The Coven

by Graham Masterton

  A surge of panic rippled through the audience. Drunken gentlemen in elegant frock coats and long periwigs were pushing each other to try and reach the door, while women in extravagant gowns were circling around and around hysterically. There was more shouting from the hallway, and the sound of running feet.

  Dear God, this was a thousand times more painful and humiliating than that time when Jonathan Shooks had raped her in her own drawing-room at the parsonage. This hurt so much more, and she was almost deafened by the baying and the screaming of the audience.

  ‘Stop!’ a man bellowed. ‘Everybody remain exactly where you are!’

  Beatrice tugged at the ribbons that were tying her down to the table, but they were knotted too tightly. None of the jostling crowd in the room was taking any notice of her now, and not one of them climbed onto the stage to help her get free.

  ‘I cannot be seen here!’ cried a tall man in a pale blue frock coat. ‘I can not be seen here!’ Although he wasn’t wearing his long-nosed Venetian mask Beatrice recognized him by his booming voice as the man who had been wearing orange on the night of Grace’s murder.

  ‘Get out of my way, damn you!’ shouted a fat elderly man with a face spotted with sores, striking at a younger man with his cane. A woman in a high pink wig started screaming, and then fell backwards against the table laden with wine bottles and plates and glasses, and sent them all crashing to the floor. Another woman tripped over her, and then another, until five or six of them were lying in a tangle with their feet kicking and their petticoats showing, all of them shrieking like off-key opera singers.

  The chaos was at its height when Jonas Rook strode into the doorway in his swirling cape and his large tricorn hat, accompanied by three Bow Street runners and two watchmen. By the sound of it there were many more officers outside in the hallway.

  As soon as he caught sight of Beatrice lying on the table, Jonas Rook sprang up onto the stage, whipped off his dark brown layered cape and draped it over her.

  ‘Widow Scarlet,’ he said. ‘Here – let me untie you! My dear God, we couldn’t have arrived here a second later! What on earth have these devils done to you?’

  He took out a clasp knife and deftly cut the ribbons around her wrists, and then he helped her to sit up. She couldn’t speak. She was so stunned that she couldn’t even burst into tears. She had been so convinced that she was going to have her head cut off that she was shocked to find that she was still alive. She felt as if she had been torn badly between her legs, and the pain was so acute that she kept bending forward to relieve it, but if she could feel pain that meant that she wasn’t dead.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ said Jonas Rook. ‘We’ll have to allow some of this carrion to leave, but we’ll be taking in all of the principal perpetrators – Mrs Sheridan, for one.’

  All Beatrice could do was nod. Nothing mattered to her now, except the gradual realisation that she would be able to go back to Black Horse Yard and take care of Florence.

  Jonas Rook sat next to her. He didn’t try to put his arm around her but he said, ‘You’re safe now, Widow Scarlet. You’re quite safe. And we’ll make sure that none of these vermin ever threaten you again.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Beatrice whispered.

  There was even more arguing and screaming from the hallway.

  ‘You struck me!’ one man shouted out. ‘You blackguard! You absolute blackguard! You struck me! Don’t you know who I am?’

  In spite of this, it sounded to Beatrice as though most of the audience had now been herded out of the house. Some of them were protesting loudly, but she imagined that most of them would want to disperse as quickly and discreetly as possible, before they were recognized by the rabble in the street outside, and their names published in tomorrow’s Grub Street newspapers.

  ‘Do you know where your clothes might be?’ asked Jonas Rook.

  ‘No, but I suspect upstairs, in the bedroom where they first held me. It’s right at the end of the first-floor corridor.’

  Just then, though, Violet came into the room. She saw Beatrice and she came hurrying towards her, her arms held out, with a pained expression on her face.

  ‘Oh my stars! Oh, Beatrice! Where’s that Coddy? That harridan! That miserable, scraggy, worn-out harlot! I’ll scratch ’er fuckin’ eyes out!’

  She held Beatrice tightly and rocked her from side to side. ‘Oh, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! But I didn’t know what else I could do. If I’d told Coddy that I knew ’oo you really was, she’d ’ave done the same to me! I thought the best thing was run over to Bow Street and fetch the traps.’

  Jonas Rook said, ‘It was just as well you did, madam, or there may well have been lives lost. I’m sorry, too, that it took so long for us to persuade Sir John to issue a general warrant, and to muster our officers, but thank God we arrived here in time.’

  He told Violet where Beatrice’s clothes might be, and Violet gave Beatrice one more hug and one more ‘Sorry, lovey – really, really sorry,’ and then she went off to see if she could find them.

  One of the constables came out of the door beside the stage looking serious.

  ‘There’s five young women in there, sir. All in a state of undress, all spark out, and we can’t wake them for love nor money.’

  ‘They’re the same five girls that George Hazzard took from St Mary Magdalene’s,’ Beatrice whispered. ‘I believe they’ve been anaesthetized with ether, which is what they did to me, too, but I think from their condition that they must have been given a much larger dose.’

  She paused, and bent forward again to ease her pain. Then she said, ‘There’s a young apothecary here from the Foundery – Godfrey Minchin. He’s bald-headed, with eyeglasses. Ask him what he’s given them. If it’s ether, they will need mustard flour mixed with warm water, as an emetic, and then cold effusions, and stimulation to wake them up. They need to be taken to hospital urgently, otherwise they could well die.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Jonas Rook, and turned back to the constable. ‘See if we’ve picked up this apothecary, and fetch him here. Then tell Frobisher to organize carriages to take these poor girls to Bart’s, and send Williams upstairs to fetch down some bedsheets to cover them.’

  Violet returned, and she was carrying Beatrice’s gown and petticoats and stockings over her arm, and her shoes in her hand. ‘There’s nobody in the drawing room at present, lovey,’ she said. ‘You can dress yourself there.’

  She took Beatrice’s arm and led her to the drawing room. Beatrice had to suck in her breath as she walked, because her stomach hurt so much, but Violet said, ‘You’ll be all right, Beatrice. You’ll get over this. Never let the fuckin’ stall-whimpers get the better of you, that’s what I always says.’

  Beatrice dressed by the fire. She was still bleeding a little, but she used her handkerchief to wipe herself and then threw it onto the coals, where it shrivelled up. She was relieved to find her purse still behind the sofa where Leda Sheridan had dropped it, with her handkerchief and all of her money and even her Toby pistol untouched. When she had fastened the bow in the front of her bodice and patted her hair, she went back out in the hallway. Violet was waiting for her, talking to two of the watchmen. She was about to ask Violet if they should hail a hackney to take them back to Black Horse Yard when she heard shouting from the back of the house, both a man and a woman.

  ‘This is an outrage!’ the man kept repeating. ‘An absolute bloody outrage! You have no right to detain me – none! I shall make a personal complaint to Sir John!’

  ‘And so shall I!’ the woman shrilled. ‘Breaking into my house like this, into a private function, with no legal cause whatsoever!’

  Beatrice saw Leda Sheridan being escorted down the hallway. Two of her ostrich plumes had snapped, and were dangling sideways from the top of her head. She also seemed to have lost one of her shoes, because she was hobbling.

  But when the man beside her appeared from behind one of the constables, Beatrice felt as if she were suddenly back in a nightmar
e. It was the nim gimmer, still wearing his white billowing robe, but without his pointed hood, and it was George Hazzard. He was still shouting, and barging the constables on either side of him with his shoulders, but none of the constables answered him, or even acknowledged that they could hear him, and they continued to march him towards the front door.

  Jonas Rook reached Beatrice first. He was breathing hard, but Beatrice could see that he was trying hard not to look triumphant.

  ‘We discovered these two hiding in the larder,’ he said. ‘There was a third man, who was naked, but he managed to elude us and hop over the garden wall. I presume he was the man who assaulted you.’

  ‘He got away?’

  ‘Yes, but never fear, we’ll pick him up, and he’ll be riding backwards up Holborn Hill for what he did.’

  Beatrice said, ‘I need to go back with Violet to see my daughter, and wash, but then I want to go to Bart’s to make sure that our girls are all revived.’

  ‘Whatever assistance you require, Widow Scarlet, please let me know instanter. This has been a most rewarding evening, as far as I’m concerned, and I have you to thank more than anybody. I regret only that you had to undergo such an appalling ordeal.’

  Beatrice said nothing. She found it hard to take her eyes off George Hazzard. She had been surprised how tall he had appeared, but now she could see that underneath his long white robes he was wearing high-heeled riding boots.

  Jonas Rook said, gently, ‘You understand that I shall have to question you in due course about the death of Mr Edward Veal, but under the circumstances I very much doubt that you’ll be facing any charges. It appears to be a clear case of self-defence against a man who had been assigned to murder you.’

  George Hazzard pushed his way forward, glaring at Beatrice with utter hatred.

  ‘Do you know what I wish, widow?’ he spat at her. ‘I wish these runners hadn’t run, but walked, and taken just a minute longer to arrive here. A minute would have been enough! But then I could have had the immense satisfaction of separating your infuriating head from your infernal interfering body, and kicking it across the room!’

  ‘You made one cardinal error, George,’ said Beatrice, although her voice was shaking. ‘You tried to use superstition to intimidate a woman well versed in science.’

  ‘Science? Pah! You’re a witch, and that’s all there is to it!’

  45

  It was nearly eight o’clock the following morning when Beatrice arrived at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. She hadn’t returned with Violet to Black Horse Yard until well after three, and after washing herself and changing into a fresh-laundered petticoat that she had borrowed from Violet, she had sat in a chair in the sitting room beside the still-warm ashes of the fire and fallen asleep for over two hours.

  When Florence had woken up, Beatrice had managed to eat a small bowlful of porridge with her, and then sit down and cuddle her and tell her one of her favourite stories, about a duck who could sing opera.

  Violet sat on the other side of the sitting room, sewing one of her pincushions and smiling at them both.

  ‘I ’opes you’ve forgiven me, Beatrice,’ she said, after a while.

  ‘Violet, there’s nothing to forgive. You saved my life. And I hope you’ve managed to save those girls’ lives, too. I must go to the hospital soon and see if they’ve recovered.’

  ‘That baldy cully wouldn’t say what ’e’d dosed ’em up with, would ’e?’

  ‘No. He didn’t want to incriminate himself. But I’m fairly sure it was ether.’

  ‘It can kill you then, ether?’

  ‘It depends how it’s administered, and how much. About five or six teaspoons would be enough to kill a young girl.’

  ‘Well, let’s ’ope and pray. Don’t you worry about little Florrie while you’re gone, lovey. I’ll take ’er down to Billingsgate Stairs to buy some mackerel. She’ll enjoy seein’ the fish all flappin’ and the crabs all crawlin’ around.’

  Beatrice entered Bart’s Hospital through the main gate, under the supercilious-looking statue of Henry VIII, and walked across the courtyard. It took her almost twenty minutes to find out where the five girls had been taken, but eventually she found them in a small upstairs room overlooking the courtyard, along with three other women who were all suffering from puerperal fever.

  They were all still unconscious, although they were breathing, but the wiry-haired Scottish nurse in charge of their room was very pessimistic.

  ‘I’m afraid to say that this is a room which makes many mourners,’ she said. She had an alarming cast in her left eye which seemed to make her pessimism even more doom-laden.

  ‘You’ve bathed them in cold water, and massaged their chests?’

  The nurse nodded. ‘We shall do so again later. But I don’t hold out much hope.’

  Beatrice went up to Judith’s bed. It seemed to her that Judith was breathing quite normally, and when she felt her pulse, her heart rate was fluttery, but only a little slower than it should have been. She looked across the room at the women with puerperal fever and she could see that their faces were waxy and they were staring at the ceiling as if all they could see was their imminent death.

  Dear God, she thought, why do you make women suffer so much, just for being women? Are you still angry at Eve?

  She sat with Judith and the other girls for a while, but there was nothing else she could do for them except pray. She asked the nurse to send her a message if any of them regained consciousness, and then she walked across to the mortuary. She had been there only once before, when she was a young girl. Her father had been asked to examine a woman who had apparently swallowed poison because the surgeon-apothecaries were unable to agree what poison it was. He had taken Beatrice with him because he had wanted her to see that death was a natural part of life. He always used to tell all of his customers, quite cheerfully, ‘The odds on you dying, my friend, are one hundred per cent.’

  The mortuary was down at the end of a long, chilly corridor with a marble-mosaic floor. Inside, it was even chillier, and as gloomy as a church, with high leaded windows.

  At the far end of the mortuary, the bodies of three of the seven girls were lying on plain wooden tables. A surgeon in a white wig and a black frock coat was standing over one of the bodies, along with his assistant, a young man in shirtsleeves, with hair that was sticking up as if he had just been struck by lightning.

  As Beatrice came closer, she could see that the surgeon had cleaved apart the dead girl’s chest, exposing her heart and her lungs, and he had opened up her abdomen so that he could take samples of her stomach contents and her bowels. He was spooning faecal matter into a metal dish with all the fastidiousness of a chef serving up pâté de foie gras.

  He looked up as Beatrice approached and said, ‘May I be of assistance, madam? This mortuary is not open to the public, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Mr Pott,’ said Beatrice. ‘It’s a long time since I was here last, and I was very young, so you doubtless won’t remember me. But I’m sure you’ll remember my father, who brought me here. Clement Bannister, the apothecary. His shop was on Giltspur Street.’

  ‘But of course!’ said Percivall Pott, passing the metal dish to his assistant. ‘Clement Bannister was one of the most inventive apothecaries that London has ever known! He came here frequently to assist with post-mortem examinations, especially when we suspected poisons or other noxious substances. He was most inspired, too, when it came to my work on chimney sweeps, and how soot might cause malignancies. Well, well!’

  Beatrice stepped forward, right up to the autopsy table, partly to show Percivall Pott that she wasn’t squeamish when it came to putrescent, half-disembowelled bodies.

  ‘I’m Beatrice,’ she said. ‘Beatrice Scarlet now, although I’m sad to say that I’m widowed. The reason I’m here is because of the suspicion that these girls may have been deliberately murdered. I have an interest in finding out if this is true, because I was taking care of them at St Mary Magdalene’s Refuge
.’

  Percivall Pott looked down at the gaping ribcage and shook his head. ‘I think the man we need now is your father, so it’s very regretful that he’s no longer with us. Apart from some superficial bruising, which may have occurred post-mortem, there is no evidence that any of these girls was beaten or stabbed or strangled or drowned or that their death was caused by a physical assault of any kind. There are some superficial blisters around their lips, but nothing more than that. I believe we have to assume that they were poisoned. The question is – what with?’

  ‘Mr Pott, my father taught me everything he knew about poisons. Well – apart from everything he knew about headache pills and cough medicines. Not to mention all of his patented treatments for gout, and consumption, and social infections, and almost every other ailment you can think of.’

  ‘Really? So you’re something of a poison expert too?’

  ‘I’m a qualified apothecary, Mr Pott, even though I’m not recognized as such by the Guild.’

  Mr Pott nodded across the mortuary to his workbench, which was cluttered with flasks and retorts and mortars and a flickering oil lamp.

  ‘I’ve tested for almost all the common poisons so far, but my results have either been negative or inconclusive. First I tested for cyanide, because it degenerates after only a day or two. Even so, cyanide can still leave a lingering smell of bitter almonds in the stomach, and some alkaline burns in the digestive tract, but there was no trace of those. I’ve also tested for strychnine, belladonna, hemlock and henbane, as well as ether and chloroform and God alone knows what else. Again, no positive results.’

  ‘Arsenic?’

  ‘Arsenic of course, and I found a fairly high level, but not enough I’d say to be fatal. There’s arsenic in so many tonics, and women’s cosmetics, and in wine, so a measure of arsenic is not at all unusual.’

  ‘What will you be testing for next?’

  ‘To be absolutely honest with you, madam, I have no idea. Some malignant substance killed these unfortunate young women, there’s no question of that. They certainly didn’t die of any allergy or wasp sting or other natural causes – not all seven of them. But I cannot think what that malignant substance could have been, because I can detect no trace of it.’