Three Times Buried by Smith

Author:Smith [Jane Smith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Jane Margaret Smith
Published: 2024-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 45

Sunday 19 August 1827

Fraserburgh

William Simpson arrived in Fraserburgh early on Sunday morning. He took a carriage to Dr Coutts’s house and sprang up the steps to the modest front door. Doctors Jamieson and Coutts were waiting for him.

The gentlemen ushered him into the chamber where the dead girl’s organs lay. Dr Blaikie of Aberdeen was already there.

‘Good day, sir,’ Blaikie said, rubbing his hands.

Simpson nodded. ‘Doctor.’

The procurator fiscal had mixed feelings about Patrick Blaikie’s presence. Blaikie was a well-known figure in the medical world – an ambitious man from a successful and powerful family. His career, thus far, had been glamorous; he had served as a medical officer in the Royal Navy and had the distinction of being on board the ship that had exiled Napoleon. He lectured on anatomy at Marischal College in Aberdeen and boasted his own dissecting room. Only the previous year, he had taken up a controversial post as a lecturer at the Aberdeen Infirmary, against protests from older physicians who saw no need for clinical lectures in Aberdeen when medical students could just as well take their degrees in London or Edinburgh. They were not impressed by the ambitions of a young upstart like Blaikie, however clever or well-educated he might be.

But to Simpson’s mind, Blaikie’s opponents underestimated the man. The doctor was single-minded and astute, and determined to make his mark in the medical world. To date, he seemed to be succeeding.

‘Shall we begin?’ Dr Blaikie said. William Simpson noted his eagerness with some revulsion. He wasn’t bothered about the doctor’s ambition, and he had faith in his skill and experience, but he had one reservation about the doctor: he was known to be a resurrectionist. One of the growing cohort of medical men who procured the bodies of the recently dead to use for anatomical research. His presence here gave Simpson the creeps.

‘Of course,’ Simpson replied. ‘There is no reason to delay, though natural scruples, of course …’

But he put his scruples aside. The case was an extraordinary one, and therefore extraordinary diligence was required. Doctors Jamieson and Coutts were respected local surgeons, but they weren’t experts when it came to chemistry. The procurator fiscal was not going to leave anything to chance; his investigation would be as thorough and scientific as it needed to be. His personal feelings were immaterial. This investigation must be done by the book. He relied upon the expertise of a man like Dr Blaikie.

Meggy’s stomach and uterus had been preserved in Dr Coutts’s house since the previous night. After the disinterment, Mr Brown and his son had returned the eviscerated body to its coffin and lowered it back into the grave. The doctors had moved from the barn to the adjacent farmhouse by the churchyard, one of the apprentices carrying the cloth-covered basin containing Meggy’s stomach and uterus. They had waited there, the medical men and the dead girl’s organs, through the long afternoon, until twilight crept in and the disappointed herds outside trudged back to their dreary lives.

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