The Lazarus Curse (Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mystery) Page 22

  At that moment, he suddenly became aware of a noise behind him. He turned to see Franklin on the bookshelf above his head, scuttling over the tops of various volumes, and was reminded how, after Lydia’s husband had been found hanged in his cell, the rat’s instincts had pointed him to the murderer. He resolved to return to Sir Stephen’s office first thing tomorrow and find out what happened to the ligature, whatever its nature or origin, that had secured the headless corpse to the pier. It may prove vital in his investigation.

  Sir Stephen Gandy had agreed to see Thomas at short notice. The coroner was standing by the hearth, holding his hands to the fire, when he entered. He turned and acknowledged the doctor’s presence, somewhat grudgingly, it seemed.

  “So, Silkstone, you have more to tell me, I hope, about how this Mr. Bartlett came to be found in such an unfortunate state in the Thames?” His manner, thought Thomas, seemed rather brusque and glib, as he paced to and fro in front of the fire, his hands now clasped behind his back. He did not invite Thomas to sit.

  “Actually, it is my intention to ask a question of you, sir.”

  “Oh?” The coroner arched a brow.

  Thomas cleared his throat. “You mentioned that the victim was tied to a pier when he was found, but you did not say how.”

  “What of it?” The coroner’s mood grew sourer by the second.

  “I wondered if I may see it, sir, if it is still available, whatever it was.”

  “And you think this will help track down the perpetrator of this crime?”

  “It may or it may not. ’Tis hard to say without having seen it.”

  Sir Stephen’s lips pursed into a grimace. “Very well, Silkstone. If you think ’twill help.” Ringing a bell on his desk, he summoned his clerk, then instructed him to fetch all documents relating to the murder of Matthew Bartlett.

  “I am a busy man, Silkstone,” he muttered as he strode over to his desk and sat down.

  Thomas gave a stilted bow. “I appreciate your time, sir,” he said, as the clerk returned with a leather wallet and laid it before the coroner. Opening it, Sir Stephen pulled out a long cloth strap and held it up. “This is what secured the corpse, although how it proves anything is beyond me,” he snapped.

  Thomas smiled as he was handed the item. Clutching it in his fist, he knew instantly that this new piece of evidence could prove key in his search for Matthew Bartlett’s killer. His heart was pounding fast, but he willed himself to remain calm in front of the coroner.

  “I am most obliged to you, sir,” said Thomas, placing the strap in his medical case. “I am sure it will be of use,” he added, before making a low bow and taking his leave.

  Back at Hollen Street, Thomas found Dr. Carruthers cradling a brandy in the study.

  “Ah! You are in a hurry to tell me something, young fellow,” said the old anatomist, having listened to the pace at which Thomas had walked through the hallway and into the room.

  Thomas, slightly breathless with both exertion and excitement, acknowledged that he was, indeed, in a hurry.

  Opening his case, he took out the cloth strap and placed it in the old man’s free hand.

  “What have we here?” asked his mentor, placing his brandy glass on the side table so that he could concentrate on what had just been placed in his palm.

  His first reaction was one of disgust. “The stink tells me it has been in water. The Thames most like.”

  Thomas smiled, but resisted the urge to reveal any more as he watched the old man run his gnarled old fingers along the ligature. When he came to an end, he felt its frayed edges and discovered telltale holes had been made in the cloth.

  After only a few seconds, Carruthers nodded. “No mystery about this, young fellow. ’Tis a tourniquet strap.”

  Thomas retrieved it and inspected the length of cloth once more. “I believe it is, for use with a screw tourniquet, if I’m not mistaken,” he said, inspecting the holes in the cloth where a buckle would have been attached. He pictured how, before an amputation, the belt was pulled tight around the limb above the wound, with the screw over the main artery. He had used one many times himself, turning the screw to compress the artery and, in so doing, aiming to deaden the main nerves, thus helping to numb the pain.

  “Now will you tell me what this is all about?” asked Carruthers, with an air of impatience.

  Thomas, still holding the tourniquet tight between his two hands, looked up.

  “It reaffirms my theory that Mr. Bartlett was not murdered by a bunch of cutthroats but by a man of medicine, a surgeon or an anatomist most like. The decapitation itself, and now this. If I’m not very much mistaken, I’ll wager this tourniquet came from Hubert Izzard’s anatomy school.”

  Carruthers shook his head. “I would not give you long odds on that one, young fellow.”

  Thomas watched his mentor’s expression. It had suddenly become very grave. He knew him well enough to realize when something was troubling him; the way his forehead puckered and his mouth drooped.

  “What is it, sir?” asked Thomas, drawing up a small chair to sit beside his mentor.

  Carruthers thought for a moment, as if framing a painful memory in his mind’s eye.

  “Sir?” pressed Thomas.

  The old man turned his head toward his protégé. “I have not been totally honest with you, young fellow,” he began.

  His words jerked Thomas upright. He had never heard such an admission from his mentor before. He knew him to be straight as a die. He frowned. “Not honest?”

  Carruthers smiled and shook his head. “I have never lied to you, but perhaps I should have told you the whole truth about Izzard before.”

  Thomas shot back. “I suspect that man’s hand in all of this, sir, but if you have any evidence . . .”

  Carruthers raised a finger. “What testimony I shall give you is only regarding the man’s character,” he insisted. “I did not tell you before, because I did not want his vile past to color your own judgment. You must be impartial in your search for the truth. You, of all people, young fellow, know that.”

  Thomas knew Carruthers to be right. The evidence, in all things, must speak for itself. Whatever his mentor was about to say must corroborate, not convict. “That I do, sir,” he replied.

  The old anatomist took a deep breath and reached for his half full glass of brandy. “My story,” he said, “is of how Izzard’s nose was broken.”

  “You have known him long?”

  Carruthers nodded slowly. “His father was the surgeon who employed me in Jamaica.”

  “I see,” nodded Thomas, suddenly understanding his mentor’s reticence on the subject. “So how did he break his nose?” he urged, unsure as to where the trail might lead.

  Carruthers’s shoulders heaved in a great sigh. “He was but sixteen when he was found raping a slave woman by her husband. In his rage, the man punched the braggart in the face. The Negro was sentenced to death, and Izzard watched him as he was strung up with a hook through his ribs.” The old anatomist gulped back his brandy. “It took three days for the wretch to die, and during that time Izzard taunted him till he drew his last breath. I shall never forget the man’s piteous cries.”

  Thomas remained silent for a moment, his head bowed, picturing the scene.

  “You understand why I did not tell you before?” asked Carruthers.

  “I do, sir,” nodded Thomas. “I would break his nose a second time,” he said between clenched teeth.

  “Such was his contempt for the slaves, even when he was barely a man,” continued Carruthers. “His father was little better, praising his son’s actions.”

  “And that is when you resigned?”

  The old anatomist nodded. “I could not stand the barbarity of it. I left for England the following week.”

  “And after all these years, Izzard still shows his contempt for Negroes,” mused Thomas. “So you believe he is having them killed to order, sir?”

  Thomas’s gaze switched back to his mentor. A single t
ear was running down Carruthers’s cheek and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “I think not, young fellow,” he said, shaking his head.

  Thomas thought of Izzard as a young man, taunting the dying Negro. It was the behavior of a bully, but perhaps not of a killer. “Because he is too much of a coward?” he ventured.

  “Precisely,” came the reply. “I do not believe he is a murderer, but he may well be doing business with someone who is.”

  Chapter 44

  At the country seat of Draycott House, the men were gathered at the far end of Sir Montagu Malthus’s bedchamber. There were three of them, two physicians and a surgeon, and they huddled like vultures eyeing a dying animal. Sir Montagu had taken to his bed on Christmas Day when the pain in his leg had become too much to bear. His knee, calf, and foot were now hideously swollen and the skin on his leg had turned an ugly speckled brown.

  Like all good physicians, Doctors Brotherton and Biglow had tried to alleviate their patient’s discomfort by adding to it. Leeches had been applied in clusters to suck out the excess fluid. They had even endeavored to bleed his offending leg, although this had proved a dangerous undertaking, as Sir Montagu kept lashing out at whoever tried to make an incision.

  There was, they had concluded, no other course of action but to call upon expert advice. Mr. Percival Parker, a surgeon of good repute, had been drafted in from Oxford. He had examined the patient and agreed with the physicians that Sir Montagu was suffering from a popliteal aneurysm in his left leg. It was so large, he observed, that it was distending two hamstrings. If the condition did not kill him outright, he told them, Sir Montagu could spend the rest of his days in crazed agony. There seemed little choice. Amputation was the preferred course, but a highly risky one nonetheless. It was this decision the men were discussing in such reverent tones when Lydia was shown into Sir Montagu’s chamber.

  The blinds had been half drawn, so that the room was in shadow. Shapes were blurred; the men of medicine in the corner were silhouettes. In the semidarkness sounds were magnified—the creak of the floorboards as she made her way toward the bed, the ticking of the mantel clock marking time, the rasping of Sir Montagu’s breath.

  The patient’s pain was being kept at bay with regular doses of laudanum and it therefore took him a while to realize Lydia’s presence. She sat down at his bedside and, for a moment, studied his furrowed forehead, dotted with drops of sweat. Agony was written on his face as clearly as if it had been in ink.

  This was the man, she reflected, who was depriving her of her happiness; keeping her and her beloved Thomas apart. His death might even lead the Court of Chancery to reconsider the conditions of the wardship placed on Richard which meant they could never marry. Yet seeing him like this, so fragile and sick, her heart felt heavy. He had been such a good friend and ally to both her father and her mother; the man they had entrusted to be her brother’s godfather, and, after her own father’s death, her own self-appointed unofficial guardian. He had watched her grow from a baby into a young woman. He had seen her trials and tribulations and even added to them, yet still she felt a strange closeness to him, as if he were her own flesh and blood.

  “Sir Montagu, ’tis I. ’Tis Lydia,” she said softly, scooping up his hand in hers. It was icy cold to the touch.

  Slowly he stretched open his eyes from beneath hooded lids and looked up at the ceiling.

  “I am here, sir,” said Lydia.

  Turning his head a little he focused on her face with a filmy stare. It was a while before he recognized her, but when he did, the corners of his mouth turned up.

  “My dear, how good of you to come,” he croaked. He raised a hand slowly and pointed at the huddle of men in the corner of his room. “I have had to endure their poking and prodding too long.”

  On hearing their patient’s words, the physicians looked toward the bed and all gave odd, stilted bows to Lydia. She acknowledged them awkwardly with a tilt of her head and her thoughts flashed to Thomas. How different he was from these men in this profession that fawned and prevaricated and acted according to a patient’s purse. Full of their own self-importance, they seemed to do more harm than good to those most in need of help.

  Sir Montagu raised his hand once more and beckoned with a hooked finger. Lydia leaned closer. “They want to cut off my leg,” he told her. She felt the blood drain from her face.

  “To amputate?” she murmured. The unexpected news churned up her stomach. She was fully aware of the implications.

  Sir Montagu gave a little nod. “They may as well string me up from a tree and leave me to die,” he said, his voice suddenly gathering strength. “You hear that?” he shouted contemptuously to the men.

  The physicians turned in unison to see their patient flapping a hand at them in a derisory manner. “Look at them!” he cried. “Bunch of quacks and mountebanks. They’ll not be having my leg. Not even after I’m dead and gone,” he scowled.

  Lydia shot the men a discomfited look. “I am sure they are only trying to do what is best for you, sir,” she told him gently, even though she knew he was unlikely to survive surgery.

  Hearing the timbre of resignation in her voice, Sir Montagu grabbed hold of her arm suddenly.

  “Do not let them cut off my leg. They must not,” he begged.

  Lydia felt pity well up inside her as she regarded Sir Montagu. For the first time in her life she could see that he was afraid. The light of terror shone in his eyes as clear as day. She looked down at her hand. He was squeezing her fingers so hard that she had to stifle a cry of pain before she tried to pull them free.

  “There has to be another way,” he said, releasing her from his grasp.

  Lydia took a deep breath as she studied his pained expression. The clock on the mantel struck three. “I believe there may be,” she said, quietly at first, so that Sir Montagu told her to speak up.

  “What did you say, child?”

  “There may be another way,” she repeated, only louder. It can be the only way, she told herself.

  Chapter 45

  The following day, early, Thomas found himself outside Granville Sharp’s residence in Fulham. He wished to relay in person what Jeremiah Taylor had told him about his attacker. Perhaps, even more importantly, he would tell him how the slave’s testimony might prove invaluable in tracking down the suppliers of Negro corpses used for Hubert Izzard’s famed dissections. Thomas feared he had, quite by fortune, uncovered a heinous racket that murdered Negro slaves to order. To his certain knowledge, Hubert Izzard had dissected at least six such corpses over the last three months. His were not the first suspicions aroused. When a justice of the peace had thought to inquire why so many Negroes had died in London, Izzard had replied it was simply down to the cold. “Their bodies are not used to our freezing winters,” he had said, and the justice was satisfied. No further questions were asked.

  Convinced that the answer to so many of these pressing queries could be found at the Crown Inn, Thomas was about to enlist the help of Mr. Sharp, who had offered his assistance when he heard of Jeremiah Taylor’s plight. He recalled his words: he felt it his duty to protect those who, in a foreign land, could not help themselves.

  The reformer, his head buried in some lofty tome, looked up at the sound of the knock and the creaking door and welcomed Thomas warmly into his study.

  “I heard of your recent intruder, Dr. Silkstone,” he said, his eyes bright as new pins. Word had spread quickly of Dalrymple’s attempt to recapture his slave.

  “News travels fast,” replied Thomas, settling himself on a chair.

  “Bad news even faster,” came the response. Sharp paused and stroked his long chin as if he had a beard. “So you wish me to act for your Jeremiah Taylor?”

  Thomas nodded. “I would be most grateful. I fear that this Mr. Dalrymple will try anything, fair means or foul, to re-enslave the young man.”

  Sharp nodded sagely. “Have no fear, Dr. Silkstone. The time is ripe to question the law, and, indeed, to clarify
it.”

  Thomas smiled. “I have great faith in you, sir,” he said, adding: “but first I would like you to help me with another grave matter that seems to be affecting the Negro slaves of London.”

  Sharp leaned forward, his long fingers tented. “What is that, pray?”

  Thomas looked deeply troubled as he told Sharp his suspicions about the number of dissections of Negroes Hubert Izzard was undertaking; he spoke of their state of preservation and of Jeremiah Taylor’s testimony.

  “So you fear that Izzard’s Negroes are not all dying of natural causes?” asked Sharp finally. He tilted his thin face sympathetically, but his expression was slightly pained.

  Thomas nodded and eagerly awaited a reply. When it came it was not altogether positive.

  “This is most interesting and I do not doubt what you say is true, Dr. Silkstone, but we need proof,” Sharp told him. “And besides, a judge will hardly believe the word of a Negro against a white man.”

  Thomas smiled wryly. “I am aware of that, and that is the reason for my visit, Mr. Sharp,” he replied. “I wish you to accompany me to the place where I believe we will find proof that somehow these slaves are being lured to their deaths.” He reached into his pocket and flourished the small handbill, retrieved from under Phibbah’s pallet, in the air.

  “These are being distributed by Quakers at an inn frequented by Negroes,” he said, pressing the bill into Sharp’s hand.

  Scanning it, the campaigner nodded. “I have seen such a pamphlet before.”

  Thomas thought of the runaway Cato. “It is my suspicion,” he said, “that at least one slave, but possibly up to a dozen, have been lured to this place and promised their freedom, never to be seen again.”

  Sharp’s eyes widened. “And you think they are murdered to furnish this anatomist with corpses?”

  “That is my belief, sir, but I hope to be proved wrong.”

  Sharp looked troubled and stroked his long chin once more. “ ’Tis dangerous ground, Silkstone, not to be trodden alone.”