The bedlam cadaver, p.5
The Bedlam Cadaver, page 5
‘Why, no, sir. I was with Dr. Allen, who worked on his papers.’
They left Lester yawning and swaying with his tray at the gateway, and climbed the stairs to the female gallery.
* * *
ONCE THROUGH ANOTHER GATE ACROSS THE top of the stairs, Harry could see the full length of the gallery. Identical to the one below, it had the same long line of doorways to the south and the same north-facing windows lighting the corridor.
The same arrangement of patients, too. Some together, some alone. More visitors moved among them, looking in at the sadder patients either confined or preferring the solitude of their rooms.
Upstairs, the woman’s singing had become a clear soprano. All her notes were exactly hit, and unstrained as if she performed at half effort.
‘I recognise that melody,’ Sir John said contentedly, looking into the air as if feeling the sound on his face. ‘From Cambert’s Pomona. Pomona sings when hiding from Vertumne.’
This was a side of the Justice Harry had not suspected.
‘I knew Cambert,’ he went on, seeing Harry’s tentative smile of surprise, ‘when he ran his Music Academy in Covent Garden.’
Unabashed by the interlude, Sir John pointed his stick for them to follow Allen.
* * *
IN THE FIRST ROOM THEY PASSED sat an aged woman, who was naked and completely still on her straw-covered bed. Her bones were made of glass, Allen explained, at least in her delusion; she dared not move for fear of them breaking. She heard her own bones cracking when she did. She could not dress, or be dressed. Chewing food would shatter her teeth; she existed on soups swallowed carefully.
‘There are one hundred and twenty cells here,’ Allen told them. ‘Hers is but one story among many.’
The next cell held a young woman barely out of childhood. She was manacled and gagged, her head shaved ready for blistering. When Harry caught her eye, she squirmed violently on her mattress. He could see she existed in a state of terror.
Spotting unfairness, Sir John waved at her with his stick. ‘Why does she get a mattress, the other woman straw?’
‘Straw is more hygienic for the dirty patients,’ Allen explained, looking slyly amused at Sir John’s revulsion.
‘Why the gag across her mouth?’ Harry asked.
‘She utters profanities, nasty enough to raise Satan’s eyebrows.’
A third woman sat on her cell floor, her shoulders jerking constantly. Another paced in circles, making loud guttural noises through her tightly pressed lips.
More cells. More stories among many.
During it all, constantly, was the noise of the woman singing.
* * *
NO ONE HAD YET REPLACED SEBILIAH BARTON, so her room stood empty. Like all the patients’ rooms, it was high-ceilinged and measured nine feet by twelve. Marks across the wall and floor showed where they had been scrubbed. New sheets covered the bed.
‘Rather than have a gallery maid do it, Millicent mopped up the blood herself,’ Matthews told them.
‘Where is the needle?’ Harry asked him.
‘Back with the others. They’re all the same.’
‘Will you fetch one?’ Sir John asked him. The Porter nodded but didn’t move. ‘Now, I mean.’
Taken by surprise to be allowed away from the Justice, Matthews looked to Dr. Allen for confirmation, then hurried away.
Harry went to the window and gazed out over the Roman wall and the rest of the City down to the Thames. In the pellucid air he could see Southwark sharply, still bearing its fire’s scars from five years before.
Below him, in the Hospital’s airing ground, patients were taking their exercise. The charity cases wore plain uniforms, the same sky-blue colour as for the staff. Others wore clothes of better quality, brought to them by family or friends. Some patients, lacking benefaction, had clothes so tattered they were little more than rags.
This had been Sebiliah’s view, day after day, for the long and dreary year she spent here.
Matthews returned brandishing a knitting needle. Sir John took it, examined it, and passed it to Harry. ‘We are agreed?’
‘Not near thick enough to have killed Diana Cantley.’
‘You allow visiting gentlemen their swords,’ Sir John said to Dr. Allen.
‘Yes, for their own protection against violent patients. Besides, when we insisted weapons be deposited in the lobby, there were too many complaints. Swords got mixed together. People took the wrong ones.’
Sir John flicked his nose. ‘Matthews, take us the way you walked with William Jones, when he carried the body to the mortuary.’
CHAPTER SIX
THE BEDLAM MORTUARY
At the top of the stairs, they waited while Matthews unlocked the gate, and waited again while he relocked it. The same routine repeated itself at the bottom. Allen led them across the men’s gallery, where Matthews opened yet another gate, enabling them to descend the next flight of stairs.
It was far darker down on the basement floor; the windows were narrow horizontal slots at the level of the ground outside. It was notably cooler, too; Harry shivered, even with his waistcoat on. Almost overpowering were the smells: cooking from the kitchen; soap and steam from the laundry; all the pepper stored in rooms rented by the East India Company.
The corridor was eerily empty. Only a few staff occasionally crossed it. Allen led them all the way from the western end of the building to the eastern.
Sir John’s limp grew more pronounced as they went. ‘William Jones carried her all this way?’ he asked.
‘If he says so,’ Matthews answered sullenly.
‘Did he, or no?’
‘He did. I walked beside him.’
Eventually, they reached the mortuary. Allen showed them in after Matthews had unlocked it. Deep shelving lined its walls. There were two tables and a large sink. One body lay on a shelf, wrapped to be taken for burial. Sir John asked Matthews to reveal the face. An elderly man. A longtime patient, Allen told them, dead from the rising of the lights.
‘You came with Jones carrying the woman,’ Sir John told Matthews. ‘He put her…?’
Matthews indicated the nearer table.
‘Then your wife, the Matron, undressed her. Where were you and Jones?’
‘I went back upstairs, to my lodge by the main entrance. He must have gone to change his clothes and wash himself.’
‘Mr. Jones would have been bloodstained,’ Harry said.
‘He looked like a butcher,’ Matthews told him. ‘A lot of the blood stayed in Sebiliah’s room, mind. My wife cleaned all that. Langdale, the other Basketman you met, mopped the rest. The stairs, this corridor.’
‘No blood on you, then,’ Sir John said.
‘I stayed clean,’ Matthews said, as if ashamed of it.
‘Where did Jones change his clothes?’
‘I don’t know, Justice. I’d hazard up on the attic floor, where the staff have their rooms. Langdale, most likely, would know. He must’ve gone to change, too.’
‘By the time Jones returned to help wrap the body, he was changed and clean.’
‘He didn’t return to do so, exactly. He arrived as Millicent finished. I’d got back just before him.’
Sir John, leaning on his stick, spent some time inspecting the room, although what it contained could be taken in at a glance. ‘Then where was the body put?’
Matthews showed them the space on the shelving, a distance away from where the dead man lay, against the adjacent wall. ‘From habit. We knew she’d be fetched before long. We could have left her on the table.’
‘When Gresham’s boy arrived, where did you take her?’
‘We’ve a door to the outside. Crawley knows it. A carriage can pull up close.’
‘How long was she in here before he came for her?’
‘By the time we’d brought her down, and Millicent—my wife, sir—had cleaned her, and wrapped her…’ Matthews thought through the timing. ‘A half hour, perhaps?’
‘She died just after nine, away by ten?’
‘Easy.’
‘Crawley said he took her at ten,’ Harry said.
‘Gresham is only five minutes away,’ Allen said. ‘I sent my message to Mr. Hooke as she was being prepared.’
On the edge of losing his temper, Sir John raised his voice suddenly. ‘Prepared, you say. For her dissection. You thought her to be Sebiliah Barton, who was still warm! But this was Diana Cantley!’ He paused, breathing heavily. ‘What is this room next door?’
‘My anatomy room,’ Allen told him.
‘Open it up, Matthews,’ Sir John said.
‘One key I don’t have,’ the Porter replied. ‘Dr. Allen keeps it.’
‘It is up in my office, locked inside my desk,’ Allen said. ‘The room has simply a table, a sink, and benches for onlookers. It also has my tools, which is why I keep its key. I use the room when a patient’s dying is difficult to explain.’
‘I have been inside,’ Harry said. ‘It is just as Dr. Allen describes.’
Sir John thought of the journey back to Allen’s office, the tiredness in his thigh if he had to wait for long, and his duty to tell Diana’s father the sad news of her death. ‘Never mind,’ he decided. ‘The room was definitely locked last night?’
‘I had no need for it,’ Allen answered.
‘You do not quite answer—’
‘It was locked,’ Allen said.
‘Where is this outside door?’
Allen led them out of the mortuary, then turned along a short passageway. Before Matthews could get to his key, Allen unlocked the external door with his own, and opened it wide.
They faced the Roman wall and a neatly flagged courtyard in front of it. A shingled roof over the door provided shelter from the weather and also gave some privacy.
Matthews showed them where Crawley had parked the cart, and the gate Jones had unlocked, then relocked after Crawley left with his load.
‘I am little the wiser,’ Sir John confessed. ‘Dr. Allen, I will take your Basketman with me. Stewing in my lockup for a day or two may teach him a more English helpfulness. Mr. Matthews, you know not of the dead women being swapped, I am sure of it. And nothing your wife said makes me think otherwise of her.’
* * *
BACK IN THE HOSPITAL’S LOBBY, FENN gripped William Jones’s collar. Manacles forced the man’s hands in front of him. Jones showed only indifference, although he still insisted he knew nothing of Diana Cantley.
‘We have learned little of import, I fear, of Diana’s murder,’ Sir John said aside to Harry. ‘Now we must inform Sir Benedict. We shall go to Africa House to do so. He may well be there, and it is closer than Bloomsbury. Mr. Fenn, take the Welshman to my home in Leicester Fields and place him in the lockup.’
Dr. Allen, looking pained, bowed to the Justice, shook hands with Harry, and nodded to Fenn and the manacled Basketman with him.
Matthews waited to lock the penny-gate. Beside him, painted the same sky blue colour as Bethlehem’s uniforms, stood a large box with a slot for coins, and an inscribed brass plate.
Pray remember the poor lunatics.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE GRIEVING FATHER
Only ten minutes’ walk from the Hospital to Africa House, but a while since Harry had taken such exercise. Although he carried his hat—its feather wagging behind him like a tail—he still had to blink away his sweat. His feet ached. Through the thin soles of his Moroccan leather boots, he could feel every jagged stone.
Passing a courtyard, Sir John—energy now returned—pointed out a line of people standing inside it. ‘That is the office to bind yourself to servitude on the plantations,’ he said.
Most of those queuing were young men alone, but there were whole families, too, with thin children looking scared. Mean-faced men patrolled them, watching for a change of heart.
‘At least they have some say,’ the Justice continued. ‘Spiriters lure many, using kidnap or false promises. I have argued for ships to be searched before their departure for those put aboard reluctantly. There is yet no law to prevent it.’
‘Little choice, or no choice at all,’ Harry said.
‘A rogue’s market,’ Sir John replied.
By the synagogue on Creechurch Lane, Sir John gave Harry a complicit look as if they should both share his disapproval, then led the way along Sugar Loaf Alley, whistling ‘If All the World Were Paper.’
* * *
ONCE THE HOME OF SIR NICHOLAS THROGMORTON, Queen Elizabeth’s Ambassador to France, Whitchurch House was now the headquarters of the Royal African Company. Most people called it Africa House. It was large but nondescript, remarkable only for just escaping the Great Conflagration.
‘I have thought to invest in the Africa trade,’ Sir John said, slowing as they crossed the courtyard.
‘At Gresham, you sounded disapproving,’ Harry said.
‘The reconstituted Company far outperforms the old. You hear claims of fine returns, nowadays, though I doubt the more excessive.’
‘Sir Benedict told me that last year it paid fifty-five percent above the value of each share,’ Harry said, glad Sir John had chosen to rest before knocking. ‘But it suffers from the old Company’s debts. Antagonising the Dutch cost it dearly. Once those monies are paid, he expects quadruple the return.’
‘Still an enterprise too much of luck, to my mind,’ Sir John said, resuming his way to the house. ‘Vessels flounder. And with the distances involved, there is a wait for your profits. That has put me off it.’
‘If you own stock, you spread your risk. There is no delay if you wish to sell your shares. And the Company now has rights from the Mine Royal, so earns from any gold it discovers.’
‘Of course, there are those who talk against the trade, perceiving unfairness.’
Harry regarded the Justice quizzically.
‘The Company has monopoly, which some rail against. Privateers, too, wish access to Africa’s west coast.’
‘We should not discuss it with the father now.’
‘Another time, undoubtedly,’ Sir John agreed.
* * *
GUESSING THEIR NEWS, THE DOORMAN LED them with great solemnity up the grand stairway. He knocked at an office door and took them straight in.
Sir Benedict Cantley was gaunt, with a deep cleft in his chin. His eyebrows grew wildly towards a bald pate, the hair around its sides falling in a tangle. Once good-looking, now he was sixty or so his features had fallen; on the wall behind him, a portrait by Sir Peter Lely provided evidence of the change.
A large graze on Sir Benedict’s forehead began to bruise.
Recognising Sir John, and—with some confusion—his new neighbour in Bloomsbury Square, Sir Benedict rose slowly from his chair. He dismissed the doorman, who pulled the door softly to. The room’s curtains were drawn together against the sunlight; shutting the door put them into deep gloom.
‘You bring news of Diana,’ Sir Benedict said. He reached out a hand to support himself against his desk. ‘Your faces tell me it is not the news I hoped for.’
‘Benedict, sadly, we do.’ For the first time since Harry had heard it, Sir John’s voice was quiet.
Sir Benedict coughed to clear his throat. ‘You have…found her?’
‘There is no soft way to tell you. She was murdered.’
Sir Benedict froze. His face drained of colour. Sir John and Harry, both thinking him about to fall, stepped forwards to steady him.
He shrugged them away. ‘There can be no doubt?’
‘I have seen her,’ Sir John answered gently. ‘Mr. Hunt here—I believe he is your neighbour—recognised her first.’
‘It is definitely Diana,’ Harry said. ‘My deepest commiserations.’
‘She lies at Gresham College,’ Sir John said.
Sir Benedict’s confusion was apparent. ‘Gresham? Why should Diana be there?’
Sir John steered around the news of her dissection. ‘We must ask all you know of her movements.’
‘When last I saw her, she made her way to Covent Garden. She never made mention of Gresham College. Not once in her life, as far as I recall.’
‘When taken there, she was already dead,’ Sir John informed him. ‘We think she was murdered at Bedlam.’
Sir Benedict sat back down heavily, placing his head in his hands. ‘Gresham…Bedlam…I cannot fathom either.’
‘We must try to understand, if we wish to find her killer.’ Sir John hardened his voice to bring the man out of his daze.
Sir Benedict looked up at them slowly. Instead of seeing them, he saw his daughter, imagining her dead body and her face forever stilled.
‘How was it done?’ he asked, his voice barely audible.
‘By sword,’ Sir John said. ‘A single thrust.’
‘She would not have suffered,’ Harry added.
Sir Benedict did not reply immediately. Instead, he turned and reached for a drawer in his desk. He withdrew a letter from it, then went to the window and pulled aside the curtain.
‘I paid them,’ he said. ‘Yet still they killed her.’
* * *
THE LETTER WAS WRITTEN IN AN extravagant hand. Long verticals and horizontals, and decorative loops crossing through parts of words, made it difficult to read.
Be assured your Daughter is unhurt. So She shall remain if you follow our Instruction. 200 Guinea coins will buy her back. You trade in Human Lives, you think this Sum modest and fair. Take the Money to the Bridge, at its Drawbridge at Dusk. Now her Safety is your Obligation, so not Ours.
Each capital S was particularly ornate. Each k looked more like a figure 8, each lowercase e and n were indistinguishable. If Sir Benedict had not helped them, it would have taken Harry and Sir John far longer to decipher.
