The Resurrection Fireplace

by Hiroko Minagawa

  Nigel paused and looked around before continuing.

  “As you may remember, his name was Nathan Cullen. He came to London from a country village. He was marvellously talented. At only seventeen, he was quite fluent in the English of many centuries past. He also wrote poetry in the modern idiom. Having discovered a rare work written by a mediaeval poet, he took it to a bookshop along with some verse he had composed himself. The owner temporized, but it caught the attention of someone else.”

  The others leaned forward.

  “Guy Evans.”

  “So he dabbles in this sort of business, too, as well as shares?”

  “Evans had no choice but to kill Harrington, under the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?” asked Clarence.

  Nigel turned to Edward, as if unsure how much to impart. The latter, perhaps at last feeling the effects of the laudanum, had closed his eyes and was beginning to nod.

  “Must you have Edward’s approval for every single word you say?” asked Clarence.

  “The circumstances are complicated,” Nigel said at last. “Nathan was lying dead in that dissection room, his wrist slit. He had just escaped confinement in Evans’s house, but at the time I was unaware of that. I thought he had killed himself… . And so I amputated his arm.”

  The others gasped. Nigel explained everything—the prohibition of suicides from church graveyards, the need to remove not just the telltale limb but the rest of them.

  “You cut off all his arms and legs? That’s idiotic!”

  “But there was a sign inked on his chest that pointed to me,” Nigel said, and described the heraldic imagery. “We misunderstood, thinking he was accusing me. We meant only to stow him in the fireplace until we could take him to a graveyard, but in all the confusion that day he was discovered.”

  Nigel summarized the rest of the story for them: Edward’s visit to the magistrate’s office with Barton, Sir John’s request that he produce the limbs, how Edward had thrown both legs into the Thames on his way back to Bow Street with the arms (which were embalmed) because the legs had borne the scars of Nathan’s imprisonment—about which Nigel also told them. Finally, he explained how he himself, unable to wait patiently, had gone to the magistrate’s office as well.

  “Sir John’s assistant noticed the ink on Nathan’s fingers. The staining on precisely three fingers revealed the intended meaning of the mark—whom it signified. And…” Nigel paused again, uncertain. At the others’ urging, he said that the sign in ink seemed to suggest that Nathan’s murderer was Robert Barton.

  “Robert may have put him to sleep with ether or some such drug, then cut his wrist to simulate a suicide. It was Edward and I, as I mentioned earlier, who amputated Nathan’s limbs. Edward found me at the task and lent me support. But we were wrong. It was murder. Our intervention must have come as a surprise to the culprit. He had only opened one artery, but the body was found with all four limbs missing. He expected the matter to be treated as a suicide and quietly forgotten, but instead the magistrate has taken a close interest in it. What is more, Harrington’s body, too, was retrieved from the fireplace where Robert allegedly abandoned it, assuming it would not be discovered.”

  “But why should he do all this?” asked Al. “Leaving Harrington aside for a moment. Robert had no connection whatsoever with the boy, surely?”

  Nigel glanced at Edward again.

  “Tell them,” Edward murmured drowsily.

  “Have you been listening?” asked Clarence.

  “I have,” he said with a nod, but then appeared to doze off again.

  Nigel gathered his thoughts before speaking.

  “Nathan had a letter addressed to us in his pocket. We discovered it after we operated on him and smeared the ink. Reading the letter made everything clear. Nathan had not found that ancient poem—he had forged it. His intentions were not wicked. He merely wanted the bookshop owner to recognize his ability. But instead, it came to the attention of Guy Evans.”

  “The broker who ensnared Robert.”

  “The very same. If the poem had been authentic, it would have been of great value. When he left it with the bookshop, Nathan held on to one leaf of parchment, to prevent the whole being published without his permission. But it was this page that allowed Evans to detect the fabrication.” Nigel explained the dating inconsistency. “At the same time, Nathan was writing another poem in similarly antique English. Elegy, it was called. Evans tricked him into coming to his home, then imprisoned him there and demanded that he finish his Elegy. When he refused, Evans threatened to prosecute him for the forgery. The prospect terrified Nathan, whose experience of being sent to prison as an innocent man had left him with a horror of the place. Evans intended to have him copy the finished Elegy onto parchment in a mediaeval hand, then announce it along with the earlier forgery as new discoveries, earning a vast sum in the process. No matter how Evans pressed him, however, inspiration did not come to him. Before long he was being maltreated—denied meals, then beaten. Finally Evans intimated that Nathan was becoming worthless, ‘like a chicken that does not lay or a goat that gives no milk.’ Nathan was petrified. He was living proof of the deception, meaning that his very existence was an impediment to Evans’s plans to sell the work. Fearing for his life, he finally escaped. He came straight here, having no one to turn to but Edward and me. But Robert must have been lying in wait. And… and I thought Nathan had committed—”

  “But, again, what reason did Robert have to kill him?”

  “Evans forced him to do it, I think. Just as he did in the case of Harrington.”

  “I wonder why Nathan was left on a table instead of in the fireplace,” said Ben. “That would surely have been easier.”

  “Two of them there would make the smell too strong, I imagine,” said Clarence. “Even for this room.”

  “I believe,” said Nigel, “that he wanted Edward and me to find Nathan, apparently having died by his own hand, so that we would not go in search of him.”

  “Still, there is no actual proof that Robert did it, is there?”

  “Nathan’s letter makes it clear that Evans aimed to eliminate him.”

  “Perhaps Evans followed Nathan here and killed him himself?”

  “The deed itself was done by Robert, I believe. The artery was opened quite neatly. The sign inked on his chest also indicated Robert.”

  “How could he have been waiting for him? How could he have known that Nathan would take refuge here?”

  “That puzzled Edward and me, too, but Edward thought of the solution: Bess. Do you remember that she had been missing for some days previously?”

  “I saw her today.”

  “Edward reasoned that Evans might have taken the dog from Robert in advance. Then, after giving Nathan an opportunity to escape—pretending to forget to lock his door, perhaps—he also let Bess go. She would head straight for our house, and Evans knew that Nathan, too, had nowhere else to go. Bess’s arrival alerted Robert to Nathan’s approach.”

  “One moment,” interrupted Al. “There was something that does not work in your account. What was it, now…? Well, it will come to me later, perhaps. Go on.”

  “Everyone who knew about Nathan’s familiarity with ancient poetry was an obstacle to Evans. Harrington had read part of Nathan’s Elegy, so Evans had Robert eliminate him. His body was at the bottom of the flue, with putrefaction more advanced than Nathan’s, so he must have died first… . May I have some claret? Talking has made me thirsty.”

  “Yes, this has been a month’s worth of talking, for you.”

  “No laudanum in this one,” said Ben, handing him a cup.

  Nigel drained it and continued. “Nathan also wrote in his letter about his concern for Edward and me. He thought that Evans would come for us next. As, indeed, he did.”

  “Why should Evans care about you two?” asked
Clarence.

  “We also knew about Nathan’s gift for old English. Like Harrington, we had seen the Elegy. This made us, as much as Harrington, obstacles to Evans’s publishing the forgery as if it were genuine—especially if he intended to bring out the Elegy in its unfinished state. I think that today was a warning to us not to speak out.”

  “So he might come after you again?”

  “You may be in real danger.”

  “Will he use Robert again?”

  “Even Robert surely has his limits.”

  “Well, the bait might have become irrelevant, but the blackmail will be in force until either Evans dies, or you do.”

  “Miss Roughhead’s death was also convenient for Evans,” said Nigel. “Nathan had revealed his knowledge of mediaeval English to her as well. She was another Evans would have wished to erase. Perhaps Robert’s disposal of her was at Evans’s direction—and then used to intimidate him.”

  “What a vile character.”

  “Surely the attentions of the Bow Street Runners will persuade Evans to exercise some prudence.”

  “But will he abandon his scheme so easily?”

  “That’s it!” cried Al suddenly. “The letter! That was what bothered me earlier. The magistrate’s assistant confiscated Nathan’s jacket when he was discovered. You must have read the letter before then—and so you should already have known that the ink did not implicate you, Nigel. In which case, why…?”

  “This is becoming a very interrogation.” The voice was Edward’s, although he still appeared to be asleep. “How can Nigel say his piece when you pepper him with questions? When we found the letter in Nathan’s pocket, we never suspected it was for us. There was much we had to do, so we hid it in our room for safe-keeping. With all the commotion, we did not have a chance to read it until last night.”

  “Have you shown the letter to Sir John?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It is crucial evidence. You must submit it to the magistrate’s office and bring suit.”

  “Two factors prevent that,” said Edward. He was visibly struggling to collect his wits as the medicine began to wear off.

  “Let me tell them,” said Nigel. “The first factor is that the school of anatomy, our dissections—all of it must come to an end without Robert’s money.”

  “Which is indeed a serious problem.”

  “For which reason we could not tell Abbott of our suspicion that the man who stabbed Edward was an accomplice of Evans. If we bring suit against Evans, Robert will surely be charged with murder also. If he were condemned, Professor Barton would lose everything he had.”

  “And everything we had,” said Ben, shaking his head.

  “The other factor,” said Edward, his voice now clear, “is the utter uselessness of the courts.”

  “May I tell them about your father?” asked Nigel.

  Edward nodded and closed his eyes again.

  “He was a vicar’s servant. Then some of the church’s silverware was stolen. Edward’s father came under suspicion and was thrown into prison. At trial he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The real thief was discovered later, but he had influential friends, and the revelation of the actual guilty party would make the earlier miscarriage of justice indefensible, so it was all kept quiet.”

  “Skin a judge and find a hangman,” muttered Edward.

  “There is all too much trading in court,” Clarence added.

  Even as the countries of continental Europe moved towards salaried, professional bureaucracies, England’s system of unpaid service had remained unchanged since the Tudor period two centuries before. Official positions ranging from members of Parliament to magistrates were filled by volunteers from the nobility and gentry. The work itself was socially respected, but there was no shortage of unethical magistrates who saw bribes as a rightful perquisite of the position.

  “Sir John does not strike me as of that kind, however.”

  “That remains to be seen,” shrugged Edward.

  “Nathan wrote in his letter about meeting others in prison as innocent as himself,” said Nigel. “One boy was sentenced to transportation for picking up a shilling in the street. Grotesque, he called it.”

  “By enriching the Lord Mayor and the nobility, Evans has made allies,” Al said glumly. “Even if we took him to court, the jury…”

  “‘The law is like a spider’s web,’” quoted Clarence. “‘Little flies are caught while big ones break through.’ Evans seems not to have laid a finger on Harrington or Nathan in person. He had another do it all. As a result, a skilled lawyer could shift all the blame onto the latter person and have Evans found not guilty. And if he also reached out to the jury in private…”

  “That reminds me,” said Al. “The verdict in the slave case was handed down yesterday. Did you hear?”

  “No, I had no time to read the papers. The trial has ended, then?”

  “My father heard about it last night from an acquaintance in the gallery. He was quite excited. It seems that the lawyer for the mutineer used an ingenious ploy. The merchant had bought off the whole jury, guaranteeing victory, but yesterday, when the court convened, the slave’s lawyer requested that they be swapped en bloc with a jury at another trial in a different chamber. The judge permitted the motion. The merchant had no opportunity to secure the loyalty of this new jury, and so, untainted by bribes, they listened carefully to the arguments and found the slave not guilty.”

  “Bravo!”

  “We must tell Sir John about everything,” said Ben. “I am sure we can trust him.”

  “Murder cases are not tried by magistrates,” said Edward. “They go to the Central Court, where the jurors, as I understand it, do not take their responsibilities seriously.” He groaned. “The laudanum has worn off. Another glass, Al, if you please.”

  “Did you not say you might become addicted?”

  “The relief as the pain fades is delicious. I never knew such pleasure before. It is far more tempting than any wench. One could become in thrall to it.”

  “Just a drop,” said Al, handing him more of the pain-killer.

  “Al, did you say earlier that Evans enjoys protection from people connected with the government?” asked Ben.

  He nodded firmly. “Yes, because he makes money for them. But… if we allow things to stand as they are, he will continue to pursue Nigel and Edward.”

  A sombre mood settled on them.

  Edward’s head drooped.

  Morning came.

  “Where is Edward?”

  Barton had arrived at the breakfast table to find Nigel there alone.

  “He has a fever.” Nigel’s eyes were dark-ringed and puffy, as if from lack of sleep.

  “What gave you that bruise on your forehead?”

  “Simple clumsiness. Nothing serious.”

  “I think I should look in on him,” said Barton, rising from his chair.

  Nigel stopped him. “He is asleep.”

  “Better not to wake him, I suppose. Has he had an antipyretic?”

  “Yes, I gave him one.”

  Arriving just as they finished their meal, Clarence was the first of the others to appear. “How is Edward?” he asked.

  Nigel raised a finger to his lips, then pointed at Barton with his thumb.

  “Good morning, Professor,” said Clarence.

  “Edward is in bed with a fever, it seems,” said Barton.

  “Oh, has it festered?”

  “Festered?”

  “That is an impressive bruise, Nigel. What happened?”

  “Nothing serious,” he said again.

  Ben arrived next, then Al, each asking in turn about Edward and how Nigel had come by his bruise.

  “You two also knew ? Has Edward been poorly since last night? What is festering? A boil?”


  “Edward was attacked,” said Clarence, despite Nigel shaking his head. The Professor was dumbfounded.

  “We had better explain things to you.”

  Clarence recounted the events that had occurred after Barton’s departure the previous evening. “As you can see,” he concluded, “we know who the foe is, but cannot accuse him publicly.”

  “Did you get that bruise in the attack, too, Nigel?”

  “No. I was just a little clumsy last night.”

  “Were you fighting with Edward?”

  “Of course he wasn’t. Do you think Edward could have hit anyone in that state?”

  “He would never hit Nigel anyway, unless he had lost his senses.”

  “What sort of shape is Edward in?” Barton asked Nigel.

  “The pain returned when the drug wore off during the night, so I prepared another draught of laudanum and wine for him. Which is why he has not woken yet.”

  Al mentioned that he had examined the wound. “Do you still have the record you kept, Clarence?”

  Barton scanned the paper handed to him. “If this is all accurate, the wound itself is not serious,” he said. “However, if it has festered, that complicates matters a little. You did not sterilize it properly, I think.”

  He received an apology.

  Barton looked over the record again and thought for a time. Then he rose to his feet. “I shall examine the wound myself. Somebody bring some hot water.”

  Three of them followed their bandy-legged teacher up the stairs. Ben went to the kitchen to get hot water.

  When the bandage was removed, Edward opened his eyes just a crack. He smiled, apparently still half-asleep. “What words cannot heal, medicine will,” he murmured. “What medicine cannot heal, the lance will. And what the lance cannot heal, death will.”

  “As Hippocrates said,” Clarence was quick to observe, but the patient had already shut his eyes again.

  Ben and Nelly came in, the latter carrying a bucket of hot water and a tendency to weep. Nigel firmly guided her back out of the room.

  Barton squeezed the pus out of Edward’s wound with stubby fingers. Edward grimaced slightly but still seemed asleep.