Page 32 of The Vanished Sister

Dr. Merriweather shook his head. “All washed clean, alas.”

“Time of death?”

At this Dr. Merriweather hesitated. “That is more difficult to estimate. By the report of the sergeant who was first on the scene, at the time the body was found, rigor mortis had already subsided, but there were as of yet no signs of putrefaction. There is the complicating factor that she was in salt water, which delays the onset of decay.”

“Is it not true,” asked Charlotte, “that in fresh water, a body typically sinks to the bottom and does not float again until the gases from putrefaction buoy it to the surface, in about three days’ time?”

Three days before the body was discovered yesterday morning, Justina Carstairs had been very much alive and well. That would have been the day Mrs. Watson, Lord Ingram, and Mrs. Albright arrived at High Burrow.

“In fresh water, it’s easier to assume that a body that has floated to the surface had been submerged approximately three days. But here on the coast, conditions are more complicated. Salt water is more buoyant, and bodies that would otherwise lie on the seafloor have been known to snag on fishing lines or lobster cages. Sometimes such bodies, in coming to the surface, break free of their ensnarement to drift on the currents.”

In other words, they could not eliminate the possibility that the dead woman might be Justina Carstairs simply because she hadn’t yet been dead three days when the body was found one hundred feet beneath the terrace of Sans Souci.

“What about the contents of her stomach?”

“Not much, other than some water she must have swallowed. I tested the water in her lungs by the way. It was salt water.”

So she hadn’t been drowned in a tub and then pitched overboard somewhere at sea—unless it had been a tub full of seawater.

The door opened, affording Charlotte a glimpse of a covered body on a slab. Mr. Carstairs and Inspector MacDonald exited in a cloud of formaldehyde and methyl phenol fumes that carried with it a whiff of a meat market on a warm day.

Mr. Carstairs did not look green around the gills. If anything, he appeared relieved. Inspector MacDonald expressed his gratitude to Dr. Merriweather and conducted Mr. Carstairs and Charlotte to a spartan room several doors down with only a desk and four chairs.

They were barely inside when Mr. Carstairs declared, with a feverish gleam in his eyes, “Inspector, that was not my wife.”

Inspector MacDonald glanced at him. “Gentlemen, please, take a seat.”

An alert-looking young policeman entered with a tea tray—Sergeant Perkins, who had accompanied Inspector MacDonald to the railway station last night. The sergeant poured tea for everyone, then sat down in a corner and took out a notebook.

Charlotte was typically wary of the refreshments served by Scotland Yard. But the good officers of the West Country took their sustenance more seriously. The tea was strong and hot, the milk thick and fresh, and a sip was almost enough to make up for the dismal business at hand. Almost.

Mr. Carstairs took several deep breaths and drank half a cup of black tea. Then he repeated himself. “Inspector, that was not my wife.”

“If I may make the observation,” said Inspector MacDonald. “Mr. Carstairs, while we were in the viewing room, you did not even wish the sheet lowered beyond the shoulders of the deceased.”

His remark was for the benefit of Charlotte, who had not been in the room—it would have been a bit indelicate for Sherrinford Holmes, not even an official investigator, to examine a female victim in front of someone who might be her husband.

“Her face, I’m sorry to say,” continued Inspector MacDonald, “had been much battered against our unforgiving coast.”

Diplomatically, he did not mention the ravenous crustaceans of said coast.

Mr. Carstairs set down his teacup and leaned forward an inch. “The victim’s fate was unfortunate and I found it difficult to study her. But the shape of her forehead is wrong—the shape of her hairline, that is. I have sat across a dining table from my wife thousands of times. I know her hairline—and the woman in there does not have the same straight hairline or the same noble forehead.”

When Charlotte had seen Mrs. Carstairs in the village church near Noble House, her hat had obscured her hairline. In the photograph they had been given—a portraiture of both husband and wife—her coiffure consisted of braids coiled atop her head that also allowed two swoops below the hairline, exposing only a bell-like section of her forehead.

“Do you have photographic evidence of this hairline of hers?” Inspector MacDonald asked.

“I do, though perhaps not at High Burrow. But the shape of Mrs. Carstairs’s forehead is something her maid should easily be able to verify for you, Inspector. Also, this woman did not have pierced ears. I have bought my wife new earrings at least once a year during our marriage and she always wore them promptly.”

Yesterday morning, Charles Carstairs, his face convulsed with fear as he looked over the body in the rowboat, had not been capable of such levelheaded observations. He’d only rasped that he didn’t believe that it was his mother, that something about the body didn’t feel like her at all.

Inspector MacDonald frowned. “If the deceased is not Mrs. Carstairs, do you have any idea who she might be, Mr. Carstairs?”

“None whatsoever,” said the man who had not absconded.

Inspector MacDonald, too, had a notebook, and a pencil in hand. He tapped the unsharpened end of the pencil on the blank page opened before him. “Do you recognize the garments of the deceased?”

Charlotte had seen the traveling-jacket-and-skirt set, green woven silk with a subtle pattern of windowpane checks. Even waterlogged, it was evident that the grey braided cords that trimmed the cuffs were of high quality and the buttons had been real ivory. She, a connoisseur of not only fashion but the cost of fashion, had calculated that the victim’s tenue was more expensive than any travel attire that she had ever purchased for herself, but on a par with those worn by Mrs. Watson, by all means a woman very comfortably situated in life.