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

the University of Pennsylvania, and was a protégé of old Walter Channing himself at Harvard.
    It was said of Roder that he could find cause of death in a corpse that had been buried for centuries and then burned for good measure. If Constable Cobban had requested Dr. Roder for the postmortem, then the officer must already suspect foul play.
    Roder, well aware that his fame had preceded him, strode to the center of the room, faced the witnesses, and made a little bow. The uncertain actor had become the impresario. There was slight, nervous applause. I turned and glared at the other observers and they put their hands back in their laps and were silent.
    “We will begin,” Roder announced.
    Cobban, who had been standing in a corner, moved closer to the table. He looked down at Dot with pity and a gentleness that spoke well for a young man who had chosen a career that often required thwacking fugitives on the head and sometimes wearing a revolver inside his coat—unofficially, of course. Revolvers had not yet been issued to the new Boston Police.
    A young assistant with long dark hair like an Italian poet’s unraveled the top sheet, leaving Dot’s arms, legs, and shoulders bare, while a second sheet still modestly covered the torso and trunk. Next to me, Sylvia put her hand over her mouth and rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
    In the harsh, bright, unforgiving light I could see other bruises on Dorothy’s arms. I knew I had to study this gruesome scene with determined concentration. The bruises were small, pale, as if the blood that would normally pool there where the skin had been insulted hadn’t had time to complete its own work. Death had halted the process. While I felt deep grief for my Dorothy, the spirit of Poe’s Auguste Dupin seemed to fill me with detective zeal.
    Cobban had been standing motionless at the head of the marble slab, staring at Dot’s now-loosened hair as if wanting to avoid embarrassing her. The doctor and his attendant, however, handled the corpse with an indifferent boldness that seemed to prolong the humiliation of death.
    Active now, Cobban leaned over Dot once again, studying the neck, jotting in his notebook where and how the bruises were located, the shape of them. He looked up, so he could see me. His eyes were wary.
    I understood instinctively that the marks on Dot’s body could not have been self-inflicted. Young Mrs. Wortham had been very roughly handled, and recently. Were the bruises acquired at death, or sometime before? Were the bruises connected with her death? I tried to convey to Constable Cobban through my eyes and expression that we were thinking alike.
    Dr. Roder started the examination at the head. He swept to one side the wealth of loosened pale hair and leaned close, pulling up the eyelids, swabbing out the ears, and prying open the mouth.
    “It would appear,” he began, speaking loudly, “to be a case of dynamic death, rather than mechanical. The woman is young and with no evidence, yet, of ill health or disease that would cause bodily failure. She was pulled from the harbor, yet there is no sign of river water in her mouth. In cases of drowning, a negative poisoning of the blood ensues, since the blood, suddenly deprived of the influence of the oxygen of the atmosphere, becomes unfit to vivify.”
    Heads in the gallery nodded to indicate comprehension. One very ancient top-hatted gentleman in the back row was already nodding off. He would be paid his ten cents whether he stayed awake or not.
    “There are bruises on the throat seemingly made by a hand,” Roder continued. “Moreover, there is a large lump over one ear, invisible to the eye because of the healthy thickness of the subject’s hair. But it is a lump, nonetheless, suggesting injury before death. A man, or a woman, may fall alive into water and die there without being drowned, as when she receives a fatal injury by falling with her head hitting a rock. But when a woman in falling into the water receives