Twenty-One Days (Daniel Pitt #1)(67)

When they reached the fford Croft house, Miriam opened the back, tradesmen’s entrance for them, and Daniel and the driver, with a deal of effort, set the coffin down by the door.

‘I’ll go and get the butler and the footman,’ Miriam said quietly. ‘No doubt you could use a hot cup of tea?’ she said to the driver. ‘And a piece of cake?’

‘Yes, ma’am, that I could,’ he agreed.

‘Then wait here,’ she ordered, and opened the back door with a key.

The driver looked at Daniel, as if he were about to ask for an explanation, then he thought better of it. Perhaps he did not really want to know.

Membury and the footman appeared and helped take the coffin into the house and down the back stairs to the cellar.

Miriam made tea in the deserted kitchen for the driver and Daniel and herself, and served it with thick slices of Madeira cake.

By three o’clock, the driver had departed with an extra reward for his civility. Membury and the footman were long returned to their own beds, and Miriam had informed Daniel that the spare room was made up for him, because he was expected to report to the kitchen at 6a.m., and by half-past six to be ready to perform the autopsy.

He had breakfast in the kitchen. It still felt like the middle of the night, although it was only about five weeks before the longest day of the year; it was full sunlight and the dew was already gone from the herbs in the small beds he noticed outside the back door. He ate hungrily, knowing it would waken him up sufficiently to pay attention. He had finished his third slice of toast with sharp Seville orange marmalade before it occurred to him that, considering the job he was about to assist with, he might have been better with an empty stomach. Too late now to cancel!

At half-past six on the dot, Miriam appeared at the cellar door and said, ‘Good morning,’ brightly. ‘Don’t worry, Membury and the footman helped me with the coffin. It’s open. We can remove her and begin.’ She did not bother with any polite questions as to how he had slept, or how he felt. She was ready to begin, and she expected him to be also.

Determined to live up to his promises, Daniel followed her inside. The cellar must have been half the size of the ground floor of the house. It was perfectly arranged to be an autopsy room, with large tables, running water, and plenty of space to put a coffin. Other doors led off into further rooms. He presumed it was for analysis, experiments, and maybe even ice boxes to store a body afterwards, until it could be buried.

All kinds of instruments lay neatly put out on trays. He would find out what they did if he had to. Some of them were obvious in their purpose: several Bunsen burners, scales of various degrees of refinement, calipers, magnifying glasses of different sizes.

‘Come in.’ Miriam guided him to where a coffin stood on a trestle, the size and height of the table near it. The lid was open away from the table, so it would be easier to move her body.

Daniel took a deep breath, and looked down at Ebony Graves.

She seemed small, with her face so charred he had no idea what she had been like in life. Most of her hair was gone. He could not have told, from what was left, even what colour it had been. Her jaw must be broken; it hung at an odd angle. The left side of her skull above her ear was terribly misshapen.

He looked at the eyes, then looked again. They were not there. She had no eyes. Just deep hollows where they had been. And now that he looked again, her nose was gone, too. Was this what happened to you, when you were burned?

Miriam touched his elbow.

Gently, they lifted the body out of the coffin, Daniel taking her head, Miriam her feet, and laid her down on the table.

‘Now that you are behaving like a detective, forget the woman she was; the spirit has gone. Where to is a matter of belief. Cling on to whatever seems to you good.’

‘Her hair . . .’ he began. ‘Her eyes and . . . what happened? She looks so – small!’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ she answered gently. ‘You are going to write down everything I can deduce, without touching her. Pick up the pad there, and the pencil, ready to begin. It doesn’t have to be neat, only legible.’

Just as well, Daniel thought silently. He would have trouble holding the pen steady.

Miriam told him the height she measured, with a note that she was not lying straight, so she was probably taller alive. Then she described her clothes, her boots. She touched one of them lightly. ‘It looks . . . too small. It isn’t on properly. I wonder why. Very fashionable. Expensive. A pair of boots like these would cost several guineas.’

‘Could she have worn a smaller size out of vanity?’ Daniel asked.

‘Don’t look very beautiful if your face is creased up in pain.’ She gave a little gesture of pity. ‘It’s not much too small. I wonder if the leather tightened? Or the foot swelled? I’ll have to think more of that when I see her feet, and look at the burns.’

She worked upwards on the body for a few moments in silence. ‘Dress is too short,’ she observed. ‘Not much. But she didn’t seem from her wardrobe to be the sort of woman that skimped on her appearance. And she certainly wouldn’t have had hand-me-downs.’

For a little while, she said nothing more, and Daniel had time to look at the body on the table. The frizzled and burned hair made it easy to see where the blow to the side of the skull had been. It was also easy to see the flesh of the neck, which was burned to the bone in some places. In other areas, he could see the flesh coming away from the bone, burned deeply.