Twenty-One Days

by Anne Perry

  The gravediggers started to dig, carefully piling the earth so they could put it back again afterwards. They moved rhythmically, used to working the spade.

  The process seemed to go on for ever, the spades getting only fractionally deeper every few minutes. No one spoke.

  Then there was a sudden, sharp gust of wind and one of the lamps fell to the ground with a crash of glass on metal. Both gravediggers were standing in the hole they had created. The sexton was on the far side of the pit. Daniel was the closest, and he took a long dozen steps and bent over. The flame was out, and he could smell the acrid sharpness of oil.

  ‘You need to go inside to light that,’ the sexton told him. ‘Take the one over to it, or they’ll both go out. I’m telling you.’

  Daniel took both lamps and walked over between the gravestones until he reached the church doorway, and the carved arch that decorated it. He put the lamps on the ground, took the cover off the lighted one, and very carefully lit the other from its flame. He covered them again and set out back. From a distance, they looked a spectral group, only the heads of the gravediggers now visible. Miriam seemed out of place, with the wind blowing her skirts and the ends of her shawl. The sexton was indistinguishable, like one of the carved stone figures signifying grief. Daniel made his way back to them just as the gravediggers stopped and asked for ropes.

  It was backbreaking, lifting the coffin out of the earth. Even with Daniel and the sexton both helping, it took them several minutes to get it up and manoeuvre it onto the waiting handcart. Daniel was warmed through, except for his hands, by the time they were finished and were trudging through the gravestones back to the van by the roadside. The coffin was loaded on, and there was just room for Daniel to sit on the end, backwards, while Miriam sat up in front and the driver finally persuaded the horse to move. It seemed to have been asleep on its feet, impervious to the activities of men.

  When they reached the fford Croft house, Miriam opened the back, tradesmen’s entrance for them, and Daniel and the driver, with a deal of effort, set the coffin down by the door.

  ‘I’ll go and get the butler and the footman,’ Miriam said quietly. ‘No doubt you could use a hot cup of tea?’ she said to the driver. ‘And a piece of cake?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, that I could,’ he agreed.

  ‘Then wait here,’ she ordered, and opened the back door with a key.

  The driver looked at Daniel, as if he were about to ask for an explanation, then he thought better of it. Perhaps he did not really want to know.

  Membury and the footman appeared and helped take the coffin into the house and down the back stairs to the cellar.

  Miriam made tea in the deserted kitchen for the driver and Daniel and herself, and served it with thick slices of Madeira cake.

  By three o’clock, the driver had departed with an extra reward for his civility. Membury and the footman were long returned to their own beds, and Miriam had informed Daniel that the spare room was made up for him, because he was expected to report to the kitchen at 6a.m., and by half-past six to be ready to perform the autopsy.

  He had breakfast in the kitchen. It still felt like the middle of the night, although it was only about five weeks before the longest day of the year; it was full sunlight and the dew was already gone from the herbs in the small beds he noticed outside the back door. He ate hungrily, knowing it would waken him up sufficiently to pay attention. He had finished his third slice of toast with sharp Seville orange marmalade before it occurred to him that, considering the job he was about to assist with, he might have been better with an empty stomach. Too late now to cancel!

  At half-past six on the dot, Miriam appeared at the cellar door and said, ‘Good morning,’ brightly. ‘Don’t worry, Membury and the footman helped me with the coffin. It’s open. We can remove her and begin.’ She did not bother with any polite questions as to how he had slept, or how he felt. She was ready to begin, and she expected him to be also.

  Determined to live up to his promises, Daniel followed her inside. The cellar must have been half the size of the ground floor of the house. It was perfectly arranged to be an autopsy room, with large tables, running water, and plenty of space to put a coffin. Other doors led off into further rooms. He presumed it was for analysis, experiments, and maybe even ice boxes to store a body afterwards, until it could be buried.

  All kinds of instruments lay neatly put out on trays. He would find out what they did if he had to. Some of them were obvious in their purpose: several Bunsen burners, scales of various degrees of refinement, calipers, magnifying glasses of different sizes.

  ‘Come in.’ Miriam guided him to where a coffin stood on a trestle, the size and height of the table near it. The lid was open away from the table, so it would be easier to move her body.

  Daniel took a deep breath, and looked down at Ebony Graves.

  She seemed small, with her face so charred he had no idea what she had been like in life. Most of her hair was gone. He could not have told, from what was left, even what colour it had been. Her jaw must be broken; it hung at an odd angle. The left side of her skull above her ear was terribly misshapen.

  He looked at the eyes, then looked again. They were not there. She had no eyes. Just deep hollows where they had been. And now that he looked again, her nose was gone, too. Was this what happened to you, when you were burned?

  Miriam touched his elbow.

  Gently, they lifted the body out of the coffin, Daniel taking her head, Miriam her feet, and laid her down on the table.

  ‘Now that you are behaving like a detective, forget the woman she was; the spirit has gone. Where to is a matter of belief. Cling on to whatever seems to you good.’

  ‘Her hair . . .’ he began. ‘Her eyes and . . . what happened? She looks so – small!’

  ‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ she answered gently. ‘You are going to write down everything I can deduce, without touching her. Pick up the pad there, and the pencil, ready to begin. It doesn’t have to be neat, only legible.’

  Just as well, Daniel thought silently. He would have trouble holding the pen steady.

  Miriam told him the height she measured, with a note that she was not lying straight, so she was probably taller alive. Then she described her clothes, her boots. She touched one of them lightly. ‘It looks . . . too small. It isn’t on properly. I wonder why. Very fashionable. Expensive. A pair of boots like these would cost several guineas.’

  ‘Could she have worn a smaller size out of vanity?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Don’t look very beautiful if your face is creased up in pain.’ She gave a little gesture of pity. ‘It’s not much too small. I wonder if the leather tightened? Or the foot swelled? I’ll have to think more of that when I see her feet, and look at the burns.’

  She worked upwards on the body for a few moments in silence. ‘Dress is too short,’ she observed. ‘Not much. But she didn’t seem from her wardrobe to be the sort of woman that skimped on her appearance. And she certainly wouldn’t have had hand-me-downs.’

  For a little while, she said nothing more, and Daniel had time to look at the body on the table. The frizzled and burned hair made it easy to see where the blow to the side of the skull had been. It was also easy to see the flesh of the neck, which was burned to the bone in some places. In other areas, he could see the flesh coming away from the bone, burned deeply.

  She had once been beautiful, according to the accounts of her. He stared at her and was overwhelmed by the reality of death. The mess of torn and burned clothes, charred flesh, face and hair destroyed, only a few months ago had been a woman. Now she looked pathetic, so alone, without dignity or meaning. Was death always like this, so . . . real? So complete?

  And how unusual that she had been buried in the clothes she was wearing when she died. Maybe it was a favourite dress, but that seemed unlikely as it didn’t even fit very well.

  Miriam became aware of his stillness and looked up. ‘Do you want to go away for a little
while?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘She barely looks like a person at all. She’s . . . anonymous! She hasn’t even . . . a face?’

  ‘I know,’ Miriam said quietly. ‘She doesn’t need one now. But we have to find who destroyed this one, how, and eventually why. I’ve learned what I can from her clothes, although what it means I don’t know yet.’

  ‘What? What did you learn?’ He wanted to know, he had to, and yet he was afraid. Death was more visceral, more intensely real than merely speaking of it would ever convey.

  ‘I cut a little of the clothes free. She looks older than I thought. Older than I expected. And her hands, too. But many women show their age in ways you would expect, even when they take care with their faces, and hair of course. Her hair is . . . destroyed.’ For a few moments, she regarded the face and neck very closely.

  Daniel marvelled how she could do it dispassionately, as if this were not all that was left of a woman who had been intensely alive less than three months ago. Who had laughed at jokes, loved her children, fought for causes she believed in. Now she wasn’t even recognisable!

  The contrast with the living, breathing Miriam was strong. Standing only fifteen or twenty inches away from Ebony’s face, or where it would have been, her own skin was perfect, her auburn hair shining with colour, so soft it tickled her and irritated, until she pushed it aside.

  Then she moved down a little and looked at the edge where the burned skin met the skin still whole. ‘Pass me the glass,’ she requested, gesturing toward the magnifying lens.

  Daniel handed it to her.

  She took it and looked at the charred skin, and the whole skin, just reddened a little.

  Daniel found himself holding his breath.

  Finally, she continued. ‘There was something added to make her burn. You can see where it dripped, and on her clothes, the fire has scorched places, and left it somewhat close to whole. I wonder what it was. And here.’ She pointed to pile of charred black bone where Ebony’s nose would have been.

  Daniel tried, but he could not see anything recognisable. He looked up at Miriam, confused.

  ‘This lump.’ Miriam picked up black, charred pieces with her forceps. ‘That’s fabric, burned badly. Used to feed the fire, I imagine. I found a small piece of oiled silk near her bosom. Caught in the folds of her dress.’

  ‘What . . .?’ Daniel began.

  ‘Oiled silk is highly flammable,’ she said grimly. ‘It’s great stuff. Waterproof, light, bends or sews evenly. But it burns like a beacon fire. Pour a little more oil on cotton, or something light, and you have a fire that would burn flesh.’

  Daniel swallowed. ‘What sort of oil?’

  ‘Fat, lard, even butter, I suppose. Didn’t you say the son painted?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, the linseed oil that artists use would be perfect!’

  ‘You don’t think Arthur . . .?’ Daniel shook his head violently.

  ‘No, I don’t. But somebody else could have.’ She straightened up. ‘Come. Sit down here, away from what’s left of her.’

  He did not argue. He felt a little queasy, and was glad she did not remark on it. He sat down on a chair opposite the one in front of her desk.

  ‘Isn’t that what you want to know?’ she asked. ‘What burned her? At a well-educated guess, I’d say highly flammable oiled silk, and a bit of lightweight cotton or muslin, and the whole lot doused with linseed oil. Lights quickly, hot, and burns very well if there was cotton to feed it. Quite enough to burn her face. And . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I’m sorry to say this, but I can’t even say for sure that this is Ebony. With all the burns . . . plus the boots and dress don’t fit. Maybe it isn’t her.’

  ‘But her family – her daughter identified her!’

  ‘Before or after this was done to her?’ Miriam asked. Her face was white, and her lips moved stiffly at the horror of the thought.

  ‘Oh God!’ Daniel stared at her. ‘What have we fallen into? What is this?’

  She put her hands over his. ‘We’ve still got a few days left. We must find out.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Daniel stayed a little longer, helping Miriam lift the body, although it was not very heavy. He watched while she took samples from various parts of the intestines, lungs, and other regions. She spoke very little, except to dictate the notes to him on everything she discovered. He wrote it down exactly as she said, once or twice asking her how to spell certain long words, names of chemicals, or little-known anatomical terms.

  She seemed to learn little that was unexpected until they very carefully laid the body on a machine that Daniel had never seen before, and could not work out its purpose.

  ‘X-ray,’ she said proudly. ‘Father gave me that for Christmas and birthday combined.’ Her face lit with pleasure and suddenly it was easy to imagine her opening an enormous parcel with a bow on the top on Christmas morning, and discovering this strange monstrosity.

  She was already explaining to him, with pride, what it could do and he had not been listening

  ‘Daniel!

  ‘I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘It can see through flesh and make pictures of the bones beneath. Or it can find anything solid, or metal we may have eaten, and trace it anywhere through our digestive system. It can find bullets, or broken-off pieces of a knife, for example.’

  ‘Is that what it’s used for?’ He was surprised. How often could they need such a thing?

  ‘Not in the hospitals,’ she dismissed the idea. ‘But we may find something useful in her bones. For example, an old break, or an abnormality.’

  He did not reply, but watched her as she put one part of the body, and then another, in front of the machine. It was rather like a camera, but fastened to the table with clamps from which two metal rods of about an inch in diameter held it at a height of two feet above the table’s surface. The table itself was long enough for an adult man to lie upon.

  The machine itself consisted of several distinct parts. The first was an eye piece, like a funnel, through which the operator looked. It was attached to a complicated box with projecting lenses and dials. In front of that was another, larger box made of something transparent. Inside it was more machinery, smaller and circular; attached to it was a large frame, as if to hold another part. It was all focused downward, less than a foot away from the body Miriam was examining.

  Then suddenly she stiffened, and stopped completely. ‘Look!’ she ordered him. ‘Look at this!’ She stepped back for him to see through the focus.

  He moved closer to her and looked down at the fuzzy black-and-white image. It was little shadows, blotches. It took a moment or two for him to realise what it was. ‘It’s a foot!’ he exclaimed in amazement at the complexity of it. He turned to her. ‘Are all those separate bones?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes! Marvellous, isn’t it? You can see a skeleton, and it’s hard to realise it is mere fragments of a person. And of course, we hardly ever know who. At first, in medical school, we were given the names, but they’re not real. It’s . . . better now to think of them being what’s left of someone.’

  He looked at it again. ‘How do you know if you’re seeing something normal, or not? What’s that – that smudge there? It’s blurred.’ He peered closer.

  ‘That is what I was looking at. It’s a lot whiter than the rest of the bone, and a bit wider. See?’

  ‘Yes. What is it?’

  ‘It’s an old break, well healed. There are more of them.’

  ‘She has lots of broken bones? An accident?’ He winced at the thought of bones snapped, jagged. He had only broken a bone once, playing football, but it had hurt appallingly. His arm had healed in about six weeks, but it still ached now and then.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said gravely. ‘A different bone and I would say probably an accident, a certain fracture of the wrist. You can put your hand out to save yourself when you’re falling. But some bones, fingers, forearm, toes . . .’

  ‘You mean de
liberate? You think he hit her? Hard enough to break bones?’ A hatred boiled up inside him towards Graves. If he had been there, he would have lashed out and hit him back. Is that what Graves had done when he couldn’t control Ebony? Then he remembered what Mrs Warlaby had told him and knew it was the truth.

  ‘Probably. But the interesting thing is this . . .’ Miriam pointed out the whitest part of the bone.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘That’s where it healed.’

  ‘Why is it interesting?’

  ‘Look at it through the magnifying glass.’ She passed it to him and Daniel peered at the pictures. Enlarged, it was still not clear to him. ‘The thickness of it, the density. And the other bones as well,’ she prompted.

  ‘They don’t look so dense. At least, they don’t to me. What am I missing?’ He turned to her. Her eyes were shining, and there was a faint flush in her cheeks.

  ‘You’re looking at a bone that was broken a long time ago,’ she said quietly, but there was a tension in her voice. ‘Probably over twenty years, at least. And the bones in general are losing mass. They are more brittle than when they were broken, not as dense.’

  ‘An illness? Is that why they broke? Then the illness was cured!’ he exclaimed.

  Her face was bleak for just an instant, and then it cleared again. ‘No, there is no cure for it . . . better diet, perhaps. More exercise. It delays it, but doesn’t cure it.’ A shadow of humour crossed her eyes. ‘The bones were broken more than twenty years ago, at least. More like twenty-five. The less density is because she is older. People’s bones do become less dense as they grow older. That is why when old people fall, they so often break bones, where younger people don’t. Children’s bones are far less fragile. Sometimes they bend instead of breaking. Women tend to lose bone strength more than men. This woman is a lot older than Ebony claimed to be. About ten years, I’d say.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’ he asked. ‘How could she get away with it? Ten years? That’s an awful lot . . .’