Resurrectionist

There was no doubting the man’s nerve, Hawkwood thought. It had been a simple ruse. It had relied on one elderly keeper, probably with fading eyesight and encroaching deafness and a time of night when the corridor would be in semidarkness, lit only by dull candlelight. As an escape plan it had been astonishingly well executed. The rain had been a bonus.

Hawkwood could see that Grubb was tiring. There was a vacant look in the attendant’s eyes and his breathing was becoming harsh and uneven. He nodded to Locke, indicating it was time to go. The apothecary bent and drew the blanket over the attendant’s waist.

“We need to talk, Doctor,” Hawkwood said, when they were back in the corridor. “I think it’s time you told me all about Colonel Hyde.”

4

The apothecary took a deep breath, as if to compose his thoughts. “Truthfully, have you ever seen anything like this?”

“No,” Hawkwood admitted. No one had.

He’d investigated killings, of course, seen scores of murder victims, usually as a result of drunken brawls, burglaries that had gone wrong or family feuds that had gotten out of hand, even crimes of passion, but this was different, a new experience. It wasn’t the manner of death but the mutilation of the victim that set this murder apart. The excising of the priest’s face had not been the result of a blood-crazed, frenzied attack. The skin had been removed with great precision. Peeled away like a mask, the apothecary had said. And so it had been; deliberately and specifically removed for the purpose of aiding the colonel’s exit from the hospital. Which indicated the escape had not been a spontaneous act but the culmination of a carefully thought-out strategy. And that, Hawkwood knew, opened up a whole slew of possibilities, not one of them palatable.

“Why was the colonel here?” Hawkwood asked.

They were back in the apothecary’s office. Locke was seated at his desk. Hawkwood was standing by the window. Thankfully, there were no bars and no illustrations of any description on the walls. Even the view over the well-trodden ground of Moor Fields was a consolation after the claustrophobia of the colonel’s cell.

A shadow moved across the apothecary’s face. “Warriors survive the battlefield bearing many scars. Not all are caused by damage to the flesh. There are other wounds that run much deeper. The effect of war on the human mind is a fascinating concept and one that has occupied me for some time. It’s not an interest shared by the majority of my fellow physicians, despite the increasing number of poor souls committed to hospital asylums by the Transport Office and the Navy’s Sick and Wounded Office each year.”

The apothecary paused, then said, “Am I right in thinking you’ve knowledge of such matters? It occurred to me when we met that you have the look about you; that scar beneath your eye, for example, and the distinct mark of an ingrained powder burn above your right cheek. You were a military man; the army, perhaps? Am I right?”

Hawkwood stared at his inquisitor. The burn mark was a legacy most musketeers and riflemen carried with them; a rite of passage, caused by flecks of burning powder blowing back into the face when their weapon was discharged.

“I was a soldier,” Hawkwood said.

“May I ask what regiment?”

“The 95th.”

“The Rifles! I’ve heard great stories of their exploits.” Locke put his head on one side and nodded thoughtfully. “Though you were not of the rank and file, I suspect. You were an officer? You commanded men in battle?”

“Yes.”

“And saw many of your comrades die?”

“Too many,” Hawkwood said truthfully.

“So you know the nature of war, the horror of it.” It was a statement not a question.

Hawkwood thought of the times he’d woken in the dead of night, drenched in sweat, with the smell of death in his nostrils and the screams of men and the crash of cannon fire ringing in his ears; sounds so real he’d thought he had been transported back in time to the blood and the mud and the flames.

War wasn’t glorious, despite the pageantry, the colourful uniforms, and the fifes and drums. War was, without exception, nothing short of hell on earth. There were moments of extraordinary bravery and heady triumph, as sweet as honey on the tongue, but mostly there was fear; massive, gut-wrenching, knee-jerking fear. Fear of being killed, fear of being wounded or crippled, fear of being thought a craven coward by your comrades, fear of dying alone on some bleak, godforsaken foreign hillside with no one back home to mourn your passing. That was the real horror. That was the truth of it.

He hadn’t had the dreams for a while, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, waiting to emerge unbidden, like demons in the darkness.

“I apologize,” Locke said. The eyes behind his spectacles glinted perceptively. “It was not my intention to stir up unpleasant memories. In answer to your question, Colonel Hyde was admitted to the hospital a little over two years ago. According to Dr Monro, the colonel’s admission was due not to mania, as you might suppose, but an acute state of melancholy.”

“Melancholy?”

“Correct. You saw the carvings above the entrance, I take it?”

Hawkwood recalled the naked stone figures and nodded.

“They are known as Raving and Melancholy Madness. I’m sure you can guess which was which.”

Hawkwood said nothing. He was remembering the manacles and the silent scream.

Locke went on, “There was a time when diagnosis was considered that simple. If the patient was not obviously suffering from one, he or she was inevitably a victim of the other. It is not, however, as you may have surmised from my discourse, as simple as that. Melancholy comes in many forms. Take the unfortunates contained within these walls, for example. For every ten patients suffering the effects of drink and intoxication, I could show you twenty who suffer from excessive jealousy. For every fifteen stricken by religion and Methodism, I can list thirty whose minds have been addled by syphilis or smallpox. Pride, fright, fever, even love; the causes of insanity – melancholy in particular – are numerous, Officer Hawkwood. But by far the most common are misfortune, trouble, disappointment and grief.”

“You’re trying to tell me that the colonel was disappointed about something?” Hawkwood said. “Hell’s teeth, if he removed a man’s face because he was disappointed, what the devil’s he going to do when he’s angry?”

The apothecary ignored Hawkwood’s retort, but continued in the same calm manner. “My understanding is that it was the commissioners’ judgement that the colonel’s experiences working amongst the wounded and the dying precipitated a state of chaos within his brain. It was as if his attempts to mend the broken bodies of his patients had a debilitating effect on his own sanity; a terrible price to pay for years of dedicated service. I can only imagine the horrors that he witnessed, trying to make whole the shattered bodies of men, but there’s little doubt Colonel Hyde arrived here in a state of severe distraction.”

Locke pursed his lips, and then continued.

“As with all patients, he was reassessed after twelve months. I was not involved in the colonel’s case, you understand, it was before my time. Regrettably, it was the commissioners’ collective opinion that the colonel was incurable. The usual procedure is that incurables are discharged unless their family or friends are unable to provide care. He has no living family. There was a child that died, a daughter, though he did not talk about her. So, grief, too, has undoubtedly played a significant role in his state of mind. Fortunately, it appears he had friends who were willing to stand surety for him, on condition that he remained in our charge. It was at that juncture that he was transferred to our incurable department.”

“Was he ever restrained?”

Locke looked nonplussed. “Restrained?”

“Like Norris.”

“Ah, yes, Norris. You saw him?”

“Briefly,” Hawkwood said.