Surgeons’ Hall Page 5

  ‘Of course,’ his eyes glittered. ‘I, however, am a very great admirer of Dr Strangeway’s work.’ The laughter stopped. Worried looks were exchanged. ‘Such finely crafted simulacra are one of the wonders of art and medicine. But let me be quite plain: I cannot imagine a less useful way of training a surgeon than solely to use such things. To learn about the body and its mechanisms without even looking at the body and its mechanisms? What folly! Pictures, models and drawings will serve us up to a point, but they are not enough. Other schools may teach in that way, but here we do not. A medical man must feel the deepest recesses of the body, the movement of the organs against each other, the spiked hardness of the kidney stone, the robust texture of the veins. He must see for himself what lies within, taste the saline membrane of the urethra, hear the sounds the body makes, the resonance of its healthy and its morbid structures. What models might afford us this type of vital knowledge?’ He shook his head. ‘Here, gentlemen, you will learn with all your senses.

  ‘Show me that later,’ he muttered, waving me away. ‘And take a seat, for God’s sake, we are late enough as it is.’

  As I clambered up to the topmost standing – the only place where there seemed to be a space – something outside the window caught Dr Cruikshank’s eye.

  ‘Bullseye!’ he cried, springing back into the performance once more. ‘Damn that creature! It stole my bread and dripping right from beneath my nose yesterday.’ The dog could be seen digging excitedly in the flower bed at the end of the garden. Dr Cruikshank bounded down from the pulpit, sprang to the window and threw up the sash.

  ‘Run, Bullseye!’ cried a student. A cheer went up. Shouts of ‘Run, Bullseye, run!’ filled the lecture theatre, as all at once Dr Cruikshank drew a revolver from his pocket. He flourished it in the air like a pirate, and balanced it dramatically on his left forearm. Squinting along the barrel, he took aim. He fired it twice, the roar of the report ringing in our ears. The ladies screamed in horrified delight. The students cheered wildly. The dog – apparently unscathed – vanished into the undergrowth. Dr Cruikshank slammed the window closed and stuffed the pistol back out of sight.

  ‘Old service revolver,’ he said, patting the pocket in which the weapon was now concealed. ‘I was at the Eastern Cape, you know. Army surgeon. Still a crack shot, as you can see. I missed the beast deliberately, of course.’ He grinned at the students. ‘It would never do to kill a dog in front of the ladies.’

  The lecture proceeded uneventfully after that. It was about the circulation of the blood, though it seemed to be a part of Dr Cruikshank’s style to share his opinions about his colleagues as he shared his knowledge about the body – much to the amusement of his students, though they were not immune either, for he did not hesitate to mock anyone he felt deserved it, saving his best Scots words for those he appeared most to disdain. The student Tanhauser was described as ‘a neep heid’, someone called Allardyce ‘a milk sop’, another absentee named Wilson was ‘glaiket’, and later ‘an eejit’. When he had finished, the students stamped their feet and cheered. Dr Cruikshank acknowledged their enthusiasm with a languid wave of his be-ringed hand.

  ‘Does he always dress like this?’ I asked the student next to me.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Even when he’s dissecting!’

  Will came up to me. ‘Why did you not save me a place?’ I said. ‘I had to sit right up here at the top.’

  He shrugged. ‘There was no room. Look, Jem, I must go with Miss Crowe just now,’ he said. ‘She is to show me where I will work and what I have to do.’

  ‘Good. And I shall—’

  But he was already bounding back down the steps. ‘Come and find me later,’ he said over his shoulder. And then he was gone.

  Dr Cruikshank was watching me. ‘Well then,’ he said as the last students filed out. ‘Let us take a look at this hand of yours.’

  Dr Cruikshank’s room was in a state of confusion. Packing cases stood about spewing straw and shredded paper, books teetered in untidy stacks about the floor and jars of specimens stood randomly on shelves, or peeped out from beneath chairs. It was hard to tell whether the stuff was coming in or going out. Dr Cruikshank flopped into an armchair before the fire and motioned me into the one opposite.

  ‘I see you looking at my finery,’ he said, gesturing to his plush waistcoat and fine neckerchief. ‘I might be obliged to labour amongst the decayed mess of humanity, but I am not without refinement or elegant manners. And I do what I must to keep my lectures lively. Anatomy can be a dull litany of facts, sir, and it is my job to make it not so. You have heard of Alexander Monro tertius, of Edinburgh? A dull slob of a man not even beloved by his own mother.’ He shook his head. ‘The man single-handedly managed to destroy the reputation of anatomy teaching at Edinburgh University. That is not the way to do it.’ He screwed the rings off his fingers and tossed them into a bowl beside his chair. ‘Damn, these things annoy me though,’ he said. He pulled off the neckerchief. ‘And this too, confound it.’

  ‘Then why do you wear it?’

  ‘I must look the part,’ he replied. He sighed. ‘In my endeavours not to teach like Monro, I seem to have taken on the manners of Knox.’

  ‘Robert Knox?’ I said. I knew he was in London somewhere, for he had long since abandoned his once thriving anatomy school in Edinburgh. Some years ago I had seen the man lecturing on comparative anatomy. His style had indeed been as flamboyant as his ideas. I grinned. ‘You do look a little like him, as well as having similar voice and mannerisms.’

  He shrugged. ‘He was the best, though he is a far cry from what he once was. The best, of course, apart from Dr Crowe, who never needs such theatricals to hold the attention of the room.’ He reached out with a sigh. ‘Come along then.’

  Dr Cruikshank rooted in his pocket and produced a magnifying glass. I waited while he peered through it, examining the hand from its severed wrist to its fingertips.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last. ‘I’m sure you’ve worked out the basics, age, gender, occupation and so forth.’

  ‘Mid-twenties, male, professional – in my view most likely a medical man, sir. You marked the blood at the base of the nail?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Do you recognise it?’

  ‘No, Mr Flockhart, I do not.’

  ‘It was left amongst Dr Strangeway’s exhibits. Possibly by a group of medical students. Your medical students, I should imagine. The rest of the body may be here, may it not?’

  ‘It is a likely place,’ Dr Cruikshank shrugged. ‘If they were our students and if they left this hand.’

  ‘And there was also this,’ I said. I pulled out the card that I had found between the finger and thumb. ‘Et mortui sua arcana narrabunt,’ he read. ‘And the dead shall reveal their secrets. How curious.’ His voice was quiet, his expression unreadable. And yet somehow I had the feeling he had been waiting for me to show him the small black-edged card and its childishly scrawled motto. No doubt Dr Crowe had told him what I was about.

  ‘Does it mean anything?’ I said.

  ‘Well, I know what it means,’ he replied tartly.

  ‘But is it significant?’

  ‘Significant? To me?’ He shook his head. ‘Why would it be? As something pertaining to an anatomy school, however, it seems more than apposite.’

  All at once he sprang to his feet. ‘Tell you what, Flockhart.’ He thrust the severed hand back at me and produced a large silk handkerchief from his top pocket, like a conjurer. He wiped his fingers on it. ‘Since you’re so keen, why don’t we go and see whether we can find the rest of him?’

  Precognition for the murder of Mary Anderson,

  18th December 1830.

  Statement of CATHERINE ANDERSON, known as Clenchie Kate, rag picker and washerwoman, residing at Tanner’s Lodgings, Cowgate, Edinburgh. Aged twenty years.

  19th December 1830

  My sister Mary and I used to go up to the Infirmary or to Surgeons’ Square every day for it was not far from our lodg
ings. The young men liked our saucy talk and glad eye, and the way we sang, for we had fine voices and we knew all the sad songs of the Isles, and some from the Lowlands too for our mother had taught us them all. But for the most part it was our spines that they loved, for our backs were twisted about in a way that used to make the students stare, and their teachers lick their lips. It was how we made our living, the two of us standing at the gates, catching their coins in the boxes we kept at our feet.

  It was no secret that Dr Crowe had developed an attachment to my sister on the death of his wife, and it was not long before she was getting from him in a day what the two of us had got in a week from all the others. At first she had laughed at him, taking his money and sharing it with me, as we had always done. But after a while something changed in her. She grew secretive. She took to brushing her hair and tying it in ribbons. They were not the kind of ribbons women of our sort could afford but she would not say where she had got them. She bought a looking glass from Jamie McGregor, the pawnbroker at the foot of St Mary’s Wynd, and was forever poring over her face. Sometimes, she disappeared for hours at a time. I had no idea where she went, and she would never say.

  One day I saw Mary in a gown of green silk. It was too fine for the likes of her, and all trailing in the dirt on account of her twisted figure. I took it to Jamie McGregor’s. She was furious when she learned where it had gone, and that the whisky she was drinking was bought with the money I had got for it. We could never afford to get it back.

  Me and Mary argued like the devil – we always had. But now it was worse. One day she showed me a little silver locket. She told me Dr Crowe had given it to her. I said we must take it to Jamie McGregor, but she would have none of it. We fought, and she gave me a black eye, but the pain of it was nothing to the pain in my heart, for I knew that the worst had happened, and that she thought herself in love with Dr Crowe, and – worse still – that she thought he was in love with her.

  He did not come to our house, not that I ever saw, though I was often out while Mary, saying she felt unwell, stayed in alone. When I came back she would have a glitter in her eye and a flush to her cheek. She said it was just the fever that made her so, but I knew better.

  His attentions did not last long. It was only grief that had drawn him to her, anyone could see that. I cannot say what happened, or how, but one day he looked upon her as she stood at the gates to the Infirmary and I saw that he had recovered enough of himself to recognise his recent folly for what it was.

  Mary never spoke of what had taken place between her and Dr Crowe. I did not ask what had occurred, but I saw it easily enough in the way her belly swelled. One day we were at our usual place at the Infirmary when Dr Crowe came by. She pulled up her skirts to show how she had grown, and cried out to him that she had his child inside her. I saw him shake his head and walk away.

  Soon after that Mary stopped coming with me. She said it hurt her legs and her back. Some of the medical men came to visit her. Mr Allardyce came, with his pencils and his measuring tape. Dr Strangeway asked if he could create her likeness in wax. Mr Franklyn begged that he might make a cast of her body with plaster. She told me she would not let them near. They said they were concerned for her, but I knew they were not. She was what they liked to call a ‘monster’ – both of us were. Neither beast nor devil, but something twisted and crooked, a human in some ways, but put together so wrongly as to make it a wonder that we were alive at all – like a two-headed goat or a dog born without eyes. And they marvelled too at what kind of a child might be born of one such as Mary, how it might grow in so topsy-turvy a womb, the bones of her spine and hips so deformed that the baby inside must come out widdershins – if it came out at all. We had once joked with the anatomists that when we were dead they might boil us up and see how we were made. Now, I swear I could hear them sharpening their knives.

  On the afternoon of the 18th I was drinking in the White Hart on the Grassmarket. I had some coins that Mr Franklyn had given me. I was there all day, and for much of the evening, with no thought to much else, and when I’d had my fill I bought some spirits for Mary and went home. When I got home the door was stuck fast. I kicked on it in case Mary was inside, for it was often swollen tight closed with the damp. There was no sound from within. I knew Mary did not like to be out in the dark, especially when the haar was getting up. I thought she might be with our neighbour, Susan Leich, but she was not. Susan and I fell to talking, and we drank the bottle I had brought home for Mary. I was there for some two hours, perhaps longer. Susan told me I slept a while, though I have no memory of it.

  When I came to leave, the fog was so thick that Susan said she would come with me, as she knew I hated the dark and the haar as much as my sister did. The door to our lodgings was still shut. Susan tried it, and declared that it must be bolted from the inside for it was stuck fast. I battered upon it, and called out ‘Mary! Wake up, it’s me and Susan!’ There was no reply. I tried to look through the windows, but the panes were too grimed with filth to see anything but shadows and a dim glowing light. I rapped on the window and called out to her to let me in. At that, the room fell into darkness. A moment later I heard the bolt draw back.

  I went inside. I could see nothing, for we have no gaslights nearby. The last lamp is on the wall at the head of Robertson’s Close, and after that the vennel plunges down into the darkness of the Cowgate as it runs below the South Bridge. The next lamp is under the Bridge itself. But I knew where to fumble for a candle, and where we kept the tinder box. Before I could find them I heard a noise behind me, and something moved in the darkness. I could not tell what it was, but the sound of it, and the curious, damp smell of the place made me sick with fear, and I cried out and ran from the room, back out into the street where Susan was waiting.

  ‘Oh, Susan,’ I said. ‘There is something evil in there. We must have a light. I will not go in otherwise, but I will wait here if you get one.’

  I stood outside while Susan ran to fetch a lantern. I could hear the sounds of drunkards further up the street. The haar was too thick to see anyone, though it comforted me to think of others so near at hand. But then I heard another sound, like the scuffle of a foot. I saw the shadows darken before me, and a shape appeared in the door to my lodgings. I could see little other than that he had lifted his arm and covered his face with his cloak, and so I stepped forward. A lantern flashed open – to blind me, no doubt, so that I might not tell who he was. I saw his nails and fingers red with blood, and I shouted out and swung my crutch. It struck home – I heard a cry, and the sound of his lantern glass smashing – and I stumbled forward to seize him. But he knew those streets as well as I, for he turned and ran straight for Robertson’s Close. My fingers caught the hem of his cloak and I felt damp wool and silk rush through my fingers as he pulled away.

  A moment later Susan returned. She had a light, and had brought her husband with her too. But it was my house and I would go into it myself, and so I did, though I wished I had not, for what I saw will haunt me for ever.

  My sister Mary was lying on the bed in a pool of blood, her face turned towards the wall. She had on her green dress, the one I had taken to Jamie McGregor’s, though it was now stained and ruined. She had ribbons in her hair. She wore a shawl too – a lace one I had not seen before – around her neck and tight about it.

  After that, I hardly know what happened. I heard someone shouting ‘Murder! Murder!’ and from the pain in my throat I knew it was my own voice. I felt arms about me, and the rough edge of Susan’s shawl against my cheek as she dragged me from the room. I heard her cry ‘Murder’ too, and soon there came the sound of running feet, and cries, and I saw lights bobbing in the darkness. And then all at once there were men and women everywhere, crowding to see, to help, to watch – I don’t know what. The surgeons came, Dr Cruikshank and Dr Wragg, their students too – young ones with earnest faces. They went inside to look at her, closing the door behind them, and I screamed out that they must get out of my house for
it was their own Dr Crowe who had killed her; it was him I had seen, his tall hat and cloak, his hand covered in blood. It was Dr Crowe who had murdered my sister, I saw him with my own eyes.

  True on soul and conscience,

  Catherine Anderson (Her mark)

  X

  The dissection room was a long chamber, its arched roof punctuated by a series of northlights that looked up at the jaundiced autumn skies. Outside I could see three crows perched on the window ledge, watching the goings on inside with hungry eyes. The air was dank and chilly, the walls newly painted and adorned with posters depicting various anatomical scenes – the blood vessels of the body, a cross section of a heart, a pair of lungs, a uterus. A bucket of white wash, the brush still projecting, stood against the far wall.

  ‘I had some of the lads spruce the place up a little,’ said Dr Cruikshank, seeing my gaze. ‘The useless ones – Tanhauser, Wilson, Squires. Some of them would make better tradesmen than they would surgeons, to be perfectly honest. Still, it’s brightened the place up a bit and the lime wash does something to mask the smell. For a few days, at least.’ He held his arms wide. ‘Are we not impressive in size, sir?’

  I could not disagree. Side by side, in rows leading down the room to a door at the far end, corpses were laid out on high wheeled tables. Stools were positioned around them, upon which young men were perched, busy about their tasks. The floor was strewn with portions of viscera, detached pieces of limbs, chunks of dissected muscle, fat and cellular membranes. The windows were open to try to alleviate the stink, the students working without hats and coats in a bid to prevent the smell of death and decay from permeating garments they could not wash. As a result many had colds, and the sound of coughing and hawking echoed from the walls, the floor underfoot moist with blobs of phlegm.