The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  “And when he runs out of real sicknesses to cure, he invents his own,” Clarety said. “He’s invented Moonpall, the Marthambles, Hockogrockle and the Strong Fives.”

  “Very wise,” I said. “If you invent an illness, it is easy enough to invent a cure for it.”

  She grew serious.

  “There is something about him, though. The girls here swear by his ‘telling’.”

  “Oh? Does he deal in the supernatural also?”

  Like most women of her type, my mistress is careless of life but terrorized by the thought of “the Beyond”. She would not jest about this aspect of the Doctor’s activities. It took a great deal of by-play, a small stream of honeyed phrases, and five more coins, before she told me of the Doctor’s acquaintance with the occult sciences. He had a familiar, it seems, an oracle who would answer questions put to him. And in illustration of his necromantic skill, he would erect pyramids of numbers, Solomon’s key – what the vulgar call the Cabbala – by which he could extract answers at will; either clear, ambiguous or unfathomably mysterious.

  I began to see the true nature of the Doctor’s practice. When gullible folk seek such answers to their problems, they as often as not give away far more than they receive. The three outstanding receipts on sale to Lady Wroth would contain a great deal more poison than had ever been taken from his lordship’s body.

  Thus, armed with a little knowledge, I went to confront the Doctor. By dint of gentle bullying, I could, I felt sure, persuade him to part with the embarrassing records of Lord Wroth’s follies or vices or worse.

  V

  It proved easy enough to find the Doctor’s establishment, for the route was well advertised. The posts of houses and the corners of streets were plastered over with his bills and papers urging the public to go to him for remedies. The advertisements had a fine flourish to them, and he had a gallimaufry of cures.

  INFALLIBLE Preventative Pills against The Plague.

  NEVER-FAILING Preservatives against The Infection.

  SOVEREIGN Cordials against the Corruption of the Air.

  EXACT Regulations for the Conduct of the Body in the Case of Infection.

  UNFAILING Anti-Pestilential Pills.

  The ONLY True Plague-Water.

  The ROYAL Antidote against all Kinds of Infection, and such a MIRACULOUS beautifying Liquid that it will Restore the Bloom of 15 to a Lady of 50.

  They were such a number that I lost count. He even offered to advise the poor for nothing. Which advice, I had no doubt, would be to buy the Doctor’s physic.

  All of them were to be had only at the Sign of the “Anodyne Necklace”, at the East End of Barnard’s Row by the School.

  Barnard’s Row was a grey-faced, respectable looking street, behind the tall, rambling façade of the Bars. The sign of the “Anodyne Necklace” hung before the most solidly built house in that solidly built street. Plainly, business was thriving, which scarcely surprised me in view of Clarety’s information. The public are always ready to throw their money away on physics, charms, philtres, exorcisms, incantations and amulets. It is indeed a golden age of quackery and one remedy is as fatal as another!

  I opened the door and entered beneath the swinging sign. A bell jangled, but the room was empty.

  To walk into this unusual, strange looking shop, was to be transported to another world entirely. Here in profusion were all the varied ingredients of the cure-pedlar. It was a dark, magical cavern rather than a shop.

  There were big pails of pickled entrails and buckets of what I took to be black, salted eggs; they could as easily have been a beast’s parts marinading in a preservative. Counters and shelves were laden with jars of brightly coloured powders and packets of black and forbidding dried stuffs. Some of the jars were labelled with such exotic information as that they contained: “Snail’s Water”, “Oil of Earthworms”, “Roast Slugs”, “Viper’s Fat”, and even “Live Lice” – for swallowing, Clarety had informed me.

  It was like a witch-woman’s pantry. There were dried cuttlefish, dried mushrooms, dried shoots, dried nuts, dried stalks, and from the ceiling there hung the stomachs of dried fish. In one corner there were some curious live reptiles in a glass-box, so ugly-looking that they would have frightened Old Nick himself. From the walls there hung the implements of his trade: a bristling armoury of fierce looking knives, scissors and choppers. The shop could have armed an uprising. It was a place of potent atmosphere and it stank dreadfully.

  I stood in the midst of all this strangeness for a moment or two before I called out “Shop!” The eyes of dead fish and live reptiles stared at me unwinkingly. I had an eerie feeling that, somewhere out of sight, more nightmarish eyes were watching me.

  I thumped with my cane on the floor. At the rear of the shop a door opened and a bizarre figure emerged from the shadows.

  He was a singularly unattractive young fellow of about middle height, thick-set and muscular, with a truculent expression and an aggressive jaw. His hair was of a bright and forbidding red, his eyebrows drawn like a portcullis over small and bloodshot eyes. But his most distinguishing feature was the pair of white buck-teeth which protruded from his upper lip and gleamed with absolute savagery when he smiled. There hung about him an odd, perverse aroma, and he was clad in what seemed to be an archaic livery.

  “Can I help you, Sir?”

  The voice was low and silky, surprisingly beautiful. A voice well-used to putting the prospective customer at his ease.

  I decided straightway to use the brash approach.

  “I wish to see Mr. Murrell,” I said.

  The young man’s smile stayed fixed, but gleamed obscenely.

  “Mr. Murrell, Sir? You must have the wrong address.”

  “No, this is the right address. I refer to the old wise man of Wessex, ‘Cunning’ Murrell.”

  The smile had faded now, only the red eyes gleamed.

  “We have no Mr. Murrell here, Sir,” he said bleakly.

  “The Doctor, then,” I said impatiently. “Asclepius. The ‘Blameless Physician’.”

  The red eyes peered at me ferociously beneath the rufous brows, but his voice remained as smooth as silk tabby.

  “Asclepius sees nobody without an appointment, Sir. Is there anything that I can do for you?”

  “I doubt it. My business is with your master. Tell him I am come to settle a debt.”

  The young man’s fears were now thoroughly aroused. He examined me closely, computing to make up his mind concerning me. He almost sniffed at me, scenting trouble. At length he said:

  “I am empowered to settle accounts, Sir.”

  “It is not in your power to settle this account,” I said. “My business is with your master.”

  He hesitated. He was now appraising me quite frankly, measuring my physical strength against his own. He decided that I might prove too much for his weight.

  “My master is not here,” he said stubbornly.

  “Then I shall wait.”

  “He won’t be here until very late, if at all today.”

  “Then I shall make myself comfortable.” I settled myself upon a small gilt gesso chair, tipping it back against the low wooden counter.

  The red-eyed man observed me sourly for a moment. Then he turned on his heel and faded back into the shadows, the bright red hair doused like a candle in the general murk. I waited for the next pass. Once more, I felt the numerous eyes fixed upon me.

  The servant reappeared a moment later. His eyes held my own, his chin was thrust out pugnaciously. He had obviously received instructions. I tensed myself, expecting him to try to hustle me from the shop.

  But he said patiently: “If you will state your business, Sir, I’ll settle it for you.”

  “My business is with your master,” I repeated.

  “My master is not here,” he said, as stolidly.

  “Then I shall wait.”

  “He will not be here today.”

  I crossed my legs, balancing my back against the counter ca
refully.

  “Then tell me where I may find him,” I said.

  “My master never receives outside of here.”

  His small red eyes were on my sword, swinging negligently at my side. His foot was placed so that, should the opportunity arise, one quick flip of his leg would send my chair spinning. I eased myself out of the chair, yawning.

  It seemed final. If the old impostor refused to see me, I had no means at my disposal of forcing him to do so, short of tackling this brutish young servant physically. I had decided beforehand that the best way to deal with Murrell was to approach him directly and try to browbeat him into relinquishing the receipts. But I could see no purpose in forcing myself on him bodily, thus raising his defences immediately. The situation required some subtlety. Besides, for all I knew, there was a back way out of the premises, and it is impossible for one man to lay siege to a house with several exits. And, in the main, it might not be a bad thing to leave the Doctor sweating a little.

  I smiled at the young man affably enough.

  “I’ll call tomorrow,” I said. “At what time will the Doctor receive me?”

  The servant hesitated. He said truculently: “He’ll be busy tomorrow. Why can’t you state your business plainly, and be done?”

  “I’ll call tomorrow,” I said, trying to mix pleasantry and menace in my manner.

  His troubled eyes never left me until I myself had left the shop.

  I was convinced that the Doctor was still in the shop and so I decided to lay in wait for him.

  I quickly spied-out the area. First of all, I made sure that Murrell could not escape me by way of a rear exit. With businesses like Murrell’s, there has always to be a backdoor.

  The only rear access to the house seemed to be a narrow passage between the houses. I walked quickly down it and found myself in a broad court, surrounded by a high wall.

  Satisfied that the Doctor could only leave by one of two exits, I returned to the street, keeping well out of sight of the shop-window.

  Like Murrell, I had a trick or two of my own. I, too, possessed a glass, that if it could not see through a brick wall, at least it could look round corners. It was my own invention, a small, round mirror, smoked in order not to reflect the sun’s rays, and angled on a telescopic stick. A primitive device, yet with it I could stand out of sight of my suspects and still keep them under observation.

  I took my place behind a mews’ wall and focused my mirror on the shop.

  For two hours I remained stationed there and nothing of any importance happened at all. A few callers came to the “Anodyne Necklace”, but not a great press of people, by any means. They almost all entered self-consciously, if not furtively, and they all left carrying small parcels. The Doctor’s customers seemed to consist largely of middle-aged women and decrepit old men.

  But nobody came out who had not gone in and I began to feel that I was, perhaps, playing a wrong hand.

  Within the space of this two hours, the weather had changed dramatically. Warring thunder clouds came up out of the west, and by mid-afternoon the sky was as cold and lowering as a moorland bog.

  I thought of abandoning the siege.

  Then, at five o’clock, there was a sudden flurry of activity outside the shop. A sedan chair carried by two scrawny looking chairmen came to a stop before the door. The door opened, the red-haired man peeked out, looking left and right. His head disappeared, and a moment later a man and a woman came down the steps.

  They were an eccentric pair. The man was an old, dun-coloured man, as dry and precise as arithmetic, hollow-faced, scant of hair, long-nosed, short of chin, and possessed of a most uncivil leer. He climbed into the chair and the chairmen closed the door on him.

  The woman who followed him out was a most extraordinary creature. I had never seen her like. She was a strong-looking black woman, as ugly and misshapen as her master, wall-eyed and bandy-legged. It was impossible to tell her age, so marked was her face with the pox and the Evil. She walked with a curious sideways roll, for all the world like a sailor on shore-leave, but this may have been due to the way she was encumbered. On her head towered an enormous turban, topped with a package, which she held secure with one hand. She was saddled like a mule, with a harness of parcels, two small baskets like donkey panniers at her hips, and a bag slung from her shoulders.

  The men heaved the chair from the ground and set off at a steady pace, the black woman following like some fantastic pack-horse.

  I trailed behind at a discreet distance.

  They plunged into a maze of twisting streets and stinking alleys that led towards Cripplegate. The road was pitted with holes filled with last week’s rain-water, and everyday’s filth. The kennels were running with sweepings and dung.

  I walked along, keeping one eye on the chair and one eye out for the natural hazards of the street, and I held a scented sachet to my nostrils, for the stink grew appalling. I kept as close to the walls as I could, as a protection from any slops thrown from the windows, though this grew increasingly more difficult as we penetrated deeper into the slums, for even the walls themselves were plastered with excrescences.

  Stepping out from a particularly gruesome protuberance, I was almost bowled over by two horsemen who came careening around the corner. Stepping back into the safety of the wall, I was accosted by a huge young savage who stopped me from proceeding further. We almost came to blows over who would “take the wall”.

  In the end, I half-drew my sword and the hulking lad stepped aside with a mouthful of coarse abuse.

  By the time I reached the end of the street, the sedan chair had vanished into the thick air.

  VI

  I searched the surrounding streets rapidly, but without success. I felt vastly discouraged. They had vanished like water down a drain, though leaving less trace. I spent over an hour trying to track down the sedan chair, asking questions of a quantity of people.

  But people in this part of the world had little inclination to impart information, even for money. Indeed, people in this part of the world hardly seemed to be of the human race. Every creature I spoke to was as surly as a butcher’s dog.

  My temper was fairly kindled at my folly. All my walking about in the clammy heat had been totally unnecessary. I should have played the game with more finesse, smoothed my way into Murrell’s presence and only then turned upon him. I had made a tactical error in alerting him to his danger. I saw that now. There seemed nothing else for it but to give up for the day.

  Two horses dashed out of a side street, showering me with small stones and dry mud. I looked up angrily and then stood staring after them, gawping.

  Lord Wroth and d’Urfey sped down the street, endangering the lives of several unwary pedestrians.

  I turned my attention eagerly to the street from which they had so precipitously emerged. It proved to be a blind alley of even more sinister an appearance than the rest of the neighbourhood. The buildings to either side had derelict, windowless walls of blackened brick, so tall they cast a permanent shadow across the street.

  I walked to the end of the alley. The structure facing me was as featureless as the others. A wall, bare of doors or windows. The only gate was boarded up and had not been opened for months or even years.

  I stood there, feeling baffled. I was as sure as certain that the horses had turned out of this street and, indeed, my nose told me pungently that horses had used the area. Physical proof of it lay on the cobblestones. But it seemed impossible that Wroth and his comrade had been visiting in this street. Perhaps the house they had visited stood near by? Perhaps they had only stabled their horses here temporarily?

  I walked down the alley once more, and stood looking at the gate. It had a monstrously derelict air about it. I lowered my eyes to stare at the cobbles immediately before it. Stooping, I picked up between my thumb and forefinger a small amount of grey ash. Somebody, only moments before, had emptied the bowl of his pipe here. I then noticed faint silvery scratches on the cobbles. A horse – o
r two horses – had stood before this gate, their shoes striking restlessly upon the ground.

  Why had they been waiting by this particular gate? I looked at it again. It was about a foot and a half above my height. I reached up and grasping the rim of it raised myself to peer over it.

  I found myself looking into a narrow yard and at the back part of a tall and crooked house. It leaned perilously towards me, grim and menacing, its windows blank with dust. There appeared, at first, to be no entrance to the building, and then I saw that steps led down to a deep-cut area in which was set a narrow door.

  The yard was strewn with rubbish and thick with dirt. Even from my place above the gate I could see the faint trace of footsteps leading across it. They began about a yard away with a deep scuffed mark where a body had landed after jumping, and the returning footsteps stopped by a large box set immediately below the gate.

  Almost without stopping to think, I climbed over the gate. I dropped into the grey dust of the yard. There was a narrow, dismal passage at the side of the house which led into what appeared to be a tunnel. I entered it cautiously and was at once plunged into a sable gloom, lit only by the faint light forcing its way through the dingy fanlight of a door at its far end. Dust swirled in my nostrils, and I could feel them beginning to swell. It was a damp, dispiriting place, with a curiously threatening air to it. I walked slowly and carefully, half expecting to be ambushed at every step. With my sword drawn, I opened the door cautiously. It groaned like a soul in purgatory . . .