Resurrectionist

3

The apothecary looked down at the corpse and gave a brief shake of his head, as if to deny the bloody reality that lay before him.

“I confess, we took it to be the colonel’s body at first. It seemed the obvious conclusion in the light of Mr Grubb’s assurance that he’d escorted Reverend Tombs out of the building, or at least the person he assumed to be the reverend. It was only when I made a closer examination that I became aware of the deception. Unfortunately, we’d already sent word to Bow Street by then. I had thought, wrongly, that Mr Leech had informed you of the error upon your arrival.”

Locke lifted the corpse’s arm by the wrist and traced a path across the unmarked knuckles. “The colonel had a scar across the back of his right hand, just here. He told me it was the result of an accident during his army service. It was quite distinct and yet, as you can see, there is no scar.” The apothecary let the arm drop back on to the cot. “This is not Colonel Hyde.”

“But it is the Reverend Tombs? You’re sure of that?”

Locke nodded solemnly. “Quite sure.”

“Did he have scars too?”

Hawkwood couldn’t help injecting a note of sarcasm into his enquiry. To his surprise, Locke showed no adverse reaction to the retort but stated simply, “As a matter of fact, he did.” The apothecary met Hawkwood’s unspoken question by pointing to his own cheeks and jaw, the areas of the corpse’s face that had been excised. “The worst of them were on his face. Here and here. The minor ones are still visible there behind his left ear, if you look closely.”

Hawkwood turned to Leech. “You escorted Reverend Tombs to the room? What time was this?”

“It’d be about ten o’clock,” Leech said. “It were still rainin’ cats and dogs.”

“After you left him, what did you do?”

Leech shrugged. “Finished me rounds, went back upstairs.”

“And the key?”

“Left it on the ’ook in the keepers’ room with the rest of ’em.”

“And this … Grubb, he’d have taken the key to let the priest out?”

Leech nodded. “That’s right.” The attendant pointed to a bell cord hanging in the corner of the room. “Soon as he ’eard the bell ring, he’d have been on ’is way.”

“And Grubb noticed nothing untoward?”

Leech shook his head. “’E never said. I saw ’im when I came on again this morning, before Adkins told ’im about the colonel’s tray not bein’ touched. Asked him how things had gone and ’e said there’d been no problems. The parson rang the bell. Grubb collected him and escorted him out.”

“I’ll need to speak with Attendant Grubb,” Hawkwood said.

Locke nodded. “Of course, though he is still convalescing.”

“Convalescing?”

“He suffered a seizure when he discovered the body. Fortunately it was not as serious as we first feared. He is feeling rather frail, however, and has not yet returned to his duties. I can take you to him.”

Hawkwood nodded and looked around the room. “Has anything been moved, Doctor?”

“Moved?” Locke frowned.

“Put back in its place. Is this how it was when Grubb found the body?”

“I believe so, yes.”

Hawkwood stared at the iron rings set into the wall above the bed. He had a sudden vision of Norris, the patient chained to the wall by his neck and ankles. He walked towards the table. In the centre of it lay a chessboard. From the position of the pieces, the game was unfinished. Hawkwood picked up one of the figures – a white knight. It was made of bone. Hawkwood had seen similar sets before, carved by French prisoners of war imprisoned on the hulks. It wasn’t uncommon for such items to appear in private homes. There were agents, philanthropists who acted on behalf of some of the more skilful artists, offering to sell their carvings on the open market for a modest, or in some cases not so modest, commission. He wondered about the provenance of this particular set as he took in the rest of the items on the table: two mugs and an empty cordial bottle. He picked up the bottle. “Curious there’s no sign of a struggle.”

Locke blinked.

“Look around, Doctor. Not a chair overturned, not so much as a bishop upended or a pawn knocked out of its square. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? You think the man just stretched out and allowed himself to be butchered? He was already dead before that was done to him. He had to be.”

Locke looked pensive. “I found no obvious signs of injury to the body – other than the trauma … damage … to the face, of course – which suggests the cause of death could have been suffocation. A sharp, swift blow to the stomach, perhaps, to incapacitate, followed by a pillow over the face. Death would occur in a matter of minutes; less, probably, if the victim was already gasping for air.”

“So he smothered him, then mutilated him? Well, that’s certainly a possibility, Doctor. So tell me: where did he get the blade?”

The question seemed to hang in the air. Locke went pale.

“I’m assuming there are rules about patients owning sharp objects, knives and such?” Hawkwood said.

Locke shifted uncomfortably. “That is correct.”

“Not even for cutting up food?”

“That is done by the keepers.”

“And razors? What about shaving?”

“The difficult patients are secured. Those of a more … placid … disposition are looked after, again by the keepers, usually with a pot-boy in attendance.”

Hawkwood saw that the apothecary was clenching and unclenching his hands.

“What is it, Doctor?”

Locke, clearly agitated, swallowed nervously. “It’s possible that I may have … ah, inadvertently, provided Colonel Hyde with the opportunity to procure the … ah, murder weapon.”

“Oh, and how is that?”

Cowed by the look in Hawkwood’s eyes, the apothecary started to knead the palm of his left hand with his right thumb. It looked as if he was trying to rub a bloodstain out of his skin. “There were occasions when I was called upon to attend the colonel in my … ah, medical capacity.”

“Really?”

“Nothing too serious, you understand: a purgative now and again, and there was the lancing of an abscess a month or so ago.” The apothecary’s voice faltered as he realized the significance of the confession.

“So you’d have had your bag with you?”

“Yes.”

“Which would have contained what, exactly?”

“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.”