Sawbones

by Catherine Johnson

  “Impossible,” said the porter, waving a hand dismissively. “Mr Ali Pasha is an important man, and very busy. Whatever it is you want with him, he has no time—”

  “I already told you!” Loveday protested. “It is a serious matter. My father has been murdered – and Mr Falcon too – and I am sure if your Mr Ali Pasha knew of it he would be keen to help us clear the matter up.”

  The porter sniffed. “I think not, Miss. He has better things to do than attend to a girl’s flights of fancy.”

  Loveday bristled, and Ezra thought he had better intervene. “Sir, please…” he began, but the porter had already closed the door on them.

  Loveday was fuming as they left, but Ezra felt only a resigned disappointment. It was as if every way they looked there were only dead ends and false hopes.

  “There must be someone else in the whole of London who speaks Arabic,” he said, trying not to sound as weary as he felt. “We will get to the root of it, Miss Finch.”

  Loveday sighed, some of the fire leaving her. She was tired, too. “Of course. I will make enquiries.”

  “And are you sure you’ll be safe at Mrs Gurney’s? It might be an idea to find other lodgings.”

  “I couldn’t stomach more change,” Loveday confessed. “I will be careful what I eat, and I will have my blade – I am pretty good with that, you know.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “And anyway, where would I go?” She shrugged. “I must make the best of things. Keep busy, find the root of all this trouble. I am sure we will, eventually.” But she sighed again, heavily, and did not sound convinced.

  “We will, I promise.”

  “Thank you, Ezra. I don’t know what I’d do…” Her voice trailed off. “I must put on a smile, that’s what I must do. It will all work out, I am sure.”

  She thanked him again as they reached Clerkenwell Green, said she would think on anything or anyone odd that she and her father had happened upon during their trip to Constantinople. Ezra said he would attend the coroner’s post-mortem. He bade her farewell and turned back towards Great Windmill Street.

  It was already getting dark and Ezra ran all the way home. He stopped on the front step, took a honey cake out of his pocket and broke it in half. He was putting one half of it in one of Mrs Boscaven’s mousetraps in the kitchen when Toms came in swinging a small carpetbag.

  Ezra put the trap down close to the hole in the skirting nearest to the fireplace.

  “You off somewhere?” he said to Toms.

  “I’m not staying here, I know that much. And in your shoes I’d be making plans too.”

  “Why’s that?” Ezra asked. “I know the master’s will – he spoke of it. He wished the anatomy school to continue.”

  “He’s dead, Ez,” Toms said flatly. Ezra bridled, but Toms didn’t notice. “You and I have seen the nephew. Even I can tell he’s not one who is,” Toms paused, looking for the right word, “a generous man. He’ll be rid of all of us before long, mark my words. What the master willed is neither here nor there … not when he’s not here to make it so.”

  Ezra remembered the funeral, and nodded sadly. The thought chilled him. Everything would change completely. He hadn’t fully taken it in. The master had been both teacher and parent.

  He turned away so Toms wouldn’t see his face.

  “And there were solicitor’s men round the house, making lists while you lot was out.” Toms drained his cup. “I’m off looking for work back up in Hampstead. I liked it there. Clean air. No bodies lying around or jars full of bits.”

  “The museum is important, the exhibits should stay together.” As Ezra said the words he remembered this afternoon. Lashley and Dr James seemed to have made their plans.

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it past that Scotchman to flog the whole lot off and pocket the rhino himself.” Toms put his cup down and held his hand out. “Shake? I know I ribbed you, but it were only talk. You weren’t too bad for a darkie,” he said. “No hard feelings?”

  Ezra shook Toms’s hand. He knew he ought to feel pleased to see the back of him, but he didn’t. Toms’ going was just one more thing changing, another part of his old life about to disappear. Ezra said nothing, just watched as Toms walked away down the street and off into a new life. Whistling, carefree.

  It was nearly seven o’clock and Ezra was helping Mrs Boscaven lay the table for the servants’ tea when Dr James called down that a messenger had arrived for Ezra. Ezra went up to the master’s office, but when Dr James handed it over, he saw that the envelope had already been torn open.

  “Sir!” Ezra said. “You have opened my post!”

  “This is my house,” Dr James snapped. “You have my name. Do not worry, I am not interested in your comings and goings, but you would do well to tell your young lady friend you are not going anywhere now, for if you do, know that the door will be locked for the evening. This is not a hotel or a lodging house.”

  Dr James slammed the door to the master’s office, leaving Ezra standing in the hall holding his letter. He took it out and read it.

  Meet me tonight at the corner of Coldbath Fields, 9.00 p.m. URGENT. I talked with the boy. It is imperative you come. Will explain all later. Miss L. Finch

  Ezra looked from the letter with its scrawled lines to the tight-shut door of the master’s old office. The word “urgent” was capitalized in Loveday Finch’s sloping hand. He had no choice but to go.

  Ezra hardly ate any tea, and left with plenty of time to make it the mile or so to Coldbath Fields, just north of Clerkenwell. He took his pocket knife and notebook, his tinderbox and a half-shilling, in case of some kind of emergency.

  As Ezra made his way east through the dark city streets there was the thinnest sliver of moon and only one house in four had bothered to put out a lantern. But the darkness and the candles lit inside meant Ezra could see into houses as he passed by. Not the parlours or the drawing rooms on the upper floors – those had their heavy winter curtains pulled shut to keep out the cold – but the kitchen windows, on which no such curtains were wasted. Little glimpses of lives lived in basements from Holborn all the way almost to Islington, entire households of servants busy with cooking or, having finished work, sitting with their feet up close to the fire, warm and cosy, talking and laughing. Ezra shivered, and it wasn’t just the cold: he felt completely and utterly alone.

  He passed the brewery at the end of Liquorpond Street and then the roads turned to mud. Up ahead out of the dark loomed Coldbath Fields Prison, square and heavy, rising up out of the fields like a prison ship that had broken upon the land, as if reminding all around that hell existed here on earth.

  Ezra looked up at the bowl of dark blue sky and wondered what path had led him into this terrible tangle of poison and murder. He hoped his master was somewhere safe and peaceful now.

  “There you are!” Loveday Finch appeared suddenly out of the shadows. She was holding a spade and had some kind of heavy bag across her shoulder. There was a boy with her, short, no more than nine or ten, carrying nothing. It was, Ezra realized as he came closer, the boy he’d seen outside the house on two occasions – the boy with the strange enunciation and ragged clothes who’d asked about the tongueless cadaver.

  Loveday must have seen the look on Ezra’s face. “This is Mahmoud,” she said. Mahmoud nodded slightly. She went on, “I found him lurking outside Mrs Gurney’s. He has been following us.”

  Ezra stared at Mahmoud, who looked unrepentant. “I knew it!”

  “He is a prince,” Loveday said matter-of-factly. “Come along, I have a spade.” She and the boy moved further off into the dark.

  “A prince?” Ezra hurried to keep up with her. “A spade? What on earth is happening? Where are we going?”

  “My father’s grave!” Loveday called over her shoulder. “We have to open the coffin. We need to look at the body.”

  “Wait! Miss Finch, may I remind you that I was present at his –” he paused; he didn’t like to say it – “his, um, e
xamination by Mr Lashley.”

  “We have to dig him up. You need to look again, Mahmoud says it is important.”

  “Imperative,” Mahmoud added.

  “‘Mahmoud says’ what? Mahmoud,” Ezra hissed, “is a boy.”

  “A boy,” Loveday replied, wheeling round, “who is the fifth son of the Ottoman Emperor Selim the Third! This is about money, as you predicted, and the money is on my father’s body. Mahmoud says he will translate my letter as soon as we dig up my father for him.”

  Ezra put his hand on her shoulder. “I told you, there was nothing on his body, or inside it!”

  The boy piped up, his voice strange and clear despite his foreign accent and much too grand for a ten-year-old dressed in ragged clothes and smelling as if he’d not washed in some time.

  “They are mine,” he declared. “The Cherries of Edirne. My insurance, which I need sorely, circumstances being what they are, and her father was to bring them to me.”

  “Cherries?” Ezra frowned.

  “Rubies!” Miss Finch said.

  “The man who killed the master wanted rubies, I remember!” Ezra’s mind was racing. “But how…?”

  Loveday shook him off. “It will take too long to explain now, and there is no time – someone else may get there first. There are jewels, Mr McAdam, hidden about my father’s body. We have to get them before anyone else and we have to do this now. That is at the heart of the whole mystery!”

  “I told you,” Ezra said firmly, “I was there when Mr Finch was opened up. There was nothing there – his stomach was already gone—”

  “They were hidden under his skin,” interrupted the boy, “not in his stomach.”

  “Well, that’s all right then!” Ezra snapped. “Of course! Oh, I remember, we failed to take his brain or bowels apart. Perhaps they were stuck up his—”

  “Mr McAdam! Please!” Loveday had thrown down the spade and was using her hands to cover the boy’s ears.

  Ezra recovered himself. “I am sorry. I was just saying that we – I – would have found anything.”

  “I think not,” Mahmoud said. He seemed remarkably composed. “We have ways and means. The jewels were to be hidden under the skin of his scalp, just behind the ear.”

  “See?” Miss Finch took Ezra’s hand impatiently. “Come along!”

  Chapter Eleven

  St James’s Churchyard

  New Prison Walk

  Clerkenwell

  London

  November 1792

  A graveyard at night is always eerie, Ezra thought, even when a corpse is a normal part of your work. There was no one in the watch house, but given the cold night it was not surprising.

  Miss Finch handed Ezra the spade. “You are the biggest, and Mahmoud is a prince.”

  “That is no excuse for not digging!”

  Mahmoud looked at him, and even in the dark Ezra was certain the boy’s lip curled. “Are you a republican, then?”

  “Isn’t this whole debacle due to the whims of sultans and princes? Surely if your countrymen governed themselves…”

  Mahmoud drew himself up to his full height. “You know nothing of my countrymen!”

  “No politics,” Loveday hissed. “Not now.”

  Ezra shook his head. What in heaven’s name was he doing hanging around in a dark, cold graveyard arguing with a boy who said he was a prince?

  “This is madness, Miss Finch,” he said.

  Loveday led him aside. “Please, I know it sounds outlandish, even to me, but I do believe him. Do you think I would countenance digging up the body of my own father if I did not?”

  Ezra could not argue with that. “Keep a good watch, then – if anyone sees, we are in trouble.”

  “I thought you said taking a corpse was not a crime,” Loveday said.

  “Yes, but opening up a grave is.” Ezra started digging anyway. “One other thing, Miss Finch,” he said, “this will not be an easy thing… Your father has been dead for some time, and—”

  “I am a grown woman, Mr McAdam. I know what we are about. Do not baby me.”

  The digging was not hard, as the grave had only been filled the previous day. Ezra struck the coffin before long, and called for the boy – prince or not – to jump down with him and help clear the dirt off the top.

  The coffin was sealed. Ezra took out his pocket knife, which was sharp enough to break the seal but not thick enough to lever the coffin open. Instead he used the edge of the spade, once, twice. The third time he heard the wood splinter.

  The smell was the usual reek of damp earth and rotting meat. Mahmoud jumped up as there wasn’t room in the grave for both of them and the coffin lid. Miss Finch stepped away.

  “Is he there? Is it him?” she whispered.

  “We need the lamp,” Ezra called up.

  Loveday passed it down, and Ezra set it on a ledge of clay and began to undo the winding sheet from the top, just as far as the neck.

  Mr Finch, thanks to the cold weather, didn’t look too bad save for the flesh beginning to draw back from the mouth and the eyes beginning to sink – where the balls had softened slightly, Ezra reckoned.

  “So where am I looking?” he asked.

  “Behind the right ear,” the boy answered.

  Ezra turned the head – he felt the give of the flesh in the neck, and pulled it away. Under his fingers the skin felt clay-cold, putty-soft. He moved the ear, hoping it wouldn’t come away in his hand – the skin had begun to slip from the cadaver. He felt behind it.

  “Have you found anything?” Loveday called.

  “There!” A lump, two, underneath his fingertips. He took his pocket knife and sliced the skin. There was no blood. Three flat, slippery, disc-shaped stones slid into his open hand. “I have them!”

  Suddenly there was the sound of slow hooves on the ground and the wheels of a large heavy cart somewhere out on the road. Loveday squealed and threw herself and the boy into the grave with Ezra.

  “Are you mad?” Ezra hissed.

  “Someone is coming, I know it!”

  Ezra snuffed out the lamp and the three of them froze, as still as Mr Finch, lying beside them in the dark.

  The cart seemed to move agonizingly slowly. Ezra was intensely conscious of the face of the cadaver only inches from his own, and his own breathing sounded so loud he was certain it must somehow be heard from the road. He held his breath, his heart pounding in his chest, and after an age the hoofbeats receded into the night.

  “I smell of death,” Loveday said as she scrambled out, shaking her skirts to loosen the mud. Ezra shut the coffin lid as best he could and clambered out after her, slipping and sliding on the mud.

  “You found them?” the boy demanded.

  “I found something. Look.” Ezra unclenched his fist and the stones, no bigger than marbles, glistened in his palm, even in the dim moonlight.

  “Oi! Who’s there?” A call from beyond the churchyard wall – a man, the watch, with a lantern raised.

  Ezra felt his heart skip. He looked at Loveday Finch and Mahmoud. But in an instant the boy had snatched up the stones from his hand and run – vanished, as quick as a phantom, into the dark.

  Miss Finch grabbed Ezra’s hand and pulled him into the shadow of the church.

  “Is someone there? Oi!” the watch called again. He blew his whistle in alarm – there was the distant sound of boots on cobbles; the man wasn’t alone.

  “We’ve had it!” Ezra whispered.

  “Come on! Over the wall and into the fields!” Loveday Finch began to run.

  “What about the boy?”

  “This way!” They got as far as the wall but it seemed to be higher here. Ezra thought he might be able to scramble up, but Miss Finch in her skirts would be trapped.

  Behind them they could hear footsteps and a dog barking, coming closer all the while.

  Loveday turned to him and grinned. “Come here!” she said, and pulled Ezra into a clinch.

  “What?” The word came out distinctly
muffled as she launched herself at him, and Ezra found Loveday Finch’s lips pressed to his. It was, he thought, infinitely more shocking than disinterring a corpse ever could be.

  The watchman swung his lantern towards them and stopped. The light was strong and yellow and they broke apart, blinking.

  “It’s only a pair of young ’uns!” the watchman called over his shoulder. “You seen anything? Grave over there’s been disturbed.” The man swung his lantern around, and Ezra was glad that Loveday had left the spade.

  “No, sir. Sorry, sir,” Ezra said, hoping the mud that clung to their shoes would not give them away.

  “Get on with you,” the man said. “Go on. Quick, before I change my mind and lock you up for something I haven’t thought of yet.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Ezra took Loveday’s hand in his and they ran towards the gate and out into the fields, keeping the pace up until they saw the lights of the houses at Clerkenwell Green in the distance.

  “I am never doing that again!” Ezra panted, stamping his feet as soon as they reached the modern stone paving to dislodge the grave mud from his boots. Every bone ached from digging, his fingers were greasy with corpse residue and his lips felt as if they had been assaulted.

  “The watch let us alone, didn’t they?” Loveday said, almost giggling with relief.

  “Thank heavens! But where did the boy go?”

  “Mahmoud? I think he got away. I hope so. Perhaps he will come to the house tomorrow.”

  “Why?” Ezra asked. “He has what he wants – you and I taken for mugs and doing his dirty work. That is royalty through and through.”

  “But don’t you see?” said Loveday. “This is the answer to everything! Someone knew Pa was carrying those rubies but whoever killed him couldn’t find them.” She looked at Ezra. “Those things must have been worth a fortune – that’s why they took his body! And when they still found nothing they went after Mr Falcon…”

  “Why would your father do that? Carry those things under his skin?” Ezra made a face.

  “We do not all have a trade, Ezra McAdam. Money comes and goes. Pa would have accepted the fee.” Loveday paused. “What I still don’t see, though, is why they came after your master.”