The Resurrection Fireplace

by Hiroko Minagawa

  Al got up, pushing his chair back, and sought leave to speak again.

  “Sir, surely the insurance company will not seek an indictment. Their contract was with Evans, whose death leaves them free of any obligation to pay anything to anyone. They will not waste time and money on a lawsuit. Edward and Nigel have allowed themselves to be misled.”

  This provoked several of the others to join in with their own loud opinions, to which Barton contributed what sounded more like a wail than words.

  Sir John struck the table with his gavel.

  “Turner,” he said, once there was silence. “You wanted me to know you were the culprit. Why? You dropped the pawn slip intentionally as evidence, did you not? There was no need to bring it to the murder scene in the first place. On the night of the fire, you cordially invited me to the Rose, indicating that you and Hart were regular patrons of that squalid establishment. With this pointer, I was able to retrace your steps towards the murder of Evans and Robert. Why did you conceal your deeds with your right hand, only to expose them with your left?”

  The magistrate fell silent, waiting for an answer. When none came, he spoke again.

  “The two of you sought above all else to protect Daniel Barton’s research, his preparations, and of course his anatomy school. You murdered Evans and Robert for this cause, thinking that because there would be no one to bring suit against you, I would have no power to punish you. On the basis of this assumption, you revealed the truth. There was also the matter of Hitchin happening to encounter Hart. Once his testimony had made it clear that Hart was accustomed to dressing as a woman, the probability that I would determine the identity of the person who importuned Abbott at the Tom Queen was high. Before all this could be discovered, you invited me to the Rose and disclosed it yourself. Did you never consider, however, that I, as a Justice of the Peace, might have the responsibility of paying to bring charges against you myself?”

  Barton was stunned. Even if they were not put on trial, murder was murder. And all for my sake… . Did Edward hope to reveal another culprit in court, or was he confident of escaping punishment by employing a skilled lawyer to impress upon the jury the iniquity of Robert and Evans?

  Sir John seemed to be wondering the same thing. “Do you intend to publicly accuse another of the deed?” he asked.

  “No. In the presence of Professor Barton and all my fellow pupils, I shall state quite clearly: Nigel and I are to blame.”

  “The prospect of hanging does not concern you?”

  “It does not.”

  “I will not allow it!” shouted Barton, getting to his feet. Al, Ben, and Clarence also raised their voices in protest.

  “Order!” cried Sir John, banging the gavel again. “Be seated!”

  When the room had settled down, he spoke again.

  “Nigel Hart, as I recall, you said, ‘We decided to trust you.’ Did you also mean that you trusted me not to indict you?”

  Nigel only smiled in reply.

  “Guy Evans and Robert Barton were plainly guilty of serious wrongdoing. It is not certain, however, that a court of law would have sentenced them to death. They might even have been found innocent. And so you took matters into your own hands. You are critical of the law, and do not trust it; in sympathy with your attitude, you thought I would refrain from bringing suit against you. Was this your understanding?”

  Barton rose again, placing both hands on the table and leaning forward over it.

  “Sir John,” he said. “I also trust you. My pupils did not commit these crimes for personal gain. It was all for my sake. To preserve my research, my preparations, my anatomy school. I humbly entreat you: if you must indict someone for these crimes, let it be me.”

  The judge paused, in some astonishment.

  “Edward Turner, Nigel Hart,” he said eventually. “In the matter of the murder of Guy Evans and Robert Barton, I am not inclined to put you on trial.”

  A murmur of relief rippled across the room. Then Clarence cheered. Ben and Al followed his lead.

  The gavel was banged again. “However!” Sir John said. “There is another case in connection with which a suit against you shall certainly be brought. I speak of the murder of Nathan Cullen.”

  “But the culprit is dead!” cried Barton. Uproar. The sound of the gavel once more.

  “Circumstances suggest that the murder was indeed committed by Robert Barton. It was Edward Turner who championed this belief. Cullen, we gather, managed to escape from his confinement at Evans’s residence, and went to seek refuge with his friends, Turner and Hart. Robert, who was lying in wait, intercepted and killed him, arranging the scene to appear a suicide. He had received news of Cullen’s escape via his dog, Bess, who had been left with Evans in advance; Evans allowed Cullen to leave intentionally, and released the dog at the same time. When Bess arrived back at Robert’s home, he knew that Cullen would not be far behind.

  “This was your conclusion, was it not, Edward Turner? Anne, summarize the report we received from Robert’s maid.”

  “The maid said that the dog was at home on both the ninth and tenth of July. She remembers it well because, on the ninth, there was a bit of a fuss when Bess was kicked by the pure collector. We interviewed the latter, who affirmed the truth of her account. Cullen’s murder took place in the dead of night between the ninth and tenth of that month.”

  “Your theory that the dog was left with Evans has proved incorrect,” Sir John told Edward. “You and Nigel Hart went to great lengths to paint Robert as the killer. You poured the ink on Cullen’s chest yourselves. You sought to imply that something lay beneath it, when you knew that nothing did; you inked Cullen’s fingers to mislead me. To reinforce the impression that Evans was eliminating those who knew of Cullen’s talent, you even hired someone to injure you.”

  What Barton saw on Edward’s face could only be described as a smirk. Nigel was also smiling faintly. Barton had never seen such a disquieting look there.

  The magistrate’s tone softened. “Each of you has confessed to committing murder. Tell me the truth about Nathan Cullen. You would have stopped at nothing to dispose of Evans and Robert. Is that not so?”

  Neither of them replied.

  “Would you go so far as to kill Cullen to bring down Robert? Surely not. The boy’s death was a suicide, and you made use of the corpse—was that what happened? Was the first reason you gave for dismembering him—to make his suicide seem to be murder—the truth? Not so that he could be buried on hallowed ground, but in order to cast suspicion on Robert?”

  I have little respect for him. The Professor recalled Edward’s comment in the tavern. And Nigel’s angry outburst. Dr. Barton is fraudulent. He brags that the results of your research, Professor, are his own. Edward’s, too. “Little respect” hardly did the matter justice.

  “Did Cullen commit suicide?” repeated Sir John.

  Both remained silent.

  “But some details are incompatible with that verdict. He had safely escaped confinement and reached your school. He was free. He had no reason—absolutely none—to do away with himself. Also, there was no means by which Robert could have been informed of his escape, and so Robert could not have been lying in wait to kill him. This brings us back to our original assumption.

  “Cullen’s letter was delivered to the two of you while he was still confined, by means unknown. There is evidence that you saw the letter in advance. When you told me that you had amputated his limbs, you mentioned that Cullen had been imprisoned in Newgate. But you also claimed to have learnt of his confinement by Evans only later, after reading the letter—post-dismemberment.”

  Sir John paused, with his head still facing Edward.

  “Without reading the letter, you had no way of knowing of his imprisonment or the marks left by the leg irons. But you did know these things. You received his letter before that evening, and once he finall
y escaped and ran to you, you killed him. All to make a murderer of Robert.”

  Almost defiantly, Edward said, “We expected you to arrive at that conclusion, sir, once you noticed the inconsistencies regarding the suicide theory and the dog.”

  The end of his comment was partly overshadowed by an anguished sound from Barton. There were extenuating circumstances for the murders of Evans and Robert. But an innocent boy? How could you act so monstrously? I could never approve of this! Not for all the preparations in the world!

  “You even applied an ink-stain to support your claim that the letter had been in Nathan’s pocket, although the disparity between the stain on the paper and that on his clothing only made me suspicious. You did not know at that time that Robert had already killed Harrington. Otherwise, I am sure, you would have accused him of that crime, without any need to murder Cullen.

  “Edward Turner, what did you do with the discarded legs?”

  “Nigel wanted to use them in his magic act,” said Edward.

  Sir John gave Anne a signal. She nodded and left the room, then returned with a middle-aged woman.

  The woman’s dress was plain but clean. Her eyes were swollen from crying.

  “This is Mrs. Cullen,” said Anne. “Nathan’s mother. We located her eventually, and brought her here to take possession of her son’s body. She was waiting in another room.”

  Barton shuddered to think what she must have felt on arriving to find her son dismembered, dissected, and half-putrefied.

  “Mrs. Cullen, this is Edward Turner and Nigel Hart, about whom we told you earlier.”

  The woman glared at them, eyes dark with hostility. She then seized a fistful of Edward’s shirt and shook him. “Give me back my son!” she cried. “Bring him back to life! Put him back together!”

  “Mrs. Cullen,” said Sir John. “Will you bring suit against Edward Turner and Nigel Hart for the murder of your son?”

  “I will,” she said. “Oh, aye, I certainly will.”

  Chapter 26

  Edward and Nigel stood in the dock while the principal prosecutor laid out the case against them, gesturing floridly to emphasize the cruelty of their actions to the row of jurors on his left. Turner, the prosecutor explained, had been the chief offender, with Hart his accessory.

  “Dr. Robert Barton, may he rest in peace, was a physician of high renown, welcome even at the Palace. I am sure, gentlemen of the jury, that you are familiar with his achievements. In his support for his younger brother Daniel, too, he was unstinting. And yet one of Daniel’s pupils, Edward Turner, wrongly believing that Dr. Barton had stolen the results of his own research, nursed a murderous grudge against his teacher’s benefactor… .”

  Sir John Fielding, Westminster magistrate, sat with Anne in the front row of the gallery. The smell of vinegar and herbs to guard against prison fever assailed his nostrils. His head cold had cleared, leaving him exposed to these pungent odours. “Left alone, a cold will clear up in a week,” Osborne had said, preparing some medicine, “but this will dispel yours in just seven days.” An experienced physician was truly a fount of wisdom.

  Edward had been spared the misery of a lengthy imprisonment in Newgate: he had spent the ten days leading up to the trial in the holding cell at the magistrate’s office. Sir John, for his part, had done all he could to hasten the opening of the trial. Nigel, as a mere accomplice, had been discharged on his own cognizance, on condition that he keep the court informed of his whereabouts. Now that the case had been formally taken up at the Old Bailey, Sir John had no further role to play. Everything now rested in the hands of Lord Chief Justice William Murray, Earl of Mansfield, principal prosecutor Reginald Boyle, and Nicholas Hooper, counsel for the defence.

  Lord Mansfield and Boyle were both for sale. This was common knowledge. However, in the present trial, at least, no dirty money had changed hands. Of this Sir John was sure.

  He did feel that the prosecutor’s opening argument had been far too one-sided. Boyle had not even mentioned that the actions taken by the accused had been for Daniel Barton’s sake. Instead, he had divided his speech between praise for the noble character of Robert Barton and denunciation of Edward Turner’s villainy and delusions.

  To achieve a guilty verdict was, of course, the prosecution’s goal. Forceful rhetoric was only to be expected. Counsel for the defence was also likely to use every trick at its disposal to have the defendant ruled not guilty.

  “Thus,” continued Boyle, “to satisfy his loathing, this vicious youth decided to misrepresent Dr. Barton as a murderer in the eyes of the world. He concocted a scheme in which an innocent lad, Nathan Cullen…”

  Mrs. Cullen’s anguished voice could be heard at the mention of the name.

  Nicholas Hooper, the lawyer Edward and Nigel had retained, was unfamiliar to Sir John. According to Anne, he did not appear to be overly burdened with experience, or many other qualities, for that matter.

  Barton had wanted to hire the lawyer who had distinguished himself in the recent slave trial. Sir John was acquainted with the man, whose fees had risen along with his fame. So why had Edward and Nigel hired this hesitant newcomer instead? Had the other lawyer quoted them a fee so high that even Barton could not pay? Or had they decided that it did not matter who represented them, since they were doomed to lose anyway?

  Sir John had had no contact with Barton or anyone else connected with the case since making the decision to send Edward and Nigel to the Old Bailey. He had no wish to give anyone cause to suspect the brokering of deals before the trial began.

  Once Boyle concluded his remarks, the assistant prosecutor called the plaintiff, Mrs. Cullen, to the witness stand. Her testimony was frequently interrupted by sobbing.

  “The lawyer is holding her hand to encourage her,” reported Anne.

  “And the Chief Justice?”

  “Examining his fingernails with obvious boredom.”

  The case must be trivial indeed by Lord Mansfield’s standards. He did not stand to profit or lose from either side’s victory. No doubt his aim was to bring the matter to a swift resolution in accordance with the jury’s finding and retire to his chambers as soon as possible.

  Barton and his pupils were in the front row as well, a few seats away from Sir John and Anne.

  The Professor was beside himself, swinging between extremes of hope and discouragement.

  What Edward and Nigel had done was clearly indefensible. Hanging was the only possible outcome for them. Well—their youth might see them sentenced to transportation, to serve as labour in the New World… but that was a fate worse than hanging. Nigel would not last two weeks. Despite the venality of their crime, however, Barton could not help muttering objections to each helping of scorn and invective the prosecutor heaped upon Edward. At one point, he even received a warning from the bailiff when he finally lost his temper and shouted “You are misinformed, sir!” at the startled lawyer.

  Their own lawyer’s hapless demeanour also irked him. Barton had had every intention of engaging the lawyer from the mutineer’s trial—the one who had employed the ingenious device of replacing the entire jury. The problem was money. Barton had seriously considered pawning his preparations. When he had mentioned the idea to Al and the others, half in jest, they had been far from amused. But when Edward had learnt of his teacher’s plans during visiting hours, his face had gone white with anger. Professor, why on earth do you think I resorted to all this in the first place? If you allow the preparations to go, you will kill me before any hangman can!

  Barton had sought the advice of Hume at the Temple Bank, and it was he who had introduced them to Hooper. The young lawyer came cheap, yet Hume assured him that this was a man to be relied upon.

  And look where they were now!

  Hume had said that he and his wife would attend the trial as spectators, but he had yet to arrive. Barton had a seat for Mrs. Hume sav
ed beside him.

  “Counsel,” said Lord Mansfield to Hooper. “Begin your cross-examination.”

  “Er, yes, m’lud,” said Hooper, plopping his wig back onto his head as he got to his feet.

  When he did not speak for a moment, Lord Mansfield repeated his instruction, with some irritation. “Begin the cross-examination.”

  Mrs. Cullen, meanwhile, was staring angrily at the man who proposed to defend the monsters who had taken her son’s life.

  “Counsel! Your cross-examination!”

  “Yes, m’lud.” Hooper looked aimlessly around him.

  Barton became aware of someone hurrying down the aisle towards the front of the gallery, and turned to see who it was.

  “The Humes have arrived,” Anne told Sir John.

  Sir John recognized the banker’s footsteps, but not the others’. “I hear three people,” he said quietly. “Who is with them?”

  “The party consists of Mr. Hume, a woman whom I suppose to be his wife, although I have not seen her before, and a nursemaid carrying a baby.”

  “Please excuse our lateness,” Hume said to Barton, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “Our carriage was delayed by some geese being herded to market.”

  Finally Hooper spoke.

  “Mrs. Cullen, a question,” he said, pointing in the direction of the Humes. “Do you know—”

  Before he could finish, however, Mrs. Cullen’s actions answered his question in full.

  She left the witness stand and ran straight in the direction in which Hooper was pointing.

  Mrs. Hume scooped little Danny from the arms of his nursemaid.

  Mrs. Cullen examined the nursemaid for a moment, then took hold of her white mob-cap and pulled it off. The chestnut curls that had shown beneath the cap came away with it, revealing a head of much shorter hair.

  Mother and son embraced at last, holding each other as tightly as if they had been carved from stone.

  Chapter 27