The Minutes of the Lazarus Club

by Tony Pollard

  The Minutes of the Lazarus Club

  TONY POLLARD

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published 2008

  1

  Copyright © Tony Pollard, 2008

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-190854-0

  Acknowledgements

  I am very grateful to the executors of Dr George Phillips for granting permission to fictionalize his journals. The staff of the I. K. Brunel archive at Bristol University were equally helpful during my visits to their incredibly rich resource. Many thanks also to Maria Heffernan of the Instituto de Taquari in Asuncion, Paraguay, for doing so much to facilitate access to the recently rediscovered minutes of the Lazarus Club. While every effort has been made to portray the events documented in these various sources accurately, any errors in fact or interpretation are the responsibility of the author alone.

  Prologue

  The waterman whistled as he pulled on the oars, his small craft carrying him slowly but steadily downstream along Limehouse Reach. He’d set out from the mouth of the Limehouse Basin and was heading for Greenwich, across the river from the southern tip of the Isle of Dogs. It was his pitch, and it took in almost three miles of river. There were other watermen and other pitches but this was his and over the years he had come to know every eddy, backwash and mudflat and had long regarded it as home.

  Pausing for a moment, he tugged down the peak of his cap against a shower of rain which for a short while turned the brown surface of the water into a sheet of hammered copper. Around his feet were collected all manner of things: pieces of timber, lengths of rope, cork fenders, bottles, various sodden items of clothing and even a small chair. He didn’t care who they once belonged to; they were his now. He was employed by the bailiff to clear the river of obstacles to navigation but any stray object floating in the water within the bounds of his beat was legally his property once lifted aboard. All very official it was: you only needed to look at his smart blue uniform to see that.

  He had been out since dawn and by now had covered well over half the beat – the ache in his arms and the twinge from his back told him that much. It had been an average day thus far but he was pleased with the chair: the wife could put it by the fire. The boat hugged the eastern side of the channel, where it was out of the way of the heavy traffic but also close to where most of the stuff drifting downstream would naturally be drawn by the current. At low tide much of the floating windfall would be left stranded on the flats, where it would fall prey to the gangs of mudlarks working both sides of the river. There was no such worry now, though, as the tide was at its fullest.

  Moored boats were always a good place – sometimes three or four would be tied together, side by side. These tethered flotillas served as traps for anything coming into their path and so the waterman would paddle around them and snag whatever was bobbing against the hulls or caught in the ropes. It was to such a spot that he was pulling now, just on the edge of the shipyard where Brunel’s great ship was being built, side on to the river. The yard also yielded more than its share of treasures – planks of timber, paint pots and lengths of heavy rope. The boats, a skiff and a pair of barges, were moored just fifty yards or so downriver from the yard and so provided the perfect opportunity for a good haul.

  Favouring one oar over the other, the waterman manœuvred the boat to the stern of the stationary vessels and with the long-poled boat hook in hand began to look for floating objects. Wedged between the barge in the middle and the skiff was a length of broken ladder, just long enough, he judged, to be of use again. After some difficulty in pulling it free he stowed it with the rest of the stuff.

  It was then he heard the noise, a scuffing and scratching interspersed with the odd sharp croak. Using the hook against the stern of the middle vessel, he nudged the small boat a little closer into shore. That was when he saw them.

  Two scabrous-looking gulls were perched on something floating in the river but seemingly fastened to the lee board of the shoreward barge. They were squabbling over whatever it was the larger of the two was jealously clutching in its beak. It took the waterman a moment or two to realize that the birds were perched on the back of a dead body, the head having become wedged between the lee board and the hull. The corpse was white as a ghost and entirely naked. With its slender limbs and long hair spread out on the water like a dark weed it could only be a woman – that or a child.

  Although he found the nudity distasteful, as he did the vision of two birds fighting over a freshly plucked eyeball, coming across a body in the river caused him little upset. He had, after all, encountered dozens of bodies in his time, many of them suicides who had thrown themselves off one of the bridges further upstream. Quite often they were sucked under almost immediately by the current and dragged downstream, to surface again only once they reached his beat. He had no idea how many of them remained submerged and made it all the way down the river to be expelled into the open sea beyond.

  Clearing the river of dead bodies, or ‘floaters’, as they were known in the trade, was all part of his job as a waterman. Indeed, he was paid a small bonus for every corpse he fished from the water and delivered back to the land.

  After edging the boat as far between the two barges as the gap would allow, he stood in the prow and used the boat hook to dislodge the birds, forcing them to continue their fight over the morsel elsewhere. Then he used it to lever back the board just enough to allow the corpse to slip free. As it came away the body rolled over on to its back. It was then that the stench hit him.

  The black funk came straight from the charnelhouse and caused him to retch and his eyes to water. He knew from past experience that the sickly-sour smell of a human corpse is just as much a taste as it is a smell, but this was the worst he had ever experienced. This one must have been under for quite some time – retting like flax in the murky depths. When his eyes recovered he was horrified to see a further reason for the noisome stench. Where the chest had once been there was now a gaping chasm, two folds of ragged flesh lying open on either side of it like the pages of a book no one would ever care to read. Catching the hook u
nder one of the armpits, he pulled the fleshy mass towards him, taking care to turn away when he needed to take a breath. What kind of accident could have caused that wound?

  Using one of the rags in the bottom of the boat to cover his hand, he took hold of an arm slippery with corruption and pulled the corpse most of the way up the side of the boat before thinking better of it and letting it drop back into the water. There was no way he was going to have that thing on board. Instead he took one of the lengths of rope and looped it around a wrist before securing the other end to the stern.

  Perhaps she had come into contact with a ship’s paddle wheel or one of the new-fangled screws? They’d make a mess of you all right. At times you could barely move out on the water, what with so much traffic plying its way backward and forward from the Pool of London.

  He had tried not to look too hard but now, with her so close, he couldn’t help himself. There was enough of the face left to tell it was a woman and that that was no accidental injury. She’d been carved, deliberately cut open – slit from stem to stern. He’d seen murder before but nothing this bad.

  Peering closer, he saw something dark glistening inside, something stirring in the cavity of her chest. Whatever it was began to thrash, sending out spurts of water. Then it sprang forth, uncoiling its sleek black body and launching itself at the waterman. He let out a yell and fell backwards, landing in the bottom of the boat alongside the dreadful thrashing form of the eel. Recovering himself, he tried to get a hold of the writhing creature, but it slipped away and wriggled between the objects in the hull. Eventually he managed to trap it in a shirt and, after wrapping it as best he could, he threw the garment and the eel as far away from the boat as possible. Within an instant the shirt had disappeared beneath the surface as the beast thrashed its way downward, for a while the best-dressed fish in the river.

  Returning his attentions to the corpse, he checked his knots and, not being able to resist one last look, ascertained that there had been space for the eel in the poor woman’s chest because her organs – heart, lungs, everything – were missing. Surely to God the eel hadn’t eaten them? He thought he was going to be sick.

  Pulling himself together, he took a seat and, after pushing away, replaced the oars in their locks. Although the yard was close he thought it better to land his gruesome catch on a quieter part of the shore and so he headed downriver awhile, the body bobbing along behind. As he sat with his face to the stern he had no option but to watch as the pale form of the woman dipped beneath the water with each stroke, only to resurface a moment later. At times the free arm flexed and it looked as though she were swimming, trying to catch up with the boat.

  He rowed faster.

  1

  Hard used, the cadaver was reduced to little more than a tattered shell and would last no longer than one more dissection. Apart from the brain, which I would remove tomorrow, all of the internal organs had been decanted into buckets sitting on the sawdust-covered floor. In one of them was the heart, along with the liver, kidneys and lungs, while in the other coiled entrails glistened like so many freshly caught fish.

  William fetched a bowl of warm water and took away the buckets while I washed the gore from my hands. The boisterous press of students had departed with its usual rapidity, and believing myself to be alone, it came as a surprise to hear a bench creak as a weight shifted upon it. I looked up to catch sight of someone moving in the gloom of the gallery. Reaching the aisle, he walked down the steps towards me – a short man, shoulders hunched beneath a head perhaps too heavy for them to bear.

  He stepped into the winter sunlight shafting down through the skylight. His face was round and pale, with eyes set back in caves of tired flesh. Whiskered jowls sank below the rim of his collar and only the well-defined lines of his lips, which were clamped tightly around the stub of a cigar, suggested good looks only recently worn away. His clothes were well cut but crumpled, as though he had given up taking care of his appearance. He stopped beside the operating table and looked for some moments into the yellow face of the cadaver. This man was clearly no medical student, but nonetheless there was something familiar about him.

  ‘It comes to us all,’ I said, wiping my instruments clean before packing them away. The stranger continued to study the cadaver, his eyes travelling down the length of the gaping torso.

  ‘Death perhaps, but surely not this,’ he said, without removing the cigar from his mouth nor his gaze from the corpse.

  ‘I think you can rest assured of that, sir. This poor soul came from the workhouse, but may as well have come from a prison.’

  He looked at me and pulled out the cigar. ‘So he wasn’t robbed from his grave then? I thought that was how you fellows got hold of your bodies.’

  This made me smile. ‘You have been reading too many Penny-bloods, my friend. That sordid trade came to a stop over twenty years ago, with the passing of the Anatomy Act. Now we get our subjects legally from the hospitals and the poorhouses – generally from among those who can’t afford funerals. There is no shortage of them, I’m afraid.’

  I took off my surgeon’s coat and hung it on a peg before trying to extract an introduction from him. ‘I don’t recall seeing you here before. You’re not one of my students, are you?’

  The cigar had long before burnt out and he looked for a suitable receptacle in which to deposit the well-chewed stump. For a moment I feared the open trough of the cadaver’s torso had been selected, but to my relief he elected to drop it into the pocket of his frock coat.

  ‘Oh no,’ he replied, eyes still fixed on the corpse. ‘I think I’m a little long in the tooth to be taking up a new profession. I’ve only just mastered my own and think I’ll stick with it, if you don’t mind.’ Looking up, he held out his hand. ‘Dr Phillips, let me introduce myself. Brunel’s the name.’

  ‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel?’ I asked, now realizing why he appeared familiar to me. The man and his engineering exploits were well known, and his portrait often accompanied articles dedicated to one or other of his creations.

  His handshake displayed a strength belied by his rather unhealthy appearance. He looked back at the cadaver. ‘Yes. The engineer.’

  ‘The whole of London is talking about your ship. When will she be launched?’

  ‘I would rather not discuss her at the moment, if you don’t mind, sir,’ he snapped. ‘That ship has become the bane of my life.’

  His sharp response should perhaps have come as no surprise, as barely a week of 1857 had gone by without the newspapers revelling in the difficulties related to the ship’s construction, and now that she was finally ready to be launched they took pleasure in predicting that Brunel would never get her into the water. She was, after all, by far the largest ship ever built.

  A change of tack was required. ‘What brings you to St Thomas’s, sir? I am not accustomed to men of such reputation as yourself sitting in on my lectures.’

  Brunel’s expression warmed a little. ‘My apologies for being brusque with you, doctor. The past few months have been a very stressful time. And as for my presence here, they say you are one of the finest surgeons in London. I hope it was not improper of me to invite myself along?’

  ‘You flatter me, sir, but no, not at all, I am delighted you found my little performance worth your time.’

  He didn’t seem to be listening, for the cadaver had once again captured his attention, and so I called for William to remove the cause of his distraction.

  ‘I have been around machines for far too long, doctor,’ he said with a touch of regret. ‘I have devoted my entire life to things mechanical. I thought it was time to learn something about the machine that I am. I hope to God, though, when the boilers go out they don’t break me down for scrap, not like that poor wretch.’

  There was a loud crash as William slammed the trolley into the side of the door. I suspected he had been drinking spirits in the storeroom again.

  ‘William, be careful!’ I shouted, not wishing to cause my visitor any
more upset over the treatment of the cadaver. As a matter of course I wouldn’t give two hoots. The dead are dead and that’s it. They don’t care if you put them in a hole, chop them up or feed them to a fire. At St Thomas’s, however, the corpse was never left to such a wasteful end. After they had been worked to the bone William would take what remained down into the cellar and boil them up in a vat, removing any last remnants of flesh. The bones were then taken to the articulator, who, after purchasing them for a small fee, which William was always careful to share with me, wired them back together and sold the skeletons on to students as anatomical specimens.

  I went to put on my overcoat while Brunel pulled on a strap drawn tightly across his chest to reveal a leather satchel from behind his back. Unshackling a buckle, he exposed the tips of a dozen or so fresh smokes sitting side by side in what had to be the biggest cigar case I had ever seen; Brunel was clearly a man who didn’t do things by halves. He pulled one out and rolled it gently between his lips, moistening the end before biting it off and spitting it on to the floor. As he played a match over the rolled leaf it gave off thick clouds of smoke and a pungent aroma which even the sickly haze of preserving spirit could not mask. One puff was enough to improve Brunel’s humour.

  ‘That was the third of your lectures I have attended, doctor. I have found them fascinating, most fascinating. But one thing has been puzzling me. I have been addressing you as doctor, just as I have heard others call you, but is it not usually the case that you surgeons refer to yourselves as mister?’

  ‘Well spotted, sir. There has long been a fashion for surgeons to be misters rather than doctors; it goes back to our medieval origins as barbers, when razors were used to cut more than beards. But in addition to my training to be a surgeon I also earned a doctorate in philosophy for my research, so people tend to use my academic title. Anyway, my patients seem happier believing they are being treated by a doctor rather than a plain old mister.’