Sawbones (8 page)

Miss Finch must have seen him looking. “It was a gift, from the valide sultan in Constantinople. She adored the act.”

“Valide?”

“It’s the title of the queen mother – well, the sultan’s mother. She is French, you know. Stolen off a boat in the Atlantic by corsairs.”

Ezra looked at her.

“I am not making up tales! I heard her speak of it. She spoke better French than the boys who rig the Alhambra in Paris.” Loveday sighed. “Pa loved Constantinople.” Her shoulders drooped a little. Ezra shut his notebook and went to put it in his bag – but it wasn’t there.

At that moment there was a scream, loud and angry, from the floor below.

They raced downstairs. Mrs Gurney was standing at the far end of the yellow drawing room. Ezra’s bag was open on the floor, and the jar with Mr Finch’s heart had rolled along the floor and up to the landlady, pinning her against the fireplace. In the reflected yellow glow of the drawing-room walls it looked unearthly.

“Get it away!” Mrs Gurney squealed. “Get the thing away!”

Ezra quickly scooped it up. She must have opened his bag and gone through his things.

“What on earth
is
that?” asked Miss Finch.

Ezra looked at her. He was in the girl’s drawing room holding her dead father’s heart. His mouth felt like ashes. He couldn’t speak.

Miss Finch moved closer.

“Is it a heart?” she said. Her voice wavered between repulsion and interest. “Is it a human heart?”

Mrs Gurney screamed again. “He is from hell!” She pulled Miss Finch away. “Get out!” she shouted at Ezra. “Get out, now! If I see you again I shall call the watch!”

Ezra had picked up his bag and run down the stairs and out into the street before he realized his good worsted jacket was still hanging in the hall. He would freeze before he got as far as High Holborn. His arms already tingling with cold, he set off down the road at quite a pace. Had the master said the Negro could have been a servant to some Eastern court? And now, here, was it more than a coincidence that Mr Finch had worked at the Ottoman Embassy?

The master would discount coincidence. Facts and science were all that could be relied upon, he would say. But these coincidences could not be ignored! The man without a tongue might be more important than they knew. Ezra should ask her about it now – after all, he would have to go back to fetch his jacket. As he turned back he saw the door of the house open and Miss Finch run out holding his coat.

“You forgot this!”

“Thank you, Miss Finch. Please, let me apologize. I never meant…”

“Do not worry, Mrs Gurney is afraid of her own shadow.”

Ezra put his coat on. “Miss Finch, I must ask you—”

“Was that really a heart?” Miss Finch cut in, awestruck.

“Yes, but—”

“Whose was it? Did you cut it out?” She held her hands over where her own heart beat and lived. It made Ezra uncomfortable.

“It’s my work, Miss Finch. I am sorry if I scared Mrs Gurney, but I need to ask you something, something important concerning your father’s death.”

“It was murder, no doubt at all, Mr McAdam.”

Ezra had to admit he agreed, but the girl was so volatile, he must proceed carefully. If there were a suspect, he was sure she would take her blade and hobble off to avenge her father’s death in an instant.

“Your father, you said he did a lot of work for the Ottoman court?”

“Yes. As I said, he was a favourite of the valide sultan – the sultan’s mother. And in London we often worked at the embassy, at least once or twice a year when they had receptions for other ambassadors – important people. You know.”

Ezra did not know, but he was not going to say. He cleared his throat.

“And in the Ottoman Embassy, was there anyone in particular your father corresponded with about work and such? A Negro, perhaps?”

Loveday shook her head. “Not a Negro, a Mr Ali Pasha. But there were servants about the place – some of them were Negroes. Why, what is it?”

“Nothing.” Ezra sighed. He must not allow himself to jump to rash conclusions. “I must get back to work. I will inform you of my findings as soon as I am ready. Goodbye, Miss Finch.” He bowed slightly and began to walk away.

“I say, Mr McAdam. Here’s an idea: couldn’t I come with you? I might be of use. I could help you solve all riddles, find all facts.” There was an excited gleam in her eyes. “I am quite thorough.”

“I am sure you are.” Ezra imagined dissecting the heart with Loveday Finch peering over his shoulder. He backed away, holding the bag tight across his body. “But no, Miss, I do not need your help.”

“Mr McAdam, are you afraid of me?” Loveday said.

Ezra thought of the men in the Fortune of War. “Absolutely not.”

“Well then.” She picked up her walking stick. “I have just had an idea – the very best. We should work together, as a team. I should have something to do and perhaps we might earn some money.” She was grinning. Ezra tried to speak but failed. “We could discover truths and right wrongs.”

“I don’t think so, Miss Finch.” He shook his head. “This is the stuff of children’s play.”

“No, I am quite serious. It would be perfect. Falcon and Finch may be no more, but Finch and McAdam are just beginning!”

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

T
he master had been called away to a private patient in the village of Hampstead and would have to stay over. Consequently Ezra had so much work to do that it wasn’t until the following day that he could get a good look at the heart. Alone in the laboratory, he took the jar down off the shelf. He had added preserving fluid and the heart bobbed and floated in its jar like an oversized pickled walnut.

He was glad to be free of Miss Loveday Finch, her yellow house and her cracked ideas. He was not, and would not be, a part of some theatrical double act or wild thief-taking partnership. He imagined she must have read about such things in one of those ladies’ novels, or perhaps because she worked on the stage her imagination was overly stimulated. Ezra sighed. The heart sat on the wooden table dead and cold. He moved the magnifying lens into place and reminded himself that he was doing this for two guineas and for his future. With Anna or not.

But he could not help becoming interested. What had caused these unnatural effects? It seemed undersized, as if it had been squeezed. He smelt it, touched it – the smell was not unusual but the texture and weight was. No wonder the man had died. How could this tiny shrivelled thing pump enough blood around a grown man’s body? But what could have caused it? Some kind of disease? Some kind of drug?

Ezra took his scalpel and sliced the organ, as neatly as he could, in two. It fell open like some outlandish but rotten fruit, dark and already beginning to smell. The four chambers were clear enough; there was nothing obvious impeding its action – only its withered size and thickened walls.

Ezra sat back and pushed the lens out of the way. He took out his notebook to see if he had written anything down during the lecture, and that was when he came across the oblong of skin he had excised the night before last. He had forgotten all about it after everything that had happened – the attempted break-in, and Miss Loveday Finch.

Ezra retrieved it, sponged it and pinned it out on a flat wax-covered tray. He could see the mark clearly now, a definite letter in tattoo-ink blue, curved and swirling like a wave. The master would know where he could find an Arabic dictionary.

He needed help with the heart as well. Mr McAdam would know exactly what had happened to it, or at least point him on the correct path. The shelf above the desk groaned with books, rows and rows stretching up to the ceiling: anatomy, the mysteries of circulation, the weight of the brain. Any one of them might have the answer, but where to start?

Perhaps he should take a walk, clear his mind in the fresh air. That was, after all, one of the recommendations the master usually made. Ezra made a thorough sketch of the heart as it was now and pinned it up above the table next to a drawing of a healthy organ to remind him of the differences. Then he put the heart back into a jar, untied his laboratory apron and went downstairs. He would take a cup of coffee and walk as far as St James’s Park. The cold frost might order his thoughts.

Ezra heard voices before he reached the kitchen – Mrs Boscaven was laughing. He pushed open the door … and there, in his own kitchen, sitting around the big fire taking coffee with Mrs Boscaven, Ellen and Toms as cosy as if she’d sat there a thousand times before, was Miss Loveday Finch producing a scarlet handkerchief from the sleeve of her mourning gown. No one bothered to look up as he entered; they were all transfixed, Ellen and Mrs B clapping, even Toms smiling and saying, “Well done, Miss!” as though he’d never seen a conjuring trick in his life.

“Miss Finch!” Ezra could not keep the surprise from his voice. “What are you doing here? I haven’t had a chance to—”

“That’s no way to greet lady callers,” Toms said. “You’ll have to excuse Ezra, Miss. He’s no good around ladies – or the living in general.”

“Pull up a chair, Ez,” Mrs Boscaven said. “Poor Miss Finch has told us how as you’re helping her with her father.”

“Has she?” He looked at Loveday but she didn’t meet his gaze. How much had she told them? Ezra found that telling the whole world one’s business was never the best way forward.

“And she’s been entertaining us all with tales of Mr Finch. You never mentioned Miss Finch, Ez,” chastised Mrs Boscaven. “The master’ll be proud of you, offering to help a young lady like that.”

“Oh yes. I am indeed very grateful,” said Miss Finch, smiling demurely. Ezra gave her a look.

He didn’t remember her being grateful when he carried her into Bart’s.

“Who’d have known what would have happened to my leg,” she went on. She sipped her tea. “It’s already much better – and, before you ask, Mr McAdam, yes, I have been using a stick.”

“And she were conjuring,” Ellen told him. “Doing tricks. Go on, make the hanky disappear again, Miss!”

“Conjuring? I thought you were in mourning,” said Ezra. He went to find his special coffee cup but
she
was using it.

“Oh, don’t be such a gowk!” Toms said. “It’s not your father passed.” He lowered his voice so only Ezra could hear and said, “As if you had one anyway.”

Ezra ignored him, poured some coffee into another cup and drank it standing up.

“We had no idea you moved in theatrical circles, Ez. Miss Finch’s life is so interesting. Did you know she and her poor father have lately returned from Vienna
and
Constantinople? And she has lived in Paris – before the revolution.”

“A wonderful city, Mrs Boscaven,” Miss Finch said. “Quite beautiful. When Pa and I performed at…” Her voice trailed off and she sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. Toms looked smitten. Ezra sipped his coffee. Was this the same girl who’d happily fought a whole inn of resurrection men?

Mrs Boscaven nodded. “But we’ve heard the French king has been arrested! Imagine that! I don’t know what to think. Wasn’t the master planning on taking you, Ez?”

“Yes, to the Hôtel-Dieu to see M. Desault,” Ezra said. “Mr McAdam says that French surgeons are the very best.”

“Perhaps when the revolution settles down…” Mrs Boscaven got up.

“I’m not sure that is what revolutions do, Mrs B.” Ezra smiled.

“Well, I think the French king had it coming,” Toms said, and reached out for a biscuit. Ezra said nothing. He didn’t want to be seen to agree with Toms.

“I reckon as the whole world is in turmoil.” Mrs Boscaven prodded at the fire. “The Russians and the Swedes.”

“And the Ottomans,” Toms added.

Ezra looked at him. “I didn’t realize you were so interested in foreign news.”

Toms gave him a filthy look. Ezra thought he saw Miss Finch smile behind her handkerchief.

“And we had cracksmen trying to smash into the house,” Ellen said, a little bit scared.

“They didn’t get in, Ellen. It was only a pair of rascals looking for easy pickings.” Ezra tried to reassure her with a smile, but it was a poor smile. He had an idea that whoever those men had been they knew quite well whose house it was. And that they would be back.

“Oh, this world is a sad and terrible place,” Mrs Boscaven said.

“Death – if you’ll pardon me, Miss Finch – is all around us,” commented Ezra.

“Never truer than in this house,” Toms added. “Death is the old man’s trade. All that cutting up, all them
things
, all those gory whatsits up in your museum.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Toms,” Ezra told him. “It’s not about death. Not at all.”

“I don’t think I’m wrong, am I, Miss Finch?” Toms smiled at her. “I mean to say, I don’t suppose you hold with any of that business, nice girl like yourself?”

Miss Finch smiled back. “Of course not, Mr Toms. Naturally I despise resurrectionists and those who encourage them.”

“Call me Henry,” he said. Ezra rolled his eyes.

“But I see the value of science, of course.” She looked at Ezra. “And now I am here, I would so love to see the museum.”

Ezra drained his coffee cup and stood up. “I was just going out, as a matter of fact.” He would not let her have it all her way.

Toms jumped up. “I don’t mind showing you round, Miss.”

“That’s so kind of you.” She paused; threw Ezra another look. “Henry.”

Toms blushed. She was playing with him. Ezra almost felt sorry for the man.

“He doesn’t know one end of the human body from another,” Ezra said.

“I think,” Toms retorted, “I know a good deal more about living bodies than ever you do.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“Boys!” Mrs Boscaven shook her head. “I think you should both escort Miss Finch around the museum.” She looked hard at Toms. “You know how particular the master is about his objects. Although I warn you, Miss Finch, it is not for the fainthearted. And boys, if she so much as blanches, you bring her back down here, quick sharp. Is that clear?”

They answered together, like chastened schoolboys, “Yes, Mrs Boscaven.”