It was Macfarlane himself who made the first advance. But gradually he can no longer fool himself – some of the bodies are of people murdered for the money their corpses will bring.Īnd then one night Macfarlane brings a corpse of a man they both know… and Fettes, knowing that Macfarlane had cause to want the man dead, has to choose whether to obey his conscience or his avarice… For a time he dulls his conscience by choosing to believe that they are getting the bodies from graves, and sometimes he and Macfarlane go grave-robbing themselves when bodies are in short supply. Fettes is responsible for receiving the bodies for dissection by the anatomy classes and paying the men who brought them. The story then goes back to an earlier time when both these men were anatomy students in Edinburgh at the time of the Resurrection Men – the body-snatchers. The great rich London doctor cried out aloud with a sharp, throttling cry he dashed his questioner across the open space, and, with his hands over his head, fled out of the door… …even as he was passing Fettes clutched him by the arm and these words came in a whisper, and yet painfully distinct, ‘Have you seen it again?’ Macfarlane tries to brush past Fettes and get away from the inn but… ‘Money!’ cried Fettes ‘money from you! The money that I had from you is lying where I cast it in the rain.’ He tries to get rid of Fettes by offering him money…
They meet, and Dr Wolfe Macfarlane is clearly horrified to have encountered this old acquaintance. Until one night another doctor turns up at the inn to treat a patient and Fettes recognises his name.
The locals call him ‘Doctor’ because he seems to have some medical knowledge, but his past is shrouded in mystery. The tale begins in the parlour of an inn, where sits Fettes, an ‘old drunken Scotchman’, getting steadily drunk on rum as he does every night. Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson by Sargent TUESDAY TERROR! The Body-Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson Aye, the nichts are fair drawin’ in, and the cauld wind is blawin’ through the deid leaves wi’ a sound like auld bones rattlin’…Īnd where better to begin our journey into darkness than in a graveyard with a master of horror… The fretful porpentine has stirred from his summer sleep and is back to haunt our winter nightmares.
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