She poked through the slushy frozen innards, where the remaining ice crystals appeared sharply detailed through the lenses of her magnifying goggles. Every winter in London, hundreds of people too poor or too unlucky to find shelter were found frozen in the streets. But autumn had only just come to England, and the nights were too warm to kill a bugger, let alone freeze him solid. And so unless she discovered that this man had been on an expedition in the far north, Mina could assume that he hadn’t frozen to death. Standing on the opposite side of the table, Newberry stopped breathing through his mouth for a long second—which told Mina that he’d held back a comment for fear of disturbing her concentration. One day, she hoped, he’d come to understand that a woman could manage both an examination and a conversation simultaneously. Without looking up, she asked, “What is it, constable?” He cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon, sir—I wondered if you can determine how long he’s been frozen.”
