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He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all. -- William Osler
Dear Stephen,
Why medicine, I wonder? You, I mean, not me. I suppose I can make up the answer, as you're not likely to reply. Scientific curiosity, I imagine, bubbling up irrepressible from an early age. Add to that the need to earn a living, not that you did so well at that until Jack took you to sea, and the luck of just enough cash to afford your training, and medical school must have seemed the obvious choice.
I'm glad you made it.
You'll be wondering about me, now. There was a time, brief enough it seems, when I possessed a fierce desire to save people. I suppose you could call what I do now avenging them instead. Between hospital and police work, I meet enough corpses in a week to turn you green with envy. You had to buy them from grave robbers! Most of my cold acquaintance present routinely enough, dull as the sniffles and sore throats I would have seen in paediatric work, but now and then one comes across my table who teaches me as much in a day as the most articulate of medical lecturers. Hospital corpses educate me on the failings and fortitude of the human body; my murder victims demonstrate the evil that can vanquish the human mind.
Your opportunities were different from mine, but I'm sure you learned much the same lessons.
Thanks for listening.
Yours ever,
Laura
*
Dr. Laura Hobson sewed up the Y-incision she'd cut twenty minutes ago in the body of Nessa Michaels, twenty-seven, Caucasian female who would have been in good health if she hadn't been suffocated to death.
"It's murder, Robbie," Laura said to the gentle throat-clearing behind her -- she no longer needed to turn around to recognize him -- "but we knew that. Foreign objects in all the orifices you saw, plus vagina and rectum. There was even a marble stuffed in the navel. All were inserted while she was alive. And yes, all children's toys, including the jump-rope she was tied up with. I have a detailed list -- hold on a moment," she told him, stripping off her gloves and heading for the sink to wash her hands. "It's on the table there" -- she pointed with an elbow -- "if you want to look."
She waited until he picked it up and then went on. "SOCO has the toys; you can take a look this afternoon. And Robbie," she said, turning around while drying her hands, because this had to be said face to face, "she was pregnant. I'd say about four months gone."
He nodded grimly. "Time of death?"
"I can narrow it a bit from what I said at the site. Between one and three a.m. Earlier is more likely."
"Thanks, Laura. Anything in the stomach? Et cetera."
"Nothing unusual. Last meal fish and chips, eaten late in the evening. Full report as soon as I can get it to you."
"Thanks," he said again, almost-dispassionate eyes surveying Nessa's face. He glanced up at Laura and added, "I hate these cases."
He had a daughter close to the same age. "I know, Robbie. Get the bastard, will you?"
"Yeah. I will."
*
Laura sank down on her sofa, sipped her wine, and brushed her fingers across the fake leather binding of the book before opening it at the marker. "Dear Stephen," she wrote on the blank sheet, and then paused. This was getting far too easy. Months ago, after Homewood Park, when the therapist they'd insisted she see had suggested the technique, she'd declared that it was too ridiculous and she would never bring herself to do it.
"Or," said Dr. Harrison, who had listened far too well in her first session when she'd still been a bit fragile, "you could put a dent in your busy social life by coming to see me twice a week. I don't think you need to. But you need something."
Epistolary therapy: writing letters that would never be delivered, to the dead, to the estranged, to random strangers, or, in Laura's case, to the imaginary. "My imaginary friend," she whispered, tracing the salutation on the page. She wasn't so old, or so technology-averse, not to think first of a computer for communication, and she'd started out with fingers poised over the keyboard; no words had come. The next day, she'd purchased a blank book at Blackwell's and taken her father's old fountain pen out of a drawer. It seemed more appropriate: Dr. Stephen Maturin had after all been born in the eighteenth century, for fictional values of "born."
To her surprise, she'd managed to write down a factual but fairly bloodless account of her kidnapping and near-live-burial, suppressing the urge to explain to Stephen unfamiliar terms such as "plumber's van." It had been easy enough to address him as if she knew him, familiarly, by first name; his life was quite open to her, insofar as Patrick O'Brian had made note of it. O'Brian was another who'd written with pen and ink; she'd had a go at reading the published manuscript of his last, unfinished book, but even with a magnifier the handwriting had defeated her. She supposed all historical fiction writers, and readers too, were throwbacks to some extent. Even her. Pathology was still hand-and-eye work, in its essence not too different from the art of physicians like Dr. Maturin, despite the miraculous advances in technology which she'd embraced along the way. If it helped catch killers, she was all for it.
Wondering if she should attempt to tutor the absent Stephen in DNA analysis, she addressed pen to paper once more.
Dear Stephen,
If I am a throwback, I'm not so much of one as to accept the limited options open to women of your era. Of course you of all people should understand that. I think you would have made a go of it with Christine Wood, if your creator had managed to hang on a bit longer. He was a widower, you know; perhaps it wasn't worth it to him to cling to life without his dear Mary. Other people manage to pull through, though, don't they?
Robbie is pulling through, I'm glad to see, though not so completely as to think of replacing Valerie. Or not replacing, but... adding someone else to his life. He's a one-woman man, I'm afraid; it's painfully obvious when we're alone. He is a toucher; he likes touching me, but it's not sexual, just comforting. Comfort's not bad, though. We could go on comforting each other for some time, I think. And if I ever got him into bed it would be the end of our friendship.
He and Sergeant Hathaway remind me sometimes of you and Jack. Or Jack and you, to be precise in the parallel. The odd couple, managing somehow to work together, and along the way developing a friendship deeper than either of them could have with a woman. I like to think of them sitting down together of an evening, taking out the violin and cello and launching into Mozart. Both of them do like music, but Robbie doesn't play anything, and I'm not sure I understand what James does with that guitar.
I have just had an odd vision of you attending a world music festival. Not that I know what you look like -- just that it's not Paul Bettany -- but I can see you nonetheless. Didgeridoos and sitars and glockenspiels. I suspect you'd hate it.
Anyway, intimate chamber music isn't their department. It could be mine, if I had anyone to play with. Do you know any duets for clarinet and cello? I wouldn't say this to anyone else, but there are days I still think my prince will turn up, and he'll surprise me with sheet music instead of flowers.
It would be my luck to fall in love with a tuba player.
Yours ever,
Laura
*
"Boring, boring, you're so boring," Laura muttered in her best Benedict Cumberbatch to the corpse on her table. He couldn't help being boring, really; he'd had the horrible luck to fall off a ladder onto his head, and there was no doubt about the cause of death, and no chance he'd been pushed. But he had one of those pathetic faces that even in death made you want to pinch him or stick your foot out and trip him, and he was pale and flabby and limp, even with rigor mortis set in, and she hated him.
Well, hardly that. It was just that this wasn't where she wanted to be today, or who she wanted to be with. And no pictures of sunny islands or muscled men appeared when she requested them, just herself, here in the morgue, in a more forgiving mood, with a different corpse.
Flabby-man tidied away, hands washed, she found her mobile and called Robbie. "Laura!" he said; he nearly always sounded happy to hear from her. "What can I do for you?"
"I was just wondering about Nessa. If you've found anything."
"Not much, no. She was surrounded by friends with alibis, and blind-deaf neighbors. Hathaway's working on the toys, but they all seem common sorts that anyone might have bought in a thousand places, including the Internet or someone's jumble sale. And worse luck, she didn't work in a toyshop. But we'll keep digging."
"Of course. No fingerprints, I gather, and no DNA likely, but forensic's working on the few fiber samples. I was wondering about the toys, actually. Could I come talk to Hathaway? I'm free unless some other idiot falls off a ladder."
"I'll tell James you're on your way."
Robbie was out on an interview when she arrived. "James," she said, pulling up a chair next to his desk, "about the orifice-stuffing."
"And good morning to you, Dr. Hobson," he answered in his Jeeves-in-a-snit mode. She made a yes-yes-good-morning gesture, and he gave her one of the mini-smiles and pulled out the neatly-charted version of her list with photos attached. "Noah's Ark figures in the ears," he said, "a matched set, appropriately enough--"
"Giraffes, if I recall," she interrupted, giving James's lanky length a nod. "Chess pawns blocking the nostrils, black and white; stuffed Piglet filling her mouth -- that's what killed her; imagine being murdered by Piglet -- the whole set of Cluedo characters up the rectum; marble in the navel; rag doll in the vagina. Yellow hair, red dress. Nessa had brown hair."
"That's quite impressive," said James.
"It was only yesterday. And it was my good memory that got me through medical school, not any inherent genius. What are your thoughts so far?"
"I noticed the same thing you did about the doll. Its placement suggests the killer knew she was pregnant. If he's the father, he might be blond." James scraped a hand through his short hair, apologetically.
"And the red dress suggests she's a scarlet woman?" Laura said. "If the Cluedo pieces were all Miss Scarlett, it would correlate." James nodded, looking down at the desk. "But likely he only had one game to work with."
"We are checking toyshops," James said. He hesitated, then went on. "Did you notice anything about the Piglet?"
He was rather enjoying the oddity of the conversation, Laura thought. "Vintage," she said. "Pre-Disney-pink-horror."
"Yes. They go for quite a lot on eBay. Either our killer didn't know the value or he was really trying to make a point."
Laura smiled at him. "Think it would fetch more as a murder weapon? But James, I've been thinking: they're all old toys. Not a Beanie Baby or electronic gizmo among them. Chess is goodness knows how old -- don't tell me," she added as James's mouth opened, "Cluedo's been around for ages; same with marbles, dolls, those wooden Noah's Ark animals. Nothing new, not even Lego, and they had Lego when I was a kid. And if you're looking for a punishment, Lego up the arse is one I've always fancied."
James winced. "So," he said, "maybe we're looking for an older murderer. Or a toy collector."
"Or just someone who rejects the modern world."
"Yes." James nodded. "Yes. Thank you, Dr. Hobson."
Barring his more flippant moods, James was as politic as he was formal, but even if he'd already come to the same conclusion on his own she sensed the thanks were sincere. "Keep me posted if you can," she said, and went back to the morgue to finish the paperwork on Ladder-Guy.
*
Dear Stephen,
I wonder what it was like for you, living on a scarily-small ship with hundreds of potential and former patients. Some degree of protocol kept them out of your wig most of the time, but you had to see them every day, the ones you'd treated for the marthambles, which don't exist by the way, and the ones whose legs you'd cut off without anaesthesia. I think I'd have trouble just running into my successfully cured patients at Tesco, which is likely why my clientele consists of those who no longer shop.
So why am I so concerned for Nessa? I suppose for the obvious psychological reasons, because she was suffocated as I would have been by the soil in the grave, and because of the toys, though none but the Piglet and the doll could be associated with babies. Even the doll would be contraindicated due to the button eyes.
If she'd survived it, she'd have nightmares. I do, still: dirt in my nostrils, and the dread of no breath, and then James lifting me, telling me I'm fine. And then a hand over my face. And I can't scream, and I know I'll die. I couldn't ever tell him; he'd be horrified.
I'm not brave, not physically. There's a certain mental toughness, and people think I'm cold and hard because I can deal with corpses. I've never had to hurt anyone, though, not since training. What you could do -- cutting into live flesh, of patients who strain against restraints because they can feel every agony not dulled by force-fed alcohol -- astounds me. It also, if I must be honest, reminds me of the work of the most brutal killers Robbie and his colleagues have chased. I've had to clean up after that; I suppose that takes courage. But the thought of someone torturing me, as you were tortured in Port Mahon, is so terrifying my mind shies from it with violence. That's human nature; I'm sure it always was. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, hm? No one thinks every moment they may need a leg sawed off with nothing but gin to solace them. No one thinks every moment they'll have to handle the saw.
I guess that's why you were so determined to get ashore to botanize and hunt nondescript birds.
And let's not even talk about the time you took a bullet out of your own chest. When I read that, I knew you for fictional, and at the same time you were more real than you'd ever been.
I admire you, Stephen. Often I feel that's better than love.
Yours ever,
Laura
*
"Thought you'd want to know, Laura," said Robbie's voice over the mobile. "We caught her. Nessa's killer."
"Her?"
"Don't sound so surprised. The female is deadlier than the male, and all that."
"I'll remember that next time I'm buying you a drink," Laura said. "How'd you solve it?"
"It was mostly Hathaway's doing. I'll let him tell you."
A second of phone-passing, and James came on. "Dr. Hobson? It was the Piglet."
"Not the butler?" she said, smiling at the pronouncement, and added, "How so?"
"Your noticing that all the toys were old helped. The killer's father was the collector. He'd sold the Tigger and the Kanga out of the set recently; that's how we tracked him down, and he dealt only in nostalgia for his own childhood. The murder motive was jealousy with a twist of incest: the father took up with Nessa. And he was furious with his daughter, not so much for killing his pregnant girlfriend as for using the Piglet to do it, so he shopped her readily enough."
"You have debauched my Piglet," Laura muttered to herself. "Thank you, James," she went on. "And thank Robbie too. I admire your work, you know."
"Thank you very much, Dr. Hobson," James said, and the phone went dead. Laura went back to her work, humming. It was a bit of Mozart, she realized after a moment.
*
Dear Stephen,
Well, the Dynamic Duo have done it again, and I am much relieved. I'd give you an account of the case, but aside from the pawns and the sad antiquity of the motive it would take too much explanation. And it's over.
I think, for the most part, this one-sided correspondence is at an end as well. If you don't mind -- and how could you? -- I will still write from time to time, Christmas and birthdays, that sort of thing, but don't expect to hear from me otherwise. I'm a bit more busy these days: I've joined a chamber group, and I'm attending a series of lectures at the Botanic Garden. And there is always dinner with Robbie.
So au revoir, dear Stephen, and may your voyages be long and fruitful.
Yours ever,
Laura
*
Two years later
Laura hadn't needed to tidy her house after Robbie and James's brief occupation; they'd left everything as they found it, and replaced the beer. So it wasn't until some time later that she sorted one of those piles of stuff that tended to accumulate, and found her book of letters to Stephen.
She had in fact never returned to it after that last brief message, so what she felt paging through almost qualified as nostalgia. Dear Stephen, dear Stephen. She hadn't reread the books in a while either, and it felt time for that.
Taking down Master and Commander from the shelf, she noticed a loose sheet tucked into the pages. Good-quality paper, addressed to her with a fountain pen in crabbed, spiky handwriting. She wondered briefly if she ought to dust for fingerprints, and then unfolded the page.
Dear Laura, it began.
It has been some time since I heard from you, but such are the vagaries of life at sea. I shall give this in charge of the mate of a home-bound Indiaman, and hope it reaches you in good health.
Jack and I have of late been satisfying ourselves with variations on our most-loved duets. On a long voyage one has much opportunity to observe one's musical partner, and I grow in admiration of his skills. He is a far better musician than I, and since my hands have nearly recovered from what was done to them in Minorca, my inferiority must be inherent. Playing with him is the best fortune I have ever had.
In the East Indies I had the pleasure to discover a nondescript stork, which I have christened Anastomus hobsonii, as I know you have always wished for a more attenuated figure, and I thought you might prefer such a namesake to the small and quite edible pig also of my finding.
I am sorry this is not longer, but we are beset in a storm and I fear the imminence of duty. Perhaps another letter from your hand will reach me, but fear not; I will always remember you and wish you fair seas and soothing dreams. I am grateful to have such a friend.
Your humble obedient servant,
Stephen
The spelling was modern, and the hand familiar, as was the habit of uninvited exploration of other people's houses. James Hathaway, you deceitful sod, she thought, and then smiled broadly and sat down to read the letter again.