The Dark Water

by David Pirie

  Bell certainly showed no disappointment, not even when he asked if any inmates had gone missing in the last few weeks and was answered with an emphatic negative. In general, his conversation was admiring and affable and it was only when we were almost done with our inspection that he turned to Edmunds and I sensed something in his manner. ‘Mr Edmunds,’ he said, ‘do you recall the night when Jefford disappeared? It was a Friday, first of December, the night Dr Bulweather was here.’

  ‘Why yes, sir,’ said the elderly man, nodding. ‘I remember. Dr Bulweather always likes to …’

  And then Edmunds stopped, realising what he had said. He looked worried and stammered a little. ‘But it is not right I should … he does not like people to know.’

  ‘You must not fear,’ said Bell. ‘I am involved in an investigation and any matters that do not relate to the crime will be kept quite confidential.’

  The old man nodded. ‘I see. Well then you must come and see her. She is one of the few you have not seen. In fact, we tend not to display her to visitors.’

  And he led us away from the kitchen and down another corridor. A nurse came past smiling at us and then Edmunds showed us into a small comfortable room where a pretty fair-haired woman sat on a chair beside a cot, upon which were dozens and dozens of dolls. All had pretty white faces and dresses. It would have been a little girl’s dream.

  Indeed, the woman seemed almost doll-like herself. She was, I judged, about thirty years old, in her arms was yet another doll and she was humming softly as she cradled it back and forth. She looked at us and stopped for a moment but barely seemed to take much notice and then started her humming again. Her mind, I could see, was gone, her expression quite vacant.

  ‘Hello, Claire,’ said Edmunds and turned to us. ‘That is Claire.’

  ‘His wife?’ I said, for there was certainly a strong resemblance to the picture in Bulweather’s house

  Edmunds shook his head. ‘Oh no, his wife is dead. No this is Claire Warren, his wife’s poor sister. He has given a great deal of money to ensure she is properly looked after, though it seems Dr Cornelius feels there is no prospect of her getting better.’

  ‘What is the story?’ said Bell quietly, and I could see he was moved by what we saw here.

  Edmunds spoke in a low voice. ‘It seems she was in Southwold and a man from London got her in the family way so she fled to the city. For some time she lost touch with her family after she fell on hard times. Dr Bulweather’s wife suffered a great deal of sadness, for they had been close and I am told her last wish was that he would find her sister and help her. This took time and when he found her it was discovered she was living as a common prostitute and that she had had another child taken for adoption. A man had used her badly and there is even talk she fell under a horse and her head was trampled. But when she came here she was as you see now, though never a harsh word for anyone. Always calm and, we hope, happy. But not really with us, as you see. He has done all he can for her.’

  ‘And why,’ said a voice from behind, ‘did you have to know?’ Both Bell and I turned. Bulweather was standing in the doorway, his face pale with anger.

  THE WHISPERING HATE

  Edmunds looked terrified. ‘I am sorry, sir. They—’

  ‘No. It is all right, Joseph,’ said Bulweather. ‘These gentlemen have found out my secret on their own, it is not of your doing. You may go on now.’

  Edmunds took his leave gratefully. Bulweather was angry but said nothing for a moment and I saw his anger visibly soften as he looked at the woman who still sat so placidly in the chair, rocking. You could see the affection in his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.

  ‘You know what you wanted to know. I only ask you do not tell a soul here, for it is very personal. I wanted to carry out my wife’s wish and I did, though what she would have felt when she came upon Claire I do not know. But I have had to keep the matter private, not merely for my wife’s sake but for my professional reputation. People here are extremely narrow-minded, especially when it comes to madness.’

  The Doctor nodded and within a short time we withdrew. Dr Cornelius awaited in his study, intrigued to hear our impressions. Upon discovering we knew of Claire Warren and had met Dr Bulweather, he was happy to talk of the matter, indeed he had her file in front of him and Bell was most interested in it. ‘I update it because Bulweather insisted her behaviour was recorded,’ Cornelius said. ‘He has tried for years to find some way of improving her mental state, it is a tragic case. Of course we have honoured his wish to keep the matter confidential, for the country people might well shun a practitioner associated with madness and scandal. But then it was a promise he made to his wife and he has carried it out to the letter. She suffered grievously after her sister’s decline. And I cannot tell you how generous he has been to our establishment.’

  Bulweather arrived shortly after this, looking no longer angry but resigned. He talked for a little to Cornelius about the arrangements of Claire Warren’s room and then he offered to accompany us back. ‘For my dog is at home and if I am with you, nobody need suspect I have been here,’ he said. ‘I am ashamed, gentlemen, to show you how I must submit to local prejudice. But it is a plain fact that once I was branded as a carer of lunatics, many would refuse to consult me.’ And so we set off.

  How different was the walk back to Dunwich that evening from the journey that had taken us here. Then I had been reflecting moodily on my father’s affliction. Now I was ashamed of such sterile self-pity, which was of little use to anyone. I had discovered there were places that truly cared for the mentally afflicted. And I also felt a new respect for Bulweather, as I am sure did Bell.

  He assured the country practitioner we would respect his confidence and he was evidently pleased. ‘Thank you,’ he said as he strode out vigorously, ‘and I am most curious to learn how you made your discovery, Dr Bell.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bell, ‘it was not so difficult. In your own living room your partner Dr Hare made a somewhat scathing allusion to Westleton House, indicating the prejudice that exists against it and against lunacy in general. This immediately alerted me to the fact it was something you might not wish to advertise. Yet your bookshelf contained a very high proportion of recent titles concerning nervous disorders. I also knew, as a matter of fact, both from Mrs Marner’s maid and yourself, that you appeared to be travelling in the direction of Westleton on the night you visited your fictitious patient. It seemed to me, therefore, a serious hypothesis that you were concealing an association with the asylum. Moreover, you are right, there is loose gossip about you, which caused me to reflect how much more necessary concealment might be if the association with it was personal rather than professional. Naturally, therefore, I did not question Cornelius who would have kept your secret, but the night manager seemed an ideal opportunity.’

  ‘Well I am glad you are friend rather than foe, Dr Bell. And I am extremely grateful you will breathe not a word of this. I care nothing if people suspect I have a mistress, as long as I protect my wife’s family name.’

  I asked him if there was any hope.

  ‘There is always hope,’ he said. ‘But it is terrible to observe a person trapped by their own mind, to see it failing them, a kind of living death. And I do not deny she reminds me also of Mary.’ And he lapsed into silence.

  The name was common enough but it struck a chord in me. For Mary was my mother’s name and I was acutely aware how much she had suffered, as our whole family had suffered, from my father’s disease of the mind. The connection released a flood of painful memories. I thought of the early years when our whole family had dreaded the screams from my father’s room. Of how, while a student, I had once opened the door to it and saw him crawling and sobbing by his fireplace. Of his tiny cell in one of the asylums with a bare table and chair and nothing else at all. Not that I had visited him for well over a year. Perhaps I might even seek advice from Bulweather. I was quite sure he would be sympathetic.

  Before we pa
rted, Bell asked if the country practitioner would keep an eye open for any household in the vicinity that might be harbouring a man from London. ‘I am convinced that one of those responsible is being sheltered here by someone,’ Bell told him. And we said goodnight.

  Back at the inn, as we waited in the parlour for our dinner, Bell and I were approached by the worried landlord. Was it true, he asked us, that Harding may have been the victim of foul play? Rumours were beginning to fly and many were now talking openly of the legend and of witchcraft. ‘People are already very nervous hereabouts, sir,’ he said anxiously if politely. ‘There are all kinds of things in the air, that the witch’s curse is starting to come true. Some of them are even saying she has followers among us now, women.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Bell, ‘but you must stamp on such nonsense at once. We are not yet even at liberty to say for certain if there is foul play, so there is no place for such talk.’ Brooks seemed to take some consolation from that and now he remembered that two packages Bell had been expecting had finally arrived.

  He returned with them and Bell opened the first. It contained recent copies of the Lowestoft Advertiser, which the Doctor scanned with interest. I picked one up but could see absolutely nothing worthy of our attention.

  After we had eaten, I left him in the dining room and wandered through to the public bar, for I felt it was worth hearing any of the gossip that was rife. Of course, Bell and I had both tried on previous evenings to elicit intelligence from this source, always without success. Nobody would even acknowledge having seen Jefford drinking here, and we felt sure this was an evasion. I purchased a tankard of beer and sat down to drink it by the window. There was a group of men, fishermen I guessed, in the corner by the fireplace, their heads close together talking in such undertones I could not overhear them. But closer to me were two others I had seen before. One was a blacksmith called Laing, a startlingly good-looking man in his way, the other a horse handler named Hepton with sand-coloured hair.

  These two were usually friendly enough when we encountered them before, though they told us little, but now they gave me a dark look and lowered their voices. I tried to engage them, no doubt clumsily, with talk of the weather and the state of the sea but they remained taciturn. So finally — driven by their sullenness — I raised the thing straight out.

  ‘I know you have some misfortunes here,’ I said, ‘but surely you do not ascribe it to a woman who has been dead for nearly two hundred years?’

  At this, the two of them turned and looked right at me. ‘As to that,’ said Laing, ‘perhaps we do and perhaps we don’t. But Colin Harding was a good man, however he did die, and there are all kinds of stories. And one thing is for sure, without any disrespect to you, sir, we have all been worse off since the strangers came here, especially the women. That Ellie from London who fairly turned poor Colin’s head with all her airs and graces. Then Jefford and now his sister. None of it has brought us any good. We don’t want such people here. And there’s some here say if any more happens they will act rather than watch the whole place be dragged down.’

  Before I could reply, the landlord entered to whisper that Charlotte Jefford was requesting an interview with me. Meanwhile the two men had returned to their whispered conversation.

  Miss Jefford was standing in the inn’s little sitting room, looking composed but pale. For the first time I noticed how very frail her figure was, almost like that of a boy.

  She turned and smiled and thanked me for coming. ‘I am greatly in need of your advice, Dr Doyle,’ she added. ‘You see I do not quite know what to do. I am no nearer understanding what has happened to my brother. I have been to the house and found little there. Now Mr Harding is dead and you may know that rumours have begun to circulate that the death is unnatural.’

  I told her nobody could yet be sure of that.

  ‘Even so, a message was left for me saying I am suspected of doing mischief, that I make spells and must leave here.’

  I looked baffled and she smiled. ‘Oh I travel with some herbal remedies. I took them out after my fright and left them on my table. No doubt one of the maids saw them in my room and thinks they are the stuff of witchcraft. It is hard to imagine in these times but it is the only explanation I can think of.’

  ‘Have you the letter? I want to see it.’

  ‘No, I burnt it at once. I do not wish to be intimidated in this way and I am afraid I am not the only one. Mrs Marner’s maid has also, it seems, been cast as the victim. Now she is frightened to go out.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said with urgency, ‘and your letter may well have come from one of the men I have just been taking to in the public bar or someone they know. The Doctor will be interested in it and I think we should talk to him.’

  The Doctor, who was still sitting reading his newspapers, got up at once when I brought Miss Jefford into the otherwise empty dining room, though I do not think I was mistaken in sensing a slight irritation at this interruption.

  He listened to her story with courtesy but seemed more interested in the persecution of Mrs Marner’s maid, indeed most of his questions were about Ellie. He asked about her mood and was told she was a little sullen, because Mrs Marner had instructed her to stay in the house for the moment, not wishing her to be pestered. This seemed to satisfy Bell and he told Miss Jefford we would visit Mrs Marner the following day.

  ‘And now, Dr Bell,’ said Miss Jefford earnestly, ‘you must advise me what is my best course. Am I to take this note seriously?’

  ‘I cannot be sure of that,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I wish you had kept it for me to see, and I ask that any others you do keep. But on balance I doubt it is serious.’

  This naturally pleased her. ‘So I should ignore it?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he spoke firmly, almost coldly. ‘I advise you to leave here at once, preferably tomorrow morning early.’

  His words were unhesitating and it was as if she had been slapped in the face. ‘But I have done nothing wrong,’ she protested. ‘I want to discover what has happened to my brother. Why should I fly from here like a coward?’

  ‘I never suggested you had done anything wrong, Miss Jefford,’ said the Doctor more pacifically. ‘But you asked my best advice and I offered it. The note may not be serious, but the legend is a different matter. I am in no position to be sure of my facts yet and so I err on the side of caution.’

  ‘But it is to give way to superstition of the most primitive kind,’ she cried, her cheeks positively burning. ‘I am not yet so weak as to do that. But I am grateful for your opinion.’ And she got up to leave.

  Bell returned to his newspaper and although I remained silent I was angry. By now it seemed obvious to me Charlotte Jefford was a woman of considerable spirit. Many of her sex, and indeed of my own, would have left after the night in the woods. Yet here she was, vigorously, if somewhat tearfully, protesting her rights to a stranger. In this respect she could not but help raise memories of another indomitable female spirit in Edinburgh.

  The thought of Elsbeth only stirred my feelings further. There was nothing personal in my wish to protect Charlotte Jefford. But I felt she was essentially a good woman who was owed our sympathy and support. The Doctor had not exactly been ill-mannered, he was too polished a performer for that, but there was still great insensitivity in his words. Here was a woman, almost certainly bereaved of a brother, showing huge courage and he offered her little except a cold dismissal.

  After a time, as I sat there, I could bear it no longer. The Doctor was now intent on the amusements section of the Lowestoft Advertiser. ‘I am sure there is much in the newspaper that is of interest, Doctor, but I do not think it gives you any excuse to dismiss the feelings of someone who has come to you for help.’

  ‘I do not follow,’ he said flatly, not even looking up. It was, as I well knew, very difficult to provoke the Doctor.

  ‘We both know she may well be bereaved and her brother dead. She is frightened and has endured a great ordeal and now i
t seems she is being threatened by one or more ignorant and superstitious persecutors. Yet all you can do you is pronounce that she should act on their prejudice at once.’

  He spoke lightly as he often did when we disagreed. ‘That is really nothing to do with it, Doyle. If she leaves she would prove her innocence. And also ensure her safety.’

  And to my fury he went back to his reading. Of course he had stoked my anger even more. And I said something I had never said before.

  ‘Her safety! It hardly helped another persecuted woman’s safety when you counselled her to leave Edinburgh.’

  And with bitterness in my heart I turned my back on him and left the room.

  THE COMPANY OF WITCHES

  It was a cruel remark and, though I was still irritated with the Doctor, I regretted it almost as soon as I was back in my room. Bell had not failed many times and it was only by chance that I had paid so dearly for his greatest failure.

  Despite my anger, I wondered if I would have said such a thing or — indeed if he would have reacted quite as coldly to Miss Jefford — if we had not both been up without sleep for the best part of forty-eight hours.

  I was on the point of going to bed when there was a tap on my door. I opened it and Bell was there. He did not smile but nor did he show any anger. He merely looked at me and I stepped back to let him in, closing the door.

  He walked to the window and then turned.

  ‘I will endeavour to explain, for we both lack sleep and perhaps I did not do so very well.’ That was, I knew, in its way an apology from the Doctor and I nodded, though still not completely relenting.

  He turned away, closing his eyes, as if feeling his way back into the case, or rather his conception of the case, for my benefit. ‘Look at it,’ he said, and there was for the first time in many hours, some passion in his voice, ‘in its entirety. Of course we are trying to avoid panic but I can tell you I am as certain as I have ever been that Harding was brutally murdered. The precise nature of how this was achieved is, as yet, a mystery but I already entertain suspicions about the mechanism and the motive. I would direct you also, however, to the spectacular nature of the deed and the sensation it was designed to cause. Only he would invent such a thing to create as much bafflement and fear as he possibly could. Nobody else would imagine it, nobody else is capable of executing it.’