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Isla looks my way. “I almost hate to ask, because I know the answer is yes, but I presume you have evidence of that?”
“Not hard evidence. Just a theory, which I didn’t even have until about ten minutes ago. It’s your fault.”
“Of course it is. What did I say?”
“That thallium is a relatively recent discovery, and while it is known to be poisonous, it is not yet commonly used by poisoners, meaning that if multiple people in Edinburgh died of it in a short period of time that would suggest…”
“The poison was supplied by the same person,” McCreadie says.
“And the others died in a similar manner?”
“Yes,” Gray says.
“Bloody hell,” Isla says, and slumps back onto the sofa.
I’m in the laboratory with Gray. When I first saw this room, I presumed it was for embalming. We aren’t at that era yet. There’s no reason for a funeral parlor to have a place to store the dead at all. That isn’t their function. Gray has it for his studies, and what he’s studying right now is the body of his brother-in-law.
With Addington having finished his autopsy, there’s the familiar Y-shaped incision. I always presumed the cut was that shape for a surgical reason, but Gray has said it’s for the undertaking profession. Doctors conducting autopsies used to just slice open the corpse down the middle, and some still do. The problem there is that it leaves an ugly mark, which can be seen on a female corpse once she’s in her dress. And so the Y incision was born, allowing the family—and later undertakers—to hide the damage with regular clothing.
As much as I hate to give Addington one speck of credit, he is a decent surgeon. His cuts are precise, as is his handling of the internal examination. Normally, in an autopsy, you’d begin with the external. I don’t know how much of that Addington does. Very little, from what I’ve seen of his reports. That’s another thing—the police surgeon’s primary function is judicial. He presents his findings at court and, presumably, to the police, being paid by them for that service. That doesn’t mean Addington always writes anything up for McCreadie or even seeks him out to deliver an oral report. It’s up to the police to corner him, as I did today.
Gray goes through the steps of both an external and an internal examination. He cleans out Lord Leslie’s fingernails—especially the broken ones—to look for skin, though he obviously can’t use DNA from it. He thoroughly checks for external signs of trauma and sees nothing that wouldn’t be explained by the poison.
Here, Gray can do a better job of checking for head injuries than he could at the scene. He’s poking and prodding at the scalp when he stops and bends over the right side of Leslie’s head. Then he makes a motion, which I am supposed to distinguish from all his other vague and distractedmotions to mean he wants a magnifying glass. I get it wrong the first time, which earns me an impatient finger snap, which is apparently easier than just saying “magnifying glass.”
I make up for the error by also passing him a comb and bringing over the lantern. He frowns at the lantern until I move in place, illuminating what he’s trying to see.
Gray uses the magnifying glass and the comb, and then passes me the glass and takes the light as he holds the comb in place. I bend over Leslie’s scalp and peer through to see an abrasion I hadn’t noticed before. It’s faint, just a reddening of the scalp, the abraded patch maybe the size of a dollar coin.
I step back and consider. Then I pull up an image from memory. I’m getting better at doing that. It’s a skill forgotten in the age of the cell phone, when you can capture anything from a sunset to a parking spot number to that certain toothpaste you like but you always grab the wrong one because you forget the exact subtype. Now I’m in a world where we can’t even call in a crime-scene photographer. Everything must be memorized.
I consult my memory, and then I walk into the drawing room, where there’s a sofa and several chairs—a sitting room for the grieving to comfortably discuss funeral plans. I tuck down my skirts, lie on the sofa, and then hang off of it, with my head on the floor. When I hear footsteps, I resist the urge to leap up.
“Yes, I look ridiculous,” I say, head still on the floor.
“You do,” he says. “But I am also impressed by your dedication to the science. I was planning to do the same thing when you were not around to see me.”
“Meaning I ammorededicated to the science than you.”
“No, simply meaning that you are less afraid of looking ridiculous than I am.”
“Am I in the correct position?”
“Tilt your head slightly to the left.”
I do that. Then I put my fingers to the spot where my head touches the carpet, and I pull myself up.
“That is it,” he says. “Our presumption was correct.”
“The abrasion is only a rug rash from Leslie sliding off his sofa as he died.”
When Gray hesitates, I say, “No?”
“Yes in general. I am objecting to the use of ‘only.’”
I frown. Then I hitch up my skirts and run back into the laboratory. When Gray arrives, there’s a ghost of an indulgent smile on his face. I’m holding up a probe.
“May I use this on the abrasion?” I ask.
