Page 85 of Evil at the Essex House
“That’s easy for you to say—” I began, and then I remembered who I was talking to. This couldn’t be easy for him, either. “Sorry, St George.”
“Never mind, Darling.” But he didn’t drop his hand from my lower back. “Let’s just get it over with, shall we?”
We got it over with, and I have to say that it was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life. One look at the corpse’s head, and it was obvious that nobody would be able to identify her that way. It looked as if all the bones in her face had been broken, and there was nothing whatsoever there that anyone could recognize. Even her hair—that of it which wasn’t sodden with blood—looked limper and more drained of color than usual. Florence had always had shiny, bouncy curls, and it was sad to see them lay limp and dirty.
The coroner’s assistant, the one who had drawn the short straw and had to work on Sunday, mercifully covered the head as soon as we’d had a chance to look at it and shake our heads. But then there was the rest of the body to identify, of course. There was a strip of linen covering Florence’s breasts, much as a brassiere would, and another strip covering her hips, but other than that, she was naked.
The violence had been almost entirely confined to her head. There were bruises around her wrists, where she had either been bound or someone had grabbed her, and also a few scratches on her legs and upper arms, but nothing apart from that.
I did my best, but it was almost impossible to reconcile the Flossie I had known, upright and vivacious, with the dead and mutilated husk of a woman on the table before me. I shook my head. “It looks like Flossie, but at the same time it doesn’t.”
Christopher nodded.
“I’ve never seen her nude,” Crispin said, gaze distant as he looked at the body. “Her face, yes. I could have identified that…”
“Yes, me too. But you never got her out of her clothes?”
The assistant looked a bit shocked as his eyes flicked from Crispin to me and back, probably taken aback at my modern attitudes.
“No,” Crispin said. “A snuggle or two in the lift, and in the front seat of my motorcar when I dropped her off places, but that was all. I’ve seen her all of four times, I think. Maybe five.”
“I’ve seen her a lot more than that,” Christopher said, “but never without her clothes.”
He glanced at me. “I agree with Pippa. It looks like Flossie, but then again, it doesn’t.”
I nodded. Crispin tilted his head and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the bell outside in reception rang. The mortuary assistant looked at the door, and at us, and at the body, and back at the door.
“Go ahead,” I told him graciously. “We won’t touch anything.”
Indeed, there was no part of me that wanted to touch any part of Flossie at all.
His eyes did the circuit again, from me to Crispin to Christopher to Flossie, and then back to the door as the bell rang again. After another moment’s thought, he seemed to reach a conclusion and told us he’d be right back. He left the door open when he left, and that was how I heard the Schlomskys arrive.
Hiram’s voice was a lot subdued from his usual American boisterousness when he informed the assistant that he was here to see Miss Florence Schlomsky. There was a pause, during which I assumed the morgue assistant debated as to whether he should ask them to wait, and then ask us to leave, or whether it would be a good idea or not to put all five of us in the same room with Florence’s dead body at the same time.
Sarah must have read it as indecision, because she said, “Listen, my good man. That’s my daughter you’ve got back there, and I want to see her.”
She sounded strident, but she also sounded stuffy-nosed, as if she had been crying all night. And that was probably what did it. The next second, there were multiple footsteps coming down the hallway towards us.
“Damnation!” Crispin’s eyes flicked over the room from side to side, searching for a way out that wasn’t the door into the hallway. Barring that, I’m sure he would have been happy to spot a hiding place. When he saw neither, he squared his shoulders and faced the doorway like a little soldier.
Christopher and I exchanged a glance, and stepped towards him: one on each side, slightly in front.
Sarah Schlomsky came through the door first, and rocked back on her heels when she saw us.
Or perhaps when she saw the body. Or a combination of both.
At any rate, Hiram came through the door next, and ran into her. The morgue assistant had the sense to stay outside in the hallway instead of getting involved.
“You!” Hiram snarled. He was staring at Crispin, but then his eyes flicked to Christopher and back, as if he wasn’t entirely certain which of them he was upset with.
“We’ll go,” I said, sidling towards the door on a trajectory that ought to take us past them without actually requiring anyone on either side to step out of their way. Behind me, Christopher nudged Crispin into motion as he brought up the rear.
“Not so fast,” Hiram said, lowering his brows. “What are you doing here?”
He hadn’t moved out of the doorway yet, and perforce, we had to stop.
“Attempting to identify the body,” I told him, which might have been a bit cold-blooded on my part, but it had the benefit of being the truth. “Detective Sergeant Gardiner asked us to stop by.”
