Inspector of the Dead (19 page)

“Right. They’re trying to distract us from the war,” a telegraph executive emphasized.

“The Russians want to make us afraid to go anywhere,” a commodities distributor complained, finishing his glass. “We’ll soon be bowing to the tsar.”

“If we’re not murdered in our beds before then. Nobody’s safe.”

“Bring another glass of beer,” the stockbroker called to Thaddeus Mitchell. “I can’t believe how thirsty I am.”

Thaddeus smiled at the exceptionally active Monday business. “Coming up!”

Someone else commented that the beer made
him
feel thirsty also. The man—a cotton importer—took another swallow, set down his glass, leaned sideways, and toppled off his chair, striking his head on the floor.

Three tables away, a property developer finished his Cream of the Valley, put a contract into his pocket, stood to return to his office, and crashed across the table.

Someone shouted.

Another man collapsed.

Thaddeus Mitchell’s smile dissolved into an expression of horror as the banker’s clerk hurled a glass into his companion’s face.

The telegraph executive removed a knife from a pork pie and drove it into a passing waiter’s neck.

Then the violence truly began.

T
he sign
CONSOLIDATED ENGLISH RAILWAY COMPANY
was remarkably subdued for one of the richest privately owned enterprises in England. Even its address was inauspicious, located on Water Lane, off Lower Thames Street, away from the grandeur of the business district’s famous landmarks, such as the palatial East India Company headquarters and the Bank of England colossus.

In one of his many shrewd business moves, Trask’s father had used intermediaries to purchase all of one side of Water Lane, with no seller realizing Trask senior’s plan and raising the price accordingly. He had broken through walls and added new corridors that unified the interiors of the row of anonymous buildings. He’d reduced the numerous entrances to three, one at each end of the block and one in the middle.

After creating the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, Trask senior had built numerous other lines, crisscrossing the country with noise, smoke, and cinders. Other businessmen understood the immense profits that could be made and built their own railways. In 1846 alone, 260 companies applied to Parliament for the right to build railways. But many of those companies weren’t able to survive, and Trask’s father purchased them at bargain prices, again using intermediary companies so that few realized the immense empire he was creating. By 1850 there were six thousand miles of railways in England, and Trask’s father owned more than half. Telegraph lines ran next to railway tracks, and soon Trask’s father built a second empire. But railways couldn’t traverse oceans, and so Trask’s father expanded his interests into steamship lines.

All this from selling stock in worthless African gold mines,
Sir Walter thought. As he raged through the central entrance, he remembered his uncle telling him that Trask and his opportunistic father were examples of the new wealth that threatened to sweep away class distinctions. “Make no mistake—commoners with money will ruin this country. Soon it’ll get to the point that we need to ask permission to hunt foxes on land we used to own.”

“Your business, please?” a porter at the front desk asked.

“I want to see Trask.”

The porter raised his eyebrows at the omission of “sir” or “colonel” or even “mister.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Just tell him Sir Walter Cumberland wants to have words with him.”

“I’m sorry, but if you’re not on this list…”

Sir Walter felt his face turn red. “Tell him that if he doesn’t see me, he’ll definitely receive that invitation to settle our differences at Englefield Green.”

The porter considered Sir Walter, frowned, and wrote something on a piece of paper. He handed it to a clerk. “Take this to Sir Anthony.”

“I’ll go with you,” Sir Walter said, angered at the reference to Trask as “Sir.”

“I can’t allow you to do that.” The porter stepped in front of him.

“Perhaps
you’d
like to meet me at Englefield Green also.”

“What’s going on here?”
a voice demanded.

Sir Walter turned toward Trask, who stood halfway down a staircase, glaring at him.

“This gentleman insists on—” the porter began.

“Yes, I heard him insisting all the way up in my office,” Trask said.

“I don’t know how you threatened Catherine’s father, but I won’t let you get away with it!” Sir Walter told him.

“Lower your voice.”

“Maybe you
did
buy Catherine from her father. I wouldn’t put anything past you. How much did she cost?” Sir Walter made a threatening motion with his walking stick. “When I learn what you used to pressure him, I’ll—”

By then, Trask had descended the stairs. With his uninjured left arm, he grabbed Sir Walter’s walking stick, yanked it from his hands, and hurled it away. Then he struck Sir Walter so hard in the face that Sir Walter stumbled from the building and landed in the slush-filled gutter.

Trask emerged from the building and took a sideways position so that the sling on his injured right arm was protected.

“I accept your invitation to Englefield Green.”

When Sir Walter tried to stand, Trask struck him again, using his left fist to knock him back into the slush.

“Unless you’d like to settle the matter right now,” Trask said.

Before Sir Walter could express the fury that his bloodied face communicated, shouts filled the end of Water Lane.

“Help!” a man screamed.

Someone with a knife was chasing him.

Other shouts filled the neighborhood. “Over at the Wheel of Fortune! They’ve all gone mad!”

Around the corner, a pistol sounded.

The man with the knife gained distance on his prey.

Trask stepped toward the attacker, tripped him as he went past, and stomped a boot down hard on the hand that held the knife, breaking fingers, forcing the man to release the knife. Trask then placed a boot on the back of the man’s neck, applying his full weight.

“Stay down!” Trask warned.

The man squirmed and wailed like an animal.

“What the blazes is wrong with you?” Trask demanded.

The porter rushed forward to help, pinning the man to the cobblestone lane.

“The Wheel of Fortune!” someone shouted. “Hurry!”

Trask spun toward Sir Walter, who remained in the gutter, holding his bleeding mouth, astonished by what he’d just seen.

“For a change, make yourself useful,” Trask told him. “Help my porter subdue this man.”

Around the corner, the shouting persisted.

Cradling his right arm in its sling, Trask ran toward the commotion. As he turned left onto Lower Thames Street, he saw a man in the slush, moaning from a wound to his stomach.

Several men wrestled with someone who held a pistol.

Trask kicked the assailant’s left knee. As the man screamed, Trask kicked his other knee, dropping him to the cobblestones. He prepared to kick the side of the man’s head, but seeing that the captors now had the advantage, Trask hurried toward more intense shouting.

People scuffled in front of the Wheel of Fortune tavern. An actual wheel hung above the front door—not the fortune wheel depicted on tarot cards, with someone falling from the wheel’s downward motion while someone else clung to the upward side. No, this was a wheel from a gambler’s game of chance. From beneath it, a stool crashed through the front window, spraying glass over the crowd.

Constables struggled to subdue the fighting. Some were forced to use their truncheons when people in the mob attacked them.

A man stumbled through the chaos.

Trask recognized him as Thaddeus Mitchell, the tavern’s owner. Blood dripped from his forehead, staining his white apron.

“Good God, what happened?” the colonel asked.

“Customers dropped over.”

“What?”

“Others began screaming. Some had knives or pistols because of the murders. They pulled them out and—”

Around them, the screams persisted.

“Somebody even used blood to write on the counter.”

“Wrote something in blood?” Trask tugged the owner toward the entrance, demanding, “What are you talking about? Show me.”

R
yan and Becker
hurried from a cab, avoiding shards from a broken window that protruded from the slush. Someone sagged against a wall, his head down, moaning. Somebody else was carried from the tavern.

A tall man with a military bearing approached them. Until now, Ryan had seen him only in uniform and might have taken longer to recognize him, if not for the sling on his right arm.

“Colonel Trask, thanks for sending your message.”

“My offices aren’t far from here—on Water Lane. When I heard the commotion, I came to learn what caused it. I quickly realized that you needed to be told.”

A police sergeant finished questioning members of the crowd and walked toward them. The insignia on his brass buckle made clear that he belonged to the business district’s police force, separate from the Metropolitan Police to which Ryan and Becker belonged.

“You understand that you’re guests,” the sergeant said.

“We’re here to help, not try to take over,” Ryan told him.

“Well, if you can make sense of this, you’re welcome.”

The sergeant led them inside.

The shadows of the Wheel of Fortune were pierced by daylight through the shattered windows. The place had a stale odor of beer and gin.

Ryan and Becker surveyed the damage. Tables had been broken, chairs destroyed, bottles, glasses, and a mirror smashed. Blood colored the sand on the floor. Two policemen helped a groaning victim limp away.

In a corner, a man with an injured forehead stared at the scene, his hands pressed to the sides of his face in shock.

“That’s the owner—Thaddeus Mitchell,” the sergeant said. “He admits to hiring a drink doctor to dilute his beer and gin so they last longer.”

“And the man he hired added more than the usual chemicals,” Ryan concluded. “Something so powerful that people who drank it either passed out or suffered visions of monsters trying to attack them.”

“How this happened I can understand,” the sergeant said. “But the why of it doesn’t come to me. What would possess someone to do this?”

“To keep people from feeling safe in places like this, where they normally feel relaxed,” Becker answered. “The same as they no longer feel safe in churches or parks—or even in their homes.”

Colonel Trask pointed toward the counter. “What I mentioned in my note is over there.”

They spread out, studying what stretched before them. Someone had stuck his fingers in blood from one of the wounded and used it to write a name along the counter.

Ryan turned again toward the owner. “Mr. Mitchell, when did the drink doctor come here?”

Not accustomed to being addressed with a term of respect, the dazed man lowered his hands from his cheeks. He worked to focus his thoughts. “Last night. A little after midnight.”

“Excuse us for a moment,” Ryan told the owner.

He motioned for Becker, Colonel Trask, and the constable to step a distance away.

Keeping his voice low so that the owner couldn’t hear, he asked Becker, “Do you understand?”

“A little after midnight. That’s the same time Commissioner Mayne and his family were attacked,” Becker answered.

“The commissioner and his family were attacked?” the colonel asked in alarm.

“At their house in Chester Square.”

“But Chester Square is at least three miles from here. After yesterday’s snowfall, it would have taken an hour to travel that distance,” Colonel Trask said.

“Exactly. The man who attacked the commissioner and his family couldn’t have been in this tavern at the same time. More than one person was involved. The same as with the murders yesterday.”

Ryan gave Becker a warning look, hoping that he wouldn’t say what both of them were obviously thinking. Young England was very real.

He turned toward Thaddeus Mitchell, who straightened after having leaned forward in an effort to hear what the group was saying.

Ryan pointed toward the words written in blood on the counter. “Mr. Mitchell, did you see who did this?”

“Yes. But what I saw is as crazy as everything else that happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“Notice how thin the finger marks are. A beggar boy wrote that name.”

“A beggar boy?”

“Before everything happened, the boy came in here, saying he needed to find his father. He looked around, but he didn’t find his father. He told me that his father had said he’d be coming here. His mother was sick, and the boy needed to make his father go home to take care of her. Would I let him stay out of the way in a corner until his father showed up? Well, the pitiful way he asked, I figured it would be all right as long as the father didn’t take too long. So the boy stayed over there.”

Thaddeus Mitchell pointed toward a corner near the counter.

“When people started falling down and screaming and attacking each other, the boy suddenly leapt onto the counter, rubbed his hand in blood on it, and wrote
that
.”

Becker leaned over the counter, reading the name in the blood. “John William Bean Junior.”

“Whoever
he
is,” the owner grumbled. “I know all my customers, but I never heard of
him.
”

“I have,” Colonel Trask said. “That’s why I sent my note.”

Ryan nodded. “Six years ago, John William Bean Junior tried to shoot the queen.”

“G
ood day, My Lord,”
De Quincey said.

Lord Palmerston frowned as he descended the staircase toward his front door.

“Why are you and your daughter waiting? No need to thank me for allowing you to continue staying here. I simply feared that your obvious poverty might have embarrassed the queen into offering a room. Now if you’ll excuse me, my impending duties as prime minister…Wait. Have I possibly misinterpreted? Can it be that you decided to travel back to Edinburgh after all, and that you’re finally saying good-bye?”

“My Lord, I am here to do you a service.”

“Then you
are
finally leaving,” Lord Palmerston said with delight.

“In a manner of speaking. We wish to take a short journey to the place where you frequently threaten to send me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“But to go there, I need a note of permission from you—and cab fare.”

“To go
where?
For heaven’s sake, stop confusing me.”

“My Lord, I wish to go to the madhouse.”

B
ethlem Royal Hospital
dated back to 1247, when it was originally a house for the poor. Its name—an abbreviation of Bethlehem—was often mispronounced as Bedlam, a word that people associated with deranged behavior after the hospital became Britain’s first institution devoted to the insane. In 1815, Bedlam acquired a new facility below the Thames, at St. George’s Fields in Southwark. “Fields” was an accurate description, for to offset the building’s gloom, a park stretched before it. Bleeding and purgatives were standard treatments, voiding the foul humors that were believed to cause insanity. Neighbors often complained about “the cryings, screechings, roarings, brawlings, shaking of chains, and swearings” that came from the building.

Bedlam’s entrance was south of Westminster Bridge, near the intersection of Lambeth and Vauxhall Roads. Leaning from a cab as it entered the grounds, De Quincey ignored the slush-covered lawn and focused on the large building that he and Emily approached.

“It resembles Buckingham Palace,” he commented.

“I’m glad that I’m the only one who heard you say that,” Emily told him.

“But it does,” De Quincey insisted as the cab drew closer. “It’s nearly as tall and wide as the palace.”

He raised his laudanum bottle to his lips.

“Give that to me,” Emily instructed. “If a supervisor sees you drinking from it, he’ll take it from you, fearing that you might offer it to a patient.”

De Quincey reluctantly handed it to his daughter while he continued to stare out the window toward the imposing structure.

“Finally Lord Palmerston gets his wish. Perhaps the madhouse is indeed where I belong.”

The cab reached the end of a treed lane. The leafless branches were as dreary as the soot that darkened the slush.

Emily descended from the cab and paid the driver with coins that Lord Palmerston had grudgingly given her. Then she and De Quincey studied the steps that led up to the stone building’s ominous entrance.

“After Edward Oxford shot at the queen in 1840, rumors spread that his incarceration in Bedlam was not a punishment,” De Quincey said. “Some newspapers claimed that he enjoyed excellent food and wine. Some even maintained that tutors instructed him in German and French. John Francis, the next man who shot at Her Majesty, hoped that his arrest would put him here also, relieving him of debt.”

“Surely anyone who actually saw this gloomy place would understand the truth,” Emily said. “The third man who tried to shoot Her Majesty—did
he
wish to come here also?”

“John William Bean Junior? His seventeen years were filled with biblical affliction. He was a hunchbacked dwarf, and all he wanted was to die.”

“A hunchbacked dwarf?”

“His arms were spindles. His back was so crooked that he needed to walk with his head down, his face peering at the gutter. He couldn’t earn a living. His brothers mocked him, prompting him to run from home and sleep in fields. One week, he somehow survived on only eight pennies that he gained from begging. In desperation, he managed to obtain an old pistol and gunpowder, but he couldn’t afford bullets, so he crammed clay pieces of a tobacco pipe into the barrel. Only seven weeks after John Francis shot at the queen, he waited for the queen’s carriage to pass him on Constitution Hill. Then he stepped forward and pulled the trigger.”

“Good heavens,” Emily said. “Was the queen injured?”

“Thankfully, no. Like so many things that went wrong in Bean’s life, the powder failed to ignite. He fled, but not before witnesses saw what he’d attempted to do. In a grotesque spectacle, the police searched all of London for hunchbacked dwarves, arresting dozens before they finally located him.”

Emily shook her head as if the idea of the police arresting dozens of hunchbacked dwarves proved that the world was indeed going mad.

“Lacking the courage to end his suffering by killing himself, he hoped that the government would end his life for him, hanging him or at least putting him in Bedlam, where he wouldn’t need to worry about his next meal,” De Quincey said.

“Did he get his wish?”

“No. Bean was sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor in prison.”

“Hard labor? A hunchbacked dwarf?”

“The government wished to make people understand that there were severe consequences for attempting to shoot the queen. After Bean was released, his health declined until he attempted what he hadn’t been brave enough to try earlier—to put an end to his wretched life.”

“How?”

De Quincey shrugged. “It’s of no matter.”

“Father, the evasive look in your eyes makes me insist that you tell me how he tried to kill himself.”

“With laudanum.” De Quincey stared at the columns of the forbidding entrance. “We’ve postponed this long enough.”

B
edlam had an
administration area at the core of the building. Galleries stretched to the left and the right, extending for a considerable distance. Windows admitted sunlight, revealing numerous people along each gallery who were waiting to see patients.

Emily approached a man behind a desk. He had spectacles perched on the tip of his nose and peered over them toward the trousers that showed beneath her bloomer skirt.

“May I help you?” he asked doubtfully.

“My father and I have a note from Lord Palmerston.”

The name had its usual effect. Sitting straighter, the clerk hurriedly reached for the note. After reading it, he told them, “You’ll need to see Dr. Arbuthnot about this. Wait here.”

He quickly crossed the entrance hall, knocked on a door, and entered.

To the left, in a distant region of the hospital, a woman wailed. Visitors stopped talking and frowned in the direction of the wails, their echo becoming shriller. Even after the anguished outburst stopped, everyone remained motionless.

The spectacled clerk returned. “Dr. Arbuthnot will see you.”

He led them into a cramped office, where an elderly man stood to greet them. His scalp was as hairless as the half-dozen skulls on a shelf next to his desk. A large diagram of the human brain hung on a wall, its sections neatly labeled.

Emily noted that there were books with titles such as
On the Functions of the Cerebellum
and
A System of Phrenology.
She introduced herself and her father.

“De Quincey. The name sounds familiar,” Dr. Arbuthnot said.

“I can’t imagine why.” Emily gave a warning look to her father, who turned his attention to the skulls on the shelf.

“The note giving you permission to speak to Edward Oxford is extremely unusual,” Dr. Arbuthnot said. “The government has been very restrictive about who can see him. His mother was allowed to visit him only once a month, and only through a barred opening in a door, with her son sitting several feet away. Often she complained that she couldn’t hear what he said. Apart from her, no one from outside has been authorized to see Edward Oxford since he was admitted in eighteen forty.”

“No one in fifteen years? Not friends or newspaper reporters?” Emily asked.

“Especially not newspaper reporters.”

“And the same conditions apply when we see him? A barred opening in a door? He must sit several feet away from us?”

“Those are my instructions. Mr. De Quincey, your face glistens with perspiration. Do you feel ill?”

He did indeed look ill, his features drawn, his face resembling moisture-beaded, aged ivory. As in their coach ride to the queen’s dinner, Emily had the unnerving sense that her father was in a half state between living and dying.

“I need my medication,” he said.

“Perhaps our pharmacy can supply it for you.”

“My father already has ample medication,” Emily informed the doctor.

De Quincey’s feet moved restlessly as he studied the numerous books on the shelves. “Dr. Arbuthnot, do you consider Edward Oxford to be a lunatic?”

“He has an indentation on the side of his forehead that indicates diminished capacity.”

“So you believe in phrenology, as some of the titles on your shelves indicate,” De Quincey said.

“It’s the only way to make a science of studying the mind. Since we can’t expose a living brain and examine it without injuring and perhaps killing the patient, the alternative is to measure the outside of a skull and then infer which portions of the brain are under- or overdeveloped, the negative and positive pressures causing the skull to assume its shape.”

Dr. Arbuthnot took a skull from a shelf and pointed toward a protuberance at the back. “This is the result of an overdeveloped cerebellum, the source of uncontrolled emotions. On each of these other skulls, I can show depressions or protrusions that indicate similar abnormalities within a brain.”

“But surely the mind is more than the shape of a skull,” Emily proposed. “How do you account for ideas?”

“They’re galvanic processes. One day we’ll be able to measure them.”

“Are you referring to electricity?”

“England’s own Michael Faraday pioneered theories about electrolysis,” Dr. Arbuthnot replied. “The brain functions because of it. When parts of the brain are under- or overdeveloped, the flow of electricity becomes uneven, causing unusual and sometimes dangerous behavior.”

“Fascinating,” Emily said.

Dr. Arbuthnot looked pleased, distracted by Emily’s blue eyes.

“How do you use these theories to treat your patients?” she asked.

“Because it’s impossible to cure a physical defect in the brain, all we can do is try to keep our patients subdued. Sometimes restraints are the only method, but the current thinking is that hydrotherapy is effective.”

“Soothing baths,” Emily said.

“Essentially. A hot bath can be a useful relaxant. Sometimes the shock of a cold bath is required in order for a subsequent hot bath to do its work.”

“And will this treatment produce a cure?” Emily asked.

Dr. Arbuthnot looked startled. “There is no such thing as a cure for mental illness. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to perform surgery to correct a physical defect in the brain. Until that time, mental affliction is a lifelong curse.”

“But don’t you think that talking to patients might help them?”

“Talking to them? What possible use could
that
be?”

“My father has a theory about dreams.”

Dr. Arbuthnot shook his head in confusion. “Dreams? I miss your point.”

De Quincey used a handkerchief to wipe sweat from his brow.

“Are you certain that you’re not ill?” the doctor asked.

De Quincey chewed a pill that he removed from a snuffbox. “There’s a mountain in northern Germany called the Brocken.”

The doctor looked more baffled. “I have not been to Germany.”

“The peak has interesting rock formations, huge blocks of granite with names such as the Sorcerer’s Chair. A spring is called the Magic Fountain.”

“This sounds like a children’s story.”

“I assure you it’s an actual place,” De Quincey said. “On a June morning, if you hiked to the top and gazed across the valley toward a neighboring peak, you would see the monstrous Specter of the Brocken.”

“Yes, a children’s story. I’ll take you to Edward Oxford.”

“The specter’s threatening gyrations in the mountain mist have caused many a heart to beat faster.” De Quincey chewed another pill. “An astute witness sometimes realizes what is happening. Occasionally a guide will relieve the anxiety of those who hired him by explaining what they see.”

“And what is the explanation?”

“On June mornings, the sun rises behind the observers. Their shadows are cast upon the swirling mist. Magnified, the shadows reflect every motion of the observers, but in a grotesque, unnatural way that at first doesn’t seem connected to the people whose shadows have been cast.”

“So there you have it. A scientific explanation,” Dr. Arbuthnot concluded.

“My father believes that dreams are like those shadows,” Emily said.

“Dreams? Shadows?”

“Troubled people might fail to see how a nightmare is a reflection of their personalities,” De Quincey explained. “But if the reflection is explained to them—or better yet, if they are encouraged to understand how their nightmares are distortions of the elements in their personalities that trouble them—then they might experience the first steps to being cured.”

“Mr. De Quincey, I take it that you are not a physician. While your theories are amusing, they have no basis in science. Dreams and nightmares are merely phantoms created by electricity.”

“How foolish of me to think otherwise. Then let us forget about interpreting dreams. Consider that Edward Oxford was frequently beaten by his father and often saw his mother beaten. The shock of this persistent violence could explain why he was too unstable to hold jobs, why he frequently burst out into hysterical laughter, and why he enjoyed tormenting others.”

“Surely you’re not suggesting that because Oxford’s father beat him and his mother, he felt compelled to inflict violence on others until at last he focused his anger by shooting at the queen.”