The Night Calls

by David Pirie

  But, by the night I describe, I know I was at last becoming aware of a vague sense of right. Whatever my reservations about Bell (and these reservations had by no means disappeared), I could see quite well that he had a good deal more rationality than Latimer or Crawford, and also I needed little persuading to honour Miss Scott as a shining example of sense and fortitude.

  As a result I longed to meet with her again, and looked for her the next day and the day after. But, after Crawford’s cruel prank, the women were much less in evidence at the university and there was no sign of her. Eventually, since there were already rumours on the subject, I told my friends of Miss Scott’s disguise and they were both amazed and impressed. Neill’s response was that, as gentlemen, we should now insist on offering the women a safe escort into the university, but his scheme gained little support and I felt a bitter disappointment when Macfarlane’s next pharmacology lecture came and went without any women attending at all.

  I walked home after it, wondering gloomily if I would ever see her again. The weather seemed to fit my mood, for the city had suddenly thrown up one of those late frosts that make its streets a treacherous misery, even in early spring. It was, I reflected, inauspicious weather for that night’s medical society ball, an annual event I usually managed to avoid. But on this occasion Waller happened to have been given a ticket, though he never attended, and my mother insisted I make use of it. So a few hours later I found myself in the ballroom of the Waverley Hotel, which once stood at the end of Chambers Street, doing my best to dance an eightsome reel.

  It might be thought that a medical society ball in Edinburgh at that time would be a smart formal event. In fact it was nothing of the kind. The hotel was a dingy place, lit by an inadequate series of gas lamps, which made for an eerie spectacle, sending flickering shadows of the dancers on to the floor beneath our feet. As an economy measure there was little in the way of food, but a plentiful supply of brandy punch had been provided in steaming bowls set to one side.

  Partly because of the absence of food, and partly because of the cold, it was soon obvious as we staggered through our dances that too much punch had already been consumed, though more by the men than the women. My partner in the reel was the daughter of the hotel owner, and by the end her father came over with a grim countenance, looked me up and down (though I was perfectly sober, having had only one glass) and pulled her away, obviously concerned about the propriety of such partners and the reputation of his establishment.

  I was rather irritated to be treated in this way and sauntered over to where Stark and Neill were pouring themselves liberal glasses of punch and laughing, for they had witnessed it.

  Neill put a comforting arm round me. ‘You are not respectable enough in his eyes,’ he said. ‘Like the heroes of our favourite Poe stories, you are “plunged in excess”.’

  ‘And I may as well be,’ I said bitterly. ‘He judges without evidence.’

  ‘Well, I hope he has no cat for you to attack.’ He was referring to Poe’s strange tale, ‘The Black Cat’, one of the many stories by that author Neill and I constantly devoured.

  ‘Then, I have not seen one,’ I rejoined. ‘But if it appears I may well be tempted.’

  All of a sudden we were interrupted by a commotion on the stairs to one side of the room. I could hear women’s voices raised, and the sound of running feet. Several men, including Stark, Neill and myself, ran up there, and women pointed along the corridor. Loud screams and sobs were coming from a room at the end.

  Stark was first there and Neill and I ran behind him as he flung open the door. We were in a ladies’ powder room, which was brightly lit with a red carpet. Directly ahead of us a woman was on her knees. She was as white as a sheet and quivering with terror. Another woman was trying to hold her, but she was hysterical. A man, who turned out to be her brother, pushed past us and put his arm round her, trying to console her.

  ‘Kathy,’ he said. ‘It is all right, you are unharmed, but what has happened?’

  She calmed down a little, but it was a while before we heard the full story, and it came out only haltingly after some brandy. The woman, whose name was Miss Katherine Morrison, had entered alone and there had been a man behind the door. The instant she closed it, he pulled her towards the window and covered her mouth. She was terrified enough, and then he produced a blade and said he might cut her throat.

  What happened next she would not say, but her friend knew and she told Stark, Neill and me the story downstairs as Miss Morrison’s brother stayed with his sister to comfort her and await the police. At first this friend had been reluctant to go into details, but I told her we were medical students and she need not spare our feelings. And so, after drinking a glass of punch, she told us the facts. Evidently the man had said he would cut some of her hair now, and one day might return to cut more of her. That was horrible enough, but he also made it clear that the hair he wanted was not on her head. Miss Morrison had had to keep still as his knife went within an inch of her belly. Hearing this, we naturally assumed the worst but it turned out the man had not lied. Using the knife, he had snipped a bit of pubic hair and done nothing else. It was odd but even so, as we all knew, it amounted to an indecent assault of the most disgusting kind.

  Already, as word spread of what had happened, much of it grossly exaggerated, the place was in an uproar. All thought of dancing had been abandoned and a search of the upper rooms had begun, though it was obviously useless, not merely because the man had almost certainly fled but because most of the searchers were demonstrably the worse for drink.

  I was trying to get a description of the man, but she had not seen him properly. All that could be ascertained was that he was lean and dressed in black. At a formal ball this amounted to nothing at all and soon, to my disgust, such frenzied portraits were circulating among the pursuers that I could see he would shortly be accorded fangs, gigantic stature and a forked tail. In any case so much noise was being made, so much bellowing and bravado, that we might as well have hunted him with a herd of elephants in front of us.

  Neill and I gave up in disgust and decided to look downstairs rather than up. The ballroom was empty now, and we moved into the kitchen area, which contained a multitude of corridors, sculleries and storage rooms.

  The first space was filled with pots and pans and a basin. I entered it and glanced around, but it seemed to be empty and I moved back into the corridor as Neill turned to the next door along. I was just behind him as he opened it.

  The figure on the other side was huge and covered in blood and gave a great cry as he came out at us like a bull. The sheer impact almost knocked Neill to the ground and forced me to grab out at my friend as the assailant darted off down the corridor.

  I made sure Neill was only winded and then raced after the man. He was already pushing his way into a kitchen, knocking a great pile of plates down as he went. I reached the door, managing to dodge the broken crockery. It was obvious the figure was aiming for the open kitchen window. Once out in the street, there would be little hope of catching him so I tried to dive for his legs.

  It was a feeble attempt, for he only kicked out at my head, sending me flying backwards into the hard wood of a cupboard door.

  I was dazed and took a little while to get to my feet, feeling very foolish, for by now he was through the window, and would have easily escaped into the darkness.

  I reached the sill, which was covered in ice, and saw that it gave on to a narrow dark wynd. There seemed little point in pursuit now but I started to clamber out. And then I stopped in astonishment. For sprawled on the paving stones below me was a large black shape, streaked in red. I stared, but there could be no doubt. It was my assailant.

  Naturally I waited, fearing some kind of trick. But he seemed to be still, so I eased myself out and jumped, every muscle poised for his attack.

  None came. He was lying there, just as I had seen, in the bitter cold, and he was quite unconscious.

  Neill was soon beside me, and
after a few minutes the police were on the scene too. Our fugitive was dead to the world, and the stench of brandy convinced me I had been a witness to the wildest stage of drunkenness, inevitably followed as it was now by oblivion. Quickly we ascertained that the man was a waiter in the hotel and that the blood on him was not his own. A chambermaid had been stabbed, though fortunately her wound was minor. Being the hero of the hour, I took the opportunity to ask one of the policemen if he would summon Dr Bell and, although the man was a little reluctant, he agreed.

  About an hour later I was waiting expectantly when the Doctor strode into the ballroom, dressed so scrupulously in his immaculate topcoat with silver-cane and bag, that you would never have thought he had been dragged rudely out of his bed. But if I expected any kind of thanks from him, I had quite forgotten his ways. He merely nodded in my direction and then went upstairs to talk to the victim of the first assault.

  This surprised me a little, for she was after all the least afflicted, but I knew better by now than to question his style. In any case there were more pressing matters, for the police had proved utterly incapable of finding the knife that had been used in both attacks. The first victim described this weapon in some detail: a long-handled, double-edged blade of a kind that sounded almost surgical. The second merely saw it glint in the darkness and felt its sharpness cold as it entered her shoulder. But her attacker was so drunk that she was able to force it from his hand and even heard it drop while he fled. It therefore seemed certain that the blade must be in the room where she was stabbed, but the police had combed the place and found absolutely no sign of it.

  I was still pondering this problem when Bell returned from talking to the first victim. Together we watched the waiter being carried out to the police cab as a large man with whiskers and an official manner entered the premises. This was Inspector Beecher, who seemed in excellent spirits for he nodded to me, even though I knew quite well that my presence on the earlier case had irritated him.

  ‘Well, Bell,’ he smiled. ‘Judging by the business upstairs this seems to involve your mysterious assailant.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Bell guardedly.

  ‘Then you must also agree your anxieties about the man appear to have singularly little foundation. He is only a drunken waiter, so drunk in fact that he made a very ineffectual attacker.’

  Bell looked at Beecher without expression. ‘I do not believe that Miss Morrison upstairs thinks he was ineffectual. Nor was his weapon.’

  ‘Ah, the weapon,’ said Beecher with irritation. ‘You will always seize on any awkward little points. It is true we have not found it yet. But you cannot deny the man’s drunkenness. No doubt he had more brandy after his encounter with Miss Morrison, which would explain why his second attack was less calculated.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Bell, ‘I have already looked at the statements and, according to several witnesses, the waiter you have locked up was deeply intoxicated for hours. It was why the chambermaid was trying to avoid him. He had courted her for months and had been rejected in favour of a local shopkeeper. Now, if you have no objection, Doyle and I would like to examine the room where she was stabbed. I would ask only that you leave Miss Morrison for a short while. She has been subjected to a good deal of questioning, and I promised her as a doctor that we would give her a little time to recover.’

  ‘Very well.’ Beecher nodded ungraciously. ‘But I cannot wait too long.’ And I could see that already the man was beginning to lose his good humour.

  A few minutes later, Bell and I approached the room where Neill and I first saw the figure. Bell stopped before we entered and went to an open window, staring out.

  ‘I can assure you,’ I told him, ‘he could not have disposed of the weapon there. He never went near it.’

  The Doctor turned back and, rather to my surprise, he had a great look of satisfaction on his face. ‘Very good, I accept what you say. Now let us see the room.’

  We entered what turned out to be a bare, dark storage room, lit by a single tiny gas lamp. I stared around me. There were signs of the chambermaid’s bleeding on the floor, where they found her, but almost nothing else. The windows were closed and shuttered, and there was absolutely no place of concealment.

  Bell examined the walls, then the lamp and the windows. I had noticed the room was warm and, near the bloodstains, a hot-water pipe ran through it at skirting level, but we could both see there was nothing beneath this. Bell studied the pipe and the wall for a moment and then he turned to me.

  ‘So, Doyle. The weapon. Where is it?’

  I looked around me. ‘It was not on his person or in the wynd, I am sure.’

  ‘Indeed. The victim insists the weapon was dropped here,’ he replied.

  ‘Then,’ I said, ‘either she is mistaken or —’

  ‘There is no mistake. She has a cut on her hand where she grasped its blade.’

  ‘So it is here. It is hidden or it has fallen.’ I went to the windows but the shutters were sealed tighter than a drum.

  ‘No,’ said Bell, watching me. ‘That is not the answer. They have not been open for years.’

  I was baffled. ‘Well, it cannot have disappeared. Doctor, you must …’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Bell, rejecting my appeal for help. ‘This is your case. You were first to see him. Think.’

  I turned from the walls back to the floor and then back to the walls again. There was absolutely nothing in this room. I thought that perhaps there was some trick to the blade, that its knife collapsed into the hilt. I had heard of such things before, but what good was that to me when I could see not even the tiniest object?

  ‘Use your sense,’ said Bell. ‘When you have eliminated what is utterly impossible, then where do you turn?’

  I stared around me. ‘Well, I can ascertain exactly where she fell.’

  ‘Good,’ said Bell. ‘Do so.’

  I could see the bloodstains and pictured the scene easily enough. The door had opened. She faced him. Yet still I had nothing. The Doctor sensed my helplessness and now he came at me as the man had, holding a feigned weapon in his hand. ‘Relive what happened. You are as she was.’

  I retaliated just as she had. ‘She said she heard it fall,’ I said to him. ‘I would guess this meant it hit the pipe.’ Slowly I followed what I imagined was her fall to the floor. ‘The knife would surely now be somewhere a few inches from my hand.’ And I stretched out with little hope for I could see there was nothing there.

  To my astonishment I did feel something cold. And I sat up at once to look. ‘There is water,’ I said in surprise. ‘Is the pipe leaking? Perhaps a hole …’ But I touched the pipe, which was very hot and quite solid. The Doctor was watching expectantly. ‘No. It seems intact and hot. But this leak is … cold … almost ice-cold.’ I knew by his face I was close. ‘Sharp and cold, the maid said.’ And suddenly I felt the bolt of illumination. ‘My God! It was ice. It was not a dagger at all. He had an icicle.’

  Bell stood there, a broad smile on his face. Then he turned and led me out through the door to the open window he had inspected earlier. There had been water dripping off a low roof here and several icicles had formed. He broke one off and held it up. It was about the size of a dagger.

  ‘The girl was very unlucky indeed,’ said Bell. ‘This man merely seized what was to hand and hit upon a deadly weapon, but at least he was in no position to use it very effectively. I am very glad, Doyle, you have learned something trivial, though I fear in a rather more important matter you have proved a grave disappointment.’

  ‘I do not understand,’ I said, as ever brought down to earth after what I had thought was my deductive triumph.

  ‘You should have called me as soon as the first incident occurred. Not only had the trail gone quite cold by the time I arrived. But, if you had, I could have told you at once there was absolutely no connection whatsoever between the drunken jealous brawl you interrupted here and the vicious, premeditated and indecent assault on Miss Morrison. As it
is, this business, which is utterly predictable, has completely obscured what is far more serious. Now let us go and tell Inspector Beecher what he has no wish to hear.’

  Beecher was standing in the ballroom grinning from ear to ear, having evidently recovered his good humour, as Bell approached. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘are you satisfied we have got your man?’

  ‘No,’ said Bell. ‘Because you have not.’

  ‘Oh, come,’ said Beecher with impatience.

  ‘Oh, Miss Morrison had already confirmed it,’ the Doctor said lightly. ‘She saw the waiter with me and will swear on oath that he is not the man who assaulted her.’

  Beecher’s smile disappeared so rapidly I thought he was going to choke. ‘You had no business to see her before I did. And how do you explain the fact that they used the same weapon?’

  ‘Because they did not. The man upstairs used a blade which was seen in full light. Your drunken waiter merely seized the first common article to hand.’

  ‘And was lucky enough to find a dagger?’

  ‘No, only this.’ And so saying the Doctor thrust an icicle into the astonished Beecher’s hand. ‘There are plenty of them about tonight and you will find the traces of his one lying under the pipe, inches from where the maid knocked it from him, mixed with her own blood. Your pathologist Summers will confirm it for you, I have no doubt.’

  Beecher was speechless as Bell moved off and I followed. ‘Our mystery man is still very much at large,’ the Doctor called back to him. ‘His activities are a matter of enormous concern. And now another opportunity has been squandered.’

  THE COINS IN THE GUTTER

  Perhaps the Doctor felt he had been a little hard on me, for he was very friendly on the journey back. Indeed, though it was late, he proposed some refreshment. I was delighted to be readmitted to his inner sanctum, the large room which lay up a flight of stairs behind the locked door in his official work place. Here he had gathered an extraordinary collection of criminal artefacts and would even refer to it as his own black museum, for there was at that time some interest in the newly opened Black Museum in Scotland Yard.