by Robin Blake
My eyes snapped open. I had been dozing and dreaming, replete with strong cheese. But suddenly I was awake again. Luke Fidelis’s dictum during our ride that afternoon had come back to me. ‘We will not make progress until contingency is distinguishable from causation, accident from purpose.’ It took another moment for the fog of sleep to clear, and then I grasped the corollary.
‘Damn!’ I said in a flash of illumination.
Dolores Brockletower’s body might have not have been taken by her murderer. If the missing body had nothing to do with the facts behind the murder, then to find it I would have to look elsewhere. That’s what Luke was suggesting I do. Look for who else required a body to be dead, besides a murderer. Look for an anatomist – and then look for grave-robbers.
‘Yes, we must regard it as a possibility,’ I found myself whispering, as if in dialogue with myself. ‘The Ice-house is behind the stable block, remote from the inhabited parts of Garlick Hall. It is not overlooked. A visit in the dark of night, a silent removal of the body over the hill above the orchard – Shot’s Hill – none of it is inconceivable.’
‘But the door was not forced,’ I objected.
‘A lock can be picked,’ I continued. ‘Or the robbers had the help of someone in the house.’
‘Dear God, I hope this is not true,’ I devoutly wished.
These matters were troubling, as if a woman’s cut throat had not already cast us profoundly enough into the wickedness of man. But an instance of resurrectionism would be a matter of serious alarm in the whole county. We had heard of such things in London, but I did not think there had ever been anything of the sort here before.
‘Well, it would not surprise me if your pious hope is too late,’ I told myself sententiously.
I rose, yawned, opened the bracket clock that stood on my mantelpiece and reached for the key. As I carefully wound it I considered how to set about finding the robbers, if that is what they were, and make them lead me to the body. The best procedure, I supposed, would be to identify their customer. The robbers may be will-o-the-wisps, but the one who buys the stolen goods cannot be other than a professional man, settled and in some way established.
I uncoupled the key-crank and pushed it back into its place beneath the clock. Then I rested both hands on the mantel and looked down into the embers of the fire. So I was looking for a physician, or surgeon, someone who dissects human remains here in Preston, or in the vicinity. Well, I knew of one that did. Or did once. One that had gone to Lancaster Castle to dissect the corpses of three of the rebels hanged in ’15. He was long retired from professional life, but did he still cut up dead bodies at home, on the sly?
I yawned again. It was bedtime. But tomorrow I would find out.
Chapter Nine
THE HOUSE IN Molyneux Square appeared, from the outside, to be in a state of disrepair. More than one of its dusty windows was cracked, the paint and whitewash had peeled and discoloured and the exposed timbers were beginning to sag with rot. When I sounded the brass knocker, flakes of paint fell around me.
The old man came to the door himself, apologizing that his housekeeper was at market and his manservant running an errand. He wore an indoor cap on his head. I introduced myself, and he beamed at the sound of my name.
‘Your father was a dear friend, sir,’ he said in a fluting, breathy voice, almost a whisper. ‘Come in, come in! I am Jonathan Dapperwick, by the way. Perhaps you had already surmised as much.’
I had not seen the man for years. My father had known him in their youth, but it had been some time since the good doctor had become a recluse, entirely ceasing to go into society, or even to leave his house. Some said that his nose had been eaten away by a cancer; others that he had died, and that his household had concealed the fact to preserve their places. I saw no evidence of either case in the man standing before me.
I followed Dr Dapperwick through the hallway, the darkness thickening as we advanced further in. Without warning, a spaniel dog hurled itself out of the shadows and threatened my ankle. It did so in a playful way that I did not take seriously, but the doctor swivelled and kicked out at it, catching the poor beast full on the rump. The dog squealed and retreated.
‘That animal is very fortunate,’ wheezed Dapperwick. ‘I dissected its mother and grandmother. Until now I have held my hand, and in fact my scalpel, in respect of it. But for how much longer, I wonder, if it continues to snap at my guests’ ankles?’
The house was quiet with, except for the dog, no evidence of another living creature within. I was led into a library that contained, I would say, five or six hundred volumes. In the middle of the room stood an oak lectern, on which a folio lay open at a page of anatomical illustrations.
The doctor’s indistinct voice made a contrast with his physical appearance. Apart from his sweeping gesture of welcome after opening the door, Dapperwick had kept his hands clasped tightly behind his back and now he stood before the fire in the same posture, a little bent, but otherwise an imposing figure of about six feet tall. His clothes (and the wig on its stand that we had passed in the hall) belonged to the fashion of the last reign, but I had a first (mistaken) impression of a man in robust health, with broad shoulders, a deep chest and a nicely rounded belly. Although he was more than sixty years old, he had a smooth, young visage. It was only when I took a second look that I noticed the lack of mobility in the face, a mask-like surface that merely simulated youthfulness. In addition he trembled, and displayed the results of his trembling on the front of his coat and waistcoat – dried and encrusted drops of soup, gravy, coffee and wine that betrayed a history of slopped cups, shaky spoons and badly loaded forks.
Dapperwick did not seem curious as to why the son of his late friend Sam Cragg should be calling on him now, after years of neglect. He was more than content simply to talk and enjoy the company, as solitary men will. So we spoke for some minutes about my father who, the doctor revealed, had represented him in a lawsuit in the mid-twenties. He did not offer to tell me, and I did not ask, what it was about, but made a silent resolution to look the case up when I returned to the office. At his request I gave a recital of my father’s final illness. This had occurred during a visit to the Buxton Spa thirteen years earlier, and Dapperwick took a professional interest in the details.
‘Your father was an able lawyer,’ the old man said when I had finished. ‘Are you knocked out of the same mould?’
‘I have followed my father as Coroner of the Borough,’ I said. ‘And it is in that connection that am calling on you, sir. I am sometimes directed by a jury to order a medical post-mortem examination. But I am short of examiners. So, as well as paying my respects to my father’s friend, I had hoped to add your illustrious name to my roster.’
‘Me, sir? But I am retired from medicine.’
‘From your earlier remark about the dog, it seems you still pursue anatomy. You are, of course, remembered for your work on the rebels of ’15.’
Dapperwick shook his head disparagingly.
‘I am sorry to hear that such an occasion from my young days is still notorious. I regret the whole business. The anatomist in those cases is not only an appendage, you see. He is worse. He is an assistant to the executioner, whose function is not philosophical at all, but punitive. Where murderers and thieves are cheerfully hardened to the prospect of a mere hanging, the anatomist sows terror in their hearts with his intention of carving up their bodies and scattering their guts and numbles to the wind. That is really no task for a man who studied at Leyden under Boerhaave, you know. I would prefer to be remembered instead for my hands and feet.’
I was nonplussed by his last remark.
‘Your hands and feet, sir?’
Dapperwick nodded towards the glass-fronted cabinet that stood against the wall behind me. Puzzled, I turned and, instead of the books that filled the other bookcases, saw a dozen glass jars displayed in a row. They contained human hands and feet cut off at the wrist and ankle and swimming in preserving liquid. I st
epped nearer to look. Some were large, and some as small as a child’s. Some were well shaped, others deformed. Their grey and puckered texture was disquieting, looking more like tripe than flesh.
I suppressed all expression of disgust, pretending I saw such sights every other day.
‘These, er, limbs are your special study, then?’
‘The extreme bodily appendages, yes. Three years ago I crowned my studies with a book entitled “The Anatomy of the Human Hand and Foot, with Supplementary Observations on Paws, Hooves, Wings, Fins etcetera”. It was intended to stamp out my name for posterity in the manual and pedal fields. Unfortunately, owing to a fire at the printers’ storehouse, the whole edition was reduced to smoke and ashes.’
He pointed moodily to the book open on the lectern. ‘I am left with the sole remaining copy – that one there. I turn a page each day.’
‘A most regrettable accident,’ I said, feeling genuinely sorry for him. ‘Do you not think of printing a new edition?’
‘I wish it were possible. By the time of the fire the type had already been distributed and would have to be re-set, and the engraved plates were melted in the flames. To reprint the book would be ruinously expensive and I was already all but ruined. I’d be risking the debtors’ prison and I could not face that.’
He looked down for a moment. I noticed that, particularly when he was not speaking, his head trembled like a man sitting inside a coach on a rough road. His lower lip was agitated, and his eyes blinked. Were these the signs of his emotion as he recollected the loss of a life’s work?
‘So be it,’ Dapperwick continued, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. ‘I am of good cheer. I have new anatomical work in progress. No point in languishing. A man must keep on. I liken my work to that of the explorers of the globe. The body is, when all’s said and done, a world in miniature, much of it undiscovered. We anatomists are voyagers. Opening a knuckle, or a heel, I used to feel like Marco Polo knocking on the gates of Samarkand. We push forward. We seek after knowledge, and reveal the unrevealed. Unfortunately my own fingers are not as accurate as once they were, as you may see.’
He unclasped his hands and held them towards me, palms down. They were in continual simmering movement, the hands themselves shaking, and the fingers twitching convulsively up and down, as if playing the keys of an invisible harpsichord.
‘I can no longer dissect a delicate system. The carcase of that dog I might roughly cut up still, though I doubt I would find anything interesting. But I would make a hash of the pretty hallux – that’s the big toe you know – of a handsome young girl.’
I saw in his smile the barest hint of an old man’s lasciviousness, as he returned his hands to their previous position.
I asked, ‘How do you go on, then, with dissecting for your new investigation?’
He moved closer to me. To make sure I understood the confidentiality of his words, he cupped a shaking hand beside his mouth.
‘I have a young assistant,’ he confided in a hoarse whisper. ‘A useful, middling anatomist, despite his youth. He comes here once a month or so, from Liverpool or thereabout. I do not publish his name.’
‘And what is the subject of your investigations?’
Dapperwick hesitated, as if gauging whether to tell me.
‘It is delicate,’ he said at last. ‘A matter of discretion. I have as yet told no one, but you are Sam Cragg’s son, and therefore to be trusted. And it will out at last, when I am ready to publish. So I will tell you, but I beg you it is not for crying in the street.’
‘I am all ears, Doctor.’
‘You will form an idea from the title of the proposed treatise. It is to be called …’
He leaned even closer, breathing the four words into my ear.
‘De Genitalia Virilis Muliebrisque.’
‘Good heavens!’ I exclaimed, starting involuntarily back. ‘That will be a remarkable work, without doubt. And a useful one. However, I understand why you do not want your competitors here in town to know about it. From my friend Dr Fidelis I know there is much rivalry in the medical field.’
By pretending to assume his secrecy was from fear of encroachment, I was hoping to lead Dapperwick into mentioning other local anatomists – his rivals. But he snorted at the idea.
‘My competitors? If I have any, they are in Edinburgh, or London. There are no anatomists in this town except myself. No, I give you the title of my work sub rosa because of the somewhat ticklish nature of the subject, you understand.’
He tapped the side of his nose and suddenly his mouth enlarged into a most unphilosophical leer.
‘Genitalia, you know. Not to be, er, raised in ladies’ company. But …’
He leaned confidentially towards me, tapped my chest with his scrawny fist and cackled.
‘ … where would we be without ’em, eh? Eh?’
I could not immediately think of a suitable reply.
‘Where, indeed?’ was what I eventually managed.
I took a little turn around the library, circling the lectern until I had composed my face.
‘Dr Dapperwick,’ I said, ‘I promise I will keep the secret of your researches from the ladies. But must I take it that, unfortunately, you will not be able to undertake any post-mortem work for me?’
He produced his quaking hands again, holding them helplessly up. Together we silently contemplated their unceasing tremors.
‘I fear you must look elsewhere,’ he concluded at last. ‘In the absence of a good anatomist you must find a competent surgeon.’
‘Ah, yes. Would, perhaps, your own young assistant be able to …?’
Dapperwick cut me off with a vigorous shake of his head.
‘Oh, no, no, I hardly think so. It would not be proper. Did I not mention that he is very young? He knows the landscape pretty well, but not the economy. He cannot diagnose the ills. No, no. He will not suit you at all.’
After this we exchanged a few more politenesses but I doubted I could find out more. There was little point in asking the doctor a direct question about resurrectionists, as he would be certain to deny any knowledge of them. So I bid him goodbye. As I walked away from his door across the square, I looked back. He was standing at the entrance looking after me, straight-backed, his eyes blinking exaggeratedly as an extra strong spasm passed through his body, and his cap tilted sideways.
On my route back to Cheapside I made a diversion past Talboys’s shop and called in to see if Abigail had returned yet. In the front room of the shop two high-spirited young females were making a lot of noise in choosing ribbons. Edward Talboys’s attitude as he awaited their decision was that of a man with more pressing things on his mind.
‘Ah, Titus!’ he called out, on seeing me.
I asked if Abigail was on the premises and could I see her? He beckoned me over to the inner end of the shop.
‘My Abby is here all right,’ he confided. ‘She has taken to her room. There was such a storm of crying when she heard of Mrs Brockletower’s being dead. It was like a death within our own family.’
The giggling customers at last made their choices. I waited patiently while they gave over the money and made their way out, then said, ‘So, may I see her, Ned?’
‘You may try.’
Talboys called another of his daughters in to mind the shop and we climbed the stairs to the first floor, and then another steeper and narrower stairway to the small boxed-in landing of the attic rooms. Talboys knocked on one of the closed doors.
‘Abby, the coroner is here, particularly to see you. You must open, you know.’
There was no reply. He put his ear close to the door, then tried the handle. It was locked.
‘Abby! I am your father. There can be no doors locked against me in my own house.’
He rattled the handle and knocked again. I heard a muffled voice from within.
‘Go away.’
‘Abby! Is that how you speak to your father?’
His pained remonstrance had not the slight
est effect. Apparently there could be doors locked against Talboys in his own house. And even against public officials. But I thought it unprofitable to pursue the matter just now, and suggested I call again in hopes that her docility would return. So we tramped back down to the shop where, before we parted, he spoke ruefully.
‘Father of four girls, you know, Titus, and however I try I cannot get their obedience. I defy any man to rule four daughters.’
Five minutes later I was re-entering the office, where Furzey greeted me in the outer room, his face animated with alarm.
‘He’s here, sir. He’s waiting for you. I couldn’t keep him out.’
‘Who, Furzey? Who’s here?’
Furzey regarded me as if my lack of clairvoyance were a mental deficiency.
‘Who’s here? Need I tell you? It’s Mr Grimshaw – who else? In the inner room. And even by his own lights he is huffing strong. Huffing strong as it blows off Fleetwood Sands.’
I went through to confront the bailiff.
I have never had the misfortune to see Ephraim Grimshaw stark naked, but I fancy that, in such a state, his spindly legs and distended belly would make a very ridiculous show. Fully dressed, however, he was alarmingly splendid, with silks, lace and silver buckles enough to adorn Lord Derby himself. His waistcoat alone, stretched tight around the globe of his belly, was a dazzle of gold thread. And his manner was high as the King of France.
‘This is incredible news, Cragg,’ he shrilled. ‘In-cred-ible. You have lost – lost! – the body of Mrs Brockletower!’
‘Well, I haven’t personally—’
But Grimshaw was not to be deflected.
‘Not personally? Let me correct you. You personally superintended the deposition of the corpse in this … Ice-house. The next time you looked – personally again – it was not there. I call that losing, sir! I call that gross losing. In fact I call it neglect of duty.’
