Page 42 of The Business of Blood
“Please, don’t let me interrupt your…discussion.”
“You know us doctors,” Phillips said mildly. “Prefer a good debate to an actual discussion.”
I inspected the dishes into which Mr. Sawyer’s organs had been separated. His brain, the only organ left inside the body by the killer, had been extracted—presumably by Dr. Phillips—and placed in its own container. It gleamed wetly beneath the Royal Hospital’s new electric lights. Like a maze, the brain. A tangle of mysteries. I wondered if we’d ever truly survey enough of it to make a decent map. To comprehend all the journeys one must take through the labyrinthine ripples to find one’s self.
“This is highly irregular,” Bond observed, though from what I could tell, he conveyed more curiosity then censure. “Miss Mahoney is neither a nurse nor the police. Should she be privy to all this death and blood?”
“I’m a Post-Mortem Sanitation Specialist, Dr. Bond, I dare say I’m in the business of blood.”
“Indeed,” he murmured.
Did I detect a note of admiration?
Instead of looking up at him, I pinched the clean edge of the bowl containing the contents of Mr. Sawyer’s stomach and tipped it a little, trying to get a good look beneath. Fish, potatoes, and maybe…maybe it had been fish pie, if that was a crust.
“I confess, I was glad to hear tell that you’d landed on your feet, Miss Mahoney,” Dr. Bond said.
“What do you mean?” I checked the liver next. A bit larger than I was used to seeing, but nothing out of the ordinary.
“Upon meeting you at Miller’s Court on the day we…found Miss Kelly, I assumed you were a…an associate of hers. I feared that you might one day share her fate.” The cool inflection of his voice warmed a little. “I was glad to learn that you’d chosen another path, ghastly as it might be at times.”
Dr. Bond and Dr. Phillips had both been called to Mary’s crime scene. They’d watched me break apart. They’d watched Croft pull me, sobbing and hysterical, away from what was left of my friend.
Disconcerted, I made a non-committal sound and moved on to the kidneys.
“What are you looking for?” Dr. Bond asked.
“Missing parts,” Dr. Phillips guessed before I’d drawn a breath to answer. “If memory serves, the kidney was a preferred delicacy of the Ripper.”
“Just so,” I said. “I took a peek in the basin last night, but it was rather dark. I noted all the organs were present, but I wondered if perhaps a piece was missing from one of them. As the Ripper only took and ate a portion of Catherine Eddowes’ kidney, not the entire thing.”
“Everything is undamaged and intact.” Dr. Phillips motioned with the scalpel between Frank Sawyer’s legs. “Whoever gutted this poor lad did so with a deft and precise hand, but was more intent upon making a ghastly example of him than a meal, in my professional opinion.”
I had to admit, even to someone as used to death as I, the sight of an unsexed corpse turned the coffee in my stomach to an acid splash against my chest.
Swallowing was no easy feat after that.
“Quite,” Dr. Bond agreed. “And upon perusal of your post-mortem report, I’m of the opinion that—”
“What the bloody hell isshedoing here?” The rough growl announced the arrival of Inspector Croft. He charged around the screen like a Spanish bull, going so far as to stop and glare at me, his nostrils flaring.
I half expected him to paw at the ground, put his head down, and charge.
“I’d admonish you to watch your language in front of a lady, Inspector.” Dr. Bond lowered thick, well-kempt brows over his mild eyes.
“Thatladyis looking at a man’s spine through his open body cavity, and you’re worriedI’lloffend her delicate sensibilities?” Upon noticing the carved-out hollow where Frank Sawyer’s sex used to hang, Croft said a few more words I promised myself I’d research later, though I wasn’t sure I’d find them in the dictionary.
“Miss Mahoney and I have an arrangement,” Dr. Phillips revealed, and, for a moment, my pulse quickened. It wasn’t as though I actually thought he would confess to our illegal activities, but, as I said before, Croft’s presence put me on edge. I’d always suspected he saw much more than he let on.
I didn’t very much think he’d mind seeing me hanged as a body snatcher.
“She often gains additional insight on a case once the police have cleared the scene,” Phillips continued. “And, on occasion, I consult with her to ascertain if she found anything in the blood she cleaned up.”
“Did you?” Croft demanded of me.
Suddenly, my pockets felt as if they contained bricks rather than beads.
“No,” I lied.
