Chapter Twelve #3
“The fact she died in a fire, when she’d been tortured with flames, scorched with hot knives by her family...oh, sir. I can only imagine the heartache it left you with,” she said.
Tears pricked my eyes, but I willed them away.
“My perceptive apprentice,” I said, after a moment.
I hoped to change the subject, leaving her satisfied that I had answered just a little and sated some of her curiosity. “Now listen, Grace. I...back at that apartment, I asked you to wait outside. I wanted to deal with the body myself, get him bagged up – ”
“I would have dearly loved to have helped you,” said Grace, sounding sombre despite the annoyance I could sense from her. She felt I’d robbed her of an opportunity to remove a body from its death place. I knew she’d have loved it, but it was out of the question.
“The biohazard removal team were already inside when I got there. They deal with difficult circumstances such as this one, when a body has been left to decay in situ for weeks or months, leaving fluids and pathogens which could be harmful if anyone should come into contact with them. Their job is to leave the site decontaminated, disinfected, and safe, after a complicated death,” I said, glancing at her in the rear-view all the while.
She frowned, deep in thought, as she fiddled with her hands in her lap.
“Anyway, the team helped me to remove the body from the scene for transportation, while they stayed behind to clean the apartment. It wasn’t something I wanted you to see just yet, in case it traumatised you.”
Grace laughed, then, startling me. I let my eyes drift momentarily from the road to look at her directly.
She pressed three fingers to her mouth to stifle her laughter, her shoulders shuddering, avoiding my gaze as she watched the traffic going by.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
She cleared her throat, an amused smirk still teasing the corners of her mouth.
“You underestimate me, sir. That’s all.”
A silence fell between us. I drove on, pondering her reaction.
“Then you’ll be all right to deal with this particular charge – to assist me, despite the state it’s in – when we get back?
” I asked, testing her further. “Mr Taylor wasn’t found for weeks, and they’re unsure how long he had actually been laying there.
He was known to have heart problems. You remember what his sister said in the meeting this morning?
They were distant, hadn’t spoken for months.
The poor man is in a dreadful state, just dreadful, and I can’t prepare you enough for what you’re going to see. ”
“I’m quite certain I can handle it,” said Grace, with her soft, feminine voice and northern accent.
It was more fitting for a nursery nurse than a funereal apprentice.
A voice I imagined offering gentle encouragement to a child.
A voice that said nothing was too much of a bother; nothing was worth fretting about.
She unnerved me, and it took a lot to unnerve me.
We’d see if she could handle it soon enough, once we unloaded the body into the mortuary and brought him to the table. I was so certain of her repulsion, once she saw the true state of things, that I put her chuckling out of my mind as we drove back to Crowthorne House.
I whistled as I pulled up the wide garage door and brought the body out on the covered stretcher, my shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows.
Grace seemed to watch me curiously rather than the body, more fascinated with the living than the dead for the moment.
The unnerving sensation crept in again, slowly, as she helped me wheel him in to the elevator.
My eyes caught the slate-grey sky and a crow perched atop the shattered orangery in the grounds. It called out, once, as if in warning – of what, I couldn’t know – and flew away with a spring of its black legs.
The smell as we hoisted the body to the slab was unbearable, wafting up and making us both cough.
She reacted to that, at least, in a predictable way.
The stench of a body, so much like rotting fruit, was an unforgettable smell.
As I unzipped Mr Taylor, the stench increased tenfold, sending me reeling.
I doubled over, hands on my knees, and retched.
As I fumbled in my pocket for the mint-smelling vapour rub to smear beneath my nose, I noticed Grace held only a finger beneath hers, apparently more used to the smell already than I was.
I dabbed the clinical-smelling balm beneath my nostrils and offered the pot to Grace, who shook her head.
“You can’t possibly abide this smell?” I asked, my frown deepening as I stood up straight.
“My skin, sir. It won’t tolerate anything like that. I’m better off without it.”
I sobered, knowing it was a sensible enough answer, but still, her reaction – or lack of one – bothered me. I folded my arms.
“How are you getting on with the treatment from the doctor?”
“Very well, thank you. I feel much better already.” She smiled softly as she took off her jacket and hung it up on the coat rack, before rolling up her sleeves and donning gloves. We both gowned up in silence, and I sensed no trepidation in Grace whatsoever.
When I opened the bag entirely and pulled it away, I was grateful for my protective goggles, gloves, and facemask. The god-awful stench filled the room, so pungent and thick that I questioned whether I’d make it without vomiting – and I’d been doing this job a long time.
Grace only stared, her dark eyes pooling with wonder, at the rotting corpse of Mr Taylor.
He was barely perceivable as a man, but for his overall shape in the vague length and width of a human, and what could be seen of his sodden, mold-eaten clothes, or what remained of them.
He had been in situ on a sofa, festering in his own juices, during the process of decomposition.
His face was barely discernible. Over all he had taken on a deep, blood-red colour with little to no definition; some hair, pulp-like flesh, and bones beginning to show as the skin sloughed away from it.
Around the area of the mouth, I could see something awful but not uncommon.
Larvae, writhing, from inside the moist cavity.
Grace seemed to focus her eyes on those most of all, watching them, fascinated.
I felt the urge to apologise for the terrible sight she was seeing; to offer to take her away from it, to get her some fresh air, and hold her to calm her down. But there was no need at all. Grace couldn’t tear her eyes away.
“Are you enjoying this?” I asked.
A pin could have been heard dropping onto the cold tile floor, the silence stretched so long between us.
Grace told me she was experienced with death, but not like this. A recently-passed human body was nothing like the situation laying before us now. It was a world away.
“I wouldn’t say enjoying, necessarily,” said Grace, listlessly, though her expression told me otherwise. “Perhaps I’m at home with it, that’s all.”
A chill crept over my skin.
“And how could that be?” I asked, swallowing hard. My throat was dry, all the moisture retreating from me in panic.
Grace let out a long breath, fogging up the lower portion of her goggles. Her voice was slightly muffled behind her mask, but I could hear her perfectly well.
“I told you my father suffered a heart attack and died at home, right in front of us,” said Grace, not meeting my stern gaze.
“Go on.”
“My mother held his head in her lap. She couldn’t leave him – wouldn’t leave him.
She loved him, depended on him, even though she knew what he did.
..what he did to me. She turned her loathing towards me instead of where it ought to be aimed, at him.
When he died, she couldn’t let him go. It was the beginning of her illness.
She took to her bed once it became impossible to keep holding him, and that’s where she stayed,” said Grace, her voice barely above a whisper.
A cold sweat had come over me, and I realised my hands were shaking at my sides.
“H-how long did she lay with him?” I asked, my voice breaking as I stuttered. “How long had he – ”
“Weeks,” said Grace, finally meeting my eyes. “In warm weather.”
The heat would have made short work of him, and it would have been a gruesome, terrible thing for anyone to see, let alone for a loved one. Grace had to have been horrified to see her mother holding a bloated corpse, refusing to move from the spot, as if she might rot away with him.
“My poor darling,” I said, wanting to go to her and hold her, but feeling as though I was frozen to the spot.
“No, it’s all right,” said Grace, her mask moving as she smiled softly. My heart pounded in my chest. “Like you, when your brother died, I didn’t feel so bad at all. In fact – and it may sound heartless, sir, but it’s the truth – I liked it. I enjoyed his decay.”
I bowed my head, shivering, wishing I’d never asked. Moments stretched between us. Grace watched the body quite serenely while I pulled myself together.
“We’ll be doing our best for Mr Taylor, but it’ll be a closed casket.
Restoration is out of the question in this highly advanced state of decomposition.
I’m afraid even my skills couldn’t stretch to making any kind of viewing possible for him.
To offer it could result in distress for the client.
With all its legal ramifications, I would advise against it.
We’ll be using a more concentrated solution to embalm where we can, but looking at the state he’s in now, I’m not hopeful. We’ll need to use our respirators.”
“Those heavy breathing masks?” Grace asked. “I’d wondered when we’d be using those.”
“It wouldn’t be safe to use anything else,” I said, grateful that we’d moved on to more technical matters. “Our main task will be to eradicate the insects and the smell, so that he’s in a pleasant state for the funeral and burial.”
We began the process, flowing easily into our rhythm, moving around one another with ease. The look of fascination never left Grace’s eyes, and I thought I could hear her muttering to herself behind her respirator, making private comments as we exposed more and more of Mr Taylor.
Grace was rarer, and more peculiar, than I could have ever known or guessed on our first meeting.
As my concern for her morbid interest grew, flames licked their way around the store-room door, my brother and his menaces creeping their way into my mind. I closed my eyes tight for a moment and willed them away, unwilling to deal with him now.
There came a thud at the short basement window above our heads, as if from someone’s boot.
Hurried footsteps followed it. Grace and I turned abruptly, startled by the sudden noise.
There came the rapid fluttering of wings as the crows dispersed, frightened away by something, or someone, who had been there moments ago.
“What if it’s him?” asked Grace, her voice trembling.
I watched the window, though nobody appeared, and noted that the footsteps hadn’t seemed hard enough to be a male. A sickness swelled inside my stomach, wondering if it could be who I feared it to be most of all...but no, it was impossible.
“Put it out of your mind,” I said softly, finally tearing my eyes from the window. “I heard a child’s footsteps, I’m sure. Not his. I’ll consult the security system later on.”