The Coroner's Daughter

by Andrew Hughes

  He remained silent as he took up a pencil and jotted something in an opened ledger, perhaps the verse itself.

  ‘Mr Elyan?’

  ‘It’s relatively simple. The machine is designed to be altered and rearranged. Letters can be placed in any order to spell out whatever you like.’ He pointed to the cross running through the girl’s body. ‘See, this line is the same as the hem of her dress; it’s just moved up and repeated. The vertical line is the length of her leg.’

  ‘But still, one would have to be familiar with such things to meddle with them?’

  He held up a hand. ‘I should not be speaking about it, except with Lord Charlemont if he so wishes. Are you a relative of his?’

  For a moment I considered lying, but then answered no, and told him my name.

  He seemed surprised, and a slight smile came to his lips. ‘You are the daughter of the coroner?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Why, I know your father. I attended several of his demonstrations years ago.’

  ‘In York Street?’

  ‘Yes. We are fellow anatomists after all, even if my interests lie more in the mechanical, but the principles are the same. The lungs are like a bellows; the heart a pump; bone and tendons, rods and wires. Your father always told us: if you want to know how something works, first you must take it apart.’ He held up a curtain that led to a back room, and said, ‘Let me show you something.’

  The workshop reminded me of Father’s office: ordered clutter, with tables bearing callipers and gears, spring-wheels and pendulums. A life-sized figure sat in a chair. She was a young woman in a morning dress, her yellow hair uncovered and loose. She sat awkwardly with both hands held up to one side of her face. Elyan fetched a flute from his desk and inserted it between her fingers, placing the mouthpiece against her parted lips.

  Her features were doll-like, but her hands looked almost real: very pale, with blemishes and creases. A fine suture ran like a seam along the insides of her fingers.

  ‘I tried everything to make her cover the holes with the proper pressure and touch,’ he said. ‘The only thing that worked was when her hands were gloved in human skin.’

  I saw him glance at me, perhaps to gauge my reaction. I reached out and touched the top of her knuckles. The skin was cold, and felt almost like wax, with the surface beneath hard and unyielding.

  ‘How did you manage to preserve it?’

  ‘Trial and error,’ he said, narrowing his eyes as if remembering the less successful attempts. ‘I settled upon a balm of liniment and alcohol mixed with zinc salts. I could give the recipe to Mr Lawless if he wishes.’

  ‘Father has no need to preserve the dead.’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ He removed the flute and cupped the girl’s cheeks with both hands, pressing his fingers until there was a clicking sound. With great care, he took her face away. Inside the head, two glass eyes were suspended on metal stalks. They were downcast as if to give her a demure expression. At the bottom, a silver tongue was fashioned and shaped to look real. Elyan laid the face on a worktable so that it tilted on her nose and chin.

  ‘The biggest challenge has been to regulate the flow of breath,’ he said. ‘Her tongue moves back and forth to block the lips, coinciding with gaps in the notes.’ Elyan licked the tip of his finger and dabbed a piece of lint from one of the eyeballs. ‘Everything must work in perfect unison – the puff of the bellows, the movements of her fingers and tongue – for the tune to be played correctly.’

  ‘Who are you making it for?’

  ‘No one,’ he said. ‘I just want to see if it can be done.’

  An odd noise came from the shop, like a glass marble rolling on a table, then the clicking of a ratchet, and finally the tinny chime of a clock. It was answered by another, which rang out a simple tune, then several more began to toll in succession. They were striking eleven, and so there was time for those lagging to catch up and synchronize. The noise swelled as they rang together, with peals of different pitch and resonance, before one by one they began to stop.

  Mr Elyan turned his head sharply and frowned. Without a word he walked back into the shop, whipping the curtain aside as he passed through.

  I had heard this sound before: when I followed the man with the lazy eye through the streets. We had faced each other in a darkened hallway, and the hour had struck. At the back of the workroom there was a stairwell leading upwards. Its upper reaches were lost in the dark, but I knew that it would take me to the alley behind Capel Street.

  Mr Elyan returned through the curtain, a mantel clock in an ormolu mount clutched in his arm. He placed it on a table, and opened its casing to peer inside. ‘I can never get this one to stay correct. Every day it lapses another few seconds.’ With a thin pincer he began to grip the delicate gear shafts one after the other, the clockwork stopping and starting with each hold and release.

  ‘Should not all the clocks have rung at the same moment?’

  ‘I could make them do that, of course,’ he said, reaching for a round magnifying glass with no handle. ‘But there is no way of knowing which of them is actually correct. All that matters is that each stays true to itself.’

  He unscrewed a cogwheel and extracted it, holding it up to his eye. Then he placed it in a vice, and began rasping one of its teeth with a metal file. He became engrossed, almost as if he’d forgotten about my presence.

  I picked up the face of the girl and felt along the smooth inverse. If I’d been alone, I might have placed it over my own.

  ‘Mr Elyan, I have seen someone visit your shop before. A man with ptosis. Could he have been the one who made the changes to Lord Charlemont’s machine?’

  Elyan paused in his work, but he didn’t glance up. He blew the shavings away from the vice, and then resumed filing. ‘I don’t know who you mean.’

  ‘He is hard to mistake. It was about a fortnight ago.’

  Elyan turned and regarded me, his eyes slanting down in what may have been concern. He was about to speak, but then he stopped himself and gestured to the mask in my hand. ‘Put that down.’

  When I did so, he reached beneath his table and pulled a lever. I heard the bolt in the front door release, and a draught caused the curtain to sway.

  Elyan returned his attention to the vice, and said, ‘I am rather busy, Miss Lawless. Please give my regards to your father.’

  I wanted to question him again, but it was clear that he would say no more. When I emerged on to the basement steps, the door closed fast behind me. I lifted my face to the narrow portion of sky above the railings, and felt a misty rain begin to fall.

  The wind whipped up as the day wore on. By nightfall, thunder rumbled over Dublin Bay, bringing the odd flicker of lightning, and Kepler was unnerved enough to lie curled up beside me on the bed. He let out a plaintive mewl when I donned a dressing gown to fetch a book from downstairs. The house was dark and quiet. I could see through a crack in the door that the parlour was lit. Ewan was there, resting his head in the sofa and reading a book against the lamplight. I was about to retreat upstairs, but instead I tied my gown tighter, and pushed open the door with a gentle knock.

  He turned when he heard me, and seemed ready to get up. ‘I’m sorry, I thought everyone was asleep,’ he said. ‘Would you like to use the parlour?’

  I waved for him to remain. ‘Stay, I’ll only be a minute.’

  He nodded and resumed reading, leafing back a page as if he’d lost his place.

  I went to the bookcase and scanned its titles. There was the copy of Lewis’s Romantic Tales that I had come to get, but I felt conscious now of picking it out.

  Ewan said, ‘Has the noise of the thunder kept you from sleeping?’

  ‘No, I am often awake at this hour.’

  ‘I’m the same. It’s easier to study in the smaller hours.’

  ‘What are you reading?’

  He turned the spine towards me. ‘Very dull, I fear.’

  I moved closer to see the gold-leaf lettering of Male’
s Epitome of Forensics.

  ‘Your father likes to test me with hypothetical cases while we work, describing two or three signs of death and asking me to deduce the cause.’ He pursed his lips and flicked through some pages of the tome. ‘More often than not, I am stumped.’

  ‘What a good idea.’ I sat down on the couch, leaving a space between us, and held my hand out for the book. ‘Let’s see if you fare better now.’

  He smiled at me, but then hesitated. ‘Some of the descriptions are rather distressing.’

  ‘Why, I have read it twice before.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I keep forgetting.’

  He passed me the book, and I leaned back to leaf through it.

  ‘Don’t give me one that is too obscure.’

  ‘Then how will you ever learn?’ I said, reading over an entry in the section marked ‘Aerial Poisons’. I sat up straight and looked at him steadily. ‘You are called to examine an unfortunate man who shows every appearance of strangulation, except there are no marks on his neck. His eyes are open and staring, tongue protruding, fists clenched and jaw locked.’

  ‘You needn’t say it so eagerly.’

  ‘When you open him up, the ventricles of the brain contain a serum tinged with blood, the lungs are collapsed and the viscera are dark-coloured and turgid.’ I closed the book in my lap. ‘So, Mr Weir, how do you think this poor man met his death?’

  He held my eye for a moment, an amused slant to his brow, and then he spoke his thoughts aloud. ‘Well, there are no wounds or contusions, and you would not have given me a case so dull as a fit of apoplexy. Something was ingested or inhaled.’ He drummed his fingers on the armrest.

  ‘Do you give up?’

  ‘No, no. I just need more details,’ he said. ‘In what kind of room was he found?’

  ‘It doesn’t say.’

  ‘Well, imagine it.’

  ‘A garret.’

  Above what?’

  A business on the dockside.’

  Ewan thought some more. ‘If he lived above a trade, his room may have been gathering vapours from below. Chemicals from a tanner perhaps, or carbonic gas from a lime-kiln.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, opening the book to show him the entry in the Epitome. ‘That’s exactly it. Fumes from the burning of lime.’

  Our shoulders drew close as he leaned over to see. ‘Really? In truth, it was a guess.’

  He asked if he could have the book back.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Because it is your turn.’

  ‘But I have not read Male in several months.’

  ‘Oh, don’t make excuses.’

  Like me, he flicked through the pages to pick out a case, glancing at me suspiciously once or twice as if I might spy the chapter. When ready, he told a tale of three sisters at a masquerade, chatting by the punch bowl. As the night wore on, one was seen to be flighty and unsteady in her dancing, another retired early feeling unwell, and at midnight, when everyone was unmasked, the third was found dead in her seat, her young, fair face contorted in seizure. ‘During autopsy, you find no other symptom or sign of death.’

  ‘But there must be.’

  ‘I am afraid not,’ he said, pleased with himself. Outside, a gust made the window shutters creak, and the clock on the mantel continued to tick.

  I tried to recall some of the more exotic poisons and their symptoms, but I could think of none that would touch three people so differently. Ewan was humming a strain from a Scottish folk-song, and I told him to hush. Years ago, when I ate the petals of a buttercup, Father had shown me all the flowers in the park that were toxic: wolfsbane and nightshade and laurel. He said one of the most common of all presented the greatest danger. Its odour caused giddiness and headache, while those who consumed it suffered convulsions and death.

  It was all I could think of, so I said, ‘The punch was laced with water-hemlock.’

  Ewan let out an exasperated sigh, and opened the book again.

  ‘Am I correct?’

  ‘That was far too easy,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to give you another.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I reached over to grip the top of the book, ‘the next question is for you.’

  ‘I knew I should have asked the one about copper sulphate.’

  I shifted closer to take the book back, but he kept his hold, and we were smiling together at our small tug-o-war when a voice by the door said, ‘Miss Abigail, what on earth are you doing up at this hour?’

  Mrs Perrin stood on the threshold, a small conical flame-snuffer in her hand.

  Ewan let me have the book. He straightened his mouth and got up.

  ‘I was just helping Mr Weir with his studies,’ I said.

  ‘I am sure Mr Weir is well capable of studying on his own.’

  He bowed his head and said that she was quite correct. ‘I am sorry for keeping you so late, Miss Lawless. It is time that I got to bed, so I shall bid you both good night.’

  He left the room, Mrs Perrin keeping her eye on him as he went, and she waited for his door to shut up above.

  ‘Look at you, Abigail. Talking to a young gentleman late at night half dressed.’

  ‘I would hardly say that,’ I said, getting up.

  ‘You should not be encouraging him any further.’

  I looked at her. ‘What do you mean, any further?’

  She tutted and shook her head, and pointed at the lamp. ‘Don’t leave that on all night. I should have been abed an hour ago.’ She closed her shawl, before bidding me good night and heading off to her room in the basement. The cushion where Ewan had been sitting was askew, so I set it straight. I did not think that I was encouraging him in anything, though when I considered it, I found the idea that there was a sentiment to encourage quite pleasing. I picked up the Epitome again and ran my finger over its spine. Flicking through the pages once more, I saw the entry for water-hemlock, placed the marker ribbon there, and slipped the book back into its gap on the shelf.

  10

  By the time we cleared the city limits the rain was falling in sheets, casting a gloom inside the carriage despite the early hour. Our progress was slow. We dipped and jolted through the countryside, the wheels sinking into potholes and splashing water on the windows. The roads became steep and narrow, and treetops crowded overhead.

  Clarissa’s hair was carefully pinned and didn’t move as she glanced upwards. ‘We’ll be lucky if we make it back.’

  ‘It is not far now,’ I said. ‘The professor’s observatory is on a bluff so it is rather exposed to the weather.’

  She braced herself against the armrest as the carriage turned a corner. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Father told me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Father had been called away at the last minute to chair a freeholders’ election for clerk of the peace. He had not wanted me to go alone, and so I asked Clarissa to accompany me, promising that James Caulfeild would be in attendance.

  We passed through a large iron gate and followed a winding drive through orchards and fields before the observatory came into view. It was a handsome house, with a wide turret rising over the rooftop crowned by a wooden dome like the cupola of a Greek church.

  ‘It’s a shame the weather is so foul,’ I said. ‘It would be nice to look through the telescope.’

  ‘Hmm?’ Clarissa’s attention was drawn towards the carriages parked near the entrance. ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure.’

  The front door opened as we pulled up to the porch, revealing an elderly maid holding an oil-lamp as if she had been awaiting our arrival. Inside, the entrance hall was modest and dimly lit. Narrow corridors led away, suggesting a warren of passages. The maid set off through one. Her lamp cast a halo on the dark wooden panels and neat wallpaper. We could hear a murmur of voices ahead, and she entered a wide room with two tall windows overlooking the gardens. One wall was taken up by bookshelves that stretched all the way to the ceiling. In the corner, there appeared to be a large terrestrial globe hidden beneath green baize cloth.
Armchairs and couches were arranged about the hearth, where men and women sat and talked. Another group were gathered around a table and seemed to be taking part in a parlour game. Professor Reeves and James Caulfeild stood by one of the windows, the professor speaking while James stared outside as if lost in thought, his hands clasped behind his back.

  The professor noted our arrival. He came to greet us, and I introduced him to Clarissa.

  ‘Your name is familiar to me, Miss Egan. Would I know your father?’

  ‘You may. He is the rector of St George’s.’

  ‘Oh,’ Reeves said flatly. ‘Then perhaps not.’ He signalled to a passing maid who carried a tray with glasses of a deep-red liqueur. ‘Malaga wine,’ the professor said, ‘with a squeeze of lemon. We always serve it at these gatherings.’

  I had a taste. It was rather cloying, but I sipped it to be polite.

  Reeves brought us about the room, introducing us to some of the other guests. It was interesting to put faces to names that I had seen printed in scientific journals, and the men would smile if I quoted the title of one of their works. As we made our way between one small group and another, the professor said, ‘You may be giving some the delusion that they are widely read.’

  I smiled and said that I hadn’t meant to.

  ‘They may demand that you be invited to every gathering from now on.’

  Clarissa kept an eye on James by the window. She asked the professor how often he hosted these events.

  ‘Only once or twice in a season. You have seen yourself that the road is difficult, and the house remote. It was my grandfather’s originally; my only addition has been the equatorial room up above. I remember coming here as a child, getting lost in the hallways, or exploring the loft.’ He looked up into the high ceiling. ‘Very little has changed; most of the furniture has been here longer than me.’

  ‘And the globe?’ I said, as we walked beside it.

  He looked at me quizzically. ‘Oh, that’s not a globe.’

  He placed his glass on a side table and removed the cloth to reveal an orrery, a mechanical model of the sun and planets. In the middle of a round table, a brass sphere about the size of a billiard ball sat upon a slender metal stem. The whole room and everyone in it was reflected in its polished surface. Six spindly arms radiated towards the edges, each holding smaller orbs of various sizes: glass marbles of red and blue and turquoise. The moons were attached to their planets with ever more delicate arms, and the table’s rim was etched with days and months and the signs of the zodiac. Four metal bands arced over the surface, representing celestial meridians and ecliptics, and lending the whole table its spherical shape.