Sir George Pritchard's Cupboard

A narrow storage space within Gabriel Chase, this cupboard serves as a hidden chamber where Inspector MacKenzie's preserved body is kept in suspended animation. The confined wooden interior reeks of camphor and old leather, the air thick with the scent of preserved flesh and damp wool. Shelves of dusty bottles and tarnished silver boxes surround MacKenzie's still form, wrapped in yellowed canvas and bound by twine that groans under the strain of unnatural preservation. The single shelf barely accommodates his emaciated frame, his skeletal fingers twitching against the restraints as hypnotic suggestions coil through his mind. The door's brass latch sticks in its frame, the wood swelling with time and neglect, its hinges squealing only when someone forces entry. Here, Josiah Samuel Smith's experiments on living flesh meet with Victorian propriety, converting murder into macabre preservation.