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Is tampering with evidence a concern yet? For as long as people have been murdered there has been the risk of evidence tampering, but we aren’t yet in a world of CSI. Detective novels are a new genre. Hell,detectivesare new.
I’ve already learned that there’s no such thing as crime-scene containment and there are only the vaguest concerns about contamination. Why would there be, in a world where forensic science is even newer than detective work? If Mrs. Bannerman caught Gray near Leslie’s body, she’d probably flip out, but she might not even knowwhyshe’s flipping out. She’d just have a general sense that the lead suspect’s brother shouldn’t be touching the murder victim.
Annis keeps her sister-in-law’s attention off us, letting Mrs. Bannerman rant about how Annis wasn’t content to poison Lord Leslie—now she hurried his death along to keep him from changing his will. The maid, Dolly, joins in with her accusations. Sarah calls for someone to fetch Dr. Mackay back and then says they should leave the body until he arrives and scoots them all out of the room… with nobody seeming to notice that we’re still there.
In fact, except for the maid’s bloodcurdling screams on seeing her dead employer, no one has paidanyattention to Lord Leslie. They’d just continued arguing beside the corpse half slumped on the floor.
I know Annis is hardly a grieving widow, but her sister-in-law has no excuse. The only thing Mrs. Bannerman seems to care about is that Leslie died before he could change his will and pass along his money with the house. Even Dolly’s wailing struck me as pure drama. Like a paid mourner, except her payment is theatrical pleasure. And Sarah? Her attention had been on Annis, all her concern there, because Leslie hadn’t earned any even from her.
Isanyonegoing to mourn the dead man? That remains to be seen.
The first obvious question is whether Mrs. Bannerman is right. Did someone decide not to wait for the poison to do its job? Was Leslie, in effect, murdered twice?
Gray doesn’t tell McCreadie or me to step back. He trusts we won’t contaminate evidence, and so we are welcome to not only examine the body but vocalize our findings.
Isla believes Gray has what we’d now call mild ADHD. He might, but she’s wrong in thinking he needs to be left alone to focus or he’ll get distracted. He gets distracted only when he wants distraction. That is, when whatever is being offered is more interesting than what he’s doing. Otherwise, he’s able to examine Leslie’s body while we do the same and talk to him. He wants to teach, and he’s delighted that we’re interested in learning.
Still, neither student is eager to interrupt the master, and so McCreadie and I whisper together as we examine Leslie, which is mostly either me passing on my observations or McCreadie asking for my interpretation ofhisobservations.
What we see is the ravages of poison. I’ve sat in on poisoning autopsies—I’m the keener who volunteers—but this is different. This isn’t someonewho accidentally ingested a toxin and died in a hospital under treatment. Nor is it someone who has been slowly poisoned, the killer trying to hide their tracks. It isn’t even fast poison, killing before the victim understands what’s happening. This is poison at its ugliest—breaking down a body in a world that has no way to reverse or stop the process. Leslie knew he was dying of poison and that no one could help him, and while he hardly seemed like a man I’d want to know better, I can mourn him for the sheer horror of his fate.
It’s hard to tell whether someone hurried the process along with another murderous method. While we don’t dare strip off Leslie’s clothing, there are no obvious stab wounds. No obvious head wounds. No marks around his neck.
“Conclusions?” Gray says.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I say. “If he was murdered, I’d say the most likely cause would be suffocation. One of those throw pillows pressed to his face. His eyes are bloodshot, but they were earlier, too, so there’s nothing in an external examination to argue for or against suffocation.”
Gray’s gaze drops to Leslie’s hands.
I curse under my breath. “Right. Look for signs of a struggle.” I check Leslie’s fingernails. “Two are broken, and I don’t know whether there’s any way to tell how recently. Poison could weaken the nails.”
“The break on his middle finger is still jagged,” Gray says. “That could indicate a struggle. However, it might also have happened earlier. Filing it smooth would hardly have been a priority in the past day. Lord Leslie is wide-eyed and his expression is one of shock, which one might see as proof of murder, but it can also be proof of, well, death.”
“He knew it was coming, and he didn’t think it’d be quite so soon. Also, he was waiting for the lawyer, so if he realized he was going to die before the guy showed up, he’d be horrified.”
“Presumably.” Gray straightens. “An autopsy will help indicate whether he could have been suffocated or otherwise murdered in a way we cannot see from an external observation of his clothed corpse. Is there anything we can determine from the scene?”
Here’s where McCreadie takes over. Yes, I’m a detective, and I certainlywantto analyze all my modern-day scenes, but if the crime is big enough to warrant that kind of attention, it’s also big enough to warrant crime-scene techs.
I’ve spent years immersing myself in forensic studies, with hope first of becoming a detective and then in hopes of joining major crimes, but it really is, again, just me being a keener. As a detective, I mostly talk to people. Hell, even my detective work isn’t searching for clues so much as searching for more people to talk to.
I know the theory of thorough crime-scene investigation—I just haven’t put it into practice. McCreadiedoesput it into practice. He may not have learned the importance of crime-scene containment, but he does know the importance of the scene itself.
“The door locks from the inside,” McCreadie says, walking over to it. “It only requires the twist of this little thumb turn. That makes it difficult to determine whether Leslie himself could have locked it after we left—if it was a key, we’d expect to find it on him. But if someone else locked it from the inside, they’d need to exit afterward, and these windows don’t open.”
“Can the door be locked and then pulled shut from the hall?” I ask.
McCreadie smiles. “Excellent question. Let’s find out.”
He reaches for the door. Gray clears his throat, and McCreadie stops.
“Finger marks,” McCreadie says. “We are now being aware of finger marks.”
They were already “aware” of them, in the sense that they knew fingerprints were allegedly unique. That’s still hard for me to wrap my head around. If you believe fingerprints are unique, why aren’t you using them? Several reasons. One, it’s a new science that most people aren’t aware of, and even some who are, like McCreadie, aren’t convinced of its validity. Two, the police lack an easy method of revealing prints on a surface. Three, while they could develop that method, what’s the point when the legal system doesn’t recognize the validity of it? More important, lacking that official recognition, they cannot compel a suspect to “give up” their fingerprints as exemplars.
Yes, forensic science in 1869 is a lot more complicated than I expected. I presumed that they don’t use things like fingerprints because they hadn’t “discovered” that science. Not true. There’s just a massive gulf between discovery, acceptance, and practice.
“I’m not sure you’re going to get a useful print off that tiny thumb turn,” I say. “Yes, twist it from the edges, please, but even if we found Leslie orAnnis’s prints… or the maid’s, the doctor’s, his sister’s, and so on, these are all people who may have had reason to lock it in the past few days.”
