Read Online Louisa and the Missing Heiress by Anna Maclean - Free Book Online Page A

would have been of more use here, at home.” I smiled ruefully.
    The house was still. Outside, a dog barked to be let in. Wind rattled withered leaves. I closed my eyes, beckoned Beatrice and the opera house in Italy, the beautiful women with their sparkling jewels and waving plumes, the men with narrow aristocratic faces, opera glasses held high to examine the feminine company in the various boxes. I smelled the champagne and pâté, the perfumes, heard the slight tinkle of crystal from the overhead chandeliers as the velvet curtains parted to reveal the stage, and onstage a set of a castle, a dark night, a new world waiting to receive its visitors. And then one word entered my thoughts— Dottie —and the vision of Italy vanished.
    “A stage and a blank page have much in common, Sylvia,” I told my companion. “But I can’t concentrate on this story till I discover what has happened to Dot.”
    The professions of detective and author, I now know, have much in common. Both involve an attempt to understand the deepest nature of human beings, as well as the act of telling—or uncovering—their deepest, truest stories. Yet when one is overcome by the desire to help a friend and solve a mystery, at least for me, it removes the desire and ability to write. It is similar to the magical time at the end of each novel when I feel completely consumed by my characters. When I am in the middle of a mystery, an event that occurs only when I must save a friend from peril, the detective work consumes my every effort and the muse is, temporarily, struck dumb.
    “It is nine-thirty,” Sylvia said, checking the little gold watch pinned to her bodice.
    “Sylvie, I worry that even for me this autopsy will prove too distressing,” I said. “Are you certain you wish to come with me? Remember you fainted at the sight of blood last summer when you cut your foot.”
    “I shall not let you endure this alone,” she replied staunchly.
    I pulled back the muslin curtain and looked out into the street.
    “There is no sun today, only clouds,” Sylvia remarked. It seemed undeniably appropriate.

CHAPTER FIVE
    A Case for Murder
    THE POSTMORTEM WAS HELD in the courthouse basement, in a cold and dreary greenish-white room grotesquely shaped like a small theater, with a construction like a wooden stage, and a table on that stage, and rows of facing tiered seats. The gaslight was unnaturally bright and cast deep shadows as people moved. Paid witnesses, mostly hired off the street, filed in and took their places, piling hats and cloaks on empty chairs in the back.
    We took a seat in front, center, just three arm’s lengths away. I could see that many of the men in attendance viewed this as a rather bold gesture. I suddenly realized that, if I wished, I could breach convention and reach down and touch my dear friend one last time. I knew I would not, but the urge was there. Sylvia was already visibly trembling.
    Waiting, I noted every detail, from the dirty rags in the corner, a stained coffee cup on the edge of the soapstone basin, the triangular sooty stains over the gas lighting fixtures. But always my eyes returned to that table and the solitary figure resting there.
    Poor Dot. How alone she looked. Her clothing had been removed and her body wrapped in white sheets soaked in chloride of lime to slow putrefaction. Even so, the sickly odor of death wafted through the room. Many of the witnesses held cologne-soaked handkerchiefs to their noses.
    Promptly at ten o’clock (we could hear the bell of Old Trinity ringing) white-bearded Dr. Roder shuffled in from a side door, like an actor uncertain of when to enter stage right. But his stooped posture and vague air were misleading. Boston’s oldest doctor of medical jurisprudence, he had an intimidating reputation as a scholar in the field, with training that could trace its ancestry all the way back to the famous Benjamin Rush. He had studied technique with Duncan in Edinburgh and Thomas Cooper at