Maisie looked up to see a woman entering via the double doors leading into the mortuary. She stopped alongside Murphy and held out her hand. “Spud—I take it you’re well?”
Murphy opened his mouth to respond, but already the woman had moved to stand alongside Maisie. She extended her hand. “Clarissa Clark—pathologist around here.” The two women shook hands and Clark pulled a pair of clean rubber gloves from her pocket before reaching toward a trolley set up with an array of surgical instruments. She snapped on the gloves, picked up a scalpel and leaned back toward the corpse, using the instrument to indicate a small area in Joe Coombes’ brain. “That’s what you’re looking at, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Maisie, taking a step to the side to provide more space for Clark to move. “It looks like some sort of tumor—yet it’s not, and there is no identifiable outline or margin. And the color—though admittedly we are looking at a young man deceased for some days, but still . . .” She looked at Clark. “What do you think?”
Clark sighed. “For the purposes of this investigation, I am obviously looking at immediate cause of death. Given where he was found, I would say that, yes, it’s of course possible that this injury here, on the other side, was caused by falling from a height and hitting a cast iron railway line at just the right angle.” Again using the scalpel, she pointed to a deep wound—a smashed orbital bone and torn flesh above the ear revealing a skull crushed into livid brain matter. “Very bad luck indeed. Could it have been made worse by being pushed, therefore increasing velocity? Yes, I would say so. But at the same time, the injury that killed Joe could well have been done by something heavy—a crowbar, for example, especially if it came down from a height.” She lifted her hand above her head and simulated bringing it down, stopping the trajectory of her hand just an inch from the open skull of Joe Coombes.
“But you’ve obviously thought about that too.” Maisie gestured toward the naked brain matter that had first attracted her attention.
“I have, and I have never seen anything like it.” Clark corrected herself. “No, I tell a lie—I’ve seen something like it. In Serbia, in the last war. I was working at a field hospital, and I saw something similar to this discoloration in soldiers subject to attack by poison gases.”
“It’s caused by exposure to toxins, isn’t it?”
Clark looked at Maisie. “Yes, I would say you’re right—in my humble opinion.”
Maisie nodded, now pointing to the wound. “Where this young man is concerned, if you had to make a choice between falling from a height and being attacked with a crowbar, which side would you come down on.”
Clark sighed. “I think you probably have an opinion, Miss Dobbs—if you are half the woman that Dr. Blanche would have taken on as his assistant.”
“You knew him?” Maisie turned to look at Clark.
“He was my favorite professor, when he came to lecture during my student years.”
Maisie looked down at Joe Coombes, at rest, free of pain. She closed her eyes for several seconds, and then opened them again. She looked across toward Murphy, and then at Dr. Clark. “I would say he was the victim of a vicious attack, and with a heavy cast iron object. But of course I could be wrong.”
As they left the mortuary together, Murphy leaned toward Maisie, as if to share a confidence. “She lied about one thing in there.”
“Yes, I know,” replied Maisie.
“That woman has never had a humble opinion in her life.”
Maisie laughed. And for a moment she thought poor young Joe Coombes would have laughed at that one too, for she had felt his presence so keenly.
Chapter 6
Maisie and Detective Inspector Caldwell had, for the most part, a professional association that was respectful, though at times tense. During the occasions when they worked together, she felt it was as if they were two hot electrical wires running side by side—if they came too close, there would be sparks. But over the years they had reached a point where they could avoid a fire, and had come to hold a grudging respect for one another. And on this evening, as they departed the pub where they had just broken the news of Joe’s death to Phil and Sally Coombes, Maisie knew that Caldwell had been glad to have her at his side, and appreciated her company.
“That—that in there—is the very worst part of this job. It’s like being in a mortuary, but instead of watching someone else take the insides out of a person, you’re the one doing it to the living. I feel as if I’ve just ripped three people apart. And there’ll be one more when their other son gets home.”
“You did very well, Inspector Caldwell—it’s not easy, to tell people that someone they love has died, especially in these circumstances,” said Maisie.
“You did most of the telling—I just filled in the police details,” said Caldwell.
“But you gave them hope that you would find out what happened. I know your hands were tied, that you could not come out and admit it was murder, when there is still a question mark over the cause of death. They believe that Joe will not be forgotten, that his screams will not have fallen into a silent void—and there’s a bitter comfort in that knowing.”
Caldwell nodded, sighing. “Offer you a lift, Miss Dobbs?”
“I think I’ll go to my office, and then get a taxicab home. I have some work to do.”
Caldwell stopped alongside the dark blue motor car parked next to the pub, where the doors were still locked and a Closed sign remained in place. A police driver held the vehicle’s door open, ready for his superior to step inside. The detective inspector turned to Maisie.
“I won’t stop you, you know—investigating the death of Joe Coombes. Just keep in touch and I’ll do the same for you. I reckon you might have more luck than me—I’ve a lot on my plate, and the results of the postmortem are what they call ‘inconclusive,’ so I daresay the coroner will report this one as ‘death by misadventure’ because murder can’t be proven and for all the world it looks like a risky jump on the part of the deceased, who launched himself off a wall the height of a building just for the sheer thrill and high jinks of it.”
“But we know that high jinks is not something someone does alone—even a boy of that age. Joe wasn’t that sort of person anyway.”
“And there’s them who would say that any lad of fifteen or sixteen is a high jinks sort of person.” Caldwell touched the brim of his hat and turned to step inside the vehicle. “I’ll send a motor car around in an hour to take you home—you’ll never get a cab in the blackout. Be in touch, Miss Dobbs—and watch your back. I don’t like this one.”
Maisie raised her hand as the motor car pulled away from the curb, and commenced walking toward her office in Fitzroy Square. It was dark now, so she switched on the light before running up the stairs, then turned it off as she placed her key in the lock—the last thing she wanted was an ARP man admonishing her for breaking the blackout. She could hear music coming from the top floor—having once been servants’ quarters in the days when the mansion had been a private home, the upper floor had been divided into separate bed-sitting rooms, and were let to students from the Slade art institute. There was no noise from the flats during the day, but at night there was often a gramophone playing, or the sound of voices—and sometimes even “high jinks.”
She had not intended to remain in the office long, but she was grateful to Caldwell and his offer of a vehicle to take her home. She unlocked the door and felt her way to the windows to draw the blackout curtains before stepping through to her private office, where she again drew the blackout curtains, and turned on her desk light.