The

Resurrection Fireplace

Bento Books, Inc.

Hayakawa Publishing Corp.
The Resurrection Fireplace Originally published as Hirakasete itadaki kōei desu
—Dilated to meet you
Copyright © 2013 by Hiroko Minagawa Originally published in Japan by
Hayakawa Publishing Corporation, Tokyo English translation © 2018 by Matt
Treyvaud and Hayakawa Publishing Corp.
 Edited by Stephen Shaw
Cover art by Kasia Bytnerowicz All rights reserved. No portion of this book in
excess of fair use considerations may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.
Published 2019 by
Bento Books, Inc.
Austin, Texas 78732
bentobooks.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-939326-20-1 (Hardcover) 978-1-939326-42-3 (Paperback)
978-1-939326-21-8 (Kindle)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018965850
Printed in the United States of America First edition, March 2019
 Chapter 1
“Hide it!”
Clarence opened the rear door just enough to hiss the
warning into the room before pulling it shut again from the
outside.
The body lying face-up on the dissecting table had been
sliced open with an X-shaped incision across its swollen
abdominal region, with the four triangular flaps of skin
folded back to expose the gravid womb within.
Beneath the table, a dog of mixed pedigree lay curled up
on the sawdust-strewn floor.
Daniel Barton, a surgeon at St. George’s Hospital, was just
injecting the blood vessels on the surface of the womb with
coloured wax, stubby fingers working the syringe with
surprising delicacy. Having already filled the arteries with
red wax, he was now introducing blue wax into the veins.
They were not at St. George’s. This was Barton’s own
private anatomy school.
Benjamin “Fatty” Beamis, who had been watching his
teacher’s hands closely, looked up at Clarence’s warning,
rosy cheeks turning pale.
“Professor, please stop the procedure for a moment,”
whispered Edward Turner, another of Barton’s pupils.
“Can’t,” said Barton. “The wax will harden.”
“We haven’t time. They will be here any moment. We
apologize, but…”
Ben took one of Barton’s arms. Albert “Skinny” Wood took
the other. A fourth pupil, Nigel Hart, looked up from his
half-finished drawing of the cadaver in black lead pencil,
meeting Edward’s eyes. The two nodded and prepared to
move the body.
“Wait! Do not damage it!”
Barton was just past forty, with a countenance not unlike a
potato. He refused to wear a powdered wig, dismissing the
very custom as a nuisance, and bared his shock of red hair
even when delivering a public lecture. The current
dissection, of course, was not part of the school’s
curriculum, but for a man of his position to go wigless was
like appearing in public clad only in his drawers.
Struggling against Ben and Al, who held his arms firmly
behind his back, the potato now became as florid as if it
had been dyed with cochineal.
“Trust us, Professor. We’ll take good care of the body. If
they discover it, they will only confiscate it.”
More to the point, everyone present would be thrown in
gaol.
“Professor, please be calm. It would make matters easier
for all of us.”
Nigel and Edward laid the cadaver on a white sheet on the
floor, then wrapped the sheet around it and secured the
bundle with wide strips of cloth before carrying it towards
the fireplace.
“Be careful!” said Barton. “That is a very rare and
precious find!”
“As we well know.”
Fortunately, it was July. No fire was lit.
Nigel lowered the fire door at the top of the fireplace so
that it hung down vertically from just below the
mantelpiece, concealing the upper third of the firebox from
view. This would arouse no suspicion: such fire doors were
common, and it was usual to lower them when the fireplace
was unused in summer.
Edward opened a secret door next to the fireplace and
entered a narrow space hollowed out within the thick wall.
A sturdy winch was installed inside.
This chamber and apparatus had been prepared by
Barton’s pupils for just such situations. The five had
worked together to complete the job, since they could not
entrust it to other people.
Using chisels and saws to open skulls and section bones
was hardly easy work, but the construction had been a
major undertaking. First they had removed bricks from the
wall to create the opening. Next they had set up a winch
inside, added a catch to prevent the handle unwinding, and
attached a pulley to the wall adjoining the fireplace. Finally,
they had made an opening in the wall and passed a rope
with a hook through it.
Today they would put the results to use for the first time.
Clarence entered the room. “Is it hidden?” he asked.
“Completely.”
“Cupboard,” said Clarence, pointing. All the pupils except
Edward, who was still in the winch chamber, dragged the
cupboard in front of the secret door. The door had been
papered to match the rest of the wall, though on close
inspection the seams were visible. The cupboard was left
empty to make it easier to move, helping to conceal the
door further, but was quite heavy even so.
“Bent-nose” Toby, Barton’s doorkeeper and factotum,
arrived to announce the arrival of two Bow Street Runners,
constables employed by the magistrate for the City and
Liberty of Westminster. This formality gave the pupils a
little more time, and they hurried to put the room in order
before Toby actually showed the visitors in.
Barton’s face was still red, and no less like a potato, when
he greeted them. In his right hand he held a scalpel still
wet with gore.
“Stealing bodies again, Professor?”
“Come now, Mr. Hales! Your suspicions are absurd,” said
Clarence, a practiced smile on his freckled face.
Constables Hales and Bray were quite familiar to Barton’s
students. This was not the first time the pair had forced
their way into the school.
The constables screwed up their faces and covered their
noses.
“Stinks even worse than usual in here today,” said Bray.
“Turns my stomach, it does.”
“It must be the heat,” said Clarence. “You may smell no
better when you pass on.”
Hales ignored him. “The grave-robbers were, as usual,
Gobbin and Dick,” he said, looking around the dissection
room. “They told us everything. Paid a pretty penny this
time, eh, Professor? That Dick was bragging about asking
more than the market rate for the bother of shifting the
mortsafe.”
The five pupils stood in a row before the dissecting table,
blocking the constables’ view:
Clarence “the Chatterbox” Spooner, twenty-two years old.
Ben “Fatty” Beamis, twenty-one.
Al “Skinny” Wood, twenty-three.
Refined and elegant Edward Turner, twenty-one.
Nigel Hart, just nineteen but a gifted illustrator with an
eye for detail.
But wait—in reality, the row was only four pupils long.
Refined and elegant Edward had failed to leave the hidden
chamber in time, and was still in there waiting.
“Move,” said Bray, shoving the pupils aside.
Strapped to the dissecting table was a dog, rendered
senseless with ether. Part of its leg had been opened to
expose an artery.
“You intrude on a delicate procedure,” Clarence said with
lofty condescension. He was by far the most accomplished
among them at talking his way out of trouble. “To interrupt
such work as this! As you see, we are peeling away the
arterial walls, layer by layer and with great care, until we
can perceive the flow of blood within.”
“That’s all my eye,” snorted Bray.
“You are wrong, sir. It is a most important matter. We
intend to ascertain whether the arterial wall possesses the
power of self-regeneration. Imagine, Mr. Bray, that you had
been pierced in an artery and were bleeding copiously.
Would it not be a great comfort to know that your arterial
wall could rebuild itself?”
The guinea that Al slipped the constable proved
immediately effective in a way that Clarence’s inflated
chatter did not; this, too, was not unusual. Bray closed his
mouth. Al’s skinny form belied his bulging purse: his father
was a successful trader. A guinea was two days’ wages for
a surgeon. A guinea could buy a whole butt of gin. Grave-
robbers, too, generally charged a guinea per body. Under
most circumstances, a guinea was enough to buy silence—
but Hales snatched the coin, with its bas-relief portrait of
King George III, from Bray’s hand, and placed it beside the
dog’s leg.
Refusing bribes on principle was another unique custom of
the Bow Street Runners.
When the previous magistrate for Westminster, Henry
Fielding, was appointed, the position of magistrate itself
was virtually an honorary one, public service done for
almost no reward, and there was no public police force in
the city of London. Private individuals—“thief-takers”—had
borne that burden, receiving payment for the criminals
they arrested. Miscreants wanted for capital crimes were
particularly valuable. But because thief-takers had no other
guaranteed income, they eagerly apprehended even those
guilty of only minor infractions—or, indeed, nothing at all.
Conversely, bribe a thief-taker generously enough, and he
would overlook even the most vicious of crimes.
Henry Fielding had reformed this system. Placing a few
trusted officers under his direct command, he had paid
them a fixed salary and strictly forbidden them to accept
bribes.
His younger half-brother, Sir John Fielding, had worked
alongside him on this project, even becoming the next
magistrate for Westminster upon Henry’s death—a position
he continued to hold at present. Sir John had expanded and
strengthened the force, establishing district stations and
working with officers there to apprehend criminals. He had
formed both foot and mounted patrols where there had
once been nothing but a night watch staffed by elderly
“Charlies.” He had only so many public officials at his
disposal, however, and thus there were still many private
individuals who made a living informing on or capturing
others for a fee.
Sir John, who had lost his sight as a young man, also went
by the name of “the Blind Beak.” His hearing had grown
sharper to compensate, and he was known and feared by
criminals as a man who could tell truth from lies from the
speaker’s voice alone.
The law enforcers under Henry and, later, Sir John were
known as the Bow Street Runners after the address of their
headquarters: 4 Bow Street, Covent Garden. This building
served as both residence and office for the magistrate, and
even had facilities for temporarily detaining captured
individuals. Hearings for minor offences were delegated to
the magistrate, while more serious cases were referred to
the Sessions House for London and Middlesex—better
known by its nickname, “the Old Bailey.” Suspects were
held in gaol for the duration of their trial.
Daniel Barton’s anatomy school was in Covent Garden,
too, between Leicester Square and Castle Street, not far
from Sir John’s offices. It should be noted, however, that
the term “Daniel Barton’s anatomy school” is something of
a misnomer: although Barton and his pupils were currently
in his private dissection room, the school itself belonged to
his elder brother, Robert Barton, and was therefore named
the Robert Barton School of Anatomy.
The Bow Street Runners were known for their integrity,
but the pay they received was meagre, albeit regular: from
thirteen shillings and sixpence to, at most, seventeen
shillings a week. The citizens of London took as dim a view
of paying the police from public funds as of granting them
public authority, and the government showed little interest
in providing the necessary funds either. The ideals of the
Fielding brothers notwithstanding, it was inevitable that
the Runners should include some such as Hales and Bray.
“Mr. Barton,” Hales said, softening his tone. “This is a
serious business. The body you bought last night was that
of Miss Elaine Roughhead, beloved daughter of Sir
Charles.”
The pupils exchanged glances. A baronet’s unmarried
daughter, six months pregnant?
“But nothing was bought,” cried Clarence quickly.
The other three pupils began to talk as well, saying
whatever came into their heads, intent on preventing
Barton’s muttered “Daughter? Unmarried, then?” from
reaching the constables’ ears. In anatomy and experimental
science, their professor was without equal, but they were
painfully familiar with his disregard for virtually every
other concern.
“Do you know the Roughheads?” asked Hales.
“No,” said Barton bluntly. “They are not among my
patients. A baronet, was it? Paid handsomely for the title,
no doubt.”
“The mortal remains of a young woman about to become a
mother, sliced to bits,” sighed Bray. “That’s a heartless
thing to do.”
“Mr. Bray.” Barton’s voice was cold. “Would you care to be
treated by a doctor ignorant even of where the stomach
was located?”
“This is not about—”
“Do you know, Mr. Bray,” Barton continued, ignoring the
other’s protests, “which organ it is that circulates blood
through your body?”
“I may not be an educated man, Mr. Barton, but I know
that much.” He thumped his chest.
“Correct,” said Barton. “The heart. However, until little
more than a century ago, it was generally believed that
blood came from the liver. The fact that blood circulates
throughout the body was unknown even to physicians. The
heart’s role in circulating the blood was proven through
dissection by the physician William Harvey—a fellow
countryman of ours, as it happens. A quite remarkable
achievement. And yet—and yet!”—he turned his eyes
heavenwards, catching sight of the dirty plaster ceiling—“it
is in England that the science of anatomy has progressed
the least, due to prejudice regarding the dissection of
human bodies. Each year, the state provides just six
criminal cadavers for dissection—in a year!—and even this
pitiful offering is monopolized by the Company of Barbers
and Surgeons. Could one hope to advance the study of
anatomy under such conditions?”
Barton’s pupils looked on nervously. The topic was
Barton’s favourite, and once he began to discourse on it he
lost sight of everything else, no matter whom he was
addressing. Neither his Scottish burr nor his general
awkwardness as a speaker (quite suiting his potato-like
demeanour) were any impediment to his jeremiads on the
theme.
“In Paris, the law ensures a supply of cadavers sufficient
for research purposes,” he went on. “But here, in England
—”
“Take it up with the big-wigs, Professor,” interrupted
Hales. “Our job is to keep the peace here in London.”
“That’s right,” Bray chipped in. “So hand over Miss
Roughhead, and be quick about it.”
Hales remained matter-of-fact. “If you’d only taken the
body of Miss Roughhead’s nurse instead, we wouldn’t have
had none of this fuss,” he said.
“Her nurse died too?” asked Barton.
“By her own hand. Unconsolable, she was, at the death of
her charge.”
“They say she took poison at Miss Roughhead’s grave and
toppled over on the spot,” added Bray.
“What was the poison?” asked Barton, unable to conceal
his professional interest.
“How should we know?”
“A shame,” Barton sighed. “I should have liked to have
that body as well.”
“You keep changing the subject. Where’d you hide Miss
Roughhead? You want us to ransack the place?”
Barton’s four pupils all swept into a low bow. Pray do as
you please.
Without hesitating, the constables began to search the
dissection room, even pulling out the desk drawers (“She
would hardly fit in one of those in her condition,”
murmured Clarence), before they moved next door.
The adjoining room was not unlike a zoo. A seal, a leopard,
a monkey, an opossum, a mongoose, a crocodile: some had
been opened at the abdomen, while others had been
prepared in such a way as to partially expose their
skeletons. If they had been alive, the screams and roars of
pain would have been deafening.
On other shelves were rows of specimens in glass jars full
of preserving fluids, or skeletal forms standing upright.
“Don’t touch them! Don’t touch my specimens!”
Ignoring his distress, Bray tugged the sea lion’s whiskers
and poked his hand into the leopard’s mouth.
“Stop that!”
“Simmer down,” said Bray with a smirk. “I thought you
might’ve disguised Miss Roughhead as a leopard.”
Part of the specimen room was used for the storing of
cadavers. Naturally, Hales and Bray examined this area too.
Had they visited in winter—dissection season—they would
have found bodies acquired by all means available, legal or
otherwise, treated against putrefaction and hanging from
hooks, but this practice was untenable in summer. The
rusted hooks hung empty as a failing butcher’s.
The school offered no lectures or public dissections in
summer either. This left Barton and his five most favoured
pupils to pursue their researches undisturbed in his private
theatre while the rest of the student body enjoyed a
welcome holiday.
Adjoining the specimen room were the students’ dissection
area and an antechamber for preparing oneself for this
work. Beyond these lay the lecture hall. Access to actual
human cadavers was the unique attraction of the Robert
Barton School of Anatomy, but it called for a considerable,
and steady, supply of the same. Before Robert’s school was
established, London had offered virtually no opportunities
for even medical students to work with dead bodies.
Once Robert had secured the assistance of his younger
brother Daniel, however, he had distanced himself from the
unsavoury business of dissection itself. Earning the
respected qualification of physician, he was made welcome
in polite society. Surgeons like Daniel were considered
somewhat lower in standing; at one time, surgery had been
within the barber’s purview. Robert was well-groomed and
conversable, moving easily among the aristocracy, while
social graces were precisely what Daniel lacked.
Robert and his family currently lived at the western end of
the property, separated from the school proper by a central
courtyard which also served as the students’ entrance.
Daniel was yet to marry, but Robert and his wife had three
children. His wife’s family were wealthy gentry with a
grand manor house on some ten thousand acres outside
Marlow. Their financial assistance had played no small part
in the opening of the school.
Passing through the ornate front entrance to Robert’s
house on Leicester Square, visitors beheld a room so large
it could host a ball, and a private museum of which Robert
was inordinately proud. Most of the specimens arrayed for
display there had been produced by Daniel and his pupils.
Robert insisted that these items were his property, since he
provided the funds necessary for their creation. Daniel was
not entirely in agreement with this view.
Hales and Bray returned empty-handed to the main
dissection room.
“Out of the way,” said Hales, pushing Ben away from the
cupboard.
“No violence, pray,” said Ben, placing his hand on his
chest. “I have a weak heart. If I am treated roughly, its
rhythm becomes quite irregular.”
“Yes?” said Hales, pushing Ben again, much harder.
Ben fell onto his back and began to wheeze. As they
watched, his fingers stiffened and his eyes rolled back into
his head. The constables shuffled uneasily, then quickly
took their leave, pocketing the gold guinea that was still
sitting on the dissecting table as they went.
“Well, that is one way to get rid of them.”
“Ben, they have gone. Get up.”
“Oh, dear, he really has fainted. What should we do,
Professor?”
“Does he in fact have a weak heart?”
“Not that I ever heard.”
Clarence put his finger to the inside of Ben’s wrist. “His
pulse is regular,” he reported.
They slapped Ben’s cheeks and called his name, but this
only made him groan.
It was hyperventilation he was suffering from, but the
condition was not yet known to medical science at the time.
“If his pulse is regular, there is no cause for concern,” said
Barton briskly. “Let him lie.”
His pupils’ faces relaxed. If the Professor said there was
no cause for concern, there was no cause for concern. His
accuracy as a diagnostician was undisputed.
“Ben, when your breathing returns to normal, give me a
precise report on the progress of your symptoms,” Barton
said, irritation in his voice. “The rest of you, back to the
dissection. Retrieve the cadaver. Clear Charlie off the
table.”
The dog tied there let out a whine.
“Mr. Barton, Charlie’s anaesthetic is wearing off.”
 “Another dose of ether, then. Someone stitch him up.
Where is that young woman?”
“Edward! Let down the body.”
“He may be asleep. Open the secret door and wake him
up.”
“To open the door, we must move the cupboard,” said
Clarence. “And to move the cupboard, we must move our
comatose friend.” He hooked his hands under Ben’s
armpits and, with the help of Al and Nigel, dragged the
corpulent body out of the way. The three of them then
moved the cupboard.
Meanwhile, Barton dosed the dog with more ether himself,
swiftly sewed up the animal’s wound, and put him on the
floor.
“Edward, hurry up and lower the hook,” said Clarence,
opening the door. Refined, elegant Edward tumbled out
onto him, making him fall on his behind.
“Professor, Edward has fainted too.”
“Fetch a bellows.”
“Do you intend to test the theory that—”
“Indeed. Hurry.”
The secret chamber in the wall was cramped and entirely
without ventilation. Edward had almost expired from lack
of oxygen. Oxygen itself would not be identified for several
more years, but the symptoms of oxygen deprivation were
well known. Barton theorized that these were the result
simply of insufficient air, and proposed that such patients
might be revived by pumping great volumes of air into
them.
His three conscious pupils hurried back with a pair of
bellows. Al held Edward’s nostrils closed and guided the
nozzle into his mouth while Clarence worked the
mechanism, forcing air into his lungs. Barton monitored his
pulse, and Nigel, looking anxious, kept a record of the
proceedings in a shaky hand, checking the time on a
pocket-watch Barton had lent him.
 “Good. His heart is beating normally. Remove the
bellows,” said Barton. Seeing Edward blearily open his
eyes, he embraced him with relief, then turned and
resumed giving orders. “Carry him up to bed. Keep him
warm and rub him with aromatic oils.”
It was, overall, a rather different response from the way he
had treated Ben.
Barton often praised Edward’s intelligence, and openly
favoured him over the others. Edward had been his first
live-in pupil, and still lived upstairs, sharing a bedroom
with Nigel, whom he had brought in later.
Nigel and Al carried Edward upstairs.
By the time their footsteps had faded away, Ben’s
breathing had calmed. The others helped him into a chair.
“I only thought to scare them at first,” he explained. “But
then I could not stop gasping. I began to feel faint, and my
extremities were numb.”
“Numb, you say?” said Barton with some interest. “Tell me
about the changes in detail. Nigel, record this.”
“Nigel has gone upstairs,” Clarence said.
“Why did he do that?”
“You told him to help carry Edward up there.”
“I did? Well, before we record anything more, let us
continue the dissection. Bring the cadaver to the table.
Quickly!”
The secret door was still ajar. Clarence removed the catch
from the winch handle. The heavy body descended until
visible behind the fire door.
“Do not damage it. Lower it carefully.”
Clarence wound the body down slowly, gripping the handle
to prevent it spinning out of control under the weight of the
load.
Barton was waiting at the base of the fireplace. Leaning
in, he managed to land the bundle with both hands before
tumbling in himself.
“Professor! Are you all right?�