Dorothy Fen

London’s plague inspector, working where contagion, record and public embarrassment meet. She is one of the names the capital thinks of when bodies, documents and reputations begin to fail at once.

Dorothy Fen is Plague Inspector of London, part of the procedural machinery by which the capital handles suspicious illness, quarantine and the control of arrivals. Her office stands where mercy, classification and procedural consequence meet, and her name belongs to the short list of people Londoners imagine taking hold when bodies, paper and reputation all begin to fail together. In the city’s movement regime she matters wherever contagion, record and public embarrassment touch one another, which on the river is more often than the river would like.

She is young for the office and the office has stopped remarking on it. Her reputation is for cool method: she inspects, records, tags and seals, and she does not discuss her conclusions until they are written. Shipowners resent her, physicians respect her, and households with something to hide find her very difficult to charm.

Companies meet her when a cargo, a crew or a lodging-house has come under suspicion and somebody must stand between a quarantine notice and the people it will ruin. She will accept help in carrying out an inspection and accepts none at all in reaching its verdict.

In person

Dorothy Fen is thirty, tall, narrow and spare, with very short close-cropped hair and a pale, triangular face of prominent cheekbones and slightly hollow cheeks; one eye is more hooded than the other, and her nose is long and hooked. A small old chemical burn runs along her jaw. She wears a fitted dark inspection coat with a high protective collar and leather gloves over long fingers, and carries a satchel of sealed specimen tubes, quarantine tags, wax seals and a folded mask. Her expression is cool and clinical.