Sawbones

by Catherine Johnson

  “At the same address as before?” Ezra sat up. “It might be useful. Are you sure there is no party at the embassy who would gain from your father’s death?”

  “No, of course not. We are – were – entertainers. I admit the politics of the Ottoman court can be extreme, but we were never a part of all that. I cannot imagine there is anything anyone would have achieved by his death.”

  “Well, it could help to see where your father last worked – if you could perhaps get me admittance?”

  “I am sure I could.” Miss Finch leant towards him. “And I was thinking about something else I could help with, or that someone at the embassy could, at least.”

  Ezra frowned.

  She laughed. “My goodness, for one supposedly so skilful with a knife you can be rather slow! Your sign, the tattoo on that piece of skin. They would know all about it there. Discovering its meaning would be simply done.”

  Ezra wondered. It was bound to be dangerous, seeking the man a cadaver had been. It might cause all sorts of problems for the master. But the honey cakes, they were Eastern too, weren’t they? Perhaps both men were caught in the same web. “You think our cadaver worked at the embassy too?”

  “Not if he was in the harem, as we suspect. The harem never travel. It is a kind of prison. A luxurious one, but a prison all the same.”

  “Do not expect me to feel sorry for royalty,” Ezra said. “They take the lion’s share of everything and are happy to let the poor starve.”

  “Don’t you ever listen? The sultan’s wives never leave the palace. And it is worst of all for any sons they may have. There is so much intrigue and plotting that the eldest sons of the sultan live closely confined until the sultan dies. One was locked up for so long he went mad!”

  “There, you see. Such wealth and power only lead to corruption.”

  “No one deserves to suffer,” Loveday protested. “Rich or poor.”

  Ezra humphed. “In my observation,” he said, “the rich usually manage to avoid their share of suffering. You should see the scraps and destitutes we get at Mr McAdam’s Monday clinics. I am sure every one of them would love to suffer as the rich do.”

  “Ezra McAdam, you are quite the revolutionary! Perhaps you would prefer to work for more equitable a fee? One guinea, perhaps? Ten shillings?”

  “That is not what I meant!”

  Loveday Finch made a face.

  “Do not tease me, Miss Finch. I am of the belief that life should be fairer. In every way.”

  “You would change the world, then?”

  “They have done it in France, in America…”

  Miss Finch sipped her chocolate. “Perhaps. But I at the moment only want to find out who would make me an orphan. And I would put money on there being some connection between my father’s death and this cadaver. You are an intelligent young man, Ezra McAdam. Don’t you want to know the man’s story?”

  “No.” Ezra said it firmly – too firmly, perhaps.

  “I can tell that you do. You are just as intrigued as I.”

  “Maybe. But if it was known that a cadaver of the embassy household ended up on the master’s anatomy table, it could be dangerous – and besides, there is no proof to link his death with that of your father.”

  “Yet!” Miss Finch’s sea-grey eyes glowed. “I cannot resist a good mystery.”

  Ezra looked around the tea rooms. “Promise me, please, Miss Finch, do not mention this to a living soul.”

  “Who do you take me for?” She was affronted.

  “I take you for one whose lips are far too loose for my liking.”

  She ignored this slight. “I could help, don’t you see?”

  “I said I have no interest in the business.”

  “You are a poor liar, Mr McAdam, and I am a professional one.”

  Ezra knew the master could get in a deal of trouble if the cadaver could be traced to them, and he resolved to be rid of the skin specimen as soon as he got home. “Miss Finch,” he said, “I am trying to solve the riddle of your father’s death. That is what you engaged me for. You should not have seen that tattoo, and I would prefer it if you could bring yourself to think you had not.”

  “How curious, you look quite perturbed by the matter.”

  “I assure you I am not,” Ezra said shortly. He stood up. “I would like to speak to Mr Falcon as soon as can be arranged.”

  “If you wish, I will send word to you tomorrow.”

  “And you should take a cab back to Clerkenwell,” Ezra added. “Your leg needs rest even if you do not.”

  Ezra walked home quickly. He went straight upstairs and unpinned the square of skin from its wax bed. He would get rid of it now, before he changed his mind – before Miss Finch’s proposition started to seem too tempting. He took it out to the anatomy room, lit and stoked up the brazier, and tossed it in. He regretted it at once. The room filled with a smell not unlike the hog roast at a fair. The skin crackled and hissed for what seemed an age considering its tiny size.

  Anna would have told him off; she would have imagined the cadaver answering the judgement trump with a square of skin missing. But Anna was not here. Ezra knew the cadaver would have a rather nasty scar up his chest, too. But he had more than likely been a Turk, and Ezra had no idea if they had a heaven or a hell or something else entirely. In any case, who knew where his tongue had got to? Lying bleeding on the floor of some tiled Ottoman palace, or perhaps on the sand in some vast hot desert.

  When the ashes had cooled Ezra raked them out and went to the yard to empty them into the rubbish heap. Suddenly, he was aware of someone watching. There, by the street entrance, was a boy of nine or ten, wearing a cap that looked too big, a filthy jacket and old boots. He was pale-skinned and dark-eyed, and a lick of hair as dark as a raven’s wing flopped out of his cap and across his face. The boy nodded at him, looked back into the street, then crossed the yard. Ezra wondered what he was after, bread or ashes by the looks of him.

  “I say!” The boy spoke with the confidence and authority of money. “Young man.”

  Ezra looked back. “Are you addressing me?”

  “I am. Are you Mr McAdam’s black?” The boy’s voice sounded strange – good fine English but odd, deep vowels. Though he seemed nervous, as if he expected a hand to reach out from Great Windmill Street and grab him at any moment.

  “That is one way of putting it.” Ezra folded his arms. This boy was a rum fish. His voice and bearing were one thing, his clothes another entirely.

  “Can I speak with the man, your master? Now.”

  “He is not here. But with your manners, I doubt I would have let you in anyway,” Ezra retorted.

  “This is most urgent.” Now the boy was closer Ezra could see there was a fierce anxiety in him, and he was pale with cold. Ezra shouldn’t have been so hard on him. He bent down, his face level with the boy’s.

  “I am sorry, but he’s away from home.” The boy’s face fell. Ezra softened. “Perhaps I can help. I could fetch you tea in the kitchen if you would like?”

  “No, I cannot stay. You are anatomists, yes?”

  Ezra nodded.

  “You have bodies, a deal of dead bodies for your students.”

  He nodded again.

  “I am looking for another black, a man, taller than you – he may have been shot.”

  Ezra was afraid his face betrayed him.

  “Yes! You have seen him! I can tell! Is he still here? Did you see a letter in his jacket, or about his person?”

  “When we see them,” Ezra said gently, “they are not generally dressed.”

  The boy almost deflated.

  “Please. Come in and have some tea.” Ezra put a hand out to the boy’s shoulder.

  “Don’t you dare touch me!” The boy’s dark eyes were furious, scared, and he shrugged off Ezra’s hand and ran. Ezra followed him, through the arch and up towards Soho Square.

  As he turned into Dean Street Ezra slipped on some ice and landed heavily on his backside. By the
time he stood up, winded and aching, the boy had completely vanished. The city, he reminded himself, was full of such poor souls, thousands of them. Perhaps when he had his own practice he would run free surgeries two days a week, or even three.

  Ezra walked back home lost in thought. The mystery deepened. Who was he? That boy could pass for Turkish – had he been thrown out of the embassy, cast aside for making a mistake? Perhaps he had seen something pertaining to Mr Finch’s death? Why hadn’t Ezra thought to ask his name when he had the chance? He had thought that cadaver was too unusual, that someone like that would be missed! What would the master make of it? he wondered. If only he was here.

  Ezra climbed up to the museum and went to close the curtain. The snow was still falling; the master would not be home this evening. Ezra could see down into the front drawing room of Mrs Perino’s house where the fire blazed, and out across the city. The cloth warehouse was so near, yet Anna St John may as well have left for the Continent already.

  Something caught his eye in the street, the flash of a pipe being lit. He looked down. The man he had seen in St Anne’s churchyard was now standing across the road, leaning on Mrs Perino’s railings, watching the front of the house. Ezra shivered and quickly pulled the curtains shut.

  Toms had gone home. He was alone in the house with Mrs Boscaven and Ellen. What should he do? What if a party of cracksmen came in the night? Ezra went around the whole house, checked all the locks back and front. He slid the bolts on the front area door and went to the master’s laboratory to check the bolts on the window. When he looked through the crack in the shutters he saw that the man had gone.

  There was something distinctly unsettling about the man, he thought: unsettling and suspicious. One more puzzle that a conversation with the master would set to rights. Ezra sat down at the table in the laboratory, lit a couple of candles and took down some books concerning circulation and the workings of the heart. Mr Finch should be his priority.

  But the words and pictures swam in front of his eyes. He could not concentrate. Was that fellow outside one of the coves he had heard outside the anatomy room? Perhaps he was with the boy? And the cadaver with the tattoo, who had he been? Was Miss Finch correct? Was he really a member of the Ottoman household? If he was, who was the strange boy, and was he a foreigner too? Why in heaven’s name had the man been shot in the back? Why wasn’t it all over the newspapers? And why couldn’t Ezra forget? After all, there had been so many – what was one tongueless man among an army of dead?

  Chapter Seven

  Mr William McAdam’s Anatomy School and Museum of Curiosities

  Great Windmill Street

  Soho

  London

  November 1792

  It was late. Outside the snow had stopped falling at last, but not soon enough – Mr McAdam had been forced to remain another night in Hampstead, and Ezra was alone.

  He was still working in the laboratory adjoining the museum when he was startled by the rumble of a cart turning into the yard. For a second Ezra froze, imagining an army of cracksmen ready to break the glass of the anatomy room and pour into the house. But when he looked out of the back window he recognized Mr Allen’s cart. By the time Ezra had run down the stairs and drawn the bolts on the lecture room door, the man was waiting. It felt as though the thaw was in the air, but the ground was still white, which made the evening strangely bright.

  Mr Allen’s boy had jumped down too, and Ezra watched as he began to push a large wickerwork hamper off the back of the cart.

  “No!” Ezra called. “We don’t need a delivery. I thought Mr McAdam had sent word.”

  Allen waved at the boy, who shrugged and pushed the hamper back.

  “No, he never did.” Allen sniffed. “Well, I need a word now I’m here,” he said quietly. “With the old man.”

  “The lecture tomorrow morning’s off. The master’s stuck up in Hampstead with the weather,” Ezra told him, watching the clouds of hot, wet air rise up off the pony’s neck.

  “Is that so?” Something about the way the man spoke made Ezra wish he’d kept his own mouth firmly shut. “Shame.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be back soon now the weather’s changed. And if it’s anything urgent…”

  Allen shifted and looked around as if he expected somebody to be watching. He leant close. Ezra could smell liquor on his breath, and dirt that seemed to have penetrated the man’s skin.

  “There’s been a problem,” Allen said, “with one of your recent deliveries.”

  “What kind of problem?” Though Ezra reckoned he knew exactly where the problem lay.

  “Someone’s been asking questions. Seems the foreign one was some important cove.”

  “The cadaver without a tongue.” Ezra said it aloud, without thinking.

  “Don’t ask me. We never look in their mouths.” Allen’s tone was suddenly icy. “Unless the teeth are good and we know someone who needs a set.” He shuffled closer. “Just remember, if anyone does start poking around asking stuff, you never got it from us. See.” He jabbed a grimy gloved finger in Ezra’s chest and stared, his eyes as cold as two balls of dirty snow. “You don’t even know my name.”

  Ezra stared back and answered coolly, “I am not scared of you, Allen.”

  At that moment the boy called down from the cart. “Pa, shall we take this one to St Thomas’s, then?”

  Mr Allen snarled at him. “How many times? I ain’t your pa!”

  The boy flinched. Allen swore, hawked up a ball of phlegm and spat onto the snow. Like the drover, Ezra thought.

  “I’m training him up.” Allen smiled, his teeth were like gravestones. “Just like your boss is training you.”

  It wasn’t worth saying anything. Ezra wished the man would just go. “We’ll see you next week, then,” he said. “As usual.”

  “God willing.” Allen waved and climbed up onto the cart. “If you lot have one, that is.” Ezra watched as he flapped the reins against the pony’s back and the cart rolled away into the night.

  Ezra followed the cart out into the quiet, snow-muffled street and shivered. The man was unpleasant, he told himself. Nothing more. But someone else was clearly looking for the cadaver – well, for the man the cadaver had been. Who, though? The strange cove he’d seen watching the house and in the churchyard? And was there any connection between him and the boy with the bearing that said money and the smell that did not? Ezra looked up and down Great Windmill Street but it was empty. All folk, honest or black-hearted, were at home by their fires, and that lifted his spirits a little.

  There was a symphony of drips from the guttering of the house opposite, the thaw. London would soon be filthy and noisy again and the master would be home. All would be well.

  Ezra stepped inside, drew the bolts again, all of them, and went upstairs.

  The fire was still burning in the laboratory but it was bitter. He shivered again. That the human body could endeavour to keep warm when all around it the cold made death ever closer was indeed fascinating. How cold, he wondered, would a heart have to be before it ceased pumping? Ezra swore the master would know precisely, and he looked forward to being able to ask him about it over one of Mrs B’s hot stews.

  Ezra sat down at the bench and flicked through his notes on poisons. There were so many! He had found a number of toxins that could take effect in the twelve or so hours that had taken Mr Finch from sickness to death: digitalis, some West African plants, oleander and milkweed, and quite a few more. They all affected the heart, or so it said in the master’s books. But would any shrivel a man’s heart so completely?

  At least he could write to Miss Finch and say honestly that her father’s death was unnatural. And that poison was the cause, he was sure. But how could he go about finding the reason, and who in heaven’s name was the perpetrator? How was it to be discovered? All of the possible poisons needed to have been administered within the previous eighteen hours. It could only be Mrs Gurney, Mr Falcon or someone at the performance the night before
his death. And from Miss Finch’s description there had been an audience of close to one hundred souls at the embassy that night. If he could find a motive… Ezra rubbed his eyes.

  It was several days now since the man’s death, and every moment that passed would, he reasoned, make it harder to find the culprit. He paced the length of the museum in the dark, the pinpricks of candlelight bouncing off every glass surface, but his mind was stuck.

  It was no use, he would have to sleep on it. Ezra pinched the candle out and went to bed. Eventually he slept, deeply, and in his dreams he imagined himself on stage in some kind of magic show. He was at the Ottoman Embassy; the audience were row upon row of tongueless, slit-eared men, arms folded, gunshot wounds weeping blood, silent and staring. Ezra was alarmed further to find the magician was not Mr Falcon but the master. Suddenly, with a wave of his wand, the master vanished, and Ezra was left alone, staring out into the crowd as they shuffled silently towards him.

  He woke suddenly, his heart racing. His body was damp with sweat and he realized he was gripping the sheets. What on earth could it mean? He almost laughed at his own folly. Exactly nothing! He was entirely and completely rational. Interpreting dreams was for old women and country idiots.

  There was a scraping and he sat bolt upright, but it was only Ellen. She was sweeping out the grate and laying the new fire in the soft dark of the early morning.

  “Oh, I am sorry, Ez! I never meant to wake you.”

  “I was dreaming, Ellen. And you’ve done me a favour waking me. I’m thoroughly glad to be out of it.”

  Ellen lit the fire and stood up. “Thaw’s come on, thank God. Master’ll be home sometime today.”

  Ezra pulled the curtain back. There were some lamps lit in the houses opposite, and the sky was a curtain of light cloud. In the streets, the sound of the city waking up – iron wheels, horses’ hooves, carts and trolleys and the drip, drip of melting snow – promised a return to normality. Ezra smiled.

  He wrote to Miss Finch outlining his thoughts. He would confirm his thesis – that it was poison – as soon as the master returned. The cause, he wrote, and the perpetrator, sadly remained a mystery until he could discover a motive, which would take time. He dipped his pen into his inkwell and paused for a moment. Then he began writing again. It would further his work if he could make a visit to the embassy as soon as possible so that he could talk to all the relevant parties. Perhaps she would be so kind as to arrange it. He could not think of any other way.