You Buy Bones Read online

  He could not see the policemen, but he trusted they could see him, and that they could see his signal for what it was: there was enough reason to come in and search. Watson would pretend to be as innocent and outraged as Parker at the rude intrusion, and there was more than a good chance he would ask Watson to vouch for him in incriminating language.

  But that little jaw-bone... that is enough cause to bring in the Law. Watson was still sickened at the thought, and hoped his reaction had never shown. Even if that is all we find tonight, I am glad. He gulped hard, swallowing a harsh mouthful of smoke, and his eyes burned in as much anger as tobacco. He was not complicated enough of a man to justify the confessed trickery over a child’s bones. Let him be seen as simple and short-sighted for science. He did not care.

  Is it so easy to pretend? Is it so simple to lower someone’s standards? It would seem so.

  It went against Watson’s every nerve to smoke at night when he did not want to be overtly observed; one might as well have a glowing target for their head. He’d declared enough sentries dead of their indulgence despite the orders of all the officers. A glowing coal was a perfect orientation for a rifleman. He shifted his weight from good leg to bad leg several times, pondering Dr. Parker. In the beginning, the man had paid no more attention to him than he had any of his other students.

  Parker had met Hamish first; most people did. Hamish was as bright and obtrusive as the ideal British man. Whilst medicine had not been his forte’ - indeed it was one of the few things in which he hadn’t taken an interest - he had shared his curiosity with geology and geography with the interdepartmentally minded Parker. From there Parker had noticed Hamish’ brother, and perhaps he had wanted to see for himself what operated under John’s mind.

  And John had not disappointed his teachers. Medicine was instinct as much as information; and he excelled in both. In a way, medicine was as thrilling as any sport or battle - well, it was a battle; a battle against the many forms of Death. To successfully conclude a case with a patient was a feeling he never tired of duplicating.

  He would have stayed in the Army forever had his fate not rested in other areas. Rather than subside into a broken heart like his brother... he had become another sort of a soldier; one that saw disease and debility as his opponents.

  Through it all, from triumph to tragedy and abject failure... Parker had made John uncomfortable with the vague and unspoken feeling that the man wanted to find something remarkable in him... which was one thing, but there were men who wanted to discover great things... simply to say they had been the discoverers. And with Parker... all the better to be able to say that he had discovered something remarkable within John Watson.

  All his life, he had watched as people flocked to his brother, wanting his friendship and his approval... wanting to take him home for the same reasons why they wanted to collect something exotic. John had loathed it too deeply for envy, and now he realised he had made a serious mistake in not ciphering this behaviour out. Now that it was being focused upon him, he didn’t know what to do about it.

  He wondered if this might be the root of Holmes’ erratic impatience with praise. He liked it well enough... if he had similar regard for the person doing the praising! If not... the phrase, ‘damn with faint praise’ could not begin to describe how his friend would react. Watson always dreaded the denouement of his cases when it had difficult clients. Holmes’ temper was quick to break free when someone he despised insulted him with congratulations and admiration.

  I should pay more attention, Watson promised himself. Starting when we are both back at Baker Street.

  He drew the smoke inside his lungs and held it for a moment, needing the calming influence of the plant. His thoughts were still in turmoil; it was not unlike knowing the enemy would attack at dawn, but being forced to wait for that intermittent hour. He blew out the tobacco in a thin cloud, watching it catch the dying raindrops from outside the tiny porch eves. The storm was fading in uneven rhythm; it made a clumsy counterpoint to the singing.

  Singing.

  Singing? The doctor felt his face deepen into a frown of concentration. His heart pounded as he moved slightly against the edge of the porch-rail, listening for the source of that sound.

  It was an old mode. Aeolian, rising and falling in the cadence of the minors’ scales. Something about it was familiar... familiar and dark.

  “As I was walking all alane,

  I heard twa corbies making a mane;

  The tane unto the t’other say,

  ‘Where sall we gang and dine to-day?’”

  Parker.

  Watson felt his unease swell to exponential mountains. Where was the man? The sound was coming from somewhere below his own feet! He looked about him quickly, saw nothing - no sign of Bradstreet or Lestrade - but nor did he see the source of the singing.

  “‘In behint yon auld fail dyke,

  I wot there lies a new slain knight;

  And naebody kens that he lies there,

  But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair...’”

  It was the oldest song in the English language; so old no one could even begin to guess. And it just happened to be a murder ballad.

  “‘His hound is to the hunting gane,

  His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,

  His lady’s ta’en another mate,

  So we may mak our dinner sweet...’”

  Bradstreet stiffened as, through the curtain of box, Watson had suddenly grown as taut as Flag Manoeuvres on the green. The man’s head whipped from side to side.

  “He hears something?” The big man whispered.

  “Look!” Lestrade’s whisper was even softer, but it managed to cut through his friend like a knife. Watson was no longer looking about; he was looking down, but then with a swift jerk, was lowering himself off the porch, exquisitely careful to not click his soles against the stonework. As they watched in growing puzzlement, the doctor dropped into a crouch, heedless of anyone seeing him off the empty street.

  For long moments they watched, baffled but knowing to be wary, then Watson very carefully rose to his feet again. It was difficult; his war injuries corresponded with each other, shoulder-wound opposing his leg.

  His face was a papery mask as he glanced up at the street-lamp, and he carefully pulled out another cigarette, making a point of smoking it halfway down before he tossed it into the stonework ringing the porch.

  “Hold it!” Lestrade hissed but Bradstreet was out of the boxwoods as soon as the door shut after Watson. The smaller man gritted his teeth, in for a penny/in for a pound, and followed him out.

  Bradstreet had stopped at the spot the doctor had just vacated. He turned to look as Lestrade came up, and his face was milky under the dark of his moustaches. “Listen,” he whispered harshly.

  And Lestrade caught his breath.

  “‘Mony a one for him makes mane,

  But nane sall ken where he is gane;

  Oer his white banes, when they are bare,

  The wind sall blaw for evermair...’”

  “Where is it coming from?” He whispered. “Is it the sewers?”

  “This is Edinburgh, man.” Bradstreet’s face twisted with an appalling knowledge. “There’re more than sewers below the surface of the world.”

  8: O’er His White Banes

  John closed the door behind him and froze, collecting information with his ears and eyes. Every nerve tingled; he was saturated with the song. It floated upward through the hallway, barely audible once he’d left the street.

  Parker was in the Vaults of Edinburgh, and Watson was not happy about it but his Adams was in his pocket, and for all his growing proof of demonism, Parker eschewed the sort of violence brought about by any sort of ballistics. His war-wounds had been collected hauling the wounded to safety.

  If he is in t
he Vaults, then his library would be unguarded...

  The doctor slipped up the stairs, the pain in his leg momentarily gone in the flush of the hunt. Foolish of him not to think of the possibility, but he’d thought this section of the street was outside the limits of the old subterranean city. The street was outside the borders of Old Town, after all...

  Absence of proof is not proof of absence. Watson scolded himself; another old teacher’s words coming back to haunt him at the worst possible moment. It was a moment’s work to detour back to his bedroom and build up an outline on the bed with pillows and his wadded-up coat. He lit the bedside-candle quickly and thrust the glass chimney around the wax in relief; the flame thrust his shadows across the walls. Closing his bedroom door after him he made his way to the library.

  “Bradstreet, pretend I know nothing about Edinburgh. What are you talking about?”

  “Niddrey Street,” Bradstreet muttered, and appeared to sight something far away, as if drawing pictures inside his mind. “Edinburgh’s got an underground city below the Old Town area... we’re not far from it; perhaps the borders went further than most of us know. Maybe this is part of the original street...”

  Lestrade was waiting with badly concealed impatience, rising up and down on his toe-tips, hands wrenched into his pockets.

  “Build over a hundred years ago, Geoff. I’m sure I don’t know why, but for years upon years, you had poor souls, mostly Irish, living underneath the city. Ten to a room no biggern’ your little office-room, plus a stove to cook on. The garbage was awful even for that time, and disease wiped out whole families at once. The Vaults are supposed to be closed, but you hear thrill-seekers wanting to visit, and they’ll pay for the trip down by a guide.”

  “Sounds like a sewer,” Lestrade decided.

  “It wasn’t built to be a sewer, but you may as well call it such.” Bradstreet smacked his gloved fist into his open palm. “That doctor fellow, he’s down there. Watson caught on, and I’m afraid he’s about to get himself into trouble.”

  Lestrade wasn’t stupid; he was methodical. “The library.” He breathed. “He said Parker would be likely to have his proofs in his library, and if he’s singing underneath the city, he can’t very well be in his house guarding it.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” Bradstreet admitted, but the men traded uneasy looks.

  Watson puffed his breath out in thought, hands on hips as he contemplated the library/study. Glass eyes gleamed back at him from behind glass displays; the real eyes floated listlessly in alcohol under jars, the colours of the iris fading gently over time. Ghostly eyes. He shuddered.

  There should be something here. Elspeth Bradstreet’s skeleton had to be hidden here. And if he could find that... he could find the proof of her murder...

  ...And there was a door in the wall where there had not been one before.

  Watson swallowed hard. He held his candle close and limped to the wall, where the heavy oak panels doubled as fashionable cabinet-drawers. The gap was large enough for a man; a small one. He reached out, touched the edges of the wood. The intricate mouldings were also the handles and hinges; he tugged gently, and the panels opened further without a squeak.

  It appeared to be a small dark-room or a re-constructed closet. More jars of preserved items met his eye, organic in nature mostly; but there were rice-parchment paintings of human pathology, hanging in bamboo frames and marked in red ink. Watson wondered where these were collected from; they appeared to be devoted to unique deformities.

  He frowned at an image of a man with a flipper for a foot. In another cabinet rested the account of an African king struck by polio; he explained his warped lower limbs as proof of his ancestry as a merman.

  He was scowling at a painting of a man with two pupils in each eyeball, wondering if the poor man’s claim to pathology was floating in one of these jars, when a draft of air brushed against the hairs on the back of his hand. It smelt not of Edinburgh, but of a forgotten stockyard. The pit of his stomach churned.

  Watson’s head turned. A panel that he had overlooked as part of Parker’s cabinetry for years because of its large size had been left ajar. Not much, but enough that the draught whispered over his skin cold and dank.

  A secret passage inside a secret room?

  Nothing for it.

  He pulled his clasp-knife out of his pocket and in a sudden move, chipped the edge of the door with the blade, marking where he was about to go. A close inspection of the darkness behind the panel-door showed nothing but a void. That could mean his bringing a light inside would be an alert. Still...

  Parker had been singing. He must be extremely confident... and he was without a doubt, drunk. That drunkenness might give him the edge he needed.

  Watson slipped behind the panel and lifted the candle high, thinning the spill of light at his feet. Just barely, a winding set of stairs spiraled downward. The smell was stronger. Much stronger. Mould mixed in it. Old animal wastes. Lye and ammonia.

  Grave-earth smells.

  The young man swallowed hard as the ghastly vapours conjured old memories of the dead and dying. Everyone thought Maiwand had been a hot place, but no. He had never been colder than when he had lain in the earth, waiting for help or death.

  Watson carefully closed the door in precisely the way he’d found it, but he was forced to step downward with his good leg, just strong enough to brace his weight whilst he moved. It was slow going; it was painstaking. It was maddening. But he kept the candle high with his good arm and stuck out his patience. The mildew became a stench. It burned his nostrils and he breathed out his mouth to lower the risk of sneezing.

  The steps ended. The candle gasped against the volume of the darkness. Watson waited, thinking. That cool draft was going to his left; he took a cautious step across the black floor - packed earth, pressed into concrete density from the years - and felt the coolness penetrate his shoes. Faint as foxfire, the stone outlines of doorways caught on the threads of candlelight.

  It was as silent as a tomb should be. He heard nothing but his own breath over the pounding of blood in his heart and ears.

  Something pale tipped in the candlelight; a scrap of paper on the packed floor. Watson caught a stronger wave of ammonia, knowing it was not natural for this sepulchral limbo. He quickened his step to see a door, leaning open into the black hallway. Glass - clean glass - reflected back at him.

  The footfalls spidered eagerly up behind him, but his wounds were too fresh and his balance, too fragile. Parker had enjoyed decades of practice after his crippling to learn compensation. Watson heard his own breath leave his lungs as the hands slammed into his chest, knocking him backwards and deeper into the room. His back struck the floor with a grunt of dizzying pain. The candle-chimney burst into fragments in the darkness; he blinked against the sting of shards and the door slammed shut; a final sounding click of a bolt-lock rang in the doctor’s ears and with it, his heart forgot how to beat.

  “I’m going to go in,” Bradstreet announced. “You back me up.”

  “No, I am.” Lestrade retorted. He met Bradstreet’s glare coldly. “Don’t give me that look, Inspector. I’m the one with the iron and you’d best think of what would happen if Dr. Parker claimed in court you’d thrashed him? I’m much more his size.”

  Bradstreet sniffed his anger down. “You’re smaller than he is in both directions,” A grudging admission. “I would adore the chance to see him accuse you of police brutality.” The clever comment did not disguise Bradstreet’s worry. “Be careful, Lestrade.”

  “Redundant grammar, Bradstreet.” Lestrade turned and as one they grimly met Inspector MacDonald trotting up with a small army of silent policemen.

  “He’s signalled.” Lestrade told the Scots. “And he feels there’s cause to bring us in.”

  “God help us.” Was all MacDonald thought of it.

>   The floor was stinking sawdust and flecks burned his eyes and nose but Watson was grateful. Its softness had saved him the injury of a heavy fall. He spat wood-shavings out of his mouth and fumbled in his pockets with trembling hands. He found his match-box inside a front pocket. He held on to the temptation to move before he could see anything and managed to strike a light after a few tries; his hands were still trembling, but it might have been from the cold and shock more than actual fear. The doctor’s brain was coldly, mercilessly analysing his person and what it found was anger warring with humiliation, and a growing horror. The smell that had soaked into the soft sawdust was prevalent now; as a medical man, he knew the reasons for such a stench.

  The match caught; he peered about the floor, found the candle and re-lit it with a gasp. The light was blessed. He felt himself relax, just a bit, now that he could see and he clambered to his feet by degrees, dripping sawdust grime and wincing at the pull of his wounds. My God, will Maiwand never leave?

  He was in a collection-room... A very different room from the rooms resting upstairs.

  Watson stared, his heart in his throat as he took in the fact he was sealed in a tomb with skeletons hanging inside glass cases.

  Parker must have spent years building it up. Years. And his father had been in trouble for such murky dealings with human remains... how much had he inherited? What had he been exposed to as a child, to defray his sense of the sacred and create this sense of arrogant entitlement?

  Elspeth Bradstreet’s bones hung suspended in its box. She was a pretty child, with Bradstreet’s apple-shaped face and firm nose and large, widely spaced eyes. Next to her floated the hunched-over skeleton of a very old man with an extra vertebra in his back. In life he had been withered; his bones were porous with osteoporosis. Most of his teeth were gone. He would have had pronounced cheekbones under his wrinkles, and a constant grimace of pain from the otitis media infection at his left ear that slowly killed him. The bones had been partially devoured by the disease; the candlelight caught the lacy filigree of the remaining bone. In his youth he had been handsome and evenly-shaped with a proud browline and strong chin.