by Alex Reeve
‘Early start, Mr Stanhope?’
I bought a dry and tasteless apple from him and forced it down my throat as I walked to the hospital.
Mr Hurst was outside his office talking to a policeman. There was nothing unusual about that in our line of work, but I didn’t recognise the man. He was older than most, with cropped, receding ginger hair and hard eyes.
‘Ah, Stanhope. This is …’
‘Sergeant Cloake,’ said the policeman, without putting out a hand for me to shake. ‘There’s been a burglary in the mortuary.’
‘Oh?’
‘A break-in,’ said Mr Hurst, correcting him. ‘Nothing was actually taken.’
‘But things were broken,’ said Cloake. ‘Destruction of property. He smashed a window and a bottle of ale.’
I remembered the one. I had left it on the shelf for the porters. ‘Who was it?’
‘We don’t know.’ He turned to me, jaw jutting. ‘Do you have access?’
‘No,’ interrupted Mr Hurst, before I could reply. ‘He’s just my secretary. Only the mortuary assistant and I have a key.’
‘Is Flossie all right?’ I asked.
‘It was at night, we believe,’ said Mr Hurst. ‘She wasn’t there. And the window wasn’t smashed, Sergeant, it was forced. Cleverly done too. It’s not easy to open a window from the outside, and no one even noticed it until this morning.’
Cloake scowled. ‘Most likely body snatchers. Ghoulish is what it is.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. The bodies are all still there. None were snatched.’ Mr Hurst checked his pocket watch. ‘We’ll leave you to continue your expert investigation into the crime. We have work to do.’
His office was opposite the examination room, a mass of journals and books covering a desk so large I fancied the room must’ve been built around it. I spent the rest of the morning taking dictation while he marched up and down declaiming his latest article on crush injuries. Through long years of practice, I was able to correct his factual inconsistencies and grammar while thinking about something else entirely, about how next time I would bring Maria a pastry, or a box of honeyed plums from the market for us to share, our fingers sticky with the juice. She adored plums more than anything.
As the clock struck three, Mr Hurst put on his apron and I knew it was time for some proper work.
The mortuary was chilly. Underneath the window at the far end, a workman was positioning a ladder, with a screwdriver and a wrench tucked into his belt. It occurred to me that the intruder must have been quite agile; the drop from the window to the cold, stone floor was eight feet at least. Why risk a broken ankle and not steal anything?
‘Vandals,’ muttered Flossie, peering up at me. She was a twinkly-eyed woman, quite at odds with the nature of her position. She’d been a nurse and had retired to the less strenuous role of logging the deceased in and out, preparing the forms and suffering the stench of decay without complaint. She had a bent back, and laboured in the half-dark like a cheerful goblin.
The room was long and narrow, a bigger sister to the examination room, lined with trolleys and tables. Two years before, a pleasure craft had collided with a collier ship and the corpses had overflowed into the hallway, stinking the place with silt and sewage. But most of the time there were few bodies here, and today only six, laid out on the trolleys and covered with sheets.
‘Anyone for Mr Hurst?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes.’ She pointed to the nearest trolley. ‘Never ends, does it?’
She pulled back a sheet to reveal a small man with a head as bald as an egg. He was thinner than I was, with skin pulled tight over his bones, and a great gash across his neck, brown and congealed.
‘His wife cut his throat in his sleep, apparently. She’d had enough of him. I s’pose we’ve all been tempted.’
‘And how is Mr Liddle?’
‘Much the same I’m afraid, thanks for asking.’
It didn’t take long. We were a well-oiled machine, Mr Hurst and me, sawing and sewing. I wrote down the notes without him having to say a word. He read them over and briskly signed underneath.
‘Let’s get on with it. I have a meeting.’
I wheeled the trolley back to Flossie and she had another one all ready to go.
‘A lady,’ she said, looking mournfully at the physical terrain under the sheet. ‘Bludgeoned, washed up at London Bridge by the wharfs. I go past there every day on my way here. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’
I wheeled the gurney into the examination room and Mr Hurst groaned. He hated doing women.
I pulled back the sheet from the face of the deceased, and it was Maria. It was Maria. Three words that do nothing to sum up that moment. It was Maria lying there, dead. It was my Maria.
Even now, I can still see her. She’s not lost to me, not entirely. I can reach out, and there she is.
Her head drops to one side as if she’s just resting. I think that she might open her eyes, so I touch her cheek, and it’s cold. Her hair falls across her face, covering her stain. It must tickle, I think, her hair on her skin like that, why doesn’t she brush it away? I do it for her, but it falls back. Any second now, she’ll open her eyes and jump up and laugh, telling me it’s all just a game and I’m so silly for being scared. She’s like a child when she laughs, open-mouthed and unconstrained. But she just lies there, still. I reach out and feel where her heart should be beating.
‘What are you doing?’ says Mr Hurst, and he looks at me sharply.
‘I’m … I don’t know. I’m sorry.’
I fetch my folio and pen, dropping the pen on the floor. My palms start to sting and the balls of my fingers ache. I’m aware of every part of me, of my skin beneath my clothes.
Mr Hurst is reading the form. ‘Found on Saturday afternoon by London Bridge, north side.’ He pushes at her cheeks with his forefinger. She doesn’t move. ‘Port-wine stain. Some ante-mortem lividity too, very minor.’ He pulls open one of her eyelids and peers underneath. ‘Rigor mortis has passed. Conjunctiva inflamed, probably by the water. Are you getting all this?’
I make my notes: rigor mortis passed, port-wine stain, conjunctiva inflamed, minor lividity, not the cause of death.
He pulls the sheet away completely, and she doesn’t cover herself up. She’s unashamed. Her arms lie along her sides, and the curves of her thighs are squashed out against the metal.
Her legs are covered with dried mud. Her feet are caked in it, and spattered with beads of inky-black tar. I peel off a piece of soft river-weed that’s stuck to her.
‘Damn it,’ he says. ‘Look at this.’ He sighs, blowing out his cheeks, and checks his pocket watch. ‘It’s not good enough. I can’t examine her in this state.’
‘I’ll wash her,’ I say quietly.
‘Good. Be quick, and let me know when it’s done. I’ll be in my office.’
I fill a bowl in the sink. The water is icy, but Maria doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t shiver. She lies still while I sponge away the mud and tar from her calves and thighs, from the dimples in her knees. It’s even in her hair. I clean between her fingers, along her wrists. She accepts it. I take her hand just as I’ve done a thousand times before, sitting on her bed while she kicks her heels against the frame, thump, thump thump, and talks and talks and talks. I love her voice. I love that she talks so I don’t have to.
Her fingernails are purple with livor mortis. She always keeps them so exact; neat little rounds. I find myself shaking. I can’t stop. My breaths are coming too quickly and I can’t suppress them. I hold on to her hand for fear of falling over, for fear of going berserk and destroying everything in this place; smashing my desk to pieces, breaking the chairs, ranting and screaming and never stopping until they drag me away.
But it passes. I can breathe again.
The water is dirty now so I empty it and refill the bowl, watching the level rise to the brim and overflow into the sink. I plunge in my hands and it numbs my skin, creeping up my arms.
I return to Maria
, and bend down to kiss her mouth, and she kisses me back, just a little bit, her dry lips sticking to mine.
She’s cold. Not just her hands, which are always cold – little blocks of ice on my warm stomach, making me shudder and laugh – all of her is cold: her shoulders, her chin, her chest. She’s as cold as the room. I turn her on to her side. She’s heavier than I expect, hard to move. Her arm flops on to the metal and the sound of it echoes off the walls. And that’s when I see the wound.
The back of her head is crushed. It is concave, pummelled by something the size of a man’s fist, but harder. Much harder.
I see it all. She would be unaware. It would be sudden. She would hear something behind her and it would happen before she could even turn round. The soft footsteps, the pause, the sudden savagery, the twisting fall into shallow water, drawing her blood away as she lies there.
I see it again, and again, until it’s all I can see, and the room and the world are gone.
I awoke lying on a sofa. For a second I was giddy, and then the truth closed in over me.
‘Come on now,’ someone said, a woman’s voice. ‘What’s wrong? What’s up with you?’
I was in the nurses’ room. It was their sofa I was lying on, pushed up against the wall between the lockers and the cabinets. Nurse Coften was the only other person in there, looking down at me with an expression of concern, her black hair framing her face and blotting out the lamplight.
‘You passed out,’ she said. ‘Are you sick? Have you been getting enough to eat? You’re very thin, you know. There’s nothing to you.’
She was a wasp buzzing round my head. I could barely bother to open my mouth to reply. I wondered if I had dreamt it all, but then I saw Maria’s lifeless face again in my mind.
I sat up and vomited on to the floor.
Nurse Coften sighed and fetched a cloth. She knelt at my feet and cleaned it up, sponging it off my shoes. The room reeked of it.
I wanted to touch Maria, one last time, but by now Mr Hurst would be performing his examination and I couldn’t bear to see her like that. I couldn’t contemplate it.
‘You should let me look at you,’ she said. ‘Or one of the doctors. You’re obviously poorly. It won’t take long.’
‘No.’
My throat was hoarse from the sick. I climbed off the bed and stumbled out into the corridor, with Nurse Coften following behind. ‘Mr Stanhope, please …’
‘Leave me alone.’
I somehow made it to the front entrance, where I was sick again on the steps. A gentleman was just getting out of a cab, and I almost threw myself inside.
I lay on my bed staring at a money spider making its way across the ceiling. I wasn’t aware of sleeping, but I must have, because I awoke, sweating and breathless, and the spider had moved to a different spot.
Once, I thought I was in Maria’s room again, and she was sprawling languorously beside me, but when I tried to touch her, searching furiously among the rucked-up blankets, she wasn’t there.
Finally, I wept. It wasn’t the memory of her face, or her injury, it was the fleeting thought of that damp strand of weed clinging to her foot. I wondered if it had happened quickly, over in an instant, or whether she’d lain there for a time being stroked into sleep by the river.
Once I started to weep, I couldn’t stop.
Hours passed, I supposed. The sun fell, and rose and fell again. Outside, voices were raised, horses’ hooves clattered in the street and rain hissed against the window. I took no notice of any of it. I would never have left my bed again, but for the need from time to time to squat over my chamber pot.
It was early morning. My window was a plus sign against a slab of white light, and the spider was slowly traversing the wall towards me. I wondered if its movements around the room were planned, part of a fixed route, or if it just meandered aimlessly in the hope of coming across a smaller insect to eat. This kept happening; for a moment I would forget and think of something else, and then the memory would return and I had to twist my fists in the bedclothes or stuff them into my mouth for fear of screaming.
There was a gentle knock at my door. I ignored it. The knock came again, this time with Constance’s voice.
‘Mr Stanhope? How are you feeling?’ If it had been anyone else, I wouldn’t have answered. But she was so young and so tremulous. And she was Constance. ‘When will you be getting up? It’s been two days.’
I had thought it had been longer, but it wasn’t important. ‘I’m unwell. I need to rest. Please leave me alone.’ All my body was hurting. My skin itched, my muscles ached and my chest was sore from weeping.
‘I’ve made you some mint tea. Shall I leave it here?’ She was standing right outside my door. I could see her shadow underneath it. She wouldn’t come into a man’s bedroom of course, but even so I slid further under the blankets.
‘Thank you, Constance.’
‘It’s here. Do you want me to pour it for you?’
‘No, I can manage.’
There was a pause, and I could hear that she hadn’t moved. ‘I’m pouring it for you. I’ll pass it in.’ The door opened a crack, and her hand appeared holding a cup and saucer. ‘It’s there,’ she said. ‘Don’t trip over it.’
‘I won’t. Thank you.’
There was another pause, and the sound of her leaning against my door and sliding down until she was sitting on the floor of the landing. ‘I have a cup too,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep you company if you like.’
I realised I was thirsty. The smell of the mint was overpowering. I crawled across the carpet and took a sip of the tea, and she must have heard the chink of the china because she said ‘that’s it’, as if I was an infant being given medicine.
I sat against the door too, so we were back-to-back on either side. I could feel her weight when she moved.
‘Isn’t that better?’ she said. ‘You do like a cup of tea.’
‘It’s delicious, thank you.’
‘Welcome.’
She said nothing for a while, and then: ‘Do you want to play guess the remedy? We never finished the last one. It was pyrogallic acid.’
I sighed. I didn’t want to guess. This silly thing, this game we played, was something I’d done before.
‘I’m tired, Constance.’
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘What’s your first guess?’
‘All right. Pyrogallic acid. Does it bring the dead back to life?’
‘No! Don’t be horrid.’
‘You’re right. I’m sorry. Headaches?’
‘No. One left.’ She was muting her usual triumphant tone.
‘Ulcers?’
‘No again. Why do you always guess ulcers? It’s never ulcers. Pyrogallic acid prevents infection.’
‘Truly? Well, now I know. Congratulations, you win. Thank you for the tea. I need to sleep now.’
‘All right. Call down later if you want something on a tray. And Mr Stanhope?’
‘Yes, Constance?’
‘That’s nine to me, and five to you.’
She left, and I went back to bed and slept for three hours, dreamlessly, until another knock woke me, this one rapid, loud and insistent.
‘Leo!’ It was Alfie’s voice. ‘Two policemen are here, and they want to speak to you.’
They were standing in the shop with that stance that said they were here on business, and impatient to be getting on with it. I’d kept them waiting while I got dressed. Alfie was standing behind the counter while Constance spun on the stool and watched with open fascination. It took me a bleary second to realise one of them was young Pallett, still bulging out of his ill-fitting uniform.
‘I’m Sergeant Cloake,’ said the other one, apparently not recognising me, although we’d met at the hospital after the break-in at the mortuary. I didn’t mind a bit. I hadn’t liked him then and I didn’t now. ‘And this is … what’s your name again, son?’
‘Pallett,’ said Pallett.
‘Right. This is Constable Hallett. We have some q
uestions for you.’
‘Concerning what?’ demanded Alfie, and I was reminded that he’d once been a sergeant in the army.
‘A girl was murdered.’
‘What’s that got to do with Mr Stanhope?’
‘We don’t rightly know,’ said Pallett. ‘We was told to fetch him. We don’t know what for.’
Cloake was annoyed. He hadn’t wanted us to know they were just errand boys. ‘Don’t make us arrest you,’ he said.
‘On what grounds?’ asked Alfie, but I put my hand on his arm.
‘It’s all right.’ I turned to Pallett. ‘I just have to use the privy.’
I went out before they could argue, and into the yard. The privy was a shabby thing of misaligned bricks and a clamorous iron roof. I tugged the door shut behind me and sat down to do my business, looking back at the house through a crack in the wall. I was shaking, and not just from the ice-cold seat against my backside.
If I went with them, I would be uncovered. I was certain of it.
Over the past ten years I had avoided unfamiliar places and was rarely drunk, never out of reach of my cilice, my sanitary cloths, a privy cubicle. I kept a map in my head and always knew what came next. But I’d been to the police station many times in the course of my work, and I’d seen the lines of men shuffling forward to be admitted and then herded off towards the cells. There, I would have no control. Sooner or later I would be searched, or required to change my clothes, or need to piss. And, after all, I truly was a criminal. Every time I called myself Leo and put on trousers I was breaking the law. My crime wasn’t something I’d done, out of greed or ill-temper, it was something I was, every minute of every day, flouting the will of God who’d created me as a woman.
I had to get away. It didn’t matter where. I’d done it before.
I exited as quietly as I could, easing the yard gate open and slipping out into the alleyway behind the shops and houses, unseen. As I reached the junction to go right towards the street, I heard a sound behind me and then a voice.