Page 48 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. V #7

Choir Seat (continued from preceding page)
smiled. “See? I’m versatile.” She paused. “We’ll “Good,” said Jane du Lac. “We’ll take supper after- modify the usual technique a little. You’ll see. wards at Villa Artigiana near Temple Meads. I Werner Mühlhaus taught me this at Oxford. It’s lo- have booked that, too.”
cal to Munich—where he trained—but it displays
well for teaching. He’s a good pathologist, Mühl- haus: he is well thought of at the Radcliffe. A good pianist, too. He’d accompany my violin. He lives in Norham Gardens. Or did.” She paused. “If he’s still alive. He was not a well man. Emphysema.” She tilted her head to one side. “An accompanist needs to be a thoughtful player. Thoughtful ac- companists are more rare than you’d think.” Jane du Lac looked down at the corpse. She raised
The student looked embarrassed.
her eyebrows. “Do you know, I met this man as a living person, just a few days ago. By chance, in a corridor near Fussell Ward. A brief, wandering conversation: he looked lost.”
“Well, I like doing so. I have some money: you don’t. And you are sufficiently self-possessed not to worry about my infringing your male sense of self-worth.” She paused in her examination of the colon. “Aren’t you?”
The corpse-smell was quite strong; bile and gut- contents; oddly sweet. Animal.
“Yes, but even so—”
Jane du Lac made the appropriate complex inci- sions and placed a tight ligature of linen thread around the oesophagus just above the cardia of the stomach. She lifted out the weighty mass of lungs, heart, liver, and spleen en bloc. This she placed—the tendons of her arms prominent—on a side trolley. She returned to the body. “We’ll get the gut out of the way first,” she said, lifting the omentum, raising the stomach, inspecting the lesser sac, then working her way along the small gut, holding the mesentery up to the light, hand- stretch by hand-stretch. She was brisk and effi- cient. “Take notes, please. Exterior examination of the small bowel: no gross abnormality detected. Mesentery: clear.”
Jane du Lac laughed. “Look, if I even thought that you were out to get something from me, that would be the end. I’ve been robbed enough al- ready. As you well enough know. But you aren’t out on the main chance. Take a note: colon: unremarkable on gross external inspection.”
The student took her dictation on a worn clip- board.
The student carried the tray to the sluice; Jane du Lac followed him, and with a pair of very sharp long-bladed scissors, opened the gut throughout its length from stomach to rectum. She washed away the contents with a short length of hose connected to the tap. “Stomach unremarkable; contains freshly eaten food and recently swal- lowed medicinal tablets. Ha! What’s this? Some- thing hard. A cherry-stone.” She rolled it between her finger and thumb. “Don’t record this, but someone must have thought enough of him to give him fresh fruit on his last day. Now record:
She moved on to the large bowel. “Caecum: unre- markable. Appendix absent. A few old adhesions.” She looked at the student from under her brows. “You noted the appendicectomy scar on the skin of the intact body?”
“Yes,” said the student. 39
“Don’t,” said Jane du Lac. “It’s not conventional, I know.”
“But you pay for everything, Jane,” said the student.
She slipped two ligatures round the base of the rectum—deploying a tight surgeon’s knot (a
reef knot with an additional twist in the under- throw) in each—and, with a pair of scissors, cut between these ligatures. She cut the mesentery and removed the gut. This she placed on another enamel tray. “Carry it over to the sluice and turn on the water.”