I gripped his head between my hands, but it still flopped about. His eyes were a sliver of white and his mouth was loose and dribbling. I tapped his cheek to stir him, but he just rolled over and started to snore.
I pulled his legs straight, took his shoes off and deliberately dropped first one then the other to the floor, noisily, from a height, to try and wake him, but he was dead to the world. I thought about smothering him. I really did. Surely God had sent him to me in this state for me to do something? I could blame it on the alcohol, or whatever else he’d taken. He could have just stopped breathing, couldn’t he? Like so many people.
But I didn’t. I simply unbuckled his damp, stinking trousers and tugged them off. As I folded them, a gold key fell out of the pocket and bounced across the floor. By the time it had settled flat, I knew what room it was for and what I was going to do with it.
I made my way up the narrow steps to the attic, clutching the key so tight it hurt my hand. At the door I turned back and held up my candle, but all I could see was a few feet behind me. Anything could have been there in the dark watching me. The only noise was the sound of my breathing. The lock made a click and turned first time. I wrapped the key in the palm of my hand again and pushed open the door.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. I imagined a knife, a stained bayonet, something incriminating and dripping with blood. I had never been in his precious attic and didn’t know where any of the furniture was. It was windowless and pitch black except for me, hovering in a yellow bubble with my candle. I could see bare floorboards beneath my blue feet – the temperature was arctic. I had no idea how Thomas could have spent so many hours holed up there without freezing to death. The air was thick and musty with dust and mouse droppings. From the little I could see, one half of the room was a huddled mass of old furniture: tables and chairs pushed together, the finials of a brass headboard, a scratched chest of drawers with missing handles, armchairs with broken backs and threadbare, moth-eaten upholstery.
I inched towards a slightly better desk and chair, which was where, I assumed, he spent his hours ‘working’. I was only a few feet inside the door when I heard a rustle above my head. Something hit the floor beside me and I froze. My heart raced as I peered down. Fresh bird droppings! I looked up and listened. Pigeons were roosting in the rafters and I could now see splatters of bird faeces all over the floor. Were there rats too? My bare feet curled at the thought and I shivered.
I searched the desk, but all I found were a few metal instruments and some medical texts lying open. One page was plastered with dried bird droppings and another showed drawings of the female anatomy. None of this was remarkable or sinister for a doctor to have in his possession. My eyes drifted up again and this time I very nearly screamed. A pair of shining eyes were staring back at me – from the face of a stuffed owl on a wooden stand. I had to laugh, because the owl wore the exact same supercilious expression as Mrs Wiggs.
I blew on it and as years of dust flew out of its feathers and back in my face I sneezed and waved the cloud away. Which was when I caught sight of the glass specimen jar on Thomas’s desk. It was clearly a recent arrival, because it was the only thing that was clean.
The specimen was cream and pink in places, and solid, as if it had been carved out of yellow limestone. It was the size of a man’s fist and looked much like a peach that had been halved and had the stone removed. In the hollow, encircled by sediment and other matter, was what looked like a tiny foetus. It had an oversized head, barely formed arms that shone white like marble, unformed hands crossed over the front of its body, the faintest shape of a nose and ear, and a dark line where the eye would have been. A human foetus in a womb. I shuddered. I’d never seen anything like it before.
There was nothing to find, no bloodied knife, no evidence. As I turned to leave, I held the candle up one last time, not expecting to see anything. But what did catch my eye scared me half to death. A woman was standing in front of me, stiff and staring. I thought it was Mrs Wiggs and let out a yelp and pinched my mouth closed. The woman didn’t flinch or move.
After a moment I realised it was only a tailor’s dummy, dressed in ratty old torn clothes. I put a hand on my heart and felt it thump. I was shaking.
The dummy was wearing dark burgundy skirts and a blue velvet jacket with a high collar and black brocade buttons. Balanced wonkily on its head was a cheap black straw bonnet adorned with paper flowers and berries – poor, sweatshop stuff, similar to the fripperies sold at Mabel’s milliner’s. There were dark, stiff patches on the skirt, as if the woman who’d worn them had spilled a drink, and the velvet jacket had lots of rips and random slashes as well as some crusty dark brown stains.
Why on earth would Thomas dress it up and have it loom over him like that?
At the foot of the dummy there was a pile of clothes. I bent down and pulled a white petticoat out, also torn and slashed. When I held it up, I saw
