The Anatomist's Wife (4 page)

I glanced past Alana to the man standing beyond her. I knew Mr. Gage had witnessed
our silent exchange, but I didn’t care. I loved my sister. If that made me seem weak
to this man, so be it. And so help me God, if he tried to use that against me, I would
hurt him far worse than this murderer ever could. Just because I had never held a
knife did not mean I didn’t know how to use one.

If only I had known then how greatly such an assertion would be tested.

CHAPTER THREE

T
he chapel where Lady Godwin’s body had been stored was located on the far western
end of Gairloch Castle. It often bore the brunt of the ferocious winds coming off
Loch Ewe in winter, blocking the rest of the castle from a direct blow. Being the
coldest part of the estate, the western block was rarely used anymore, and at an hour
past midnight, the rooms and hallways that were shrouded and dusty from disuse felt
eerily vacant.

I shivered as we marched down the corridor, grateful I had thrown a shawl over my
shoulders before we set out. The lantern Mr. Gage carried barely peeled back the darkness
around us, and certainly did nothing to heat the drafty hallway. Much as I had decided
to dislike him, I found myself shifting ever closer to his body, trying to stay as
close to the center of the circle of light as possible.

I realized we could have waited until dawn to examine Lady Godwin’s body. She would
stay fresh enough in the chapel cellar. But I had decided it would be better to have
the task over and done with. Procrastinating was not going to make it any easier,
and I knew I would never get any sleep that night regardless. Mr. Gage had readily
agreed, and I wondered if perhaps he felt the same way.

The clatter of our footfalls echoed off the old stone, the only sound other than the
creak of the swinging lantern. The silence unsettled me, but I somehow felt speaking
would only make it worse. As if making conversation somehow demeaned the seriousness
of our undertaking. Besides, what would we talk about? The weather? The party? It
all just seemed foolish.

I wrapped my shawl tighter around me. I didn’t even really know Lady Godwin. In the
week she spent at Gairloch, I had discovered she was a flirt and many of the men seemed
to fancy her. After all, she was beautiful, but in the superficial way that wealthy
ladies often are. I believe I’d only spoken two words to her during her stay, an “excuse
me” as she nearly bumped into me in the hall one evening. And now I was about to view
more of her than any of her gentlemen admirers had ever seen.

The wooden chapel door appeared out of the darkness at the end of the hall, just steps
before we would have crashed into it. Mr. Gage lifted the latch and pushed it open
with a mighty shove. It groaned in protest, sending a shiver down my spine.

I stepped past him, just to the edge of the light, and studied the shadowy interior
of the church. Moonlight poured through the tall, arched windows, casting a hallowed
glow across the pews. Two candelabras flanked the altar where a single golden cross
stood in the center next to a stand propping up the Bible. The air smelled of damp
and beeswax and the musty scent of a chamber that has been too long sealed. Philip
and Alana attended Sunday services in the village, so the castle chapel was rarely
used. I imagined the housekeeper, Mrs. MacLean, found it pointless to clean it weekly
when it was used but once a year at Christmastime.

Mr. Gage shut the door and dropped the wooden crossbar into place, locking us inside.
He caught me watching him and shrugged. “Just taking precautions.”

My veins ran icy at the thought of someone with nefarious purposes following us here.
Our desire for secrecy and privacy had been another advantage to conducting our examination
of the body at night. But if the killer had been watching us, waiting to see what
we would do . . .

Something of the fear I felt must have shown on my face, for Mr. Gage lifted aside
his coat to reveal a pistol tucked into the waistband of his trousers. It did not
make me relax, but it did take away some of the breath-stealing panic. Perhaps I had
underestimated Mr. Gage. If he had contemplated the danger we might be in and thought
to bring a gun, maybe he wasn’t so inexperienced.

I followed him down the side of the chapel and into a small room to the right of the
altar. Stacks of hymnals and extra candles covered a table, and a wardrobe, containing
vestments, no doubt, stood in the corner. He passed these items without a glance and
walked straight to a door in the back left corner. I watched over his shoulder as
he jiggled the key, which Philip had given us, inside the lock. The door opened to
reveal a stairway along the back wall of the chapel, leading downward. Rather than
stumble along with the light at my back, I gestured for Mr. Gage to precede me. He
took the stairs slowly, allowing me to easily keep up.

I nearly turned around and fled back up the stairs when the stench of dried blood
and perforated bowel rose up to fill my nostrils. As it was, I had to grip the banister
tightly to keep from pitching forward. I had left the door open behind me, and I was
acutely grateful for it. This place needed some fresh air; the impulse to retch was
so strong. I wondered how Mr. Gage was holding up and wished I had thought to bring
a cloth of some kind to wrap around my nose.

The wooden stairs creaked loudly as we reached the bottom. I hoped they had been inspected
recently. The thought of being trapped down here with Lady Godwin’s corpse made me
unsteady. I reached out blindly and clung to the support of the bottom post.

Mr. Gage moved toward a table positioned near the center of the cellar, where the
body was laid. A sheet had been thrown over the corpse, but the blood had soaked through.
There had simply been too much of it. He set the bucket he was carrying in his other
hand down on the packed earth floor, sloshing the water inside it. The glow of the
lantern he still held cast his shadow across the floor and up the dirt wall behind
him. Dislike or not, I was glad he was there with me.

He turned back to look at me. “Are you all right?”

How many times had someone asked me that this evening? I swallowed the bile I tasted
at the back of my throat and released my grip on the stair post. “Of course,” I replied.
However, my voice lacked the certainty I had been aiming for.

I crossed the room to set my bag down on another table, which was scattered with miscellaneous
earthenware objects. The black portmanteau looked almost like a surgeon’s satchel,
but it carried far cruder instruments than the fine sterling-silver implements my
husband had used. Two kitchen knives, a pair of pincers, several small vials for collecting
any samples, towels, an apron, and an old pair of my kid-leather gloves, which would
most certainly be ruined after this.

I tossed my shawl aside, despite the fact that I was still shivering from the cold,
and quickly tied the apron around my body. Fortunately, the sleeves of my Parisian-blue
gown were already short, so I would not have to wrestle with them. As I pulled the
worn gloves onto my fingers and fastened them, I focused on my breath. It was sawing
in and out of me at a rapid pace, and I knew I had to slow it, and my racing heart,
if I was going to make it through this without completely panicking or, worse, passing
out. I had never fainted in my life, and the indignity of the idea of doing it in
front of Mr. Gage did much to snap me out of my stupor.

I stepped up to the table and stared down at the bloody sheet, trying to imagine I
was back in my husband’s private examining room. Sir Anthony had enjoyed the rush
of performing his dissections as if he still stood in a crowded medical theater. He
had rarely allowed an audience of any kind in those days while I stood behind him
making sketches and taking notes. Later I understood why. But there had always been
a showmanship to his movements, a pomposity to his voice, as if he were lecturing
to an audience of hundreds. I had ignored the pretense and focused on the body before
me, losing myself in capturing the beauty of the form, the harmony of the lines, the
intricacies of its hidden mysteries. It was the only way I made it through those first
few times. Looking down at Lady Godwin, I worried that none of the beauty that had
so often called to me could be found on this table.

I glanced up at Mr. Gage. He was studying the sheet in much the same way I was, with
a mixture of curiosity and dread.

“Are you ready?” I asked, pleased to hear how detached I sounded.

He met my eyes, letting me know I was not alone in this, and nodded.

Taking one last deep breath through my mouth, I steeled my nerves and reached out
to slowly peel back the makeshift shroud.

The first thing I noticed was the paleness of Lady Godwin’s face. Her skin had already
taken on the opaqueness of death, except for a dull red bruise that had blossomed
from her left eyebrow down to her cheekbone. Someone had closed her eyes and mouth,
which allowed her expression to appear more composed, but I still couldn’t help but
remember the mask of terror I had seen stamped there a few hours earlier. I quivered,
feeling my impassiveness already begin to waver.

My gaze slid down to where blood splattered her chin and lower face, to the ugly gash
stretched across her neck. “He slit her throat,” I murmured, stating the obvious.

I was inexperienced with such a sight. Sir Anthony had opened several cadavers’ necks
for me to record the intricate workings inside—the bones, muscles, and nerves; the
esophagus, windpipe, and vocal cords—but we had never viewed a corpse subjected to
such a gruesome injury. The only observation I could contribute was that from the
appearance of the cut, the killer had only needed to make one slice with his knife.
I knew from watching Sir Anthony make his dissections that it would have taken a significant
amount of force to make such a clean, precise cut.

I suppressed a shudder and reached out to smooth back a strand of hair that had matted
to the blood on her neck. “Wet rag,” I said, holding out my hand. I waited for Mr.
Gage to dunk one of the cloths I had brought in the bucket and give it to me.

I carefully dabbed at the wound to wash away some of the tacky blood hiding it, feeling
oddly detached from myself. I had never touched a corpse before, and Lady Godwin’s
body seemed so fragile beneath my fingers. The water ran in pink streams down her
neck to the table below. The depth of the gash and the manner in which the skin peeled
back from the wound made me flinch.

“What?” Mr. Gage asked. “What is it?”

I shook my head and swallowed, struggling to regain my composure. “Ah, it’s just an
ugly wound. This one slash alone killed her. Any other wounds she may have suffered
are just superfluous.”

His eyes slid back up to examine the bruise on her face, and then lifted to meet mine
over Lady Godwin’s head.

“I can’t tell whether she was struck before or after her neck was slit,” I told him.
“But I imagine there would be some sign of struggle if she had been hit before.”

I reached for her right hand and turned it over to look for any cuts, lacerations,
or chipped nails. The left hand was more difficult to manage, for I had to reach across
her blood-soaked bodice. The body had already begun to stiffen, and the elbow would
not bend easily.

Our eyes met once again across the corpse, and I could see the same confusion I felt
reflected in Mr. Gage’s eyes. It did not appear that Lady Godwin fought her murderer,
which meant she probably knew the person. And even more disturbing, the attacker may
have struck her after killing her. The bruise was too new for the blow to have been
delivered earlier than that day. I didn’t recall seeing a contusion there at dinner.

My stomach slowly roiled, and I was forced to step back from the body for a moment.
“Did . . . did the body get dropped while it was being transported from the garden?”
I asked, hoping maybe one of the men had lost his grip.

Mr. Gage shook his head. His brow was furrowed in concern. “Clearly, someone harbored
a great deal of hatred toward the viscountess.”

I felt that was somewhat of an understatement. Why would someone murder Lady Godwin
and then strike her, as if killing her was not enough? It was appalling. And I was
having a very difficult time dealing with it all.

I looked up at Gage, blinking back the wetness in my eyes that I knew had as much
to do with my overloaded emotions as the stink of blood and death.

He had the courtesy, or perhaps the intelligence, not to ask me about it. “I never
realized a neck wound could bleed so much,” he stated, waving his hand over her bloody
torso.

I took in the state of Lady Godwin’s bodice, my eyes sliding downward to her skirts,
and frowned. Neck wounds certainly bled a great deal, but there was no way that this
quantity of blood would have trickled down to her abdomen. I thought back to the sight
of Lady Godwin laid across the garden bench and the pools of blood collecting in the
flounces of her skirt.

“There’s something else.”

He leaned in again as I smoothed my hands down her torso, smearing more blood across
the gold fabric. The seam joining her bodice to her skirt had been carefully ripped
open and then rearranged and tied back in place with the sash. I remembered the stench
of perforated bowel I had smelled upon entering the cellar and quickly reached out
to undo the sash.

Knowing what I would find, I didn’t even flinch when I peered through the gap in the
gown. Lady Godwin had been sliced open with two incisions forming a
T
over her lower abdomen.

“My God,” Gage cried, raising his arm to bury his nose in his sleeve.

“I don’t think He had anything to do with this,” I murmured, moving closer to peer
at something that had caught my eye.

“You’re certainly right about that. But I don’t understand why the killer made these
two cuts?” he puzzled, looking over my shoulder at what I was doing. “As you said,
the neck wound alone would have killed her. Was this just another way of taking out
his anger? Did he want to disfigure her womanhood in some way?”

I slammed a hand down on the table beside the corpse to steady myself as my churning
stomach lurched violently. I could feel Gage’s eyes on my face as my cheeks drained
of their last vestiges of color.

“I . . . I think she was with child.”