Page 75 of Disturbing the Dead
“The title is ridiculous,” I mutter as I glare at the first volume. “The Mysterious Adventures of the Gray Doctor? The Mysterious Adventures of Doctor Gray would flow better and make sense.”
“I would have used ‘undertaker’ myself,” Isla says. “The Mysterious Adventures of the Curious Undertaker.”
She glances at Gray, but he’s staying out of the conversation, leafing through the pamphlets with a growing fissure between his brows.
“Mallory?” Isla says softly, pulling my attention back. When I look over, she murmurs, “He is fine.”
I want to grumble that he might be fine, but this is not fine. It’s not fine at all.
Gray has kept out of the limelight because he doesn’t want it. He just wants to do his damn work, and I get that. As a cop, I’d cringed anytime I got in the papers, and if I had the chance, I’d direct attention to a more deserving officer.
Part of it was that I felt there was always someone more deserving, and if I got my photo in the paper instead, it was because someone making those decisions thought I had a better “look” for the piece. Young, female, and attractive enough. I had a pleasant and open face. Cute, as I’d been told, which was a whole lot more flattering when I was a whole lot younger. In interviews, I was, well, me. Friendly, approachable, a little bit outspoken, a little bit sarcastic. A good choice for a sound bite that was honest but never too biting.
So I understood why I got more ink than my colleagues, but I hated it. I’d literally cringe when someone joked that I was in the papers again. I just wanted to do my damn job.
This isn’t a photo or a mention in the paper. These are entire stories dedicated to Gray, written by a stranger who is profiting from Gray’s earnest attempts to quietly help the police and further the state of forensic science.
I might be snarling about the shitty title, but really, I’m snarling about the whole damn thing. And that’s before I start reading.
“Oh hell, no,” I say after two pages. “If this is Jack, she had damn well better never show her face around here.”
“Perhaps,” Isla says gently, “but it is no worse than you would read in the papers, Mallory. In your time writers might have better ways to describe people who do not resemble the dominant population, but this is normal.”
Maybe, but the fact that she didn’t need to ask what I’m snarling about tells me she noticed it, too. McCreadie might have grumbled about the adjective “vigorous” being attached to his every mention, but in two pages, the writer has made three different references to Gray’s skin color and two to his “foreign visage.”
“Perhaps you would like to read elsewhere?” Gray murmurs.
The words are soft, with no sense of rebuke, but my cheeks still heat.
“Sorry,” I say. “It just pisses me off.”
“Then we shall reach an agreement. You have registered your disapproval of these descriptions. Now I will say that if this damnable writer mentions your bosom one more time, I shall be forced to challenge them to a duel, even if it does turn out to be Jack.”
Isla snorts. “Oh, but her bosom is mentioned so prettily, Duncan, so as not to offend women and children.” She lifts the book. “‘Miss Mallory leaned over the victim, the firm mounds of her maidenly bosom rising and falling in panicked breaths. “Sir!” she cried. “Do you think he is dead?” She clapped her pretty hands over her pale breast and gazed beseechingly at her employer through her lovely golden lashes.’”
“That is not for women and children,” I say. “It’s soft-core porn disguised as detective fiction. For the record, I don’t give a damn how many times Catriona’s boobs are mentioned. I’m going to be challenging the writer to a duel for portraying me as a simpering fool.”
“At least we know the writer has never met you,” Isla says. “That would seem to strike Jack from the list of suspects.”
“Unless she’s doing it to piss me off. Panicked breaths and beseeching looks,” I mutter under my breath.
“Now, now,” Gray says. “I have seen you look at me most beseechingly from under those golden lashes. You do it every time there is only one cup of coffee left in the pot.”
“Like the way you look at me when there’s only one pastry left on the plate?”
“While I hate to interrupt your adorable banter,” Isla says, “I must assure you both that I have now gone two pages with nary a mention of Mallory’s bosom. There is only this rather unremarkable tidbit.” She raises the book again. “‘Miss Mallory noticed a mark on the floor, and in her haste to examine it, she lifted her skirts—’”
“What?” Gray looks thunderous.
Isla raises a finger. “‘She lifted her skirts most decorously, revealing no more than a sliver of milky skin above her fine boots, and then she arranged the skirts to allow her to crouch on all fours—’”
Gray starts to make strangled noises, his expression murderous now.
“‘To crouch on all fours,’” Isla repeats, clearly enjoying herself, “‘with her rounded posterior in the air.’”
“A duel,” Gray grinds out. “This requires a duel.”
“‘She crouched there, on her hands and knees, rounded posterior lifted as she bent to examine the evidence on the floor, which…’” Isla chokes on a laugh. “‘Which turned out to be nothing but a speck of dirt.’” She claps a hand to her mouth as her shoulders shake with laughter, tears welling. “Oh, my.”
