“Well, tell her to ring up the Savoy Grill. They’ve gone off there, the whole group, all squeezed into a taxi, to have an early lunch. Keeping themselves available, so to speak. I, er, judged the presence of so many assertive characters on the premises counterproductive, sir, and made the luncheon suggestion myself. Though I believe I recommended the nearest Joe Lyons Tea Room. Ask for Colonel Swinton—he’s footing the bill. I mean—playing host.”

“Right. I’ll tell my Miss Snow to fix up a meeting for, say, two o’clock. That suit you? It’ll give you and me a few minutes for a sandwich at the Red Lion in Scotland Court.”

“If we still have the stomach for corned beef and tomato ketchup after a two-hour autopsy, sir.”

Joe grinned. “I think I shall give the slice off the joint a miss for once. Get your shoes and hat, Orford. You’re Scene of Crime officer. It won’t do to keep Dr. Rippon standing about.”

The inspector shot to his feet, eager to be off. He seemed prepared to join in Joe’s malicious amusement. “Glad to have you aboard, sir!” he commented.

CHAPTER 6

The rooms that passed for a police laboratory were a few yards downstream in a building of ornate layer-cake architecture matching the rest of Norman Shaw’s New Scotland Yard headquarters. Lined with filing cabinets and shelves of dusty bottles and cluttered with piles of decaying gear that seemed to have been around since Victorian times, the rooms always struck Joe as dim and dank. They lacked the sleek modernity of St. Mary’s or St. Bartholmew’s, where pathology was normally performed. No tiled walls here. No easily sluiced-down mosaic flooring. No Matron to insist on the level of cleanliness that the great hospitals had to offer.

Joe felt obliged to apologise to the pathologist who was standing at the ready in the middle of the postmortem room. “Dr. Rippon! Sorry to find you still working in this rathole. Would you believe me if I told you the gleaming new forensic medicine facilities at Hendon College are even as we speak being dusted off ready for use?”

“No. I wouldn’t. And I didn’t believe you when you fed me the same line on ten previous occasions. Sandilands! How d’ye do?”

The handsome young man was managing to smile politely while conveying his disapproval. Though he could admire the facial contortions, Joe read the warning signs and hurried on with his business. He drew forward to the inspector. “And I believe you’ve met our Detective Inspector Orford in whose hands the case has been placed. He remains your contact—your Scene of Crime bloke. I’m here to hover about smoothing feathers and offering a reassuring flash of gold braid to a demanding public if I read it aright.”

The pathologist smiled more broadly. “Ah, yes. The modern policing. Like justice, it has to be seen to be done. You’re going to have your work cut out to get to the bottom of this one, I think,” he warned. “I’ll say straight away that this is, as the inspector concluded, a case of murder. I am discounting suicide or mischance for a very spectacular reason which I will reveal as we go along.”

Joe watched as, greetings over, the men plunged straight into their task. He was content to stand back and observe.

Dr. Rippon was a tall man with a pink and white complexion, sharp grey eyes and immaculately cut fair hair. He had a pair of stout rubber boots on his feet and rubber gloves on his hands. A pure white starched pinafore reached down to his ankles. Well-muscled arms were bare below the short-sleeves of his cotton shirt. He glowed with health and cleanliness, lighting up his dilapidated surroundings.

Rippon leapt straight into a professional briefing with the inspector, giving assurances that he had not started on the autopsy but had used his time to perform an eyes-only inspection of the corpse. With a gesture, he invited Joe to move forward and join them at the table on which the remains were lying and tactfully allowed the two policemen a moment to take in the pitiful sight.

They looked silently at the spotlit offering laid out on the marble table. Joe could only imagine the effect this small creature would have had on what, oddly, he was ready to think of as her rescuers as she emerged from the Thames mud. Her well-shaped body was outlined by the clinging folds of a still-damp garment, which looked very like an ancient Greek chiton. Joe had seen her brothers and sisters in the British Museum on carvings taken from the Parthenon by the enterprising Lord Elgin in the last century. The short pleated skirt reached to her knees, revealing muscled calves and a pair of sturdy bare feet which seemed to have slipped out of their sandals no more than a moment ago.

Even in death, the face was lovely, the profile so pure that Joe again recalled the carved features of the young men and maidens of Athens walking and riding in triumphant procession, marble noses tilted at an angle of challenge to the world, worthy images of their gods. Her hair reinforced his theory that the girl was foreign. It was beginning to dry out into a thick curling mop that reached her shoulders. Very dark, in shade. Almost black. The eyes were closed.

Following his gaze, the doctor murmured, “Eyes dark brown. That strange chestnut colour you only seem to encounter in the south of France. Come and take a look. There, don’t you agree? I’d say she’s probably not English. Like most Londoners these days,” he added with a smile. “She could be French or Italian.”

Joe was too preoccupied with his own turbulent thoughts to give an answer. He was feeling sick with foreboding.

“Any identification yet?” The doctor broke the silence.

They shook their heads.

“I’ve requested a list of missing girls from records and asked for it to be delivered to me here,” Orford supplied.

“Then you’ll have to listen to what the girl herself is telling us,” said Rippon. “It’s not much. In fact, I’ve never had to deal with a subject that was so successfully cleaned of any clues as to her death—or life. Here she is, exactly as she was brought in. Female. Mid-twenties? No jewellery, no wristwatch, no laundry marks on her clothing as far as I can see. Well nourished, no broken bones in evidence. Good teeth. Her limbs are graceful but well developed. She has the body of a circus performer or an athlete. What else can I tell you? She’s wearing something—not much—but it’s rather distinctive. A tennis dress? Wimbledon on yet, is it? Whatever it is it must be very nearly new. And the matching undergarments are, equally, of good quality. They bear the label of an Italian manufacturer.”

Joe was staring at the body in growing horror. Keeping his voice casual he asked: “Can you tell at this stage how long she’s been dead, doctor?”

Rippon reacted to his concern with a brisk reply: “Between two and three days. I can tell you more precisely when I’ve examined the stomach contents. Briefly: rigor had passed but putrefaction has not yet set in. The temperature of the Thames will have to be taken into calculation of course and I’ll give you my best estimate later. The cold water will have affected decomposition and washed away any tell-tale foam at the mouth and effluvia from all orifices.”

The inspector quivered with rage. “Those darned witnesses … the diggers … the dowsers … they were actually pouring buckets of river water over her!”

He was silenced at once by the grave tone of the doctor. “No one’s blaming them. Anything of use to us would have disappeared in the one, two, however many tides that had already swept over the spot before they found her. If it weren’t for their efforts this morning, the body would have been lost to us—possibly for eternity. Had it been subsequently scoured to the surface it would have been swept away miles down river and out to sea by any current strong enough to dislodge it in the first place. And we owe them thanks for their fast reactions in summoning your help and then digging up and transporting the body. The scene of crime—or deposition, rather; the assumed crime most probably did not occur on that spot—was rendered unusable but they took the only action they could to preserve the corpse. Stout chaps,” he concluded.