Victims of consumption occupied three of the tables near the far wall. They were all razor-thin, their skin marble grey, their clothing spotted with blood. They had slowly coughed up their lives. Kingsley’s own wife had suffered this way, and he avoided looking too closely at their faces, afraid he might see the same dull animal fear that had transformed Catherine. He had carefully compartmentalized the memories of his wife on her deathbed: the bloodstained linens, the long nights, the hoarse moans that had echoed through their home every night. He preferred to remember her as she had been in her prime.
He moved on as he always moved on when those memories surfaced.
The last table in the corner of the room held an old woman’s body. Her throat had been cut as she passed through an alley, her bag stolen. Kingsley had no idea what might have been in that bag. The mugger and murderer had not been caught. Kingsley stood by the table and looked down at the old woman. She seemed peaceful, sleeping, as if she might wake at any moment and ask for a cup of tea. He took her hand and gazed at her untroubled face and allowed himself a moment before turning and unloading the bin of body parts onto the empty table beside it.
There was much to do and the work never ended.
INTERLUDE 3
CHARING CROSS, LONDON, TWO YEARS EARLIER.
Dr Bernard Kingsley stood in the open doorway and surveyed the room. It was long and narrow like a potting shed, with more than thirty tables flanking a tight center aisle. There was just enough room between the tables for a man to walk sideways. There were no windows in the room and only the single door. The ivy that grew along the outside walls of the tiny morgue had pushed through crevices in the wood and moved inside, where streamers of it spilled across the low ceiling. Street sounds echoed through the odd-shaped chamber like the bustle of an open-air bazaar, but the room lacked the breeze or sunlight of such a place. No one had yet noticed Kingsley standing there.
Two men in dirty smocks wandered aimlessly at the back of the room. One of the men had tied a kerchief around his mouth and nose, presumably to filter the stench, which was considerable.
Kingsley took a step farther into the room, letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. He resisted the impulse to gag and reached inside his coat for his pipe and tobacco. Disguising the odor of the dead was the only reason he ever smoked. He blew through the stem and added a pinch of an American blend to the bowl, catching the leftover tobacco in his pouch as it fell. Hard to do in the semidark. He tamped the bowl with his thumb and sucked air in through the dry tobacco, tasting it.
One of the men, the one with the kerchief over his face, saw the flicker of Kingsley’s match and moved toward him as Kingsley drew on the pipe and got a decent flow going. It was a false light; the pipe went out. He tamped again and lit another match. This time smoke billowed around his head. His own private and portable atmosphere.
The man with the kerchief waited patiently as Kingsley made the matches and tobacco pouch disappear back into the recesses of his coat. Kingsley took a long drag and held it. He looked back out at the street, then turned and plunged into the morgue facility.
“Beg pardon, sir,” the man with the kerchief said. “Not s’posed to be reg’lar folk in here while the work’s goin’ on.”
“What’s your name, fellow?” Kingsley said.
“Frances Mayhew, sir. Call me Frank. That over there’s my brother, Henry. But he don’t like to be called Hank on account of it rhymes with me.”
“Frances and Henry. Are you doctors?”
Frank let out a guffaw. The sudden gust of air blew his kerchief up over his eyes. When it had drifted back down over his mouth and nose, Frank bowed and tugged on his forelock.
“No, sir. Not hardly. No call for doctors round here noways. Patients in here’s all dead, don’tcha know.”
“Are you assisting a doctor, then?”
“Like I said, sir, no doctors come round here mostly ever. Ain’t noways to bring these’uns back to life.”
Kingsley brushed past Frank Mayhew and walked down the row of corpses. The tables, three dozen of them, were short, each barely more than a meter long. The young children in that room fit the tables well, but the adults lay with the tops of their heads butted against the walls and their legs dangling off the tables into the corridor. As he walked, Kingsley was unable to avoid brushing against them, setting the legs in motion. He looked back at the rectangle of light that led to the street outside, dead feet swaying back and forth in front of it as if on the verge of escape. Rigor had passed in most of the bodies. They had been lying there long enough for their muscles to become pliable once more.
“This is monstrous,” he said.
“Well, aye, sir. No argument from us there.”
“If you agree, why do you allow these conditions?”
“Due respect, we don’t allow nothin’, sir. Ain’t our place. We does the job as told.”
Kingsley pointed at the one called Henry, who cowered at the back of the room. “You. Are you in charge here?”
“He don’t talk much no more,” Frank said.
“Well, who’s in charge here, then?”
“Nobody.”
“What do you mean, nobody?”
“Well, somebody, I s’pose, but they ain’t come round here in as long as Henry and me’s been here, which is goin’ on a couple months now.”
“Then how did you come to be here?”
“Got choosed out the workhouse.”
“Why were you chosen? What was your experience? Were you a doctor’s aide? An apprentice or student of some sort?”
“’At’s a whole lotta ways of askin’ the same thing, sir. I don’t mean no disrespect, but you’re gettin’ worked up past where you oughta. It ain’t good in here, ’at’s for sure, but Henry and me’s doin’ what we’s told. We ain’t lookin’ for no trouble, and we don’t noways wanna go back to the workhouse.”
Kingsley took in a deep breath of pipe smoke and coughed. He held up a hand until the coughing spell had passed, then nodded.
“I didn’t mean to besmirch your work or your reputation. But I want to speak to someone in charge, and this all seems a cruel joke.”
“No joke, sir. And it’s like I said, there ain’t nobody in charge round here ’cept me and my brother. We’s just doin’ our best to get along, ’at’s all.”
“Yes, you said as much. Let me ask again: What did you do that you were chosen for this job?”
“Well, we dug ditches for a time, and afore that we helped on that retaining wall was built down the river.”
“Dug ditches.”
“Dug us a few graves, too. Might be called experienced with the dead. Might be why we was choosed.”
“Good Lord,” Kingsley said. He glanced back at the doorway and sighed. “Well, in the absence of anyone more qualified, perhaps you can help me. I’m looking for a woman.”
Frank released another kerchief-rattling guffaw. He waited for the cloth to settle back over his face before he spoke.
“No offense meant, sir, but we don’t want no part a that.”
Kingsley finally lost his composure. He pushed past Frank and stalked deeper into the morgue. The darkness was broken only by that double row of pale grey legs swinging gently back and forth. A neglected market with the dead laid out on display. Kingsley felt disoriented already. A hand grabbed him by the arm and swung him around.
“You can’t be in here, sir.”
Frank’s face was expressionless, backlit by the open door. Without a thought, Kingsley swung at the ditchdigger and missed. Frank took a step back, and Kingsley grabbed him by the collar and dragged him forward. Frank was the larger man, but Kingsley was determined.
“Beg pardon, sir,” Frank said.