Authors: David Pirie
The Night Calls (7 page)
His eye had fallen on an alcove at the end of the corridor where two steps led down to a room, and he moved there now as we followed. Its door, like all the others, was closed. The Doctor flung it open.
At first all I saw was red. A sea of it. But it was not light inside and, for just a moment, I thought perhaps this wash of colour was some kind of mad trick with paint or wallpaper. But then the smell, which had somehow been contained by that stout oak door, reached us and I knew the truth. On every surface there was nothing but blood.
The stuff covered that small and empty room like some kind of obscene soup. It saturated the walls and the door and the ceiling. It even obscured the light from the tiny window.
But the floor was most startling. For, as I stared, and I know this is hard to contemplate, here the blood actually had depth, like water.
In the middle of the room lay some kind of pulpy shape. It was sodden, but you could make out clothes. A coat, and the hem of a skirt.
Beecher was choking but Bell held his ground, though he made no move to enter. The room was, we could all see now, much smaller than any other we had found. Taking his cane, the Doctor leaned forward and poked the horrible object in the centre of the floor. I felt myself almost retching for I assumed it was the body that had been leeched of all this blood. But, as he worked, we soon concluded it was only a pile of woman’s clothes. The Doctor poked for several moments but could find no evidence of anything else.
Yet there was something more in the room. On a ledge to one side I could see a neat, indeed almost symmetrical, pile of gleaming coins, presumably belonging to the owner of the clothes.
Beside me, Bell used a phial to collect a sample of the blood, taking every care not to step in it as Summers appeared down the corridor. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we have been through the place from roof to basement. There is nothing that—’ He broke off as he saw our expressions and stared in amazement at the chamber. When he noticed the clothes, he assumed the worst until he was told we could find nothing else.
‘A room of blood then,’ said the Doctor grimly. And he straightened up, putting his sample in his bag.
Once we were sure we had seen all there was to see in that foul room, the Doctor and Beecher closely questioned the two women downstairs. There was not much to learn and, by the time they had finished, Beecher had lost some of his ill temper. Indeed it was Bell who looked concerned. Once again our man seemed to be slipping away into the twilight.
The hysterical woman with blood on her, who had raised the alarm, told us in bad English that she had been sleeping alone in the room where I was attacked. She had been woken in the dark by a sound and started to dress when she felt bloody hands round her neck, hence the stains on her dress. She screamed and ran away downstairs to be greeted by the maid. Neither of them had in effect
seen
anything at all. Only the room of blood pointed to a serious crime, but whose blood was it?
seen
anything at all. Only the room of blood pointed to a serious crime, but whose blood was it?
To make matters worse, the madame of the place, a stout overdressed woman in her fifties, had now arrived. She was courteous enough but said little, and it was soon obvious all she really wanted was for us to leave her place of business. Indeed, if it had not been for the room of blood, I am quite sure she would have blamed it all on her French hireling’s imagination.
She was talking quietly in a corner to this woman now, probably telling her to say as little as possible. Meanwhile I stood to one side as the Doctor and Beecher conferred. Summers was still upstairs.
‘So, as ever with this mysterious man of yours,’ Beecher was saying pointedly, ‘we seem to have nothing concrete. Nobody even saw him properly.’
‘But we can be sure of one thing,’ observed Bell. ‘He knows the place intimately.’
‘No help there at all,’ said Beecher. ‘It is true of half the men in the town, yet none will admit it. And, as you know, madame here would probably rather be hanged than betray her custom. I am afraid it may be just another distraction, Bell. These places have their own rough manners, and I prefer to keep out of them.’
This was too much for the Doctor. ‘I hardly think, Beecher, even you can describe what we saw in that room up there as rough manners.’
To my surprise Beecher smiled at this. ‘We cannot even be sure he had anything to do with that matter. There are other possibilities.’
Bell frowned. ‘Perhaps you will be so kind as to suggest one.’
‘Well I should wait for Summers, and I put this forward merely as a vague idea. But just suppose,’ said Beecher, ‘one of the poor wretches who works here slit her wrists. Then she crawled out to die. That would be simple enough, though no doubt you will counter it with some fantastic story.’
To his great irritation, Bell burst out laughing. ‘But why should I, when you have done it for me? I realise, Beecher, you would invent almost anything to avoid investigating murder in a city brothel. But if you wish to indulge in ghost stories, then, believe me, with all that blood, I think you would be better off plumping for vampires.’
Beecher was white now. ‘What do you talk of?
‘A murder enquiry. Have you any idea,’ the Doctor asked leaning forward intensely, ‘of the
volume
of blood in that room? Nobody gave that blood and lived to crawl out, I can assure you of that. It has been drained from someone quite recently. It is fresh.’
volume
of blood in that room? Nobody gave that blood and lived to crawl out, I can assure you of that. It has been drained from someone quite recently. It is fresh.’
It was a very pretty polemic and, though the Doctor had been crudely crushing, I felt little sympathy for his victim. Inspector Beecher was almost a personification of the city’s hypocrisy in those days. Here, especially in the city’s netherworld, the police always preferred to look the other way. Indeed, as Bell had pointed out when he first introduced me to his private field, the general code was to investigate as little as they could except where a case was so blindingly obvious that success was certain. Such cases, as the Doctor never tired of reminding me, gave comfort to the ignorant while enabling the worst kinds of crime to continue unremarked.
‘I will tell you the unwritten code of this town,’ the Doctor said ruefully, and not for the first time, as we walked back along the busy street. ‘It is to do as little as possible.’
For the rest of that day and into the evening, Bell was intent only on pursuing his chemistry investigations and, after I had helped him set up some of the equipment, he had no further need of me. This was fortunate for I had an appointment I was very anxious to keep.
I had arranged to meet Miss Scott at the entrance of the corridor that led to Latimer’s dissection room. She had been mysterious about her intentions but I guessed what she had in mind. Sure enough she was there, waiting in the shadows to one side, in a black coat with a high collar, a scarf and a black hat.
I went over to her at once, uneasily aware that along the corridor the night-clerk was already staring at us. Her eyes were so large and striking that I hoped to heaven he would not see them.
‘I will do?’ she said softly, looking up at me. Her hair had been pinned up under her hat.
I nodded. But in truth I was starting to wonder if this was madness. ‘We must seem to know each other, be old colleagues,’ I whispered. ‘And don’t look anywhere near him.’
‘Of course.’ She gave a bright confident smile. ‘I am ready.’
The sight of that smile once again subdued some of my doubts, which was just as well, for I had begun to realise the true danger of what we were about. If we were stopped and the night-clerk saw she was a woman, no quarter would be given by Latimer or anyone else. Even Bell would be quite powerless to help after such a flagrant breach of the rules: both of us would undoubtedly be flung out of the university, and I could well imagine the sort of gossip that would follow.
We turned to make our way along the corridor. The night-clerk’s desk was on my left so I took care to see Miss Scott was on my right and we started to walk. Ahead of me the night-clerk was writing something, with a pen that he dipped in an inkwell, but we were not yet near him.
Soon we were closer and still he wrote. Perhaps, I thought, this would be relatively easy. After all, he knew me and could have no objection to another student accompanying me. But, just as we came opposite him, he suddenly put down his pen and stared at Miss Scott with such a frown that I felt sure he was going to say something.
Without thinking I began to talk at once, desperately recalling some chat I had heard after an operation the previous day.
‘Oh no,’ I said, shaking my head at her. ‘Walker has a fad about the portio dura, the motor to the face. He thinks paralysis of it comes from a disturbance of the blood supply. Even got it into his head to remove a patient’s ear once, which caused a lot of chatter.’
She nodded. The night-clerk was still staring. Of course Miss Scott could not risk speech, that in itself was the problem, but she knew it and gave a little nod and clapped me on the back. ‘Yes,’ I said, trying to sound amused, ‘you remember him?’
We were past him now and I pushed on. ‘He always said the first great advance of the human race was when they attained the power of speech. The second was when they learned to control it. Regrettably, according to him, women have not yet attained the second stage.’
With that we turned into the room and I closed the door firmly behind us. Through it I could see that the night-clerk had returned to his writing. We had done it. Miss Scott was almost choking but only with suppressed laughter. ‘It is all right,’ I said. ‘He has gone back to his work.’
Her eyes flashed with humour. ‘You are wretched, Mr Doyle,’ she said.
‘I had to play a part. It was the first that came to me.’
She looked at me. ‘You do not believe that, I hope. About women and the powers of speech.’
‘No,’ I said, aware it was the first time since reaching manhood that I had ever been properly alone with a woman of this age. ‘But I heard someone say it yesterday and I had to play it as well as I could.’
She turned and I sensed that she too was aware we were alone, but was determined to show no embarrassment. ‘Too well for me perhaps. Can we begin? We will not be disturbed in here?’
‘I have never known him come in, and so far as I can see there are no other students here.’
I turned up the gaslight. Latimer’s dissecting room was a dark, cavernous place with a white skeleton hanging at the far wall who was affectionately known as Jock. Right in the middle were a number of covered tables and, as we approached them, she took off her coat and hat, revealing her beautiful hair. It was so abundant that she could hardly stop it from falling and I remember one of the curls tumbled down around her ear.
I suppose I was just as determined as she was not to be embarrassed, so I removed only the cloth that covered the cadaver’s lower legs. ‘Yesterday Latimer was dissecting the knee.’ I said, exposing both knees. One was intact, the other a mass of muscle and bone. I pointed to it. ‘He used this and said we could continue on the other as we wished.’
She stared down at it and, when she looked back up at me, there was a challenge in her eyes. ‘I am not squeamish, Mr Doyle. We do not have to start here.’
I smiled at her doubt. ‘I assure you it is what we were doing.’
At last, much to my relief, I could see she believed me, for it was the truth, even if at that point a highly convenient one. So she turned away to pick up a blade and rolled up her sleeves, bending down intently.
Then, after a moment of careful inspection, she made an incision. I watched her face as she worked, for there was something remarkable about the concentration on it. Finally I looked down at her hands and was amazed, for she was moving with a dexterity and speed that would have surely surprised even Latimer.
‘It is hard to get at the cruciate ligament,’ she said, for she had exposed most of the rest, ‘but there …’
She found it and I was astonished. ‘But … we took ten minutes on the other one. You have done dissection before?’
She looked up at me and smiled. ‘My father was a doctor. Sometimes he allowed me to assist him.’
‘In the hospital?’ I had never heard of this happening.
She had gone back to her work. ‘And in training. My sister and I were brought up in Cape Town. You can do a huge amount there with very little, and nobody quibbles about being treated by a woman. They need us too badly. Now there is the articular cartilage, I think.’
‘I cannot see you need instruction,’ I said. And then we both froze, for outside the door there was the sound of heavy footsteps. I felt my heart beating and Miss Scott went quite pale. They were clearly coming straight to this room; there was no other place they could be going. We stood there foolishly waiting for it to open, facing the end of our short careers.
In that instant I suddenly thought of what Neill had said about the imp of the perverse, the serpent of nihilism that somehow weakens your limbs and lulls you into inaction at the moment of maximum danger. Fortunately the thought galvanised me and I raced quickly towards the door, reaching it just in time to pull it open. A labman with red whiskers who worked for Latimer stood there. My heart turned over, for this man was almost as strict as his master.
‘Mr Doyle?’ he said. ‘You work quite late.’
‘Yes,’ I said, standing as firmly as I could before him, keeping the door half closed and hoping to heaven Miss Scott could not be seen. ‘Two of us are completing a dissection. Latimer suggested it himself yesterday.’
I am sure he would have asked me to step aside, but I saw he had a bundle of papers in his hand.
‘Oh, I can take these,’ I said as airily as I could. ‘For I know where they go and my colleague does not wish to be disturbed.’
It was a bold play. This man often showed utter contempt for students, and could have swept past me in a moment to see who this arrogant ‘colleague’ was. But he also had enormous reverence for the practice of Dissection. That religion had been instilled into him by Latimer who hated any disturbance or noise when he was wielding the knife.
His face was a few inches from mine, scrutinising me. ‘Who is it?’ he said quietly but rather sharply.
‘Douglas,’ I said quickly, naming a particularly talented student who was a great favourite of Latimer’s.
Again he paused. But in the end, prudence won the day and he handed me the papers. ‘They had better be placed correctly or I shall be quite aware who disturbed them,’ he said discourteously. And then he withdrew.
I made sure he had gone, closed the door and turned around. Miss Scott emerged from the shadows. We were both overwhelmed by the narrowness of our escape. I told her that Douglas had been here earlier so there seemed little prospect of repercussions, but it was some time before we returned to work.
Slowly we recovered our confidence and I watched as she finished what she had begun, commenting again that she hardly seemed to need the practice.
Miss Scott looked up at this. ‘It is more to show myself that I can do it in spite of them all, for I know it would have made my father proud,’ she said with feeling. ‘In the summer I intend to go back and work in the hospital he helped to found.’ She turned back to her work. ‘But what of you? Is your father a doctor? Is he proud of you?’
The question was natural enough and yet to me it was a dagger. ‘He is not a doctor, no,’ I said awkwardly after a moment. But she was so engaged she did not seem to notice.
‘Well,’ she said as she finished her last incision. ‘I am quite sure he is proud of you.’ And she covered the cadaver and stood up. It was obvious how pleased she was to have defied the bullying Latimer, for her face had a mischievous expression, perfectly framed in the halo from the gas lamp.
After she had replaced her coat and hat, the walk back along the corridor was uneventful for the night-clerk seemed half asleep. Once we were beyond him she left me to change her outward disguise in the same room where Crawford had once found us. Soon she had let down her hair, packed away the hat and I was escorting her home in a more normal fashion.
I discovered now that her father had died of fever four years ago. Her eyes misted over as she talked of him. ‘It was hard to bear,’ she said, ‘for we hardly knew my mother. She had given me the name Elsbeth but spelled it differently, with a “b” rather than a “p”. My father always said it might have been an accident for she was ill when she wrote it down, but he said it made me one of a kind. When I am working, I feel happy and close to him.’ I wanted to hear more, but suddenly she seemed to remember herself. ‘Like some spy,’ she said, ‘you ask all the questions. I want to know what makes you happy.’
As she spoke, she studied me closely. I smiled, for it was not easy to answer. And then, for the second time in that memorable evening, she seemed to alight as if by instinct on a delicate subject. ‘For example,’ she said, ‘what about all you do for Dr Bell? Do you enjoy working for him?’
‘As his clerk? Yes I do.’
My slip was tiny but she sensed it at once. Her instinct was extraordinary. ‘If not his clerk, what then? I see you must have some other role.’
I did not know what to say for I took her to be serious.
‘What else could you be, Mr Doyle, his valet?’ She said, smiling.
‘Sometimes,’ I said ruefully, ‘it may seem so. There is a good deal of cleaning.’
And so fortunately the subject was left and all too soon we had arrived at her lodgings, a dreary four-square house with a stone step which looked as if it was scrubbed hourly. This was probably true, for Miss Scott lived in dread of the landlady whose face scowled down at us from a window.
‘She is quite as fierce as Edinburgh landladies are reputed to be,’ she told me. ‘Her house is called Seaview, which is among the grimmer jokes, for the sea feels very far away.’
Neither of us wanted to say goodnight, but it seemed the woman would certainly come down if we lingered any further.
‘Perhaps we could meet to arrange another dissection?’ I said a little falteringly. ‘Next time I will make absolutely sure his labman has departed for the evening. That is, if you wish to continue, for I fear you learned nothing.’
‘You are right.’ She came closer. ‘I learned nothing. About
you.
But next time I will persevere.’ We agreed a place to meet and then she turned away and was gone.
you.
But next time I will persevere.’ We agreed a place to meet and then she turned away and was gone.
I had no lectures the following day and it was not till the afternoon that I entered the Doctor’s downstairs room to see if he needed me. The blinds were drawn and the place was in semidarkness. But I fancied I could hear something, a muttering sound, so I came round the side of the bookcase.
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