Surgeons’ Hall

by E. S. Thomson

  And then, just as the noise reached a climax of laughter and singing, the door to the apothecary crashed open. The night swirled in, dank and dark, bringing with it the smell of refuse, night soil and the river at low tide. The flames of the candles guttered and shrank, those nearest the door snuffing out altogether to trail wraiths of sticky black smoke. On the threshold was a figure, short and broad as a barrel, a pair of muddy, ill-fitting boots projecting from beneath a dirty, trailing nightshirt.

  ‘So that’s what you want to do to me, is it?’ Her voice was thunderous as she waddled forward, kicking the door closed with the heel of her boot. I recognised them as belonging to Gloag – a pair of large overshoes that he wore in the dead room when wiping down the bodies. Annie’s face had drained of blood. There was another crash as Mr Jobber slid from his chair onto the floor in a dead faint.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Roseplucker,’ said Will. ‘Would you like a glass of ale, ma’am?’

  ‘Gin,’ she barked. ‘Got any?’ She snatched the beer anyway and sank into one of the chairs before the apothecary stove. She pointed a stubby finger at Annie, still ashen, a piece of plum cake forgotten in her hand. ‘You saucy minx!’ she cried.

  ‘I thought you was dead,’ screamed Annie. ‘You was just lying there with your eyes open. You weren’t breathin’ or nothin’, ask Mr Jobber!’

  But Mr Jobber was unable to answer any questions. Having lurched back to his feet he was now hunched over, weeping uncontrollably.

  ‘I were sleeping!’ Mrs Roseplucker said. ‘I had a bit to drink is all. And some o’ that laudanum for my tooth.’ She opened her mouth and thrust a grubby finger inside. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t sell them too,’ she said, darkly. We all looked at Mrs Roseplucker’s grinning black teeth for a moment – no dentist in his right mind would want anything to do with them. ‘I were just sleeping,’ she growled again.

  ‘Like the bloody dead,’ cried Annie, her face sulky. She twisted the rings on her fingers. ‘I’m Mrs Roseplucker now.’

  ‘Oh no you ain’t!’

  ‘Tell us what happened, madam,’ I said. I handed her a plate. ‘Pheasant pie and some of Mrs Sorley’s pickle?’ I fetched a bowl of hot water and, once I had eased the boots from her toes, coaxed her to put her feet in it. I gave her a shawl and bade her sit closer to the warmth. The vapours from her foot bath, laced with mint oil and rosemary, wafted about her knees in fronds of fragrant steam. She looked around covetously. ‘Nice,’ she said. ‘Very nice. You done very well for yourself, Mr Flock’art. I said as much when I was up here before.’

  ‘Before?’ I said.

  ‘This morning. Came for some medications. Pennyroyal and carrot seed for the girls. Laudanum for me ’ead. And me teeth. And a draught to help me sleep.’ She eyed Jenny critically. ‘Didn’t get much of a discount, though I told ’er you and I was friends. And what was in that draught?’

  I looked at Jenny. ‘You didn’t? That recipe from the Herball?’

  She grinned. ‘Well I had to try it on someone!’

  ‘Get on with it, madam,’ said Will. ‘And as you aren’t at Wicke Street you can tell us without expecting a fee.’

  It turned out that Mrs Roseplucker had drunk a considerable amount of gin in addition to the laudanum she had taken and the medieval sleeping draught supplied by Jenny. She had been in her bed at the time and had fallen into a deep sleep. Annie said she had checked for breathing ‘with a feather’, but having perceived no response from the woman even when she had shouted in her ear and ‘stabbed her foot with a pin’, she had then ‘made ready the corpse’. Mr Jobber, who didn’t know any better, had gone along with everything.

  On arriving at Corvus Hall they had been sent round the back. It had been late in the day when they had arrived and there was only Gloag in attendance at the dead house. Of course, he had taken them at their word. A corpse was a corpse, why should he ask any questions? With the assistance of Mr Jobber, Gloag had carried Mrs Rose-plucker into the mortuary, slid her onto the slab and then recorded her name in the register. He had closed the door and gone about his business elsewhere in the building. Mrs Roseplucker had lain there, still and silent, sleeping amongst the corpses for the next few hours. Eventually, the effects of the gin, the opium, and the belladonna had worn off.

  ‘First thing I remember is feeling cold,’ she said. ‘Cold as the stone on which I was laid. And when I opened my eyes it were that black I hardly knew whether I were dead or alive for I could see nothing, nothing at all. Dark as the grave it was. Smelled like it too. An’ quiet, quiet as the grave. But I were still not myself and I drifted off again. But then—’ she looked around at us, her face aghast. ‘That’s when it happened.’

  ‘What?’ cried Mr Jobber. ‘What ’appened?’

  ‘The most terrible thing,’ she said. ‘It made my poor ’eart jump in my body like it were a live thing – which it were,’ she glared at Annie. ‘But now it were racing. Why? Because I saw that where I was laying it were suddenly less dark, that there were a light, though it weren’t much of a one, just a thin glowing line, spectral-like in the gloom and it was then that I saw where I was, and that I were in a sepulchre! A house of the dead! But the horror were only just beginning, my dears, oh yes, for the next thing was the voices. Hollow, echoing voices and the sound of a door opening, slowly, slowly, like a door in a crypt. At first I thought it were opening by itself, moved by some dire ghostly presence, but it were worse, far worse than that. Oh, my dears! What I saw next will haunt me for the rest o’ my days, for it were a hand, its fingers long and thin and white as bone. I saw it creep around the edge of the door and push it open. O’ course I still had no idea where I was but thought I were dead and gone to some terrible place on account of the life o’ wickedness I’ve lived and it were the Devil himself coming to get me.’ She put up a hand and spread her fingers about her flabby neck. ‘I felt something about my throat, choking me, so I thought, but when I pulled at it I seed it were just a bandage. The voices came closer. Whispering I don’t know what but it were like spells and incantations and all manner o’ wickedness.’ She lowered her voice. ‘All at once I could hear them. “I thought it was behind us,” one o’ them said. ‘And “I hoped never to think of it again.” “Not think of it?” replied the other. “There is not a day goes by when I don’t think of it.” “I will do whatever it takes,” said the first voice. “I did then. I will now.” “It is too late for that,” says the other. “Too late. For all of us. It will follow us to the grave and beyond.”

  ‘And then the door started to open. Two of them there was, two of them come to get me, dark against the light of their vile lantern. They had knives in their hands, their coats black as night, ragged as the weeds of the dead, for the dead was all around, their faces green and decayed, wrapped in blankets all bloody and foul. I thinks to jump up with a cry, but I’m that afeared I can’t move a muscle. I sees the two devils looking at a huge book, like they’re totting up the final reckoning for us all. They muttered together, and then they bends over a body. “No,” said the one. “No, it will never be over. And yet we have work to do.”I heard a squelch, and a sigh, and it was all I could do not to faint away with terror at the sound of it. They went away after that, but left a lantern burning like they was coming back at any moment. It were just about then that I found my voice, and so I jumps up with a cry. I jumps up and I grabs the lantern and I runs out of that terrible place as fast as I could.’

  Gabriel and Jenny had crept forward and were now sitting cross-legged at the beldam’s feet, their eyes round, their expressions rapt. Annie too had sidled forward. Mr Jobber, sitting in his place beside the pies, had his gaze fixed upon his mistress. Mrs Roseplucker looked around with satisfaction. ‘I went up a dark passage and out through a door. It were the only door I could see! Then out again into a hall, high and bright with lamps it were, with glass boxes on all sides filled with monsters and creatures, with bones and bits of flesh and skin. The floor were splotched with red, red as blo
od it were! There was young men standing about and they yelled out as I passed by, though they didn’t stop me. They couldn’t stop me, my dears, for I were that fast on my feet! In a trice I were at the front door. I felt their hands clutching at me for they would have dragged me back in and butchered me there and then had they got hold of me. But I were faster still. Ask Mr Jobber, he’ll tell you how fast I am. And I ran! Lord, how I ran!

  ‘Well, I gets out onto the road and there’s people screaming to see me on account of my nightdress and bandages about my face. I started for home and it took me past the door to this here shop for I chose not to take the back streets, not in my condition, and I heard singing. Singing! And music! And the cackle of you, missy!’ She jabbed a finger towards Annie once more. ‘Fit to wake the dead, and wake me you did, madam – not that I were dead. Well, I looked in and damn my eyes if it weren’t you! And you too, Mr Jobber! How could you eat and drink and sing happy songs knowing I were dead?’

  ‘But you weren’t dead,’ said Annie.

  ‘Give me them rings back, you besom!’

  ‘A tale fit for the pen of Prosser McLucker,’ said Will, sitting back with a grin. ‘That was your old pen name, I believe, madam?’

  ‘Prosser McLucker?’ cried Gabriel, sitting up straight. ‘From Tales of Violence and Blight?’

  ‘You wrote “The Curse of the Haunted Hand”?’ said Jenny, ‘and “Crimes of Captain Bloodheart”?’

  ‘Those are mine, yes, my dears.’ Mrs Roseplucker smiled, her face splitting like a rotten apple. ‘You liked ’em? I took to writin’ when times was hard at Wicke Street. That there pen name is just “Mrs Roseplucker” only all mixed up.’

  ‘That were my idea,’ muttered Annie. ‘It’s an anniegram—’

  Gabriel and Jenny inched closer. ‘“The Curse of the Haunted Hand”,’ said Jenny. ‘I read it jus’ last week!’

  ‘Did you really see a dead man’s hand move on its own?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘Course she didn’t,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s a story!’ She gazed at Mrs Roseplucker with awe. ‘But it’s my most favourite!’

  ‘The creeping right hand of Dick Danvers,’ breathed Gabriel.

  ‘The right hand is important, my dears,’ said Mrs Roseplucker, leaning forward. ‘It means strength, power and protection. It’s the hand we put on the Bible when we swear an oath, the hand we sign our name with, the hand Dick Danvers used to condemn his own brother. The right hand is the hand that reeks of guilt and shame.’

  ‘And the left?’ said Jenny

  ‘The left is weak. It is death and decay.’ She sat forward, huge in her billowing nightdress and sleeping cap. ‘And if thy right hand offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee!’ she cried. ‘Ain’t that the truth?’ She shrugged. ‘That’s in the Bible. Don’t know where.’

  Precognition for the murder of Mary Anderson,

  18th December 1830.

  Statement of ANGUS WRAGG, surgeon, curator of the Anatomy Museum, Surgeons’ Hall, and of Dr Crowe’s Anatomy Museum, 13 Surgeons’ Square, residing at 13 Surgeons’ Square, Edinburgh. Aged fifty-six years.

  19th December 1830

  I have known Dr Crowe for some twenty-five years. It was with some pain that I saw him become enamoured of the crippled beggar Thrawn-Leggit Mary of Robertson’s Close. Dr Cruikshank asked me for help in curing Dr Crowe of his unfortunate affection and I was more than happy to help – the reputation of Dr Crowe, of the Anatomy School, and of his late wife were all dependent upon it. I knew the woman Mary Anderson for what she was. They were prostitutes, she and her sister, and as such the father of the child could have been any man.

  As Dr Cruikshank bade me, I watched her. One night I saw a man go in at her door. I did not know who he was at that time, but it told me that the girl would be at home and about her business that evening, and so I sent one of the corner boys to fetch Dr Cruikshank and be quick about it. When I saw who was with her I was most surprised, and glad Dr Crowe and Dr Cruikshank did not come sooner. I sent my man in directly after, the payment to be left upon the table where it might be plainly seen, and no doubt might arise about what it was for. It was just in time, for at that moment Dr Cruikshank and Dr Crowe arrived.

  After that we vowed never to speak of the matter. Dr Cruikshank made it clear to all those who knew what had lately occurred that the subject of Dr Crowe’s misplaced affection, and the nature of his disabusement, would on no account be alluded to again. I included Mr Allardyce in this bond, and I could see that he was mightily relieved by it.

  I was not present when the girl Kate was paid by Mr Franklyn to go away from the gates of 13 Surgeons’ Square, nor when her sister Mary stabbed Dr Crowe, though I was apprised of both of those events by Dr Strangeway. My next encounter with the women was when Dr Cruikshank came to get me on the evening of the 18th inst. asking me to come to the foot of Robertson’s Close ‘for they say Thrawn-Leggit Mary is dead,’ he said. He knew me for a stout fellow – having been a surgeon some thirty years or more I have seen and done that which would make a lesser man quail in his boots. The mob did not frighten me – though when I later saw what had happened to Mary Anderson it made me glad they had not seen it too for there would have been no safety for us that night if they had.

  I did not enter the hovel with them, but rather stayed outside in the street. The mob was fierce angry. They would have strung us all up if they could, for they had not forgotten the West Port murders and were sore aggrieved that not one surgeon had hanged for it. It was for this reason that I thought it prudent to remain at the door until the gentlemen inside were ready. It was not a comfortable vigil: ‘I know you,’ a voice shouted, once the door was closed. I could not see who for the haar was thick about. Then she stepped forward, small as a child between her two crutches. It was Clenchie Kate. ‘Bloody Wragg,’ she shouted. ‘A man who would sell his own soul for a corpse – if he had a soul to trade.’

  ‘They are all the same,’ said another voice, a man’s, though I could not see who he was.

  ‘They took Daft Jamie for a corpse, poor lad,’ said someone else.

  ‘Aye,’ cried another. ‘And wee Mary Patterson.’

  ‘And now they want our Mary too?’ shouted a fourth.

  ‘I’ve seen your friends coming in and out,’ cried a woman I knew as Susan Leich, a shrew of a woman, and a drunkard, and a friend of both the twisted sisters. ‘Those young men from Surgeons’, that red-haired one with his pens and his weepin’ and maitherin’ about “poor Mrs Crowe”. You are all of you guilty—’ And so it went on, getting hotter and hotter, so that I was afeared we would indeed be set upon, and wondered what it was that kept them so long inside.

  At last they were ready. Dr Cruikshank was sorely troubled by what he had seen inside that house, I could tell by his face. He was all for leaving Allardyce behind to keep the crowd from entering the room before the constable arrived, but I would not have it. They did not like Allardyce – that much was plain. They did not like any of us, truth be told, and there would be no safety for one of us left alone on the Cowgate that night. And so I said it would be better if we all returned together and Dr Cruikshank did not argue.

  We took her to Surgeons’ Hall, for although we did not have a licence for a post-mortem, I had the keys and if the mob followed us up the close we would be safer than if we had taken her to Dr Crowe’s school. We had hardly started when the constable came up. He made us send the boys away, young Mr Franklyn and Mr Allardyce. I saw the knife he had brought up. The words upon it were well known to me. They were well known to us all, for they were the words Dr Crowe used to end all his lectures, and before starting all his dissections in front of the young gentlemen. It was a benediction, he said, one the young gentlemen would be well to respect when they picked up the knife and stood over the corpse. Et mortui sua arcana narrabunt: and the dead shall surrender their secrets. I saw the initials that were engraved on the opposite side of the blade and I knew without doubt who its owner was.

  Tr
ue in soul and conscience,

  [Signed] Angus Wragg

  Will and I decided to go back to the Exhibition. I wanted to look again at Dr Strangeway’s work – was there something about the models he had chosen to display that might help us uncover what was going on? It was a long shot, but I insisted.

  There was a crowd standing before the exhibits, young men, mostly, though there were others too. To my surprise I saw that one of them was Dr Crowe. ‘Wait,’ I said to Will, who had been about to approach and call out a greeting. ‘Let’s see what happens.’

  Dr Crowe was standing with his hands in his pockets. The crowd ebbed and flowed around him. I expected him to move off, but he didn’t. We could not see his face, could not see what emotions he might be feeling, only that his attention was unwavering. The exhibit that held him was the head and face of the man. As in all his creations, Dr Strangeway had captured an almost divine expression: the eyelids half closed, the lips slightly parted, the cheeks smooth and flawless; the gaze, half visible beneath lowered lids fixed on some far away point. It attracted the attention of the public too, and I heard numerous voices exclaiming over the work, how skilled it was, how extraordinary in its detail, how fascinating to see what lay concealed beneath. Such order and beauty, they said, a fearful image of death and life, caught in a single frozen moment. Who was he, they wondered? What man had been immortalised in so extraordinary a way? And then they moved on, their gazes drifting to other items on display – surgical knives, leg prostheses, stethoscopes. Only Dr Crowe remained where he was. What did he see that kept him there so long?