That morning, Mr Franklyn stepped out. He was hoping to be appointed demonstrator, and was anxious to show himself to be worthy of the position.
‘Go back to your sister, madam,’ I heard him say as he tossed her a few coins. ‘Or, better still, bring her to us when her time comes, and we will do all we can.’
Clenchie Kate jabbed her crutch at him, and made the sign of the evil eye, for Mr Franklyn was known to have visited the sisters on many occasions. It was said that he had already made an arrangement with Rabbie McDade, the skeleton maker at High School Yards, for the stringing up of Mary Anderson’s bones.
‘You will cut her to bits,’ she cried. ‘You will cut her to bits and boil her bones. Has she not had enough of men wanting her body for their own purposes that you must murder her and butcher her too?’
Some of the students laughed at that, as though the idea of anyone slaking their desires on a body as misshapen and twisted as Thrawn-Leggit Mary’s was most amusing. But there were others who looked away, and in their faces I saw that if Dr Crowe had visited the girl then he was not alone.
Kate Anderson saw it too, and her language dissolved into abuse. Two porters appeared from the direction of Surgeons’ Hall and dragged her back the way she had come, and we returned to our business. It was reported by Gloag later that day that Clenchie Kate had been seen insensible with drink in the Grassmarket even before the hour was out.
We thought that was an end to it – for that day at least. But there was worse to come. It was late in the afternoon when it happened. I was in attendance because I had made several preparations of the heart – in its entirety, and also in cross section, the aorta and valves, the strings and powerful muscular sides of the organ clearly revealed. I was proud of these creations – undertaken in wax and, if I may say so, an impressive simulacra of that most vital of organs. I was not usually present at Dr Crowe’s lectures, but I wanted to see the response of the students to my models. It is well known that Dr Knox, our most famous rival at Surgeons’ Square, is dismissive of any teaching aid other than the cadaver itself, and I was keen to prove him mistaken. It was for this reason that I witnessed first-hand the events that took place that afternoon.
It was after half past six. Dr Crowe was concluding his lecture on the circulation of the blood, the last class of the day, when a terrible wailing and moaning came to us from the passage outside. We heard shouting, and a cry of pain – I learned later that the woman had bitten Gloag’s hand and thrashed him with her crutch as he tried to drag her back onto the street. There came the sound of cursing, and then the barking of a dog as one of the porters’ boys ran to untie the terrier used by Dr Cruikshank to chase the rats from the dissecting room. Before the dog could be brought up, however, the door to the lecture theatre burst open.
Mary Anderson lurched in, her crutches dragging, her gait a crab-like shuffle. She locked the door behind her and flung the key aside. Mr Allardyce – Dr Crowe’s apprentice, and a young man always keen to show his loyalty – leaped to his feet to protest at the intrusion, but Franklyn pulled him back down. I heard him whispering, ‘Sit still, Allardyce. This is none of your affair.’ The other young gentlemen, clearly in anticipation of a lively ending to the day’s work and knowing the deep love and respect Allardyce entertained for Dr Crowe and his late wife, hissed at him to shut up and stay seated.
I could see that Mr Allardyce was aggrieved at this, no doubt because my niece, Miss Crowe, a regular attendee at her father’s lectures, was seated in her customary position in the front row and had the best view of what might unfold. I was tempted to go across to her, or to try to halt proceedings myself – and yet I did not. It is an error of judgement I will regret for the rest of my life.
Instead, I sat transfixed. The servitors had lit the lamps hours earlier for it was mid-winter, and in the guttering candlelight Mary Anderson’s resemblance to my dear sister was more striking than ever. She had a luminous ethereal loveliness, no matter how bunched and twisted her body, and as I looked at the students’ faces I knew they all saw it too. I could not help but take a sketch – a quick ink drawing that caught the lines and angles of the girl’s cheeks, the dark, tragic eyes, the fine brows. I had drawn her many times, though never had she looked so distraught, so passionate, as she did that afternoon.
As for Mary, she peered up at us, up at that silent jury of men and her lip curled in a sneer. After that, she paid us no mind at all. She had eyes only for Dr Crowe, who stood motionless before her, a drawing of the heart in red chalk on the blackboard behind him.
‘You have killed me,’ she cried. Her voice was shrill against the thumping of Gloag’s fists against the locked door. ‘The babe that you have put inside me is my murderer. And I will take its life as it takes mine, for there’s nothing to be born alive from a body as foul and twisted as this one.’ She used the Scots word ‘thrawn’, ‘as thrawn-leggit, an’ bough-haunched, as this ’n,’ her native tongue giving her words a rough poignancy that was not lost on us.
I thought Dr Crowe might speak, might bluster her remarks away with a wave of his hand, but he did not. Instead, he bowed his head and allowed her words to fall like blows upon his shoulders. ‘You have killed me,’ she repeated, ‘and you have killed our child. Why should you be suffered to live?’
His waistcoat that day was of blood red silk. I had admired it on many occasions, thinking how appropriate a colour it was for a man in his line of work. And so when the woman pulled out the knife and plunged it into his heart we saw nothing but the shock on his face, and the clutching of his fingers about the blade.
True on soul and conscience,
[signed] Silas Strangeway
At first we travelled to St Bride’s Infirmary. But Dr Crowe had gone, they said, and had taken Dr Strangeway with him. He had opened a new anatomy school. Bigger and better, affiliated with St Bride’s Infirmary and St Bride’s Workhouse and well supplied with bodies from both. The porter handed me a card, the address, ‘Corvus Hall Anatomy School’, freshly printed upon it in black and gold. When I saw where we were to go my heart grew cold within me. Somehow, I had always known the place would one day draw me back.
I should have guessed, or at least had some inkling, for the signs had been there. It had been some two weeks ago. I had gone up to my physic garden on St Saviour’s Street to work on the poison beds – I had neglected them of late and the belladonna I had been so proud of was looking particularly sorry for itself. Will had come with me. I remembered him lying on his back in the middle of the camomile lawn, an empty bottle of beer at his side and Hammond’s Principles of Draughtsmanship over his face. It was warm for mid-September, one of the last hot days of the year, in fact.
‘I can hear shouting,’ I’d said. ‘Can you?’
‘No.’ His voice was sleepy.
‘Hammering too. I’m sure I heard – there it is again!From next door – the house must have been sold. Did you know of it?’
‘Did I know of it?’ He sat up. ‘Of course not. Why would I? Didn’t you?’
‘No.’ We were on our feet now, the two of us standing at the gate in the wall, looking over.
The villa beside the physic garden was huge. Set back from the street behind tall black railings and unkempt bushes of laurel, it was a broad Georgian box, flanked by two short, square wings. A colonnaded portico added grandeur to the front, the south-facing windows looking out at the wide sweep of a gravel drive. At the back, in the shadow of the main building, was an ugly low structure of blackened brick, half-hidden in a dark mass of ivy and surrounded by hawthorn and yew.
The name on the gateposts was Sugar-loaf House, and I could remember when the villa had lived up to its name, glinting in the grubby London sunshine as if it had been built from those hard, sweet crystals. That was back when it had been owned by Dr Magorian, the most highly regarded of St Saviour’s medical men, back when my father was still alive and St Saviour’s Infirmary still standing, and I had loved Eliza, the doctor’s only daughter.
Since the death of Dr Magorian and his wife, and the disappearance of Eliza, the place had stood empty and silent – the windows boarded up, the paths rank with weeds.
That morning workmen were visible, removing the boards from the first-floor windows. The heavy front door stood open to the afternoon sun.
‘Perhaps we should go and introduce ourselves,’ I said. ‘It would be the neighbourly thing to do, would it not?’
A short, wiry man in a dark woollen jacket and waistcoat stood apart from the others. His tall hat was pushed to the back of his head as he surveyed his men.
‘Good morning, sir!’ I said as we approached. ‘I see the place is waking up again?’
The man looked askance at my face, his gaze lingering in mingled disgust and pity on the scarlet birthmark that covered my eyes and nose.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, touching the brim of his hat. ‘The place has been sold at last.’
‘To whom?’
‘My instructions came through the solicitor. I’ve no idea who the new owner is.’
‘May we look around?’ I said.
‘I’m not sure as you should, sir. It’s not like most other places. Not like any place I’ve ever seen, in fact.’ He looked up at the building, his face troubled. ‘I heard the previous owner was a doctor, but I can’t think what sort of a man he must have been—’
‘This is Mr Flockhart, formerly apothecary of St Saviour’s Infirmary,’ interrupted Will. ‘I’m Mr Quartermain.’ He shook the fellow’s hand. ‘From Prentice and Hall—’
‘Prentice’s, you say?’ said the foreman, clearly more impressed with Will’s provenance than mine. He shrugged. ‘Look around, sir, by all means. But there are things in there that no one should ever want to see.’ And he turned from us and hurried away, as if he no longer wished to speak of it.
The house smelled old and stale. The air was damp, with a chill not unlike that found in a mortuary. There was a stillness to it too, as if the building were holding its breath.
‘Why have we come?’ whispered Will. ‘There’s only sorrow here. Can’t you feel it?’
‘Not at all,’ I lied. ‘It is only bricks and mortar to me.’ I grinned, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Shall we look around?’
For all that I felt strange and sad to be in the place my Eliza had called home, I would not let him see it. Will was my dearest friend, the one man who knew that beneath my gentleman’s shirt and britches I concealed the body of a woman. It was a lonely path, one upon which my father had set my feet before I was old enough to ask why, for it was he who had given me my brother’s identity almost as soon as the two of us had emerged from the womb – me alive and screaming to be heard, my brother slipping out after me, dead and silent. How else might he get the male heir he wanted if not through deceit, for my mother had died birthing us, and my father’s developing madness had prevented him seeking out another wife. Will and I had become friends – he the junior architect, reluctantly emptying the graveyard of St Saviour’s Infirmary prior to its demolition, and me the apothecary to that now vanished hospital. These days we shared lodgings above my apothecary shop on Fishbait Lane. His friendship had saved me from an existence of lonely isolation, and I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone – anyone but Eliza.
We went from room to room, our boots loud upon the stairs. The house had been boarded up with its contents intact, and spiders and moths had been hard at work. Furnishings, once opulent, were ragged and decayed; ornaments – vases, candlesticks, picture frames – all draped with cobwebs. On the north side of the house a loose gutter had caused a great dark stain to appear on the wall. The paper hung down from it like strips of diseased flesh. The place made me shiver. More than once I looked over my shoulder, but there was never anyone there. On the first floor, as we passed the open door to the library, I thought I glimpsed a face in the over-mantel mirror – a woman’s face, the eyes strange and glimmering. But when I looked again there was nothing, nothing but the dim blush of light on the dial of a stopped clock.
‘What is it?’ said Will.
‘Nothing,’ I muttered. ‘Nothing but my imagination.’
But Will was hardly listening. ‘Designed by Adam himself, I should imagine,’ he said, peering up at the cobwebbed cornice. He slid his hand onto the smooth curl of the banister. ‘Look at these stairs! The way they curve upward, as gracious as the whorl of a sea shell. The way the sunlight filters through the cupola at the top. The rooms might be decayed but their beauty is unmistakable.’ He smiled. ‘It is a place of air and light and beauty – three things in poor supply in this filthy city of yours.’
‘It is your city too,’ I said. I wondered what he would make of the structure the previous owner had erected to the rear of the house. The dissecting room and mortuary – even the thought of the place made me queasy. Instead, ‘It will be good to see the place lived in properly,’ I said. I meant it too.
But the past was not as easy to avoid as I had hoped, for at length, we reached the upper storeys. I hesitated at the head of a dark corridor. I had been there before, and I knew what lay beyond.
Will, however, did not. ‘What’s in here?’ he said. Without waiting for my answer, he stalked forward and threw open a door.
It had been a number of years since I had set foot inside the doctor’s private anatomy museum. Then, the place had been brightly lit, full of medical students and buzzing with conversation. Now, it was dark and silent. Here and there, blades of light sliced through the shutters, skewering a six-fingered hand; a cross-sectioned brain; an unidentifiable tangle of hair and teeth, all still and silent in their glass specimen jars. Before us was a human head – pale and loose-lipped, its gaze illuminated by a shaft of silver sunlight.
‘My God!’ Will took a step back. ‘I’d forgotten what your doctor friends got up to.’
‘He was no friend of mine,’ I retorted.
‘What’s it all doing here?’
‘It’s a typical arrangement for a well-known medical man, a surgeon, to set up his own anatomy school,’ I said. ‘If he has an anatomy museum of over five hundred pounds in value, and if the corpses can be supplied and a licence procured then the students will come. This is – was – Dr Magorian’s anatomy museum. Or part of it, at least. This place was always associated with St Saviour’s Infirmary – the students might examine the dead here and then examine the living there.’
‘Dead bodies?’ said Will. ‘Here?’
‘Of course dead bodies,’ I scoffed. ‘Usually those of the unclaimed dead. Paupers, beggars, people from the workhouse. Once upon a time their corpses would have been flung into a lime pit. Now, they are given to a grateful medical profession.’
‘And yet the fellow lived here too?’
‘Yes.’ I could stand it no more. I longed to be back in the physic garden, the scent of turned earth and damp leaves sharp on the air, rather than in this stale and ghastly place. I crossed the floor in three strides to throw back one of the heavy wooden shutters. The sun streamed in. What had appeared ghoulish in the half-light now looked faded and banal, like bits of meat floating in aspic.
I sniffed. Spirits of alcohol, a mixture of juniper and cloves – the smell of the preserving fluid. ‘I’m surprised they have not become corrupt.’ I picked up one of the jars and held it high, observing its contents in the light. The diseased heart that bobbed within was pale and flabby-looking, the window cut into its left ventricle revealing greyish valves and heartstrings, for all specimens lost their colour in the end.
‘Is something wrong?’ said Will, seeing the look on my face.
‘Someone has been here,’ I said. I thought of the ghostly face I thought I had seen; the feeling I’d had that someone had been following us. ‘These specimens have been cared for, even if the rest of the house has not.’
‘But the place has been boarded up—’
‘There’s no doubt about it,’ I said. I took up another jar. Inside, floating gently in the viscous liquid, was a tongue, gr
eyish-pink and newly severed. ‘This anatomy museum still has a curator.’
I had vowed to put the place from my mind. I had largely succeeded – not least because I had not been back to the physic garden for some weeks due to my commitments in the apothecary. But now, here we were, right at its doors. In that short space of time the property had been transformed. The windows were free of boards and shutters, the driveway occupied by wagons and cabs. The front door stood open, and within I could see shadows and movement, as if from a crowd of people. Ahead of us a pair of young men, their books under their arms, sprang from a hansom and headed for the entrance. On the air, above the rattle and din of the street, came a raucous chanting.
‘A is for Arteries tied up in knots
B is for Bones boiled up thick in the pot
C is for Carotid pulsing with life
D is for Dermis we slit with our knife
E is an Embryo in a glass case
F a Foramen that pierced the skull’s base . . . ’
All the windows were open, blinds fluttering in the cold breeze as the voices inside rose and fell. There was a distinct smell upon the air, at once familiar and disturbing – carbolic, putrescence, preserving spirits.
Surgeons’ Hall Page 2