The Devlin Diary (18 page)

“Captain, would you have your men position Mr. Henley so that the injured part of his leg is off the table?” she asks. “Dr. Strathern, if you would take hold of his ankle, please?”

Though Strathern is standing beside her, he does nothing. Hannah feels the king’s, and everyone else’s, eyes upon them. The physician turns his back to their audience and speaks softly. “His Majesty said that we were to work together.”

“Yes, and you can help by holding the patient’s ankle,” she whispers in return.

“I think I should perform the surgery.”

“You are ambitious, aren’t you? I happen to be more qualified for this task than you.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Dr. Strathern, you do not look like a surgeon.”

“Pardon me for saying so, but neither do you. And yet here we are.”

“I have performed many surgeries in the past, including the amputation of an arm.” She is exaggerating slightly, but with good reason.

“You have?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Strathern seems surprised. “The truth is I am not precisely a physician or a surgeon.”

“Then what are you?”

“An anatomist.”

“You dissect dead bodies?”

“Yes.”

“Mother of Christ,” Hannah lowers her voice even further. “You’ll kill him.”

“And how do you deduce that? A man’s body is designed the same whether he is living or dead.”

“There is a great deal of difference between operating on a dead body that feels nothing and a living man who will most likely be screaming and thrashing about in pain.”

Is she imagining it, or does he blanch just a little? It gives her a strange sort of pleasure. “You must make the incisions very quickly,” she continues, “so as to cause as little suffering as possible. Can you do that?”

He hesitates. “In truth, I’m not accustomed to working in haste.”

“Then I will resect the skin and muscle, and perhaps you could saw the bone.” She doesn’t look at him while she waits for an answer. She doesn’t want him to know that by agreeing he’ll be doing her a favor.

“All right then.” Strathern looks down at his coat. “We’ll need aprons.” One of the guards goes off into a corner of the tack room and returns with two blacksmith’s aprons. Hannah gives the captain her vial of poppy syrup.

“When Mr. Henley wakes,” she says, “which he probably will, instruct your men to hold him as still as they possibly can. I know this will be difficult, but you will be doing him a service if you remain strong.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“When Mr. Henley opens his mouth, pour this in. Half will be fine to start, but he is a big man and may require more. It should make him calmer and easier.”

Hannah double-checks the position of Henley’s body. His injured leg juts off the table. Dr. Strathern holds his ankle, while his other limbs and his shoulders are firmly secured by the guards. “Is everyone ready?” she asks, and she receives nods all around. “Your Majesty, we will begin.” She takes a final measure of Henley’s calf and lightly places her knife for the first incision.

“You’re too low on the leg,” Strathern whispers. “The bone is shattered closer to the knee.”

“We’re not going to resect the bone here,” Hannah says, annoyed. “Just the integument. We’ll need as much healthy tissue as we can salvage to form a stump.” She turns her attention to the task before her. “Don’t interrupt me again.”

She quickly makes an incision halfway around the leg, about a
quarter-inch deep; and then another in the opposite direction, so that the two incisions nearly meet—or would if the leg were not broken. Henley groans loudly and instinctively tries to pull his leg away, surprising Strathern most of all, who looks on uneasily as the leg moves in his hands.

“Captain, the medicine, please,” Hannah says.

The captain lifts Henley’s head and tips the vial into his mouth. “How much?”

“All of it.”

Henley gags on the syrup and spits some of it out. He moans and tries to move, then finds that he can’t. His eyes flick open as his consciousness returns.

“My leg!” he screams. “My sodding leg. You bloody bastards. My God, it hurts!” The guards struggle to keep him still as Henley’s sobs rack his body.

“Hold his leg down harder, there just above the knee,” she commands the guard closest to her. He complies, and she raises the knife again. She feels a ring of perspiration break out on her forehead and the annoying tickle of a single bead of sweat as it rolls down her face. Only a profound resolve keeps her hands from shaking. She gently separates and slices through the muscles one at a time, working through the peroneus, the soleus, the tibialis. This is the most agonizing part of the surgery, and under her knife Henley trembles violently. She has never caused anyone so much pain before; it is nothing less than horrible, yet she knows it must be done. As she cuts the tendons, Henley is still sobbing and moaning, but she can feel his anguish subside a little. With any luck he will be unconscious again before they saw off the jagged ends of the broken bones. She severs the last bits of muscle, tendon, and skin. Arterial blood spurts forth, splattering her and Strathern. Their audience gasps. The sound seems to come from very far away.

She turns to the other physician, who now holds Henley’s foot and ankle in his hand. Their eyes meet, and she sees that his are a deep blue-gray, intense, and intelligent, a fact which registers in her mind with a simultaneous sense of surprise. Strathern’s face and forehead
are streaked with blood; at some point he must have wiped one of his hands across his brow. For a moment they do nothing more than look at each other, at their blood-splattered selves. In God’s name, what have they done? Have they just killed a man or let him live? It is impossible to know. Then Strathern lowers his gaze to the severed limb in his hands. It’s already turning blue.

“Put it in the box,” Hannah says. Without question and without emotion, Strathern places Henley’s foot into the box of bloodied straw. He opens the instrument case and removes the saw, then straightens and regards the amputated leg in front of him with a practiced composure.

The rest of the operation goes smoothly. Nat Henley lapses into blessed unconsciousness. Hannah ties off the bleeding blood vessels. Using thin strips of fabric, she retracts the severed muscles up toward the knee, and Strathern saws off the jagged ends of the bones. They form a stump by overlapping the muscles and skin and sewing them into place. Hannah rips up the rest of the sheet to use as a dressing. Nat Henley is lifted from the table and carried to a cot set up in a corner of the tack room.

The king stands and stretches. Arlington waits anxiously for his verdict. If the king banishes her from court, Hannah thinks, so be it. She would be happy to see no more of it. Arlington can do whatever he will with her.

“Excellently done,” the king says to the two physicians. Arlington’s relief is immediately evident. “Dr. Strathern, I hear you are in charge of the new anatomy theatre at the College of Physicians.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

“I wish you well. Please keep me apprised of your work there. I am always interested in the latest discoveries. Mrs. Devlin, you have earned your two weeks. But the court will have a dance then, I will insist upon it.” He takes out his pocket watch. “It’s time for dinner. Who’s joining me?”

The king departs, followed by the group of pale-faced courtiers, none of whom looks in the mood to eat.

“This should keep you in good stead with Arlington,” Montagu
manages to whisper to her on his way out. “You might be disappointed that you’ll be kept at court a while longer, but I’m not.”

The room empties, and Hannah searches the operating table for her bottle of syrup. Even a few drops would help ease her pain. She finds it on the floor, without the stopper. It is disappointingly empty. She puts the vial in her pocket and goes over to check on Mr. Henley. Dr. Strathern is covering him up with a wool blanket that smells strongly of horse.

“What will you do with the foot?” he asks. It has been wrapped in a section of sheet and placed in a clean box of straw beneath the cot.

“It isn’t mine to do anything with. If Mr. Henley lives, he can bury it himself, and if he does not, his family can bury it with his body. You didn’t think you would have it for one of your anatomical studies, did you?”

“Despite what you may have heard, anatomists are not grave robbers. Not all of them, anyway. The captain told me that Mr. Henley has a brother living somewhere near Cheapside. They are going to try to find him, and when they do, I will ask him if he thinks Mr. Henley would like to contribute to our understanding of the human body.”

“By giving you his foot to dissect? I hardly think he will agree.”

“It doesn’t do any harm to ask.”

“I think he’s already been through enough.”

“I do realize that, but this is a medical issue, not a personal one.”

“Many physicians believe that the study of anatomy will never help discover the causes of illness.”

“I cannot say that I agree with them. I believe that all knowledge is valuable, even if we are not certain to what use this knowledge shall be put.”

“Dissection for dissection’s sake? It seems to me that you are overeager to cut up this man’s foot.”

“It seems to me that you were overeager to cut off his leg.”

“He would die if we had not done so.”

“And now? How much chance does he have of surviving?”

“At least he has a chance, which he did not before.” She is suddenly very angry, but her head hurts too much to think straight, to
form the words of contempt she feels. With some surprise, she sees that Dr. Strathern is angry too.

“Mrs. Devlin, I was expected for dinner at noon, an engagement for which I am already late,” he says stiffly, “and I cannot possibly arrive looking like this.” He looks down at his blood-splattered hands and clothes. “If you’ll excuse me,” he says, turning on his heel and walking out the door.

Fourth week of Michaelmas term

T
HE MASTER TAPPED
the microphone and called for quiet before addressing the few hundred students and fellows assembled in the hall. “For those of you who have not heard, I am very sorry to tell you that one of our most esteemed and beloved fellows, Dr. Derek Goodman, died this morning.”

The noise in the hall instantly rose to a clamor, necessitating another plea for silence. Claire sat next to Hoddy, whom she had called as soon as she had returned to her set. His displeasure at being awoken so early had been quickly overcome by shock at the news. Andrew stood with a group of fellows in the empty alcove where the buffet was served. They all wore a similar expression of sad incomprehension.

After the hubbub died down, the master continued. “Apparently Dr. Goodman was out walking late last night when he fell and hit his head. We are all saddened by his death. At the present time, I have nothing more to tell you, but I would like to introduce Detective Sergeant Hastings, who will be handling the inquiry.” He stepped back from the microphone, and the blond woman Claire had seen Andrew talking to earlier stepped up.

“As Lord Liverton said, I’m DS Portia Hastings with the Criminal
Investigations Division. On behalf of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, I’d like to offer our sincere condolences on the loss of your colleague and teacher.” The detective appeared to be close to Claire’s age, give or take a year or two. Her black jeans were topped by a fitted, men’s style shirt, also black. She wore her straight blond hair parted to one side, so that it dipped in a light golden curve across her brow. The blond hair looked natural, as did she; she used very little makeup, perhaps none at all. With her fresh, vibrant good looks, she didn’t need any. As Portia stood behind the mic in front of such a large assembly, Claire sensed her lack of fear and innate confidence. “We have no reason to believe that Dr. Goodman’s death was anything other than accidental,” she said. “However, I would like to speak to anyone who saw him or spoke to him yesterday.”

A rippling murmur went through the hall. Claire turned anxiously to Hoddy. “I’m sure you’ve nothing to worry about,” he whispered. Then he looked up and saw how many people were craning their necks to stare at Claire.

Hoddy squeezed her arm and told her to sit tight. He got up and went over to Andrew, with whom he carried on a short, whispered conversation. Soon he was back at Claire’s side.

“You’re going to have to speak to the detective,” he said. “She already knows a bit about what happened. Andy says they’ll expect you in the vice-master’s office at four o’clock today.”

“Andrew’s going to be there too?”

“It’s for the best. You’re a foreigner, she’s a detective. The master has asked Andy to be the police liaison. The detective’s an old friend of his.”

No wonder they had looked so friendly earlier. “This really is a small town, isn’t it?”

Hoddy shrugged. “I tried to tell you.”

In all Claire’s years as a student, she couldn’t think of an occasion when she’d been sent to the principal, but as she entered the vice-master’s office, she felt as if she had been summoned for a reprimand. She gave her name to a secretary, who lifted a telephone receiver and announced her
to whoever was assembled in the office beyond the closed door. Even before it opened, Claire’s palms felt damp.

She was relieved to see that the only people present were Andrew Kent and the detective. Andrew greeted her politely but with a formal reserve. The detective rose as Claire walked in. Andrew introduced her as Detective Sergeant Hastings, which the detective quickly amended to Portia. They each sat down in one of the cushy, slip-covered chairs in the vice-master’s spacious office.

As Portia leaned forward, her long hair fell over her shoulders and she unselfconsciously brushed it back. She was even prettier close up, Claire noticed, a green-eyed blonde with dewy skin and peach-colored lips.

“Can you tell me about your argument with Dr. Goodman?” Portia’s manner was pleasant but serious.

“Just yesterday or the whole story?”

“The whole story.”

Claire began with finding the diary in the Wren Library, running into Derek Goodman and going to the pub with him, showing him her notes and then confronting him after she’d found out that he was writing a paper on the very subject she had been researching. She didn’t stop until the embarrassing end, when she hit him in the face.

“Do you often get into heated arguments?” Portia asked.

“No, of course not.” Claire glanced at Andrew, and remembered that it wasn’t completely accurate to state that she never got into arguments. “Well, not like that.”

Portia scratched a few lines in her notebook. “Did you see Dr. Goodman again last night?”

Claire shook her head. “No.” Andrew seemed intensely interested in her answer. “No,” she repeated.

The detective opened a leather-bound portfolio on the coffee table in front of her. On the top was a standard-size sheet of paper. Portia handed it to Claire, who looked at it with wonder: it was a Xerox copy of one of the encrypted pages from the diary. At the bottom of the page, someone had scrawled,
I told you so—now PAY UP.
The last two words were not only capitalized but underlined as well.

“This is a copy of a paper we found in Dr. Goodman’s coat pocket,” Portia said. “Is that your handwriting at the bottom?”

“No.”

“Do you know whose it is?”

“No,” Claire answered, “but this is a page of the diary I told you about.” She turned to Andrew. “This proves Dr. Goodman was lying.”

Portia looked askance at Andrew. “It’s a copy,” he said with an apologetic shrug. “I’m afraid it isn’t proof.”

“You think I’m lying?” Clare asked.

“I didn’t say that I don’t believe you. I just said this piece of paper can’t be considered proof that the diary exists. Just because these marks look like they were made with ink and a quill doesn’t automatically make them old. The original could have been written five hundred years ago or five minutes ago. Until we have our hands on the original, there’s no way to know for sure. I believe that’s Dr. Goodman’s handwriting, by the way.”

Portia took the paper back from Claire. “Do you know what this is, or what it says?”

Claire shook her head. “No.”

“It’s tachygraphy,” Andrew said. “It’s an old form of speed writing, or shorthand, that was popular in the seventeenth century. Pepys used it.”

“Peeps?” Portia asked, her brow furrowing.

“Samuel Pepys,” Andrew explained. “He was secretary to the Admiralty, and he kept a personal diary from 1660 to 1669. It was written in shorthand much like that. It wasn’t translated and published until the early nineteenth century, however. It caused quite a stir among the Victorians, as he wrote very frankly about his private life. In his later years, Pepys amassed a sizable library, which is now kept at Magdalene College.”

Portia smiled thinly. “Thank you for the history lesson, Dr. Kent.” She rattled the page in her hand. “Do you know what this says?”

“Not offhand, no.”

“If I make another copy for you, can you find out what it is and what it says?”

“I can try.”

The detective turned her attention back to Claire. “Do you carry your mobile phone with you?”

Claire nodded.

“May I check it?”

Claire felt the blood rush to her face. Yesterday was embarrassing enough, and now she was being treated like someone with something to hide. She took her phone from her purse and gave it to the detective, who quickly scrolled through the menu and looked at Claire’s list of recent calls. Finding no calls to or from Derek Goodman, she snapped the phone shut and handed it back. “What’s going on?” Claire asked.

“Nothing, really,” Portia said. “I’m simply being diligent in my job. I don’t know if it’s true in America, but in England accidental deaths are investigated as a matter of policy. I’m trying to put together a time line of Dr. Goodman’s actions last night. It may help us understand why he was walking around on the Backs at two in the morning.” Her glance shifted to her notebook for a second and then back to Claire.

“Do you take any drugs?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you take any medications?” she repeated. “Prescription drugs, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Street drugs?”

“Is this really necessary, Portia?” Andrew asked.

“It is, in fact. I received Dr. Goodman’s toxicology screen earlier this afternoon.”

Andrew looked worried. “He was drunk, wasn’t he?”

“With a blood alcohol level of point ten, yes, I’d say so,” she replied tartly. “But that’s not the half of it.” She shuffled through the papers in her portfolio until she came to the desired report. “He also tested positive for marijuana, Xanax, Vicodin, a couple of antidepressants, and cocaine.”

“Good Lord.” Andrew paled.

“He was a walking pharmacopoeia.”

“I had no idea,” Andrew said. “I mean, I knew he drank, but…did you find any of those drugs in his set?”

“Only a couple that he had prescriptions for. Which makes me think he might have been at a party last night. Where or with whom I don’t know yet. If you hear anything—”

“Of course I’ll let you know.”

“The department’s under a lot of pressure to make this go away quietly.”

Andrew sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I’m not surprised. I’m sure the master is already imagining the headlines: ‘Trinity History Fellow, Author, and Drug Addict Dies.’ Not exactly good for admissions.”

“I know how you feel about your school, Andrew, but we’re not going to be able to sweep this under the rug.” Portia handed Claire a business card. “If you think of anything else, please ring me, or you can stop by the station.”

They stood and shook hands, and Andrew walked Claire outside. The blustery wind swept Andrew’s tie up and over his shoulder, and he tugged it down into place again. They faced each other awkwardly, both at a loss for words.

“Well,” he finally said, “I’ve got to get on. I’ve got another meeting.” He glanced down at the ground, then at his watch. Clearly he didn’t want to discuss anything. So this was what resulted from the English fashion of pretending things never happened.

Not so satisfying after all, Claire discovered.

That evening, she was comfortably ensconced in the chintz-covered wingback in her set when she heard a knock on the door. She opened it to find Andrew standing outside.

“May I come in?” he asked.

“Of course.”

He walked inside and looked around her set, his eyes lingering on the photo of Claire and her mother propped on top of the low bookshelf, the student papers stacked on the dining room table, the open
book resting on the arm of the chair. Andrew moved closer to scan the title:
Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behavior.

“Studying the native culture?” he inquired.

“Yes,” Claire answered honestly, although she felt slightly embarrassed to have been found reading the book, as if he’d caught her peeking into his personal life—going through his medicine cabinet, for instance, or looking him up online. Or perhaps it was simply embarrassing to need a book to tell her why people who spoke the same language as she did were so unfathomable to her.

“Have you learned anything about us?”

“Quite a lot.”

“Such as?”

“English people talk about the weather to disguise their social unease. Tea is considered a near-miraculous beverage that can soothe almost any ill. It’s possible to tell someone’s social class by the way they eat peas.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She’d learned that it was considered rude to ask direct questions, even questions Americans would take as a mark of friendliness and sociability, such as, What do you do for a living? or, Where do you live? She’d learned that introducing yourself to a stranger was considered offensive. (No wonder English people talked about the weather so much, she’d thought when she’d read that: almost every other topic was off-limits.) She’d also discovered that many English people would rather commit suicide than boast about themselves or their achievements, and that people who did boast about their achievements (or simply mentioned them, even) were thought to be either vulgar or American, and usually both. Claire had read that English men, especially those in the upper classes, were notoriously inept at conducting romantic relationships.
That
chapter she had read with great interest.

“Why are you here?” Claire asked.

“I’m afraid I have some rather bad news,” Andrew replied. “About Derek. DS Hastings called about an hour ago with the results of his
postmortem. The cause of death appears to be drowning. Considering the variety of drugs that he ingested along with copious amounts of alcohol, I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that Derek Goodman drowned in less than a foot of water. However, the coroner found a few small bruises on his face and neck.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Andrew said, “that someone held him down.”

“With all those drugs in his system, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Derek Goodman was dancing around on the Backs stark naked and singing tunes from
Brigadoon.
” Hoddy raised his cup to his lips for a tentative sip; the freshly made tea was still steaming hot.

Claire stirred milk into her mug of Earl Grey. “It certainly explains some of his erratic behavior. Portia Hastings said that if he hadn’t drowned he might have died from an overdose.”

“Yet they’re convinced it’s murder.”

Claire nodded and sighed. “Apparently so.”

They sat comfortably, if not contentedly, in Claire’s set, looking out at New Court and the melancholy drizzle that had been coming down all morning. The tree in the center looked cowed under the constant rain, and all the small, twittering birds had disappeared. Where did they all go?

“Andrew told me that the master actually wanted to suspend me, just to make a show of taking some action,” Claire informed Hoddy. “He convinced him not to do it by claiming that as an American, I would sue the college for wrongful dismissal. It’s not very nice to know that I still have my job simply because Americans are believed to be overly litigious. Not to mention that people seem to be terribly suspicious of me now. Every time I go to hall, I feel like everyone’s whispering and staring at me.”