Chapter 1
London, October 2nd, 1833
Otto Hartman looked down in to the empty grave. It was an average one, only two and a half feet deep, most like a middle class person once inhabited it. He noted that the soil was still somewhat fresh. Only a month or two in the ground then he thought. The coffin, if you could call the long box in front of him a coffin, was large, most likely an obese man was meant to be crammed into it. To many people this looked like your run-of-the-mill body-snatching. Body-snatching was still common, even though a law had been passed the past year and was nigh on stopped, some still did it. Otto did not think so however. How did he know? If it was a indeed a standerd body-snatch, then, there would not still be a pair of arms in the box. He was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of someone with his gut purging itself. He turned and saw his young charge, Will Gimble, was, indeed, vomiting.
The young man was just 18 and had never seen a pair of rotting arms before. So Otto did not blame him for voiding his guts. He laughed to himself. If the boy vomited anymore, he figured they could open a sluice gate and drown all the bastards in the city.
"You quite done there son?" he said raising his eyebrows.
"Yes, sir."
"Good." he said. "Come here."
The young Scotsman did so, brushing the last bits of his lunch from his trim moustache. Looking down at the arms he paled again, but it seemed the last of his lunch was gone, and his big brown eyes just stared. He was pulling at the long tail of his red hair as his nerves began to fray.
"What do you see?" Otto asked.
"A pair of moldy arms." he said.
"Do you now?" Otto replied. "I see a pair of arms with skin cut from the body by a scalpel. Then the arms were sawed off by a.... well.... a saw and then thrown back in to the coffin."
"Hummm.... why would a body-snatcher not take the arms?" Will added.
"Indeed." Otto replied.
"Unless they are not body-snatchers." said Will.
"My thoughts exactly, son."
"So what do we do?" Will asked.
"We look for them." Otto said.
Chapter 1 part 2 soon to come.
So there you go; hoped you liked it