‘Of course I’m not,’ she says, drawing a soapy finger from the tub to brush a loose curl of hair from her face. ‘Just as you cannot un-make a physician of yourself, you cannot un-see what you saw. I believe everything you told me. It’s just rather hard to comprehend, that’s all.’
‘Sir Fulke Vaesy is a very eminent man of medicine,’ Nicholas says, wondering why he’s bothering to defend his former profession. What does he care for Vaesy now? Or the College of Physicians, for that matter? They are part of someone else’s life. ‘But what kind of anatomist can oversee a dissection and not even notice that someone’s been there before him?’
‘Perhaps he’s just not as clever as he thinks he is. But I cannot say I’m surprised. All that learning, and still the barber-surgeons have to do the cutting for you. Years of study, yet you call upon apothecaries to mix your medicines. I sometimes wonder what you physicians actually do to earn those fancy gowns you wear.’
‘I threw mine away. And you’re not the only one to wonder.’
Bianca’s soapy finger has left some suds clinging to her temple. She brushes them aside with the back of her wrist. ‘Well, Master Lapsed-physician-without-a-gown, tell me again – just so I can take it all in.’
‘This is what I know for sure: the infant on Vaesy’s dissection table had been bled dry. Jacob Monkton had been eviscerated. Both had an inverted cross cut deep into their flesh, close to the extremities, severing a major blood vessel. I believe they were drained of blood via those wounds. Before they died.’
‘How do you know the cross was inverted? Wouldn’t that simply depend on which way were you looking at it?’
‘The transverse cut was at the end nearest the ankle,’ he tells her. ‘It would be more natural to make it at the upper end or in the middle.’
‘Unless the bodies were upside-down, suspended by their feet. Then the crosses would be the right way up, wouldn’t they? There’d be nothing satanic about them at all.’
‘Apart from the fact that they were made to drain out the victim’s life-blood,’ Nicholas murmurs to himself. He’d tell Bianca about the marks on Jacob Monkton’s limbs; it adds weight to her suggestion that the bodies were suspended. But he doesn’t want to risk distressing her further.
‘And that’s what killed them – the blood?’ she asks.
‘There was virtually none left in the infant, and Jacob’s evisceration came after death – I’m pretty sure of that.’
‘So why would the constable say Jacob fell into a waterwheel?’
‘An easy life, most likely. I didn’t recognize the man. He’s probably newly appointed. He can probably barely write his name, so a report to the coroner would be a labour he’d most likely rather do without. Then there’s the fact that there was no obvious culprit to hand, no witnesses to a killing. Much easier to tell the coroner it was an accident. Especially if you’re right about Jacob’s malady of the mind.’
‘And you think the killer disposed of their bodies in the river, in the expectation they’d either sink or wash out into the Narrow Sea?’
He nodded. ‘And if they didn’t – well, who’d be interested in the remains of a crippled child and a boy with addled wits? In my practice at Grass Street we used to get two or three such unfortunates washed up in the Fleet ditch every month. The question you’re going to ask me, I suppose, is why? Why kill them in such a manner?’
‘Actually, I was going to ask if this child and Jacob Monkton are the only ones.’
He’s been trying not to consider that possibility. ‘You think there could be more? God grant that there are not.’
Bianca looks up from the tub. ‘The child was crippled, Jacob addled in the wits. Perhaps the killer thinks the world would be better off without the weak. I’ve met more than a few in this parish who think like that.’
‘He’ll have his work cut out then,’ says Nicholas. ‘Think of all the men crippled by the wars in Ireland and the Low Countries, women ruined by disease and hunger, children blinded and maimed in accidents… He’s got a fine choice in this city, if that’s what he’s killing for.’
‘But bleeding one victim and gutting the other? Aren’t there easier ways to dispose of a burden, if that’s what the killer thought they were?’
‘Of course there are. And they don’t require a measure of medical knowledge.’
‘You think he has a skill in surgery?’
‘A very small skill,’ Nicholas agrees. ‘Either that or he’s a supremely incompetent physician. The way Jacob Monkton’s body was eviscerated would shame even a half-trained barber-surgeon.’
‘Perhaps he was in a hurry, frightened of discovery–’
‘In which case, exsanguination is a strange way to kill. Even a small child will take time to bleed out.’ Again Nicholas sees the wheals on Jacob Monkton’s limbs. ‘No, he was in no hurry. In my judgement, he was taking his time. He had a purpose in mind. I just can’t imagine what it was.’
‘If those wounds really were made in the form of a satanic cross, Nicholas, the likes of Bredwell and Ned Monkton would say they’re a sign of devilry. And they wouldn’t be the only ones around here to think it.’
‘Then they’re superstitious fools,’ Nicholas replies, remembering the apocalyptic sermons the vicar of Barnthorpe used to preach to his congregation each Sunday, warning that the Devil lurks behind every tree, waits on each dark country lane for the unwary and those who let their faith slip even for a moment. He’d been astonished by the congregation’s open-mouthed acceptance, their readiness to blame the lameness of a cow or the confusion of a sick and bewildered old woman on some satanic agency.
Bianca confirms what he’s thinking. ‘That may be so, Nicholas, but I can tell you, if two women walk out together on a sunny afternoon on Bankside and it suddenly starts to rain, there’s more than a few in this city will instantly call them a coven!’
‘So going to the parish with this may not be the best of ideas,’ he muses.
‘Two corpses with the mark of Satan carved into them? There’ll be a full-blown witch-hunt by sunset. They’ll find some poor innocent, force a confession out of him and then we can all have a good hanging.’ She adds harshly, ‘That’s always good for business, if nothing else.’
‘We can’t just do nothing, Bianca. We can’t simply wait for the next poor soul to wash up on the tide. If there have been others, we need to find out.’
‘And just how will you do that?’ she asks.
‘They took Jacob Monkton’s body to the mortuary at St Tom’s – I heard the constable say so. The mortuary porter there will have made a note of injuries and marks for the coroner and for the parish mortuary roll. If there have been others, perhaps they’ll be on his records, too.’
Bianca drops the linen onto a nearby bench, where it lands with a heavy sodden thud – a little too much, for Nick’s taste, like the sound Jacob Monkton’s gutted corpse made on the Mutton Lane stairs.
‘The mortuary porter?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘At St Tom’s?’
‘He should be able to tell me, if anyone can.’
Bianca raises her eyes to the ceiling. ‘He might,’ she says, ‘if you hadn’t punched him in the face, and I hadn’t cursed him to the Devil. The mortuary porter at St Tom’s is your old sparring partner, Ned Monkton.’