by Evelyn Weiss
how to best assist us, Miss Agnes, you should know how this all came about. My investigations into this strange matter began on the 18th April 1912, shortly after the night of terror that you and the Strathfarrar family experienced on the Titanic.
I was in Halifax, the principal settlement of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, on business which need not concern us now. I received a message at my hotel from a local surgeon, Dr Finch. The message did not give any details, but it asked me to go to the doctor’s surgery, next to the Halifax city hospital, on a matter of the utmost importance. Dr Finch’s message said that it seemed like Divine Providence, that fate had cast a mystery at his door, and at the same time, had placed there, in the wilds of forgotten Nova Scotia, the one man in the world with the talent to solve the mystery.”
I don’t know whether he’s quoting Dr Finch word for word, but Professor Axelson speaks without any sense of modesty.
“Despite the time – it was nearly midnight – I went over to Dr Finch’s surgery. He seemed utterly relieved to see me. But he would not say what the issue was, the question that had driven him to contact me with such urgency. Instead, he asked me to accompany him to the building next door. It was the Halifax city mortuary attached to the hospital.
As you can imagine, the mortuary was deserted and unlit at that time of night. We carried lanterns as we made our way into the darkness, past stacks of makeshift pinewood boxes, each containing a corpse. These were the bodies found in the ocean, by the four ships sent by the White Star Line on the grim errand of recovering the dead.
Dr Finch paused at a coffin with a chalk scrawl on its rough-hewn pine planks. One word – ‘Spence’. I looked into the doctor’s eyes, almost in disbelief.
‘Yes, Professor Axelson. This is the body of Viscount Percy Spence, one of England’s richest aristocrats.’
‘Not just one of the richest, Dr Finch. We both know him to be the most flamboyant and glamorous figure in Europe. Notorious, even.’
‘As a single gentleman, an automobile racer and recently, an aviator – his appeal to – how can I put it – to the fairer sex, is well known.’
‘As I said, Dr Finch. Notorious. So – this is he?’
‘Indeed. His identity is confirmed by his wallet, and I have also heard about the Viscount from one of the Titanic survivors – one of those who was unfortunate enough to share a lifeboat with him in his last hour.’
‘Unfortunate? They were the lucky ones – those who got into the lifeboats. They survived when so many others perished. And there is another thing I don’t understand, Dr Finch. The newspapers say that everyone in the lifeboats was taken on the SS Carpathia to New York. Whereas, all these bodies brought to Halifax – they have been recovered from the Atlantic Ocean.’
‘I will explain shortly, Professor Axelson. But come, I have not called you here in order to simply show you a wooden box.’
Dr Finch took a crowbar and levered off the planks, one by one. The first plank was the leftmost, and it revealed one of Percy Spence’s hands, the fingers grotesquely clawed. I was reminded of Matthias Grünewald’s famous Crucifixion altarpiece, and the agony of execution by that method.
The second and third planks were lifted, and I looked into a face that had once been handsome and full of life. Now, it bore the visage of a gargoyle. The famous aquiline nose and profile of Percy Spence were transformed into a beak-like grimace. The mouth was fixedly open, as if gasping for air, and a distended tongue lolled over the lower lip like a serpent peering from its lair.”
Professor Axelson’s normally measured tone of voice is getting quieter. As if even he does not quite want to say what is coming next.
“The greatest horror, though, was around his eyes. It was as if the eyelids of the corpse had already shriveled to nothing, leaving the white eyeballs naked in their empty sockets. The stare was so fixed, so filled with terror, that it was as if this man, in his last moments, was truly gazing into Hell.”
The professor’s voice is now almost a whisper. As always with Professor Axelson, I’m drawn in by the slow, even speech, the hushed rasp of his words. Sitting in the civilized haven of Chisholm’s study, I’m suddenly taken there – I’m standing, with Professor Axelson and Dr Finch, in the freezing cold of the Halifax mortuary, surrounded by the dead of the Titanic, gazing with horrid fascination at a face frozen in unspeakable agony.
The professor carries on with his tale.
“Dr Finch spoke quietly to me. ‘Your diagnosis, Professor Axelson?’
‘From a clothed body and a contorted face? I am renowned, Dr Finch – but even so, without a proper examination, I can only offer a guess.’
‘I trust your guess, Professor Axelson. Let us see if it matches my own diagnosis.’
‘Then I would say – from the level of pain shown in this face, these hands – that this man was poisoned. Strychnine.’
‘In which case...’
‘Yes. Your surmise is correct, Dr Finch. I understand now why you have called me here. All these’ – I gestured to the boxes surrounding us, the many victims of the disaster – ‘are tragedies, every single one of them. But this is more. In looking at this face of horror, you and I, we are looking at – murder.’
Dr Finch closed the lid of the box, and we returned to his surgery, where I looked though his report and the results of the tests he had carried out on the cadaver. It was clear that the Viscount had been poisoned.
As I closed the report, Dr Finch spoke again. ‘You see now, Professor Axelson, why I described his companions aboard the lifeboat as unfortunate. He lay helpless on the floor of the boat, survivors crowded all around him, and they witnessed his slow excruciating asphyxiation, while they were unable to help in any way. Even amid the terrors and anguish of that night, this was an appalling thing for them to witness.’
‘So – you have spoken to the witnesses, Dr Finch?’
‘I have heard from one who was on that boat. When he heard that bodies were being recovered from the ocean, he wired the mortuary at Halifax to enquire if the body of Percy Spence had been identified among the dead, saying that he had witnessed the Viscount’s death, and had reason to believe that it was suspicious. I had already identified Spence’s body, and realized from the appearance of the corpse that his death looked unnatural – so I wired the gentleman back, asking for all details. I received this.’ Dr Finch handed me a telegram, and I read –
‘I Harold Lowe and four others put Viscount Spence’s dead body out of Lifeboat 14 and into the water Stop To make room for a woman we saw in the water who we rescued Stop After the sinking of RMS Titanic Viscount Spence had been on floor of lifeboat dying very slow in Extreme Agony and unable to speak Stop Lifeboat 14 launched from Titanic just before sinking and a servant girl had dragged Viscount into lifeboat just before launch and was with him on floor of boat trying to offer succour to him until his last breath Stop Do not know servant girl and we did not see her again on RMS Carpathia or at disembarkation at New York Stop’.
I looked at Dr Finch, and I asked the obvious question. ‘Does anyone else know of her, Dr Finch? This servant girl?’
‘I am here in Halifax, Professor; I know nothing about those who sailed in the Carpathia to New York. But all the survivors – they would be looking out for themselves and their families; a friendless servant girl would be invisible, as it were, among them. I fear that it may be impossible to trace her.’”
Axelson looks at me, then at Chisholm. “In fact, finding Miss Kitty turned out to be surprisingly easy. You, Chisholm, did it for me.”
Chisholm is about to say something – but the professor looks briefly at his watch, and speaks decisively. “It’s time, now. We must proceed with the final session of hypnosis. I feel sure that she saw, not just the effects of the poison on Spence, but the person who put that poison into his wine. She can name the killer. Despite her violent reactions, we must take Miss Kitty back one last time to that fateful night. Back to her most terrifying moments aboard the Titanic.”
4.Rooftops in darkness
The professor pauses. I feel he’s assessing my reaction, my desire for involvement in this grim business. After a few minutes he speaks again. “You now know enough about Percy Spence’s murder, Miss Agnes. So – are you ready to be with Miss Kitty again, in a final hypnotic session? For the revelation that we shall hear from her lips?”
“Yes indeed, professor, I am. In fact I’m more intrigued than ever. I’ll go up to Kitty’s room and see if she’s awake.”
The servants’ quarters are four floors above us, in the eaves of the house. Up here, the stairs are dimly lit, the carpet thin. I hear the creak of the boards on the stairs and the landing, the tread of my own feet. Then, in the near-darkness, I hear the sound of my own knock on Kitty’s door. The noise echoes along the gloomy corridor, but I hear nothing from within the room.
I knock a little louder.
Maybe thirty seconds pass before I knock again. Then I try the handle: the door flies open. I’m looking at a blank square of window, open against the moonlit sky. The narrow bed is unoccupied. The wind blows into the empty room.
I shout down the stairs. Within seconds I hear Chisholm’s footsteps on the ground-floor staircase. But there isn’t a moment to lose. I go to the window. It’s a dormer window built into the roof of this block of