The Dead Place

24

Cooper tried not to look at Professor Robertson differently next time they met. He was making an effort to keep Diane Fry’s comments out of his mind, not to mention his own reference to necrophilia. That was definitely one thought to re-bury in whatever hole it had come from.

When he arrived at the house in Totley, the professor was in his garden, spraying ant powder on the flagged path and against the back wall. This evening, he was wearing black wellington boots. Yet the trouser legs of his pinstriped suit were flapping outside the boots, which rather defeated the object of wearing them, surely?

‘Come in, come in,’ said Robertson. ‘The blasted insects have seen enough of me. I’m sure they must have grasped my intentions by now.’

They entered the house through the back door into a utility room. The refurbishment had revealed pine floorboards in many of the rooms, and even the kitchen units were built in Edwardian style, with beech and granite work surfaces.

When the professor passed close to him, Cooper caught a whiff of odour from his clothes. He felt sure it was from his clothes, though he couldn’t quite name the smell. It made him think of old garments draped on wooden hangers in a mahogany wardrobe — especially the clothes at the back, the ones that were never worn any more.

Robertson sat with his hands clasped together as Cooper delivered the information he was allowed to share.

‘Glycerine, phenol and formaldehyde?’ said the professor when he’d finished. ‘An unholy trinity, if ever I met one.’

‘They’re used in embalming fluids, I believe.’

‘Exactly. Formaldehyde slows the rate that proteins degrade, so muscle tissues become fixed. That’s why it’s so difficult to move the limbs of an embalmed body. They no longer have the flexibility of living muscles.’

‘Oh?’ Cooper hadn’t expected to be presented with such an immediate image of the professor handling a dead body.

‘Glycerine softens the tissues and reduces fluid loss. An antibacterial substance like phenol prevents breakdown by micro-organisms.’

‘It delays decomposition, in other words.’

‘Indeed. What embalming really does is coagulate the body’s proteins, temporarily hardening and preserving. The work of the embalmer is the art of denial, the creation of an illusion. The body is drained, stuffed and painted for its final performance.’

Drained, stuffed and painted. Cooper filed that expression away in his memory.

‘I wonder if you know a place called Alder Hall, sir? It’s in the Wye Valley, not far from Edendale.’

‘I believe I know the name. Now, in what connection would I have heard of Alder Hall?’

‘There’s a collection of bones. Below the hall, in a crypt.’

‘Ah. Civil War relics?’

‘Yes, sir. Have you ever visited?’

‘No, I don’t believe so. What’s the name of the family?’

‘Saxton. What about a lady called Madeleine Chadwick, then? She’s the last of the Saxtons.’

Robertson shook his head. ‘I don’t quite see…’

‘What can you tell me about ossuaries?’ said Cooper. ‘Is that the right name for places where bones were kept?’

‘Yes, but the Alder Hall crypt isn’t an ossuary, is it? As I recollect, the bones were found elsewhere.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Robertson waited for him to explain, but Cooper remained silent. He was anticipating that the professor wouldn’t be able to tolerate silence, and would feel obliged to fill it with the sound of his own voice.

‘A lot of ossuaries came about where there was a shortage of suitable ground for burials,’ said Robertson, sitting back in his chair. ‘When you died, you might only be allowed to occupy your grave for a year or two, then you’d be dug up so that someone else could have your spot. The remains could mount up in vast numbers. Families would sometimes visit the bones of their dead relatives each year and wrap them in fresh cloths as long as they retained some flesh. Of course, decomposition takes place four times faster in the air. Burial simply slows the process down.’

Cooper thought of the first messages from their mystery caller. He’d referred to decomposition several times. The scented, carnal gardens of decomposition. He knew all about the processes of decay.

And now Robertson was watching him. Not for the first time, Cooper felt the professor might be able to read his thoughts.

‘But what about the smell?’ he said.

Robertson looked pleased. For a moment, Cooper thought the professor was going to nudge him in the ribs, like a bar-room comedian. Wink, wink, say no more.

‘It’s the transition from black putrefaction to butyric fermentation that causes the main source of odour. If you ever smell it, you won’t want to eat blue cheese again for a while. The body is drying out by then, and the exposed surfaces turn a little mouldy from fermentation. Just like your cheese will, if you leave it in the fridge too long.’

Cooper remembered he had some Blue Stilton in the fridge at home. He’d better throw it away, because he didn’t think he was going to eat it now. He’d only be thinking of a combination of Billy McGowan’s tattooed arms and butyric fermentation.

His attention beginning to stray, Cooper picked up a book that had caught his eye.

‘Do you collect antiquarian books, sir?’

‘Well, it’s hardly antiquarian. The book has no intrinsic value. It simply relates to my field of interest.’

‘I see.’

Cooper opened the book to the title page. What field of interest exactly? He knew the name of the author — everyone did, if only by reputation. But he’d never met anyone before who admitted to reading his books, let alone having one in the house. He flicked through the pages cautiously. He felt as though he might be corrupted by something if he read the words. He’d half-expected to find illustrations — dark, shocking pen-and-ink drawings between the chapters. But there weren’t any.

‘Yes, the Marquis de Sade,’ said Robertson, watching him with that smile again. ‘But not one of his, er… more celebrated titles, I’m afraid. It isn’t terribly easy to find.’

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ admitted Cooper, turning back to the cover. The book was called LaMarquise de Gange.

‘One of his very last works,’ said Robertson. ‘It was published a year before de Sade died. The Marquis was seventy-three years old by then, and had been locked up in an insane asylum for the past ten years.’

Cooper put the book back on the shelf.

‘Don’t you want to know how La Marquise deGange relates to my interests?’ asked Robertson.

‘Do I need to ask? I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

Robertson laughed and put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Dissection,’ he said.

Cooper felt the pressure of the professor’s fingers on the layer of muscle that covered the bones of his arm. The fingers moved slightly, as if parting the sinews and blood vessels to touch the deepest part of him. He had a momentary realization that the professor really could see inside him, and knew what his body looked like from the inside out.

‘Dissection became remarkably fashionable among the nobility of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,’ said Robertson. ‘Some of those self-appointed scientists set up their own dissecting laboratories at home, just as you or I might have a billiards table. They took great pleasure in inviting their friends round for the evening whenever the grave robbers had delivered a fresh corpse. Can you imagine that?’

‘No,’ said Cooper. But then, he couldn’t imagine fitting a billiards table into his flat in Welbeck Street either. Presumably an Edwardian gentleman’s residence had its own billiards room, if not a dissecting laboratory.

‘And de Sade wrote about this?’ he asked, moving back slightly to free himself from the professor’s hand.

‘Yes, in La Marquise de Gange,’ said Robertson. ‘What a subject to be occupying a man’s mind when he’s seventy-three, eh? But then, he obviously wasn’t afraid of death.’

Cooper followed Robertson with his eyes as he moved around the study, passing backwards and forwards in front of the window, his bulk creating flashes of light and dark as he talked.

‘Earlier this week, we visited a place called the Infidels’ Cemetery,’ said Cooper.

‘Oh, really?’

‘You’ve not heard of it?’

‘No.’

Cooper was surprised, given Robertson’s interests. But perhaps the graves were too ancient for him.

‘It’s near Monsal Head,’ said Cooper. ‘Just an old graveyard. But there was an inscription on one of the gravestones that I’ve never seen before. I think it was in Latin. I wonder if you’d know what it means.’

‘Try me,’ said Robertson, almost glowing with pleasure at another chance to show off. ‘A memorial inscription, you say?’

‘Yes. I think it was in Latin: caro data vermibus.’

‘Ah yes, very interesting,’ said Robertson.

‘I thought it would be.’

‘Cadaver.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It’s an example of an acronymic derivation. The word “cadaver” was believed to derive from the initial letters of your Latin expression caro datavermibus. Literally, it means “meat given to worms”. A perfectly apt phrase — in the case of burial, at any rate.’

Cooper was starting to feel a bit detached from reality as he listened to the professor. He’d come to think of it as a weakness that he could so easily slip into someone else’s world and share their obsession. Most of the obsessions he came across were the kind he’d rather not have in his head, and it looked as though Robertson’s would count among them. He might have to watch some mindless TV tonight to push it out of his mind.

‘Is this your wife, sir?’ said Cooper, at last finding the photograph he’d been looking for. It was tucked away on a lower shelf of the display cabinet, nestling in the gloom between two willow-pattern plates. The glass of the cabinet was smeared, as if someone had touched it with dirty fingers and not cleaned it since.

The professor himself was easily recognizable in the photo, though he was ten or fifteen years younger and dressed to the nines in a dinner suit and red bow tie, with a matching handkerchief in his top pocket. The lady with him was tall and elegant, and equally well dressed in a red gown that exposed smooth, white shoulders. The couple stood close together as they posed for the photographer. Their manner didn’t seem artificial — they looked genuinely happy and affectionate.

Robertson moved over to the cabinet and bent to look at the photo as if he’d never seen it before.

‘Yes, that’s Lena. We were attending some academic bunfight somewhere.’

Cooper wasn’t quite sure how to ask the next question. ‘Is she …?’

The professor watched him for a moment, almost seeming to enjoy his discomfort.

‘Lena died five years ago, shortly before I retired.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was cancer, of course.’

‘Of course?’

‘Cancer is rather like the ancient mariner, isn’t it? You remember the Samuel Coleridge poem? “It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three.”’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Cooper. ‘I don’t — ’

‘One in three people in this country suffer from cancer at some time in their lives.’

‘Ah.’

Robertson turned away from the cabinet and walked to the window. He gazed out at the new houses in the crescent below him. Cooper caught that faint smell again. It made him think of mothballs, too. But he didn’t know what mothballs smelled like, or even if they were used any more. He associated them with grannies and antimacassars. He’d have to call in Boots the Chemists and ask for some, to see if he could put a name to the smell. Otherwise, it would remain permanently elusive.

Finally, the professor stopped moving and turned to face him. ‘Modern society has mismanaged death, don’t you think? Most people would say they want a quiet, dignified death. Yet the majority of us die in hospitals, surrounded by respirators, dialysis machines, naso-gastric tubes, undergoing endless sessions of chemotherapy and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation procedures. Death is converted into a mechanical spectacle, the weapons of technology lined up against the processes of nature. A miniature Armageddon fought in the veins.’

‘It must have been a very difficult time,’ said Cooper. It was a phrase he’d heard people say in these circumstances. He’d never thought it meant very much. And it didn’t now, when he said it himself.

‘My wife taught me that there are two stages of dying to go through,’ said Robertson. ‘First, you’re afraid that you’ll die. And then you’re afraid that you won’t. There’s a point when death becomes a thing to be welcomed, the event you desire most in the world. Some of us reach that point before others.’

Cooper began to button his coat. He knew when it was time to leave.

‘One in three,’ said Robertson. ‘Why should we be surprised when it affects us, or our loved ones? Yet still we ask the question.’

‘What question is that, sir?’

‘“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?”’ Robertson smiled sadly. ‘We never expect it to be us, do we?’

Cooper didn’t know what to say. He was starting to feel very uncomfortable, and slightly queasy. He wasn’t sure if it was the tea or all the talk of decomposition.

‘Thank you for your help, Professor,’ he said. ‘I have to go now.’

‘A shame. You never did explain your interest in the sarcophagus. Does it relate to your enquiry into the human remains found at Litton Foot?’

‘No, it was something in one of the messages.’

Robertson had his back to him at that moment, pouring himself another drink. But Cooper saw his shoulders stiffen, his head come up with sudden interest. For a second, their eyes met in the mirror over the TV set. Cooper felt himself being probed again, as if the professor had found more depths in him than he’d anticipated.

‘Messages?’ he said.

Robertson turned, raising the glass of whisky to his face, but not drinking — an old trick to hide the expression, or to distract attention from the eyes.

‘I probably shouldn’t have mentioned them,’ said Cooper.

‘That sounds intriguing. Do tell.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t. It’s not really relevant to my present enquiry.’

‘Oh, a different enquiry altogether? Something I can help you with, though?’

‘I don’t think so, Professor. Thank you.’

For the first time, Robertson had lost his affability. He couldn’t hold the glass to his lips any longer without taking a drink, or it would have looked odd. He gulped a half-inch of whisky, and put the glass down. Cooper caught an irritable gleam in his eyes, a downwards curve of his mouth, as if the malt had turned sour in its bottle.

‘Well, I really must be going,’ said Cooper.

Robertson was still thoughtful as he accompanied him to the door and on to the gravel drive.

‘Tell me, those questions about Alder Hall — were those related to your messages? And decomposition. Why did you ask me about decomposition?’

‘Professor, I’m sorry — ’

‘You haven’t been entirely honest with me, have you?’

‘I wish I could share everything with you, Professor, but I’m working under certain limitations.’

‘Limitations, yes,’ said Robertson. ‘We all work under limitations, don’t we?’