The Detective and the Devil (12 page)

‘Part of the section on Mortlake.’

‘Mortlake? The village on the Thames?’

‘Yes. I know of no other village with the name, in Surrey or indeed anywhere else.’

‘Hmm. Johnson was interested in Mortlake? His wife’s sister lives in Putney – or lived. It is still unclear. I wonder what he was looking at.’

‘He was looking for John Dee.’

Horton looked up from the book and at his wife. There was a sparkle in her eye. She’d enjoyed her academic investigation.

‘The removed pages run on from a list of notable personages who lived and died in Mortlake,’ she said. ‘The missing pages contain the longest entry of all of these. The entry
is for John Dee.’

‘Ah.’

‘Yes. And according to the account in this volume, John Dee was something of an odd collection of parts – part-sage, part-wizard. Perhaps even a spy. Certainly an astrologer and an
alchemist.’

‘An alchemist?’

‘Men such as Dee believed that everything on earth – including men and women – were composed of four essential elements in different compounds. Alchemists explored those
combinations. They sought out the perfectibility of man, believing that through study and contemplation man could become like God.’

‘Do we no longer have such men?’

‘No, husband, we do not. Now, we have chemists. And we understand that there are a great many more than four essential elements.’

‘And this Dee was an alchemist?’

‘Among other things. He does not strike one as a particularly reliable witness, and this account of Dee’s life seems to be based entirely on the Doctor’s own telling. He was a
fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and his patrons included Edward VI . . .’

Horton had to struggle with his memory to even recall this monarch.

‘. . . who gave him a pension and two rectories. Dee was suspected of treason by Bloody Mary . . . ’

Had she been the sister of Edward? Horton thought she was.

‘. . . but returned to favour under Elizabeth.’

Who
was
Mary’s sister, Horton was sure. Or her cousin?

‘To this point, this could be the account of any scholar under the Tudors. In 1575, the Queen visited Dee’s house in Mortlake to see his library, which was a wonder of the age, the
biggest private library in England. Imagine, husband! A Queen visiting a supposed Magician!’

‘It seems unlikely.’

‘And it is only his account. But then Dee’s life took a very odd turn. Dee claimed to be able to speak to spirits via a stone – a “scrying stone” he called it
– which an angel had given him. He performed what he called “incantations” with a young man named Edward Kelly. They left England in 1583 for several years, and ended up at the
court of the Holy Roman Emperor, but then Dee and Kelly fell out with each other. Dee returned to England, to find his library destroyed by a mob, and his reputation in tatters.’

‘Did people really imagine him to be a magician?’

‘Yes,’ said Abigail. ‘Well, a necromancer, meaning one who communes with demons, though Dee claimed they were angels he was talking to.’

A mob and a necromancer. For a moment, Horton was taken back to Thorpe village, a village overtaken by rumours of
maleficium
in which he had spent time the previous year.

Abigail continued: ‘Dee claimed that Elizabeth herself called him back to England, and he tried to claim money from her to restore his library. He said four thousand books had been taken.
Four thousand books! At a time when there were scarcely a dozen printers in the land!’

‘Did the Queen listen to his claim?’

‘The account doesn’t say. But he must have spent more than ten years living in England again before Elizabeth died. Then James took the throne, and he did not look kindly on
Dee’s supposed dabblings in magic. Didn’t like witches, either. Dee was accused of calling up evil spirits, and died a few years later, penniless.’

‘Is there any truth to all this?’

‘Well, the account goes on to speculate that Dee was actually some kind of spy, and that all his talk of magic and spirits was in fact secret codes containing political intelligence. But
there seems to be no evidence for that. I can’t even imagine why people would have believed it. Dee claimed to have served the Queen, but it isn’t at all clear how – and all these
instances of Elizabeth’s attention to him come from his own account. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he made the whole lot of it up.’

‘The story is intriguing, certainly. But I do not see its relevance.’

‘Well, there is something else here. The final paragraph lists Dee’s writings, or at least those things which Dee claimed to have written, and they are astonishingly varied. He wrote
about the reformation of the Gregorian calendar, geography, natural philosophy, optics, metaphysics, astronomy, astrology and what the writer of this book calls “the occult sciences”.
The account says Dee was asked to use the stars to predict the most propitious time for Elizabeth’s coronation.’

The calendar and the secrets of the stars, all mixed together. How on earth did Dee ever tell the difference between the real and the imagined?

‘But here it is, husband. I read it this morning: “He wrote an account also of his voyage to St Helena, and a treatise on the Queen’s right to certain foreign
countries.”’

She looked up from the book.

‘Didn’t you tell me yesterday that the subject of Benjamin Johnson’s work was the island of St Helena?’

‘I did,’ he said. ‘The connection is interesting. And the third volume?’

‘That I can make no sense of. The title seems to be in Greek, not Latin – and I have no Greek
or
Latin. It seems to consist of a set of 120 short statements or . . .
Husband, are you quite well?’

Horton had opened the third volume, the tattiest and oldest of the three, at the frontispiece while Abigail spoke to him, and there it was: the strange symbol that had been left on the
Johnsons’ chests. It was at the centre of an arch with two columns etched on the old page. Above it he saw the words
Ioannis Dee Londoninensis
, which he thought he might now be able
to translate.

And on either side of the odd symbol, the initials I and D.

Ioannis Dee
. John Dee.

She had little time to discuss the revelation of John Dee’s symbol with her husband, though she could tell him that she knew Dee called it a ‘monad’. Charles
had to attend the inquest into the awful murders on the Highway, so she left him to his own thoughts, and went off to St Luke’s to confront hers.

It took the best part of an hour to walk to Moorfields, and she took her time, enjoying the space in which to think. She had not seen Dr Drysdale during her visit of the previous day, and she
wondered if she would today. She had not spoken to him for a week. The events of the last two days – the murders on the Ratcliffe Highway, the books Charles had found, her own research into
them – had taken her away from herself, and that had partly explained her reaction to Charles’s concern. She had felt offended that her husband thought her mind was not strong enough to
cope with these disgusting deaths, but the truth was she had worried about that herself. She had discovered that she was coping well enough, and wanted to share this knowledge with the doctor.

She went looking for him when she arrived at St Luke’s, the first time she had sought him out; previously, he had come to find her. But she saw on his face as she walked into his
consulting rooms that there was a simple reason for their not meeting over the past week. He had not wanted to. He seemed embarrassed and somehow irritated by her arrival.

‘Ah, Mrs Horton. I’m afraid I have little time to talk today.’

‘Oh. Well, I shall not disturb you.’

She turned to leave, but he called her back and asked her to sit.

‘My apologies, Mrs Horton. I should not simply dismiss you. We have discussed much in these rooms, and I owe you an explanation for my avoidance of you.’

Avoidance?
she thought, as she sat down.

‘You have heard me speak of Dr Bryson, of Brooke House?’ he said.

‘The physician there? Why, yes.’

‘But your memories of him remain sketchy?’

‘Yes, doctor. But, as I have said, my mind was much disturbed during my sojourn at Brooke House. My recollections are generally unreliable.’

‘Perhaps not as unreliable as you think, Mrs Horton. You see, Dr Bryson is not all he seems to be.’

‘He is not?’

‘No. In fact, the story he tells is so odd that he is currently incarcerated here, at St Luke’s, for investigation.’

This disturbed her. A mad-doctor driven mad by thoughts of Brooke House?

‘Bryson’s theories are in themselves sound,’ Drysdale continued. ‘I find his concept of moral projection to have some relevance, and his belief that the effect of
mesmerism can be ascribed to it will, I am sure, be demonstrated one day. But his recollections of Brooke House have become . . . well, they have turned into something altogether
different.’

I am not sure I wish to hear this
, Abigail thought.

‘Bryson has talked extensively of a woman who had an extraordinary ability – that of persuading her fellow patients to perform actions which they were reluctant to do, or which they
had not themselves desired. This was the area of his work that I was interested in; this was the essence of his
moral projection
theory of mesmerism. But I must admit that I imagined the
woman of whom he spoke was yourself.’

‘Me?’

‘Why, yes, Mrs Horton. You do have an extraordinary capacity to put people at their ease, and I have witnessed you calming the patients here at St Luke’s with just a well-chosen word
or phrase. I have been working for some months now under the assumption that
you
were Dr Bryson’s test patient; that he was investigating your ability while he was treating you. I
was seeking to talk to him of his theories without revealing that I knew you; that I had, in fact, been investigating your own mental well-being.’

It was a pure and cold violation. She gripped one hand with the other to stop both shaking. He had been
investigating
her? Dr Drysdale seemed only depressed by his revelations. He had
no conception of how he was affecting her.

‘However,’ he continued, ‘my assumption was entirely incorrect. I had not mentioned your name to Bryson during our discussions, as I wished to maintain our confidential
relationship, but I fear that during a recent session with the man I blurted it out. He remembered you, of course, or claimed he did. But he said the woman he spoke of was not you. He said you knew
the woman who had the peculiar abilities I wish to investigate. Her name was Maria Cranfield. Do you recall her?’

Something twitched at the back of her understanding, a sliver of memory, but it was not enough to grasp hold of, and in any case her mind was a kaleidoscope of anger and shame. She had been used
under a misapprehension. Drysdale’s dishonesty dismayed her.

‘Dr Drysdale, I will not return to St Luke’s,’ she said, standing. ‘I am not your test experiment. I had thought we were jointly discussing your theories, partly as a
means of understanding what happened to me at Brooke House. I had thought you wanted me to contribute to your research. I see now I was only a specimen. Goodbye.’

She turned and left, still holding her hands together, desperately trying to keep her self-possession until she could find somewhere quiet and dark to weep her shame away.

The venue for the coroner’s inquest into the deaths of the Johnsons was the same as it had been for the death of the Marrs – upstairs at the Jolly Sailor. The
atmosphere of near-hysteria that infested the streets outside was the same. A good number of the men watching the proceedings were the same – there was John Harriott, there was Edward
Markland, there were Markland’s fellow Shadwell magistrates, Story and Capper.

And there was Charles Horton, sat in the same place as he had been for that other inquest almost four years ago – at the back, his face hooded, unwilling to be seen, watching and listening
and trying to make sense of it all, all the time wondering if these echoes of the earlier atrocity were all part of someone’s deliberate plan.

He felt unhappily led by the nose, manipulated by signs, obscured by clouds of significance. Those strange symbols on the bodies of the Johnsons, tying them to the book of the Elizabethan
necromancer John Dee, were the oddest remnant of all. The symbols were not accidental, just as the maul in the little bedroom was not accidental. There was a deliberation at work here, a particular
consciousness.

St Helena, too – the strangely poetic and popish name of that distant island kept repeating itself. He knew
where
the island was, of course – he was a Navy man, a mutinous
officer, and all Naval officers knew the shape of Britain’s overseas possessions like they knew the curves of their cannon and the smell of their sail. But he had never visited the East India
Company island. The Royal Navy only visited Company lands when there was trouble afoot.

These considerations were interrupted by the arrival of the jury, which was walked into the room by Unwin. The men were as pale and grim-faced as the Marr jury had been, and Horton wondered if
they had also been taken to the River Police Office to view the dead bodies. If so, they had walked a good way, watched over by a fair-sized crowd which had come out to see if, as rumoured, the
Monster had returned.

With the jury seated, Salter was the first to be interrogated by Unwin. He described the condition of the bodies – the damaged faces, the shattered craniums and slashed throats.

‘Was there anything unusual about the bodies, other than the terrible violence?’ asked Unwin.

‘There were two matters of note,’ said Salter. ‘One was the absence of any blood at the scene of the crime, despite the terrible injuries.’

‘To what do you attribute that?’

‘Either the house was cleaned, or the bodies were brought there from somewhere else.’