by John Boyne
To begin with, he took a sharp-pointed No. 6 needle with a narrow silver blade at the top and inserted it into the tip of the abscess, which immediately burst and leaked its fluid into Milburn’s mouth. The second the blade touched the blister, the boy jumped as if struck by electricity and Hawley sat back, accustomed to this reaction. ‘I have to drain the abscess first,’ he explained. ‘I’m sorry, this will be a little painful but it won’t take long. You have to be patient.’
Milburn, who was not by nature a coward and already had aspirations towards joining the police force, nodded in resignation and sat back, his fists clenched together tightly on the armrests, his fingernails pressed deeply into the palms of his hands to counteract the pain over which he had no control. He closed his eyes when Hawley put the blade in his mouth again, but it was difficult to remain still while the doctor scraped out the abscess.
‘Can’t you give me some more anaesthetic?’ he pleaded after washing out his mouth for the eighth time, his body trembling from the pain.
Hawley shook his head. ‘That’s the strongest one that I’m allowed to use,’ he lied. ‘It’s just that the abscess is so far developed that it’s bound to be painful. But it’s nearly clear now, which means I can remove the tooth.’
Milburn nodded and sat back again. A thin line of perspiration had broken out across his forehead and he was trying to mentally remove himself from the proceedings by staring into the light and performing an act of self-hypnosis. The abscess now cleaned out, Hawley reached for one of the forceps and, urging the young man to open his mouth wider, clamped it around the dark remaining half-tooth, took a firm hold of it and, gently at first, levered it from side to side, attempting to urge it from its moorings. A cry of pain issued from the boy’s mouth as throbbing and pressure combined to send jolts of pain through his body. His ears became more alert to the sound of the pliers wrestling the creaking tooth back and forth and, had Hawley not been standing over him with a knee on his chest as he pulled, he might have jumped up and run from the surgery in fright. A sharp crack sent Hawley tripping slightly backwards, pliers in hand, part of the tooth in its grasp as blood poured out of Milburn’s mouth. He gave a yell of surprise and jolted forward in the seat, but the sudden pain of the tooth’s removal was as nothing compared to his relief when he saw that the operation was over. He lay back, surprised that his mouth was still aching, and swore to himself that he would never wait so long again before going to the dentist.
Hawley told him to wash out his mouth several times at the sink and he placed some gauze where the tooth had been in order to stem the flow of blood and, when it had finally stopped, the doctor returned to his position and looked inside, frowning.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Master Milburn,’ he said, making the young man’s heart flutter in terror. ‘It’s as I thought. The tooth was so bad that it cracked as I pulled it. The root is still planted in the gum and I’ll have to remove it surgically.’
‘Oh no,’ Milburn sighed to himself, wondering whether it would be monstrous to start crying. ‘Surely not. Can’t it just stay there?’
‘If it did, your whole jaw would become infected and you would end up having to have all your teeth removed within a month.’
Milburn nodded stoically and resigned himself to more pain. Surely, he reasoned, there could not be much left to endure. ‘Go on then,’ he said, lying back and closing his eyes.
‘Unfortunately, no more of the tooth is left above the gum to pull, so I am going to have to cut open the gum and extract it from the inside. Not very pleasant, I’m afraid.’
Milburn stared at him and felt himself begin to laugh hysterically. Was this really a dentist who stood before him or some type of sadistic murderer, intent on producing as much blood and pain as possible? Still, he had little choice but to let the man finish the job he had started, and he lay back, his palms indented now with the sharpness of his fingernails, as Hawley took a sharper blade and, ignoring the boy’s screams, sliced the gum open in a criss-cross shape, like a hot cross bun, thus exposing the root of the damaged molar. ‘There she is,’ he exclaimed in delight, using two implements now to push back both sides of the gum so that he could see the offending object. ‘What a beauty!’ It was difficult to remove with so much blood pouring into the cavity, but he quickly reached inside with the narrowest forceps he possessed and, quite oblivious to the squirming and screaming of the boy beneath him, reached in and took a firm hold of it, pulling it loose with his right hand while his left rested on the boy’s chest, pressing him down into the chair lest he try to escape. With the sound of air being sucked into a vacuum, the remainder of the tooth came free and he stood back triumphantly, the forceps and his hand covered in blood while Peter Milburn held a palm to the side of his face in agony, one of the worst experiences of his life finally behind him, although he would never quite forget it. He sat up and tried to get out of the chair but his legs were weak beneath him and he was aware that a river of blood was pouring from his mouth.
‘Look at that,’ said Hawley, rotating the forceps in the light and admiring the tooth like a proud father. ‘Rotten to the core. A thing of beauty in itself.’ He glanced at the boy and nodded towards the sink. ‘You’d better wash your mouth out,’ he said. ‘Then sit back down and I’ll stitch you up.’
‘Stitch me—?’
‘Well, I can’t leave you like that, now can I?’ Hawley asked, grinning from ear to ear. ‘The blood won’t clot until I close the wound. A few stitches, and you’ll be right as rain.’
Milburn almost fainted and in his mind started to run through all the terrible things he had ever done in his life, wondering whether this was God’s retribution called back on him now. As a child he had bullied his younger brother mercilessly and exposed himself to every girl in his classroom for an apple. He had recently been the driving force behind a rift between his widowed mother and a gentleman she had fallen in love with, a perfectly decent gentleman but one who had threatened the boy’s home life and the selfish attentions he demanded. Two weeks before, he had stolen twelve pence from the cash box on his uncle’s fruit stall where he worked after school and, having got away with it, had resolved to take similar amounts at irregular intervals until he could afford a new bicycle. Perhaps all these misdeeds were coming back to haunt him now, he thought as he leant back in the chair, his mind suddenly filling with an image of himself in his coffin, and he lay there while Hawley completed eight expertly applied sutures to close up the hole which he had left in his mouth. The anaesthetic had practically worn off by now, and Milburn screamed throughout the whole procedure, blood-curdling screams, the screams of the demented and the hysterical; but Hawley hardly heard a note of them, so intent was he on his work, so proud of his abilities, so much in love with the art of medicine that for him the music of pain was nothing more than a melody to work by. Finally he placed more gauze in the boy’s mouth and told him to bite down on it for ten minutes; when he removed it, it was soaked in blood, making him feel even more faint, but when he washed out his mouth the blood had indeed clotted and the procedure was finally over.
‘You’ll have to come back to me in a week’s time,’ Hawley said, ‘so I can remove the stitches.’ Milburn stared at him in horror. ‘Don’t worry,’ he continued, laughing. ‘That will only take about thirty seconds and you won’t feel a thing.’
Handing over the two shillings which the operation had cost, the boy reeled out of the room and into the waiting area where, horrified by what she perceived to be the sounds of the young man’s murder in the ghastly chamber beyond, Hawley’s other prospective patient, the fifty-year-old woman, had fled into the night, determined to live with her pain rather than subject herself to the passions of a sadist.
Hawley didn’t care. The hour he had spent correcting Peter Milburn’s mouth, the use of the needles and forceps, pliers and stitches had excited him considerably and he wanted nothing more than to close the surgery now and return home; and this, having washed the used implement
s and replaced them in the disinfectant for the following night’s use, he did.
Cora was already in bed when he returned home, for her activities with Señor Berlosci that afternoon had exhausted her, and she barely glanced in his direction as he came in. It had been almost eight months since they had been intimate together, but tonight he had practically run down High Holborn and across Tottenham Court Road in order to return to his wife. She was surprised by the speed with which he removed his jacket, shirt and trousers—he normally waited until she was asleep before joining her in the marital bed—but when he came towards her and slipped under the covers, nuzzling his head against her breasts, it was all she could do to keep her dinner down.
‘Hawley!’ she exclaimed. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’
He looked up at her as if that should have been obvious. ‘Do not deny me, Cora,’ he pleaded, although in truth he felt little attraction for this woman he had married six years before. She would merely provide him with some comfort now. He pressed himself against her and she felt his desire and pushed him away.
‘Get off me,’ she shrieked. ‘Filthy man!’
‘But Cora—’
‘I mean it, Hawley. How dare you?’
He stared at her, his lust descending with each passing second, and he felt a sense of loneliness as never before.
‘Honestly,’ she muttered, rolling over and away from him, nervously hoping that he would not continue to display his emotions to her any longer that night.
He did not, rolling in the opposite direction, embarrassed and humiliated. It was several hours more before he fell asleep and, when he did, his dreams were filled with the memory of Peter Milburn’s torturous evening. When he awoke, he was surprised to find himself as damp as a pubescent teenager and was forced to steal from the bed quietly before his wife awoke to clean away the signs of his dream, his desire fuelled by his memory of the pain and screaming he had inflicted earlier that night.
* * *
Business at Munyon’s Homoeopathic Medicines was improving but the health of its owner, Mr James Munyon, was failing more and more every day. He had become increasingly forgetful and unable to work through the entire day without feeling exhausted by the end of it. Finally, on the advice of his own doctor, he agreed to retire, leaving Hawley to run the shop alone. It was almost a month before anyone responded to the ‘Help Wanted’ sign the younger man placed in the window. Several unsuitable applicants offered themselves for the job, but he rejected them quickly and began to worry that he would never find a suitable assistant. He had almost forgotten about the search when the bell above the door gave a jingle to announce the presence of a young woman in the shop. Hawley looked up from the accounts he was studying, but his new customer had her back to him and was examining a display of herbal medications in the corner of the store by the window, picking up a jar and carefully reading the instructions on the side. He looked back down at the invoices and receipts spread out before him, but within a moment he glanced up again for something about her drew him instantly. She was not very tall, no more than about five foot seven inches, and with her back to him had an almost boyish figure: slim, narrow-hipped and healthy. Her hair was dark and cut short just above the shoulder. As he watched her, she sensed his eyes on her back and turned a little to the left so that he could observe her pale skin and the sharpness of her cheekbones in profile. He looked down at once, not allowing himself to glance up again even when he heard her walking towards him. Only when she gave a small cough to announce her presence did he tear himself away from his figures and stare at her as if he had not even heard another person come through the door.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said quietly, taking her features in at a glance. She was quite young and very pretty in a slightly androgynous way, as if God had been unable to decide whether to make her a surprisingly masculine girl or an unusually pretty boy. Somehow, however, even in His confusion He had managed to create something extraordinary. A small scar running from under her nose to her lip was the only noticeable flaw, but Hawley felt a sudden desire to touch it. ‘How can I help you?’ he asked, resisting.
‘I saw your sign,’ she said in a firm voice which suggested that it was taking some courage on her part to speak to him.
‘My sign?’
‘The sign in the window. The “Help Wanted” sign. I wished to enquire about it.’
‘Ah,’ said Hawley, putting his pen down and sitting back a little. ‘Of course. The position.’
‘Indeed.’
He nodded at her, unsure what to say next. He had interviewed several people for this job and he always wanted to appear authoritative but friendly, get things off to the right start. This was exactly where things had gone wrong with Helen Aldershot. Mr Munyon had hired her and, determined to make a good impression, Hawley had been too nice to her. By the time he needed to assert his authority it was already too late and she was walking all over him.
‘To whom should I speak?’ the woman asked after an uncomfortable silence had descended on them.
‘Speak? About what?’
‘About the position.’
‘Oh, the position,’ he repeated, as if this was an entirely new conversation. ‘I do beg your pardon, miss,’ he added after a moment. ‘You’re actually the first applicant I’ve seen in quite some time, so I was trying to think where I should begin.’ He frowned at once, unsure whether he should have told her this. After all, it would not do to appear desperate. ‘Let me find a fresh sheet of paper and take your details,’ he said finally, flustered and rooting in his desk before finding one. ‘Your name,’ he said. ‘That’s the best place to start.’
‘Ethel LeNeve,’ she replied. ‘L-e-N-e-v-e,’ she added, spelling it out. ‘Capital L, capital N.’
‘Miss LeNeve,’ he repeated, writing it down. ‘And that would be Miss or Mrs?’
‘Miss.’
‘Miss LeNeve. And your address?’
She gave it to him and he knew the street she was referring to, for he walked past it every evening on his way to his surgery. ‘Quiet little place,’ he told her. ‘Very pleasant.’
‘You know it then?’
‘I run a small dental practice in the evenings in Holborn. I must walk past your home every day. You live with your parents, I assume?’
Ethel shook her head. ‘I live alone,’ she said; and this surprised him, for a single woman of twenty (which was her age) to be living alone could constitute a scandal. ‘My parents are dead,’ she explained. ‘But they left me their small flat. A widow lives downstairs and I sometimes act as her companion. She’s a nice lady, but she sometimes mistakes me for her son.’
‘Her son?’ he asked, surprised.
‘Her mind isn’t what it used to be. But she has a heart of gold and treats me very kindly.’
Hawley nodded, pleased that there was no suggestion of any impropriety and wondering whether the widow should be introduced to Mr Munyon. They could enjoy their senility together, mistaking each other for a lamp-post or a stick of celery. ‘Well, Miss LeNeve,’ he began. ‘The position is one of general assistant and typist. Can you type?’
‘Typing is one of my skills,’ she said with a sweet smile. ‘Forty words per minute at the last count.’
‘Well that’s fortunate,’ he said. ‘If I try to type fast, I inevitably mis-spell a word and have to begin again. I can go through reams of paper like that. Naturally, in a pharmacy it’s very important that we do not make mistakes with what we type on our prescriptions. We don’t want to end up killing anyone.’
‘Naturally,’ she said, looking around. ‘But can you tell me, exactly what type of pharmacy this is? I’m afraid I don’t know very much about . . . homoeopathic medicine,’ she said, struggling with the word a little.
Hawley relaxed now, enjoying her comfortable presence, and he began the speech he had used on more than one occasion, explaining the birth of homoeopathy in Japan thousands of years before and its gradual reintroduction into west
ern culture, its uses and benefits. He stopped short of expressing his own lack of belief in its healing powers, for that was something he had admitted to no one, not even to his wife; and Ethel seemed intrigued by all he said. She stared at him, listening to every word and watching his lips as he spoke. By the end, she was hooked.
‘That’s fascinating,’ she said. ‘I never knew there could be so many alternatives to visiting the doctor. To be honest with you, I’m always rather afraid to do so. Sometimes I wonder whether they know what they’re doing at all. If you think about it, anyone could set themselves up in a practice and claim they have a medical degree and then kill half their patients by mistake. Or by design.’
Hawley gave a narrow smile and realized that he had not yet introduced himself. ‘I’m a doctor myself, actually, Miss LeNeve,’ he explained.
‘Oh!’
‘Hawley Harvey Crippen,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘Doctor Crippen, that is. I should have introduced myself earlier.’
‘I do apologize,’ she said, blushing a little. ‘I didn’t mean you, of course. It’s just that one hears so many stories about—’
‘Don’t give it another thought, miss,’ he said, raising a hand. ‘It’s perfectly fine. You’re quite right, in fact. There are a lot of charlatans around on the streets of London these days and it can be hard to know who to believe. I myself, however, received my degrees from two medical colleges, one in Philadelphia and one in New York, so you need have no worries about me in that regard.’
‘From America,’ she exclaimed breathlessly.
‘Indeed,’ he said. He had taken to renaming his diplomas as degrees these days; it made things simpler, he believed.
‘So you’re an American. I’ve always wanted to go there.’
‘Really. I always wanted to leave,’ he said, which was untrue but seemed witty to him. She smiled. Another silence descended but it was broken by the jingle of the bell as the door opened again and Hawley looked around, his face falling when he saw his wife striding towards him, her handbag clutched tightly in her hands in front of her, her eyes like thunder. ‘My dear,’ he began, before she interrupted him.