Chapter One – A Very Special Day

Mr Crumbtray loved his work. He liked to watch peoples’ faces when he told them what he did all day (which to be honest was very rare these days, because he really preferred not to be spoken to). He liked the fact that he worked alone and in silence. Others in his profession liked to play music, classical particularly, or upbeat pop, perhaps a cheery local radio station to tell them about up and coming village fetes, traffic jams. It kept them in touch with the world they said, but Mr Crumbtray had no wish to be in touch with the modern world. Anyway he liked to work in complete silence, or dead silence as he sometimes joked to Mrs Crumbtray. It was more respectful he thought to work like this.
Today he was working on an elderly lady. She lay face up on his cold stone slab and in this way the blood would drain away from the face. If a face was too heavy with blood it would discolour and bloat, an appearance that would upset the relatives, many still raw with grief. He hated it when they made a scene it really wasn’t necessary at all and it upset him for the rest of the day. It was Mr Crumbtray’s personal duty to give all his clients (or friends as he privately referred to them) the impression of simply being asleep. Asleep and peaceful. In that way he considered himself an artist, a magician even. The things he could do with a wrecked face were really very impressive indeed.
Although Mr Crumbtray didn’t approve of music whilst he worked he did occasionally hum to himself. He hummed if he was in a particularly good mood which he was today.

He was looking forward to tonight, a special night; little Tommy’s birthday. There would be cake and ice cream, just the three of them. Mrs Crumbtray was preparing his favourite meal: Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pie with new potatoes and garden peas, ice cream and jelly for Tommy, and cake for all of them. They would both be waiting for him when he arrived home, Mrs Crumbtray and little Tommy, tiny and so well behaved. He’d been such a surprise he had, little Tommy, after all those years together, just the two of them. But oh what joy he’d bought them, what joy.

The next part of the process Mr Crumbtray found the most demanding, the most skilful. After carefully scanning the body for a clean artery he inserted the draining tube with all the respect and delicacy of a surgeon. Although his patients could not complain he still believed precision was of the utmost here. Respect for the relatives, for his profession. He’d seen the work of others before, careless and bruising and it made him upset and angry. Mr Crumbtray was always impressed by the amount of blood a body held. Once, in his early days, he had underestimated the amount of blood his patient contained and it had ended up overflowing the tank, the thick crimson fluid sloshing around on the floor, the air rich with its sharp metallic odour. He chuckled gently to himself at the memory. It was not a mistake he had ever repeated. A patient could hold up to fifteen pints, but today was average, just under ten.

As it was Little Tommy’s birthday Mrs Crumbtray would be sure to dress him up in his favourite royal blue sailor suit. It would be a quiet peaceful party, just the three of them. Mrs Crumbtray always said that the less friends you had the less problems you had. Mr Crumbtray had once pointed out, quite gently he thought, that it should actually be the fewer friends you had, but Mrs Crumbtray had got terribly upset at this criticism. She had cried and moaned softly for a long time and he had had to spend almost the entire evening stroking her fine grey hair to sooth and reassure her.

Once all the blood had been drained it was time to introduce the embalming fluid. Mr Crumbtray inserted a fresh tube into the open vein and turned on the embalming pump. Into the body he gently fed a mixture of formaldehyde and methanol to be distributed evenly around the patient, ensuring that the tissue would deteriorate no longer and bacteria would not live.

It was at this stage of the process, whilst the machine softly hummed with its work and the veins of the patient gently pulsed with the motion of the fluid, that Mr Crumbtray always had a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit. He liked to sit on his stool and watch his preserving fluid flow around the patient, an underground chemical stream finding its way into all the corners and cavities, the flesh undulating and rippling with the motion.

Walking home from work Mr Crumbtray felt a deep sense of calm and satisfaction. The preserving work had gone well and the cosmetic work, often more difficult than people realised, had been successful. With older patients the eyelids would often sag back into the eyes and have to be filled out using cotton wool between the lid and the eye to round it out. The mouth also had to be set to a natural expression, to look as if the patient were simply resting. All this Mr Crumbtray did with precision and care on a daily basis.

Mr Crumbtray walked up his immaculate garden path, paused to admire a particularly magnificent specimen of rhododendron, and marvelled once again at how much care and effort Mrs Crumbtray had put into the outside appearance of their lovely Victorian terraced property. The knocker on the front door was mounted on a beautifully painted illustration of the house’s name, Fayrebank. He rapped sharply on the door, twice.

From behind the door he heard Mrs Crumbtray’s plaintive “Who is it?” to which he replied “Why it’s me, Mr Crumbtray.” The bolts were slid back and he was in the hallway holding the dear Mrs Crumbtray in his arms. She was trembling slightly. She always did when he first arrived home.
“How’s little Tommy?” he said.
“Fine, he’s in his pram, having a little nap before his party,” she replied.
“I’ll go and prepare his bath,” said Mr Crumbtray. “You bring him up in a few minutes.”
Mr Crumbtray loved to prepare little Tommy’s bath every night. He wasn’t at home in the day so this evening ritual was always very special for the two of them.

Mrs Crumbtray carried little Tommy into the bathroom and handed him to her husband. Mr Crumbtray lowered him very carefully into his bath, his lovingly prepared bath of formaldehyde and methanol, smiled sadly at the tiny, wrinkled, shrivelled form of his only son and said,

“Happy 21st birthday Tommy. “

Chapter Two – How do you kill a circus?

“So Mr C. how’s Mrs. C? You two been anywhere nice lately? She had a bit of a do recently didn’t she I heard ? She feeling any better? Don’t suppose you’ve been out much if she’s been under the weather a bit. Can’t say as I blame you, much better off at home you are. ”
The man speaking was Dave, delivery Dave, a harmless fellow whose job it was to deliver all Mr Crumbtray’s chemical requirements.

He wasn’t an emotional man but Mr Crumbtray, as we already know, was exceptionally proud of his work, his workplace, the tools of his trade. As he had no guests to work on today he was cleansing and sterilising all his equipment: his sterilisers, his pincers, his pliers, his tubes, his scalpels, his needles, his forceps, his clamps, his razors, his hooks and his vein expanders. It was this last tool that he was cleaning whilst he listened to the delivery driver. The vein expander was a small but particularly brutal looking instrument, used in the embalming process, pushed carefully into veins for the insertion of drainage equipment. It was this tool that he was polishing now; he held it up so that its steel surface caught the light. The vein expander, though small, had a tough job: to pierce flesh, continue downward and cut through bone: quite impressive for such a small implement. Used incorrectly, carelessly or with malice it could do great damage to flesh. Alive or dead.

As Dave continued his endless stream of unanswered and unwanted questions Mr Crumbtray fell into a sort of trance, his eyes glazing over. He often did if people talked to him about anything other than work; he actively discouraged any sort of conversation.

Delivery Dave was unpacking a box of small chloroform bottles and stacking them onto Mr Crumbtray’ s work surface. The driver had his back to him, but kept half turning to him, as if expecting a reply, communication.

Mr Crumbtray could just make out the prominent vein, the superficial temporal vein, on the side of Dave’s temple, and the larger one, the jugular, on his neck. Mr Crumbtray’s eyesight was exceptional; he noticed that the delivery man’s jugular was particularly pronounced, pulsing gently as he spoke.

“We like to go away of course, who doesn’t, a change is as good as a rest and all that….. “

Your large vein is your jugular, and your artery is the common carotid, as there are different carotids branching out of the main one. The carotid is the vein commonly used to feel one’s pulse (under your jaw on the soft spot, the other common one is the brachial on your wrist for babies). The jugular is a very vital vein, leading from your brain to your heart. When slit, you will quickly die. Discipline (aka execution) in this form has even spawned a word, “jugulate,” meaning to resolve something with extreme methods.

Mr Crumbtray silently recited this passage whilst the driver rattled on. He did this if he felt under pressure. Or if he was aroused.

“………… so you see what the wife and I do is we have a few days at home, then get a little b n b by the sea for the rest of the week. That way you get..”

“How do you kill a circus?”

“How do you what?” said Dave in genuine surprise. Not surprise it has to be said at the question, although it was a strange one, but at the fact that Mr Crumbtray had actually spoken at all. He had been delivering to him for over four years now and he had only ever said hello and thank you and goodbye. This was new. Strange. He felt uneasy. The mood in the room had changed very quickly.

He turned and faced Mr Crumbtray, noting once again, as he did every time he visited, that the mortician’s eyes were the most striking he had ever seen. Two agate marbles set deep inside the man’s skull. As always Dave found the man’s presence made him very uneasy, the reason in fact that he kept up the continual stream of unreciprocated conversation.

Without warning, and very quickly, Mr Crumbtray took a step nearer to Dave, his face a mere six inches away from the delivery man’s. For the first time, at such close proximity, he was aware of the mortician’s physicality. Although Mr Crumbtray was only 5ft 4 he had immensely broad, powerful shoulders and a neck to match. A strange malice seemed to pour out of him like a dark mist. He noticed too that he had his hands clasped behind him, his broad shoulders flexing slightly, working something behind that powerful back.

“How do you kill a circus?” he repeated.

Christ not only was Boris (for that was his private name for Mr Crumbtray) speaking, thought Dave, he was actually telling a joke. He let out a nervous laugh, shrugged his shoulders slightly. The mortician brought his hands from behind his back, took one step closer to the poor man, and placed something cold and sharp against his neck. It all happened so quickly that poor old Dave had no time to react………..