Page 7 of The Business of Blood
Iwasn’t ashamed to say that I squirmed out of Croft’s ham-fisted grip in a rather undignified manner.
I’d heard Inspector Grayson Croft’s hands compared to iron hammers, and my smarting upper arm lent validation to the claim. I couldn’t say I’d studied them before, but I certainly did now.
My father used to say that you could tell a lot about a person by looking at their hands. And not in the way my Aunt Nola did, reading palms and the like, but by studying the details.
Inspector Croft’s hands matched the rest of him. Big, square, and rough, with old calluses, scars of dubious origin, and blunt fingers. Though his hands were clean, and his nails curiously well-kempt, the skin of his knuckles bore the craggy confessions of recent violence. As I stared, I idly wondered what my father would have said about Croft after taking a look at his hands.
I even allowed myself to wonder what Aunt Nola would read in them, though I would bet a month’s pay he’d never let her near them. The consummate skeptic was Croft.
“Why do you suppose it doesn’t smell?” I wondered aloud, hoping to buy myself the time it took for Aberline to arrive.
He glowered down at me, scrubbing the palm he’d maltreated me with on his suit coat before burrowing his fists into his pockets away from inspection. “Itdoessmell. It smells like a ripe corpse and a lake of blood.”
“Well, that’s a given, isn’t it?” I glowered right back, furrowing my brow to do him one better in the foul expression department. “But you know as well as I that the stench of a disemboweled body is a great deal worse than your average corpse. We’d not like to be standing in such poorly ventilated rooms without our suppers making a violent reappearance. What did the coroner have to say about that in the post-mortem report?”
His lips compressed into a white hyphen.
I marched over to the tin basin full of poor Mr. Sawyer’s innards. If Croft sanctimoniously refused me answers, I’d find them myself. I was no medical expert by any means, but neither was I a fool. Building a business such as mine, I’d learned a few things the past couple of years.
Hao Long followed me like a shadow, and I handed him my pail before I snatched the lantern from the table.
Careful to keep my skirts out of the pool of blood, I peered down into the macabre stew, holding the lantern aloft. “Which surgeon conducted the post-mortem examination?” I queried. “Dr. Brown or Dr. Phillips?”
If I were lucky, it would be Dr. Phillips. He was more likely to let me take a peek at the post-mortem report. I’d met him right here on Dorset Street when he reported the findings on poor Mary. He’d explained to me thatpost-mortemis Latin forafter death. I liked the sound of it so much, I decided to purloin it for my own professional title.
“Most women would faint at the very thought of what is in this room,” Croft muttered, more to himself than to me.
“As I am not a matron, factory girl, nor a prostitute, it’s safe to assume I’m not like most women of your acquaintance, Inspector.”
“You are unlike anyone I know,” he confirmed.
I didn’t glance back to gauge Croft’s expression, mostly because I didn’t have to. I knew what he thought of me. To say I confounded him was putting it too mildly, and to say I disgusted him was too harsh. But I was certain the dark, bemused tone of his voice accompanied an expression I’d seen on too many faces. A horrified rejection at the sight of a well-kempt woman scrubbing blood from the wallpaper, carrying a mattress soaked through with the leavings of death…
Or using the wrong end of a soiled fork to slide organs around in a basin to inventory them—as was my current occupation.
The inspector wasn’t wrong when he said that ladies might be seized with the vapors at the sights and scents of death, but he wasn’t altogether accurate, either. In the two years I’d been a Post-Mortem Sanitation Specialist, I’d calculated that about one in four men collapsed in a faint that would do a debutante proud—and all at the sight of a little blood. Never mind a ghastly scene such as this one. And let me tell you, it was the bigger and more braggadocious ones that were the most often afflicted by a loss of consciousness. Of course, they didn’t call what a man didfainting.But it was the same bloomin’ thing, if you asked me.
I turned to Hao Long and gestured at the next room, where Aidan sat with Mrs. Sawyer, then I pointed back at the basin. He nodded and set down the pail and the tray of supplies he’d brought in with him. He eyed Croft as he passed the inspector in a rustle of dark silks.
Whilst waiting for Mr. Long to carry out his task, I refocused on the basin, doing my best to keep my heartbeat from galloping after my unruly thoughts.
It was all here as far as I could tell. Two kidneys with adrenal glands attached, two lungs, a heart, a liver, a spleen, a gallbladder with the bile duct still intact. I was extremely careful with the intestines as I nudged them aside with the handle of the fork. It wouldn’t do to acquaint myself with the contents therein.
Sweet Christ and all the saints, was that a…? Was that hisshillelagh? I cast a horrified glance back at the corpse and noted that the blue fabric of his trousers had darkened between his legs.
Dear Jesus, I wondered if he’d still been alive when his sex was cut from his body.
“You can’t come in here, Father, this is a murder scene.” I turned to find Croft’s shoulders blocking Aidan from entering the room.
“I understand, Inspector, but the Chinaman fetched me,” Aidan said congenially, nodding his head to where Hao Long lingered beside him.
Though he was the taller of the two, Aidan emitted a great deal less menace than Croft. He looked past the inspector to find me, an action I assumed Croft did not appreciate if his stance was ought to go by.
“Do you need something?” he asked.
“Your opinion.” I pointed to the basin.
“Absolutely not.” Croft remained where he was, as insurmountable as a Spartan shield wall. And just as prickly.
