“St. Katharine’s is a dangerous place,” said Sebastian. “Especially at night. What the devil were you doing there?”
Gibson’s gaze drifted away. “I . . . I sometimes feel the need to walk, of an evening.”
Sebastian studied his friend’s flushed, half-averted face and wondered what the hell would drive a one-legged Irish surgeon to wander the back alleys of St. Katharine’s on one of the coldest nights of the year. “You’re lucky you didn’t fall victim to these footpads yourselves.”
“Footpads had nothing to do with this.”
Sebastian raised one eyebrow. “So certain?”
Gibson nodded to the middle-aged matron who dozed in a slat-backed wooden chair beside the fire. “Keep an eye on the woman,” he told her. “I won’t be long.”
To Sebastian, he said, “There’s something I want you to see.”
Chapter 3
At the base of the frost-browned, unkempt yard that stretched to the rear of the surgery stood a low stone outbuilding where Gibson conducted both his official postmortems and the surreptitious, illegal dissections he performed on cadavers filched from the city’s churchyards by body snatchers. Of one room only, with high windows to discourage the curious, the building had a flagged floor and was bitterly cold. At its center stood a granite slab with strategically placed drains and a channel cut into the outer edge.
The body of a man, still fully clothed, lay upon it.
“I haven’t had a chance to begin with him yet,” said Gibson, hooking the lantern he carried onto the chain that dangled over the slab.
It sometimes seemed to Sebastian as if every suicide, every bloated body pulled from the Thames, every decaying cadaver that passed through this building, had left a stench that seeped into its walls, their muted howls of anguish and despair echoing still.
He took a deep breath and entered the room. “If St. Katharine’s authorities are convinced he was killed by common thieves, I’m surprised they agreed to an autopsy.”
“They weren’t exactly what you might call enthusiastic. To quote Constable O’Keefe”—Gibson puffed out his cheeks, narrowed his eyes, and adopted a decidedly nasal accent—“‘Wot ye want t’ be botherin’ wit’ all that fer, then? Sure but any fool can see wot killed him.’” The lantern swung back and forth on its chain, casting macabre shadows across the slab and its grisly occupant. He put up a hand to still it. “I had to promise I wouldn’t be charging the parish for my services. And I paid the lads who carried the body here myself.”
Sebastian studied the slim, slightly built man upon the surgeon’s slab. He was young yet, probably no more than twenty-six or twenty-eight, with a pleasant, even-featured face and high forehead framed by soft golden curls. His clothes were of good quality—better than the woman’s and considerably newer, fashionably cut in the Parisian style and showing little wear. But what had once been a fine silk waistcoat and linen shirt were now ripped and soaked with blood, the chest beneath hacked open to reveal a gaping cavity.
“What the hell? He looks like he was attacked with an axe.”
“It’s worse than that,” said Gibson, tucking his hands up under his armpits for warmth. “His heart has been removed.”
Sebastian raised his gaze to the Irishman’s solemn face. “Please tell me he was already dead when this was done to him.”
“I honestly don’t know yet.”
Sebastian forced himself to look, again, at that ravaged torso. “Any chance this could be the work of a student of medicine?”
“Are you serious? Even a butcher would have been more delicate. Whoever did this made a right royal mess of it.”
Sebastian shifted his gaze to the dead man’s face. His eyes were large and widely spaced, the nose prominent, the mouth full lipped and soft, almost feminine. Even in death, there was a gentleness and kindness to his features that made what had been done to him seem somehow that much more horrible.
“You say he was a physician?”
Gibson nodded. “He was staying at the Gifford Arms, in York Street. The constables brought round a gentleman from the hotel—a Monsieur Vaundreuil—to identify him.”
“Yet he couldn’t identify the woman?”
“Said he’d never seen her before. He also said he’d no notion what Pelletan might have been doing in St. Katharine’s.” Gibson rubbed the back of his neck. “I should mention that, along with his papers, the constables also found a purse containing both banknotes and silver.”
“Yet they’re convinced he fell victim to footpads?”
“The theory is that the thieves were interrupted.”
“By you?”
“I certainly didn’t see anyone. But then . . .”
“But then—what?” asked Sebastian.
Gibson colored. “I was rather lost in my own thoughts.”