Mayhem

by Sarah Pinborough

  I turned my back on Harrington’s house and crossed the street.

  *

  ‘If you are a newsman, then you can leave right now. We have nothing to say to you. The family are all at dinner and cannot be disturbed.’ The housekeeper had barely opened the door; even through that narrow gap I could tell she was a formidable woman. Her eyes were suspicious, but alert, and I knew that if there were secrets in this house, this woman would know them.

  I held my hat between my hands.

  ‘I am very sorry to disturb you so late. My name is Dr Bond. I am the Police Surgeon. I …’ I hesitated around the words, and then managed, ‘I examined Elizabeth. I just have a few questions.’

  She stared at me for a long moment, but I had seen a flicker of pain and care cross her stern face at the mention of the dead girl.

  ‘You ’ad better come in.’

  I was shown into the drawing room, and after a few moments an elegant woman in her forties appeared, with the housekeeper alongside her.

  ‘Dr Bond?’ she said, and gestured to a seat, which I took. She remained standing. ‘I am Mrs Blythe. I am afraid my husband is not at home. This is about Elizabeth Jackson?’ She was elegant and polite, but there was a distaste in her voice, as if the whole business of Elizabeth’s demise was, whilst undeniably unfortunate, intensely irritating for the scandal it had brought to her door. ‘Mrs Hastings will be best able to answer your questions. She manages the staff. She spoke to the inspector. I will say that we had no trouble with Elizabeth – none of which I am aware.’

  I thanked her, and she drifted gracefully out the door and back to her family and their polite dinner, leaving the housekeeper and I to discuss the brutal facts of murder as if they might stain her hands like coal dust. Elizabeth Jackson had been in her service for several years, and yet I doubt she had given her more than a few minutes’ thought since finding out about her death. I was equally certain that Mrs Hastings, however, had given her considerably more thought than that.

  ‘Was she a good girl?’ I asked, when we were alone.

  ‘Yes, she was. Very good.’ The defensiveness I had seen in her eyes at the door was still there, but now I could see that she was protecting Elizabeth. I thought perhaps she felt a little guilt and sadness for how badly the maid’s life had ended.

  ‘And yet she ran away?’ I saw Mrs Hastings’ mouth tighten. ‘I am not looking to add to any supposed shame on her name, Mrs Hastings,’ I said, quickly. ‘I have seen what happened to her – the violations of her body. I more than most am aware of what she must have suffered. I wish to help lay her to rest.’

  ‘But – if you don’t mind me saying, sir, you’re a surgeon, not a policeman—’

  ‘The Police trust me,’ I said – and that was true, even if neither of the inspectors knew I was here. ‘I have a natural leaning to understanding human motivations. I want to get to know her life.’ As I spoke, I realised how true my words were. I wanted to know – I had to know – if Elizabeth had known the Harringtons. Of course, even if she hadn’t spoken to him, James could have known her. He could have—

  ‘She was a pretty little thing, you know,’ Mrs Hastings said suddenly. ‘I don’t think many people told her that – I didn’t – but she was pretty. And she was quiet, did her work well, no back-chat – not a complainer.’

  ‘Was she courting at all? Did she have someone?’

  ‘No, not then, but there was a young man a year or so before she ran off – she was giddier than usual, smiling and laughing downstairs.’ She sighed a little. ‘I’m not so old that I don’t remember what causes that in young girls.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, one day the smiles stopped. She settled back into her work, but she was quieter – for a few months at least. I presumed he had found another girl, or moved away – you know what young men are like. But there was no scandal. She was a good girl.’

  ‘Tell me,’ I asked, my mind turning over her reiteration of Elizabeth’s ‘good girl’ qualities, ‘why would she run away? A man again – the same one, perhaps?’

  Mrs Hastings went to speak, and then stopped, though her mouth moved silently for a second as she re-thought her initial response. ‘That’s what I told the officers, yes: I thought there was a man, and I thought that something unfortunate had happened. She had changed. She wasn’t getting enough sleep. Her eyes had dark hollows around them’ – she looked at me pointedly – ‘much like your own. She was troubled. Yes, I think there was a man involved.’

  ‘But there is something else?’ I said gently.

  ‘Elizabeth was afraid.’ The statement was matter-of-fact. ‘I believe she was terrified. I’ve seen girls who’ve got themselves in a shameful mess before – I’ve been in service a lot of years, and there are a lot of silly girls out there – but their fear wasn’t like hers. I’ve seen shame, yes, but this was terror.’

  ‘What – or who – could terrify her so, I wonder?’ I thought of shadows behind men’s backs; I thought of a young man who had gone off travelling and come back sick and haunted.

  ‘I am afraid I do not get involved in the personal lives of the staff.’ This time the defensiveness in her tone was entirely for her own benefit, and I smiled and nodded, and, needing her to open up again, said, ‘Exactly as it should be. Did she have visitors, or anyone waiting for her after work?’

  ‘No, as I—’ She stopped abruptly. ‘Actually, she did have a rather unusual visitor – not just before she ran off, though. That must be why I did not recall it when the police inspector asked. It was a while before that – but I remember the day well, for it was the day before she died.’

  ‘Who died?’ I was confused, but despite the laudanum calming me, my heart began to pound with excitement.

  ‘Mrs Harrington.’

  It took all my self-control not to jump in my seat, but still my faced burned with a sudden rush of blood and my fingertips tingled.

  ‘Who was Mrs Harrington?’ I feigned only mild interest, but found myself leaning forward, as if I could somehow suck the information out of her more quickly that way.

  ‘They lived in this road, she and her husband, until they died – some awful poisoning from some foodstuff their son brought back from his travels abroad. He nearly died himself, but his youth saved him. It was that night, after she had come here to speak to Elizabeth. The son moved away for a while, but he’s back now, and with a new young wife. They’re having all sorts done to the house.’ She spoke the last with some disapproval.

  ‘This young man’ – I tried to keep the eagerness from my voice – ‘could he have known Elizabeth, do you think? Is that possible?’

  ‘You would have to ask him, sir.’ The barriers had come up; Mrs Hastings doubtless disapproved of gossip, and yet here she was, tattling to me about the goings-on behind the baize – that would be how it appeared to her, of course, although she was in fact providing valuable information in a murder case.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I shall.’ I got to my feet. I needed to absorb the pieces of the puzzle she had given me, and as much as I loathed myself for it, I needed to see the priest too. By rights I should go to Inspector Moore, or Andrews – but what could I tell them? That I suspected Dr Hebbert’s son-in-law of these awful crimes? In truth, the only evidence I had was that he might once have known one of the victims. The rest of my ‘evidence’ was founded on the supernatural; I could never repeat any of it to Henry Moore; he would think my insomnia had finally got the better of me.

  I did not look at Harringtons’ house as I passed it, but as I walked away, I was sure the ghosts of his dead parents were screaming at me from behind the dark sockets of the windows.

  I shivered and pulled my coat tight around me and tried not to jitter at the sound of my own footsteps echoing on the pavement.

  *

  This time I did not struggle to find the crumbling building where the priest had made his home. Perhaps Kosminski’s strange delve into my mind had somehow f
ixed the route more clearly in me, or perhaps it was a more basic drive, the instinct for survival, that led me there. I needed to see them – I needed to be with others who believed, as I now had to admit to myself, the last doubter, I did.

  ‘I knew you were coming,’ Kosminski said. He smiled, with no evidence of his usual tics and twitches. His filthy body was calm and his eyes were orbs of darkness. He had taken the drug, that was clear.

  Heat engulfed me as I stepped into the room, for the fire was blazing and the windows were shut.

  ‘I saw you walking,’ Kosminski said. ‘You went to the dead girl’s house, the last sacrifice, the last feed, and then you needed to see us: I could feel it, the shift. The change. It led you to us.’

  The priest was on his knees in front of the fire. He had removed his shirt and robes, leaving his torso bare. His back was slick with sweat, and the once-smooth canvas of skin below his muscular shoulders was lacerated with a pattern of sliced cuts. Even by just the glow of the fire I could see that under the fresh wounds were years of scars. Beside him on the floor lay the birch with which he had been flagellating himself.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  He picked up his shirt with his good hand and dressed while getting to his feet; deft, swift movements that belied his deformity.

  ‘Preparing,’ he said. ‘Making my peace with what must come.’ He pointed at the bed and I sat as he took the other end. Kosminski dropped into a cross-legged position on the floor.

  I thought of our madness, and the madness of how we must look, but I still found comfort in being around them. Kosminski had known I was coming – he had seen it. Such visions were not madness; they were surely a gift.

  ‘Do you think this is truly God’s work?’ I asked. The question came from nowhere, but I found it was important. In all of this I had never considered what would happen when or if we found the Upir and its host. But after seeing the priest punishing himself so, the answer was becoming clear to me. ‘Or are we becoming playthings of the Devil?’ The object of our hunt was no longer a stranger: it was James Harrington. He had a face and a name – and a wife. What was to become of him?

  ‘I believe in my calling,’ the priest said, simply. ‘Beyond that, I cannot answer you. Your soul must speak for itself.’

  I looked from the priest to strange little Kosminski and felt a wave of tired, irrational anger towards them. What had they been doing all this time anyway? I was the one who had found Harrington. They had simply lurked in the shadows.

  ‘We had to wait for you to believe,’ Kosminski said, answering my unspoken question as if plucking it direct from my mind. ‘Three, the power of three. Two is nothing, three is everything.’ His words were so much clearer than his normal broken English, coming out sharply in fast bursts. ‘The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost – three – I could see you – your fears. Someone who had been sick, someone who had travelled and someone else, someone you love.’ He plucked a few hairs from his head and laid them out on the dusty floor. ‘Pieces: all the pieces, coming into place. He didn’t know.’ His voice was wistful. ‘He didn’t know, not for a long time, not in Paris, maybe not in Rainham. But now he does. Now the Upir is stronger than he is.’

  ‘Aaron sees you in his visions,’ the priest said, ‘and I have watched you.’

  ‘You are very good at watching,’ I said, ‘but thus far, that is all you have done. If you are so sure the creature is among my friends then why have you not hunted it down yourself?’ The flames cast dancing shadows across the walls and the priest sat in the middle of them, a dark lord in a dark, cold fire.

  ‘The police have taken in the hairdresser twice more for questioning, did you know that? His strange ways, his agitations, make them think he might be Jack the Ripper. I have made him stay at home most evenings. Tonight, two hours ago, he just turned up. He was terrified – upset and irrational – but still he came. I had to give him the drug to calm him. I think perhaps he must be the bravest of us three. We do not have to see what he sees. He said you were coming. He said you had found the Upir.’

  I was shocked. There was, of course, no reason for me to know of the arrests, or for anyone to have told me – none knew of my acquaintance with Kosminski – and yet I was disturbed by the idea that there were cogs and wheels turning that touched on our hunt unknown to me. I had to try and distract the investigation from him; I would speak to Andrews – or perhaps Moore. But how to steer such a conversation in that direction? That was another question.

  ‘Have you?’ the priest asked, leaning forward to look at me more closely.

  ‘Have I what?’ I had been so focused upon the first half of his statement that I had paid no attention to the rest.

  ‘Found the Upir?’

  For a moment I said nothing. Kosminski rocked slightly backwards and forwards, muttering under his breath, the words barely more than a whisper, but I heard them clearly enough: ‘Yes he has, yes he has, yes he has …’

  I wondered what he saw in his dark moments. Had he seen Harrington? I doubted it – if he had, they would surely have told me. They would not have been here and waiting. They would have come to my house. Or even bypassed me completely and attacked James. Maybe Kosminski only had glimpses and emotions. Parts of the whole, just as I was presented with the parts of those the monster had killed. Enough to know something without knowing everything.

  ‘What will we do with him?’ I asked.

  ‘So you have found him,’ the priest said, turning to face me, and leaning forwards until he was only inches away. His eyes blazed with dark excitement. I fought the urge to pull away from him as an irrational fear gripped me. I had forgotten that under his calm words he was a zealot: this was his life’s work, and he would die if he had to, rather than let the creature he hunted escape. I, on the other hand, was just an ordinary man who had been caught up in events beyond his control – a man who doubted his own sanity because of these same events. This man, this priest, had no doubt sustained the injury to his arm in some other hunt such as this one.

  ‘What will we do with him?’ I asked again.

  ‘We shall try to destroy the Upir,’ he answered. ‘Separate it from the host and starve it.’

  ‘How do we separate it from the host?’ I asked.

  ‘You know the answer to that,’ the priest said. ‘We kill him.’

  I stared into the fire for a long time after that, the heat barely warming the chill that was settling into my veins. I thought of the dead women we were unable to identify. I thought of the rotting torso in the vault at Scotland Yard, found so many months ago. And I thought of poor Elizabeth Jackson, a good girl who was so afraid that she ran to a miserable end she could not escape. I thought of Juliana and James. Would that be her body, laid out in the mortuary one day for her father and me to examine? Where would this all end if we did not end it first?

  I told them everything I knew. That was why I had come here, after all: to share the madness, to speak my suspicions and evidence aloud.

  When I had finished, it was the priest’s turn to speak, and he did so calmly and softly: a quiet explanation of what I must do.

  *

  Juliana was pregnant, and this news stopped me in my tracks, for all I had been so committed to my undertaking. They had returned from Bath a week after I had seen the priest, and I had thought myself ready to take the next step.

  Although June had moved into July and the heat and stench were stifling in London, the days had been cold and dark for me, haunted by thoughts of Elizabeth Jackson and her misfortune at meeting James Harrington.

  I had contacted the Harrington family doctor, under the guise of research into a disease I had come across at the hospital, and learned more about James’ affliction; during our subsequent conversation, I heard the story of his parents’ painful death. I put out enquiries on murders similar to ours, and discovered one similar had taken place in Paris, at the very time that James Harrington was travelling through France on his way back to London
.

  None of this filled me with any comfort. I was ready for some kind of confrontation, if only because I could no longer stand the bleak tension building inside me.

  I had been invited to dinner the next day at the Hebberts’ – James and Juliana had once again taken up residence there, while the top floor of their Chelsea house was completed. I had intended to take the strange opium and confront Harrington over his connection with Elizabeth Jackson, to see if I could see the Upir. I tried to convince myself that the latter was less important than the former; for all the priest’s talk of the monster possessing him, I was more concerned with finding some trace of suspicious behaviour in the man himself, believing that if I abandoned the rational entirely, then I would have lost myself entirely too.

  My plans came undone, however, by a chance meeting while I was returning from an inquest. London is a large city, but there they were, on the pavement in front of me, laughing happily together. My initial disquiet was forced aside by their effervescence and it was clear that although they had intended to keep their news until the next day, they could not hold it in.

  ‘We are expecting our first child,’ Juliana exclaimed, reaching out and gripping my arm. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

  I almost recoiled with the impact of the words. My mouth dropped open as I fought to find some emotional footing. Thankfully, they were both so wrapped up in it themselves, they did not notice, nor give me time to respond.

  ‘We were going to tell you tomorrow,’ James said. His eyes danced merrily and his skin looked healthy. ‘But as you can see, we cannot contain ourselves – a new arrival for our new house. And we would like you to be Godfather.’

  ‘Oh, I could not—’ I was still reeling from the news – and then this. Godfather?