As for her companion, decay had started, I could see that from the skin at her abdomen, but then it had stopped, and the girl had simply dried out. She too was completely naked, her hair a thin mousy brown, dry as straw, her teeth small and even between her desiccated lips. But the horror did not end there, for what was far worse, what made my stomach clench and my limbs turn cold with horror, was the fact that the chest cavity of the woman’s corpse had been opened up, the ribs cut through so that the heart was exposed. It lay like a dark stone, shrivelled and black. Above the hole, at her collar bones, were two familiar incisions.
I sucked a breath in through my handkerchief and dragged my gaze away from that splintered hole, those severed ribs. Was there nothing about her that might enable us to discover who she was? I bent closer. Something, surely, must remain to mark her individuality. And then I saw it. At first I thought it was a shadow, or a smoke smut. And then I touched it, and knew that it was a part of the fabric of her skin. A birthmark, large and dark, the shape of a heart and the size of a florin, right there at the top of her arm.
‘Jem!’ Will pulled me back. ‘Come on!’
The wind blew in through the open window, a cold blast of air that chilled me to the bone, and made the flames leap, the smoke filling the room once more.
‘We must take them,’ I gasped. ‘Help me.’
‘They will fall to bits,’ cried Will as I bent to lift the skeleton from the bed. He seized my arm. ‘Jem, stop. You cannot carry them like this. Wait here.’ He vanished. I heard his feet upon the stair, the sound of something – tearing, thumping, I did not know what – and then he was back again. In his arms was a bundle of dusty curtains. He flung one over the skeleton and rolled it over. He scooped the burden up and placed it on top of the other corpse, wrapping them both together in a second curtain.
I had helped to stretcher bodies up and down the stairs at St Saviour’s many times, and our load, stripped and dried as they were, weighed very little. It was a wonder we did not both fall down and break our necks, for downstairs I could see nothing – the darkness, the gritty air, the smoke in our eyes rendered us blind. For one moment I thought someone had closed the front door, for I could not see it anywhere, and I felt panic well up inside me like bile. But then suddenly we were outside, sinking to our knees in the filth of the yard as we gasped for air.
It took two hours for the men from Drake’s Bonded Warehouse to put out the flames. The proximity of the river, and the urgent desire of Drake’s not to see their brandy go up in flames, hastened the process, but not before the old villa, and Dick Tulip’s old workshop, were both burned to the ground.
Chapter Twelve
We took the bodies to the mortuary. Young Toad was sent to fetch the police inspector, and whichever medical man might be still on the Blood. The police inspector raised an eyebrow at the sight of us.
‘You two again.’ He cast his eye over the two bodies, and his face turned pale.
Beside him, Toad licked his lips in excitement. ‘We don’t normally ’ave quite so many,’ he said. ‘Mostly we only gets them what’s drowned.’ He reached out a hand and gingerly touched the leathery skin of the mummified girl. ‘Look at this one! She weren’t drowned.’
‘In the attic of that old house on Deadman’s Basin, you say?’ said the police inspector. ‘Thieves, probably. Or beggars.’
‘They’re girls,’ said Will. ‘Young ones.’
‘Whores, probably,’ said the inspector. ‘Using the place for their own purposes, I imagine. Probably died of the cold. Lots of them do. You say they was lying on beds? That the window was open? There you are, then!’
‘What about this?’ Will pointed to the open chest, the withered heart of the mummified girl.
‘Rats,’ said the inspector. ‘Probably.’ He looked away in distaste. ‘I’ve seen it before, unfortunately. I’ve seen lots of dead people in slums, and on the streets. Dead girls. It’s the way things are. There’s no pity in London. Not for them what’s poor. Don’t know if there ever will be. I dare say the magistrate would agree with me. He usually does.’
‘Rats?’ I said once the man had gone. ‘I hardly think so.’ I bent over the body. ‘The bones are clearly cut through with a sharp and precise instrument, and the skin has been slit with a scalpel. There’s no gnawing or scratching here. This is a work of precision.’
We heard the sound of approaching footsteps and Dr Proudlove appeared. His face, as he entered, was aghast. ‘More?’ he said. ‘The boy said there were two of them—’ He stopped when he saw the bodies. Lying side by side on the slab they looked small and thin, pathetic in their own way, but fearful, as death often is, and all the more so when it is viewed in a damp and dingy mortuary and illuminated by a sickly yellow lantern light. ‘Dear God,’ he whispered. But behind him came someone I had not expected to see.
‘Where are they? Let me see.’ She pushed past her brother.
‘Gethsemane—’ He tried to pull her back, to shield her from the sight, but she shook him off, sidestepping him quickly. Her hands flew to her face, and she let out a cry.
‘Come away,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you can do for them—’
‘A surgeon’s knife did that,’ she said, pointing to the cavity in the chest of the mummified girl.
‘Perhaps,’ said her brother. ‘Though there are many knives that might cut as cleanly.’
‘I know this girl!’ She was peering at the skeleton. ‘I know her. She is – was – Susan Williams. She was with us at Siren House.’
‘When?’ I said.
‘About eighteen months. Perhaps longer.’
‘And she went to the Blood?’
‘She did.’
‘How can you tell who she is?’ said Will.
Miss Proudlove pointed to the teeth. ‘That smile.’ She covered her face and let out a sob. ‘That chipped tooth, those crooked teeth. I’d know it anywhere.’
Dr Proudlove and I conducted the post-mortem. There was little more to report. The heart was in place, though exposed, the other organs, as far as it was possible to tell in so dried a state, were all in good health. There was evidence of tubercles about the spine, but nothing that would have killed the girl. Dr Proudlove worked in silence, his face tense.
‘I cannot say how she died, nor whether she died before her chest was opened.’ He rubbed his face, his expression desolate. ‘Or after. Let us hope it was before.’
‘How might we identify her?’ said Will. ‘Her face is not recognisable, not without the soft flesh to give it its contours, its character. Even the girl’s mother could not say for certain. It’s possible I might try to draw her, to imagine the face with the full flesh of youth, but I’m not sure—’
I pointed to the birthmark on the dried skin of the upper arm. ‘We have this,’ I said. ‘It seemed to mean nothing to Miss Proudlove, but it might mean something to someone else.’
Confession of Susan Williams on arriving at Siren House
My name is Susan Williams. I hail from Kent, though I’d rather not name my village if it’s all the same, sir. I don’t have much of a story to tell – nothing that should be written down, at any rate. I’m twenty-seven, older than most of them here and you might say that I am old enough to know better and to behave better, too. What I do know is that life isn’t always how you expect it to be, for I was once a married woman. My husband was a carter – not a lofty profession such as yourself, sir, but an honest man and a hard-working one. At least, he was when I married him, for that’s another thing that can’t ever be predicted – how people will turn out when times change and they find themselves hard pressed to be the person they started out being. I was young when I married him, but not so green that I didn’t know that marriage is a difficult road.
My man lost his living – through no fault of his own – and could get no work at all. I had no one but him, my mother and father being dead of the cholera some years before I was married. I was a seamstress, like my mother, so I was not wit
hout some skill. But when my husband was out of work it wasn’t enough to keep us both. He took to drinking, though it pains me to admit it, and that made matters worse. I had a child by then, sir, a boy, though I’m glad he can’t see what a situation his mother has found herself in now.
We came to London in the hope we might improve our circumstances. We’d heard the town was full of opportunities for folk that were willing to work. But we had no idea how hard it would be in a place like this. We thought we might go back once we came, but how could we? There was nothing for us back there, and there was always a chance things might improve if we stayed here, though they never did. We spent all we had on lodgings – poor lodgings they were, down near the docks, but at least my husband had work. He unloaded the cargo, and they liked him for a strong man who never complained. But when the ships didn’t come upriver there was no work for days – not until the wind changed. And the crowd of men at the dock gates waiting to be picked grew bigger every day. He started to be known as a drinker again, and that was an end to it, for there were a hundred men to take his place and they had no room for men with liquor on their breath.
After that it was just me and my sewing. Shirts I did, simple ones as well as fancy. But it hurt my eyes to see by the candle, though it was worse without, for I often tried to save on candles, but the days were so dark it was impossible.
It all happened very quickly after that, one thing after another, till there was nowhere to fall but into the grave. The cholera came down our street. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it, and then there was my husband dead, and my little boy, both of them gone in a day. How often I’d wished it had taken me too.
One of the girls who lived upstairs from us, she worked on shirts too and she knew what had happened. She told me how she earned some extra. At first I thought I could never do it. But I was married once and I knew it for what it was, and since my boy died I had no feeling for anyone or anything. I’d not loved my husband, not for a long time, and yet I’d been obliged to give him his due. Surely it would be no different, I thought, only this time it might pay for my bed and board, which is more than I had got from my husband.
And so, one night I went out with Nora, and we went to an ale house that was known as somewhere for girls like us. There were worse places, I knew, though I hoped to be dead before I ended up in them. The life wasn’t so bad. Not much worse than before, but no squinting at shirts in the dark and no sore neck and back from crouching over the candle trying to see your work. Besides, there were other girls who’d come to it like me, though I don’t know any of them now. Most of them’s dead, sir.
It were partly that what made me come to Siren House, sir, for it’s hard when you’re alone on the streets. Nora left – I don’t know where she ended up – and one of the others I used to know got killed by a man who said she’d stolen his wallet. And then when I got pinched I was almost glad, though I’d not done nothing to deserve it, except begging, which is surely better than what I had been doing, though the magistrate seemed hardly to care one way or the other. So I was sent to prison. I can’t read, sir, but one of the others read your pamphlet out loud to me and I remembered it and so here I am.
Note on Susan Williams on leaving Siren House
Susan Williams walked the streets for upwards of three years after the death of her husband and son. She has no family or friends to help her and seems a sullen, sorrowful woman. And yet her old life holds no appeal, and as a former mother who laments the death of her child one might assume her to have a more nurturing and domesticated spirit than some of the more strong-willed girls. Her skill with the needle will not go amiss either. For these reasons I recommend that she be offered a situation in the laundry on board the Blood.
Chapter Thirteen
I took out my notebook and flipped open the ink pot. ‘My observations are as follows,’ I said. ‘The windows were boarded over, but the top two boards had been torn away—’
‘You think the window is important?’
‘I think it is vital. I think it provides the answer to how these women came to be as they were. The window was unboarded, and smashed, so that it was impossible to close.’
Will took a mouthful of scalding tea. We were back at the apothecary on Fishbait Lane, both of us glad to be away from the river, the basin, the Blood.
‘Do we have to talk about it now?’ he said. ‘Can we have a few minutes without thinking about death and corpses? I assume the two we have just found are linked in some way to the girl we pulled out of Deadman’s Basin two days ago. And all are connected to the Blood?’
‘If I was not entirely persuaded before I am convinced of it now.’
‘How so?’
‘The window.’
‘Go on,’ said Will.
‘It is fairly obvious – though not necessarily for reasons you might imagine – that the first body to be put there was the skeleton, though she was not a skeleton when she went in there.’
‘But she was dead?’
‘I think so. I also think the reason why one was a skeleton and one was mummified is because the seasons changed between the one being laid there, and the other. It is the time, and the manner of abandonment, that is most important. So – the first to be put there was the skeleton. The mattresses on both beds had been removed so that as much of the bodies as possible – both of which were completely unclothed – would be exposed to the air. The window was left open to allow the flies to enter. The city is full of flies, the basin outside the place truly pestilent. And, as any anatomist will tell you, whereas it is most usual to remove skin, muscle and connective tissue by boiling the body in a large cauldron in the manner of making a broth or soup—’
Will groaned. ‘Too much, Jem. You forget sometimes that I’m not as familiar with the horrors of medical men as you are. This boiling business might sound perfectly normal to you but it is the stuff of nightmares to me.’
‘Shall I stop?’
‘No, no—’
‘I fear there is no way of saying it nicely.’
‘Do go on,’ he dabbed his lips. ‘Broth or soup—’
‘One might normally boil the body, but an equally thorough effect – completely stripping bones of soft skin and tissue – will be achieved in a matter of weeks if the corpse is left to the flies. “Fly blown” is the phrase Hunter uses.’
‘But the smell!’
‘Would hardly be noticed in an abandoned house at a place like Deadman’s Basin. The wire bed-frames mean that the flies could get at every part of the naked corpse. Whoever left the first body would have expected to achieve the same results a second time—’
‘And presumably never returned to check. I suppose there would be no need to remove the bones. No one could identify them, and it is not easy to carry a sack of bones through the streets.’
‘Far wiser to leave them where they are.’
‘But why was the other body not a skeleton too?’ said Will.
I sipped my tea. ‘I think that the first of the bodies was put there during the summer months – last year probably. The breeze is light in the summer, the city warm, the place stinks, and the flies are at their most abundant and voracious.
‘The second body shows evidence of some putrefaction – but not much, and what had taken place has been arrested. Why? I believe the second body was placed there later in the year, last year, I would say, in the winter.’
‘I remember it was exceptionally cold last winter.’
‘Cold and dry and windy. Did you notice how the wind today came from the north and east? It blew straight through the open window into the room and – coincidentally – through that hole in the wall straight over the body. Cold, dry air, for months over a long, cold, dry winter. The body was mummified. Dried out like a piece of tobacco. The dryness prevented the usual process of decomposition from taking place. And there’s something else too.’
‘Pray continue.’
‘Both the bodies showed evidence that they had be
en cut in the same way that Mary Mercer had been cut.’
‘Incisions at the collar bone?
‘Yes. On the skeleton the abrasions of a knife were faint – if I had not been looking I would have missed them. The other girl – the girl with no name – her dried-out skin was damaged in the same place. One might say that the skin had split as it dried and was pulled tight against the bones beneath, but I was looking for evidence of a cut in that place, and on the feet, and I believe I found it.’
‘It must be a man who did this,’ said Will. ‘We must surely assume an understanding of medical matters – who else would know how to make so precise an incision, or how to strip a corpse? It’s hardly a subject a lady might be familiar with.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘It’s horrible to think of – flies everywhere. Clouds of them, all black and shimmering. Clustered about that poor girl. Feasting. Breeding. Hatching—’
‘It’s nature, Will. She is very efficient.’
‘She may well be efficient, but I dislike hearing about her methods.’
‘How’s your head?’
‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘Though I’m bruised all over from that fall down the stairs.’ He looked at my soot-smeared face and grinned. ‘What a sight we are! Like sweeps!’
Both of us were black with smoke, our eyes smarting, our clothes flecked with cinders. We stank of the mortuary too, I was sure of it, even though we had had to walk home, for no cabman would take us looking and smelling as we did.
Will licked the corner of his handkerchief and scrubbed at his face. It made no difference. ‘Are those baths ready, Gabriel?’ he said. ‘Hurry up, lad. I don’t think I can bear the smell of myself for much longer!’
While we had been talking, Gabriel and Jenny had been filling two tin baths with hot water. It was a lengthy process, for the water had to be drawn from the pump in the apothecary sink, and then boiled on the stove top. We had only one bath at the apothecary, but I had borrowed one from the baker a few doors up as I was not prepared to share Will’s water, not when he was so filthy – and I doubted very much whether he would like mine.
The Blood: What secrets lie aboard? (Jem Flockhart Book 3) Page 15
