Audience for a Crime
Jacob ducked under a beam, carefully nursing a tankard of brown porter. The smoky room was crowded, but he spotted an empty seat in the corner. He strode across the sawdust floor, sat down, and supped his pint.
The tavern was dark and candles flickered through the murk against tobacco-stained walls. It had not been an outstanding day for Jacob, and the porter was going down too easily. He removed his pipe and filled it with tobacco from a grubby leather pouch, lit the pipe and inhaled it deep into his lungs. He coughed into the soot-stained sleeve of his greatcoat and spat onto the floor. Ah, that was better.
“Can I get you another?”
Jacob looked up. People didn’t normally buy him a drink. Actually, they never bought him a drink. Sam Brown, what did he want? “You can.”
Sam had long hair but was balding. He was a short man, stout with thick muscular arms. Jacob reckoned he had the beating of Sam if it came to it, but it wouldn’t be a pretty fight.
Sam returned, placed two tankards on the table, spotted a wooden stool, and dragged it across. Jacob downed his first pint and raised his new tankard against Sam’s.
“Cheers. So why would someone buy me, Jacob Smith, a drink?”
Sam’s face was grimy, but not as dark as Jacob’s; he smiled with the left side of his mouth. “Well, how’s business?”
“You may ‘ave heard, but my lad broke his arm.”
“You beat ’im?”
“Now, why I’d do that? He fell down the chimney. He was getting too big, anyway.”
Sam smiled. “Oh dear, such a shame. So you might need some work?”
“I might be.”
“I’ve got some work for a rich gentleman, a lord. Are you in?” Jacob sucked on his pipe. “There’s a guinea in it for you.”
“A guinea. Yeah, I’m in. What’s it doing?”
“I’ll show you soon enough. We’ll leave after this.”
They left the tavern; Jacob followed Sam through a narrow street. The gas lights gently flickered, and it was difficult to avoid the filth on the pavements. It hadn’t rained for weeks and Jacob’s hand covered his nostrils to thwart the foul stench. “How far we going?”
“Two miles,” replied Sam.
Sam’s short legs were like pistons; Jacob struggled to keep up, even with his long stride. Sam turned into a lane and took out a key. He undid a padlock and opened a heavy wooden gate.
“Got the key, have you?” said Jacob.
Sam led Jacob into a yard and went through a side door. “Yeah–stay ‘ere.”
After a few minutes, Sam came out and loaded two shovels, some rope, and a bag onto a wooden cart. “Right, push this out the gate.”
Jacob pushed the cart into the lane. Sam locked the padlock, and they set off. “This way.”
“I’m doing the pushing, am I?”
The cart was heavy and the rough cobbles shook Jacob’s arms. After two streets, sweat formed around his neck. His thick coat wasn’t helping. “Ang on a minute, will ya?”
Sam turned around. “A bricky lad like you can do a bit of hard labour, can’t ya?”
Jacob coughed. “Just give me a minute.”
A slim figure came out of the shadows and placed her arm on Jacob’s shoulder. “After a bit of fun, are you?”
“Not tonight.”
“Shame, I thought you’d brought your own bed.”
Jacob looked at the cart and then at the woman; she smelt of lavender. “You’re young, aren’t you?”
“I’m Elsie, maybe next time?”
“Come Jacob,” said Sam tersely, “we’ve work to do.”
They carried on through the streets for over half an hour until Sam walked into a cemetery. He stopped. “Wait, a while.”
“I ain’t no grave digger, you know?”
“I ain’t paying a guinea for grave digging.”
Jacob watched Sam walk along, reading the gravestones. He stopped at one and checked a scribbled note in his pocket. “Over ‘ere.”
Jacob wheeled the cart over to the grave. “Is this what I think it is?”
Sam took a shovel from the cart and started digging in the fresh grave. “I’ll take the first turn.”
It was over an hour of digging through the dank, dark earth, but eventually, Jacob’s shovel hit a wooden box. Sam jumped down and helped clear off the dirt and then jimmied the lid off. After tying a rope around the body within, the two men hauled it up and roughly loaded it onto the cart.
“That’s it,” said Sam. “I’ll close the grave.”
The light from the moon caught a ring on the woman’s hand. Jacob thought about removing it but didn’t want to be observed doing it. Once Sam was happy with the state of the grave, he put a ragged sheet over the body and they took turns, pushing the much heavier cart back to the house.
***
Sam closed the gate to the yard, opened the door into the house, and together they lugged the body into a back room. In the candlelight, Jacob saw a grey-haired gentleman asleep in a chair. He roused as they placed the body on a table.
The man stood up; he was plump, with a red flabby face. He lit a gas lamp and then inspected the woman. Jacob could make out a bushy moustache beneath an unfortunate wart at the side of his nose. “A fine cadaver. That was quick, you’ve done well.” He looked at Jacob. “It probably helped to have this lump of a man help you.”
Jacob disregarded the man’s comment; he was used to worse.
“Would that be all, your Lordship?” asked Sam.
The man went to his desk and unlocked a drawer. “You’ll probably want to be paid.” He handed them both a guinea.
“Good day to you,” said Sam. “Let me know when I can be of assistance again.”
The man nodded and Sam left the room.
Jacob looked at the body, “What yer doing with the body?”
“I’ll show you” The man went to some shelves at the side of the room. On the shelves were jars that Jacob hadn’t noticed before. There were organs, animals, limbs and even strange creatures, all in jars filled with yellow liquid. Jacob carefully studied the contents. He did not know what most of them were, but he knew the heads were human. They were facing the table like an audience waiting for the show to start. He turned to the man, who smiled. “You’ll probably going to ask me why. Come look at this.”
The man showed him a large book of drawings, detailed sketches of anatomy. Jacob peered at the book, slowly turning the pages. “So the body?”
“I will dissect it. Why don’t you watch? You could be useful.” The man picked a saw. “I guess you’ve used one of these before?”
Jacob cut where instructed and when he wasn’t required; he sat in the chair and observed the man working on the body with several instruments. The man worked until morning, carefully taking notes and making drawings throughout.
Jacob stood up to leave. “So, what’ll you do with the drawings?”
“They will help save lives–it will give an understanding of the human body. The workings of the organs, of the brain. It will tell us how we think. One day, we will take the liver from one person and put it on the body of another.”
“No!“
“Yes, with practice, it will be achieved.”
“Achieved, with dead bodies?”
“It’s all I have to work with. My work would benefit from a live patient. I could transplant a liver into that person from one that I have preserved in these jars.”
“What, into a person?”
The man nodded, “If successful, it would save many a life.”
“But the blood.”
“Yes, the blood, that it what we need to learn. If you brought me a person, there would be five guineas in it for you.”
Jacob looked at the dismembered body on the table. “Would that person live?”
“I can’t guarantee that.”
“I could not do it for five guineas.”
“Ten.”
Jacob studied the room with the jars, the instrument, and the body on the table. “Okay.”
“Ten guineas it is. I will expect you tonight.”
***
Elsie needed little persuading, as five shillings were more than she could earn in a week. Jacob felt guilty as she took his arm and happily followed him back to the house and into the front room. He told her to close her eyes, then he used the ether on her and she fell unconscious onto a couch.
Jacob carried Elsie into the back room and laid her on the table. The man stood up and examined her. “You’ve done well. Will you be watching again?”
“No, I’ll be off.”
The man nodded, unlocked the drawer and counted out ten guineas.
***
Sergeant Jones was searching the upstairs of the house; there was no sign of Lord Palmer. The tip off was odd. Murder, they’d said. Very unusual. He heard the constable from downstairs shouting his name.
He walked down the staircase and into the back room. “What is it, man?”
“A body, look.”
“Put the light on, will you?”
Jones saw what it was, but as the light came on, he saw the grisly detail. A naked corpse lay on the table. A corpse minus one head.
The constable pointed to the jars on the side. “You need to see these.”
Jones walked over and examined the jars; he’d seen nothing like it. “What twisted mind…”
“Grave robber, I reckon. His Lordship must have been a grave robber.”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
“And what about this?” The constable showed Jones the book of drawings.
“Terrible. It’s…” The quality of the work surprised Jones. He traced the sketches with his fingers. Such detail, such workmanship.
“So, what now?”
Jones scratched his head. “Who gave us the tip-off?”
The constable shook his head. “Dunno.”
“Okay, question everyone in the street. Someone must have seen something unusual. What with all this going on?”
The constable nodded and left the room. Jones studied the heads in the jars. Mainly women’s, except for the head of a young man and one of an old man with a grotesque wart on his nose. He looked at the heads and then at the body. Was it possible that one of these heads could belong to the decapitated man’s body on the table?