Devoured (26 page)
‘Long enough,’ Hatton answered. ‘I know everything.’
Benjamin Broderig shut the box. It was late but his mind was spinning, like the earth on its axis. He thought of Katherine, who would be buried tomorrow. Perhaps she could see him even now. Her breath in the air; her words, a whisper in the night.
But this was London. There were no rocks, no flowers, no water spirits. The sky was sullied. It was unclean, despite the feathering snow. Broderig thought about his journey here and the places he still wanted to go. He walked over to his desk and found the map of the Aru Islands, and with a quill plotted out the route he might take and thought about how if he went there, he would have no one to write to and no one to share it with as he had when Katherine Bessingham was still alive.
Sarawak
December 22nd, 1855
Dear Katherine,
I think I have changed. Not just that I am a little bearded now, and less like the boy you once knew, but that I have changed in my outlook. I think this is more profound a change than the physical, don’t you think? And of course, with bated breath, I am in some anticipation to hear your reaction to Mr Wallace’s ideas.
But I am still surprised that he shared his thoughts so freely. Perhaps here in Borneo, away as we are from England, a man can really think about the way of things. There is no fear here. No Society. Yes, of course, there is fear of a snake bite, perhaps even a fear of reputation. But we are freer here. Less formed.
Mr Wallace will return to Singapore before he plans his next adventure. He said he only waits on money. I had hoped that he might see something in me, and ask me to join him, but sadly, he did not. He is clearly a man who is happiest when he is working alone. Perhaps this is what makes him so good at this trade. I can see now that I was just passing his time for him, playing chess, talking of theories whilst he readied himself for the next expedition.
The day we left Brooke’s cottage, Emmerich packed up and got ready in the greatest of moods. I heard him chatting on the veranda. His ‘ummings arrhings’. And his hilariously Germanic,
‘Jawohls’
at each of Mr Wallace’s questions. So polite and deferential.
I am slightly at a loss to be back now in Sarawak and wish Mr Wallace was here. Don’t get me wrong. Good old Emmerich will always be my friend, no matter how far I travel. But it is close upon me, I can feel it. The time for leaving again. The rainy season is just around the corner when collecting will become impossible. The forest will be beaten down with pounding rain and Wallace will escape it by heading east. Emmerich, on the other hand, enjoys the rainy season and the immobility of it all.
And the more I think on this, the more convinced I am that he will never leave. In Sarawak, he needs little to live on. He has his house. His trade in orchids. But I have none of these things now the Mias are spoken for and my Dutch friends are gone and little San, who I think of often, far away with my gun in his hand.I have even started to gather up my belongings and pack away some instruments no longer needed in boxes marked ‘Handle with Care’.
I heard a church bell ringing this evening. There is a Calvinist chapel in Sarawak. It must have been the way the breeze was blowing that let the low, plaintive rings reach my ears. So out of place in this world and yet when I heard it, I felt homesick. I wandered down to my moonlit beach in the vain hope that I might see a ship I knew, but there was nothing on the horizon. No chugging steamer, no glorious junk, no surveyor’s ship. Just flat black ocean; sea and sky melding together into a void. I sat down on the beach and then noticed it was moving.
First flurries of sand flying into the air. Then tiny creatures: turtles. Not one or ten, Katherine. To my astonishment, there must have been a thousand or more, moving across the sand to the sea. Where were they going? Would they all get there? Something was calling them. I picked up a little hatchling. It was a leatherback
(Dermochelys coriacea)
and it struggled in my hands. I was not God, but I felt, just then, at that moment, that if I wanted to, I could be. It made me shudder. So instead, rather than killing the little creature as ‘The Collector’ should
have done, I set it down. Released, it scuttled forward, kicking up the sand with its tiny flippers. I watched it go. The gentle waves lapped up onto the beach and as the sea pulled its might out again, I saw my little turtle rise up, then disappear.When the spectacle was over and the beach was left with only two or three stragglers, I wandered back. And like the turtles, I knew it was my time to set off in a new direction. To have faith, if not in God, then in destiny. To stop looking out hopelessly at horizons, but to pack up my cases and go home.
The rest of my thoughts, my ideas, my journals I will keep with me, for you must be growing tired of my rambling letters, Katherine, and so I promise you this is the last. Journeys home are not the same as journeys leaving. The next words you shall hear from me shall be face to face, together at Ashbourne. And thinking of that, of home and familiar company, yes, it’s true to say, I feel almost myself again. In fact, quite content with the world and well.
Yours etc.
Benjamin Broderig looked out of the window and his hot breath steamed up a panel, so that he could easily draw his own initials on the glass. He breathed on the letters purposefully again, so the initials evaporated. Then somewhere in the house, he heard a voice. Perhaps his father was up? But the voice sounded rough and inelegant, so more likely a servant. He folded up his map again and placed it by the bookcase and as he did so, heard a soft creak of wood, and the fall of footsteps. Broderig looked at the door, braced himself, and took his pocket pistol out. Inspector Adams had been right about one thing, he knew he was in danger. But there was nobody there, and so he put the pocket pistol back, deciding a snap of cold air was needed. Just an echo in his head, he thought to himself.
The topiary garden was heaped with snow, the gate left swinging open. Broderig started towards the city, hugging the wharfside as he went. Every now and then stopping and looking out at the vast expanse of flattened water, veiled in a shroud of low-hanging mist. Broderig kept going until he reached the shadows of Parliament. He had some shillings in his pocket. He passed a church, but the place he needed was just across the street. The tavern looked long closed up. But Benjamin Broderig rapped on the door, and a panel slid open and an eye presented itself, unblinking and bloodshot. ‘W’dya want?’ said a voice from within. Harsh and unwelcoming.
‘Porter,’ the young man replied. The door opened.
‘Get the keys, and release him. Don’t argue with me, Constable. I give the orders round here.’
Hatton stood at Inspector Adams’s side, waiting for the key to turn, and there he was, sitting in a corner and looking at his fingernails, as if nothing had happened.
‘Albert. I am so glad to see you. Inspector Adams here will be the first one to say it. You’re a free man, innocent of all charges. Come, friend, your wife is fretting. But I’ve sent a message to say you’ll be on your way as soon as possible.’
Hatton covered his joy in a rambling account of procedures to follow. Roumande looked up at his friend and smiled, another stickler for detail.
‘Released, you say? How long have I been here? Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the number of instruments we are lacking in the morgue, and I’m sure I could get them sent over from Belgium at half the cost.’
Roumande? Would you credit him? Any other man would be counting the hours till they knew the time would come when they would surely swing from a gibbet. But not this man.
‘Have I ever told you what a fine fellow you are? And how we could not, would not, cope without you at St Bart’s? But promise, Albert. No more letters, I beg of you.’
Roumande thumped Hatton hard on the back. ‘Come, Adolphus, we have work to do. Send another message and tell my wife I’m well, and I’ll return home when we’ve finished the autopsies.’
The two men left The Yard and headed back to St Bart’s. They hung their coats on the meat hooks and set to work, starting with Finch. It was hard to give the bloody lumps a Christian name but the leather form didn’t seem to deserve it, either. It was propped up, Sunday best, in a corner. Its dusty appearance was the same as before. Hatton looked again at it and the book it still held.
Vestiges
. Why that particular book, he thought to himself? Was the killer making fun of Finch? It was ten years out of date and already the world of science had moved inevitably forward. It was a book only read now by the masses. Why not something more suitably erudite by Mr Darwin or Charles Lyell?
Roumande, hand to his mouth, was caught in a momentary thought and then said, straight to the point, ‘It’s a sorry job, badly done. Why a halfwit or a child could make less of a mess of it. Look at the bulges, and as for the stitching, I wouldn’t let them hem my trousers, Adolphus. It’s hardly a masterpiece.’
The two of them laughed, their gallows humour a condition of the morgue.
Roumande addressed the Professor in a more serious tone, ‘If you permit me to say so, we never actually managed to inspect all his organs as thoroughly as we might have done. Perhaps we should start with the meat, before we conclude anything final about the form?’
Slowly, they unwrapped the body parts which had been preserved in excellent condition, having absorbed a great deal of the Fen’s peaty soil. Finch’s brain put to one side, still wrapped in calico, Hatton moved to the heart.
‘The large tweezers, if you please.’
Roumande handed them over.
‘And pass me the three-incher, Albert, if you would be so kind.’ Hatton was still looking for something, but what, he didn’t know.
The heart was a good one. An upside down, pear-shaped pumping machine. Hatton weighed it. Eleven ounces exactly.
But there was something else, and he traced the point of his knife along it. It was not large. But it was there. A small lump of scar tissue and a thin slash of a wound.
‘Do you see what I see, Albert?’
‘Yes. Cut it out, Professor, and put it under the microscope.’
Carefully, Hatton took his smallest blade and made a sharp incision into the left ventricle wall. ‘This knife isn’t working, Albert. I need the circulating biopsy tool.’
With a simple pressing down of his hand and a sharp twist, the instrument they had improvised themselves lifted a perfectly cylindrical sample of the tissue. Hatton walked over to his microscope and peered down the viewing rods.
And he was right. Twisting the little wheels, the tissue’s cell formation spoke only to those who could read it. Success. Forensic evidence. A sharp blade had been pushed through Finch with considerable force. There was a clear disruption to the tissue cells. Deep bruising and abrasions which had not, due to the brown discolouration from the peat, shown themselves to the naked eye initially, but more than that. A shard of silver.
‘Tweezers, Albert.’
The tweezers grew large and cumbersome under the lens, but Hatton plucked the shard out and held it up to the light.
‘It’s a sliver of steel. Which means our killer must have used tremendous force for the metal to break off like this.’ Hatton was beginning to understand what might have happened. The weapon had been pushed through Finch’s heart; the cut deep and at an angle. That Dr Finch had been facing his murderer when he died was clear. So, had they known each other? Had they been friends? Lovers?
‘Can I see it, Adolphus?’
Hatton stepped aside. ‘I think I know this type of tip end, Adolphus.’ Roumande held the tiny shard of metal up into the light using the tweezers. ‘It’s not from a dissection knife. This might be a wild guess, but I think this is for hunting or fishing.’
Roumande was right, and Hatton knew it. The shard of metal had a tiny point which was razor thin, and the beginnings of a crescent-shaped dip, a groove in the metal.
‘I think we can surmise that Finch was stabbed through the heart with a fishing knife by someone he knew, as you suggest, Albert. He was overpowered. His body parts were then cut up and carted to the Fens. How and by whom, I cannot tell. But I have my suspicions. The mess was cleared up, the parts deposited, and then whoever was the culprit came back and rebuilt him again. Quite an undertaking and not for anyone fearful.’ Hatton didn’t mention the Mucker, but he thought it.