Page 13 of A Treacherous Trade
The subsequent humiliations began with nine-and-thirty stab wounds to the face, body, and genitals of Martha Tabrum, and ended—so far as anyone knew—with the physical and sexual dismantling of my best friend.
“Oh. I thought you’d only been to one Ripper scene.” Davies didn’t seem to like that I knew more than he did about the case. That I could impart to him information he wasn’t already privy to.
“Aberline let me peek at the other case files,” I said, crouching over Jane Sheffield’s body to take a closer look at her hands. “As a favor.”
Her nails were discolored, the joints and knuckles stretched and stiff. What had she been reaching for? In what position had she actually died before someone staged her like this?
“Do you think she was poisoned, Inspector Davies?” I asked. “I’ve been told that horse-loads of arsenic might make one’s nose and ears bleed thus. Or was it strychnine?” Suddenly, I couldn’t remember which toxin begat which symptom. Standing, I looked about the room for a dressing table or a medicine cabinet. Both of which were not a part of this particular setting, for obvious reasons. Young girls didn’t apply cosmetics or administer their own medicine.
There was, however, a drink cart with several decanters and two glasses in the corner.
The irony galled me to the core.
The inspector was looking at me strangely, but to my surprise, he answered. “I’ll know more when the autopsy is done. The attending coroner, Dr. Bond, said it could have been ratsbane, and I have seen a man once bleed from both ears after arsenic poisoning… How would you know that?”
“I work with an overabundance of chemicals, Inspector, and I do very meticulous research into all of them before handling. For my own safety and that of my employees.”
He eyed me warily. “Never heard of arsenic being used as a cleaning agent, Miss Mahoney.”
“Well, it isn’t. But, as you said, it’s very useful for getting rid of vermin. And vermin famously tend to make a nuisance of themselves in proximity to the dead.”
Case in point, the inspector himself.
At that opportune moment, the scuffle of steps and the drone of masculine voices announced the arrival of the coroner’s cart. Which alleviated stress for both the inspector and me, as we seemed to have mutually tired of each other’s company.
I made myself as invisible as I could as the men cleared the body away, and bade goodbye to Davies by asking him to give my best to Aberline at their next golf outing.
Remaining in the room, I studied the soiled carpets as Davies and Mrs. Chamberlain held a vitriolic conversation elsewhere below stairs. I didn’t catch every word, but I did hear the proprietress demand to be updated on the investigation.
It wasn’t difficult to guess at Davies’s reply based solely on his tone.
Whilst they bandied insults at one another, Amelia appeared at the door. She gazed down at the few stains on the pale carpets with dismay, and I thought we were both sorry to note that poor Jane had bled from every place a person could possibly do so.
“This gentleman is here for you, Miss Mahoney,” she said after several attempts at clearing her throat. “He is carrying a great deal of supplies.”
She opened the door wider and stepped aside to let in Hao Long, the dark-eyed Chinese immigrant who’d been my assistant for nearly two years now.
“Thank you, Amelia. I will come to find you and Mrs. Chamberlain when I’m finished here.” I tried to inject gentle dismissal into my tone. If she were distressed by such an inconsequential amount of blood, then I was glad she hadn’t seen the body. The horror of Jane’s features.
“I hope you’ve brought my sodium hypochlorite powder,” I said to Hao Long as I moved to help relieve him of his burden of several baskets.
He had a perfectly mobile cart full of supplies he would retrieve from storage once I called him to a death, and a deft pony to pull it. However, it seemed very few people died on the ground floor here in London. And I gathered from the strands of silver threading into his blue-black braid, and the lines branching from his eyes, that Hao Long was a man much older than I’d first assumed.
His movements muffled by the flow of ebony silk, Hao Long fought for some breath as he frowned at the carpet.
I wondered, for the first time, if my assistant was in need of an assistant.
I’d always spoken to him in my language, and he spoke to me in his. Neither of us understood much of one another, but we both got along well enough through nonverbal modes of conversation. Hao Long could scowl in any dialect, and I often knew what his gestures and expressions conveyed without needing clarification.
For example, this scowl told me he was insulted that I even showed up to this job, as it was so small. He could have taken care of it himself and pocketed a greater share of the bill.
“I know,” I said, unable to communicate the story or my reasons for being here. “I’ll leave you to it and I’ll send you the commissions.”
He nodded, shooing me toward the door like an ornery parent.
I allowed him this, though I turned when I’d almost reached Amelia, who still remained in the doorway.
“I want to thank you, Hao Long, for doing so much of this work while I’ve been… While I’ve been unable to.”
