“Yes. Please.”
The doctor scurried into the next room and came back with a paper-wrapped parcel that he laid down on the generous margins of the autopsy table. I pulled open the twine and drew out a beautifully made shoe of light brown leather, and set its heel against the sheet of paper Holmes spread out with his sketch of the path-side indentations: an exact match. The shoes were so new they had not yet developed creases. The right one had a splash of dried blood on its toe. The soles and heels were clotted with damp chalk and grass, matching the boots I had left in the car outside.
I picked up the left shoe and slid it onto her foot; as I'd thought, there was room for two fingers behind her heel.
“The shoe is at least a size too large,” I commented. Holmes grunted, and turned back to his close examination of her small, soft hands.
I tucked the cloth back over her naked feet, then took my time re-wrapping the shoes. I held the stockings up to the light, but all they told me was that she had fallen to her right knee on soft ground once, leaving a green stain and starting a small hole in the mesh that had not had time to unravel. The hat was a summer-weight straw cloche, as new as the shoes. Close examination showed one small fragment of grass adhering to the left side of the brim, with a smear of chalky soil beside it: The hat had fallen from her head and rolled on the ground.
With reluctance, I turned my attention farther up the table, to have my eye caught by a mark on her torso. I pulled the sheet down as far as her navel, and saw a dark red tattoo, an inch and a half long, in a shape that, had I not seen it elsewhere already, my eyes might have read as phallic:
It lay in the centre of her body, between the umbilicus and the rib-cage; its soft edges indicated that it had been there for years. I pointed it out to Holmes, who turned his attention away from the finger-nails of her left hand (where, I noticed, she had worn a wedding ring, no longer there).
Over the protest of the doctor, we pulled away the sheet entirely, and turned her over (the unnatural flop of her head made me very glad I had not eaten the cake on the wife's tea tray), but there were no other tattoos, and what marks she bore had been done long ago.
We turned her back and pulled the sheet up again. Before her head was covered, Holmes tipped her head slightly to show me the skin behind her left ear: A lock of hair had been snipped away, leaving a bare patch the diameter of a pencil. I nodded, and walked around to look at her right arm and hand. She had a bruise on the tender inside of her wrist, old enough to have begun to fade; one of her neatly manicured finger-nails was broken; there was a grey stain on her middle finger.
I pointed it out to Holmes. “Ink?”
He took her hand, splaying her child-like fingers so as to see more clearly. “Yes,” he said. He returned her arm to her side, but his own hand lingered on hers. He studied her, this woman his son had loved. “I wonder what manner of voice she had?” he murmured.
Then he twitched the sheet up to cover her.
“When will you do the autopsy?” he asked Huxtable.
“I was scheduled to do it this afternoon, although-”
“I would appreciate it if you would send me a copy of your results. You have my address?”
“Yes, but-”
“Who is the officer in charge of the investigation?”
“Well, it would have been Detective Inspector Weller, but I understand it's been given to Scotland Yard because of the… unusual aspects of the case. Which is why, as I was about to say, the poor girl might be taken up to London for the autopsy. I was told I should hear one way or the other before Sunday dinner.”
“I see. I shall ring you later today, then, and see where it stands. Good day, Dr Huxtable.”
Our hasty departure took us as far as the doorway before Huxtable remembered why we had come in the first place.
“Er, sorry,” he called, “the message said you might be able to identify-”
“No!” Holmes snapped. “We don't know who she is.”
I stared at him, but he swept out of the door, leaving the doctor spluttering his confusion as to why we had shown such interest in a stranger.
At the car, I got behind the wheel and turned to ask Holmes why he had claimed ignorance, but one glance at the side of his face had me reaching for the starter and getting the motor-car on the road.
The expression that hardened his features and turned his eyes to flame was one I had rarely seen there.
Rage, pure and hot.
22
Transformation: How could the man control the process?
What Tools might shape Transformation, what methods
bring it about? Testimony, II:5
HALFWAY TO POLEGATE, HOLMES FINALLY STIRRED, and reached for the cigarette case in his pocket. When the tobacco was going, he rubbed the match out between his fingers and let the breeze take it, then seemed to notice for the first time that we were on the move.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. If I pass through a second time without greeting Mrs Hudson, she might just go back to Surrey permanently. Apart from which, with that expression on your face, I figured you'd be wanting your revolver.”
“This was my son's wife.” His voice was like ice. “A young woman who had lifted herself from the gutter on the strength of her own wits. A person whose acquaintance I was looking forward to making. Instead of which, I find her laid out like a slaughtered farm-animal.”
“Did you see anything under her finger-nails?”
“If she struggled, it did not include digging her fingers into the ground or scratching at an assailant.”
I thought this as good a time as any to tell him what I had seen. “Those shoes were very new and not inexpensive, but a woman would never have bought that ill-fitting a pair for herself. They gave her blisters. And the stockings she wore were far too long for her. She'd had to hook the garters down into the stocking itself-one of them had already worn through.”
“One might add the general unlikelihood of a Bohemian choosing to dress in silk stockings and a flowered summer frock. I saw no such garments in her wardrobe at home.”
I thought of my conversation with the neighbour's child. “Perhaps she dressed that way to make a more staid impression on someone.”
“But if, as you suggest, she chose neither the shoes nor the clothing herself, then either she assembled the garments from another woman's wardrobe, or she was given them to wear.”
“By someone who didn't know her size very well,” I said without thinking. To my consternation, Holmes did not react, even though my statement clearly suggested that Damian's knowledge of his wife's dress size was a factor to be taken into consideration. He simply smoked and looked daggers at the passing view, while I bent over the wheel and concentrated on not driving over any distracted churchgoers or Sunday ramblers.
Greetings with Mrs Hudson cost me an hour, which Holmes spent shouting down the telephone and crashing about in his laboratory. I was saved from the enumeration of her Surrey friend's ills by Holmes' bellow from above that he wished to leave in a quarter hour. I tore myself away and hammered up the stairs, throwing an assortment of things into a bag and conversing with him as we went in and out of various rooms.
“-need to speak with the station masters in Eastbourne, Polegate, and Seaford, and show them her
