Eliot Pattison - Bone Rattler

Five minutes later they were in a forward hold, a dim narrow space where the dank air carried the pungent, almost overwhelming scents of bilge water, spices, mildew, pitch, and spoiling meat. Arnold and Woolford stood by with lanterns as three keepers, led by Lister, pulled a canvas sheet from a long wooden box, then pried up the nails that secured the top. They lifted away the top and then quickly retreated, casting suspicious glances toward Duncan as they disappeared. Only Lister remained in sight, lingering uneasily near the entrance.

Professor Evering had been salted. His corpse had been cleaned before being laid in a bed of salt, his clothes neatly arranged, a worn silver timepiece added to his waistcoat. His flesh was drawn and puckered, his bloodless lips stretched in a grotesque grin. The professor’s eyes were covered with large penny coins.

Arnold stepped forward and with his fingernails pushed the pennies away, letting them fall into the salt. “Pagans,” he muttered in a disdainful tone.

“We always placed our cadavers in barrels of brine,” Duncan said in an absent tone as he studied the body, his medical training taking over. “Preserves them quite lifelike.”

“So the cook suggested,” Woolford replied. “But a barrel of brine lowered into a grave somehow seemed less than heroic. And this way we avoid the risk that twelve stone of pickled pork gets buried instead.” His words seemed to hint at amusement, but there was only challenge in his eyes when Duncan looked up.

Duncan worked quickly, unbuttoning the collar of the dead man. Rigor mortis had long since left the body, and he pushed the head from side to side between his hands while Arnold stood back with disgust on his face. “The most valuable benefit of the office of hangman,” he explained as he worked, “is the privilege of selling his victims to the medical schools. I have examined over a score of men from the gibbet. Each one bore terrible contusions around the throat, because the rope always crushes the living tissue. See for yourself. The professor shows no such marks.” He pointed at the pale skin of the man’s neck.

“Surely this is a job for a magistrate,” Arnold protested. “Some respect is due-”

Arnold was cut off by Woolford’s raised hand. “There is no magistrate here,” the lieutenant interjected, “and soon the body will be on its way home. Surely we owe the esteemed Evering an opportunity to teach his successor.”

Duncan glanced at the doorway, where Lister lingered, looking strangely pained, then proceeded to probe Evering’s remains, starting with his hands. They were soft, unblemished, showing no sign of a struggle. The professor’s right hand clutched the small Bible Duncan had sometimes seen him reading on deck.

“I read from his own scripture at the service we held for him on deck,” Arnold explained. “He kept to his books,” he said in a louder, poised voice, as if he had decided to begin a eulogy. “When his wife died of fever a year ago he sought a new beginning. But he always seemed so lonely.”

Duncan bent, studying the book in the scholar’s hand. “Why is it damaged?” he asked. “He loved his books, he would never do that.”

“Do what?” Woolford asked.

“The last pages are torn out.” Evering’s fingers did not resist as with his own fingertip Duncan pried up the back cover far enough to glance at the last page. “Revelations. Revelations has been ripped out of his Bible.”

Arnold’s mouth opened and shut as if for an explanation, but no words came out. Someone had removed the pages about the end of the world.

Duncan began examining Evering’s attire. “Are these not the clothes he wore when pulled from the sea?”

“Dried and brushed, yes,” Arnold confirmed. “We added the waistcoat and the watch.”

His waistcoat. Duncan did not recall ever seeing Evering without his waistcoat, the pockets of which were always bulging, filled with slips of paper, even sea biscuits to share with the prisoners, who had slowly warmed to the quiet, gentle scholar. But when they had pulled him from the water, Evering had not been wearing the sleeveless garment. As if he had died before fully dressing. As if he had died in his own quarters.

“This is his everyday waistcoat,” Duncan observed. “He had a black one, for Sunday services. And this is his ordinary watch. He had a gold watch with a fob shaped like a book.”

“Gone,” Arnold replied. “The thieves are as thick as rats on this ship.”

“And his shoes?” Duncan asked.

“One of the keepers polished them,” Arnold said.

“And repaired this?” Duncan asked, pointing to the buckle on the left shoe, which was smaller and shinier than that of the right.

“I suppose,” Woolford said impatiently. “Why would we possibly-” he began, but the words died in his throat as understanding lit his eyes.

“What,” Duncan asked, “was the professor’s buckle doing by the blood-soaked compass?”

Arnold bent over the shoe as Woolford stared at it with a dark expression. Neither offered an answer.

Duncan paused again over Evering’s left knee, where the britches seemed somehow to adhere to the flesh. He rolled up the fabric, having to pry it from the skin at the knee. “He knelt on something before he died,” Duncan observed, squatting to study the chalky skin of the knee. Numerous small punctures radiated out from the patella, the skin slightly discolored around each. Several held tiny shards that glistened in the light. Duncan studied them a moment, holding a lantern close. Glass. Small, sharp pieces of green glass. They would have made it impossible for Evering to walk without incredible pain. Which meant the professor had not knelt on the glass before he died, but as he died.

Duncan moved to the pockets, discovering a slip of paper in the waistcoat. Hoping his companions did not mark his moment’s hesitation, Duncan used his other hand to open a second pocket as he palmed the paper. From the britches he extracted a handkerchief, wrapped around a ball of leaves and stems, which Duncan smelled before extending toward the others.

“Seaweed?” Woolford inquired.

“Tea,” Duncan replied. “Does a man contemplate a pot of tea and suicide at the same time?” He gazed into Evering’s lifeless face, feeling a strange connection with the man, realizing how much they had had in common, remembering the quiet conversations he and Adam and Evering had sometimes shared. Evering had spoken passionately about the calculations he had made that predicted a comet that would be visible in North America by mid-autumn. Duncan sensed that he and Evering would have become close friends had the professor lived. And now, for the first time, Duncan realized that even in his death Evering might provide the key to Adam’s mystery.

“A despondent gentleman, still in anguish over the loss of his wife, might do just that. Suicides are irrational,” Arnold countered. “The death wish can seize them without notice. And we have only the word of a convict that he died before entering the sea.”

Duncan sighed and circled the coffin, then quickly opened Evering’s jaw, lowering his ear toward the dead lips as he firmly pressed on the man’s diaphragm. A wheeze of air rushed up the throat, sounding so much like a cough that Woolford leapt back with a gasp of alarm.

Duncan stayed bent, close to Evering’s mouth. “What say you, Professor?” he asked in a solemn voice, gazing at Arnold as he spoke. He pushed again and a sound like a groan came from the body. “Exactly,” Duncan said. “That is what I have been telling them.”

The color had vanished from Woolford’s face. He seemed to expect Evering to rise up from his coffin at any moment.

“Desecration!” Arnold hissed.