The Bone Garden Read online

  WEST END MURDER DESCRIBED AS “SHOCKING AND GROTESQUE”

  At 10 PM Wednesday, officers of the Night Watch were called to Massachusetts General Hospital after the body of Miss Agnes Poole, a nurse, was discovered dead in a large puddle of blood on the back steps of the hospital. Her injuries, according to Officer Pratt of the Watch, left no doubt that this was an attack of the most brutal nature, most likely inflicted with a large cutting instrument such as a butcher knife. The lone witness remains unidentified to this reporter, out of concern for her safety, but Mr. Pratt confirms that it is a young woman, who described the assailant as “cloaked in black like the Grim Reaper, with the wings of a bird of prey.”

  “This murder took place in Boston,” said Julia.

  “A mere half-day carriage ride from your house in Weston. And the murder victim was a woman.”

  “I see no connection to my house.”

  “Oliver Wendell Holmes may be the connection. He writes to Margaret, who’s living in your house. He makes this puzzling reference to her aunt, and to a killer known as the West End Reaper. Somehow, Holmes became involved in this murder case—a case he felt compelled to tell Margaret about over fifty years later. Why? What was this mysterious secret she was never supposed to know?”

  The distant bellow of a ship’s horn made Julia look up. “I wish I didn’t have to catch the ferry. I’d really love to learn the answer.”

  “Then don’t leave. Why not spend the night? I saw your overnight bag by the front door.”

  “I didn’t want to leave it in my car, so I brought it over with me. I was planning to check into a motel in Lincolnville.”

  “But you can see all the work we have to do here! I have a perfectly nice guest room upstairs, with quite a spectacular view.”

  She glanced at the window, at fog that had grown even thicker, and wondered what view he was talking about.

  “But perhaps it’s not really worth your trouble. It seems I’m the only one who cares about history anymore. I just thought you might feel the same way, since you touched her bones.” He sighed. “Oh, well. What does it matter? Someday, we’ll all be just like her. Dead and forgotten.” He turned. “The last ferry leaves at four thirty. You’d better head back to the landing now, if you want to catch it.”

  She didn’t move. She was still thinking about what he’d said. About forgotten women.

  “Mr. Page?” she said.

  He looked back, a bent little gnome of a man clutching his knobby cane.

  “I think I will spend the night.”

  For a man his age, Henry could certainly hold his drink. By the time they’d finished dinner, they were well into a second bottle of wine, and Julia was having trouble focusing. Night had fallen, and in the glow of lamplight everything in the room had blurred to a warm haze. They had eaten their meal at the same table where the papers were spread out, and alongside the remains of roast chicken was a stack of old letters and newspapers she had yet to examine. She could not possibly read them tonight, not the way her head was spinning.

  Henry didn’t appear to be slowing down at all. He refilled his glass and sipped as he reached for another document, one of an endless collection of handwritten correspondence addressed to Margaret Tate Page. There were letters from beloved children and grandchildren and medical colleagues from around the world. How could Henry still focus on the faded ink after all those glasses of wine? Eighty-nine years old sounded ancient, yet Henry was out-drinking her, and certainly outlasting her through this evening’s reading marathon.

  He glanced at her over the rim of his glass. “You’ve given up already?”

  “I’m exhausted. And a little tipsy, I think.”

  “It’s only ten o’clock.”

  “I don’t have your stamina.” She watched as he brought the letter right up to his spectacles, squinting to read the faded writing. She said, “Tell me about your cousin Hilda.”

  “She was a schoolteacher, like you.” He flipped over the letter. Added, absently: “Never got around to having any children of her own.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Don’t you like children?”

  “I love them.”

  “Hilda didn’t.”

  Julia sank back in the chair, looking at the stack of boxes, the only legacy that Hilda Chamblett had left behind. “So that’s why she was living alone. She didn’t have anyone.”

  Henry glanced up. “Why do you think I live alone? Because I want to, that’s why! I want to stay in my own house, not some nursing home.” He reached for his glass. “Hilda was like that, too.”

  Stubborn? Irascible?

  “She died where she wanted to,” he said. “At home, in her garden.”

  “I just find it sad that she was lying there for days before anyone found her.”

  “No doubt, so will I. My grandnephew will probably find my old carcass sitting right here in this chair.”

  “That’s a horrible thought, Henry.”

  “It’s a consequence of liking one’s privacy. You live alone, so you must know what I mean.”

  She stared at her glass. “It isn’t my choice,” she said. “My husband left me.”

  “Why? You seem like a pleasant enough young woman.”

  Pleasant enough. Right, that would bring the men running. His remark was so unintentionally insulting that she laughed. But somewhere in the middle of that laugh, the tears started. She rocked forward and dropped her head in her hands, struggling to get her emotions under control. Why was this happening now, why here, in front of this man she scarcely knew? For months after Richard left, she hadn’t cried at all, and had impressed everyone with her stoicism. Now she could not seem to hold back the tears, and she fought them so hard her body was shuddering. Henry didn’t say a word and made no attempt to comfort her. He simply studied her, the way he’d studied those old newspapers, as if this outburst was something new and curious.

  She wiped her face and abruptly stood. “I’ll clean up,” she said. “And then I think I’ll go to bed.” She swept up the dinner plates and turned toward the kitchen.

  “Julia,” he said. “What’s his name? Your husband.”

  “Richard. And he’s my ex-husband.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “No,” she said softly.

  “Then why the hell are you crying over him?”

  Leave it to Henry to so logically cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Because I’m an idiot,” she said.

  Somewhere in the house, a phone was ringing.

  Julia heard Henry shuffle past her bedroom door, his cane thunking as he walked. Whoever was calling knew that he required extra time to reach the phone, because it rang more than a dozen times before he finally picked it up. Faintly she heard his answering “Hello?” Then, a few seconds later, “Yes, she’s here right now. We’ve been going through the boxes. To be honest, I haven’t decided yet.”

  Decided what? Who was he talking to?

  She strained to make out his next words, but his voice had dropped, and all she could hear was an indistinct murmur. After a moment his voice fell silent, and she heard only the sea outside her window, and the creaks and groans of the old house.

  The next morning, by the light of day, the call did not seem at all disconcerting.

  She rolled out of bed, pulled on jeans and a fresh T-shirt, and went to the window. She saw no view today, either. If anything, the fog looked even thicker, pressed so densely against the glass that she thought, if she poked her hand outside, it would sink into something that felt like gray cotton candy. I drove all the way up to Maine, she thought, and I never even saw the sea.

  There was a sharp rap on her door, and she turned, startled.

  “Julia!” Henry called. “Are you awake yet?”

  “I’m just getting up.”

  “You must come downstairs at once.”

  The urgency in his voice made her immediately cross the room and open the door.

  He was standing in th
e hall, his face alight with excitement. “I’ve found another letter.”

  Twelve

  1830

  A HAZE OF CIGAR SMOKE hung like a filmy curtain over the dissection room, the welcome odor of tobacco masking the stench of the cadavers. On the table where Norris worked, a corpse lay with its chest split open, and the resected heart and lungs rested in a foul-smelling mound in the bucket. Even the frigid room could not slow the inevitable process of decomposition, which had already been well under way by the time the corpses had arrived from the state of New York. Two days ago, Norris had watched the delivery of the fourteen barrels, sloshing with brine.

  “New York is where we have to get them now, I’ve heard,” Wendell commented as their four-student team hacked their way into the abdomen, bare hands diving into the ice-cold mass of intestines.

  “There aren’t enough paupers dying here in Boston,” said Edward. “We coddle them and they stay too damn healthy. Then when they do die, you can’t get at them. In New York, they just scoop the bodies out of potter’s field, no questions asked.”

  “That can’t be true,” said Charles.

  “They keep two different burial pits. Pit two is for the discards, the corpses no one’s likely to claim.” Edward looked down at their cadaver, whose grizzled face bore the seams and scars of many hard years. The left arm, once broken, had healed crooked. “I’d say this one was definitely from pit two. Some old Paddy, don’t you think?”

  Their instructor, Dr. Sewall, paced through the dissecting room, past tables of cadavers where young men worked four to a corpse. “I want you to complete the removal of all the internal organs today,” he instructed. “They spoil quickly. Leave them too long, and even those of you who believe you possess strong stomachs will soon find the stench unbearable. Smoke all the cigars you wish, drown yourselves in whiskey, but I guarantee that a whiff of intestine left to decompose for a week will bring low even the hardiest among you.”

  And the weakest among us is already in trouble, thought Norris as he glanced across the table at Charles, whose pale face was wreathed in smoke while he frantically puffed on his cigar.

  “You have seen the organs in situ, and witnessed for yourself some of the hidden gears of this miraculous machinery,” said Sewall. “In this room, gentlemen, we illuminate the mystery of life. As you take apart God’s masterpiece, examine the workmanship, observe the parts in their proper places. Witness how each is vital to the whole.” Sewall paused at Norris’s table and examined the organs lying in the bucket, lifting them out with bare hands. “Which one of you resected the heart and lungs?” he asked.

  “I did, sir,” Norris said.

  “Fine job. Finest I’ve seen in the room.” Sewall looked at him. “You’ve done this before, I take it.”

  “On the farm, sir.”

  “Sheep?”

  “And pigs.”

  “I can tell you’ve wielded a knife.” Sewall looked at Charles. “Your hands are still clean, Mr. Lackaway.”

  “I—I thought I’d give the others a chance to start.”

  “Start? They are already finished with the thorax and are into the abdomen.” He looked down at the corpse and grimaced. “By the smell of this one, it’s going bad fast. It’ll rot before you even pick up your knife, Mr. Lackaway. What are you waiting for? Get your hands dirty.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Dr. Sewall walked out of the room, Charles reluctantly reached for the knife. Staring down at their prematurely rotting Paddy, he hesitated, his blade poised over the bowel. As he gathered his nerve, a chunk of lung suddenly flew across the table and smacked him in the chest. He gave a yelp and jumped back, frantically brushing away the bloody mass.

  Edward laughed. “You heard Dr. Sewall. Get those hands dirty!”

  “For pity’s sake, Edward!”

  “You should see your face, Charlie. You’d think I’d thrown a scorpion at you.”

  Now that Dr. Sewall was out of the room, the students turned boisterous. A flask of whiskey began making its rounds. The team at the next table propped up their corpse and shoved a lit cigar in its mouth. Smoke curled past sightless eyes.

  “This is disgusting,” said Charles. “I can’t do this.” He set down the blade. “I never wanted to be a doctor!”

  “When do you plan to tell your uncle?” said Edward.

  Fresh laughter exploded at the other end of the room, where a student’s hat had found its way onto a dead woman’s head. But Charles’s gaze remained on Paddy, whose deformed left arm and crooked spine were mute testimony to a life of pain.

  “Come on, Charlie,” encouraged Wendell, and he held out a knife to him. “It’s not so bad once you get started. Let’s not allow this poor Paddy to go to waste. He has so much to teach us.”

  “You would say that, Wendell. You love this sort of thing.”

  “We’ve already peeled away the omentum. You can resect the small bowel.”

  As Charles stared at the offered knife, someone jeered from across the room: “Charlie! Don’t faint on us again!”

  Flushing a bright red, Charles took the knife. Grim-faced, he began to cut. But this was no skillful resection; these were savage slashes, his blade mangling the bowel, releasing a stench so awful that Norris lurched backward, lifting his arm to his face to stifle the smell.

  “Stop,” said Wendell. He grabbed Charles’s arm, but his friend kept hacking away. “You’re making a mess of it!”

  “You told me to cut! You told me to get my hands bloody! That’s what my uncle keeps telling me, that a doctor is worthless unless he’s willing to gets his hands bloody!”

  “We’re not your uncle,” said Wendell. “We’re your friends. Now stop.”

  Charles threw down the knife. Its thud was lost in the high-spirited bedlam of young men let loose upon a task so gruesome, the only sane response was perverse frivolity.

  Norris picked up the knife and asked, quietly: “Are you all right, Charles?”

  “I’m fine.” Charles released a deep breath. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  A student stationed at the door suddenly hissed out a warning: “Sewall’s coming back!”

  Instantly the room fell quiet. Hats came off corpses. Cadavers resumed their positions of dignified repose. When Dr. Sewall walked back into the room, he saw only diligent students and serious faces. He crossed straight to Norris’s table and came to a halt, staring at the slashed intestines.

  “What the devil is this mess?” Appalled, he looked at the four students. “Who is responsible for this butchery?”

  Charles appeared to be on the verge of tears. For Charles, every day seemed to bring some fresh humiliation, some new chance to reveal his incompetence. Under Sewall’s gaze, he now seemed dangerously close to shattering.

  Edward said, too eagerly: “Mr. Lackaway was trying to resect the small bowel, sir, and—”

  “It’s my fault,” Norris cut in.

  Sewall looked at him in disbelief. “Mr. Marshall?”

  “It was—it was a bit of horseplay. Charles and I—well, it got out of hand, and we sincerely apologize. Don’t we, Charles?”

  Sewall regarded Norris for a moment. “In light of your obvious skill as a dissector, this poor conduct is doubly disappointing. Do not let it happen again.”

  “It won’t, sir.”

  “I’m told that Dr. Grenville wishes to see you, Mr. Marshall. He waits in his office.”

  “Now? On what matter?”

  “I suggest you find out. Well, go.” Sewall turned to the class. “As for the rest of you, there will be no more tomfoolery. Proceed, gentlemen!”

  Norris wiped his hands on his apron and said to his companions, “I’ll have to leave you three to finish old Paddy.”

  “What’s this about you and Dr. Grenville?” asked Wendell.

  “I have no idea,” said Norris.

  “Professor Grenville?”

  The dean of the medical college looked up from his desk. Backlit by the gloomy daylight t
hrough the window behind him, his silhouette resembled a lion’s head, with its mane of wiry gray hair. As Norris paused on the threshold, he felt Aldous Grenville studying him, and he wondered what blunder on his part could have precipitated this summons. During his long walk down the hallway, he had searched his memory for some incident that might have called his name to Dr. Grenville’s attention. Surely there’d been something, since Norris could think of no reason why the man would even notice, among the several dozen new students, a mere farmer’s son from Belmont.

  “Do come in, Mr. Marshall. And please close the door.”

  Uneasy, Norris took a seat. Grenville lit a lamp and the flame caught, casting its warm glow across the gleaming desk, the cherry bookshelves. The silhouette transformed to an arresting face with bushy side-whiskers. Though his hair was as thick as a young man’s, it had gone silver, lending distinguished authority to his already striking features. He sank back into his chair, and his dark eyes were two strange orbs, reflecting the lamplight.

  “You were there, at the hospital,” said Grenville. “The night Agnes Poole died.”

  Norris was taken aback by the abrupt introduction of this grim subject, and he could only nod. The murder had been six days ago, and since then there had been wild gossip in town about who—or what—could have killed her. The Daily Advertiser had described a winged demon. Whispers about papists had been inevitable, no doubt launched from the lips of Watchman Pratt. But there had been other rumors as well. A preacher in Salem had spoken of evil afoot, of foul creatures and devil-worshiping foreigners who could only be combated by the righteous hand of God. Last night, the outrageous tales had inspired a drunken mob to chase a hapless Italian man down Hanover Street, forcing him to seek refuge in a tavern.

  “You were the first to find the witness. The Irish girl,” said Grenville.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen her since that night?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You are aware that the Night Watch is looking for her?”

  “Mr. Pratt told me. I know nothing about Miss Connolly.”