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When I say as much, Gray shakes his head. “Yes, that helps, but he looked the other way because I passed him a half sovereign. It is a crime scene, one with a small degree of infamy. He will presume I simply want a closer look.”
“Crime-scene containment. Say it with me now.Crime-scene containment.”
“I am hardly the one you need to convince, Mallory. Nor is Hugh. The problem is that young officer is paid less than a common laborer, and therefore he is open to corruption. In fact, many young men join the constabulary expecting it. Have you resolved that issue in your world? Are your police incorruptible?”
I grumble under my breath. He has a point, of course. I’ve been offered my share of bribes. At least in my time, it would take a helluva payoff for an officer to let a stranger onto a scene, but only because you’d presume they want to tamper with evidence. Officers have no such concern here, and we are inside, alone, to do what we want.
I head straight for the kitchen and open the icebox. The smell hits me, and my hand flies to my mouth and nose. Right, it’s an icebox, not a refrigerator, meaning that with no one to replace the ice, the contents have already spoiled.
Wait. Mrs. Burns only went on the run this morning. That suggests she wasn’t the one who usually replaced the ice. Or was her husband’s death such a shock that she wasn’t eating and never realized the contents had begun to spoil?
I turn to Gray as he walks over behind me. “The icebox is out of ice.”
“I am surprised they even have one,” he says.
“I’m guessing they aren’t in every kitchen yet?”
“Certainly not.”
He walks over to examine the appliance, which is more of a small chest, only big enough to hold maybe a dozen cartons of milk.
I’ve never given much thought to what people did before the advent of refrigeration. At the town house, there’s an icebox as big as a fridge. But it’s not as if you can stick water in a freezer and get ice. For that you need, well, electricity. There’s someone who drops off ice, which can’t be cheap.
“I see the problem,” Gray says when he rises from examining the icebox. “Substandard construction.”
“A used icebox?”
“On the contrary, it seems very new.”
I look closer, noting the lack of wear marks on the wood. “So just cheaply made?”
“Yes. An icebox must be well insulated. Otherwise, the ice melts too quickly. You have a wooden exterior, a tin interior, and insulation of sawdust or straw.”
The interior of this one is wood. While there’s probably some kind of insulation, it’s not going to keep the ice from melting for long.
“So they had money to spare and decided to splurge on an icebox,” I say. “They bought the cheapest one they could find, not realizing that meant they’d end up spending more on ice in the long run. In summer, that would be even worse.”
“Also, the food is improperly arranged. One ought to store uncooked meat on the bottom, cooked food next, and then fruit and vegetables up top.”
“Because the ice is at the bottom, so the most perishable items go there.”
“Yes, which I know because I was distracted when I took out a bottle of milk at home and replaced it on the top shelf.”
“Mrs. Wallace schooled you after you spoiled the milk.” I look into the icebox. “Not only is the ice melting faster than expected, but the food would have been spoiling even when therewasice. Pudding has milk or cream in it, meaning it would be in the icebox. The fact it’s a new icebox would explain why Mrs. Burns made that pudding for her husband—taking advantage of the new appliance to cook what he liked. Was it actually poisoned then? Or did he die of severe food poisoning, like botulism or salmonella.”
“Bot…?” Gray begins.
“The world hasn’t discovered that yet? Lovely. A little something for me to remember the next time I eat out.” I point at the icebox. “Spoiled food develops bacteria, which is what causes food poisoning, both the mild kind—which just means you spend a day in the water closet—and the kind that can kill you.”
“Bacteria causes…?”
He trails off, his gaze going distant as his mind races through the implications. And with that, I lose him.
Here is another part of history I’m still struggling to understand. What seems like basic science to me can be revelatory to someone in 1869. It’s like having a time traveler come back to the twenty-first century and tell us, quite casually, that house flies cause cancer.
Is there a danger in revealing future discoveries to Gray? No, and this is something else I am learning. It would be like that time traveler telling me about house flies. I could email every top scientist with the news… and they’d drop my discovery into their spam folder. The only thing it would mean is that I’d personally avoid contact with flies and make sure my loved ones did, too, and that is what Gray and Isla will do with the information.
Gray continues thinking it through while I check the icebox, holding my breath against the stench. The pudding is there. At least, I presume it’s pudding. The British version isn’t always what North Americans think of as pudding, and so when I find a sticky dome studded with dried fruit, I pull it out.
