Except the Dying

“Let’s keep to the side,” he said to his constable. A gust of wind whipped across their faces, stinging, lifting the snow into a puff of mist that shone in the air like diamond shavings. Murdoch pulled his muffler up around his nose, which was pinching against the cold.

They were about ten feet away when Murdoch realized it was Alice Black who was lying there. There was no mistaking that garish red and black striped jacket and the foolishly overdecorated hat. He felt a pang of pity as they stopped and gazed down on her.

There had been no dignity in her dying. Her brown straw hat had fallen off to the side and one of the dingy yellow feathers, broken in two, lay across her livid cheek. Her swollen tongue protruded from her mouth and the capillaries in her eyes had burst so that the sockets seemed to be swimming in blood. Murdoch knelt down and Crabtree shifted his feet nervously beside him. He wasn’t used to this sort of death.

“Nasty, sir,” he said.

“It is that. The rope has almost broken through the flesh, it was pulled so hard.”

Murdoch found it distressing himself, but he had seen his share of bodies washed ashore. Once, a Norwegian trawler had been shipwrecked off the coast and a young blond sailor had been found jammed in the rocks. A piece of sail rope was wrapped tight about his neck, and he had looked the way Alice did.

“At least we know for sure this one didn’t die from natural causes,” said the constable.

Murdoch nodded. “Too true. Go back to the beach and mark any wheel tracks or prints that you find.”

“What do you think she was doing out here, sir?”

“What she was doing is probably not so much the question. How’d she get here is what bothers me. Look!”

Alice was in her stocking feet and the black wool was torn at the soles. He could see lesions on the skin underneath where the ice had scraped her.

“I doubt she walked all the way from home without her boots.”

He glanced over at the shore where the half-dozen huts were scattered. To the west was the Gooderham Distillery, the smoke stacks etched against the blue sky.

“I suppose she could have been gaying it in one of these cottages,” said the constable.

“It’s possible, but she’s a long way from her own territory. I’m more inclined to think she came in a carriage. Maybe somebody wanted a winter poke. Anyway, let’s search first, then we’ll start asking.”

“Yes, sir.” Crabtree looked down at Alice’s body. “She wasn’t heading anywhere that could help her.”

He indicated the white expanse of lake stretching to the horizon. A flock of gulls were gathered nearby, their underbellies white as the snow, their hooked beaks yellow and cruel.