“It is all right, I suppose. Did you hear about what happened to my mother?”
“I heard a few things.”
“It was your father. I know it was. I saw him running from the house.”
“That is not true!” There was panic in his voice. Both of them knew any man of their class would be hanged immediately if accused of raping a physician’s wife. “He was with me that whole night. I swear it,” Clifton said.
Monty looked at Clifton and shook his head, sighing. “As you say. It truly makes no difference to me one way or another.”
Clifton took a deep breath. “There is something I need to tell you.”
“Let us talk about it while we walk. Want to go looking for that wolf? Maybe down by the creek?” he said softly. He reached out to touch Clifton’s hand briefly, so that no one could see.
Clifton looked back at the house for a moment. “I can’t go into the woods with you any more, Monty.”
“What? Why?”
Clifton looked down at the ground. “I do not do those things anymore.”
The front door opened and the young woman came out onto the porch, staring at them both. Monty glared at her, “Who is she?”
“My cousin. Her father owns a small stand at the new rail station in Gillingham,” Clifton said. “I am travelling with her in a few days. I’ll be going to live with them and work at the stand.”
“For how long?”
Clifton shrugged. “My father says that if I marry her, I can take over the stand and become a businessman, Monty.”
“Marry? You cannot be serious.”
“Yes,” Clifton said. He looked down at a patch of grass he’d been kicking with the point of his shoe, seeing that he’d uncovered the dirt completely. “We have to grow up sometime, Monty. Can’t go ripping around the woods together forever, you know.”
Monty nodded, looking away. “When you are ready to stop joking, let me know.”
“Truly, I wasn’t joking, Monty.”
He looked back at Clifton, feeling his cheeks glowing hot. “If you want to play house with some strumpet, feel free, but do not pretend that it will make you happy.”
Clifton’s face clouded with anger. “That is enough, Mr. Druitt. Good day, sir.”
“It is best that you call me sir, you lowly little farm scum. That is all you are and all you will ever be. You, your whore, and whatever little creatures you two manage to grunt into existence. Scum, the lot of you.”
Clifton stopped in his tracks, looking over his shoulder. “I am sorry if I’ve hurt you, Monty. Some things are beyond our control, though.”
“If I showed you what was beyond your control it would be that whore’s guts spread across your conjugal bed.”
Clifton turned, half-smiling in surprise at the sudden malicious turn in Monty’s normally gentle voice. As their eyes met, Clifton’s smile turned to a scowl, seeing the naked fury in Monty’s face, and he found himself wondering if it had not been a rather serious threat. “Go away from here and never return, Mr. Druitt. If you come anywhere near me or my loved ones ever again I shall hurt you.”
Monty turned and began walking quickly into the woods. By the time he reached the trees he was running, crashing through branches, unable to see.
~ * * * ~
Dr. William Druitt stopped practicing medicine and devoted his later years to the care of his wife. Ann’s condition deteriorated to the point where William kept her confined to her bedroom. She had broken, smashed, and cracked every possible thing within it until nothing remained but a bare room with four walls. William threw a mattress on the floor for her to flop around on in between fits of shrieking. Ann lost the ability to attend to even the most basic bodily functions and William risked his own safety even attempting to bathe her. She had become wild.
One night William’s eyes were mere slits as he sat on the couch, clutching his chest. “What is wrong, father?” Monty said.
“I just need to rest a moment,” William said. “Your mother has been even more active than usual today.”
Monty considered this for a moment and then picked up a blanket and draped it over the old man. “Stay here and relax. I will attend to her.”
William thanked him and patted his hand. “Be gentle with her, son. She is a fragile creature and she loves you dearly, even if she is incapable of showing it.”
“I will,” Monty said.
Ann Druitt was lying on the floor, covered by a thin sheet. Her eyes did not look away from the window when Monty went into her room with a tray of tea and biscuits. “Good evening, mother,” Monty said. “I will leave these by your bed in case you would like them. Father will be in later after he has rested.”
“Do you ever see her, Monty?”
“See who?”
“Your sister,” Ann said. “I do. She comes down from her bed sometimes and whispers things to me. Things about you.”
He thought of that night so long ago when the black eyed corpse had stared at him while he slept in her bed. “No,” he said. “Never.”
Ann turned toward him sharply, “Georgiana could not endure knowing what she was. She was too weak. It is up to you now, Monty.”
He set the tray down on the floor and said, “I have no idea what you are talking about, but I will not stand here and listen to the ravings of a lunatic. Goodnight, mother.”
“Why do you think you are so in love with that farm boy? It is your natural instinct to be like the women of my family.”
Monty pounced on top of her and covered her mouth with his hand as she bit and squirmed under him. “If you utter one more word I will snuff out your life, you wretched, evil creature. I would be doing everyone in this house a favor by putting an end to your misery.”
“Monty?” his father called from downstairs. “Is everything all right up there?”
Monty pushed up from the mattress and told her to be silent. She laughed shrilly. “You do not even have the courage to kill a defenseless woman. Filth! Sinner!”
He kicked the tray at her with a clang, sending it crashing against the wall. Tea sprayed Ann and the plate of biscuits went flying, making her screech. William shouted, “Montague! Hang on, son. I’m coming up.”
Monty snatched the tray from the ground and said, “No need, father. Mother has decided she is not hungry this evening.” He shut the door behind him and went back down the stairs, assuring the old man that everything was fine.
~ * * * ~
Montague Druitt left Dorset as soon as he was old enough to enroll at New College in Oxford, dismayed at his father’s decision to abandon his practice. He begged William to institutionalize Ann so that the two of them could open the medical office they’d always spoken of. William refused, and Druitt moved away. He applied himself ferociously to his studies but found that the medical classes were too far beneath his level of experience and understanding to keep his interest. Druitt chose to focus on a new area of study that seemed to hold as much depth and complexity: Law. In truth, Druitt threw himself into school and work to try to ignore the strange desires welling within. He felt an uncontrollable rage bubbling beneath the surface of his being, threatening to overwhelm the carefully constructed personality he’d crafted during his school years.
Druitt observed the women he passed on the street, thinking of what lovely mysteries lay beneath the curtain of flesh, how he could plunge his hands into any one of them and tear out their insides. At night, he dreamed about the bodies from his father’s office. He dreamed about cutting them open, but instead of being cold, stiff corpses, they were warm and wet. Screaming.
~ * * * ~
Dr. William Druitt died of a heart attack in 1885. His youngest son returned for the funeral, staying just long enough to see the casket lowered into the ground. At the funeral he issued a cheque for the entirety of his inheritance to a local doctor, with the understanding that Ann would be regularly visited and cared for. Druitt provided the Inner Temple’s address to the doctor and told him, “Do not
contact me until either she is dead or the money runs out.”
In early 1888, Druitt settled in Blackheath, a small section of the southeast area of London. Will had been living there for ten years, and both were delighted to live so close to one another. Druitt took up a position at the George Valentine’s Boarding School for Boys in Blackheath, residing at the school as Assistant Headmaster. His expertise in cricket, an interest he’d fostered since his brother first taught it to him, gained him the interest of the Morden Cricket Club, and earned him the position of Treasurer and Secretary for the Blackheath Cricket, Gottball, and Lawn Tennis Company.
In July of that year, Druitt received a letter from Dorset. He opened it expectantly, hoping to finally have word of Ann’s departure from the world. It was not. The doctor had died, and his widow wrote that there was not enough money in the world for her to continue caring for Ann as her dead husband had.
Druitt contacted the Brooke Asylum in Clapton and arranged for staff members to travel all the way to Dorset and transport Ann over one hundred miles to their facility. “If you do not mind me saying so,” Dr. Steward said, “I think it is delightful that you would go to all this expense to bring your mother close to where you are. We will do whatever is in our power to make her trip a pleasant one. But, and I hope you do not mind me saying so, you are aware that there are other facilities closer to where she would be more comfortable?” Dr. Steward asked, puzzled.
“Of course I am,” Druitt said.
“But you still want her to come to here?”
“I insist.”
That night, as Druitt lay in bed, he pictured Ann struggling against the confines of her straightjacket in the darkness of the storage car of the train that carried her from Dorset. She screamed and thrashed, beating her head against the wooden boards of the car, howling so loud that the other people in the car were awakened. Small children were terrified. The conductors shouted at the men bringing her to the Asylum that she must be silenced or else thrown off the train. That would be perfect, Druitt thought. He imagined them opening the door to her car, wooden clubs raised.
FIVE
The Brooke House Lunatic Asylum was fewer than ten miles away from Blackheath. It was only one month since Druitt confined his mother to the Asylum, and he visited her at every possible chance.
Carmen sought fares along Greenwich, and Druitt flagged down the nearest one while side-stepping steaming piles of horse dumpings. The carman asked Druitt where he would like to go, cocking an eyebrow as Druitt responded vaguely, “Somewhere near Kenninghall Road, in Upper Clapton. It does not matter where you let me off.” The carman snapped his rein and clicked with his mouth, bringing the carriage around to face the opposite direction. “What do you think you’re doing?” Druitt said.
“Takin’ you where you said, sir.”
“Why are you not taking Bow Street through Mile End?”
“We can go that way if you’d like, sir, though it really don’t make sense, if you don’t mind me saying. Most carmen don’t like to go anywheres near Whitechapel, and I expect they been takin’ you the long way round. Costs twice as though, dunnit?”
Druitt gritted his teeth in annoyance. “Why do they avoid Whitechapel?”
“You new to these parts, sir?”
“So what if I am?”
“No offense sir. It’s just a bit of a shady spot, is all. I knows me way around it like the back o’ me own hand though. I can have you in an’ out of there in a jiffy, like. Unless you want to go the other way, that is. You’re the boss, sir,” he said, snapping his reins.
“I care not which way we go.” Druitt opened the shade on the cab’s window as the carman increased the pace of the horse and the carriage began to rock from side to side as it moved along the uneven streets. Druitt dabbed sweat from his brow and pulled his damp shirt away from his body, fanning his skin with the wet fabric. The large, well maintained homes of Blackheath and Greenwich gave way to smaller, more closely packed together ones the farther they travelled. The men and women in expensive coats, hats, and umbrellas strolling Eliot Place vanished, only to be replaced by a simpler, working-class folk with dour, dirty faces.
Druitt heard a crunch and squeal over the side of the carriage. He leaned out the window to look as a rat’s body rolled up toward him on the rear wheel before being ground into the cobblestones below.
“Still all right, sir? Not regretting it, is you?”
“No,” Druitt said, scoffing. “I am familiar with Portsmouth. It is a highly depressed area also.”
“That right?” the carman said, chuckling. “Portsmouth, you say. Far cry from Whitechapel, I reckon.”
Druitt looked ahead, noticing several buildings on the upcoming block had collapsed roofs. The houses beside them were boarded up, and though they were clearly meant to be vacated, people still sat on the front steps talking idly. The wooden planks covering the entranceways had been ripped away and hard eyes peered at Druitt from within their dark confines, watching them pass.
The carriage stopped for traffic at a busy intersection where a woman stood near them on the corner, holding the hand of a small child. The carriage was close enough that Druitt could hear the child singing and her mother murmuring soothing words to her little girl. She caught Druitt looking at her and turned, staring directly at him with a cocked eyebrow.
The carman turned in his seat, smiling with a mouth that was blackened and jotted with bits of broken teeth. “You want I should ask her in for you, sir?”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s a working girl…you were looking at her. Never mind, sir. On our way,” he said, cracking the rein.
Druitt turned in his seat to see the woman fix her attention on the next cab as it pulled up. The driver of that carriage slowed his horse and stopped. He got down and opened the back door for the woman, who immediately entered, then he scooped up the little girl and sat her down on the seat beside him up front. The last thing Druitt saw before turning around was the driver putting one of the reins in the little girl’s hands and telling her to crack it as hard as she could. The man in the back of the cab undid his trousers and grabbed the child’s mother by the back of the head and forced it into his lap.
~ * * * ~
“Has she been like this for long?” Druitt asked. “Why was I not immediately informed of the change in her status?”
Ann Druitt stared blankly back at him. The irises of her eyes had gone milk white. Her mouth hung open, as if someone had unscrewed the hinges of her jaw and strings of drool were spooling from her teeth.
Doctor Steward checked his notes. “It has been three days since she’s spoken. Her last reported complaint was that all of the blood in her body had shifted to the left side. She told me that the entire right portion of her body had been replaced with a colorful variety of other fluids. Since your mother’s arrival last month, she has regularly complained of similar ailments. On the last night anyone heard her speak, the patient stationed in the bed beside hers reported that Ann began screaming in the middle of the night. Of course, around here that can be quite common. When we checked on her that morning, she was like this. Am I to assume that your father’s name is Jack?”
“No, it was not.”
“Curious,” the doctor said.
Druitt banged his fist on the table, “Enough chatter, I want something done. She needs to be conscious of her surroundings. She needs to know exactly where she is.”
The doctor set his notes down, “I am glad that you feel that way, Mr. Druitt. I have been reading about a doctor in Switzerland who has been performing an experimental psychosurgery on his patients. He’s met with some success, but is currently looking for more test subjects. I think your mother fits his criteria, and we would certainly be interested in having someone from Brooke House participate in such a prestigious endeavor. Is that something you might consider?”
“No,” Druitt said.
“The only cost involved is getting your mother to Switzerlan
d,” he said. “Dr. Burckhardt is-“
“No,” Druitt said. “I want her near enough that I can see her regularly.”
Dr. Steward cleared his throat, and picked his notes back up. “There is another matter I wish to discuss with you, Mr. Druitt. It is noted on your mother’s charts that mental aberration runs in your family, and recent research has shown conditions similar to hers can be hereditary. However, given her condition, I want to qualify some of the things she has told us. It is not unusual for our patients to wholly fabricate histories for themselves. Given her condition…”
Druitt ignored him, staring into his mother’s eyes.
Dr. Stewart cleared his throat, “She told us her mother committed suicide when she was five years old. Apparently the body was discovered on Christmas morning. After her mother’s death, an Aunt moved in to help care for the children, but that woman subsequently slit her wrists in a bathtub two years later. Finally, it says that your older sister committed suicide as a child. Your mother said she leapt out of a window and landed on a wrought-iron fence. Is all of this true?”
Druitt turned on the doctor and suddenly smiled, his voice calm and soothing when he spoke, “All of that is a complete fabrication, Dr. Steward. I would request you do not besmirch my family’s good name by recording such nonsense on any official documentation.”
“Of course,” Dr. Steward said, making notations on the chart. “I will give you a moment alone with her, before I return. Have a good day, Mr. Druitt.”
“One moment, Doctor. Why did you ask if my father’s name was Jack?”
“She was calling for someone by that name,” Dr. Stewart said. “She kept saying she’d been expecting him.”
Druitt watched the doctor leave. He looked back at the old woman, who had not moved at all. Only the puddle of drool on the table below had gotten larger. Druitt leaned forward and whispered, “I will not let you slip away so easily.”
Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes (Gentlemen's Edition) Page 5