“A friend of hers came forward, an Alice Sullivan,” Byrnes continued. “Alice said she saw Carrie twice that day. Carrie hadn’t had a proper meal in days, so that afternoon Alice got them sandwiches at a saloon. She claims they met up again for an evening meal at the local Christian mission before going their separate ways to do their business.”
“When was the last time she was seen?” Uncle asked.
“Alice said around half past eight that night. Saw her with a man named Frenchy.”
“Was Alice the last person to witness her alive with him?” I asked.
Inspector Byrnes shook his head. “Mary Minter, the housekeeper at the hotel, saw her take a man into her room later that evening. She said he wore a black derby hat and had a thick mustache. Real dodgy. Didn’t look anyone in the eye, kept his face down. Like he was trying to not be noticed. We can’t confirm if it was Frenchy or someone else.”
“Has someone tracked down Frenchy?” Uncle asked.
“Apparently, she was seen with two different men named Frenchy last night.” At Uncle’s confused look, he clarified, “Frenchy is a popular nickname around that neighborhood. One man is called Isaac Perringer. We’re still lookin’ for the other. For now we’re callin’ them Frenchy Number One and Frenchy Number Two. I’ve got my best men out searching for them. We’ll round them all up and show them to the witnesses.”
“Most hotels, even more questionable ones, require a ledger to be signed,” Thomas said. “Did anyone on your staff inquire about it?”
“Course. What kind of fools do you think we are over here?” Byrnes gave Thomas a scathing look. “He registered them as a C. Nicolo and wife.”
“Do you have a photograph of the ledger?” I asked.
Byrnes frowned. I was unsure if it was our inquisition about his police work, or if the question caught him off guard. “Can’t say that I do. Why?”
“An analysis of the writing might prove this murder cannot be connected to the London Ripper,” Uncle said, giving me a swift nod of approval. “If you’re so keen to quiet the papers, it’d be an excellent way to show the person in question’s hand is different from known Ripper letters. Between that and securing a witness to place either ‘Frenchy’ at the murder scene, it ought to be easy enough to tamp down Ripper hysteria.”
“You’re expecting a drunken lot, most of whom lack proper intelligence during the best of times, to be reliable witnesses.” Byrnes buttoned his overcoat and donned a bowler hat. I fought the urge to remind him that he was the one who’d suggested “rounding them up,” not Uncle. And it was their circumstances, not their intelligence, that made them turn to the bottle. “You’re either incredibly naïve, or hopeful, or both, Dr. Wadsworth.” He tipped his hat and headed for the door. “Good night.”
“Inspector?” Uncle asked, stepping into his way. “Will we have access to the body?”
Byrnes paused, considering. “She’ll be in the morgue at Bellevue until they take her to Blackwell’s Island along with the other unclaimed bodies. If I were you, I’d go tonight. Sometimes corpses don’t make it ’til morning. Especially not on Misery Lane.”
The morgue on 26th Street—appropriately referred to as Misery Lane—ought to have been called a crypt. One from the likes of Poe’s macabre imagination or the beginnings of a sinister vampire tale. It was dark and dank and smelled of rot and human waste. If I allowed my mind to wander, I might convince myself I could hear the faint beating of a buried heart.
Located one story below the foreboding hospital above, bodies lay stacked in heaps on wooden tables. I’d never seen such disregard for the dead before and swallowed my horror down. Corpses were shoved so closely together, I wondered how they’d moved new bodies onto adjacent tables without knocking the others over in the process.
Uncle paused at the threshold, his gaze landing on each body in various states of decay. He removed a handkerchief from his inner pocket, eyes watering. One corpse nearby had already begun to bloat, and the fingers and toes were the blackish blue of death.
A man in a butcher’s apron glanced at us, then went about his business of inspecting the bodies. Candles burned ominously close to the corpses. Two young men dressed in black stood in the shadows, watching the coroner with bored interest. He snapped at them, motioning to a cadaver that seemed quite fresh. “This ought to do. Take it and be off with yourselves now.”
Their boredom transformed into a gleam of hunger I knew well as they stepped forward and claimed the proffered dead. They hoisted the elderly male corpse onto a wheeled stretcher, hastily tossing a sheet over it as they pushed it out of the room. The sound of wheels turning rumbled down a corridor. At my furrowed brow, Thomas leaned in to whisper, “Medical students.”
“Interns.” The old man turned back to us, eyeing my uncle with thinly veiled annoyance as he pulled a pocket watch out. It was nearly midnight. “You the professor fro
m London?”
“Dr. Jonathan Wadsworth.” Uncle glanced around the room again, the flickering light reflecting in his spectacles like flames. I fought a shiver. He looked like a vengeful demon. “I’m told the body of Miss Carrie Brown is here. Would you mind showing it to us?”
“The whore?” The coroner’s sour expression said he most certainly minded the interruption, especially for someone as lowly as a prostitute. I clenched my hands. “If you must.” He jerked a thumb down one long, narrow aisle of cadavers. “This way.”
Thomas, ever the gentleman, swung his arm toward the two men retreating down the row of the dead. “After you, my love.”
I gave him a tight smile and followed Uncle, my cane clicking in alternating soft and hard thumps as I walked over mounds of sawdust on the tile floors. I wasn’t frightened of the corpses—those I found strangely comforting. The atmosphere and disregard for their scientific study made my skin crawl. Well, that and the maggots wiggling around the bits of bloodied sawdust, which hadn’t been swept away in quite some time.
At the end of a row of bodies, close to where a lone bulb buzzed above us, we stood over the remains of Miss Carrie Brown. Much to my dismay, she’d been washed. Swathes of pale flesh marbled with deep blue veins were marred only by the stab wounds. Uncle closed his eyes for a moment, likely trying to collect his anger. “She’s been cleaned.”
“Course she has. Won’t do us any favors to keep her dirty and stinking while she’s here.”
A blatant lie. None of the other bodies had been cleaned. He’d probably tried tidying her up to sell to the doctor in the operating amphitheater above. A potential Jack the Ripper victim would be quite a draw. Thomas reached for my arm as I took an unconscious step forward. I wouldn’t resort to violence, but part of me wished to strangle this man. Miss Carrie Brown had already been forced to sell herself in life; these men had no right to auction her flesh in death.
“Did you photograph the body before wiping away evidence?” I asked.