He steps through the dark opening into another space, a workshop for a decidedly darker form of work. A restraining chair dominates the central part of the space. Behind it, a smoked glass screen. Directly in front of the restraining chair a white sheet has been hung on the wall — an improvised screen to catch a magic lantern’s projected image.
The bell jangles frantically.
He steps behind the smoked glass screen and tugs at a large handle. At the far end of the room, a tall metal door springs open.
“Why make us wait?” an impatient voice calls as its owner, the handsome Dr. Lamb bustles in, Gladstone bag gripped in one hand. Four funeral attendants dressed in black crepe stagger in behind him, lugging a cheap-deal coffin.
“How long?” Jedidiah asks.
“Less than an hour has elapsed,” Lamb answers. “Still, we must hurry… before rigor sets in.”
The funeral attendants thump the coffin to the floor and hurriedly tear loose the lid, revealing the still-cooling body of the Italian valet in his burial shroud. The kinked neck bears a purpling rope burn. The engorged face is cyanose blue, the tongue hanging loose. The funeral attendants struggle to lift the limp corpse from the coffin and drape it atop a scarred wooden operating table. Dr. Lamb drops his Gladstone beside the corpse, snatches it open, and extracts a scalpel and a bone saw. He looks up at Jedidiah. “You have the heart mechanism ready?”
“Of course.” Jedidiah brings forward the slim metal box, brassy and precisely machined.
Dr. Lamb draws up liquid from a smoky brown bottle into a horse-sized hypodermic. He raises the needle and squirts a fine jet into the air.
“What is that?” Jedidiah asks.
“Adrenaline… along with a powerful coagulant of my own devising. This time, if an artery is cut with a knife or severed by a bullet, the blood will instantly coagulate upon touching the air.”
“So this one won’t bleed out? How do you know it works?”
“The prison infirmary has many inmates lingering at death’s doorway. We had an elderly prisoner afflicted with typhus. Mere days to live. I gave him an injection of the drug. Within seconds, I was able to slice through his femoral artery. It should have produced a gushing fountain but the blood coagulated instantly. I next tried the carotid artery in the throat. The same result.”
“And the prisoner still lives?”
The doctor looks at the toy maker with puzzlement. “Certainly not. He died within minutes. The coagulant is so powerful it effectively turned his blood to stone. Of course, with the blood pressure so high, we will not have the same difficulty.”
And with that, he plunges the needle of the hypodermic into the corpse’s neck and depresses the plunger all the way. That accomplished, he sets the empty syringe aside and snatches up a huge scalpel. “Make ready with the device,” he says to Jedidiah. “My technique is advancing with practice. This one should not take as long as previous.”
He drives the scalpel into the corpse’s thorax until the blade bites into the sternum below, then draws the blade down the chest with the zeal of a butcher slicing a rump roast for an impatient customer. Moments later he has the chest cavity peeled open and the small space resounds to the bone saw’s monotonous rasp.
CHAPTER 22
CAKES AND CORPSES
When the whirling carousel of Oscar Wilde’s mind finally groaned to a shuddering standstill, he found himself sitting at a small table in the window of the Corner House teashop on the Strand. Evidently he had been there for some time, for crowding the table in front of him were no fewer than four towering sandwich stands with each of the three tiers crammed with battalions of tea sandwiches and every description of confectionary, both sweet and savory: deviled eggs, fairy cake, potted shrimp, sticky buns, mince pies, chocolate truffles, sponge cake, lemon bars, macaroons, gâteaux, malt bread, Viennese whirls, and of course, that most English of artery-clogging indulgences: Devonshire clotted crème and scones. He balanced a hot cup of tea upon a saucer. On the table before him stood two teapots, one he had already emptied and another one waiting, fully brewed and ready.
Wilde looked dozily about, fighting the peculiar sensation that his mind had gone out for a wander without him and had only just returned. The surrounding tables were fully occupied, mostly by elderly ladies taking tea. The chatter of hot gossip and the clatter of teacup against china saucer were positively clamorous. Just then, a very weary Conan Doyle trudged up to the table and collapsed in the chair opposite.
“Been looking for you all over. Fortunately, a large Irishman in the window of a teashop is quite conspicuous. I thought perhaps they were trying to raffle you off.”
Wilde spoke around the cucumber sandwich he was munching. “You look beastly.”
“I am exhausted,” Conan Doyle admitted. “I have had quite the day.”
Wilde raised his extravagant eyebrows and paused to dab butter from his lips on his napkin and wash down his mouthful with a sip of Lapsang souchong.
“I have the most extraordinary news to share.”
“Although you thought I was idling at my club, I too have news to share,” Wilde mumbled around the mouthful of sandwich he was chewing feverishly. His actions seemed manic, sped-up. Conan Doyle detected a lack of focus about his friend’s eyes and, for the first time, noticed the huge spread of food on the table.
“Good Lord, Oscar! Are you catering for a church fête?”
“I cannot stop eating the cucumber sandwiches. They must put something in them.”
Conan Doyle ogled the celebration of sandwiches and confectionaries. He was a large man whose muscular frame required regular fueling, and the aroma of whipped cream and pastry sugar set him to salivating. Wilde noticed his friend eyeing the feast and said, “By all means, Arthur, feel free to indulge. Even from here I can hear the Doylean stomach growl like a ravening beast.”
“Most kind,” Conan Doyle said. He snatched up a cucumber sandwich and inhaled it. Then followed suit with a chicken curry, and then another cucumber.
A waiter approached. “Pot of tea for you, sir?”
“Earl Grey, please, and a pot of hot water.”
The waiter whisked himself away. Conan Doyle fixed his friend with a stern gaze, leaning over the table as he spoke in a low voice. “I have some shocking news to relate to you concerning our friend Doctor Lamb.”
Wilde waved a hand. “Please can we not mention that ghastly business whilst we are dining.”
Conan Doyle snatched another sandwich and crammed it in his mouth. “Theeere wurf no bobby in the coffee.”
Wilde responded in kind: “I’m furry, whash did chewsay?”
Conan Doyle swallowed his mouthful and said. “There was a body in the coffin, but not the right one. Vicente’s corpse had been substituted with that of an older man. Judging by the man’s wasted appearance, I’d wager another denizen of Newgate.”
Wilde paused mid-chew, his long face a parody of itself. He swallowed noisily, wiped his mouth on a napkin, and said, “Oh dear. That is a very disturbing turn of events.”
“And your news?”
“After you abandoned me at Newgate, I followed the marquess.” Wilde saw the question framed in Conan Doyle’s eyes and added, “I suspected it was no coincidence he attended the execution this morning.”
“And what happened?”
“I did as your Sherlock Holmes chappie would do. I followed him,” Wilde announced theatrically.