‘Will,’ I said. ‘We have just spent the afternoon contemplating the death and mutilation of Dr Rutherford. Can you see any difference between this . . . this needlework and the other?’
‘No,’ said Will. His face was wet with tears.
‘Will, look. Think. You must help me.’
‘I cannot look, Jem.’
I took from my pocket the rolled-up canvas pouch full of knives and blades Dr Bain had once given me. I snipped a piece of the bloody thread from Dr Golspie’s eyes, and another from his mouth.
‘Dr Rutherford was stitched using his own suture,’ I said. ‘There’s no doubt that the stuff was close to hand – Dr Rutherford had some on his desk, as he had used it to stitch up Letty’s scalp not three weeks earlier. But this? This is different.’ I took a fold of paper from my notebook and wrapped the scrap of thread inside it. ‘The job is not half as neat,’ I added. ‘In fact it is quite a mess. Was it done in haste, or was there some other reason?’ I looked about. The walls were streaked and stained with damp, the sagging curtains and dirty windows blackened by the soot that belched from the ancient stove. It was untidy, though whether this was due to Dr Golspie’s slatternly domestic habits, or because the murderer had ransacked the place in search of something I was not sure. ‘Is the place always this disordered?’ I said. ‘You’ve been here more often than I.’
‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘Yes, it always looks like this.’
I pulled out my lens and examined Dr Golspie’s fingernails. They were dirty, but they appeared to contain no visible trace of skin or blood. ‘The room was locked. There was no sign of forced entry, no evidence of a struggle. We can only assume that Tom let his murderer in, just as Dr Rutherford did. That he knew him, and did not think of him as a threat.
‘I am quite certain that there was something Dr Golspie wanted to tell us,’ I continued. ‘But what?’ I thought back over Tom Golspie’s words earlier that afternoon. The light was too bright. It dazzled me, blinded me as if I had knives in my eyes . . . I saw a face but not a face, eyes and lips and noses, but not put together properly, not as it should be. ‘Was he simply raving?’ I said. “‘It was the face of a demon,” he said. “It was looking straight at me, and yet not at me. I knew its name, and yet I did not know it. It knew me . . .’” I stared down at Dr Golspie, at that hideous bloody mask, his youthful features obliterated beneath dark criss-crossed stitches. ‘It was after Dr Christie spoke that his manner changed,’ I said. ‘Something Christie said had triggered a thought. A recollection. Something.’
‘What did Christie say?’
‘He said, “These are fragments of memory – eyes, lips, monstrous faces – these are the fragments that speak of your own murderous act.’”
‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘Tom repeated the word. “Fragments,” he said. “Like knives.’”
And then all at once it was as clear to me as it had been to Dr Golspie. What a fool I had been. ‘The mirror!’ I said. ‘Dr Golspie smashed the mirror that was above the fireplace. Those are the fragments he is talking about, Christie just supplied the word. The broken shards were sharp as knives. Did he see someone? A face glimpsed in a broken mirror is not a face at all, it is nose, lips and eyes but not as it should be. But who did he see?’
‘The person Dr Rutherford was waiting for. The person who killed them both.’
‘But why would he not tell us straight away? Why did he wait, for it is the delay that has killed him, I am sure of that. Did he not want Dr Christie or Dr Hawkins to hear?’
‘Perhaps the face he saw was one of theirs.’ We fell silent. ‘It cannot be,’ said Will.
‘What other explanation do we have?’
‘There must be other possibilities. Who knew that Dr Golspie had been sent home from Angel Meadow? That his memory was returning’
‘Thanks to Dr Mothersole, every single person listening to the Ladies’ Committee’s recital.’
Will groaned. ‘This is impossible.’
‘And there is still the question of why Dr Golspie took Gabriel’s penny blood.’
‘To read, I assume. I believe they’re compelling.’
‘Dr Golspie is an educated man. He would not choose to read a penny blood for his own entertainment. And yet, when faced with sitting still and waiting for us to return to the apothecary he did the one thing that any intelligent, inquiring and impatient person would do.’
‘What?’
‘He read something. Anything! Probably the first thing that came to hand. Look at all these books!’ I gestured to the shelves that covered the walls. They were filled with novels, medical books, plays, volumes of essays. ‘Dr Golspie is addicted to reading. If he sees words, he reads them. If he cannot see words, he tries to find some. So while he awaits us he picks up Gabriel’s penny blood—’
‘I hardly think it matters—’
‘But of course it matters! Why would he take it away? Was he really so enthralled by its contents that he could not bear to leave it?’
‘It does seem unlikely—’
Then why—?’
I was looking about the room as I talked, searching the floor, the desk, the mantel. And then I saw it, Tales of Violence and Blight, lying open on the arm of Dr Golspie’s fireside chair. I snatched it up, and flicked through its grubby pages. On the cover was a woodcut, painted black and red, and depicting a young lad in a tricorn hat pointing a pistol at an evil-faced man. It was stained with fingerprints, coal dust and grease smuts from Gabriel’s fervid readings, and the cheap paper was already almost coming apart in my hands. The main story was Vicious Dick and the Accursed Stranger. Something snagged at the back of my mind. It was something Gabriel had said, when he had said he knew that Dr Rutherford was dead. Dr Rutherford had been ‘cut ugly’ Gabriel had said, and ‘stitched up somethin’ bad . . . just like Vicious Dick and the Accursed Stranger.’ I had told the lad to be quiet. I had told him to shut up and not to repeat the tittle-tattle of others. Had he had something useful to say all along? I skimmed the first page of Vicious Dick. Such overblown rambling prose! I had read the bloods myself when I was young, but I did not remember them being as lurid and tedious as this. And then I found what I was looking for.
Angel Meadow Asylum, 18th September 1852
The day was fair. Not for me a stage draped with London’s fogs and vapours: I would have a blazing arc of summer sky for my theatre. I had seen the spectacle of a hanging many times, felt the excitement of the crowds. I had seen the way the condemned wept and shouted, though even the most brazen were cowed into silence at the sight of that broad cross-beam, the noose a black teardrop silhouetted against the heavens. As I mounted the scaffold on that warm and sunny day I could not help but wonder how many felons had climbed those steps before me, for the wood was lustrous and smooth, the treads worn and bowed from so many shuffling feet. But my thoughts were not my own for long. Even inside Newgate I had heard the roar of the crowd, and now that we were outside, standing before our audience, the noise was deafening. The smell in my nostrils was the smell of the fair: of bodies crammed together, ale and onions and sweat.
There were three of us to be hanged that morning. Three women. One was a fat old beldam from Seven Dials. Married to a bit faker, she had been caught with a purse full offalse sovereigns. The other was as young as I. She had been in service, had killed her baby and hidden its body under her bed. The coiner’s wife appeared unconcerned, but so drunk was she that I wondered whether she comprehended what was about to take place. The younger one was so pitiful I could not look at her. She hung off the Ordinary’s hand as if he might somehow lead her to glory, poor wretch. But my real sympathy was for myself, and I had little to spare for my sisters upon the scaffold. We were not united by the death we were about to share, and I knew nothing about these women other than the crimes of which they were accused.
At the foot of the gallows I saw a boy selling chestnuts, and a man hawking sheets of printed paper – presumably an account of the bloodthirsty crimes we
were said to have committed. Closer still, and practically standing beneath the gallows itself, the anatomists were clustered. Dressed in black coats with tall hats and golden watch chains looped across their chests, they looked up at us with hungry eyes, their long pale fingers steepled thoughtfully before their mouths. They nodded and pointed and frowned as they talked to each other. I wondered whether they had already sharpened their knives, whether my young flesh would slice open any easier than the tough old woman standing next to me – and then a hood was thrust over my head. It stank of bile and vomit. I heard my companions — a piteous wailing from the ruined servant to my right, to my left the drunken weeping of the coiner’s wife. The reek of urine —from which of them it came I do not know — stung the air. I was manhandled backwards, and the rope pulled over my head. It was heavy against my neck, and as warm as a lover’s arm from the heat of the sun.
You might think that we would fall silent, cowed by a sudden terror at what was about to take place. Two of us did, but the girl to my left continued to weep and babble, to cry for ‘dear Everett’, who I assumed was the rake who had ruined her. But the crowd was quiet now too and her voice rang out, thin and piteous.
The stillness of a crowd is a silence that chills the soul, that stops the heart and turns the mind mad. Beneath that black hood I could hear only the sound of my own breathing, my own muttered prayer and the thumping of my heart. My life was over before it had begun. I had committed crimes, but had I not been driven to it by my persecutors? I had wanted to escape the life I had been born to, but how was it possible in a world that was so clearly weighted in favour of those who had everything?
Then all at once there was a loud, clattering bang to my left and the ground beneath me dropped away. My heart abandoned me, jumping from my chest as I fell. There was a jolt and a searing pain at my neck as if the rope were scalding hot and twisted tight and cruel against my skin. My mouth filled with a foul metallic taste; the blood in my head raging as if it would burst. I felt my eyes bulge and throb, my lips grow thick and livid, pulsing in time with the pounding of my heart. My breath rasped, squeezing through the smallest of openings in my throat. My lungs burned within me as though what air remained to them had turned into acid. Lights burst before my eyes, blinding lights that joined with the blazing pain in my neck and throat and lungs until I was consumed by it entirely.
Chapter Thirteen
What more could we do? Will pulled a sheet from Dr Golspie’s bed and covered up his body. Should I take one more look round? I would not get the chance again.
‘Was he cautious with visitors?’ I said. ‘Was he a private man?’
‘Not really,’ said Will. ‘He never locked the door when he was in. I was always telling him he should be more careful. The landlady’s children used to come in sometimes – more than once I came up to find one of them in here. The eldest was always hanging about. He used to take away the ashes, and bring up the water but I’m not sure his intentions were always honest—’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Billy Slater.’
I went to the window and threw it open. ‘Billy!’ I yelled. ‘Billy Slater!’
‘Who wants to know?’ A lad of about twelve years old was standing in the street, his hands on his hips, looking up at me.
‘Come up,’ I cried. I flung out a penny. ‘Come up and I’ll give you another!’
A minute later I heard his boots upon the stair. I met him at the door. I did not want to let him in, did not want him to see Dr Golspie’s body, even though it was now concealed by a bed sheet. ‘What’s she on about?’ he said, gesturing with his head back down the stairs to where his mother could be heard still shrieking and wailing.
‘Did Dr Golspie have any visitors this afternoon?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ came the reply. A cunning look stole into the boy’s eyes. ‘Want to know who?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Cost you a shillin’.’
‘Sixpence.’ I tossed him a coin. ‘Who came to see him?’
‘A lady.’
‘Did you see her coming up the stairs or going down?’
‘Shillin’,’ said the lad. I passed him a penny. ‘Going down,’ he said. ‘What’s this all about anyhow?’
‘What time?’
‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Ain’t got a watch, have I?’
‘Then what did she look like?’
He shrugged. ‘Like a lady.’
‘Is that the best you can do?’
‘It’s all you’ll get for a penny.’
‘Well, was she tall? Was she small?’ I flipped another sixpence at him. I was running out of change.
‘She were neither.’
‘What colour was her hair?’
‘A shillin’!’ I clicked my tongue and tossed him my last ha’penny. ‘I didn’t see,’ he said. ‘She were wearing a cloak.’
‘Well what can you tell me?’
‘She were pretty. That worth anythin’?’
‘Not much,’ I said. To a lad like Billy Slater any woman who might be considered a lady would be pretty. ‘What else?’
He thought for a moment, his fingers to his chin, his eyes looking me up and down as though he were evaluating how much more he might be able to extort. He grinned. ‘How about her name?’ He jangled his cache of coins. ‘That’s definitely worth a shillin’.’
‘Will,’ I said. ‘Have you got—?’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Will rooted in his pocket and pulled out a coin. ‘You tell us the name or this goes back in my pocket and you get nothing but my boot against your arse.’
The boy snatched the coin and plunged back down the stairs. As he went, he shouted a name over his shoulder. ‘Susan,’ he cried. ‘Her name was Susan.’
The police came and took Dr Golspie’s body to Angel Meadow. Dr Graves’s hansom had hardly reached the gates of St Saviour’s before he had to return to the asylum to conduct another post-mortem. There was little to report: the blow to the head was given by someone right-handed, delivered in all likelihood while Dr Golspie was facing his attacker. The assault was swift and hard, so that Dr Golspie had neither shied away nor sought to defend himself. The Wound to the head had been made by a surgical knife that – to his surprise – belonged to Dr Graves himself. All this, I already knew. And yet Dr Golspie was hiding one last secret: inside his stomach was a quantity of custard tart.
‘Dr Hawkins said he would send Mrs Lunge up with a custard,’ I said to Will. ‘Clearly, Tom was alive at that point. We must speak to Mrs Lunge.’
‘We must also speak to Susan Chance.’
Dr Graves seemed rather bored by the whole procedure. ‘How many more post-mortems will you be needing today, gentlemen?’ he said. ‘I do have other things to do with my time.’ He sounded irritable. He washed his double-bladed knife and dried it with a soft cloth. He stroked the blade fondly, as if reassuring it that its ordeal as a murder weapon was now over, before stowing it away in his bag. When he found that Dr Golspie had no relatives to bury the body, he packed Dr Golspie’s organs back into the corpse, sent for a wagon, and had it trundled off to the anatomy school at St Saviour’s. ‘Two cadavers in one week?’ he said as he sprang up beside the driver. ‘You don’t deserve such a boon.’
That evening, Will and I were silent as we sat before the fire. We had not the heart to talk about the murder, and there was much to do the following day. I examined the strand of thread I had taken from Dr Golspie’s stitched eye socket and compared it to the suture I had taken from Dr Rutherford. They were both the same, though I remained convinced that there was something different this time. ‘The stitches were inelegantly executed,’ I said.
‘Perhaps there was no time to be neat,’ said Will.
‘Or perhaps this person was clumsy. Inexperienced.’
Will shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’
What more might we do that night? I prepared the apothecary’ bench for the next morning’s work and tried to clear my head.
&
nbsp; The office of Tales of Violence and Blight was at the top of a dilapidated building in Blinker’s Lane, a dingy thoroughfare not far from Prior’s Rents. The stairs groaned with every step, the windows rattling as we passed, as though someone outside were trying to get in. The owner was a small red-haired man with ink-stained fingers and a woollen waistcoat worn almost to the threads. He introduced himself as ‘Ravelston Dykes, sole proprietor of London’s most pop’lar penny weekly’. Mr Dykes’s eyes were rimmed with red, his gaze forever sliding back to his desk or darting to look over our shoulders as if he expected a bailiff to march in at any moment – clearly, running London’s most popular penny weekly was a precarious and exhausting business. The room where he worked was small and stuffy, warmed by a pot-bellied stove and hung about with washing. Mr Dykes lit a longstemmed pipe, and sat back in his chair. ‘ Vicious Dick and the Accursed Stranger,’ he said. ‘Came out only the other day, that one. A good un. We get a lot from that particular writer. Feller named McLuker. He’s got a real feel for the slums. Tells it likex ‘e was there.’
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