Chapter 20
“S
o, we are to lose you to Oxford again,” said Dr. Carruthers over breakfast the following morning. Thomas detected a note of disapproval in his voice.
The young New Englander was toying with a rasher of fatty bacon on his plate, but had no appetite for it. He knew he had to return to Boughton Hall before the inquest convened. He would take the coach up to Oxford that very morning, so that he could endeavor to track down the poison used to kill vermin on the estate. He would need a sample of it to test.
Dr. Carruthers sipped the coffee Mistress Finesilver had just poured him. He was aware that Thomas had postponed a lecture he was due to give at the College of Surgeons the day before because he was working on solving the riddle of this purgative.
“Remember you have a duty to your students,” he warned his protégé.
Thomas rested his fork on the side of the plate. “Indeed, I would never forget, sir, but I also have an obligation to the court. It is relying on me to determine how a young man died.”
The old doctor let out a deep sigh. “You are not a lawyer, Thomas,” he countered, obviously annoyed.
“But I seem the only one who may be capable of clearing up this awful mystery,” protested Thomas. He found himself pointing the fork aggressively at his mentor and was glad he could not see his uncharacteristically fiery gesture.
Abashed, he put his knife and fork together carefully on the side of the plate in an act of closure. “I must take my leave now, sir,” he said, rising from the table. “I shall be back by the end of the week.”
Dr. Carruthers nodded and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He hoped his student’s brilliant young mind would not stray from the path of anatomy and serious study. Murders were best solved by lawyers and constables, he told himself, not by scientists.
Back in his laboratory, Thomas began to pack his bag with the necessary implements and ingredients he would need to carry out experiments on any samples of poison he might find at Boughton Hall. A sense of panic was rising within him as he rushed to strap ampules and phials securely into their correct cases. When he performed in front of students in the anatomy theater he was a priest. His chalice was a knife and the actions he executed were rituals; above reproach and incontrovertible. His unquestioning congregation held him in awe. They merely watched his skill and precision as he teased out long lengths of tubules and sliced through cumbering flesh. To them he was an apostle of the great Vesalius who, more than two hundred years before, had performed the first postmortem dissections. He was respected and revered on his own hallowed ground.
A court, however, was foreign territory, full of nonbelievers and infidels. His audience would be made up not of students eager to learn, but of curious meddlers and bloodthirsty gossips. And he, with his science and his theories, would be regarded as no better than a common charlatan, who peddled false remedies and cure-alls at fairgrounds and markets.
Thomas shuddered at the very thought of taking the stand as he began collating his notes. He had just packed the last sheaves into a bag when a knock came at the door. He was annoyed. “Yes, Mistress Finesilver,” he called out brusquely. The door swung open and, sure enough, there she stood, her face pinched and unsmiling as usual. Yet instead of telling Thomas that she had darned his stockings for the very last time, or that his hot meal was growing cold, she announced he had a visitor.
Immediately Thomas put down the last of his notes and turned toward the door. He was struck straightaway by the young man’s resemblance to Lydia: the high cheekbones, the loosely curled hair, the same heart-shaped face.
“Please, come in,” said Thomas, holding out his hand. Francis Crick took it, slightly bemused. He recognized the young man from his attendances at his lectures.
“You bear a great resemblance to your cousin, Mr. Crick,” ventured Thomas.
“You speak of Lady Lydia?” The young aristocrat seemed shocked. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do,” he mused.
“You were the one who recommended me to her ladyship, were you not?”
“Yes. Yes, I was,” said Francis, not knowing whether he might be castigated.
Thomas paused. “Thank you for your confidence in me,” he said, nodding his head.
“You are a great anatomist, Dr. Silkstone,” replied the young man genuinely.
Thomas smiled. “No, not great, just inquisitive.” He fastened the clasp on his bag and turned to the student. “And true to my nature, I must ask you what brings you here, Mr. Crick.”
Francis straightened himself, as if he had suddenly remembered the reason for his presence. “I am come on a mission on behalf of my cousin,” he announced in what Thomas thought was a somewhat formal manner. The doctor’s curiosity was roused. “Go on,” he urged.
The young man plunged a hand into his coat pocket and retrieved a gray drawstring bag. Handing it carefully over to the doctor, he said: “Lydia wanted you to have this.”
Thomas remained silent, but took the bag warily and laid it on his desk. Inside was a small, clear glass bottle with a cork stopper. Sitting down, he held the bottle up to the light. Inside the liquid was colorless. It could have been water, or pure alcohol, save a few minute impurities that floated in it.
Francis eyed Thomas nervously as he began to uncork the bottle. It only took a second before the doctor knew for sure what was contained inside. His head jerked back involuntarily, as if someone had punched him in the face. So strong was the smell that it sent his senses reeling. It was an unforgettable, unmistakable smell. It was a smell like bitter almonds. It was the smell of cyanide.
“And this was made at Boughton?” Thomas choked. Francis, too, could smell the pungent odor. He turned away, panting. “Yes. Captain Farrell made it in a still. He would make the poison from black laurel cherries every autumn.”
This knowledge came as a revelation to Thomas. “So, there is a still at Boughton where cyanide is made?”
Francis nodded. “There was,” he replied hesitantly.
Thomas placed the cork back into the bottle neck. “There was?” he repeated. “So, where is it now?”
Francis looked awkward. He knew the information he was about to divulge would be incriminating for his cousin’s husband. “Captain Farrell had it destroyed after Edward’s death and all the poison with it.”
Thomas paused to process what he had just heard. “I see,” he said thoughtfully. “So, where did Lady Lydia find this bottle?”
“There is a place called the pavilion on the estate. ’Tis like a summerhouse. She found it there,” said Francis gravely.
Thomas held the bottle up for inspection once more. “Then no one else knows that this bottle exists?”
“No one.” Crick shook his head solemnly.
Thomas banged his palms down flat on his desk. “Then we must get to work,” he said emphatically.
Two large preserving jars sat on Thomas’s desk. He had been about to pack them into his bag when his unexpected visitor arrived. One contained a section of the earl’s stomach, the other part of his liver.
“I can test the deceased’s organs for traces of this substance,” said Thomas, looking at the brownish objects that floated anonymously in preserving fluid. But just as he had uttered these words he saw the pained look on Francis’s face when he realized that his cousin’s remains had been reduced to tissues in sample jars. To be a good anatomist, or indeed a surgeon, Thomas had learned that compassion must be distanced and emotion suppressed, but he recognized that these were exceptional and traumatic circumstances. He laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You do not have to assist me,” he said softly.
Francis looked at him vacantly for a moment; then, as if a sudden resolve had seized hold of him, he replied: “We must do what we can to find out what killed Edward.”
Thomas nodded, satisfied in the knowledge that the young man who stood before him had the makings of a good surgeon. “There are two aprons hanging up over there,” he said, pointing to the hooks on the far wall. Francis allowed a smile to flit across his face before he obeyed the surgeon’s order.
Meanwhile Thomas transferred the sample jars over to his workbench and carefully opened the one containing the dead man’s stomach tissue. Surely if cyanide had been added to the purgative, he would have smelled it during the postmortem, he told himself.
Francis brought the aprons over and together they put them on. Next Thomas laid his instruments out on the bench and using tweezers lifted the large section of stomach out of the jar and onto a porcelain dish. Now he was looking at this pulpy bag with fresh eyes and a heightened sense of smell. He lifted the dish and sniffed, then passed it over to Francis.
“One in six people is not capable of smelling cyanide,” Thomas told him, “but I do not believe we would both suffer from anosmia, especially as we both detected the odor from the bottle.”
At that moment the latch on the laboratory door clicked open and Dr. Carruthers appeared. “Are you still there, Thomas?” he called.
“Indeed, sir,” he replied, wiping his hands on his apron and walking over to greet the old doctor.
“I did not want us to part on difficult terms,” said Carruthers, taking Thomas’s hand.
“There is no bad feeling on my part, sir, let me assure you,” replied Thomas, feeling a little embarrassed that such a conversation should be taking place in front of one of his students. He changed the subject as quickly as he could. “You have come at an opportune time, sir,” he continued.
“How so?” replied the old doctor, making his way slowly into the center of the laboratory. His progress was suddenly halted, however. Like a rabbit that has sensed the approach of a fox, he stiffened and sniffed the air, his nose twitching violently. “Heavens above, I smell cyanide,” he exclaimed.
Thomas and Francis shot a glance at each other. “ ’Tis something I’ve not smelled since I did a postmortem on a young fellow who drank a tankard of the stuff in the winter of ’72.”
Thomas’s eyes opened wide. “Sir, you’ve performed a postmortem on a cyanide death?”
“Unrequited love, I believe. Messy business,” reflected the old doctor, unaware of the significance of his revelation.
“And do you still have the stomach?” Thomas realized that this postmortem took place eight years ago. It was too much to hope that the sample still remained.
“Still have the stomach?” repeated Dr. Carruthers. Thomas held his breath. “Of course I do,” he chuckled, as if there was any question that he had not kept it.
“You’ll find it on the top left-hand shelf in the cupboard in the storeroom,” he revealed.
Thomas smiled broadly with relief, knowing he should never have doubted his mentor.
The storeroom lay through another door and down a narrow passage. Thomas rarely ventured into it. Dr. Carruthers often referred to it as his “medical encyclopedia” and Thomas had vowed one day to familiarize himself with the contents of all the mysterious jars and carboys it held, but he had simply been too busy.
The young anatomist and his student ventured into the damp, windowless room. Holding his candle aloft, glass containers came into view one by one, each labeled in Dr. Carruthers’s spidery scrawl and there, sure enough, on the top left-hand shelf was a jar labeled “stomach—cyanide poisoning.” He could scarcely believe his luck.
As Francis Crick held the candle, Thomas carefully reached up for the container and gently brought it down. Taking it to the light of the passageway, the two men inspected the macabre cargo. There it was: the perfectly preserved stomach of someone whose life had been so blighted that he had killed himself in one of the most agonizing ways imaginable.
Back in the laboratory Thomas and Francis returned to the workbench.
“You’ve found it, then?” asked the old doctor, smiling.
“Indeed we have,” replied Thomas, eagerly prizing off the lid of the jar.
Even after eight years in preserving fluid, the smell was still unmistakable. The acrid odor immediately wafted into the air.
Thomas lifted the sample carefully onto another dish. The most striking difference between this sample and that of Lord Crick’s was the color.
“Well, look at this,” whispered Thomas to himself as much as to Francis. The mucosa of the stomach was a deep inky blue, with a heavy staining of the fundus, yet the antrum was spared.
“ ’Tis a deep blue if I remember correctly,” ventured Dr. Carruthers, now sitting at the desk.
“Indeed it is,” replied Thomas, surprised by the comparison. “It bears no resemblance whatsoever to Crick’s stomach. So ’twas not rat poison that killed him.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Francis.
“This is proof, Mr. Crick,” he countered. “A negative proof, but proof all the same.”
“So, what
did
kill Edward?” asked the student.
“That,” replied the young doctor, “is what we still have to find out.”
Chapter 21
I
f death, mused the great thinker Dr. Samuel Johnson, is merely a gateway on the path from life into eternity, a portal from mortality to immortality, then what does it matter how a man dies? The act of dying is not of importance. It is how he lives that counts.
“What say you to that, Mr. Crick?” asked Thomas at the end of a long afternoon in the laboratory.
The young student had remained to assist him in his tests on the contents of the jar of rat poison. The process of elimination was a laboriously slow one, as the liquid had to be broken down into its various components and each one tested for its toxicity. Now, however, at least one conclusion could be scientifically proven. Edward Crick did not die from cyanide poisoning. Dr. Carruthers’s specimen had proved vital to Thomas in this respect. It was the one aspect about which he could be certain should he be questioned in the witness stand at the forthcoming inquest, assuming the matter of the still and the rat poison came to light.
Thomas studied Crick as he rinsed the phials in a bowl of water. Even his gestures, the angle at which he held his head, the cadence of his voice, reminded him of Lydia.
“Are those not the thoughts of Dr. Johnson?” replied the student.
Thomas was duly impressed. “Indeed so.” He had been fortunate enough to be introduced to the great thinker by Dr. Carruthers when he first came to England and he found him to be a most convivial fellow, with a sharp wit and a tongue to match. His visits to Bedford Coffee House were legendary and the discussions that his forthright remarks provoked were always as lively as a fireworks display.
“He is a man of great erudition and humor, but I am not sure I agree with him on that particular point,” he said, securing the lid on a sample jar.
Crick turned to face his mentor. “How so, sir?” he pressed.
“It matters greatly if the man’s dying was by the hand of another.”
The younger man paused and looked away. “And you are still convinced my cousin was murdered?”
Thomas wiped his iodine-stained hands on a damp cloth. “The more I see, the more I believe he was,” he replied earnestly. “And you?”
Crick sighed deeply. “I do not know what to think, sir,” he replied, as if the very effort of forming an opinion or making a decision was far too much for him to bear.
Thomas chided him for his ambivalence. “Come, come, you are a scientist, Mr. Crick. We are traveling down the path of discovery and soon we will come to a fork in the road. Which route do we take?”
The young man looked at Thomas blankly. The doctor waited for a while, but seeing that no reply was forthcoming from his student he obliged him with the answer. “The one of which we are sure, of course,” he said. “The one where we can tread heavily and not be afraid that we will sink. Our path must be built on fact, not on assumption, Mr. Crick.”
The problem that confronted Thomas was, of course, that there were so few facts at his fingertips that no path presented itself more than any other and he was in danger of finding himself utterly lost.
The next morning Thomas left London for Oxford once more, only this time he was accompanied by his eager assistant. He had found Francis Crick to be a personable young man, although somewhat lacking in the tenacity needed to pursue the truth. He suspected a certain sloppiness in his manner and haphazardness in his methods that were not conducive to thorough anatomical investigation. He had much to learn, thought Thomas, as their coach bounced and bumped along the main road leading northwest through the rolling Chilterns.
Once they reached Oxford, Francis Crick was to journey onward to Boughton Hall where he would spend the night and accompany Captain Farrell and Lady Lydia to the inquest in the morning. Thomas was to stay, once more, at the White Horse. First, however, he walked to Christ Church, to pay a visit to Dr. Hascher.
Thomas found the old professor hunched over a weighty tome in his study. The men greeted each other as old friends and Thomas asked if he might store his various samples and equipment in the professor’s laboratory for safekeeping. They then enjoyed a schnapps together.
“You are troubled about tomorrow? Yes?” The professor sensed Thomas was as tense as a tendon at full stretch as he sat in a chair opposite him, staring into his glass.
“It troubles me that I have such little real evidence to present to the court,” acknowledged Thomas. He was used to standing up in front of dozens of students and delivering lectures whose foundations were laid on indisputable facts, but tomorrow he would face a court with little more than a handful of straws. “And yet ...” He broke off.
The professor frowned. “What is it, Thomas?” he asked, seeing a look of fear shoot across the young doctor’s face as he remembered the scribbled note of warning.
“And yet someone is worried about what I may find,” he said, delving into his waistcoat pocket and handing the professor the piece of crumpled paper.
The old man hooked a pair of spectacles onto his nose and looked at the note. “It seems as zough you have disturbed a nest of vipers, Thomas,” he said gravely. “Be careful.”
An hour or so later Thomas took his leave. The night was as crisp as starched sheets and the air so cold it could have been sliced with a surgeon’s knife. The black dome of the Radcliffe Camera loomed large against the star-studded sky as Thomas made his way across the cobbles toward Broad Street.
Great Tom was tolling the hour as he walked briskly past the Camera’s steps. From the shadows of the great portico he could hear a girl’s staccato pants of pleasure, punctuated by the rhythmic grunts of a man. They cared nothing for the great works that lay inside: the papers of John Friend’s original chemistry lectures or the collections of such notable scientists as Nathan Alcock. They cocked a snook at scholarship by their actions and their complete lack of respect angered Thomas. He quickened his pace now, past Hertford College in Catte Street.
A little farther on a group of begowned drunken scholars crossed the street under the disapproving gaze of the great philosophers of the Sheldonian, squawking obscenities like a flock of crows. Their existence was so very different from his own sophomore days in Philadelphia, where the distractions from the labor of the medical book and the apprenticeship of the knife had been more genteel. Thomas shook his head absentmindedly as he thought of what Aristotle and Plato might make of these ignorant dolts.
The White Horse now lay within sight. Candles burned dimly in its frosted windows. Even his spartan room, with its damp bed linen, seemed inviting now as the chill air began to seep into his very bones.
He was looking forward to a sound night’s sleep before the inquest tomorrow. He had just begun to cross the last few yards of pavement before he reached Broad Street when he suddenly became aware of a presence beside him. He turned swiftly to see who was there, but he felt only the crushing force of a fist to his jaw. It sent him reeling backward, so that his left shoulder smashed into the wall behind him. Now another blow was struck to his guts, doubling him over. He let out a cry as he felt his diaphragm go into spasm, and then dropped to his knees on the icy ground. As he did so he searched for his purse. “Here, take my money,” he pleaded hoarsely, pointing to his belt. But his pleas fell on deaf ears as yet another blow was rained on his head, striking him just above his left eye. This time he dropped like a stone onto the pavement.
“ ’Tis not your money that’s wanted, Doctor,” came the gruff voice in the darkness.
Thomas tried in vain to lift his head, but the pain was so great it felt that flames were licking every nerve ending. Putting his hand to his forehead, he felt a warm trickle of liquid gushing from a wound just above his left eye. It was a feeling so familiar to him, he did not need to see the color of it to know it was blood.
“For God’s sake, have pity,” he pleaded as he felt another sharp jab under his ribs as his assailant kicked him. The sound of his own cries now filled his ears as the sharp stabs of pain penetrated him like the blade of a stiletto. Again and again the jabs came until the cries died down, the whimpers were silenced, and the night belonged once more to illicit lovers and rowdy scholars.
The night watchman found him sprawled along the pavement outside Exeter College. Thinking him to be the worse for drink at first, he had kicked him soundly in the ribs, but when he received no response, he bent down and held his oil lamp over the man. It was then that he saw the trickle of blood seeping from a wound to the head. With his foot the night watchman turned the man over, so that he now lay on his back. From his dress and his face he could tell he was a gentleman. Bending down he placed his grimy fingers around the throat, feeling for a pulse. He could find none. So, satisfied that this gentleman would no longer be needing any money, he delved into the purse that hung on his belt and brought out two guineas.
The find brought a smile to his stubbly face. Not bad for a night’s work. “A brace of shiners,” he said to himself, but that, of course, was not an end to it. He could not move the dead weight. He would have to enlist help. Disappearing down Broad Street, he turned into Turl Street and into the Turf Tavern, where he knew he could find a willing assistant.
“You’ve a good ’un here,” puffed the night watchman’s accomplice, as he helped his friend lift the body from the pavement and into a handcart.
“At least four pounds, I’ll wager,” replied the night watchman, gleefully tucking the gentleman’s limp arm into the cart for fear of further damaging his precious cargo. Together they pushed their prized load back down Turl Street. Warily they crossed the High Street, then trundled down Oriel Lane, arriving at Christ Church by a narrow back gate—the one they always used for such occasions.
Usually it was an old one they brought, or a young child, often a fetus, but no matter their age, they were always poor, scrawny specimens without flesh on their bones or money in their pockets. This one was different and Professor Hascher, they told themselves, would pay over the odds for it.
“This one’ll please ye, doctor,” said the night watchman, as he let his burden land on the dissecting table with an unceremonious thud. But as soon as he pulled back the hessian from the man’s face, Professor Hascher’s interested expression turned to one of horror.
“O mein Gott!”
he cried when he set eyes on the man’s features as he lay limp and crumpled on the dissecting table. The elderly anatomist’s hands flew up to his lined face.
“It cannot be,” he cried, leaning over the pallet.
Both the night watchmen were shocked by his reaction as they saw him bend down and put his ear to the man’s mouth. He felt for a pulse in the man’s wrist and his expression suddenly changed.
“Zis man is not dead, you fools,” he muttered under his breath. “He is unconscious. Stand back,” he barked and, pushing them both aside, he reached for his instrument bag on the desk. Pulling out a pad of gauze and a bottle of iodine Professor Hascher began dabbing Thomas’s head wound.
By now the blood had congealed around the abrasion. The skin is at its most delicate above the eyes, and the skin on Thomas’s face was like a taut drum hide that had been hit too hard and split. Professor Hascher knew he would need to stitch the wound. He had to forget that this was his friend, his colleague who lay supine and helpless before him.
As the needle pierced the skin for the first time, he was glad that Thomas was still deep in a crevasse of oblivion, unaware of all feeling and therefore all pain. It was a merciful escape for him because the wound was a long one and the needle penetrated and reemerged several times before the professor’s work was complete.
A row of black, flat stitches now adorned the young doctor’s bruised brow and Professor Hascher took a small step back to inspect his work from a short distance. He was pleased with its neatness, its precision. He may have been more used to suturing corpses, but he could still turn his hand to a trim piece of handiwork when required.
The wound now cleaned and sutured, the professor’s attention was diverted to the rest of Thomas’s battered body. His patient made no move throughout the stitching and this troubled him. He opened the young man’s bloodstained shirt and saw there was a wound on his abdomen and severe bruising all around, consistent with having been repeatedly kicked.
“Pass me more gauze, will you,” he instructed the night watchman’s assistant. The man, of rough appearance, whose stench of stale sweat fought with the smell of preserving fluid in the laboratory, obliged. It occurred to Professor Hascher that if these men would have been prepared to sell a corpse to him, as they had done before, they would also rob it beforehand.
“Where is the money you stole from zis man?” he asked, taking the gauze.
The ruffian looked shocked and darted a glance at the night watchman, who now struggled to his feet. Simultaneously both men delved into their pockets and each brought out a guinea, stolen from Thomas as he lay helpless on the pavement. They placed the coins on the desk nearby under the professor’s reproachful eye.
“If you want zem back, and to avoid ze wrath of ze magistrate, you will have to earn zem zis time,” he told them mysteriously.
The men looked on puzzled as the professor sat at his desk and scribbled a note. “You will ride to Boughton Hall near Brandwick at first light,” he told them. “And deliver this to Lady Lydia Farrell,” he said, handing the night watchman the sealed piece of parchment. “You will wait for her reply, zen, if she so wishes, escort her back here. Do you understand?” The men nodded vigorously. “Zen we shall talk about reimbursement,” added the professor, dismissing them with a contemptuous wave of his hand.