"It fits her too well." I dropped the skirt and ran my gaze over the gown. "It was made for her."
"Or her lover sent her to a dressmaker," Thompson said.
I looked at the young woman’s neck and wrists, which were bare. "No jewels. If she had a protector, she would wear the jewels he bought her."
"Someone could have taken them," Pomeroy said.
I touched the woman's throat. "There is no sign of bruising or force on her neck, nor on her arms. I do not believe she was wearing any jewels before she fell in. She was not robbed."
Thompson leaned down with me. "No," he said. "But she was murdered."
He turned the woman's head to one side. I recoiled, my hand tightening on my walking stick.
The entire back of the woman's head and been caved in, rendering her skull and hair a black and bloody mess.
Chapter Two
I looked down at the wound, an ugly gouge on the woman's otherwise pretty head. She'd not been much past five and twenty. A life snuffed out too soon.
"Do you know who did this?" I asked, my voice hard.
"That we don't, Captain," Thompson said. He looked at me sideways, his own eyes quiet, but in them I saw a spark of anger that matched my own. "Found the body, nothing else. She can't have been floating there long." He looked up at the waterman. "Maybe only thrown in this afternoon?"
The waterman nodded. He must have seen his share of bloaters, and Thompson must have too. They'd know just by looking at the body how long she'd been in the water.
"How much had she drifted, do you think?" I asked. "Do you know where she went in?"
"She didn't go far," the waterman said in his reedy voice. "I found her fetched up under th' bridge."
He pointed. Blackfriar's Bridge lay just upstream of us. I was night-blinded by the lanterns, but looked that way as though I could see the arches of the dark bridge.