Authors: David Pirie
The Night Calls (8 page)
Bell was crouched forward under a flickering gas lamp, staring into a microscope. Around him were a great mass of dirty beakers and test tubes. Evidently many experiments had been tried and, from his pallor, I could see he had been there all night. He glanced up at me but I knew better than to interrupt.
As I watched, he had placed a sample of the blood we had found in the room on a slide, adding some acetic acid and a grain of salt before heating it over a Bunsen. Then he squeezed some of his own blood from a small incision in his arm on to another slide and treated it similarly. He examined both of these alternately, but it was obvious the results were far too inexact to satisfy him and finally he pushed them away angrily.
‘I am a fool, Doyle, though I cannot yet prove it. Someone is taking me for a fool, and that idiot Beecher will not hesitate to say so. I am surprised he has not sent for us already.’
He got up and opened the blind and, as if in answer to his words, a familiar black carriage could be seen turning into the courtyard.
‘Ah, there,’ he said. ‘Well, we must take our medicine.’
‘I do not understand,’ I said, for since I had no idea then what Teichmann’s test was, I could not know what he meant.
‘Nor do I,’ said Bell grimly. ‘And least of all does he, but I regret to say it will not stop his mockery.’
A short time later we climbed out of the carriage on a street in the Old Town I did not know but which seemed to lie immediately behind Madame Rose’s. As we got out, I saw a number of policemen waiting for us and all were grinning from ear to ear. Inspector Beecher and Summers stood at the back. Summers smirked. Beecher just managed to keep a straight face, but even so I do not think I have ever seen the man so pleased with himself.
He came forward. ‘There is good news, Dr Bell. We have found what you were looking for. If you will follow me.’
And with that he strode off round the back of the large building behind him, which was a shared dwelling house. Bell and I followed, as several other policemen kept the pace, and the Doctor was surprised enough by this to stare back at them. ‘If only,’ he murmured to me, ‘they showed similar enthusiasm during their other investigations, half the criminals in the city would be caught.
There was a clump of bushes behind the tenement and Beecher led us through them towards a rather miserable beech tree. I could hear the sound of insects, though the day was not particularly warm.
Beecher had stopped and turned. ‘Your victims, Dr Bell,’ he said as he folded his arms.
At his feet were two large dead sheep, their throats neatly cut and their eyes removed. The flies were buzzing around but the animals had obviously been drained of blood. ‘So I don’t think on this occasion,’ he continued, ‘we need to be worrying ourselves about a murder enquiry.’
Now the reason for all the smiles was obvious. Both Bell and I could sense the eyes of the other police on our backs. But Bell did not give an inch of ground. ‘My congratulations, Inspector,’ he said, holding Beecher’s eye. ‘And the blood-soaked clothing?’
Beecher shrugged. ‘Its owner is an Agnes Walsh. She worked for a spell at Madame Rose’s and left her coat in that room which was used for storage. No doubt she will get a shock if she ever comes to reclaim it. So that would seem to answer that. Someone’s gruesome idea of a prank. All your dramas are, as before, quite unfounded. I will bid you good day.’
And he left the eyeless sheep and walked back triumphantly to his grinning colleagues.
The Doctor had been scrutinising the area around the sheep but now he straightened up. ‘One moment, Inspector?’ he said with a careful politeness which I had learned to distrust. ‘If you recall, a woman was half strangled.’
Beecher turned back. ‘A prostitute claimed she was attacked but she seems perfectly all right. It is hardly a grievous thing. I dare say the joker did not want his slaughter interrupted. We will keep our eyes open, if you will excuse the expression.’ There was a guffaw from one of the policemen. ‘But I fear there are other more pressing matters.’
‘Yet none so strange,’ the Doctor answered with derision. ‘Do you really suppose the sheep were slaughtered inside? Of course not.’
He bent down again and pulled out some rope which had evidently been used to hoist them up and was still tied to the legs of one. ‘No,’ said the Doctor, ‘they were strung up to drain the blood and then cut down. The receptacle may even be very near.’
He started rooting through the undergrowth and suddenly spied something. ‘There,’ he said, for he had fished out the bloody pail on the end of his cane and held it up.
Of course this did not impress Beecher or his grinning cohorts. ‘Mere details, Doctor. But …’ Beecher paused for effect, ‘ … if you must reconstruct this terrible crime you have discovered, I strongly suggest you use your own bathroom.’
At this, a great explosion of laughter erupted behind him. I do not think Bell was unpopular with all of them – Summers for one was often his ally – but the Doctor could be severe and proud and it is always amusing to see pride take a fall. Moreover most of the policemen were probably just as relieved as Beecher to avoid an investigation in a leading city brothel, for there was no knowing where such a path might lead.
Beecher beamed and turned away as his little crowd dispersed. Bell was still intensely scrutinising his finds, more interested, as ever, by the details of the case than its politics. ‘The laughter of imbeciles,’ he muttered to himself as he examined the pail, and then turned his attention to the rope and its knots. ‘Probably quite fitting in the circumstances.’
He lingered in that foul place for a long time and, when he was done, he insisted on revisiting Madame Rose’s, which was not yet open but showed every sign of preparing itself for customers. Two women were giggling and prettying themselves in a cloakroom by the door, while flowers had been arranged in the main room and refreshments were being laid out.
The Doctor marched right past them to the stairs. At once the madame appeared, looking most uncomfortable, and Bell informed her that he required a few minutes to look again at the room where the blood had been found. She explained anxiously that the place would be receiving guests within the hour, but we were permitted to climb the stairs. There was no sign of anyone, though I heard women’s voices, and soon we were back at the end of the top corridor, staring through the open doorway.
At first I thought we were in the wrong room. For the place was utterly transformed. The entire area had been scrubbed from top to bottom, and now that the window was clean, sun shone directly into it, making it look almost cheerful. Of course some staining remained, but that was all, and I could see now how carefully our man had chosen this space, for it was too small to be used as a bedroom and, contained no furniture.
Bell stood there staring, his face showing far more open disgust now than it ever had at the blood itself. ‘The idiots could not even retain the evidence,’ he muttered, moving over to the window and studying it, then turning back to look again at the room. There was no sign of the clothes or the little pile of coins I had seen. Presumably the police had taken them away the day before.
Bell examined every cranny but found little to satisfy him, for there was nothing to find, yet still he lingered, paying attention to the room’s corners, to the ledge where the coins were placed, to the window-latch and the floor. I was becoming anxious for I had arranged to meet Miss Scott at six, yet I knew how much he hated to be interrupted in such deliberations. Twice, surreptitiously, while his back was turned, I consulted my pocket watch.
Bell was now at the far corner, bent down at a place where for some reason the stains were more profuse. ‘It is singular, Doyle. And I have to say it disturbs me greatly.’ He seemed to sink into a trance. But then he continued without changing his tone in any way. ‘I think you have about nineteen minutes.’
‘What?’ I said.
He did not look up. ‘Judging by the intervals at which you have consulted your watch, you are meeting someone at six o’clock. I will see you in the morning.’
That night Miss Scott’s dissection was as expert as before, if less eventful. I had already established that Latimer’s labman was away on Tuesdays, and on this occasion the night-clerk turned out to be an ancient short-sighted man who would probably have given almost anyone the benefit of the doubt even at close quarters. Indeed it went so smoothly that Miss Scott began to plan. Perhaps she might even be able enter the place alone on this night of the week and smuggle some colleagues in too.
Afterwards we walked to her lodgings as slowly as we could, taking a roundabout route. During the walk our conversation turned away from science and took on a dreamy, languorous quality. We spoke of favourite poems and favourite books. To my delight she had read a little Poe and we talked excitedly of his stories. Both of us, it seemed, longed to hear the strange music in his work like Roderick Usher’s wild and improvised airs on his guitar. I told her how it reminded me of Samuel’s violin and went on to describe his death.
As we reluctantly neared her lodgings, I was lamenting how the beggar’s death had been ignored because he was poor. Until now the conversation had been a little rhapsodic but here it took another turn. Miss Scott wholeheartedly agreed, telling me her own determination to practice medicine had arisen from observing the conditions in her father’s hospital. But then with her lodgings in sight, she turned the tables. ‘Now I have told you why I entered medicine, Mr Doyle, but still I know little of you. What is your mission?’
I had not expected this and was left feeling like a fool, for the honest fact was that medicine had not even been my own idea. It had been decided by my mother, at Waller’s urging, while I was still away from home. I could hardly tell her this and I was certainly not going to mention Waller’s name, but still I was not going to lie. ‘I do not appear to have a mission, I am afraid,’ I said.
She looked at me intently but then she laughed. ‘Well, does it matter? Everyone finds a path.’ She became more serious. ‘If not medicine, then something else. We all build our castles in the air.’
‘Yet, only you could make them sound like an ambition.’ These were, I suppose, the first truly personal remarks we had exchanged. ‘I never met anyone like you.’
She stared at me. There was obvious emotion in her eyes. She started to speak, and then a window was flung open and a miserable voice with a clear tone of spite called her name. Of course it was her tyrannical landlady.
‘There is my demon,’ she said. ‘I must go.’ She turned and then looked back. ‘I still do not even know where you live but you said with your parents.’
I told her it was true, hoping she would not guess that my family’s precarious finances made any other arrangement impossible. I added that I would like to walk with her again, perhaps at the weekend and she agreed. If only it had been left there. But she stopped a moment. ‘If I could ask you a favour?’
‘Anything.’
‘When next we walk out, I should like very much to meet your parents. I would take it as an honour, Mr Doyle.’
She turned away then and disappeared. Which was fortunate for I had been smiling hopefully and she had no time to observe how my expression changed to confusion and misery.
My anguish continued as I walked home. How could I tell her about my father? What excuse could I provide? That he was ill? Unfortunately, since she was a medical student, that was out of the question for she would at once ask about his condition. Moreover, if she came to our home it was certainly possible he would scream or cry out from upstairs. Nor could I bear for one instant the notion of her meeting Waller. That was not to be contemplated, for there was no knowing what he might do. If my mother was absent from the room, I could even imagine him laying bare my father’s abject condition just to humiliate me.
As if to echo all my worst fears, that night I was awoken out of a fitful sleep by the sound of screaming from below. It was followed by the noise of breaking glass. I dressed rapidly and reached the stairs.
Below me all was chaos. My father was there, fully dressed and in the throes of some kind of violent fit, having smashed plates and a mirror on the wall. My mother and Waller were controlling him with great difficulty and of course Innes and his three sisters had been woken. Ida, who was then three, was crying, the others stared in horror.
I moved at once to help, calming the children and escorting them back to bed. Behind me my father’s cries were fading for Waller had forced him to take a draft.
At last he was back in his room and, after doing what we could to clear up the destruction, we repaired miserably to our beds. As might be expected, the episode served as a reinforcement of all my worst fears. Elsbeth Scott was, I acknowledged as I lay there, more important to me than anyone I had ever met, but the risk of seeing her tainted by this horrible house was simply not to be endured. Anything was preferable to that – yes, even not meeting her at all.
It was a cowardly solution, but I am ashamed to say that for a few weeks I stuck to it. I buried myself in my books and my studies, I helped at home, for my father’s condition was now so bad that all our energies were needed to hold the house together. I attended few lectures but in any case, when the women were present, they were usually in a large group on the other side of the hall and our paths never crossed. For his part, Bell was engrossed in thought and made poor company. In fact, I suspect he was out of humour.
And then something unexpected happened. It was on the morning I had decided to attend one of Anderson Ritchie’s physiology lectures. This course was important for my studies, but it was also true that, by now, I was desperate to see Miss Scott again even if I still had no idea what I would tell her about my home, and could offer little explanation of my withdrawal. I knew that Ritchie admitted women and moreover his hall was small, so there was every chance I would be able to meet her.
The cold weather of some weeks earlier was now a distant memory and we were enjoying an uncommonly mild spring. I noticed a few of the women smiling in the sunshine as they walked across the square to the lecture hall, and I felt suddenly full of hope. Perhaps I would just tell Miss Scott that my parents were away for a few weeks and postpone the evil hour. I did not care for I wanted only to see her, and it was then that I heard the commotion ahead.
There was shouting and someone slammed a door. I noticed a sudden look of alarm on people’s faces and I ran forward into the corridor which led to the hall. At the end of it students were milling about a large vaulted area. Now I could see Crawford, his face flushed, his mouth contorted with rage. Beside him were his cohorts, all of them blocking the way to Ritchie’s lecture.
The women faced them, their backs rigid, the atmosphere appeared very tense. I could not see Miss Scott and I moved to get closer.
‘Someone was in Latimer’s laboratory last night,’ Crawford was shouting. ‘They were not caught, but dissecting work was done and we believe these women are helping themselves to our materials against all the university regulations.’
His words dismayed me, of course, though I marvelled at the man’s talent for spying.
Sophia, the most articulate and active of the women, was prepared to challenge him, but kept her distance. ‘By all means try and find who entered Latimer’s room, but it is nothing to do with this lecture. I would remind you we are permitted to enter the class.’
Crawford sneered at this, frenzied with excitement. ‘She does not even deny it,’ he yelled to his gang. ‘It is written in the Bible what they are.’ And he reached into his pocket. For a moment I thought he was about to produce a weapon, but he brought out a fistful of coins and flung them headlong at the women.
One of the coins nearly caught Sophia in the face, but she dodged and the others clattered on the stone. As I stared at them, I was reminded of the pile of coins we had seen in the brothel and something rushed into my mind. But before I could quite fix on it I was delighted to see Neill step forward. ‘Whatever your complaint, Crawford, you must let them through,’ he shouted and I am glad to say voices were raised in agreement.
All Crawford’s attention was still on the women. He was enjoying their terror and his friends were urging him on, roaring and cheering at every remark he made. ‘They are such delicate lambs, are they not?’ he leered. ‘But lambs have blood to shed and who can say what harm may come to them!’
I was close enough to see his face clearly now, and it seemed possessed. His eyes blazed, and there was a fleck of spittle on his lower lip. Its sheer ugliness was too much for me. ‘Let them through,’ I shouted, and I lunged forward, trying to push him away. ‘Are you mad?’
Unfortunately I could not quite reach him amongst that heaving crowd, but he heard me and laughed. ‘Are not all the best doctors mad, Doyle? It is why these women will never qualify, except possibly as wet nurses.’
No doubt this gross insult would have provoked more roars of pleasure from his people except at that moment a woman moved forward from the others, somehow forcing the crowd to part till she was beside him. And, with unexpected speed, the woman brought her knee into his groin. Crawford’s face, which had been triumphant, suddenly contorted with pain and he doubled up. But I was not looking at him, I was looking at the figure of his attacker. It was Miss Scott.
Of course Crawford recovered quickly and launched himself after her. He was strong, and no one person could possibly have restrained him in that frenzy. But he was so obviously out of control that even his friends held him back. I clung on to him too.
‘I will kill her.’ He was screaming. ‘You hear me.’
I felt a stern hand on my shoulder and turned to find that several strapping porters had appeared. Behind them was Dr Gillespie who had immediate responsibility for discipline within the university precinct.
The presence of the porters rapidly cooled the passions of the throng, though Crawford was still having to be restrained by his friends.
‘This is disgraceful,’ Gillespie was shouting to all of us. ‘We cannot possibly tolerate such a bedlam. The lecture is of course cancelled. And the women must stand down for two months.’
There were cries of anger at this injustice, not merely from the women. I doubt it would have had the slightest effect, but Crawford’s roar of triumph at this development was so uncontrolled, his frenzy so palpable, that even Gillespie could not ignore him. He turned. ‘And you, sir, for three.’
Gillespie moved away, thinking his work done, but I thanked heaven the porters still held Crawford, for now all his attention turned back to Elsbeth, who had moved into the midst of the women. ‘This is your doing, Miss Scott,’ Crawford screamed at her. ‘You will pay for it. As a lamb to the slaughter, and you will not escape me.’ For a moment it looked like he might break free, and others, including myself, moved to block him.
At last he subsided, and when I turned round I knew why. The women had gone, and I had lost my chance of talking to her, perhaps for as long as two months. Of course I could try my luck at her lodgings but I knew perfectly well the landlady would never allow a gentleman to call. My only course would be to write a letter and see if she would answer. After all that had happened, including my weeks of silence, it seemed highly dobutful.
With a bitter heart I turned to walk to Bell’s room for there was something I wanted urgently to discuss with him. I could find no sign of Bell, but I was told he was in the building, and I wandered around disconsolately for a while until I overheard his voice outside Gillespie’s room.
‘I incline to think …’ Gillespie’s tones were pompous, sonorous.
‘Then do so,’ came back Bell’s voice, obviously angry. ‘Of course the safety of these women is our responsibility! And we must accept it!’
With these words he strode out of there so fast that he almost knocked me over. I moved quickly to get out of his way and walked rapidly alongside him. ‘Dr Bell, I wanted to discuss a matter with you.’
‘If it is about this business with the women, I have already stated my position—’
I interrupted. ‘I am glad, and it concerns them in a way.’ I struggled to marshal my thoughts for I was about to present the doctor with my own deduction, and I knew it would be subject to ruthless scrutiny. He indicated that I should proceed.
‘You recall,’ I said, ‘that pile of coins in the room where we found the blood?’
He nodded.
‘I thought at the time it reminded me of something. Now I know why. It is because there was something very similar beside the beggar who was killed.’ I had told the Doctor about Samuel’s death and he had lamented that such forensic negligence was nothing unusual.
‘Presumably his earnings,’ he answered. We were getting close to his rooms.
‘Yes, that is what I thought,’ I replied eagerly. ‘But I felt there was something odd and now I see what it is. Samuel never left his earnings on the street, they were always in his violin case.’
‘Perhaps it was overturned,’ he said, still without any great interest as we entered between the high shelves. There was dank water in his tank, no doubt awaiting some specimen.
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