“I found Nathan Cullen lying face-up on a table in our dissection room, having committed suicide by cutting his wrist,” said Edward.
“Nathan Cullen?”
“The boy. This razor was on the floor.”
As Edward passed the object to him, Sir John stroked his hand. Edward pulled it back swiftly. “My apologies,” said the magistrate. “I was trying to read your hand.”
“I amputated Nathan’s arms and legs,” Edward told him.
“Why?”
“To make it appear that he had been murdered.”
“Why?”
Edward gave him the same account he had given the Professor: Nathan’s reasons for coming from Sherbourne to London. His great ability. His despair at going unrecognised for that ability. His poverty. His wish to be buried in a churchyard when he died.
The story had changed in one crucial way, however: in relating it to Sir John, he left Nigel out entirely.
Sir John allowed him to finish without interrupting. Echoes of the tale seemed to linger in the air even after Edward fell silent. The magistrate remained silent too, as if listening to a distant voice. His eyes were closed, but his face wore a more meditative look than before.
“I see,” he said at last. “The boy was a suicide, but in order to allow him to be buried in a church graveyard, you made it look as if it was by another hand. Amputating his limbs was part of that project. Is that an accurate summary?”
“It is.”
“Why, I wonder, would he choose the dissection room as the scene of his suicide? If he found the graveyard a restful place, would he not go there?”
“Who knows what was in his mind? I have given you only the facts I can verify.”
“What became of the severed limbs?”
“They are in my room, preserved against decay. I intended to wait until Nathan was interred, a presumed victim of murder, and then bury them alongside him. If his suicide is to become public knowledge, I shall give them to his family.”
“I need to examine them first. Bring them to me. If you run, you should be there and back in less than twenty minutes.”
When Edward had left, Sir John turned to the Professor. “And what do you wish to discuss with me?” he asked. “There is something you have yet to reveal, I think. You are unsure how to proceed. Well, speak. Silence may at times say more than speech, but now is not the time for it.”
“The faceless corpse,” Barton felt obliged to tell him, “was also at the bottom of the flue.”
Sir John smiled. “This is growing almost comical. Perhaps we should put on a show at Drury Lane. The Resurrection Fireplace.”
“I should have told you immediately.”
“Whoever deposited it there must have been familiar with the peculiarities of your fireplace. A valuable clue, Mr. Barton, but one you concealed.”
Barton felt as if he were the focus of a piercing light from behind the man’s closed eyelids.
“As I recollect, it was Edward Turner who claimed that the faceless cadaver was found lying on a dissection table by all your students together.”
“Is that so? I forget.”
“You are perspiring, Mr. Barton.”
The Professor mopped his brow with a handkerchief. Sir John’s sense of smell was also quite sharp, it seemed.
“Who was aware of how your fireplace was constructed?”
“All my pupils knew.”
“And did you?”
“Not until they informed me… . However, Sir John, I am as guilty of concealing the matter from you as they are. If you punish them, pray treat me identically.”
“When Mr. Turner returns, I shall ask him directly.”
There was an extended silence, finally broken by a knock on the door.
Anne Moore entered, saying that she wanted to report on the unidentified bodies, before noticing Barton and falling silent.
“Have you found their names?” asked Sir John.
“Shall I leave the room?” asked Barton.
“No, you may stay and listen. Where is Abbott?”
“Waiting outside,” she said. “The district reports have arrived. The full list of runaways and missing persons was extremely long. From it we eliminated the indigent and members of the labouring class, as well as those of the wrong sex, age, or body type. Finally, we narrowed the list down to those who made their living with a pen, whether writing words or figures. We are not quite finished yet, however.”
“Read to me what you have.”
She produced a list of a dozen or so names and read it aloud.
“Mr. Barton, did any of them mean anything to you?”
“Not one.”
Another knock came at the door.
“Sir John,” Abbott announced, “Edward Turner has returned.”
“Send him in.”
Edward had hurried, it seemed. His face had a thin sheen of sweat on it. In his arms he carried a large jar, which he placed on the desk before removing the cloth that covered it.
“Anne, what do you see?”
“A pair of forearms,” she told him, “severed at the elbow. They are immersed in preserving fluid and have gone white. The left arm has a wound on its wrist, perhaps three inches long.”
Chapter 4
It was three weeks before Nathan was reunited with Elaine. His unfailing daily visits to Tyndale’s bookshop bore fruit at last.
He was arguing with Farrow through the half-closed door as usual when a chaise drawn by a single horse pulled up outside the shop. The driver lowered the step, and a plump woman whom Nathan took to be somebody’s nurse emerged. She then extended her hand to help the other passenger out. Elaine.
Farrow opened the shop door fully for them. Nathan took the opportunity to slip inside as well.
“How nice to see you again,” Elaine said to Nathan with a smile that left the clerk with no choice but to hold his tongue rather than chase him away. She turned to her nurse. “This is the gentleman I told you about, Norma,” she said. “My knight.”
Norma inspected Nathan closely, frowning a little, then gave the faintest of nods.
“Now,” said Elaine to Farrow. “I thought perhaps my book would be ready.”
“Your timing is perfect, madam. I was just about to send a messenger to inform you that the work on your book is indeed complete. We insisted that the binder do it quickly. Ah, Mr. Evans,” he added, seeing this person arrive just then. “Your Robinson Crusoe is ready too.”
“We meet again, madam,” Evans said to Elaine with an air of familiarity. Norma glared at him.
Tyndale handed Elaine her book, and Farrow gave Evans his.
While the nurse paid, Elaine boarded the chaise again, turning her gaze towards Nathan as she did so and, by it, inviting him to join her. Scarcely able to believe it was true, the young poet placed one foot on the carriage step. She smiled and nodded—at least, he thought she did. So he entered the carriage, and she indicated the seat opposite her.
The nurse boarded the carriage a moment later. Eyes fixed on Nathan, she sternly said, “Miss Elaine.”
The carriage swayed into motion.
Noticing Nathan gazing at the red leather binding, Elaine handed him her book. “Can you read it aloud?” she asked.
Nathan opened it up. “Je suis obligé de faire remonter mon lecteur au temps de ma vie où je rencontrai pour la première fois le chevalier des Grieux,” he read. Was his pronunciation correct? He was prepared to leap from the moving carriage at the slightest hint of mockery on her lips.
Instead, she said, “Your voice is very pleasant. Won’t you read that to me again in English?”
“‘I must take my reader back to the period of my life at which I first met the Chevalier des Grieux,’” read Nathan, translating as he went. The look of admiration that appeared on
her face made him inwardly give thanks to his old parish priest, who had taught him French. A Frenchman might have objected to his accent, but it did not seem to bother Elaine.
They passed a tea-shop, and she ordered the driver to stop. “I shall have tea here while my knight reads aloud to me,” she declared. “Norma, go home ahead of me in the chaise. You may return for me in an hour.”
“Miss Elaine, I simply cannot—” The nurse put up some resistance, but eventually obeyed.
If coffee-houses were for men, tea-shops were for women. Supplied with a fragrant spiced bun and a cup of Bohea tea, at Elaine’s request Nathan continued reading Manon Lescaut aloud, putting it into English as he went along.
“I have in truth very little French,” Elaine confessed. “I intended to have my tutor translate the book for me, but this is much better.”
The arrogance of the upper classes, who expected their every wish to be fulfilled as a matter of course, was something of which Nathan was keenly aware and strongly critical under ordinary circumstances. In Elaine’s case, however, he did not find it objectionable at all.
By the time Norma arrived in the chaise precisely an hour later to collect her charge, the Chevalier des Grieux had eloped with the bewitching Manon to Paris, where the two maintained a love nest together despite pressing financial difficulties. Manon appeared to be secretly supported by a rich male acquaintance.
With some reluctance, Nathan held the book out to Elaine. “No—keep it,” she said. “I shall come here every day. You must come too, book in hand, and read it to me.”
“I shall be here without fail,” he said.
“Where are you going now?”
“I must call at the offices of a certain newspaper,” he told her. “They are to publish some poems of mine.”
The real nature of the writing, and indeed of the newspaper, he carefully omitted—a minor concession to his pride.
In any case, Elaine showed no further interest. “Tomorrow, then,” she said, and with a final smile made her exit.
Tea-shops were where a more genteel sort of female patron socialized. He found this one far more agreeable than Matthew’s coffee-house, where men much older than him engaged in loud debate. The staff here were also much more courteous than at Matthew’s—although this may have been because his arrival with Elaine had given him some credit in their eyes. The looks he received from other customers, women all, were milder, too. At Matthew’s, he was treated as a tiresome minor, if not merely ignored.
The conversation of the women in the tea-shop was frivolous, reinforcing his feeling of superiority with each snippet he overheard. His most pressing task was to finish the satirical poem that Harrington had commissioned, but he returned to Manon Lescaut instead.
Two hours later, he had finished it. What a fool the Chevalier des Grieux was, he thought. The man forsook everything for the sake of a woman with no scruples whatsoever, and ended up in a New World colony.
But what if Elaine proposed that they run far away together? How would he himself respond? Although the prospect was unlikely, he thought it over anyway.
Elaine took an interest in him: that much was certain. Why else would she ask him to read to her every day from this book—which, though beautifully bound, was frankly rather disappointing on the page?
If only the tale were thrice its actual length! Reading aloud was more time-consuming than reading silently, and translating each sentence slowed the pace still further, but within a week des Grieux would be in the colony quarrelling with yet another man with his own designs on Manon. The Chevalier would then kill this rival and flee with Manon to a remote and barren place where her death brought the romance to its conclusion.
He resolved to finish his Elegy first. Then, once Manon Lescaut was done with, he would read his poem to her, a tale of love in a distant land between a noblewoman and a page. And Elaine, to her astonishment, would learn how far superior a writer the unknown Nathan Cullen was to the renowned Abbé Prévost.
His imaginings grew wild, stretching in all directions. Modesty soon lost its place entirely in his reverie.
But anxiety grew alongside self-confidence. Would others appreciate the merit of his poetry? The idea that it might not be as accomplished as he thought was difficult for him to accept.
He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. His composition had been promised to Harrington by three o’clock. He had not yet written a word.
The sweet, even cloying mood of the tea-shop made it difficult to conjure up the sharp, cynical language required for satire.
Gathering his writing implements, Nathan got to his feet.
As he took his customary seat at Matthew’s, he felt the staff’s unfriendly gaze on his back.
Nathan had already published several works in Harrington’s newspaper. Payment was a mere two shillings for each, but since he was otherwise living off his savings, even this income was more than welcome. The trouble was that the work ate into the time he could otherwise have spent on what he truly wished to write.
His bun and beverage at the tea-shop had been paid for, saving him one meal’s worth of expenses. If he were treated to the same each time he met Elaine there, it would help a good deal—pathetic though he felt acknowledging the fact.
He struggled to concentrate on his work.
Having no interest at all in politics, Nathan had been unaware of the chorus of voices raised in denunciation of the corruption in Parliament, or that a man called John Wilkes was chief among them, until hearing as much from Harrington. The worsening of relations between the New World colonies and England; Wilkes’s mustering of anti-government forces since his return from those colonies: Harrington gave him themes, and Nathan wrote on them, denouncing the government in the form of caustic verse.
Because the mockery was not genuinely his, the poems did not come easily, but he found that he did have a knack for well-crafted poetic satire—which had become something else he counted against himself.
He completed the poem for Harrington within the hour, then worked on his Elegy until shortly before three o’clock when it was time to set out for the offices of the Public Journal.
Passing through Castle Street, he remembered that this was where Edward and Nigel lived. They were studying anatomy under a Professor Barton, with whom they also lodged. Excellent fellows, even if their occupation was slightly unsettling.
He gazed up at Barton’s residence. What appeared to be a single long building viewed from the street was in fact two: Edward had told him that beyond the double gate lay a courtyard which separated Barton’s elder brother’s home on the left from the dissection school and Barton’s own residence on the right. Students entered through the double gate, and there were two rear entrances leading to the lane behind, one at each back corner of the property.
Were they performing a dissection somewhere in that building now? Wishing he could peer inside, he walked on.
Nathan feigned confidence around the two of them, showing as little weakness as possible. At their first meeting, he had intimated that his work was on the verge of publication, but Tyndale still kept him waiting. Edward and Nigel never brought the subject up. No doubt they had gathered that things were not going well. Nathan’s anxiety over his financial situation was another matter he was careful to keep private. He did not want pity. Every so often he would slip, revealing a sentimental nature in unguarded remarks like “If I die, bury me beneath a cypress in the churchyard,” but he always regretted it later. He wanted to be thought a cynic.
Harrington’s newspaper had its offices among the rookery of Gin Lane. Every building on the street was dilapidated, except for three: a pawnbroker, a gin distillery, and an undertaker’s premises.
The sides of the lane were lined with filth and kitchen scraps thrown from the windows, and animals nosed among them for leftovers. It was not even three o’clock, but there were a
lso people who sat outside drinking straight from the bottle.
The newspaper’s rooms smelt of alcohol too. Despite its impressive name, the Public Journal had a staff of just three, including Harrington himself, who handled everything from writing to printing and sales. Nathan had not learnt this until after he became a contributor, and the knowledge was somewhat discouraging. Harrington had apparently hoped to engage him as a sort of general assistant, but Nathan had no interest in the offer. He thought of himself as a poet and writer.
On his visits to the coffee-house, Harrington was generally well dressed, but in his own offices he was scruffy. “Excellent,” he said, scanning Nathan’s work. “This will be fine. Come, give me a hand.” Without giving him time to refuse, he descended to the basement where two employees were setting type beside an oily-smelling press.
“Mr. Cullen’s piece has made it in time,” announced Harrington. “Let us put it on page three. Nathan, would you care to try some typesetting? It should be a simple task, since you wrote the original.”
“No, I am afraid I have another appointment after this.”
“A shame. It would be a good experience for you, I think.” He began to set the type himself.
“… My fee?” said Nathan.
Harrington gave him two shillings. “Indict the government in stronger terms next time,” he said. “It need not be in verse. They are plotting to exile Wilkes again. He read your piece last week, by the way, and said there was much to recommend in it. He deplores the way that poverty prevents young people with bright prospects like you from making a name for themselves, and is intent on overturning our current way of doing things, in which a handful of aristocrats maintain their grip on governance in the name of the King. Don’t be afraid to be radical. The hearts of the people cannot be won with lukewarm rhetoric.”
Harrington clapped him on the shoulder encouragingly. Nathan put the two shillings in his purse and let himself out.
The Resurrection Fireplace Page 11