by David Pirie
I turned away, for, though I saw the logic of what he said, it did not help my mood.
The Doctor disregarded me and started to remove papers from his case, talking as he did so. ‘The steamship company was relatively helpful, the Canadian and American authorities not at all. I was forcibly reminded of my observation to you, Doyle, that we are medical men, who cannot expect to find the police forces of the world at our disposal, so I have resolved to concentrate on the advantages of my profession rather than its weaknesses, and there has been one piece of luck.’
He had now unpacked most of the contents of his case, and I was amazed to see that on the table was a mass of correspondence. Bell had been as good as his word. There were letters and cables, it seemed, from hospitals, doctors, surgeons and even medical orderlies in Canada and America.
‘You have found a trace of him?’ I said.
‘Undoubtedly,’ he said.
I came forward. ‘Where is he?’
He smiled at me then. ‘I said a trace, Doyle. I have told you this will take time. It comes from before we knew him.’
I was disappointed but still engaged. He handed me a letter with pages of nearly indecipherable handwriting.
‘A Dr Andrez who works in the hospital in Quebec was extremely helpful. It transpires Cream was run out of the town as an abortionist an 1876. He is not a wanted man, but it was made clear to him he would not be welcomed back there. It is why I believe he has moved on from Canada.’
‘And will this Dr Andrez let you know if he has news of him?’
‘Of course, of course,’ said Bell. ‘Every one of these new-found correspondents has agreed to alert me in confidence if they receive news. But I doubt it will be Dr Andrez. As I say, Thomas Neill Cream avoids Quebec now. It may be some time before he emerges. But, if he is not arrested, you can be sure of one thing, Doyle. We will see him again. Perhaps, if we are not careful, it will be when least expected.’
Of course I was impressed by the Doctor’s industry, but it still seemed only a meagre consolation for the enormity of the acts we had endured.
‘But would he not laugh at this,’ I protested, ‘when our only weapon is letters and correspondence!’
The Doctor stopped then, reflecting. ‘Oh yes, undoubtedly he would laugh. That is precisely my hope. For so long as he enjoys himself he will be less guarded and I can surely gather in the end what I need.’
‘And then?’
‘It will depend solely on him. But I have told you I am confident.’
‘I wish I could say the same,’ I said. And I left him shortly afterwards.
Over the next few weeks I did not see so much of Bell, for I was still sunk in a degree of gloomy apathy. Sometimes I would wander by the docks, staring at the boats bound for the great American and Canadian ports, wondering if I would be able to stow away or work my passage. Once I even made enquiries and it was brought home to me that, while the arctic whalers were often in need of a ship’s doctor, and would therefore bend the rules, all boats heading out for the New World could afford to insist that their ship’s doctors were fully qualified. And of course a paid passage was out of the question.
In any case, I was not so foolish as to forget the Doctor’s word of warning. A futile excursion to America would, even I had to acknowledge, be quite likely to yield no results whatsoever except for transforming me into a purposeless vagrant. Yet most evenings I took out her ribbon and touched it, renewing my vow to find justice.
After a time I made some attempt to continue my studies and carry on what routine I had. I cannot truly say that there was much lessening of the pain, but I was in a more balanced state of mind and aware now that, while I would never give up the quest for justice, I must at the same time try to get on with my life. During the year that followed I had the distraction of two further cases with the Doctor, climaxing in the extraordinary Christmas of 1879 when the Tensmuir railway disappearances were resolved. The matter concentrated my mind and acted as a diversion from my grief, yet by the start of 1880 I was again grimly aware of all the time that had elapsed since Elsbeth’s death, and still we had no further news.
The Doctor naturally reminded me that he had never expected anything else. But I was finding it very hard indeed to settle down, and when a fellow student called Charles Augustus Currie asked me to take his place as a ship’s doctor on an arctic whaler out of Peterhead called The Hope, I decided to accept.
We sailed north in the last week of February in 1880, and there was plenty of time for reflection in the extraordinary eternal day of the arctic summer. When I came back to Edinburgh in September, I knew I was in some way changed. It was not that I was reconciled, but physically I was more robust and I took pride in being able to hand my mother fifty gold pieces, knowing that at last, for the first time ever, I had made some real difference to the household accounts.
Bell had only one serious piece of news, namely that Neill Cream had been practising in London, Ontario. We had been sitting by the fire of his upstairs room and I remember jumping to my feet as soon as I heard this. ‘Then we must detain him. I will go there …’
‘There would be no purpose in it,’ he said sadly. ‘He has moved on. A chambermaid called Kate Gardener was asphyxiated by chloroform. Some suspicion attached to Cream, but not enough to arrest him. And so he left hurriedly.’
‘When?’ I asked.
‘Six months ago. They have no idea where he has gone.’
I brought my hand down on his mantelpiece in despair. ‘What is the use of it then? We will always hear when it is too late.’
He pointed out that we had little alternative, and in one sense we were getting closer, but I will not disguise the sheer bitterness I felt in that moment. To think of this monster moving remorselessly through North America, already having killed again and probably more than once, while we were left with nothing, was hard to bear. On the basis of this new case, Bell had in my absence applied to the authorities again, but they were just as uninterested as before. He had also proceeded to write directly to law enforcement officers in Ontario but received only bland unforthcoming replies.
And so, as before, I stared with utter frustration at the map which the Doctor had placed in a prominent position on his wall, with its carefully pencilled line marking our foe’s known movements. As I stared at the outline of that great continent, what struck me again was the enormity of it all. The land was, in the end, so large. Town after town, city after city, state after state, each with hundreds and hundreds of communities.
‘Yes,’ said Bell, reading my thoughts. ‘A man might lose himself there easily. It is the ultimate labyrinth.’
The ultimate labyrinth. I suppose these, more than any other, were the words that stayed with me. How long would it be before the beast appeared from that labyrinth to claim more lives, perhaps here, or more likely in London? For I knew quite well that Neill had come to Edinburgh from the capital and often spoke of it with interest and excitement.
It was with a heavy heart that I returned home from that reunion with the Doctor and contemplated the future. The sea voyage had made it imperative that I must now apply myself to my studies for the final examination. The prospect held little appeal, but I could hardly let my people down, and it was what Elsbeth would have wanted. Also, I knew that I would have more chance of finding justice as a doctor than as an impecunious student. And so it was I spent that last winter at university in furious study, attempting to make up all the work I had lost, and passed my Final Examination with no great distinction in the spring of 1881.
It would be nice to be able to write here that the Doctor was pleased by my results, and that we came together in muted celebration at the end of my training to make further plans in our quest for justice. But it would not be the truth.
In fact, I saw less and less of him as that last year progressed. And, looking back, I suppose it may even be that I had taken my berth on the arctic whaler to get away from him. This change of heart might seem puzzling
for at first, it is true, Elsbeth’s death had brought the two of us closer, and the bond stayed strong when we were active. But during most of 1880 there was almost nothing else for us to dwell on except the failure to find Cream. Inevitably, I fear, this impasse brought all of my old reservations about the Doctor and his method flooding back.
During my last term, an unspoken understanding was reached that neither he nor I would mention our unfinished business unless there was news. This meant that our meetings began to have a strained air and our final encounter as teacher and pupil took place, shortly after my graduation, when I came to his room to say farewell. By accident we met, not in his domain, but outside in the square.
The sun was going down, sending shadows on to the old flagstones, and there was a chill in the air. He clasped my hand and there was a slight twinkle in his eye, but I remember thinking somewhat sadly as I walked away how utterly unremarkable any listener would have found that conversation: just a desultory farewell between a student and a teacher. It seemed an odd and diminished climax to all that had happened between us. But I had decided that the Doctor’s painstaking hunt was proving useless and that I must make my own way and wait until I had the resources to do better. Then, no matter what the cost, I would see justice.
PART FOUR: HIS HELL
THE MURDER ROOM
The weather in London in the late autumn of 1883 was of a kind I had not known before. It was dank and cold with a drifting directionless wind which could not finally penetrate the thick fog. The Times indeed wrote of the ‘weight’ of fog which enveloped the streets every day like a thick blanket of green and grey. Normally you would equate fog with stillness, but this was quite the opposite for in other respects the weather was unsettled and stormy.
Two years had elapsed since I left Edinburgh and, without giving up any of my unfinished business, I had been struggling to establish myself as a doctor on the south coast of England. My Uncle Richard, a wealthy and successful London illustrator, who I used to visit as a child, became aware of my financial difficulties and sent me several letters of introduction including one to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth. This might have helped but in the end I burned it for, though I had not abandoned a religion of some kind, I could not honestly claim to be a Catholic. I was aware that this attitude had not pleased my uncle, but shortly afterwards, to my pleasure and surprise, I received another offer. A London doctor of his acquaintance called Small (who was no Catholic but a Quaker) wished to visit his sister in Egypt and wrote asking if I would be interested in taking his place at a wealthy riverside practice in Ponsonby Place near Vauxhall Bridge. It was only five weeks and I suppose most doctors would have regarded the fixture as too short to be worthwhile. But I soon calculated that the weekly salary I would earn was ten times more than I could possibly hope to make in Southsea. Moreover some friends and patients of Dr Small had agreed to lodge me at a modest rate, so almost every penny of my wage could be saved against the future.
There was no difficulty in arranging for my practice to be covered by a neighbouring doctor, fortunately one who would not poach my meagre list for he was on the point of retirement. And so it was that I found myself trudging through the London fog that damp November, little knowing the immense significance of my visit.
The house where I was billeted turned out to be a small place in a tiny street called Esher quite close to the river and not very far from the Royal Aquarium. Martin Morland, who lived there with his wife Sally and their two small children, was from Wales, where he had been brought up in the countryside. He had come to London in the 1860s to work for a publisher in Chandos Street and prospered at first, rising to become principal private secretary to the firm, but the business had done badly in the stagnation of the 1870s and he was forced to obtain a humbler post elsewhere as a senior clerk in a company that made calendars.
Morland, who was in his mid-thirties, could be moody but essentially he was kind, and welcomed my presence just as eagerly as the money it brought to his home. His wife Sally (for as soon as they saw my youth they had insisted on Christian names) had fair hair and the most exquisitely pixie-like ears I have ever seen in a woman, and the ears somehow seemed to mirror her nature. I knew that as soon as I set eyes on her, and it delighted me that she took me up as a friend who she could trust.
No doubt partly because she was married, Sally, who was some years younger than her husband, was the first woman since Elsbeth with whom I enjoyed a simple affection. The fact of her marriage made her safe, and yet, if I am absolutely honest, it also awoke an old sadness in me. After one recent mistake, I was now absolutely sure that if I were ever to pick up the pieces of my life successfully (which no doubt is what Elsbeth would have wanted), it would be with someone like Sally Morland. But she was just as unattainable as my long lost love.
Sally’s nature was generous, her spirits high and much of her delight was in her children, Lucy then starting her letters, and Will, who was three. She would pick them up like skittles and sit them on her knee and read them silly rhymes and fables till they were bursting with laughter and merriment, and all I wished was to sit quietly in the corner, hoping that nobody would notice me.
But Sally was never the kind to exclude anyone, and soon enough she would look over her three-year-old son’s shoulder at me and chide me for not joining them, and the children would reach out and call me to come. At once I would be exhorted to tell them of skeletons and prescribing and dead men’s bones and all manner of doctor’s lore which they seemed to find highly ridiculous as indeed, when you reflect, it certainly is.
After such times, when the little cook who helped with the meals had begun preparing the dinner, I would slip away and undertake one of my long evening walks of exploration. Most often I trudged down Romney Street and others till I reached the Thames and turned left to walk for about a mile till I came to that extraordinary maze of little ways and lanes on the north side of the Strand which reminded me of Edinburgh. I was particularly struck by Holy Well Street, a name that always gave me a secret amusement because the thoroughfare was so far from Holy and so unlike the house of the same name I had known before. It might once have been smart but now it had become a dingy place where the less reputable booksellers offered guinea sets of dubious engravings imported from Paris.
There is a story about this area of the city which seemed to me then a wonderfully pointed reflection of the feeling of those endless streets. It relates that a young man from the country found himself lost here one winter’s night but took courage from the fact that he was only a few yards from the light and safety of the Strand. The boy set off with a brave heart but kept returning to the point where he had started until he was completely adrift in the stifling courts, yards and alleys without light or air until he died of exhaustion.
I thought of this often as I walked through that warren, sometimes myself fearing I would never emerge into the light. And then, just as I was giving up hope, I would make out the ‘Chocolate in Spain’ shop on the corner of the Strand, where the chocolate was strong and thick and came with a goblet of ice-cold water, and my heart would lift. At other times I would cross Waterloo Bridge and walk east to stare at the teeming dock-life of the city, dimly aware that London itself was working deeply on my senses. And then I would walk back the way I had come to the little house near the Vauxhall Road where Sally would greet me with a smile and an offer of tea, Martin would look up from the fire with a wave, and I would sit down and hear about the day.
Sometimes the two of them would talk of their circle, which seemed highly exotic to me for, though the family often had to struggle financially, they were on friendly terms with a number of illustrious neighbours. There was Macandrew, the marine scientist, who was well known for his inventions and marvels at the Royal Polytechnic Institution and had a house near Timber Wharf. There was Guthrie Johnstone, an obscure artist who specialised in somewhat eerie moonlit scenes. I say obscure because he never found fame, but I recall, when I was a child, my
Uncle Richard once mentioned his name in a whisper as if its very syllables might contaminate me. The children also talked much of their Uncle Tim from New York who had visited the previous year with an Aladdin’s cave of treasures; indeed their eyes grew wide even at the mention of this relative. And of course there were also the doctors from my practice, who often visited.
It was evident to me that Dr Small, the Quaker, must have taken up the family and introduced them to a whole series of people, though I must confess I was slightly baffled as to how he had made the connection to me. Undoubtedly the subject must have arisen at the Athenaeum, where I knew he met my Uncle Richard, but the latter was so annoyed that I had accepted what he regarded as a puny engagement, rather than the grander introduction to the Bishop, that he would not discuss the matter and showed no interest at all in my visit.
It may, I suppose, sound from these new excitements as if I had put the thought of justice behind me. It was not so. My mind returned to it every day, indeed I recall wondering, as the Morlands told me of their circle, if there was any hope I might find someone there who could help me more than Doctor Bell. Of course this was only wishful thinking, for it seems obvious to me now that I could have moved through every corner of London society for a hundred years without meeting anyone else quite like the Doctor.
Shortly after my arrival at the Morlands, one night I had a toothache and took a draft of laudanum. I do not in my heart believe I ever used the drug to excess but I admit that, following my experiments with gelsemium as a reliever of pain, I had resorted to it on occasion.
It might have been the reason for my dream. But I am more inclined to the view that exploring those teeming streets of London had stirred something in me. For they could hardly help reminding me of the terrain he liked best, of the women he liked to prey on, of the desires and weaknesses he chose to manipulate. The labyrinth of streets at the back of the Strand often recalled for me their counterparts in Edinburgh, though here there was more of everything, including people, and the lanes and wynds seemed unending.
