“No.”
“Mrs. Henry, we can be careful about it, I promise,” Vivian put in, glancing at Bea’s stricken face. Part of her wanted to stay out of it, but even more of her wanted to back up her friend. “Someone I know has connections at the coroner’s office, so he’s asking them to look into it. They should be able to—”
“No.”
The sharp word hung in the air, startling all of them. Even Mrs. Henry looked surprised by how forceful she had sounded. She took a deep breath. “You don’t need to be prying into Pearlie’s life,” she said.Her voice was soft; thawed of its frost, Vivian could hear a current of fear running underneath. “No matter what happened, no good comes from getting mixed up with those kind of people, or from getting in their way. I know you and your uncle were close, Beatrice. But you let things be, you hear me?”
“Wait, do you mean you don’t think he killed himself either?” Alba demanded. Mrs. Henry tried to urge her back into her chair, but Alba shook her hands off, stepping away from the table, her movements quick and jerky. “Why didn’t you say something? What do you think happened? You have to tell me, Della, youhaveto—” Her voice was rising as she spoke, her breathing coming faster.
“Alba, you have to calm down—Think of the—Alba!”
It was no use. Alba shook off Mrs. Henry’s hands once more, then kept shaking her head, growing more hysterical.
“Bea, get Dr. Harris,” Mrs. Henry ordered. “Tell him Alba’s in a state and he needs to come quick. It isn’t safe for her to be getting agitated like this.”
“Mama, what—”
“Do what I say.Now.”
Bea nodded, already sliding her feet into shoes. “Yes, Mama.” She didn’t waste time arguing or asking more questions—when Della Henry spoke like that, her children listened.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Vivian asked as they hurried out the door.
Bea looked as though she wanted to say yes, but in the end she shook her head. “You find Leo and get to the coroner’s office. We need answers, and we need them quick.”
“What if the coroner says nothing strange happened, it was just…” Vivian couldn’t bring herself to say the wordsuicide,not to Bea. Not yet.
Bea’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t have time to argue. “Get going and find out, will you? I need to find the doctor.”
Walking through the halls to the coroner’s office made Vivian shudder, and not just because she could picture a corpse on the other side of every door.
The city’s chief medical examiner kept his offices as part of Bellevue Hospital, a large, ominous building overlooking the East River. Not many years ago, the position had been held by a man who knew nothing about science but was very good at taking orders from the sort of people who put politicians in power. But there had been a scandal that had made so much of a splash in the papers that even the Tammany political machine couldn’t protect their man. The old medical examiner was out and a new one had taken his place.
“He’s a fair man,” Leo said as they stopped in front of a door. “Doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol, but he’s a decent fella in spite of that.” Leo grinned when the joke made Vivian giggle a little. “I don’t know whether we’re dealing with him or one of his staff. But either way—” He knocked on the door with his knuckles, a quick, businesslike series of raps. “—he should be able to tell us something. Or nothing, which is something in itself. Don’t be nervous.”
There was no way to not be nervous, not there, not for her. What if the commissioner found out they were there? Would he cause trouble? Would that trouble follow her back to the Nightingale? For a moment, Vivian wished she hadn’t asked Leo for help. But she would do anything for Bea. And it was too late, anyway.
“Come in.”
She had been worried that she would find herself in the place where bodies were autopsied, but the room that greeted her was like any other office, full of overstuffed shelves, a desk covered in papers, and old coffee cups scattered about waiting for someone to remember them and clean them up.
Vivian had read about the coroner and his staff in the paper, menwho used newfangled science to unmask killers, particularly the city’s poisoners. He was younger than she expected, but friendly, approachable, even a little portly. If she’d run into him on the street, she never would have guessed that he mangled bodies and chopped up their organs for experiments and who knew what else, all to catch murderers.
But she couldn’t remember his name, though knew she had to have read it at least once. She stepped forward, not wanting to hover in the doorway, and waited for Leo to introduce them.
The coroner looked at her in surprise. “You brought a friend?” he asked, a hint of disapproval in his voice.
“I told you I needed a favor for someone else,” Leo said, giving Vivian a sideways smile. “She’s the someone.”
There weren’t going to be any introductions, Vivian suddenly realized. Leo didn’t want to give her name, and the medical examiner, it seemed, wasn’t going to insist on it. She felt a rush of relief—the last thing she wanted was someone knowing exactly who she was and why she was there. But she didn’t want the coroner to overlook or dismiss her, either. She shook off her nerves and stuck out her hand.
“Pleased to meet you, mister. Thanks for your help.”
Looking bemused, he took the offered hand and shook it. “Wait until you know what I have to tell you, young lady. Then you can decide whether to thank me or not.” He gave them another quick once-over, then nodded, as if he had just decided something, and stood. Shrugging off his jacket, he tossed it onto a hook on the wall and pulled on the white lab coat that was waiting there. “I have five minutes. Walk with me.”
“Where are we going?” Vivian asked nervously as they were ushered back into the corridor. The tap of their shoes on the stone floor echoed around them, and while the air was heavy and humid, the summer heat didn’t seem to penetrate inside the heavy walls. She was hard-pressed not to shiver as they followed the coroner.
“I have an autopsy to do,” he said. Glancing sideways at her suddenlywhite face, he chuckled. “Don’t worry, young lady, I’m not expecting you to watch. But I have to stay on a schedule. And the bottle Mr. Green asked me to test is still in the lab.” He swung open a heavy door for them. In spite of his fatherly features, his eyebrows were raised as if in challenge as he ushered them inside.
