The Ghost of Waterloo (10 page)

The final indignity, dissection, was unavoidable. The late General’s gaolers were keen to dispel charges that they had poisoned their celebrated charge. Napoleon himself had fuelled that rumour mill, telling his last doctor, ‘After my death, I want you to examine my stomach particularly carefully; make a precise, detailed report on it. I charge you to overlook nothing.’ Dr Antommarchi, a fellow Corsican, agreed. And so the stage was set.

For the laymen present, the autopsy lived up to necropsy’s fearful reputation as the ‘beastly science’. The sturdy body’s distended abdomen had been ripped open and the organs brutally exposed. A blood-spattered Antommarchi examined evidence of corrosion and a lesion in the area of the pylorus, the opening between the stomach and the intestine, and hurriedly announced that the cause of death was cancer.

While at least one important man, Napoleon’s chief gaoler, Sir Hudson Lowe, was pleased and in agreement with what the autopsy concluded, one witness was deeply puzzled.

This worrier was Thomas Owens, who understood corpses. He had been an army surgeon during the last Iberian and Continental campaigns, both of which had been sparked by the ambitions of the man whose shell now lay before him.

At the climax of the conflict – between 1810 and ’15 – the British Army numbered more than 300000. After Waterloo, its strength dropped by two-thirds.

With fewer soldiers, few battles and, consequently, fewer wounds or illnesses, the army needed fewer doctors. Owens drifted onto the reserve lists, which paid less. But, money notwithstanding, his removal from the battlefield suited him. Doctoring under fire was generally less successful than the often hit-or-miss practices carried out in even the comparative calm of civilian peacetime. While all patients feared treatment, only soldiers had turned it into a grim prayer muttered before battle: ‘God save me from the surgeons!’

Now – and this was one reason he had landed on St Helena – he was a ship’s surgeon. He had worked briefly in London at Guy’s Hospital, but a falling-out with the influential anatomist Dr Vyse had driven him out. He spoke the truth when he now told his hosts at the post mortem that his interest was, literally, a passing and professional one. In reality, it was also personal. Owens had served at Waterloo and had seen Napoleon Bonaparte during the battle (a thing that, oddly, relatively few of the 140000 men, Allies or French, on the field could have said).

He had a fascination with the fallen Emperor and keenly followed his progress in exile. He found it quite surprising how much private information about the celebrity prisoner was public knowledge.

During this dissection, he was given an earlier report by a physician from the island garrison, Dr Alexander Arnott, and it seemed perfectly borne out by the result of the autopsy. There was, however, one oddity in the account: the illustrious patient had, curiously, insisted on being examined in a darkened room. Owens had also studied the diagnoses of a Dr Barry O’Meara, who had treated Bonaparte in 1817 when he first complained of pain under the right ribs, and he also knew the opinions of other medical visitors. While the Arnott report now broke no new medical ground, Thomas Owens found the other case notes more intriguing, and confusing. As was the banishment of Barry O’Meara in 1818 for being too friendly with the former Emperor.

Today, they had all seen the unarguable evidence of a stomach ailment and a small stone in the bladder. The feet were very swollen and the body had lost much of its hair. Owens noted that even the greying thatch of black pubic hair was sparse around the wizened, circumcised penis.

What also troubled him was the state of two other vital parts of the corpse now laid out before him. O’Meara and Antommarchi had separately diagnosed a grossly enlarged liver and suggested hepatitis. Owens understood that a damaged liver, even one hobnailed by drink, could often regenerate remarkably, but the organ now shown him by the bloody-handed anatomist seemed pristine, apparently never affected in any way. And the late patient was not jaundiced, as one might have expected of a man with liver problems.

The puzzled doctor also knew that Bonaparte, all his adult life, had suffered greatly from prolapsed piles. This may have even cost him victory at Waterloo. There, when he had a chance to turn the battle, his haemorrhoids were so strangulated and protruding that he could not walk or ride, and paused in pursuit while leeches gorged to reduce the swelling.

At Owens’ request, the surgeon had gently turned the body and parted the posterior cheeks to examine the Emperor’s anus. There were no signs of any disease or healed wounds; there was no evidence of surgical repair.

How very strange, thought Owens. Something must have happened between the earlier diagnoses of the doctors and the final analysis of dissection. But exactly what?

Thomas Owens kept his counsel. Anyway, to the Frenchmen here he represented the enemy – and who would listen to a half-pay army surgeon who was now a ship’s sawbones?

The torn carcass was packed with aromatic herbs then stitched together and prepared for a rapid burial nearby. The body was dressed in the uniform of the Chasseurs of Bonaparte’s beloved Imperial Guard, which he had formed seventeen years earlier – but there was an odd incident.

The dressers could not find the General’s best uniform and had to make do with a spare green coat and doeskin trousers. The procession was then free to move across Longwood Green to the grave in Geranium Valley, led by the Emperor’s favourite horse, the grey named Le Vizir, a gift in 1807 from the Ottoman Sultan.

The Emperor’s will was read, and among the bequests was one of 80000 francs to a certain William Balcombe. But there was little money for anyone. And there was a strange remark: ‘I die prematurely, murdered by the English oligarchy and its hired assassins.’

Apart from the uniform, several other items could not be found among the dead man’s personal possessions. The bedside pictures of his Empress, Marie-Louise, and of their baby King of Rome were missing. As was the small leather bag on its ribbon sling, an object Napoleon Bonaparte had carried for as long as the island’s intimates could recall.

Chapter Fifteen

Sydney, Australia – Spring, 1828

Well, there you have it then, Doctor!’ exclaimed Ralph Darling once Thomas Owens’ mind and tongue were back in Government House in the present day, following his narrative regression to 1821 and St Helena. ‘He is dead and buried. As you say, you saw it. There could be no resurrection from that ordeal.’

‘His Excellency is right,’ said Nicodemus Dunne after a pause. He had held back to allow Captain Rossi, as his superior, an opportunity to comment, but he noted that the Police Chief was uncharacteristically subdued.

‘Indeed, Doctor,’ the Patterer continued, ‘perhaps any conflicts between the various doctors’ diagnoses and the apparent evidence at the post mortem are just that: contradictions in what was, dare I say it, not a very scientific circumstance.

‘For what did you have? Basically, a primitive setting, tales from physicians of varying origin and at different times, and a rather uncooperative patient (in life, at least). Is it any wonder that certain symptoms do not coincide between the reports?’

Dr Owens, however, was adamant. ‘No, sir. I now believe that the body I saw butchered belonged to someone other than Bonaparte.’

‘Why, exactly, Owens?’ asked Rossi, breaking his long silence.

‘A fair question, Captain,’ the doctor replied. ‘At the time, as I have told you, I did mentally remark on the absence of body hair and the fact that there seemed no obvious liver damage. But two further matters should have alerted me then that something was amiss.
Primus
: the overall condition of the corpse. With such a progressive illness as the one proposed, one could reasonably expect the body to be sorely wasted. It wasn’t.
Secundus
: no one, not even I, looked, or cared to look, carefully enough at the liver. Sure, as I’ve said, it showed no obvious signs of damage. But its tissue, its essence, should have been analysed there and then. That may well have revealed toxins retained. The hair loss and waxen skin tone actually point to poison as the cause of —’

Thomas Owens paused in mid-sentence and clapped a hand hard to his forehead. ‘Good Lord,’ he cried, ‘I am even more stupid than I thought!’

‘What is it?’ asked Rossi, thoroughly alarmed.

‘Just this, gentlemen,’ replied the doctor. ‘I was fed yet another clue to the puzzle at the post mortem and I failed to recognise it as well.

‘Monsieur Louis Marchand, who I learnt was a most loyal servant, was generous with his information and told me that in March doctors had administered emetic tartar to his illustrious master.

‘I knew that this specific is usually meant to induce vomiting, but Marchand did not understand the reason, saying simply that “the doctors” and Napoleon’s chamberlain, a Comte de Montholon, had overseen the treatment. I will comment on this in a moment, but it seems that in April the patient complained of great thirst and received large measures of an orgeat.’

‘Which is what?’ interrupted the Patterer.

‘In its simplest form,’ answered Owens, ‘you probably know it as a barley water, but this orgeat appeared to have been concocted as a thin syrup made from almonds, sugar and orange flower water.’

‘Sounds harmless,’ shrugged Rossi.

‘Indeed,’ said the doctor, ‘but bear with me. There were further administrations of orgeat for thirst and then, on 3 May at least, only two days before his death, the General was given large dosages of calomel (more on that soon too) to ease his constipation. Perhaps he received more doses of this subsequently. I don’t know.’

Owens spread his hands. ‘However, what I
do
know is that emetic tartar contains antimony, which is never entirely pure, containing perhaps five
per centum
of arsenic.

‘And what is a symptom of arsenic poisoning? Yes, gentlemen – raging thirst and costiveness, or constipation.

‘So, one may take orgeat for thirst. Very well, but what if the “almonds” therein were not almonds at all, but the bitter almondlike taste – disguised by sugar – of a hydrocyanic acid solution, that solution we popularly call prussic acid?

‘Finally, there is the calomel, which someone offered him to alleviate constipation – which we know can be caused by the arsenic in emetic tartar. And too much calomel – which, by the way, is white, tasteless and fickle in its chemical changes – means too much mercury. And too much of a mercurial treatment can infuse toxicity, deadly poisonous traces, in human tissue.

‘Thus, we appear to have a merry-go-round of medicinal marvels – or is it a dance of death?’

‘That’s absolutely fascinating,’ said Dunne.

The Captain’s mouth was open, and even imperious Ralph Darling was shaking his head in surprise. The Governor, however, soon recovered his equanimity, and his scepticism.

‘Very prettily told,’ he said doggedly. ‘The fellow may well have been poisoned – it’s hard to draw any limits with the damn French – but, for that matter, he may well have poisoned himself. You tell us that he’d tried before. No matter. None of it means that the dead man, however he died, wasn’t Bonaparte.’

But Thomas Owens was not cast down; instead a triumphant smile transformed his long face. ‘Oh, we buried the wrong man that day, never fear,’ he said. ‘I confess that I didn’t know the truth at the time – and it took me too damn long to see the lethal light. Even after I found the sachet today, the sad and strange reality is that I didn’t realise the full significance of what I’d witnessed that day in 1821 until just now.

‘Oddly enough, I had a stirring of inspiration only the other night, when I witnessed the humiliation of that poor castrato at the theatre.’

At the mention of Levey’s cheeky endeavour, the Governor frowned, but curiosity overcame any rancour regarding the theatre and he did not interrupt.

‘That night,’ continued the doctor, ‘I idly considered – it was professional interest, I assure you – the medical procedure involved. I should have gone further, I suppose.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ said the Patterer.

Owens laughed. ‘Oh, my dear Dunne, I simply mean that I was looking at the physical area where you might say my knowledge, training and instincts let me down so badly at the
post mortem
on St Helena. You see, when I looked at the castrato I considered the cruel operation required on his genitalia.’

No one could follow the doctor’s reasoning and it showed.

‘Well, you could say that when I closely examined that body on the island, I had my priorities – to put it vulgarly – arse-about. I was looking at the anus when I should have concentrated on the penis. My description just now of the autopsy repeated the great error I made seven years ago. Remember? I remarked,
en passant
, that the body’s member was circumcised.

‘Of course, the real Napoleon’s was not!’

Chapter Sixteen