I borrowed a surgeons' apron and prepared to assist in the autopsy, though it was Byrnes and Holmes that did most of the investigating. Lestrade glanced nervously at his watch from time to time.
"Feel free to leave us, Lestrade. We shall send for you if we find anything untoward." Holmes dismissed Lestrade with a wave of his hand, and Lestrade seemed glad of it. He was not a squeamish man, but the autopsy of a child is never a pleasant thing to watch.
Byrnes handled the body with great care and concern. He was careful both to preserve any evidence that might be present and to respect the peace of the dead. They both pored over the body.
"About seven years old, possibly a little older?" he enquired of me.
"Yes, agreed," I said.
He produced a magnifying lens, not dissimilar to the one that Holmes used. He looked closely at the boy's now revealed skin in great detail. Holmes listened to his commentary with great interest.
"The fingertips are quite scratched; deeply in some places, obscuring the prints. There is thick mud under the nails, which are raggedly broken, and have bled some time ante-mortem."
"He was a manual worker of some sort employed by the river," said Holmes.
And so it continued between the men; Byrnes would make a statement of his immediate findings on the body and leave a pause in which Holmes could interject with his reasoning. Byrnes would then continue, listening carefully to Holmes' comments and occasionally adding his own. It was quite fascinating to witness.
"There is some evidence of malnutrition; the eyes are sunken and the ribs most prominent."
"A pauper."
"He has the scars of several old injuries. His left forearm has been broken at least twice in separate incidents and well set and mended."
"I have deduced that he has been in the care of someone, though a pauper."
"His gums show signs of saturnism,"
"His work involved the use of lead," said Holmes.
Byrnes turned the boy, carefully, onto his front. He grimaced. "Signs of having been flogged, repeatedly, over the course of many years; most recently about three weeks ago?" He again looked to me for confirmation and I looked at the granulation of the wounds and concurred.
"Quite brutal," I remarked.
"Indeed. One of the others showed signs of having been flogged, but nought so severe as this."
Holmes looked closely at the marks.
"Does this link the two cases?" I asked.
"Flogging is a common enough punishment," said Holmes, shaking his head.
We stood back for Byrnes to complete his work. He restarted his commentary after a few minutes.
"Both lungs contain water. Rupturing of blood vessels in the sclera; stomach filled with water; absent of food."
"Classic drowning," I said, and Holmes nodded.
At this point Byrnes carefully looked over the rest of the body and washed himself.
Holmes seemed unsatisfied. "I am missing something."
Byrnes did not seem to understand. "The boy drowned."
"But why; how did he drown?"
Byrnes frowned. "I am afraid I cannot say. I do not have nay knowledge of the boy other than of his body here before me, and my remit as a police surgeon allows me to do nothing more than state the cause of death, which was undoubtedly drowning."
Holmes nodded. "You have been most useful, Dr Byrnes. May I take another look?"
"Please do!" said Byrnes. "I would like to hear anything you might have to say about it."
He was genuinely enthusiastic to learn from the great man, and my friend and I both found this refreshing.
Holmes walked around the body. "What is this?" he said, suddenly leaping back to the boy's left hand."
Byrnes and I moved closer to look. Holmes held his glass over the little finger. Tied around it was a small piece of thread.
"I did not notice it," said Byrnes. "Now that you mention it, there was such a tie on one of the other bodies."
"Really," stated Holmes. "This is not commonplace."
"A reminder of some kind?" offered Byrnes.
"It is tied with two half hitches and is made from thin twine."
"Our sailor," I said.
"Well done, Watson."
"It is essential that we see the other bodies," said Holmes.
Byrnes agreed and obliged us.
Indeed, one of the other bodies did have the same tie, with the same knot and the same material. I concurred that they all did drown, water having entered the lungs ante-mortem. Two of them showed signs of lead poisoning.
"We have our link, Dr Watson," said Holmes.
"What of the other two?"
"It is possible, quite possible, that they are unrelated to this case. But as a group they share various characteristics of one sort or another. They are all male; they show the same lack of nutrition, of metal poisoning, of repaired clothing, of river work and of drowning."
"Where was this body found?" asked Holmes. I thought it unusual that he had not asked this before, but he was more interested in a physical link between the bodies.
"Wapping," said Byrnes, checking his documentation.
"All from the same stretch of river, at the edge of the Pool of London," said Holmes.
I criticised myself internally for doubting the convictions of my friend that there was something amiss with the deaths of these children. As ever, he was quite correct. Quite what was amiss was to be the next line of enquiry.