by David Pirie
In my dream, I was walking urgently through them with a sense of expectation. I would hurry on, hoping to arrive I do not know where when suddenly I saw a familiar figure. For he was striding along ahead of me, his face shining in a broad luminous smile, glorying in the muck and lust and misery around him. He looked a little older, and in some ways his figure seemed almost like some evil parody of the Doctor for he held a cane too. But, unlike Bell’s smart silver-top, his was a cruel-looking black rod and he did not hesitate to use it to sweep people out of his way. That was bad enough, but in the dream I had an overpowering, if indefinable, feeling that his black cane had known far more disgusting and lecherous uses. Was it a prophecy of what was about to happen? I do not know. I think the influence of the city would have acted on my memories in this way even if there had been no sequel. But it came.
Every Friday afternoon it so happened that Sally Morland’s children went to visit their aunt in Turnham Green, which was then a place of many amenities with fields and gardens and lawns. Once I had done my round, my Friday afternoons were often free. This allowed Sally Morland and I to take excursions together, for she was as anxious as any hostess to ensure I saw the sights. And one afternoon, quite soon after I arrived, we paid a visit to the famous waxworks exhibition, then situated on Baker Street, called Madame Tussaud’s.
I had first been enthralled by this display of waxworks and other oddities when I was a young boy visiting my Uncle Richard in London. Then I thought it utterly magical to come out of the London cold and the bustling streets with their hansoms and enter a great hall where you were suddenly transported by the faces and scenes of a bygone age. As a boy I spent hours staring in particular at the heroic figures of chivalry, especially the likeness of the Duke of Wellington. Sally Morland was amused to hear of this as we stood before the Duke again, but I will admit some of the magic of the illusion had faded. Now I could not help noticing that the colour of the skin, which I had once ignored, was hardly flesh-like, while the hands looked more like grey gloves than limbs. And I said as much to my guide.
‘Well, Arthur,’ she replied, and I had come to love the ease with which she spoke my name. ‘Perhaps it is sad the Duke has lost a little of his lustre for you. When we next come I think I will get Martin to dress up in his jacket and stand here and you will recapture all the old magic.’
I told her that he would make a first-class Duke, and we walked on, soon finding ourselves in what is now, thanks to Punch, generally known as ‘The Chamber of Horrors’ but was then the ‘Hall of Murderers’ or sometimes, (in a phrase that reminded me at once of Dr Bell) the ‘Murder Room’. Compared with the Doctor’s collection of crimes, much of this was not so grisly. There were, it is true, waxworks of various executions and tortures, many dating from the origins of the exhibition in the French Revolution, and also figures of various murderers through the ages, starting with a waxwork of the Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean. Elsewhere we passed the French ‘Bluebeard’, Gilles de Rais, and the more local figure of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street.
My companion took a lively interest in the barber and his hellish shop but I was more intrigued by the collection of ancient police papers and old newspaper reports adorning one wall. There was even a reference here to the famous Abbey Mill murderer Ian Coatley, whose 1870s exploits had impinged in a most unfortunate manner on the last case and my patient Heather Grace. This had at least reunited me with Bell but I knew rather more of the facts than were set down here, and I was moving on quickly to the report of an Irish highwayman’s infamous deeds when my eye fell on a police artist’s ink drawing above it.
My reaction was instantaneous. It was something about the posture, something about the hair, something almost, above all, about the room in which the figure crouched over his victim with its large red and heavy curtains. My eyes went at once to the writing beside the drawing.
Portrait of an Unknown Poisoner
On 11 November 1882, Lizzie Norton, resident of Cheapside, but employed in an establishment near the Strand, was given a lethal cordial by a gentleman who had offered her hospitality and claimed to have knowledge of chemistry and medicine. The gentleman, who was evidently a man of means, insisted she drink it and would have stayed with her, had he not been interrupted by a chance disturbance in the next room. At once he removed himself from the premises and was not seen again, while Miss Norton became violently ill. A doctor was called who pronounced Miss Norton had been poisoned with strychnine, and would certainly have perished if she had taken the full draft. Upon her recovery the fortunate young lady was able to help a police artist to complete this sketch of the man who she thought was from the colonies. Enquiries were set in train but he has not been seen again.
It was fortunate for me that my companion was still mesmerised by the waxwork of Sweeney Todd. No doubt the idea of a man who claimed children among his victims was particularly dreadful to her, and it gave me time to compose myself. I read the details again quickly, making sure I had really seen the devastating phrase ‘from the colonies’, and then turned away to gather my wits. Even so, as soon as she came over to me, Sally noticed the change in my mood. I tried to divert her with some foolish question or other, but she looked at me closely.
‘Arthur,’ she said, ‘are you quite well? You are pale.’
There was little I could say at first. ‘I am perfectly well,’ I replied. ‘It is only that I was reminded of a sad memory, that is all.’
She looked at me gravely. Fortunately I had moved far away from the ‘Portrait of an Unknown Poisoner’ and behind me were some ancient newspaper reports about London riots and the violence of the mob. Even so, her eyes turned to them quickly and then back to mine. And I believe she was quick enough to understand that, whatever I had seen, I had no wish for her to share it.
‘Have you been the victim of a crime, Arthur?’ I know it was her innate sympathy that made her say it, and she added quickly, ‘I promise I will not ask you more.’
‘No,’ I said, feeling I should tell her something. ‘It was someone I was once close to.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well, I have said I will not ask more. Let us leave the room and go back to the generals and admirals.’
I nodded gratefully, and Sally Morland never impressed me more than she did for the rest of that day. For she contrived to ask questions and make comments that piqued my interest and attention, keeping up our spirits. And slowly, with difficulty she dragged my mind away from what I had seen. Yet all the time, too, she succeeded in showing she had not forgotten what had happened, and was strongly sympathetic.
Perhaps fortunately, then, it was not until I lay in bed that night that I was able to reflect sensibly on what I had seen. Was it possible, I now wondered, that the picture was just a coincidence? Perhaps it was, but even so I had no intention of leaving the matter there. In the light of my dream I could only feel I was being led back to Cream. And I had to seek the Doctor’s opinion.
We were due to meet in any case the following week. Examination duties were taking Bell to London quite regularly at this time, and on the appointed Saturday I found him curled up in an armchair before a roaring fire in the large railway hotel he favoured. He looked a picture of health, his silver hair glowing in the firelight, his hawk-like features animated with excited interest for he was giving his attention both to a treatise on the properties of sympathetic ink and to the observation of his fellow guests.
At once he sprang up with a great smile to shake my hand, his energy as boundless as ever, and waved me into the other chair. ‘You lodge with a publisher, I perceive,’ he said as we sat down.
I looked at my hands and my clothes to see if there was anything that could possibly have told him this, but there was not. ‘Do you know the Morlands?’ I said with a little amazement, for I had mentioned the name only in passing.
‘Of course not,’ he said, holding up my letter to him. ‘This was written from your lodgings – see how dark the ink is? It is genui
ne Indian ink, rubbed up perfectly black, which is difficult to get hold of but essential for publisher’s drawings. I therefore deduce you sat at your host’s desk to write it.’
This led us naturally enough on to the monograph he was reading until at last I started to tell him about what I had seen. I sensed his excitement growing and I had not got very far before he put up a hand to interrupt my account. ‘Forgive me, Doyle,’ he said, ‘this is no criticism of you but I would much prefer that you do not prejudice my own judgement further until I see it at first hand for myself.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Yes, there will be plenty of time to attend to our lunch afterwards. If you find me a cab, I will collect my coat.’
The day was cold and the streets were empty so the doorman found a cab without difficulty and we were on our way. Since I had suspected the Doctor might dismiss my account, I could certainly have no complaint about the attention he was paying to it. As soon as we had reached the exhibition and entered its ‘Hall of Murderers’, he gave a single cursory and uninterested glance at his surroundings before we moved on to the wall of papers and newspaper reports. Soon, without my prompting, he had seen the sketch and walked directly to it.
I did not look at my watch but I am fairly sure the Doctor must have stared at the drawing, and the accompanying text below it, for fully thirty minutes. Occasionally, during this time, he would walk away a few paces, reflecting, but always he would move back, studying it again with the same rapt attention.
Finally he was finished and we walked out together though I said nothing for I could see he was still deep in thought. We had our lunch back at the hotel but neither of us did any justice to the game pie and trifle that was provided. In fact we barely said a word until the meal was over.
At last he came to the point, admitting that the thing had had almost as much impact upon him as it had upon me. ‘But in the end,’ he said with sudden passion, ‘we cannot be sure if it is chance. If not for the mention of the colonies I would certainly presume it was. For I place little value in such vague and sensational reports, and even less in the so-called doctor’s diagnosis. It does not even sound like strychnine. It is just that the mention of the colonies is so suggestive. Yet even that, Doyle,’ and he slapped his hand on the table in frustration, ‘is so vague a term.’
‘But I have been feeling an intimation of something for days. Before I even saw this I had a dream that he was here.’
‘You are not asking me to deduce anything from that, I assume?’ he said. ‘London is a city that feeds the imagination as you have no doubt observed.’
‘Is it not worth trying to talk to the girl?’ I asked, for I knew the Doctor had some distant connections within the local force and was occasionally called for forensic advice.
Bell shook his head. ‘After a year, there is little chance they will even know where she is. Of course I will try to make enquiries. But my honest advice for now would be that you assume it is coincidence. If you do not, then you will see him everywhere.’ Now he turned and gave me a searching look. ‘And you are not sleeping so well, I determine.’
I knew what he was thinking. The Doctor had more than once strongly expressed his disapproval when I took stimulants to alleviate the mental anguish that sometimes returned. He was wondering now if I had reverted to the habit.
‘It is hardly surprising. The sight of this had an effect.’
‘If you are taking something to dull it, Doyle, I counsel you to reconsider. I would hate old memories to be reignited in any fanciful way.’
I assured him my only draft had been for a toothache, and eventually we parted with a vague proposal to reunite at some point during the rest of my stay. As I walked back to the Morlands, I will confess I was slightly irritated by his final words on the subject. There were, I thought, rather more important things to discuss than my self-prescribing habits. And, while I was grateful he had given the subject his attention, surely he must know that, in asking me to ignore it, he was recommending a course of action that was not merely difficult but practically impossible. That night, as I lay in bed, I noticed, for the first time, that the street light outside my window sent a shadow on to the ceiling above me. The longer I studied it, the more I saw that it formed the outline of a figure, crouched and predatory, with a black rod clutched in one arm. It was some time before I slept.
THE DEN AT REHEBOTH CHAPEL
On the Sunday following my meeting with Bell, the Morland family had arranged for me to come with them to visit the scientist Colin Macandrew. His place was only a short distance away, but there was a world of difference between their little street and his off the Grosvenor Road which was broad and light with painted doors and elegant stonework. These houses, moreover, had backs which looked directly on to the river and the Morland children, who had been many times before, were in a fair state of excitement even before we rapped on the gleaming silver knocker. I had had enough of grand houses to last me a little while, so I was pleasantly surprised when Macandrew himself answered, explaining that his manservant was indisposed. He proved to be a youthful enthusiastic man with a ruddy face and long red hair who shook me firmly by the hand as soon as we were inside. Then he ushered the delighted children directly to where they longed to go, namely the maritime laboratory in his basement.
This sounded so grand that I fully expected to see a huge flooded tank with a diving bell just as I knew Macandrew had demonstrated in the Royal Polytechnic exhibition. In the event the place was more modest, but there was a small tank with subaqueous plants and fish which the children loved to observe. Beyond it stood a dissecting table, two large basins with running water and some other intriguing items of scientific equipment including a microscope which magnified the tiniest marine creatures into huge monsters.
Macandrew presided over these with a manic energy, sometimes giggling at the children’s endless questions and pushing his hand through his hair. ‘These are the toys,’ he cried. ‘And toys should be played with. Ah Will,’ he said, ruffling the little boy’s hair. ‘People say a boy should not pull the wings off flies. Quite right. He should pull the heads and legs off as well for then he will be called an anatomist, and soon the school will be putting up a plaque in his honour!’ And he laughed heartily.
Of course Will had no idea what he was talking about but laughed too, and the demonstration continued. At one point, while Sally was lingering by the tank with her children, I asked Macandrew with interest about the dissecting table and the man leaned against it, drumming his long fingers on it as he talked.
‘Oh,’ he said in answer to my question. ‘I am a toiler. One recent area I have been exploring is the exact nature of the human lungs during and after drowning. It is my conviction that the doctors could learn far more from the other sciences than they do. What is the human body but a machine? If we could better understand the lung’s susceptibility to water there might even be a way of strengthening them.’
‘You could hardly make us amphibious?’ said Martin, joining us.
‘Yet once we may have been.’ Macandrew raised his hand as if to begin a lecture on evolution but then seemed to think better of it. ‘No, my hope was that there might be a way of delaying the effect of drowning. It became quite an obsession, but so far it is a forlorn one. Another was the state of the body after heart failure. Again, the heart is just a pump, sometimes not a very efficient one. Is there no way of improving it?’
‘But surely that is not your main work?’ I asked.
‘Oh no, it is a sideline, Dr Doyle.’ He turned to me, studying my features. ‘You must have a special hobby in your medical practice. What is it? Let me guess? The facial muscles? Perhaps blood temperature?’
I felt more foolish than anything for I had no real answer. ‘I have done some study of the eye but I am only just starting out. Tell me, did you not make the diving bell?’ I was keen to get the subject away from me.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I study all aspects of oceanography, and I helped to design the diving bell
among other things.’
At this point the children came running over. ‘The tunnel! The tunnel!’ they chanted.
Macandrew picked up Will with a genial air. ‘Well, I can hardly refuse so strident a request, and I have made preparations,’ he said, handing the boy back to his mother and leading us over to a door on the other side of the room.
We all followed expectantly as the door opened on to a stone staircase with a black railing beside it which went down to a subbasement level. The workshop had been lit by gas, but below us there was dim light from what I took to be carbon filaments, and somewhere I could hear the hum of a motor.
‘Macandrew was at the Munich exhibition of electricity this year,’ said Martin. ‘He knows a deal about it.’
‘Be careful now,’ said Macandrew, ‘for sometimes the stairs get a little wet.’ We proceeded slowly down, with Sally keeping a close hand on both her children. The electrical illumination did not flicker as a candle would but nor was it was very bright, casting a suffused and rather ugly red glow on us as we descended.
Soon we were in a damp stone corridor which led south, though as the children had said it was more like a tunnel than anything else. The air was a little stuffy and I noticed a puddle of water beside one door, but we walked on past it for several yards until we had to crouch low, and finally the space came to an abrupt end with a single light hung dimly above us. Ahead was a small square of wood, but otherwise nothing.
‘Well, where are we?’ said Macandrew to the children as we stood there in that damp space.