“Watch out for Oberon, Bottom! He’ll kill you!” shouted someone in the audience.
“Where is the king? His wife’s about to cuckold him!” cried another.
The last thing Titania produced from her basket was part of a leg, raw and scarred around the ankle, which she raised above her head and, with a curse, flung not into the cauldron but straight into the flames below… .
Chapter 24
Not long before noon the following day, Daniel Barton’s dissection room was once again honoured by a visit from Sir John Fielding, Justice of the Peace, accompanied by Anne Moore on one side and Dennis Abbott on the other.
The only others present apart from Barton himself were Clarence and Charlie. Edward and Nigel were both still upstairs. Nelly was taking their meals up to them.
“Sir John,” said Clarence, “I was just about to call on you with our report. The three of us took turns watching Dr. Barton’s house, but saw no sign of his having returned. There were no lights in the windows. At around eight o’clock this morning, a maid emerged from the rear entrance while I was watching. I inquired casually if Dr. Barton was well. (Was that a bad idea?) She said that the master of the house had been away for some time. I could not tell if she was telling the truth or not, lacking your sense of hearing, sir. Al and Ben remain on watch as we speak.”
While Clarence chattered on like this, a plain coffin was carried in by some Bow Street Runners.
“Mr. Barton, we have need of your services once more.”
Al and Ben then joined them in the room.
“I relieved them of their duties,” explained Sir John. “Surveillance of Dr. Barton’s residence will no longer be necessary, I think. Last night—I should say this morning, before dawn—a fire broke out at Evans’s house.”
The students began to murmur among themselves.
“Through the efforts of a fire-brigade, however, the blaze was extinguished.”
Fire-fighting was handled by private units organized by insurance companies. Their goal was to bring fires under control quickly to minimize the amount that had to be paid on insurance policies. These private firemen, however, did not protect buildings that were not insured by their employers, and showed no great eagerness to save lives either. Their principal task was to prevent the building itself from burning down.
“No servants appear to have been in the house,” said Anne. “Presumably they left the place when the death of their master made them unneeded.”
The cadaver that was produced from the coffin and laid face-down on the dissecting table had been badly burnt. It was naked, and scarcely a trace of its hair remained. The skin on its back was charred.
“Only this corpse was found on the premises.”
“I don’t think even a Frenchman would eat a steak like this,” said Clarence.
“A German might, though,” said Ben.
“Go and get Nigel,” said Barton. “We need him drawing.” As Ben disappeared upstairs, he called after him, “If he lacks the energy, leave him be! Although that would be a shame.”
“Is Mr. Hart not in good health?” asked Anne.
“Confinement seems to have taken his toll on him,” said Barton, a hint of criticism in his voice.
“He was not ill treated.”
“It must have been trying mentally, however,” said Clarence in a similarly critical tone.
The instruments were prepared for the dissection. Charlie’s ears pricked up at the clink of metal on metal.
Ben returned to report that neither Edward nor Nigel were able to leave their room.
“It cannot be helped,” said Barton. “Let us begin. Al, make your record detailed. It will have to do instead of drawings. Ben, Clarence, roll the cadaver over onto its back.”
For a few moments, Barton and his three pupils were lost for words.
The back of the cadaver had been scorched, but the front was quite untouched; the body must have been face-down on the floor. The face was swollen, but not unrecognisably so.
“Rare.”
It took a moment for Barton to grasp the tasteless joke one of his pupils had made. At the same time, he realized that it was only through black humour of this kind that such events could be endured.
“Do you recognize this man?” asked Sir John.
Barton sighed, then nodded. “It is my brother,” he said.
“Anne, you had better not watch the dissection. Go and talk to Turner and Hart.”
“Sir John. As your eyes, I need to get accustomed to every sort of sight. I should like to stay.”
“The reason why only the back is burnt,” said Barton, “is that, as the flames rose around him, he was lying on his front, unable to move. There is no indication that he was bound, so he may have been unconscious… .”
“The body was found in what appeared to be Evans’s office, which was probably the source of the blaze. An extensive collection of ledgers was reduced to ash there.”
“My brother… must have slipped in and set the fire to destroy any record of his debts. Then, for some reason, he was unable to get out. That seems to fit what we see here.”
He paused, then told his pupils to open the body.
Around an hour later, he had this to say: “The cause of death was drowning. Drowning, moreover, that occurred quite some time before the fire was lit this morning.”
Chapter 25
In the court attached to the magistrate’s office on Bow Street, Sir Saunders was seated in a slightly raised chair, pronouncing a judgement that would send the defendant before him to Fleet Prison for not paying his debts.
The door to the courtroom was guarded by two officers but not closed, allowing Barton to peer in at the proceedings as he walked past on his way down the broad corridor. He had never observed one of the trials that were held here before.
Clarence all but entered the room in his eagerness to see inside, until one of the guards prodded him back. Al and Ben were otherwise occupied, helping Edward and Nigel make their way along the corridor.
An officer led them into an area they had not been in before: Sir John’s hearing room.
The magistrate was already there, at ease in his chair as Anne read the newspaper to him.
Near the wall on the right was a long, narrow table, with chairs set out only on the side closest to the wall. These faced Sir John’s perch at some distance from it.
As soon as Barton and his pupils had taken their seats, another man waddled in.
He approached the judge to greet him. Anne directed him to one end of the table. There was no chair there, so Charles Hitchin simply stood, like a suspect in the dock.
“He should rest his gut on the table,” Clarence whispered to Ben, eyeing the man’s considerable girth. “He makes you look positively slim.”
“Mr. Hitchin,” said Sir John from behind his own table. “This room is not a court proper, and we are not at trial. There is no clerk to record the proceedings, and no spectators. Only those with some connection to the case are present. You will not be asked to swear on a Bible, and were you to lie, you could not be charged with perjury.”
Barton wondered if the city marshal could feel the magistrate’s gaze fixed on him through the strip of black cloth.
“That said, I hope that you will speak truthfully.”
Hitchin nodded, jowls wobbling.
“What do they call that young performer at the Rose?”
“Titania,” he said, looking quickly at Nigel and away.
It seemed to Barton that Sir John’s sheer force of will left Hitchin no room for hesitation.
“And who is Oberon?”
“Him,” said Hitchin, not looking but jerking his thumb at Edward, who was leaning on his neighbour’s shoulder.
“That will do. You are dismissed,” said Anne.
“Is that all?”
“It is.”
Perhaps afraid that he risked being sent to Newgate if he remained, Hitchin left in a hurry.
After this mound of flesh was gone, the magistrate had Dennis Abbott step up.
“This room is not a court proper… ,” he began, giving the same speech he had given Hitchin, though his tone was far milder. He followed this by saying, “I had Anne tell me, once more, what happened when Robert Barton hurt his hand on the staircase at the Tom Queen. As I understand it, a heavily painted woman passed him on the stairs, then covered your head with her dress and laughed. Did you realize it at that moment?—that she was your ‘witch,’ I mean.”
Abbott’s heavy jaw remained closed.
“Refusal to deny is as good as an affirmation.”
“No. I did not realize it at that moment.”
“You do now, though.”
“Yes,” he replied in a voice drained of all colour.
“You are dismissed.”
“I shall resign my position, sir.”
“If you insist.”
“Mr. Barton. I trust there is no need to enlarge upon the exploits of your two prize pupils.”
If only I had looked in on them that night, thought Barton. But the door had been locked, his knock on the door was unanswered, he thought them asleep and had not wanted to wake them… . There had been no need to go as far as they had. Lost preparations could be made anew. But if I were to lose the two of you…
“Abbott sent word to Nigel Hart that Robert Barton and Evans were to meet at the Tom Queen inn,” Sir John said, addressing the two pupils in question. “It was the perfect opportunity to eliminate them both. The pair of you at once concocted a plan to murder Evans and saddle Robert with the blame. What was Hart’s role in that plan? Exactly what Turner claimed to have done originally—except that Hart was dressed as a prostitute. Frocked and powdered, he entered the room reserved for Robert and Evans in advance, added some laudanum to the wine, hid behind the sofa, and then strangled Evans once the latter was insensible. Hart’s lack of physical strength forced him to tie one end of the man’s cravat to a chair to accomplish this deed. Once it was done, he left the room—passing Robert coming the other way, and taunting Abbott… . You are a man of some audacity, Hart. Robert entered the room, saw the dead body, and panicked. Under the circumstances, suspicion would be sure to fall on him. To leave by the door would be too hazardous. He was saved by Edward Turner, who had been waiting in the next room and now called to Robert from the window and helped him escape. Robert may have found it suspicious that Turner was there, but he had no time to hesitate. The rest is as Turner has already said—although he did not mention using some wine to mask the smell of Nigel’s cosmetics… . Naturally, Robert would insist that he had arrived at the room to find Evans already dead there, but the circumstances were highly unfavourable to him. What is more, if Albert Wood is to be believed, you—Turner—also threatened Robert by bringing up Harrington’s killing, and the violation and murder of Elaine Roughhead.”
Sir John’s voice had remained even and calm throughout his speech. Now it grew a good deal warmer—almost kind.
“Turner,” he said. “Stand over there.” He indicated the position that Hitchin and Abbott in turn had occupied earlier.
His face ashen, Edward began to rise to his feet. Barton stopped him.
“My lord,” Barton said. “Sir John. I entreat you. Edward is not fully healed yet.”
Edward gave Barton’s hand a light, then firmer squeeze before going to the spot Sir John had indicated. He spread his legs slightly, clasped his arms behind his back, and stood straight.
“You killed Robert right after he signed the papers, did you not?”
“I did.”
“How did you overpower him? There cannot have been much opportunity to slip opium into a drink in a critical situation like that.”
Al raised his hand, seeking permission to speak. “If Edward did kill Robert, it was lawful self-defence,” he said. “Robert did sign the papers, but tried to kill Edward afterwards. There were marks on his neck where Robert had attempted to strangle him. I saw them myself. They are gone now, but…”
“I regret to inform you, Al, that such an act cannot be deemed self-defence. How did you overcome him, Turner?”
“It was a close thing when he assaulted me, but fortunately I knew how to incapacitate him. There is a certain point on the body which can be used to deprive a man of his senses almost at once.” Edward tapped the area of the carotid artery with one finger.
“Anne, read the record of the dissection received from Professor Barton.”
“‘In case of death by fire,’” read Anne, “‘blistering occurs in the airway due to the inhalation of heated air. No such burns were observed in the case of Robert Barton’s cadaver. It can therefore be concluded that he was already deceased when the fire broke out. His lungs were visibly swollen, filling his thoracic cavity and covering the front of the pericardium. Water, combined with blood, had seeped out of his lungs and into his chest. All of these are characteristic of drowning. In summer, this fluid would remain in the thoracic cavity for three or four days, after which it would begin to leak and spread throughout the body. As a result, the subject cannot have drowned earlier than the ninth of July.’”
“Well, naturally enough,” said the magistrate, a thin smile on his lips. The Evans incident had occurred on the twelfth of July. “After Robert was incapacitated, we believe you plunged his face into a basin of water and drowned him,” he said to Edward. “Why employ this particular method? Drowning is indicative of malice and murderous intent.”
“In the misplaced hope that it might make things easier,” said Edward. “I thought that if I threw him into the Thames later, no suspicion would fall on me. I hid his body in the wardrobe until I could carry out that plan.”
“If, instead of this expedient, you had strangled or beaten him to death, a competent lawyer might have taken the route that Al suggested earlier, and secured a verdict finding you not guilty by reason of self-defence. Instead, your scheme has put you in danger of losing your life. Whose services did you intend to engage to carry the body to the Thames?”
“I cannot say.”
“Gobbin, then.”
There was no reply.
“We learnt from the pawnbroker the amount you received in exchange for your watch. Seven pounds, Mr. Oppenheimer said. His account books confirmed this. A considerable sum. You hired someone to wound you, yes. Their remuneration would have been a guinea at most. You used the rest to grease the wheels with Gobbin, in addition to calling on his sense of obligation to you for saving his child’s life.”
Edward still remained silent.
“Instead of casting the body into the river, you had Gobbin convey it to Evans’s house. The entrance there was being watched. Gobbin went in through the coal cellar, I suppose?”
“I carried the body myself.”
“No, I did,” said Nigel, getting to his feet and standing beside him.
Anyone could see that Nigel lacked the strength for the task. At present, Edward was hardly better suited to it, either.
“Edward Turner, I contend that you and Gobbin entered Evans’s house through the coal chute, with Gobbin doing the heavy work. Subsequently, you may have sent him home. Then you, Edward Turner, laid the corpse face-down, doused it with oil, placed Robert’s promissory notes on top of it, and set the whole lot ablaze. Meanwhile, Nigel Hart was at the Rose performing those preposterous rites of his. That, surely, was the reason for your fatigue, Mr. Hart. You were not particularly tired when released from detention. Nor were you mistreated during it.
“Edward Turner, what made you change your plan from immersing the body in the Thames to transporting it to Evans’s house and burning it along with all record of his debt?”
“You alr
eady have the answer, I think,” said Edward coolly.
“If Dr. Barton was simply missing, his body undiscovered,” said Sir John, “funding for Professor Barton’s research and anatomy school would be imperilled. Discarded in the Thames, the body might indeed go unfound—or be found too late to be readily identifiable. This was why you changed course, was it not? In either case, disposal of the records at Evans’s house would have been required. Evans himself appears to have been heirless, but if left undisturbed the documents might have fallen into someone else’s hands eventually.”
“And I killed Evans,” Nigel reminded him.
“Just as I killed Robert,” said Edward.
Barton felt the blood drain from his extremities. “Can’t be true,” muttered Clarence on one side of him. “They did nothing of the sort,” said Ben on the other. Their reaction echoed his own.
Jointly, however, Edward and Nigel disclaimed any part in starting the fire.
“You are indeed a cunning pair,” said Sir John. “There can be no trial, whatever the crime, if no one brings suit, as you are well aware. No one appears likely to finance a suit on Evans’s behalf. Professor Barton, is there anyone who might indict Edward Turner for the death of Robert Barton? Robert’s wife, perhaps?”
“If the matter came to trial, too much would become public—Harrington, young Cullen, all of it. I do not believe that my sister-in-law would wish that. My brother went to Evans’s home to retrieve certain documents. Through some misadventure, a fire broke out while he was there and he perished in the blaze. That is how I would explain things to her. If I hinted also at the suspicions that surrounded Robert, I doubt she would pursue the matter.”
“These two shrewd pupils of yours made the same calculation, it seems. Their assumption was that there would be no trial. That was why they confessed. Is that not so, Turner? Hart? Arson, however, cannot be dismissed so easily; if nothing else, the insurance company will bring suit for that. As a result, it is arson alone they will not admit to.”
The Resurrection Fireplace Page 33