by Fraser Nixon
The next corridor was deserted. Turn right, turn right again, and right you are. A light burned behind the pebbled glass of a door that read “Resident Warden.” An interesting position to occupy, as I had, and unique to McGill and the Royal Victoria, as far as I knew. One’s duties were varied—assisting in the wards, a little human husbandry, liaison work with the faculty, and so forth. In reality the job had one specific, obscured function. My knowledge of what went on would be the lever to pry morphine from a cabinet.
Gingerly I turned a well-oiled knob and opened the door to a familiar figure behind a desk. Smiler wore a white laboratory coat and was furiously raking his hands through tonsured hair. He didn’t notice me and my first impression was of the room’s unusual disarray. Smiler was a prim, tidy bastard. He muttered to himself in an agitated fashion. As my presence made itself manifest Smiler’s wide eyes turned my way.
“Mick,” he whispered.
He was pale and frightened. Of me? Perhaps. So he should be.
“How, how’d you know? Who told you? Who else knows?”
“Knows what? Look at yourself in the mirror, man. You’re a wreck.”
“Oh God, what’m I going, what’re we going to do?” he moaned.
“Calm down, for one.”
Something was very wrong. At his best Smiler was no lion of courage, for all his bluff. He loosened his necktie and rubbed his face. Whatever had happened here presented me with the ideal opportunity. If Smiler was compromised my duty was to exploit the situation. Here was one apple he couldn’t polish away.
“It’s all over. My God, I’m ruined.”
He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” I said. “We’ll work it out. Tell me what happened.”
“Don’t you know? Why’re you here? Who sent you?”
“Listen, man. I know what goes on. Tell me. I can help.”
“Help,” Smiler said, in a faraway voice.
“Yes, help.”
I moved into his field of vision.
“What is it? Cops? What’d they find out?”
“No, no, no. No police, not yet, but they’ll be here. They’ll know. I knew it was bound to happen sometime but why’d it have to happen to me? Why me?”
Slowly and soothingly I spoke: “Smiler, tell me what it is and I’ll see what I can do. It’s me, Mick. Did I grass when I was kicked out? No. I know what goes on here but I never breathed a word. What happened? Did someone do something?”
The last query I barked sharply and Smiler started. His stammer jumped with fear. “It’s, it’s bad.”
“How bad?”
“Nothing can save me.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“I wasn’t even, I wasn’t even supposed to be here today. I’ve got a pharmacology paper due. Jacques couldn’t come in. I’m co-, co-, covering for him. He was supposed to be here for the, for the, for the...”
“Delivery?” I asked.
“Yes,” whispered Smiler.
So that was it. Several things could rattle a resident student: one was to inadvertently provide the cause of death. Opportunities for error were rife: in my second year a poor fellow had somehow managed to inject a large quantity of air into a hoyden’s vein and prompted a fatal embolism. Mistakes often happened. and for all its rigours the discipline of medicine was as prey as any others to pure bad luck. Second to that was being caught out with a stolen dead body. Worst was finding dead a person you knew. “Show me,” I said.
“No, Mick, I can’t,” protested Smiler weakly.
“Why not? I know what this’s about. Let’s have a look.”
“I can’t. My God, the police. The police. They’ll tell my parents, they’ll put me in gaol.”
“No one’s going to gaol.”
I put iron in my voice. The need for morphine made me strong and guileful. Here was a different kind of luck and my advantage must be pressed. Do what Jack would. Turn this to your advantage. Get what you want. All that was required of me was to apply correct pressure to his flaw, his cowardice. Before me he snivelled and wiped his nose.
“They came in early this morning with her,” he said.
“Her?” Fear tingled through me. “Who is she?”
“I was here to pick up some notes. I to-, I to-, I took delivery but I didn’t have time to check. I had class, biochemistry. I told Jacques about it but he couldn’t make it this afternoon so I came in to cover for him. I should’ve known, should’ve known something was wrong right away.”
Involuntarily electricity ran up my spine and I felt my arrectores pilorum muscles tauten, forcing my hair to stand on end. Smiler’s tone was genuine and there was a quality about what he said.
“Show me,” I commanded.
Smiler rose and moved automatically. The word that came to mind was: robot. He went around a dividing wall to the closet in the corner and touched the hidden latch. The secret door slid open to a staircase. My knowledge of where that staircase led had been the trump I’d played to the reviewing board. It was a time-honoured practice. Subjects were always needed, by hook or by crook. Every medical faculty in Christendom and beyond had a similar facility. Here the resident warden’s true role was as chamberlain to the world below. I followed Smiler underground.
Twenty-one paces down. My initiation had been with a resident named Jones. He’d played it up as an experience out of Poe and had been onto something there. At the far wall of the subterranean chamber was a heavy door bolted shut that led through to a concealed alley with space for horse and cart to turn around. There was the smell of meat and chemicals, dampness and earth, with unclean instruments on a table by the sink. The weird scene was lit by a lambent green radiance, phosphorus in the stones. Smiler spoke in the dark.
“I should’ve known something was wrong. We weren’t expecting a, a delivery, and they didn’t ask the usual amount. They wanted less.”
Smiler turned to me guiltily. I understood. He’d been planning to pocket the difference. Typical Hebrew. He’d changed his mind, however. It was becoming difficult to stand this anticipatory tension.
“I only just unwrapped it, her. Ten minutes before you arrived. I, I thought you knew somehow.”
I couldn’t take this at all.
“Who, Goddammit?”
“Mick, I, I can’t.”
“Turn on the light.”
Smiler went to the switch and flicked on the current, then shrank away. My eyes adjusted and at first I didn’t understand what I was seeing. The shape gained discernible form and I felt a terror. Every fear had been realized, here, before me now.
No.
No.
No.
Laura was on a slab in the middle of the room, her eyes closed.
“GET OUT.”
“Mick?”
“Get out!”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Go and strip a bed. Bring back sheets.”
“Sheets?”
“A shroud, man.”
Smiler stood up, his laboratory coat dirtied by the abattoir walls. My eyes had been blinded, seemingly. He came to me.
“Bring half an ounce of morphine powder from the dispensary,” I said.
“What? What for?”
I grabbed Smiler’s necktie.
“I’m going to get you out of this scrape so don’t ask stupid questions. Understand?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”
“Sheets, clean ones. Find a bag, a large one, for hockey equipment or a duffel for the laundry. Clean ones, get it? Don’t talk to anyone. And make sure they’re clean. It’ll be dark soon and we have to move. When did the body snatchers bring her in?”
“Around six this morning.”
“And she’s been here all alone since then?”
“Yes. The office’s been locked.”
“Keep it locked. Get going.”
The last order jolted Smiler to life, now Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant. I couldn’t d
o what the German had, the new Prometheus. I couldn’t bring her back. My sight restored with tears, hot and stinging with salt. I blinked them away and heard the door close above.
I turned to Laura. She was resting on the oilskin tarp the resurrection men had brought her in. I wondered how many bodies had been rolled up in it before today. They probably hosed it down and hung the damn thing to dry on a clothesline in a backyard. Common understanding had the profession passing down the generations of a local French-Canadian family since the Patriot rebellion of 1838. Grandfather, father, and son, a caste of untouchables. With shovels and picks they sold the fruits of their labours to the tête carrée doctors and students at McGill, an arrangement out of Hogarth or engraved by Doré, a waking nightmare.
I could see livid bruises corresponding to fingers and thumbs around her throat. Her face was very slightly blue and the smallest tip of a tongue protruded. She’d been strangled. I touched her skin. Cold. Her hyoid bone was broken. There was dirt in the folds of her clothes, in her ears, her hair. She’d been in the earth. Someone had wiped her face. She wore a dark brown velvet riding coat, silk chemise, woolen skirt, and leather boots. Nothing indicated that she’d been violated. Her hands were gloved and a strand of pearls was looped around her neck. That was incredible. The grave robbers usually stripped valuables from bodies, a privilege of the profession. I’d seen corpses with jaws that’d been broken open so teeth with gold fillings could be yanked from the bone by pliers. Fingers with rings would be snipped by strong shears. I touched the pearls and didn’t need to rub them against the enamel of my teeth to know the pale orbs were real, not paste. The only element missing was a reticule or purse.
Her auburn hair was pinned up, more or less how she wore it in life. In life. I touched my own face, and felt my mouth tighten. She was gone, forever, and yet here she was again, one last time. It was such an incredible sequence of events leading me to this infernal place at such an instant, scarcely credible, and yet here I was. The man who loved her more than anyone in all the world stood over her lifeless body. I needed a cigaret.
In the close atmosphere was a deep, evil savour I didn’t overmuch like. So many things had happened that I’d already begun to forget or couldn’t tell myself the truth about. I wanted brandy, opium, a needle to numb me. With impious hands I lit a vesta and with it a Forest and Stream. A pretty picture in the crypt. Smoke cleaned out my lungs and the fag end was on the ground by the time Smiler returned. He was quiet and ghostly. I took a large sheet from him and wrapped Laura as tenderly as I could, breathing over her and smelling the faintest hint of her toilet water and powder, of herself mingled with earth. I made her up as an Egyptian mummy, a pharaohess, Tut-Ankh-Amon’s queen. Smiler’d found a bag and helped me hoist Laura into it. Once upon a time and on the open sea she’d be sewn into her shroud but in this age it was a sack of rubber closed with lightning fasteners. Suddenly I was incredibly tired.
“Did you bring the rest?” I asked.
Smiler flinched.
“Yes, yes I did, but what do you need it for?”
“Hand it over.”
My eyes burned into his and he saw how serious I was. Smiler took two stoppered vials from his coat and handed them to me warily. I took them to the table and opened my deck next to the rusty blood-spattered lancets, saws, probes, clamps, and broken Erlenmeyer flasks. It was an unprofessional mess. Regardless of the fact that this was not a room for careful work the instruments should have been washed and dipped in disinfectant, for the sake of those of us still living.
I dripped water in a spoon and put powder in, then boiled with a match. A new hypodermic would’ve been fitting considering the surroundings but there was no time for such niceties, not with the elixir so close. I removed my coats and rolled up a sleeve, bound the cord over a bicep, and held it taut with my teeth. Smiler watched me and I watched him as I made the injection, pushing the plunger to its resting place. Loosening the cord my body went slack; I floated backward to a wall, Smiler’s mouth agape.
The black magic worked its charm and in a very few minutes I was back on my toes, ready to move. I re-dressed and tested my strength at the slab, placing my hands under the clammy rubber. I lifted. She was light as a bird, hollow-boned even at dead weight. With the amount of morphine I’d taken I felt flushed with fresh power.
A jerk of my neck had Smiler scuttling to unshoot the bolt of the vault door. He swung it open on creaking hinges and fresh air came in.
“Follow me,” I said.
“What, now? Where to?”
“We’re going to put her back in the ground, and then alert the authorities. This way you’re safe.”
Smiler goggled and followed as I shuffled down the passageway. There was an angled trap above my head. It was difficult to climb up the slanted scuttle; bags of waste were normally dragged out to incinerators by another route. This was typically a one-way channel. Smiler and I came out into a quiet yard with no overlooking portals, another precaution of the planners. Above us on all sides were shuttered, barred windows. In the mean, grassy square we heard the scurry of rats.
“What time is it?”
Smiler consulted a pocketwatch.
“Half-four.”
Tricky dusking light had fooled my eyes. We wanted no witnesses to our departure. Between this wing of the hospital and a freestanding block crept a narrow passageway. I hoisted the heavy bag over my shoulder and walked between the dripping brick walls. By following a little-used path edging a football field I came out through a broken wooden fence. The grade led upward to the covering thickness of trees. Judging that our movements had been unobserved I stopped and set my load against a trunk. Smiler wheezed behind me. I unbuttoned my collar and fanned myself with my hat.
“Where’re we going?”
“The burying ground. They’re gravediggers, so they must have found her in the cemetery.”
“Which one?”
“The Protestant, naturally. We’ll see if we can find out what happened. Perhaps something was left behind, a clue. Then we can get them.”
“Do you know who did this?”
I cast my mind over the preceding days. “I believe so.”
“Then... then, what?”
“We’ll put her back. You can telephone the police. Use a callbox and disguise your voice. The body snatchers won’t breathe a word; they’re probably drinking to forget it as we speak. This way the dons won’t find out, your parents neither.”
Lame as it sounded to my own ears, Smiler seemed to find this plan plausible enough. I wondered about him. He wasn’t a bad fellow, really. Recent adventures with Jack had toughened me to whipcord. I now took activity such as this in my stride. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up flying an airplane onto a dirigible accompanied by a drunken Eskimo quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald. Poor Smiler, though, was gobsmacked with shock. In his experience transporting a body up a mountainside in the gloom was a perilous challenge. To me this fatal course felt pre-ordained.
It was cold enough to keep good people by the hearth in their homes. No such luck for yours truly. The sky now a dark purple and the terrain ideal for camouflage, concealment. I might be making a mistake, but it didn’t feel like one, instead as though it was my destiny to walk this trail. Who other than I understood the significance of these surroundings, this landmark to my frustrations and disappointments? None now breathing. Near here I’d found strawberries, on the side of the mountain once an old Huron boneyard. Their palisade stood hereabouts, rotted away and ruined by succeeding ages. Everything fades to dust and tonight would be lost for all time. Only the rock would stand, the royal mountain, and even it would one day erode in the rain and snow.
Tangled roots underfoot on the steepness. Smiler forged ahead now, visible in his white coat. What was he thinking? Frightened of me, of the evidence of crime I carried, of losing his place in the world through implication and accessory after the fact. They were all reasonable fears. I kept an ear out for any disturbance.
In these parts burrowed red foxes that hunted at this sneaking hour. Smiler’s breathing had regularized but my heart hammered under the strain. Laura was ninety-five pounds, no more, her hair fine and red, her features delicate and precise. My God. This is what I’d come to, carrying the corpse of the woman I loved through the night in my drug-bolstered arms. I slowed. Smiler rounded a curve. Beyond the slope, past the breaking clouds, I saw a smear of deep maroon where the sun had set and, low on the horizon, a sharp pinpoint of scarlet: Mars. We’d covered a mile on an ellipse up the northwest flank of the mountain and were nearing the edge of the park proper. In a ragged stand of pine I stopped to catch my breath and gently placed Laura on a declivity. The second and final rigor mortis had not yet set. Smiler jogged back to where I rested. He squatted and huffed.
“So,” I said. “What’d you talk about with Houdini at the Princess?”
This startled him. He hopped up, eyes darting nervously to Laura, mute witness to this macabre scene.
“I saw you with Jacques Price and another fellow. What happened?”
“We, we went to see him.”
Smiler sat again and it poured from him. He spoke rapidly, the sound of his own voice reassuring himself. I kept a careful eye on his panic. He was on my leash yet and needed to stay tied to me for the time being.
“Jacques and I went to, we went to talk to Houdini. Jacques was going to sketch him for the school ’paper. There was a knock at the door and someone showed up.”
“Who?”
“Whitehead.”
“Who?”
Smiler told me. It was a character named Whitehead. Apparently, he was a divinity student and a Christian. He’d begun asking Houdini screwy questions about the Bible.
“What kind?” I asked.
“Did Houdini believe in it? Had Jesus performed the miracles or were they put-ups?” said Smiler.