The Blue Girl Read Online Free Page B

time. Here, one might pay a pound and a shilling or one might pay as much as five pounds for a year, depending on how many books one would like at a time. I keep track of every book that comes in and out of this library.”
    “And yet someone has borrowed
Marriage, Foolishness and Folly
without your knowledge.”
    “Nobody has borrowed the book you mean. I’ve simply misplaced it.”
    “I don’t think you’ve ever misplaced so much as an errant thought. Who else is employed here?”
    “Nobody.”
    “What about Robert Cream? Did he have relatives? I imagine they would be allowed to roam free here, graze where they like amongst the books.”
    She returned to the ladder without answering and began to climb, the books in one hand. I held out my hand and stopped her.
    “I’d like to borrow a copy, if you don’t mind. Brush up on all that custom and practice.”
    “You’re not a member of this library, sir.”
    “Let’s call it official police business then.”
    She sighed and appeared to weigh the two copies of the book, deciding which to give me. To my eye they were identical, twin volumes with cheap blue bindings. Finally, she settled on one and handed it over. I tucked it under my arm and smiled.
    Something borrowed, something blue.
    “Thank you,” I said. “And not just for the book. You’ve been terribly helpful.”
    “I certainly have not.” She kept her gaze on the shelves. “I haven’t said a word to you.”
    “Of course. I may come back if I need more help. I’ll have to return anyway. To give back the book.”
    “Please keep the book. I hope never to see you again.”
    Sometimes they protest too much.
    •   •   •
    Dr Kingsley was in his laboratory when I returned to University College Hospital. He looked up when a white-collared nurse ushered me into the room.
    “Ah, Constable, you’re just in time to see what there is to see.”
    “I only came to return something your daughter lent me.”
    “I thought perhaps you were here to learn more about the young lady you found.”
    “Is there more to learn?”
    Kingsley beckoned me forward. Sometimes the hazards of my job have nothing to do with physical injury. There are things people aren’t meant to see. But there was no way for me to leave without finding out what the doctor had discovered. I reluctantly followed him. The blue girl lay on her wooden table. She was small; the table stretched on beyond her feet and her long hair spread out over the other end of the table without draping over the edge. Kingsley had been at work on her body. Her chest cavity was open and many of her organs had been removed to shallow metal basins. I glanced at the body and looked away, swallowing hard as my gorge rose. But there was nowhere I could look without seeing something horrible. My gaze fell upon a mottled purple organ that rested on the table next to her. It looked like something that might be waiting for a butcher to wrap, some dense piece of freshly washed horse meat resting in a shallow pool of pink water. It glistened in the lamplight.
    “The body is only a shell, Constable,” Kingsley said. “Only a machine that has wound down and ceased its work.”
    “It all seems a terrible indignity.”
    “Perhaps. But the true indignity was performed on her by someone else. That indignity ended her life and we have the opportunity to restore some of it to her memory.”
    I imagine it was something he told himself every day as he worked at taking people apart and putting them back together. For me, the rationalization didn’t work. Whether she inhabited that broken machine anymore was a question for priests and philosophers. To my mind, she was still a girl and we men had not yet completed our bloody business on her body.
    “You’re back already?”
    I turned at the sound of a girl’s voice. Fiona was entering the room through the door at the far end, her sketchbook crushed to her slight bosom. I moved between her and the grisly sight on the