Free An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears

they were prepared to tip heavily for the privilege.
    ‘There you are, then, sirs,’ said the warder as he swung open a heavy door leading into what I gathered was a cell for a middle-ranking sort of prisoner.
    The man whom Lower hoped to cut into small bits was sitting on a little bed. He looked up in a rather sulky fashion as we entered, then peered curiously, a glimmer of half recognition passing across his face as my friend passed into the thin stream of light that came through the open, barred window.
    ‘Dr Lower, isn’t it?’ he said in a melodious voice.
    Lower told me later that he was a lad from a good, but impoverished family; his fall from grace had been something of a shock and his position was not sufficiently elevated to spare him from the gallows. And now the time appointed was drawing near. The English rush from trial to sentence with considerable speed, so that a man condemned on Monday can often be hanged the following morning unless he is lucky; Jack Prestcott could count himself fortunate that he had been arrested a few weeks before the assizes arrived to hear his case; it gave him time to prepare his soul, for Lower told me there was not the slightest chance of an acquittal or a pardon.
    ‘Mr Prestcott,’ Lower said cheerfully. ‘I hope I find you well?’
    Prestcott nodded and said he was as well as could be expected.
    ‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ Lower said. ‘I have come to ask something of you.’
    Prestcott looked surprised that he should be asked a service in his current condition, but nodded to indicate that Lower should ask away. He put down his book and paid attention.
    ‘You are a young man of considerable learning, and I’m told yourtutor spoke very highly of you,’ Lower continued. ‘And you have committed a most heinous crime.’
    ‘If you have found a way of saving me from the noose, then I agree with you,’ Prestcott said calmly. ‘But I fear you have something else in mind. But please continue, Doctor. I am interrupting your speech.’
    ‘I trust you have meditated on your sinful conduct, and have seen the justice of the fate which awaits you in due course,’ Lower continued in what struck me as being a remarkably pompous fashion. I suppose the effort to hit the right tone made him sound a little discordant.
    ‘Indeed I have,’ the youth replied with gravity. ‘Every day I pray to the Almighty for forgiveness, mindful that I scarcely deserve such a boon.’
    ‘Splendid,’ continued Lower, ‘so if I were to tell you of a way in which you could contribute inestimably to the betterment of all mankind, and do something to cancel out the horrible acts with which your name will be for ever associated, you might be interested? Hmm?’
    The young man nodded cautiously, and asked what this contribution might be.
    Lower explained about the law on the corpses of criminals.
    ‘Now, you see,’ he went on, scarcely noticing that Prestcott had turned a little pale, ‘the Regius professor and his assistant are the most appalling butchers. They will hack and saw and chop, and reduce you to a mangled ruin, and no one will be any the wiser. All that will happen is that you will furnish a rarity show for any spotty undergraduate who cares to come along and watch. Not that many do. Now I – and my friend here, Signor da Cola, of Venice – are dedicated to research of the most delicate kind. By the time we are finished, we will know immeasurably more about the functions of the human body. And there will be no waste, I promise you,’ he went on, waving his finger in the air as he got into his stride.
    ‘You see, the trouble with the professor is that, once he stops for lunch, he tends to lose interest. He drinks a good deal, you know,’ he confided. ‘What’s left over gets thrown away or gnawed by rats in the basement. Whereas I will pickle you . . .’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’ Prestcott said weakly.
    ‘Pickle you,’ Lower replied enthusiastically. ‘It is the very