“That’s it, Aggie,” said Hare. “Home—with old Burke, the kindest landlord in the town. Burke, be a helpful lad and take the good lady’s arm.”
Burke and Hare, supporting Aggie between them, staggered across to the door, where Hare paused and listened to the silence. It was broken only by the barman’s snores. “Ye know, Burke,” he said, “there’s no-one here to see old Aggie go, except us.”
Out in the street, a nightwatchman called: “Twelve o’ the clock an’ all’s well!” As his shout died away, a distant church bell tolled faintly.
Burke and Hare half-carried, half-dragged Aggie as far as the opening of Tanner’s Close without incident. Then they heard a familiar sound—the blind “bones” player. His click-clack was unmistakable. For Hare, the prospect of murder was exhilarating. He hummed the player’s tune lightly to himself. Suddenly, though, he realized that the player was coming down the close towards them. He drew Burke and Aggie to one side, pushing them into the shadows.
The player had a stick which he tapped on the cobbles in accompaniment to the bones. Burke and Hare held their breath as he drew level. Suddenly he stopped, his stick poised. He sensed that somebody was near him. He turned his head to left and right. Hare bit his lip and stared at Aggie. She was unconscious.
Deciding that he might have been mistaken, the bones player started tapping his stick again. To the partners’ utter relief, he went on into the darkness from which he had come, and the trio continued their unsteady progress to Burke’s house.
“Open the door,” Hare whispered.
Hare dragged the limp Aggie across the threshold and into the living room at the back of the building, where a candle spluttered on the table. Helen lay asleep on the bed in the corner.
Hare steered Aggie to a chair, propped her up in it and said to Burke: “Now gi’ her a drink.”
The noise Burke made as he opened the larder caused Helen to wake with a start. She was amazed to see Aggie.
“What’s that woman doin’ here?” she demanded.
“Mind yer own business,” said Hare.
He glanced at Burke, who was standing at the larder rather uncertainly with a bottle of whisky in his hand, and a mug. Hare took the bottle and mug from him, and Aggie, on hearing the inviting sound of liquid being poured out, woke up instantly.
“Wha’s this place?” she asked, accepting the mug and draining it.
“Ye’re with friends, Aggie,” said Hare. “Me and Mr. Burke here …”
Aggie took one look at Burke and said: “I’m goin’.” She tried to get up, but Hare pushed her back into the chair. Helen, seeing that a dark deed was impending, got out of bed and put a shawl round her shoulders.
“Now Aggie, m’dear,” said Hare. “Ye’re in no condition to be walkin’ abroad. Burke, gi’ Aggie another drink o’ the whisky.”
Aggie drank eagerly, holding the mug in trembling hands.
“That’s me girl,” said Hare. “I can see the bloom comin’ back into yer cheeks already.”
He was aware of Helen standing beside him, staring. “Go outside and keep watch,” he ordered her sharply.
“What for?”
“Do as I say.” He kept looking at Aggie. Helen, feeling frightened, went out down the passage towards the dormitory.
The whisky seemed to fix Aggie to her chair. Her withered sallow face looked crumpled and pathetic. She sat and stared at Hare like a skinny, mesmerised rabbit. Hare’s eyes were greedy.
Burke breathed rapidly. Although he was stronger than Hare physically, committing a murder always made him feel nervous. For a fleeting second he didn’t want to go through with it.
“Willy …” he began.
But Hare whispered confidently: “It won’t take a minute.” For Aggie’s benefit he said loudly: “Now ye wouldn’t want to be turnin’ old Aggie out—not with her feelin’ so weary.”
The candle flickered. Aggie, seeing the fiends standing over her menacingly in the eerie glow, sobered up a little out of sheer fright. “What are ye up to?” she cried.
Hare gave her a friendly hug. “Now Aggie,” he chided. “Surely ye’re not thinkin’ our intentions are dishonourable!” He chuckled. “An’ ye old enough to be me own mother, rest her soul.”
Aggie was doubtful, but Hare’s chuckle reassured her. She smiled at him and took the mug he offered.
“Och, ye’re a couple o’ kind-hearted boys, so ye are,” she said. “There’s not many kind to the old folks these days …”
She drank thirstily. Hare took the empty mug. Then she yawned. “I’m awfu’ sleepy,” she murmured, closing her eyes.
“That’s right, Aggie,” Hare cooed. “Ye have a rest … a good rest …”
He nodded to Burke.
But Burke didn’t move; he hesitated. Hare’s face twisted savagely. He nodded to Burke again, impatiently, urging him to get to work. Eventually Burke, his mind made up, dragged Aggie on to the bed and clasped a hand over her mouth.
She struggled furiously. Hare danced away, pinching his nostrils and gesturing to Burke to do the same to Aggie’s. As the fight continued, Hare gripped the foot of the bed, jumping up and down in exultation, a weird half-smile on his face, urging Burke on.
Aggie kicked out violently and Hare had to skip back a pace or two. But gradually her movements became more feeble. With one final twitch, they stopped.
Burke looked down at her and backed away from the bed. The only sound in the room was his laboured breathing. He was thoroughly shaken by the experience.
Not so Hare. He slapped Burke on the arm. “Hardly a whisper!” he said. “To be sure the old girl’s better off. She’d nowhere to go. That must be a terrible thing when ye’re old.”
Burke was still staring at Aggie. “She bit my hand, Willy,” he said. “She bit it.”
“Well, ye canna blame her for that, can ye?” Hare replied. He dragged a large tea chest out of a corner into the middle of the room. “Now let’s undress her and get her in here, Burke. Fold her up nicely.”
CHAPTER V
Trade Starts Picking Up
“I think you might have called at a more convenient time,” said Dr. Knox, descending the cellar steps. He was resplendent in a dressing gown of red brocade with pink quilted lapels. “It’s nearly six o’clock in the morning.”
“Indeed we apologise, yer honour,” said Hare. “But knowing how ye like them fresh, we brought poor Aggie along at once.”
Aggie, covered with sacking, lay on the dissecting table. Knox looked at her briefly and made his customary comment: “Excellent.”
He started counting coins into Hare’s mittened hand. “Three … four … five. Where did you find her, by the way?”
“In the street, yer honour, dead drunk.”
“Quite understandable,” Knox replied. “The police tell me that as many as six of these poor creatures die in the streets from drink most nights of the week.”
“Drink can be a terrible curse, yer honour,” said Hare. “But thanks to it, this old woman is as fresh as a herrin’.”
Burke cut in: “An’ she’s already pickled, so to speak!”
Knox smiled thinly. “I prefer the subjects pickled externally. This one is liable to explode.”
Burke and Hare looked horrified.
“Oh, indeed they do sometimes, when the alcohol content is too high,” Knox went on. He counted more coins into Hare’s palm to bring the total to £10, and turned to the waiting Davey. “See to the subject later in the morning, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
Knox pulled back the sacking and studied Aggie in more detail. “Hm, it was her heart, I suppose,” he said.
Hare switched the conversation to less embarrassing channels. “Ah, ye’re a fine man to do business with, Doctor,” he said briskly. “Would ye still be wantin’ a more or less regular supply of unfortunates?”
“There is always a big demand for them here.”
“An’ isn’t there hundreds like her? Nowhere to sleep—an
’ with the freezin’ cold, it’s a wonder the whole place isn’t littered with corpses!”
“I gather you live in Edinburgh?” said Knox.
“Aye we do.”
“Down on the west side?”
Hare thought it best to keep his address secret. He simply said: “We are well acquainted with all parts of the city, yer honour.”
Knox didn’t press the point, and never asked the question again; indeed, right until Burke’s trial, he had no exact knowledge of where the partners lived.
Aggie’s face, he observed, was dark and livid in appearance, and there were spots of blood about her nose and mouth—signs of strangulation or suffocation. But he made no comment on this as he went up the cellar steps for another hour in bed. To Davey, who was following him, and who clearly guessed the true circumstances of Aggie’s arrival, he muttered: “Probably the best thing for her.”
“She was a fair age, sir,” replied Davey. “She’ll serve a more useful purpose now than she did when she was alive.”
Burke and Hare stepped into the dawn light in the back alleyway. Hare closed the door behind him and looked up at the sky, pleased with the night’s work. He breathed the clean air deeply, exclaiming: “What a grand day for livin’!”
Burke was more thoughtful. “Aye,” he said slowly.
As the partners emerged from the alleyway into Surgeons’ Square, they passed one of Dr. Knox’s posters advertising his current courses of “Practical Anatomy and Operative Surgery”.
Printed in heavy black type, it ran:
Two DEMONSTRATIONS will be delivered daily to the Gentlemen attending the Rooms for PRACTICAL ANATOMY. These Demonstrations will be arranged so as to comprise complete Courses of the DESCRIPTIVE ANATOMY of the Human Body, with its application to PATHOLOGY and OPERATIVE SURGERY. The Dissections and Operations to be under the immediate superintendance of DR. KNOX. Arrangements have been made to secure as usual an ample supply of Anatomical Subjects.
FEE for the First Course, £3 5s.; Second Course, £2 4s.; Perpetual, £5 9s.
N.B.—An Additional Fee of Three Guineas includes subjects.
Certificates of Attendance on these Courses qualify for Examination before the Royal College of Surgeons, the Army and Navy Medical Boards, etc.
Hare examined the poster with interest, and tapped with a bony linger the line: “Arrangements have been made to secure as usual an ample supply of Anatomical Subjects”.
“Do ye know what?” he said. “A man could become a millionaire at our game!”
“Do ye think so, Willy?”
They started walking towards Tanner’s Close. “That’s what I’m tellin’ ye,” said Hare. “An’ do ye know, it gives a man pride; respect of himself when he knows he’s doin’ a good job. Just think on it—Burke and Hare, members of the great medical profession!” He laughed loudly.
The partners went straight to their homes. Hare, having instructed his wife that he was not to be disturbed, slept soundly for the rest of the morning. Burke, however, was a person to repent his crimes. That day, as always after a murder, he put a bottle of whisky beside his bed to help him to sleep, and when he awoke soon afterwards, with nightmares, he drained half the bottle in a single draught. He couldn’t forget how Aggie’s body, even after she had stopped breathing, twitched as he tried to push it into the tea chest, and he kept hearing, again and again, the long, low rumbling that came from her stomach.
At 9 a.m. Dr. Knox, proudly wearing a brilliant yellow silk waistcoat, mounted the platform in his classroom for the first of the day’s lectures. “Today, gentlemen,” he said, indicating with a wooden pointer a human skeleton hanging on a metal stand beside him, “we deal with the skull. First, though, you may be interested to hear an item of information which has come to my notice.”
The students waited expectantly for what they knew would be another of the doctor’s acid condemnations of his medical colleagues.
“An extraordinary surgical operation,” Knox went on, “has this morning been performed in a neighbouring building by a gentleman who, I believe, regards himself as the first surgeon in Europe.”
The students instantly recognized this as a reference to Dr. Ferguson.
“A country labourer from the neighbourhood of Tranent came to the Infirmary a few days ago with an aneurism of considerable extent, connected with one of the main arteries of the neck. Notwithstanding of it being obvious to the merest tyro that it was an aneurism, the most distinguished surgeon in Europe, after an apparently searching examination, pronounced it to be an abscess.
“Accordingly, this professional celebrity—who among other things plumes himself upon the wonderful strength of his hands and arms, without pretension to head, and is an amateur member of the ring—plunged his knife into what he thus foolishly imagined to be an abscess. The blood burst forth from the deep gash in the aneurismal sac, and the patient was dead in a few seconds!”
Knox paused, surveying the expressions of incredulous amusement on the faces of his class before continuing: “The notable member of the profession is actually an extra-academical lecturer on surgery in this great metropolis, and on this occasion was assisted by a gentleman similarly constituted both intellectually and physically, who had been trained under the fostering care of a learned professor in a certain university”—clearly, the students thought, Dr. Monro—“who inherited his anatomical genius from his ancestors.
“Tracing the assistant of our distinguished operator further back, I have discovered that he had been originally apprenticed to a butcher of this city, but that he had been dismissed from this service for stealing a sheep’s head and trotters from his employer’s shambles!”
Raising a hand to stop the gust of laughter, Knox concluded: “It is surely unnecesary for me to add that a knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology and surgery is neither connected with, nor dependent upon, brute force, ignorance and presumption; nor has it anything to do with an utter destitution of honour and common honesty.”
He then tapped the skeleton’s skull with the pointer. “And now, gentlemen, to deal with the matter on hand. I draw your attention to the protuberance of the frontal lobe. This individual might have been a useful citizen. But he was hanged some twenty years ago for murdering his entire family.”
Abruptly, Knox turned to the class and called: “Mr. Jackson!”
Although Jackson sat in the second row, his mind was far away. He thought of Mary, the walk by the river and the events of yesterday evening; how he had asked her to marry him, and how she had said she would think about it. At Dr. Knox’s call, Jackson was nudged from his day-dream by the student next to him. “Sir!” said Jackson.
“Would you be kind enough to step on to the platform?” Knox requested.
Jackson rose from his seat and crossed to stand beside the skeleton.
“Now, sir,” said Knox, “please explain to us the way in which modern surgery might have saved this man from the gallows.”
“Yes, sir …”
“Use the pointer, Mr. Jackson.”
Jackson picked up the pointer where Knox had left it on the desk and studied the skeleton’s head. There was a long silence.
“We are waiting,” said Knox pleasantly.
Jackson turned to face Knox. “First … er …” he began.
“Please don’t mumble the word ‘sir’,” Knox reminded him. “And turn your head so that the class can hear you.”
“Yes, sir. First … by … er … removing the protuberance of the frontal lobe …”
Knox looked as if he would burst with fury. “Removing it?” he roared. “What are you proposing to do—scalp him?”
The students laughed. Knox rapped his knuckles on the top of the desk angrily. The laughter subsided.
Quietly Jackson murmured: “I’m sorry, sir …”
“You can’t enlighten us?”
“No, sir.”
“Were you not given a thesis to prepare on this subject, Mr. Jackson?”
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid I …”
“That will be all,” said Knox coldly. “Mr. Smedley!”
As Jackson returned ignominiously to his seat, Smedley, a thick-set, ginger-haired student from Newcastle, marched up to the desk, picked up the pointer and waited confidently for Knox’s signal to begin.
“Proceed, Mr. Smedley,” said the doctor.
“Modern surgery,” said the student, “could have lifted part of the lobe—so—approximately one-eighth of an inch to take pressure from the brain.”
“Very good,” said Knox. “Continue, please.”
Jackson’s humiliation was complete. But as Smedley’s voice droned on, already his thoughts were slipping away, wondering why it was that some evenings Mary was late in coming to him.
He was still wondering that question at midnight. He had made a real effort to catch up with his work. The table in his room, lit by an oil lamp, was littered with hastily-written manuscripts. Mary had promised to be with him by eight, and every half-hour he had gone out on the stairs to listen. But there was no sign of her.
He couldn’t keep awake any longer. He yawned, lay down on the bed, fully clothed, and was quickly asleep.
A little chiming clock on the table was striking the quarter to two when Mary’s voice echoed up from the street outside. She was singing loudly, with drunken abandon. Jackson stirred. A minute later the door of the room was flung open. Mary swayed in across the threshold. Her hair was awry; her bodice was open and revealing.
Jackson stared in disbelief as she finished her song, using broad theatrical gestures and supporting herself by clutching at the bedrail. Her mood changed to sudden annoyance when she noticed Jackson’s work on the table.
“What are ye starin’ at me like that for?” she demanded.
“I was just … looking,” said Jackson dully. He couldn’t bear to see her like this. She read in his eyes his silent condemnation, then ran to a cracked mirror on the wall and peered into it, loathing what she saw.
She whirled round, and with a sweep of her hands sent the entire contents of the table—the clock, the quill pens, the bottle of ink and the lamp—hurtling to the floor. The lamp crashed on the boards at the foot of the curtains, which caught ablaze almost instantly.
The Flesh and the Fiends Page 7
