A Perilous Perspective (Lady Darby Mystery #10)(78)

Mairi’s father. Yet again he was a figure at the periphery of our investigation.

“It’s true, then? That he worked for Alisdair,” I clarified, grateful she’d broached the subject for me.

Her brow lowered. “Is that something else Barbreck neglected to inform you?”

“We thought he was the estate carpenter.”

She heaved a sigh of aggravation. “He’s undoubtedly talented with wood, and he’s been employed in a number of such projects around the estate. But his chief position was as a manservant to Alisdair when he was home, and caretaker of his cottage when he wasn’t.”

I thanked her and then set off to meet Gage and Anderley in the library, where I found Anderley perusing the titles on one of the bookshelves while Gage was seated in a chair near the windows reading some sort of document with creases. At my appearance, my husband glanced up and nodded before returning to his letter. Anderley took this as his cue to have our horses saddled and brought around, murmuring his intentions to do so as he departed.

My gaze strayed toward the door on the opposite side of the room, wondering if Henry was still closeted inside Barbreck’s study with his records, before crossing toward Gage. He refolded the paper and pushed to his feet, meeting me halfway. There were no brackets at the corners of his mouth, so I assumed the missive had not been from his father.

“Cromarty,” he replied in answer to my unspoken question, lifting the letter.

“How do they fare?” I asked, knowing my brother-in-law Philip always began each letter with a report on his family. A fact I had become tremendously grateful for this past spring during the turmoil that had flared up in London.

In the tumult of all the political maneuverings between the Whigs’ labors to pass the popular and long-awaited Reform Bill and the Tories’ efforts to squash it, rioting had erupted in the capital. Fears of armed insurrection had even led many wealthy citizens to make gold withdrawals, threatening the economic security of the Bank of England and further destabilizing the nation. Philip’s and Alana’s letters had been filled with frightening details, and I had been in genuine terror for them for a number of days. That is, until the Tories capitulated and the king had given in to the demands of the Whigs and the populace at large, leading to the passage of the Reform Act.

“They are well. Though, from the tone of his letter, I believe they are tiring of London. Especially in the heat of summer.”

There was a reason most of society fled the city at the end of the social season for the cooler breezes and less fetid smells of the countryside. But there had been several pressing matters before Parliament this session, and so Philip and many of the other lords and members had remained. It was those pressing matters which turned out to be the main subject of his missive.

“They’ve passed it.”

I looked up into Gage’s expectant face, knowing only one such act of Parliament could have brought such an astounded expression to his beloved features. It caused an answering flutter in my chest.

“The Anatomy Act,” he confirmed.

I pressed a hand to my neck, feeling a rising sense of relief.

Among other things, the Anatomy Act would now make the unclaimed bodies at workhouses, hospitals, and prisons available to physicians, surgeons, and medical students for the purposes of teaching and research. This would end the macabre necessity of hiring body snatchers to supply the corpses for their lecture halls and laboratories. Of a certainty, the act was not perfect. The very fact that the law it replaced had solely made provisions for the bodies of convicted murderers to be anatomized—making the act of dissection a form of punishment—by extension seemed to now criminalize the act of being poor. But at least it was a step in the right direction and should serve to eventually end the trade of the resurrectionists and their robbing the recently deceased from their graves.

Given my history with the subject, and the false accusations that had repeatedly been leveled against me—that I’d known about and assisted Sir Anthony in his procurement of bodies from body snatchers—it was no wonder such news should impact me so greatly. I suspected it would not be the end of the issue. Not while cholera still raged throughout parts of Britain and Europe, spurring violence and protests where people believed the physicians treating the ill were allowing the poor to die so that they could put their bodies to use on the dissecting table. There had been an article in the newspaper about an incident in Caithness-shire only a week before. But that didn’t lessen the impact the bill’s passage had on me. The sensation that I’d almost been granted a reprieve from some terrible punishment. It actually made my knees weak and tears prick at the back of my eyes.

Noticing this, Gage wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. “Relieved?”

I nodded, still too stunned to speak. Maybe now some of the horror that had attached itself to the act of dissection would lessen. Maybe people would begin to view it in a different light. And maybe they would stop looking at me with such fear and disgust when they contemplated such things.

“Did he write anything else?” I asked a few moments later when I was able to gather the words.

“Just that he and Alana and the children will be returning to Edinburgh within the week. Now that the Reform Act and the Anatomy Act have passed, he’s eager for a respite.”

None of this news was particularly surprising or concerning, but a furrow formed in Gage’s brow nonetheless.