The Anatomist's Wife Read online

  “Darlin’, they’re fine,” he said, bending closer to look into my sister’s face. “I promise you they’re safe, Alana. I placed two footmen outside the nursery door and instructed them and the nursemaids that no one outside of our family is allowed near them without my express permission.”

  Alana nodded, still looking shaken.

  I reached over to take her hand. “I saw them just a little over two hours ago,” I tried to reassure her. “They were being put to bed, and they all appeared to be fine.”

  “I . . . I should have checked on them,” she stammered. “I was just so overwhelmed by the guests . . . and their questions.” She shook her head. “I should have looked in on them.”

  “Stop that!” Philip took her face between his hands and stroked her cheekbones with his thumbs. “Our guests drove me to distraction just in the space o’ the ten minutes it took to deliver my instructions. You’ve been dealin’ with them for over three hours. O’ course, you were overwhelmed.”

  “Yes, but Kiera thought to check on the children,” she said.

  I squeezed her hand and smiled sadly. “Because I was hiding.” Alana knew I would never willingly associate with the guests, especially after the accusations flung at me in the garden and again in the parlor, so I didn’t bother to apologize for not assisting her. Perhaps I failed her in that regard, but my sister knew my shortcomings, and understood them.

  She squeezed my hand in return before taking a deep breath.

  “All right?” Philip asked, staring lovingly into Alana’s eyes. She nodded, and he leaned forward to drop a kiss on the top of her head.

  I glanced up at Mr. Gage. He was leaning against the wall once again, albeit less casually than before. His jaw was dusted with stubble, but the hairs were so light I could barely see them. I imagined they were as blond as the hairs on his head. He was an attractive man—my artist’s eye had to give him that—but the way he presented himself, his smug certainty that he was the most handsome man in the room, rankled me more than I wanted to admit. I had met good-looking men before, and most of them had been as aware of it as Mr. Gage, but they had always amused me more than irritated me.

  “Now,” Philip said, bringing us back to the matter at hand. “Kiera, I was askin’ if you would assist Mr. Gage.” I watched his Adam’s apple bob, and I knew he was forcing out the next words. “Particularly with examining the body.”

  I stared at him silently, uncertain how I was going to, or whether I even should, honor his request. I had been finished with dissections and corpses the moment Sir Anthony died, and been grateful for it.

  “Forgive me,” Mr. Gage interjected with polite severity. “But I fail to comprehend this request.” He gestured to me. “Why on earth would you want your sister-in-law to help me with such a matter?”

  I studied him warily. Did he truly not know?

  Philip seemed just as taken aback, for it took him a moment to reply. “Gage, what do you know about Lady Darby?”

  Mr. Gage glanced at me, almost in puzzlement. “Not much. I inferred there was some sort of scandal following her husband’s death. Some of the guests seem quite mistrustful of her. I gather many of them actually believe she should be our prime suspect.”

  His gaze bored into mine, but I refused to be intimidated. He had told me nothing I didn’t already know, didn’t already suspect. I stared back at him and gave him nothing. Not anger or shock or fear. I understood inquiry agents and their games, and I was not interested in playing.

  Philip cleared his throat, and I finally broke eye contact to look at him. He was asking my permission to speak. I shrugged. Gage could hear the facts, but I doubted he would decide to believe me innocent unless it served him.

  “Lady Darby is the wife of the late Sir Anthony Darby, a great anatomist and surgeon in his day. He even attended to the health of the royal family.”

  Mr. Gage took in this information with a nod.

  “At the time of Sir Anthony’s death, he was working on a human anatomy textbook, a sort of . . . definitive reference for fellow surgeons and medical students. When he embarked upon the project some three years earlier, he realized he would need an illustrator, an artist to depict the images.” Philip glanced up at me nervously, but I did not move my eyes from the stone in the hearth I was staring at. “Sir Anthony was rather frugal with his money.”

  “He was a miser,” Alana stated angrily.

  “Yes, well, he decided he would rather not pay an illustrator for his work if he did not have to. So he married one.”

  I did not look up to see how Mr. Gage had taken this bit of information.

  “My sister and our father were not made aware of his plans prior to the wedding,” Alana told him. “I think if Papa had known what Sir Anthony was about, he would have shot him in a rather crucial part of his anatomy.”

  Philip coughed. “When Sir Anthony died, and one of his colleagues uncovered the finished pages of the book, the man raised an outcry against it. Apparently, many of Sir Anthony’s fellow surgeons and physicians knew he rather famously couldn’t sketch, especially not with the amount of skill the anatomical drawings showed. It didn’t take long for them to figure out who actually created them. Lady Darby is quite well-known for her portraits.”

  I could feel all of their eyes on me, and it took everything in me not to clutch my stomach where it roiled. I would never forget the looks of disgust on Sir Anthony’s friends’ and colleagues’ faces as they accused me of unnatural tendencies and dragged me before a magistrate. Or the horrible names and epithets hurled at me in public and in the papers. The butcher’s wife. The sawbones’ siren. The people were still frantic over the recent trial of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh, and terrified that grave robbers turned murderers were also working in London, smothering their prey and delivering them to local surgeons for dissection. I was all too easy a target for their pent-up fears. High society had been particularly vicious, revealing their own fright over the resurrectionists, as well as their horror at discovering a gentlewoman involved in such grisly work as dissections. No one had understood. No one had even tried. Without Philip’s and my own brother’s intervention, I was certain I would be locked away in Bethlem Royal Hospital or worse.

  “I assure you, the magistrate cleared Kiera of all wrongdoing,” Philip told Mr. Gage.

  The room fell silent as Mr. Gage digested this information. I was simply thankful for another moment to collect myself. It did not matter that it happened over a year ago, it still rattled me to recall any of it. Alana reached out to take my hand, and I squeezed hers in return, to reassure her, but I still did not move otherwise.

  “So Lady Darby witnessed numerous dissections years ago,” Mr. Gage remarked as if he were restating someone’s testimony. “And sketched them. How do you know that she even understands them? Perhaps she was just drawing what she saw. How do you know she can even contribute anything to an autopsy?”

  I laughed inside, bitterly. As if I could ever forget.

  I looked straight into Mr. Gage’s eyes. “I have never held a knife, but I can tell you where to make the cuts, how the intestines turn, what color the liver should be—in my sleep.”

  Mr. Gage did not flinch from the rawness of my words, but held my gaze steadily. He blinked only once and seemed to come to some understanding, for he nodded slowly, just a single bob of his head. I felt some of the tension drain out of me.

  “Will you do it?” Philip asked.

  I looked at my sister. Alana was always so strong, so competent, so sure of herself. And she protected me like a fierce warrior maiden. Like one of her children.

  She tried to look strong now, but I could see the fear in her eyes. I knew she would never ask this of me, would never expect it of me, but I had to do it. For her. For Malcolm, and Philipa, and little baby Greer. A murderer had invaded
my sister’s home, and I wasn’t about to let him harm my sister’s family any more than he already had.

  “I’ll do it,” I said softly.

  My sister squeezed my hand again where she held it. A silent tear slid down her cheek, and I knew I had said the right thing.

  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

  The 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 th
e 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.