A Murder in Time

by Julie McElwain

  She turned to face her audience. “There’s another difference between a streetwalker and a prostitute in—what did you call it?—an academy. Streetwalkers aren’t very choosy.”

  “Neither are Birds of Paradise, if you have the blunt,” Alec pointed out dryly.

  “Yes. You have to have the . . . er, blunt. Does it cost the same to hire a street whore as it does a girl from an academy?”

  “Hardly. Streetwalkers will offer their services in the alley for a shot of whiskey and a few shillings.”

  Kendra picked up the piece of slate and wrote “money” in the unsub column. “He paid for a girl from an academy. From London, most likely. Plenty of opportunities to hunt. Why go farther?”

  Alec looked at her. “You speak as though killing the girl were sport.”

  “To him, it was. This was not the murder of a young girl. It was more.”

  “Dear heaven,” Rebecca breathed.

  “And he had to transport her here somehow.” It was too early for trains. That left . . . stagecoach or horse?

  Rebecca frowned, thinking. “A public stage?”

  Alec’s lips twisted. “Doubtful—not unless her benefactor made it worth her while.”

  “So not a tryst with a farmer,” Kendra said slowly.

  “He’d have to be a wealthy farmer. A bawd would never have let her go, and the girl would not have gone unless—”

  “She could better herself,” Kendra finished, earning a raised brow from Alec.

  “I never considered it in that precise way, but yes.”

  “’Tis true, then,” Rebecca said, staring at her. “The outrageous rumor that this madman is one of . . . of us.”

  “If you mean someone in the upper classes, then yes.” Kendra noted the other woman’s shocked expression and thought of the servants crowded around the breakfast table. “You thought he was a drifter—a gypsy, perhaps? Because the perpetrator can’t be somebody you know?”

  The blue eyes sparked, then went cold. “Mayhap you know such fiends, Miss Donovan.” Her upper-class accent was so precise, it was like a slap. “I do not.”

  “Actually . . . you do.”

  Rebecca drew in a breath, the earlier friendliness gone. Now she looked every inch the aristocrat.

  Kendra sighed, but maintained eye contact. “I think you could be very helpful to this investigation, but if you can’t handle it . . .” She shrugged.

  The other woman frowned. “I can . . . handle it.”

  The phrase was obviously unfamiliar to Lady Rebecca, but she’d gotten the gist of it. Kendra was beginning to like the Lady.

  “Good. Otherwise . . .” She remembered what Dalton had said yesterday, and gave the other woman a speculative look. “Just how good are you at portraiture?”

  The question threw Rebecca. “You want me to paint your portrait?”

  “Not me—”

  “Bloody hell. We already told you, that would not be proper,” Alec snapped.

  Kendra ignored him. “We plan to send out a description of the girl with the Bow Street Runner. It would be much more effective to have a photo—a sketch of some kind.”

  “You want me to paint the dead woman?”

  “Charcoal or pastels would be faster.” She glanced at the Duke. “I’m sorry, but it’s the best way.”

  “This is beyond the pale—” Alec protested.

  “I’ve never known you to be such a stuffed shirt, Sutcliffe,” Rebecca interrupted him, her expression once again amused. Kendra caught the glimmer of excitement in the cornflower eyes. “I shall do it. When?”

  Kendra’s lips curved with an irony her audience would never understand. “I always say there’s no time like the present.”

  18

  Alec grabbed Kendra’s arm before she could follow the Duke and Rebecca out of the schoolroom. The action surprised Kendra—almost as much as the electrical jolt she felt at the physical contact.

  “Why are you involving Lady Rebecca in this?” he demanded.

  He released her, and Kendra let out a breath. But it caught in her throat again when he put his hand up, palm flat against the wooden doorframe, and shifted his body, effectively caging her in. She was close enough to see the gold flecks around the pupils in his green eyes, close enough to smell his scent, a blend of clean linen, leather, some kind of soap, and a masculine underpinning that was unique to the man.

  “Well?” he asked impatiently, when she remained silent.

  She cleared her throat. “I already told you—I think she’ll be helpful to the investigation. If she can sketch the dead girl’s face, we’ll have a much better chance at identification than sending out a verbal description.” She paused, then shrugged. “And it wouldn’t hurt to bring in a woman’s perspective.”

  Alec frowned. “What the devil is your perspective?”

  A twenty-first-century perspective, Kendra wanted to say. Instead, she shrugged again. “A woman from the aristocracy, then. As I said before, I think we’re dealing with someone from your class, Lord Sutcliffe.”

  “Exactly what is your class, Miss Donovan?” he asked softly.

  He was looking at her so intently that Kendra found herself fidgeting. She forced herself to stop and gestured to the clothes she was wearing. “I’m a servant.”

  “Odd. That is what I told the Duke.” He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes, which remained a clear, cool green. “Exactly who are you, Miss Donovan?”

  To Kendra, it seemed as though he were saying: What are you? But perhaps she was reading too much into that—years of being under the microscope, as it were, more science experiment than child, had left her sensitive.

  She remained silent. She had no choice, really. She could hardly tell him the truth.

  He straightened, stepping back. “I shall be keeping a very close eye on you.”

  Not for the first time, Kendra thought that, despite his elegant clothes, upper-class accent, lithe grace, and lineage, there was something dark, almost dangerous about the marquis. “That sounds almost like a threat,” she said.

  He smiled grimly. “There is no almost about it, Miss Donovan.”

  Kendra was relieved when they caught up with Rebecca and the Duke on the path leading to the icehouse. Aldridge was carrying Rebecca’s art supplies. The other woman had also put on an ankle-skimming dark brown velvet coat, Kendra noticed. The gaze Rebecca turned in their direction was frankly speculative, but she didn’t ask where they’d been.

  “I’ve told Lady Rebecca if she has second thoughts about doing this, she may simply inform us,” Aldridge stated.

  Rebecca merely smiled. Her amusement vanished, however, when they entered the icehouse. Good, thought Kendra. She didn’t want anyone involved who viewed this as some sort of novelty.

  Propriety may have been tossed out the window, but the Duke and Alec still made sure that the nude body was covered to the neck with a coarse wool blanket before Lady Rebecca was allowed to enter.

  Kendra immediately scanned Jane Doe. Dalton had closed her eyes, but otherwise hadn’t touched the head. Normally, the M.E. would make an incision and pull down the scalp and cut open the skull to remove the brain, which was then weighed and measured. But this was the early nineteenth century. Maybe that wasn’t part of the normal procedure. Or maybe Dalton had decided to forgo that part of the autopsy because it was clear that the girl hadn’t died from a brain injury. Whatever the reason, it was probably for the best; Kendra doubted Lady Rebecca would’ve been allowed into the room if the girl’s head had been sliced open like a tin can.

  As Rebecca began setting up her art supplies, Kendra glanced around. Visiting morgues and viewing autopsies were all part of the job, but there was something really creepy about this room, with the cold seeping up from the stone floor, the dead animal carcasses hanging by hooks against the far wall, and the flickering light from the lanterns, staving off the perpetual gloom. The smell—dust and decay—seemed to have grown stronger.

  She saw that Rebecca was a
lso affected, but that might have had less to do with the atmosphere than it did with the corpse. For a long moment, Rebecca stared down at the dead girl, her expression solemn. Kendra thought she saw her shiver, but when she reached for the paper and pastels, her movements were brisk and sure.

  Kendra didn’t know what to expect, whether she’d get an accurate likeness of the victim or not. It wasn’t as though Rebecca was a professional artist. Art was merely considered an appropriate activity for ladies of the era. At least she wouldn’t get a woman with three noses, as modernism wouldn’t take the art world by storm for several more decades. But Kendra was impressed with the woman’s absolute focus, her face pulled into lines of concentration as she worked, her tongue caught between her teeth. For the next ten minutes, the only sound in the room was the whispery movement of pastels against sketch paper.

  “What color are her eyes?” Rebecca asked, without stopping, without looking up.

  “Brown.”

  She nodded, choosing a different pastel. Her fingers were smudged with color by the time she put the crayon down, and flipped her drawing tablet around to show them.

  Kendra studied the portrait with an appreciation she hadn’t expected to feel. Not only had Rebecca captured the girl’s likeness, but she’d infused it with a liveliness that was obviously now absent. Maybe it was creative license, but Rebecca had added just the faintest smile to the Cupid’s bow mouth, a healthy tint of pink in the cheeks, a coquettish gleam in the eyes.

  “You’re good. You’re very good.”

  “Better than a death mask,” Aldridge added, and then looked over at Kendra. “You were right to insist upon this, Miss Donovan.”

  “Do you really believe this will help?” Rebecca asked.

  Kendra thought of what was said yesterday, that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of brothels in London—assuming the vic was even from a London brothel. She shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”

  Gently Aldridge pulled the blanket up to cover Jane Doe’s face.

  “What will happen to her now, Duke?” Rebecca asked.

  “We shall have to bury her soon. We can’t keep her here forever.”

  “A day or two at the most,” Alec agreed.

  The Duke picked up Rebecca’s art supplies, and gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”

  “You can go,” Kendra said. “I have one more thing I need to do.”

  She was already turning to Rebecca so she didn’t see the humor that flashed in the Duke’s eyes. It wasn’t every day, Aldridge reflected, that he was dismissed by a servant.

  “Could I borrow a pastel stick and some of your sketch paper?” she asked Rebecca.

  Even though the other woman’s eyebrows rose questioningly, she handed over the requested supplies. “What are you planning, Miss Donovan?”

  “I need to view the body again. Make a record of the wounds inflicted. I should have done it before the autopsy, but . . .” She’d still been reeling over the fact that she was in the nineteenth century. “I’ll need some assistance turning over the body.”

  “I will stay with Miss Donovan,” Alec volunteered.

  The Duke hesitated, looking as though he would’ve preferred to stay as well. But then he took Rebecca’s sketches and box of pastels and ushered her from the room. The woman shot them a departing look that was impossible to interpret before the door closed behind her.

  Ignoring Alec’s presence, Kendra concentrated on drawing two crude outlines of the female form, front and back.

  “Perhaps Rebecca ought to have stayed. Your artistic skill leaves much to be desired,” Alec observed, seeing the results of her handiwork.

  She made a face. “Likeness isn’t important here. Location is—location of the injuries.” She put down the paper and pastel stick, and pulled off the blanket.

  Dalton had done the standard Y-incision, sewing up the ragged edges of flesh after he’d finished. The girl looked like a torn ragdoll that some tailor had attempted to repair, with gruesome results. Her skin had become more mottled, tinged greenish-red. They were right; the cool temperature in the icehouse wouldn’t delay the body from breaking down much longer.

  Methodically, Kendra moved down the body with her visual examination, starting at the top. “No bruises, cuts on the face, other than petechiae around the eyes,” she murmured. Was that significant? She retrieved the paper and pastel stick, drew a line through the neck area. “Manual strangulation. Several times. Ultimate cause of death. Bite mark on left breast.” She made a corresponding mark on the drawing, scribbling notes in the margins. “Knife wounds begin beneath the breasts. Looks like shallow slashes on upper torso. Deeper, thicker cuts in the middle of torso following the path of the Y-incision to the pubis. Still—deliberate cuts. No stabbing. Nothing frenzied.”

  Alec suspected Kendra wasn’t even aware that she was talking out loud. He watched her with a kind of appalled fascination as she marked up the crude drawing she’d made, carefully depicting each wound, and meticulously writing notes in the margins. In a strange way, her behavior, the intense look of concentration on her face, reminded him of the Duke when he was caught up in one of his experiments.

  She paused, leaning back to glance at the drawing she held, comparing it to the body. “There are no cuts on her arms, and only a few on the legs, confined to the upper thigh area. The majority of injuries were inflicted below the breast but not on the breast.”

  “That is incorrect. Her arms and legs have cuts.”

  She glanced up, looking vaguely startled, as if just remembering he was there. “Those weren’t caused from a knife. They’re lacerations—postmortem. Probably caused by the river’s current and rocks. Her inner thighs are bruised, most likely from when he raped her. I need to turn the body over.”

  Ironically, it was Alec who had no trouble touching the dead girl. Kendra was the one who had to swallow hard when she reached out to grip a shoulder. The flesh felt cold, waxy. Unfortunately, the victim was no longer in rigor mortis, leaving the body flaccid, and more difficult to turn over. As soon as it was accomplished, Kendra wiped her hands against her apron, feeling queasy.

  Kendra studied the deep purple blotches that marred the flesh at the small of the girl’s back and thighs. “She was lying on her back when she was murdered. This is lividity. When the heart stops, blood begins pooling at the body’s lowest points.”

  Alec stared at her. Who the hell is she? If she hadn’t been a woman, he’d have thought her a sawbones.

  “He didn’t bother to cut her here, either.”

  Alec pulled his eyes off Kendra to survey the lacerations on the dead girl’s back and buttocks. “Those are from rocks, I assume.”

  “Yes.” She returned to the girl’s head, threading her fingers through the hair as she peered closer. Although she still wished that she had latex gloves, this didn’t make her feel so queasy. Human hair, after all, was dead protein, even on a living person.

  “There are scrape marks on the scalp consistent with where the hair has been cut. Looks to be postmortem, given there are no contusions in the scalp area. He wasn’t careful, but this wasn’t part of his need to inflict pain,” she said quietly. “She was already dead. She had no more meaning to him. He was done with her.” She made more notes on the sketch paper. “We can turn her back now.”

  They rolled the body over, and Kendra was wiping her hands on her apron when someone knocked at the door. Alec barely had time to toss the blanket over the dead girl before the door flew open. A boy of about ten stood there. His round eyes immediately went to the corpse. He looked disappointed that the body was covered.

  Alec narrowed his eyes when he recognized him. “Dammit, Will! When you knock at a door, you need to wait until someone bids you to enter.”

  “Oh. Sorry, gov—er, me Lord. Oi was told ter fetch ye.” The kid’s eyes shifted from the covered body to Alec. Kendra caught the sparkle of excitement. “The thief-taker . . . Oi mean, the Bow Street Runner—’e’s ’ere!”

 
; 19

  “You think the dead lass was a bit o’muslin? Beggin’ your pardon, m’Lady . . . ma’am.” Sam Kelly, the Bow Street Runner, shot Rebecca and Kendra an apologetic look. If he thought it odd that two women, one a Lady and one a servant, were allowed to sit in on what must be considered an improper discussion, he didn’t show it.

  Kendra hadn’t known what to expect from a nineteenth-century detective, but Magnum, P.I. he was not. He was a short plug of a man, with muscular arms and legs that strained the seams of his dusty gray topcoat, black waistcoat, and breeches. His face, framed by a mop of curly, reddish-brown hair and iron-gray sideburns, looked almost elfin, with turned up features that seemed incongruous on a man his age, which Kendra estimated to be early forties. His eyes were light brown, almost gold, and as expressionless as his face. Cop eyes, Kendra thought with a jolt of recognition.

  “Should we summon Mr. Hilliard and Mr. Morland?” Rebecca asked from her seat on the sofa.

  Sam glanced at the Duke. “Mr. Hilliard and Mr. Morland?”

  “Mr. Hilliard is our local constable and Mr. Morland holds the position of magistrate—a mere formality, as the Duke is the largest landholder in the area,” said Alec. “Neither gentleman has experience with anything like . . . this.”

  “I agree.” Aldridge considered what Miss Donovan had written on the slate board. “’Tis no insult to the gentlemen in question, but we ought to keep our speculation amongst ourselves. Do you have any objection, Mr. Kelly?”

  Sam considered the matter. The gentry were an odd lot. But the Duke of Aldridge was his client and paying the blunt. He shook his head. “Nay. Not a one.”

  “Excellent. As for the girl, we suspect she worked at an academy. Most likely London.”