Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell

by Howard Engel

  TWENTY-SIX

  Waverley Station was crowded. Full of noise, steam, grit, the odour of tar and that strange sort of illumination that belongs chiefly to major railway terminuses. Bell examined the arrival schedule and purchased two platform tickets before we walked down the ways. The London train had just arrived and was disgorging its human cargo into the waiting arms of loved ones and relations.

  “Come!” Bell urged and began moving towards the end of the train. “This last third-class car was added after the train was made up in London. Marwood boarded at Sheffield, after travelling from Horncastle to Lincoln, and from Lincoln to Sheffield. He would probably have gone into the emptier coaches. I believe it is usual with Marwood to trade his second-class ticket, supplied by the Home Office, for a third. A penny saved is a penny got, in his line of work.”

  “Do you know the man?”

  “Few do. His acquaintances are notoriously shortlived. Ah, here is a possibility. Note the small satchel, and the retiring acolyte, a first-time assistant, or I miss my guess. His clothing comes from the Midlands. Ah, and he has just popped one of his famous boiled sweets into his gob. That settles it!”

  The man Bell had singled out from among the alighting dozens was a middle-aged man, not unhandsome of countenance, although inclined to be ruddy. He wore an impressive watch-chain across his ample chest. His low felt hat, tidy black cravat and frock-coat gave a fleeting impression—a rather northern one—of the late Prince Consort. He shepherded his assistant, who carried an overnight case as though he had never been farther from home than the nearest market town: his eyes were blinking at the size of Waverley Station. Bell approached them and I followed.

  “Mr Marwood, I presume,” said Bell, tipping his hat.

  “And if I am, to whom am I indebted for this unexpected welcome? If it is a welcome.”

  “Oh, you are most assuredly welcome to Edinburgh. And so is your assistant. My name is Bell, Dr Joseph Bell, and this is my assistant, Conan Doyle, who will soon be a medical man like myself.”

  “This here is Jack… What are we going to call you, Jack?”

  “Jack Dawes, Mr Marwood. It’s not a bit like my real name and it’s not difficult to remember.” Marwood smiled at his assistant and then turned again to Dr Bell.

  “Have you been sent by the governor of the gaol, sir?” Bell smiled and inclined his head in a manner that might be taken for a nod. Then Marwood turned to his assistant with an open smile: “You see that, Jack, they know how to greet a person in Scotland!” By now we were walking up the ways, surrendering our platform tickets at the gate, and making our way to the four-wheeler we had engaged.

  As we walked, a third person slipped into step with us. Whether he had come from the train, I did not see, but he seemed to know Marwood and Bell took no notice of him. While we climbed aboard the carriage, the stranger flagged down a hansom that had just disembarked three young ladies, all dressed in mourning. When our coachman shook his horses into action, the hansom turned his black-and-white nag around and followed us at a modest distance.

  “Gentlemen, perhaps you will not be surprised to hear that your most cordial welcome is not the greeting that is often extended to someone of my trade. Not long ago, a stranger in Norwich was thrown into a duck pond on the general suspicion that he was myself. He took the leaders of the mob responsible to court for assault and defamation. Counsel for the defendant claimed that being called the hangman could not possibly be defamatory, since the hangman, like a judge, performs an important civic function. Unfortunately, the court ruled it was absurd to argue that the executioner’s office is a branch of the judiciary, and awarded damages. In my view, gentlemen, the person of the hangman, or executioner, as I prefer, is akin to that of the judges, magistrates and justices in the land, whatever a Norwich judge says. It is fearfully hard to see that even the judge that condemns a man to the gallows holds himself aloof from the unpleasant task he sets upon other shoulders. It is most vexing.” From time to time, Marwood popped a peppermint into his mouth. Each time, he offered the bag to all comers before putting it back into one of the huge pockets on the side of his coat. He remarked upon the sharp cold turn the weather had taken. Jack Dawes looked at me with suspicion I could not shake off. After a time, he turned to look at the view.

  Bell began to quiz the hangman about his travels. He asked if he had often been to Scotland. In uncharacteristic hyperbole he began lauding the excellence of Scottish ale. We quickly discovered that Marwood considered himself a connoisseur of good ale. Before I was quite aware of what was happening, it had been concluded that we would stop at The Beak’s Wig to taste of the best Scottish brews. Marwood, despite the blue ribbon of a total abstainer worn prominently on his lapel, was much amused and entranced by the suggestion. The ribbon, I took it, was not intended seriously in his present company so far from Horncastle and Lincolnshire. With hardly a look at his watch, he gave both ears to Joe Bell’s history of the drinking establishments of Rose Street. I had no idea that such lore formed part of my friend’s vast store. He pointed out where, in former times, prostitutes sold their wares; where “Half-Hangit Maggie” used to tell of her amazing resurrection; and, turning in at a well-used door, where Burke and Hare used to drink away their ill-gotten money.

  “They were businessmen, providing dead bodies for Dr Knox’s dissection classes, Mr Marwood. In this tavern, Burke and Hare divided the spoils of their necrophagous trade. They began by delivering corpses they came across in the wynds and closes, or resurrected from Greyfriars cemetery. Later, they provided freshly dead specimens of their own making. Very profitable they found it. The notorious Dr Knox was liberality itself, Mr Marwood. You don’t know how difficult it is to get a cadaver that isn’t pocky even nowadays.”

  All of this Marwood and his young assistant absorbed as though they had never fallen in with better companions than ourselves.

  In the howff, Bell ordered ale by the half-measure, so that Marwood would be able to savour the difference from one to the next. “Now this, my friends, is a dark, nut-brown ale made in small quantity for a titled Highland family. I happen to know that, apart from a small stock that comes here, a practice that comes of a service done during the Forty-five, involving a Jacobite lass and her Georgian lover, this ale is unknown except among knowledgeable people. Ah, but the next, the next may be called the king of ales. This has won prizes at international exhibitions in Copenhagen, Munich and Chicago. It was awarded medals at the Great Exhibition… !” And so he went, on and on, with Marwood and his associate drinking glass after glass with evident enjoyment. A mellower Marwood could not be imagined. He drank deeply and commented intelligently upon each glass. He introduced us to a comic song from the English music halls in which his name figured prominently.

  “Here’s another one, gentlemen,” he said, half getting to his feet. “This question was asked at the Palladium in London: ‘Tell me, if Pa killed Ma, who’d kill Pa?’ You know the answer to that? I bet you don’t. The answer is: ‘Marwood!’” At this, he dissolved in a broad, bluff laugh that breathed a beery sort of sweetness and light into every corner of the howff.

  “Mr Marwood, perhaps you will have heard of my Irish colleague, the Reverend Samuel Haughton, MD, FRS, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. He has written a small treatise on the subject of hanging, from a mechanical and physiological point of view.”

  “I remember seeing that. Has some very difficult sums in it; calculations with fractions, square roots and so on. I try to keep my arithmetic simple. I’ll leave the x, y and z for the reverend gentleman. You have to watch them Irish: they’re all up to summat. I remember one time in Kilmainham Gaol…” Marwood was launched on an anecdote with an Irish locale. This was followed by other stories with settings all over the British Isles. Each was the tale of death on the scaffold. And yet we laughed to hear Marwood tell it.

  Bell introduced the hangman and his friend to more ales and porters, all the while keeping up a commentary which touched upon t
he strengths of each of the proffered brands. I had early stopped trying to match them drink for drink. Otherwise, even with my student’s head for alcohol, I should have fallen into the sawdust on the floor and slept for some hours. As far as I could see, Joe and the man from Horncastle were drinking gill for gill, sometimes crooking their arms around one another. After some time, Marwood’s features seemed to be subsiding into the lower portion of his face as his eyes grew heavy and their lids closed from time to time. As for Jack Dawes, the assistant, his eyes had closed much earlier. He was now slumped on his bench and oblivious to further pain or pleasure.

  “Ah, my friend,” said Joe to the hangman, “it is strange that you should come all this way to Scotland just to taste of its ale. We are a whisky-drinking people. There’s more than one thing to do with malt than brew it. Have you had a sip of the finest distillation known to man? I am speaking of a blend of heather from the shaws and peat from the glens. The savour of it alone is enough to turn a rational, sober man into a prophet, a poet, a rhapsodizer on the themes of love and life and beauty. Mr Marwood, I am speaking of the single malt. It is a creature you seldom see where you come from. Aye, they call it by the name of whisky south of the border, but it is not the thing itself. But let me show you the way. In after times you will remember the poor doctor who put your foot on the ladder leading to Elysium…” He brought the landlord close and ordered with great charm and ceremony a dram of the finest whisky in the house. When it arrived, we all—all but young Dawes—lifted our glasses in a toast to the visitors from the south. The executioner responded with a pledge to our civility and courtesy. When the drinks were gone and the glasses were emptied, Marwood was beginning to look decidedly off-colour. He suddenly moved the table back with his belly and stood to attention. For a moment, I thought that he was going to propose another toast, but no, he was simply trying to move past the sleeping form of his companion in order to find the lavatory. He stumbled through the crowded room, twisting, upsetting a chair or two, in the direction I had indicated. As soon as he was gone, Bell was on his feet:

  “Quick, Doyle. There’s not a moment to lose. Take the smaller bag!” I could see that he had pulled the dark valise belonging to the hangman from the floor and was making for the front of the howff. At the door, he paid the reckoning and in less time than it takes to say it, we were back reeling in the twilight of Rose Street running down towards Hanover Street. Here Bell hailed a cab, and a moment later we were settled back into the leather cushions breathing heavily. Joe was the first to speak, but he did not do so until he had looked from the cab to see if we were being followed.

  “Well, well, my friend. You have just witnessed a side of my nature the existence of which I would have doubted two hours since. You have also witnessed the Bell variation on the classical method of arsenic poisoning.”

  “Poisoning! Dr Bell, I must pro—”

  “The variation is harmless, Conan. Rest assured. In the classic recorded cases, such as that of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, poisoning over a long period of time using arsenic is brought to a head by the administration of antimony. In my variation, a prolonged period of drinking ale to excess is brought to a sudden conclusion by a change to hard spirits. I have often entertained the theory of its effectiveness but never imagined that I would ever be able to give it a practical trial. How is your head?”

  “Swimming. But, I confess, more from recent events than from the drink.”

  “I hope you noticed that I was spilling a good deal of my drink under the table.”

  “Where it mixed with my own. But why, Doctor? Why did we do it? Why did we make the hangman drunk? He will be well enough in the morning to see to young Lambert. His headache may be severe, but he will still be able to do his duty.”

  “And with what will he do it, lad?”

  “Why…why…” Here my eyes fell for the first time on the two grips we had taken from the southerners. I looked up at Bell for a further word.

  “You canna hang a man without your rope, Conan. You canna tie his arms and feet without your straps nor cover his head without a county kerchief. We have borrowed his bag of tricks. Call it insurance. We have bought some time. We have scotched the snake, not killed it.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Before driving north to Leith, where Bell had taken rooms at an inn under assumed names, he had the driver take him through the city where he left calling cards at some of the finest Georgian doors. Each card contained a hastily scrawled message which required the receiver’s attendance the following morning at the New City Gaol. At dawn, shortly before the appointed hour for Alan Lambert to make his last confession and prepare to walk to the gallows, Bell and I, after a rough night, stopped to awaken Lieutenant Bryce and brought him along in the four-wheeler. On our arrival, we banged on the tall, thick, double doors of the gaol. The two bags belonging to Marwood and his assistant we left in the care of the cabbie who was asked to wait for us. As we stood at the door, a second cab came along. From it alighted the stranger from the station: a well-dressed, self-assured man of middle age.

  As soon as a warder opened the small door set in the larger double doors, we requested to be brought at once to the governor of the gaol, where Bell introduced himself and his companions. The stranger was introduced simply as Mr Wilson, from London. While the governor, one Major Ross, exchanged dark looks with Bryce, he appeared to be deeply displeased with the rest of us as well.

  “You’ve made a sorry mess of this, Dr Bell. You’ve lost your position of trust at the university for this prank, I warrant. I only hope that you have had the decency to bring with you the necessary equipment—purloined by you—so that I may do my duty as I have sworn to do. You have proven yourself to be a most dangerous clown, sir, and I cannot but rejoice in your fall.”

  “That’s as may be, Major,” said Bell. “I take it that the execution has not yet occurred?”

  “It has been postponed for an hour and will, by God, take place at nine o’clock without any further hitch or delay. Your meddling has won you nothing, sir. You have simply given serious distress to a brave young man who was prepared to die like a man until you unsettled him. He has won the respect of every man within these walls. He would have taken his punishment like a soldier, sir, until you interfered.”

  “Yes, it’s very edifying for all when the victim smiles and shakes hands, isn’t it? Too bad you couldn’t have trained him to stick his head in the noose like Punch does to Jack Ketch. I trust that Mr Marwood is here and has found something to soothe his sore head.”

  “Dr Bell, I will not banter with you. If you have something to say, then say it and be gone. This is a busy day for me.”

  “Major Ross, I have been so bold as to invite certain people who have knowledge of this case to come here this morning.”

  “You had no right. The number of official witnesses has been made up. You must leave here at once.”

  “Perhaps not quite at once. I did not invite people here to witness an execution, but to prevent one.”

  “Then your hopes are doomed to disappointment, sir. I shall do my duty if I have to hoist him up myself. This is one of Her Majesty’s gaols, sir, not a court of appeal.”

  “A court of appeal here in your office! What an extraordinary idea, Major. How neat, how tidy, how apt!”

  “What are you maundering on about, Doctor?”

  “Major Ross, I will not tease you further. Mr Wilson, whom I just introduced to you, is the senior Queen’s messenger. He is empowered to convey a message directly by telegraph to the Home Secretary. He is here this morning at the express wish of the prime minister to see that we conduct ourselves in a manner that will bring no further disgrace upon the name of justice in these islands.” All eyes turned to Wilson, who hadn’t moved. He stood stock-still, with the whisper of a smile on his lips.

  “Sir, is this true? Can one believe this man?”

  “It is true, Major. But be it understood that I am here to see that justice is done, not to
make any judgments. I am a referee, plain and simple.”

  “Do you mean to say that we are going to try Lambert all over again here and now?”

  “I mean to demonstrate his innocence. If I succeed in convincing you, then you will instruct the messenger yourself.”

  “And if you fail?”

  “Ah, but I shall not fail, sir. First, may I ask you if there are among the witnesses assembled inside any who were involved in the trial?”

  “Aye. The Lord Advocate, Sir George Currie, is here, acting in place of the sheriff of Midlothian, who, as you may know, is seriously ill. Mr Veitch is with his client now, taking his leave of him.”

  “Capital! Then both the defence and the prosecution are represented. You will note that, Mr Wilson. Major Ross, I suggest that these gentlemen be sent for.” At almost the same moment a clamour began at the door as it was rapped upon loudly by a heavy-headed stick or club.

  In ten minutes the large office of Major Ross was stuffed full of the people who knew most about the case of the murders in Coates Crescent. Sir George Currie, in fine form, tried to match the impatience of Major Ross. The Lord Advocate is not to be trifled with! Adam Veitch looked intrigued. Burnham, the Procurator-Fiscal, was in a towering rage, until he was mollified by Ross, who explained about the Queen’s messenger. The new face belonged to the chief constable, Sir Alexander Scobbie, a giant of a man, now blighted and bent, as though struck by lightning, and supporting himself cautiously with two sticks. His deputy chief, Keir M’Sween, a broad-faced, dark-eyed vigorous man in his forties, gave no indication that we had once before met within these walls. Others in the crowded room were Mlle Clery’s forgotten husband, the voice teacher Mario Cabezon, as well as the Procurator-Fiscal’s own son, young Andrew Burnham. Sitting somewhere near me was Graeme Lambert, the man who first brought Bell into the case. The grey-haired gentleman next to him, with fine grey gloves folded in his lap, could only be his father.