The minutes of the Lazarus Club - By Tony Pollard Page 0,2
after pushing away, replaced the oars in their locks. Although the yard was close he thought it better to land his gruesome catch on a quieter part of the shore and so he headed downriver awhile, the body bobbing along behind. As he sat with his face to the stern he had no option but to watch as the pale form of the woman dipped beneath the water with each stroke, only to resurface a moment later. At times the free arm flexed and it looked as though she were swimming, trying to catch up with the boat.
He rowed faster.
1
Hard used, the cadaver was reduced to little more than a tattered shell and would last no longer than one more dissection. Apart from the brain, which I would remove tomorrow, all of the internal organs had been decanted into buckets sitting on the sawdust-covered floor. In one of them was the heart, along with the liver, kidneys and lungs, while in the other coiled entrails glistened like so many freshly caught fish.
William fetched a bowl of warm water and took away the buckets while I washed the gore from my hands. The boisterous press of students had departed with its usual rapidity, and believing myself to be alone, it came as a surprise to hear a bench creak as a weight shifted upon it. I looked up to catch sight of someone moving in the gloom of the gallery. Reaching the aisle, he walked down the steps towards me – a short man, shoulders hunched beneath a head perhaps too heavy for them to bear.
He stepped into the winter sunlight shafting down through the skylight. His face was round and pale, with eyes set back in caves of tired flesh. Whiskered jowls sank below the rim of his collar and only the well-defined lines of his lips, which were clamped tightly around the stub of a cigar, suggested good looks only recently worn away. His clothes were well cut but crumpled, as though he had given up taking care of his appearance. He stopped beside the operating table and looked for some moments into the yellow face of the cadaver. This man was clearly no medical student, but nonetheless there was something familiar about him.
‘It comes to us all,’ I said, wiping my instruments clean before packing them away. The stranger continued to study the cadaver, his eyes travelling down the length of the gaping torso.
‘Death perhaps, but surely not this,’ he said, without removing the cigar from his mouth nor his gaze from the corpse.
‘I think you can rest assured of that, sir. This poor soul came from the workhouse, but may as well have come from a prison.’
He looked at me and pulled out the cigar. ‘So he wasn’t robbed from his grave then? I thought that was how you fellows got hold of your bodies.’
This made me smile. ‘You have been reading too many Penny-bloods, my friend. That sordid trade came to a stop over twenty years ago, with the passing of the Anatomy Act. Now we get our subjects legally from the hospitals and the poorhouses – generally from among those who can’t afford funerals. There is no shortage of them, I’m afraid.’
I took off my surgeon’s coat and hung it on a peg before trying to extract an introduction from him. ‘I don’t recall seeing you here before. You’re not one of my students, are you?’
The cigar had long before burnt out and he looked for a suitable receptacle in which to deposit the well-chewed stump. For a moment I feared the open trough of the cadaver’s torso had been selected, but to my relief he elected to drop it into the pocket of his frock coat.
‘Oh no,’ he replied, eyes still fixed on the corpse. ‘I think I’m a little long in the tooth to be taking up a new profession. I’ve only just mastered my own and think I’ll stick with it, if you don’t mind.’ Looking up, he held out his hand. ‘Dr Phillips, let me introduce myself. Brunel’s the name.’
‘Isambard Kingdom Brunel?’ I asked, now realizing why he appeared familiar to me. The man and his engineering exploits were well known, and his portrait often accompanied articles dedicated to one or other of his creations.
His handshake displayed a strength belied by his rather unhealthy appearance. He looked back at the cadaver. ‘Yes. The engineer.’
‘The whole of London is talking about your ship. When will she be launched?’