Chapter 17
Thomas returned home to find the coroner’s men off-loading the makeshift wooden coffin into the side gate. They were accompanied by the count, who was directing proceedings. Mistress Finesilver was also watching, mindful of doors being scraped and windowpanes broken.
“Have a care, will you?” she called as the men carried the coffin on their shoulders through the narrow entrance to the laboratory and set it down on the floor.
By now the rain had stopped and pale sunlight drifted in through the high windows of Thomas’s laboratory, making it easier for him to see. Even so, he knew he had to work quickly. He had only a few hours in which to determine the cause of death and, hopefully, to provide the coroner with some clues or pointers as to who might be responsible for this dastardly crime.
“I smell blood,” said Dr. Carruthers, feeling his way into the laboratory. Since he’d gone blind, his other senses had become heightened to compensate for his lack of sight.
“Indeed you do, sir,” said Thomas, preparing himself for the postmortem. He donned his large apron to shield his clothes from bodily fluids as he worked, and made sure his hair was secured tightly at the nape of his neck. “Sir Peregrine Crisp has engaged me to work on the body of a young man found dead in his bed this morning.”
“And I am assuming there was foul play,” said the old anatomist, easing himself into a nearby chair.
“Yes, unless he managed to slit his own throat from ear to ear himself,” replied Thomas.
He pulled back the sheet in which the corpse had been transported. Already the body was beginning to turn, and rigor mortis had set in. He was glad that his mentor was sitting nearby. It was always good to bounce ideas and theories off one so knowledgeable.
“I shall examine the whole first, sir, before concentrating on the wound,” he told Dr. Carruthers.
“Indeed so.” The old man nodded.
Beginning at the young man’s feet and legs Thomas noticed nothing unusual, save for the fact that they were completely hairless. Apart from slightly more developed thigh and calf muscles, and indeed their length, they could have belonged to a boy. His abdomen was insulated with a thick layer of fat and his breasts were budding ’round the nipples, like a pubescent girl’s. Moving down to the genitals he noted that this was, indeed, a castrato.
“Moreno told Count Boruwlaski the boy had been involved in an unfortunate riding accident,” said Thomas cynically, inspecting the area.
Carruthers let out a jaundiced laugh. “Yes, I’ve heard the horses around Bologna and Rome are particularly prone to throwing their young male riders,” he quipped.
The operation to remove the testicles had obviously been carried out many years before by someone using crude instruments. The scar tissue was still rough and jagged. There was no seed, but there could still be pleasure at least. He had even heard of a castrato who was chased out of a European court for his philandering. At least that was some compensation for the agonies the boy must have suffered during the torturous procedure, thought Thomas.
“What devils do such things in the name of religion?” he muttered under his breath.
He moved up the body to the torso. “Interesting,” he remarked.
“What have you found?” Dr. Carruthers tilted his head.
Thomas ran his hands over the smooth chest and thoracic cavity. “The rib cage is much bigger than one would expect on a youth of this size.” He had often surmised that the physiology of a body could be adapted by its various uses, just as animals seemed to adapt to their natural habitats.
“Could it be the lungs are more developed than normal?” suggested the old anatomist.
“That is possibly the case.” Thomas nodded, aware that a thorough and intrusive surgical examination of the chest was out of the question.
There were just two more areas to examine before Thomas reached the neck wound: the arms and hands. Again there was no sign of bruising. Opening the stiff, pale fingers, he also scrutinized under the nails. As far as he could see they were clear; no scraps of flesh or strands of hair lurked beneath the keratin to suggest there had been any form of struggle.
“The fingernails are clean, sir,” he confirmed. “And now we proceed to the face.”
Thomas inspected the mouth cavity once more, bounded at the sides by the maxillary bones. They were still intact, but he noticed now that there were more cuts on the tongue. These, together with the lacerations on the fleshy folds of the inner lips and the broken front tooth, merely confirmed his previous suspicions.
The nose, too, once elegant and pointed, now veered slightly to one side. Probing deeper he also found that the two palatine bones that form the roof of the mouth and the floor of the nose were crushed. A huge force must have been brought to bear on the face to produce such an effect.
“We have a classic case of suffocation here, Dr. Carruthers,” he announced.
“So the poor devil was suffocated before he was sliced up,” mused the old surgeon.
“Thankfully, it would seem so,” replied Thomas. “So now we begin in earnest.” He stood upright, stretching his tired back muscles before hunching over the corpse once more, a pair of forceps and a sharp knife in his hand.
“Tell me what you see,” instructed the old surgeon.
Thomas took a deep breath. Now he was entering a realm that was familiar to him. Like a watchmaker, he knew what to expect to find in the internal workings of the human body. He understood the mechanisms of each organ, each shaft of bone and each cushion of muscle and its correlation to adjacent parts. He had come to comprehend the relationship between elements that made a hole and of corresponding functions and purposes. Yet how strange it was to be confronted with a clock case when most of its inner machineries had been removed.
“I am looking at the neck. About six inches in length from the mandible to the clavicle,” he said.
“A long one,” commented Carruthers.
“I see an incision has been made at the front of the neck just below the thyroid cartilage.”
“Incision, you say?” repeated Carruthers. “Do not murderers usually slash, or cut or gash?”
Thomas paused and nodded slowly. “That is my experience, sir, but that is why this case is so unusual.” He peered at the deep, gaping wound. The skin had been cut away in a neat and deliberate square as if it were surgical gauze. The tissues around the opening were swollen and a thin, brownish fluid had crusted around the edge, yet the cut was smooth. The blade used, he surmised, was sharp, clean, and concise.
“Go, go on,” urged Carruthers.
Thomas delved deep into the wound and probed it using a scalpel.
“Well?” The old doctor was growing impatient.
“I need to be sure,” Thomas told him, lighting a candle. “Can you hold this for me, sir? I need to be sure that my eyes are not playing tricks.”
The old doctor began to move toward the table and Thomas took his hand before folding his fingers around the candle-holder.
“If you stay there, then I will be able to confirm what I suspect,” the young anatomist told him.
Now that the area was illuminated, Thomas could see much more clearly. There was the muscular tube of the pharynx, extending from the base of the skull to its junction with the esophagus next to the ring of the cricoid cartilage. There, too, was the tip of the oropharynx, but of the larynx, which would normally lie in front of the lowest part of the pharynx, there was nothing. Between the pharynx and the level of the sixth cervical vertebra was just a dark void.
“It is as I thought, sir,” said Thomas, snuffing out the candle with his finger and thumb. “The killer has cut out the larynx and with it the vocal cords.”
“But who would do such a thing?” said Dr. Carruthers, shaking his head. “He would have to be mad.”
“Or a genius,” added Thomas under his breath as he began recovering the cadaver. It would remain in the laboratory overnight until the coroner’s men came for it at first light.
The sun had disappeared behind dark clouds once again and the report for the coroner needed to be written. By now the stench of the corpse was too bad to remain in the laboratory, so Thomas suggested that he and Dr. Carruthers finish their discussion in the house. It would be up to Franklin, Thomas’s white rat that lived in a cage in the corner of the room, to keep guard over the body until first light.
The young doctor was just locking the outer door to the laboratory when he heard footsteps on the gravel pathway.
“Who goes there?” asked the blind doctor.
“ ’Tis Count Boruwlaski,” replied Thomas, watching the little man bluster toward them.
“Count, what is the matter?” he asked, seeing the troubled look on the visitor’s face.
“Ah, Dr. Silkstone, Dr. Silkstone. It is Signor Moreno,” he cried, trying to catch his breath.
“What ails him?” frowned Thomas.
The dwarf shook his head and gulped. “They have arrested him for murder.”