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Authors: Tessa Harris

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Thomas smiled to himself and turned the page. There was a list of five notables, starting with the most eminent. He began: “Lord Hector Braeburn, Scottish peer and expert swordsman, aged sixty-seven.” He always paused to await a response from Dr. Carruthers.
“Expert! Tosh! I patched him up after a duel once.”
Thomas continued. “Admiral Sir John Feltham, RN retired, fought during the Seven Years’ War and sustained an abdominal wound from which he never fully recovered.”
“The old sea dog had the pox!” interjected the doctor.
Next came a lady who had done many charitable works, followed by a lesser member of the Royal Academy. A well-known musician took precedence over a mathematician and an exclusive clothier. They were all known to Dr. Carruthers and they all solicited various anecdotes and yarns, seasoned with the old physician’s favorite expletives. “All those bodies safely tucked up in their mortsafes and vaults. Such a bloody waste!” was how he would usually wind up the evening. This lament was often intoned just after the mantel clock had struck eleven.
“Bedtime for me, young fellow, and I suggest for you, too,” Dr. Carruthers would say. Thomas was usually more than ready to follow his advice. On this particular evening, however, he returned to the front page of the broadsheet, folded it neatly, and put it on the desk. It was too late to finish reading the back page, he thought, although he told himself he might return to it the following evening. Had Thomas read the final page of
The Advertiser
of that particular edition, however, he would have seen a small item, tucked deep down on the right-hand column of the newspaper under the announcements section. It read: “Death of Young Earl.”
According to the broadsheet, the Sixth Earl Crick, of Boughton Hall in Oxfordshire, died at his home on October 12, 1780, aged just twenty-one. But the unremarkable insertion went unnoticed and instead Thomas climbed wearily upstairs, undressed, and as soon as his head hit the pillow, he fell sound asleep.
Chapter 3
T
he face of Lady Lydia Farrell’s dead brother peered in at the window. It appeared on her dinner plate by candlelight and in flames in the fireplace. It came to her when she was walking in the gardens, or sewing in the drawing room. It was with her wherever she went and whatever she did and every time it wore the hideously terrifying expression of a young man dying in unspeakable agony.
Five days had passed since that fateful morning of Edward’s death and the memory of it was seared on her brain as indelibly as if by a branding iron.
Edward had just taken his physick from a phial that had been brought earlier that morning. What was in it? Lydia’s first thought was that the apothecary was to blame; that he had been mistaken in the quantities he had used, or indeed in the ingredients. It did not take long, however, for her thoughts to take a darker turn. What if someone had poisoned her brother? What if he had been murdered? Whatever the cause, he had fallen into a coma and died soon after.
Since that day doubt had hovered in the air. It had floated on the ether like some poisonous miasma, infecting everything it touched. It tinged the looks of servants toward their superiors and, worst of all, it clouded the vision of Lydia toward her husband, Captain Michael Farrell, like a malevolent mist that shrouds the truth.
“You must try and eat, my dear,” urged Farrell, sitting at the other end of the long oak table. He tucked into his ham and eggs as if nothing was untoward. “Your brother was ill,” he said. “That is why he needed medication. The pity of it is, none of us knew just how ill he was.”
Lydia watched her husband pierce the pink meat with his fork and envied his appetite. To say that he and Edward did not like each other would have been an understatement. They loathed and detested one another. Yet despite the ever-present acrimony between them, they did at least tolerate each other, for her sake as much as anything else. For her sake, too, Edward, in the will he had written on inheriting the Boughton estate and another in Ireland, had named Farrell as the chief beneficiary, should he die without issue. It was a fact that was lost on no one.
Aware that she was gazing at him, Farrell looked up at her, as if he could read her innermost thoughts. He smiled, yet there was no warmth in his eyes. It was so different from that captivating look he had bestowed on her at their first meeting three years ago.
 
Lydia and her mother, the Dowager Countess of Crick, were on a visit to Bath when, at the height of the season, an unfortunate lack of communication left Lydia, her mother, and their maid Eliza without a room for the night. As Lady Crick waxed and wailed about their unenviable circumstances, Captain Michael Farrell, lately of the Irish Guards and Director of Entertainments at the famous London Pantheon, happened to be walking by on his way to the gaming tables. While Lady Crick’s protestations assailed his ears, it was her daughter’s elfin looks, together with her fine jewelry, that attracted his eyes. He swiftly introduced himself and offered his own room to the forlorn ladies. In the process he won Lydia’s heart.
As a show of gratitude the charming captain was invited to accompany them to the Pump Room the next day and thus he began inveigling his way into Lydia’s heart. At the various balls she attended he would always be given the first dance, and many more besides, and it soon became clear that this dalliance was more than a passing fancy. There were other suitors, of course, but the captain’s Gallic charm seemed to give him the upper hand.
After Lydia returned home to Boughton Hall the captain would send her letters almost daily and trifles of affection—books of poetry and ribbons. The young noblewoman was completely entranced by the handsome lothario and it was soon evident that she only had eyes for him.
Michael Farrell was debonair, handsome, and utterly charming. He was also a gambler, a flirt, and a fashionable profligate. Ever since Lydia found the maidservant Hannah sobbing in the scullery because of the “bad things” they were saying about the master in the village after that fateful day, she had looked at her husband in a new light. She had watched his long, tapered fingers pour wine from flagons. She had breathed in his musky scent laced with cheroot smoke and oilcloth and listened to him give orders to servants in a cultured Irish brogue that was as soft as brushed velvet. She had seen his green eyes play on the white necks of the pretty servant girls and knock back a bottle of brandy before midday. Admittedly, he was no saint, but could he be a murderer, she asked herself.
“Why do you not go into Brandwick this morning, my dear? ’Twill take your mind off things.”
Farrell obviously had no comprehension of just how wretched his wife was feeling. Lydia’s brother would be laid to rest, aged just twenty-one, in the family vault the very next day. She marveled at his insensitivity. Were she to set foot in the village she would be forced to run the gauntlet of rumor and innuendo. She dared not tell him that the draper had even refused Cook credit for a new apron. Yet she had no stomach for a confrontation. She said simply, “I think not,” and was about to excuse herself from the breakfast table when Howard, the butler, entered with a letter held aloft on a silver salver. He presented it with great ceremony to Farrell, who opened the seal with a knife.
Lydia watched as a frown settled on her husband’s brow.
“What is it, Michael?” she asked with trepidation. It took a great deal to make her husband frown. He unfolded the parchment and scanned it for what seemed like an age to her. He then looked up and paused for a moment, as if wondering how to frame his reply.
“ ’Tis from your brother’s godfather.”
“Sir Montagu?”
Farrell was studied, yet forthright. “He has heard gossip.”
“Gossip?” Lydia found herself echoing her husband and the very word chilled her to the bone.
“Rumors about Edward’s death.”
Lydia breathed deeply. It was almost a relief that someone other than herself had brought the situation to her husband’s attention.
“You know something?” His voice was almost accusatory.
Lydia nodded slowly. “In the village they say ...” She broke off, unable to bring herself to reiterate what scandalous rumors were being spread like shovelsful of dirt around Brandwick and beyond to Banbury, where Sir Montagu Malthus lived.
“What do they say, Lydia?” His voice remained calm, but she could see there was anger in his eyes.
“They say that perhaps ... perhaps Edward’s death was murder.” She waited anxiously for her husband’s reaction, wringing her linen napkin under the table. Although the word had been on her lips for several days, it was the first time it had been spoken.
Farrell paused for a moment. “Then Sir Montagu is right,” he said finally, standing up. “We must stop these vile rumors spreading.”
“Yes, but how?” pleaded Lydia.
“It was well known that Edward was sickly. We must order a postmortem to prove he died of natural causes.”
The young woman looked at her husband. There was a defiant air about him. His head was tilted back slightly, highlighting his jawline. Just then a ray of morning sun caught the blade of a knife on the table, making it glint menacingly. The thought of her young brother being opened by a surgeon’s scalpel appalled her, but at the same time, she knew her husband was absolutely correct.
And so it was that a surgeon, Mr. Walton of Oxford, and a physician, Dr. Siddall of Warwick, called at Boughton Hall on the morning of October 18, 1780, six days after Lord Crick’s untimely demise. Captain Farrell greeted them courteously enough and showed them to the upstairs room. Lydia watched from a half-opened door in the drawing room.
“Who is it, Lydia?” Her mother, seated in a large, high-backed chair, heard the men talking in the hall and became agitated. In fact these days agitation was her natural state. The death of her husband had had a profound effect on the woman, who was now in her early fifties. She had lost what little ability she ever had to concentrate and her addlepated mind flitted butter-flylike from one often unrelated subject to another. Lydia was sure she did not realize her only son was dead, or indeed how he had died. She had heard her daughter screaming for help on that terrible morning and had screamed with her, but Lydia did not believe she had any idea why.
“Funeral? Who’s dead?” murmured the dowager, her lace cap tilted at a rakish angle over her gray, wiry hair, which she wore in the old-fashioned way. Lydia envied her sublime ignorance.
As soon as Farrell opened the door for the medical gentlemen, the young earl’s corpse made its presence felt. The room was filled with the unmistakable stench of decomposing flesh. The cadaver lay covered under a white sheet on the bed, and with handkerchiefs over their faces, the surgeon and the physician approached it with caution. Captain Farrell watched their fearful expressions with muted amusement. Dr. Siddall stepped forward first and gingerly pulled the sheet back. Mr. Walton had approached the corpse, too, out of a sense of professional duty. Neither of them, however, was prepared for the grotesqueness of the vision that awaited them. Crick’s hideously contorted face had already fallen prey to rigor mortis and proved too great a challenge for the mortician. Although his lids were closed, his mouth was open and creamy gray grave wax oozed from the orifice. The pallid cheeks had been almost comically dusted with rouge, but they were bloated and maggots were already feasting inside the nasal cavities. Both doctors let out a simultaneous groan.
“My brother-in-law is not a pretty sight, gentlemen,” remarked Farrell wryly.
The two men looked at each other gravely and retreated to confer. After no more than a minute Mr. Walton spoke for them both. He cleared his throat, turning away from the cadaver. “Have you any notion as to how ... ?” He did not finish his sentence, as if not wishing to appear indelicate.
Farrell nodded his head slowly. “Indeed, gentlemen,” he began in a sombre tone, “you have heard directly from his physician, have you not, that my brother-in-law was a sickly youth?” The doctors, who were aware of the young lord’s general malaise, nodded sympathetically in unison. Leaning forward, rather conspiratorially, as if about to let the men in on some terrible secret, Farrell continued: “It is an indelicate matter, gentlemen, and not one that is common knowledge, but poor Lord Crick lay with a doxy in his first term at Eton and was never the same again.”
This news, however shocking, seemed to satisfy the medical men that Lord Crick’s death was perfectly natural. If the French pox had not killed him, then some complication of the vile disease had. There was no more to be said.
It was therefore with great relief that Mr. Walton concluded to Captain Farrell: “We fear that his lordship’s corpse is in far too advanced a state of decomposition for us to draw any conclusions as to the cause of his death other than the fact that he was”—Dr. Siddall cleared his throat and obligingly finished his colleague’s sentence—“infected.”
The captain nodded and looked at them earnestly. “There is, too, a risk of contamination, is there not, gentlemen?”
Suddenly finding a sympathetic ear, the two doctors nodded their heads vigorously with one accord.
“Indeed so,” retorted Mr. Walton eagerly.
Farrell looked solemn. “Would I be correct in assuming that you agree with Dr. Fairweather that my brother-in-law passed away through natural causes, then, gentlemen?”
The two doctors looked at each other gravely and, once again, nodded their heads eagerly in agreement.
“Then I am free to bury him?”
“By all means and with the greatest of haste for all our sakes,” urged Dr. Siddall obligingly.
From the drawing room, Lydia could hear footsteps descending the stairs. She rose and walked softly toward the door. She could hear her husband bidding the gentlemen farewell and waited till the front door was shut before confronting him.
“They were here not ten minutes,” she said, frowning.
Farrell turned and held her hand. “Your poor brother is too far gone, my dear. We must bury him at once.”
Lydia’s heart sank. She feared Edward would take the secrets of his death with him to his grave and no one in Brandwick, nor in the whole of Oxfordshire, would ever know the truth. More importantly, nor would she.
BOOK: The Anatomist's Apprentice
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