Prologue
I can remember every dead body I have ever seen.
Albeit, I have only seen three but I assume that is more than most people.
The first two dead bodies I encountered were very similar, two older men in their eighties. Both pale, cold and undistinguishable features. The greatest difference between the them was that one was missing a section of his skull whereas the other had a cut from his neck down to his naval exposing his inner chest cavity. Now, I must confess, it is not unusual to see dead bodies in medical school, it is expected. However, what is unusual is to find the dead body of your classmate in your Professor’s office.
Charlotte Brown had been dead for a week and missing for longer. The police started looking for her when she stopped turning up for classes in the autumn. One day she was there, her crisp new books, leather brogues polished to perfection and sharp mind and then she was gone. This was very unlike her, you know being the well to do girl she was. But that’s the thing, people can surprise you, do things you never thought possible of them. Perhaps this why it had to end this way.
I cannot pretend I was surprised to find her body considering I partially orchestrated the events that lead to her death. I was surprised however by how different her body looked to those I had seen previously. She was not neatly placed on a cold metal table with a white cotton sheet over her for students to respectfully pull down and expose and investigate. Her eyes were not sewn shut and her body embalmed for the benefit of preservation. No, instead she had been contorted in such a way that she could fit between an old leather armchair and the wall. She had two bruises around her neck which had begun to fade to a mixture of orange and green with the passing time and the smell from the decomposition stifled the room. In my dissection lessons at Apsley College Oxford, I had been taught the method of sprinkling several drops of rose water onto an old tissue and holding under your nose to prevent gagging from the rancid smell of bodies. Unfortunately, I was less than prepared for finding her this evening. In fact, I was just trying to find Professor Harris in his office but there was no trace of him, only Charlotte.
The university did exactly as I assumed, press interviews, a well prepared remembrance article in the national newspapers, half hearted support for students and then quickly it was hushed away as though Charlotte had never existed. It would be a lie to say this was not pleasing to me, I was able to carry on with my life as planned or at least that’s what I thought. However in reality, my life would never be the same, not since I arrived at Oxford, not since Charlotte’s death and not since I met Professor Harris.
