The Reckoning

While Hawkwood had been leading skirmish parties against French forward positions, the 36th Regiment, along with others, had been engaged in a decisive rear-guard action on the opposite flank. Moore’s army had saved the day, albeit at the cost of his own life, and the evacuation had been completed. The 95th and the 36th had been among the last troops to embark.

The sexton took his time answering. Swirling the dregs of the brandy around the inside of his mug, he tipped the drink back and placed the empty receptacle on the table. Drawing a sleeve across his lips, he looked Hawkwood full in the eye.

“Every bleedin’ day.”

4 (#u9bc2c893-a59f-50c2-9ea5-dc6435b02e3e)

Rumour had it that Quill had once served in the Royal Navy and that he’d been wounded in action at the Battle of Lissa while serving aboard HMS Volage under Phipps Hornby. Hawkwood had no idea if the rumours were true. From his own limited experiences of life on board a man-o’-war, he thought Quill did have the look of someone who might be at home between decks, though not as a surgeon; more likely as the captain of a gun crew. He had a bruiser’s stature. The shaven, bullet-shaped skull added to the mystique. It wasn’t hard to imagine him screaming orders, surrounded by sweaty, hard-pressed men ramming powder and shot down the barrel of a 32-pounder while enveloped in a world of fire, flame and flying splinters.

And yet, on the occasions that Hawkwood had visited him, there had been no visible sign of a wounding and he’d always appeared remarkably affable, which, given the nature of his work and the environment in which he laboured, was something of a miracle. Quill was the surgeon appointed by the Coroner to perform necropsies, usually whenever the circumstances of death were outside the ordinary. His place of work was a dead house.

Quill’s dead house was located in a dark and gloomy cellar – formerly a crypt – situated beneath an annexe of Christ’s Hospital. With St Bartholomew’s just around the corner, it was a convenient staging post for transferring bodies from hospital to grave. The authorities had been using it for decades, mostly because they hadn’t had to make any structural alterations.

Sleeves rolled up above his elbows, Quill was bent over one of his examination tables when Hawkwood arrived.

“Door!” he commanded with his customary opening brusqueness. He did not turn immediately, but when he did, he smiled upon recognizing his visitor. In the gloom, his breath misted as he spoke. “Officer Hawkwood! Hah! I was warned you’d be along.”

It was a macabre vision, for the surgeon’s hands were red with gore, as was the apron he was wearing. Hawkwood couldn’t recall a time when he hadn’t seen Quill in his bloody apron and didn’t like to think what the rest of the stains might be. Beneath the examination table, the flagstone floor was slick with dark fluids.

“Warned?” It was all Hawkwood could do not to clamp a hand over his nose and mouth, for the smell was appalling; worse than anything at the burying ground.

Quill grinned. Clearly unmoved by the reek coming off the bodies around him, he also seemed unaffected by the cold. Beads of sweat shone across his bald pate and Hawkwood could have sworn there was steam rising from the apron. He’d seen similar sights when heat appeared to ascend from the innards of wounded and just-killed soldiers; and in Smithfield slaughterhouses, too, on market day. But these bodies weren’t warm; they were anything but. He decided it had to be a trick of the light.

“Good to see you again,” Quill said. “I take it you’re here for the St George’s cadaver?”

Hawkwood realized the surgeon was clasping a scalpel in his right hand. His stomach turned.

“I am.”

“I couldn’t have examined it where it was?”

“If you had,” Hawkwood said, “you’d have ended up like me.”

The surgeon studied the gap in Hawkwood’s coat and beneath it the stained breeches and boots to which the mud was still clinging.

“You think that would have made a difference?” Spreading his arms, the surgeon invited Hawkwood to inspect his apron.

“It was a burying ground. It was in the wet and I didn’t think it was a proper place to perform an examination.”

“There wasn’t convenient shelter nearby?”

Hawkwood thought about Sexton Stubbs’ cottage. “No.”

“And, in any case,” Quill said wryly, “you wanted it done directly.”

Hawkwood nodded. “Yes.”

Quill fixed him with an accusing eye. “You thought I would move your find to the front of the queue?”

The inference was clear. There were procedures when it came to performing necropsies. Surgeons like Quill worked for the Coroner, but the latter couldn’t act without permission from a justice of the peace. Since inquests were expensive, they were ordered only when there was evidence of violence or the cause of death was suspicious. However, if the death involved someone from the impoverished layers of society, many justices would rule an inquest unnecessary; thus there would be no crime to investigate. Hawkwood was relying on his past association with Quill in a bid to circumvent the system.

Hawkwood glanced around the room. It looked as though the surgeon was behind in his work. Below the curved roof, the walls were lined with bodies, awaiting either examination or dispatch to their place of interment. It wasn’t hard to see why Quill, despite their past dealings, might be irked by another one turning up unannounced.

But when he turned, the smile was back, which could only mean one thing.

“You’ve already taken a look,” Hawkwood said. “Haven’t you?”

Placing the scalpel on the examination table and removing a blood-stained cloth from behind his apron string, Quill wiped his hands. “As it’s you, I have – and it’s not pretty, though she was once, I think, poor mite.”

The surgeon moved to an adjacent table and then stepped aside to provide Hawkwood with a better view.

Covered to the neck by a grubby sheet, the body was lying on its side in almost the same position in which it had been found. Hawkwood thought about the dead woman’s naked state and the pit she’d been lifted from and how many bodies there might have been buried beneath her. Tied, thrust into a sack, cast down into a stranger’s grave and then covered with a filthy shroud that would have been used on God knew how many other remains; if ever proof were needed that the dispossessed were robbed of all dignity, even in death, this was it. The one redeeming feature, if it could be called such, was that the corpse’s eyes were no longer wide and staring, but half-closed. Presumably, Quill had taken advantage of the rigor leaving the body to make the adjustment. The cord, Hawkwood saw, had been cut from her wrists.

“You’ll appreciate it’s been only a short time since I took delivery,” Quill said, “and that my initial examination was somewhat cursory.”

“I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

“As you wish.” Tucking the cloth back into his apron, Quill placed both hands on the table and gazed down at the remains. “We have a young female – eighteen to twenty-five years of age or thereabouts. Cause of death: asphyxia … strangulation.” The surgeon paused, as if mulling over his diagnosis. “Probably.”

“Probably?”

“There is noticeable bruising under the throat, caused by some sort of ligature.” Quill pointed towards the corpse’s jawline. “Possibly the same cord that was used to bind her wrists and ankles.”

“Her ankles were tied as well?”

Quill shrugged philosophically. “Easier to fit her in the sack.”

There was less engrained dirt than Hawkwood remembered as he gazed down upon the remains. From the state of the water in a tin bowl placed by the corpse’s feet, Quill had already made a token effort to wipe the body down prior to his examination. As a result, the discoloration in the skin was even more pronounced than it had been when Hawkwood had observed it at the bottom of the pit.

“And if it wasn’t … strangulation?”

“There are several contusions, a fracture of the zygomatic – the cheekbone – as well as dislocation of the mandible. There is also damage to the left side of the skull. Here, you see?”

“She was beaten?”

“Severely, I’d say.”

“Beaten and throttled?”

“Yes. But then you’d already guessed that before you brought her up, am I right?” The surgeon eyed him perceptively.

“I thought it was a possibility, from the parts of her I could see.”

“Which is why you referred her to me.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“The constable described the circumstances in which she was found. Clearly she was not meant to be discovered.”