Free The Art of Murder by Michael White Page B

plinky-plonky Mozart concerto at the Sheldonian, that I wanted to know more about human anatomy than I could gain from my own courses of study.
    ‘My dear Sandler,’ he replied with characteristic enthusiasm, ‘that really is a very easy matter to resolve.’
    ‘What do you mean exactly?’ I replied, leading him on.
    ‘Are you tired?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well then, why waste a moment? Come with me.’
    We were walking along Broad Street but he turned us both round by gripping my shoulder and spinning on his heel. ‘Our lab is not far, just past Wadham on Parks Road. There’s always someone working late.’
    And so I saw my second dead body. As a third-year student, Merryfield had his own key to the laboratory. He was right, there were two other students working there still. The place was freezing.It was a cold November night, but I surmised the place was kept cool by some clever artificial means.
    The cadaver Merryfield showed me was that of an old man. He was kept packed in ice in a steel cabinet. Merryfield opened the door to the unit and slid the body out on a narrow tray. I glanced down at the forlorn figure on its metal bier. His skin was yellow and as wrinkled as a dried prune. ‘He was seventy-seven when he died,’ Merryfield commented.
    ‘But how do you obtain your specimens?’ I asked. ‘Is there still a trade in grave-robbing?’
    Merryfield looked greatly offended. ‘No, there is not, Sandler!’ he snapped. ‘We are morally minded students, just like you. The dead bodies we use are all officially accounted for and their passage from the workhouse, the prisons and the hospitals is documented in triplicate.’
    ‘I’m sorry, I …’
    ‘Burke and Hare went out of business a long time ago,’ he added.
    I held my hands up and made a very fine show of trying to pacify my ‘friend’. The fact was, of course, that I was greatly amused by his reaction, though I could not let him know that. ‘So how on earth do you preserve the corpses?’ I said, quickly putting Merryfield back into a position where he could do his best to impress.
    ‘Well, that’s actually a very good question,’ he said, his ill temper evaporating. ‘It’s not at all easy. Have you heard of refrigeration?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘That’s what we do here. We have a gas generator at the back of the building which keeps the room cool. You must have noticed?’
    ‘Yes, I did,’ I retorted with a shiver.
    ‘The body is embalmed with a special chemical called glutaraldehyde and packed in ice in the box there.’ He pointed to the dead man’s steel tomb. ‘The glutaraldehyde has turned Franklin’s skin yellow.’
    ‘Franklin?’
    ‘That was his name. A murderer, apparently. Killed two small children.’
    I stared down at the sinewy naked form and could not visualise it as ever having been a living thing, let alone a person possessing the passion to kill.
    Later Merryfield and I walked back to Broad Street together. After arranging a date and time for my first extra-curricular anatomy lesson with him, we parted on good terms. He wandered off to his room in Lincoln College and I walked slowly along Turl Street towards Exeter. But I knew even then that I would not sleep until I had spent some more time with Franklin.
    I waited for three hours, watching the clock on my mantelpiece until the hands reached one. We were all supposed to be tucked up in our rooms by ten at night, and the curfew was strictly enforced. But, as you will have gleaned, I’ve never been an entirely conventional fellow. Within twenty-four hours of arriving at Exeter I had found at least three different ways to avoid the Bulldogs. It was a simple matter toslip unnoticed past the head porter, Mr Cooper, as he read the Oxford Times and sipped tea in the porters’ lodge. I could move with great stealth and almost completely silently. As a precaution, I had put on black clothes, smeared my face with paint and pulled a hat tight down over my head.
    Another useful skill I