The Rosary Garden by Nicola White (best books to read now TXT) 📕

here, loping around like Brideshead aristocrats with their little red ball. God, he was getting like his father – disgust as a first resort.

They passed behind the pavilion and entered a nondescript building that was part of the science department. Four flights up was the office of the chief pathologist, a man who combined an academic career with intimate examination of the country’s dead. He was a well-known figure throughout Ireland, striding across newspaper photographs – out of court, into court or entering a tented area in some newly blighted place.

The room they entered hummed with fridges, freezers and extractor fans, and the whiff of formalin brought Swan’s nostrils to attention. The muddle of the place reminded him of Deirdre Hogan’s house, but here the clutter was elevated to a professional level. Slide carousels, files, shelves of reference books, microscopes and other precise-looking instruments he couldn’t put a name to crammed the room. Stacks of Tupperware boxes filtered the light from the attic windows. Of course it probably had a different name when put to scientific use – plasticeptacle or polyquarinator or something.

Among this attic of delights stood the Edwardian figure of the pathologist, leaning on his knuckles over one of the island counters that sliced the room, half-moon glasses balanced mid-nose as he stared at something in a white plastic box in front of him. His open lab coat revealed a tweed suit, check shirt and knit tie. He looked like a man who might go and shoot some grouse when the office day ended.

As they approached, he pulled a lid onto the box and pushed it to one side. While they made pleasantries, Swan’s eyes kept wandering towards it, imagining lurid contents – a severed body part or some naked, quivering organ.

‘Vincent, do you bring me news or are you wanting something from me?’

‘I had a question,’ said Swan. ‘It’s going to sound a bit naïve.’

The pathologist folded his arms and leaned back in readiness. ‘It’s the simple ones that are the tough ones,’ he said. ‘Who made the world? and all that.’

‘How can you tell if a woman has carried a child? Internally, I mean.’

Swan got a smile for his effort.

‘Hmm … pregnancy shifts the pelvic girdle, widening and loosening the joints to a certain degree. It also stretches the womb, naturally enough, and even though it contracts again, you can tell the difference at post-mortem if the deceased is still of child-bearing age. After the menopause it’s a bit more difficult. Of course in cases where there was a subsequent hysterectomy, the difficulty is obvious – just the bone girdle to go by.’

‘What if the woman is still alive?’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘If she’s walking about saying that she hasn’t had a baby at all, can you prove she has?’

‘There would commonly be signs from such a major event, of course: trauma … scarring from tears likely – a lot depends on how much time had passed between delivery and examination.’

The pathologist reached over and pulled the plastic box an inch towards his body, then poked it so it lay exactly parallel to the desk edge. Swan felt the silence between them like a great fog of uncertainty.

The pathologist looked at Considine. ‘Any insight you would care to offer?’

Gina’s face darkened and she flashed a quick look at Swan. ‘I’ve never been pregnant.’

‘I think you should be talking to an obstetrician about this,’ said the pathologist, addressing Swan once more. ‘But I imagine the accessible signs to look for are stretching of the skin, scar tissue from tearing at the mouth of the vagina and changes in the os.’

‘The what?’

‘The os. The opening in the cervix – it becomes distended into a line rather than a dot. And a scan would probably reveal womb changes.’

Considine had pulled out her notebook, was writing ‘OZ?’ on a blank page, head bent.

‘What about the psychological effect? Do you think it would be possible for a woman or girl to deliver a baby and then sort of forget about it? Or not really forget about it, in the ordinary sense, but blank it, act as if nothing at all had happened. Even tell herself that nothing had happened?’

The pathologist pulled over a stool and sat down. ‘Psychology’s not my field. But I remember a case in England, about eight years ago, still sticks with me. A young guest at a wedding delivered herself in a toilet cubicle during the reception, then placed the baby and the afterbirth in the sanitary bin and re-joined the party. People were coming and going all the time, and one witness saw the girl retouch her make-up before leaving the Ladies. And none of her friends or even her boyfriend admitted to noticing she was pregnant.’

‘Complete denial?’

‘Yes, or at least a sense of putting things back to how they should be, sans baby.’

‘And just carry on normally.’

‘Exactly. Unless you’ve come across yet another dead infant, I presume we are still discussing your Rosary Baby?’

Swan nodded.

‘In cases of denial, you don’t take the time to wash, feed and clothe your baby before killing it. Quite the contrary.’

‘Yes, that’s what doesn’t fit. Given those few days that it lived – do you think it’s possible for a girl to deliver and look after a baby on her own, to keep its existence from anyone else?’

‘I’m flattered that you seek my opinion on such a wide range of things.’

‘Have a go—’

‘Probably. Maybe. Women have delivered on their own throughout history. I’m sure they still do, though few would actually choose to. There’s a good man at Holles Street I can recommend for all this stuff.’

Considine wrote the good man’s name in her book. The pathologist reached out for his plastic box again, pulling it directly in front of him and pausing to look at them with his thumbs hooked under the lip of the lid. Swan braced himself. The pathologist flipped the lid off to reveal a stack of white sandwiches, then smiled a wicked smile.

They said their thanks