Devoured Read Online Free PDF

the backdrop to Professor Hatton’s work. Stomaching the stench was the first hurdle to conquer for any young physician considering a career in the area of medical jurisprudence. That and its paltry pay.
    Hatton looked at his filigree pocket watch to check that it was indeed ten o’clock and time to start the cutting. Despite the morning hour, the morgue was still gloomy. Lamps had been lit and flickered around the walls, still splattered with the yellowing body fluids from yesterday’s post-mortem. A young girl, barely twelve, who had been stitched back together with due attention by Monsieur Roumande.
    ‘Bludgeoned to death, then dumped in an alley off Joiners Street.’ Roumande spoke to the young man, who stood next to him and asked for her name. The man stepped away distraught, but Roumande continued. ‘There have been at least two others like this, with the same marks. But like the others, none have claimed her, and so she ends up here. Naked, wrapped in a cloth, and labelled as “pork”. Sorry to be so brutal, sir, but since you asked.’
    ‘Let me introduce you to my right-hand man, Mr Broderig,’ Hatton was quick to intervene, with a flourish of his hand. ‘My Chief Diener, Monsieur Albert Roumande.’ Roumande bowed as Hatton continued, lowering his voice a little, ‘I don’t think Mr Broderig needs any more detail on a nameless cadaver. He’s just lost a loved one and has volunteered to attend this morning’s autopsy. So go easy on him, Albert. This is his first cutting.’ But the young man said he was perfectly well, and to please continue.
    Roumande shrugged. ‘Well, all I can tell you is her skull was smashed, her throat slashed. See here.’ He pointed with the tip of his scalpel. ‘The lower part of her body, from her abdomen down, bludgeoned to a pulp. Her arms were bruised and cut, as you can see on inspecting her wrists.’ Roumande brushed the spindly arms lightly with his fingertips. ‘Strange pricks, as if by a bodkin.’
    ‘She was abused, then?’ asked Benjamin Broderig.
    ‘Abused and murdered, though for some reason Scotland Yard seems happy to part with this one, without even a delivery note.’ Roumande looked over at Hatton. ‘Perhaps I’ll ask Inspector Adams when he gets here, because it seems out of sorts. It is Inspector Adams, isn’t it? Inspector Adams of Scotland Yard?’
    ‘The very same, Albert.’ Hatton smiled at Roumande, because they were friends. ‘We’ll start very shortly, Mr Broderig, but remember, if at any point you cannot bear it, we will have an assistant take you out. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
    ‘I haven’t offered my presence here lightly,’ Broderig said, his eyes gold in the light of the mortuary’s lamps. ‘But I’m used to cutting. I’m a specimen collector, although my dissection is of a different nature. For scientific research, cataloguing and so forth.’ Hatton looked up from polishing his knife, thinking it was good to have another Man of Science in their midst. But this thought was cut short by a rapping at the door.
    ‘Good morning, gentlemen. The bulldogs said I had to come round the back. Not the response I would normally expect for a man in my position, but apparently your Hospital Director insists upon it.’ Inspector Adams hurriedly took off his coat and continued, ‘So, tell me, where the devil are we, exactly? Is this the basement? Or a store cupboard?’
    The Inspector laughed, but Hatton frowned, feeling the insult, because the cutting room had long been designated the stealthiest position at St Bart’s, far removed from the rest of the hospital. His life’s work still held by many with a mixture of disgust and loathing. Pathologists like Hatton remaining hidden, often left to struggle alone or, in his case, helped by a diener, as Albert Roumande insisted he still be called, although Roumande was far from being a mere servant of the morgue.
    It irked Professor Hatton that he should be shut off in this