The Flesh and the Fiends Read online

  Body Snatchers

  The horrifying story of Burke and Hare, whose names have become as sinister and evil as the gory exploits they undertook.

  The film stars PETER CUSHING, June Laverick and Donald Pleasence in the leading roles.

  A CORGI NOVEL

  THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS

  is the stark, horrific story of Burke and Hare, bestial killers whose crimes appalled the world. Body-snatching from new graves was a recognized trade in the days when surgeons’ colleges wanted corpses for their dissection tables. Burke and Hare, terrorizing the dark backstreets of Edinburgh, soon discovered a far easier means of obtaining the flesh for which they were paid so handsomely.

  And Dr. Knox, who bought their victims, was strangely oblivious of the monstrous evil wrought by these fiends for “the sake of the advancement of Science”. He asked no questions …

  THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS

  Starring

  PETER CUSHING

  JUNE LAVERICK • DONALD PLEASENCE

  co-starring

  DERMOT WALSH • RENÉE HOUSTON

  GEORGE ROSE

  with

  BILLIE WHITELAW • JOHN CAIRNEY

  MELVYN HAYES

  Produced by ROBERT S. BAKER • MONTY BERMAN

  Directed by JOHN GILLING

  Original Story by JOHN GILLING

  Screenplay by JOHN GILLING • LEON GRIFFITHS

  Director of Photography MONTY BERMAN

  Music written and Conducted by STANLEY BLACK

  A Triad Production

  Released by Regal Films International

  A CORGI BOOK

  First publication in Great Britain

  Corgi Edition published 1960

  © Transworld Publishers Ltd., 1960

  Based on the screenplay by

  John Gilling and Leon Griffiths

  for the Triad Productions Ltd. film

  Corgi Books are published by Transworld Publishers Ltd.,

  Park Royal Road, London, N.W.10.

  Made and printed in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd., London, Reading and Fakenham.

  Up the close and doun the stair,

  But and ben wi’ Burke and Hare.

  Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief,

  Knox the boy that buys the beef.

  —19th century jingle.

  CHAPTER I

  Partners in Crime

  Death should be peaceful, but in the graveyard just outside Edinburgh there was no peace.

  The early hours of Wednesday, November 28, 1827, were cold and dark. A heavy ground mist, stirred occasionally by a wind that moaned plaintively, like a soul crying from hell, settled in a swirling, icy shroud. The crumbling headstones, moss-stained and neglected, reached up unevenly through the rain-soaked grass, pointing bleached bony fingers at the night sky.

  A neighbouring church-tower clock was striking 2 a.m., its thin tolling echoing through the mist, when a horse-drawn cart crunched up the gravel road to the cemetery and stopped at the tall gates.

  Two men, both protected against the chill air by thick overcoats and mufflers, got out. One of them, John Baxter, a gaunt, leathery giant with two days’ stubble on his chin, picked up a lantern. He held it aloft to light the way; in his other hand he grasped a spade. His companion, James Mackenzie, though smaller physically, and stockier, was no less evil in appearance. He also held a spade. Over his shoulder were slung two lengths of stout chain, each with a sharp iron hook at the end, and under his arm he carried a large folded sheet of canvas.

  Mackenzie nodded as a signal that he was ready, and Baxter opened the squeaking gate. They were in such a hurry that they did not trouble to keep to the paths, but trampled across the graves. Baxter clumsily kicked over a small urn holding a posy of autumn flowers. As the blooms spilled out, Mackenzie, close on his heels, trod them unheedingly into the mud.

  The two men moved stealthily, pausing from time to time, standing and listening, to make sure they were not being followed. Their ghoulish mission was not only illegal but also personally dangerous. Many devout Scotsmen believed that resurrection of the body after death should be taken literally, and never hesitated to give summary punishment to any graveyard raiders they caught. However, the doctors’ teaching colleges of the day desperately needed bodies for anatomical classes, and when there is a demand—gruesome though it may be—there are always men to supply it.

  Families of loved ones buried in the wealthier parts of the cemetery had already guarded against body-snatchers. Over each resting place was erected a strong metal cage that defied interference. But soon Baxter and Mackenzie came to a new grave that had no cage; just a simple headstone, a spartan monument bearing the inscription:

  IN LOVING MEMORY

  TOBIAS MCINTOSH

  BORN 1762 – DIED 1827

  Mackenzie dropped the chains to the ground with a crash. “Quiet, I tell ye!” growled Baxter.

  First they laid out the canvas near the headstone. Then began a scene of horror which, no doubt, was being repeated in other graveyards south, as well as north, of the Border. Baxter and Mackenzie dug quickly, with vigorous strokes, at the end of the grave where Tobias’s head lay, tipping the spadefuls of earth on to the canvas. Down they went, deeper. The grave was only a week old; the soil was still fairly loose. After ten minutes they were down so far that Baxter’s spade struck wood. The men exchanged significant glances.

  “Gi’ me the chains,” ordered Baxter. Lying full-length, he groped down into the hole and fixed the two iron hooks, one each side of the coffin lid.

  “Now pull!”

  With a ghastly splintering, part of the lid was ripped away and hurriedly hauled to the surface. Mackenzie removed it from the hooks and slung it aside. Once again Baxter leaned down into the hole, now coming face to face with the pallid corpse. Mackenzie held the lantern high to guide him as he slipped a chain under Tobias’s shoulders.

  Baxter tugged at the chain. Mackenzie put down the lantern to help. Roughly the stiff, lifeless body, dressed in its grave-clothes, was dragged from the coffin. The two men pushed the broken piece of lid back into the hole, and while the snowy-haired corpse was stretched out on the grass, shovelled back the earth, shaking the last few lumps off the canvas. Baxter trod them into place with his boot.

  “It looks as tidy as ever it did!” he said.

  The deed accomplished, they wrapped the mortal remains of Tobias McIntosh in the canvas and left as furtively as they had come. The cart and its dreadful load trundled back into the city, to the dingy single room which Baxter and Mackenzie shared. There they waited impatiently until the following evening when, once again cloaked by darkness, they could deliver the result of their night’s work to an eminent client, Doctor Robert Knox, of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

  The doctor’s Academy was an attractive, two-storeyed house at No. 10 Surgeons’ Square. The strip of cobbled pavement outside the front door was sheltered by a wide balcony, resting on stone arches, under which passers-by retreated thankfully in rainy weather. The balcony, in turn, was covered by a roof supported on five pillars. Small rectangular windows on the upper floor let the pale Scottish sunlight into the servants’ quarters.

  The lecture hall was downstairs at the back of the building. Dr. Knox lived on the first floor and when, in his rare moments of relaxation, he stood on the balcony, he had the Royal Medical Society’s Hall on his left, and the Surgeons’ Hall on his right. In front of him was the centre of the square—an agreeable oasis of lawns and trim, well-kept flower beds ringed by a path. The whole was totally enclosed by a high iron fence, entered only by a locked gate, which ensured that the pleasures of the garden were strictly reserved for residen
ts.

  At dusk, by which time Baxter and Mackenzie had put Tobias in a tea chest and loaded it on their cart, the square was still thronged with students entering and leaving classes. Such was the thirst for anatomical knowledge, and so great the reputation of Edinburgh in the medical world, that six teachers—Dr. Knox among them—were fully occupied lecturing every day.

  A lamplighter, beginning his rounds, turned to watch a fine carriage clatter into the square and stop at No. 10. The driver was about to climb down when the door of the carriage opened and out stepped a young woman. She was in her early twenties, pretty, but with a firmness of chin that suggested character and a person knowing her own mind. At that instant her face had an excited half-smile of anticipation, for this was Martha, the ward of Doctor Knox, and she was home at last for the first time after three years at a finishing school in Paris.

  “Take my luggage round to the back, please,” she told the driver.

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  Martha looked up at the house lovingly, thankful to see it again the same as ever, just as she’d always remembered it. Lifting the hem of her blue silk dress as she stepped across the cobbles, she hurried to the door and pulled the bell.

  David Paterson, or “Davey”, the doctor’s sixty-year-old porter and general factotum, hired at a wage of seven shillings a week, was at a table inside the spacious entrance hall, busy lighting two large oil lamps. With him was Knox’s principal assistant, Dr. Geoffrey Mitchell, a handsome dark-haired man in a black coat with white frills at the cuffs and narrow grey trousers. Around the walls of the hall, in jars and showcases, on ledges and in corners, stood scores of anatomical specimens, bones, tissues and other human relics, all carefully preserved, many of which had been bequeathed to Doctor Knox by his former partner, Dr. John Barclay, and which always surprised faint-hearted visitors to the Academy with their grisly greeting.

  Mitchell had taken a large, dangling skeleton off its stand, in preparation for a lecture later that evening, when the bell rang. Davey moved towards the door.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mitchell. “I’ll see to it. You’d better take those lamps through to the lecture room.”

  For a few seconds, Mitchell was undecided what to do with the skeleton. He hadn’t time to put it back on the stand, and he certainly couldn’t open the door while holding it. So he put it in an armchair, where it sat upright, exactly as it would have done had it been alive and covered with flesh.

  When he opened the door Martha stood in the half-light, her face in shadow.

  “Good evening,” he said politely.

  “Dr. Mitchell,” Martha replied crisply, “I hope you are better at diagnosing an illness than you are at recognizing a face!”

  As she smiled up at him, his expression changed from one of puzzlement to incredulous recognition.

  “No!” he exclaimed. “I don’t believe it! It can’t be!” He stepped forward and took her by the hands delightedly. “Please forgive me, won’t you, but we weren’t expecting you till next week.”

  Martha laughed, a youthful laugh that Mitchell had longed to hear the many lonely months she had been away. “I changed my mind,” she said. “I exercised a woman’s privilege.”

  Mitchell, looking her up and down—at her elegant, tasselled Paris gown, her slim figure—was greatly impressed. “A woman you are indeed!” he said admiringly.

  “Really, that is enough, doctor,” said Martha in a reproving tone. “The students in the square are beginning to notice. Let me come in!”

  “Why, of course.” He was momentarily confused. Then he added warmly: “Welcome home.”

  As she entered the hall, returning into the familiar museum-like atmosphere, Mitchell couldn’t help staring at her. “And to think,” he said, “you’ve been away three years!”

  Martha untied the ribbons of her bonnet and took it off, revealing her blonde hair in a magnificent bouffant coiffure. “Did I really look so awful three years ago?”

  “You were very young,” Mitchell told her. He added seriously: “I know one thing, Martha. You are beautiful now …”

  Martha glanced at the floor demurely, in the way that ladies of quality did when receiving a compliment, and after an awkward pause Mitchell started to fuss around her. “You must be tired after your journey. Come and sit down. I’ll tell the doctor you’re here.”

  Every chair seemed to be piled with books, charts and medical gear. He was about to offer her the most comfortable chair when he realized it was occupied by the skeleton.

  “Ah, you’ve still got Douglas,” said Martha.

  “Douglas?”

  “This skeleton. I’ve always called him that. He looks, somehow, as if he must have been a Douglas—big, broad and strong. I’ll never forget a little girl coming in here one day and saying how cold he must be in the winter, being so thin and bony!”

  They laughed. “I suppose you had a gay time in Paris,” Mitchell said wistfully.

  “I enjoyed every minute.”

  “You made many friends?”

  “Oh, dozens.”

  “There were parties, I suppose, every night, and dancing. It must have been very different from Edinburgh.”

  “It was—but I think you’ve got the wrong idea about Madame Duclos and her finishing school. We were in bed every night promptly at nine-thirty.” Suddenly it dawned on her what he was getting at. “For your information, doctor, my circle of friends did not include any men!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just … it’s just that the house has been empty without you.”

  Martha switched the conversation to another topic. “How is the doctor?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t change. He’s as brilliant, aggressive, provocative and verbose as ever.” Mitchell smiled. “But believe me, even he will be lost for words when he sees you …”

  “Any thanks are entirely due to Madame Duclos. She works miracles.”

  “Miracles—that’s the word for it, right enough!” said Mitchell appreciatively. “It’s rather dismal down here. Let’s wait for the doctor up in his study and give him a surprise.”

  As they went to the stairs a thunderous burst of handclapping came from the nearby lecture hall. “One of the doctor’s courses is ending,” Mitchell explained. “This is their big day. They’ve heard the results of their examinations.”

  That evening, as always, Dr. Knox cut a dominant, impressive figure on the lecture platform. He was thirty-six. He wore a tail-coat of the richest crimson, a plum-coloured brocaded waistcoat, a flamboyant cravat of black and white chequered silk and a fashionable white starched collar, its pointed wings projecting upwards to touch the ends of his mutton-chop side-whiskers. His high forehead was surmounted by greying wavy hair, and although, because of a physical defect since birth, his left eyelid remained semi-closed, giving his slender features a sinister air, the blue eyes behind his half moon-shaped spectacles blazed with evangelical fire.

  Edinburgh was his birthplace, though his spectacular medical career had taken him to many countries abroad. He joined the Army and in 1815, at the age of 24, was in a military hospital in Brussels where he attended wounded survivors from the battlefield of Waterloo. Two years later he sailed to the Cape of South Africa with his regiment, the 72nd Highlanders, and astonished his fellow-officers by riding ninety miles a day without tiring. At night round the camp fire he excelled even the Africans at story-telling. By 1823 he was back in the Scottish capital, where his energy, drive and inexhaustible enthusiasm for surgery soon established him among the foremost medical authorities. In 1825 he was gladly admitted to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and started his first course of lectures on anatomy and physiology in the winter of that year.

  His sharp tongue and fondness for criticizing anyone less brilliant than himself made enemies of most of his colleagues, but where students were concerned, his success was immediate. His forceful, lively style electrified them. The fervour his lectures provoked has probably
never been equalled before or since. As might be expected, a great number of students sought instruction from him, and for every course he had some 350 names on his register, or about seventy per cent of the entire school—a popularity which did little to endear him to rival tutors.

  The accommodation in his lecture hall was so limited that on many occasions he had to repeat the same lecture three times a day. This, nevertheless, was no hardship, for the doctor had a vivid streak of vanity; he relished the sound of his own voice. His powers of rhetoric could make a whole class hang breathlessly on every syllable. Whenever he strode to his lecture platform, he was assured in advance that his class would worship him and that he, at the end of the lesson, would bask in their adoration.

  On this particular evening the worthy doctor was in excellent form. Like an actor receiving applause, he bowed his head slightly as he waited for the clapping to subside. He rested his left hand on his lapel, then raised his right arm to command silence.

  “Miracles, gentlemen,” he said, his voice ringing with sincerity and an almost arrogant confidence, “are an apology for ignorance and a retreat for fools!”

  He pointed dramatically at his audience. “You,” he said, “you men of medicine, are the modern miracle-makers. To primitive man the human body was a miracle. But to you it is a structure of some two hundred and sixty bones and attendant muscles and glands, blood vessels, nerves, organs and tissues. It is a complicated structure, I grant you, but to us, no longer a miracle!”

  He looked around the hall, at the tiers of students massed on the hard wooden benches and sitting on the steps in the aisles. All of them gazed at their lecturer with wrapt attention.

  “And so today,” Knox went on, “some of you become doctors in your own right—masters of anatomy. I congratulate you. You are entering the most honourable profession in the world.” An impish smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. “Sometimes, of course, it is too honourable. If half my colleagues pursued the study of disease as strenuously as the honour of knighthood, the country would be a damned sight healthier place to live in!”