Chapter 89

The lecture auditorium seemed cavernous from the highest tier.

Cassandra sat beside Sebastian beneath the shadow of the upper railing, her gloved hands resting primly in her lap as the professor’s voice rose from the floor below and travelled through the great circular chamber.

The stone walls and sweeping tiers carried the professor’s words until it seemed to reverberate throughout the chamber.

Even from where she and Sebastian had chosen to sit, the professor could be heard with great clarity.

It was precisely the sort of place Cassandra had imagined when she first suggested they attend one of the Association’s lectures. Imposing, austere and filled with the peculiar solemnity of a room devoted to studying the dead.

They intentionally chose one of the highest levels.

From there, Cassandra could observe the entire chamber without drawing much attention to herself.

The lecture was open to the public, allowing those outside the institution to attend and, indeed, encouraging them to do so.

Students and casual observers occupied the tiers around them, listening with varying degrees of enthusiasm, while below, at the centre of the room, Professor Alistair Bellamy stood beside the dissecting table.

Cassandra’s reason for being there varied greatly from theirs. However, she had to be patient.

The plan required fineness. They could not approach Professor Bellamy during his lecture, and Cassandra had no intention of rushing and making a mess of things.

She had come dressed as another woman, carrying another woman’s grief, and every part of the deception had to be maintained with care. One careless question, one detail she failed to remember, and the entire ruse could collapse.

So she waited.

They needed an opening, and until the lecture ended, they would have to sit quietly and listen.

Fortunately, Cassandra discovered that listening was not nearly as tedious as she had expected.

She had never given much thought to this school of study before. It was not that she had considered it beneath her; rather, it had simply never occurred to her that it might be something worth considering at all.

Women of her station were not encouraged toward such pursuits, and the study of the human body belonged to a world that had always seemed distant from the carefully arranged boundaries of her own.

Yet Professor Bellamy had a way of making the subject sound compelling.

Her black mourning gown was deliberately plain, without the fashionable embellishments she normally wore, and the veil chosen completed the ensemble.

Mrs. Elizabeth Pembroke. Just recently widowed.

That was the woman she was supposed to be.

The widow she had chosen to impersonate had once been married to a doctor, a man who would have been at medical school at the same time as Whitmore.

Their paths might have crossed often enough for them to have known one another, perhaps even shared some degree of friendship.

The identity belonged to a real woman, which made the deception considerably safer.

Sebastian had located the recently deceased doctor whose name they were borrowing for Cassandra’s story and, more importantly, had confirmed that his widow was still living.

Cassandra had committed every scrap of information they had managed to uncover to memory until she could recall the miniscule details.

It was dishonest.

She knew that perfectly well.

But honesty had become an expensive luxury.

Too many people had lied to her, leaving her to suffer the consequences of believing them.

She had little patience left for moral scruples that demanded she abandon an opportunity simply because taking it required a measure of deception. If a lie was what it took to get her closer to the truth, she could live with that.

Below, Professor Bellamy moved on to the heart. He spoke of the chambers of the heart and the great vessels connected to it, explaining the manner in which blood travelled through the body. He moved naturally from the heart to the arteries and veins, explaining their differing structures and functions.

His passion for the subject was clear for all to see.

Cassandra had never imagined she would find any of it interesting. Yet there was something absorbing about hearing the human body explained so seamlessly.

Professor Bellamy continued his demonstration, and Cassandra watched as he began to dissect the cadaver.

Beside her, Sebastian grew noticeably uncomfortable.

Cassandra gave him a sidelong glance.

The watch officer’s attention remained fixed upon the table below, though there was something distinctly squeamish in the set of his features.

He was doing his best to conceal it, which only made it more amusing.

Sebastian had faced violent men, bloodshed and dangerous situations in the course of his work without losing his composure, yet the sight of a professor calmly opening a dead man’s body appeared to make him squirm in his chair.

He leaned slightly toward her, lowering his voice so that it would not carry. "Perhaps this is not quite a scene for a lady’s eyes."

"I have known death more intimately than most," she murmured. "This is hardly enough to trouble me."

Since returning from the dead, she had never spoken a word about what had happened to her. This was the closest she had ever come to acknowledging the truth of what she had endured.

Sebastian gave her a brief look, apparently deciding that there was no sensible argument to make against that statement.

He turned his attention back to the lecture.

Cassandra did the same.

The professor continued his explanation, moving between the heart, the major vessels and the organs they supplied. Then the subject shifted from ordinary anatomy toward the effects of disease.

"The appearance of the vessels could reveal abnormalities," Professor Bellamy explained. "Changes in organs and tissues could sometimes provide indications of disease, inflammation, injury or other conditions that had existed before death. Careful examination could reveal disturbances that would never have been apparent from the outside."

The professor was no longer merely teaching them the names and functions of parts of the body.

He was explaining how the body itself could preserve evidence.

A person might tell a false story about what had happened before death. A witness might lie. A family might conceal an illness.

Circumstances surrounding a death might be misunderstood or intentionally misrepresented. Yet the body could retain signs of what it had endured.

The dead could not speak but the study of the corpse might prove useful to an investigation in ways she had never considered.