‘As you know I had many errands to do this afternoon, one of which was to visit the post office. While there, I heard talk of the mailbags that had been on the train last Sunday. Even though the bags were in the water for several days, they were tightly sealed, so some of the addresses were legible. I enquired if there was anything for Magdalen Yard Road and the postmaster returned with this package. It feels heavy, from having been in the water. He said it might still be damp inside so to dry it out fully, but the address is fully legible. Look, Mrs Craig, it’s for you.’

Ann took the letter and stared at it. It was Robert’s writing. She turned it over and looked at the sender’s name. She bit her lip; it was from her husband.

CHAPTER 32

Chapter 32

2015

‘Want to come and give me a hand with this stuff, Fi?’

‘Yeah, what is it?’

‘Bit gruesome,’ said Martha. ‘Working on the postmortems today. Need to rake through all the records and see if anything’s suitable for the exhibition.’

Martha and Fiona sat down in front of piles of folders on the table and put on their white gloves. ‘Where did they take place?’ asked Fiona.

‘Well, at first they had a makeshift mortuary in the station, in one of the waiting rooms.’

‘Wow, that must have been weird.’

‘Yes, but that was just for the first few days when Dundee was a city in shock. No one was using trains at first, then they moved everything to the Dundee Royal Infirmary in Barrack Road.’

‘So did they have enough doctors specialising in pathology to carry out the post-mortems?’

Martha shrugged. ‘Dunno. There was no university then, so no professors of forensic medicine. They’d have had to use just regular doctors, I guess. Main man here seems to be a Dr Donald Anderson, he’s signed off most of them but there are some other signatories.’ She flicked through the pages and pointed at signatures.

‘How could they tell a body had actually been involved in the disaster and not just drowned?’

‘They used rectal temperature to assess the length of time since death and the state of rigor mortis.’

Fiona squirmed. ‘God, what a job. Presume it’s all a bit less grim nowadays?’

‘It’s certainly more precise.’

‘Right, so how accurate could the doctors have been in 1880?’

Martha shrugged. ‘Well, they must’ve had so many bodies all at once, it would have been a sort of production line. The body would first have to be identified by family, desperate for news. Then, once it had a name, they’d have examined it and written the report.’

‘So, any injuries not caused by just drowning would have been noted too?’

‘Yeah, some had injuries caused by boat hooks or grappling irons used to recover the bodies from the water. Not all of them were conveniently washed ashore.’