“Declan, Mr. Irvin, we need the body transported to our lab at the hospital morgue—the one devoted to Queens University, gentlemen. I’ll send the knacker-man ’round.”
“A horse butcher?” asked Ransom, astounded. “Would you tell the man’s wife that her husband’s body was carted about on a butcher’s wagon?”
“The knacker doubles as our body man,” said Thomas, shrugging and frowning.
“For corpses, you see, to work on… at the morgue, you see, for surgical study,” added Declan as if informing a child.
Reahall slapped Ransom on the shoulder and said, “What you fellows in Chicago call a John or Jane Doe, we designate as A. N. Other; any unidentified body found dead in the gutter or dead of mysterious causes—and this certainly qualifies—goes for dissection and studies like your John Doe types.”
“Boston, man. I am from Boston.”
“But wait, sirs, this man is known,” piped up Walter who’d remained respectfully quiet, holding the lantern, keeping a certain distance from the educated men. “He’s no ‘Nother’ for your dissections! The miners hear of you cutting on McAffey, you’ll have a riot on your hands, for sure.”
“Hold on there, big fella,” said Reahall, a hand going up; this followed by a near imperceptible signal for two uniformed Belfast coppers to step forward out of the waiting shadows to lend a hand and to keep Walter in his place. “You can send one of my men to fetch the knacker,” he told Bellinghan.
“He’s not far,” said Declan, back on his feet. “Name is Mitchem… lives in the back alleyway near where Grovesnor meets Hilltop End just past Falls Road.”
“Aye, that’s the place,” added Thomas, “and you need only ask anyone in the neighborhood and they’ll point it out.”
Constable Reahall ordered one of his men off on the errand. “You’ll do your best then to determine cause of death, Dr. Bellingham?” Reahall’s rhetorical question hung in the air for a long moment until Bellingham met his eye and slowly nodded. Ransom recognized the unspoken signal—that the constable, as with the knacker-man, would get a kickback on the corpse.
“The lads and I will find an answer,” replied Bellingham. “It’s a medical mystery to be sure, and we love a good mystery—don’t we lads?”
“Ol’ Mitchem’ll find some use for that damnable dog, too,” added Reahall, laughing as if picturing the knacker at a meal. “Might make a nice meal for Ol’ Mitch, eh?” he asked Bellingham.
Bellingham only frowned and replied, “I think it best he haul the thing along with the bodies to our refrigerated units at the dissection theater back of the hospital, and from there, we’ll get it to one of the furnaces at the steel works. Burn the damnable thing along with the bodies if need be.”
“I should think he’d best burn it where it lies,” said Declan. “For all we know it’s riddled with disease.”
“Your decision, sir,” replied Declan, “but whatever’s to be done with this creature hauled from the mine, every precaution should be taken as it may well be riddled with a disease.”
“What sort of disease?” asked Reahall.
“We have no idea, not yet,” replied Declan.
“Black plague?”
“Too soon to tell,” Bellingham intervened quickly. “We’ve not seen the like of it in our lifetime—whatever it is brought these men so suddenly to death.”
While the others debated such matters, Ransom imagined this fellow Mitchem, likely a body snatcher as well as a horse butcher, and the silent tacit agreement among these medical men and the authorities; he imagined how Bellingham paid dearly for Reahall to look the other way whenever he got a new body at the university for dissection—a homeless without family or ties normally snatched not from the grave but from the gutter. His greatest contribution to his race coming in death by repeated, passive teaching—teaching surgery to such good young men as Thomas Coogan and Declan Irvin.
“You damn ghouls!” Walter suddenly shouted. “Goons! You can’t have McAffey to cut ’im open in that morgue! He’s to be buried proper and in one piece!”
“We’ll not dissect the man nor misuse his body!” countered Bellingham. “I promise you, we’ll only run some tests on his blood and fluids, Mister… mister…”
“McComas, your honorable sir… and I will come looking for you if there’s a mark on him!”
“That’s enough, McComas,” said Reahall raising a club and adding, “One more word of disrespect, and you can spend the night in my jail! I won’t have ya threatening the good doctor or these lads.”
“Make sure the napper hauls both bodies to the Mater when he gets here,” Bellingham said to Reahall. We’ll want to compare the blood and fluids.”
Since his arrival in Belfast, Ransom had learned of every back alleyway, studying the lay of the city for the day when he must run, a day sure to come… and perhaps it already had given this trouble. For now he slipped away from the others and this mess he’d become entangled with, a mess that had to drag in the authorities. As he silently disappeared, he thought of the two medical residents who’d hired him. He also thought as he made his way back to his small rented apartment of how often he heard the common phrase about these streets: ‘You go to dah Mater to find out what is dah matter’ referring to the Mater Infirmorum Hospital.
He heard this phrase almost as often as the word ‘hello’ here; he heard it whenever someone in a shop, a cafe, or a pub complained of an ailment. In this area of the city where the hospital resided, everyone knew it as Mother-of-the-Sick, but the Latin word Mater was interchangeably pronounced as ‘mae-ter and matt-er’.
Again his thoughts returned to his clients, the two students at the hospital, which he recalled as founded in 1883; he knew too that it’d been modernized in 1900 and had some major improvements three years ago such as dormitories for the students, and while it stood in the midst of a socially and economically deprived part of the city, it welcomed fresh, young gentlemen working to become doctors and surgeons. The hospital was not far from the center of commerce here and the wharves. Mater was often caught up in community tensions during the time of ‘The Troubles’ as the locals called open religious warfare between Protestant and Catholics—both of whom lived side-by-side in the surrounding streets. Mater had begun to take on the power of a symbol of stability in this unsure place, leading by example, turning away no one from their door—despite political leanings, and as a result the place had become famous for dealing with gunshot wounds as well! True too of Victoria Hospital across town. Mater had only three years ago become a teaching center, receiving students from Queens University.
“Those boys,” he said aloud to the dark streets as he walked through a shroud of fog for his current home, “have to admire them their youth and their goals.” They reminded him of young Gabby back in Chicago, Dr. Jane Tewes’ daughter, for her determination to become a surgeon like her mother before her. He fantasized for a moment of enticing Jane and Gabriel to Belfast to work and teach at this place named Mother of the Sick.
“You may count on it as surely as rain falls in Spain, doctor,” Constable Ian Reahall was saying while looked about for the mysterious private investigator, Wyland, only to realize he’d slipped away into the shadows. “Damn that man,” Reahall muttered in anger, but he recalled what Wyland—if that was his actual name—had said about going to Slip 401, to
Reahall’s sarcasm made Declan wonder what he could mean; he shrugged in Thomas’ direction, but Thomas only looked away, a sick look painting his features.
“Nothing more to be done tonight, lads… ah gentlemen,” began Bellingham. “You two are way beyond curfew and bedtime. Get some rest, and we’ll sort this affair out the in light of day.”
David Ingles awoke, finding himself in a sitting position, upper torso lying over Declan Irvin’s detailed and stunning journal. Dry-mouthed and exhausted, he looked over his shoulder to where Kelly Irvin softly moaned in her sleep, and for a moment, he studied her features where she lay in her clothes. She looked so lovely and so normal, he thought and offered a prayer for a millisecond that it had all been a bad dream—her crazy story. It felt good to hope for this up till the moment of fully recalling Declan Irvin’s journal; it all came rushing in at him again, vividly gripping, the intern’s voice lifting off the page! So compelling, so sure, so authentic until the tale had enraptured David so completely until sleep had forced him to stop reading. Thus the final truth of the sinking of the unsinkable
