I tried to call on my bookish voices, that trick of my intuition that recycled lines from books I’d read and spoke to me sometimes when I was at a loss or needed to pay attention to something my conscious self wasn’t aware of. Books usually had to be in the general vicinity for the bookish voices to pipe up, and there were plenty of books close by. However, my bookish voices had been communicating with me less and less at the bookshop. I’d worked so hard to keep them under control that they’d come close to muting themselves, become more like silent coworkers that just kept their heads down and their focus on their own jobs.
About half an hour later, just as a wave of tired came over me, Tom moved an old kerosene lamp and said, “Dr. Robert Knox was the doctor, right?” He held up a small chrome container in one hand and the brown leather case it had come out of in his other hand. “This was actually under the treasure chest, but I just got to it. There were other things in the way.”
“Yes, Dr. Knox,” I said as I followed him back to the worktable.
Gently, Tom set the two things on the table.
“I’m not qualified to touch those,” he said. “Have at it.”
The chrome container was small, only about three inches wide by four inches high. Its hinged lid made me think of Zippo lighters, and a memory of sitting on my long-gone grandfather’s lap flashed in my mind. He’d light a cigarette with a Zippo, click it shut, and put it in the pocket on his shirt. I could still remember the leftover tangy smell.
At first, the engraved stamp on the container was the most interesting part of it. Written in an old cursive font, it said: Dr. Robert Knox, Edinburgh Medical School.
“It doesn’t look big enough tae hold scalpels inside it,” Tom said.
“They were different back then,” I said. “More like a barber’s straight-edge razor.”
“They folded over, hinged?”
“Yes.”
“Then that … Delaney, just sitting on a shelf in Edwin’s warehouse?” Tom said.
“I know, Tom, it’s crazy the stuff that’s in here. But, at the moment it seems more than possible.”
“Are we going tae have a look?” Tom asked.
I nodded and grabbed a pair of latex gloves from a box under the worktable. After I slipped them on I pulled back on the chrome hinged lid. Packed inside like sardines were what I thought were ivory handles.
I slipped out one of them and then unfolded it.
“A scalpel, or maybe it was called a lancet,” I said as I placed it back on the table.
“That belonged tae the man who bought corpses of people who were murdered?” Tom said as he shook his head.
“It appears that way. I’ll have to do some research to confirm.”
“That’s unbelievable,” Tom said.
“I know. I’ve felt that way a few times since I’ve been here,” I said.
“You have an interesting job, love,” Tom said.
I smiled at the comment and the term of endearment. I was so taken with the guy in the kilt that I almost thought his words were more interesting than the historically significant scalpels. That was not a reasonable opinion for someone in my position, or something a girl-power girl was all about, but there it was.
“I need to get these in a protective bag before we go,” I said. “It won’t take long.”
Tom watched as I put the leather case into one bag made for preservation and safekeeping, and the chrome case, filled with more scalpels, into another. Then I put the scalpel that I’d pulled out for inspection into its own bag.
“Grab that chest again. We’ll put all of the separate bags in it and then the whole thing into a drawer on my desk,” I said.
I wouldn’t take them with me, because the chances of something going wrong increased the farther they were from the place in which they’d been hiding for who knew how many years. I debated staying in the warehouse overnight—I knew Tom would stay with me. But I also knew that Edwin would think our staying was unnecessary.
I wasn’t the only one to double-check the lock on the warehouse door, however. Tom watched as I turned the skeleton key to the right three times, and then he tested the knob after I did. We both triple-checked the lock on the shop’s front door.
“Should we call Edwin?” Tom asked as we stood outside in the cold.
“No, he said that only life and death was urgent enough for middle-of-the-night wake-up calls.” We’d had a few of those, but I still wondered, were scalpels presumably used by Dr. Robert Knox close enough to life and death? I decided they weren’t.
“Your place or mine?” Tom asked as we started the walk up the short hill to his car.
I was stunned and happy about the discovery we’d made. I was also distracted, wondering if I really had done the right thing by leaving the scalpels behind, but the outside air and the proposition cleared my mind. I made a big deal of eyeing the kilt. “Yours is closer.”
Tom laughed, though I could still hear some of his own concern. “Aye, it is. Let’s go then.”
FOUR
“Extra strong,” Tom said as he handed me a cup of coffee. “Just the way I think we both need it today.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I sent him a tired smile as I took the mug. He looked tired too, but his hair was perfectly messy. I resumed my explorations out the front window of his small blue house by the sea as he turned to go back into the kitchen. His breakfast specialty was omelets, and he’d already cracked the eggs.
I sat in my favorite—in the entire universe, probably—chair and let the sea’s
