Alchemy: an historical psychological suspense thriller of perfect murder

by Chris James

  He laughed, grabbing the sketch. ‘Lady? Polly Nichols ain’t no lady. What, leave you with a dose, did she? Want your money back, that it?’ His customers found that greatly amusing. The overweight landlord squinted his eyes as he held my sketch up to a lamp. ‘Didn’t know she’d scrub up that well, that’s for sure. Difficult to say. But I guess–Yeah, could be ’er.’

  ‘She would have shared a room, with Nell. Nell or Nellie she was sometimes called.’

  ‘Nellie,’ the landlord added. ‘Yeah, Nellie Holland.’

  I felt ill and sat down. My Polly. I’d sent her into the very depths of hell. I went outside and retched. My poor, poor dears. What a callous fool I’d been, sending them away – nothing could have been more cruel. And what of dear Nell?

  I must have knocked on every door in Whitechapel before I finally returned home after midnight, grief-stricken over dear Polly and worried stiff about poor Nell. No one could help me with finding the sweet girl. I mourned the loss of my little family and the joy they’d brought into my life for those few short weeks.

  After a miserable month, with little left in the larder, I headed towards the Savoy where I knew that, close by, The Strand Gallery exhibited some of the finest art I’d seen in London. I had with me a business card handwritten in my best copperplate script and two portraits, the oil barely dry. Both were of Polly. I couldn’t bear to part with them, but it was that or starve.

  I found the front of the gallery surrounded by a lively group of well-dressed folk bustling to get a glimpse of something in the window. Obviously, the proprietor had chosen wisely once again and was causing quite a stir outside. None had ventured inside and the fact I would not be causing too much of a disturbance improved my confidence as I opened the door and made my way in.

  The proprietor was a flamboyant toff with shiny, flat hair and a waxed moustache, who might have thought he sounded French but his version grated on my ears, my fluency in that language being far superior to his.

  ‘Monsieur, bonjour,’ he greeted me with and then, continuing in French, told me his name was Jean-Louis and, twisting the ends of his moustache, asked how I was, how was the weather pleasing me and how could he, favoured expert in art in all London, help me invest in a work of art.

  I answered in French only to find he didn’t understand. When I offered to explain the purpose of my visit in English, he was visibly relieved and broke into perfect Cockney.

  ‘Winder-dressin’,’ he replied, referring to his French, ‘but I’ll learn it one day. Them haristocrats adores it.’

  I offered him my card. ‘I hoped you could exhibit my work.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ he said dismissively, conjuring a huge purple handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbing his nose. ‘I’m known only for the best, you know.’ He pointed to the small crowd outside peering in at an easel standing in the window. ‘People buy from me because I can sniff out a good investment,’ he dabbed his nose again, ‘heirlooms, something they can ’ang on to or make a profit if they don’t. Look at ’em stare. Guests from the Savoy, mostly. I tips the commissionaire. Jean-Louis, gets first butcher’s. Them out there,’ he said, pointing to the crowd through the window and tucking his handkerchief away, ‘are making a note in their ’eads. The place to come for London’s finest art.’

  He strutted over to the back of the easel. ‘Take this little gem,’ he said, holding the legs of the easel. ‘Brought in this morning for her ladyship. Sold within minutes. Could’ve sold a dozen if I ’ad ’em.’ He turned the picture to face us. A card showed the price, one hundred guineas, with Sold written boldly across it. I did my best to conceal my surprise.

  ‘Her ladyship?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sent her lady-in-waiting,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘And she could wait on me anytime she liked.’

  ‘You could have sold more like this?’ I asked him.

  ‘By this artist, yes. But tell me, what kind of thing do you paint, young man?’

  I pulled the two portraits of Polly from my bag and leaned them against the wall.

  ‘How exquisite,’ he said, picking up one of the paintings and taking it into the daylight in the front window. It featured Polly bent over backwards on the chaise. ‘You knows the gel, then?’

  ‘Gel?’ I asked.

  ‘There can’t be two such beauties in all of London, surely? This is the lady-in-waiting I referred to,’ he said, pointing at the other painting on the easel. ‘She’ll be calling soon for her ladyship’s money.’ He ran his hand over Polly’s thrusting breast. ‘My God, you’ve captured her well. I can sell these. Betya life.’

  I felt elated. Polly wasn’t the victim of the man the newspapers were now calling Jack the Ripper. She was alive and well. And that could only mean Nell was in safe hands, too. How delightful! And they had the means to make a good start in their new home. I laughed out loud, surprising Jean-Louis, and referred him back to my card and my signature on it. Then I held the card against the signature at the bottom of the portrait on the easel before us in the window; an angelic child, Nell, wearing a guardsman’s crimson jacket.

  His mouth gaped as I turned to leave.

  ‘I’ll bring more like her ladyship’s paintings in a couple of weeks, Jean-Louis,’ I said, leaving the two portraits of Polly behind, for him to sell. ‘Please let her lady-in-waiting know when she comes for her money that Jacob Silver the artist called and would she leave her address that I might call on her and renew our acquaintance.’

  ‘And maybe she could continue to pose for you, sir?’ Jean-Louis said suggestively, running his fingers over Polly’s breast again. ‘Very marketable. Very marketable indeed.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ I smiled and opened the door. ‘Bonjour, monsieur.’

  Once home, I raced up to my studio and pulled out sketches of Emily. I was determined my next paintings would be special and after the daylight faded and I could no longer work on the canvas I sought out formulae in the old tome: Alchemy that might make the finished work even more desirable than the pretentious Jean-Louis could ever imagine.

  Two weeks later I returned to collect eighty pounds from the sale of the two portraits of Polly and took along my new offering. I watched proudly as an excited Jean-Louis examined what I felt was my best ever painting.

  ‘Between Manet and Monet, I think,’ he proposed, holding it up on the wall. He moved along further, ‘After Rubens, before Turner, maybe?’ He sashayed over to the window with it. ‘No. It deserves a place of its own.’ He pulled another painting off the easel in the window and put my Emily in its place.

  Out through the window, people stopped in their tracks, cooed and pointed. A small crowd soon gathered. And they all had something remarkable in common. All their eyes stared – their pupils huge.

  And I knew exactly the reason why.

  ‘You must promise me exclusivity, Master Silver, I insist,’ Jean-Louis said as he offered me two sovereigns. ‘An advance. Bring me everything, you ’ear?’

  By the time I left his gallery a crowd had gathered outside, clambering to get a glimpse of my very own Mona Lisa.

  The following day a messenger called at my home and said he’d been instructed to await a reply.

  ‘Emily sold,’ the note read, ‘When can you bring some more?’ It was signed Jean-Louis St Clair. There was a sealed envelope inside.

  ‘Tell him two weeks. I’ll work day and night,’ I told the messenger. After he left I opened the envelope; a bank cheque for an awful lot of money – one hundred and fifty pounds. My first cheque. And the first I’d ever seen. Papa had a bank account but I don’t ever recall him writing or receiving cheques. People we traded with insisted on cash. ‘Cash before you kill ’em,’ the supplier’s carrier would say on every delivery, before attempting to unload anything off his wagon. And Papa said the same terms applied to those we dispensed our medicines to. Cash before we killed them.

  I opened my own bank account and now that I was in funds decided to invest in some fresh food to fill the
larder, and just as importantly, someone to cook it.

  I wrote out a cardboard sign but surprisingly, before I could hang it on the front door, there was a knock at the side door and a lady who looked rather familiar asked if the housekeeper vacancy was still available.

  I nodded, and the rather large woman, as round as she was tall, barged her way past me and headed indoors.

  ‘How did– Who sent you?’ I said to her back.

  ‘The Institute,’ she replied, heading upstairs. ‘Which room’s mine?’ she called out from the top landing.

  ‘Turn right, box room at the–’ I offered, but the box room door slammed shut before I finished.

  From outside her door I could hear her unpacking and humming happily. ‘You’re Betsy Pollock, the Matron at Greenwold,’ I called out. The humming stopped, but she didn’t answer. ‘We haven’t discussed your duties. Your hours.’ She still didn’t answer. ‘What am I to pay you?’ The door opened and she stuck her large round and dimpled face out. ‘We agreed two shillings and sixpence and all found. Thank you,’ she said, closing the door sharply.

  ‘We agreed?’ I called back to her.

  ‘The Institute,’ she called out.

  How the Institute would know of my needs or, for that matter, know anything at all about me I found bewildering, especially as I neither knew nothing of who or what it was, and why they should interfere in my business. While I could recall, vaguely, that they’d something to do with my receiving my treasured tome Alchemy, it would be sometime before I discovered that the Ancient Institute of Apothecaries and Alchemists was, in fact, a co-sponsor behind my scholarship to Greenwold College.

  It was such a relief to find Betsy performed well in the kitchen. After finishing my first proper meal for months and then settling into a regime of long spells in my studio, painting variations of Emily, interspersed with regular meals, I found myself quite content with the decision to employ her.

  But I had no idea she was conspiring against me.

  Chapter 7

  As time passed, and having informed the wholesalers I was no longer available for work, I hadn’t so much as stepped out of the house. I realised I had no need of people to complicate or clutter my life. I would spend a little time each morning in the laboratory topping up the tincture that I had grown accustomed to taking – and that ensured I had all the company I needed, in the privacy of my locked studio. It was something from the mood collection that I had mastered with the professor back at the college and which, I discovered later, of all the potions listed in my wonderful book Alchemy, would have the most profound effect on me.

  It was my little secret, something I made sure Betsy was not aware of. It was the same tincture I had used on Emily, back at Greenwold, and I could never forget what it did for her and how it cheered her so. Imbibing her remedy made me feel part of what she and I had together; part of her. And what harm was there in a wee drop every now and then – or two drops, occasionally more, depending on how my mood took me?

  The lure from the bottle of pale green liquid standing on the windowsill, particularly when the sunlight streamed through it, throwing a perfect spectral array across the wall opposite, was quite irresistible. Consuming that nectar always brought her to me, but oh, how I missed touching that girl!

  Whatever I created on canvas would sell. With Jean-Louis continually insisting eroticism is the future, and with Emily so eager to please, I did find my art leaning in that direction. While she would do anything I asked, I found she never ceased to surprise me with new, ever more provocative poses.

  I could paint what I liked, as long as I wished, and someone else ensured that I ate properly; the house was cleaned and there was a clean shirt to put on if I needed one. How many others were as fortunate? I was emperor of my own domain. Everything was within my control. How could I not be content? What could possibly go wrong?

  My artist’s palette, prepared each morning, consisted of a healthy daub of burnt umber, one of chrome yellow, a French blue, another of crimson or vermilion as the fancy took me, purest white and blackest black; ample turpentine and linseed oil alongside, together with a small dish of the most important ingredient of all – Desire – my wonderful pale green tipple. I always began by dipping the brush in the delicious Desire. I liked to suck that dry, leaving the bristles damp, at the same time gaining my first pick-me-up of the day. Dipping again and mixing that with the paint, I was ready to paint anything my imagination could conjure up.

  If the canvas was blank, from a fresh start, I knew it wouldn’t be for long. No sooner the outline wet the canvas, Emily would arrive and whet my appetite to continue with gusto. Another quick dip or two and she would laugh; yet more, and her infectious giggle would fill the air and I would soon be sharing a private paradise with an angel.

  There were times when I would look at that pale green liquid in the bottle and sense its comradeship – and how much I was in its debt.

  I found I was only content painting Emily. Day after day, building her image in front of my eyes, I felt I was a part of her and she of me. She would respond; I learned what pleased and displeased her; and before long, I heard her respond – her sweet angelic voice.

  ‘You got a woman in there, master?’ Betsy called out from the landing one day.

  I opened the door and assured her I was alone. To my surprise she passed me a full bottle of my favourite green tipple, adding, ‘I made you this up. So’s you can carry on working, like. And I think it’s high time you opened the dispensary again. It’ll provide an income until your paintings sell reg’lar.’ And before I could comment, ‘I’ll go start tidying things up down there.’

  ‘I only have one certificate. I need to study, sit more exams,’ I called after her, hoping she would drop the idea.

  ‘I have the certificates,’ she insisted, ‘You’ve no need to concern yourself about that.’

  I wanted to ask to see them, but she walked away with such a stern face I decided to leave it until another opportunity arose. But I was so surprised she was aware of my secret tipple, as I had always kept it in a concealed compartment in the back of a cupboard in the studio.

  Later, I was away from the house for three or four hours replenishing art materials. When I returned, Betsy was as good as her word, opening up the dispensary. She had ripped away the boarding from the old shop front and cleaned some eighty years of grime off the plate glass windows beneath. A man arrived and leaned a ladder against the outside and began scraping the paintwork.

  Within a couple of days, S. Silver & Sons ~ Apothecaries, above the windows, shone brightly and it looked like we would soon be back in business.

  ‘People are pestering for medicines and we don’t have any stock,’ I told Betsy early one morning, after a rude awakening from a hoard of people banging on the windows.

  ‘All in hand, Master Jacob,’ Betsy told me as she swept past me on her way from the laboratory, her arms full of merchandise. ‘Credit,’ she assured me. ‘You pay the suppliers end of the week.’

  I hoped she had remembered Papa’s adage: cash before you kill ’em, in order to repay the supplier. Following her, eager to see for myself exactly what she had achieved in her new shop – bearing my name above the door – it was a pleasant surprise, not at all as I feared. What had become a disused, dusty and dilapidated storeroom full of old furniture and empty containers of every shape and size had been transformed into what must have been one of the trendiest pharmacies in all of London. Bright lights shone down on shelves loaded with coloured bottles and jars, medicines and cures, powders, dried leaves and plants. It was truly breath-taking – and I had contributed nothing. I felt ashamed. I realised Betsy had been with me just six months and was now virtually in control of my life. But I was quite content to float along with her.

  ‘You get back to your art,’ Betsy insisted, pushing me out of the door. ‘Can manage here quite well on my own, thank you.’

  Before I reached the top of the stairs I heard the shop bell ring a
nd the first customer enter. I looked out of the window to see customers impressed by the window displays making their way inside. Betsy would do a roaring trade.

  Returning to the sanctuary of my attic studio and locking the door, I consumed another tall glass of my green inspiration and eagerly awaited the wonders that would manifest themselves before my eyes. I was soon wrapped in the ecstasy of Emily engaging me with her imaginative sexual fantasies, finding it difficult to choose which pose should finally appear on the canvas.

  I could never have known then that, three floors below me, Betsy was plotting murder.

  The Trial: Day 4

  A bottle of pale green liquid stood in a ray of sunlight on a table before Percy Ponsonby. I found myself almost mesmerised by a perfect spectrum cast through the bottle, the jurors’ faces striped with the brilliant colours of the rainbow. Alongside the bottle, numbered jars contained different coloured powders.

  The elderly witness stooped in the witness box and lowered his right hand, passing the Bible back to the clerk.

  ‘Your name and profession, sir?’ asked prosecuting counsel, Mr Ponsonby. ‘Please address your comments to the jury.’

  ‘Dr Horatio Pincher. Principal of Toxicology at the Royal London Hospital, sir.’

  ‘Dr Pincher, were you given these items to examine by the police?’ Mr Ponsonby pointed to the jars and bottle on the table.

  ‘I was, sir.’

  ‘Exhibits 16 to 22, m’lud,’ Mr Ponsonby said to the judge. ‘Tell the court what you discovered, doctor.’

  ‘One jar contained a chemical compound: thujone; the other five, pulverised dried herbs and fungi. Ergot; psilocybe semilanceata; peyote cacti; belladonna, commonly known as deadly nightshade; and the last, thapsia villosa, commonly known as deadly carrot.’

  ‘And, in simple terms, what do they have in common, doctor?’

  ‘They are all hallucinogenic and deadly poisonous, taken sufficiently, sir.’

  ‘Taken sufficiently?’ asked Mr Ponsonby.