Sawbones (10 page)

“You could lower your voice, Miss Finch.”

“I would remind you I am your employer! I take it you still want to earn your two guineas?”

“I do,” Ezra said. He should not let irritation get in the way of his investigation.

“Well then,” Miss Finch said. “I wish to talk with you. Now.”

Ezra led her towards a tea shop in Panton Square. Inside, there was a good fire, and the windows were fogged with condensation. Ezra ordered hot chocolate and they sat down.

“Miss Finch,” he began, “when I saw your father’s body, it was clear someone had already…”

“Already what?”

Ezra shifted in his seat. “Taken something. Taken parts out of his body – namely, the stomach. I think whoever did it was trying to conceal proof of poisoning.”

Loveday Finch sat back, satisfied. “There. I knew it.”

“Please, there is a long way to go before we reach any conclusion.” He took out his notebook. “I need to know if anyone hated your father, or wanted him dead. Perhaps I could speak with Mr Falcon?”

She almost laughed. “Mr Edward Falcon would never have killed Pa. He is bereft! He has had to change the act all about.” She shook her head. “It has caused him far too much trouble.”

Ezra sipped his chocolate. “Still, it would be most useful if you could arrange a meeting. So I can see for myself.”

“I will, although I do not think it will lead to anything. He is so desperate he has asked me to perform. But I am still in mourning.”

“I should have thought that would pose you no problem,” Ezra said.

“I would not do it,” she said. “Mrs Gurney would throw me out.” She was quiet a moment. “But I am sure Pa would not mind; performing is our livelihood. In one way or another. And I have been doing our accounts. Pa said we would be living high off the hog once we returned from Constantinople, but I suppose he had not reckoned on his own death.” Miss Finch sighed and Ezra felt uncomfortable thinking about his payment.

“Oh, I can see what you are thinking. Your two guineas are safe. My father has provided me enough.” Miss Finch shrugged. “I can stay at Mrs Gurney’s as long as I wish. She has been kind, in her own way.”

Ezra could see from her face that Miss Finch did not regard an indefinite stay at Mrs Gurney’s to be the perfect legacy. However, she was not one to dwell on the unknown. She shook back her red curls, took a piece of paper out of her bag and began to unfold it. “Take a look at this. I thought it might be interesting.” She slid the paper across the table. “Mr Falcon has another performance at the embassy, a seasonal reception, it says, three weeks from now.”

“At the same address as before?” Ezra sat up. “It might be useful. Are you sure there is no party at the embassy who would gain from your father’s death?”

“No, of course not. We are – were – entertainers. I admit the politics of the Ottoman court can be extreme, but we were never a part of all that. I cannot imagine there is anything anyone would have achieved by his death.”

“Well, it could help to see where your father last worked – if you could perhaps get me admittance?”

“I am sure I could.” Miss Finch leant towards him. “And I was thinking about something else I could help with, or that someone at the embassy could, at least.”

Ezra frowned.

She laughed. “My goodness, for one supposedly so skilful with a knife you can be rather slow! Your sign, the tattoo on that piece of skin. They would know all about it there. Discovering its meaning would be simply done.”

Ezra wondered. It was bound to be dangerous, seeking the man a cadaver had been. It might cause all sorts of problems for the master. But the honey cakes, they were Eastern too, weren’t they? Perhaps both men were caught in the same web. “You think our cadaver worked at the embassy too?”

“Not if he was in the harem, as we suspect. The harem never travel. It is a kind of prison. A luxurious one, but a prison all the same.”

“Do not expect me to feel sorry for royalty,” Ezra said. “They take the lion’s share of everything and are happy to let the poor starve.”

“Don’t you ever listen? The sultan’s wives never leave the palace. And it is worst of all for any sons they may have. There is so much intrigue and plotting that the eldest sons of the sultan live closely confined until the sultan dies. One was locked up for so long he went mad!”

“There, you see. Such wealth and power only lead to corruption.”

“No one deserves to suffer,” Loveday protested. “Rich or poor.”

Ezra humphed. “In my observation,” he said, “the rich usually manage to avoid their share of suffering. You should see the scraps and destitutes we get at Mr McAdam’s Monday clinics. I am sure every one of them would love to suffer as the rich do.”

“Ezra McAdam, you are quite the revolutionary! Perhaps you would prefer to work for more equitable a fee? One guinea, perhaps? Ten shillings?”

“That is not what I meant!”

Loveday Finch made a face.

“Do not tease me, Miss Finch. I am of the belief that life should be fairer. In every way.”

“You would change the world, then?”

“They have done it in France, in America…”

Miss Finch sipped her chocolate. “Perhaps. But I at the moment only want to find out who would make me an orphan. And I would put money on there being some connection between my father’s death and this cadaver. You are an intelligent young man, Ezra McAdam. Don’t you want to know the man’s story?”

“No.” Ezra said it firmly – too firmly, perhaps.

“I can tell that you do. You are just as intrigued as I.”

“Maybe. But if it was known that a cadaver of the embassy household ended up on the master’s anatomy table, it could be dangerous – and besides, there is no proof to link his death with that of your father.”

“Yet!” Miss Finch’s sea-grey eyes glowed. “I cannot resist a good mystery.”

Ezra looked around the tea rooms. “Promise me, please, Miss Finch, do not mention this to a living soul.”

“Who do you take me for?” She was affronted.

“I take you for one whose lips are far too loose for my liking.”

She ignored this slight. “I could help, don’t you see?”

“I said I have no interest in the business.”

“You are a poor liar, Mr McAdam, and I am a professional one.”

Ezra knew the master could get in a deal of trouble if the cadaver could be traced to them, and he resolved to be rid of the skin specimen as soon as he got home. “Miss Finch,” he said, “I am trying to solve the riddle of your father’s death. That is what you engaged me for. You should not have seen that tattoo, and I would prefer it if you could bring yourself to think you had not.”

“How curious, you look quite perturbed by the matter.”

“I assure you I am not,” Ezra said shortly. He stood up. “I would like to speak to Mr Falcon as soon as can be arranged.”

“If you wish, I will send word to you tomorrow.”

“And you should take a cab back to Clerkenwell,” Ezra added. “Your leg needs rest even if you do not.”

Ezra walked home quickly. He went straight upstairs and unpinned the square of skin from its wax bed. He would get rid of it now, before he changed his mind – before Miss Finch’s proposition started to seem too tempting. He took it out to the anatomy room, lit and stoked up the brazier, and tossed it in. He regretted it at once. The room filled with a smell not unlike the hog roast at a fair. The skin crackled and hissed for what seemed an age considering its tiny size.

Anna would have told him off; she would have imagined the cadaver answering the judgement trump with a square of skin missing. But Anna was not here. Ezra knew the cadaver would have a rather nasty scar up his chest, too. But he had more than likely been a Turk, and Ezra had no idea if they had a heaven or a hell or something else entirely. In any case, who knew where his tongue had got to? Lying bleeding on the floor of some tiled Ottoman palace, or perhaps on the sand in some vast hot desert.

When the ashes had cooled Ezra raked them out and went to the yard to empty them into the rubbish heap. Suddenly, he was aware of someone watching. There, by the street entrance, was a boy of nine or ten, wearing a cap that looked too big, a filthy jacket and old boots. He was pale-skinned and dark-eyed, and a lick of hair as dark as a raven’s wing flopped out of his cap and across his face. The boy nodded at him, looked back into the street, then crossed the yard. Ezra wondered what he was after, bread or ashes by the looks of him.

“I say!” The boy spoke with the confidence and authority of money. “Young man.”

Ezra looked back. “Are you addressing me?”

“I am. Are you Mr McAdam’s black?” The boy’s voice sounded strange – good fine English but odd, deep vowels. Though he seemed nervous, as if he expected a hand to reach out from Great Windmill Street and grab him at any moment.

“That is one way of putting it.” Ezra folded his arms. This boy was a rum fish. His voice and bearing were one thing, his clothes another entirely.

“Can I speak with the man, your master? Now.”

“He is not here. But with your manners, I doubt I would have let you in anyway,” Ezra retorted.

“This is most urgent.” Now the boy was closer Ezra could see there was a fierce anxiety in him, and he was pale with cold. Ezra shouldn’t have been so hard on him. He bent down, his face level with the boy’s.

“I am sorry, but he’s away from home.” The boy’s face fell. Ezra softened. “Perhaps I can help. I could fetch you tea in the kitchen if you would like?”

“No, I cannot stay. You are anatomists, yes?”

Ezra nodded.

“You have bodies, a deal of dead bodies for your students.”

He nodded again.

“I am looking for another black, a man, taller than you – he may have been shot.”

Ezra was afraid his face betrayed him.

“Yes! You have seen him! I can tell! Is he still here? Did you see a letter in his jacket, or about his person?”

“When we see them,” Ezra said gently, “they are not generally dressed.”

The boy almost deflated.

“Please. Come in and have some tea.” Ezra put a hand out to the boy’s shoulder.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” The boy’s dark eyes were furious, scared, and he shrugged off Ezra’s hand and ran. Ezra followed him, through the arch and up towards Soho Square.

As he turned into Dean Street Ezra slipped on some ice and landed heavily on his backside. By the time he stood up, winded and aching, the boy had completely vanished. The city, he reminded himself, was full of such poor souls, thousands of them. Perhaps when he had his own practice he would run free surgeries two days a week, or even three.

Ezra walked back home lost in thought. The mystery deepened. Who was he? That boy could pass for Turkish – had he been thrown out of the embassy, cast aside for making a mistake? Perhaps he had seen something pertaining to Mr Finch’s death? Why hadn’t Ezra thought to ask his name when he had the chance? He had thought that cadaver was too unusual, that someone like that would be missed! What would the master make of it? he wondered. If only he was here.

Ezra climbed up to the museum and went to close the curtain. The snow was still falling; the master would not be home this evening. Ezra could see down into the front drawing room of Mrs Perino’s house where the fire blazed, and out across the city. The cloth warehouse was so near, yet Anna St John may as well have left for the Continent already.

Something caught his eye in the street, the flash of a pipe being lit. He looked down. The man he had seen in St Anne’s churchyard was now standing across the road, leaning on Mrs Perino’s railings, watching the front of the house. Ezra shivered and quickly pulled the curtains shut.

Toms had gone home. He was alone in the house with Mrs Boscaven and Ellen. What should he do? What if a party of cracksmen came in the night? Ezra went around the whole house, checked all the locks back and front. He slid the bolts on the front area door and went to the master’s laboratory to check the bolts on the window. When he looked through the crack in the shutters he saw that the man had gone.

There was something distinctly unsettling about the man, he thought: unsettling and suspicious. One more puzzle that a conversation with the master would set to rights. Ezra sat down at the table in the laboratory, lit a couple of candles and took down some books concerning circulation and the workings of the heart. Mr Finch should be his priority.

But the words and pictures swam in front of his eyes. He could not concentrate. Was that fellow outside one of the coves he had heard outside the anatomy room? Perhaps he was with the boy? And the cadaver with the tattoo, who had he been? Was Miss Finch correct? Was he really a member of the Ottoman household? If he was, who was the strange boy, and was he a foreigner too? Why in heaven’s name had the man been shot in the back? Why wasn’t it all over the newspapers? And why couldn’t Ezra forget? After all, there had been so many – what was one tongueless man among an army of dead?

Mr William McAdam’s Anatomy School and Museum of Curiosities
Great Windmill Street
Soho
London
November 1792

I
t was late. Outside the snow had stopped falling at last, but not soon enough – Mr McAdam had been forced to remain another night in Hampstead, and Ezra was alone.

He was still working in the laboratory adjoining the museum when he was startled by the rumble of a cart turning into the yard. For a second Ezra froze, imagining an army of cracksmen ready to break the glass of the anatomy room and pour into the house. But when he looked out of the back window he recognized Mr Allen’s cart. By the time Ezra had run down the stairs and drawn the bolts on the lecture room door, the man was waiting. It felt as though the thaw was in the air, but the ground was still white, which made the evening strangely bright.

Mr Allen’s boy had jumped down too, and Ezra watched as he began to push a large wickerwork hamper off the back of the cart.

“No!” Ezra called. “We don’t need a delivery. I thought Mr McAdam had sent word.”

Allen waved at the boy, who shrugged and pushed the hamper back.

“No, he never did.” Allen sniffed. “Well, I need a word now I’m here,” he said quietly. “With the old man.”