Surgeons’ Hall

by E. S. Thomson

  The womb is the carrier of all life. As any anatomist will tell you it sits low in the abdomen, held in place by muscles and ligaments. What a precious organ it is! A place of warmth and safety, of mystery and awe. It inspires wonder – and fear. Wonder at its life-giving properties, fear at the power it exercises over us. For it is the defining organ of the female body. We are told we may not study, we may not read anything more than the catechism, as we will injure our wombs if we do. Our anatomy is our destiny, and we ignore it at our peril. Does not the presence of a womb demonstrate beyond all question that we are designed only for motherhood? And if we do not breed? What then? Hysteria. Madness. The decay of civilisation itself.

  My womb is a cold and barren cavity, bloody and dark with regret. I throw aside those twin prizes, virginity and chastity, for they have no value to one such as I. I am told I may never marry, that the madness that lurks within me must not be permitted to breed. I must accept it, they say. I lie alone in my bed at night and I lay my hand across my belly and I think of all the blood I have seen and the pain I have caused.

  Statement of Dr Silas Strangeway, Corvus Hall,

  30th September 1851.

  Corvus Hall, 30th September 1851

  My dear Flockhart

  It seems to me that the time has come to tell you what happened on the night of 18th December 1830. The events have been recorded elsewhere by others, me included, and yet there is a version of events, a true version, that has remained a secret for over twenty years. It has become clear in recent days, however, that what happened in the past has not stayed in the past. Perhaps we were naive to think that we might live our lives with impunity, that what we hid from the world back then might be outweighed by good deeds and hard work. We are united by it, those who were there that night, for good or ill, and will remain so for the rest of our lives.

  After I was attacked yesterday I knew that all our striving not to think of it, all our pretence that it had not happened, had come to naught. And so here is my statement. Long overdue, perhaps, it is my account of what happened on the day we carried the body of Mary Anderson up from the Cowgate to Surgeons’ Hall.

  In the spring of 1830 Dr Crowe’s wife died of the smallpox, leaving him the sole parent of Lilith, then some fifteen years old, and her two young siblings, both of them mere babies at the time. Dr Crowe was distraught, and for a time we believed him to have almost lost his reason. Most notable was his attitude towards a beggar woman named Mary Anderson, who went by the name of Thrawn-Leggit Mary, and who bore a strong resemblance to my late sister, Dr Crowe’s wife. In time it was rumoured that Dr Crowe had had intimate relations with the girl. He denied that this was the case, though I did not believe him, especially as it was soon evident that she was pregnant. Mary Anderson always maintained that the child was Dr Crowe’s. It was for that reason that on the 18th December 1830 she came up to his lecture hall to accuse him in front of all his students. The girl attacked him, attempting to stab him through the heart with a blade taken from the dissecting room.

  As you are aware, Dr Crowe has always maintained that a woman has as much right to a medical education as a man. As such, it was usual for his daughter Lilith to be in the front row of his lectures. When Mary Anderson attacked her father Lilith had an uninterrupted view of it. There is no doubt that she was most distressed by what she had witnessed that day. For weeks – months – she had borne all that had been thrown at her: the death of her beloved mother; the distress this had caused her father, with whom she had always enjoyed the closest of relationships; having to care for her two young siblings – a role she had no great love for as it took her away from her studies. She had watched her father withdraw into his work, excluding her where once he had encouraged, unable to look her in the face for he saw only her mother when he did. And then came his infatuation with Mary. It was partly medical – her spine intrigued him, there was no doubt of it – and yet it was also something altogether more inappropriate and worrisome. How could this woman, this crippled beggar from the darkest of Edinburgh’s streets have a face that so matched that of his beloved? Dr Crowe could talk of nothing else, and indeed the likeness between the two was most remarkable. It was only Lilith who refused to accept it. ‘There is nothing of my mother in that beggar girl,’ she said to me on more than one occasion. Mary Anderson had no right to such a face, she said, no right to remind anyone of her dear mother. One day I came home from Surgeons’ Square to find that she had taken a scalpel to a blue dress her mother had once worn and sliced it to ribbons.

  ‘Better this than have him give it to her,’ she said.

  They almost came to blows, Lilith and her father, and I was relieved when, after a few months, the whole business seemed to have blown over. But then Mary appeared at the lecture theatre. Lilith remained silent as the scene unfolded before her, stoical, no matter what. But when she saw what the girl had done – attacked her father, stabbed at his heart only to have the blow deflected by the only picture of her mother that existed – I saw a coldness in her eye, a hardness, and a determination in her face I had not seen before. With hindsight I believe that was the moment when everything changed, when Lilith determined to do all she could to rid herself and her father of Mary Anderson.

  After Mary’s assault, and her removal from the lecture theatre, Dr Crowe, Lilith and I returned home. As soon as we were inside, Dr Crowe, who had affected to be unconcerned by the attack, broke down, weeping uncontrollably – a shocking sight for any daughter to witness. After that he locked himself in his study, refusing to speak to anyone.

  Sometime later I heard him emerge from his room. I tried to speak to him about Lilith, to tell him that he must talk to her, perhaps take her away for a few months, but he would not listen.

  ‘I am going out, Silas,’ he said. ‘I must walk or I shall go mad.’

  I said the haar was rising, that he would be unable to see his way, that he might be attacked and robbed or struck down by a carriage in the dark, but he cared nothing for those things. I could do and say no more, and I stood aside as he put on his walking cape and his hat, and took up his cane and his lantern. ‘Tomorrow everything will be better,’ he said wearily. ‘But tonight – tonight I must walk.’

  Some little while later I heard the sound of footsteps in the passage. At first I thought Dr Crowe had returned, that he had forgotten something and come back, or, still better, that he had decided I was right and had come to speak with Lilith. But when I looked out I saw Lilith herself, cloaked as her father had been, and carrying one of the lanterns the apprentices used when they were out in the graveyards at night. Before I had chance to say anything she had opened the door and stepped out into the fog.

  Of course, I put on my own coat and set out after her. I had no idea where she might be going – my first thought was that she was following her father, but that was hardly possible as he was long gone. The only place she might go was to see Dr Cruikshank, though as it was a Wednesday he would be at work late at Surgeons’ Square, and not at home. It was then that I wondered whether it was her intention to visit Mary Anderson, and that perhaps it was to Tanner’s Lodgings that she was bound. And so it was to that place that I headed as fast as I could, though much hampered by the dark and the fog, for I had come out in haste and had no light.

  Oh sir, I have told no one of this these twenty years or more, but that night I witnessed something I hope never to see again, for when I opened the door to Mary Anderson’s house I opened it upon a scene of carnage. On the bed lay the girl’s corpse, around her neck a blue silk shawl – I recognised it immediately as one that had once belonged to Mrs Crowe. It was pulled tight. But worse still was the sight of Lilith, fingers red and slippery with gore, a knife glinting in her hands, hunched over the body of Thrawn-Leggit Mary.

  You may know, sir, that even then my niece was a skilled anatomist. At all times she carried a set of knives in her bag – Dr Cruikshank had given them to her on her fifteenth birthday. He had had them made specially,
with bone handles and steel blades, the finest in Edinburgh. She held one of them in her hand now, its shaft bloody, her fingers slathered with the stuff. I saw straight away that she had cut through Mary Anderson’s dress, and also through the flesh beneath. And at that moment, the moment I came in, she was pulling a child from the opening she had sliced in the wall of the dead girl’s womb.

  When she turned to me I hardly knew her for my niece. Her skin was white, luminous almost, but in the glow from the fire and the light from the lantern it had a Devilish crimson cast to it, smudged here and there with dark clots of blood. Her eyes were huge and wild, dark and fathomless, as if I were looking into the eyes of a demon. ‘Uncle,’ she said, a faint smile curling her lips. ‘Look!’ Her hands shook as she held out to me the red and slippery mess. I took it from her – what else could I do? The creature was the tiniest baby I had ever seen, pink, and wrinkled as a maggot and so small that I could hardly believe it would live. And then she handed me something else. I thought at first it was the placenta, but it was not. It was another baby, as small as the first but bloodier. Like two tiny sparrows they were, both girls, both living – for she had tied the cords as best she could when she cut them free from their mother.

  I wrapped both babies in my waistcoat – to be sure, I could have wrapped them in my handkerchief they were so small – and said I would take them away directly. I bundled Lilith to her feet and told her she must go, go from that place and return home straight. She said she would make the girl decent, and that then she would quit the place directly. Perhaps it was wrong of me to leave her, but I took her at her word. In truth, I could not bear to remain there a moment longer. It is a failing that has haunted me ever since.

  After leaving the babes at the foundlings’ hospital I was returning home via Surgeons’ Square when I bumped into Dr Cruikshank. He informed me that Thrawn-Leggit Mary was dead – I was surprised at how quickly the news had got out – and on his insistence I accompanied him back to Tanner’s Lodgings.

  It is here that I come to the most painful part of my tale, for there I found that rather than making the girl decent, as she said she would, my niece had done something quite different. The legs and abdomen she had left lewdly exposed, a pose perhaps befitting a girl who was known to be of easy virtue. Worse still, the face she had railed against so many times she had sliced clean away. I could hardly bear to look at what she had done, and my hands shook when I thought how close she must have come to being discovered. I saw too that she had left one of her knives amongst the bedding – I noted that Dr Cruikshank had also observed it, and his expression was no less appalled than mine. We exchanged a glance, but said nothing, and I saw him hide it quickly in his hand before the others could see it.

  It was a long night, and hours passed before I eventually returned home. Lilith was in her room. She was asleep, and when I awoke her she had only the most fragmented memory of what had occurred that evening. She remembered her hands pulling the shawl about the girl’s neck. She remembered the knife, the blood, and the two tiny infants. I believe she has retained those memories, that she knows what she did, and what she is, but, like the rest of us, she has never spoken of it.

  That night she fell into a fever, no doubt brought on by the shock, and by the cold night air. She almost died. Indeed, her two young brothers caught her sickness and it took them both, adding still more to the burden of grief and sadness endured by that blighted household. Dr Cruikshank, Dr Crowe and I vowed to say nothing of what had happened, and when evidence found at the scene pointed to someone other than Lilith, we remained silent. I assumed Dr Cruikshank had seen to it, for he would do anything to protect my niece. And so it was Franklyn, Dr Crowe’s apprentice and a young man of great promise, who was accused, and not one of us stood up to speak in his defence. He fell from a window trying to elude his pursuers. But he was innocent of all he was charged with.

  I have carried this burden for many years. Franklyn comes to me in my dreams, even now. It is his face you see at the Exhibition, Lilith and I, working on that piece together, found we had fashioned a likeness of him before we even realised what we were doing. I cannot defend our actions. I can only say that my sole intent was to protect my niece, who was driven by passion, rage and sorrow to do what she did.

  And yet, if Mary’s life was taken, and the life of Franklyn was forfeit, then saving the lives of those two innocent babes was at least some recompense, for shortly before we left Edinburgh Dr Crowe adopted them both. We named them Sorrow and Silence, for that is how we have all lived since that terrible night.

  I cannot undo what has been done. We have prevented Lilith from ever marrying – whatever dark force had driven her to murder must not be permitted to breed – and done all we can to keep her and her sisters safe from harm. I have no idea who it is who pursues us now, but I am quite certain that it is because of what happened that night in Edinburgh that we are being persecuted. I accept my fate, when it comes, but I ask you to look to my nieces, Flockhart, to help Lilith and her sisters, and protect them from whoever, from whatever, awaits them in the darkness.

  Sincerely yours,

  Silas Strangeway

  Dr Cruikshank swept forward and took Lilith in his arms.

  ‘Dr Strangeway told me what happened,’ I said. I held up the letter he had left for me in the wax workshop. ‘This is his confession. His statement. The one he did not give that night in Edinburgh twenty years ago.’

  ‘Dr Strangeway told me what had happened that night too,’ said Dr Cruikshank. ‘He said he had left Lilith and taken the children – we both saw what she had done. It was I who found her knife, I who took it so she would be safe. We told Dr Crowe, and then the three of us promised never to allude to it again, never to ask about it, never to speak to her, or anyone, about what she had done.’

  ‘You put Franklyn’s knife under the bed?’ said Will.

  ‘No,’ said Dr Cruikshank. ‘No, I did not. I assumed Dr Strangeway had done so – I never asked him. We vowed to ask nothing of one another. What we did, we did for her. We loved her, all of us.’

  ‘But none as much as you, I think, Dr Cruikshank,’ I said gently.

  He sighed. ‘No,’ he said. He looked down at her, and stroked the hair from her face. ‘None as much as I.’

  ‘To deliver one’s own sisters from their dying mother aged only fifteen, I am hardly surprised that her mind was unhinged by it,’ said Will. ‘And yet, to kill another human being? To desecrate the corpse? It is no wonder it could never be spoken of. No wonder she pushed it deep inside herself, so deep that she had only the most subtle memory of it.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘And what reason would those who love her have to lie about such a terrible deed?’

  ‘But we did not lie,’ said Dr Crowe quietly. ‘That is what happened, though I wish to God it had not.’

  ‘You did not lie,’ I said, ‘because you believe that is what happened. All of you believe it, even Miss Crowe. But it is not what happened. Dr Strangeway has provided us with yet another version of events, but they are still not the truth. The truth of that night has most conveniently lain hidden from all of you, and from John Halliday, for twenty years, even though it was in plain sight – had Halliday been able to step outside his vengeance for one moment, and read what he had before him slowly and objectively.’

  The room was silent.

  ‘But where?’ said Dr Crowe. ‘Where has it lain hidden?’

  ‘Why, in these documents, of course.’ I took up the wad of papers that Halliday had given me. ‘Precognition Papers for the Murder of Mary Anderson,’ I said. Written statements collected from each of you the night that Mary was murdered. The truth has been here all along – had anyone the wit to see it.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Will. ‘I could see nothing in them that pointed to anyone but Franklyn.’

  ‘But of course it is.’ I pulled open the papers. ‘Look here: Clenchie Kate smashed her assailant’s lantern with her crutch. Later we are told that
one member of the party from Surgeons’ Hall had to follow close on another as his lantern was out.’

  ‘Who?’ said Dr Crowe.

  ‘Dr Allardyce,’ said Will after a moment. ‘It was Dr Allardyce.’

  ‘So,’ said Dr Allardyce. He had not moved from his chair, his arm still around the box he had saved from the fire at the Hall. ‘The lanterns often went out. You cannot accuse a man of such crimes based on that!’

  ‘Oh, but there is much more than that,’ I said. ‘You see, Franklyn tells us that he thought at first Mary had arrived at Dr Crowe’s lecture to accuse someone else. He was referring to you, Dr Allardyce. There is also the matter of your feelings for Mrs Crowe. Dr Strangeway acknowledged the deep love you had for her. Franklyn also noted it. And we are told that you had been seen entering Tanner’s Lodgings on many occasions, weepin’ and maitherin’ about poor Mrs Crowe. Can you deny that it was you who was with Mary Anderson on the night when Dr Wragg had paid a man to go with her so that Dr Crowe might have the scales fall from his eyes? Look here, when he says that no one is ever to allude to the events of the night in question – I included Mr Allardyce in this bond, and I could see that he was mightily relieved by it. Of course you were relieved, Dr Allardyce, for it was not only Dr Crowe who had become enamoured of Mary Anderson, was it?’

  ‘But how on earth did I kill the woman? How was I not seen or heard?’ Dr Allardyce smiled and shook his head. I had never seen him so confident. And why not, when he had kept his secret for so long?