Prayers for the Dying

by Tracy L. Ward

  Ainsley waved Cutter, their footman, away and poured his own tea before selecting the few bites he would eat from the plates in front of them.

  “My son was looking for you,” she said as Ainsley began spreading jam on his biscuit.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “Nathaniel, of course. He said he had discovered an interesting place with some friends last evening and he is very keen to show you.”

  Ainsley raised an eyebrow.

  “He wouldn’t elaborate, you understand. Certain things a mother is not supposed to know.”

  Ainsley ate his breakfast quickly and then stood up from his chair.

  “Finished so soon?”

  “My apologies, Aunt Louisa. I must head to work.”

  Aunt Louisa sighed and shook her head. “A house full of bodies and no one to dine with.”

  Ainsley turned to Cutter. “Make sure Margaret receives a plate in Father’s room,” he said before heading for the hall.

  As Ainsley left for work, the body of the man was being loaded into the back of the police carriage. Simms was standing on the sidewalk speaking to Mr. Talbot, the owner and resident of the nearby house. Ainsley had met Mr. Talbot and his wife at some long-forgotten ball. It was Margaret who was far better acquainted with the family thanks to her friendship with Mr. Talbot’s daughter, Winifred. Ainsley was acquainted with Miss Winifred as well, though it was a relationship he now greatly regretted.

  Ainsley skirted the scene and crossed the street. Curiosity brought him alongside the police carriage, where he saw Sergeant Cooper, whom he recognized from an earlier case.

  “Tough case, that,” he said casually to Cooper.

  “Yeah,” Cooper said as he hopped down the carriage steps to the pavement. “You working this one for us then?” he asked, dabbing beads of sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.

  Ainsley fidgeted with the lead figure in his pocket as he looked into the back of the carriage. The body had been covered with a sheet. He didn’t wish to lie outright, but there was nothing wrong with leading them back toward him. “It’s being brought to St. Thomas then?”

  Cooper shrugged. “We’ll have it there before ten.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “We’ll leave when he’s done his dithering.” The sergeant laughed at his disparaging remark. Simms was many things, a ditherer was not one of them.

  Ainsley glanced up. “In this heat, you’d be better off taking him there now.”

  Cooper looked up to the heavens, squinting against the direct summer sun. It was barely nine o’clock and the temperature was rising rapidly. London had been sweltering under a relentlessly dry few weeks, a phenomenon that had everyone asking when the rains would return. A few wondered if they ever would.

  Ainsley stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Once a person passes away their internal organs begin a process of bloating. The intestinal gases—”

  Cooper’s face began to contort as Ainsley spoke. “All right, all right. I’ll take him there myself.” He began walking toward the front of the carriage. “Care to join me?” he asked.

  Ainsley looked past the horses to Simms, who was scribbling hurriedly in his notebook. “Yes,” Ainsley answered. “Then I can get started right away.”

  He smiled at his own cleverness and ignored the nagging guilt that found him by the time the carriage reached Westminster Bridge. He would have a little less than an hour with the body before Simms noticed it had been directed to the wrong place—and then what? Simms would undoubtedly come looking for it. He’d have to be quick to ensure the extraction of as many details as possible.

  When the carriage pulled up outside St. Thomas, Ainsley hopped down and went straight for the back door of the carriage. He didn’t bother waiting for a porter and together he and Sergeant Cooper brought the body down to the basement.

  Luckily, the autopsy table was empty and they were able to deposit the man there straightaway. Barely in the room for two minutes, Sergeant Cooper covered his nose at the smell. Ainsley was quick to pull a pack of cigarettes from a nearby shelf. He removed one and lit it. He offered the pack to Cooper. “Helps with the smell,” he explained.

  Cooper nodded and took one. After it was lit he waved the smoking end under his nostrils and breathed deeply. “How can you stand it, doctor?”

  “It’s not usually this wretched.” Ainsley turned to take his leather apron from the hook near the sink. “It’s this weather, you see. Even down here it gets quite warm.”

  “Is it cooking them?” Cooper asked, daring to look under the sheet at a nearby table. At least twenty corpses lay in even rows about the room, awaiting their turn with the surgeon. Only after Ainsley examined them could he issue a death certificate and hopefully some peace for their grieving families.

  “Not cooking them,” Ainsley answered, hurriedly readying his tools. “At this time of year the decomposition process is accelerated. Our job goes much smoother if we can keep the ambient temperature low. It allows us more time, you see.”

  With his tools ready, Ainsley turned to his subject and pulled back the sheet. The man’s arms were still bound in front of him and his hat remained wedged between his forearms and his body. The cut at his throat was clearly visible now that the corpse was reclined.

  Cooper edged away from the autopsy table. Intrigued by Ainsley’s work, he slipped into one of the aisles and walked toward a cloaked body.

  “I wouldn’t go over there—” Ainsley cringed at the sticky sound of Cooper’s shoe touching a pool of bile and coagulated blood that had spilt on the floor.

  “Ah, God!” Cooper retreated quickly to the main aisle. “I’ll leave you to it then, doctor,” he said, backing toward the door. “Send word once you know anything about our man, yeah?”

  “Wash your hands,” Ainsley called without looking up from the body. “There’s some carbolic soap next to the sink in the closet down the hall.”

  Cooper waved his thanks as he pushed through the doors that led from the room. Ainsley smiled. The antics of laymen in the morgue never ceased to amuse him.

  With the cigarette perched in his mouth, Ainsley leaned over the body. With his tweezers, he pulled back the severed skin at the throat to have a closer look at the damage done beyond the dermis. He could hear the familiar tick tick tick of his pocket watch, which only became more exaggerated as time went on. Any minute Simms would come bursting through that door, demanding the return of his dead man, and Ainsley would be forced to comply.

  The throat wound was delivered by a dull blade, which left tear marks, and didn’t pierce too far into the neck. The damage was enough, though, to end the man’s life, but it would have been far from instant. A major artery was severed entirely while another had only been nicked. Ainsley pulled away and surveyed the man’s shirt and coat. He ran his hand along the dark linen fabric and felt the blood that had gushed from his wound and dried. Ainsley scrunched up the fabric in his fist. It felt far too malleable to have soaked up all the blood. The fibers would be stiff and rigid if all the blood from his wound had collected there.

  Ainsley closed his eyes and recalled the scene. The pavement hadn’t a drop of blood on it. He turned his attention to the coarse rope that held the man’s hands together. Pulling a magnifying glass from the cache of tools behind him, Ainsley leaned in close. The rope was clean.

  He stood up and leaned into the table with his fists. Either the majority of the blood gushed forward or he was held from behind as he bled out.

  The door to the morgue opened violently, slamming into a nearby table. Ainsley paused and readied himself for a confrontation with Simms. When he turned he saw a middle-aged woman standing just inside the doors. Her hands shook as she placed her handkerchief over her mouth and nose.

  A porter ran in just behind her and grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “She got past me.”

  The woman, who had red hair and a pale complexion, sobbed openly. She hid her face with her handkerchief while the other clutched
a pendant dangling at her neck. The porter began tugging at her, trying to convince her to leave. Ainsley raised a hand to stop him and began walking down the main aisle toward them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her mouth twisted in emotional agony. She kept her gaze on Ainsley as he walked toward her. “He wouldn’t let me in.” Her eyes darted past Ainsley and scanned the room, a glint of apprehension in her eyes.

  “What is it?” Ainsley asked. “What are you looking for?”

  “My daughter has been missing for three days,” she said, lowering her handkerchief briefly.

  Ainsley nodded and waved the porter away. “It’s all right, Sam,” he said. “I can take it from here.”

  Sam clenched his jaw and finally nodded before turning to leave.

  “Oh, what a god-awful smell,” she said. She closed her eyes as if to steel herself against the stench. If she were a man, Ainsley would have offered her a cigarette as well.

  “How old is your daughter?” Ainsley asked.

  “Fourteen this September,” the woman said, her words laced with pride. “She works as a scullery maid in Clerkenwell. She’s a good girl, she is. A proper girl.”

  Ainsley smiled. “Perhaps you’d like to wait outside the doors while I look.”

  “If it’s all the same, I’d like to see for myself. I’ve enquired at all the other hospitals. No one has her. I thought… maybe.”

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll see what I can find. Can I ask your name?”

  “Mrs. Adelaide Wagner.”

  Systematically, Ainsley went from table to table checking the papers provided for each corpse, pulling back the sheets of those without paperwork. As he searched, Mrs. Wagner wandered up and down the main aisle, all the while giving a detailed description of her daughter. “Red hair like my own, though not as curly,” she said. “She had a sprinkling of freckles, on her nose mostly, with a few on her cheeks. They move when she smiles.”

  Ainsley’s heart lurched at the last detail. If her daughter was in the morgue such a description would only remain a memory. After a good half hour, Ainsley had looked under every sheet but found no one who even closely matched Mrs. Wagner’s daughter’s description.

  “She’s not here, ma’am—” When he looked up Mrs. Wagner was standing at his examination table, enthralled by the body he had just been working with. Her eyes raised when she realized Ainsley was watching her.

  “Poor fellow,” she said, sniffling. She raised her handkerchief to her nose again. “I’ll never understand what brings men to do such things to others. I only hope my daughter does not share his fate.” Overwhelmed at the thought, Mrs. Wagner cried openly. “Thank you for taking the time to look.”

  Ainsley followed her out the door and after a few steps he guided her to a row of chairs along the wall. She sat down without a word and buried her face in her hands.

  There was a time when he wouldn’t have wanted so much contact with a family member of the deceased. When he had begun his position at St. Thomas he’d avoided any such interaction and went to great lengths to ensure he never saw the other side of a cadaver’s existence. It was a habit gained from medical school. A calm detachment served all the medical students well, especially when there were concerns about the origins of their specimen. It was often better not to ask.

  The last year, however, had softened him considerably. Starting with the death of his own mother the previous Christmas, Ainsley realized that death could not be isolated. To understand the death he needed to understand the life lived. It was becoming an obsession. He needed to know how, but most of all why.

  “Are there any family members who can help you?” he asked after a time.

  Mrs. Wagner nodded as she pulled the handkerchief away from her face. “Yes. I have a son, who is more dear to me than anything. He takes good care of my daughter and me. He’s all we have left.” She sniffled into her handkerchief. “I had another son,” she explained. “But he was murdered.”

  And that was when Ainsley realized why she had come to the morgue so soon, assuming her daughter had met with a similar end.

  “I just don’t know what to do. No one will help me. Even the police have thrown up their hands.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  Ainsley looked down the hall to his superior’s office. The door was closed, but he knew Dr. Crawford was inside. “Will you wait right here a moment?” Ainsley asked. “I’ll go ask my supervisor.”

  Mrs. Wagner’s gaze followed him as he stood and walked the length of the hall. He hadn’t said many words to Dr. Crawford in recent weeks. It was enough to know his old position had remained vacant and that Dr. Crawford voiced no objections to his return.

  “Come in.”

  Ainsley pushed his way through. Dr. Crawford sat behind his desk, a sour expression the only acknowledgement of Ainsley’s intrusion. The seasoned surgeon, once commanding and unforgiving, had turned to the drink to drown out the sorrows that seemed destined to plague him during his final years at the hospital. It wasn’t entirely Dr. Crawford’s fault—Ainsley knew this—but that did not garner any sympathy from the Board of Governors. Crawford’s demeanor toward Ainsley was neutral at best and that was about as much as Ainsley could hope for, given the circumstances.

  “What is it?”

  “There is a woman here searching for a missing fourteen-year-old.” Ainsley watched as Crawford remained still. “It’s her daughter, sir.”

  Pressing his lips together, Crawford turned in his chair and quickly thumbed through a dossier. “There’s no unidentified woman that young,” he said.

  “Perhaps her age was misidentified.” Ainsley stepped forward.

  Crawford looked unimpressed by Ainsley’s insistence. “You have a look then,” he said, slapping the file on Ainsley’s chest. “But get out of my office.”

  Ainsley fumbled as some of the papers tried to slide from the folder. “Thank you, sir,” he said as he turned. Dr. Crawford was waving at Ainsley dismissively with one hand and reaching for a half-drunk bottle of scotch with the other when Ainsley closed the door behind him.

  The hallway was empty and the woman was gone. The chair where she had sat remained uniform among the others as if it had never been disturbed. “Mrs. Wagner?”

  Ainsley’s throat went dry. Had he only imagined her? He was no stranger to unearthly visits, though none of them had lasted so long. He spied Sam at a doorway at the end of the hall and hurried toward him.

  Sam turned as Ainsley neared him, revealing a large bundle of soiled and stained sheets destined for the laundry at the other end of the hospital basement. Sam hoisted the heavy bundle onto his shoulder with a grunt.

  “Did you see Mrs. Wagner leave?” Ainsley asked, as he pulled himself to the wall to allow Sam room to walk by.

  “No, sir,” Sam said. “Last I saw her she was with you.” Sam took two steps before turning to face Ainsley. “Funny woman, that. She didn’t want me to check Dr. Crawford’s files. Said she wanted to see for herself.”

  Ainsley glanced to the files still anchored at his chest. He nodded absentmindedly and thanked Sam for his help.

  “Where is he?” The unmistakable voice of Inspector Simms boomed down the hall. Ainsley took a deep breath and steeled himself against Simms’s wrath. He ducked into the morgue and was halfway down the aisle to the examination table when Simms burst through the door.

  “Where is he?” he repeated more sternly.

  Two constables circled around Simms and charged down the aisle. Ainsley backed away and was surprised when they flew past him to the examination table. They wrapped the body in the sheet once again and positioned themselves at the head and feet to carry him from the room.

  “Inspector Simms,” Ainsley said and hurried toward the detective before he had a chance to leave. “I took the liberty of—”

  Simms rounded on him and forced him back into one of the tables. “You are always taking liberties, aren’t you?” he charged, his nose merely inches from Ainsley’s o
wn. “I have no room in my work for men like you.”

  “Men like me?”

  “Yes!” Simms scowled. “I warned you, now don’t force me to make good on my promise.” He poked Ainsley hard on the chest with his pointed finger, his expression revealing his wish to do far worse. “If I see you within ten yards of another crime scene I will see you are properly charged. Have I made myself clear?”

  “But Simms, I think—”

  Simms shoved Ainsley then, sending him back into the occupied table and further into the space beside it. The corner jabbed Ainsley in the kidney as he stumbled backward. The file and the papers it held spilled out onto the floor. “I don’t give a damn what you think. Not anymore!” Simms bellowed, towering over him.

  Ainsley’s fists tightened at his side as he leaned into the table. If they were going to have it out, fist to fist, then Ainsley would not back down, though he really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  The door opened again and Ainsley expected to see one of the constables returning. Both he and Simms were surprised to see Julia standing there. Simms adjusted his jacket on his shoulders. He heaved a breath and looked to Ainsley.

  “Don’t let your arrogance hinder your common sense, Dr. Ainsley,” Simms said, plucking his hat from the ground and brushing off the dust. “You don’t work for me anymore.” He turned for the door and nodded at Julia. “Miss Kemp.”

  “Inspector Simms.” Julia bit her lip as the detective passed her and walked out the door.

  Ainsley leaned into the table a moment longer to catch his breath. He deserved every ounce of disdain Simms dealt him. There was no excuse for what Ainsley had done and he didn’t dare justify it.