‘I wonder if you know a place called Alder Hall, sir? It’s in the Wye Valley, not far from Edendale.’
‘I believe I know the name. Now, in what connection would I have heard of Alder Hall?’
‘There’s a collection of bones. Below the hall, in a crypt.’
‘Ah. Civil War relics?’
‘Yes, sir. Have you ever visited?’
‘No, I don’t believe so. What’s the name of the family?’
‘Saxton. What about a lady called Madeleine Chadwick, then? She’s the last of the Saxtons.’
Robertson shook his head. ‘I don’t quite see …’
285
‘What can you tell me about ossuaries?’ said Cooper. ‘Is that the right name for places where bones were kept?’
‘Yes, but the Alder Hall crypt isn’t an ossuary, is it? As I recollect, the bones were found elsewhere.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Robertson waited for him to explain, but Cooper remained silent. He was anticipating that the professor wouldn’t be able to tolerate silence, and would feel obliged to fill it with the sound of his own voice.
‘A lot of ossuaries came about where there was a shortage of suitable ground for burials,’ said Robertson, sitting back in his chair. ‘When you died, you might only be allowed to occupy your grave for a year or two, then you’d be dug up so that someone else could have your spot. The remains could mount up in vast numbers. Families would sometimes visit the bones of their dead relatives each year and wrap them in fresh cloths as long as they retained some flesh. Of course, decomposition takes place four times faster in the air. Burial simply slows the process down.’
Cooper thought of the first messages from their mystery caller. He’d referred to decomposition several times. The scented, carnal gardens of decomposition. He knew all about the processes of decay.
And now Robertson was watching him. Not for the first time, Cooper felt the professor might be able to read his thoughts.
‘But what about the smell?’ he said.
Robertson looked pleased. For a moment, Cooper thought the professor was going to nudge him in the ribs, like a barroom comedian. Wink, wink, say no more.
‘It’s the transition from black putrefaction to butyric fermentation that causes the main source of odour. If you ever smell it, you won’t want to eat blue cheese again for a while. The body is drying out by then, and the exposed surfaces turn a little mouldy from fermentation. Just like your cheese will, if you leave it in the fridge too long.’
286
Cooper remembered he had some Blue Stilton in the fridge at home. He’d better throw it away, because he didn’t think he was going to eat it now. He’d only be thinking of a combination of Billy McGowan’s tattooed arms and butyric fermentation. His attention beginning to stray, Cooper picked up a book that had caught his eye.
‘Do you collect antiquarian books, sir?’
‘Well, it’s hardly antiquarian. The book has no intrinsic value. It simply relates to my field of interest.’
‘I see.’
Cooper opened the book to the title page. What field of interest exactly? He knew the name of the author - everyone did, if only by reputation. But he’d never met anyone before who admitted to reading his books, let alone having one in the house. He flicked through the pages cautiously. He felt as though he might be corrupted by something if he read the words. He’d half-expected to find illustrations - dark, shocking pen-and-ink drawings between the chapters. But there weren’t any.
‘Yes, the Marquis de Sade,’ said Robertson, watching him with that smile again. ‘But not one of his, er … more celebrated titles, I’m afraid. It isn’t terribly easy to find.’
‘I’ve never heard of it,’ admitted Cooper, turning back to the cover. The book was called La Marquise de Gange.
‘One of his very last works,’ said Robertson. ‘It was published a year before de Sade died. The Marquis was seventy-three years old by then, and had been locked up in an insane asylum for the past ten years.’
Cooper put the book back on the shelf.
‘Don’t you want to know how La Marquise de Gange relates to my interests?’ asked Robertson.
‘Do I need to ask? I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
Robertson laughed and put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Dissection,’ he said.
287
Cooper felt the pressure of the professor’s fingers on the layer of muscle that covered the bones of his arm. The fingers moved slightly, as if parting the sinews and blood vessels to touch the deepest part of him. He had a momentary realization that the professor really could see inside him, and knew what his body looked like from the inside out.
‘Dissection became remarkably fashionable among the nobility of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,’ said Robertson. ‘Some of those self-appointed scientists set up their own dissecting laboratories at home, just as you or I might have a billiards table. They took great pleasure in inviting their friends round for the evening whenever the grave robbers had delivered a fresh corpse. Can you imagine that?’
‘No,’ said Cooper. But then, he couldn’t imagine fitting a billiards table into his flat in Welbeck Street either. Presumably an Edwardian gentleman’s residence had its own billiards room, if not a dissecting laboratory.
‘And de Sade wrote about this?’ he asked, moving back slightly to free himself from the professor’s hand.
‘Yes, in La Marquise de Gauge,’ said Robertson. ‘What a subject to be occupying a man’s mind when he’s seventy-three, eh? But then, he obviously wasn’t afraid of death.’
Cooper followed Robertson with his eyes as he moved around the study, passing backwards and forwards in
