Beloved Poison (Jem Flockhart)

by E. S. Thomson

  Dr Bain and Dr Catchpole arrived at the apothecary at the same time, and were obliged to enter together. Dr Catchpole looked dejected, his eyes red rimmed, his gaze hostile and ill tempered. Dr Bain affected not to notice Dr Catchpole’s black looks. He winked at Will and me, ruffled Gabriel’s hair and made Old Mother Speedicut an elaborate bow. ‘Dear lady,’ he said. He turned to my father. ‘And how are you, Mr Flockhart? Dr Hawkins tells me you’re feeling the benefit of his treatment.’

  My father nodded. He was lying back on his cushions again. ‘You know of it?’

  Dr Bain glanced over at me. ‘I know . . . something of it,’ he said. I was about to object, to ask whether everyone but me was privy to my father’s health concerns, but Mrs Speedicut had fixed her gimlet eye upon me, so I said nothing.

  ‘Well now,’ said Dr Bain. ‘What’s all this about coffins?’

  ‘Coffins?’ said Dr Catchpole.

  ‘Clearly, Dr Catchpole, you are not quite as devoted to listening to the gossip of the hospital’s servants as Dr Bain,’ said my father.

  ‘I dare say you’re right, Mr Flockhart,’ said Dr Bain. ‘Oh!’ he added, turning to his colleague. ‘How is Mrs Catchpole? I heard she fainted yesterday while she was with the lady almoners. Feeling better, I hope?’

  ‘She has taken to her bed, sir. She is—’ Dr Catchpole breathed deeply. ‘She is not herself.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ murmured Dr Bain.

  ‘No doubt you are,’ snapped Dr Catchpole. ‘My wife is pregnant.’ He glared at Dr Bain. In his left hand he held a pair of dogskin gloves, so that for a moment I thought he was going to slap Dr Bain across the face with them, or at least throw one to the ground and demand satisfaction.

  Dr Bain looked at Dr Catchpole warily. Then, when nothing more seemed to be forthcoming, he leaped forward to seize the doctor’s hand. ‘Congratulations, my dear fellow.’

  Dr Catchpole snatched his fingers away.

  Dr Bain pretended not to notice. ‘So, Jem,’ he said, rather too brightly. ‘Where are they then? These coffins young Master Locke has been telling me about?’ Did his cheek turn pale as he spoke? Was his smile forced? I saw his eyes flit nervously across the bottles and jars set out on the table top, as if searching for something he did not want to find. At the time I made nothing of it.

  ‘I see no coffins, Dr Bain,’ said Dr Catchpole. ‘If you want coffins I suggest you try the undertaker, rather than the apothecary.’

  ‘It’s the Devil’s work,’ cried Mrs Speedicut.

  ‘How do you know what it is?’ I said. ‘You’ve not even seen them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Gabriel. He rubbed his ear. ‘I told her about them, and she boxed my ear. Boxed my ear, for nuffink!’

  ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ I added, wishing now that I had not given the woman some coffee. She was taking an inordinate length of time to drink the stuff. ‘Don’t you have work to do?’

  ‘I’m here for ars’nic,’ said Mrs Speedicut. She looked at my father. He had closed his eyes, so she leaned forward and jabbed his shoulder with the stem of her pipe. ‘There’s rats again, Mr Flock’art. Rats!’

  ‘There are always rats,’ I said.

  ‘Got any ars’nic?’ repeated Mrs Speedicut.

  ‘Of course I have arsenic,’ I said. ‘This is an apothecary. We have no want of poisons here.’

  ‘You should try some yerself, Mrs Greedigut,’ said Gabriel. ‘Just to make sure it works.’

  Mrs Speedicut rose from her chair, her cheeks quivering with fury. ‘You young tyke!’ She flung her pipe at Gabriel’s head, but he had already scuttled up the wall-ladder. Quick as a monkey, he mounted the half-empty top shelf and crawled along it.

  Mrs Speedicut seized the broom and jabbed the end of it towards his retreating arse. ‘You come back!’ she shouted, her cheeks trembling with fury. ‘Come back this instant!’ She began mounting the ladder, her great bulk swaying from side to side, her chubby, mottled ankles exposed for all to see. The rungs groaned beneath her as she tried to swat Gabriel off the shelf with the broom-head. A jar of sulphur crashed to the ground.

  ‘Mrs Speedicut, I shall discipline the boy,’ I said.

  ‘Dr Bain,’ whined Gabriel as the broom swooshed past his ear. ‘Get her off me!’ But Dr Bain merely grinned and folded his arms.

  ‘Ha!’ screamed Mrs Speedicut, still clinging to the ladder. ‘Your beloved Dr Bain, he don’t care about you! He don’t care about anyone or anything except himself. He’s no different from any man – selfish to the bone. He shags his wick – yes, my lad, don’t you turn away from me with your blushes. I knows you’ve seen him yerself. Not that he cares who knows, or who sees, or what the consequences might be. Well you’re a consequence and he don’t care a fig about you neither. Nor about your mother.’

  The room fell silent. Exhausted, Mrs Speedicut slid to the floor. Her face was crimson, her lips moist and quivering, as though her words had coated them with bile. It was true that Dr Bain paid Gabriel’s apothecary fees. Dr Bain said it was merely an act of philanthropy for the benefit of a poor orphan boy, but we all knew better. After all, did the lad not look exactly like Dr Bain? As for Gabriel’s mother, I would never forget the day, some fourteen years earlier, when she had handed me a bundle containing the infant Gabriel, and vanished into the infirmary’s chapel.

  What had happened next I could no longer recall in detail, though I know that some moments later I had been distracted by a sound high above. I looked up to see the woman emerging from the topmost arch of the bell tower. She did not hesitate, did not cry out or cling to the stonework in fear. Instead, she ducked her head beneath the arch, and stepped forward, black skirts flapping crazily as she plummeted into the courtyard below.

  Dr Graves had been the first to appear, brought to the window of the out-patients’ dispensary by the terrible sound of the girl’s body striking the courtyard. In his eagerness to get to the corpse he clambered out of the window, and within moments was upon her, swathing her limp and bloody remains in a bed sheet he had brought with him for the purpose and carrying her off in the direction of the dissecting room.

  A cursory attempt was made to find the girl’s origins, but no likely answer was found. Pointing to the poor state of her clothing, Dr Graves observed (rather conveniently, I thought) that she clearly came of low birth (and therefore was hardly worth the trouble she was causing everyone). As she had chosen to end her life in the hospital grounds, he said, it was only right that her remains should be devoted to the advancement of medicine.

  Dr Bain came into the hospital later that day to find the girl’s brain bobbing in a jar of preserving fluid. Her body had been eviscerated, her organs bottled and labelled for the museum. Her face, which had remained untouched by the ordeal, had been photographed and a plaster cast taken of its features. Dr Graves’s microscope had winked its knowing eye at me as I gathered up the empty carboys of formaldehyde from his work bench.

  ‘Better than burial at a crossroads, with a stake through the heart, what?’ Dr Graves laughed as he packed away his knives.

  Dr Bain had said nothing. He stared at the dead girl’s unpacked body, and at the cast of her face, for a long time. Then he bent to remove a stain from his boot with his handkerchief.

  I never told Gabriel that I had witnessed his mother’s leap from St Saviour’s bell tower. I did not tell him that every day his feet passed over the flags where her body had lain, or that if he stood on his tip toes and peered behind the bottles laid out in the anatomy museum he might see her brain floating, like a sponge in a jar of dirty bathwater. No one had ever told him anything. Until now.

  ‘Mrs Speedicut, please—’ Dr Bain stepped forward, his face white.

  But Mrs Speedicut had not finished. ‘D’you know what happened next?’ she cried. ‘Once she were dead, he cut her up for all those young medical men to look at. She were your mother, an’ he did that to her!’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Gabriel. His face was ashen.
‘Dr Bain wouldn’t do that—’

  ‘It was Dr Graves who performed that post mortem,’ said Dr Bain in a low voice. ‘As you are well aware.’

  ‘Yah!’ cried Gabriel. He pulled off his shoe and flung it at Mrs Speedicut. She ducked, and it clipped Dr Catchpole on the ear.

  ‘Confound it,’ cried Dr Catchpole. ‘Mr Flockhart, this apothecary is no better than a bear pit. And in front of strangers too.’ He glanced at Will who was standing beside the condenser, a beaker of cough syrup in his hands. He was wearing one of Gabriel’s aprons, his ridiculous hat was crooked on his head and his expression was so startled that I could not help but laugh. The sound only enraged Dr Catchpole further. ‘The governors shall hear of it.’

  ‘Get off!’ shouted Gabriel as Mrs Speedicut plunged forward to jab at his backside once more.

  ‘Can’t you control that boy, Mr Flockhart?’

  ‘Can’t you control your wife, Dr Catchpole?’ said Gabriel.

  Dr Bain gave a bark of laughter.

  ‘Master Locke, come down this instant,’ I cried, as the place erupted once more. ‘Mrs Speedicut, step back, if you please. And put that broom down, woman!’

  ‘This is intolerable!’ shouted Dr Catchpole above the din. ‘Mrs Speedicut, I am surprised at you – such vulgarity has no place here! And you, master apprentice!’ His voice trembled with fury. ‘I cannot even begin to think what Mr Flockhart means by allowing you to speak so to a physician. And to assault me!’

  ‘Come, Dr Catchpole,’ said Dr Bain. ‘Can’t you see Mr Flockhart is not at his best today?’ We all looked at my father, who was sitting back in his chair, his eyes closed, while the hurly-burly went on around him. The noise abated. ‘It was a moment’s hot-headedness, that’s all. I dare say Mrs Speedicut was provoked, though her exposition was certainly unwarranted. But the lad is young, he didn’t mean to harm anyone—’

  But Dr Catchpole had not finished. ‘As for you, sir,’ his fingers flexed about the silver knob at the head of his walking stick. ‘You are an insult to this hospital.’

  ‘I?’ Dr Bain blinked. ‘But I have only just come in!’ He attempted a smile, his teeth white between his dark curly side-whiskers. He looked at Dr Catchpole – old Dr Catchpole, absurd in his theatrical cape and frothing white regency neckerchief – and his contempt was plain. ‘My dear fellow—’

  ‘Don’t you patronise me!’ cried Dr Catchpole. ‘I am not your “dear fellow”. I am forced by professional etiquette to tolerate you. You and your . . . your . . . behaviour.’ Suddenly Dr Catchpole raised his arm and struck out at Dr Bain with the knob of his stick.

  Dr Bain staggered backwards, reeling against the shelves. He stared at Dr Catchpole in surprise, blood pouring down his face and seeping into his emerald waistcoat in an ugly dark stain. He sank to his knees.

  At that moment the door opened and Dr Magorian strode in, his wife at his side. Dr Catchpole made a choking sound. He pushed past Dr Magorian and vanished into the fog.

  ‘There he is!’ Mrs Magorian pointed at Dr Bain. ‘The defiler!’

  ‘What?’ Dr Bain staggered to his feet. The handkerchief he was now holding to his brow was almost as bloodstained as his waistcoat. He put out a hand to steady himself and brought a jar of powdered senna pod crashing to the ground.

  ‘You and my daughter,’ said Dr Magorian. ‘Last night.’

  Dr Bain shook his head, a look of pain and confusion on his face. ‘Dr Magorian, I—’

  ‘Don’t trouble to deny it. I have witnesses. My dear wife for one. Mr Jem Flockhart for another.’

  ‘I admit that I saw someone in the courtyard last night,’ I said. ‘But it was too dark to see precisely who it was.’ I might still be angry with Dr Bain, but I would not hand him over to his enemies.

  ‘Dr Catchpole appears to have meted out just punishment already,’ said Dr Magorian. He loomed over the bloodstained Dr Bain, swinging his stick in his hand. ‘Which saves me the trouble.’

  ‘Sir, I—’

  ‘You have despoiled her!’ cried Dr Magorian.

  ‘I’ve not touched her!’

  Mrs Magorian wrung her hands together, and shook her head. ‘“Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart”,’ she whispered. ‘Matthew, chapter five, verse twenty-eight. Oh!’ She dabbed at her lips, as if overcome by nausea.

  ‘Quite so, my dear,’ said Dr Magorian. She looked up at him and nodded, as if giving her consent, before turning her head away. Dr Magorian took hold of one of Dr Bain’s lapels and leaned forward. ‘I don’t need the Bible to tell me what sort of a man you are. You may do as you please with other men’s wives and daughters, but you will not do as you please with mine.’ He pressed the head of his cane hard into Dr Bain’s crotch. ‘I think you understand me.’

  ‘Well, Jem, I deserved that, didn’t I? Who’d have thought old Catchpole had it in him.’

  ‘Why must you be so provoking?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dr Bain winced as I dabbed at his head with a cotton pad soaked in witch hazel. ‘Thank God they’ve all gone.’

  After the excitement and violence of the morning, I too was glad to have some quietness. Dr and Mrs Magorian had swept out into the fog. Mrs Speedicut had gone off to the laundry room; Gabriel had gone to the cook house. My father had asked to be helped upstairs to his room ‘to get some peace from this infernal madhouse’. Only Will remained, poring over his plan of St Saviour’s while he waited for the kettle to boil. After his morning in the apothecary I wondered whether the excavations of the churchyard had taken on a more appealing aspect. At least the incumbents did not fight amongst themselves.

  ‘And now you’ve got Miss Magorian in trouble,’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ Dr Bain sighed. ‘And I’m sorry for that. But it was her idea that we meet. She said she had something she wanted to speak to me about. But then when she came she didn’t say anything much. She seemed rather nervous, in fact.’ He grinned. ‘D’you think she’s in love with me?’

  I exchanged the witch hazel for a wad of gauze soaked in alcohol and pressed it to the wound above Dr Bain’s eye. ‘Ow!’

  ‘Serves you right. But it’s a shallow cut. It could have been much worse.’ What game was Eliza playing? I resolved to find out, one way or another. ‘It’s just as well that her father blames you for the meeting.’ I wrapped a bandage about his head to hold the gauze in place. ‘Now, take a look at these, if that’s what you came for, and then go home. We’ve seen more than enough of you for one day.’

  Before him, on the table top, I placed the six small coffins. Dr Bain looked at them in silence. He did not move, he did not touch them. ‘Where did you find them?’ he said at last.

  ‘In the old chapel.’ All at once his face appeared paler than ever, the blood draining from his lips. I started forward. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’

  ‘What? No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s just . . . just my head.’ He unwrapped one of the bundles and stared, appalled, at the rags, and the hideous blotch-eyed doll within.

  ‘It’s blood,’ said Will. ‘Each one of them is soaked in blood. Or at least, the bindings are.’

  Dr Bain seemed not to be listening. ‘Look, Jem,’ he said suddenly. ‘Would you mind if I took these away with me? Just for a day or so.’

  Will and I exchanged a glance. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’ What else could I say? I could hardly refuse. After all, it didn’t matter who had the coffins, not really. And yet why did I feel that they should remain here? Why did I feel as though it was up to me – up to Will and me – to find out where they came from and who had hidden them away? I thought of the six crudely shaped dolls, their six ragged screaming mouths and six pairs of black misshapen eyes. They had seen something. They knew something. It was something monstrous, I was certain. And they would yield their secret – if we asked the right questions.

  ‘Why not come for supper tonight?’ said Dr Bain. ‘You and Mr Quartermain? Perhaps we might examine these p
eculiar little relics together. The light is better in my study. Besides, I have something else I need your help with. You’ll understand when you come. But I’ll take them now, if I may.’

  Without waiting for my answer, Dr Bain took a sack from beneath the apothecary table and loaded the coffins inside. Suddenly he seemed anxious to be gone. He glanced at the window, as though distracted by a movement, but there was nothing to be seen but brown fog, as thick and dense as the flank of a giant beast. ‘Pity about that fog,’ he muttered. ‘Can’t see a damn thing. Still, can’t be helped.’ He adopted a brisk tone that was at odds with his obvious feelings of unease. ‘Come over directly after your rounds, Jem. Earlier if possible. You too, Quartermain. We shall uncover the secrets in these boxes before the night is out.’

  Chapter Four

  By the time my evening rounds were over the fog was so thick that we could barely see to the ends of our noses. We had a lantern each, but it made little difference. Once we were outside on St Saviour’s Street it was as though we were walking along the bottom of the Thames. I could feel the squelch of ordure beneath my feet and the rustle of refuse though I could not see where to step that I might avoid it. We had covered our mouths and noses with scarves, but still the fog tickled our throats and coated our tongues with the taste of sulphur and effluent. Beside me, I heard Will retch and cough. I was glad that Dr Bain’s house was so close to the infirmary, as it was not a night to be out.

  It was peculiar for a gentleman to open his own front door, and I could see Will’s surprise, but Dr Bain was not a slave to etiquette. When he wished to have an evening of experimentation he would send the servants out for the night. It was easier than having to explain the smells and noises, and servants, once acquired, were hard to keep even in the most respectable households. Supper would no doubt be some cold meats and cheese, set aside by the housekeeper before she went out, though Dr Bain may well have forgotten about supper altogether, and we would end up going to Sorley’s chop house.