Resurrectionist

“Mend them. Or at least that’s what McGrigor, the Surgeon-General, thinks. His is the second signature on the bond. The one we couldn’t read. He said Hyde had grand ideas about the future of surgery and how one day it would be possible to mend the wounded by taking working parts from dead men’s bodies.”

Locke closed his eyes. “He got that from John Hunter.”

“He was Hyde’s anatomy teacher, his mentor. Wait – you knew of the connection?”

“I knew a little of his medical studies. He would talk about them sometimes. He was one of the few students who were fortunate to have lived under Hunter’s roof at his school in Castle Street.”

“It was Hunter who helped get Hyde his commission. Twenty years ago, it was Hunter who was Surgeon- General.”

Locke said nothing.

“That’s it, Doctor. You now know as much as I do.” Hawkwood walked to the window and looked out over Moor Fields. “Somewhere out there is a lunatic who thinks he’s God and who’s taken to cutting up the bodies of dead women, and who’s persuaded another lunatic to draw him pictures of electrical machines. I tell you now, Apothecary, I need all the help I can get, and I’m open to suggestions.”

Hawkwood turned round, and found that Locke was staring at him.

“What?”

“Hunter …”

“What about him?”

“How much do you know about John Hunter, Officer Hawkwood?”

“Other than his connection with Hyde and the fact that he’s held in high regard, not a damned thing. Why?”

The apothecary hesitated, as if deciding whether or not to continue. Then he said, “There was a story, many years ago. It appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine. It concerned a forger who was imprisoned in Newgate and sentenced to the noose. Despite a petition to the King requesting a pardon, he was taken to Tyburn and hanged. It was said that, following the hanging, the forger’s body was carried by hearse to an undertaker’s parlour in Goodge Street. There, it was delivered into the hands of several members of the Royal Society, Hunter among them. The story goes that, under Hunter’s guidance, they rubbed the flesh and placed the body close to the fire to warm it, and used bellows to try and inflate his lungs. When that didn’t work, they employed electric shocks from Leyden jars to activate the heart muscle and restore the forger to life.”

Locke fell silent.

Hawkwood said nothing. In a moment of dark recall, he felt the familiar tightening round his own throat, heard again the scrabbling of heels on planking, and the echo of coarse laughter.

“Officer Hawkwood?”

Hawkwood looked up. The memories retreated back into their lair.

The apothecary pushed himself away from his desk. “I know what you’re thinking, Officer Hawkwood. I told you a short time ago that I was not a foolish man and yet, here I am, telling you what sounds like a fairy story. Well, I have another tale for you. Eight years ago, a convicted murderer was hanged at Newgate. His name was George Forster. After one hour, his corpse was taken down and delivered to a professor of physics. The professor then performed a demonstration. He connected the corpse to a battery. When he activated the battery – or, as James Matthews would put it, he closed the circuit – Forster’s eye opened. As the electrical current continued to flow, Forster raised a fist into the air. His back arched and his legs began to kick. The witnesses to the demonstration were convinced that, for a brief period, George Forster was brought back to life. The professor’s name was Giovanni Aldini. He was visiting this country from Italy. He was Luigi Galvani’s nephew.”

It’s me who’s going mad, Hawkwood thought.

But Locke hadn’t finished. “Have you heard of the Humane Society? It was founded by an apothecary, William Hawes, and a physician, Thomas Cogan; for the sole purpose of rescuing victims of drowning. The Society offered rewards of up to four guineas to anyone who succeeded in restoring life to any person taken out of the water for dead, within thirty miles of London. As you can imagine, quack medics for miles around came up with suggestions for how resuscitation could be achieved. Everything from bloodletting and purging to enemas and the ingesting of tobacco vapours. Eventually Hawes approached Hunter for advice. Hunter suggested using electricity. He said it was probably the only method there was for stimulating the heart.”

“Are you telling me it has actually worked?” Hawkwood couldn’t believe he was even asking the question.

“I’ve not seen it done, but there have been reports of successful recoveries, yes.”

“The criminal, Forster?”

“No, Forster was not resuscitated. Aldini’s demonstration proved to be an interesting experiment, no more than that.”

“What about the other one? The forger?”

“There were differing stories. Some say that Hunter failed and the forger was buried. Others say that he survived. One newspaper claimed that he was living in Glasgow, while another reported that he had dined with an Irishman in Dunkirk. I was trying to recall the fellow’s name. It has just come to me. It was Dodd – Reverend William Dodd.”

Jesus, Hawkwood thought. Not another bloody parson.

He turned and looked out of the window. Most of the snow had melted away, though across Moor Fields a few small patches of slush were clinging doggedly to the edges of the ponds and between the exposed roots around the bases of the trees. From a distance they looked like smears of grey marzipan.

“It was seeing the drawings and remembering my conversations with the colonel that reminded me of Hunter’s experiments,” Locke said behind him. “You remember when I told you that I found some of Colonel Hyde’s ideas innovative? It sounded fantastical, but now, hearing the true reason for the colonel’s admittance to the hospital and your belief that he’s responsible for the mutilation of the two corpses found at St Bart’s makes me fearful of the colonel’s intentions. Even thinking about it, I cannot bring myself to believe that anyone would contemplate such a thing.”

Hawkwood turned back.

“I know how this must sound, but you said it yourself: everything Colonel Hyde has done, he’s done for a reason. You remember I likened a distracted patient’s mind to a maelstrom, and that sometimes out of that swirling mass a single thought can arise, a moment of epiphany, which sets events in motion and influences every subsequent decision the patient makes? Those decisions form the framework for the patient’s existence, his reason for being. Perhaps it was seeing the Galvani drawing that planted the first seed. Colonel Hyde was a student of John Hunter. It’s likely that Hunter would have talked about his experiments on electrical resuscitation with his students, certainly the more able ones. Hyde’s conversations with James Matthews – who, despite his obsessions is possessed of genuine technical knowledge – could have acted as a catalyst, perhaps the final trigger that launched him on his grand design.”

“Grand design?”

The two men looked at each other. Hawkwood’s brain was spinning. It couldn’t be true. The idea was absurd, preposterous, the stuff of nightmares. He closed his eyes. “It’s madness!”

“Yes.” Locke nodded. “I agree. That’s precisely what it is. Tell me, Officer Hawkwood, do you know your Shakespeare?”

“It’s been a while since I attended the theatre, Doctor.”

“There’s a quotation, from Hamlet: ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your Philosophy.’”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, anything is possible.”

Both men fell silent. Neither wanted to be the one to voice what both of them were thinking.

Hawkwood broke first. “McGrigor thought the colonel might be taking the body parts in order to carry out some kind of surgical procedure. You think he’s going to try and raise the dead. I think you’re both right. That’s his grand design. That’s why he’s been obtaining corpses and removing internal organs. That’s why he got Matthews to design his electrical machine. He’s going to use the spare parts to repair a dead body, then he’s going to try and bring it back to life.”

“That’s not possible,” Locke whispered.