Barrett introduces me to the doctor—George Phillips, the police surgeon. In his fifties, with muttonchop whiskers and wearing a high-collared white shirt and black stock tie under his smock, he looks as if he stepped out of a portrait from the previous century. Barrett explains that I’m his wife and a reporter for the Daily World, with official permission to observe the autopsy.
Dr. Phillips smiles, and benevolent lines crease his face. “Well, this is a first for me—a lovely lady to watch me at work. But are you certain you want to, Mrs. Barrett? Postmortem examinations are not for the faint of heart.”
“I’m certain.”
My heart didn’t fail me when I saw Annie Chapman with all her organs removed, but I’ve never watched the actual cutting and eviscerating. As Barrett and I join Dr. Phillips at the table, we look at each other. He doesn’t seem squeamish; he’s watched autopsies before. We share wan smiles, and I can tell that he’s thinking what I’m thinking: how bizarre to find ourselves standing together at an autopsy table as we did at the altar this morning. It feels right, even though I imagine it would seem wrong to other people.
Dr. Phillips dons rubber gloves and peels the blanket off the body. Charles Firth looks shrunken, his skin gray; death has extinguished his personality, reduced him to a mass of decaying flesh. I breathe shallowly but still catch a sweet, rotten whiff of the dried blood on his clothes. When Dr. Phillips unbuttons and opens the white shirt, it sticks to the skin underneath.
“I don’t think we need an internal examination.” Dr. Phillips studies the narrow cut between Charles Firth’s upper ribs. “The cause of death is obvious. You’re in luck.” His wry smile at me says he knows I dreaded watching the cutting.
It’s not only the cutting that would have distressed me; it’s also the posthumous violation of a man I knew and liked, to whom I owe my good fortune.
“The crime scene was the first I’ve ever seen at which the victim was killed during a photographic session,” Dr. Phillips says. “What was he trying to photograph?”
“Ghosts,” Barrett and I say in unison.
Dr. Phillips raises his bushy white eyebrows at us. Barrett explains about the supposedly haunted church.
“A murdered ghost hunter; how peculiar,” Dr. Phillips says. “I must confess, I think photographs of that sort are an abominable hoax.”
Although I hate to challenge his skepticism and my own, I say, “I developed his photographs. Look at this one.” I take a duplicate print out of my satchel.
Barrett and Dr. Phillips purse their lips as they scrutinize the pale figure assaulting Charles Firth.
“I think it’s a person,” Barrett says.
“I agree,” Dr. Phillips says. “The blurriness makes it appear to be a ghost.”
But they don’t sound entirely confident. I say, “The Daily World is going to publish this photograph tomorrow, with the headline ‘Murder by a Ghost?’ ”
“Get ready for trouble,” Barrett says. “Remember the panic during the Ripper murders? People were seeing him on every street corner and going mad with fear.”
“I attended the Elizabeth Stride murder scene and performed the autopsy.” Memory clouds Dr. Phillips’s expression.
I was the first to discover her body. That’s one of my secrets related to the Ripper case. “Heaven help us if people start thinking they see ghosts.”
“It behooves us to prove that this is not a case of supernatural crime,” Dr. Phillips says. “I can tell you that aside from the circumstances, this murder was a simple stabbing. The weapon was a sharp blade approximately half an inch wide. Nothing the least otherworldly about that.”
“Many people already think the Ripper is a ghost because he committed six murders and escaped without being seen.” Even if I were to tell them his identity, they would probably disbelieve me and cling to their superstition.
“Is there any way to rule out a ghost?” Barrett says.
“Let us take a closer look.” Dr. Phillips examines Charles Firth’s stiff hands. “No wounds. He didn’t try to defend himself. He must have been taken by surprise.” Walking slowly around the table, Dr. Phillips examines the clothed body from head to toe. He pauses to touch a gloved finger to the sleeves and lapels of the black jacket.
“Have you found something?” Barrett says.
The bright lights in the morgue reveal what the darkness in the crypt concealed—traces of a pale, greenish substance, a dried slime. Dr. Phillips leans close to the slime on Firth’s jacket, sniffs, makes a face, and draws back.
“It has a strange odor. Foul, but with an aromatic tinge.”
“What is it?” Barrett says.
“It could be mucus or vomit. Although I’ve never encountered any with that odor.” The doctor probes Mr. Firth’s nostrils and open mouth with a cotton-tipped stick. “Hmm, none in there. It doesn’t seem to be his.”
“I didn’t notice any at the scene,” Barrett says. “Did you, Sarah?”
“No. But if it didn’t come from Mr. Firth, then where did it come from, and how did it get on his clothes?”
“I’d better have another look around the crypt later,” Barrett says.
Dr. Phillips uses scissors to cut slimy patches from Mr. Firth’s clothes and puts the bits of fabric in a small glass jar. “I’ll send these to a chemist for testing.”
An unwelcome thought occurs to me. “Could it be … No, it’s impossible.”
“Impossible to be what?” Barrett says.
The thought is like a feather stuck in my lung, and I have to cough it out. “Ectoplasm.”
“Ah—the supernatural substance with which ghosts supposedly take physical form,” Dr. Phillips says. “It makes them visible to humans and allows them to do things they can’t when they’re mere disembodied energy.”
“I heard about a séance where ectoplasm came out of the medium’s mouth.” Barrett speaks hesitantly, as if afraid to sound foolish. “It took the shape of a devil with wings and flew around the room howling.”
I muffle an unladylike snort of disgust.
“Most certainly a hoax,” Dr. Phillips says.
I think of the hoax that was once played on me. Soon after my mother told me my father was dead, I took the money she gave me to buy groceries and spent it on a medium. The fat old woman lit candles, burned incense, moaned, and went into a trance. As her body trembled and her eyelids fluttered, she said that my father was in heaven, he sent me his love, and he promised me that we would be together again someday. That the prediction came true and we actually have reunited doesn’t make up for the fact that she couldn’t have received a message from his spirit because he wasn’t dead. She tricked a bereaved child. Now I hate to add more credence to the mistaken idea that a ghost killed Charles Firth.
“Do we have to tell anyone about this?” I point at the glass jar of samples. It repels me as though it contains a genie that will whip London into a panic. I picture Barrett and me so busy chasing nonexistent ghosts that we haven’t time to catch the real, mortal killer.
“I’ll have to mention it in my autopsy report,” Dr. Phillips says.