The Anatomy of Death Read Online Free

What in God’s name do you think would induce a woman to get herself involved in the Beastly Science?”
    What indeed, Dody thought, other than the lack of any other specialist surgical positions available to her. She remembered all too well the revulsion she’d felt for the dissecting rooms as a raw medical student, and how those feelings had returned during her first few weeks in Edinburgh. But it was amazing what one could get used to, especially when there was no choice. Of course, she would rather be working with the living than the dead, but she had soon discovered that her talent for detached observation put her in good stead for such a profession. Irrespective of the gore in which she was sometimes steeped, the wonder of the science and a natural inclination to solve a mystery had soon put an end to the horrors she once had. After a while, even the odours ceased to bother her.
Mortui vivos docent
—the dead teach the living. She wondered what the dead bodies awaiting below would teach her.
    At the bottom of the stairs she looked around the small autopsy room. It was a far cry from the facilities in Edinburgh. No amphitheatre here with raised seats on which craning students sat and observed; no benevolent pedagogues and powerful electric lighting, ventilation, and decent drainage. Here she would be a one-woman show, performing in a primitive environment for sceptical men who didn’t believe women should be engaged in the practice of medicine, let alone the Beastly Science. The sudden weight of it hit her as she stepped into the icy cold room.
    Exposed pipes clung to the chipped and dingy whitewashed walls. A stained porcelain sink rested against the far wall between shelves of books and specimen jars. Above the sink there hung a portrait of King Edward VII, black mourning crepe still wound about the frame. There was no portrait of the yet-to-be-crowned King George V. It seemedappropriate somehow: a dead king to rule over the kingdom of the dead.
    The tap over the sink dripped and gaslights spluttered from their brackets on the walls. In bygone years, Dody reflected, autopsies would have been conducted in police stations or public houses; either would have been preferable to this dank, foul-smelling cave.
    A bowler-hatted gentleman in a suit of loud checks stepped forward and introduced himself as Mr. Bright from the coroner’s office. He gave Dody a little bow, doffing his hat to reveal a skull as bald as an egg. Another mortuary attendant, marginally younger than Alfred, appeared from the cadaver keep and told them everything was ready.
    Shepherd fumbled in the folds of his coat and produced a fat cigar. He bit the end off it and spat it onto the sawdust-strewn floor. After lighting up, he gulped down the smoke like he was slaking a thirst. Pike took a silver case from his inside pocket, offered a cigarette to Bright and the attendants, took one for himself, and snapped the lid closed.
    Dody gave him a quizzical look, which he did not appear to notice. From her Gladstone bag she removed the velvet pouch containing her own smoking paraphernalia. Five pairs of eyes converged on her as she expertly packed her clay pipe, swiped the match across the rough wall, and coaxed the tobacco to a gentle glow.
    “How many bodies are there, Superintendent?” she asked between puffs.
    Shepherd was staring at her in undisguised disbelief.
A most unbecoming habit in a lady
, she could imagine him saying to his colleagues later in the station house. But what did he expect her to use to combat the stench—lavender water?
    “Superintendent …” she repeated.
    “Three, miss, all from yesterday’s riot at Westminster.”
    Good God, the women’s march!
Spilsbury’s note had made no mention of that. Now she wished she had allowed Rupert to read her the whole of the article from
The Times
. She bit hard upon the pipe stem. She would be fair and professional; of course she would. But if these policemen were to find out that her