Sawbones (11 page)

“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.

He sealed the envelope with the master’s wax and set it up ready to post.

One day he would be a surgeon and have his own place with a brass nameplate fixed to the wall. Anna’s family might well look at him differently then. Perhaps Ellen would come and work for him as housekeeper, and he would leave Toms far behind, and good riddance. He would take a house in the newer developments north of Oxford Street, perhaps, where there was a little more space, and he would meet Mr McAdam as an equal at the Company of Surgeons dinners.

He got up, invigorated with the thought of a future that didn’t include Toms, mystery cadavers and rash, impetuous, red-headed girls.

Today, Ezra decided, he would clean and sort the museum. He would shine the jars and order their display anew. It would act as an apology for being such an idiot and wanting to leave. It would show Mr McAdam that he was truly grateful – for his training, for his education and for his home – and it would set his own mind at ease to occupy himself with something familiar and certain. He set to work. He would be a credit to the master in every way.

Ezra worked without break, dusting, cleaning and writing new labels in his best hand for those that had faded. It was hard work but fulfilling: Ezra enjoyed being in the museum and there was a simple pleasure in the quiet, careful organization. When Mrs Boscaven came up with a tray of food as the clock at St Anne’s struck three, he realized it had hardly occurred to him he was hungry.

“You’ll waste away with no lunch,” she said, setting the tray down. “There’s some cold cuts and the end of the loaf. As it’s quiet, Ellen and I are off to see the new Indian cottons in the Piccadilly warehouse before the dark comes down and supper needs cooking.”

“Thank you, Mrs B.” Ezra stretched and stepped down off the chair he’d been using to dust the top shelf.

Mrs Boscaven set her hands on her hips and looked round. “Well, well, you’ve done wonders in here. Though I don’t like to look too closely at whatever it is you and the master keep in all these infernal jars.”

Ezra smiled. “They’re not infernal, Mrs B, honestly.” He lit the candles and went to close the curtains.

“Well, here’s to hoping the master’s travelled as far as Islington by now,” Mrs Boscaven said. “With luck, he’ll be home for supper. The street’s almost back to its usual self. I heard a body crying for fresh fruit! Can’t imagine what they meant in this weather – last summer’s apples, I expect.”

Ezra took the plate with the cold meat and bread, and tucked in. He was hungrier than he thought.

“How you can eat with all this stuff around, and the smell, heaven knows! I’d better send Toms out for some good cheese before the master gets in.” Mrs Boscaven clucked away downstairs.

By the time Ezra heard the front door close, he’d finished his lunch and was onto his second cup of tea. He looked around, tired but satisfied. The museum had been transformed – the glass gleamed, the freshly penned labels stood out neat and clear. If only the puzzles of life were as easy to order as so many jars on shelves.

Ezra put the cup and plate back on the tray and took it downstairs to the kitchen. He helped himself to another couple of slices of cold ham and some of Mrs Boscaven’s chutney. The kitchen windows were below street level and he could see it was already dark outside. But plenty of carts and wagons trundled past, and Ezra hoped Mrs B was right and that the master would be home for supper.

It was as he sat by the kitchen fire boiling the kettle for a third cup of tea that he heard a different sound. Not the shouts or the rumble of traffic from the street, it was the sound of breaking glass. And it came from above, from somewhere up in the house.

Ezra stood up, his heart jumping in his chest. He picked up the poker from where it leant against the fireplace. Should he shout? Would his mere presence be enough to scare a cracksman off? He gripped the poker tight.

He could hear a heavy tread. It sounded as if more than one person was up there. Ezra climbed the stairs from the basement to the ground floor – they were up in the museum. He took a deep breath and went up another flight.

For a moment he stood silently on the landing, holding the poker in both hands, listening. More breaking glass – and if he wasn’t mistaken, that was the sound of a jar dropping. One of the jars from the most precious anatomical collection in London – possibly the world. All his work today, all the cleaning, all the sorting…

Ezra could not bring himself to be cautious any longer. He pushed open the door to the museum and swung wildly with the poker.

“Mr Ezra McAdam. Oh, please, put it away for God’s sake.” A thin man stood leaning against the mantelpiece. He was dressed in a fine wool jacket, expensive, pale grey, with a modern tall hat covering his hair, his skin a few shades lighter than Ezra’s own. The man wore a small neat pointed beard, greying in places, and would not have looked out of place in one of the smarter arcades in Mayfair.

“Meet my friend Oleg,” the man said. “You may have seen him … around.”

Ezra turned. Standing in front of the broken first-floor window was the man he’d thought was a drover, wrapped in his sheepskin. He was holding a jar – the double-skulled foetus, a rare specimen that any surgeon would have been lucky to witness, never mind acquire perfectly preserved.

Ezra balked as it slipped through the man’s fingers and smashed on the floor sending up a spray of foul-smelling embalming fluid.

“Oops,” the man said. “Do be more careful, Oleg.”

Ezra tried to make out his accent. Was it Turkish?

Oleg grinned and went to pick up another jar. Ezra swung the poker against his arm but the man brushed it away as if the iron rod smashing into his bone was no more than the flutter of a moth’s wings.

Ezra hit again. Oleg moved slowly, looked at his arm then at Ezra. His eyes narrowed very slightly but otherwise he didn’t even flinch.

The thin man had pulled something from his jacket. Ezra heard the snap and clack of a catch engaging. Very slowly, he turned to look.

The pistol was aimed at his heart.

He dropped the poker and watched it roll away under the cabinet of hands and feet.

Oleg suddenly swept his arm along the first row of jars, breaking ten, fifteen at once.

“No!” Ezra jerked forward, for a moment forgetting the gun.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The man had pulled the trigger back. Ezra put his hands up and retreated again, powerless to do anything but watch as years of work, hour upon hour of study, smashed and broke on the floor.

“Please! No more!” Ezra tried to keep his voice level but he could have wept; he could see the specimens all over the Turkish runner, formless like so many beached jellyfish, the liquid seeping away through the carpet and down between the floorboards.

“Now now, young Mr McAdam, there’s still plenty more jars left for Oleg to break, and there’s always your bones, too. I’m sure that he would oblige.”

“With pleasure, Mr—” Oleg coughed, his voice was thicker, deeper – also foreign, but not Turkish. He nodded at the smarter man. “Mr Ahmat.”

Ezra breathed deeply, trying to stay calm. The cold and rain were blowing in through the broken window, water spotting the books on the higher shelves.

“What is it you want?” he asked. “Anything. Take it and get out – the Irish Giant? Take it!” If only he could make them leave.

“In good time, boy,” Mr Ahmat said coldly. Ezra watched as he removed his hat, bent down and lit his pipe with a taper lit from the fire. “And I think you know what we want. Clever boy like you. Apprentice surgeon, I heard. Not bad for a black, don’t you reckon, Oleg?” Mr Ahmat smiled. It was the smile of a lipless man, flat and thin, showing teeth.