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I jerked my head in response, emotions cooling. I set the tray back on the table and gave my uncle the measuring tape. Outside I was as sturdy as the ship, while inside I churned with emotion like the waters we sailed through. I wasn’t sure the Ripper case would ever leave me in peace.
Uncle measured the body from foot to crown with efficiency, then reported to Thomas. “Deceased is approximately one hundred and sixty-two-and-a-half centimeters. Shoulder-length brown hair. Caucasian. Estimated weight is between eight and eight-and-one-half stone.” I wiped down the scalpel and handed it to my uncle before he asked for it, then prepared the toothed forceps. “Greenish discoloration is present in the middle of the abdomen.”
He gently prodded the closed eye, checking to see if it yielded, and I tried not to wince as he pried the lids open. For some reason, the examination of the eyes was my least favorite part.
“Eyes are milky and slightly protruded,” he said. “Conditions in the cargo hold are moderately warm to cool. From outward examination, I’d place the death between seventy-two and ninety-six hours.”
Our external examination was complete. Now it was time to unearth clues left by the murderer. Uncle pulled the skin taut on the collarbone, pressing his scalpel until the skin split in its wake. He repeated the movement on the opposite side before dragging the blade down the center, completing the Y incision. Though with the torso ripped open, he didn’t have much to slice into below the ribs.
Once Uncle cracked the sternum, I clamped the rib cage open without being asked. He grunted approval, high praise considering his attention never wavered once the postmortem began. Up this close the odor was strong enough to cause a few stray tears to slide down my face. I rubbed my cheek against my shoulder, then collected a specimen jar in case Uncle needed it.
“Lacerations are present over the intestines. Both large and small.” He leaned closer, until his nose was a mere hand space away from the exposed cavity. He took the scalpel and carefully moved the muscles away. “Ribs show marks from knife blades. Victim was stabbed repeatedly before being partially eviscerated.”
A strong indication that whoever had committed this murder had been enraged. This was no random crime—there was too much passion and anger involved.
Uncle drew back, dabbing at the sweat on his brow. “The nicks in the bone are similar in appearance to those found in the severed limb. Though closer inspection with a microscope will be needed to be conclusive. They’re also reminiscent of wounds left by Jack the Ripper. Strikingly so.” We all paused for a moment, not wanting to utter the impossibility of that aloud. “Thomas, is there a problem?”
“Apologies, Professor.” Thomas’s pen rushed across the journal, capturing each word and detail with the same precision Uncle used to carve the dead. I forced myself to focus on his quick, sure movements.
I came back into the procedure as Uncle sliced into the stomach, revealing more clues as to time of death. “Contents are mostly digested.” He removed his rust-colored hands and peered at me over his spectacles. “What might that mean, Audrey Rose?”
“Time of death would have occurred between meals.” I leaned over the cavity to get a better look. Uncle stepped aside, ever the professor of forensic medicine. “If I had to guess, I’d say it indicated she’d been murdered very late at night, or in the early morning hours before her first meal.”
“Good.” Uncle poked around the empty stomach, making sure we’d missed nothing. “Now we’ll just need to find out who else has been reported missing to the captain. Her clothing is folded up there. Someone ought to recognize it.”
I followed his gaze to a pile of tattered and worn garments. Judging from the tears and patches, she wasn’t a first-class passenger. Her life had likely been hard and she did not deserve to have it ended in such a callous manner. Dread pulled my shoulders down. Dissecting a cadaver on a slab of cool metal was hard, but not impossible. Attaching names and a life to a victim, however, was impossible not to feel.
“Shall I say what we’re all thinking?” Thomas asked. “Or does this crime not seem disconnected from the others to you?”
Uncle glanced back at the body, expression shuttered. “We will treat this as we treat all cases and make no assumptions either way. What else have you deduced?”
“Since this corpse is female and is in possession of all her limbs, we have another problem.” Thomas closed his notebook, then stood beside me. “There is still another body out there. Have all the crates been searched in the cargo hold?”
Uncle shook his head. “Captain Norwood felt uncomfortable with that.”
I rubbed my temples, doing my best to ignore the pulsing anger. “So our captain would rather wait until the next victim’s stench coats the corridors of the ship? It’s bad enough that he refuses to ask Lord Crenshaw to comply with our investigation and he is very sensitive to Dr. Arden’s need to remain locked up in his rooms, but when will he worry about the victims? Unless he doesn’t want these crimes to be solved. Perhaps he’s the man we’re searching for.”
Thomas paced the perimeter of the small room, tugging at his collar. I’d been so consumed with the postmortem, I’d forgotten how warm it was down here. He moved one way, then the other, constantly in motion, much like his thoughts.
“His arrogance is an ugly quality, though I don’t believe he’ll hang for that.” He stilled. “The ringmaster is charming, brash. Utterly full of himself and has excessive taste in dramatics.”
“Those traits, while annoying, don’t mean Mephistopheles is our murderer,” I said. “If not the captain, or ringmaster, then who else?”
Thomas stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’d say Jian is too obvious, though still a decent suspect. And the Amazing Andreas is quiet enough to be terrifying. His type is the one that taxidermies animals and secretes them away in hidey-holes. Though maybe we’ve been focused on men when we should consider our murderer might be a murderess.”
“A Knight of Swords, a Fool, a Hierophant, an escape artist, a ringmaster, and now either an Empress or an Ace of Wands,” I said, prattling off each of the performers’ stage names. It was truly remarkable that we could all maintain straight faces while naming potential murderers. “Out of those, you believe a woman is our killer?”
Thomas pulled his pocket watch out. “Whoever is responsible, we need to figure it out quickly. Once we reach American shores, our murderer—or murderers—will slip from our grasp.”
THIRTY
GREATEST TRICK OF ALL
MEPHISTOPHELES’S WORKSHOP
RMS ETRURIA
7 JANUARY 1889
