Hazel watched from the window as Jack and the carriage disappeared around the bend, where the few brittle leaves that had clung to the trees against the winter frost blocked it from view.
* * *
JACK HADN’T THOUGHT HOW DIFFICULT IT would be to climb up to the nest he had built for himself in the rafters of the theater while trying to keep his chest stitches from splitting. Halfway up the ladder, he had to pause and catch his breath. He was just contemplating whether it was worth it to continue up when he heard a knock on the theater’s front door.
The knocking was hard and persistent. Strange. The theater had been closed for months. Jack had come in the stage entrance, through the alley, and Mr. Anthony had all the other keys to the place. There was no one knocking at the front door who had any business being at Le Grand Leon.
Jack waited, listening to the sounds of the building shifting in place, wood creaking and cold air whistling through the places in the ceiling where the beams didn’t quite come together. The knocking came again, the stern cracking knock of determined knuckles. The knocking didn’t stop, and so Jack shuffled through the dust-strewn lobby to reach the front door, pocketing a small knife and keeping his fingers wrapped around the handle just in case.
“Jeanette? That you?” he called. There was no answer.
He pulled open the door to reveal the police constable, two guardsmen, and the magistrate. On instinct, Jack tried to run. The constable pulled Jack into a rough grip with his hands behind his back.
“Hey!” Jack shouted. “Hey! What are you doing?”
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Penelope Harkness, Robert Paul, Mary McFadden, and Amelia Yarrow. And no doubt countless others. Sickening.” The constable spat on Jack’s boots.
“There’s some mistake. I’m telling you, there’s some mistake.”
One of the guardsmen found the knife in Jack’s pocket. He brought it out and displayed it for the magistrate, and then put it in his own pocket, shaking his head in disgust.
“Hey, that’s mine! Give it here!”
The magistrate cleared his throat and looked down over his nose at Jack, although they were the same height. “We were told we might find you here. Seems some of your little friends at the close on Fleshmarket aren’t so trustworthy as you might want to admit. Thieves, murderers, betrayers. God have mercy on all your souls.”
“You’re lying,” Jack said, wriggling against the grip. “You’re lying. This is a joke! Why would I murder anyone?”
“Have you been selling bodies to the Anatomists’ Society?”
Jack’s mouth went dry, and his tongue seemed swollen.
The magistrate smiled. “Stands to reason an industrious young man like you would have wanted to cut out the middle man, so to speak. No need to waste any time waiting around for a funeral when you can just kill someone yourself.”
“That’s a lie,” Jack managed to whisper. “I never killed anybody. I sold bodies, I did, but I dug them up.”
The magistrate ignored him. “Very convenient, doing the killing during an outbreak of the Roman fever. Not many people would have been willing to get close enough to check the cause of death.”
The police constable nodded. “He even came to me, had convinced a young lady of some elaborate scheme. Covering his tracks. Tried the same thing on the viscount’s son.” He sneered. “Thank God and King that the young Lord Almont was clever enough to see you for what you are. How many more would you have killed just to line your pockets?”
“Find Hazel Sinnett!” Jack said. “Find her, the lady of the house at Hawthornden Castle. Find her and bring her here, she’ll set you right.”
The police constable jabbed his elbow into Jack’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Jack doubled over, but the two guardsmen kept him from falling. He felt his stitches break, and the blood from his old stab wound began leaking onto his shirt. “Don’t go telling us what to do, murderer. And how dare you try to blacken the name of one of your social betters.”
Edinburgh Evening Courant
22 December 1817
RESURRECTION MAN TAKEN TO TRIAL FOR MURDER
Yesterday, the Court proceeded to the trial of Jack Ellis Currer, indicted for murder. No trial in recent years has aroused such an intense interest in the general population: In the hour before the prisoner was brought to the bar, the doors of the Court were besieged by a large body of the public trying to get a glimpse of what will surely be an historic proceeding. Lord Maclean and another noble Lord were seated on the bench in the minutes before ten o’clock.