Welcome back! In this chapter, George, William, and Julia visit Charles and Josephine Bailey's home to investigate further. Later, they make a gruesome discovery.
Upon arriving at Josephine Bailey's house, they discovered that she'd left the door unlocked in her haste to get to the police. Why she wouldn't have just telephoned someone over was beyond George.
"You don't suppose someone else has already been inside?" he asked quietly.
Turning to look over his shoulder, William, who stood closest to the now-ajar door, frowned.
"We'll find out."
Stepping into the front hallway provided no clues as to whether or not they were the first ones at the scene. The three of them, in a line, wound their way into the sitting room, with Julia shutting the front door behind them and bringing up the rear.
The room was nice and big, bright, with a broad selection of doilies, lace, and florals that were most likely Mrs. Bailey's doing. The sheer curtains were pulled to the side, allowing the afternoon sun to beam in on the mess before them.
As Josephine had promised, the J.P. & Company-branded box sat on the coffee table, and all around it a pool of what appeared at first glance to be blood.
"Julia?" William prompted, but his wife already had her bag open on the settee and was approaching the substance with a vial.
"It would certainly seem to be blood," she affirmed, catching several drops of the liquid dripping off the table and stoppering the vial. "I'll have to examine it further, of course, but for the moment..."
"What else would it be if not blood?" George asked, thinking about some preserves his Aunt Daisy had made once.
"In all likelihood it is blood, George," Julia explained, "but it may not be human blood. It could be from an animal—but as I've said, it will need to be examined."
While George set about the usual process of dusting for finger marks (around the bloody leaks, of course), Julia turned to William. He had crouched next to the table and was giving the box a hard stare. Sinking down beside him, she laid her hand lightly on his arm.
"Do you suppose we could open it in the same way we opened yours?"
"I'm confident they changed the combination from its default."
Julia sighed softly, nodding in agreement.
"The blueprints?"
William frowned and finally blinked, turning to look at his wife.
"The ones James Pendrick sent to you. Perhaps there's an alternative way to open it."
"Of course," William beamed at the new revelation.
"I don't suppose we could just smash it? You know, just take it... and drop it off the roof of the constabulary." George asked innocently, demonstrating with an air of excitement.
He knew it was the most basic of methods to attempt, but surely it couldn't hurt. The worst that could happen would be that it made a terrible mess. The best, that the thing sprung open and whatever was inside—for, George reasoned, there had to be something in there besides blood—was revealed.
Julia and William rose at the same time, and when her husband looked about to berate George for his suggestion, she spoke first.
"It would certainly be worth a try, George, and could save us a lot of time trying to decipher the combinations or dismantling it by hand. If it comes to that."
William shot her a look, but she countered it with one of steady, practiced calm.
"We must still adhere to protocol," he replied quietly. "We'll bring it back to the station and examine our options there. George, if you will."
The constable approached the table, lifting the box with a slight struggle. Though it was smaller than the one sitting in William's office, it still possessed a hefty weight. Julia pulled some gauze from her bag and wadded it up, wiping the liquid from the bottom of the box to prevent it dripping all the way through the hall and down the front walk. Given the size of the thing and how much liquid had already pooled, she doubted there could be much left in there anyhow.
"Carefully, George," William instructed as he led the way back to the door.
"Yes, sir."
. . .
"That looks just like yours, Murdoch."
Nothing could get past Inspector Brackenreid some days.
"It is, for the most part, sir. Though I fear it will be more difficult to unlock than my own," William replied distractedly as he shuffled through the blueprints for the sixth time since returning.
Julia had tested the blood first thing and had determined it was, indeed, human. After bringing her report to William, she stayed and had been mechanically trying combinations for well over three hours. George had been flitting between the two, helping Julia keep record of the permutations, and being a sounding board for William's musings as he scrutinized the diagrams.
"Time to call it a night. I'm headed out."
George gave a small wave of his hand, but the Inspector didn't bother to wait for a reply from William or Julia before leaving; he knew well that he wasn't likely to receive one. If you asked him, he would say that he thought they both worked too hard and deserved each other, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
As the minutes ticked on, George began to yawn, Julia began to sigh, and William began subconsciously tapping out a rhythm on the edge of his desk.
"Wait!" the constable exclaimed suddenly, causing both doctor and detective to give a start.
He jumped up from the chair he'd been lounging in and rushed over to William's desk. As he flipped madly through the notebook, Julia abandoned her post and went to perch on the edge of the desk, frowning.
"What is it, George?"
"Here!"
He had found the page he'd been looking for, and recited:
"'A private courier' brought the box to Mrs. Bailey."
William and Julia exchanged a glance, wondering what they were supposed to garner from that when it was clear George expected them to fill in the gaps.
"Well wouldn't it have come with instructions? If somebody sent her this box wanting her to open it, wouldn't they have at least given her the combination?"
They realized that George was absolutely correct and that either or both of them should have thought of it much sooner.
"She didn't mention any letter or instructions, but she was agitated and in shock," William mused.
"It could easily have slipped her mind, then," Julia suggested.
"Precisely," George agreed. "Her sister took her home a couple hours ago. Apparently she took a turn and the Inspector thought it would be best since we already had the box and it technically wasn't a crime scene."
"The poor woman," Julia sighed. "I can only imagine what she must be going through... Although we don't know for sure that Charles Bailey is dead. A bloodied coffee table would hardly suggest it."
"We need to find out what that box contains," William, whom had been quietly contemplating to that point, interjected. "And sooner rather than later."
"I could try her on the telephone," George suggested, and was already half way out of the office by the time William nodded.
"You believe he's still alive?" William asked softly once George had disappeared.
"You do not."
Leaning back in his chair, his gaze settled on the confounding box across the room.
"If he is, in what state? You concluded that the substance leaking from the box was human blood, and quite a lot of it."
"Yes, though hardly enough to kill a person outright. Unless he was dead already and..."
"And?"
"And someone had drained it."
They fell to silence for a moment.
"We are only scratching the surface of this," William sighed, eyes flicking back to the blueprints spread out before him. "There are so many more questions that need answering."
"You'll find the answers. You always do."
He looked up to see his wife smiling down at him and made an attempt to return it. While his record in police work was second to none, self-doubt would always gnaw away at his heart.
"William."
"Yes, Julia?"
"When has a case ever been easy? Think of all the others we've seen over the years. They were hardly settled in a few hours—sometimes they took days, or weeks, or months... even years."
"This one feels different," he answered slowly and with a frown.
Sighing sympathetically, Julia rose and circled behind him, hands falling to his shoulders where they gently squeezed and kneaded.
"Have faith, Detective Murdoch."
Leaning down, she pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek.
"I will always try, Doctor Ogden," he said, smiling, and turned his head just enough to capture her lips with his.
A throat being cleared made them both look up to see a faintly-blushing George standing in the doorway, holding a scrap of paper.
"I've telephoned Mrs. Bailey. She was asleep, but her sister, a Miss Marjorie Clark answered. I explained what we were looking for, something with numbers and symbols, and she managed to find a paper with these on it. I asked her to keep it somewhere safe until tomorrow."
He held up the scrap of paper and William rose to retrieve it.
"Now I'm no artist, but I think I managed to capture what Miss Clark was describing to me," George warned, but William was already at the box.
His fingers deftly turned the dials, following the instructions George had written down, and panels began to slide open at what felt like an alarming rate. His comrades hovered on either side of him as the last dial clicked into place and the final panel slid. Hands poised, there was only to open it.
Then he stopped.
Of a sudden a heavy mood settled over the room, for the box was now unlocked. It was only to collapse the panels and look inside. Then they would find... well, no one could say.
"William?" Julia prompted softly from his left shoulder, her face inches from his.
That was enough to trigger his brain and body back into action, and he slowly pressed down on the panels until they sat around the blood-soaked inner box. Pulling out a handkerchief, he folded it several times to prevent it soaking through, and used it to gingerly lift the lid.
Whatever they had been expecting to see, it was not this:
There was a little blood left in the bottom of the inner box, though likely only about a quarter of an inch deep. Probably none of it should have leaked out, but it had been discovered that the box had been tipped on its side during delivery, allowing most of the grisly surprise to seep out gradually. William had to hand it to Pendrick—the gears still worked even when clogged with partially-dried blood. On the sides and lid there were scattered an assortment of roughly oval-shaped objects, each about an inch high and half an inch wide.
"What do you suppose those are?" George asked, although at that point he did not particularly care for an answer.
"I've an idea..."
Julia gently stepped around and in front of William, who still stood staring with a perplexed look at what they had just uncovered.
The constable and detective heard her count quietly under her breath before she straightened.
"Julia?"
Frowning, for it was all she could seem to do at this revelation, Julia looked him in the eye and gave her answer:
"Skin."
"I beg your pardon?" George asked, growing paler by the second.
Julia took a deep breath.
"Skin... Human flesh."
She began looking around the office for something, returning moments later to the bewildered gentlemen with a pair of pliers (the best she could do when not in the morgue) and a scrap of paper. Very carefully, Julia plucked one of the fragments from the box and transferred it to the paper where she gently blotted the blood off. Several tense seconds later, she held the piece of skin up to the light and nodded—an outward affirmation of what she'd suspected for a few minutes. When she turned back to George and William, she was met with grave but questioning expressions.
"There are ten of these in that box," she explained.
That was all it took for the gears in William's head to click into place.
"Fingers."
"Well, pieces of fingers, to be precise, but... yes, I'm afraid so."
George shivered.
"I believe," Julia continued, once more holding the scrap of skin up to the light to gauge it, "someone has either removed their own finger marks, or has removed them from another."
"Who would do such a thing?" George whispered, more to himself.
"And why," William added, stepping behind Julia to observe the faint-yet-visible ridges of fingerprints in the light.
"More questions," she sighed, alluding to their earlier conversation. "We'll need to store these properly. Perhaps in the morning, when we've all had some sleep, we can take prints."
"Then I'll see if I can match them to any we have on record," George offered.
"If they belong to Charles Bailey, as I presume they do, we won't have documentation of them. He has no criminal record of any kind," William said.
"What about Josephine Bailey?" Julia proposed. "We can't rule her out of this entirely."
"She has no record, either, but we should ask her back to the station tomorrow to take her finger marks."
"And we've still got the ones I took from the box today," George reminded them.
"Yes... I'd nearly forgotten," Julia responded. "Our courier may not be who he said he was."
"We will adjourn for the evening and get an early start tomorrow," William decided.
The three gathered their things, Julia having the extra task of placing the finger pads into a small jar to transport to the cold room of the morgue on the way home. They stepped out into the night, streets now lit only by the lamps and a fresh wet sheen on the ground from a light drizzle.
"Good night, George."
"Good night, Detective, Doctor Ogden. See you tomorrow."
. . .
"There, they'll be safe until morning."
Julia closed and locked the door to the cold storage. She'd left William at the steps by the office, where he still stood with a far-away look in his eyes.
"That's enough, now. We leave work at work," she chastised softly, grasping his hands.
"Yes," he replied after a short lapse, "You're right, Julia, you always are."
Smiling, he offered her his arm, and the two set out into the city anew.
He had a hunch, however: Julia's rules or no, this case would follow him home.
