Scarlet Widow Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought about the drunken porters who might be waiting for her in the street outside and nodded, and followed him into the large back room. It was even colder in here, so that her breath smoked, and the only light came from a single high window. The walls were damp and flaking, with black patches of mould on them, as if they had caught the diseases of the people who were brought in here day after day.
    This morning there were nine bodies altogether – five men, two women and two children. They were lying on trestle tables against the walls and on blackboards just above them the names of their resurrectionists had been scrawled in chalk, to lay claim for bringing them in. Three of the men were still dressed in coats and britches, although their shoes had either fallen off or been removed, revealing holes in their stockings or dirty bare feet. Two of them were dressed in grubby woollen shrouds, and one of the women, too, was wearing a shroud, but hers was much cleaner, as if she had just been lifted from her coffin. The other woman wore a heavy grey skirt with layers of tattered petticoats underneath, and black button-up boots with worn-down heels.
    Each of their faces was concealed by a flannel duster – not to give them dignity, but to spare any visitors the sight of their collapsing features as they decomposed. Although the room was so chilly, and most of the bodies had been recovered from an ice-cold River Thames, the smell was still so strong that Beatrice pulled up her sleeve to cover her nose and mouth and tried not to breathe too deeply.
    ‘Take a squint at this one!’ said Robert, lifting the duster from the face of one of the men. The man was cross-eyed, with patchy ginger hair, and his tongue was sticking out sideways, as if he had died while trying to make his friends laugh.
    ‘Please – I don’t want to,’ said Beatrice, turning away ‘I just want to get home.’
    ‘How about this young lady – she was the one who tried to save her children from drowning!’
    Beatrice couldn’t help but look. The woman was white-faced, very young, no more than nineteen or twenty, with a pointed nose and the razor-sharp cheekbones of somebody who had never had enough to eat. Her brown eyes were staring at the ceiling and her mouth was stretched wide open.
    Before Beatrice could turn away, the woman let out a high, breathy whine, which ended in a squeak. Beatrice jumped away in fright.
    ‘She’s alive ! Robert! She’s still alive!’
    Robert took hold of her hand again and gave it a shake, as if to shake the silliness out of her. ‘Nah, Bea, don’t worry, they often does that. It’s the gas in their bellies. You can come in here some summer evenings when it’s warm and they’ve been lying here all day and they’ll all be whistling and farting and moaning and complaining. It’s like they’re saying, what are we doing here dead, when we should be in the bar, having a pint of ale and playing ombre?’
    He lifted the duster that covered the face of the woman in the shroud and peeked underneath it. ‘Don’t know why they brought this one in, though. She’s a bit far gone for the surgeons, I’d say.’
    Again, Beatrice didn’t really want to look, and yet she couldn’t resist it. Even though the bodies disturbed her so much, and their smell made her feel so nauseous, she found that they fascinated her. How had they died? Why had they died? That cross-eyed man, who had probably had a heart attack in mid-guffaw, or that panicky-looking young woman, caught forever in a soundless scream – she and Robert could stare at them and make remarks about them, but they would never be able to explain what had happened to them. They were all here, all nine of them – but they were all gone, too.
    She nodded towards the woman in the shroud. ‘Why is she wearing that funeral gown? She looks as if she’s all ready to be buried.’
    ‘That’s because she was buried once,’ said Robert. ‘Either that, or laid out ready.