The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [80]
“It is our joint responsibility, we members of this rational brotherhood, to stand firm against the assaults of those who would hobble our investigations. We pursue higher ambitions than they conceive, and cannot be bound by the petty concerns of mob, or church, or polite society. It is both our burden and our honour to stand above such considerations.”
He surveyed the attentive faces, as if to determine their worth.
“In one more way are you privileged, gentlemen,” he proclaimed with a dramatic flourish of his scalpel, much as the conductor of an orchestra might wield his baton. “It is this: you have found your way into my charge. I tell you frankly that you are most fortunate, or wise, to have arrived at such a destination.”
A ripple of amusement tumbled down the steeply raked gallery of seating. His students knew the shape of this theme. They had heard it often enough before, and it was one that seldom proved less than entertaining.
“You have escaped, some of you all too briefly, from under the dead hand of the university. These men they call lecturers and professors”—Knox gestured at the wall with his blade, sending their imaginations out beyond the Royal Infirmary, over the tenement roofs, to where the great college of the university lay—“they rest upon laurels earned by those now dead. They rely upon the notes of men who gave the same lectures, word for word, thirty years ago. There is no movement. And thus they allow the torch that they inherited to falter, its flame to dim.”
He lowered his voice at last, surveying his assembled acolytes with one final sweep of his distinguished head.
“Not here, gentlemen. Here we still pursue the mysteries. Here we still stride forward, admitting of no restraint that lesser mortals might seek to set upon our advancement of human knowledge. So. Let us see what discoveries await us this evening, shall we?”
He bent over the dead woman and set his scalpel to her throat. A pause. An expectant hush. Then, with a single firm and unerring movement, he cut her open from neck to stomach.
“I’ve a sworn statement that you were seen in the company of whores, Quire.”
There was a lascivious looseness to the way Acting Superintendent Baird said the words. He savoured their feel in his mouth far too much. Quire stared back at the man, not bothering to conceal his distaste.
Baird occupied like a thief the seat in which James Robinson had so recently sat, Quire thought. A usurper, entirely too enamoured of the authority he had stolen. Delighting too much in its exercise, as men so often did when they were not truly deserving of the power they wielded. The less they had done to earn it, the more it pleased them to display it.
“Who’s done the swearing?” Quire asked.
The dead weight of his voice should have been a warning to anyone alert to such things, but Baird was not one such.
“Not your concern. The truth of it, that’s what you should be pondering.”
“Have I no right to know my accuser, then?”
“This isn’t a court of law,” Baird scoffed. “It’s a matter of discipline. You’ve breached the regulations of your employment, and for that I’m your judge and the Police Board your jury.”
Quire knew then that he was caught. A fish in a net, and all his thrashing would do nothing but wind him more tightly in the mesh. He had sensed trouble, without knowing its shape, as soon he got back to the police house, to be greeted by the message that Baird required his immediate presence.
Until then, the day had been quieter than most of his recent experience. He had woken, still aching and stiff from his exertions at Cold Burn Farm, after sleeping fitfully through the best part of a full day and night. He had half expected to be roused by the sound of men, or hounds, at his door, come to put an end to him. Instead, it had been the cries of a gypsy woman out on the Canongate, proclaiming the luck-giving properties of the sprigs of heather she had for sale.
He spared