Chapter 10
“Gone, sir? I-I don’t understand.”
Mr. Barts, Dr. Munroe’s apprentice, stood next to the table that they occupied at the Green Lantern, a tavern with a low, timbered ceiling, a fire roaring in the rugged stone hearth, and a dark mahogany bar that ran the length of the far wall.
Serving maids wove around the tables or worked behind the tap, handing out tankards sloshing with ale and plates piled high with meats and vegetables.
The room was noisy with the clatter of cutlery and conversation, a homey congeniality that Kendra thought solidly middle-class, the customers mostly clerks, merchants, and shopkeepers.
Forty-five minutes ago, they’d retreated to the tavern to satisfy their hunger and wait for Mr. Barts.
By the time the apprentice, a pale young man with wispy blond hair and a weak chin that disappeared into his cravat, came jogging through the tavern door, they were almost finished with their meal.
“The dead woman from the Thames is not in the morgue,” Munroe said now.
Mr. Barts blinked. “But . . . I didn’t move her. No one came to claim the body. It must be there.”
“It’s not. Please, sit down, Mr. Barts. Do you want any food? Something to drink?”
“Oh. Thank you, no, sir. I ate earlier.” Barts had taken off his tricorn hat, but kept on his greatcoat as he pulled out a chair and sat. He frowned at Munroe. “This is most unusual, sir.”
“Did anyone ask to see the body?” Kendra asked. She saw the flash in Barts’s pale eyes and knew he was thinking of the veiled lady, and clarified, “Not the woman on Friday.”
“Oh.” Barts’s face fell. “No. No one.”
“Did you notice anyone loitering outside the school?”
“No. Well, at least, I don’t think so. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Do you think—” Barts stopped abruptly, casting a quick look at Sam.
Munroe lifted his tankard. “Go on, Mr. Barts. If you have a suspicion, please, speak freely. You are amongst friends.”
The young man’s eyes darted uneasily around the table. With the exception of Munroe, she suspected that he didn’t view them as friends. And maybe not even Munroe, who was his employer.
“I only . . . well, could a resurrectionist be involved, sir?” Barts said. “Stealing the body to sell to one of your competitors?”
Munroe’s dark brows lifted in surprise. He was quiet for a moment as he considered the possibility. “I concede that this is a competitive business,” he said slowly. “I have certainly vied with my fellow anatomists in purchasing bodies. However, we outbid each other—we don’t steal from one another.”
Kendra regarded him. “How difficult would it be to steal a body from the morgue?”
“It’s never happened before, but I daresay it wouldn’t be very difficult,” Munroe admitted.
“You’re familiar with the building, my lady.
If Mr. Barts and I were in our offices or in the operating theater, it would be fairly easy to go into the morgue without our knowledge.
And the building has various entry points besides the front door.
Someone could sneak in with no one the wiser. ”
“I locked up when I left in the evening, sir,” Barts insisted. “I did it every evening when you were gone.”
Munroe nodded. “I don’t doubt you, Mr. Barts, as I had to unlock the door when Mr. Kelly and I arrived earlier. However, I never checked the other doors. I saw no reason to do such a thing. Someone could have broken in.”
“I’ll send me lads ter the flash houses, see if anyone’s heard of a body being stolen.
” Sam angled his head as he considered the matter.
“’Tis a queer job for a housebreaker ter steal a body—queer enough that they’d most likely boast about it.
And somebody would be paying them, ’cause they wouldn’t be doing it on their own.
These buggers would steal their own mum out of her bed and sell her for a guinea. ”
A barmaid, ample hips swinging like a pendulum, sashayed up to their table, her dark eyes on Barts. “W’ot can Oi get fer ye, love?”
“Oh.” Barts seemed startled to be addressed. “Nothing. Thank you.”
“Well, if ye change yer mind . . .” The barmaid gave him a wicked grin and wink that had Barts turning red and swallowing nervously.
Kendra addressed the apprentice when the maid swung to the next table. “You worked in the morgue when Dr. Munroe was gone?”
“No, I didn’t conduct any postmortems. I taught a few classes for the students,” he replied stiffly.
“I also did paperwork and ordered supplies, as instructed by Dr. Munroe. Everything was normal. But I . . .” He looked to Munroe.
“I didn’t go down to the morgue, as there was no reason to do so until your return, sir. ”
“You did nothing wrong, Mr. Barts,” Munroe reassured him.
They had no more questions for the apprentice, so Munroe dismissed him. Kendra watched Barts weave his way across the room to the door. After he’d disappeared, she turned back to Munroe. “Do you think Mr. Barts could be involved in the theft of the body?”
“Good God, no. Absolutely not.”
Kendra didn’t say anything, but she wondered if Munroe’s faith was misplaced.
Barts had been nervous. Sure, he always struck her as nervous.
But Barts had access to the school and the missing body.
Kendra didn’t know how much assistants earned during this time, but she suspected that it wasn’t much.
Bribery was a long-standing practice. Barts could even rationalize it: Who would it hurt? The woman was already dead.
Frowning, Munroe picked up his tankard again.
“Bodies are always valuable to those in the medical field. However, if the interest was dissection, I had two bodies in the morgue. Why only steal the woman? Women and children aren’t worth as much as an adult male.
Why—” He drew in a sharp breath, and something flickered in his intelligent gaze.
“You’ve thought of something,” the Duke prompted.
“Yes. Possibly.” He set down his tankard without taking a drink. “There was a peculiarity about the woman that I failed to mention. When the River Police brought her to me, she wasn’t clothed. That’s not the oddity,” he added hastily. “I’m merely mentioning it to give you a full understanding.”
Kendra nodded. “Go on.”
He said nothing for a long moment. A strange expression had settled behind his eyes.
Then he expelled a breath. “As I told you, I didn’t have time to conduct a postmortem, so I cannot say the cause of death.
But I can say, based on my visual examination, she was not shot, stabbed, or strangled.
I believe—although I can’t be certain—that she was in the Thames for only a day or two.
In my experience, cold water can slow decomposition.
The river is also dreadfully polluted, which hinders marine life.
This allows the body to be more preserved than, say, if she’d been pulled from the ocean. ”
Kendra wasn’t surprised. The stench coming off the river was like a living thing, and was also the main reason wealthier citizens abandoned their homes near the river to move west to the Mayfair District, which was conveniently upwind of the Thames.
“She had abrasions around her wrists and ankles,” Munroe continued.
“Abrasions? Like she’d been restrained?” Kendra was careful to keep her voice neutral, even as her stomach did a quick roll.
“The marks would be consistent with some type of restraint—a sturdy material rather than metal, I’d say,” he acknowledged cautiously. “She also had puncture wounds on the insides of her forearms.”
The Duke looked to Kendra with apprehension. “Dear heavens. Is this the same kind of madman as before?”
When Kendra had first arrived in this period, they’d found the nude body of a young girl floating in the lake at Aldridge Castle.
Kendra had eventually killed the sadistic serial killer preying on prostitutes.
Could they now be dealing with another likeminded madman?
Was that why the body had been stolen? Was the killer afraid it would yield incriminating evidence upon closer scrutiny?
A chill prickled the back of her neck. “I don’t know what we’re dealing with—yet.”
Munroe added quietly, “The restraints and puncture wounds weren’t the most peculiar thing.”
Kendra eyed him. “What else did you see, doctor?”
“It was what I didn’t see. Livor mortis.”
Everyone stared at him. The laughter and conversation around them seemed out of place for their talk.
“How is that possible?” the Duke asked.
“I know of only two possible causes. The woman was either severely anemic and had very little blood in her veins to produce lividity when she was killed, or she simply had no blood in her veins at all. The puncture wounds, the restraints . . .” Munroe shook his head, his gray eyes dark with worry.
“I’m afraid that someone took this woman, restrained her, and then drained her dry. ”
***
The mood inside the carriage was somber as the horses trotted down the dark streets to Alec’s residence at 25 Bedford Square. The amber glow from the interior brass lantern illuminated the lines on the Duke’s face, making him appear older than his fifty-plus years.
He met Kendra’s gaze. “This morning, we had one murder to investigate. Now it appears that we have two—if the woman from the Thames is connected.”
Three, Kendra added silently. If Edwina had indeed witnessed Lady Westford’s murder and had been caught by the killer.
But she didn’t point that out. Instead, she said, “I don’t see how they aren’t connected.”
She considered the timeline. On Wednesday, Jane Doe had been found in the Thames and delivered to Munroe’s morgue.
A scandal sheet had an article about the body on Thursday, and Friday morning, Lady Westford arrived to view the body.
For some reason, the countess waited until Saturday night to go to Bowden Theater, inquiring about Clarice, the missing actress.
The next day, Lady Westford was murdered.
And now the body from the Thames—a body that may not have had any blood—had disappeared. What the hell’s going on?
Kendra looked out the window when the carriage drew to a halt. They’d arrived at 25 Bedford Square. My new home. That was enough give her a jolt, momentarily pushing the murders out of her mind.
The Duke leaned forward to look at them as Alec assisted Kendra down the carriage steps. “This is not how I imagined we’d celebrate your wedding day.”
The bells of a distant clocktower rang out. Kendra smiled up at the Duke. “The wedding was perfect.”
He returned her smile. “It was. Good evening.” He settled back in his seat as the coachman put up the steps and closed the door, then the carriage rolled down the street, quickly swallowed up by the ghostly fog that had drifted in an hour ago.
Alec drew Kendra’s hand through the crook of his elbow and ushered her up the flagstone path to the distinguished brick mansion. The bells stopped—ten o’clock.
“Normally, the staff would line up to greet their new mistress,” Alec told her as they approached the glossy black door, illuminated by two gas lamps on each side.
“That sounds tiring. I hope they don’t do it every day.”
Alec grinned. “They won’t even do it tonight, as most of my staff is still at Alcott Park. We were supposed to stay here only one night before beginning our honeymoon there.”
Kendra tilted her head to look up at Alec when they paused on the stoop. Keeping her gaze locked on his, she slid her hand down his arm in a slow caress until their fingers laced together.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she whispered. “As long as I’m with you.”
“I don’t mind postponing our honeymoon—with one caveat.”
The gleam in his eyes quickened her blood and made the breath evaporate from her lungs.
She kept her eyes locked on his as he lowered his head.
His warm breath feathered her lips, making them tingle, an instant before his mouth covered hers.
Heat invaded her, melting her bones. Hands still linked, she pressed herself against him, gave herself up to him.
The hours of viewing death and speculating about the worst sort of humanity vanished like wisps of smoke. The night suddenly hummed with magic.
Kendra was breathless, her ears buzzing, by the time Alec broke off the kiss. He raised his head, his green eyes nearly black.
“The caveat,” he whispered huskily.
Kendra barely heard him over the thrumming of her heart. “What is it?”
“Our honeymoon can wait.” His mouth curled in a slow, sexy smile. “But I must insist on a honeymoon night.”
Keeping her gaze locked on his, Kendra loosened his cravat, then raised herself on her toes to brush her lips against his ear. “I think that’s a wonderful idea, my lord.”
She didn’t take her eyes off Alec as they entered the house, failing to notice the road to the park—and the shadowy figure watching them from the trees.