Free Legion of the Dead by Paul Stewart Page B

Will stepped forward and produced a glass vial from his pocket.
    ‘Actually, I think you can,’ said Will. ‘I’m looking for Dr Fitzroy. I’ve got the medicinehe requested …’ Will began.
    ‘Medicine?’ the man repeated, surprised. ‘Don’t you know where you are, son? This is the morgue.’ He nodded towards the shroud-covered trestles. ‘Bit late in the day for medicine for this lot,’ he added and croaked with amusement.
    ‘Oh, dear, how stupid of me,’ said Will, his voice bright and naive. ‘I don’t suppose you could …?’ His words trailed away.
    The morgue attendant tutted and shook his head from side to side. ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered. ‘You tick-tock lads! You’d best come with me, son. I’ll see you right.’
    He took Will by the arm and the pair of them disappeared through the doors, leaving me alone in the morgue. I turned and approached the rows of trestle tables. Every one was covered with a white shroud from beneath which pairs of feet protruded, each with a tag carefully tied to the big toe. I glanced at the first one.
    Eliza Morris
, I read, the words written in a slanting black copperplate script.
Cause of death: the croup
. And underneath, in bold red capitals:
FOR BURIAL
.
    Then at the next,
Thomas Rideout. Cause of death: Heart Failure. FOR BURIAL
.
    I continued down the line.
Blow to the head. Apoplexy. Fever
…
FOR BURIAL, FOR BURIAL, FOR BURIAL
… Eight trestles along, I paused, my heart hammering in my chest as I read the tag:
    Unknown indigent. Cause of death: Drowning. FOR DISSECTION
.
    The body beneath the shroud was considerably larger than the others. At the head of the table, a wisp of hair was just visible which, in the candlelight, seemed to me to have a hint of ginger about it. My hands were shaking as I leaned forwards. I was hot and cold at the same time. I touched the shroud. As I did so, there was a slight, yet unmistakable, movement from beneaththe material. I froze, transfixed.
    With a soft thump, an arm slipped off the side of the trestle table and dangled loosely, the fingers of the hand gnarled and twisted. My breath came in sharp gasps. Could this be the graverobbed body of Firejaw O’Rourke?
    I had to find out.
    Moving up to the top end of the table, I took hold of the material, slowly lifted the white sheet – and let out a cry. It wasn’t the Emperor of Gatling Quays at all, but an unfortunate old man at least twenty years his senior, bloated and mottled by harbour water. A tavern drunk most likely, I thought, who’d stumbled on the shoreside cobbles in the dead of night, and whose body had gone unclaimed. The morgue attendant had probably got an arrangement with the Harbour Constabulary – who fished bodies out of the water – and stood to make a few shillings from the doctors upstairs.
    But this wasn’t the work of graverobbers.
    By all accounts, graverobbers dealt in fresh bodies, where there was real money to be made … I turned away and checked the rest of the tags. Finding no others for dissection, I headed for the door with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment.
    As I pushed open the dark varnished door, I heard a high-pitched scream and found myself face to face with a dazzlingly pretty nurse.
    ‘You startled me!’ she gasped, before stooping to pick up the bundle of blank mortuary tags she had been carrying and which now lay scattered at her feet. ‘This place always gives me the shivers,’ she continued, blushing daintily as I bent to help her. She looked up at me, and frowned. ‘You’re not Bentham!’ she exclaimed.
    ‘I’m afraid I’m lost,’ I said. ‘Took a wrong turning.’ I shrugged, indicating my sling.
    She smiled as she gathered the last of the tags and stepped past me to place them on the mortuary attendant’s desk beside the door.
    Turning quickly away, she pointed to my arm.
    ‘Would you like me to take a look at that arm of yours?’ she asked.
    ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ I said, smiling