The Devil's Ribbon
HE
D
EVIL’S
R
IBBON
D.E. M
EREDITH
For Mum and Dad – with love, always
le grá go deo
They are going, going, going from the valleys and the hills,
They are leaving far behind them heathery moor and mountain rills,
All the wealth of hawthorn hedges where the brown thrush sways and trills.
They are going, shy-eyed colleens and lads so straight and tall,
From the purple peaks of Kerry, from the crags of wild Imaal,
From the greening plains of Mayo and the glens of Donegal.
They are going, going, going, and we cannot bid them stay;
Their fields are now the strangers’ where the strangers’ cattle stray.
Oh! Kathaleen Ní Houlihan, your way’s a thorny way!
– Ethna Carbery, ‘The Passing of the Gael’
Nothing but shadows and an eerie stillness in the heat of a simmering night as a figure stoops under a lintel and makes his way quickly, through a labyrinth of alleys, before finding Berry Street and heading north along the Farringdon Road. For a fleeting moment he pauses and looks over his shoulder, to be seen briefly against the backdrop of a Smithfield butcher’s shop. His face mottled like the pox in the dark of its window. A sharp jaw, full lips, skin drawn tight over jutting cheekbones, and grasped tightly in his hands, a book. Musty pages from another lifetime, another world away and on its broken board, just one word –
Liberty
.
Four hundred and twenty prayers are inside. Cries in the dark, ghosts from his past, but tonight some of those prayers are about to
be answered, as he heads out of the city, past Finchley Fields, walking at a terrifying pace, his head down, continuing faster, faster. He isn’t wearing any boots as he sweeps past the numerous slop houses, slums, and taverns of the Holloway Road, where it grieves him to say that according to the newspapers, and that wonderful British institution,
Punch
, the Irish smell of piss, live eighty to a room and keep pigs in the privy.
Well, that’s the Irish for yer, yer honour. Savages, the lot of ’em
.
But this man is heading to where the rich folk live. Up Highgate Hill, still hogging the shadows, he smoothes on gloves so when he leaps over a wall, he bounds up from his haunches like a cat, not making a sound, not leaving a mark, as he pushes on through the meadows which are humming with night insects, moving at a swift pace past the spiked gates of The Necropolis.
Pitch black, the stars overhead like needles, lucent and shimmering. White Lodge. At the back of the house, he loiters, looking through a window at an older man who’s slumped over what looks like a mound of parliamentary papers, Points of Notice, bills from the estate, an essay by Carlyle,
In Memoriam,
and other testaments to a dire lack of faith.
Is the man sleeping? Or is it simply a love of laudanum?
The killer double-checks the poison which he keeps in a vial, knowing this death to be inelegant, mockingly cruel but, more important – fast.
He gives the door a sharp kick and it swings open with ease. The older man doesn’t move a muscle, but remains asleep, blissfully asleep – as the killer looks around the study to see back copies of
The Nation
, others of
An Glor
. Up above him, a map of Ireland, and on a little table, buttermilk, a plate of soda bread, and two sherry glasses, left untouched.
The killer lays a hand on the sleeping man’s shoulder and whispers his name, but nothing comes back.
Gently does it
, he thinks, filling up the needle and giving it a tap. Down the hallway, silence. The floor above him, silence. Not even a mantel clock.
He leans in closer. ‘
Gabriel
?’ He’s so close, he can smell a spicy pomade, the toilette of a gentleman, but this gentleman will never be clean until …
‘
I’m here, Gabriel. Wake up
.’
A drowsy look of surprise.
‘
You
…’ say laudanum eyes.
‘
Save your prayers for the devil
,’ the killer says, as he plunges the poison inside.
The skin is
cold
and often damp, the tongue flabby and chilled like a piece of
dead meat
. The patient speaks in a plaintive
whisper,
tosses incessantly from side to side and complains of intolerable weight or
anguish
. He
struggles for breath,
points out the seat of his
agony
. If blood is obtained at this point, it is black, oozes like jelly, drop by drop. Towards the close, the patient becomes insensible and with a rattle in the throat,
dies quietly
after a long
convulsive sob.
’
All was silent in the morgue, save the scratch of a nib, as Professor Hatton copied out a passage from one of his well-thumbed medical journals, underlining words which reminded him not of the symptoms of cholera, but of his father who’d died on a suffocating night, reminiscent of this one.
He was pale, when his sister Lucy had taken his hand. ‘You did everything you could, Adolphus.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t enough,’ he’d replied bitterly, as they’d stood among the handful of people who’d gathered by the newly dug graveside, watching as the coffin was lowered, knowing prayers were a comfort to some. He’d stared at the Hampshire earth and the worms made violet by the spades, thinking if there was a God, then how could this happen … again?
Bone-tired, Hatton shook away the bad memory and forced his wandering mind back to his work, which was money well earned but giving him the damnedest headache, as he wrote on a neat, square of paper, ‘Note to self – alimentary canal, entry point? Sphincter muscle? Exit? See Mr Farr’s work,
London Medical Gazette
, page 12 – Broad Street Pump –
how does cholera travel
?’
Outside, there was a sudden sound of wheels on cobbles, the creak of a chain and a harsh voice crying in the dark, ‘Bring ’em over ’ere. For pity’s sake …’ere, I say …’
Not more bodies, he thought. It was midnight and he’d only just finished cutting the last lot, making the cholera count what – twenty? He checked his notes – yes, twenty – which wasn’t enough to call it an epidemic yet, which was good news for Infectious Diseases, but for him? Well, thought Hatton, that was a moot point.
The harsh voice came again –
‘Don’t lift the cover. Wheel it over there. There, I say. Leave the bodies by the water pump. Fussy devil? You ain’t heard the like. He’ll ’ave your guts for garters, if anyone touches that padlock.’
Hatton’s chief diener, Albert Roumande, was on the far side of the mortuary, a question in his eye to which Hatton said, ‘I know, I know, Albert. I’m going.’ Outside, in the moonlit yard, an arc of stars framed a paltry gang of body collectors who were gathered in a round with torches in their hands. Hatton snatched one of the torches. ‘For pity’s sake, put the damn flames out. Then for heaven’s sake clean yourselves up a bit. There’s a real risk of infection, here. Especially you! Have you learnt nothing from us, lad?’ The young man in question stood to attention, removing his cap in a quick show of deference, as Hatton shook his head at the youth’s dishevelled appearance. ‘Monsieur Roumande has a mountain of work for you, so hurry yourself. Where have you been anyway? You’ve been gone hours already.’
‘
Excusez-moi,
but Monsieur Roumande said he needed me to visit Newgate, sir, and then go on to the Irish nests in the slums, where I heard the fever bell ringing. Shall I help shift the bodies, Professor?’
‘Well, that’s
your job
, isn’t it?’ said Hatton, cross, because he’d done a fifteen-hour stretch already. ‘Get the corpses into the mortuary, quickly, then it’s hot water and carbolic for the lot of you. No hands anywhere near the mouth, until you’re done with the cadavers and washed. Do you understand me, Patrice?’
The boy nodded, contritely.
‘Very well, get on with it,’ said Hatton, wiping a swathe of sweat from his neck, because the air in the morgue was uncomfortable and fetid, but it wasn’t much better out here, he thought. St Bart’s Hospital had been built as a sanctuary for the sick on the ancient meadows of Smithfield, a holy place of medieval monks and healers, but the ‘smooth’ fields had long become a market, and the market had long become a herding place
for animals and a slaughterhouse for a thousand dead sheep, a million disembowelled pigs, the split carcasses of cattle. But it was a different sort of death tonight that demanded Professor Hatton’s attention.
Back in the cutting room, Albert Roumande wobbled precariously on a rickety chair, risking life and limb, but determined to hang up another posy of dried herbs to drive the scent of death away, because as chief diener – a word meaning only ‘servant of the morgue’ – his work covered all matters of sanitation, odour control, preserving and pickling, the procurement of newfangled instruments, knife sharpening and bookkeeping. Added to which, being a man of rare intellect and an avid reader of everything from
The Lancet
to
The London Medical Gazette
, when it came to understanding the nuances of anatomy, in truth, he was barely a whisper away from Professor Hatton himself.
Roumande jumped down from the chair with remarkable dexterity as he announced, ‘If the summer keeps up at this temperature, we’ll soon be awash with corpses. But where and how to store them without buckets of ice?’ He scratched his head. ‘That’ll be the next problem. The heat is choking the city, but at least we’ve someone committed to help us, at last.’ He turned to their apprentice, Patrice. ‘But no peace for the wicked, eh? Go and get those cadavers onto the dissection slab, lad, and then I’ve got a treat for you.’
The boy wiped his hands on his apron and beamed. ‘A treat? For me, monsieur?’
‘Learning and erudition, Patrice. You’ve been with us for almost a fortnight now and you can’t always be scrubbing and mopping. Put on some gloves, don a mask, and you can observe your first cholera cutting. Is that permissible, Professor?’
Hatton nodded, happy to leave such matters to Albert Roumande. A man who excelled not only in all things to do with the running of the morgue, but whose sage advice was something Professor Hatton – the younger man, at thirty-five – had come to rely on. For example, on how to raise children – ‘
With love, Adolphus, nothing but love
.’ On how to sharpen a knife, ‘
Always, Professor. Against the blade
.’ On matters of dissection, ‘
I think you’ve missed a bit, Professor
.’ And matters of the heart, ‘
Like birds need the sky, and stars need the moon, a man needs a wife, Adolphus …
’
But tonight was not a night to contemplate matters of the heart. There was work to do. Standing under a sign which said
Perfect Specimens for an Exacting Science
– cherry red on Prussian blue – Hatton carefully inspected an array of surgical instruments, embossed with the doctor’s initials –
ARH esq
.
‘The smallest, I think, for the child’s gut,’ Hatton said to the sliver of silver in his hand.
‘I agree with you, Professor,’ said Roumande, rolling back his sleeves. ‘Here, Patrice, step up to the cadaver. See these scissors? They are typically used to separate the membranes out from the muscle. Each fold, each cavity may unlock a secret. Step forward, but touch nothing. Observe the organs carefully because later we shall expect you to draw them.’
Hatton prepared to delve in, to feel the flesh rip against the blade, and the muscle melt against metal. Muffled behind his calico mask, he said, ‘See here, as I draw the blade.’ Hatton sliced the torso of a young Irish girl, creating a purple slit, a seeping Y, running through the skin down to the pelvis and then back again to her right breastbone.
Roumande stood ready with a large pair of coal tongs, peering over the corpse and adding, ‘A perfect skin flap, and the infection is clearly
denoted by the telltale blood. It resembles crème de cassis,
n’est ce pas
?’
The youth spluttered, ‘
Excusez-moi
, monsieur.
S’il vous plaît
. Please, wait … wait a moment, monsieur.’
‘I have him.’ Roumande crooked his arm around their apprentice. ‘Here, steady now. Sit down for a moment, but what on earth’s the matter? You’ve seen umpteen dissections before.’
Patrice put his head between his legs and retched into a nearby bucket, wiping his mouth. ‘
Excusez-moi, excusez-moi
…’
‘Is it the girl that upsets you? Or the fear of these infected bodies?’
‘It’s the black blood, like a witch or the devil’s …’
‘Cholera isn’t the prettiest.’ Roumande patted Patrice on the back, and then turning to Hatton, said, ‘The smalls will be more interesting for Mr Farr, don’t you think? And we’re in luck tonight for we’ve a couple of babes, here.’
Hatton didn’t reply, his eyes still intent on the girl.
‘Lost in thought, Adolphus?’ asked Roumande.
Hatton shrugged. ‘You’re right, Albert. We should concentrate on the smalls.’ He pointed his scalpel at the micelike shrouds. ‘And I’d wager those babies are twins.’
‘My thoughts exactly, Professor. To compare the onset of fever on cadavers of the same nature will perhaps be worth a few extra guineas for Mr Farr? And I couldn’t sleep tonight if we dissected the girl. She must have been a sight for sore eyes, before the cholera took her.’
She was maybe fourteen, girlish yet womanly, on the cusp of life before she died, thought Hatton, as Roumande bent down to study the girl a little closer, saying, ‘There’s a priest in Soho might be willing to bury her. Though where he puts them is a mystery, for they can’t be buried in the
confines of the city.’ Roumande turned to their apprentice. ‘All cholera corpses by rights should be incinerated. The Board of Health insists upon it. And yet here lies the prettiest of creatures, an innocent and a Catholic, as well. Well, what do you think, Patrice? Do we burn her like meat?’
The morgue wasn’t a democracy, thought Hatton to himself, and not all opinions mattered. Hatton was all for self-improvement, being of humble origins himself, but there were limits. And more to the point, was this dead child really worth the trouble? But before Hatton could say any of this, the lad spoke up, ‘I know the priest. It’s Father O’Brian at the Sacred Heart in Soho who buries them. Special dispensation for Catholics, Professor, because in death we don’t like to be burnt, monsieur.’
Professor Hatton lifted a handful of the dead girl’s red gold hair. Auburn curls, pallid lips, and lids of ash. ‘Very well, take her to the priest, for she’s at peace now. But mind yourself, Patrice. We’ve strict rules for cholera cadavers. There’s still the curse of disease upon her, so tell no one what you have on the cart. Only the priest, Father O’Brian, do you hear? If we can give one of these poor children some dignity, so be it.’
An hour passed, as Hatton sat quietly, not fighting the sense of loss which always overcame him after so many gone forever. In the winter, he would pull up his chair close to the huge stone grate. A roaring fire would warm his body, if not his soul. But this was summer. No fire was lit. The cholera girl had been delivered to the priest and the lad was back at his station again, as Hatton shut his eyes, listening to Roumande, slipping in and out of French, with his ‘
Oui! Attention!
Do it like this’ and ‘
Mais, non! Non, non, non. Écoute
. Do it like that.’
They had worked together long enough for Roumande to know that
the Professor needed a pause for contemplation on life, and what it really meant when it ended.
The filigree watch in Hatton’s fob pocket ticked.
Perhaps twenty minutes passed before the Professor found the wherewithal to stand up, brush himself down, move over to the chipped enamel sink, and peer at himself, noting the worn-out face of a solitary man.
‘It irks me,’ said Hatton, still looking in the mirror.
‘What’s that, Professor?’ asked Roumande.
‘Mr Farr specifically asked me to do the cholera work, and yet all my findings must be checked by Dr Buchanan, our hospital director, but he’s a physician and knows nothing of pathology. He simply wants to ingratiate himself with Mr Farr and all those eminent gentlemen at the Board of Health.’
Roumande shook his head. ‘It’s been a long night. You’re tired, Adolphus, and still upset about the girl.’
‘No, Albert. It’s not just the girl. Our budget review is tomorrow at nine,
remember
?’
Roumande gave a shrug,
but of course
.
Moving over to his desk, and opening a drawer, Hatton found his favoured chisel blade. ‘The usual squabbling at the trough, Albert. You should see the other doctors and their sycophantic ways. It’s a disgrace.’ He nicked the wood; little shards were flying up. ‘They come to the meeting laden down with chocolates, bottles of Cognac, cigars for Dr Buchanan, but I shan’t do it. There’s no dignity in it, and anyway’ – he stabbed the desk, hard – ‘forensics isn’t a priority at this hospital. Never shall be, never will be.’