‘That just left his personality then.’ Squires grinned. ‘He doesn’t have one, as I recall.’
‘He forced himself on Sorrow Crowe?’ said Will, his expression appalled.
‘He certainly did something,’ replied Tanhauser.
‘And now the weird sisters hate us all the more,’ said Squires. ‘Not that they liked us before. I think the only reason they didn’t tell anyone about Wilson was because they know their position here is precarious. None of the men like them around. If their father hears of anything untoward happening he’ll stop them from coming. We might like that, but I doubt they would.’
‘Why do you stay at Corvus Hall?’ I said. ‘There are other anatomy schools.’
‘That’s an easy enough question to answer,’ said Squires. ‘The fees are lower than at other schools. And Dr Crowe is the best. The very best. So is Cruikshank. But we learn our anatomy and surgery and we get out. We get out as fast as we can.’
Precognition for the murder of Mary Anderson,
18th December 1830.
Statement of JAMES WILSON, constable.
19th December 1830
On the evening of 18th inst. I was called to Tanner’s Lodgings on the Cowgate at approx. 10 o’clock, having heard reports of a disturbance in one of the houses. I understood that there was some to-do with the surgeons, who were close by that part of the town. As I approached I saw that a crowd had gathered at the foot of Robertson’s Close. I could hear a wailing and lamentation above the muttering of the crowd. The door to the ground floor house of Tanner’s Lodgings was open, the cripple woman Clenchie Kate lay weeping on the threshold. I asked a man what had occurred. He replied ‘Thrawn-Leggit Mary is dead. The surgeons have killed her.’
Since the trial of Burke and Hare any unexpected death in that part of the town is deemed murder and blamed upon the surgeons, so I took what he said with a pinch of salt. I knew the woman Mary Anderson by repute and by sight. I had heard that she was in the family way and could not be expected to live through it. If she were dead, therefore, I reasoned that it may well have occurred in the natural manner of things. But however she had met her end it was clear that the surgeons had wasted no time in claiming her for their own, for I was told that they had taken her body already.
I went inside Tanner’s Lodgings. The building is a part of a teeming midden of rooms and dwellings, and there were a number of people inside the dead girl’s house, neighbours who had come to gawk and gape. I chased them out. The other constable had not yet arrived, but I looked about the place as best I could, given how dark it was, and my lantern not the best. I saw the stain from the blood on the floor, and on the mattress. I looked beneath the mattress, and beneath the slats that covered the bed frame, and it was there that I found the knife. I took it in my handkerchief and put it into my satchel. At length, two more constables arrived, and I was able to leave them there so that I might go up to see the girl’s corpse.
I arrived at Surgeons’ Square to find the place in darkness. I went straight to Surgeons’ Hall, for I could see a light on in one of the windows. The door was opened by Dr Wragg, a known intimate of the resurrectionists and a more dubious-looking fellow it is hard to imagine. I asked to see Dr Cruikshank, or Dr Strangeway, or indeed, any of the gentlemen who had recently been down in the house of Thrawn-Leggit Mary. I said also that I knew they had the body and that I would like to see it.
Dr Wragg led me down a narrow flight of stairs, and then out into what seemed to be the back of the building. It was dark and cold, and he carried only a candle so there was precious little light to see by. We passed all manner of cases displaying all sorts of objects, and what with the darkness and the horror of it I wished I had waited for the other constable. Dr Wragg took me through to a room. It was long and dimly lit and laid out with tables. There were bodies upon four of them, mercifully shrouded and in the shadows, though the smell of the place was enough to make any man sick, for it was the smell of the grave. Ahead of us, three men were gathered about the last of the tables, a lantern on a hook above their heads. A fourth was standing to one side, half in the shadows. I recognised him as Dr Strangeway.
‘Sirs.’ Dr Wragg’s voice was loud in the silence, for the men were bent close over their subject, their voices low as they worked.
‘What is it, Wragg?’ said Dr Cruikshank. The other two were unknown to me. By their youthful looks I took them to be students.
They all put down their knives and stepped back from their work when they heard I was the constable. Their fingers were bloody. ‘Forgive me, Constable, if I do not shake your hand,’ said Dr Cruikshank. His manner was casual, almost indifferent.
On the table to one side was a heap of crumpled fabric, green silk, heavily blood stained, and a mass of a grey linen, also blood stained, which I took to be her under things. The girl herself lay naked on the table, her skin white in the lamplight and scarlet from where they had cut her open. I stepped closer. I saw the legs twisted most horribly, a great bloody gash across her body. I saw her hair, tangled and dark, and her skin like marble. And then I saw her face.
When I came to, I was lying in a dark corner on one of the dissecting tables. Dr Wragg was standing over me, a bottle of salts in his hand. The others were back at their work. He told me that they were conducting a post-mortem and would present it to the procurator-fiscal in the morning.
I told him I must speak with Dr Cruikshank, for he was also the police surgeon, and although he might be permitted to undertake a post-mortem the other young gentlemen should absent themselves from what was the body of a murder victim, and not a corpse upon which they might practise their skills with the knife. At that, he nodded, and sent the two young men from the room. They both glared at me as they went, though they made no objection.
When Dr Cruikshank came to me I handed him the fold of canvas from inside my satchel. Wrapped within was a blade. ‘I found this beneath the bed,’ I said. ‘Hard up against the wall, as if it had slipped down by mistake.’
He looked at it closely in the lantern light, turning it in his hands and running his fingers over the handle. He told me that it was a surgical knife. ‘It makes a clean and speedy incision,’ he said. ‘The handle long for a firm grip, the blade short for a controlled cut. It is the very best sort for a job such as this.’
‘What job?’ I said.
‘For slitting the belly from top to bottom,’ he replied. ‘The incision is neat, controlled, shallow.’ He drew his finger down my body, from the middle of my chest to the buttons on my britches. But it was not her body that had so unmanned me.
‘And her face?’ I said to him. ‘What manner of blade did that?’
He did not reply.
True on soul and conscience,
[Signed] James Wilson, police constable
The next day I went back up to the Hall. I hoped I might speak to Dr Strangeway about his years in Edinburgh, for he seemed the most likely to talk and I was becoming convinced there was something about their shared past in that city that bound them together. I was met at the door to the wax modelling studio by Sorrow Crowe. She kept her eyes downcast, their fish-scale iridescence hidden. She told me their uncle was at work in his room at the back. ‘He does not let anyone in when he is working,’ she said.
‘Who is it, my dear?’ It was Lilith’s voice.
‘Mr Flockhart.’
‘Is he alone?’
‘Yes.’ I wondered how she knew.
Inside, Silence and Lilith Crowe was standing in the light from the tall north windows. Seated before them on a straight-backed chair was a fat woman in a dirty shift. She sat with her hands in her lap, a cat sleeping on the table top by her right elbow. A cape of waxed canvas had been placed over her shoulders through which her head poked. Her face was smothered in a thick layer of white plaster. There were two tubes pushed up her nose so that she might breathe, and a narrow one projecting from her mouth.
‘You find us making a moulage,’ said Sorrow.
> ‘A mask,’ said Silence. She looked up at me, and smiled. ‘Perhaps we should do you too, Mr Flockhart.’ Her voice was low. I liked it, though it was not like other voices. She could not hear how she was supposed to sound, and so the edges of her words were blurred and ill formed.
‘They are usually done from the dead, are they not?’ I said.
‘Usually,’ replied Sorrow, who of course heard everything. ‘But not always. We have a technique. Sister, are we ready?’
Silence Crowe moved quickly, her hands working around the woman’s head, a knife in her hand wielded with practised familiarity. There was a cracking sound and the whole mass of plaster came away. The woman beneath was covered in some sort of grease, I assumed so that the plaster did not stick to her face. She was quite hideous to look at. The scabs upon her head were crimson and painful-looking, her scalp almost completely without hair. She put up a hand to scratch at them as the plaster came away. The bridge of her nose had corroded, the bones beneath eaten away by syphilis, so that she had a melted sunken appearance. She opened her eyes, red-rimmed and cunning, and regarded me balefully.
‘Mrs Roseplucker,’ I said. ‘I see you are not looking your best, ma’am.’
‘I am not, sir,’ she replied. ‘But I am not dead yet so all is well. I came up to Corvus Hall to make the acquaintance of the young medical men. Ain’t it a pleasure to have them back in the neighbourhood?’ She grinned horribly. ‘I’ve served the medical men all my life. I’ll die doin’ it too!’
‘You have returned to Wicke Street?’
‘I have, Mr Flock’art, me and my girls.’
‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘The Home for Girls of an Energetic Disposition.’
‘You remember us, sir! How kind! I’m sure we’ll be back in Bartleby’s Book of London Pleasures before you know it. It’s not so far for the young medical men to come, and come they will, sir. They always do. You want to pay us a call. You and your virgin friend. Mr Quartermain, wasn’t it? I can help him with that, sir—’
‘I’m afraid you are a poor advertisement for your House, madam,’ I said. ‘Looking as you do.’
‘Well I am when I’m like this,’ she retorted. ‘Where’s my dress? Where’s my ’at and my veil? My wig’s the best in London!’
She reached behind her and seized what I had thought was a sleeping cat, and crushed it onto her head. The brindled ringlets danced about her ears. I saw her wince as the rough weave of the horsehair grazed her scabby scalp. I plunged a hand into my satchel.
‘Take this salve, madam. Zinc, calendula, borage, chickweed, lavender. It will help the itch a little, soften the skin, and soothe the wounds.’
She leaned forward and snatched it from my grasp with her usual graciousness. ‘Not that there’s anyone in this room what’s perfect, Mr Jem.’ She sat back and sniffed at the salve, regarding me through narrowed eyes. ‘They know,’ she added, pointing to the sisters. ‘They know about you.’
‘I’m sorry to see you have fallen on hard times,’ I said, choosing to ignore her remark.
‘Times is always hard,’ she replied. ‘But now this place has opened up again who knows what might happen?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Who knows?’
‘I’ve already had some young men stop by, but it’d be nice to have some more. I came up here in my Sunday best to meet the lovely young gentlemen and these ladies saw me at the gates and asked if they might make a model of me. Of my face. Three guineas, sir!’ She laughed, a grating sound, rough and hollow, like the opening of an iron coffin. ‘I always said my face was my fortune.’
‘It most certainly is, ma’am,’ I said.
‘Pity you can’t say the same about yours!’ She laughed again. I grinned. I was glad to see her so merry. The last time we had met she had been angry and discouraged, forced to move away from her usual haunts about St Saviour’s Street and take up residence near the docks. She turned to the sisters, who had carried the mould to their workbench and were heating up a mixture on the stove top. They no longer seemed interested in either of us. The smell of hot wax filled the air. ‘Perhaps I might have one for my own, miss,’ she called out. ‘For a present, like. Mr Jobber would be so pleased.’
I asked after Annie, one of Mrs Roseplucker’s most long serving ‘virgins’ and Mr Jobber, a great dolt of a man who knew the cost of every gentleman’s requirements and would fling them out into the street with their trousers about their ankles if they outstayed their welcome. ‘Both still with me, sir,’ she said, ‘and often askin’ after you and dear Mr Quartermain. Our Annie’s grown up to be quite the beauty.’
‘Still a virgin?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it makes the poor girl weep, sir. She ’as that many suitors I can’t hardly keep up but not a single one will do for our Annie. Choosy, sir, that’s what she is. As for poor Mr Jobber, that dear lamb, why, he almost wept with joy once he seed we was goin’ back to our old place.’
Mrs Roseplucker vanished behind a screen. When she re-emerged she was battened into an ancient dress of watered silk the colour of ox blood. It was scabbed with repairs, some neat, some not, though the festoons of ragged lace that hung from her skirts did much to conceal the worst of them.
Sorrow and Silence went about their work at the far end of the room. Once they had what they wanted they appeared unconcerned with chaperoning their guest from the building. I wondered where Dr Strangeway was – they seemed not to need him for anything, and I could see Lilith bent over the workbench, her face close to a crimson mass of wax, a scalpel in her hand. She appeared hardly to have noticed that I was there. Mrs Roseplucker adjusted her wig, and crammed a large circular bonnet mounded with artificial roses on top of it. She fixed the whole teetering mass onto her head with a length of black lace, tied in a bow beneath her pudgy chin.
‘Oh!’ she said, suddenly catching sight of a waxen face hanging on the wall. It was another moulage showing the effects of syphilis. ‘There’s Maria Taylor! Used to work out of a house down on Blackcock Lane. Dead now, o’ course. And there’s old Mother Spendlove,’ she cried, pointing to another. ‘Why, I’ve not seen her these last ten years or more. We was girls together, she and I, back in Prior’s Rents – a long time ago now. Beautiful girl she was, though not like me. I were always the favourite. She got the pox quite early on, whereas I’ve kept my looks.’ Mrs Roseplucker nodded at the moulage. ‘See? Not that it stopped her. Funny to see them here, ain’t it?’
I could not reply. I hoped never to see my youthful acquaintances immortalised in a gallery of syphilitic faces. Mrs Roseplucker pocketed the money the sisters had left for her on the table. ‘Will you allow me to escort you from the building, ma’am?’ I said. I offered her my arm. ‘Have you had many medical men coming to Wicke Street?’
Mrs Roseplucker pressed her lips together in a thin line. ‘That’s private, Mr Flockhart,’ she said. ‘I can’t be telling all and sundry what gentlemen visits my girls!’
‘A florin says you can.’ I tossed her a coin. She snatched it from the air with grubby fingers. ‘Couple o’ the young ones ’ave been. I’ve taken to selling sheathes,’ she added conversationally. ‘For them what wants ’em. The young men know all about the pox,’ she added. ‘So they likes to look out for themselves. Can’t say I blame them.’
‘Names, madam,’ I said. ‘Can you give me any names?’
‘They don’t tell me who they are, Mr Jem. You knows that. Though there is one I recognise.’
‘Who? Is he from Corvus Hall?’
‘Course he is,’ she said. ‘He’s the master!’
‘Dr Crowe?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘You ask our Annie.’
‘I’m asking you.’ I gave her another coin. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Not much to tell. He came some weeks ago for the first time. Wanted to see the girls – not that I’ve got many at the moment. Chose our Annie. She said he’s transfixed by ’er back. You know she got that arse what sticks out. Apparently there’s a name for it. Can
’t think what. Lord something or other – trust our Annie to ’ave a deformity what ’as an aristocratic name!’
‘Lumbar lordosis,’ I said.
‘That’s it. He likes spines. So he said.’
‘And?’
‘And so he said he wanted a girl with an interesting spine and that’s where our Annie came in. Then he made her wear a green dress he’d brought. Had it made special, he said, though Annie said it’s that old fashioned she looks a complete fright in it.’
‘And?’
‘And so she wears it when he comes a-calling. Green dress and blue shawl. Silk! But she has to cover her face when he’s doing his business. He don’t actually want to see it’s her. She don’t mind. She’s had worse and he pays well enough.’ She sounded approving. ‘Wish they was all as easy to manage for he ain’t no bother.’
I had no idea what to make of it, and yet at the same time I felt guilty – who was I to tittle-tattle with a brothel owner about her clients’ proclivities? I gave her another shilling and sent her on her way.
The following morning I was awakened by a persistent banging on the apothecary door. I was still groggy with sleep as I pulled it open and found Mrs Speedicut standing there. Her eyes were staring, her small mouth open in a wheezing ‘o’ as she tried to get her breath. She wore neither cap nor coat and had evidently run all the way. I took her by the elbow and ushered her inside. It was barely five o’clock – she would have just started her morning shift at Corvus Hall. I tried to make her sit down at the apothecary table but she would not.
‘Oh, Mr Jem,’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘Oh, that I should see such a sight!’ I poured her a cup of coffee, for the pot on the stove was still warm, and slopped a generous measure of gin into it. ‘Now,’ I said, shoving the cup into her hands. ‘What is it?’
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