The moon was barely visible behind heavy cloud cover. Still there was enough light to see the wagon and swing the dead girl into the pile of corpses.
“Christ, I could feel the crystals of ice melting in her hair where my hands touched,” Cruncher said. “Here, warm up. Have some brandy.”
When I weighed the flask in my hand and hesitated, he said: “Finish it and don’t worry. I’ve got a bottle stashed under the seat in Perry’s hearse.”
That made me laugh and I snorted and coughed, spraying brandy onto the bodies.
“Hey, don’t waste it on the stiffs—they’ve already been baptized.”
That made me laugh harder and bending over, cough more. Cruncher pounded my back.
“All right now, Sykes?”
“Yes,” I said, straightening up and giggle-coughing into my fist.
“Good,” he said, and gave my shoulder a light squeeze that had, I thought, all the camaraderie in the world behind it.
“We might as well get a good haul,” Perry was saying to Winterbourne and O’Rourke as I re-entered the crypt. “We’ve got the wagon and I know of another medical institution that will pay good money for any left-overs. If there are any . . . ”
“Sure, Professor,” Winterbourne said. “As many as you like. Me and Freddie are as strong as oxes.”
“Freddie and I,” Perry automatically corrected. “And it’s not oxes,” he paused, catching sight of me. “Never mind. Oh, Sykes, perhaps you could start opening a few crates on the east side of the vault? Where’s Van Dyson got to?”
“Right here, Professor,” Cruncher said from behind a coffin near the door. He caught my eye and mimed refilling his flask.
“Excellent. Hard as hell to keep track of things with all these caskets lying chockablock about. Well, I was just saying to young Winterbourne and O’Malley here—”
“O’Rourke, sir.” Winterbourne took a step sideways and tromped on Freddie’s foot.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, sir,” O’Rourke said.
“Good. Please don’t interrupt. First year students have that habit and it’s a bad one. Never learn a damn thing that way. What was I saying?”
“About the haul, Professor,” Cruncher said.
“Yes. You partner up with Sykes and get to work on the caskets on my left here. It’s better to take a few from each area—less likely the gravediggers will notice. They won’t, anyhow—morons, the lot of them.”
We snaked toward the eastern wall.
From across the vault, Perry was saying “Now, even if we pick up too many for our own students, we can always render bodies down to bone. There are medical schools in sore need of skeletons. I can show you how to articulate a specimen. It’s quite an art,”
“Yes, Professor,” O’Rourke said.
“Like to learn that skill, O’Malley?”
“You bet.”
“Good lad, you never know if you’ll get through all four years and it’s good to have a trade—a lucrative trade—to fall back on . . . ”
“Did Perry make you learn how to articulate a skeleton?” Cruncher said in a low voice as we started to pry open the first lid.
“No. What about you?”
“No, but I watched—from a distance—but very closely, so I know how it’s done. I guess he figures ‘O’Malley’ doesn’t have much chance making it through the program.” He dropped a coffin nail in the pocket of his leather apron.
“Or if he does get a degree, Perry thinks he’s only going to treat shanty Irish, anyhow,” I said.
“God save the Queen,” Cruncher said, winking. “Dyson is strictly English. The Van in my name is from my mother’s family.” Cruncher tilted the flask and took a long swallow; then he passed the brandy across the coffin to me. I had a drink and handed it back.
“Ready?”
He nodded and we lifted the lid away,
“Aaugh!” I stepped back, pressing my sleeve against my nose and mouth. The stench rising out of the casket was unbelievable.
“Not quite frozen yet,” Cruncher said.
I felt myself beginning to retch.
“Here, sit down a minute.”
I sat on the cold floor and lowered my chin between my knees.
“Put some of this under your nose.”
He handed me a small round tin.
“It’s camphor ointment with a little peppermint and lavender.” He pulled aside his makeshift mask and I saw it gleaming above his upper lip. “Keeps the reek safely at bay.”
“She has the pox,” I said.
“No question there; her dancing days are done.”
I laughed weakly.
“And for godssake, take this handkerchief and tie it on.”
Maybe he saw me blush, or maybe it was because I didn’t immediately put my hand out for it when he took it from his pocket. “Go on, use it. I don’t give a good goddamn if you don’t have a handkerchief, Sykes. You’re smart. I like intelligent people.”
I smeared on a thick dollop of the waxy cream. He has magic pockets, I thought irrationally. What’s next? A white rabbit, a flock of parrots?
“That’s right, cover your mustache hole,” he said.
I took the handkerchief—heavy linen—and monogrammed JVD, and began to fold it.
“Thanks, Jerry.”
“Don’t let the monogram show, a gentleman never does.” Above the makeshift mask, his eyes were merry.
“I know,” I said, tying it on, then standing up again and looking down at the woman’s hideously scarred face. “Terrible. Even her eyelids.”
“Maybe her eyes, too. She might have died blind.” He leaned over and lifted the scabrous flap of flesh and I saw that the sclera of her right eye had gone red from hemorrhage. He whispered, “Let’s take her, Sykes . . . think of what we could learn dissecting her.”
I realized that avarice I’d seen in his eyes earlier was for knowledge, even forbidden knowledge. But it didn’t stop me from interjecting, “Are you mad?”
He held up his gloved hands and waggled his fingers. “Nothing to worry about, Sykes. Seriously.”
I put my face up to his until we met like a bridge over the body and were nearly nose-to-nose. “The scabs . . . she’ll contaminate all the other bodies . . . ”
“Chuck her to one side at the bottom of the wagon, once we’re in the lab we can spray ’er and any of the others in proximity with phenol—no one’s going to get sick.”
“The professor—”
“It’s dark, he’s old and tired, he won’t see a thing. And a little judiciously dispensed cash will keep O’Rourke and Winterbourne shut up if they do notice her; and we make sure we’re the ones to haul our specimen out of the cart.”
“But in the lab—the others are bound to notice tomorrow when it’s daylight . . . ”
“We’ll start tonight, we’ll hide her till we’re done. Sykes, this could be the making of our careers.”
He didn’t say, Especially yours. We both knew that medical school scholarship boys were lucky to eke out a living—and they had to compete with midwives and barber-surgeons and even dentists. “What about afterward, Van Dyson?”
I saw the corners of his eyes crinkle and tilt upward and knew he’d smiled behind his mask. “That’s pie, Sykes, pure pie. We cut her up, flense and boil her to get rid of the grease; then we can articulate the skeleton.”
“And?”
“Keep it for a souvenir in your office or sell it. But I’m betting that when we’re done dissecting, neither of us will have to concern ourselves with anything more than where we’re going to display our Copley Medals. Just think. We’ll be in the company of Franklin and Gauss and Ohm.”