The Flesh and the Fiends Read online

  The ensuing gust of laughter pleased him. Now he reached the climax of his address and wagged an admonitory finger. “But let me warn you,” he said. “Your studies are not yet over. As long as you face the challenge of death, they will never be. Remember also that death is not only your enemy; it is your friend. Death is an incident producing clay. Use it, mould it, learn from it.”

  He paused. “Finally, hearken to the words of Mr. Alexander Pope: ‘Know first thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is—Man!’ Yes, gentlemen—Man, alive or dead!”

  His speech having ended, the doctor made a theatrical half-bow and stepped back a pace towards some high bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes at the rear of the platform. The students applauded loudly, scrambling to their feet and swarming down the steps to surround him. Then they parted respectfully, allowing him to walk to the door.

  One of the students, Peter Jackson, a hesitant, good-looking youngster of nineteen, with broad red cuffs on the sleeves of his mustard-coloured tail-coat, darted ahead and opened the door. “May I speak to you, sir?” he asked anxiously.

  Knox, despite his curt, aloof manner when teaching, was always approachable. “Certainly,” he said, striding out into the corridor so quickly that Jackson had to hurry to catch up with him.

  “Well, what is it?” Knox demanded.

  “I was hoping, sir, that I would have graduated this term.”

  “Not less than I, Mr. Jackson,” observed the doctor.

  “Please tell me where I have failed, won’t you, sir. I try; I work harder than most. I try to please you …”

  Knox raised his eyebrows. “To please me, indeed,” he said. “Do you consider yourself harshly treated?”

  “Why, no, sir!”

  “Unjustly?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I will diagnose the cause of your failure,” he said incisively.

  “Yes?”

  “You are far too emotional. Emotion is a thing that dulls the intellect. Try to approach the science of medicine more calmly; be altogether much more clinical in your outlook.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jackson miserably. “I will try.”

  They had reached the door of the doctor’s study. Knox smiled benevolently. He had a soft spot for students who shared his quest for knowledge, and although it was his policy never to get involved in the personal problems of his classes, he liked Jackson, and suspected that the teen-ager was being handicapped by financial troubles. “Are you short of money?” he asked.

  Jackson was embarrassed. “I can manage, sir. I get two pounds a month from home. Sometimes, of course, especially around Christmas, when things are expensive, it’s a bit difficult, but …”

  The doctor raised a hand. “I asked for statement— not a soliloquy. If you are interested, there is a job you could do to help me.”

  “I’d like that, sir, whatever it is.”

  “You can assist Davey to treat the—er—subjects; our anatomical specimens. I think you know what to do. It’s merely a matter of seeing that they arrive safely, looking after them and ensuring that they reach the lecture hall in the best condition possible.”

  “I understand, sir. Thank you, sir!”

  “It will put an extra pound a month in your pocket.”

  “That’s very generous of you, sir …”

  Without another glance at Jackson, Knox entered the study and shut the door.

  Excitedly, the student ran down the stairs two at a time to tell Davey the good news. During their conversation, a bell rang at the back of the house.

  “Sounds as if you’ll be starting your job right away,” Davey remarked. “Take this lantern and see who it is.”

  Jackson went to the rear entrance, which opened on to a narrow alleyway of gloomy brick still glistening with a recent shower of rain. Baxter and Mackenzie stood there in the same heavy coats and mufflers they had worn at the cemetery. With them was the horse and cart.

  “Good evening,” said Jackson.

  Baxter was puzzled to see a face he didn’t know. Having come on a mission for which the penalty could be transportation to Australia, he raised his top hat and said cautiously: “Is Mr. David Paterson around?”

  Davey quickly appeared behind Jackson, and on seeing the tea chest on the cart realized the reason for the visit at once; Baxter and Mackenzie were regular callers.

  “We’ve a package for Doctor Knox,” Baxter announced to Davey with a grin. He spoke as if he were merely delivering some books that had arrived on the stage coach from Newcastle.

  “Certainly, gentlemen,” said Davey. “Come down to the cellar.”

  Mackenzie eased the tea chest off the cart, taking the weight of it on his shoulders. With Davey leading the way, he staggered down the cellar steps.

  “No doubt ye’ll be seeing quite a lot of this young man here,” said Davey, meaning Jackson. “He’s the doctor’s new assistant.”

  “Is he, now?” said Baxter, turning to Jackson, who was holding up the lantern to light the steps. “Then let me congratulate ye on havin’ such a talented master. They say he’s the cleverest doctor in Scotland—and England, too, for that matter. By the way”—his voice became low and confidential—“we’d be grateful if we could have the chest back this time. They’re hard to find, ye know.”

  “I’ll put it on one side for you,” said Jackson hurriedly. “You’ll be calling again?”

  “Just as soon as we can dig up some more business, as ye might say!”

  Doctor Knox, meanwhile, in his study, had been looking forward to a few brief moments of leisure between classes. He always enjoyed the study as a complete contrast to the spartan surroundings of the lecture hall. It was tastefully furnished with carved walnut armchairs and settees of the period; clusters of candles in ornamented brackets burned cheerfully against the large-patterned wallpaper, and a coal fire had been lit in the grate. Mitchell stood on the hearthrug with his back to the blaze.

  “Is the class over?” he asked.

  “Yes, thank goodness,” said Knox. “Another thirty witch doctors loosed on the unsuspecting populace!”

  Mitchell smiled, but in such a way that Knox suspected he was hiding something. “What’s the secret?” he asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” Mitchell replied, trying to keep a straight face and seeing out of the corner of his eye Martha tip-toe up from behind the door, where she had been hiding. Suddenly, she reached out and put her hands over the doctor’s eyes.

  “Good heavens!” he exclaimed, and turned abruptly.

  “Darling!” said Martha, kissing him.

  Knox was astonished. His austere manner melted at once. He gripped her hands. “My dear child …” he said. Then standing at arms’ length from her, he looked her up and down admiringly, as Mitchell had done. “Mitchell, we must thank Madame Duclos for this miracle!”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in them.”

  Knox looked at Martha again. “Well, I do now. From a long-legged, gawky schoolgirl to this!” He kissed her on the forehead tenderly. “You look quite wonderful, my dear,” he said, adding flippantly: “You’re a tribute to French cooking. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” said Martha gaily. “And I’m grateful to you for sending me to France.”

  “Did you have a good journey back?”

  “Yes; as you know, I wasn’t really coming until next week, but I heard that a boat was leaving Calais and coming straight up here to Edinburgh. I asked Madame Duclos and she let me come. It was a beautiful trip and took only three days.”

  “Three days—from Paris to Edinburgh!” said Knox. “The world is getting a very small place!”

  He went to a cabinet, opened the doors and took out a decanter of sherry and three glasses. “We must drink to France, Mitchell. You’re the man for a pretty speech.”

  “I can hardly compete with you.”

  “Ah,” said Knox, “but would you call my speeches pretty? That’s the point!”

  Ther
e was a knock at the door. “I wonder who that can be,” said the doctor irritably. He called: “Come in!”

  The door opened and Jackson stepped into the room. He looked at Knox and said: “Two gentlemen are here, sir, with the stiff.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The—er—subject, sir.”

  Knox’s expression relaxed. “Thank you,” he said. “Please attend to the drinks, Mitchell. And don’t wait for me, Martha; I won’t be long. Tell him about the broken hearts you left behind in Paris!”

  Smiling, he went out with Jackson. Mitchell crossed to the cabinet, and slowly filled two of the glasses from the decanter. In an awkward silence he handed one to Martha. “Well,” he said at last, “aren’t you going to tell me—about the broken hearts?”

  “I trust your interest is purely academic,” she teased.

  She went to one of the study’s big windows and pulled aside the blue velvet curtain to gaze at the square. “Oh, it’s good to be home!” she sighed. “The sun shone in Paris more often than it does here, but even so, for all the rain, and the gales that cut you to pieces, I like Edinburgh best.”

  Mitchell joined her at the window and raised his glass. “To Madame Duclos!” he said.

  “I hope,” he went on thoughtfully, “you won’t find Edinburgh too dull after Paris.”

  Martha faced him. “Should I?”

  “Well, it needn’t be. It can be the most romantic city in the world.”

  “It has secrets I’ve never dreamed of?”

  “It has …”

  “And will you show me these secrets, Dr. Mitchell?”

  Mitchell thought of the macabre scene he knew was being enacted downstairs in the cellar and said: “Well, some of them …” Martha looked up at him over her sherry glass, her eyes sparkling.

  The cellar was damp and eerie, a dismal place of brooding shadows and the stale lingering smell of death. Running the length of the house, with a ceiling of massive oak beams, it was not only a temporary mortuary for specimens but also a junk room; old surgical tables, boxes and furniture were stacked in the corners. When Knox, preceded by Jackson holding the lantern, arrived at the top of the steps leading down to the cellar floor, the cold air after the warmth of the study hardened his features into a mask. Waiting for him at the foot of the steps were Baxter, Mackenzie and Davey. Knox descended in silence, one hand on the slender iron balustrade, the other touching the wall. Rivulets of moisture trickled off the stone on to his fingers.

  He took the lantern from Jackson and held it over the tea chest. Then he lifted a dirty square of rag which covered the chest and stared disdainfully at the dead upturned face of Tobias. After sniffing the corpse’s odour critically, Knox let the rag fall back. Baxter stepped forward like an eager salesman.

  “It’s nice and fresh, sir. Just a week in the grave.”

  Knox fixed him with the stare which was famed for making students quail. “I’ll give you five guineas.”

  “But, sir …” protested Baxter. “Ye paid six for the last one—the young girl, remember?”

  “Five, I said.”

  Baxter glanced at Mackenzie, who said nothing, but shrugged in acceptance.

  “Well, doctor,” said Baxter, trying to make the best of it, “since ye are such a good customer …”

  Knox scowled at him and took out a purse, finding that it contained only two coins; a guinea and a ten-guinea peace. He held the golden guinea up to the light, observing its brilliance. “No doubt you gentlemen know how to spend this,” he said.

  “Indeed we do, sir!” said Mackenzie brightly.

  “And where will you be celebrating tonight?”

  “We always go to the Merry Duke, sir,” said Baxter.

  “Take this on account, then,” Knox told him, tossing him the guinea. “Jackson, when my housekeeper returns later this evening, please get her to change this.” The doctor handed the student the ten-guinea piece. “Then go down to the tavern and give them the balance.” To Baxter he said: “I think you know your way out.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Baxter. “And thank ye kindly. Ye’ll not be mindin’ sir, if we call again?”

  “Any time you like.”

  “Thank ye, sir. I was speakin’ to your assistant a little while ago about the tea chest. I suppose it will be all right if we have it back when ye have finished with it …”

  “I said I would see to that, sir,” Jackson interrupted.

  “The chest will be ready for collection on your next visit,” Knox promised.

  “Thank ye, sir. Good evenin’.”

  As Baxter and Mackenzie left the cellar, Knox went to the tea chest, lifted the rag again, and sniffed with disgust. “ ‘Nice and fresh’, indeed! I’d say it was nearer a fortnight old than a week.”

  Jackson hovered around behind him. “You’d think the Medical Council would do something about it, sir, wouldn’t you?”

  “In what way? Academies such as mine need plenty of subjects if we are to do our teaching properly, and since too few people die in the poor houses, this is a means of keeping up the supply. It has been going on for more than a century, and as far as I can see it always will.”

  Jackson and Davey started easing the tea chest across the floor. “Surely the Medical Council,” said Jackson, “ought to petition Parliament so that Academies could be supplied legally.”

  Knox laughed. “Parliament! With five hundred walking corpses there, you’d think they could spare at least one. The Member for Edinburgh would do nicely!”

  Jackson and Davey dragged the chest to a long rectangular grey metal bath filled with a strong solution of brine. A shelf extended the length of one of the top edges, and Jackson and Davey, after pulling Tobias from the chest, laid the corpse out along it. Knox came over for a more detailed inspection of his purchase, examining Tobias’s face. “I’ve seen him around the streets, haven’t I?”

  “The name’s McIntosh, sir,” said Davey. “Used to sell us firewood.”

  “Oh, yes. I remember. Roll him into the bath.”

  Knox went back upstairs to his glass of sherry and the reunion with Martha. The ghostly splash of the corpse dropping into the preservative echoed behind him.

  Jackson stayed in the cellar for a while, looking down into the tank, at the white face of Tobias turned upwards through the water. The student shuddered with revulsion.

  Davey put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Dinna let it upset ye,” he said. “Ye’ll soon get used to it. The only thing I don’t like is when they fall apart as ye tip them in.”

  CHAPTER II

  Into Mary’s Welcoming Arms

  With the coming of night, the lecture rooms at Surgeons’ Square were deserted and silent. Corpses dissected that evening lay shrouded on the black marble slabs, awaiting the following morning’s ruthlessness of the knife. The temperature in the streets dropped with a salty wind that had swept across the white-crested breakers of the nearby Firth of Forth, but in Dr. Knox’s study the candles and oil lamps burned warmly. Only an occasional faint drumbeat of rain on the windows reminded the doctor and his guests of the dismal weather in the darkness outside.

  “You will, I hope, be joining us for dinner?” Knox asked Mitchell.

  “I’d be delighted,” Mitchell replied.

  “But you’re not going to monopolize Martha!” the doctor added firmly. “She and I have a lot to talk about. Haven’t we, my dear?”

  “Don’t look so upset, Dr. Mitchell,” Martha teased. “There’s tomorrow and the next day—and the day after that.”

  Elsewhere in Edinburgh meanwhile, the Scottish capital’s less wealthy citizens were thinking about their pleasures. Anxious to enjoy the rewards of their work, Baxter and Mackenzie headed their horse and cart straight for the Merry Duke, a drive which took them away from the fashionable surroundings of Surgeons’ Square down behind the West Port to the slums in the area of Tanner’s Close.

  This particular close was a narrow unlit alley, its name derived from
an adjoining tannery. The people who lived in the grim tenements never complained about the tannery’s stench, however, for it mingled unnoticed with the rich smells from the alley itself, which was used as a communal rubbish dump. In the basement of one of the tenements, unaware of the infamy and horror to come which would even perpetuate his name as a word in the English language, lived William Burke. He was an Irishman, squat and brutish, with a bull neck, large dissipated eyes and thick lips. His roughly-cut hair topped his ears and reached down the nape of his neck in a straw-coloured thatch.

  Although within a year mothers were to scold their children by threatening: “Burke will get you!” his life had begun humbly and ordinarily. Born in 1792 in Orrey, County Tyrone, of respectable church-going cottagers, he signed on for seven years with the Donegal Militia at the age of nineteen and served as a batman. Then he left the army, and in County Mayo married a delightful young girl who presented him with three children. In 1818, nevertheless, after a violent tiff with his father-in-law over a plot of land, he deserted his wife and family and emigrated to Scotland. He found a job easily enough, for the Union Canal, linking Glasgow and Edinburgh, was being built, and he was taken on as a “navigator”—or “navvy”, as canal-diggers were called.

  While billeted in the village of Maddiston, where everyone knew him as a sociable drinking companion and an expert dancer of Irish jigs, he met a hard-faced, disreputable shrew named Helen M’Dougal. She had lived with a sawyer for many years, and borne him two children, but gladly agreed to live with Burke without troubling to have their relationship blessed by the Church. They came to Edinburgh, Burke earning money for a poverty-stricken existence by selling second-hand boots and shoes.

  The couple’s luck turned for the better when they happened to go to a lodging house in Tanner’s Close run by John Broggan, a carter by trade, whose wife was one of Burke’s cousins. Broggan suddenly had to leave Edinburgh for a place where the police couldn’t find him, and Burke and Helen thus became owners of the property, inheriting a ready-made income of several shillings a week for which they had to do little or nothing. Like most of the poor in those days, they spent the greater part of their money on whisky and gin, which was cheap, plentiful, and fiery enough to give temporary release from the wretchedness of life. The hangover afterwards was so appalling that the craving for more liquor, and the oblivion it afforded, became all the stronger.