Authors: David Pirie
The Night Calls (24 page)
It was fortunate for me that my companion was still mesmerised by the waxwork of Sweeney Todd. No doubt the idea of a man who claimed children among his victims was particularly dreadful to her, and it gave me time to compose myself. I read the details again quickly, making sure I had really seen the devastating phrase ‘from the colonies’, and then turned away to gather my wits. Even so, as soon as she came over to me, Sally noticed the change in my mood. I tried to divert her with some foolish question or other, but she looked at me closely.
‘Arthur,’ she said, ‘are you quite well? You are pale.’
There was little I could say at first. ‘I am perfectly well,’ I replied. ‘It is only that I was reminded of a sad memory, that is all.’
She looked at me gravely. Fortunately I had moved far away from the ‘Portrait of an Unknown Poisoner’ and behind me were some ancient newspaper reports about London riots and the violence of the mob. Even so, her eyes turned to them quickly and then back to mine. And I believe she was quick enough to understand that, whatever I had seen, I had no wish for her to share it.
‘Have you been the victim of a crime, Arthur?’ I know it was her innate sympathy that made her say it, and she added quickly, ‘I promise I will not ask you more.’
‘No,’ I said, feeling I should tell her something. ‘It was someone I was once close to.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘Well, I have said I will not ask more. Let us leave the room and go back to the generals and admirals.’
I nodded gratefully, and Sally Morland never impressed me more than she did for the rest of that day. For she contrived to ask questions and make comments that piqued my interest and attention, keeping up our spirits. And slowly, with difficulty she dragged my mind away from what I had seen. Yet all the time, too, she succeeded in showing she had not forgotten what had happened, and was strongly sympathetic.
Perhaps fortunately, then, it was not until I lay in bed that night that I was able to reflect sensibly on what I had seen. Was it possible, I now wondered, that the picture was just a coincidence? Perhaps it was, but even so I had no intention of leaving the matter there. In the light of my dream I could only feel I was being led back to Cream. And I had to seek the Doctor’s opinion.
We were due to meet in any case the following week. Examination duties were taking Bell to London quite regularly at this time, and on the appointed Saturday I found him curled up in an armchair before a roaring fire in the large railway hotel he favoured. He looked a picture of health, his silver hair glowing in the firelight, his hawk-like features animated with excited interest for he was giving his attention both to a treatise on the properties of sympathetic ink and to the observation of his fellow guests.
At once he sprang up with a great smile to shake my hand, his energy as boundless as ever, and waved me into the other chair. ‘You lodge with a publisher, I perceive,’ he said as we sat down.
I looked at my hands and my clothes to see if there was anything that could possibly have told him this, but there was not. ‘Do you know the Morlands?’ I said with a little amazement, for I had mentioned the name only in passing.
‘Of course not,’ he said, holding up my letter to him. ‘This was written from your lodgings – see how dark the ink is? It is genuine Indian ink, rubbed up perfectly black, which is difficult to get hold of but essential for publisher’s drawings. I therefore deduce you sat at your host’s desk to write it.’
This led us naturally enough on to the monograph he was reading until at last I started to tell him about what I had seen. I sensed his excitement growing and I had not got very far before he put up a hand to interrupt my account. ‘Forgive me, Doyle,’ he said, ‘this is no criticism of you but I would much prefer that you do not prejudice my own judgement further until I see it at first hand for myself.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Yes, there will be plenty of time to attend to our lunch afterwards. If you find me a cab, I will collect my coat.’
The day was cold and the streets were empty so the doorman found a cab without difficulty and we were on our way. Since I had suspected the Doctor might dismiss my account, I could certainly have no complaint about the attention he was paying to it. As soon as we had reached the exhibition and entered its ‘Hall of Murderers’, he gave a single cursory and uninterested glance at his surroundings before we moved on to the wall of papers and newspaper reports. Soon, without my prompting, he had seen the sketch and walked directly to it.
I did not look at my watch but I am fairly sure the Doctor must have stared at the drawing, and the accompanying text below it, for fully thirty minutes. Occasionally, during this time, he would walk away a few paces, reflecting, but always he would move back, studying it again with the same rapt attention.
Finally he was finished and we walked out together though I said nothing for I could see he was still deep in thought. We had our lunch back at the hotel but neither of us did any justice to the game pie and trifle that was provided. In fact we barely said a word until the meal was over.
At last he came to the point, admitting that the thing had had almost as much impact upon him as it had upon me. ‘But in the end,’ he said with sudden passion, ‘we cannot be sure if it is chance. If not for the mention of the colonies I would certainly presume it was. For I place little value in such vague and sensational reports, and even less in the so-called doctor’s diagnosis. It does not even sound like strychnine. It is just that the mention of the colonies is so suggestive. Yet even
that
, Doyle,’ and he slapped his hand on the table in frustration, ‘is so vague a term.’
that
, Doyle,’ and he slapped his hand on the table in frustration, ‘is so vague a term.’
‘But I have been feeling an intimation of something for days. Before I even saw this I had a dream that he was here.’
‘You are not asking me to deduce anything from that, I assume?’ he said. ‘London is a city that feeds the imagination as you have no doubt observed.’
‘Is it not worth trying to talk to the girl?’ I asked, for I knew the Doctor had some distant connections within the local force and was occasionally called for forensic advice.
Bell shook his head. ‘After a year, there is little chance they will even know where she is. Of course I will try to make enquiries. But my honest advice for now would be that you assume it is coincidence. If you do not, then you will see him everywhere.’ Now he turned and gave me a searching look. ‘And you are not sleeping so well, I determine.’
I knew what he was thinking. The Doctor had more than once strongly expressed his disapproval when I took stimulants to alleviate the mental anguish that sometimes returned. He was wondering now if I had reverted to the habit.
‘It is hardly surprising. The sight of this had an effect.’
‘If you are taking something to dull it, Doyle, I counsel you to reconsider. I would hate old memories to be reignited in any fanciful way.’
I assured him my only draft had been for a toothache, and eventually we parted with a vague proposal to reunite at some point during the rest of my stay. As I walked back to the Morlands, I will confess I was slightly irritated by his final words on the subject. There were, I thought, rather more important things to discuss than my self-prescribing habits. And, while I was grateful he had given the subject his attention, surely he must know that, in asking me to ignore it, he was recommending a course of action that was not merely difficult but practically impossible. That night, as I lay in bed, I noticed, for the first time, that the street light outside my window sent a shadow on to the ceiling above me. The longer I studied it, the more I saw that it formed the outline of a figure, crouched and predatory, with a black rod clutched in one arm. It was some time before I slept.
On the Sunday following my meeting with Bell, the Morland family had arranged for me to come with them to visit the scientist Colin Macandrew. His place was only a short distance away, but there was a world of difference between their little street and his off the Grosvenor Road which was broad and light with painted doors and elegant stonework. These houses, moreover, had backs which looked directly on to the river and the Morland children, who had been many times before, were in a fair state of excitement even before we rapped on the gleaming silver knocker. I had had enough of grand houses to last me a little while, so I was pleasantly surprised when Macandrew himself answered, explaining that his manservant was indisposed. He proved to be a youthful enthusiastic man with a ruddy face and long red hair who shook me firmly by the hand as soon as we were inside. Then he ushered the delighted children directly to where they longed to go, namely the maritime laboratory in his basement.
This sounded so grand that I fully expected to see a huge flooded tank with a diving bell just as I knew Macandrew had demonstrated in the Royal Polytechnic exhibition. In the event the place was more modest, but there was a small tank with subaqueous plants and fish which the children loved to observe. Beyond it stood a dissecting table, two large basins with running water and some other intriguing items of scientific equipment including a microscope which magnified the tiniest marine creatures into huge monsters.
Macandrew presided over these with a manic energy, sometimes giggling at the children’s endless questions and pushing his hand through his hair. ‘These are the toys,’ he cried. ‘And toys should be played with. Ah Will,’ he said, ruffling the little boy’s hair. ‘People say a boy should not pull the wings off flies. Quite right. He should pull the heads and legs off as well for then he will be called an anatomist, and soon the school will be putting up a plaque in his honour!’ And he laughed heartily.
Of course Will had no idea what he was talking about but laughed too, and the demonstration continued. At one point, while Sally was lingering by the tank with her children, I asked Macandrew with interest about the dissecting table and the man leaned against it, drumming his long fingers on it as he talked.
‘Oh,’ he said in answer to my question. ‘I am a toiler. One recent area I have been exploring is the exact nature of the human lungs during and after drowning. It is my conviction that the doctors could learn far more from the other sciences than they do. What is the human body but a machine? If we could better understand the lung’s susceptibility to water there might even be a way of strengthening them.’
‘You could hardly make us amphibious?’ said Martin, joining us.
‘Yet once we may have been.’ Macandrew raised his hand as if to begin a lecture on evolution but then seemed to think better of it. ‘No, my hope was that there might be a way of delaying the effect of drowning. It became quite an obsession, but so far it is a forlorn one. Another was the state of the body after heart failure. Again, the heart is just a pump, sometimes not a very efficient one. Is there no way of improving it?’
‘But surely that is not your main work?’ I asked.
‘Oh no, it is a sideline, Dr Doyle.’ He turned to me, studying my features. ‘You must have a special hobby in your medical practice. What is it? Let me guess? The facial muscles? Perhaps blood temperature?’
I felt more foolish than anything for I had no real answer. ‘I have done some study of the eye but I am only just starting out. Tell me, did you not make the diving bell?’ I was keen to get the subject away from me.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘I study all aspects of oceanography, and I helped to design the diving bell among other things.’
At this point the children came running over. ‘The tunnel! The tunnel!’ they chanted.
Macandrew picked up Will with a genial air. ‘Well, I can hardly refuse so strident a request, and I have made preparations,’ he said, handing the boy back to his mother and leading us over to a door on the other side of the room.
We all followed expectantly as the door opened on to a stone staircase with a black railing beside it which went down to a subbasement level. The workshop had been lit by gas, but below us there was dim light from what I took to be carbon filaments, and somewhere I could hear the hum of a motor.
‘Macandrew was at the Munich exhibition of electricity this year,’ said Martin. ‘He knows a deal about it.’
‘Be careful now,’ said Macandrew, ‘for sometimes the stairs get a little wet.’ We proceeded slowly down, with Sally keeping a close hand on both her children. The electrical illumination did not flicker as a candle would but nor was it was very bright, casting a suffused and rather ugly red glow on us as we descended.
Soon we were in a damp stone corridor which led south, though as the children had said it was more like a tunnel than anything else. The air was a little stuffy and I noticed a puddle of water beside one door, but we walked on past it for several yards until we had to crouch low, and finally the space came to an abrupt end with a single light hung dimly above us. Ahead was a small square of wood, but otherwise nothing.
‘Well, where are we?’ said Macandrew to the children as we stood there in that damp space.
‘We are under the river,’ they said with whispered awe.
‘Quite right,’ said Macandrew, ‘and to prove it …’ He turned and removed the wooden lid from the wall ahead and I could see a tap with a wooden mug beside it. He turned this and water came spilling out, which Macandrew used to fill the mug, raising it to his lips. ‘I always toast my guests in the water of the river.’
Soon it was my turn and I wet my lips in the liquid which was not particularly appetising but not foul either. Evidently Macandrew was able to purify it for I did not like to imagine how such a draft might taste otherwise, containing as it would all manner of noxious things. But there was something strange in knowing the river was above this space, and I hardly wondered the air was a little dank.
On the way back another wonder was in store, for Macandrew opened the waterproof portholed door we had passed earlier which led to a small chamber. All I could see inside was some kind of closed vent on the floor and a large opening in the wall. The children, who knew it well, were again full of excitement. ‘This is the flood chamber,’ he told me, pointing to a large wheel in the wall outside. ‘If you open the vent, it fills with water in twenty minutes or so. I test models of much of the equipment here and sometimes the apparatus itself.’ As soon as we were outside and, the door was sealed, Macandrew turned the wheel and, for just a few seconds, water flooded into the small space. Then he pulled a handle and much to the children’s glee it drained away.
Once we were upstairs again, the children rushed over to look at the magnifying apparatus. While they squealed and laughed and took turns with their parents, Macandrew questioned me about my training and experience. ‘I am sure Edinburgh is all very well in its way,’ he said. ‘But of course the larger teaching hospitals here see a far greater variety of patients, meaning their experience is unrivalled. In the end we cannot escape the fact that London is the empire’s heart. The rest are all outposts.’
It was not a point I had much interest in contesting, especially with a man who had evidently studied biology and engineering rather than medicine. But I could see quite well now that, behind his easy manner, Macandrew was intensely competitive, and I also had to recognise, though it was not very enjoyable to do so, that here was the reason why a man, only a few years my senior, had reached a position of some eminence while I was a struggling junior doctor.
Of course, I was careful not to let the Morlands sense I had any reservations about the visit, and that evening I talked animatedly to Sally about all we had seen. She was not, I had already noticed, as enthusiastic about Macandrew as Martin but I was surprised now to notice a slight anxiousness in her. She kept looking worriedly at her husband, who sat staring gloomily into the fire. I was well aware that he sometimes found work a burden, so I could only conclude he was dreading another week making calendars. Feeling that I was in the way, I thanked them for the outing and retired to bed. But, even as I said goodnight, Martin barely stirred from where he sat.
The start of the following week was, for me, very busy, too busy even to spend much time dwelling on the matter of the sketch in the ‘Hall of Murderers’. One of the partners in the medical practice had sprained an ankle getting out of a cab, while another was suffering from a chest cold. Consequently there was more work for all of us and it was not until Wednesday, when another doctor had agreed to cover some of our patients, that things became a little easier. Even so I did not return to the Morlands till well after nine that evening, having sent word that I had already dined, though in truth I had only managed to take something from a pastry cook’s stall I passed while out on my calls.
I had seen little of the Morlands all week and was looking forward to their company as I took off my coat off so I was, I must confess, a little surprised when the cook appeared to inform me with a slight air of agitation that Mr Morland was not at home. I went straight to the drawing room at once. Sally stood at the fireplace with her back to me.
‘Well, I am sorry to be such an absent guest …’ I began as cheerfully as I could, for I was remembering the low spirits of the previous Sunday night, when she turned and I saw to my astonishment that she was crying.
The sight was so heart-rending that my words died away and I took a pace towards her. But she put up a hand to stop me.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I am sorry to intrude, I will go.’
‘No,’ she said, and her voice was unsure but she had contained her tears. ‘Please, the truth is, Arthur, I have been waiting for you.’
At this I did come forward to face her. It was strange to stand so close to her and she did not look away, though the sadness in her was all too apparent. Of course it brought back memories and I reflected that, though I had been mistaken about someone else not so long before, in Sally there could be no mistake. Her lack of guile, her instinctive kindness were there so visibly before your eyes.
‘You know I would do anything to help you,’ I said. Since there was not and never could be the slightest impropriety in my relationship with Sally, I saw no reason to conceal the fact that I admired her.
She nodded and looked down. ‘I am asking a favour of you, Arthur, and I am not sure I could ask it of anyone else in the world other than my husband, whom it concerns.’
I waited. I could see her lips tremble as she summoned up the courage to tell me.
‘I have not seen him since yesterday morning.’
I was amazed and almost exclaimed aloud, but fortunately realised in time how little help that would be. ‘And you have no idea?’ I said as unemphatically as I could.
‘Why, I have every idea,’ she cried. ‘You think otherwise I could have borne it? But to go to the police is only to get him into further trouble. And I would never be admitted without …’ She was wringing her hands so tightly I thought the fingernails would pierce the skin. I led her to a chair and made her sit down.
‘Sally, we will get him back. You must just tell me where to go.’
Now I saw the hope in her eyes. ‘You must not blame him, he has had such worries. We had hoped, but …’ The tears welled up but she collected herself again. ‘Sometimes when he is so cast down and can see no way out, when he is in a black mood, he wishes only to escape in this way. Once before he was there a whole night, but never two. I cannot bear to wait and worry about what might happen to him.’
It was not easy, but gradually I had the story. Sally Morland was sure that her husband was in an opium den in the dockland south of the river and, though she could not name it, she believed she could describe its precise location. It was in a small alley not far from the long and rather forbidding street known as Shad Thames, an area, one social reformer described as ‘the most out-of-the-world and low-lived corner of London’, that was mainly notable for its warehouses and its crime. The alley was almost at the eastern extremity of Shad Thames, near Gainsford Street. Fortunately she had made Martin tell her this after the first occasion, precisely because she dreaded it might happen again. But now, after hours and hours of waiting, poor Sally Morland hardly knew which was more unendurable: the fear that her husband was still there, and had been for a night and a day, or that something even worse had befallen him.
At first she was utterly determined to come with me and, for all my protests, I believe she would have insisted, except that upstairs Will woke up from a dream and cried out for his mother. Here was my opportunity: I told her she must go to her son and meanwhile promised her faithfully I would set out to try to find Martin in the place she described.
I took a hansom across the river, discharged the driver near Curlew Street, which was more respectable, and then walked without any problems a little way up to the warehouses of Shad Thames. I had been told the place I sought lay well past Butler’s Wharf towards Landell’s Wharf and that the alley lay between a shop and a tavern called the Lord Lovat. As I moved further east I had two frights, the first when three men came out of a slop house and stopped, staring at me and whispering among themselves, obviously debating whether to come after me. I doubled my pace.
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