Chapter Twelve #2
Theo’s eyes lit upon a small vase on the windowsill, holding a bouquet of dried lunaria.
They looked disarranged, and a few seeds had scattered.
She crossed the room and held the stems in one hand as she tipped the vase up.
A small key landed with a clink on the sill.
It was where he kept the spare back-door key at home – in the empty vase on the console table.
Theo listened again, then crossed to the huge cupboard.
The lock clicked and the doors swung open, releasing a scent that caused Theo to recoil.
Something both stale and sweetly tangy, not overtly horrible but utterly repellent.
She breathed shallowly, trembling in spite of herself.
Inside was a set of shelves, and below them two columns of deep drawers.
The shelves held jars, and the jars held fleshy things – unmistakably parts of a body, or bodies.
Pieces of people. Mysterious organs, and lumps of bone with the flesh and skin still attached, suspended in preserving fluid.
Theo supposed Ralph had bought or acquired them to aid his practice in some way; she supposed it was normal, and only seemed ghastly to non-medical eyes.
She didn’t look too closely, but one snagged at her gaze.
It was a large jar on the bottom shelf, containing a pitiful thing – a tiny baby, hardly bigger than Theo’s hand; its fingers the length of her eyelashes, its eyes dark behind translucent lids.
Theo swayed, and held the cupboard door for support.
Her baby? Theirs? Surely, he would not. And yet, she wasn’t sure he would not.
At so early a stage, the child cannot be said to have truly lived .
. . She wasn’t sure at all, and noted, abstractly, how terrible that was.
She turned the jar as gently as she could, until she found a label.
Foetus; male, approx. 20 weeks; pauper mother, died by exposure; aged approx.
30 years. Theo sagged. Not Amelia then; not Timothy.
But somebody’s baby. A poor woman who’d died of the cold.
Had she given permission for her child to be preserved in this way?
How could she have? No mother would, so who or what had given Ralph the right?
Because the label was in his handwriting.
She looked closely and saw tiny stitches closing an incision that ran all the way up the back of the baby’s skull.
Light-headed, Theo turned the jar back the way she’d found it.
She opened the first of the drawers. A skeletal hand, the bones fixed to a wooden plaque with a series of tiny pins and wires.
There was something wrong with some of the bones – even Theo could see that.
They were bulbous and uneven, and in places the surface had peeled away to reveal porous innards like honeycomb.
The second drawer: a long leg bone, too thick, and warped into a bow-shape.
Sabre Tibia, Paget’s disease of the bone.
Leg removed at knee; subject Leslie Tregowan, male, labourer, aged 64 years, M.E.
Theo wondered if Mr Tregowan had survived the operation; if he was walking about on one leg somewhere, happy to have donated the deformed one.
She opened the third drawer and snatched her hand back with a gasp.
A skull, much smaller and smoother than the one hanging in the corner.
Theo guessed at once that this one had belonged to a woman, and the empty eye sockets gazed up at her from the drawer with what looked like an accusation.
Or a plea. Grinning white teeth, the bottom set overcrowded, and crossing slightly.
Above the left temple, a circle had been drawn on the bone.
Theo looked closer, her stomach curdling as she understood.
The circle was not drawn, it was cut into it.
Sawn, in fact, with a fine-toothed blade.
A disc about two and a half inches across.
With faltering hands, Theo turned the skull.
The label was inked directly on to the bone: Trephine to remove meningeal clot beneath concussive injury; subject Melissa Cartwright, female, pauper, aged 14 years, M.E.
Theo reeled back, knocking the drawer. The disc of bone fell out of Missy’s skull, leaving a hole in her head like a gruesome third eye.
‘Oh, no,’ Theo moaned.
She wanted to snatch the skull up and rescue it from that dark and lonely hiding place; she wanted also to slam the drawer shut and never see it again.
Shivers ran right through her; every part of her recoiled from what she had found.
But, how had it happened? Who’d given Ralph permission to keep Missy’s head?
To bury her incomplete? The thought of her headless body going into the ground while Theo and the other mourners had all stood around, unsuspecting, was grotesque.
Had anyone given him permission, or had he simply done as he pleased?
The questions hit her like stones. Had he detached her head himself?
Had he cleaned the flesh and skin and hair away with some harsh chemical?
Theo fought for control of herself, and didn’t hear the footsteps approaching along the corridor.
‘Theo? What are you doing?’
Ralph’s voice sent a shock right through her. Hidden by the cupboard door, she had just enough time to shut the drawer before he was there, and she turned to him, speechless. He pushed her aside and closed the cupboard doors.
‘You shouldn’t have . . . These samples are very sensitive to the light. They are not play things, Theo!’
‘Play things?’ she whispered.
‘You shouldn’t have looked.’ He rounded on her. ‘This is my private room, and its contents are no concern of yours. Why did you open this cupboard? How did you? Do locked doors mean nothing to you?’
Theo shook her head. She was shuddering, her ears ringing.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ None too gently, Ralph pushed her into a chair. ‘Put your head on your knees for a minute. Breathe slowly.’
Theo did as she was told, as much to buy time as anything else. When she looked up at last, Ralph was at his desk, leaning back in the chair, staring at her.
‘What did you see that upset you so badly?’ There was suspicion as well as anger in his voice. Theo knew without thinking that she must not confess what she had found in the drawer. It was too terrible, and she didn’t understand it.
‘The . . . the baby . . .’ she managed to say, and he softened a fraction. A flicker of what looked like relief in his eyes.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Such things are upsetting for a woman to see. Especially—’ He shook his head. ‘But to break into a locked cabinet, Theo—’
‘It wasn’t locked,’ she said.
‘It most assuredly was.’
‘Yes, but – the key was in the lock. I swear it was. So I . . . I didn’t think you would mind. I’m very sorry, Ralph. I shouldn’t have pried. I was only curious, but it was wrong of me.’
He frowned, perhaps weighing the possibility of having accidentally left the key in the lock against the chances of her lying.
Theo’s eyes swam as she awaited his judgement, and she let the tears drop to mask her fear, her outrage.
After a moment, Ralph got up and took the key from the cupboard door.
He dropped it into the pocket of his waistcoat, then fetched a bottle of Vin Mariani from a shelf and poured two glasses.
He knocked one back in a single gulp and passed the other to Theo, laying his hand on her shoulder.
‘Then we’ll say no more about it,’ he said, calmly now. ‘Drink this. It will restore you.’
Theo did as she was told. The drink was dark red, and slightly bitter. Within moments there was a tingling in her blood; a rush of determination cleared her head and crystallised her thoughts.
‘What is that?’ she said.
‘Just wine, fortified with an extract of coca leaf from South America. The leaves are a natural stimulant.’
As he spoke he poured himself a second glass, and swallowed it as quickly as the first.
‘Forgive me for barking at you, it has been a long night. Why have you come?’
‘I wanted to ask after Mr Miller – how is he? And I brought you some breakfast from home. You always say the food here isn’t to be taken before noon.’
Theo managed to smile even though her hands were still shaking. Female, pauper, aged 14 years, M.E.
‘It was a kind thought,’ Ralph said. ‘And I’m happy to say that Mr Miller is progressing well, though he is not yet out of danger.
It was a close-run thing; his condition was not at all good as he left the table.
His breathing was shallow and his pulse was very high, but a large enema of hot saline immediately lowered it to one hundred and forty.
He woke around an hour ago and was able to converse without impediment, though I do notice some slight paresis of his left side. ’
‘I see.’ Theo’s tongue was sticky. She was desperate to leave.
‘A great deal of bloody serum has been oozing through the dressing. Across one section where I have cut away the skull, there was no skin to re-cover it—’
‘Ralph . . . please stop . . .’
‘It is only the normal workings of the human body – a body no different to yours or mine.’
‘A wound so terrible it has nearly killed a man is not normal.’
‘That’s true. But the healing process . . . what a body can survive, when treated correctly, is truly miraculous, Theo!’ He leaned towards her eagerly. ‘Every time I make an advance like this, I begin to conceive of what we might one day come to achieve . . . It’s a marvellous thought!’
Theo hoped the man would live. There had been other times, with other patients, when Ralph had been optimistic after surgery, only for the unfortunate person to deteriorate soon afterwards.
Like the man kicked by his horse, who’d died while she was alone on their honeymoon.
Ralph’s mood after each loss cast a shadow over the whole house for days.
They were all made to feel his disappointment, and frustration.