The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [64]
It was an uncomfortable attention to be subjected to, but Quire’s discomfort went a good deal deeper than that. The room in which the two men sat—that prodigious desk between them like the polished bole of some huge fallen tree—was in part study, but only in part. It also served as a storehouse of what were, to Quire’s eye, grotesqueries.
Two short skeletons stood in glass-fronted cases, an honour guard flanking Knox. Their empty eye sockets seemed to Quire to be watching him with as much disdain as their owner. Atop a cabinet was a collection of disarticulated bones, each of them mounted on a wooden stand, the better to display their deformities. Every one of them was bent or twisted or gnarled with bulbous outgrowths. Beneath a dusty glass dome was a human hand, bleached of all colour, its fingers splayed, its skin peeled back to expose the intricate web of bone and tendons and muscles beneath it. There were gas fittings on the walls, small brackets like candle-holders. They were not burning now, but Quire could imagine how starkly eerie the place must seem when their light threw shadows from Knox’s strange collection.
The human body was here reduced to a parade of oddities and afflictions, its constituent parts exhibited in a menagerie of disease. Quire could guess at the educational justification of it all, but he could not look upon it without being put in mind of those whose remains had found their way into the collection. He could not help but wonder about their lives, their suffering. He somehow doubted that such thoughts greatly troubled Dr. Knox.
“Are you a religious man?” Knox asked at length, his tone much moderated.
“No, sir. I am not.”
“Very well. You should then, being rational, be aware that the light of reason has shone brightly in this city these last fifty years. Great men have walked these streets, and their learning, their insight, in every field of thought from the arts to science to philosophy has illuminated all the land and driven superstition into exile. The flame is less bright now, perhaps, but still there are some men of exceptional talents, with the will to feed it. You do your city, and your nation, no service if you seek to traduce the reputation of those who strive to keep it lit.”
“That is not my intent, sir,” Quire said blandly. “I know only that we cannot have murder going unanswered, and that I am required, by duty and inclination alike, to find those responsible.”
“Again, you presume some knowledge upon my part that does not exist.”
“They are resurrectionists, sir. Lifters of corpses. It’s a matter of common sense to make enquiry of those through whose hands a great many corpses pass.”
“A very common kind of sense, indeed,” snorted Knox. “I smell the prejudice of the mob in it. The irrationalities and misguided sensitivities that would set shackles upon scientific endeavour. Let me make it clear, Sergeant: corpses do not pass through my hands, as you so casually put it. They receive the attention of my knife, and such skills as I possess, for the education of hundreds—many hundreds—of young men who set a not inconsiderable value upon it.
“Paterson, my doorkeeper, manages the supply of cadavers, and I can assure you they are acquired by means that need be of no concern to you and your ilk. Now, if you will excuse me, I have matters requiring my attention. Be so good as to give me some peace, would you?”
Knox rose at that, and came briskly out from behind the desk, extending an open hand. It was, Quire supposed, the politest dismissal he could have hoped for in the circumstances. He stood, and shook the proffered hand. Knox’s grip was firm, almost excessively so. It was the grip of a man unfamiliar with the inhibitions of self-doubt; or inured to them by force of will.
“You do not recall me, sir, I suppose?” Quire said.
“Recall you?” Knox frowned as he released Quire’s hand from its imprisonment. “Why, have we met before?”
“You saved my life; or my arm, at the least.”
“Did I? In what circumstances?”
“Brussels. Thirteen years ago now.”
“Ah.” Knox nodded slowly.