Free The Anatomy of Death by Felicity Young Page A

cause is just.”
    “But what use is it to us?” Florence said, dashing away her remaining tears.
    “I’ll tell you as we go, but first we must find a chemist’s shop that is still open.”

Chapter Seven
    P ike rarely turned down a request from the landlord at the Three Bells to entertain his guests, and tonight was a particularly special occasion—the wedding reception of the landlord’s daughter. Pike’s knee never seemed to pain him at the piano, and he manipulated the pedals with a jaunty spring that had long been missing from his walking gait. As his fingers melted into the piano keys, he left the unsettling scene in his office behind. How the superintendent was going to get away with a shoddy autopsy on a high-profile society figure wasn’t his problem.
    He had started the evening with a selection of traditional ballads and romances, joined by a quartet of young women from the Southwark workhouse. He’d first heard them sing in his local church, and whenever an appropriate opportunity arose, he asked them to join him when he played.
    “But you’re not staying for the whole night,” he’d warned.“Functions like this tend to get a bit out of hand, bawdy even. I don’t want your innocent young minds corrupted.” To which the girls had responded with a mixture of disappointment and mirth: “That’s right, Captain—pure as the driven slush is what we are!”
    The last song of the first bracket was a round, “Summer Is A-Comin’ In,” and his spirits soared with the melody as he accompanied the pure voices that cut clean through to the heart.
    Summer is a-comin’ in
    Loudly sing cuckoo
    Groweth seed and bloweth mead
    and springs the wood anew
    Sing cuckoo!
    The song ended to a roar of applause. The girls responded to the whistles and catcalls with mock curtsies, flinging lip back as good-naturedly as it was hurled at them. Pike decided the audience was ready for a change of pace. He would skip the Gilbert and Sullivan he’d planned and get straight into the rollicking music hall numbers everyone could sing along to.
    But first, he escorted the girls to the pub door and handed each of them their sixpence, warning them not to dawdle lest they should find the workhouse door locked. Winnie Whistle threw her spindly arms around his neck and thanked him for the chance of escaping the workhouse for the evening.
    “And I didn’t cough once and spoil it, did I, Captain?”
    “You did marvellously, Winnie.”
    Delighted with the praise, she offered her rouged cheek, pressing it to his lips before he could back away. “Better getthat stuff off your face, Winnie,” he said, holding her by the wrists at arm’s length, “or they’ll have you out the workhouse in a flash.”
    “Oh, give over, Captain.” She laughed.
    “She wouldn’t be laughing like that if she knew you was the Old Bill,” Brockman, the landlord, said as he joined Pike at the door. The clatter of the women’s footsteps and a bout of coughing from Winnie continued for some moments after the mud-coloured fog swallowed them up.
    Pike wiped the grease from his lips and tapped his nose. “Our secret, Mr. Brockman.”
    “Winnie’s a lunger, is she?”
    “I think she might be. Though the workhouse authorities assure me she’s clear of TB.” Pike would have liked to do more for her; the girl had a child and did her best for it. But he could hardly send her a hamper—the workhouse staff would surely keep it for themselves. He was glad he could slip her a sixpence every now and then.
    He accepted a mug of ale from Brockman and took a long swallow, feeling more at ease in the dockland pub than he ever had in polite society or the stuffy confines of the officers’ mess.
    Brockman had been his regimental sergeant major and served with Pike in India, Afghanistan, and South Africa. He and his wife were the only people in the pub who knew Pike was a high-ranking Scotland Yard detective. To everyone else he was just the captain, an old army