. Location is—location of the injuries.” She put down the paper and pastel stick, and pulled off the blanket.
Dalton had done the standard Y-incision, sewing up the ragged edges of flesh after he’d finished. The girl looked like a torn ragdoll that some tailor had attempted to repair, with gruesome results. Her skin had become more mottled, tinged greenish-red. They were right; the cool temperature in the icehouse wouldn’t delay the body from breaking down much longer.
Methodically, Kendra moved down the body with her visual examination, starting at the top. “No bruises, cuts on the face, other than petechiae around the eyes,” she murmured. Was that significant? She retrieved the paper and pastel stick, drew a line through the neck area. “Manual strangulation. Several times. Ultimate cause of death. Bite mark on left breast.” She made a corresponding mark on the drawing, scribbling notes in the margins. “Knife wounds begin beneath the breasts. Looks like shallow slashes on upper torso. Deeper, thicker cuts in the middle of torso following the path of the Y-incision to the pubis. Still—deliberate cuts. No stabbing. Nothing frenzied.”
Alec suspected Kendra wasn’t even aware that she was talking out loud. He watched her with a kind of appalled fascination as she marked up the crude drawing she’d made, carefully depicting each wound, and meticulously writing notes in the margins. In a strange way, her behavior, the intense look of concentration on her face, reminded him of the Duke when he was caught up in one of his experiments.
She paused, leaning back to glance at the drawing she held, comparing it to the body. “There are no cuts on her arms, and only a few on the legs, confined to the upper thigh area. The majority of injuries were inflicted below the breast but not on the breast.”
“That is incorrect. Her arms and legs have cuts.”
She glanced up, looking vaguely startled, as if just remembering he was there. “Those weren’t caused from a knife. They’re lacerations—postmortem. Probably caused by the river’s current and rocks. Her inner thighs are bruised, most likely from when he raped her. I need to turn the body over.”
Ironically, it was Alec who had no trouble touching the dead girl. Kendra was the one who had to swallow hard when she reached out to grip a shoulder. The flesh felt cold, waxy. Unfortunately, the victim was no longer in rigor mortis, leaving the body flaccid, and more difficult to turn over. As soon as it was accomplished, Kendra wiped her hands against her apron, feeling queasy.
Kendra studied the deep purple blotches that marred the flesh at the small of the girl’s back and thighs. “She was lying on her back when she was murdered. This is lividity. When the heart stops, blood begins pooling at the body’s lowest points.”
Alec stared at her. Who the hell is she? If she hadn’t been a woman, he’d have thought her a sawbones.
“He didn’t bother to cut her here, either.”
Alec pulled his eyes off Kendra to survey the lacerations on the dead girl’s back and buttocks. “Those are from rocks, I assume.”
“Yes.” She returned to the girl’s head, threading her fingers through the hair as she peered closer. Although she still wished that she had latex gloves, this didn’t make her feel so queasy. Human hair, after all, was dead protein, even on a living person.