Innocent as Sin

by C. A. Asbrey

  “That’s the age apprenticeships start for doctors.” Dr. Fox shrugged. “They start doing menial work, but Albert’s obviously bright. I can use him.”

  “He’s supposed to be working with us,” Nat said.

  “I’ll pay, so it’ll go toward his university fund. How about a dollar a day?” He raised a hand to shut out the protest spilling from Nat’s opening mouth. “It’s more than boys usually earn. It’s a good offer.”

  “It won’t take long, Uncle Nat. It’ll be a day. Two, at most,” Abigail answered.

  “Fine.” He nodded. “Just for a day or so. I was looking forward to spending time with you.”

  Her eyes lit with warmth. “I know. It’s why I came, but it won’t take long.”

  “Good.” The sheriff rubbed his hands. “Did anyone see the body being brought in?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The skin was folded back over the corpse’s face and the domed top of the skull sat on the tray beside the body. The brain slipped out into Dr. Fox’s hands, more firm and gelatinous than Abigail expected. She watched, fascinated at the events unfolding before her, the pull of new knowledge overwhelming any revulsion she felt.

  He frowned. “This is partially frozen. How cold is that church hall?”

  “It’s freezing, but I wouldn’t have thought it was that cold. We slept there.”

  “Can you hand me that scalpel, Albert?” He took the implement. “Now, what do we cut to remove this?”

  “The optic nerves and the spinal column?” she asked.

  “That’s right. We also cut the carotid arteries and the pituitary stalk.” He sliced as he spoke. “The temporal lobes are lifted, and the tentorium is cut with either scissors or a scalpel. The cervical spine is then cut as far down as possible. The pituitary is removed by fracturing the sella turcica.” He turned the organ in his hands. “It looks healthy, but that’s to be expected in an obvious stabbing.” He deposited the brain on the tray and turned back to the body which lay open and on display; a large ‘y’ cut displayed the organs, the pinnacles of the ‘y’ starting just below each shoulder.

  “It all looks fairly normal to the naked eye except for the wound to the heart. I’ll examine it more closely when we remove it. Let’s start with the liver.” He plunged his hands into the abdomen his arched brows registering bewilderment.

  “What is it, Doctor?”

  His brows met. “It’s stiff.” He felt around in the abdomen. “It’s frozen solid beyond the surface.”

  “Frozen?” She peered into the cavity. “He must have been left outside.”

  Dr. Fox shook his head. “Nope. I’d expect to see bites and animal activity, especially at this time of year when there’s been a hard winter and there’s little food around. I’d also expect him to have frozen from the outside in. This is more like he was frozen solid and started to thaw from the outside overnight. His skin was normal.” He wiped his bloody hands on his apron. “Let’s have a look at the heart. Yup, that’s frozen solid, too. He must have been a block of ice when he was dragged into the church hall. He’s hardly thawed at all. I thought he didn’t smell much when I opened him.”

  “So he’s been stored somewhere cold? Somewhere animals can’t get to?” Abigail stared down at the gaping chest. “Does that sound like anywhere you can think of?”

  “It sounds like everywhere I can think of.” The doctor wiped his hands on a cloth. “Just about every place in town has outbuildings and root cellars, and the place has been as cold as the crypt for weeks, now. We’ll never narrow it down by looking for somewhere cold and private. Not in this weather.”

  “We can’t do much until he’s thawed, can we?”

  “Not much without damaging the organs, no.”

  She paused. “Can you tell how long he’s been frozen? How long has it been cold enough for that to happen here?”

  Dr. Fox shook his head again. “Nope, I can’t tell. I’ve read of frozen bodies being recovered from the bottom of lakes with hardly a mark on them after years. It takes nearly a week for them to thaw out. Mind you, once you thaw them out, the cells start to lose their integrity and the body deteriorates. I’m going to have to do some reading on this.” He turned to ‘Albert’. “It’s a damned shame the telegram wires are down. I could do with advice on this from your Pinkerton friend.”

  “We still might be able to contact him.” Abigail removed her apron. “But maybe it’s not a complete waste. We can examine the clothes to see what size man they were made for and the trajectory of the wound. Do you have a tape measure? We can compare the suit measurements to the corpse. We can estimate height from leg length, can’t we?”

  “Yes, we can. Tibia, fibula, and height of foot. Also, arm span. We’d have to estimate hand and finger length.”

  “We’ll have to estimate foot height, but the trousers dragging on the ground should be a good indication.” She stretched out the trousers. “I’d say the top of the thigh would be about here, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, but we can also check against the iliac height. I’m going to estimate it as being about here. Get a pencil and paper, Albert.”

  She grabbed a clipboard, taking notes.

  “Subischial height—iliac height—get that jacket spread out. Let’s get the arm span from that. We’ll have to estimate the hands…we’ll use an average of seven inches.” He leaned over the bench, scribbling figures and working through equations, resting forehead on his left hand. He stood back his lips forming a line. “I’m estimating foot height and hand length. So I have to allow for error. By my reckoning, the man these clothes were made for was between five-foot-seven and five-foot-eight-and-a-quarter, allowing for any variations within the normal range.”

  Abigail noted the figure and compared it to the height of the corpse. “That’s why the trousers were too short. He was five-foot-ten.” She took the trousers, turning them inside out, and examined the stitches. “No label, it’s probably too old for one.” She peered at the seams. “The stitches are even. They look like they’re done by machine.” She held it out to compare to the work around the waist. “A watch pocket is hand-finished, and the stitches are different. I think it is machine-sewn and hand-finished. The legs are wide, indicating they were fashionable in the fifties. The legs tapered more in the sixties, and would be about the right timescale for them being relegated to work-wear by the late sixties, and largely at rags by 1869." She took a piece of paper and knocked the fabric until a red dust fell onto the sheet. She rubbed the grit between her fingers. “Brick dust…I thought so. Is there a brick factory around here? I’ve seen brick-fronted buildings.”

  “Yes, the brick factory is by the river on the road out of town.”

  “Maybe the body was stored there? Let’s look at the pockets.” She turned them out onto another piece of paper, bits of fluff, a white granular powder, and sawdust. Another piece of paper under the other pocket caught even more white powder. She raised questioning eyes to Dr. Fox. “What is it?”

  He frowned. “Well, I can test it, but I need it to be pretty pure to get a good result. That means someone sitting and picking through all those grains to pull out anything which shouldn’t be there. You start that, and I’ll see if there’s any more of it caught in his clothes.”

  She fixed him with dismayed eyes. “What? Sort through tiny grains to find stuff that’s another tiny grain?”

  “Yup.” He strode over to a drawer and pulled out a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass. He put them beside her with a clatter. “There you go, Albert. You might need these. That’s why I’m paying you a whole dollar a day.”

  ♦◊♦

  Her shoulders ached and her eyes protested against the blurring of the magnifying glass, but the grains were beginning to look nicely organized on the sheet of paper. The sawdust was fairly easy to remove, but the tiny dark specks of the red brick dust were infuriatingly fiddly. In a few hours, she had made progress and a series of little piles sat in front of her. She pulled her arms out
in a great stretching yawn and rolled her head around to release the tension in her neck.

  “You’ve done really well.” Dr. Fox smiled.

  “It’s tough work.” She huffed. “Really fiddly.”

  “I’ll bet.” He poured another lot of the powder onto the corner of her paper and grinned at her dismay. “I reckon there’s about a quarter of an ounce in total. It was caught everywhere, in his shoes, the back of his neck, and so on. It must have been scattered everywhere where he was lying. We should have enough to test from all this, though.”

  “This’ll take forever.”

  “I know.” He pulled up a chair. “That’s why I’m going to help. We’ve got to find something to do until he thaws out.” He put on a pair of magnifying spectacles and started to work on sorting the grains.

  "So, Albert." Dr. Fox paused before glancing over the lenses. “You know I’m a doctor. Anything you tell me will be in complete confidence.”

  She put down her tools and stared at him with a frown. “I know.”

  “So? Is there something you want to tell me, or do I ask the questions?”

  She took a deep breath. “About what?”

  He looked her full in the face. “I’m medically trained, but I could tell the difference between male and female since I was a kid. Sure, you can pass as a boy at a distance, or in passing, but not at close quarters or for long periods. Who are you, and why do you suddenly appear at the same time as a corpse?”

  Her spreading smile surprised him as much as watching her rip off a fake pubescent moustache and pull off the shaggy wig. She switched back to her own Scottish accent. “My name is Abigail. Abigail MacKay. I work for Alan Pinkerton in the women’s department. My being here has nothing to do with the body, which happened to be left on a mattress near us. I’m happy to help you with a murder, although I normally earn a lot more than a dollar a day.” Her own hair was caught in a tight cap and clips in numerous pleats flat to her head. Long fingers worked at it until it hung in glossy dark curls to her thighs. She laced her fingers through her hair and rubbed furiously at her scalp. “Aah, that’s better. All the tight hair starts to ache after a while when it’s pulled up.”

  The doctor laid down his tweezers staring at her with amazement. “You expect the sheriff to believe this?”

  “I have a chest in the left luggage office at the railway station. It contains equipment and disguises, not to mention identity papers.”

  He tilted his head. “A confidence trickster would have all of that, too.”

  “True, but would a confidence trickster have fought you all to make sure you didn’t miss any evidence? She’d have kept her head down and walked away. I’m a trained detective, and I don’t want whoever did this to get away with it.”

  He sat considering this information. “Those men. Your uncles—”

  “Are of no concern to you, but they’re not my uncles. I’m not related to them in any way.” She smiled. “I know the telegraph wires are down, but provided they aren’t broken farther along the line, I can show you how to tap into them and use them, anyway. The Pinkertons have been doing it since eighteen-fifty, and probably employ people who did it since the system was invented.”

  “What are you doing here in Pettigo?”

  “At the moment, it feels like I’m counting angels on the head of a pin.” She laughed. “I’m here on another matter. I’m not prepared to talk about that.”

  “And the doctor you said you’d trained under?”

  “A colleague.” She grinned. “He taught me a lot, but not how to become a doctor. He’s an adherent of the scientific method of detection taking hold in Europe. You must meet him. He’d be impressed by your work and your eye for detail. I am.”

  “Just supposing I believe you.” Dr. Fox sat back in his chair. “How do I know you have nothing to do with this murder?”

  “Because if I had, you’d never have seen me at all. Do I strike you as an idiot?” She folded her arms. “Now, if you’re looking for help I can try to use the telegraph wire to ask the agency about frozen bodies and to identify how long they’ve been dead. Somebody somewhere in the world must have done work on it, and they have experts who have nothing but time to look into it. It could help.”

  “You could be talking to anyone,” the doctor answered.

  “Bring the local telegrapher.” She shrugged. “Let him send the message. I’ll show him how to tap the wires, after that it’s the same process he’s used to. We have to tell them to reply at a certain time and date to make sure we’ll be at the broken line to receive it.”

  “I have one more question, Abigail.” His eyes glittered across the table at her. “How can I let you go back to a church hall full of men tonight? It’s not right for a woman to sleep there.”

  “Trust me. With my uncles at either side of me, I’ve never been safer in my life. The smell is a whole other matter.”

  “Yeah, but I expect they’re used to it if they work with you often enough.” he chuckled at her eyes widening with indignation. “What? It’s a pathology joke. If you’ve never heard jokes about the smell, you can’t possibly be telling the truth.”

  “Very funny. Now, how about we try to work out the trajectory of the wound and the height of the person who made it?”

  “Good idea. I suppose you know how to do that?”

  “I do. I need a string and a tape measure.” Her eyes narrowed. “You do, too, but you’re quite right to check.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Abi?” Jake darted a discomfited glance at his ‘nephew’, dressed in boy’s clothes but with her hair trailing to her knees as she and the doctor worked to match a stabbing movement with a straw protruding from the rib cage of a skeleton hanging from a frame. “He knows?”

  “I do.” Dr. Fox grinned at their concerned faces. “Come on in and join us. She’s told me everything. She had to. It was obvious she was a female. I know you’re Pinkertons. Why didn’t you tell the sheriff?”

  “We didn’t want to tell anyone.” Nat darted a hard look at Abigail. “We have another matter to deal with as soon as the town opens up, and we need to stay low. We didn’t mean to stay here. We got stranded. Why’ve you got a bit of string tied to a skeleton?”

  “We’re trying to work out the height of the person who stabbed him from the position, and trajectory of the wound. We’ve set the skeleton to the victim’s height and the straw shows the angle of entry.” Abigail held the tape as Dr. Fox crouched and made a stabbing motion. “That looks about right. So an over-arm swing from someone smaller than him, say between five-foot-five and five-six. I’ll take a note of that. Could it have been a taller person seated?”

  “I’ll look into that.” Dr. Fox stood and faced the men. “If it’s any help, I can offer you a bed here instead of the church hall.”

  Jake stared at the corpse covered by a sheet and the brain on tray on the workbench. “Here? No thanks.”

  The doctor’s gray eyes followed Jake’s gaze. “Not in here, in the house with me. I have one spare room, which will go to Miss MacKay, of course. You gentlemen are welcome to the parlor where we can put a couple of mattresses. Sleeping in front of the fire here’s got to be better than the church.”

  “I’m sure Abi’ll be happier in a bed than lying between us.” Nat masked the regret in his eyes with a beaming smile. “That’s real kind of you, Doctor. We’ll be happy to accept.”

  “I’ll have to tell the sheriff.” Dr. Fox warned. “I’m not going to lie.”

  “That’s fine, Doctor. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.” Abigail pointed at the little piles of dust. “Maybe my colleagues could help separate the grains and I could try to intercept the telegraph wire to contact the agency about frozen bodies?”

  “Frozen bodies?” asked Nat.

  “Yes. We had to halt the examination. He’s frozen solid inside, thawed on the surface. He’ll take days to thaw out.” Dr. Fox slid the brain into a jar and poured liquid over it. “He could have be
en frozen for weeks. I have no idea how long he’s been dead. I also have no idea how to find that out without help.”

  “And these little piles of stuff?” Nat peered at Abigail’s work.

  “Traces found on the body. I need them separated out so I can test them,” said the doctor.

  “It’s frustratingly tedious work. I thought you could maybe help out while I go out tomorrow? I need to tap into the telegraph lines to get a message to the agency. I need to ask them about frozen bodies,” said Abigail.

  “Tap into a telegraph system? I can do that in my sleep.” grinned Nat. “You write out the message you want sent and I’ll send it as a soon as we find a line.”

  Abigail’s brows rose. “You can?”

  “I guess this is one area where our skills overlap, Abi. There’s no need for you to go tramping over miles of snow.” His eyes gleamed, sensing she wanted a break from sorting piles of grains by passing the job onto him. “You can finish the easy work here in the doc’s warm office.”

  Doctor Fox rubbed his hands together. “That’s sorted then. I think we’ve done enough here for the day. How about some dinner while we get mattresses brought over? Mrs. Small won’t have expected guests, so we’ll have to eat out. I’ll warn her breakfast will be for four, though. My name is Clarence, but everyone calls me Clancy.” He turned back to Abigail. “So, do you stay as a boy or a woman?”

  “A woman, I suppose. The genie is out of the bottle. If someone could get my chest from the station, I can change.”

  “Yeah, we’ll do it,” Jake answered. He proffered a hand. “Nat and Jake. Good to meet you, Clancy.”

  “No surnames?”

  Jake’s uncompromising blue eyes glittered at the doctor. “Nope. Just Nat and Jake is all you’re gonna get.”

  ♦◊♦

  “Clarence?” The young woman, her nose pinched red by the cold, blinked around the table and paused to stare at Abigail. “I thought I saw you through the window of the restaurant.”