Smithson wasn’t listening closely. Instead, the young sergeant watched Julia work. She must have seemed as exotic to him as the Asian victim on the table. Tennant had grown used to working with a female medical examiner. What he’d never adjusted to was tight spaces, a legacy of his military service and the bombardment he’d survived during the Crimean War.
Tennant’s eyes prickled, and droplets spread across his forehead. The gaslight seemed to shrink into a small circle and slowly expand, returning the room to its original brightness. He struggled to regulate his breathing and concentrate on the postmortem.
Julia held up the undergarment she’d cut away. “The chemise is lace-trimmed silk. Quite expensive, I’d say. French or Belgian, most likely. No corset.”
Congealed blood covered one side of the girl’s face. Before Julia sponged it away, she wiped the victim’s other cheek and lips with a dry white cloth. Faint, reddish marks stained the fabric.
“Rouge and lip paint.” The doctor picked up a scalpel and made a Y-shaped incision extending from her shoulders and down to the pubic bone.
Sergeant O’Malley rapped on the window and held something up. Tennant wasn’t the only one relieved to leave the room. A pale, swaying Sergeant Smithers followed him out the door and headed for the loo.
“A cracked bottle rolled out of the bag when the coppers moved her.” O’Malley handed it to Tennant. “The name and markings look the same as the laudanum we found in Miller’s stash.”
“S. Cooper, London,” Tennant read. “Yes, it looks identical to me.”
O’Malley cocked his thumb. “The divisional inspector upstairs is telling me she’s not the first foreign lass to turn up on his turf. Himself is asking to see you when the medical examination is done.”
An hour later, Julia sat across from Tennant and O’Malley in a borrowed interrogation room.
“The girl had been ill, a well-established infection,” she said. “Yellow mucus filled her bronchia, and her nails were blue from lack of oxygen. She almost certainly had a high fever before she died.”
“So, not murder,” Tennant said.
“Not directly, at any rate.”
“A prostitute, do you think? The face paint and expensive undergarments point to a high end of the trade.”
“I found the telltale genital signs of the occupation’s risk—the ulcers of first-stage syphilis.”
“Poor lass,” O’Malley said. “They’d have no patience with a girl who’s rotten with the pox. Wanting her off their hands, the bastards, and dumping her like she was week-old fish.”
“Someone shackled her,” Julia said. “Her wrists showed marks of bondage, and . . .” Julia bit her lip and looked away. “And she’d made an unsuccessful attempt to end her life. The marks are on her wrist.”
Tennant heard the strain in her voice and observed Julia’s tightly gripped hands and white knuckles.
She reached for her medical bag and stood. “The report will be on your desk tomorrow.” Julia nodded and exited.
“Excuse me,” Tennant said to O’Malley, and followed her. He caught up to her outside the street door and took her elbow.
“Let me hail a cab for you.”
“Thank you.”
“This postmortem . . . I know it was painful for you. A young girl, desperate to end her life. Difficult after—”
“After Helen’s suicide.”
“Yes.” His heart twisted at her trembling attempt to smile.
“Thoughts of my old friend will intrude,” Julia said. “But you were kind the day you listened to me tell her story.”
A hansom slowed and stopped at Tennant’s signal, and he handed her into the cab and stepped back.
Julia settled in and looked at him. “It helps to share things that haunt you. To share one’s nightmares with a friend.” Her eyes flickered to his leg. “Perhaps one day you’ll honor me by confiding yours.”
He watched her cab roll away and thought of her word “friend.”
Layers of guilt and shame wrapped their experiences. For Julia, it was an unmarried friend’s pregnancy and the suicide she had failed to prevent. For Tennant, the Crimean War had left a shaming legacy of physical and mental weakness.
