You Buy Bones (30 page)

“I made a cast of a cast,” Watson nodded. “I had the cast of fine ceramic, and when it fired it shrank. Then I re-plastered the cast. The result was a smaller copy of the original. Parker thought the hands were of a five or six year old child, and he recognised the hands. It was... a bit of a long gamble, but... I had a suspicion.”

Lestrade was a moment collecting his voice. “You were right not to show him.” He said at last. “Bradstreet is a professional, Doctor. But no one should ever see such a thing.”

“No.” Watson agreed.

The smaller man ran his hand through his hair; a particular mannerism that fascinated Watson, for it went against the other's cat-like sense of neatness. “Is there some way we can put the rest of her up in a casket? Something that can be buried with the rest of her?”

“There is.” Watson nodded. “Bradstreet needn't look.”

“Good.”

They set to work. The Murder Room - Lestrade couldn't think of it any other way - was not very large, but it had many objects. Watson's concentration was jolted when he heard Lestrade pull in his breath.

By this point, Watson would have to wonder what would startle the little man. He looked up from the act of opening a thin cabinet. Lestrade was yanking thin gloves out of his coat-pocket in a fever and pulling them over his fingers. That done, he reached into a black-lacquered box and gently pulled out a withered-up hand. The skin was black from preservatives and moved like dry leather. Inside its gnarled, grotesquely swollen fingers, a fat candle of an unwholesome sallow tinge collected dust.

“Lestrade?” Watson hesitated.

Lestrade did not speak or look at him at first. “Carney Ambisinister's missing hand,” he said in a thin voice.

“Ambisinister the murderer?” Watson stepped over to take a look. “Are you certain?”

“I was on the case.” Lestrade was still staring at the thing, what had once been a living hand, between his own two. “I'd know that moon-scar on the wrist anywhere.” He was silent from the weight of his thoughts for a long moment. “I remember when they hung him, and I thought, ‘now it's over,' for it's really quite a simple thing to take a life. It only takes a moment.” The detective was pale as candle-wax. “But it never is over, not really. All you do is just take a life that's taken a life.” He swallowed hard. “All the people he'd killed had been the work of a moment. No more. But the next day, when they called to tell me the body had been desecrated, all I could think was, ‘it was supposed to be over.'”

Lestrade couldn't speak further than that. He was not as imaginative as Dr. Watson or Mr. Holmes; imagination was a pitfall in his career. But he could still see the facts in his mind. Rumours had circulated almost instantly despite the efforts of the Yard; that the hand had been turned into a Hand of Glory, a mark of witchcraft for who knew what sort of purpose?

“We need to bury him with his hand.” He said at last. “So long as we keep mum. If one ghoulish collector knows, another will know...” Bitterness was thick as sea-salt in his voice. “We found it the first time... it was being sold on the market with sorts of things you'd never want to look at, doctor... and we put it in the Archives thinking it would be safe, whilst we pondered what to do. And there it was stolen again. The reporters had their fun with us.” Something made him look down past the withered palm and his face changed, hot and swift as summer lightning.
“He left the ticket on!”
Lestrade hissed.
“I don't believe it! He left the crime ticket, still tied on to the arm-bone!”

Watson shook his head. “This will take years.” He said dully. “Only discreet inquiries will do, and they aren't as swift as the other methods.”

Lestrade swallowed. He drew filthy air into his lungs until he calmed. “I'll be taking this back with me.” He said softly. “Return it... under better guard.”

“If Holmes were here,” Watson murmured, “he would suggest a discreet burial posthaste with no one the wiser.” A mixture of understanding and disappointment rested inside his normally pleasant voice.

Lestrade was too exhausted to fumble with words. “Mr. Holmes is not the law, Doctor Watson. I am as long as I wear the Guelphic Badge. And I must make my decisions within the law.” He would ensure Holyrood was correct about the permission to bury this sad relic, but until then would keep quiet.

Watson's lips tightened fractionally under his trimmed military mustache. “And I am a soldier, Mr. Lestrade. I understand duties. We each have our own.”

Yes. But Watson, though a soldier, was turning into something else.

He would have been a perfect addition to the Yard... if his life hadn't turned to Baker Street first. He wasn't aware of it, but his character was already more than what it had been when Lestrade first met him. Holmes' influence was all well and good, but the two waters didn't mix. Holmes had never struck him as someone who would obey the law if it didn't suit him. No. He would go to his own higher power every time. And from such mistakes, anarchy and corruption began in the Yard. It was inevitable.

The two men sensed the crucial hour in the room. They were united in their desires, but chasms existed between them in their methods. Complete trust would never be possible... not if both men hoped to keep to their own moral codes.

Lestrade lowered the relic back into its case. Watson turned again to his project. They went back to work.

It was morning when Lestrade stumbled into the small room he shared with Bradstreet. He wanted to sleep, and any wayward dreams had best go elsewhere for their business: he wasn't buying any of it.

After a few minutes of lying face-down on the scratchy blanket with his entire body buzzing like a beehive from nerves, the little detective rolled over and tugged his hanging coat closer, fished in the pocket, finally pulling out a familiar little book.

Parker's collection of specialists.

He leafed to a particular page in the back. Parker had
liked
the quote of the man on the other side: a spinal-injury specialist in the Western side, who had dallied in France long enough to make an in-depth study of the unfortunate Lacenaire.
[8]

Or, rather, a particular part of Lacenaire.

The quote had been marked in pencil. Over and over.

And over and over.

Lestrade read the quote again. He couldn't help himself.

A study of Hands

-Theophile Gautier

Lacenaire

Strange contrast was the severed hand

Of Lacenaire, the murder dead,

Soaked in a powerful essence, and

Near by upon a cushion spread.

Letting a morbid fancy win,

I touched, despite my loathing sane,

The cold, hair-covered, slimy skin,

Not yet washed clean of deathly stain.

Yellow, uncanny, mummified,

Like to a Pharaoh's hand it lay,

And stretched its faun-shaped fingers wide,

Crisp with temptation's awful play;

As though an itch for flesh and gold

Lured them to horrors yet to be,

Twisting them roughly as of old,

Teasing their immobility.

A man who was truly mad might be stuck on a Hand of Glory... but would they be honest enough to admit it made them uneasy? Lestrade's guts told him Parker was useless and cruel, but... not...
irrational
.

Gregson, of all people, had a special turn of phrase for people like Dr. Parker. He called them “Incurably and cold-bloodedly sane.” Lestrade had passed the days and inexperience when he would have scoffed at Gregson's wit. Like everything else, the man's wording was a fatal blow for its effectiveness.

The courts of law could put a man to trial or bedlam for his sanity... but they couldn't do a thing about a sane man who was missing a heart and soul. Hang him, yes, but could one prove a deviant of this... extreme degree... was actually sane?

If he was a less stubborn man, Lestrade would have turned the little book to the courts. But... Watson had told him he never wanted to see the book ever again.

And really, there was no proof that the penciling was Parker's, was it?

The detective finally put the book back. He needed to talk to someone when this was over - Brother Jerome, perhaps. This was a dirty, filthy, horrible, terrible case and he could trust the little friar to help him understand it.

Watson had been called as principal witness on grounds that his name would be kept out of the papers. Lestrade and Bradstreet hadn't expected the speed of the acquiescence of the authorities, but Watson had his wish.

“Either his name or his family name means something to someone,” Lestrade muttered at the tiny book he'd been reading over and over since they'd allowed Watson the courtesy of a private moment. Through the single glass pane of the office they watched, blear-eyed, as the doctor signed his final statement with a crisp snap of the pen and passed it across the desk to the waiting official - some Gaelic title Lestrade didn't recognise.

“You knew anyone who'd share rooms with Sherlock Holmes'd be a stripe apart.” Bradstreet muttered. “But could be they just want the case kept mum.” He was living on cups of black tea and cigarillos the way his friend was living attached to his book. In the privacy of MacDonald's freezing office, they would watch everything through the open office-door. MacDonald had even pulled the rest of the specimens from Parker's little private Black Museum, so the two men were a little crowded. Still, it was a small price to pay to keep prying eyes from the pitiful remains until they were shuffled back into the morgue-storage where everything was guaranteed to be safe as houses.

“How are you feeling, Roger?” Lestrade asked bluntly.

Bradstreet grunted. He looked like he had a case of pink-eye, and shrunken hollows gave an appearance of lost weight and mass. “I don't look it,” he muttered, “but I feel... I feel weightless.” He flicked dark ash into the tray as he spoke. “It's like... well, I don't know. Like I can breathe again. And I didn't know I was missing that breath in the first place.”

Lestrade nodded his understanding. At his elbow perched a battered box for blasting-caps, with hand-painted MONOTYPE SAMPLES over the lid in bright blue. No one would guess the last remnants of Carney Ambisinister rested inside it, wrapped in more cloths than would shame a mummy. The little detective was taking no chances.

Bradstreet couldn't stand the silence. “Why
monotype
?”

“Who'd steal monotype?”

More silence. Bradstreet tried to take the question literally. It was usually the safest thing with all things Lestrade. He was still composing a response when his friend stiffened up, his dark eyes upon the door.

The doctor's limp was less pronounced; perhaps his statement about having to “move it out” was true. Relief had lifted his spine and clarity was back in his thin face that had not been there since before their collaboration.

“I'll be attending the trial,” he stopped as he came to the Inspectors, and waved them to keep their seats as he leaned forward on his walking-stick. “I also contacted some gentlemen of my acquaintance. After the full examination and recording, you will have your sister's remains. In view of the delicate circumstances, that should be within the next 60 hours. They promised to keep her name out of the papers, as well as yours...” He paused to cough into his hand. “Excuse me.” He apologised faintly. “I believe there are still particles of sawdust in my lungs.”

“Can you do anything for that?” Lestrade asked quietly.

“Oh, indubitably... just not in polite company.”

“I'll contact my family.” Bradstreet nodded, his face perfectly composed again. He had been preparing for this day for a very long time. “But, doctor, if I may.?”

“...yes?” Watson wondered as he tucked a fresh handkerchief into his sleeve.

“Dr. Watson,” Bradstreet spoke one inch at a time, and his dark eyes were fastened deeply upon the tall, tan-skinned man. “Dr. Parker... was he... intending to collect you?”

Lestrade jumped slightly. He hadn't expected Bradstreet to pay attention to anything outside his own sphere...

Watson licked his lips and chose not to answer directly. Lestrade was staring from one man to another with an uneasy expression.

“He is not... sane, I think.” He said carefully.

“No, of course he isn't.
Why
would he collect you?” Bradstreet persisted. His dark eyes were bright, almost feverish with the need to know. “All those... poor people down there, there was something significant about them. You said in your report he accidentally called you ‘something,' now that means something to
me
.”

Watson did not want to answer. He would have rather not answered for the rest of his life. He closed his eyes and took a shuddering breath. “I was his student,” he said heavily. “He was... fascinated by the wounds of war. Perhaps... because of his own.” He looked down. “So few of us came back from the desert. Jezail bullets caused amputations as much as death... he wouldn't have had much to study...”

“Ghoul.” Lestrade said under his breath. He was fixed upon the arm-bones of the tursh-toothed woman before him.

“You set yourself up as the trap. Perfectly done.” Bradstreet said softly. His eyes shone with tears.

“I let Parker believe a few falsehoods,” Watson closed his eyes, he was so tired. “I let him think those hand-casts were part of a set, and that the older casts were in the possession of your family's priest. I also intimated that the hand-casts were going to wind up in a museum someday.”

“Well he wouldn't have liked that!” Lestrade stared. “You just as well invited him to kill you to cover up his murder!”