by Paul Stewart
Number 3, Caged Lark Lane was old, rundown and in need of repair. Not that I’m complaining. For what they were, my rooms were very reasonable. More importantly, the high roof atop the five-storey building offered both excellent views and easy access to the surrounding rooftops to any highstacker worth his salt.
Today, though, I wouldn’t be shinning down the drainpipe and entering through my attic window. Instead, like more conventional occupants, I climbed the stairs to the front door.
As I did so, I heard the words of the neighbourhood newspaper-seller floating through the air. With his wooden leg and eye-patch, Blindside Bailey was an old war veteran supplementing his meagre pension as best he could. By day, he would sell the editions of the newspapers; by night he would entertain the locals in the Goose and Gullet by recounting his past campaigns to any who would stand him a drink. Many’s the time I had whiled away an evening, listening to Blindside’s tales of a soldier’s life in the far-off lands of the East.
Blindside Bailey was an old war veteran.
‘Read all about it!’ Blindside Bailey’s gruff voice rang out. ‘Body of gangland boss taken! Read all about it! Graverobbers ransack gangland leader’s grave! Read all about it!’
Turning on my heels, I hurried back to the corner. I exchanged a copper penny for the latest edition of the Daily Chronicle, and a cold chill spread down my spine as I started to read.
‘Yesterday evening, as the good folk of the city slept in their beds, the body of infamous gang leader, Edwin “Firejaw” O’Rourke, was stolen from his final resting place in Adelaide Graveyard in the Gatling Quays district. Harbourside police suspect grave-robbers, or “resurrection men” as they are known locally, of perpetrating this outrage …’
Back in my attic rooms, I collapsed into my old armchair and studied the Daily Chronicle. I must admit, my hands were shaking as I scanned the column of small print. It seemed that Firejaw O’Rourke was merely the latest victim of a spate of outrages in cemeteries and graveyards all over town. Ada Gussage had said as much when I ran into her in Adelaide Graveyard, though I had been too spooked and full of lamprey venom to take it in. Now, here it was in front of me in black and white.
The Chronicle was of the firm belief that this was the work of graverobbers, or resurrection men – a bunch of individuals so reviled and disreputable that not even the denizens of Gatling Quays would admit to having anything to do with them. Apparently, the corpses they stole ended up on marble slabs in underground dissecting theatres, where students of anatomy would pay handsomely to study them.
You could make a pretty penny from a recently buried corpse. The fresher the body, the higher the price the unscrupulous surgeon would be prepared to pay, no questions asked – and all in the interests of scientific enquiry, of course.
The account in the Daily Chronicle, so measured and plausible, seemed to confirm the professor’s theory, and I wanted to believe that the ghastly apparition I’d seen in the graveyard was indeed a figment of my imagination brought to vivid life by the venom of an exotic sea creature. Perhaps all I’d really seen was an empty grave, ransacked by graverobbers. The rest was simply a terrible hallucination, just as he had said. Yes, I really did want to believe him – yet it had all seemed so real that doubt still gnawed at the back of my mind …
Just then, there came a light tap-tap at the window and I looked up to see Will Farmer peering through the grimy glass. I beckoned for him to come in. He pushed the window open and dropped down lightly to the floor.
‘Barnaby, where have you been?’ he said. ‘I was beginning to—’ His gaze fell on the sling and a look of concern crossed his face. ‘What happened?’
‘Pull up a chair, Will,’ I said, ‘it’s a long story.’ I shook my head. ‘A story which I’m still trying to get straight in my own mind. Some of it is pretty hard to believe …’
‘Try me,’ he said.
And so I recounted the strange events that had taken place over the previous couple of days. Will listened attentively, his eyes growing wider and wider as I described my trip out into the harbour and the underwater battle with the black-scaled lamprey. And when I got to the incident in the graveyard, he jumped back so violently I thought he was going to tumble from his chair.
‘Unbelievable,’ he gasped.
‘I know, Will, I know,’ I said. ‘The professor says the poison from the lamprey’s bite affected my mind, made me see things.’
‘So Firejaw O’Rourke didn’t rise from the grave?’ asked Will, his voice little more than a whisper.
‘That’s what I keep telling myself,’ I said. ‘It was so real, and yet …’ I shook my head. The nagging doubts remained. ‘He can’t be alive, can he, Will? The pair of us saw him being buried two weeks ago.’ I looked down and tapped the newspaper folded on my lap. ‘Now I read that, according to the Daily Chronicle, O’Rourke was dug up by a gang of grave-robbers and his corpse sold for dissection.’
‘Dissection?’ Will repeated quietly. He frowned. ‘Sunday night you were in the graveyard, right?’
I nodded.
‘Well, that’s interesting,’ he said, ‘because I noticed something odd on Monday morning. In the early hours, it was.’
‘Go on,’ I said, leaning forward in my armchair.
‘I’d had a dawn drop to do for Mr Tilling the apothecary,’ Will went on. ‘There’d been an outbreak of damp-lung at St Jude’s Hospital and I had an emergency consignment of sulphur and morphia pillules to deliver. Old Mr Tilling had been working all through the night to complete them … Anyway, it’s half-four when I arrive at the hospital, and still pitch-black. Just as I get there, I see this old wagon pull up, and these two rough-looking types jump down and drag out a long wooden crate …’
‘A coffin?’ I asked.
‘Same size,’ said Will, ‘but not the same shape. Just a long box, really.’
I nodded. ‘And what did they do with it?’
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ said Will. ‘Instead of going in through the front entrance, they took it round the back, where Bentham was waiting for them.’
‘Bentham?’ I said.
‘The morgue attendant,’ said Will, his top lip curling. ‘Bulgy eyes and warty skin. None of the nurses can stand him … He’s a slippery character at the best of times, but he was looking more furtive than ever that morning. Kept glancing round, and I was sure he gave money to the men …’ Will looked up at me. ‘I didn’t give it much thought at the time, Barnaby, but it could well have been a body.’
‘Firejaw O’Rourke, perhaps?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ said Will. ‘The crate was big enough. And after all, it did arrive the morning after his body went missing …’
I nodded as a shiver ran down my spine. So what exactly had I witnessed in Adelaide Graveyard in my feverish state? Was it a mere figment of my imagination, or not? I certainly hoped it was. The alternative, that Firejaw O’Rourke had indeed come back to life, was too gruesome to consider. Today was Tuesday. Even if the body had been bound for the dissection table, they couldn’t have finished with it already.
‘Come on, Will,’ I said, climbing to my feet. ‘I’m not going to be happy until I’ve found out one way or the other.’
‘The hospital?’ he said.
‘The hospital.’
With my arm still bundled up in its sling, highstacking was out of the question. Instead, Will and I made our way across town down with all the other cobblestone-creepers. It was late afternoon by now, and the streets were thronging.
We dog-legged through the Laynes – ancient cobbled alleys lined with tiny workshops that, each day, burst out of their cramped premises onto the street to display their wares. An elbowing crowd jostled one another as bargain-hunters picked their way through stacks and racks of produce, noisily haggling.
I squeezed past a portly dowager, her nose the colour of port-wine and her fleshy arms buried deep in a pile of tawdry lace antimacassars, who was stridently arguing over their p
rice. A rickets-bowed gardener was inspecting a row of spades outside Guthrie’s Ironmongery next door. Further on, two grubby children were teasing a small bony dog with the toffee-apple they were sharing, making it leap up, before hiding the sweetmeat behind their backs – and leaving the dog yapping with frustration …
As we reached the corner of Marchant Lane and Croup End, the rank odour of the Tivoli Slaughterhouse curdled with the sharp eye-watering tang from Selsey’s vinegar factory, filling the air with an unspeakable odour. Covering our noses, we entered Margolies Street, where a mist of pink and white dust filled the air. Sills, steps, kerbs, ledges; every surface in the narrow street was covered in a fine layer of powder.
Four shops along, the curved sign above a pair of wrought-iron gates announced in gothic lettering, Algernon Mortimer & Company - Monumental Masons. I peered inside as we passed.
Two stocky men in overalls stood at the centre of a yard, their bodies swathed in the billowing dust as they sawed at a large slab of veined stone. A third man – a red-and-black spotted kerchief tied round his head – was seated on a low stool to their right, chisel and mallet in hand, chipping away at an arch-shaped gravestone. He was whistling something bright and tuneful which rose up above the grinding noise of the stone-cutting, the perky melody at odds with the sombre nature of his job.
Stacked about him in rows were finished headstones, each one awaiting their inscriptions. Black, white, pink and grey; some were extravagant, some modest. There were arched slabs and corniced oblongs. One was carved like a scroll, another like a book, its pages fixed for ever half-open, while several were simple yet elegant crosses made of granite or sandstone.
But it wasn’t the gravestones that made me stop and stare, open-mouthed, through the gates of the monumental mason’s. No, it was the sight of the carved figures perched above them – stone angels, wings spread wide, hands clasped and heads bowed, their sightless eyes staring down. I shivered uncontrollably as, for a fleeting moment, I was transported back to the horror of Adelaide Graveyard.
I felt a tug on my arm. ‘You all right, Barnaby?’ Will asked. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a—’
‘Don’t say it,’ I interrupted him. ‘Come on, St Jude’s is just up ahead.’
We rounded the corner of Bishops Walk and there it was, the tall imposing neoclassical frontage of St Jude’s Hospital.
Thirty years earlier, the place had been a scandal – little more than a fever pit from which patients were lucky to get out alive. Its doctors had been the worst kind of sawbones; its nurses gin-soaked drabs. But that had all changed during the last war, when a new kind of nurse had emerged from the army hospitals of the East. These angels of mercy had reformed the appalling conditions in which wounded soldiers had languished, and brought their new methods of sober cleanliness and meticulous order with them when they returned from the war. Now, St Jude’s was a model hospital, bringing relief and comfort to the city’s sick.
‘Busy as ever,’ Will commented, as we approached the forbidding entrance.
I nodded. The forecourt was teeming, with numerous horse-drawn carriages jostling for position at the foot of the circular entrance steps, and a constant stream of people going in and coming out of the great studded doors. Some were on crutches, some were on stretchers and, as we climbed the steps, I found myself making diagnoses of the people we passed.
A young child – his face grazed and legs mashed – who was being carried in by his father must have been the victim of a traffic accident. A woman with a gashed arm, the unfortunate target of a rabid dog. While a grey-skinned, sunken-cheeked old man, coughing violently behind a blood-flecked rag as he lay on a wooden stretcher, was clearly consumptive …
As Will and I entered the great entrance hall, the atmosphere changed. It was light, warm and pungent. The sooty smell of the lamps which were fixed to the walls mixed with the unmistakable odour of carbolic soap. Nurses in crisp white aprons formed the shuffling patients into orderly lines in the great vaulted hall, and sent them off to various parts of the hospital to have their ailments tended to.
‘Broken bones, that way,’ snapped a tall nurse in wire-framed spectacles, eyeing my sling and pointing me down a long corridor to the right.
‘It’s all right, sister,’ said Will, stepping in. ‘He’s with me. We’re making a delivery.’
‘Oh, afternoon, Will,’ said the nurse with a smile. ‘Didn’t see you there.’ She raised her eyes to the vaulted ceiling. ‘Chaos it is, today. Absolute chaos … No, madam,’ she cried out, darting off in pursuit of a portly individual whose face was covered in a suppurating rash. ‘I’ve already told you, the sulphur baths are that way …’
We left her to it. Will steered me across the great hall, the floor tiled with pale grey and green marble slabs and inlaid with a wonderful mosaic depicting the Rod of Asclepius; a single green snake, its venomous mouth agape, wrapped around its knotted length.
‘The morgue’s downstairs,’ he told me as we reached the top of a stairwell on the far side.
There were classical scenes painted on the walls of the stairwell: fluttering winged babies dangling grapes before the mouths of voluptuous maidens; centaurs and satyrs, and groups of men with long robes and thick beards. One individual stood out. Taller than the rest, he had a quill in one hand and an axe in the other and, from the top of his head, a small flame burned at the centre of his halo. Will nodded towards him as we headed down the stairs.
‘St Jude, himself,’ he said.
As we went down the stairs, the sounds from the entrance hall faded. A couple of nurses in crisp white uniforms clutching glowing lanterns passed us, heading in the opposite direction, followed a little later by a doctor, with what I took to be one of those new-fangled wooden stethoscopes tucked into the brim of his top hat. We continued down into the gloomy depths of the great hospital.
At the bottom of the stairs, Will pushed open a pair of dark varnished doors and we entered a large vaulted chamber with rows of wooden trestles stretching away into the shadows. High above our heads a simple chandelier comprising four white candles – three of them burning – hung down from a chain in the centre of the vault.
‘Can I ’elp you?’ A low cracked voice sounded from behind us.
Turning, I saw a small stooped individual in a grubby apron and black, greased-down hair leering back at us. Tipping me the wink, Will stepped forward and produced a glass vial from his pocket.
‘Actually, I think you can,’ said Will. ‘I’m looking for Dr Fitzroy. I’ve got the medicine he requested …’ Will began.
‘Medicine?’ the man repeated, surprised. ‘Don’t you know where you are, son? This is the morgue.’ He nodded towards the shroud-covered trestles. ‘Bit late in the day for medicine for this lot,’ he added and croaked with amusement.
‘Oh, dear, how stupid of me,’ said Will, his voice bright and naive. ‘I don’t suppose you could …?’ His words trailed away.
The morgue attendant tutted and shook his head from side to side. ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘You tick-tock lads! You’d best come with me, son. I’ll see you right.’
He took Will by the arm and the pair of them disappeared through the doors, leaving me alone in the morgue. I turned and approached the rows of trestle tables. Every one was covered with a white shroud from beneath which pairs of feet protruded, each with a tag carefully tied to the big toe. I glanced at the first one.
Eliza Morris, I read, the words written in a slanting black copperplate script. Cause of death: the croup. And underneath, in bold red capitals: FOR BURIAL.
Then at the next, Thomas Rideout. Cause of death: Heart Failure. FOR BURIAL.
I continued down the line. Blow to the head. Apoplexy. Fever … FOR BURIAL, FOR BURIAL, FOR BURIAL … Eight trestles along, I paused, my heart hammering in my chest as I read the tag:
Unknown indigent. Cause of death: Drowning. FOR DISSECTION.
The body beneath the shroud was considerably larger than the others. At the
head of the table, a wisp of hair was just visible which, in the candlelight, seemed to me to have a hint of ginger about it. My hands were shaking as I leaned forwards. I was hot and cold at the same time. I touched the shroud. As I did so, there was a slight, yet unmistakable, movement from beneath the material. I froze, transfixed.
With a soft thump, an arm slipped off the side of the trestle table and dangled loosely, the fingers of the hand gnarled and twisted. My breath came in sharp gasps. Could this be the graverobbed body of Firejaw O’Rourke?
I had to find out.
Moving up to the top end of the table, I took hold of the material, slowly lifted the white sheet – and let out a cry. It wasn’t the Emperor of Gatling Quays at all, but an unfortunate old man at least twenty years his senior, bloated and mottled by harbour water. A tavern drunk most likely, I thought, who’d stumbled on the shoreside cobbles in the dead of night, and whose body had gone unclaimed. The morgue attendant had probably got an arrangement with the Harbour Constabulary – who fished bodies out of the water – and stood to make a few shillings from the doctors upstairs.
But this wasn’t the work of graverobbers.
By all accounts, graverobbers dealt in fresh bodies, where there was real money to be made … I turned away and checked the rest of the tags. Finding no others for dissection, I headed for the door with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment.
As I pushed open the dark varnished door, I heard a high-pitched scream and found myself face to face with a dazzlingly pretty nurse.
‘You startled me!’ she gasped, before stooping to pick up the bundle of blank mortuary tags she had been carrying and which now lay scattered at her feet. ‘This place always gives me the shivers,’ she continued, blushing daintily as I bent to help her. She looked up at me, and frowned. ‘You’re not Bentham!’ she exclaimed.
