Content Warning: These Chapter Summaries & Analyses refer to violence against women and gore, which are depicted in the novel.

Chapter 1 opens in Dr. Jonathan Wadsworth’s Laboratory, in Highgate, London, on August 30, 1888. The protagonist, Audrey Rose Wadsworth, an aristocratic 16-year-old who is the daughter of Lord Edmund Wadsworth, cuts open a cadaver under the supervision of her uncle, Jonathan Wadsworth. An unknown young man enters as they are examining the liver of the dead body; Audrey’s uncle leaves with him, leaving Audrey to sew up the cadaver. On his way out, Audrey’s uncle concedes that she may attend school the next day (he will be teaching a forensic medicine class) if she dresses as a boy and says nothing aloud.

Audrey sits in quiet frustration as her uncle asks a question (about the nature of the death of a female murder victim) to the class to which she knows the answer. A boy, whom Audrey believes was the visitor the previous night, suggests that the victim was attacked from behind; he demonstrates on a classmate, miming slitting his throat. Audrey’s uncle enthusiastically congratulates the boy, whom he calls Thomas, on his deductions; he believes that the murderer was seeking the murdered woman’s organs.