A Stroke of Malice (Lady Darby Mystery #8) - Anna Lee Huber Page 0,20

“My first thought was . . . well . . .” He hesitated. “He reminds me of Helmswick.” His brother-in-law and Lady Eleanor’s husband. “But it can’t be him. Helmswick left for Paris over four weeks ago.” With the crushed crown, he gestured to the corpse. “So this can’t be him.”

I bit my lower lip, doing a quick mental calculation. “Actually, it could.”

Both men turned to me in surprise.

“I know that seems incredible, but given the environmental factors . . .” I glanced around me “. . . the cold temperatures inside this crypt, and the fact that it’s the dead of winter, as well as the heavy sack he was wrapped inside protecting him at least temporarily from scavengers, it means it’s just possible he might have been deceased for that long.”

I contemplated my previous experiences with corpses, and the lengths of time Sir Anthony had been able to utilize them before putrefaction became too advanced. The conditions in his private anatomical theater were far less auspicious than this for preservation, despite all the methods my late husband had employed to keep the bodies from decaying too quickly. But there had been a particularly cold January in 1829. One when ice had even formed on the Thames. I remembered how bitterly cold the cellar was where Sir Anthony performed his dissections and experiments. But in spite of my cramped fingers, I also couldn’t help noting how the chill had slowed the normal rate of decomposition.

I wrapped my arms tighter around my body as a shiver worked through my frame. “I would say it’s most likely the man has been dead somewhere between two to four weeks, and a few days beyond that is not outside the realm of possibility.” I shrugged one shoulder. “Of course, if he was killed somewhere else and then left there for a period of time before being transferred down to these subterranean chambers, his death might have been more recent, but I doubt it.”

“That’s a broad range,” Gage remarked, resting his hands on his hips.

I grimaced. “I might be able to narrow it down if I take a closer look at the body, but it’s doubtful. Time of death is often difficult to judge even in optimal conditions, and these certainly aren’t those.”

“Then this couldn’t be a guest from the Twelfth Night Ball?” he asked more for clarification than out of genuine curiosity.

“No, this man died before Hogmanay,” I asserted, wondering if Gage had harbored the same initial suspicion I had upon watching the arm slide out of the sack. That perhaps someone had used a forged note like the ones some of the other guests had received to draw the victim down here to their death. But the body was far too decomposed to continue entertaining such a possibility.

“Can you tell how he died?”

I began to shake my head as I allowed my gaze to slide over what features remained of his face again, but then stopped. “There. On the skull.” I leaned closer. “I think that’s a fracture.” I lifted my hands to roll the man’s head to the side, but Lord Edward stepped in.

“Here, allow me.”

I wasn’t about to object, and waited until he’d turned the head to the left before dipping my head to examine the wound. It was indeed a fracture, radiating back toward a rather large indentation. Someone had coshed the man in the side of the head with such force that it had splintered the bone, causing jagged shards to pierce inward toward the brain.

“What would cause such a violent injury?” Gage ruminated in an aghast voice as he peered over my shoulder.

“Maybe a large stone or brick,” I posited, but if so, the wielder would have needed to be incredibly strong and his victim lying on the ground in order to generate enough force. But then another thought occurred to me. I looked up at Lord Edward. “Or a mace.”

His mother had mentioned that the guard room housed ancient weaponry, and I had seen it hanging on the walls myself when we arrived at the castle.

His somber expression turned even grimmer, but he did not argue with this assessment, perhaps having already thought of it himself.

Gage reached into the pocket of the man’s jacket, and I backed away so that he could have the space to search him for any belongings or some form of identification. When the sleeve of the man’s coat shifted upward to reveal some of the skin underneath, I did note it