Next it was her turn to share her innermost thoughts. “You must find me strange,” she said. Many did. In truth, Edwina secretly feared he would abandon her on the street, afraid to continue walking beside such an aberration, knowing who and what she really was. Instead, he took hold of both her hands, drawing her closer to him.
“Miss Blackwood, I find you many things—brave, remarkable, enchanting—but strange isn’t one of them.”
A black cat scurried past their feet with a dead mouse dangling from its mouth. A train rattled overhead, spewing coal smoke and ash that rained down on their hair and clothes. Though far from a romantic setting, Edwina did not object when Ian leaned in to kiss her under the glow of a streetlamp. She could have stood in his arms until morning, and might have, too, if not for the hansom cab that pulled to a stop beside them.
Ian sighed and faced the cab. “Chief Inspector Singh. Impeccable timing as usual.”
The inspector leaned her head out of the cab. “You need to come with me. Both of you.”
The pair, feeling they had no other choice, climbed into the cab beside the woman who, for the moment, seemed to hold their freedom in her hands.
“We would have come to see you in the morning,” Ian said. When Singh didn’t answer, he paid closer attention to the direction the cab was going. “Wait, where are we heading?” he asked, but their destination was soon apparent without Singh verbalizing it. The cab veered left and two minutes later drove up beside the northern end of the tower bridge.
A cold foreboding came over Edwina as the cab stopped inside an archway beneath the massive girders. She shivered, remembering the cold water she’d plunged into over and over again, searching for Ian’s lost memory. The chief inspector jumped out of the cab and ordered them to follow.
“Riya, what’s happened?” Ian demanded she answer before he let Edwina disembark. He seemed to understand something grave had occurred or they wouldn’t have stopped at such a place.
Singh did an about-face on the pavement, her skirt twirling in a manner too frivolous for the moment. “A body. About an hour ago.” She stared solemnly at Edwina. “I’m afraid I must insist.”
Edwina grew queasy. Unsteady. Images came to mind unbidden of ghastly blue skin and seaweed draped over half-lidded eyes. She squeezed her own eyes shut, willing the image to fade as she stepped out of the cab.
“Are you all right?” Ian wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Lean on me, if you must,” he said and nodded at the chief inspector.
They followed Singh inside the bridge’s abutment to a room covered in white tiles. The temperature dropped like a winter chill out of the north. A body lay on a table covered with a white cloth. The dripping fringe of a black shawl peeked out below. Edwina covered her mouth with her hand, afraid of the noise that would come out otherwise.
“They fished the body out down there,” Singh said, pointing to where a set of steps led to the river from the landing outside the room.
“What is this place?” Ian asked, holding Edwina with both arms now as she curled into him.
“They call it Dead Man’s Hole,” she answered plainly.
Singh nodded. “So many bodies wash up here because of the current, they added a morgue to have a place to store them until they could be identified or taken for burial.” The chief inspector beckoned forward a man standing in the corner, and he came and peeled the sheet back from the body. “I know this is difficult,” she said, “but we need you to tell us if this is your sister, Mary.”
Edwina didn’t need to look to know her sister was the one laid out on the table. The lace-up boots, the black skirt, and the shawl from their mother’s loom were all Mary’s. But she knew she must maintain composure long enough to verify the face she’d seen every day of her life for twenty-three years. Not another in the world as similar to her own as the one gone gray and blue under a sheet.
“What happened to her?” she asked.
“We think she waded in upriver as the tide came in. She’d filled her shawl with large stones and tied it around her neck and shoulder.” Singh gave Edwina a moment to take it in. “Sometimes a sinking spell is used to aid the weight of the stones, but we can’t be certain.”
A strange paralysis came over Edwina. Her lungs forgot to take in breath, and her legs wanted to collapse beneath her. Singh snapped her fingers, and the man from the morgue grabbed a chair for Edwina to sit on. “I saw her mere hours ago,” she said, recovering only slightly. “We fought. Here on the bridge. I told her she would hang for what she did.”