Free The Lamplighter by Anthony O'Neill Page B

seemed almost old enough to have been around in the resurrectionist days, but was he really suggesting the body had been dug up for the purposes of theft?
    â€œYou think they might have aimed to sell the body for medical research, is that it?”
    The superintendent took a puzzled glance at the decomposed corpse. “Not in its current state, no, sir.”
    â€œThen what is this talk of ghouls?”
    â€œI only mean the standard troublemakers, sir. Larking young ’uns and the like. This part of the yard, with the railway embankment, is ’specially popular with such types.”
    Groves sighed with disgust. He did not trust the superintendent, who smelled of gin and incompetence, but he relished the feeling of intimidating the man, a precious moment of mastery in the midst of all the confusion. “All the more reason, I would have thought,” he said, “to make this the area of more frequent patrols.”
    The superintendent gulped, genuinely fearful for his job.
    â€œNever mind, man. You heard nothing, in any event?”
    â€œThe embankment…” the superintendent said feebly.
    â€œMakes it difficult to hear, all right. How long do you calculate it might have taken to dig, then?” He looked at the roughly gouged pit. The top half of the casket had been pried from the earth just enough to allow the lid to be smashed open—wood lay in shards and splinters—and the body dragged out by its shoulders.
    â€œWith a pick and a shovel,” the superintendent said, “and a man or two…”
    â€œHow long?”
    The superintendent did not answer directly. “It’s more the way the pit’s been dug, sir. It don’t look like a shovel’s been used, or any other form of implement.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean…a man’d be more likely to dig a roughly square hole, separating the grave boards and turning the earth on either side of the plot.”
    Groves looked behind him at the disturbed earth, sprayed out in a great fan. “Are you trying to say this pit was dug by hand?”
    The superintendent looked reticent. “Seems…seems something like that, sir.”
    â€œBy a beast?”
    The superintendent shrugged. “A beast would have no interest in meat as rotten as this, sir, with all respects to the deceased.”
    â€œThen it’s a man?”
    â€œA man wouldn’t punch open a lid like that, but use a lever.”
    â€œSo which is it—man or beast?”
    But the superintendent could not answer.
    Again the specter of bestial strength had been raised, leaving Groves to wonder if his tour of the city’s circuses had been so foolish after all. A man and a beast—or a number of beasts—in combination. He remembered the hoofprints in Belgrave Crescent and scanned the area around the grave for more clues, but whereas most of Warriston Cemetery had been planted with evergreens—cedars and cypresses artfully distributed—here in the lost corner there was an abundance of deciduous varieties, so that the ground was carpeted with decaying leaves and no prints or tracks were apparent.
    He watched the photographer curse and splutter at his apparatus, unable to get a clear shot through the fog. Pringle spoke up. “Should we take the body back to the mortuary, sir? I’m not sure if we’d need a warrant, what with the body already exhumed.”
    But Groves disliked the prospect of Professor Whitty or his ilk poking around again and making equivocal observations. “There’s nothing this body can tell us,” he decided. “And it’s against the law to exhume a body after ten years.”
    â€œTwenty years, sir.”
    â€œAye.” Groves felt flustered. “That’s very well, but all we can do now is return the Colonel to his box and seal him up as best we can. If the family wants a new casket they can make their own arrangements.”
    But