“Me? I never touched her!”
“You took her to Doctor Knox’s … you and your cut-throat friend.”
“Now listen here,” Burke protested. “I …”
Jackson leapt at him. Burke warded off the attack and brought his thick arm down on the side of Jackson’s neck. Jackson recovered from the blow; again he lashed out at Burke, sending him reeling backwards on to the bed.
“Murderer!” Jackson screamed.
Then he gripped Burke by the throat. His anger seemed to give him twice his normal strength. Burke hit back at him, but was drowsy with liquor. Jackson hung on, pressing his thumbs against Burke’s windpipe.
Suddenly, Jackson stiffened. He gave a sharp, low groan of agony and his grip on Burke relaxed. He swayed—and Burke rolled aside to let him slump on the bed.
Burke looked up to see, behind Jackson, the leering face of Hare. And as Jackson fell, Burke also saw that a table-knife had been plunged into his back, up to the handle.
Hare stooped over Jackson and withdrew the knife. Next he turned the body over, face uppermost, to make sure it was dead. Carefully he tugged a handkerchief out of Jackson’s trouser pocket and wiped the blood from the blade.
Burke was shaken by his narrow escape. He lurched to the table, with a hand at his throat, poured himself a drink and gulped it down.
“Well,” said Hare casually, “there’s one subject we canna go sellin’ to Doctor Knox!”
“Wha’ shall we do wi’ him?”
“Wait till it’s dark.”
“Wha’ then?”
“Take him to an alley and let the police puzzle how he got there!”
Burke was worried. “The police? That’s askin’ for trouble!”
“The police ha’ hundreds o’ unsolved murders on their hands, an’ here’s another to add to their collection. This murder is the same as the rest o’ ours. No more than two people ha’ seen it done. When we leave here tonight the body will, in the eyes of the world, seem as alive as the rest o’ us. Just a wee bit drunk, that’s all …”
“It’s a sly one ye are, Willy, an’ no mistake!” Burke admitted with a smile.
At eleven o’clock that night the partners left Tanner’s Close, dragging Jackson between them. His coat collar was turned well up, and Hare had pushed a hat over his face.
At the end of the Close, a man came towards them.
“Easy does it, old fellow!” said Hare in a loud voice to Jackson. “Ye’ll be sober in the mornin’!”
After the man had passed, Hare glanced at him anxiously, but he continued on his way, not having noticed anything unusual.
As the partners neared the Market Place, Daft Jamie appeared out of a side street and began walking in step beside them. Hare longed to tell him to go away, but thought it would arouse suspicion.
“Wha’s the matter wi’ yer friend?” asked Jamie.
“He’s fine,” said Hare irritably. “We’ll see ye later, Jamie.”
Hare quickened the pace, but so did Jamie.
“Och I may as well come wi’ ye,” he said. “I’ve nothin’ to do. Can I gi’ ye a hand?” Much to the consternation of Burke, he tried to look under Jackson’s hat. “He doesn’ae look very well,” he said.
“He’s all right,” said Hare. “He’s had too much to drink, that’s all.”
“I wish I could say that for meself!”
Hare paused. “Here,” he said, searching in his coat pocket. He pressed a coin into Jamie’s hand and walked off so rapidly that Burke stumbled in his haste to keep up. Burke and Hare had reached the other side of the street and were disappearing down a narrow passageway when Jamie looked at the coin.
“Hey, Mister Hare! Mister Hare!” he called in astonishment. “Ye’ve given me a guinea!”
His benefactor had gone. Jamie smiled happily at his unexpected wealth; then, as he walked on, he began to wonder. Surely there was something odd in Hare, who was rather a skinflint, giving him such a lot of money just for drink, and hurrying off.
For the rest of that night Jamie pondered this, the most extraordinary riddle he’d ever come across …
Dr. Knox was finishing breakfast when Davey knocked respectfully at the dining room door and announced: “There’s a police constable to see you, sir.”
For a moment, Knox wondered if Elliott and his friends were carrying out their threat of taking him to the courts, but the policeman said: “We’ve a body in the mortuary, sir. It was found earlier today, and there’s reason to believe it is one of your students—Christopher Jackson by name. You might like to see what we found in his pocket.”
The policeman held out a crumpled sheet of paper. Knox looked at it. “Indeed, it is his timetable of my lectures for this term.”
“We’d be grateful, sir, if you would identify the body.”
“Certainly,” said Knox, folding his napkin. “I’ll come right now.”
The Doctor was in the hall, with Davey putting a cape round his shoulders, when he saw Mitchell. “Care for a trip to the mortuary?” he asked. “It’ll make a change from our own downstairs.”
“What’s happened?” said Mitchell.
“The police have found a body. They say it’s one of my students.”
“Which one?”
“Jackson.”
The mortuary, a low stone building, was a short coach-ride away. Knox and Mitchell were met there by Inspector McCulloch, a tall, bearded man dressed sombrely in black. Jackson lay on a white marble slab. The Inspector lifted the sheet that covered the body and Knox gazed impassively at the dead, white, upturned face.
“It’s Christopher Jackson,” he said.
“You are quite sure, sir?” asked the Inspector.
“Quite. You say he was stabbed?”
“Yes, sir,” McCulloch answered. “Do you know of any reason why someone should want to kill him?”
“None. He was a quiet lad, hard-working … I don’t know about his private life, of course.”
“Or you, Doctor Mitchell?” asked the Inspector.
Mitchell paused before replying: “No, I can’t think why anyone should wish to kill him.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said McCulloch briskly. “I don’t think I need detain you any longer.”
The two doctors sat in silence in the coach for most of the return journey to Surgeons’ Square until Knox said: “Why did you lie to the police?”
“Did you want me to tell the truth?’
“Why not?”
“I think I’ve already made myself clear on that point.”
“Your consideration for me is very touching, Mitchell. However, if you believe that the life of a street woman is more important than the advance of surgery, stand in the Market Place and scream ‘Murder!’ to the mob!”
Mitchell replied quietly: “I was thinking of Jackson.”
“Poor Jackson,” said Knox with genuine sympathy. “If he really believed that his girl was murdered, why didn’t he come to me—or, better still, to the police?”
“When a man takes the law into his own hands,” said Mitchell, “he does so out of despair. I hope others won’t be driven to the same extremity.”
The dissection of Mary’s body did not begin that day, however. On Knox’s orders she was preserved in spirit for several weeks, thus providing a lucrative income for Davey. All the medical students in Edinburgh seemed to want to see her, and he had to be suitably persuaded to take them down to the cellar for a look.
The activities of the partners, meanwhile, continued undiminished, with Burke playing a leading role. Many months previously, when he was trading in boots and shoes, he knew an old cinder-gatherer whom he simply called “Effie”. She sold him scraps of leather which she found in the cinder-buckets, and he used these to cobble his wares. Not knowing that Burke had changed his profession, she called on him one day in Tanner’s Close.
“Are ye wantin’ more leather?” she asked. “’Tis a long time since ye bought any.”
Burke at o
nce realized that she would make useful material for Knox. He invited her in. When she saw the amount of money that Burke could afford to spend on whisky, she tried to wheedle the secret from him.
“I’ll tell ye bye an’ bye,” he kept promising. “Ha’ some more whisky now. It’ll do ye good!”
Within a couple of hours Effie was totally incapable. Burke went out to fetch Hare; the murder was committed, and Knox paid his top price of £10.
Burke made a habit of patrolling the streets of the West Port during the early hours of each morning in the hope of finding victims. In the middle of May he was near the Watch-house when he displayed daring and enterprise worthy of Hare. Two policemen were hauling a drunken, insensible woman into the Watch-house. Burke was indignant at such gross discourtesy.
“Let her go,” he said. “I know where she lodges and will take her home.”
“Will ye?” said one of the policemen, greatly relieved.
“Ye’re a Good Samaritan,” said the other. “This isn’ae a job we like.”
“I’m always willin’ to help the police,” said Burke.
The policemen gladly let him carry the woman off to Tanner’s Close, where he used plenty of whisky to ensure that she didn’t regain consciousness during the coming day—or at any other time. She too, was judged by Knox to be worth £10.
In June, the partners committed one of the cruellest and most revolting of their crimes.
Burke befriended an old man in the Merry Duke. He wasn’t the most promising of clients; he had been a sailor and lost one of his arms in Nelson’s Egyptian campaign. Burke didn’t like to think how much Knox would deduct from his price for a subject which wasn’t complete. Also the man had been weakened by tropical disease and was little more than a skeleton. Nevertheless, no other prospective victims were on offer, and Burke reflected that in his business, as in all others, one had to take the bad with the good.
At about eight in the morning, after an all-night drinking session, Burke suggested: “If ye’ll do me the honour of comin’ to my house I’ll gi’ ye a dram of whisky like ye never tasted before!”
The sailor was only too pleased to accept, and followed Burke out into the street, rolling more than ever he’d done in his shipboard days. The couple hadn’t gone far when a plump, red faced woman in a woollen shawl stopped them. She held a bundle of belongings in one hand; her other hand was held tightly by a thin, sickly boy of twelve.
“Can ye help a poor woman?” she said.
“I’ve no money,” Burke snapped.
The woman laughed. “I dinna want yer money,” she said. “Me an’ Malcolm here—my wee grandson—ha’ tramped from Glasgow an’ are lookin’ for some friends of ours, the Stuarts. Do ye know them?”
“There’s a lot o’ Stuarts in Edinburgh,” said Burke.
“But ye must know them,” the woman insisted. “Annie, the mother, has dark hair. The father’s a baker and they’ve two bonny children, both boys.”
Burke looked at the woman, and then at the sailor. Of the two, the woman was by far the better physical specimen and would command a bigger price at Surgeons’ Square. He turned extremely pleasant.
“Do I detect a trace o’ Irish in that voice o’ yours?” he asked.
The woman was delighted. “To be sure,” she said, “I was born in Ireland.”
“No!” said Burke. “So was I! At Orrey in County Tyrone.”
“Och, me darlin’ mother came from County Tyrone. ’Tis wonderful findin’ a friend like yerself so quickly!”
Burke promised to do what he could to put her in touch with the Stuarts. First, though, he had to get rid of the sailor. The group was standing outside a gin shop, so Burke gave the sailor tuppence, saying: “Be a good lad and buy us a bottle.”
The moment he had gone into the shop, Burke hustled the Irish woman and the boy round the nearest corner.
“Wha’ about yer friend?” asked the woman.
“He’s all right,” said Burke. “He knows the way home. He’ll be joinin’ us later.”
As the trio hurried through the streets Burke assured the woman that since she was a compatriot she’d be welcome to stay with him for as long as she liked while she searched for her friends. On arrival at Tanner’s Close the house was empty—Helen, in the absence of her husband, having gone elsewhere in search of companionship—and Burke sent the child out on to the waste ground at the back to play. Then he made the woman drunk in the living room as the necessary preliminary to killing her, putting her in a tea chest and nailing down the lid. There was a macabre scene when Burke, Helen and the boy had a meal late in the afternoon. Burke, in order to give the boy a seat at the table, drew up the chest and sat him on it.
The child had been dumb since birth, but he soon made it obvious by his worried behaviour that he wanted his grandmother.
“She’s lookin’ for the Stuarts,” Burke told him.
The boy was given a bed in the empty dormitory that night while Burke and Hare sat in the back room and discussed his future.
Burke said: “Take him into the street and lose him!”
“That’d only start questions,” said Hare. “I’m thinkin’ he’ll have to go the same way as his granny.”
Early the next morning, Hare went out to buy a container big enough for two bodies. By this time, the child was getting frantic at the absence of his grandmother and resented Burke’s constant instructions to stay in the cold dormitory. At eight-fifteen Burke decided to get the murder over and done with.
“All right,” he called from the living room. “Come along in wi’ me and warm yerself by the fire!”
The lad came. Burke closed the living room door and grabbed him. Then he held him face upwards across his knee and broke his back like a stick of wood before suffocating him. (Burke later confessed that this murder troubled him more than any other. The mute pleading in the boy’s eyes haunted him for the rest of his days.)
Hare returned shortly afterwards with an old herring barrel. Both corpses were put into it and loaded on to Hare’s cart for delivery to Surgeons’ Square. For some mysterious reason, the horse stopped when it reached the Mealmarket in the Cowgate and refused to move another inch.
“Gid on wi’ ye!” said Burke impatiently.
But the horse wouldn’t budge, even when Burke got down and tried to lead it along by the bridle. Eventually Hare’s shouts and curses attracted a crowd.
“It’s no good,” said Burke, “we’ll ha’ to take the barrel by a different method.”
The partners therefore hired a porter who had a small sledge which rattled and bumped over the cobbles. Burke unloaded the barrel himself at Surgeons’ Square and carried it down to the cellar.
The bodies were so cold and stiff that Davey and Ted Shepherd, a student who had replaced Jackson as Knox’s assistant, had a difficult job getting them out of the barrel. Knox, though, declared himself to be satisfied with the corpses, despite the slight smell of herring, and paid £16 for the pair.
The obstinate horse, which was getting old, proved to be less of an asset to the partners. Hare, in disgust, sent it to a knacker and received a miserable five shillings in exchange.
CHAPTER VIII
Poor Daft Jamie
On June 20 Burke went to spend the evening with the Hares. During the conversation, Burke mentioned that Helen was planning a holiday.
“She wants to go back to that place near Falkirk where we first met,” he said.
“Are ye goin’ too?” asked Hare.
“Not if I can help it!”
The three of them guffawed, and the matter wasn’t raised again until Hare went downstairs to look for some cold mutton and a loaf which Mrs. Hare very hospitably suggested would make a late supper. As soon as her husband was out of the room she said to Burke confidentially “Mightn’ae it be a good idea if ye did go on holiday?”
“Why?”
“I’ve been thinkin’ a lot about Helen lately. Ye’re not exactly lovebirds, are ye?”
“Och, we rub along all right. Anyway, Helen’s me own affair.”
“I’m wonderin’ if she doesn’ae concern us all. Are ye sure we can trust her? Might she not go crawlin’ to the police?”
Burke thought this over.
“Since ye are a friend, I feel I can speak plainly,” Mrs. Hare continued. “An’ my opinion is that ye couldn’ae trust her with a farthin’ as far as the next corner. She’s not Irish, like us; she’s a Scotswoman, an’ they’re unreliable. If ye ask me, she’s goin’ up to Falkirk to see that husband of hers—the faithless hussy!”
Burke went home in the small hours and lay awake, unable to rid his mind of these suspicions. Helen was out—Mrs. Lawrie informed him with a gleam in her eye that she saw her leave the house with Jim Carter, who lived on the top floor—and when Helen returned at 6 a.m., incoherent with drink, Burke made his decision. Helen was too bad a risk.
Later that morning he went round to the Hares again and told them what he proposed to do. He would indeed go on the holiday, and make sure that Mrs. Lawrie and other inquisitive neighbours knew he was going. On the pretext of needing something to contain the luggage for the trip he would borrow Hare’s travelling trunk. On the eve of departure, the Burkes would invite the Hares to a little farewell party in their room, and Helen would be encouraged to drink as much as she could take. After a while, Mrs. Hare would say she was ready for bed and go home, leaving Helen alone with Burke and Hare. The partners would murder her and put the corpse in the trunk. Then they would take the trunk to Hare’s house—if Mrs. Lawrie was nosing around, Burke would remark to Hare that he wasn’t needing the trunk after all—and early the following morning, about three o’clock, before the neighbours were awake, Burke would set off for Falkirk.
He would lie low for a couple of weeks, during which time Hare would sell the corpse to Dr. Knox, and then he’d send Hare a letter breaking the sad news that Helen had died on holiday and was buried in the country. Hare would spread the story among the neighbours at Tanner’s Close by calling there with the excuse of picking up some extra things that Burke wanted urgently in Falkirk.
Helen fixed June 24 for the start of the holiday; Burke accordingly borrowed the trunk on the 22nd, and the party was arranged for the evening of the 23rd. Unfortunately for the partners, Helen stayed remarkably clear-headed throughout the evening, and after four cans of gin had been consumed and Mrs. Hare had gone home, she looked in such formidable fettle that neither Hare nor Burke fancied a fight with her.
The Flesh and the Fiends Page 11
