by James McGee
“The usual items: salves, pills, emetics and suchlike.”
“And your instruments?”
There was a moment’s pause before the apothecary answered. When he did so, his voice was close to a whisper. “Yes.”
“Your surgical knives, with their sharp blades? Because you’d need a knife with a sharp blade to lance an abscess, wouldn’t you, Doctor?” Hawkwood said.
The apothecary glanced towards Leech, but there was no sympathy on the attendant’s face, merely relief that someone else was in the firing line.
Hawkwood pressed home his attack. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? At some time during one of your visits to remove a boil from the colonel’s arse, he managed to steal one of your damned scalpels.”
Locke’s face crumpled.
“And you’re telling me you didn’t even notice the loss?”
Locke’s expression was one of abject misery.
Hawkwood shook his head in disbelief. “I’ve half a mind to arrest you, Doctor, though, frankly, I wouldn’t know what to charge you with – complicity or incompetence. I’m beginning to wonder what sort of place you’re running here. Good Christ, who’s in charge of your damned hospital, the staff or the lunatics?”
Locke’s cheeks coloured. His eyes, magnified by the round spectacle lenses, looked as big as saucers.
Hawkwood was aware that Attendant Leech was staring at him. Word of the apothecary’s dressing down would be all over the hospital the moment Leech left the room. He nodded towards the body and the ruin that had once been a man’s face. “How long would it have taken to do that?”
Locke took a deep breath; his lips formed a tight line. “Not long, if the murderer knew his trade.”
There was a pause.
“Well, go on, tell me,” Hawkwood said, wondering what else was to come.
“Colonel Hyde was an army surgeon. He operated in field hospitals in the Peninsula. His treatment of the wounded was, I understand …” Locke bit his lip “… highly regarded.”
“Was it indeed?” Hawkwood digested the information. Then, taking a candle from the table, he stepped through the archway into the other half of the cell.
There was another table upon which stood a jug and a washbowl. Against one wall sat a mahogany desk, a folding chair and a large wooden chest bound with brass. Looking at them, Hawkwood felt an instant stab of recognition. As a soldier he’d seen desks and chests like these more times than he cared to remember. Enter any officer’s quarters, be it in a barracks, or even a battlefield bivouac, and it would be furnished with identical items; they were standard campaign equipment. He even had a chest of his own, strikingly similar to the one here, back at his lodgings in the Blackbird tavern. It had been acquired during his time in the Peninsula, at an auction following the death of the chest’s former owner on the retreat to Corunna.
The room and its contents were at complete odds with the bare functionality of the sleeping quarters and a world apart from the conditions in which the other patients, or at least the ones he’d seen, were being kept. Those had bordered on the inhumane. By contrast this accommodation was verging on the palatial. Why should that be? Hawkwood wondered.
By far the greatest contrast lay in the collection of books and the drawings that covered the walls; several score, by Hawkwood’s rough estimate. So many, they would not have disgraced a small library. Hawkwood held the candle close and ran his eye over the serried ranks of leather-bound volumes. None of the authors’ names meant anything: Harvey, Cheselden, Hunter. Others were evidently foreign. Vesalius and Casserio appeared to be Italian, while some, like Ibn Sina and Massa, sounded vaguely Oriental. The ones in English were all similar in tone: Anatomy of the Human Body, The Motion of the Heart, The Natural History of the Human Teeth. There were others with titles in Latin. Hawkwood assumed they were medical texts, too.
The etchings and engravings that filled the spaces on the cell walls were in a similar vein, literally. Each and every one of them showed representations of the human body in anatomical detail, skeletal and musculature, both whole and partial, from skulls and torsos to arms and legs. A couple, which to Hawkwood’s untutored eye resembled the root system of a tree, were, he realized upon closer examination, diagrams of veins and arteries. Some were close to life size, others were smaller and looked as if they might have been torn from the pages of books or old manuscripts. Many of the renditions depicted the moving parts of the body, such as the neck and the joints at wrist, elbow and knee; all were remarkably and gruesomely intricate. The illustrations had an unsettling quality. Looking at them, Hawkwood realized why he was experiencing disquiet. The drawings reminded him of the horrific wounds and the amputated limbs he’d seen in the army’s hospital tents. The smell in the cell brought it all back to him. The only things missing were the blood and the screams; the screams, at any rate.
He sensed a presence at his shoulder.
“The miracle of the human body,” Locke said softly. “Men have strived for centuries to learn its mysteries.”
An illustration caught Hawkwood’s attention. It was nightmarishly graphic, depicting the lower half of a human torso from stomach to mid-thigh. The skin of the lower belly and pelvic area had been opened and peeled back layer by layer to reveal the interior of the abdomen. The upper legs were shown severed at mid thigh. The end of each thighbone could be seen encircled by densely packed layers of muscle and flesh. Each limb looked disturbingly similar to the cuts of meat he’d seen hanging from hooks above the Smithfield butchers’ stalls he’d passed on his way to the hospital. He found himself transfixed. The figure did not appear to possess genitalia, which seemed odd, given the artist’s exceptional eye for detail. He looked closer, raising the light, and realized what he was looking at and what it meant. The figure was female.
“Van Rymsdyk,” Locke said behind him. “A Dutch artist; dead now, but much in demand by anatomists for his expertise in capturing the human form. The Hunters, Cheselden, they all made use of his services.”
The names still meant nothing, although there was no doubting the skill of the illustrator. The detail was astonishing.
“Convincing, aren’t they?” the apothecary murmured. “Too vivid, some might say. Yet without van Rymsdyk and the rest, medical science would be becalmed, like a ship awaiting a breeze. If I may continue with the analogy, surgeons are the navigators of our times. Like Magellan and Columbus before them, they search for new worlds. To navigate, you require a map. If no map is available, you create your own, so that others may follow in your wake.” Locke spread his hands. “These are surgeon’s maps, Officer Hawkwood. Anatomical charts of the human body. The more accurate the chart, the less danger there is of running aground.”
The apothecary blinked owlishly and fell silent, as if suddenly overcome by his own loquacity.
Hawkwood’s attention was drawn to the far corner of the cell, the part of the room in deepest shadow. He moved closer. The drawing was similar to the rest: a standing female figure, explicitly nude. The figure’s right hand was raised to conceal its right breast. The left hand was held lower, covering the groin area. The belly was shown cut open, revealing the organs beneath. Each organ was marked with a letter. The figure was framed by four smaller insets, each differentiated by a Roman numeral, showing the progressive, layered dissection of the stomach wall.
The apothecary followed his gaze. “Ah, yes, a Valverde engraving, one of his studies on pregnancy.” Locke stared at the wall, lost in thought.
Hawkwood had seen enough. He wanted to be out of there, away from the disturbing images and the darkness and the dripping stonework and the smell of death. He wanted to be where there was sunlight and fresh air, not in this … slaughterhouse.
He turned and led the way back into the sleeping area and the waiting Leech. “Keep the room locked. No one enters. There’ll be someone along to collect the body for examination by the coroner’s appointed surgeon.”
Who was about to have a very busy morning,
Hawkwood reflected wryly, what with this and the dead man in the graveyard.
He turned to the apothecary. “Take me to Grubb.”
Locke nodded and ushered him into the corridor, plainly relieved at being able to leave the cell and its grisly contents behind.
The elderly attendant was in his room, huddled in a chair, a blanket covering his legs. A bowl of thin broth and a lump of soggy-looking bread sat on a table beside him. His face was pale and drawn and he gazed apprehensively at his visitor as Locke made the introductions.
The attendant’s hands shook as, with a faltering voice, he relived the events of the previous night, confirming that he’d noticed nothing unusual when he’d gone to collect the parson.
“You didn’t see his face?” Hawkwood asked.
Grubb shook his head. “Not properly.’ E was already wearin’ ’is ’at and scarf when I let ’im out of the room. I did take a quick gander when I was walkin’ ’im to the door, but ’e caught me at it and pulled ’is scarf up. Mind you, it were a bitter night.”
“Did he say anything?”
Grubb thought back. His chest rose and fell. The breath wheezed in his throat. “’E said goodbye to the colonel, when I let ’im out of the room.”
“But the colonel didn’t reply,” Hawkwood said. “Did he?”
Grubb shook his head. “I thought I ’eard them talkin’ before I unlocked the door, but I couldn’t make out the words.”
Hawkwood heard Locke gasp and threw the apothecary a warning look. Hawkwood knew it had been part of the colonel’s plan, talking with himself to trick whoever was outside the door into believing that both occupants of the room were alive. Similarly, by posing as the priest and halting on the threshold to bid his unseen host good-night, he had fooled Grubb into thinking the colonel was acknowledging the farewell, perhaps with a nod or a wave of his hand.
“Did he say anything else?”
“Said good-night when I let ’im out the front door. I offered to see ’im to the main gates, but he said he was all right on his own.”
There was no doubting the man’s nerve, Hawkwood thought. It had been a simple ruse. It had relied on one elderly keeper, probably with fading eyesight and encroaching deafness and a time of night when the corridor would be in semidarkness, lit only by dull candlelight. As an escape plan it had been astonishingly well executed. The rain had been a bonus.
Hawkwood could see that Grubb was tiring. There was a vacant look in the attendant’s eyes and his breathing was becoming harsh and uneven. He nodded to Locke, indicating it was time to go. The apothecary bent and drew the blanket over the attendant’s waist.
“We need to talk, Doctor,” Hawkwood said, when they were back in the corridor. “I think it’s time you told me all about Colonel Hyde.”
4
The apothecary took a deep breath, as if to compose his thoughts. “Truthfully, have you ever seen anything like this?”
“No,” Hawkwood admitted. No one had.
He’d investigated killings, of course, seen scores of murder victims, usually as a result of drunken brawls, burglaries that had gone wrong or family feuds that had gotten out of hand, even crimes of passion, but this was different, a new experience. It wasn’t the manner of death but the mutilation of the victim that set this murder apart. The excising of the priest’s face had not been the result of a blood-crazed, frenzied attack. The skin had been removed with great precision. Peeled away like a mask, the apothecary had said. And so it had been; deliberately and specifically removed for the purpose of aiding the colonel’s exit from the hospital. Which indicated the escape had not been a spontaneous act but the culmination of a carefully thought-out strategy. And that, Hawkwood knew, opened up a whole slew of possibilities, not one of them palatable.
“Why was the colonel here?” Hawkwood asked.
They were back in the apothecary’s office. Locke was seated at his desk. Hawkwood was standing by the window. Thankfully, there were no bars and no illustrations of any description on the walls. Even the view over the well-trodden ground of Moor Fields was a consolation after the claustrophobia of the colonel’s cell.
A shadow moved across the apothecary’s face. “Warriors survive the battlefield bearing many scars. Not all are caused by damage to the flesh. There are other wounds that run much deeper. The effect of war on the human mind is a fascinating concept and one that has occupied me for some time. It’s not an interest shared by the majority of my fellow physicians, despite the increasing number of poor souls committed to hospital asylums by the Transport Office and the Navy’s Sick and Wounded Office each year.”
The apothecary paused, then said, “Am I right in thinking you’ve knowledge of such matters? It occurred to me when we met that you have the look about you; that scar beneath your eye, for example, and the distinct mark of an ingrained powder burn above your right cheek. You were a military man; the army, perhaps? Am I right?”
Hawkwood stared at his inquisitor. The burn mark was a legacy most musketeers and riflemen carried with them; a rite of passage, caused by flecks of burning powder blowing back into the face when their weapon was discharged.
“I was a soldier,” Hawkwood said.
“May I ask what regiment?”
“The 95th.”
“The Rifles! I’ve heard great stories of their exploits.” Locke put his head on one side and nodded thoughtfully. “Though you were not of the rank and file, I suspect. You were an officer? You commanded men in battle?”
“Yes.”
“And saw many of your comrades die?”
“Too many,” Hawkwood said truthfully.
“So you know the nature of war, the horror of it.” It was a statement not a question.
Hawkwood thought of the times he’d woken in the dead of night, drenched in sweat, with the smell of death in his nostrils and the screams of men and the crash of cannon fire ringing in his ears; sounds so real he’d thought he had been transported back in time to the blood and the mud and the flames.
War wasn’t glorious, despite the pageantry, the colourful uniforms, and the fifes and drums. War was, without exception, nothing short of hell on earth. There were moments of extraordinary bravery and heady triumph, as sweet as honey on the tongue, but mostly there was fear; massive, gut-wrenching, knee-jerking fear. Fear of being killed, fear of being wounded or crippled, fear of being thought a craven coward by your comrades, fear of dying alone on some bleak, godforsaken foreign hillside with no one back home to mourn your passing. That was the real horror. That was the truth of it.
He hadn’t had the dreams for a while, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, waiting to emerge unbidden, like demons in the darkness.
“I apologize,” Locke said. The eyes behind his spectacles glinted perceptively. “It was not my intention to stir up unpleasant memories. In answer to your question, Colonel Hyde was admitted to the hospital a little over two years ago. According to Dr Monro, the colonel’s admission was due not to mania, as you might suppose, but an acute state of melancholy.”
“Melancholy?”
“Correct. You saw the carvings above the entrance, I take it?”
Hawkwood recalled the naked stone figures and nodded.
“They are known as Raving and Melancholy Madness. I’m sure you can guess which was which.”
Hawkwood said nothing. He was remembering the manacles and the silent scream.
Locke went on, “There was a time when diagnosis was considered that simple. If the patient was not obviously suffering from one, he or she was inevitably a victim of the other. It is not, however, as you may have surmised from my discourse, as simple as that. Melancholy comes in many forms. Take the unfortunates contained within these walls, for example. For every ten patients suffering the effects of drink and intoxication, I could show you twenty who suffer from excessive jealousy. For every fifteen stricken by religion and Methodism, I can list thirty whose minds have been addled by syphilis or smallpox. Pride, fright, fever, even lov
e; the causes of insanity – melancholy in particular – are numerous, Officer Hawkwood. But by far the most common are misfortune, trouble, disappointment and grief.”
“You’re trying to tell me that the colonel was disappointed about something?” Hawkwood said. “Hell’s teeth, if he removed a man’s face because he was disappointed, what the devil’s he going to do when he’s angry?”
The apothecary ignored Hawkwood’s retort, but continued in the same calm manner. “My understanding is that it was the commissioners’ judgement that the colonel’s experiences working amongst the wounded and the dying precipitated a state of chaos within his brain. It was as if his attempts to mend the broken bodies of his patients had a debilitating effect on his own sanity; a terrible price to pay for years of dedicated service. I can only imagine the horrors that he witnessed, trying to make whole the shattered bodies of men, but there’s little doubt Colonel Hyde arrived here in a state of severe distraction.”
Locke pursed his lips, and then continued.
“As with all patients, he was reassessed after twelve months. I was not involved in the colonel’s case, you understand, it was before my time. Regrettably, it was the commissioners’ collective opinion that the colonel was incurable. The usual procedure is that incurables are discharged unless their family or friends are unable to provide care. He has no living family. There was a child that died, a daughter, though he did not talk about her. So, grief, too, has undoubtedly played a significant role in his state of mind. Fortunately, it appears he had friends who were willing to stand surety for him, on condition that he remained in our charge. It was at that juncture that he was transferred to our incurable department.”
“Was he ever restrained?”
Locke looked nonplussed. “Restrained?”
“Like Norris.”
“Ah, yes, Norris. You saw him?”
“Briefly,” Hawkwood said.
An expression of sympathy moved across the apothecary’s face. “He’s an American, a seaman. Came to us almost twelve years ago. He’s attacked his keepers on at least two occasions.” Locke gave a wan smile. “But I assure you, he is an exception. The vast majority of our incurables are perfectly harmless. You may even have heard of a couple of them. There’s Metcalfe, for example, who thinks he’s the heir to the throne of Denmark; the Nicholson woman; and Matthews, of course.”