by Howard Engel
“This is no common villain’s shiel,” I said, breaking a silence of nearly fifteen minutes. Bell ignored the remark and turned the pages of the city directory which he had brought with him. He handed me the bull’s-eye lantern, then closed the book with a low whistle.
“What is it?” I asked.
“My suspicions are confirmed,” he whispered. “Confirmed in general. But even I did not imagine that the trail would lead us here.”
“I can see power and position written on the walls and windows, but what else do you see, Doctor?”
“This is the wee abode of Sir William Burnham, QC, KCB, the Procurator-Fiscal of the Shire of Midlothian!”
“It can’t be!” I gasped. “He, if anyone, is above suspicion.”
“No man, nor woman neither, is above suspicion, laddie. But this would account for the well-managed campaign being waged against us: my little talk with the principal of the university and your tumble in the back street near the Cowgate, not to mention the man standing in the shadows at the back of the museum across from my house.”
On the way back to Bell’s rooms in Lothian Street, I contemplated our enemy: Sir William Burnham. What did I know of him? Very little, and yet, at the same time, I do not recall a time when his name was unknown to me. I remembered the pink face from the first day of Lambert’s trial. Sir William was a part of the landscape, like the Castle as seen from the Grassmarket, and almost as durable. His name was often in the papers, usually in connection with an important civic event. His comings and goings were marked in the column usually devoted to the court circular. He was the keystone of that outwardly respectable and inwardly corrupt world that Stevenson spoke about. He had called the city a sty, a cesspool, with all of its officials vampires. I was forced to imagine Sir William Burnham with one or another of his arms reaching into the herring barrel of corruption.
I had seen Burnham’s magnificent estate in Fifeshire. It had been pointed out to me on a summer ramble with my family several years ago. We heard shooting on the large grouse moor and caught sight of several of the beaters as they made their way home at the end of the day.
While I was thus musing, Bell beside me was fidgeting. I asked him what was toward. He replied with a smile. “Does that spy in the bushes across the street from me still disquiet you?” he asked. I admitted that he did waylay my thoughts more than I liked.
“I think I know how to dislodge this unwelcome limpet, Doyle. Lend me your hat.”
“My hat? What are you—?” Bell placed a finger on my lips and gave a reassuring twist to his head. All the while he was readjusting his clothing and brushing his usually tidy hair until it was plastered over his balding head. He fixed it there with saliva. Under my hat, it appeared as a fringe, which quite altered his appearance. He tore his pocket handkerchief into several pieces and inserted one balled fragment into each of his cheeks. I marvelled as he tried out several distorted expressions in his pocket mirror, each one an invented emotion to suit some imagined situation.
“Is this a rehearsal for some amateur theatricals, Doctor?”
“I resent the word ‘amateur’ in the context, Doyle. I pride myself on my ability to alter my appearance. I have often done it for the academic procession at June convocation. No one seemed to notice. Of course, I had no idea that it would ever prove to be of more practical use.”
“This must have something to do with that fellow outside your house,” I said.
“Capital! You too are catching on to this singular game. How is it possible that I never tried it before?”
“You mean, if Graeme Lambert had not come to see you, this side of your personality would have remained forever buried?”
“Forever is a muckle wee bit of time, Doyle. I should not like to judge of that. And I was forgetting the singular business of the Dean’s telescope, which I must tell you about one day.”
The cab had now crossed the George IV Bridge. Bell banged upon the roof for the driver to stop and we got out into the dismal, nearly empty street. Bell paid the driver from his coin purse and we tasted our heels for some distance, sending out smoky blasts of warm air into the cold night air. When we were in sight of his house, Bell urged me into a dark doorway in the façade of the museum. With a finger laid to one side of his nose and a whispered “Shush!” he was off down the street by himself. He had altered his accustomed pace and, I know that this will sound absurd, even his height had been altered: for he walked with a strut that resembled that of a military man in his retirement, a soldier on half-pay. Breathless, I watched him go directly to a dark shadow across from the light coming from Bell’s windows. A dark figure stepped out of the shadows for a moment and then both figures were swallowed up into the blackness of the night.
With the light coming from Bell’s rooms adding distorted oblongs of light on the pavement, I lifted my eyes to those windows, for something about one of them caught a portion of my attention, but had failed for a moment to convey to my brain the significance of what was to be seen there. I looked more attentively and nearly cried out. For there, for all to see, sat Dr Joseph Bell! His shadow could easily be seen against the drawn blind. I looked away to the spot where my friend had been a moment before, but could make out nothing. The darkness was as unbroken as before. In the first-floor window, my friend seemed to be nodding over the book he was examining. I was about to ignore my instructions and cross to his front door, when I saw a figure emerge from the shadows. It was the spy. I flattened my back against the door of my alcove hiding-place. The spy passed within three feet of me and continued down the street and out of sight. Moments later, Bell himself appeared, beckoning me to follow. He crossed to his door and waited. My progress was prolonged by my inability to keep my eyes off the silhouette of my friend already seated in his own bay-window and at the same time searching for his latchkey in his pocket in the street below.
TWENTY
The mystery was quickly solved when we were again seated in Bell’s rooms. Mounted on a pedestal table, whose height had been increased by several thick medical tomes, sat a Fowler’s Phrenology head with a few paper additions held in place with sticking plaster. “Come in and meet Dr Joseph Bell, Doyle. He does rather well, doesn’t he? I altered the shape of the nose and chin as well as giving a suggestion of hair. Otherwise, a Fowler head does very well.”
I examined the head more carefully. It was the familiar object with its map of the cerebral cortex marked off with boundaries like a political map of the cantons of Switzerland. To this, cut-outs which more closely represented Bell’s face had been applied, as I have already said. A lamp had been placed directly behind the figure so that a sharp outline, similar to the silhouettes we used to make of children on a rainy afternoon, was cast upon the blind.
“Ingenious, but simple,” Bell said, moving the figure slightly on its perch, so as to present a slightly different effect.
“So much for the mystery of your being in two places at once, Doctor. Now tell me what you said to the spy to get him to leave his post.”
“Oh, that? I simply took him aside and put a bug in his ear.”
“It must have been a giant beetle to get him to leave without authorization.”
“A cerambycid called the aberrant long-horned beetle would be about the correct size for the commission I gave him.”
“Commission?”
“Doyle, my good fellow, do you hear an echo in here, or am I going slowly deaf?” I must have blushed, because suddenly my collar seemed a size too small. But, Bell’s joke was easily swallowed when he rang for his housekeeper, who brought up the first of a succession of trays, which she placed on the table Bell and I hastily cleared of books and papers.
During the soup, perhaps to put me off the scent of our enquiry, Bell told me that he had heard from the runaway George Budd in Plymouth in the morning post: he had married the wench I had seen and was setting up his medical practice there on the south coast.
“He’s a brilliant sort of eccentric,” said
my friend, “but I must say I’m not unhappy he’s gone. I’ve never met a more insensitive human being. He is like a boot demanding an apology from the toes it recently trampled. He will make a spectacular success of medicine, I suspect, but it won’t be because of his skill in the profession. He has too little patience to win many patients. He’ll find the necessary megaphone to shout his quack cures. But, there’s more than that. I believe he has started experimenting with cocaine. I have seen it in his eyes. He has never shown more than the customary malevolence to me, his teacher. Still, I don’t quite trust the fellow. Never did. There’s a mean, vindictive stripe down his back. And you know how arrogant he can be.”
“Poor girl,” I said.
“Mrs George Turnavine Budd, my friend. A Ward in Chancery no longer, unless they are discovered.”
During the fish course, Bell dissected the head of his fish while giving an impromptu lecture on asymmetry. “In the flat-fishes, as Huxley so ably points out, the skull becomes so completely distorted that the two eyes lie on one side of the body. Take your plaice, now. Pleuronectidae. In certain of these fishes, Doyle, the rest of the skull and facial bones—please examine the bones under my fork—yes, and even the spine and limbs partake of the same asymmetry. How do you find it? Is it to your taste?”
“I’m afraid that mine is getting cold.”
“Well, eat up! Eat up, laddie! I’ll no’ have you letting a nice bit of plaice go to waste. But tell me about your wanting to become a doctor. Is this the wish of your childhood being realized?” Over the rest of the fish and then on into the roasted woodcock with boiled potatoes and greens, I told him about my ambitions. I made him privy to the small successes that I had had with some articles and stories. We were finishing a hot apple tart when Bell wiped his chin and spoke again.
“So, you don’t see yourself lancing carbuncles for the next fifty years when you could be writing stories. What sorts of stories, laddie?”
“I’ve always been fired up by tales of chivalry. And of the Napoleonic Wars. The Monmouth Rebellion. What I wouldn’t give to have been there!”
“There’s always a new war coming up the drafty turnpike, Doyle. Dinna wish too hard. You narrowly missed the Crimea and China. Perhaps you’d like to join General Gordon in suppressing the slave trade in the Sudan, Abyssinia and central Africa. These are brave times for the Empire, Doyle. Take care your eyes are not closed. While France is crippled and the Germans stand beguiled by their victory, while America is recovering from its family dispute, now is the time for Russia to snatch at the east. And everywhere our empire is in its way. Disraeli sees that. That’s why he is trying to woo Ismail Pasha to part with the Suez Canal. There’re real stories enough for you brewing in the next few years.”
“I want to write about the Forty-five. It’s our own history and who is to write it now Scott’s in his tomb?”
“And he has that monument, like a Chinese rocket, on Princes Street. You have a friend, young Stevenson; he’s anither like you! Canna be two like that, God knows. Has he been blowing in your ear?”
“We both want to get on, Doctor. And we see that we would like to do it with our pens. Perhaps the lancet will help support my muse. I don’t know how it will work itself out, sir. But I am bound to complete what I have started here.”
“Good! Do you think you would like to try a cigar?”
“Gladly. But I hope you don’t imagine that I have forgotten about the spy across the street. I want to know what you told him to send him on his way.”
“Och, that. It’s a thing of no special significance. I told him that he should warn the deputy chief constable that Scotland Yard is showing an interest in this case and might be sending someone to Edinburgh to investigate.”
“Wonderful! Is it true?”
“Of course not, Doyle. But he doesn’t know that.”
TWENTY-ONE
I was looking up everything I could find about Sir William Burnham in the free library. It was a fine old family to be sure. Not Scottish, but there were many of the “Auld Enemy” around about who had taken a bite of the haggis and not gagged. One Burnham invented a high-pressure air lock, another was a hero at Balaclava. A third was a Baptist preacher, who threw himself against the rock of the Presbytery often enough to finally retire impotent and wasted to Bournemouth at the age of thirty-five. A Burnham had been allied with Montrose, another assisted in the Highland clearances. Another group of Burnhams had distinguished themselves in local government: a Staffordshire sheriff, a bailiff from Worcestershire and so on. They appeared on councils from the ranks of solicitors and advocates. In the last century, for a time, one of that name, as Lord Provost, may be said to have “ruled” Edinburgh. Of course it didn’t last. Nothing does. But there were other Burnhams back again in high places not twenty years later. As Procurator-Fiscal, Sir William was enormously powerful.
My recollection of his Fifeshire estate, interrupted by Bell in the cab, as he slipped into his contrived disguise, became for me the symbol of the man I had seen at the opening day of Lambert’s trial. But, suddenly, the absurdity of my work was brought home to me. How ridiculous, how silly of me to be wasting not only my own time, but the much more valuable time of Alan Lambert, in this improbable pursuit. In science we learn to reject absurd propositions. Unequal things may not be compared successfully. Why should a powerful man persecute this blameless young man into his grave? With what object? They lived in different spheres. What possible connection could Burnham have with Mlle Clery, apart from his box overlooking the stage at the opera house. Perhaps they had met at a reception. She was most attractive and the toast of the city. Could some irregular relationship have existed? Edinburgh was famous for being a town where the right hand quickly forgot what the left was doing. Could such gossip be suppressed?
Clearly, more work needed to be done here. My tower of speculative filigree required buttressing before it began to shake and fall. It needed hard facts or, failing that, hearsay of a respectable sort. What did I know of a certainty? The affections of Mlle Clery had been conferred upon another: the poor fellow who shared her fate. Would it be likely that the Procurator-Fiscal would share a mistress with a minor clerk in some drab department of public works? I tried to imagine my poor father, in days of more robust health, competing with some great civic official for the favours of a Mlle Clery. I could not see it.
When a public official stoops to folly…Scottish history is rich in examples. History is in general. I must not be too quick to call absurd what merely looks absurd.
Louise Lambert was seated in my place in the library when I arrived with my satchel of papers and books. She looked at me with wide eyes. “Any news?” she whispered, taking my hand in hers.
“There’s too much to say and so much to be done that I have no time to tell you. Have you eaten your dinner?”
“I’m engaged,” she pouted, and added, when she saw my expression, “A dear aunt from Aberdeen.” That made me feel better. Then I had an idea.
“Louise, remember you told me about an amateur play you saw a few nights ago. Could you repeat what you said? There was something in your description that caught my mind.”
“But not your memory it seems.”
“Be a dear and tell me again.”
“I thought it was well done. Some of Graeme’s old friends were in it. People you don’t know, like David M’Clung and Henry Burgoyne. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes, tell me the rest.”
“That’s about all. Graeme hated it, but Graeme won’t admit that Andrew Burnham is a fine amateur actor. They’ve hated one another since they were children. Andrew is really very good. You should have seen him at the Scobbie masquerade, he was quite ravishing, although, of course, father thought he went too far.”
“Why was that?”
“He was too good. Father said it made him feel peculiar. I just wanted to know who had done his hair.”
Instead of having a bite to eat, when Louise left to meet h
er aunt, I wandered over to the Opera House and then around the corner to the nearest tavern, The Wounded Stag, where I found stagehands with a dark pint in almost every hand standing at the bar and chattering choristers tuning their pipes with sherry. I was looking for Jasper Ballantyne, who had failed his second year medicine and then, in a fit of melancholy, attached himself to the theatre as a man of all work. As long as his strong back supported him, he would be employed.
Ballantyne was standing at the far end of the bar, holding an empty glass in his hand. I approached, clapped him on the back, and ordered two pints from the barman, who looked as though he would rather be in some other business. His disapproval of his customers—perhaps it was of drinking itself!—was evident in every line in his face. Jasper Ballantyne, on the other hand, enjoyed his vices. Unfortunately, his face was beginning to show it. There were now bluish deeps to his eye sockets, and the colour in his cheeks had faded. When I remarked on the latter in a joking way, he protested that the theatre was indoor work and that I should not be surprised by theatrical pallor. He offered the pale faces of his companions as proofs of his assertion. The choristers, already made up for the matinée, we agreed to disqualify from the argument, although with our backs to the bar the lot of them made far more attractive viewing than our own features reflected in the mirror behind the bar.
