‘A well-nourished Caucasian female, physical condition consistent with a stated age of twenty-nine. Sixty-one kilos, one hundred and seventy-three centimetres.’ The pathologist looked up. ‘That’s about nine stone nine pounds, five feet seven inches.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Physical injuries are all superficial. No signs of external trauma.’

‘Any signs of recent sexual activity?’ asked Fry, to take her mind off the smells.

Mrs van Doon pursed her lips and flicked back her sleeves. ‘You have all the best ideas, don’t you?’

‘I need any indication I can get of whether there was another person in the house that night.’

‘Yes, I understand where you’re heading. I can see why they employ you on these cases. I imagine you don’t leave any bit of dirt unexamined.’

‘We have a lot in common, then,’ said Fry coolly, surprised by the sharpness of her tone. But she supposed even pathologists were human sometimes.

‘No, no signs of sexual intercourse. This is the only item that’s of real interest –’

The pathologist held up a body part that had been cut free and sliced open with a scalpel. Fry didn’t recognize it, which was probably what Mrs van Doon expected.

‘This is the oesophagus. The black stains you can see on the inside are soot. They suggest that your victim was alive when the fire started, because she breathed in smoke. There’s enough in the oesophagus to have resulted in asphyxiation.’

‘So that’s the cause of death?’

‘Possibly . . . There’s a sort of triple whammy in these cases. Inhalation of soot particles damages the airways, because the particles are super-heated and contain toxic agents. Hot air burns the upper passages, too, and can cause vagal inhibition. But there’s a third factor. Carbon monoxide is normally associated with soot inhalation, and I can deduce some CO poisoning from the cherry pink discoloration on the torso. We’ll get blood samples analysed for carboxyhaemoglobin levels. But anything above fifty per cent is fatal.’

‘I presume there’ll be a report soon.’

‘When I get time.’ The pathologist began to strip off her gloves. ‘The other two fire fatalities are children, I see.’

‘Yes.’

‘You know, the children look almost undamaged, but for the carbon monoxide discoloration and some smoke staining.’

Fry searched for something to say. ‘That makes it worse, I suppose. They don’t look as though they should be dead, do they?’

‘On an emotional level, that’s true.’

She watched the pathologist drop her gloves into a bin, wondering if she’d just been the object of a subtle insult, or a slur on her professionalism. On an emotional level? But perhaps it had been a moment of personal confession. It was difficult to tell with Juliana van Doon.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen