‘What?’ Dr Graves paused in his labours about the rib cage. Sweat dripped from his brow. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Yes, bloodroot it is.’ He gestured at Dr Bain’s severed head with the end of his bloody knife. ‘There. You see? The tongue.’ He bent to his task once more. ‘The stuff is in the oesophagus too.’
‘May I look?’
‘By all means.’ I heard the sound of ribs splintering, and he stood back from the corpse. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and beckoned the students. ‘In fact, you may all come closer.’
One by one, Dr Graves asked the students to step forward so that they might peer into Dr Bain and admire the arrangement of his internal organs: the liver, heart, kidneys and spleen, the delicate bags of the lungs, the smooth slippery yards of intestines. Then, he selected certain individuals to remove those organs. The liver was placed in a bowl; the heart in another. The lungs, blackened with pipe smoke and years of city air, occupied a third. He asked them to touch and feel, to smell and taste. ‘Use every sense,’ he cried. ‘Only then can you truly understand.’ They gathered round to peer at the membranes, ligaments and musculature of the body cavity. Hidden from view for a moment, I slipped from my pocket a bundle of surgical knives Dr Bain had once given me. Removing the smallest and finest of these I set to work.
The heart was congested, choked with thick dark blood, which I knew to be a possible symptom of bloodroot poisoning. And yet still I was not convinced. There were other poisons that would result in the same congestion. And there was still the appearance of Dr Bain’s face when we had found him – the paralysis about the lips, the dark splotches in the eyes. I had to be sure . . .
‘Let us examine the brain,’ cried Dr Graves. ‘If we take the skull—’
I closed my eyes at the sound of the trepanning knife, trying to blot from my mind the knowledge of what was taking place at the dissecting table. While everyone was distracted, I slit open the pale muscular bag of the stomach.
They worked upon Dr Bain diligently. St Saviour’s anatomy museum was extensive, and there was little in Dr Bain’s corpse that was worth preserving for posterity. But his body parts were useful for the purpose of instruction and practice, and a number of students were keen to keep some of his organs for their own collections. Dr Graves wiped his hands on a dirty towel and rinsed his knives in a bowl of muddy red water as he handed Dr Bain over to the students. Soon, there would be nothing left of the man at all: the veins and arteries of his major organs would be injected with coloured wax; the flesh stripped from the muscles; the brain put into a jar of preserving fluid, or sliced up like a cooked cabbage and divided between the students so that they might each preserve a cross-section. Finally, his bones would be boiled in a gigantic copper vat Dr Graves kept for just such a purpose, and strung together with wire. I was glad not to have to stay in the place any longer. I had seen what I needed to see, had proved what I wanted to prove. I excused myself, and went to find Will.
He was standing on the top of the brewhouse, looking out over St Saviour’s churchyard, watching the excavations. I climbed up to stand beside him. ‘Dr Bain’s lips and tongue were stained with bloodroot tincture,’ I said. ‘The tumbler at his side suggested that it was the last thing he had touched. And yet, Dr Bain and I had already tested the actions of the bloodroot. Why on earth would he choose to test it again, and do so when he was alone? Last time he tried it the stuff had almost killed him.’
‘But he was not alone,’ said Will. ‘There was another person with him.’
‘Nonetheless,’ I said. ‘It still doesn’t explain why he would down a tumbler of bloodroot tincture all over again. Besides, although it was on his lips and tongue, and from what I could see it was also present in his throat and the upper part of his oesophagus, I detected none of it in the stomach. The stuff is clearly visible. I would be able to see it if it were in the stomach.’
‘Meaning what, exactly?’
‘Meaning he did not swallow it,’ I said. ‘It was introduced into the area – presumably by his executioner. Bloodroot is highly visible. It would look like accidental death – accidental bloodroot poisoning – if it were found in his mouth and throat. After all, the last notes Dr Bain made in his ledger were about the actions of bloodroot. But it was not accidental at all.’
‘You mean he was already dead when the bloodroot was poured down his throat?’
‘Dead or paralysed.’
‘Paralysed?’ Will looked alarmed. ‘By what?’
‘Something fast acting. Something that would have rendered him insensible, or at least unable to move or call out. Cyanide, perhaps, though I could smell nothing of bitter almonds when we found him. Aconite is more likely. It has no smell. It causes paralysis. It kills as soon as it is ingested and one doesn’t need a large quantity of the stuff to achieve a result. It can even be absorbed through the skin.’
‘And who might have access to such a substance?’
‘Anyone, of course. This is a hospital. We’re surrounded by surgeons and physicians, all of whom have access to it and are aware of its uses and applications. The apothecary, the herb drying room, the physic garden . . . it might have been got from any of those places, by almost anyone who was of a mind to find it.’
‘Why on earth do you keep it,’ said Will, ‘if it’s not a medicine?’
‘But it is a medicine,’ I said. ‘In small doses, at least. Medicine and poison, life and death, the point at which one becomes the other isn’t always easy to command.’
‘Though there are plenty here who claim to have that skill,’ said Will. He looked out at the graveyard once more. Already, the excavations had produced a great many corpses. How glad I was that the wind was blowing from the east that day. ‘All these bodies,’ he muttered, shaking his head. ‘D’you think most of them spent their last days in St Saviour’s Infirmary?’
‘A good many.’
‘Makes me wonder how many of them were killed by your so-called doctors.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘As for our murderer, well, we are looking at the work of a doctor there too, I’m certain. The whole crime is too methodical, too clever, the knowledge required to kill, and to deceive in the killing—’
‘Can we find out who? And why?’
‘I’m sure we can,’ I said. ‘We are dealing with someone quick and clever, but they’re not as quick and clever as you and I.’ I meant what I said. And, even now that everything is over, and despite the terrible events that occurred, I still believe I spoke the truth that day. But confidence breeds complacency, and my assumption that we could not fail to uncover the truth, that we could outwit anyone, was callow and foolish. What a price I was to pay for my arrogance.
Chapter Seven
Dr Bain’s will was simple and straightforward: his property should go to Gabriel, once the lad was of age and had finished his apprenticeship; his library, and his anatomy museum, was left to me. But what was I to do with such a superabundance of medical books and museum pieces? I had no room for them at the apothecary. In the meantime, everything stayed where it was.
I went to look for Gabriel. I found him in the herb drying room, curled up on a blanket on a high shelf amongst the hop sacks, his face turned to the wall.
‘Gabriel.’ I put out a hand and touched his shoulder. He shuffled forward, moving away from me. ‘I’ve brought you some food. Bread and cheese. And some of those pickled oysters you like from the whelk stall on Fishbait Lane.
‘And look,’ I said. ‘I’ve brought you a treat.’ I produced a large orange from my pocket. I pulled out my knife and began to peel the thing, slicing the skin from pole to pole. The oil burst from the ruptured pores in a zesty mist.
Gabriel sat up. His face was red and puffy, his eyes bloodshot. He sniffed, and wiped his nose with the cuff of his coat. His nose was raw from the piece of sacking he had been using for the same purpose. ‘Don’t you have a handkerchief?’ I said. Standards had to be maintained, despite the forces of grief overwhelming us. I hand
ed him mine. ‘Keep it.’
We ate the orange sitting side by side, looking out of the gabled window at the city. The sky was an inky blue-black, flat and featureless. Before it, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, the roofs shone black and silver, picked out sharply against the lowering rainclouds.
‘You know you will still be our apprentice, Gabriel,’ I said. ‘You’re part of our family. You always were, you know.’
Gabriel sniffed. ‘Is it true what ol’ mother Greedigut said? Is it true that Dr Bain was my father? I always thought he was, but I never liked to say it.’
‘I think there’s little doubt about it.’
‘And about my . . . my mother.’
I could think of nothing to say. ‘Well,’ I said, hoping comradeship might serve, ‘I didn’t know my mother either.’
‘But mine’s all cut up,’ said Gabriel. ‘Mrs Speedicut said. How will God know where to find her, when the trumpet sounds, if she’s all in bits in jars?’
‘Look,’ I said, wondering where on earth he had got such nonsense – the lady almoners, no doubt, ‘everyone’s in bits in the end. D’you think they’re all waiting below ground, nice and clean in their Sunday best?’ I shivered at the thought of that growing mound of stinking corpses excavated from the churchyard. ‘She’s better off in bits in jars, if you ask me.’
For a while we sat in silence. ‘I saw the Abbot, you know,’ said Gabriel. ‘I saw the Abbot and I knew Dr Bain was goin’ to die. I told him too and he took proper fright.’
‘What?’ I turned to the lad and seized him by the arm. ‘What did you say?’
‘I went to speak to Dr Bain after ol’ Greedigut said those things,’ said Gabriel. ‘I tried to forget what she’d said, but I couldn’t. I pretended I didn’t mind, but I did. I wanted to know about my mother, what were she like? Did he love her? Did he care about her? Greedigut said he didn’t care. I just wanted to know. So I went out when you and Mr Quartermain came back that night. It was late, but I knew Dr Bain would be back too. I was going towards Dr Bain’s house when I saw this man—’
‘Man?’ I said. ‘How do you know it was a man? Did you see his face?’
Gabriel shrugged. ‘Who else might it be? You don’t get women out at night in St Saviour’s Street, leastways not respectable ones. Not when the fog’s up neither. I didn’t see his face, but I knew it was the Abbot – the one what Mrs Speedicut talks about.’
‘That’s a ghost story.’
‘Is it?’ Gabriel turned to me with sorrowful eyes. ‘Well, I saw someone in a cloak and a hood in the fog. Standing outside Dr Bain’s house. Still, and quiet. Just looking. Watching.’
‘And then?’
‘Then nuffink. I came along and he just vanished.’
‘Vanished where?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘I didn’t see.’
‘And you saw Dr Bain? You spoke to him?’ My voice was sharp, almost accusatory. Poor Gabriel, he was no longer enjoying the interview, but I could not stop now. ‘Did you see Dr Bain the night he died?’
‘Yes, yes, I saw him.’
‘Did you go inside?’
‘He wouldn’t let me in. Said he didn’t have time. Said he would talk to me in the morning, and I was not to listen to what Mrs Speedicut said about anything. Then I told him about the Abbot. Proper angry I was, and upset. I was glad to tell him the Abbot was watchin’ him.’ Gabriel looked at me, his face awash with tears. ‘I told him he would die. That the Abbot was after him, and that meant he were a goner. I said I were glad—’ he gave a muffled sob.
‘I’m sure Dr Bain took it in his stride,’ I said, more sharply that I intended. ‘What happened next? That’s more important.’
‘He looked up and down the street, but there was only fog, thick as porridge. Told me to go home. Said he’d speak to me proper in the morning.’ Gabriel blinked tearful eyes. ‘Gave me a shillin’ too. Even though I said those things.’
‘What time was it?’ I said. ‘Did you see?’
‘It were too dark and foggy to see, but I know it was after midnight. Dr Bain told me. “Go home, Gabriel,” he said. “It’s after midnight. Far too late for a lad like you to be out.” I ran straight home.’ He shivered. ‘That night – the night Dr Bain died – the street was so cold. Soon as I was out in it I wanted to be back home.’
I knew what he meant. It was the sort of cold that made your bones ache; made you long for a warm fire and company. The fog seized your throat so you could hardly breathe and drowned the world in brown. Familiar streets were filled with fearful shadows, inexplicable noises and disembodied footsteps. It came too regularly to surprise anyone, but one never got used to it. For me, it always brought a terrible sense of loneliness, as though I had been deserted by the whole of humanity, even as I stood in the centre of the world’s greatest metropolis. Anything might happen, anything might befall me, and no one would have any idea about it.
That fear crept up on me now, as I sat beside Gabriel in the herb drying room. I had once felt safe at St Saviour’s. Life was always the same for us, circumscribed by ward rounds and prescription making, by the gathering of herbs and the preparation of tinctures, pills and salves. There was comfort in that routine, for all of us, and pleasure in doing it well. How quickly things had changed. People and places I had once regarded with a rather bored familiarity had taken on an unkind aspect. Our world, once so ordered and predictable, now seethed with jealousy, resentment and murderous ambition. I wondered why I had never noticed it before. Perhaps I was not as worldly wise as I thought I was.
I opened the window. Looking down, I could see the men toiling in St Saviour’s graveyard. Coated in the mud in which they worked, it was as though the earth itself had come alive. Beside them, at the edge of the workings, stood Will, his tall hat chimney-black against that world of brown. From being quite unknown to me, he had, in the space of a few days, become the one person I felt I could rely upon; the one person I was sure, in my heart, was a good man. I had known those who worked at St Saviour’s for my entire life. And yet could I say the same about any of them? Could I say that I knew for certain they were good men? Behind Will, in the shadow of the graveyard wall, three dark figures watched. Even from my eyrie in the herb drying room above the old chapel, I could recognise them well enough: one tall and proud; one powerfully built and crouched, always, as if to spring; one weary, stooped beneath a weight of resentment and melancholy as though he carried his troubles upon his own back. Dr Magorian. Dr Graves. Dr Catchpole.
The funeral was speedily arranged. The executive committee had decided to honour Dr Bain’s commitment to the hospital and the medical profession with a commemorative service, and a brass plaque inside St Saviour’s parish church. The plaque was to be engraved with his name, the dates of his life, and a quotation from the Bible: ‘Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am weak: O LORD, heal me, for my bones are vexed. Psalm 6, verse 2.’ I had chosen it. No one else had suggested anything, and I liked its combination of meekness, disgruntlement and understated vengeance.
‘He was weak,’ Mrs Speedicut had said. ‘Weak as water.’
‘His bones have been wired together into a skeleton and are going to stand in the dispensary,’ said my father. ‘So they’ll be pretty vexed too, I should think.’
Gabriel gave a muffled sob.
‘Let us hope the words are prophetic,’ said Will.
‘My thoughts exactly,’ I replied. ‘D’you know the rest of Psalm six, Gabriel?’
Gabriel shook his head.
‘“Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be ashamed.”’
The event itself was, in every sense of the word, economical. As there was nothing left of Dr Bain once Dr Graves and his students had finished their work, there seemed little point in bothering with a coffin. And there was no family to object to the thriftiness. The service was brief, the church cold, the afternoon so dark that candles had to be lit. The wicks had not been trimmed and streams of sooty s
moke trailed upwards to mix with the smell of tallow and mildew, and the reek of the open graves outside. Dr Bain’s colleagues were in attendance in the front pews. I sat at the back, with Gabriel, my father, and Will. Will had given the workmen outside the afternoon off, so that the sound of the excavations did not impinge upon the service. Instead, the funeral – if one might call it that – was conducted to the thunderous accompaniment of the rain drumming on the roof, and the hypnotic plop . . . plop . . . plop of some invisible ingress of water.
But the indignities accorded Dr Bain in this final acknowledgement of his life did not end there. The chaplain was suffering from a cold, and his words were, more often than not, obliterated by a volley of sneezes, or muffled by the folds of a handkerchief. The organist had sprained his wrist and was obliged to play using only one hand – a performance that could have been bettered by any street musician’s monkey. Dr Magorian read the eulogy. The candlelight threw his proud beaked nose and deep eye sockets into ghoulish chiaroscuro, and as he stood at the lectern I was reminded of an ancient woodcut I had once seen that depicted the Devil emerging from the depths. He spoke for no more than three minutes. It was an insult, and we all knew it. I had heard him talk for longer on the matter of emptying the ward spittoons.
I was wondering whether I should step forward and offer my own celebration of Dr Bain’s life, when there was a great rattling at the door. The candles shrank and guttered and a gust of malodorous wind billowed up the aisle. We heard the moist slap of bare feet running, and a woman’s voice cried out.
‘Where is he? Do you have him here?’
The rows of black-clad backs, the bowed shoulders and heads, slowly turned around. Faces, pale as mushrooms in a dung heap, peered into the gloom, looking back towards the door. I could see frowns of disbelief, hear the clicking of tongues. ‘This is no place for a woman,’ someone muttered. ‘Who is it?’ But I knew who it was. I recognised the voice – ragged with emotion, and taut with grief and desperation.
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