by Alex Grecian
He pronounced the cause of death for the poor girl at a glance and the nurses cleared the table to make room for a new corpse. There were many more waiting. There always were.
The man next to her had been ill. He had come from somewhere upstairs in the hospital and had been worked over by another doctor. There were small purple wounds on the man’s chest, abdomen, legs, arms, and forehead where leeches had been applied. It was an old method of treatment, and Kingsley had no use for it. Patients who had been bled were invariably weaker and thinner and sicker than when they were first admitted to hospital. Kingsley would have to decide whether to credit the man’s death to illness or malpractice. In similar cases in the past, he had marked bleeding as the cause of death, but the hospital frowned on that. Dr Kingsley had been encouraged to keep his progressive thinking to himself.
There was a bin next to the only empty table in the room. The bin was filled with disembodied limbs, heads, and torsos. There was no mystery as to the cause of death. A man in Mayfair had wheeled the bin into a police station and had confessed to chopping up his entire family in a fit of pique after too much drink. Kingsley had already pronounced cause on the woman and two children whose body parts were mingled in the bin. But he had decided to stitch the three people back together, to make them whole again, before their burial. It seemed only proper.
The bodies of children always bothered Kingsley most.
Many of the other tables’ occupants had been struck down by horses or wagons or stray building materials as they walked in the streets near the hospital. Here a man’s head was stove in and unrecognizable; there a woman’s arm was separated from her shoulder. She had bled to death while the omnibus that hit her had rolled on to its appointed rounds.
Victims of consumption occupied three of the tables near the far wall. They were all razor-thin, their skin marble grey, their clothing spotted with blood. They had slowly coughed up their lives. Kingsley’s own wife had suffered this way, and he avoided looking too closely at their faces, afraid he might see the same dull animal fear that had transformed Catherine. He had carefully compartmentalized the memories of his wife on her deathbed: the bloodstained linens, the long nights, the hoarse moans that had echoed through their home every night. He preferred to remember her as she had been in her prime.
He moved on as he always moved on when those memories surfaced.
The last table in the corner of the room held an old woman’s body. Her throat had been cut as she passed through an alley, her bag stolen. Kingsley had no idea what might have been in that bag. The mugger and murderer had not been caught. Kingsley stood by the table and looked down at the old woman. She seemed peaceful, sleeping, as if she might wake at any moment and ask for a cup of tea. He took her hand and gazed at her untroubled face and allowed himself a moment before turning and unloading the bin of body parts onto the empty table beside it.
There was much to do and the work never ended.
INTERLUDE 3
CHARING CROSS, LONDON, TWO YEARS EARLIER.
Dr Bernard Kingsley stood in the open doorway and surveyed the room. It was long and narrow like a potting shed, with more than thirty tables flanking a tight center aisle. There was just enough room between the tables for a man to walk sideways. There were no windows in the room and only the single door. The ivy that grew along the outside walls of the tiny morgue had pushed through crevices in the wood and moved inside, where streamers of it spilled across the low ceiling. Street sounds echoed through the odd-shaped chamber like the bustle of an open-air bazaar, but the room lacked the breeze or sunlight of such a place. No one had yet noticed Kingsley standing there.
Two men in dirty smocks wandered aimlessly at the back of the room. One of the men had tied a kerchief around his mouth and nose, presumably to filter the stench, which was considerable.
Kingsley took a step farther into the room, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. He resisted the impulse to gag and reached inside his coat for his pipe and tobacco. Disguising the odor of the dead was the only reason he ever smoked. He blew through the stem and added a pinch of an American blend to the bowl, catching the leftover tobacco in his pouch as it fell. Hard to do in the semidark. He tamped the bowl with his thumb and sucked air in through the dry tobacco, tasting it.
One of the men, the one with the kerchief over his face, saw the flicker of Kingsley’s match and moved toward him as Kingsley drew on the pipe and got a decent flow going. It was a false light; the pipe went out. He tamped again and lit another match. This time smoke billowed around his head. His own private and portable atmosphere.
The man with the kerchief waited patiently as Kingsley made the matches and tobacco pouch disappear back into the recesses of his coat. Kingsley took a long drag and held it. He looked back out at the street, then turned and plunged into the morgue facility.
“Beg pardon, sir,” the man with the kerchief said. “Not s’posed to be reg’lar folk in here while the work’s goin’ on.”
“What’s your name, fellow?” Kingsley said.
“Frances Mayhew, sir. Call me Frank. That over there’s my brother, Henry. But he don’t like to be called Hank on account of it rhymes with me.”
“Frances and Henry. Are you doctors?”
Frank let out a guffaw. The sudden gust of air blew his kerchief up over his eyes. When it had drifted back down over his mouth and nose, Frank bowed and tugged on his forelock.
“No, sir. Not hardly. No call for doctors round here noways. Patients in here’s all dead, don’tcha know.”
“Are you assisting a doctor, then?”
“Like I said, sir, no doctors come round here mostly ever. Ain’t noways to bring these’uns back to life.”
Kingsley brushed past Frank Mayhew and walked down the row of corpses. The tables, three dozen of them, were short, each barely more than a meter long. The young children in that room fit the tables well, but the adults lay with the tops of their heads butted against the walls and their legs dangling off the tables into the corridor. As he walked, Kingsley was unable to avoid brushing against them, setting the legs in motion. He looked back at the rectangle of light that led to the street outside, dead feet swaying back and forth in front of it as if on the verge of escape. Rigor had passed in most of the bodies. They had been lying there long enough for their muscles to become pliable once more.
“This is monstrous,” he said.
“Well, aye, sir. No argument from us there.”
“If you agree, why do you allow these conditions?”
“Due respect, we don’t allow nothin’, sir. Ain’t our place. We does the job as told.”
Kingsley pointed at the one called Henry, who cowered at the back of the room. “You. Are you in charge here?”
“He don’t talk much no more,” Frank said.
“Well, who’s in charge here, then?”
“Nobody.”
“What do you mean, nobody?”
“Well, somebody, I s’pose, but they ain’t come round here in as long as Henry and me’s been here, which is goin’ on a couple months now.”
“Then how did you come to be here?”
“Got choosed out the workhouse.”
“Why were you chosen? What was your experience? Were you a doctor’s aide? An apprentice or student of some sort?”
“’At’s a whole lotta ways of askin’ the same thing, sir. I don’t mean no disrespect, but you’re gettin’ worked up past where you oughta. It ain’t good in here, ’at’s for sure, but Henry and me’s doin’ what we’s told. We ain’t lookin’ for no trouble, and we don’t noways wanna go back to the workhouse.”
Kingsley took in a deep breath of pipe smoke and coughed. He held up a hand until the coughing spell had passed, then nodded.
“I didn’t mean to besmirch your work or your reputation. But I want to speak to someone in charge, and this all seems a cruel joke.”
“No joke, sir. And it’s like I said, there ain’t nobody in charge round here ’cept me an
d my brother. We’s just doin’ our best to get along, ’at’s all.”
“Yes, you said as much. Let me ask again: What did you do that you were chosen for this job?”
“Well, we dug ditches for a time, and afore that we helped on that retaining wall was built down the river.”
“Dug ditches.”
“Dug us a few graves, too. Might be called experienced with the dead. Might be why we was choosed.”
“Good Lord,” Kingsley said. He glanced back at the doorway and sighed. “Well, in the absence of anyone more qualified, perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for a woman.”
Frank released another kerchief-rattling guffaw. He waited for the cloth to settle back over his face before he spoke.
“No offense meant, sir, but we don’t want no part a that.”
Kingsley finally lost his composure. He pushed past Frank and stalked deeper into the morgue. The darkness was broken only by that double row of pale grey legs swinging gently back and forth. A neglected market with the dead laid out on display. Kingsley felt disoriented already. A hand grabbed him by the arm and swung him around.
“You can’t be in here, sir.”
Frank’s face was expressionless, backlit by the open door. Without a thought, Kingsley swung at the ditchdigger and missed. Frank took a step back, and Kingsley grabbed him by the collar and dragged him forward. Frank was the larger man, but Kingsley was determined.
“Beg pardon, sir,” Frank said.
“My wife is here. Somewhere in this hellhole. Show me where.”
Arms reached around Kingsley from behind and lifted him into the air. Startled, he let go of Frank Mayhew’s shirt. The ditchdigger rocked back on his heels and the arms released Kingsley. He turned and saw Henry retreating again to the back of the room.
“Sir, all due respect,” Frank said, “you’re a right gentleman and all, but I ain’t s’posed to let you in here. An’ my brother don’t let nobody touch me ’cept hisself.”
“I’m a doctor, you halfwit.”
“Oh, well, ’at’s different then, ain’t it?”
Kingsley straightened his shirt and tie. He ran a hand over his hair, but it was always unruly and his hand did nothing to tame it.
“Catherine Kingsley,” he said. “That’s my wife’s name. There must be some record of her having been brought in?”
He said it as a question, not at all convinced that anything that resembled record keeping went on in this place.
“Henry’s got charge of the papers and such.”
Frank motioned to his brother and Henry came forward with a wad of greasy papers in his fist. Kingsley took them from him and went back to the door to look them over in the sunlight. He realized that he was clenching his pipe so tight that his teeth hurt. He squatted, his back against the jamb, and rubbed his jaw and took another puff, then smoothed the papers out against his knee. There was no organization visible in the notes, no standardized form, just a haphazard recording of whatever had been relayed when the bodies were brought in. Half of the reports were missing the deceased’s names. He shuffled through them quickly and saw nothing about his wife. He stood and turned and thrust the handful of paperwork back at Henry, who took it wordlessly.
Kingsley left both brothers standing at the door and plunged back into the gloom, the bubble of smoke around his head keeping pace.
Kingsley found his wife after some searching. Catherine was on a table halfway down the aisle on the right-hand side. She was nude, lying on her back atop a dirty blanket, her legs dangling like the rest of them. Her eyes were open and unblinking, staring up into the dark. He wondered where she had gone and what she was looking at.
He took her hand and stood there. The pipe fell from his lips and he didn’t notice.
After a time, the silent brother, Henry, appeared at his side and moved the edge of the blanket over her, covering Catherine, giving her back some modesty. He reached out and closed her eyes and then was gone again, swallowed by the shadows. Kingsley hardly noticed.
When Henry returned, he was holding a sprig of ivy, plucked from the wall. He laid it on Catherine’s chest. He nodded at the doctor and backed away. That small gesture was enough to break Kingsley, and his grief poured from him in great choking waves.
When it had passed, he leaned in and kissed his wife on the lips for the last time.
He picked up his pipe, stood, and turned around.
“My name is Bernard Kingsley. I am a surgeon with University College Hospital in the West End. I will send people later today to help you pack up this operation, and you will move it all, every corpse in your care, to my facilities.”
Frank looked alarmed. “All of it?”
“Just the bodies. You may keep these ridiculous tables and this horrible reeking shack.”
“But the bluebottles send boys round here with the bodies. This place’ll fill back up in no time at all.”
“I will notify the police that they may deal with me from now on. This is not the way a civilized society cares for their dead. This is the way of animals and savages.” He shook his head. “No, not even savages. Even they practice ritual and ceremony in order to show respect. This is ruin. This is horror.”
He walked past Frank. Henry was standing in the doorway with his back to them, his face in the sun. Kingsley put a hand on the bigger man’s arm.
“Thank you for your kindness toward my wife.”
Henry looked at him, but said nothing. He turned his head and looked back at the sky. He rocked gently back and forth, as if listening to music only he could hear. Kingsley couldn’t tell if his words had even registered with the former ditchdigger.
“But, mister, what will me an’ my brother do now?” Frank said.
Kingsley didn’t turn around, didn’t address the man directly.
“Go back to the workhouse,” he said. “Go find occupations better suited to your skills.”
“We can’t go back again, sir. Henry won’t last there. Ain’t much left of ’im now.”
Kingsley stepped off the curb and, still keeping his back to that house of death, he let some warmth enter his voice.
“Then find something to do outside in the fresh air and sun. Your brother shouldn’t be cooped up in a place like this, anyway. Nobody should be. Not even the dead.”
He used the sole of his shoe to tap the tobacco out of his pipe, put it back in his pocket, and walked away down the street. He didn’t look back.
75
He woke from his reverie and looked at his handiwork. A lattice of stitches ran pell-mell over the surface of the little girl’s body, linking her arms and legs and head like a hideous human quilt. He raised his head and regarded his laboratory. It was clean and open and the bodies were stretched out full-length on long tables, with adequate drainage. The sunlight through the windows at ceiling level was filtered through bubbling green gasogenes, lending everything a sickly glow, but Kingsley liked that. It meant that work was going on.
And now he remembered where and when he had met the homeless man, the dancing man who had found the shears thrown from a killer’s carriage. He’d somehow known the name, but his connection to the man had been lost until now.
“Henry Mayhew,” he said.
His voice echoed.
Kingsley looked down at the little girl’s body. In a dress with a high collar, nobody would ever see the black stitches that kept her from falling apart at the seams. She was at least presentable.
He put down the forceps and the thread and rubbed the back of his neck with his bloody hand.
There were two more bodies that needed to be sewn together, but Kingsley knew that he had to find Henry Mayhew again before the police returned him to the workhouse or, worse, the asylum.
He owed the former ditchdigger something, and he was ashamed that it had taken him this long to remember and to act.
He rinsed the blood off his hands in the basin on the counter, grabbed his jacket, and left the room. The people on the tables could
wait. They had all the time in the world.
76
He had gone out the previous night while the boy slept, but he dared not risk it again. He could lock the boy up again, but he didn’t want to. He felt they’d made real progress in their relationship since Fenn’s escape attempt. To imprison him again, even for the hour or two it would take him to run his errand, might cause the boy to resent him again.
But he had offered to take his catalogues to the police. If he failed to deliver on his promise, Sergeant Kett—or worse, Inspector Day—might begin to wonder about him.
Cinderhouse left Fenn at the dining table with a bowl of soup and went from room to room in the tidy house, gathering what he could find. Most of his catalogues were at the shop, but there were a few that he’d brought home for one reason or another. They were all horribly out of date, but the police wouldn’t know that. In all he found eight catalogues. That ought to do.
He checked on the boy, made sure he was still eating, and stepped out the front door, locking it behind him.
His hansom was out front, the coachman bundled up top, snoozing. Cinderhouse wondered at the fact that the man could sleep while sitting up, but supposed that it came with long practice. The horse whinnied at Cinderhouse as he approached, and he stroked its muzzle.
“Somewhere to go, Mr Cinderhouse?”