Beloved Poison (33 page)

‘You don’t have a dog,’ I said.

‘Don’t I?’ Dick frowned. ‘But I always ’ave a dog.’

I glanced at Will. ‘He’s never had a dog,’ I muttered.

‘I’m eighty!’ cried Dick. ‘Ninety! One hunner! I’ve had plenty o’ dogs!’

I sighed. ‘Thank you, Dick.’ This was useless; the old fellow was talking gibberish. I made as if to leave. But Dick was speaking again. His tiny eyes shifted from my face to Will’s, his right eye dead and misted with cataracts, his left blinking in the candlelight, as bright as an apple pip.

‘Used to watch ’em,’ he said. ‘Them what came from the ’ospital. Dug up anyone they could. Paid me not to see, but I always saw. Sometimes I took their money, sometimes I didn’t. Up to me, ain’t it? Took a stick to ’em once, chased ’em out the place. ’Ad my dog then.’ He chuckled, and shook his head. ‘In and out the ground they go. In and out and in again. No peace for ’em even here. Even now.’

‘In
again
?’ said Will.

Dick nodded sagely. ‘Puttin’ ’em in. They did that too. That’s my job, ain’t it, and I can’t say as they did it right. But I left ’em to it. No one asks Ol’ Dick nuffink any more, so why should I tell ’em how to do the job like it should be done? Why should I tell ’em where they should be diggin’?’

‘
I’m
asking you,’ said Will. ‘You know this graveyard better than anyone, Dick. Did you see them last night?’

‘Yes,’ said Dick.

‘Who?’ I cried.

‘Medicals,’ said Dick. ‘Always the same ones.’

I sat forward. ‘Did you see who they were? Their faces? Can you describe them? How many did you see?’

‘Nah!’ said Dick, recoiling. He scowled at me. ‘Didn’t see
nuffink
!
’

‘Come along, man,’ I cried. ‘You said you saw someone, so who did you see?’

Will put a hand on my arm. He stood up, and coaxed Dick to sit on the chair, then crouched down at the old man’s side. ‘Now, Dick, just you tell us what you saw. You remember last night, don’t you? Out there in the dark. Who did you see? Could you tell who it was?’

‘Yessir,’ Dick nodded, peering down at Will fondly. ‘It’s one to watch and two to dig, when they’re takin’ ’em out. Take it in turns, that’s the way. But not when they put ’em in. When they put ’em in there’s two of ’em – man and boy. Should o’ taken my dog an’ chased ’em.’ He stroked his chin and looked perplexed. ‘Didn’t atcherly
see
’em dig though. Not this time. Didn’t hear ’em dig neither. Usually do. Must be me deafness.’ He frowned. ‘Used to be dark when they came. Dark as pitch, and the lantern movin’ amongst the gravestones like will-o’-the-wisp. Even
that’s
changed now. They come in the moonlight now.’ He grinned. ‘One big-small. Nine guineas, when it’s the season for cuttin’ ’em up! But I’ll let you take ’em all if you give me a shillin’.’

Will smiled, and pressed a coin into the old man’s hand. ‘You drive a hard bargain, sir,’ he said. ‘But I
will
take them all.’

‘Two of them,’ I said, as we walked back to the excavations. ‘He said he saw two of them. A man and a boy. A boy! D’you think one of Joe’s gang is a party to his murder?’

‘Unless he was referring to Joe himself. Perhaps he meant Joe and his attacker.’

‘Perhaps. And he said there was no digging. “Didn’t see ’em dig, didn’t hear ’em dig neither.” That’s because there
was
no digging, not last night.’

‘What did he mean by “One big-small”?’ said Will.

‘It’s resurrection men’s talk for a large child,’ I said. I had not heard the term for years. ‘Nine guineas was the top price some anatomy schools paid. And Dick was surprised to see them putting the body into the ground rather than taking it out. “That’s my job,” he said. Pity he didn’t see their faces,’ I added.

We fell silent as we walked back towards the mound of bones. The rain drummed on the hoods of our oilskins and trickled down our faces. The men laboured in the pit, and around the bone pile, but they did so in silence, their faces turned to their grim work. From each hood a pipe projected, down-turned to keep the cinder alight, the clouds of smoke that billowed from between their teeth masking the stink of the earth. I had decided to take Joe to the dissecting room, and I gathered him up in my arms, still wrapped in his tarpaulin shroud. The men stopped in their work and parted to allow us through, their heads bowed.

As I carried Joe’s body towards the gate, a curious feeling crept over me. It was an uncanny sensation, a contracting of the flesh, as though a raindrop had penetrated my oilskin and was oozing down my spine. I looked up, my gaze drawn to the windows of the infirmary – black, gaping rectangles in the great grey edifice of that ugly square-shouldered building. For a moment I could make out nothing but the rain pouring down from inky skies, rising up again in a miasma of dampness. It rendered the air opaque, as if we viewed the world through a curtain of dirty muslin. And then a breeze blew; the drizzle billowed and shifted. A face looked down at us, the ribbons of her bonnet blowing about her face like the heads of the hydra.

We took Joe to the anatomy room. The morning was dark, even for the time of year, but the glass panes in the roof turned the place into a luminous theatre; the rounded bellies of glass vessels catching the light in glinting rows of watchful eyes. Dr Graves kept the place gleaming, and my face – red and white, like blood and bandages – was reflected back at me from the mirrored surfaces of bottles and knives. I laid Joe on the dissecting table.

‘You’re not going to cut him up, are you?’ said Will.

‘No,’ I said. ‘But we must examine him, to see what we can discover.’ I pushed Joe’s hair back from his face. He seemed to be watching me from beneath half-closed lids, wary, even in death.
One big-small,
I thought.
Nine guineas
. The lad would have been worth more dead than alive.

The tarpaulin had kept much of the rain off, so he was dry, more or less. This, I knew, was to our advantage. We removed his clothes, and went through the pockets. Apart from a ha’penny, they were empty. I examined him as gently as I could: his face, head and neck, his torso and limbs. I looked at his nails with the magnifying glass, and lingered over his palms, and the tips of his fingers.

‘Well?’ said Will. He was standing against the wall, his gaze fixed upon his boots, as if he was afraid to look up. I knew the place unsettled him; the jars of preserved tumours and organs made him uneasy. As for the hiss of a scalpel against flesh, the grating of the bone-saw, or the squelching of fingers amongst viscera, those things, I knew, he would not be able to countenance at all. But I had no need of such drastic measures: my senses would serve us well enough.

‘There is a gash to the back of Joe’s head,’ I said, my fingers probing gently. ‘The skull is crushed. I can feel that the wound is rounded at the edges, as if caused by something heavy and blunt.’

‘Dr Catchpole has a weighted stick,’ said Will. ‘And Dr Magorian.’

‘All gentlemen have them,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think this has been caused by a blow from a walking stick. I think it’s been made by Joe’s head striking the edge of one of the tools at the foot of the pit. There was blood on the shaft of an axe which lay beneath him, did you notice? The axe was wedged under a block and tackle, so it could not have been used as a weapon
per se
.’

‘So he was flung down into the pit, hit his head, and that’s what killed him?’

‘It would be easy to claim he fell, easy to say that his death was nothing more than misadventure.’

‘And yet he was covered by a tarpaulin. Concealed.’

‘Yes. Though it would be possible to argue that he pulled it as he fell. More telling are the bruises on his wrists. The imprint of fingers is clear.’

‘So he was held tightly, or dragged, by the wrist?’

‘I think so. Joe’s a slum child. His whole body is covered with bruises and weals, but I’m sure
these
marks are fresh. They’re red, not yellow or blue like the other bruises on him, so you may well be right. Still,’ I sighed. ‘It doesn’t prove anything. Not when there are so many other, older marks of violence upon him.’

‘There’s a bruise around his eye,’ said Will, stepping closer.

‘And look at his fingers,’ I said. ‘The nails.’ I handed him the magnifying glass.

‘Recently broken. The dirt’s not rubbed into the breaks.’

‘Poor Joe,’ I said. ‘He must have put up quite a fight.’ But there was something else; something I was sure would provide us with some answers at last. If I could only be certain. ‘Look at the palm of his right hand, Will. Use the magnifying glass. What do you see?’

Will bent over the dissecting bench, the glass to his eye, his nose almost touching Joe’s fingers. After a moment he said, ‘I can’t see anything.’

‘Can’t you?’ I took the glass. I was hardly certain myself. And yet Dr Bain had said one must use
all
the senses. Sight was not the only thing we might rely upon to uncover the truth. I sniffed at Joe’s hand, but it was hard to detect anything in the thick atmosphere of the dissecting room. I touched his palm with my fingertips, but the gritty sensation I was searching for was indiscernible. I licked the skin in the centre of his hand. I shook my head. ‘I still can’t be
sure
,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Will, his expression disgusted. ‘What can’t you be sure about?’

‘I’m sorry, Joe,’ I murmured. And then I leaned forward, and put my mouth to his. I licked the tip of the dead boy’s tongue.

‘What are you doing?’ cried Will. ‘Jem!’

But now I
was
certain. ‘Sugar,’ I said, wiping my lips. ‘The last thing Joe touched, the last thing he ate, was sugar. And he did so just before he died.’

The coffins were our last hope to find the truth. That evening, in search of privacy and solitude, we took them to Dr Bain’s laboratory. The place was eerily silent: the clock no longer ticked; the rats, which used to keep up an incessant rustling and squeaking, I had stuffed into a sack and flung into the Fleet Ditch. Since Dr Bain’s death I had kept the shutters closed. I now added the precaution of pulling the curtains closed too, so that not a single thread of light might be visible from the street. It was clear that this was something Dr Bain never did – certainly, I had never seen him do it – and the ponderous drapes released choking grey clouds.

Tears stung my eyes. ‘It’s the dust,’ I muttered. But it wasn’t. I put my hand over my eyes, unable, for a moment, to bear the sight of that familiar place: the black marks on the fireplace where the doctor had knocked out his pipe; the greeny-brown blobs of masticated coca leaves that littered the hearth. How many evenings had I spent at Dr Bain’s bench? His book on poisons lay unfinished; the notebooks in which we had written up our findings were in a pile on the corner of the desk. It was the custom at St Saviour’s for a medical man to bequeath his papers to his successor; but to whom might I give Dr Bain’s papers? Had he meant for me to keep them? Who would be appointed, now that he was dead? I did not want to think of it. Dr Bain could never be replaced.

Will pulled out the coffins. Both appeared to be cut from the same material. ‘They are made from a prescription ledger,’ I said. ‘We have used the same kind for years. Anyone would be able to procure such a thing.’