Close examination of human blood has taught me three things. It is as thick as paint, it is surprisingly nutritious and, finally, like excreta, we do not find that our own excites a reflex of disgust.
The man lying on cobbles kept gagging at the taste of the watery red liquid which dribbled from his lips, and it was this that gave him away. A sponge, I guessed, hidden in the corner of his mouth and worked by his tongue. Chicken’s blood, most probably, it looked too thin for pig.
His legs lay at strange angles, no bones visible through the cheap tweed of his trousers but obviously broken, at least, obviously broken to those who did not know how such breaks looked in real life.
If the clerk had looked ridiculous, the doctor was even more so, his short legs pumping and his face as red at that of a Sioux brave. He wore a frock coat that had seen better days and once belonged to someone else; unless our man had shrunk several inches in height as he filled out around his waist.
‘Stand back,’ he demanded. ‘Stand back.’
Those around the injured man did as they were told.
‘Ahh,’ said the doctor, seeing me stand alone. ‘You must be the unfortunate owner of that unhappy…’ Shrewd eyes flicked from my carriage, which had him frowning, to my clothes, which seemed to put his mind at ease.
‘A shocking accident,’ he said, ‘most shocking.’ A refrain quickly taken up by a woman in the crowd and then by several people around her.
Kneeling, the doctor touched his hand to the victim’s throat in a manner that would have been entirely convincing had be been checking a body for a pulse. Since the patient’s eyes could be seen fluttering in his head such checking seemed entirely redundant.
Next the doctor reached inside the thin man’s coat to feel for his heart, and when the doctor took his hand away, his fingers were red with blood. This was enough to make a woman faint. Needless to say, it was the woman who’d first taken up his refrain and as she fell, she twisted to land elegantly, revealing rather more ankle than was seemly.
This seemed to make the doctor angry.
‘Hysteria,’ he announced. ‘Not helpful.’ The fat little man eyed me grimly. ‘All the same, not surprising. Such a shocking accident…’ His smelling salts left the woman with tears running down her face.
An attempt to straighten the injured man’s leg produced a shriek of such pitch that it unsettled one of the horses now being cut from its harness. I knew this because Hunter swore, despite the tender sex of many of those around him and swore almost as loudly as the man had screamed.
The fat little doctor stood, shook his head and turned towards me. ‘If we could talk…?’ he said, taking my elbow.
We walked together towards the bridge, while those around us fell back as if afraid of the weight of guilt they believed I carried. The sky was still grey, the river little brighter than the surface of a rusty sword. A chill wind swept along its surface, and although this was nothing to the winds which blow so fierce in the Hindu Kush that they carve rock before one’s eyes, it was in keeping with the drabness of a drab town. In England, bless it, everything works on a smaller scale.
‘You are a gentleman,’ he said.
When a man says that he means he considers you his equal. I found this idea amusing, although I was careful to keep that from reaching my face. As a young man I walked through the aftermath of the massacre of Meerut, my skin stained with walnut juice and let not a single sight disturb the calm that carried me through crowds of rioting sepoys.
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘A gentleman and a soldier.’
‘And a man of comfortable means.’
I was about to object but saw his eyes slide across my loaden coat, which was lined with green silk. So instead of objecting, I muttered something non-committal, quintessentially English.
‘This is difficult,’ he said. ‘Very delicate.’
At that point, I was meant to ask why it was difficult. He waited and I waited some more.
‘Very difficult,’ he added, as we turned back towards the press of people. ‘I’ll be blunt. You’re a gentleman and this is a dreadful accident. It is my best opinion that this man will die. I am sure someone has already sent for the police.’
This I privately doubted, since the crowd were far too busy being shocked to do anything that useful.
‘I can ease things,’ he said. ‘Let the patient be moved to my surgery. I will undertake to treat him.’
‘But he will still die?’
‘Oh yes,’ said the fat little man. ‘Nothing I can do will stop that.’ He paused, with the manner of someone considering how far to risk his reputation. ‘I can, however, delay slightly in announcing his death. I will mention complications, the poorness of his constitution, perhaps even suggest a certain unsoundness in his mode of life.’
‘A more deserving man would have lived?’
‘Indeed.’ The little man nodded, delighted at my quickness of wit. ‘There will be costs,’ he said. ‘Minor outlays. I can see the poor wretch’s family on your behalf, maybe give his wife a few guineas towards a Christian burial and the keep of her children. My own fees will be modest.’
Raising my eyebrows, I waited.
The sum he named would have bought a town in Odessa.
‘All in,’ he added hastily. ‘As would include my fees, outlay for his widow, a burial… Such a tragic accident,’ he repeated, shaking his head. For one hideous moment I feared the man was about to begin his spiel all over again, for we were nearing the crowd and the last thing I wanted was to waste more time on fainting women and chicken’s blood sponges.
‘Let me examine the patient,’ I said.
‘You?’ he said, sounding altogether less certain.
Put me in the path of danger and I will swear in the ripest Hindi. The man in front of me said his single word in an accent that spoke of education and birth. At times of great stress we all revert to the accents of our childhood. It seemed he was a rogue from choice rather than necessity.
‘Did I not mention I was a surgeon?’ Opening my coat further, to reveal the gun beneath, I began to push my way through the crowd.
‘Look at me,’ I demanded of the groaning man, and he opened his eyes with a great deal of fluttering and a dying fall of sobs, all the more convincing for being slight.
‘Now focus on my finger.’
I moved this digit and watched his eyes trail after, delayed by a single second and inclined to roll back in his head. Mind you, good at acting or not, I could always use any man prepared to step in front of charging horses, catapult himself above a carriage and dislocate his own leg on landing.
Gripping that leg, I put my other hand to his knee and pulled, twisted and pushed almost simultaneously. The wretch gave a hideous shriek, more from shock I suspect than anything else and forgot to keep his eyes half focused.
‘See,’ I said, ‘good as new.’ To make my point, I worked his knee as one might work the leg of a horse. In the crowd someone began to clap.
‘Those ribs,’ I added. ‘How are they feeling?’
He cast his eyes behind me to the fat man who hovered anxiously at my shoulder. Whatever passed between them, the wretch now sprawled on the ground sighed, his face already resigned.
‘Better,’ he said.
‘Let me.’ His ribs were fine, the sponge actually a bladder sewn into the side of his shirt and worked by pressure. Our man with the narrow face and darting eyes was so busy worrying that I might identify the object beneath my fingers, that he entirely failed to notice when I lifted his wallet.
‘Nasty swelling,’ I said, pocketing that object as I wiped my fingers on the side of my own trousers. ‘Otherwise, just a graze.’ Helping the man to his feet, I held him steady as he found his balance. It was a nice touch.