Willing Flesh by J.S. Cook

Author:J.S. Cook [Cook, J.S.]
Language: nld
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Seven

The lunatic asylum at Bethlehem Hospital—more familiarly known as Bedlam—never failed to depress Raft to the utmost.

During the course of his duties as a constable and later as a police inspector he had often had cause to visit the hospital.

He always came away from these visits feeling rather more depressed than when he'd gone. There was just something about the dim, grey building and its dim, grey inhabitants that seemed to drain the life out of him, and instil in him a sense of overwhelming hopelessness.

He had arisen early this morning, breakfasted upon an unusually excellent repast prepared by Mrs.

Featherstonehaugh, and taken a cab to Bedlam upon Hoare's advice, hoping to find the reason behind the recent spate of murders featuring holes drilled into people's heads. He needed to understand why Blessington needed to drill holes into the skulls of his victims. Raft understood the theory behind the procedure but that didn't explain why the man was randomly choosing people off the streets and using them as experimental subjects. There had to be a reason why he was conducting his bizarre surgeries on the streets of London, something that had to do with the man's own internal needs.

Clearly he was enacting some grotesque parody of medical treatment that had more to do with what was going on in his own mind than what was occurring in the minds of his putative patients.

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Willing Flesh

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Raft had chosen Jeremy Hoare as his companion on this trip because of Hoare's innate appreciation for all that was strange and unusual, no matter where it might be found—and because Hoare had insisted that one of Bedlam's inmates had something useful to contribute to Raft's investigation.

"Good morning to you, Inspector." Hoare climbed into the cab briskly, tucked his long legs against the seat. "I see by the way you hold yourself that you have suffered some injury." Hoare really reminded Inspector Raft of a very thin, very strange and exotic bird.

Raft explained the wound to Hoare in as little detail as possible, fearing to excite the solicitor's native curiosity. "I am quite recovered. Mrs. Featherstonehaugh was most helpful." He had slept soundly, undisturbed by his usual phantoms, which surprised him. He had thought that his worry over Freddie and last night's strange encounter with the knife wielding Turk or whatever he was would have kept him awake till all hours. He might have dismissed the man with the knife as just another desperate lunatic looking for someone to torment except for the direct reference to Tansy Royal. That couldn't have been mere coincidence. It seemed like Miss Tansy Royal had a great many friends, many of them culled from the London underworld. "I didn't expect to sleep at all," Raft said, "considering how everything these days seems to be conspiring to keep me and everyone in London awake at night."

"I fear that the body very often dictates to the mind, and there is very little that we mere mortals have to say about it."

Hoare was in one of his expansive moods this morning, Raft 228

Willing Flesh

by J.

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