Chorus of the Dead

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Feelings had changed:

Love, by harsh evidence,

The threesome, Ainsley, Jonas and Margaret stood around Bennett's body, which was draped in a thin white sheet as he was entirely naked beneath. His skin had taken on a dark, tinged appearance since the last Ainsley had seen him, though it was not entirely unexpected since the old doctor still had not been treated and prepared for burial. Jonas and Margaret stood in disbelief, while Ainsley's face bore a pained look of defeat.

"Will you assist me, Jonas?" Ainsley asked. "I have no other whom I trust with such a task."

For the first time since they had entered the room, Margaret pulled her eyes from the corpse and raised an eyebrow.

"For pity's sake, Margaret! Do not look at me so."

Sucking in a deep breath, Margaret turned as if to leave the room. "Do not concern yourself with me. I am just another adornment in the room."

Ainsley let out a breath and shook his head in disbelief. "Margaret, please."

Margaret turned to face him. "Oh Peter! You know as well as I that I shall not be able to do anything worthwhile in my life, at least not while people are watching. Let me help you." She reached out her hands and clutched the bed post with the tight grip of a determined woman.

Ainsley knew his sister's prospects for a satisfying life were limited. She was expected to marry well, bring forth strong heirs and then slip into the background as their mother had been expected to do. He began to feel grateful for the opportunity to follow his interests, even if it meant a career based on deception.

Ainsley gave a glance to Jonas, who merely shrugged. "Very well," Ainsley answered resignedly. "I will remind you, however, I have no patience for squeamishness."

Their work started when Jonas pulled back the sheet, revealing the withered, ashen skin of the town's only doctor. Ainsley stood to one side, Jonas on the other, Margaret positioned nearby with a small array of medical tools in front of her, which Ainsley had brought from London. The curtains had been pulled back as far as possible and Jonas had fetched as many candles and lamps as could be found to illuminate the room even more.

With the first cut, a long thin line down the centre of Bennett's torso, Ainsley was transported back to his days at school when Jonas and he were often paired together to dissect a cadaver brought to them earlier in the day. The instructor would stand behind them, sometimes on the risers of the operating theatre to get a better view of the shaky, uncertain cuts of the would-be doctors. The entire class, eager to watch fellow students butcher the corpse and, in effect, butcher any chances of receiving a passable grade, would surround the pair being graded, often commenting and correcting procedure under their breathes to the person standing beside them. Ainsley and Jonas's peers were never there to encourage them, nor did it seem likely that they wished to learn from them. The reality was that Ainsley and Jonas were the best surgeons the school had seen in a dog's age and everyone, even the instructors, were eager to watch them fail.

"Just like old times," Jonas said in a hushed voice, "Never thought we'd be paired up like this again."

Ainsley gave a feeble smile, his attention fixated on the delicacy of the task. He pulled away for a moment, stretching out his back that was threatening to become sore by days end. The bed, even with a hard board secured beneath the body, was a far cry from a real examining table. "How's work at the university? Do you miss working with real people?" Ainsley pulled back Bennett's skin from his rib cage and kneeled in closer to examine the late doctor's lower organs. "You should see about a transfer."

Jonas shook his head. "The laboratory suits me," he explained. Ainsley saw him give a sideways glance to Margaret before continuing. "Besides, Dr. McPhearson's daughter has taken a liking to me." Jonas puffed out his chest and allowed an arrogant smirk to spread over his face.

"Is she the young woman with the red hair?" Ainsley asked, turning from the corpse and grabbing the small saw that was part of his arsenal of tools.

"The very same."

Ainsley smiled. She was a lovely young lady, though it pained Ainsley to admit that she had spent more time talking to him at the college's garden party than she had with Jonas. "She's very fetching. You should ask her--"

"Ahem!" Both men turned to Margaret who had been standing beside them, trying to concentrate on the procedure. "Gentlemen, please!" Her tone was more of a command than a plea for compliance.

Chagrined, both doctors turned back to their subject abandoning the topic of the lovely daughter with red hair. "My apologies," Jonas answered quickly, giving a slight bow out of respect. Ainsley did not bother to offer an apology; his focus was already on Bennett's internal organs. "Do not apologize. My sister said she wishes to learn the ins and outs of dissection. She needs to learn that such banter is part and parcel." Ainsley shot her a look of challenge. If the girl wished to be in the presence of doctors while they worked she must learn her place among them.

"Oh please," Margaret answered with a laugh, "as if the state of Jonas's love affairs are of any concern to me." Margaret hitched up her skirt slightly as she rounded the bed to gain a better view. "You may do better to keep any chatter to the topic at hand." She approached the body, looking at the organs which were revealed. "May I remove the organs?" she asked, her hand out stretched, palm facing the ceiling, asking for the scalpel.

With a quick glance to Jonas, who failed miserably at hiding his amusement, Ainsley relinquished his tool and watched helplessly as his sister positioned it above the cavity he just opened. Unable to avoid it, Margaret pulled out the intestines with all the grace of a young mother trying to change her screaming baby's first nappy. Seeing her struggle with the cumbersome organ, Jonas reached out his hand and helped pull them out before placing them on the table behind him and Ainsley.

With his arms folded over his chest, Ainsley waited for his sister to ask for help, almost daring her to admit the task was too much. She worked slowly, he noticed, much slower than he would have and it took every ounce of self-control he could muster to keep himself from grabbing for the knife and taking over.

"That's the stomach," he offered, rather instinctively, as Margaret pulled the organ out with her bare and bloody hands.

"I know," she answered concertedly, lifting her gaze to meet her brother's, making sure he saw her annoyance.

Jonas took the stomach from her, and then the liver, placing them beside the mound of intestine she had already extracted.

"I am most interested in the contents of the stomach," Ainsley said, turning his back to Margaret and honing in on the stomach.

"Poisoned, you said?" Jonas asked. "Like the girl."

"I can't be sure." Ainsley lifted the stomach and held it up to the light streaming in through the window. "He died so suddenly. I didn't have the faintest clue he was even ill." Ainsley lowered the stomach back into place and turned to watch Margaret, his disdain for her slower pace vanishing as he relished in the plight for truth. "It could be unrelated but it seems odd that he would die right after Josephine's funeral." He looked over Dr. Bennett's body. "If it is poison, why did it take him so easily while Lillian fights it off?" Ainsley exhaled and turned to Jonas. "To tell the truth, I am not sure how to treat her, nor do I wish her to keep taking the tonics Bennett prescribed." Ainsley gestured to his desk across the hall where he had placed the vials he confiscated from Lillian's bedside table.

After washing his hands in a nearby basin, Jonas left the room briefly, returning a moment later with the vials in his hands. "Shall I process them for you?" he asked, looking over the adhered labels with academic interest.

Ainsley nodded, turning his attention slightly to Margaret who offered him a pair of kidneys with outstretched hands, blood oozing down her lily white wrists. It was the image of his own sister, engaged in such a scene that prompted his visceral reaction. He raised his relatively clean arm to his mouth in case he were to lose the contents of his stomach.

A glimmer of annoyance spread over Margaret's face. "Peter, you are acting like a novice," she said, thrusting the kidneys toward him. "Now here, take these before they slip through my fingers."