“There are other poisons,” I suggested. “Botanical toxins such as monkshood or foxglove. They can be found in any garden, and their effects would not be immediately apparent in death.”
“True,” he agreed—reluctantly, I fancied.
He moved to her head and beckoned for me to hold a lamp closer. With infinite care, he tugged gently upon one eyelid, revealing an iris of such delicate sapphirine colour, it might have belonged to a Renaissance angel. The pupils were wide and black against the pale irises which themselves were ringed with a much darker blue.
Suddenly, he bent swiftly to the eye, motioning with impatience for more light. I obliged, realising he had caught the scent of something of importance. He examined first one eye, then the other, peering closely at the eye itself and then the eyelid. When he finished, he did a most curious and unexpected thing. He turned back her lower lip and gave a smothered shout of satisfaction.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“Look there,” he said, pointing to a collection of dark spots inside the lip, clustered like a constellation. “I have seen it once before, on theLuna. One of the cabin boys went overboard in a storm. By the time we sailed back to find him, all we could do was recover the body. He had marks just such as those inside his eyes and lips. The ship’s surgeon said it was a common thing in those who drowned.”
“So the Beauty may well have drowned. But accidentally or by the hand of another?” I asked.
His expression was grim. “That is what we must discover.”
He bent once more to his task, scrutinising the flesh of her limbs. The skin was smoothly, unsettlingly perfect.
“The effect is so odd,” I observed. “She is so lifelike, one expects her to speak, and yet there is something utterly cold about her.”
“Whoever did this to her robbed her of her humanity,” he replied grimly. “It is monstrous—” He broke off, bending even closer to peer intently at her right hand, then her left. He said nothing as he studied her, but it was apparent he was forming a conclusion of some sort.
“What do you see?” I asked.
“A moment,” he murmured, moving quickly to her legs and examining them before giving a little growl of satisfaction. He straightened and faced me with a grin. “Whatever processes she has been subjected to have smoothed and plumped her flesh, but with close observation it is possible to see three things: a set of distinctive calluses on her hands, knees whose skin is thickened and slightly discoloured, and telltale swellings below the kneecap.”
He waited as I assembled the pieces. “A maid!” I exclaimed.
His smile deepened. “Precisely.”
He pointed out the features he had described and I nodded. “Not just a maid then,” I told him. “A maid-of-all-work. See here? The faintest of scars at her wrist, too precise and narrow to be anything but the edgeof an iron. But those calluses and kneecaps speak to scrubbing brushes and time spent on hard floors, not a laundrymaid’s purview.”
He was thoughtful. “She is a little old for a maid-of-all-work, but not by much. Poor girl.”
He did not elaborate, but I knew we were both thinking of those unfortunate children, plucked from workhouses and orphanages and put to work at the most menial of jobs, hauling and scrubbing, cleaning, cooking, and laying fires, tending linen, mending, sewing, and any other chores expected of them. Most were employed by the age of twelve and mercifully only toiled for a few years before moving on to slightly less arduous employment. Theirs was the lowest rung on the ladder of domestic service, found only in households which could not afford a proper complement of staff. It was inhumane to expect a single girl to do the work of at least three indoor servants, but there were many who could afford the pittance of their wages and counted themselves too proud to stoop to the emptying of slop jars and hauling of water cans. It was little better than remaining in the workhouse, but not by much. That the Beauty had once undertaken such employment meant that she had at some point found herself in a desperate situation. Had she been orphaned? Left friendless and without family until some enterprising soul took her into service, exchanging her youth for drudgery?
“She died before they could rob her entirely of her beauty,” I mused. “A few more years and she would have been worn to ribbons.”
Stoker did not reply as he moved to her torso. He removed the section of her abdomen he had already loosened, putting it gently aside. I did not wish to look at the panel of flesh, but in the interest of science I forced myself. It seemed like that of any young and healthy individual, with a consistent distribution of fat below the skin and no marked imperfections.
The first time the Beauty had been laid open to our gaze it had beenso unexpected a thing that we had no chance to examine her properly or even notice anything of interest within the abdominal cavity. This time was different. This time, one could clearly see the machinery of digestion in its various and gory glory.
“No blood,” I observed.
Stoker shook his head. “There wouldn’t be. The first task of preservation is to remove any fluids which might contaminate the process. Ordinarily, the organs of digestion would have been removed as well, but whoever did this wanted to preserve her perfectly as an anatomical model,” he told me, pointing out the stomach, the pale grey tangle of intestines.
I think he meant to say more, but he stopped abruptly, his mouth slack. “Oh, no, no, no,” he managed in a hollow voice.
“Stoker, whatever is the matter?” I demanded. “Surely you can tolerate the sight of a little viscera. You are a man of science,” I reminded him.
He said nothing else, only lifted a finger and pointed, and I noticed his hand was not steady when he did so. He was indicating a place below her large intestine, the place where the organs of fecundity repose.
I lifted the lamp near and saw the unmistakable swell of the womb, an enlargement that could have only one cause.
“The Beauty was with child,” I said in horror.
CHAPTER
8