“I’ve been asking after you,” Quire said before the scavenger could speak.
“Aye, sir, aye. I heard as much. I’ve no been well.” Carstairs extended a trembling hand, regarding it with a sad, piteous gaze. “The palsy’s on me something dreadful, and my chest…”
He gave a thick, richly textured cough by way of illustration and bestowed upon Quire a mournful smile.
“Is it your body that’s ailing or your conscience, Shake?”
“Oh, sir. You may have the right of it there. They say you’re a sharp one, and so you are. Body and conscience, and wife too. There’s the truth. D’you ken my wife at all, sir?”
“I don’t.”
“No, of course not. Well, have you a wife yourself, then, sir?”
“No.”
“Well, my wife is a wife of a certain sort, sir. A righteous sort. A righteous woman, and not blessed with great patience for a poor sinner like myself. But for her, and for my conscience—but for the needles of the pair o’ them—I’d be in my sickbed still, not come here seeking after yourself.”
“Well, you’ve found me now.”
“Aye, sir. That I have.”
The scavenger rose unsteadily to his feet, one arm reaching for the wall to lever himself up, the other dancing at his side. Quire clenched his own left hand to still a sympathetic tremor; one infirmity called up by another. He grasped the old man’s elbow, taking what little weight there was to take.
“Can we speak, the two of us, somewhere a wee bit more private?” Shake asked, casting nervous glances around.
There were watchmen and policemen passing to and fro, and a steady traffic of townsfolk in search of succour, or delivering accusations, or asking after relatives. And there was Lieutenant Baird, standing in the doorway. He was deep in conversation with one of the members of the day patrol, but his eyes were drawn to Quire and to Carstairs.
“I can’t speak easy unless I ken it’s just you that’ll be hearing me, d’you see?” Shake murmured.
“Come, then,” said Quire, and gently guided Carstairs into a quiet side passage.
Shake’s hands began to leap and flutter with unease when he saw where he was being taken. The dark cells stood open and silent, like waiting mouths.
“Best place, if you don’t want to be seen or heard,” Quire said reassuringly. “That’s all.”
He closed the iron-banded door behind them, and the bustle of the police house was suddenly no more than a murmur. Quire could understand Shake’s reluctance to take up such quarters, however briefly. It was a miserable place, redolent of the troubles of those who had inhabited it. The dark cells were only used to hold those likely to harm themselves or others, and thus contained the equipment of restraint and of punishment. The door was heavy, with just a small grille of bars to admit light. There were iron rings in the wall for the attachment of bonds. And a flogging horse—a narrow four-legged bench, with leather straps by which a man’s wrists and ankles might be secured—bolted to the floor. It was there that Quire settled Carstairs to sit.
“You’ve a reputation as a fair man, sir,” the scavenger said. “A man less given to hasty judgement or condemnation than most of his fellows, when it comes to those of lower station than yourself. I’m hoping that’s true.”
“Aye, well maybe I am and maybe I’m not, but we’ll not know unless you tell what you came to tell, Shake.”
“I’d not have come at all otherwise, if I’d not thought you’d give me a fair hearing. It’s a terribly thin life, sir, the scavenger’s. Needs doing, right enough, the cleaning of the streets, the carting off of the muck and the city’s sheddings. But it’s a thin life.”
“It’s hard work,” Quire said. “I know it. And I know the pay’s meagre.”
“Aye, sir. Meagre. That’s the word. So the temptation’s something fierce. You find a body, and there’s none but yourself about…”
“You go through the pockets.” Quire nodded, taking care to keep his voice free of accusation, leavening it with understanding.
“Oh, you do, sir. You do if you’re a poor sinner. Then, if you’re a poor fool of a man, you tell what you’ve found to your good wife. And she’ll not be having it, sir. Not at all. There’ll be no rest in my house until I’ve put it right, and that’s the truth.”
“What did you find?”
A trembling hand brought forth a small object and offered it to Quire.
“Only this, sir. Only this. Inside, in a hidden pocket. Not a thing else.”
A small silver snuff box. Quire took it and lifted it to one side, the better to see it in the dim light. A thing of exquisite beauty, shaped like a tiny chest with fluted edges of silver rope, and with a dedication engraved upon its flat and polished lid in a flowery hand. Quire had to narrow his eyes and hold the box still closer to the grille in the door before he could make out the words.
“Get yourself home, Shake,” Quire said quietly. “You’ve done well. Done it late, but better than never, eh? Tell your wife I said so.”
The Royal Infirmary was an imposing structure: two wings projecting forwards from the grand central span of the building, the whole array adorned with a strict grid of tall rectangular windows. Quire passed through the gateway, flanked by pillars upon which sculpted urns rested, but turned aside from the steps leading up to the main entrance. His path took him instead to a side door, and down secluded passageways to the place where the corpses resided.
He found Robert Christison there, and was struck by the fact that the incumbent of the University Chair in Medical Jurisprudence seemed more contentedly at home in this chamber of the dead than any man—whatever his calling—should naturally be.
The tiled walls and floor reflected and concentrated the cold smell of vinegar and soap. Cabinets were arrayed around the walls, like a mute audience for the acts performed on the four waist-high stone slabs that took up much of the room. A crude trolley stood to one side; a conveyance for the dead that now bore not a cadaver but a neat array of tools of evident craftsmanship and gruesome purpose. Long-bladed flat knives, saws, hooks and forceps and shears. The means by which the human form might be dismantled.
There was but a single corpse there, that same one that Quire had so recently attended upon in the Cowgate. Christison stood over it, absorbed in his exploration of its corporeal mysteries. He had the sort of well- proportioned good looks that spoke of a gentle and uneventful upbringing. Though only thirty years old, when he straightened and looked at Quire he did so with the confidence and instinctive authority of one in full command of his profession and surroundings.
“Sergeant Quire. I expected you rather sooner.”
“There were certain enquiries I had to make this morning, sir, after some new information came into my hands.” He could feel the weight of the silver box in his pocket as he spoke. “Your message did not find me at first.”
“I see. Well, our subject is in no haste to be elsewhere, I suppose. I do have one or two other matters to see to, though, so we must be brief.”
Christison wiped his hands on the upper part of his apron.
“Do you wish to examine the body for yourself?” he asked.
From where he stood, Quire could see more than enough. Skin parted and lifted back; pale bones couched in the meat; tubes and sacs. There was, in this considered dissection of what had not long ago been a living, breathing man, a cold calculation that Quire found disturbing despite its benign intent.
“No, sir.”
Christison nodded, matter-of-fact.
