Surgeons’ Hall

by E. S. Thomson

  ‘And you, sir,’ the constable addressed me. ‘Dr Crowe says it was you who found the body.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ I said. I told him that the housekeeper at Corvus Hall was well known to me, that she had come across Dr Wragg and had run to fetch me for fear of what else to do, and in case the gentleman was still alive. ‘She is a simple woman, sir,’ I said. ‘She only did as she thought best.’

  The constable seemed quite happy to accept the fact that anyone might wish to flee from the Hall, especially on discovering a corpse dangling from the banisters. I could hardly blame him. ‘Well.’ He licked his lips. ‘That seems to be that.’ It turned out he had already viewed the body, and had accepted Dr Crowe’s argument that Dr Wragg had taken his own life. He said he would present that conclusion to the magistrate, though it would be wise to have a post-mortem. It was quite clear that he too could not wait to get away from the place.

  Dr Wragg was left in the dissecting room for the next few hours, the door locked. It was a Sunday, so there were no classes and few students about. No one had any cause to go in and view the body – no one, that is, until Halliday came in sometime after 10 o’clock. I was upstairs with Will when Halliday appeared. He looked pleased to see us, but when he saw our faces his smile of welcome stalled. We told him Dr Wragg was dead and his face sagged in sorrow and surprise. ‘I cannot believe it,’ he said. ‘I was talking to him only yesterday. He seemed quite well. A little belligerent, but that was his way. He cannot be dead! How? And when? May I see him?’ His questions tumbled out in confusion. ‘Killed himself, you say? Oh, the poor old fellow.’ He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his eyes.

  ‘His appearance . . . It is no way to remember him,’ said Will. ‘He does not look like the man you knew. Not now.’

  ‘I would like to have a few moments.’ Halliday’s face was crimson. ‘I had no idea,’ he said. ‘I knew he was ill. And I confess I had . . . I had seen the laudanum bottles. And yet this? If I had known I would have let him have his own way, would have allowed him to continue with his old-fashioned arrangement of the specimens.’

  We went downstairs together. Dr Crowe was in the vestibule talking to Skinner. He looked up as he heard us on the stairs. ‘Halliday, my dear fellow—’ he could tell by the look on Halliday’s face that he had heard the news. ‘Come now,’ he patted the younger man’s arm. ‘Pay your respects, my dear boy, and then come and sit with us for a while. Lilith would be glad to see you. And there is something I would like to ask you.’

  Halliday nodded, his face pink with emotion. For all that he had argued with Dr Wragg he seemed genuinely affected by the old man’s death. He vanished down the passage towards the dissecting room. He was not gone more than two minutes when there was a cry. A door banged and he reappeared again, his face ashen.

  ‘My God,’ he said. His knees seemed to buckle beneath him and he steadied himself against the wall. ‘My God—!’

  I ran down the passage, Halliday, Will and Dr Crowe at my back as I burst into the dissecting room. Dr Wragg’s body was where we had left it, and yet I could hardly believe what I saw. How had it happened? The door had been locked! With my own eyes I had seen Dr Crowe turn the key and put it in his pocket. And yet somehow, someone had been there. The winding sheet had been thrown back, the corpse exposed for all to see. The right hand had been cut from the wrist – not a clean, meticulous dismemberment but a crude, hasty butchery. The hand had gone. And the face – that was gone too.

  Face

  What assumptions we make about beauty, about ugliness. Those with regular, symmetrical features are assumed to be beautiful inside as well as out. Misshapen features or blighted skin are deemed ugly, as if what we see on the outside is the manifestation of some inner darkness. But what lies beneath this superficial layer of flesh by which we set so much store? Blood, sinew, tissue. Strip all that away too and there is the skull, the image of death itself – and in death are we not all equal?

  Like many anatomists I am skilled at the removal of the skin of the face. How else might students see for themselves what lies beneath – what muscles might be afflicted by palsy, by what mechanisms the eyes blink, the jaw move or the lips work? It is not an easy undertaking. It requires dexterity and patience, and a gentle, some might say feminine, touch with the knife. Zygomaticus major, zygomaticus minor, corrugator supercilii, orbicularis oculi – mouth, forehead, eye – all of us have them, layers of muscle lying in shining perfection just beneath the surface. They are essential to the expression of emotion, and is it not emotion that makes us human, emotion that lies at the very centre and soul of our being?

  And yet there are those who believe that it is physiognomy, the study of the expressions and arrangement of the face, which tells the truth about who we are. It is evident in the low brow of the felon, the close-set eyes of the delinquent, the thin lips of the deceiver.

  I look in the mirror and what do I see? I, who can slice off a face with such delicacy and precision, but can do nothing to cut away the signs of my own wickedness. I see high cheek bones, a proud nose and full lips. But I have read Lavater’s essays on physiognomy and I know these features betoken only cruelty, jealousy and a thirst for vengeance.

  Dr Graves came up from St Saviour’s. Dr Crowe suggested him. For all that we were in an anatomy school it seemed appropriate for Dr Wragg’s postmortem to be conducted by someone who was not associated with the place. Dr Graves arrived on his corpse wagon – a boxed cart designed to carry bodies back to his lair at the new large St Saviour’s which had been built on the other side of the river. At first he wished to remove Dr Wragg’s body from Corvus Hall, but Dr Crowe and Dr Cruikshank refused to allow it. He offered them three guineas, ‘the going rate’ he said, ‘for the average workhouse corpse’. He looked down at Dr Wragg’s body. ‘Mind you,’ he said. ‘It’s minus a hand and a face, and being so old it’s hardly worth the price. Come, sirs, three guineas is most generous. What do you say?’

  ‘I say “no”,’ said Dr Crowe. ‘Gloag!’ He summoned the hunchback from the sluice room. ‘See that Dr Graves has all he requires. And might I advise an assistant, sir? Mr Flockhart, perhaps you could oblige us? As former apothecary to St Saviour’s you know Dr Graves and his methods.’ He eyed Dr Graves with distrust. ‘I’m sure you know your way about a corpse too.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘I’ve attended many a post-mortem – almost all of them undertaken by Dr Graves.’

  As the doors closed Dr Graves pulled out his box of knives. From his coat pocket he produced a handkerchief, inside of which was a hardboiled egg. He proceeded to eat it, while looking down at the corpse and considering where to begin.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, licking his fingers. He dusted wet flecks of egg from his lapels. ‘At least we are in the best place for it. The light is good and there are no interruptions.’ He looked at the stump where the hand had been severed. ‘Rather hastily done,’ he said. ‘But a reasonable job nonetheless. Where is it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, sir,’ I replied.

  ‘Students?’

  ‘I believe that is the opinion, sir.’ I hardly knew what else to tell him. ‘Have you seen anything like this before?’ I ventured.

  ‘A corpse, minus its face and right hand? No.’ Dr Graves bent closer, running his eye over the crimson musculature of Dr Wragg’s flayed cheeks. ‘We can see a lot about Dr Wragg from what has been left exposed,’ he said. He pointed to the cheeks. ‘Beneath the skin tells us all we might wish to know of a man’s personality, his life and cares. In the young we see little. They are a blank slate. Unformed clay yet to be written on or fashioned by life into something more inflexible.’ He pointed with his knife at Dr Wragg’s forehead. ‘Scored deep into lines by a lifetime of frowns and disappointment. Had he hoped for more from life? See the jaw clenched tight – perhaps from physical pain? And the crow’s feet – the result of years spent squinting at corpses in poor light. It is a face without happiness.’ Dr Graves’ face hovered intimately clos
e to Dr Wragg’s. ‘I met this gentleman on a number of occasions. He was a man of few words and little mirth. It is all here. I could have described him to you even if I had not met him: severe, joyless, frowning, squinting in the darkness, troubled by pain.’ He sighed. ‘What will they say about me, I wonder? Well then, Mr Flockhart, shall we see what else we can find?’

  We removed the old man’s clothes. It was some time since I had undressed a corpse and I had forgotten how heavy and unhelpful they were. Dr Graves proceeded methodically. He noted the marks of the rope at the neck, the way the larynx was crushed and squeezed. Death by strangulation, undoubtedly. I asked whether he was sure. ‘Look at the neck, Flockhart,’ he said. ‘The fellow dangled from a rope under his own weight for goodness knows how long – hours, is my guess. Look at his face. His neck is broken too. All in all I would say that’s rather conclusive, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You see no other . . . no other fibres?’ I said.

  ‘Fibres?’ He blinked. ‘No.’

  ‘And the bruise to his temple?’

  ‘Sustained as he fell. Now, let us get on.’ He took out another of his knives, and slit Dr Wragg’s body from pubis to sternum. The skin, old and wrinkled as it was, parted silkily. A layer of yellow fat beneath the dermis oozed. At the abdomen, Dr Graves’s knife pressed deeper. I saw the abdominal muscles glinting darkly, parting like lips beneath the blade.

  Dr Crowe was quite correct. Dr Wragg had a tumour in his lung the size of a clenched fist. There were others in his liver and spleen. It was also quite clear that Dr Wragg was a long-term user of opium. His viscera smelled strongly of the stuff – something I had often noted in those who were addicted to opiates – and his bowels were badly costive.

  ‘Perhaps we should allow the students in,’ I said once we had finished. ‘Dr Crowe said Dr Wragg’s organs are to go to the students – if they want them. It was his wish, apparently.’

  Dr Graves was packing the organs back into the body. He was engrossed, like a child with a jigsaw puzzle. I knew he had done such a job many hundreds of times, but he still seemed to delight in it. He held up Dr Wragg’s diseased spleen. ‘I like the spleen,’ he said. He turned it in his hands. An ugly malignancy was visible on the underside. ‘Can I keep it?’ He pulled out his handkerchief, the one in which he had kept his boiled egg, and began wrapping up the spleen the way a cheesemonger might swathe a half pound of Wensleydale. He stuffed it into his pocket.

  ‘Put that back, sir!’ I said. ‘You cannot keep it, it belongs to Dr Wragg.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re in an anatomy school, Mr Flockhart. The dead own nothing here. Not even themselves. What right does Dr Wragg have to his body? He has no need for any of it now.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I can show my students. I have an interest in morbid anatomy. I can put it in my collection.’

  ‘I cannot let you take a single part of him,’ I said. ‘Dr Wragg’s body is for the students of Corvus Hall.’ I was not sure why I was defending the man. I had spent much of my life amongst bodies, both living and dead, but all at once I could not bear the dismembering, the anatomising, the pulling into its constituent parts. No wonder public feeling ran high against the anatomy schools, despite the passing of the Act that guaranteed them a supply of corpses and rendered grave robbing unnecessary. No wonder so few medical men gave their own bodies to their colleagues. I knew the students would be no more respectful than Dr Graves, and yet would it not be more fitting if Dr Wragg’s body and its malignant organs were bequeathed to his own anatomy museum?

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gloag get up from the chair he had been sitting on. He crept forward menacingly. No doubt he had been instructed to wrestle any filched organs from Dr Graves if the occasion required it. He cracked his knuckles with a sound like a child emptying a bag of marbles. Dr Graves reluctantly slid the spleen back where it belonged. I heard a moist squelch as it slipped into place. ‘Very well,’ he said, his voice sulky. ‘But Dr Wragg owes me a spleen, even if it’s his own!’

  ‘How so?’ I washed my hands at the sluice. Dr Graves rubbed his on the winding sheet and began nibbling on another boiled egg. ‘Years ago,’ he said. ‘I knew Wragg in Edinburgh. He was the curator of the anatomy museum at Surgeons’ Hall. A prestigious appointment. “Bloody Wragg”, the students used to call him as he always had a filthy cloth hanging from his belt—’

  ‘They still do.’

  He grunted. ‘Well, I left Edinburgh some years before Dr Wragg did. But I remember him well enough.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘As a man? Dishonest, through and through. As a surgeon I have no idea. He’d given that up long ago. He spent a number of years in the army before he came back to Edinburgh. After that I think he preferred the dead – he’s not alone in that. But there was one occasion I had a body – one that I’d dug up myself, mark you – that had a tumour just like this one.’ He eyed the spleen longingly. ‘It’s unusual to see one this large. I was only a student, but I knew it was quite a find. Wragg took it, and put it in Surgeons’ Hall museum. I was pleased to have made a contribution, until I saw that he had put his own name on it rather than mine.’ Dr Graves scowled. ‘He’d do anything for a choice exhibit, especially one he could claim as his own. When I asked him about it he just laughed. Said he was sure I’d have plenty more. As it happens I have not. Apart from, with some poetic justice,’ he pointed at Dr Wragg’s insides, ‘that one there.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I said.

  ‘Of course that’s not all, though it gives you some idea of the kind of man he was. You’ll know about Robert Knox, of course. Burke and Hare, et cetera, et cetera. Well, your Dr Wragg was no better. Anything for a corpse, for an organ, for something to show the students – they were hard to come by in those days, I can assure you, and without bodies there were no students and without students,’ he raised his eyebrows, ‘there was no income. No reputation. Wragg had friends – in high places and low. He was close to the anatomists – he was one of them after all. But he was closer still to the resurrectionists, to the hangman, to the sick and dying. He was notorious about the Old Town, appearing like the Reaper himself at the bedside of those too poor to expect anything else before they’d even drawn their last breath. What times they were.’ He grinned. ‘But exciting. You can’t beat the thrill of a midnight dig in a graveyard. Of course, one has to be fast. There’s a technique, you know. Burrow down to the box, break through the lid at the chest, get your hooks under the arms and heave! Lord, I was fast. But not as fast as Wragg. Nor as devious.’

  ‘What about murder?’ I said.

  ‘To get a fresh corpse?’ He laughed. ‘I’d not put anything past this one. You know the old rhyme, of course? Through the close and up the stair; but and ben wi’ Burke and Hare. Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief, And Knox the boy who buys the beef. Well, Knox might have been “the boy who bought the beef”, but I’ll wager Wragg was a little closer to the source of the matter, as it were. Closer than anyone cared to mention. I thought he was going to be named when the West Port murders were all anyone could talk about and it seemed likely that a surgeon would have to step up and take at least some of the blame. But he got away with it. He always did.’ He licked his lips, the half-eaten egg like an eyeball in his hand. ‘Bloody Wragg – the name has many connotations, Mr Flockhart.’

  At the moment there was a cry from outside in the corridor. ‘Help! Help! Oh! Come quickly!’

  I left Dr Graves and rushed out into the passage, relieved that there were still so few students about. Instead there was only Dr Crowe and Dr Cruikshank, who emerged from the lecture theatre together. Tanhauser and Squires appeared at the door of the common room, Halliday behind them with a book in his hand. On the staircase I saw Lilith Crowe and Dr Strangeway. All of them looked alarmed, unsure of where, exactly, the cries had hailed from.

  ‘Help,’ came the voice. ‘Anyone!’

  ‘Dear God, what is it now?’ said Dr Crowe stepping
forward, his face white.

  ‘Help me!’

  ‘Upstairs,’ I said.

  Sorrow Crowe stood at the door to the anatomy museum, her hands bloody. ‘I can smell it,’ she whispered. ‘Meat. And blood. I put out my hands and felt the bone, the wet flesh. The rough skin, the web between thumb and finger, the stink of the dissecting room – it is Dr Wragg.’ Her blind eyes stared at me, her expression a mask of fear.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Here on this door.’

  I pulled her roughly away. Behind her, nailed to the double doors of the anatomy museum, was Dr Wragg’s hand. The skin of the palm had been peeled back and skewed by pins, the flesh and bone supported in between, like a butterfly against a board. Between the first and second finger was a card, no bigger than a carte de visité, the words et mortui sua arcana narrabunt scrawled upon it in black ink. The writing was clumsy, as if written by a child, the card smeared with dark clots of blood.

  I saw Dr Crowe and Dr Cruikshank exchange a glance. Lilith Crowe betrayed no emotion at all, but stood with her arms around her younger sister. Beside her, Dr Strangeway wrung his scarred hands. Silence had appeared, though I had not heard her coming. She joined her sisters, and they stood side by side, Silence scrutinising the ring of faces with as much determination as I, Sorrow with her eyes downcast. I knew she was listening to everything, that she knew the sound and smell of every one of us. She raised her head, her expression sharp, her eyes a glistening mother of pearl in the light that flooded in through the cupola. She stared straight at me. What had she sensed now?