Page 90 of A Devilish Element
“I don’t see how announcing his lordship’s impotence would have helped matters.”
“No?” He shrugged. “Perhaps not. Perhaps one truly does need to consider the whole picture.”
In actuality, she was more hurt by the deception than the notion of him having been intimate with another man. If two people loved one another, then it was for God to judge them, not their fellow man. Except, Jem had been quite adamant that love had not been a part of it.
Then again, she hadn’t asked for his love either, when she’d asked him to sin with her.
“Wait, what do you mean the whole picture?”
She took Bell’s silence as a refusal to elaborate. “I…” She sniffed hard and pulled her shoulders back. “I don’t care for being deceived, Doctor Bell.”
“I don’t much care for lady doctors, but sometimes one simply has to get over oneself.”
She bristled. “They are hardly the same things.”
“They both involve things we love, Miss Wakefield.” He challenged her with cocked brow. “Swab.”
Eliza huffed. She had no intention of getting any further into the meat of the matter with him. Thus, when he opened his mouth again, she blurted, “What of Mr Cluett?” to divert him.
Bell stared at her bemused. “What of him?”
“Do you think him responsible? Trustworthy? Do you think he did,”—she peered down at the dead man—“this?”
“Trustworthy. George? Hell, no!” He laughed. “As to whether he’s responsible, until I determine the cause of death, let’s not be too hasty with the accusations. Poison doesn’t strike me as his style though. It requires forethought and planning, and George is… Well, you saw the pair of them this afternoon chasing about. Now, if Linfield had been run through with a sword, or had a pistol ball lodged between his ears, then I would point the finger at George. The truth of the matter is though, Miss Wakefield, is that there’s not a soul among us who didn’t have a reason to want him dead, you included, so shall we concentrate on the task at hand and see what we might uncover?”
He completed the cut he was making so that it ran from sternum to pubic bone, then two more from each shoulder to the sternum so that the two lines formed a Y-shape. “You will find other anatomists tackle things in different ways, but this is my preference. And now, we will determine your true mettle, Miss Wakefield. These cuts traverse both the skin and abdominal wall, but to reach the organs it is first necessary to remove the ribs. For that we use—”
“A saw?” She reached for the tray ready to pass it, recalling the accounts of the surgeons’ theatres she’d scoured in the past for insights.
“Pliers.” He corrected her, reaching for them. “I prefer pliers. I find them more efficient. First, we need to ensure these flaps stay out of the way.” He drew the top flap back over Linfield’s face first, then peeled back the two sides, only to pause. “What in the name of hell?”
Eliza too gave a gasp. She was made of stern stuff, though her desire for knowledge was currently warring with her emotions. This was the man she’d only recently dined with, and with whom Jem had embroiled himself. The smell of offal and garlic assaulted her nostrils, prompting her to pinch them closed, but it was the sickly green glow emanating from within the cavity of his opened torso that prompted her to make an unladylike exclamation not dissimilar to Bell’s. “That… that is not—” She looked to Bell for confirmation. “—normal?”
The physician stood with his arms raised, pliers at the ready. “No.” His tongue swept his dry lips. “No. Not normal at all.” He stretched out and snuffed a couple of the nearby candle flames, which made the glow increasingly apparent. It ran through many, but not all the exposed organs.
“It’s concentrated in his alimentary canal.” Bell gestured with the pliers, pointing out Linfield’s stomach, and then both intestines. The glow was most pronounced in the upper regions. “This is certainly what did for him.” The pliers clattered against the metal tray as he dropped them. “Never in all my days. That’s…” He bolted through the door to the adjoining room.
“Doctor!” Eliza scurried after him. The hairs on her own arms were raised. There was something particularly ghastly about the quality of the light spilling from Linfield’s body. It filled the mind with unease, sucked at her sense of reality, so that all her hairs stood on end. “We cannot leave him exposed like this for the mice and rats to nibble on.” Such a grotesque fate she wouldn’t wish on a commoner, and absolutely wouldn’t do for the son of an earl. It was not that one was more deserving of dignity than the other, rather a matter of decency. “Doctor Bell!”
“A moment, Miss Wakefield.”
Jem hastened from the chaise as the pair crossed the threshold. “Are you done so soon? Does this mean… Is it as you feared? Poison.”
Eliza froze, assaulted by memories forged earlier that day, of lying in Jem’s arms, contented and merry, giddy with the possibilities that lay ahead. She hadn’t dreamed of forever with him—well, maybe a little—but she had revelled in the pleasure of his company. What she wouldn’t give to be back in that pleasant daydream. She noted that Jem was twirling one of the gas-containing balloons in his fingers. He let it go, and it sank to the floor, before being blown into a corner by Bell’s swift pacing.
The doctor ignored them both. He bowed his head over the old bucket sink as if he thought he might vomit but uncurled to his usual height a moment later. “I’m not done, no. Barely begun, but yes, I think we might conclude poison the cause. Poison or the touch of whatever spectre roams this place.”
“Spectre?” Jem’s brows wrinkled in turn. “Eliza? Whatever? What nonsense is this?”
“It’s…” She raised a hand, while the other she pressed to her waist. “It’s…”
Bell’s agile fingers set to tapping against his troubled mouth. “I like none of this. It is distinctly wrong in every regard. Gentleman, Lady, I am not one given to theatrics, and while I enjoy novelty, this is… it’s…” He rubbed his nose.
“It’s what?” Jem asked, his eyes flashing with his frustration at the both of them.
“Peculiar,” Eliza ventured. “I’d suggest you look for yourself, but perhaps don’t.” He turned almost the same sickly shade as the light in Linfield’s guts at the mere suggestion. “The thing is Linfield’s innards are… Well, they’re glowing.”
“I beg your pardon.”
