More frustrating still, Kennet Lovell was a bit-player in the Burke and Hare story, existing only for that one gruesome scene, while in the history of medicine in Edinburgh his role was more negligible still. Large gaps were left in his biography. By the time she’d finished reading, she knew only that he had completed his studies, moving into the field of teaching as well as practising. He had been present at the Burke autopsy. Yet three years later he seemed to be in Africa, combining much-needed medical skills with Christian missionary work. How long he spent there she couldn’t say. His reappearance in Scotland came in the late 1840s. He set up a medical practice in the New Town, his clients probably reflecting the wealth of that enclave. One historian’s supposition had it that he had been bequeathed the bulk of the Reverend Kirkpatrick’s estate, having ‘kept in good graces with that gentleman by dint of regular correspondence down the years’. Jean would have liked to see those letters, but nobody had quoted from them in any of the books. She made a note to try tracking them down. The parish in Ayrshire might have some record, or someone at Surgeons’ Hall might know. Chances were, they couldn’t be recovered, either because they’d perished – been disposed of with Lovell’s effects when he’d died – or had gone overseas. An awful lot of historical documentation had found its way into collections overseas – mostly Canada and the US … and many of those collections were private, which meant few details of their contents were available.

She’d seen many a trail go cold, frustrated by her inability to know whether some letter or document was still in existence. Then she remembered Professor Devlin, with his dining table crafted by Lovell. Lovell, who according to Devlin was an amateur woodworker … She sifted through the papers again, sure that there was nothing in them mentioning this hobby. Either Devlin had some book, some evidence she’d failed so far to find, or else he was myth-making. This, too, she saw all the time: people who ‘just knew’ that the antique in their possession had once belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie or Sir Walter Scott. If it turned out she only had Devlin’s word for it that Lovell had worked with wood, then the whole notion that he had left the coffins on Arthur’s Seat would begin to crumble. She sat back, annoyed with herself. All this time, she’d been working on an assumption that could turn out to be false. Lovell had left Edinburgh in 1832; the boys had stumbled on the cave containing the coffins in June 1836. Could they have gone undetected for so long?