A Murder in Time(115)
“April Duprey had to contact the killer somehow. Is there any way to track that?”
“I don’t see how,” Sam said. “She had her footman post the letter—an unusual enough occurrence for him ter take note. But as he can’t read, he had no way of knowing who was on the receiving end.”
Kendra let out a frustrated sigh. Would every lead turn into a dead end? She set her coffee cup down, and walked over to the slate board. Picking up a piece of slate, she crossed off the name of Jane Doe, and wrote Lydia Benoit. It didn’t matter that it probably wasn’t the name that the girl had been born with. Anything was better than the anonymous Jane Doe. Maybe Rebecca was right; it was important for a soul to be identified.
“Captain Harcourt has an alibi for the time April Duprey was killed,” she said. “I don’t think he and Gabriel are telling the truth about their whereabouts on the night Lydia was killed, but for the reasons I’ve already stated, I think we can cross them off the list and focus elsewhere.”
Munroe joined her at the slate board. “’Tis an unusual assortment of observations you have written here, Miss Donovan. Yet I have to ask: are these facts, or conjecture?”
Kendra considered that for a moment. “You could say it’s conjecture based on facts.”
“I see.”
“It is most unusual, but Miss Donovan takes a scientific approach to crime,” said Aldridge. “One that involves deductive reasoning.”
“That is unusual, sir.”
Kendra couldn’t tell if the doctor believed in the process, but she wasn’t going to try to convince him. She had the Duke’s support, and that was all that mattered.
She looked at Sam. “Did you find out anything about Dalton’s late wife?”
He gave her an incredulous look. “I only dispatched a man ter ride up north ter make inquiries. ’Tis several days’ ride. Me men in the area here are still questioning servants. Maybe someone’ll have something ter say.”
No matter how complex an investigation, it always boiled down to the basics, Kendra thought. Canvassing the neighborhood, questioning colleagues, friends, family, neighbors. The techniques changed, but the approach remained timeless. There was something comforting in that.
Munroe set aside his teacup. “’Tis time for me to meet April Duprey. God willing, she will have something to say as well.”
45
Dead men could tell tales, Kendra knew. So could dead women. In the future, science would give voices to the dead with such discoveries as chromatography at the turn of the century, and then luminol and the scanning electron microscope in the 1930s. And, of course, the most valuable tool of her time, DNA typing, which law enforcement would begin to make use of in the mid-1980s—more than a century from now.
What tales could April Duprey possibly tell, she wondered, with such primitive tools at their disposal?
They gathered around the body. Everyone except Rebecca, who, despite her protests and the gentlemen’s proclamations for being progressive thinkers, couldn’t bridge this era’s gap between the sexes. Nor the class system, Kendra suspected. Rebecca was a Lady. And ladies had more delicate sensibilities than a woman from the lower classes.
They had yet to determine where Kendra belonged. Even though Munroe had seen her “handiwork” on the slate board, he gave her a critical look over April Duprey’s body. “Do you understand what is involved in a postmortem, Miss Donovan?”
“Yes.”
“I shan’t catch you if you swoon.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He was silent for a moment, then shrugged. “As you wish. I shall begin with an external examination.”
Dr. Munroe discarded his jacket and cravat, rolled up his sleeves, and put on something that reminded Kendra, a bit ghoulishly, of a butcher’s apron. He leaned over the body. “If someone could assist me by holding the lantern to give me better light?”
Kendra picked up one of the lanterns that had been brought into the gloomy room, angling it so the amber light fell directly on the woman’s pale face.
“Thank you, Miss Donovan.”
With interest, she watched Munroe slide several sheets of foolscap beneath the head, then begin to work a comb through the tangled hair. “Looks to be mostly twigs, leaves . . .” He dumped the debris into the glass vials he’d lined up on the table behind him.
“Lacerations on the face, varying sizes. Looks to be from branches.” He moved down the body. “She appears to have been cut on the back of the hand.”
“From a knife, and only once,” Kendra pointed out.
“Yes. I can see that.” He did what she had, taking a tweezers and magnifying glass for the initial inspection. “I shall need to remove the glove.”
He attempted to remove it manually, but dried blood and moisture and internal gases that bloated the dead woman’s hand had effectively glued the leather to the skin beneath. Abandoning the effort, the doctor cut off the glove and then scrutinized the hand.
“Shallow knife wound,” he observed.
“It’s not a defensive wound,” Kendra felt compelled to add. How much did he understand about forensic pathology? How much did anyone in this century?
Munroe regarded her through his Harry Potter glasses. “I am aware of defensive wounds, Miss Donovan.”