James McGee - Resurrectionist

“Grand design?”

The two men looked at each other. Hawkwood’s brain was spinning. It couldn’t be true. The idea was absurd, preposterous, the stuff of nightmares. He closed his eyes. “It’s madness!”

“Yes.” Locke nodded. “I agree. That’s precisely what it is. Tell me, Officer Hawkwood, do you know your Shakespeare?”

“It’s been a while since I attended the theatre, Doctor.”

“There’s a quotation, from Hamlet: ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your Philosophy.’”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, anything is possible.”

Both men fell silent. Neither wanted to be the one to voice what both of them were thinking.

Hawkwood broke first. “McGrigor thought the colonel might be taking the body parts in order to carry out some kind of surgical procedure. You think he’s going to try and raise the dead. I think you’re both right. That’s his grand design. That’s why he’s been obtaining corpses and removing internal organs. That’s why he got Matthews to design his electrical machine. He’s going to use the spare parts to repair a dead body, then he’s going to try and bring it back to life.”

“That’s not possible,” Locke whispered.

Hawkwood looked at him. “A moment ago, you told me anything is possible.”

“Not that,” Locke said.

“The colonel seems to think it is. My question is, who’s he planning to resurrect?”

He saw that the apothecary was staring at him, a stricken look on his face.

“Doctor?”

“I think I know,” Locke said softly.

“Who is it?”

“His daughter.”

Nathaniel Jago rose from the bed and padded naked to the window. He ran a hand across his close-cropped grey hair and looked out at the early-afternoon scene below. He did so without a trace of conceit or self-consciousness, totally at ease with himself. He was not a young man. His face was square and hard edged and carried the lines of someone who’d experienced the harsher side of life and all the adventures it had to offer, and met them head on. His stocky frame and broad shoulders gave him the look of a wrestler or a pugilist. Indeed, his body carried more than its fair share of wear and tear, but a keen-sighted and knowledgeable observer would have recognized the majority of his scars as having been made not by fist or elbow but by blade and bullet.

Jago was not a Londoner by birth. His childhood had been spent on the Kent marshes, a world away from the hustle and bustle that filled the city street below. He stared down at the clogged thoroughfare, at the horse-drawn carriages clattering over the cobbles, the hunched shoulders and bowed heads of the pedestrians, and wondered, not for the first time, why he felt so at home here. It was strange how things turned out.

“Penny for them,” a husky voice said behind him.

Jago turned. The crow’s feet at the corners of his dark eyes crinkled. “Just admirin’ the view.”

“Me, too,” the voice said. The comment was followed by a throaty chuckle.

“You’re a brazen hussy, Connie Fletcher,” Jago laughed. “Have you no shame?”

The woman in the bed was laid on her side. She, too, was naked. Her head was propped on her right hand. A pair of warm blue eyes, framed by a tousled mane of blonde hair, regarded Jago with a mixture of humour and affection.

“Shame? You’re a fine one to talk, standing by the window with your arse hangin’ out.” Her eyes dropped. “Mind you, it’s quite a nice arse. Not too saggy. In fact, not bad for an old ’un.”

“Watch who you’re callin’ old,” Jago said, feigning insult. “I’ll ’ave you know, I’ve been told I’ve got the body of a twenty-year-old.”

“That so? Well, it’s high time you gave it him back, then. Now why don’t you come here and give Connie a squeeze?”

“You could always start without me,” Jago said, lifting a suggestive eyebrow.

“True, but it’s not half as much fun.”

Jago looked up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes. “The things I do for England.”

Connie Fletcher pulled back the corners of the quilt and grinned. “God save the King!”

Jago returned to the bed and Connie moved over, taking the edge of the bedcovers with her.

“You in?”

“I’m in,” Jago said.

Connie drew the quilt over them both. Resting her head against his chest, she nestled in close. “Snug as two bugs,” she said.

They lay in easy silence. Connie’s breath was soft against his skin. After a minute or two, though, he felt her stir. She lifted her head.

“I didn’t mean it about you being old,” she said. “You’re not.”

“I ain’t exactly in my first flush,” Jago said.

“Who is?” Connie raised herself up. “I’ve stockings older than some of the girls I’ve got working here.”

Jago looked down at her. “You’re a fine-looking woman, Connie Fletcher. And don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Connie patted his stomach. “And you’re a smooth-talking flatterer, Nathaniel Jago,” she said. “But I thank you for it, all the same.”

“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it was so. And you’ve got the brains, and there’s not many I’d say that to, neither.”

“Well, it’s nice to know I’m appreciated for a bit more than these — ” Connie dropped her gaze and cupped her left breast. “Not that they haven’t given me a good living, mind.”

With Connie’s head against his chest and her leg across his thigh, Jago felt satisfyingly at ease. Which wasn’t to say that his guard was totally relaxed. It was another legacy of his days in the army: the ability to rest and conserve energy while still keeping one eye open, just in case.

A peal of girlish laughter sounded beyond the room.

“That’ll be Esther,” Connie chuckled. “She’s got his lordship with her. Don’t know how he manages it at his age. He’s a game old devil, I’ll give him that. Esther says he likes to chase her round the bed. He reckons it’s the only exercise he gets now that he’s given up hunting. Will you chase me round the bed when you’re old and grey?”

“I’m already old and grey,” Jago said. “You want to run round the bed, be my guest.”

“And they say romance is dead,” Connie murmured.

The laughter along the landing faded away.

The room fell silent. The sound of the street could be heard faintly beyond the window.

“I need a favour, Nathaniel,” Connie said hesitantly.

“Wondered how long it would take.”

She turned her head and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been fidgeting for the last five minutes. Come on, out with it.”

Connie sat up. Her breasts swayed enticingly. “It’s Chloe. A friend of hers has gone missing.”

Chloe was one of Connie’s girls, a petite redhead with alabaster skin.

“Why the interest?”

“Because Chloe’s worried and she came to me for advice.”

It was a good enough reason, Jago acknowledged. Connie was like a mother hen with her girls. She recruited them, taught them how to dress and how to conduct themselves in proper company. She looked after their welfare, too, arranging medical examinations with a local doctor who made regular visits to the house. To Connie, a clean house was an orderly house and an orderly house brought in the business. And with business came profit.

“This friend, she’s a working girl, too?”

Connie nodded.

“Independent, I’m assumin’?”

Connie nodded again. “Works the Garden and the Haymarket. Met her once. Chloe and I ran into her outside Drury Lane. Bonny-looking girl; just the sort to fit in here, with the right training. In fact, I had thought of getting Chloe to ask her if she’d be interested. Sadie told me the other morning she’s expecting a proposal from young Freddie Hamilton, Lord Brockmere’s son. He’s been visiting her for the past six months. They say he has an income of five thousand a year. If he does ask, she’ll be off, which would leave me with an opening.”