Chapter 6
“My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don’t know anything at all.”
Oscar Wilde
Once the poor dead girl’s discreetly draped body had been laid out upon the Hospital Wing’s sterile white enameled table, Marigold felt the fear and horror she had thus far been able to keep at bay well up inside her. “Are you going to perform an autopsy?”
Though Marigold had been privy to the information Doc Oliphant had shared after performing the autopsy in the Great Misery Island murder, she had not been present for the grizzly undertakings.
It was one thing to know about and understand the importance of a postmortem examination; it was quite another thing to be confronted with taking part in one.
“Nothing so clinical,” Dr. Barker assured her.
“I’m not entirely qualified to do a complete postmortem, nor are my facilities set up for one.
But I should like to make a record of my own preliminary observations, especially as symptoms and indications that are present at the moment may fade or change as the natural progression of death takes over. ”
But Dr. Barker must have sensed Marigold’s trepidation.
“Why don’t you sit over here?” she suggested, indicating a smaller table to one side.
“Let me find you some paper … Oh, and a blanket—you must be frozen. We ought to send up to your room for dry clothes. I can’t have you getting sick on top of everything—” She removed to the wardroom, returning with a thick wool blanket. “Wrap this around you.”
“Thank you.” Marigold accepted the blanket, but she had rather be slightly uncomfortable in her damp clothes than have anyone going through her precisely organized drawers.
“I’m warm enough now that we’re indoors.
” She took up the pen and paper and seated herself so the examination table wasn’t in the direct line of her vision.
Not that she felt entirely squeamish, but it would not hurt to take some sensible precautions.
“All right then.” The doctor took a deep breath and stilled, standing quietly in front of the draped body. “Let us begin. Tell me again, from the beginning, how you came to find her. When did you see her first?”
Marigold focused her mind’s eye on the scene. “I saw the hat first. I thought it was Aggie Newton’s. She had one—a hat—similar to this girl’s. From Jordon Marsh, she said.”
“Write that down,” the doctor instructed.
“Yes, ma’am.” As she did so, Marigold felt more of her poise and confidence return. “I did realize she had been in the water for some time—long enough for her skirts to become quite badly entangled under the corner of the boathouse.”
“Yes?” The doctor encouraged. “And for her skin to exhibit vascular marbling and livor mortis—that is, darkening or discoloration. What else?”
“She had, or has, only one glove—black suede—as if she had lost its mate or …” Marigold trailed off, reluctant to make a supposition at such an early date. “Well, clearly, her other glove was lost, either in the process of her slipping or falling into the water, or before.”
“Mm,” the doctor made a vague sound of something approaching agreement. “Also write that down.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Marigold said again, concentrating on making sure her handwriting was both neat and precise.
“You took a good look at her once you’d got her out of the water, I gather?”
“I tried,” Marigold confessed. “I noticed the top two buttons on her jacket were missing. Or are missing,” she corrected herself. “Though the jacket”—a plush, dark velvet with fashionably wide sleeves—“might still have a maker’s label. It seems fairly new.”
“Does it? What makes you say that?”
Marigold screwed her eyes shut so her mind’s eye could picture the body of the girl arrayed before her on the dock. “The fabric was soft, even sopping wet. The pile was long and shiny, even in the light in the boathouse, not worn.”
“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “I can see the threads from the buttons here. They’re short and frayed, as if—”
“As if someone had tugged at the lapel and torn them off—perhaps in a struggle? Oh, and there was a sort of scuffed gash on her boot that looked new, or at least unrepaired—otherwise her boots were quite well polished.”
“Very observant. Yes.” There was a moment of quiet. “There is a label sewn in at the back collar, but I’m going to need your help. I’m going to attempt to move her head. If you could read the maker?”
Marigold obliged with alacrity, grateful to have something so mundane to concentrate upon.
“Wa—” she had to reach in to tug the tag straight.
“Watteau. Oh, Madame Watteau, at Number Six Beacon Street. I know that shop.” It was just down a block or so from Isabella’s far more established—and expensive—atelier, the House of Dana.
Which brought another thought. “Are there other labels on the rest of her clothes?”
“You check the hat,” Dr. Barker instructed, gesturing to the sodden tam on the clean draped side table.
While Marigold had been taking her careful notes, the doctor must have freed the hat from the tangle of the girl’s wet hair.
“Jordan Marsh,” Marigold read. “Just as I thought—or as Aggie said.” It must have been a very popular hat for two girls in such close proximity to have purchased it.
“I’ll have to ask her if she knows of another girl on campus who might have owned it. ”
And the pin, which had first caught her eye, was fastened to the spray of feathers and was incised with some writing. “S.d.B.L.,” Marigold read. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“I suppose I can look that up,” Marigold offered, already trying out combinations in her head—South Dedham something Library …
“Good ide—” Dr. Barker rattled a nearby swivel lamp into place to get a clearer look at something. “Blast. Just as I feared.”
Marigold immediately looked up from her examination of the pin. “What is it?”
The doctor had unbuttoned the high neck of the plaid-patterned blouse and held it away from the neck. “Marks of a particular sort. But notes, please, if you will resume. Take this down exactly.”
The doctor only waited for Marigold to rush back into place before she began a terse narration.
“Despite extensive livor mortis, there is distinct bruising all around the front of the neck, dark, well-articulated. Consistent with manual strangulation. Indeed, judging from the blossom of blood risen beneath the skin at the center of her throat, either her larynx or her hyoid bone was likely fractured by the pressure from—” Dr. Barker took a moment to take a deep breath before she resumed.
“—bruises consistent with handprints, in a pattern showing individual fingers, can be observed. And judging from the color of the bruises as well as the rest of the skin, they were inflicted just before the subject’s death. ”
A hideous chill settled deep into Marigold’s bones—she couldn’t help the shiver that crawled across her skin. “You’re saying she was strangled, not drowned?”
“She was,” Dr. Barker confirmed quietly. “By somebody with very strong hands. The marks are quite unmistakable.”
Silence yawned between them, filled with growing horror.
Rowers generally had very strong hands.
Had one of the Greek chorus of the senior class oarswomen behind Marigold not an hour ago done this? Sarah Appleton and her too-quick denial came swiftly to mind.
But Marigold was getting ahead of herself. Rational thought precluded letting her personal animosity for her rival color her thinking.
“Those other marks?” Marigold sought refuge in logic. “The little red dots on her face and especially in her eyes?” she ventured over her suddenly tight throat. “What did you call them?”
“Petechiae,” the doctor said again. “Formed when capillaries burst under strain and leak blood into the surface of the skin. Consistent with strangulation. The chill of the water may have acted to arrest the fading of the red marks and darker bruises.”
“She didn’t drown.” Somehow it was a small relief to think that this poor girl might not have suffered like the others in Salem Sound, thrashing and fighting as the cold water closed over them.
“Perhaps.” Dr. Barker frowned so hard she had to adjust her spectacles on her nose.
“It would have depended upon the degree of strangulation—whether it was enough to only make her pass out before she was thrown—” The doctor’s voice broke with emotion.
“—or pushed into the lake. I’ll have to measure these marks more precisely.
” She cleared her throat to collect herself.
“But let us continue the visual examination. Her hands also show some bruising around the wrist. Less lurid or deep than the marks to the neck, but still visible. Consistent with being restrained. Her nails, which are neat and well kept—buffed regularly, I should think—show no obvious abrasions or detritus collected by scratching.” The doctor took up a magnifying glass and carefully surveyed the girl’s pale white fingertips, before she moved on.
“But the water may have washed that away. And the cold temperature of the water will have also arrested the bloating that typically progresses along with the rigor of death.”
While Marigold forced herself to focus on unemotionally recording the doctor’s words, Dr. Barker moved her lens on. “Looking again at the clothing—what was it you noticed about her skirts?”
“The large rip at the hem—that was where her skirts had become tangled with the piling under the boathouse.” Marigold tried to remember her exact words upon the dock.
“Her skirt ripped—there—when I pulled her out.” And then she remembered something else.
“But when I was pulling her up onto the dock, I thought the button at the waist—or the material surrounding said button—seemed to have given way as if it were—”