Grimm's School for the Erratically Gifted: Chapter 12

Passionate scholars and obsessed fans of history know the Carver family. Their place in history is assured as that of a noble family stuck at the edge of the aristocracy, beating and battering at the gate to be let in, only ever achieving tertiary status as peers. There has never been a Carver more honored than a Marquis, and their most notable family member, Lord Bullion Carver, rarely warrants more than a footnote in the more specific and specialized history books.¹ There is no other family that married into more royal families and noble bloodlines, and yet never achieved any inherent political worth, as these marriages were inevitably to children no higher than seventh in the lines of succession.

Those fans and scholars need not be told, then, that the Carver Family was originally based in Mothburn before acquiring land outside of Cliffside and uprooting their family tree.

What even the most devoted scholars may not know is that the Carver family mausoleum remained in the Mothburn Graveyard, and that Fairly Carver had a key.

“It was his first payment for my services,” Leeta said, twisting the key and opening the thick stone doors. “It’s the perfect hiding place: lots of flat space to work, no one can get in — who’d want to? — and it stays cold so I don’t have to rush.”

Edmund followed Leeta as she descended the stone steps. His memories took him back to the tomb of Orpha Moulde that he had found when he was eight (Had it really only been four years ago?). This flight of steps was shorter, however, and the walls clean stone instead of ragged dirt.

The main burial vault at the bottom of the mausoleum steps was as large as one of Grimm’s classrooms, the center dominated by a long flat sarcophagus. A collection of oil lamps, sconces, and standing torch holders surrounded it, along with…Edmund looked again…a photopictoral camera!

“Where did you get that?”

“Built it,” Leeta shrugged. “Second thing Fairly paid me was chemical formulas and diagrams; all I needed to make one of my own. He didn’t realize it, I don’t think. I take pictures with it for my records. It takes a while, and I don’t have good light, but I manage.”

“Records?” Edmund asked.

With a flourish worthy of a stage-magician, Leeta reached into one of the thin alcoves and lifted the lid off the coffin. There, nestled around the skeleton of a long dead Carver lay piles of paper, brass tools, and a collection of everything that an aspiring dissector might need.

Leeta pulled out a stack of leather-wrapped quires. “Every body I dig up, I record. Color, stiffness, smell, rot, I track everything. I measure abrasions, bruises, hair-length…and I experiment, too. Do you have any idea the amount of things I’ve discovered? And not just about the corpses, I’ve discovered ways of discovering. Do you know no-one really understands decay?” she tossed one of the quires to Edmund. “A lot of people still believe it’s just natural erosion from exposure to the air.”

“That was disproved by the early Egyptian expeditions,” Edmund opened the quire and flipped through the tightly scribbled words. Nothing was more tightly sealed than an Egyptian tomb.

“Right, but if not air, then what? What causes decay? What’s the process? How long does it take? No one has any idea, and we have a perfect collection right outside! Bodies that have been buried and decaying for decades, all carefully marked and cataloged as to their age and date of death. Is there a better source of material to study?”

Edmund couldn’t think of one. He turned the page and was greeted with several pages of careful drawings of dead bodies in various stages of rot. Notes and arrows described different points of interest and curious oddities, some with later-added footnotes and cross-references to newer studies.

Leeta opened another coffin and dragged out a stack of small metal plates. “Thanks to these,” her voice was soaked in excitement, “I can figure how long a body has been dead, to the hour. I can learn if they died by suffocation, blood-loss, starvation, or seven different types of poison. I can even tell you how long it took for them to die. Take a look at these and tell me what you see.”

She spread the metal plates like cards on the sarcophagus. Edmund could see that each was a ferrotype of a corpse taken from a different angle, focus, and distance. They were all labeled with a small string of etched numbers in the corner, likely for easy reference.

Before long, Edmund could tell the pictures were of two separate bodies. The first body was poorly treated, with bruises, scrapes, and abrasions. On its side was a…

Edmund picked up one of the plates and stared. Leeta pointed; “That’s a knife wound. See where the blade caught the skin? It wasn’t a well-kept blade. Probably old or dirty. See here?” she pointed again. “This bit’s ragged, and I found a bit of rust in there. The blade wasn’t regularly cleaned either. Now, take a look at this.”

She snatched the iron plate from Edmund’s hands and shoved another in its place. There was no mistaking it: this was a picture of one of the Ripper’s victims. The body had been cut apart and sewed back together again. Fingers were missing, strips of skin had been cut away, and on the corpses back there was the telltale opening of a knife blade.

Edmund looked closer at the wound. It was almost the same as the first…but…

“It’s a different knife,” Edmund drew the obvious conclusion. “There’s no ragged bit.”

“Exactly!” Leeta snatched the plate away. “No rust, and this discoloration here is a result of blade oil. Even the angle of entry was different, but the coppers fingered the same man for both murders! Said he was the Ripper after they nabbed him for stabbing the first bloke because he slept with his wife. Now you tell me, what do you think?”

“There were two knives,” Edmund shrugged, “so there were two killers.”

Leeta grinned and handed Edmund a thick bound quire, opened to the fourth page. a scrap of newspaper had been pasted there, the headline proclaiming the police had been forced to admit that their suspect was no more than a regular murderer, and the dreaded night-stalker was still at large.

“You did this?”

“Had to makes sure they didn’t stop looking,” Leeta took the book back and replaced it in the crate. “Damn monster’s killed more than twenty women so far, and the police’d love to wipe their hands of the whole thing.”

“Is that what you do when you’re not digging up bodies? You solve crimes?”

“Or blackmail people for money,” Leeta shrugged. “Not a bad living, really.”

Edmund looked back at the quire in his hand, then at the coffins, the tools, the papers, and the photopictoral camera. Edmund was impressed. Astounded, even.

She had done it. What Edmund had wanted, she had managed to do.

Edmund knew it deep in his soul. Leeta was a genius. In a crypt with makeshift tools and corpses for company, she had managed to apply the foundational aspects of observational science to the legal and policing professions. She took the forensic arts of lawyerly prosecution and practical policing, and crafted methodology that could be used to define and establish official practices for future discoveries. A forensic science, perhaps.

It was revolutionary.

And if she could do it in a crypt without teachers or proper equipment…what excuse did Edmund have?

Looking into Leeta’s eyes, Edmund felt his last drop of will fade; it was love. Edmund knew it as surely as he knew how to subliminate ice, or track the electrocardiopathy of a dead rat. It was true and immutable, like the color of her eyes.

She hid in the shadows, dressed in raven leather. She crept along the streets peering out at the world around her, finding secrets and mysteries. She had built her own lab in the basement of a mausoleum, surrounded by ancient caskets of the dead. She studied corpses and drew the truth from them, discerning the reality of the world from its cast-offs, detritus, and refuse.

They could work together! The Mouldes had chosen him to be a part of their family, why couldn’t he choose Leeta? The individualist rules of Grimm’s now seemed so limiting compared to the unexplored vistas that stretched before the two of them, hand in hand. Her hair was fire and her eyes pure gemstone. Her smile was lightning and her movements sunlight on the water. Her will was a burning brand that drove her onward, seeking both the truth and the respect that came from professional skill and moral fortitude.

Long nights of reading in the dark of Moulde Hall while she stalked the streets yawned tantalizingly before Edmund. Sitting over dinner and trading secrets until the mysteries of Brackenburg, Mothburn, maybe the whole Britannian Empire stretched before them.

“You going to be sick?”

Edmund shook the future free from his imagination, and fell back to the world at hand. “I’m fine. I’m very impressed with what you’ve done.”

“Well doesn’t that just make it all worthwhile.”

“Can I work with you?”

“No.”

It is a vital component of upper-class etiquette that one never flat out refuses another. Indeed, the word “no” is considered a terrible taboo among some circles, not only for its atrocious connotation but also for its brevity. Requests can be denied, of course, but the process is a drawn out affair, involving several letters, afternoons in the country, and usually half a bottle of brandy²

This is to say, Edmund had never heard the word directed at him in such a manner before. It caught him completely by surprise.

“Why not?” he managed to ask when he had swallowed his unhelpful indignation. “Why show this to me if you didn’t want to work together?”

An odd smile crossed Leeta’s face. “Because you’re harmless.”

“I am not,” the insult stung. He would have thought that Leeta, if no one else, would be able to see the hidden dangers Edmund held. “I could tell everyone. I’ll bring the police.”

“You poor lad,” Leeta shook her head. “Don’t try to threaten me, you’re no good at it. Tell anyone you want; you’re not the first person who thought that just maybe a grave-digger could be found in the graveyard.”

Edmund clamped his mouth shut. What could he say to convince her, to show her how important it was for him to be near her and her work?

As has been explained, Edmund was a gentry of uncommon kind. He was able, due to inclination and perhaps no small part of genetic disposition, to think things that no one had ever thought before. Sometimes this twisted madness that gave him the inspiration for any number of fantastic inventions that were destined to reshape the whole of Britannian society.

On occasions such as this, it allowed him to see a path forward that no other member of the Founding Families would dare consider.

“Can I work for you?” he asked at last.

Leeta cocked an eyebrow, a smirk played across her lips. “Aye,” she said after a moment. “Aye, I think you might.”

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For a full month, Edmund worked harder than he ever had before. His evenings, once full of studying, letter-writing, and the odd social engagement; now saw Edmund slipping out through the ice-house passage and making his way to the graveyard. Somehow Edmund had known that it would eventually come to this. As much as he wanted to bring the Moulde Family into good reputation and well-repute, there was something about his life that constantly dragged him back into the shadows.

He was never alone on the streets, either. He constantly had to duck behind barrels or slip between buildings³ to avoid late-night revelers, or rough-and-tumble Downstreeters who were looking for a bit of fun, a bit of coin, or a bit of the first leading to the second.

When he made it to the Graveyard, he went straight to the Carver Family Mausoleum. There he would wait for Leeta to unlock the door and grant him access to her entire archive of notebooks, quires, and daguerreotypes. He handed her tools while she performed autopsies, wrote down the observations she muttered to herself, carefully measured out the chemicals she needed for her experiments, and always, always, paid attention.

On the occasions when she needed to dig up another body, Edmund found a comfortable spot on the floor or a corner of a coffin-filled recess and began to read.

It wasn’t just autopsies in her notebooks, there were also chemical processes that Edmund recognized from his medical books. Detailed accounts of attempts to avoid capture described the mindsets and strategies of the city’s worst criminals. Police procedure was explained and critiqued in easily understandable outlines.

Every day that he did this, for the privilege, he gave Leeta another one of his inventions.

“What do you do with these?” he asked one day.

“Use them,” Leeta answered as she studied his latest payment. “Here, that’s a stupid place for a lever. Put it higher and you don’t need this gear.”

“But then the rotational energy won’t reach the bottom spring,” Edmund pointed. “There have to be six gears.”

“No, you can use a directional piston, here,” Leeta pointed back. Then the whole thing will work much faster."

“It’s not supposed to be fast, it’s supposed to be right.”

“It’s hardly right if its no faster than just using your hands.”

It was one of many arguments. Every discovery Edmund showed her sparked some disagreement, critique, or correction. Often, these arguments sparked new ideas in Edmund’s mind.

It was the foundation for any good working partnership. It was why Leeta was working with Fairly, after all; he gave her a place to study, she gave him bodies to dissect. Junapa had taught him strategy when he was younger, and the pragmatic exchange of skills and services was more than enough reason to work together.

With Lady Tinbottom, Edmund was enraptured by how similar the two of them were. With Leeta, he was enticed by how different. She was a lens through which he could learn so much about the world. She provided so much for him and was asking so little in return. With every deal they struck, Edmund was coming out ahead. How could it not be love?

He found himself stealing glances at Leeta more and more, delighted at this bizarre partnership he had found. Soon enough, Edmund was enraptured. Not just by Leeta, who was enticing all by herself, but by her work as well. In his classes at Grimm’s, the students were encouraged to only think about problems, and while this was very effective at teaching Edmund how to think, it wasn’t until he watched Leeta perform careful and complex procedures on a partially decayed corpse that he realized he didn’t know how to apply his thoughts. Not like she did.

The Dilettante Trust had revealed secrets to Edmund he had never suspected. Leeta was showing him what those secrets could do.

It was this that prompted him to open his mouth one evening, as Leeta was digging for a fresh corpse: “I have an idea.”

“Just the one, then?”

“Come to Grimm’s.”

“Ha!” Leeta’s head snapped back. “You must be joking!”

“I’m not,” Edmund felt his pulse quicken as a plan formed in his head. “If you were a student at Grimm’s, you would have access to better equipment, and books, and teachers…” he paused. None of that had helped him. “I’ll share the Dilettante Trust with you, and Fairly will be there to help too. You’ll have a bed to sleep in, and no one will try to exorcise you anymore.”

Leeta shook her head as she dug. “Look, Grimm’s may be all well and good for you, you’ve got a rich family and all, but me? They’d never let me in the door. I’ve got my two hands, my two feet, and a shovel. That’s what gets me through this life.”

“I can put in a good word,” Edmund tried again. “The word of a Moulde carries a lot of weight, and when they see what you’ve managed to do all on your own, they’ll beg you to come.”

“Cor, you are sweet on me, aren’t you,” Leeta paused in her digging. “You trying to make me an honest woman?”

Edmund didn’t understand what she meant, so he simply waited. After a moment, Leeta climbed out of the hole and sat next to Edmund, pulling the leather mask off of her face. “What does legitimate mean to someone like me? The toffs won’t accept me, the streets don’t want me, and no one else cares about me. If I was ever going to be more than what I was, it wouldn’t be because of what they think, it’ll be because of what I do.”

They stared at each other in silence before Leeta finally shrugged. “If you want to waste your breath, though, I can’t stop you.”

---

Edmund watched Headmaster Lynch think.

It was easier than looking at the rest of the Headmaster’s office, which was covered in dust. The cold stones had been worn down over the years, a smooth path eroded where countless headmasters had paced over the years. Old worm-eaten shelves creaked under the weight of thick moldy tomes, half of which had fallen to pieces through age and rot.

When Edmund had first come to Grimm’s, he would not have been able to keep his eyes off the books. Now, he recognized them as ancient redundancies. They wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.

The only other place to look in the room was at Dean Aquinas, who stood in the corner with his arms folded, glaring at Edmund with a gaze he was perfectly content to avoid.

“Hm,” Headmaster Lynch hm’d, while Aquinas narrowed his eyes.

It was a perfectly articulated ‘hm.’ Edmund noted the careful downward slope of Headmaster Lynch’s tone, suggesting equal parts surprise and skepticism. It was a ‘hm’ that told Edmund that he was being far too clever for his own good. More clever than a young lad of twelve ought to be.

Edmund was ready for just such a ‘hm.’ As well structured as this ‘hm.’ was, there was no one in the country, in the world, who could ‘hm’ quite like Matron.

“Perhaps,” Edmund leaned forward slightly, “I could take you to the lab? I am confident that, once you see what she has been able to achieve, you will welcome her into Grimm’s with open arms.”

After a moment, the Headmaster shook his somber head. “No.”

“No?” It was such a useful tactic, repeating a statement as a question. It conveyed ease and a relaxed air. It gave him a moment to plan his next move. Above all, it gave the Headmaster the option to expound, an option he took with scholarly eagerness.

“Knowledge,” Lynch said, his booming voice toned down to a whisper. “is a sacrament. It is a holy blessing. It is a promise and a duty and a service to a cause far greater and more powerful than anything you and yours have ever experienced. To have is mere possession, as easily gained and lost as the opening and closing of a hand, but knowledge…Knowledge is the only thing that when shared, is not diminished. Knowledge is the only thing gained when the mind is opened, and lost when the mind is closed. To know is to have greater power than anyone who does not know.”

Lynch’s eyes focused on Edmund’s. “This ‘Raven Resurrectionist’ would dare take this sacrament, this wisdom, and apply it?”

“In the past month,” Edmund insisted, “I had the honor of attending the Resurrectionist and observing the practical application of knowledge. I must admit, I learned things.”

Headmaster Lynch’s eyes burned like a preacher’s on his firebrand pulpit. “You most certainly did not. Knowledge is pure. Applied knowledge is tainted, tarnished with the original sin of action. Knowledge is studied. Ruminated on. Thought about. Action is not knowledge. The basest animal can act. Humanity is the only animal that can think!”

“Regardless,” Aquinas interjected, “the proposed student in question has been neither tested nor present at Grimm’s at the beginning of the school year. As Dean of Methods, I could not allow such a clear violation of procedure as to allow their attendance.”

“I imagine,” Edmund began, carefully constructing his sentences word by word, “that surely Methods are mutable, depending on the situation.”

“Never!” Dean Aquinas sputtered. “Methods are not mere suggestions, they are immutable laws of order, and the holy writ of order is procedure! Bureaucracy!”

“Then test her now,” Edmund grasped the easily available compromise, “She can join Grimm’s next year.”

“It is a moot point,” Headmaster Lynch shrugged. “Even if you somehow could perform a rhetorical miracle and convince me that a…” here, the Headmaster choked on the abhorrent word, “practical application of knowledge could in some way improve the educational process, a process which, I might add, has been maintained in these hallowed halls consistently for centuries, there will be no students next year whom could benefit from this…odd theory of yours.”

It is here that the steady drumbeat of clues, hints, and subtexts that had filled the room since Edmund had entered finally broke through his stubborn focus on the matter at hand. Edmund looked from Aquinas to Lynch and back. “No students?”

A flash of bitter irritation, or perhaps shame, flickered on Aquinas’s face. “It is with regret, though not for your sake, that I must tell you that this will be the last year that Grimm’s School for the Erratically Gifted remains open. Next year, the gates will remain locked, and the professors, along with three centuries worth of knowledge, education, and scientific advance, will be barred from entry.”

“What?” Edmund asked. He hadn’t heard properly.

“Nonsense,” Headmaster Lynch shoved his head towards Aquinas like a flustered chicken. “Shall I tell you the place of finance within an institution of higher education, Master Edmund?”

Edmund cocked his head.

“Absence!” The Headmaster slammed his open palm down on his desk. “There is nothing in the world more corrupting and active than the flow of money! The foul stuff clogs the arteries of science and stops up the drain of education. Grimm’s School for the Erratically Gifted has existed for centuries, and Dean Aquinas thinks that just because we are out of money that it is therefore insolvent and must ‘declare bankruptcy,’ as if one necessarily followed the other!”

Edmund glanced at Dean Aquinas, who spared him the pained look of a parent who had tried time and again to correct their misbehaving child’s intractable behavior.

“Our bursar,” Aquinas began, “Professor Babbages, was one of the few gentlemen in this institution who understood both the form and its function of finance, and managed to facilitate them all. He appreciated the importance of Method and its place in an ordered institution of higher education. If this institution is going to remain open, it will require a steady hand on the tiller. And, indeed, the til.”

“The school is out of money?” Edmund couldn’t have heard properly.

“Not a single coin,” Aquinas set his jaw. “Therefore, the school must close, and any student who, at the end of this year, will have yet to achieve their full five-year diploma…well, hard luck to them.”

One year? No diploma?

“Dean Aquinas is well-meaning and intellectually sound,” Headmaster Lynch continued, “but he has his head stuck on the ideas that debts must be repaid, and laws must be followed.”

Edmund was beset by a collection of un-Moulde-like thoughts, to wit: Laws are meant to be followed, and all debts must be repaid. Had he not been so adamant about rebuilding the honor of the Moulde Family, he might have felt embarrassment at the thoughts having crossed his mind. Instead, he fell back on the very Moulde-like tactic of firm contradiction.

“The school can’t close,” he said, less a plea and more a willful attempt at forcing the universe into shape.

“It will not!” the Headmaster slapped the table again. “I say that the venerable scholars of the Fertile Crescent and the wise sages of the ancient Orient didn’t need bursars for the freedom to study the universe.”

“They needed food though, surely?” Aquinas said. A reasonable retort, Edmund thought.⁴

“They needed nothing but the hot burning fire in their bellies and the cold tempering ice of their minds. And so shall we. Grimm’s, my boy, will continue.”

One of Edmund’s talents was hearing what hadn’t been said. “And the students? Will classes continue? Will students still graduate?”

“Oh my goodness no,” the Headmaster coughed. “Grimm’s will continue as an institution, but students are quite superfluous to that function. We Scholars of Noesis will carry on advancing the art education alone. You’ll all have to go.”

Edmund’s brain churned, powered with the fuel of panic. “Because of money?” His mind flew to the writs of investment he had stashed away in Orpha Moulde’s skull, sitting on his desk at Moulde Hall. “If a benefactor invested —”

“Quite impossible” Headmaster Lynch shook his head. “Investments require returns, and returns of education are applied. We will not submit to such heresies.”

“A donation, then.”

Aquinas grumbled. “Donations are; along with tuitions, payments, loans, and bribes; the exclusive purview of the Bursar. No one else can take them, arrange for them, or implement them.”

“So that is quite out of the question,” Lynch nodded.

“I should like to meet with him then,” Edmund said. He was positive he could work something out. He had to. If there was no Grimm’s, he would not graduate, he’d never be a genius in the eyes of the Founding Families. If he didn’t have their respect, then the Moulde Family would crumble to pieces, cannibalized by the upper-class vultures of High Society.

“Much good may it do you,” Headmaster Lynch shrugged. “His absence is why we are bankrupt in the first place.”

It was the pause before the word “absence” that told Edmund everything he needed to know, even before Aquinas clarified the headmaster’s statement.

“Professor Babbages was found dead yesterday. As we no longer have a Bursar, therefore we can have no money. It is a simple logical syllogism, and it is this adherence to procedure and bureaucracy that makes Grimm’s School for the Erratically Gifted the envy of every other institution of learning in the civilized world.”

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Professor Babbages lay on the examination table in Professor Whiskfield’s laboratory. His clothing had been tossed aside onto a dirty workbench, while a single sheet covered his body.

Professor Whiskfield had demanded the right to autopsy the body. She hadn’t started yet. She was surrounded by students, all eagerly watching, thinking, and possibly learning.

“Weakness,” Professor Whiskfield muttered, staring down at the pale form. “Science is bold. Science is brave. Science has no place for sentimentality. Besides,” she muttered, “I never really knew the man.”

Nor had Edmund. He had only spoken with him once, months ago, at Moulde Hall. He had seen him a few times at Grimm’s, in the auditorium or walking down the hall. The closest he had been to the old bursar was through taking his class, which was nothing more than watching him copy down long and detailed mathematical formulae on the blackboard walls.

It had been the first class he had taken at Grimm’s.

Edmund was aware of Death as a concept, but he had only ever been aware of one death that would affect him, apart from his own: Matron Moulde’s. When Matron died, Edmund knew his life would spin about the fulcrum of Moulde Hall like a compass.⁵

Apart from that, Edmund had been content to consider death only in the abstract; a source of inspiration for his poetry, or some undiscovered country he would only ever read about. Of course, death had surrounded him ever since he was adopted, but it had been the peaceful atmosphere of the dead, not the actual act of dying. It was akin to how the glory of life in the form of trees, grass, and sunlight might surround someone who had never dealt with the horrible miracle of the birthing bed.

As such, he never considered the concept of “sudden and unexpected” death, much less the death of one of the two men who had considered him Grimm’s material. He, in point of fact, had never even bothered to consider what Professor Babbages’ death would do to him.

What it did was this: Edmund had suddenly lost one of the two men in the world who had decided he was worthy of the title Graduate of Grimm’s. In a distant and unfamiliar way, Edmund was suddenly and acutely aware that the number of people in the world who in any way believed in Edmund and his potential had been reduced by one.

Edmund watched as the Professor reached out and took a scalpel from her small tool-table. She stared at it a moment before bringing it down to Babbages’ chest.

The blade rested on his skin for several moments.

“I don’t suppose,” Whiskfield slowly said, “that it would be appropriate to cut open a professor in front of his students. Do you think? Emotional. Yes, quite an emotional situation.”

“Science is emotional,” Edmund reminded her. The other students nodded. They had all heard Whiskfield’s manic lectures on the subject.

“Yes,” Whiskfield nodded. “Quite right.”

Science was very much like poetry, in that respect. A word here, a comma there…and the elation that followed! Oh, to craft anew what had once seemed so simple, so mundane…

What inspiration could there be now? What revelation of Edmund’s could salvage his ruined future? All because of the death of a single man.

This understanding of the situation should not go un-noted, as it is completely contradictory to both Edmund’s understanding of the world later in life, and the thesis of his groundbreaking work on poetic synecdoches. At the time, however, it fit with how he viewed the world, so the thought continued unchallenged.

Instead, his thoughts were consumed with a singular focus. Who had done this? If he could figure out who had slain Babbages, they would receive proper retribution for their crime.

And then, perhaps Edmund could ascertain why Babbages was slain. If he knew why, then perhaps he could discover some solution that would let Grimm’s remain open. Then he could enroll Leeta as a student, finish his education, fulfill his duties as an Heir…

Edmund took a deep breath. His list of responsibilities kept growing longer. It seemed every week there was another sudden and inexplicable wrench that twisted his plans into a chaotic mess.

A sharp intake of breath from Professor Whiskfield drew Edmund’s focus. “Ah! I am a fool! Of course, I cannot begin a…a dissection with students in the room. Not when there are lessons to be learned! First we must…yes, our Naïve Realism lessons must take the fore-front. Gather around everyone, and observe.”

Like a lazy whirlpool, the students drew closer and slowly circled the table. Every inch of the man was as vibrant and colorful as the corpse Edmund had seen in the ice-house. He noted every blemish, every discoloration, every detail was filed away in his memory.

After the students had all made three full circuits of the body, Whiskfield shoved through the throng to the table. “There, and now, the back!” Hoisting the limp cadaver, Professor Whiskfield flipped Babbages onto his front with a thud, and the circling continued.

On the first circuit, Edmund pointed. “That looks like a knife wound.”

“Does it? And do you see a knife?” Professor Whiskfield’s hands were crawling over themselves like spiders, anxiously playing and periodically straying towards the nearby scalpels. “That is no knife wound, it is a slotted opening in the flesh, and that is all we can say about it. Remember your lessons, my boy.”

Edmund remembered. He remembered every lesson, and here in front of him was another one. A lesson about death and the dead he had never learned before: every body Edmund had ever seen had died. The corpse in the bag that Fairly had made him bring up to this very lab had once been alive. A person. Every skeleton in the Moulde family tomb had been alive. They had breathed, and thought, and moved.

Perhaps more pertinent, Edmund remembered the exact same knife wound; same size, same shape, same angle, same discoloration which Leeta had blamed on blade-oil.

His concerns and frustrations were swept away with a singular fact: Babbages had been slain by the Ripper.

A resonant clatter startled the students from their observations. Turning around, they all saw Professor Whiskfield grasping her arm to her chest, like she was holding back a wild animal. A nearby tray of scalpels had dropped to the floor.

“Ah! Well,” Whiskfield brushed her hands on her lab-coat under the student’s curious gazes. “A successful autopsy, I feel! Yes, well done. I have my notes, and I suppose you do too, yes? Yes, I suppose I will go and devote my attentions to other matters, while I leave you all to clean up? Yes. Quite a good idea!”

With that, she vanished down the steps of the tower.

The students all looked at each other with the bemused curiosity of people who knew for a fact that someone else would do the unpleasant business of cleaning up, before filing out of the room like a funeral procession.

In seconds, Edmund was alone with the body.

He left Wiskfield’s lab minutes later, his plan burning clear in his mind.

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