Devoured by D. E. Meredith Read Free Book Online Page A

back from the morgue. He could have taken a carriage, but walking allowed time for contemplation and reminded him that there was indeed a world outside St Bart’s, where people lived. Where they argued, laughed, raised families, had passions. He saw the results, but did he really live that life himself? Not yet, he thought. But maybe one day, soon.
    He turned the key in the lock to be met by the usual greeting of Mrs Gallant’s King Charles spaniel baring its teeth and snarling at him.
    ‘He likes you. He really does, Professor. Shall I take your coat, sir? I’ve got some soup ready. Stop it, Archie. Really, the dog is very bad. Aren’t you, Archie, dear?’
    Hatton’s smile was weak and he often gave the dog a sharp kick, but not in full view of the owner, who this evening was wearing a full-skirted brocade of orange tartan. She’d worn it specially, because Mrs Gallant loved Professor Hatton only second to her dog, and often wondered to herself that if she was ten years younger, or perhaps twenty, and a dress size smaller, or perhaps several, he might one day sweep her up into his arms and declare, ‘Mrs Gallant, it’s more than your economical soup I’m after.’ But luckily for Hatton, no such thought had ever occurred to him. He was oblivious to her head tilts, her dips, her special favours, and the jealous stares of the older tenants at the lodging house, who he thought were very welcome to her.
    ‘No soup, Mrs Gallant. Not tonight. I ate at the morgue.’
    Professor Hatton went upstairs and closed the door behind him. Somewhere along the corridor a piano could be heard. Keys played, off scale.
    His bachelor rooms were comfortable enough. One room adjoining another, the latter room benefiting from a huge sash window, a desk, an easy chair, but very little else save his medical journals.
    He ran his finger along a shelf until he found the thing he was looking for, which was a small wooden box. No Strombus gigas or anything so impressive, but to Hatton this box had no need for grand dimensions to be of value. It simply was so.
    He opened it to reveal a shell, too delicate for words. Too delicate for touch. Nestled in cloth, an angel coloured nautilus which, with barely a thumb press, would shatter into a thousand pieces. A crystalline wafer, gone. Dead, like the creature who had once lived there, and beneath the shell, a small piece of paper. Not a love letter, but a list of facts, written in the bold hand of a child. Not much older than the girl today in the mortuary he’d been, when on a glorious day one summer, he’d found the shell washed up on Wittering Beach. Professor Hatton smiled to himself at the memory, but at the same time was troubled. To smash a woman’s skull? To hear it shatter? And for what? Hatton knew the dangers of being a freethinker. Lady Bessingham had been writing before she died; forensics had proven it. And Mr Broderig had grown so agitated when he spoke of their correspondence. He’d been pale from the autopsy, of course, but it was more than that. Broderig seemed worried, a little desperate even. So, thought Hatton, putting the nautilus back in the box, where were the letters now? 
     
Sarawak
June 4th, 1855

     
Dear Lady Bessingham,
The mail boat arrives this afternoon and so I decided to sit down once more and put pen to paper. Suffice to say, you would not recognise me, dear lady. I am already liberally freckled and my hair is turning blond. I have grown a fine set of burnished whiskers to give the impression that I know more of this collector’s trade than is entirely true. Whiskers, the longer the better it seems, have two excellent uses in this climate. Firstly, they impress upon the Dayaks that I have some age and some authority. The men are practically hairless and cannot grow a beard. Secondly, the whiskers keep the bugs and flies off my chin. Because if there is one thing I cannot get used to, it is the biting and infernal scratching which is part of my life here