The mortuary was in the basement of a building some five minutes from the river. As Hadley filled in paperwork upstairs, I descended the iron steps to the examination room where Odelia Wyndham’s body had been brought. The temperature had dropped a good twenty degrees, as it always did in such places.

Dr Caswell, a rotund, porcine man with a grey brush cut, was laying out his instruments. My nostrils were assailed by the familiar yet always disturbing odours of carbolic acid, ammonia and death. I shivered in my linen suit at the sudden chill, contrasting so sharply with the damp heat of the day.

Caswell looked up and nodded. A combination of gas and electric light gave the place a strange brilliance. On the table, covered by a white sheet, lay the body of poor Odelia Wyndham. An attendant pulled back the draping, and once again I stared down at the girl’s dead face.

The young woman, of late so vibrant, volatile and lively – was now a marble carving, white and still. Her blonde hair, free from its constraints, billowed about her on the table, a wet and tangled mass of curls. Her beauty was transformed into an ethereal shell of young womanhood. Our first meeting had been troubled, but even so, in this quiet, cold room, I felt a sharp pang of grief. A wasted young life, tempestuous but nevertheless promising, that promise now never to be fulfilled.

Had Holmes been there, he would no doubt have chided me for the sentiment.

‘May I begin?’ I asked, and with Caswell’s nod I withdrew the covering, took out my pocket lens, and began to examine the corpse in the manner I hoped was like my friend’s.

Sherlock Holmes’s protocol was unique, as he never took the means of death for granted. Although it would appear Miss Wyndham had drowned, I checked her nails, inside her mouth, her neck and head, and all the major and minor bones. The body had been in the water for several hours, and in that amount of time and with the heavy current in the lock, vital evidence could have been washed away.

Hadley joined us and stood silently against the wall to give us room to work.

‘Serious bruising,’ I said. ‘Two fingers broken, and possibly two – no, three – ribs. She fought someone, and fought hard.’

Caswell followed behind me, confirming these larger injuries and undertaking his own business. He vouched that the young lady had not been molested. At least there was that.

Thirty minutes later, I had all the information that could be gleaned from Miss Wyndham’s corpse. Her wrists bore the bruises of someone’s strong grip. The broken fingers and more bruises along the side of her right hand and across the knuckles indicated she had struck something, more than once, with considerable force. I announced those findings to the others.

‘I concur on all,’ said Dr Caswell.