Simon Bendelow, Deceased
It was near the close of my incumbency of Dr. Cornish’s
practice—indeed, Cornish had returned on the previous evening—that my
unsatisfactory attendance on Mr. Simon Bendelow came to an end. It had
been a wearisome affair. In medical practice, perhaps even more than
in most human activities, continuous effort calls for the sustenance
of achievement. A patient who cannot be cured or even substantially
relieved is of all patients the most depressing. Week after week I had
made my fruitless visits, had watched the silent, torpid sufferer grow
yet more shrivelled and wasted, speculating even a little impatiently
on the possible duration of his long-drawn-out passage to the grave.
But at last the end came.
“Good morning, Mrs. Morris,” I said as that grim female opened the
door and surveyed me impassively, “and how is our patient to-day?”
“He isn’t our patient any longer,” she replied. “He’s dead.”
“Ha!” I exclaimed. “Well, it had to be, sooner or later. Poor Mr.
Bendelow! When did he die?”
“Yesterday afternoon, about five,” she answered.
“H’m. If you had sent me a note I could have brought the certificate.
However, I can post it to you. Shall I go up and have a look at him?”
“You can if you like,” she replied. “But the ordinary certificate
won’t be enough in this case. He is going to be cremated.”
“Oh, indeed!” said I, once more unpleasantly conscious of my
inexperience. “What sort of certificate is required for cremation?”
“Oh, all sorts of formalities have to be gone through,” she answered.
“Just come into the drawing-room, and I will tell you what has to be
done.”
She preceded me along the passage, and I followed meekly,
anathematizing myself for my ignorance, and my instructors for having
sent me forth crammed with academic knowledge, but with the practical
business of my profession all to learn.
“Why are you having him cremated?” I asked, as we entered the room and
shut the door.
“Because it is one of the provisions of his will,” she answered. “I
may as well let you see it.”
She opened a bureau and took from it a foolscap envelope, from which
she drew out a folded document. This she first unfolded and then
re-folded, so that its concluding clauses were visible, and laid it on
the flap of the bureau. Placing her finger on it, she said: “That is
the cremation clause. You had better read it.”
I ran my eye over the clause, which read: “I desire that my body shall
be cremated, and I appoint Sarah Elizabeth Morris, the wife of the
aforesaid James Morris, to be the residuary legatee and sole executrix
of this my will.” Then followed the attestation clause, underneath
which was the shaky but characteristic signature of “Simon Bendelow,”
and opposite this the signatures of the witnesses, Anne Dewsnep and
Martha Bonington, both described as spinsters and both of a joint
address which was hidden by the folding of the document.
“So much for that,” said Mrs. Morris, returning the will to its
envelope; “and now as to the certificate. There is a special form for
cremation which has to be signed by two doctors, and one of them must
be a hospital doctor or a consultant. So I wrote off at once to Dr.
Cropper, as he knew the patient, and I have had a telegram from him
this morning saying that he will be here this evening at eight o’clock
to examine the body and sign the certificate. Can you manage to meet
him at that time?”
“Yes,” I replied, “fortunately I can, as Dr. Cornish is back.”
“Very well,” said she; “then in that case you needn’t go up now. You
will be able to make the examination together. Eight o’clock, sharp,
remember.”
With this she re-conducted me along the passage and—I had almost said
ejected me; but she sped the parting guest with a business-like
directness that was perhaps accounted for by the presence opposite the
door of one of those grim parcels-delivery vans in which undertakers
distribute their wares, and from which a rough-looking coffin was at
the moment being hoisted out by two men.
The extraordinary promptitude of this proceeding so impressed me that
I remarked: “They haven’t been long making the coffin.”
“They didn’t have to make it,” she replied. “I ordered it a month ago.
It’s no use leaving things to the last moment.”
I turned away with somewhat mixed feelings. There was certainly a
horrible efficiency about this woman. Executrix, indeed! Her
promptness in carrying out the provisions of the will was positively
appalling. She must have written to Cropper before the breath was
fairly out of poor Bendelow’s body, but her forethought in the matter
of the coffin fairly made my flesh creep.
Dr. Cornish made no difficulty about taking over the evening
consultations, in fact he had intended to do so in any case.
Accordingly, after a rather early dinner, I made my way in leisurely
fashion back to Hoxton, where, after all, I arrived fully ten minutes
too soon. I realized my prematureness when I halted at the corner of
Market-street to look at my watch; and as ten additional minutes of
Mrs. Morris’s society offered no allurement, I was about to turn back
and fill up the time with a short walk when my attention was arrested
by a mast which had just appeared above the wall at the end of the
street. With its black-painted truck and halyard blocks and its long
tricolour pennant, it looked like the mast of a Dutch schuyt or
galliot, but I could hardly believe it possible that such a craft
could make its appearance in the heart of London. All agog with
curiosity, I hurried up the street and looked over the wall at the
canal below; and there, sure enough, she was—a big Dutch sloop,
broad-bosomed, massive, and mediæval, just such a craft as one may see
in the pictures of old Vandervelde, painted when Charles the Second
was king.
I leaned on the low wall and watched her with delighted interest as
she crawled forward slowly to her berth, bringing with her, as it
seemed, a breath of the distant sea and the echo of the surf,
murmuring on sandy beaches. I noted appreciatively her old-world air,
her antique build, her gay and spotless paint, and the muslin curtains
in the little windows of her deck-house, and was, in fact, so absorbed
in watching her that the late Simon Bendelow had passed completely out
of my mind. Suddenly, however, the chiming of a clock recalled me to
my present business. With a hasty glance at my watch I tore myself
away reluctantly, darted across the street, and gave a vigorous pull
at the bell.
Dr. Cropper had not yet arrived, but the deceased had not been
entirely neglected, for when I had spent some five minutes staring
inquisitively about the drawing-room into which Mrs. Morris had shown
me, that lady returned, accompanied by two other ladies, whom she
introduced to me somewhat informally by the names of Miss Dewsnep and
Miss Bonington respectively. I recognized the names as those of the
two witnesses to the will and inspected them with furtive curiosity,
though, indeed, they were quite unremarkable excepting as typical
specimens of the genus elderly spinster.
“Poor Mr. Bendelow!” murmured Miss Dewsnep, shaking her head and
causing an artificial cherry on her bonnet to waggle idiotically. “How
beautiful he looks in his coffin!”
She looked at me as if for confirmation, so that I was fain to admit
that his beauty in this new setting had not yet been revealed to me.
“So peaceful,” she added, with another shake of her head, and Miss
Bonington chimed in with the comment, “Peaceful and restful.” Then
they both looked at me and I mumbled indistinctly that I had no doubt
he did; the fact being that the inmates of coffins are not in general
much addicted to boisterous activity.
“Ah!” Miss Dewsnep resumed, “how little did I think when I first saw
him, sitting up in bed so cheerful in that nice, sunny room in the
house at——”
“Why not?” interrupted Mrs. Morris. “Did you think he was going to
live for ever?”
“No, Mrs. Morris, ma’am,” was the dignified reply, “I did not. No such
idea ever entered my head. I know too well that we mortals are all
born to be gathered in at last as the—er—as the——”
“Sparks fly upwards,” murmured Miss Bonington.
“As the corn is gathered in at harvest time,” Miss Dewsnep continued
with slight emphasis. “But not to be cast into a burning fiery
furnace. When I first saw him in the other house at——”
“I don’t see what objection you need have to cremation,” interrupted
Mrs. Morris. “It was his own choice, and a good one, too. Look at
those great cemeteries. What sense is there in letting the dead occupy
the space that is wanted for the living?”
“Well,” said Miss Dewsnep, “I may be old-fashioned, but it does seem
to me that a nice, quiet funeral with plenty of flowers and a proper,
decent grave in a church-yard is the natural end to a human life. That
is what I look forward to, myself.”
“Then you are not likely to be disappointed,” said Mrs. Morris;
“though I don’t quite see what satisfaction you expect to get out of
your own funeral.”
Miss Dewsnep made no reply, and an interval of dismal silence
followed. Mrs. Morris was evidently impatient of Dr. Cropper’s
unpunctuality. I could see that she was listening intently for the
sound of the bell, as she had been even while the conversation was in
progress; indeed, I had been dimly conscious all the while of a sense
of tension and anxiety on her part. She had seemed to me to watch her
two friends with a sort of uneasiness, and to give a quite
uncalled-for attention to their rather trivial utterances.
At length her suspense was relieved by a loud ringing of the bell. She
started up and opened the door, but she had barely crossed the
threshold when she suddenly turned back and addressed me.
“That will be Dr. Cropper. Perhaps you had better come out with me and
meet him.”
It struck me as an odd suggestion, but I rose without comment and
followed her along the passage to the street door, which we reached
just as another loud peal of the bell sounded in the house behind us.
She flung the door wide open, and a small, spectacled man charged in
and seized my hand, which he shook with violent cordiality.
“How do you do, Mr. Morris?” he exclaimed. “So sorry to keep you
waiting, but I was unfortunately detained at a consultation.”
Here Mrs. Morris sourly intervened to explain who I was; upon which he
shook my hand again, and expressed his joy at making my acquaintance.
He also made polite inquiries as to our hostess’ health, which she
acknowledged gruffly over her shoulder as she preceded us along the
passage, which was now pitch-dark, and where Cropper dropped his hat
and trod on it, finally bumping his head against the unseen wall in a
frantic effort to recover it.
When we emerged into the dimly lighted hall, I observed the two ladies
peering inquisitively out of the drawing-room door. But Mrs. Morris
took no notice of them, leading the way directly up the stairs to the
room with which I was already familiar. It was poorly illuminated by a
single gas-bracket over the fireplace, but the light was enough to
show us a coffin resting on three chairs, and beyond it the shadowy
figure of a man whom I recognized as Mr. Morris.
We crossed the room to the coffin, which was plainly finished with
zinc fastenings, in accordance with the regulations of the cremation
authorities, and had let into the top what I first took to be a pane
of glass, but which turned out to be a plate of clear celluloid. When
we had made our salutations to Mr. Morris, Cropper and I looked in
through the celluloid window. The yellow, shrunken face of the dead
man, surmounted by the skull cap which he had always worn, looked so
little changed that he might still have been in the drowsy, torpid
state in which I had been accustomed to see him. He had always looked
so like a dead man that the final transition was hardly noticeable.
“I suppose,” said Morris, “you would like to have the coffin-lid taken
off?”
“God bless my soul, yes!” exclaimed Cropper. “What are we here for? We
shall want him out of the coffin, too.”
“Are you proposing to make a post-mortem?” I asked, observing that Dr.
Cropper had brought a good-sized handbag. “It seems hardly necessary,
as we both know what he died of.”
Cropper shook his head. “That won’t do,” said he. “You mustn’t treat a
cremation certificate as a mere formality. We have got to certify that
we have verified the cause of death. Looking at a body through a
window is not verifying the cause of death. We should cut a pretty
figure in a court of law if any question arose and we had to admit
that we had certified without any examination at all. But we needn’t
do much, you know. Just get the body out on the bed and a single small
incision will settle the nature of the growth. Then everything will be
regular and in order. I hope you don’t mind, Mrs. Morris,” he added,
suavely, turning to that lady.
“You must do what you think necessary,” she replied, indifferently.
“It is no affair of mine;” and with this she went out of the room and
shut the door.
While we had been speaking, Mr. Morris, who apparently had kept a
screwdriver in readiness for the possible contingency, had been neatly
extracting the zinc screws and now lifted off the coffin-lid. Then the
three of us raised the shrivelled body—it was as light as a
child’s—and laid it on the bed. I left Cropper to do what he thought
necessary, and while he was unpacking his instruments I took the
opportunity to have a good look at Mr. Morris; for it is a singular
fact that in all the weeks of my attendance at this house I had never
come into contact with him since that first morning when I had caught
a momentary glimpse of him as he looked out over the blind through the
glazed shop door. In the interval his appearance had changed
considerably for the better. He was no longer a merely unshaved man;
his beard had grown to a respectable length, and, so far as I could
judge in the uncertain light, the hare-lip scar was completely
concealed by his moustache.
“Let me see,” said Cropper, as he polished a scalpel on the palm of
his hand, “when did you say Mr. Bendelow died?”
“Yesterday afternoon at about five o’clock,” replied Mr. Morris.
“Did he really?” said Cropper, lifting one of the limp arms and
letting it drop on the bed. “Yesterday afternoon! Now, Gray, doesn’t
that show how careful one should be in giving opinions as to the time
that has elapsed since death? If I had been shown this body and asked
how long the man had been dead, I should have said three or four days.
There isn’t the least trace of rigor mortis left; and the other
appearances—but there it is. You are never safe in giving dogmatic
opinions.”
“No,” I agreed. “I should have said he had been dead more than
twenty-four hours. But I suppose there is a good deal of variation.”
“There is,” he replied. “You can’t apply averages to particular
cases.”
I did not consider it necessary to take any active part in the
proceedings. It was his diagnosis, and it was for him to verify it. At
his request Mr. Morris fetched a candle and held it as he was
directed; and while these preparations were in progress, I looked out
of the window, which commanded a partial view of the canal. The moon
had now risen and its full light fell on the white-painted hull of the
Dutch sloop, which had come to rest and made fast alongside a small
wharf. It was quite a pleasant picture, strangely at variance with the
squalid neighbourhood around. As I looked down on the little vessel,
with the ruddy light glowing from the deck-house windows and casting
shimmering reflections in the quiet water, the sight seemed to carry
me far away from the sordid streets around into the fellowship of the
breezy ocean and the far-away shores whence the little craft had
sailed; and I determined, as soon as our business was finished, to
seek some access to the canal and indulge myself with a quiet stroll
in the moonlight along the deserted towing-path.
“Well, Gray,” said Cropper, standing up with the scalpel and forceps
in his hands, “there it is if you want to see it. Typical carcinoma.
Now we can sign the certificates with a clear conscience. I’ll just
put in a stitch or two, and then we can put him back in his coffin. I
suppose you have got the forms?”
“They are downstairs,” said Mr. Morris. “When we have got him back I
will show you the way down.”
This, however, was unnecessary, as there was only one staircase, and I
was not a stranger. Accordingly, when we had replaced the body, we
took our leave of Mr. Morris and departed; and, glancing back as I
passed out of the door, I saw him driving in the screws with the ready
skill of a cabinet-maker.
The filling-up of the forms was a portentous business which was
carried out in the drawing-room under the superintendence of Mrs.
Morris, and was watched with respectful interest by the two spinsters.
When it was finished and I had handed the registration certificate to
Mrs. Morris, Cropper gathered up the forms “B” and “C,” and slipped
them into a long envelope on which the Medical Referee’s address was
printed.
“I will post this off to-night,” said he; “and you will send in Form
A, Mrs. Morris, when you have filled it in.”
“I have sent it off already,” she replied.
“Good,” said Dr. Cropper. “Then that is all; and now I must run away.
Can I put you down anywhere, Gray?”
“Thank you, no,” I replied. “I thought of taking a walk along the
tow-path, if you can tell me how to get down to it, Mrs. Morris.”
“I can’t,” she replied. “But when Dr. Cropper has gone, I will run up
and ask my husband. I daresay he knows.”
We escorted Cropper along the passage to the door, which he reached
without mishap, and having seen him into his brougham, turned back to
the hall, where Mrs. Morris ascended the stairs, and I went into the
drawing-room, where the two spinsters appeared to be preparing for
departure. In a couple of minutes Mrs. Morris returned, and seeing
both the ladies standing, said: “You are not going yet, Miss Dewsnep.
You must have some refreshment before you go. Besides, I thought you
wanted to see Mr. Bendelow again.”
“So we should,” said Miss Dewsnep. “Just a little peep, to see how he
looks after——”
“I will take you up in a minute,” interrupted Mrs. Morris. “When Dr.
Gray has gone.” Then addressing me, she said: “My husband says that
you can get down to the tow-path through that alley nearly opposite.
There is a flight of steps at the end which comes right out on the
path.”
I thanked her for the direction, and having bidden farewell to the
spinsters, was once more escorted along the passage and finally
launched into the outer world.