Edward Croft held back the white sheet from the face of the body, and Lucien allowed his features to crumble as he'd seen so many relatives do when he showed them the deceased. His voice quavered just enough. "Yes. That's my cousin, Teresa."
"I should contact the police," said Edward quickly.
Lucien lay a hand on his arm, stopping the bespectacled little undertaker from going to the phone. "No need. I've spoken with Sergeant Noakes this morning. I wanted to see the body to confirm it's her. But can we spend some time with her now? My wife would like to say a rosary for her."
Behind Lucien's back, Jean bit back her outrage but tried to look properly pious when the undertaker glanced at her.
Croft checked his watch. "Well—"
"Just a quarter of an hour," Lucien said with a sad smile. "Go and have your lunch. I'm accustomed to working with bodies. I'll put her back once we're finished."
The room was cramped with three people attempting not to stand too close to the corpse. Its dingy white walls closed in on them, and a vase of limp lilies on a small table filled the air with cloying scent. Thick steel doors were behind ivory curtains, attempting to hide the utilitarian function of the cold storage.
"Alright then," the undertaker said slowly, heading toward the room's door. "I'll be in my office with a sandwich and a cuppa if you need anything."
"Of course, of course," Lucien said, ushering the small man out and closing the door on his fretful face. Then he moved a chair to block the door so they'd have some warning at the undertaker's return.
"Lucien—" Jean said, then couldn't think where to begin.
He seemed to be unaware of her presence as he carefully folded back the sheet to expose Teresa Smith. Her body was dressed in a loose rough cotton hospital gown, as the habit she had worn was evidence. Her skull had been opened at the temple to examine the brain injury from the fatal blow, but the scalp and skin was now sewn closed. The Y incision on her chest was visible at the neck of the gown.
"Hello, Teresa," he murmured. "We never met in Singapore, but let's be old friends now."
Jean lowered herself to the chair, clutching her handbag close. Although she'd now seen several dead bodies, she was still deeply disturbed by the sight of the remains on the steel gurney, the skin ashen blue and the rough sutures like great tears on the skin.
Lucien shed his jacket and quickly put on a pair of rubber gloves. As he lay out the few tools that he'd purloined, Jean surprised him by retrieving a string of rosary beads from the mysterious depths of her handbag and beginning to run the beads through her fingers, her lips moving quickly.
He started to speak then refrained from doing so, but she asked, "Is there something you need from me?"
"No, no, you're busy," he said with a stiff smile.
She slipped the beads into her coat pocket. "What can I do?" she said, determined to put aside her discomfort.
"Take notes?" he suggested. Once more she dipped into her bag, and brought out the notepad and stub of a pencil from the night before, then came to stand by him.
Tipping Teresa's head carefully to expose the fatal blow site to the weak overhead light, Lucien kneeled down and peered through her matted bleached blonde hair, stiff from dried blood. "Head injury is consistent with a blow from a blunt object." He carefully parted the strands, picked out some small dark chips from the wound with tweezers and put those in one of the envelopes that he'd laid out. "These should be from the blood-stained brick which was found beside the body and was likely to be the murder weapon, but worth looking at under a microscope."
"Can you tell anything about the height or handedness of the killer from the angle of the wound?" Jean asked, pencil poised.
He glanced up at her and gave her a bright grin. "Excellent questions, Dr Blake."
She flicked his ear with her pencil and found that she was feeling more at ease.
He straightened. "She stood about five foot, and would have been wearing a pair of sturdy brogues or low heels in her habit, I would think. So let's say no taller than five foot, two inches."
She made these notations.
"The blow is from a downward angle to the left side of the head, consistent with a right-handed taller perpetrator facing the victim. However, a taller person standing farther away would have the same angle as a shorter person striking her while standing much closer."
"That doesn't negate another woman being the killer. And Patsy is a statuesque lady," Jean mused.
"Yes," Lucien agreed shortly. After turning Teresa's head to face up, saying, "My apologies," he continued his careful examination. "Both earlobes scarred, suggesting a pair of earrings having been torn from her piercings some time ago."
Jean's hand shook as she wrote this.
Lucien eased Teresa's mouth open. "Victim had worn a partial, not currently present—they probably have it in her effects. It may have gold teeth in it. It appears that the front top row of teeth were missing. The rest of her teeth are in good health, so this may have been the result of violence."
After scrutinising Teresa's still features, he carefully felt her facial bones. "Her left orbital socket was fractured at one time." Delicate fingers probed her jawline. "And her left jaw," He stood. "Collaborating either led to retribution or didn't save her in the end."
"This is so very sad," Jean said, her voice quavering.
"Yes, it always is." He glanced up at her. "I'm going to remove her gown now. Are you alright with that?"
Jean gave a sharp nod. "You must."
"I'm sorry that Dr Harvey isn't here to do this," he told the corpse. Very gently, he loosened the gown's waist strap and opened it.
Jean realised that Teresa was about her age. Like Jean, she'd been slender, but there was a fragility to her limbs and torso that Jean didn't have, like looking at a curled, dried leaf. Her ribs stood out in sharp relief but two of them on the right side of the ribcage appeared caved in. Even without Lucien telling her, Jean made a note. Then she noticed Teresa's breasts had faint scars, too symmetrical and thin to have been stretch marks. Jean took a few deep breaths through her mouth to keep the bile down but she wrote this in her notes as well.
"Yes," Lucien said, seeing her doing this. "The cuts are not deep. Just enough to terrify her."
Jean remembered the scars she'd found on Lucien's body, when she'd examined her new husband properly in the daylight. His limbs, slack and spent, arms outstretched across the luxurious bed in their ocean liner stateroom. Stupefied by spent arousal, he allowed her to trace the lines and gouges, and he had these same sort of shallow, straight lines on his inner thighs and lower groin, disappearing into his pubic hair. She hadn't dared to actually look for scars on his genitals; she couldn't bear to think of him in that sort of pain. When she gently rolled him, grumbling like one of the old farm dogs, she'd discovered whip lashes across his buttocks. Thankfully he had fallen asleep before she began to sob and didn't hear her. She'd been glad to get that out of her system without his knowledge, but now the emotions swelled in her again.
Regaining control, she moved on. "But that's a caesarean scar?" She pointed with her pencil.
"Yes," he said, moving down Teresa's body, bent close to exam her torso for more clues. He stilled. "There's sign of possible sexual activity, but I'll have to examine her further to confirm this, Jean. Are you comfortable with that?"
"Is this part of your normal autopsy?" she asked.
"Yes, men, women...children, if necessary."
Her face blanched. "It's important," she said more to herself than him. In that moment, she understood his gentleness when he made love to her; his touch so sure, but reverent.
After another murmured apology, he eased Teresa's legs apart. First using his tweezers, he removed dark pubic hairs from among her blonde ones, and carefully slipped them into one of his envelopes. "I wish I had her knickers," he said, then noticed Jean's shocked expression. "I may not be able to get a proper semen sample from the vagina swabs, but there would be much more material in her knickers," he explained apologetically.
Jean had to turn away while Lucien did his swabs and quickly sealed the cotton swab sticks in a wax envelope.
"Still, for there to be this much physical evidence, she must have had sexual intercourse immediately before she was killed. She'd not had time to wash or even clean up."
"Was she raped?" Jean asked, her near whisper tone still echoing in the empty room.
"I can't tell. Another doctor may say that because there's no sign of vaginal tearing or bruising that she's not been raped, but particularly if she was accustomed to giving herself in the hope for better treatment, she may not have struggled—just wanted it over with."
Jean wiped tears away. "This poor woman."
Tipping the body, Lucien noted bruising on the right hip and shoulder. "Not all related to lividity," he murmured. "This may be where she landed as she fell." Finally, he quickly checked Teresa's legs and feet, and seeing nothing more than signs that she wore ill-fitting shoes regularly, draped her gown back over her body. Closing her notebook, Jean stood at Teresa's head, retrieved her rosary and finished the prayers.
When she fell silent, Lucien asked, "Have you had those with you this whole time?"
Before she could answer, the door flew open, easily knocking aside the chair. In barged a tall man with slicked back blond hair and a cigarette dangling from his sneering lips. Noakes was in close pursuit, his honest face filled with concern.
"'Who the 'ell are you?" the man bellowed.
In one quick motion, Jean swept the envelopes with samples into her open handbag while Lucien blocked the interlopers' view by stepping forward, offering his outstretched hand with a big smile. "Dr and Mrs Blake, at your service."
~ end chapter 4