Page 50 of Courier of Death
Claude had not been able to interject before Leo replied, “As he is deceased, I’m not convinced he would care who looks at him now, man or woman.”
He’d frowned for the rest of the morning, throwing wary and incredulous glances at her as Claude proceeded with the examinations. His hands shook here and there, but whenever the tremors grew serious, Leo distracted Mr. Quinn with a comment or question, the most outlandish being, “What is that cologne you are wearing? Or is that ammonia that I smell? Forgive me, they’re so similar.” And with each postmortem closing, Claude stepped back to allow Mr. Quinn to do the suturing, claiming the more he did, the better he’d become at it.
By noon, with three examinations complete, they paused for tea.
Leo had been taking notes all morning, jotting postmortem findings down, as had Mr. Quinn. She’d presumed he was taking notes on the examination procedure itself, perhaps recording pieces of insightful information Claude provided. However, when Mr. Quinn took the chair behind Leo’s desk and fed paper into the typewriter, she put her hands on her hips.
“What do you think you are doing?” she asked, perhaps a bit more sharply than necessary.
“Typing a postmortem report,” he replied. “It is part of my duties here.”
She fought the desire to stomp her foot and order him out of her chair. But it was only a matter of time before she was ejected from this morgue and the duties she had grown accustomed to—and was quite good at. Though it pained her, she held her tongue as she slapped her notes down upon the desk. Instead, she went to the possessions register to record the personal items that had come in with the three corpses that morning.
The first man had expired of heart failure, the second of untreated pneumonia, and the third corpse, an older woman,had been a vagrant who’d been attacked by a dog. The animal’s sharp teeth had torn at a bundle of varicose veins in her left leg, which had then hemorrhaged profusely. Without immediate medical care, and in her weakened state, she’d died. The woman’s possessions had been limited to her clothing and tatty shoes, though the two men had quite a lot in their pockets. The first man had come in with a leather case stuffed with documents and random bits, easily identifying him.
“Don’t you require your notes for that?” Mr. Quinn asked after pausing his typing for a few moments. He was tediously slow, his pointer fingers hunting arduously for each letter.
“No, I do not,” she replied, filling in the lines for the pneumonia victim.
“Are you logging the possessions for all three bodies?”
“Yes.” Leo sighed, realizing that he was unaware of her unusual memory. What a bother to have to explain.
She lowered the register and faced him. “I have an impeccable memory, Mr. Quinn. Photographic, some call it. Very useful for tasks like this.”
He rested an elbow on the desk and turned toward her. “A photographic memory? Truly?”
Oddly, he looked intrigued rather than doubtful—the latter of which most people were whenever they learned of her preternatural ability. She nodded and turned back to the possessions register.
“Can you remember everything then? Say, what I was wearing yesterday, when we first met?”
She closed her eyes and groaned. “That is hardly a difficult question. You were wearing the same ugly brown suit that you’re wearing today. Besides, I am not going to prove my memory to you by performing like some circus monkey. Take my word for it, or don’t. It makes no difference to me.”
She finished with the possessions log while Mr. Quinn went back to his stilted typing. With him still occupying her desk, and nothing more to do in the postmortem room, Leo decided on another search of the crypt for her family’s boxed-up belongings.
Without windows or natural light, the darkened crypt required her to bring a paraffin lamp. A series of arches constructed of block stone divided the vast crypt, which ran not just beneath the old vestry but also reached under the adjacent St. Matthew’s Church. Everything from broken pews, crates of moldering hymnals, a discarded confessional, and rolled-up tapestries to a series of older autopsy tables, chairs, and, of course, boxes upon boxes of unclaimed personal items belonging to past corpses packed the arched spaces. Somewhere among it all—Claude had given her a general idea of their location—were her family’s things.
When Jasper revealed her father had been working for the East Rips, she hadn’t wanted to believe him. But the truth was, she could hardly remember her father. Leonard Spencer was a mystery to her. And now, Flora’s comment about hisbloody, bloody businesshad become more ominous knowing that her father had, at some point, formed ties to a criminal gang. If she could find his papers, or even Flora’s letters to her mother, she might better understand what he’d done to make his family a target for revenge.
Leo went past the section she’d finished off the previous evening, before Mrs. Zhao’s panicked arrival, and set her lantern on a rusted metal surgical table. The boxes and crates here were coated in at least an inch of dust. Even the spider webs were aged and dusty, drifting loosely like old lace. She reached for a box made of once-stiff corrugated board, now soft and limp.
“What is all this?”
Leo hadn’t heard Mr. Quinn descending the wooden steps and now felt encroached upon.
“Storage.” She wasn’t inclined to fully explain.
“There’s quite a bit of it,” he commented, running a hand over some of the boxes she’d searched yesterday. “Storage for the church or the morgue?”
“Both. Is there something I can help you with?” Leo asked, eager for him to leave so she could get on with her search.
He exhaled and came to a stop within the circle of lantern light. “I wanted to apologize.”
It wasn’t what she’d expected.
“It was rude of me yesterday to ask if you were paid a wage. It’s none of my business.”
The apology at least sounded sincere.
