The Devlin Diary (23 page)

Ravenscroft falls to one knee. As he crouches down, he catches a whiff of his own fug: scorched wool, burnt hair, horse shit. How can his luck be so poor, that he should appear in this filthy undone state
before the king? Panicking, he drops everything he carries under his arm; the easel clatters on the floor and the drawings roll away from him as if possessed by a spirit. The king approaches, holding out his hand. Ravenscroft has never kissed the hand of a monarch before and is momentarily flummoxed: should he place his lips on the back of the hand or on the fingers? The royal fingers sport two capacious gold rings, one set with sapphires and one set with rubies. The back of the hand is lightly covered by a growth of black hairs. Before he can decide the hand is withdrawn. The king clears his throat and steps back a few paces. From the royal sleeve a scented handkerchief is extracted and briefly held to the royal, obviously affronted, nose.

“Mr. Ravenscroft,” the king begins, in a voice sonorous and rich. “Perhaps you will be so good as to show me what you have just shown Sir Hugh.” He points across the room. “From over there, if you will.”

H
E HAS NEVER
been squeamish, but Edward Strathern does not like to be stared at by the cadavers he dissects. It makes the process much too personal and intimate, as if the body could suddenly become animate again. He cannot explain why something he knows to be impossible should trouble him, but this queasy fear seems to be securely lodged in the human psyche. Doesn’t everyone prefer the eyes of a corpse closed? Once the spirit is gone, one imagines that only something evil could make it return.

He places his fingertip on one of Sir Henry’s open eyelids, but it won’t budge. Even when a person dies with their eyes closed, rigor mortis can tense the muscles of the eye socket and force the eyelids open again. Unfortunately neither the watchman nor the guards who handled Sir Henry’s body thought to close his lids and put coins on them to keep them shut. If Edward exerts too much pressure now he’ll tear the skin, and he has been instructed to make Sir Henry more presentable for his surviving relations, not less. It won’t be easy: at present he is not looking well.

“Rigor of the facial muscles is well established,” he says loudly for the benefit of Mr. Billings, the ancient amanuensis the college has pro
vided for him. He sits perched at a small escritoire set up on the operatory floor, laboriously penning a wavering script with a palsied hand. The anatomy theater at the College of Physicians is modeled after the one at the University of Leyden but, being new, has incorporated some welcome innovations: a skylight directly above the operating floor and a dissection table on wheels so that cadavers can be easily rolled in and out. Otherwise, Strathern could almost forget whether he is in London or Leyden, the interiors are so similar, with spectator galleries on each side and low-hanging chandeliers that provide additional light. This will be his first postmortem performed in relative peace and silence, without a group of students crowding him and peering over his shoulder. His only other companion this day is his assistant, a newly licensed young doctor named Gordon Hamish, who stands on the opposite side of the dissection table upon which lies Sir Henry’s brutalized but still clothed body. Like Edward, he does not wear a wig—it gets too much in the way—and Hamish’s thatch of red-gold hair appears like a halo when seen against the candlelight. His pale, light-lashed eyes are the only feature visible on his face, as his cravat covers his nose and mouth. Hamish is new to dissections and not yet accustomed to the smell of cadavers. Strathern does not find this corpse particularly noisome, as Sir Henry has not been dead long and the cold night air has slowed the process of putrefaction. Despite the young doctor’s sensitivity, Strathern considers himself fortunate in his choice of aide: Hamish’s quick mind and eagerness to learn compensate for his lack of experience. Not to mention that none of the other physicians at the College wanted the position.

“There is a deep cut through the trachea which has produced some blood but which does not appear to have severed any arteries,” Edward says, continuing his external examination. Sir Henry’s cravat saved him from worse injury. His waistcoat, however, did nothing to protect him. The silk vest is ripped in a half dozen places and soaked with blood. “There are a number of wounds to the chest and abdomen.” He unbuttons what’s left of the waistcoat and opens it, revealing the torn and bloodied shirt beneath. Dr. Hamish hands him a pair of scissors, and he splits the shirt up the middle. Five deep gashes, one in the lower left
breast that Strathern suspects pierced the heart, and a diagonal laceration to the abdomen of at least seven inches crisscross the torso in a ghastly pattern of dried, rust-colored blood, purple hematomata, gray integument.

Hamish mumbles through his cravat.

Strathern frowns. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Hamish tugs his scarf down. “It looks like someone went mad,” he says, breathing carefully through his mouth. “It isn’t necessary to cut someone up like this just to kill him, is it?”

“No.”

“Should I write that down?” the secretary asks.

“No.” Edward lowers his voice. “Any one of these injuries might have killed him—if not right away, then soon enough.”

“But with only one, he might have lived long enough to tell someone who did it.”

“That’s true.”

Strathern lifts Sir Henry’s arm off the table. It doesn’t go far. “Mr. Billings, if you will please record: state of rigor mortis is extreme, indicating the time of death is likely to be between twelve and fifteen hours ago.” He sets the arm down again. “According to people who saw him last, Sir Henry was still alive at eleven last night, which would put his death at some time between eleven and one of the clock.”

“Rigor mortis won’t wear off for another twelve hours or more. How’re we going to get all his clothes off while he’s so stiff?”

“We’ll have to cut them off.” Edward takes up the scissors again and begins cutting along a jacket sleeve while Hamish removes one of Sir Henry’s gloves. “Good God,” Hamish says. He holds up a bloodied hand. “Look at this.”

The outside three fingers of the right hand have been cut off at the base, just above the metacarpal bones. Edward removes the other glove. The left hand is intact.

“The watchman who discovered the body this morning said that no purse or coin was found on him,” Edward says. “Maybe the person—or people—who killed him stole his rings too.”

“By cutting off his fingers?”

“It may have been easier than taking the rings off.”

Edward strips off the layers of jacket, coat, and vest, uncovering the left half of Sir Henry’s torso. Hamish cuts off the garments on the other side. On Sir Henry’s right breast, just below the clavicle, the killer—Strathern can only assume it is the killer—has used the point of his knife to carve symbols deep into the flesh: a kind of curved Y, an X inside a square, and a cross.

“Mother of Christ,” Hamish swears softly. “What is that?”

The work of a madman, Edward thinks, but he doesn’t say it aloud. He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

The news crier stands on the corner of King’s Street waving a sheaf of crudely printed paper. “Murder in St. James’s!” he shouts. “Murder in St. James’s Park!”

Moll Harris pushes her way into the crowd and swaps a halfpenny for a handbill. The news crier’s gaze lingers briefly on the plum-colored crescent under her eye before quickly moving on to the others eager to press money into his palm. She walks quickly as she reads:

“Heinous Murder Comitt’d in St. James’s Park: Under cover of Night this 12th of November an unknown Assailant viciously Attack’d Sir Henry Reynolds and left him for Dead; by which means he did Die; of Wounds so Grievous that his Body was near Decapitat’d; and his Arms and Legs nearly cut Asunder. His Majesty Charles the 2nd calls out his Guard to hunt down the Villain.”

Moll crushes the paper in her hand and lets it fall to the ground. Only the murder of a gentleman would cause such a fuss. Londoners meet with unnatural deaths all the time, but for the most part the law can’t be bothered to raise a hue and cry for any of them. Especially if they are poor, and especially if they are women. She thinks of a girl she knew named Beth, who once dwelled, as Moll did, in the dark courts and alleys around Maiden Lane. Beth disappeared a few months ago. Like Moll, she’d eked out a living picking pockets and practicing the art of “buttock and twang”: picking up a mark in a tavern and luring him into a back alley, where her lover or pimp—in Moll’s case, the foul-tempered Seamus Murphy—knocked him down and took what
ever was worth stealing. Beth disappeared, and nobody even bothered to look for her. Her shiftless, maggoty-headed husband said she’d run off, but Moll didn’t believe him for a second; she’d lay a bet that Beth was pushing up flowers in an unmarked mound in one of the fields around London.

That’s what will happen to Moll too if she doesn’t escape now. At last she’s got money enough, and God knows she’s got reason enough: the bruises that everyone can see are nothing compared to the ones hidden under her clothes. Of course, if Seamus discovers that she’s gone off with the spoils from last night, her life won’t be worth a farthing. But by her estimations he won’t recover from his drunken binge for at least another few hours, by which time she’ll be gone from this godforsaken city.

She makes her way through the maze of market stalls, heading toward Russell Street on the east end. In sight are no less than six of the King’s Horse Guards. Do they imagine that the “villain” will march up to them and give himself up? The thought provokes a bitter laugh. They’ll never find the man who done it, never.

A muscular hand grabs her upper arm and twists it painfully. “Just where did you think you were going?” Seamus snarls.

The odor of beer on his breath is so strong that Moll can taste it. “Let me go.” She thought he was still out cold when she tiptoed from the room.

“Do you know what the law will do to a woman that deserts her husband and robs him blind? It’ll be Newgate for you, without nothing to look forward to but the gallows.”

“You’re not my husband.”

“I am if I say I am.”

“Let me go!” This time Moll says it loud enough to turn a few heads.

“First you’ll give me that purse.”

He grabs her hand, pulling one of her fingers back, hard. She yelps with pain. “Give me the purse,” he threatens.

“Stop it.” Her finger feels like it’s about to break. “I’ll give it to you, but you’ve got to give your word not to hurt me.”

The coarse barking sound that issues from his mouth is what Seamus would call a laugh. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, you will,” he says. His free hand grapples at her waist, reaching into the placket between her outer skirt and petticoats to take hold of the richly endowed purse they’d lucked into last night while prowling St. James’s Park. Sir Henry Reynolds’s purse, Moll knows now. Seamus puts it safely into his own breeches and lets her go, regarding her with an expression she knows too well, one of domination and disgust.

He’ll kill her this time, Moll is sure of it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. There won’t be any handbills about her death, no King’s Guards looking for her killer, no justice. Seamus will tell people she’s run off, and they’ll believe him, because if they don’t he’ll beat them black and blue. And soon they’ll stop asking.

There’s only one way out of her predicament. “Help!” Moll screams. “Guards! Over here! This is the man who killed that gent!”

Two of the Horse Guards turn swiftly, urging their mounts toward Moll and Seamus, and call out to the other guards in the square.

“You bitch,” Seamus spits.

“There isn’t a word nasty enough for what you are,” she sneers back. “Over here!” she yells again. At last, she’ll be free of him. “This here’s the man you want—the man who killed Sir Henry Reynolds!”