constituted sufficient explanation for his inability to complete his preparations.
‘With pleasure,’ Amelia replied.
Liebermann caught Rheinhardt’s eye and their shared amazement brought them perilously close to laughter. Such an invitation was unprecedented.
Professor Mathias blew his nose and observed the Englishwoman’s deft movements. When she was finished, she stepped back from the trolley and Mathias inspected her handiwork. His palpable relief was evident in the softening of his features.
‘Very good,’ he said, as if nothing remarkable had transpired.
He turned to face the autopsy table and folded the upper sheet back, revealing the corpse’s face. He placed a finger on the dead woman’s cheek and traced one of the lines that curved out from her nostrils and arced around her lips.
‘Only distant death can heal the presence of such suffering; where the portals shall open, there shall I be healed again …’
Then he removed the sheets, exposing the dead woman completely.
‘What is her name?’
‘Selma Wirth,’ Rheinhardt replied.
‘And where was she discovered?’
‘Neubau. In her apartment — lying on the parlour floor.’
‘Was she found lying on her back?’
‘Yes.’
Mathias picked up a large pair of scissors and cut vertically from the hem of the dress to the cinched waist.
‘No undergarments?’
‘Her drawers had been removed — voluntarily, so it would seem. We found them in the parlour beside her.’
Mathias examined the material that was bunched up directly underneath the woman’s genitals. He pressed out the creases with the palm of his hand.
‘I cannot see any traces. And there are no indications to suggest forced ingress.’ Then he leaned forward, prised the woman’s labia apart with his fingers and inhaled. The subsequent noise he produced was stertorous. The old man looked round at his companions. ‘My nose is congested: I can’t smell a thing.’ His words were as much an appeal for assistance as a statement of fact.
While Rheinhardt and Liebermann were exchanging looks of alarm, Amelia took Professor Mathias’s place between Selma Wirth’s legs and breathed in deeply. She did so with the serious determination of a convalescent eager to experience the invigorating tang of a coastal breeze.
‘I cannot detect anything …’ she paused before adding
Mathias shuffled over to a cupboard and returned with a flask of blue-purple liquid and a tray of glass slides and cover slips. He placed them by the microscope.
‘I am happy for you to prepare the slide, Miss Lydgate,’ said Mathias. ‘Please proceed.’
The Englishwoman stood at the end of the autopsy table, folded her coat sleeve back, and insinuated her right forefinger into the dead woman’s vagina. Her first metacarpal began to move from side to side, suggesting that the hidden digit was rotating. This image of Amelia Lydgate — so prim and controlled — exploring the internal anatomy of another woman (albeit a dead woman) aroused shameful feelings in Liebermann which he tried to suppress. He lowered his eyes and garnered some consolation from the sound of Rheinhardt nervously coughing into his hand and shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Curiously, Amelia showed no sign of embarrassment or discomfort, only the focused resolve of an individual utterly engaged in an important task.
Amelia withdrew her finger and turned it beneath the electric light. The cast of her face altered slightly — suggesting satisfaction — as the semi-transparent film covering her white skin glistened. Taking a glass slide from the tray, she rolled her finger over its surface, leaving a grey mucoid smear. She then dipped the slide into the hematoxylin, shook off the excess liquid and fixed the slide on the stage of the microscope. Finally, she wiped her finger on a grubby towel that was hanging from a hook under the bench and sat down on the stool.
With practised ease she altered the angle of the mirror, changed the objectives, and made coarse and fine adjustments.
‘She was most definitely violated,’ said Amelia.
The Englishwoman moved aside and let Professor Mathias look into the eyepiece.
‘Come over here and see for yourself, inspector,’ said the professor.
When Rheinhardt peered into the microscope he saw a luminous blue world populated by a swarm of bullet- headed creatures with long tails.
‘Sperm cells,’ said Mathias. He returned to the autopsy table where he completed the task of cutting off and removing Selma Wirth’s clothes.
Her nakedness, brilliantly pale beneath the electric light, produced in the onlookers a respectful silence. In due course, the hilt of the dagger commanded their attention. It seemed monstrously large. An annulus of dark crystals had collected around the blade and the dead woman’s breasts were marbled with blood. Professor Mathias filled a bucket with water and cleaned the body with a sponge.
‘I do not see any bruises,’ said the professor. ‘But you will notice that her arms and hands are quite red — the skin is dry and cracked. What do you make of that, Miss Lydgate?’
‘Did this lady suffer from a dermatological complaint?’
Mathias tilted his hand in the air and then reversed the movement. His expression communicated that although this was an acceptable answer, it was not the right one.
‘The inflammation does not proceed up the arm,’ said Mathias. ‘Notice how it stops rather abruptly at the elbow.’ Amelia frowned. ‘Such an unusual pattern strongly suggests that Fraulein Wirth was a laundry worker. Am I right, inspector?’
‘Yes,’ said Rheinhardt. ‘You are.’
The old man allowed himself a self-congratulatory half-smile. Mathias dropped the sponge into the bucket and then grasped the hilt of the dagger. He pulled — but the weapon resisted. He pulled harder and it came out, producing a slight rasp. The old man looked at Rheinhardt: ‘You don’t need a pathologist to tell you how she died, inspector.’
31
IT WAS EARLY MORNING and a weightless sun hovered behind a screen of diaphanous cloud. Rheinhardt was making a wary descent down a slippery cobbled road towards a square-fronted building with a flat roof on which four cylindrical water tanks were clearly visible. A second storey, rising behind these tanks, presented an exterior comprised almost entirely of slatted shutters.
His speculation was confirmed when one of the shutters opened, revealing row after row of suspended undergarments.
A waste pipe, positioned next to the tanks, was expelling steam in sharp bursts. The sound it produced was oppressive and industrial, a repetitive mechanical cough, the unrelieved regularity of which had the potential, so Rheinhardt supposed, to induce a very bad headache. He watched the steam rise and wondered how the occupants of the building preserved their mental equilibrium. Perhaps they didn’t …
When Rheinhardt arrived at the entrance he stopped and listened to the cacophony coming from inside:
