Last time a hole had this much pain and decay my dentist pulled the entire tooth. I wondered if maybe someone could just pull this out and throw it way.
Indiana Jones’ protege led me down a rickety stairs and along a makeshift gangway. We were about thirty feet below the street and a thousand years before it.
“We discovered it this evening, the owner only lets us work in the evenings.” Indy and his colleagues were excavating a city centre basement. It was pretty much unchanged in the last 200 years, except the passage of time and patchy repairs left the basement damp, the brickwork dubious the beams dodgy. The owner wanted the whole place condemned before some antiquities society started celebrating its authenticity and slapped a preservation order on it.
But no amount of preservative could save these walls. A survey to ensure its destruction hadn’t worked out. The house was close to the University and had probably housed medical students over the last few centuries, some of whom appeared to have taken their practical studies home with them.
When the engineer assessed the basement he discovered a further space below, and it was down here they found the skeletons in the cupboard. Or close enough.
“It’s a body we found” he added, which in the surroundings was not exactly a shocker. “I was about to call the police but Mrs Frobisher said no, call you first.”
Mrs Frobisher was the housekeeper, more terrified of annoying her employer than all macabre melee right here under her feet. Mrs Frobisher said call me because if it wasn’t for me Mr Frobisher would still be a free man. Love and marriage, such a rare partnership. “All these skeletons show the marks of dissection, hopefully after they died, but we can’t be sure. There are saw marks and even nicks where we imagine ligaments were cut from the bone.”
His excitement was a little worrying, if he was so fond of these amateur doctors would he one day copy them, that’s case I’ll happily avoid. There was a clatter behind us as Mrs Frobisher pounded her way towards us. “Good Evening Mr Marlowe, how good of you to come!” Her counterfeit glee was as convincing as her hair colour. “Nothing to see here of course, just tell Digger Boy here it’s all OK and we can get this lot out of here.” Indy bristled at the insult, “I don’t think so, I think this is a major crime scene!”
He tried to stand firm but the loose plank and low ceiling didn’t allow it. In his white overalls and blue shoe covers his fidgeting footwork looked like a cross between young Elvis and the mating ritual of a Blue Footed Booby. “Don’t be silly its just like the others been here for centuries.” She scoffed.
“I don’t think so Mrs Frobisher” I replied, “He’s wearing a casio watch”
