place it on the carpeted floor, then stepped away and sat on the stool with his back to the piano.
“This is what I called you about. I didn’t know what else to do. I mean, I got one hell of a shock when I found it a few hours ago.”
“Don’t tell me it’s a live rat.”
“Trust me, it isn’t alive. The lid was sealed tight. I had to pry it open.”
Anya didn’t like dead rats any more than live ones, but she slid off the lounge and onto the floor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Brody stand and move further away. Whatever was inside really had him spooked.
She tentatively wiped some dust off the lid with the back of her hand and revealed a detailed marquetry design. “This is beautiful craftsmanship,” she said, but her host was staring out the window. She couldn’t imagine what was inside that could be so disturbing. Undoing the clasp, she flipped open the lid and lifted what felt like wax-paper wrapping. She quickly sat back on her haunches, unable to believe her eyes.
“Where did you find it?”
Brody didn’t move. “Under the floorboards in what was my parents’ bedroom. I was rearranging the walk-in wardrobe when part of the old floor gave way. When I eventually yanked my ankle out, the box was right there.”
Anya studied the tiny dead form, curled up inside the small chamber. The miniature body lay in a fetal position, knees resting against the chin. There was no doubt. This was a fossilized human baby.
The pair remained in silence for a few moments.
“I could do with that coffee now,” Anya said, returning the lid and closing the latch. “After I wash my hands.”
“Of course.”
Brody moved to the kitchen area with a glass conservatory overlooking more gardens. A granite island-bench dominated the area, with copper pots hanging from a chained metal grid above it. Dan obviously had no trouble reaching the utensils that were out of reach of most people.
His hands trembled as he loaded a small machine with a metal capsule and placed a demitasse cup, the only size small enough to fit, under the nozzle. The smell of rich coffee filled the air.
He pulled a carton of full-cream milk from a serving door in the stainless steel fridge and placed some in a steel mug adjacent to the machine. Within seconds, he poured frothy milk into a china mug and repeated the process.
Anya washed her hands in the sink and dried them with paper towel from a dispenser at the wall. The mug warmed her hands. She could appreciate the lawyer’s anxiety at the find. Despite dealing with criminal trials, he had probably never seen a human body before, let alone experienced the shock of discovering one in his parents’ wardrobe.
“Do you have any idea whose child it could be?”
He offered his guest a cane stool, which she accepted.
“This house has been in Dad’s side of the family since it was built three generations ago. It was always passed on to the eldest son.”
“Was there ever any scandal about illegitimate pregnancies?”
Dan shook his head and washed out the used steel mug. Apart from fresh basil in a small vase, the benches were empty of clutter.
“Do we need to call crime scene? I mean, will they want to photograph the…”
“Possibly. I’ll check with them, but it’s not as uncommon as you might think. With garden renovations, it’s not unheard of for someone to discover tiny remains, particularly given the number of stillbirths and backyard abortions in the past.”
Brody nodded but didn’t appear relieved in any way.
Anya excused herself to make the call. Moments later she returned, with a swab kit from the bag in her car.
“I just need to take some shots of the wardrobe with my mobile. I’ll take the box with me if you like, and take it to the morgue. There’ll have to be a post-mortem.”
“Of course. I’ll show you where I found it.”
“I should probably take a DNA swab from you now, if you don’t mind, for comparison to the child.”
Dan leaned against the bench. “It…it isn’t mine.”
“I’m not suggesting that. We know it’s old from the type of box and condition. But it would help us work out whether the child was born to someone in your family.”
“My grandparents always had servants. My grandfather had a reputation for being quite the ladies’ man, before and during his marriage.”
The irony of his own reputation with women appeared lost on Dan Brody.
Anya knew it wouldn’t have been the first time that a servant was impregnated by her boss and the results hidden. But to hide a dead child in the wardrobe wasn’t the wisest move. It would have made more sense to throw the remains away or bury them.
She removed the cotton-tipped swab from her kit and Brody bent forward, allowing her to scrape the inside of his cheek. She felt his breath on her face as she removed the swab and returned it to its sealed container.
Dan reached forward enough to brush her hand.
“I’m just…well, grateful you’re here. I didn’t know who else to call.”
Anya felt a surge of blood to her face. She had never seen Brody like this and had never imagined that he could be so vulnerable. At work he was always in control and his arrogance was incomparable, even in the egotistical domain of law. Then again, if anything could rattle a person, an unidentified dead body in the house was it. His girlfriend would no doubt comfort him soon enough. For a brief moment, she felt jealous of the new woman.
With a permanent marker from her kit, she labeled the specimen before returning to the drawing room. Brody stood in the doorway, keeping his distance.
Anya bent down and collected the tiny body in its makeshift coffin. She hoped for its sake, and for Brody’s, that the baby had died of natural causes.
12
The following afternoon Anya removed the wax-paper covering, held her breath and slowly lifted the remains from the box. Any uneven pressure could break off limbs. It was a wonder the body had survived the damaged floorboards and the subsequent car journey.
The white form seemed more delicate against the cold steel dissecting table.
Jeff Sales had been finishing off some paperwork and greeted Anya with something akin to excitement at her find. He was keen to examine the remains as soon as possible.
“It’s an adipocere all right, not that I doubted you.”
Unlike the normal process of decomposition, this skin and soft tissue had undergone transformation. What once was skin was now a hard waxy substance-adipocere-most obvious over the buttocks, abdomen and cheeks, the fattiest areas of the body.
“It’s a reasonable size and it’s possible that it was delivered full-term.” Jeff switched on the overhead surgical lights. “What do we know about it?”
“Only that it was found in a wardrobe, under the floorboards in an old wooden box. At the moment we have no idea who gave birth or how it got there, or whether it ever lived to take a breath.”
“So we’re looking to see if any signs of homicide are present.” He moved the light directly over the abdomen. “Remarkable, I think we can presume it’s a female judging by the genitalia. I’ve never seen anything quite this preserved before. There’s a stump of an umbilicus so at one stage someone cut the cord, post delivery.”
Determining whether or not the baby had taken a breath was not that easy. If the lungs had ever inflated, they were now collapsed and semidecomposed.
“Is there a chance you can rehydrate the umbilical stump and see histologically whether the child was freshly born or a few days old?”
“That’s an excellent thought, I’ll take some biopsies.”
