by Howard Engel
“Knowing where your enemy is located is almost as good as knowing what to do about him. Mark my words, he will come in handy one day. In the meantime, he is doing us no injury. No, I would be far better occupied if you handed me the third volume of my commonplace books, the one marked ‘C.’ I found the right volume and passed it across to him. It was a rather messy tome, with pages stuffed in higgledy-piggledy, some attached with pins, some not attached in any way. For a few moments, Bell concentrated on turning the pages to the exclusion of anything else that might be going on in his neighbourhood. I replaced his fallen meerschaum on the table from where it had dropped to the carpet.
“Ah,” he said at length, pointing into the book where I could see nothing. “Corry! Montague Corry! That’s the man!”
“I beg your pardon?” Bell looked up from the book as though trying to recall the features of the person whose name was recorded in the book.
“Corry is the man to put me in touch with the doctor, the specialist, indeed, who well may be able to cure all of Lambert’s woes.”
“He must be a remarkable specialist if he has such powers. Who is he?”
“Corry is an old student of mine. I keep a list of them all, you see. You too will have your place. The commonplace books are a record of the men whose careers I have helped. Many, most, in fact, are medical men, but by no means all. Monty Corry is an old friend, but he is not the specialist.”
“And this specialist?”
“He is the best specialist in all of Europe,” he said. “Yes,” he added, “and perhaps the rest of the world to boot. Hand me my portfolio of writing papers. I must think what is best to say.”
Once again, Bell became abstracted. I watched him work in silence. He cursed once, taking the page and crushing it in his hands, then straightening out the aborted mess to rescue a line or two for the fair copy he slowly put together. I had seen Bell’s crystalline concentration many times before, but this time, he did not, upon completing his work, show me what he had written. He popped it into an envelope and affixed a seal after writing out the address. Since he gave it to me to post, I at least was able to read that much before I consigned it to a pillar box on my way home that night.
The Hon. Montague Corry,
Hughenden Manor,
Near High Wycombe,
Bucks.
FOURTEEN
At the beginning of the week, I stepped into the reading-room of the old free library once more. With the venerable smell of leather and polished wood, it was a change from the dusty and dim medical library where I was bound to meet my contemporaries and be dragged from my books to make an eleventh man for cricket or to kick a ball around in some nearby close for half an hour. Worse were the invitations to a tavern or howff nearby. I was most susceptible to such invitations, and, without showing the blue ribbon of a teetotaller, I had to remember that not only had I my studies to manage, but also I must not forget the man in the condemned cell. I understood that he was allowed a portion of beer with his meat; part of the privileges offered to those who were to be legally snuffed out before the month’s end.
I was researching everything I could discover about all of the principals in the case: Lambert, Eward and most of all Mlle Hermione Clery. I examined the family backgrounds, the places they visited, what the press had ever said about them until my fingers properly ached with stiffness. My knuckles could easily have chalked a billiard cue. I tried to write with my left hand with slow progress and little success.
“Mr Doyle?” My reverie was arrested by a voice whispering my name. It was more than the conventional decorum of the library that informed the utterance: I detected a special need for privacy.
“Lieutenant Bryce!” for indeed it was he. “How did you find me among so many books? Do sit down. The old fellow beside me will not be back for some time. As you see, he has eclectic tastes: British Birds, Catullus, The Holy War. He won’t return from drinking his dinner at M’Cordick’s bar for another half-hour at least.” The policeman turned to see if his presence in the reading-room had been noticed, but even such a singular occurrence had not been visibly noted. He settled his impressive frame into the chair and moved it closer to mine.
“Mr Doyle, you haven’t seen me this morning, nor did I speak aught to you. Do you understand?” I nodded slowly, wondering why he had not picked this same device when I last saw him with Dr Bell. “I have a message for Dr Bell,” he said. “Will you oblige me in carrying it to him?”
“Of course, Lieutenant. But what, if I may ask, are you at liberty to say now that you were unable to say in Bell’s rooms?”
“I am seeking advice, Mr Doyle. You may have remarked the other night that I was not happy in not being free to help you. My request to Dr Bell has to do with how I might, with honour, achieve that position. Do you follow me?”
“You are seeking a formula that will allow you to speak without incurring the wrath of your superiors.”
“In a tidy nutshell, sir. Could you arrange for me to see the doctor at the earliest opportunity?”
“Tonight he is off to give a formal lecture at the Old College. If you could slip in just before he leaves at six-thirty, I’m sure that he will see you.” Bryce listened to see if I intended to add more to what I had said, and then rose to his sturdy feet. “I should tell you, Lieutenant Bryce, Dr Bell’s house is being watched day and night.”
“Thank you, sir. I know something of the matter. That is the reason I followed you here, sir. I believe that Dr Bell has a back entrance. Am I right in thinking that, Mr Doyle?” I had no expert knowledge of the house, but it was not so very different from my own to make me doubt it. I told him this.
With the slightest of nods to me, he was off again, having chosen to walk to the end of the hall and leave by the main door only after having apparently surveyed the complete reference collection along the walls.
That night, I found my friend in a paroxysm of disorder. All of his drawers were open, several shirts had been taken out and discarded. He was wrestling with a collar button and spoke to me of the virtue of calmness as he fidgeted and fretted.
“You got my note earlier, I hope?”
“Oh, yes. Least of my worries.” I had undertaken to fasten his necktie; he lectured me upon the origins of the custom. At last, he was totally assembled in his suit, his papers in good order were placed in a morocco leather case.
“You should have a wee bite to eat before you go,” I said.
“I have no stomach for it. Why, oh why do I consent to do these things? Did I imagine that October would never come? How do I look?” he said in despair. I stepped back and looked him up and down. In every way he looked the distinguished academic he was, and I told him so.
At that moment the bell sounded and we soon heard the housekeeper’s knock at the door. In less than a minute, Lieutenant Bryce was seated in the basket chair near the fire. Mastering himself for a moment, Bell found Bryce a drink and poured a large one for himself, which, upon second thoughts, he divided in half, giving me the third glass.
“You find me pressed for time, Lieutenant. But what service I may do you is yours if it is within my powers.”
“Sir, I have been in the police for thirty years—”
“Oh, we’ll never have time if you begin with the story of your life! We know about your medals, your commendations by the chief constable and a’ that. Come to the important part.”
“Sir, I am going to speak frankly—”
“Certainly, certainly. Why else did you come? There is no one listening in the armoire or behind the door. You may speak to us as though thinking your own thoughts. Only be quick. I have to be gone in less than five minutes.”
“Three!” I corrected. “The cab is already at the door.”
“A miscarriage of justice has been allowed to occur, sir. I think you know of what I am speaking. I was not part of the original investigation, but by the time they brought me in, they had parted the cable and lost the anchor in this business. The
y were adrift and couldn’t see it! I tried to tell them, but they were caught up in the chase to Liverpool and then to New York.”
“Yes, but we’ve not time for the details now. What do you want?”
“Sir, in the force we know our place. We may not contradict our superiors.”
“In the interests of justice, you must speak out, man!”
“That’s not the way it’s done, sir. It would be like jumpin’ into a tank of hungry crocodiles. I would vanish in a flash and young Lambert would be topped on schedule. No, there must be anither way to it.”
“Suppose I write to a colleague of mine, Dr Keefer, one of Her Majesty’s prison commissioners for Scotland? I will tell him that you need some guarantee of immunity before you will be able to come forward.”
“I would need that. And, there’s no need for this to become public. No newspaper reporters and—”
“This case has become far too public to guarantee anything along those lines, my friend. There was an editorial in The Times this morning. They are highly critical of the way this case has been handled. There’s shoulders in the scrum, man, and there are going to be bloody noses before we’re done. You can count on that. I will write that wee letter and let you know what happens. Now, I must be off before you. Doyle, have you got my case? Where did I put my hat? Damn it, why do I get myself involved in making public speeches?”
FIFTEEN
Again I found Bell in his rooms after supper. He was reading a medical tome and sipping that excellent port which he from time to time invited me to share. I brought him up to date on the things I had learned from my research.
“You know, that watchdog is still stationed across from your windows, Bell. Do you still believe that he is harmless?”
“Oh, my friend, I never said harmless. But at least we know he is up to no mischief we know nothing of. We have muted him, taken him out of action. But, I see he makes you uneasy. Very well. I will consider what to do about him.”
Several days had passed. Busy ones to be sure, but days offering little contact with my friend. With my mother and one of my sisters, I went to visit my father in the nursing hospital. The view from the hilltop establishment was of an impressive reach of the firth, near where it curves towards the city. My father I found hardly altered from when I saw him some weeks earlier. He tried to muster a smile for all of us and kept the conversation well away from the issues that we all were thinking about. He said that he was proud of the progress of my medical studies. He showed me some drawings that he had made in the hospital gardens and I promised to bring him more paper. The experience was enormously exhausting in a way I cannot explain. One owes certain duties to one’s parents to be sure, but why is it never easy?
I continued to attend classes, did what was expected of me in the laboratory, and wrote up some experiments I was trying in an attempt to master the effects of corrective lenses on astigmatism.
I had been to see Alan Lambert several times since that first visit to the New Gaol. We talked at first about the case, of course. I tried to learn as much as I could about his movements prior to the crime and immediately afterwards. After a word with Bell, I prowled the streets and closes near Howe Street and talked to Lambert’s neighbours. Lambert showed an interest in hearing what I could tell him of these. I suspect that it helped him pass the time to hear of the comings and goings of the families on his landing as well as news of his mistress, Agnes Flett, who now maintained a room up a stair farther along Howe Street. The condemned man told me stories laced with good humour, if not keen observation, about the butcher, the baker and the one-eyed tailor near Howe Street. In his dim cell, with the gaslight caged in wire, and the thin blanket folded out of the way at the end of his cot, he seemed altogether too much fortune’s fool, a plaything of the gods. I found it almost more than I could bear to keep visions of his fatal appointment with the hangman from rendering me an impossible guest.
When not in conversation, we played draughts.
“The warders keep me in constant practice,” he said. “I was never a good player, but I am learning. Besides, it helps to pass the time. I suppose, that’s why they encourage it.” It was difficult to look him in the eye, and there was so little else to turn one’s attention to in that dusty hole that my embarrassment was all too clear to my host. He rarely spoke of the shortening days or of the eight-o’clock walk on the morning of Thursday, the twenty-third. For the most part, he encouraged me, and through me Dr Bell, in the reinvestigation of the crime. Once, he gave way to complete despair, but quickly mastered himself, and sent me off with a joke. Whatever happened in the end, I was glad that I had got to know the condemned man.
From what I observed, there was nothing of the murderer about him. He was a fellow from a similar, if slightly more exalted background, but we had much in common. He, and his brother both, had had the heavy cross of his grandfather’s still-hallowed name to bear. His achievements had enclosed the family in a cage of propriety which was plainly crushing both of them.
Several times, I met Graeme in the courtyard, either on his way to Alan or just coming from him. He waited for me twice and we walked and talked as we tried to put distance between us and the New Gaol. I introduced him to the barmaids of Rutherford’s bar, but discovered that while he had a healthy thirst, he was no Stevenson with the wenches. He told me a little of his life among the painters and artists of the city, of their necessary thrift, their scorn for propriety and their betters. Once, coming from Rutherford’s we were overtaken by a group of noisy, well-dressed young men, on a tear of some kind. They were kicking a silk hat in front of them as they lurched and shouted their way along the cobblestones of Drummond Street. It was like a scrum of gentlemen players after a match. With arms flailing and silk scarves flapping about in the wind, they moved on past us. Suddenly, one of the young men turned around and looked back at us.
“There’s that ill-skite, Lambert!” he said. Others in his party turned, glaring.
“Say nothing of hemp, Andrew, you’ll make him blush.”
“Fancy knowing the hangman’s coming.” This from the fair-haired young man who had lost his hat.
“Come along, man, you’ll start him moythering us. They’re all the same, the Lamberts! Tarts and clerks, that’s their meat! Let’s not be thrutchin’ up wi’ the likes o’ them.”
We took a stair down into a close and quickly lost ourselves trying to lose our pursuers. The lanes between Drum-mond Street and Surgeon’s Square were sinuous and dark. We heard the young drunks coming after us. From the shadows of a wynd near Infirmary Street, we saw them pass, the moon glinting on their walking-sticks and scarves. In the end, they passed us by and we were able to recover our bearings, but for a time I thought the sound of my own breathing would give us away.
“Young Andrew Burnham,” said Graeme. “He was a brute in school. I remember him well. Another was David M’Clung. The one whose hat they were kicking. I knew him at school as well. His father’s a director of the bridge company that spanned the Firth o’ Tay.”
“They were about your age.” I said. “Too much money and too much to drink. I don’t think they were going to hurt us.”
“Andrew Burnham would drown kittens.”
We reached the High Street, where we parted. It was easier walking under the street lamps. Still, I suppressed an urge to whistle.
On three of my visits to the New Gaol to see Alan Lambert, I had encountered Louise just coming from her brother. Here too acquaintance blossomed into friendship. One night, she took me with her to her reading-society and we listened while George Meredith read from The Egoist, a strange and admirable book, in a small, reedy voice that oddly filled the large hall. She had placed an absolute ban on our discussing Alan’s sorry plight and made me agree to abide by it. She kept to her side of the bargain, although I could see when I glanced at her sitting next to me that her mind frequently wandered away from the reading. Afterwards we ate a late supper in the only respectable inn I was acquainted
with, where one ate and talked without danger to the woman’s reputation.
“I suppose you think it is all very dashing to be running about saving people in distress?” she said. She looked at me as though I were quite ridiculous.
“I haven’t saved anyone yet. One gets so little in the way of help, you see.” She frowned and changed the subject. Soon she was describing an amateur play she had attended with her brother. It kept us from speaking about what we were thinking about. She went on and on about it. I listened but with half an ear. She was a dear girl, but quite firmly under the thumb of her monstrous father.
On another evening, I had the pleasure of her company at a concert of Handel’s music played in one of the assembly rooms close to Princes Street. This was indeed the evening that took me late to Bell’s rooms in Lothian Street, where I chided him about the lurking sentinel in the bushes across the street from his house. Perhaps I was overestimating the significance of the dark figure hiding deep in the shadows. At any rate, as I have said, Bell reassured me. By now, I was inclined to believe my friend when he asserted something. And, I must admit, his saying it gave me a night of happy dreams.
Bell, of course, had written his letter to his friend in the prison service the evening of his public lecture, but it was some time before he had an answer. When that arrived, he mentioned the fact at the clinic and invited me to drop around for a glass of sherry after my evening meal.
It was not quite eight o’clock when I rang his bell and was seen up to Bell’s rooms by Mrs Murchie, the housekeeper. “Well, sir,” said he. “We have our answer from the Lord Advocate. I’ve sent a note round to Bryce, with a word of caution.” So saying, he handed me the letter itself attached to a few lines from his friend in the prison service, Dr Keefer. The letter from Sir George Currie, the Lord Advocate, read, in part, as follows:
…If the constable mentioned in your letter will send me a written statement of the evidence in his possession of which he spoke to Dr Bell, I will give this matter my best consideration…