Dr Rutherford had been fascinated by the shapes and contours of heads. He had made no secret of his obsession, and was proud, more than proud, of his extensive collection of real human skulls. He was pleased to declare that he knew the provenance of each one in his possession, that he had met many of them in person, and that he had boiled the flesh off them himself in copper cauldrons. Once, I arrived to find him with his shelves bare, his skulls laid out upon the floor in front of him in neat ranks. Dr Rutherford was kneeling before them. A soft chamois-leather in his hand and a bowl of water at his side, he wiped each skull tenderly, before drying it off with a muslin cloth and buffing it to a gleaming lustre with a mitt of finest kid.
‘Look,’ he crooned when he saw me. He held up a large, yellowish cranium with a broad, flat forehead. ‘This is Maria Seldon of Spitalfields. She cut her husband’s throat and hid his body beneath the cellar floor. See the sloping forehead?’ He ran his fingers over the gleaming bone. ‘Close eyes, pronounced jaw and a marked protuberance precisely where her organ of deviousness is located. It is unmistakable. Her crimes were entirely true to her character, her character entirely readable from her cranium.’ He laid the skull down and picked up another. ‘And here’s Moll Caraway. She murdered her mother and had her lover dress up as the old woman to fool the neighbours. The organ of deceit is singularly well developed, the organ of wit a pronounced bulge, the tendency to violence clearly evident. Miss Caraway was considered something of a humorist and did a regular turn as a laughing artiste at the Cat and Barrel on Fenwick Lane, Whitechapel.
‘And look here! Dorcas Gilmour. A quite infamous prostitute from Seven Dials. Murdered at least six men before she was caught.’ He closed his eyes and threw his head back, his face radiant as his hands traced the contours of the girl’s skull more gently than any of her customers would ever have done.
‘Amativeness,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Oh, it was strong in this one. And greed. And violence too. I could pick her out with my eyes closed.’ He opened his eyes and dabbed the cheekbone with his wash-cloth. ‘She was transported but died on the journey. I made sure to get my hands on such a prize specimen.’
‘And the others?’
He shrugged. ‘The poor house. The gallows. The resurrectionists – they know my tastes.’ He picked up a small skull no bigger than an apple. ‘Left for dead beside the pump in Prior’s Rents. Newborn. Even in the womb the personality is set. See the indentations here, the elongated cranium? The child would have grown into a sot, and a whore, there is no doubt about it.’ He held the tiny head close to his face and peered into its empty eye sockets. ‘Well my precious, shall we wash you now? Shall we make you nice and clean?’
Now, looking up at that wall of skulls, I had the impression that they were glad that Dr Rutherford was dead, each one of them relieved to be free from his urgent caresses, his lascivious sponging and polishing. Death had granted them peace and obscurity. Dr Rutherford had denied them even that.
I caught a movement on a high shelf and almost dropped my lamp. But it was only a mouse, its white tail vanishing between the broken teeth of a large mottled skull.
‘What is it?’ said Will. ‘Is there something wrong?’ He shuddered beneath the gaze of so many leering faces. ‘Not that there’s very much right about a wall adorned with two hundred skulls. Sometimes I wonder who’s really mad at Angel Meadow. Compared to this, Edward Eden seems the sanest man here!’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Up there. What do you see?’
‘Faces,’ said Will. ‘That’s all.’
‘You said yourself that Rutherford was neat.’
‘So he was.’
‘Then what’s happened to those two skulls on the top shelf?’
Will squinted up. His breath grew sharp, and I knew that he had seen it too. ‘They’re crooked.’ He looked at me. ‘And there’s a space.’
I lowered my lantern. ‘One of them is missing.’
I could hear footsteps approaching from the hallway behind me. ‘We must be quick,’ I said. ‘There’s one last thing—’ I peered again at the body of Dr Rutherford stretched out on the hearthrug, its feet towards the door, its head pointing to the fireplace. The phrenology callipers projecting from the side of the head glinted dully in the lamplight; the darned face more waxen and grotesque than ever as the skin paled and grew firm, the stitches lengthening over the lips as they were pulled taut by a growing rigor mortis. I looked at the door, at the corpse, at the mirror – broken into long shards so that the room was reflected in a kaleidoscope of fragments. I lifted my lantern and scanned the floor, the hearth, along the skirting boards. I clicked my tongue. ‘It has to be in here—’
‘What?’
I grabbed the heavy iron poker and stirred the cinders in the grate, the heart of the fire glowing angrily as I shifted the coals. And then I saw it. I could not pluck it out from amongst the embers with my bare fingers as the fire was still hot, nor could I pocket it without burning myself.
‘Your handkerchief, Will,’ I said. ‘Quickly!’ Between the claws of the coal tongs I held an object – ovoid in shape and no bigger than a lemon; hard, but slightly yielding to the touch, and as black as coal. I slipped the tongs onto the hearth and plunged what I had found into my pocket.
The sound of footsteps grew louder, and all at once Dr Hawkins was back. Beside him was Mrs Lunge, as white as a ghost in her nightdress and dressing gown, her hair hanging in dark waves about her shoulders. She carried a candle, the shivering flame making the shadows behind her rear and leap. Her face was paler and haughtier than ever, and she loomed over the doctor the way a medieval queen might stand over a peasant.
‘Good morning, Mrs Lunge,’ I said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘As you might expect, Mr Flockhart, sir,’ she said.
‘I believe it was you who came upon him?’
‘Yes, sir. I was restless and couldn’t sleep. I was going to go down to the kitchens to make myself a cup of tea. It took me past Dr Rutherford’s door—’
‘You have a room on this floor?’
‘At the other end of the corridor. I saw that there was a light in here.’
‘Was the door open?’
‘No, sir. It was closed.’
‘Locked?’
‘No, sir.’
‘And so you came in?’
‘I assumed Dr Rutherford had gone home, but had left the lamp burning by mistake as he sometimes does. I came in to extinguish it and I saw—’ She dabbed her lips with a handkerchief and mopped her eyes, though they looked dry to me. ‘I saw him.’
‘And what time was this?’
‘Some half an hour before you arrived, sir.’
‘Did you hear anything that evening? You say you couldn’t sleep?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did you touch anything when you came in?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did you see anything? Anything unusual or out of place?’
‘Save for Dr Rutherford’s murdered and mutilated body?’ I had the feeling she was mocking me. ‘No, sir.’
‘I wonder you are not more upset to find your employer so brutally murdered,’ Will said.
She fell silent then. I had the impression that there was something she wanted to say, some rejoinder she wished to make – then Pole arrived, and with him the constable, and I decided I would save what further questions I had for another time. The constable stepped into the room and I heard him draw a gasp of breath. He crouched down to peer into Dr Rutherford’s face, his handkerchief clamped across his mouth.
‘Here,’ said Will, handing the fellow his salts.
Dr Hawkins turned to me. ‘Take these,’ he said in a hushed voice. He held out a bunch of keys. ‘You may come and go as you please, Jem. Do what you can. Find out who did this.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t think why this has happened. Can the man have had such an enemy?’
I put the keys in my pocket. I did not know what to say. Angel Meadow had changed profoundly since Dr Ha
wkins’s incumbency – for sure, he had returned as medical superintendent, but he had been away for almost a year, what did he really know of the conflicts and tensions that might exist between its current inmates? He had come back to a very different place to the one he had left behind. He looked bemused, stunned even, by what had taken place, and seemed hardly able to tear his eyes away from the corpse.
‘Who would do such a thing?’ he whispered. ‘Have I come home to this? Perhaps I would have been better to have stayed away.’
‘How is Mrs Hawkins?’ I said.
‘She was unwell last night. I took her home early. I think it was the excitement and the warmth of the room. I have not seen her this morning, though I assume a night’s rest will have restored her. Jem.’ Dr Hawkins took my arm. ‘Just be sure that every door you unlock is locked again after you have passed through it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do not be remiss – either of you. There are dangers here—’ He gestured to the body, his face tense. ‘You must look after yourselves. And each other.’
‘You think this is the work of a mad man, sir?’ said Will.
Dr Hawkins looked at him strangely. ‘You think it is the work of a sane one?’
I did not venture an opinion. Pole, standing in the doorway, regarded me in silence. His palsied features were as unreadable as ever but there was something in his drooping eye that gave me pause. I did not know the man; he was no more than a turnkey to me, but I recalled what he had said the week before as he ushered me into the asylum’s main corridor: All on us is mad at some time or other. And when we are, we do things no man can explain, and no judge can forgive.
Chapter Six
We went back downstairs. ‘I’ve had enough of this place for one morning,’ said Will. He pulled out his watch. ‘And it’s not even six o’clock.’
‘What do you say to a pot of coffee and a plate of kippers at Sorley’s?’ I said.
‘How can you even think about food?’
‘Because I’m hungry. If a bloody face and a dead body put me off my breakfast, I would have starved to death long ago.’
We were passing a heavy panelled oak door, discoloured with age and scuffed and gouged, I presumed, from the violent resistance of the lunatics who had been dragged through it. From the other side, I heard the slow stumping approach of heavy ill-fitting boots, the guttural sound of a muttered oath and a rich tubercular coughing. Keys jangled, and the door swung open. An attendant peered out into the corridor where we stood. He looked exactly as I remembered him, his skin etiolated from a life spent underground, his eyes watery and blinking in the light from the candle he held aloft. His coat was a greasy-looking verdigris, the high shawl collar glistening and oily and scattered with flakes of dry skin. The breath of the basement billowed out around him, damp and stale. When he saw me, he froze, the hand that clutched the keys a bony pointing claw. ‘I know you!’
‘Hardly, sir,’ said Will, clearly appalled that such a fearful apparition could claim me as an acquaintance.
‘Not you,’ said the attendant. ‘Him.’ He jangled his keys in my face. I noticed a yellowish excrescence on the sleeve of the fellow’s coat, like mould or mildew of some kind. Really, I would not have been surprised if he had had mushrooms sprouting from his pockets. ‘Quick!’ he beckoned us into his lair. ‘Come see!’
We followed the man down a narrow flight of stairs and along a low-ceilinged passage. The stone floor beneath our feet struck cold through the soles of our shoes and I shivered. There were doors on either side. From behind each came the familiar sounds of the incarcerated mad – cries and groans, the sound of sobbing and a perpetual rhythmic moaning.
‘Locked ‘im in meself last night. Then this mornin’ I goes to see ‘im and ‘e’s disappeared. Vanished! I’ve been ‘ere, man and boy. I’ve seed ‘em die in there – bite through their own tongues, some of ‘em, or swallow it, whole! I seed ‘em scream till they kilt themselves with it and choke on straw like they was beasts. But I ain’t never seen one disappear.’
The lock was well oiled and the key turned smoothly and silently. The cell inside was eight-feet square, the walls and floor covered with a stained and slimy-looking oilcloth. Inside, crumpled upon the floor, lay a strait jacket. In a corner, as if flung aside in fury, was a leather bridle. The last time I had seen it, it was being forced between Dr Golspie’s lips. And yet the sight of the empty strait jacket and the discarded bridle meant only one thing: that Tom Golspie had not spent the night brutally confined after all. Yet if he was not here, then where was he? How had he escaped? As I looked about that tiny cell, breathing in that hot, stale air, the questions in my mind wavered and grew confused, engulfed by a familiar dread. My uncle had spent his final days here, my father had been destined to follow him. Would I too, live to call this tiny chamber with its padded walls my home? I could almost taste the stale and leathery tongue of the bridle.
‘I must get out of here,’ I said thickly. ‘Take a closer look, Will. I . . . I cannot.’
I took the steps two at a time, my stride growing longer, the flame in my lantern shrinking and guttering. And then it went out. The darkness drowned me, pouring into my eye sockets like black water. My fingers clawed at the door, my fists banging and banging—
And then all at once the door opened and I tumbled out to lie asprawl on the floor of the main hallway. In front of my nose I saw the shiny toes of a pair of well-polished boots; beneath my elbow I felt the grasp of a helpful hand.
‘You’re safe now,’ said a voice. I looked up into the round expressionless face of Edward Eden.
‘You!’ I said. ‘Did you open that door?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
‘How? With what?’ And then, ‘Aren’t you locked in at night, like everyone else?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then how are you out of your room?’
‘Because I have these.’ Edward held up a bunch of keys identical to the ones I had in my own pocket.
‘Where did you get them?’
‘From Dr Golspie.’
‘But he is – was – locked up in the basement.’
‘I let him out.’
‘But when? How?’
‘Dr Hawkins said some of us could be out last night. We were to meet his wife. When Pole put Dr Golspie in the basement I went to Dr Golspie’s room and found his keys.’
I knew that the lunatics were not locked into their rooms during the day, not in the private wards anyway, and last night a number of them had been at large during half of the night too. Given what had happened since, it now seemed the most careless and incautious of decisions. ‘You have many freedoms here,’ I said. ‘Some asylums would not allow you half so much liberty.’
‘We don’t have liberty at night. Not usually.’ Edward looked at the door I had just emerged from. ‘And we don’t have any at all in the basement. I’ve been down there,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t like it one bit. I hated knowing that Dr Golspie was down there, that’s why I took his keys. I had a plan to let him out. It was a good plan, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you should tell me more about it.’
Edward grinned, and leaned in close. ‘Later, when they locked me in my room for the night I waited for a bit and then came out again. I used Dr Golspie’s keys. I came down here and I crept downstairs to the basement and I let him out too. I like Dr Golspie. He’s kind.’
‘When? When did you let him out?’
Edward shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’
‘And where is he now?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Did you see where he went?’
‘He ran away.’
‘Where? Did he say where he was going?’
‘He said he had to see Dr Rutherford.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘No.’
‘Did you see Dr Rutherford?’
Edward chewed his fingernail. His face had taken on a worried look. ‘I lost Albion,�
� he said after a moment. ‘Albion?’
‘My new mouse. The mouse you gave me.’
‘The white mouse?’
‘Yes,’ said Edward. ‘That’s right. You remember him!’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘And I have seen him too. Just this morning.’
‘Oh!’ cried Edward, clapping his hands. ‘Where?’
‘In Dr Rutherford’s room,’ I said. ‘Is that where you lost him?’
Edward fell silent. He wound his hands together and pressed them to his cheek as if in search of comfort.
‘Well?’ I said.
Tears filled Edward’s eyes, and he looked about, his expression fearful. ‘You mustn’t ask,’ he said. ‘I cannot tell. I mustn’t.’ He began blubbering, wiping his eyes and nose on his coat sleeve and refusing to say anything more.
‘Do you not have a handkerchief, Mr Eden?’ I said with a sigh.
He nodded, and pulled a large square of crumpled silk from his inside pocket. Like the dawn that was now visible outside the asylum’s high windows it was streaked and clotted with scarlet.
We went to Sorley’s for breakfast. The place was busy despite the early hour but we managed to find a booth at the back beside the fire. Will ordered two plates of cutlets and a pot of coffee. We ate in silence, both of us preoccupied with what we had seen and heard that morning. When we had finished we pulled out our pipes and sat back, regarding one another through a haze of blue smoke. In the course of one night Angel Meadow had descended into misrule – doctors strait-jacketed and imprisoned underground, patients roaming the hallways unlocking doors – and in the midst of it all was a dead man.
In particular I feared for Dr Golspie – for we had found him soon after, lying upon the chaise in his consulting room. He had opened a vein in his arm with a scalpel ‘to let the madness out’, and his sleeves and furnishings were soaked in blood. He was raving and incoherent; muttering about angels and voices, about Rutherford, about wanting to stop the madness for he was too tired to manage it any longer . . . It had taken Pole and two burly attendants to hold the man down while Dr Hawkins and I bandaged his arm. Dr Hawkins had wanted to give him a dose of laudanum, but I was uncertain how it would react with the hashish he had taken, and so we had forced him into the strait waistcoat instead. There he was to remain until he recovered his senses.
Dark Asylum Page 8
