‘My God, can you imagine if you arrived at the beach one morning and just saw all these bodies strewn on the sand. Horrible.’ Fiona shivered. ‘Dad told me about a beached whale there once, when he was a boy. The entire city was out in force, trying to get it back into the water. Pretty sure they managed.’

Fiona pointed to the paper in front of her. ‘Anyway, what d’you think? Does this one seem suitable for the exhibition?’

‘Yeah, could be. This one here’s similar.’ Martha read aloud. ‘Name Annie Smart, says aged mid-twenties. She was twenty-four and from 52 Union Street. She was a weaver. Death by drowning, but this one also mentions hypothermia. Again, there’s mention of lungs overinflated, filled with water, serous fluid in the pleural cavity. Also mentions white froth in the airways.’ Martha grimaced. ‘Bloody hell, what a way to die, they must have struggled under the water, but I suppose the water was so cold, it can’t have taken long.’

‘Horrible. I noticed another one had lesions on the forehead, presumably from being bashed against the rocks. Or against something in the train – crashing into the carriage or part of the engine or something.’

‘Thanks for helping, Fi. I’ll take our selection to the boss once we’ve done them all, see what she says. She might think we can’t display any of them, but at least without names it’s just representative of the disaster, not of any specific family. Thankfully there were no photos in those days in morgues.’

Fiona looked at her watch. ‘I’d better clock off now, if that’s okay. D’you want me to do more work on these tomorrow?’

‘Might need you to, but I’ll see how I get on.’

She shuffled the papers and put them into a neat pile. ‘We’ve done up till the ninth of January. I’ll carry on with the post-mortems from the rest of January this afternoon and see what’s left.’

Fiona peeled off her gloves. ‘Thank God we’ve not come across anyone named Craig!’ She laughed and headed for the door.

CHAPTER 33

Chapter 33

Monday 5 January 1880

‘You smell nice, Mamma,’ said Lizzie, putting her arms around Ann. They were sitting on the window seat in the drawing room awaiting their guests.

‘Thank you, sweetheart. A lady must always smell delicious.’ Ann turned as she heard the crunch of feet on the gravel. ‘Here they are!’

Ann and Lizzie went down to meet the Donaldsons and, with each step, Ann was thinking of the letter upstairs in her room, drying off in front of the fire. Hopefully she would be able to unfold it and read it later.