The high ceiling with exposed beams rendered the schoolroom only marginally less cold than outside. As I closed the door, making a great racket, the children turned and stared. A schoolmistress approached along the aisle, which divided the desks in two sections, her heels echoing over the woodblock floor.
“Get on with your work!”
With her plain, stern features, and hair stretched above her scalp in a stiff bun, there was little resemblance to her handsome half-brother. The doctor spoke almost in a whisper. “I’m sorry for the sudden intrusion. Miss Appleby here wishes to talk to you about Tobias.”
“What? Have you lost all sense, Doctor?”
She peered around as if there might be spies among the pupils. Breathing fiercely through her nose, she ordered the doctor to take the class for a moment then led Miss Appleby and me into a windowless storeroom. The smells of boxed chalk, new pencils, water-based paints, and fresh paper reminded me of school as a little boy. Also, the schoolmistress’s strict manner prompted a peculiar echo of crimeless guilt, as if we were about to be scolded for our existence alone.
“Who are you?”
Miss Appleby introduced us and said that her business was fighting injustice.
“Injustice?” The schoolmistress spoke as if the word were a profanity. “What can you do?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. But anything is worth a try, wouldn’t you say?”
“Poking your nose in looking for trouble is bad for everybody.”
“I’m not seeking trouble, madam, merely the truth.”
“The truth is there is no justice in this life. Tobias is doomed. We just have to accept that and get on with things.”
“But if the real murderer is at large still, and we do nothing and he acts again, how could we live with that on our conscience?”
“Don’t lecture me about moral duty! You should try spending a lifetime in this town first.”
“What if your brother is innocent?”
“Of course he is innocent.”
“Then who murdered Charlotte Crane?”
“Her father, naturally.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Call it instinct, or a good judge of character, whatever you like. Miss Appleby, have you ever been in love?”
She swallowed uncomfortably. “Once, yes.”
“Then you understand it would be impossible for Tobias to kill Charlotte. They were sweethearts. It carried on for months in secret but the silly girl read too many novels, Wuthering Heights in particular. She was dazzled by romantic notions and grew complacent, visiting him at the quarry for all the men to see. They were planning to marry, to run away together. Crane found out, followed her up there and, after beating Tobias to within an inch of his life, strangled his own daughter. You see, for her to marry a boy of lower class would have brought shame on the Crane family. Such a proud, cruel man, her death was simply about honour over public disgrace.”
The bedroom was very dark and cold as I stepped barefoot across the floorboards. I lit the lamp then dressed, my shadow jerking in the half-light. When ready, I knocked on Miss Appleby’s door.
She shovelled coal in the grate, ignited twists of newspaper, then dragged the strongbox nearer the warmth. “Each time I prepare, I am reminded of that darkest period of my life, and the moment I first laid eyes on the surrogate. I shall never forget. In that sense, I feel I should warn you.”
“Oh?”
“The experience you are about to witness is most distressing.”
“Then why do it? What made you want to continue your father’s work? I’m interested to know what motivates you.”
She seemed annoyed by my questions. “Duty, Mr. Creswell, Papa’s final wishes. Can you understand that?”
“To some degree I suppose, but not if—”
“He was lying in his casket in the living room, only hours after he was lynched. The family solicitor paid us a visit. He handed me bundles of papers and a modified oak strongbox. There were detailed instructions for the apparatus, and a recipe for the feed. The final instruction I found most difficult to undertake. But I managed to bring him back for half a minute.”
“You brought your father back?”
She nodded, tearful now. “He groaned pitifully, but was unable to speak. I wept, tried reassuring him that what had happened wasn’t his fault. I didn’t know it then, Mr. Creswell, but the newer the corpse means the less work for the surrogate. The surrogate is merely a means to recall rather than a tool for sustaining the process. A returnee to a fresh body attempts instinctively to use their own damaged organs and not the surrogate’s, their larynx instead of the brass horn. Yet, despite my ignorance at that time, it was obvious Papa’s vocal tract had been crushed by the rope. Still, his lips kept puckering until finally I understood what he was trying to communicate and placed a pen in his cold fingers. Naturally it was not the neatest handwriting, but I could make out the words he scrawled.”
“Which were?”
“Save them, Mr. Creswell. My father implored me to save them. And you ask what motivates me?”
Soon after we were outside in the freezing night air. A growing dread was pressing on my heart, and I soon grew fatigued from carrying the strongbox along the dark streets to the chapel. On arrival, I placed it on a patch of grass and leaned against the cold wall, grateful for the rest, yet feeling that I had no control over what I was venturing into. The chapel, a drab building with a single domed window at the front, stood on a sharp gradient like everything else in that town. A hazy sliver of moon cast little light, and my eyes strained to see the silhouetted figure trudging slowly up the hill towards us, past the terraces then the workingmen’s club on the corner.
“I fail to see why you employed his services,” the doctor said to Miss Appleby, watching the lumbering figure also. “He cannot be trusted.”
“I’m not cut out for manual labour and neither are you and Mr. Creswell by the look of it. Sometimes one has to take risks.”
Pugh complained about the late hour and the cold, but when the doctor handed over several pound notes, he quieted. We entered through black gates then trod over frosty turf around the headstones until we arrived at the Crane family plot, conspicuous by the pale imposing edifices looming in the darkness. One statue was clean and new, a winged angel sculpted from white marble. Miss Appleby laid the wreaths to one side then Pugh went to work hacking at the icy crust with the spade edge.
We waited in silence; the only sounds Pugh’s laboured breathing, the scrape of the spade and the wind rushing through the spindly trees that bordered the perimeter. Fortunately, beneath the hard surface, the soil was softer otherwise it might have taken the gaoler half the night to complete his trench. When his tool struck hollow wood, Miss Appleby jumped down to help lift the casket lid. Pugh crossed himself as the stink wafted up. I stood at the edge of the trench. It was too dark to see anything. Miss Appleby lit an oil lamp and placed it low inside to conceal the glow. Now I was able to see Charlotte’s condition. The skin had begun to bloat, ripening to dark coppery tones, a grotesque contrast to the pretty white bonnet and the frock with bows and frills.
“I’m not confident,” Miss Appleby muttered to me. “The longer a corpse is laid to rest the harder it is to recall, and the more painful for those brought back if successful. It also means the surrogate will have to work hard, dangerously so, which worries me.”
Quickly, she unpacked the box, unravelled wires and tubes and connected them to the cadaver, including a copper disc which she tucked inside the dress’s buttons and placed against the heart. She yanked a brass lever. A soft beating sounded, to which Charlotte’s body began to gently spasm in rhythm. Pugh, standing in the trench still, muttered a prayer as milky serum sluiced through the catheters and into Charlotte’s decayed circulatory system.