“Not the kind you’re thinking,” Stoker told him flatly. He related the details of the rest of his examination as J. J. took out her notebook and a stub of pencil. She licked the tip and began scribbling as Stoker talked. When he had finished, she skimmed her gaze over the pages, her brow furrowing in concentration.
“No outward signs of violence, apart from the tiny haemorrhages in her eyes and lips, suggesting suffocation,” she read back.
“Or drowning,” Stoker added. “With what they have done to her lungs, it would be impossible to say if they were once full of water.”
“What have they done to her lungs?” J. J. asked with a malicious look at Mornaday.
Stoker described the process in lurid detail, explaining that the organs of respiration had been pumped full of the preservatives that filled the rest of the body, giving even her machines of mortality the same waxen appearance as her exterior.
Mornaday groaned and dropped his head between his knees again.
“If you swoon, I shall write about it,” J. J. promised.
“You would notdare,” Mornaday said through gritted teeth.
J. J. and Stoker exchanged grins whilst I reached under my skirt for the flask strapped to my thigh. I poured out a tiny measure of the liquid inside and held it under Mornaday’s nose. He reared back in protest, but I pinched his nose closed until his mouth opened, upon which I poured in the liquid and used the end of my forefinger to force his chin upwards. He swallowed involuntarily, then opened his mouth, gaping like a landed carp.
“Aguardiente,” he rasped. He knew I always carried the potent liquor upon my person for just such occasions. There was nothing like this distillation of essence of sugarcane to clear the nasal passages and stiffen the resolve.
He blinked several times in rapid succession. “I see stars.”
“It will pass,” I promised. I turned to the others. “Do stop tormenting Mornaday. He cannot help his aversion to wax dolls.”
J. J. snorted and Stoker smothered a smile.
“It is notdollsI take issue with,” Mornaday protested. “But there is something distinctly uncanny about that,” he finished, pointing at the Beauty.
“She still deserves a proper burial,” I reminded him.
“And justice,” Stoker put in.
Mornaday retrieved a spotted handkerchief from his pocket and ran it over his damp brow. “Why have you not reported this to the police? Properly, I mean,” he said. “You would never have summoned us here if you hadn’t meant for it to be off the official record.”
Stoker and I exchanged glances. “It is Lord Rosemorran,” I explained. “He is fearful of any potential scandal.” I glanced narrowly at J. J., who batted her lashes in feigned innocence.
“I would never abuse his lordship’s good nature,” she promised. “So long as I have the exclusive on the story, I will keep the Beauclerk name out of it.”
We turned to Mornaday who was wearing a thoughtful expression. “And if there was indeed foul play involved and we find the villain responsible?”
“Then the arrest as well as the full credit for the investigation is yours,” I said.
He grinned. “All right then, let us take this thing from the beginning. We must work from the smallest circumstance to the widest.”
“Meaning?” J. J. demanded.
“Meaning, we begin with the body. Stoker has made certain observations which are not conclusions, but which are suggestive. We have a young woman bearing signs of domestic service—and not at the highest level. This was no lady’s maid or governess, judging by her hands. Butneither was she born to the lower orders. Her features are too refined for her to have come from the workhouse or the gutter.”
“You cannot be certain of that,” Stoker protested. “Darwin himself in his studies on physiognomy—”
Mornaday made a gesture as if strangling himself with a hangman’s noose. “Have over with your theories, man! I am telling you, this was no prostitute or beggar girl. You can infer as much from her bone structure.”
“You bloody well cannot,” Stoker retorted.
I held up a hand. “We can at least agree that she worked for her bread. Her body bears the signs of her labour. And we can further agree she was most definitely not gentry,” I added.
J. J. was quick to catch my meaning. “Because if she had been from that sort of family, her disappearance would have been noted far and wide.”
Mornaday nodded. “Exactly. At some point this young woman vanished. Someone must have missed her. If her family were highly placed, the story would have become a cause célèbre.”