The Bedlam Detective

by Stephen Gallagher

  Though unmistakably a cell, with bars at the windows and an inspection slit in the door, the room was not without its comforts. It had an armchair, a writing table, and a bookcase filled with botanical and other learned texts. In the armchair sat Somerville, enormous, a walrus of a man. He did not rise as they entered, but he did close the book that he’d been reading.

  In the doctored photograph at the front of Sir Owain Lancaster’s book he’d been represented as a tall, spare member of the party with white hair and a long goatee. In life, his beard was a dirty gray. Combed out, it reached to his chest. He wore a smoking jacket, a waistcoat that was almost bursting its buttons across his girth, and checked trousers. One leg was extended and supported by a padded stool, recalling the infection for which he’d been treated on the voyage home. He wore a carpet slipper on the elevated foot, slashed open to relieve any pressure.

  Sebastian introduced himself and Evangeline and said, “Thank you for consenting to see us.”

  “I don’t recall consenting,” Somerville said. “What I recall is the suggestion that I might be returned to the disturbed ward if I refused.”

  “Who suggested that?”

  “Who indeed.”

  “If this goes well, then perhaps I can intercede for you. See if I can’t persuade the superintendent to let you hold on to your privileges.”

  “Can we drop the charade?” Somerville said. “It’s been made very plain to me. I tell you my tale or they take my books away.”

  “As you wish,” Sebastian said, and there was a pause in proceedings as extra chairs were brought in.

  When all were seated, Sebastian said, “You were in the jungle with Sir Owain Lancaster.”

  “I was.”

  “And apart from him, you were the only survivor of the party.”

  “Not exactly. A number of the men turned back early and missed the worst of it.”

  “All right, then,” Sebastian said patiently. “You’re the only other man who completed the journey and survived.”

  “I told the story for the inquest in Brazil. I was too ill to attend the court, but my account was translated and read into the record.” At this point, he looked toward Evangeline. He said, “It has elements that are not pleasant for me to recall, or for anyone else to hear.”

  Evangeline said, “Don’t be too concerned on my account.”

  “Very well, then,” Somerville said. “Just bear in mind that these are the words of a madman. Even I can’t trust everything that I say.”

  FORTY-ONE

  I believe that sir Owain had already spent two years preparing the expedition before I joined it [Somerville began]. The design of those great steam cars was his own. I traveled up to his estate and saw the plans there, and he took a party of us to his engineering works to see them being built. His original idea had been for the Europeans to traverse the jungle in airships while the Portuguese-speaking camaradas and their mules kept pace with us on the ground, but he’d been persuaded to abandon that. Not for any technical reason, I don’t think, but because his wife refused to fly.

  You’re aware that he took his wife and child on the expedition and they didn’t survive it? They appear nowhere in any of his retellings, but I don’t believe there was ever any doubt that they’d accompany us. Mrs. Lancaster brought outfits for almost every occasion, but nothing for the conditions that we actually encountered. I can’t imagine that he’d given her any true idea of what might lie in store.

  For a man who prided himself on his thoroughness and rigor, Sir Owain came badly unstuck. He planned around his vision meticulously. But try suggesting any possibilities that were not part of his vision, and he’d give you very short shrift. I had been to the Amazon before and knew what to expect. Sir Owain had read up on the Amazon and was sure he knew better.

  Take me, for example. I was engaged as the expedition’s botanist. Only once we were under way did I learn that I was to perform as the expedition’s doctor as well. He’d planned this to keep the numbers down. He called it good business sense.

  I said to him, “But I have no more than one year of medicine. What if illness should strike?”

  He said, “Then I shall expect you to go out and find suitable remedies in the local vegetation.”

  I argued that I had only basic first-aid skills-I could set a leg or drain a wound, but nothing much beyond that. He assured me that nothing more complicated would ever be called for. “An accident,” he would quote in response to any disagreement, “is an inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.”

  Well, as you know, two of those mighty land craft broke down and never made it to our assembly point. So even before we set off inland from the coast, we were abandoning supplies. Another of them burst its boiler three days inland. That meant another two tons of goods to leave by the wayside. He wouldn’t dump his family’s luggage-not even that infernal rocking horse-but instead he recalculated everyone’s rations with the aim of supplementing them with game from the jungle.

  The plan was to travel overland to the lake headwaters of a particular uncharted river, where we’d unload our boats. The steam cars and the mules would make their way back, and the main party would navigate the river all the way down to the sea. Along the way we were to stop at predetermined points, to take measurements and make celestial observations for Sir Owain’s global ordnance system.

  I was traveling some way behind the engines, in the mule train. Some days I could be as much as a mile back from the leaders. As we went along I’d see sacks and boxes by the trail, opened and rifled by those ahead of me. Sir Owain continued to ride in luxury at the head of the parade, unaware of the vital supplies hemorrhaging away in his wake. When I raised it in camp the camaradas blamed the Indians, while the Indians either failed to understand, or pretended so.

  We were a week behind schedule when we reached the lake that was the birthplace of our unpronounceable river, although Sir Owain declared his confidence that we’d make up time once we were on the water. It took us two days to prepare the boats and load our goods onto them. This involved some inevitable stock-taking, and for the first time I saw Sir Owain show concern. The boxes of staples-by which I mean salt beef, tinned hams, biscuits-were by now far outnumbered by those packed with fine wines, champagne, olives, and foie gras.

  The lamp burned in his work tent for most of that night, and some harsh words were spoken. By morning he and his quartermasters had radically revised the expedition plan to suit our remaining supplies and manpower. One-third of the camaradas were paid off. They were sent back with the mules and oxen, which I gather they promptly stole.

  Everything and everyone else was loaded onto the boats and launched across the lake. This lake stood on a level plain, with mountains behind it and the jungle sloping away below. Without wind or tide to disturb us, that first day’s crossing was like a lazy afternoon on the Thames.

  The river itself was another matter. It began quietly enough at the point where the lake emptied, but within the first mile it began to narrow and speed up, and then its course very soon took some rapid turns. Rocks and islands set up eddies that made the boats sometimes hard to control. Nevertheless, after two days we reached a point close to our first measuring station with some excitements but without any real mishap.

  While the astronomer and the survey party hacked a trail to the spot from which they needed to make their observations, the rest of us set up camp. I took the opportunity to gather some botanical specimens, while others hunted for meat. Alas, they shot only monkeys, which most of us refused even to consider.

  When our surveyors returned we celebrated with some of the champagne and tinned truffles. The next morning we broke camp and returned to the water.

  On leaving the lake we’d kept the boats close together, in a kind of flotilla. But this approach had its disadvantages. In rougher waters the boats could be driven together, risking upset. Instead of using their paddles to steer, the Indians and camaradas had to employ them to
shove the boats apart, and so for miles at a stretch all proceeded in chaos, with everyone crashing and turning and spinning midstream.

  So for this next part of the journey we launched one after another, with gaps in between. Sir Owain’s pilot boat would precede us all. He carried a fearsome-looking Indian whose task it was to read the river’s signs and warn of any dangers ahead, while Sir Owain sat with a gun on his knees ready to shoot the Indian if he got out of hand. Where a hazard presented itself, they’d make a landing and place a signaler with a flag to warn the rest of us to paddle for the bank.

  When we met a waterfall or any other obstacle, we’d have to lift our boats from the river and carry everything around to the other side of it. Around midafternoon I noticed that our boat was moving faster, the waters were boiling and heaving, and our crew was paddling harder to keep control. There was one major disadvantage in using the river’s own energy to power our journey. Whatever might happen, there would be no going back.

  At that point, we seemed to be moving from rough water into actual rapids. At the same time we were descending into a gorge, so there was no riverbank to head for. The gorge snaked and turned, giving us no chance to warn those who followed, any more than we could have received warning from those ahead.

  The change in the water was sudden and brutal. One moment a fast, rough ride; the next, a merciless battering. Within seconds we’d lost our paddles and unsecured cargo and were clinging on for our lives, as our boat tossed and skipped down a thunderous chicane of white water and spray. Swept around the next bend, we came upon the first wreckage; one of our steel-hulled boats had lifted right up out of the water like a leaping fish, turned onto its side, and jammed itself between rocks, and now there was no sign of the men who’d been emptied from it. As we sped by I saw a wooden chest from its load caught in a whirlpool, spinning in place. I’d barely had a chance to take that in when our own boat grounded hard and bounced on a great shelf of stone, and only my grip on the side kept me from being flipped overboard.

  We lost a man from our boat. I was too busy clinging on, and never saw him go. After a while, we reached quieter waters and were carried along, out of danger but with no control. We bailed out the boat with our hands and prayed that those from the wreck had survived, and that the others had fared better than we. A few hundred yards farther on, our prayers received their grim answer.

  Boats, bodies, debris … I can hardly exaggerate the horror. We coasted through them in appalled silence. For all who’d fetched up here, more must have been swept on downstream.

  Farther on, the river widened and slowed. To our left rose the sheer curving side of the gorge; it held the river in a wide loop, with a low-lying beach contained within the loop like a tranquil island. On this sandbank I saw our astronomer, waving a flag made from a shirt, and with nothing but our hands for oars we dug into the water and propelled ourselves toward him.

  Five out of our twenty boats had survived intact. Forty souls, including all in the lightly laden pilot boat, remained alive. The rest-gone. It was a true disaster. Over the next day or so we saw many of our fellows being carried by, bloated and floating high in the tepid waters and with a cloud of flies over each. Some of the cargo drifted by as well, and we rescued whatever we were able to catch. I found the medical kit, and in my capacity as “expedition doctor” did what I could to treat the minor injuries of the survivors.

  Any drowned Europeans that we saw, we dragged in for burial. I regret to say that the Indians and camaradas were pushed out into the middle of the river and sent on their way. The surviving camaradas were grimly accepting of this practice, as they were the ones assigned to the digging. While searching for a suitable graveyard site within reach of the river bend, our burial party found a row of overgrown mounds with wooden grave markers. The wood was rotten, the markings illegible. Those graves could have been made ten years before, or a hundred.

  I found this deeply disturbing. It meant that others had been this way before us, and had suffered a similar trial. But no record of any prior exploration of the river had been found. Which suggested to me that those who’d survived this hazard, and made these graves for their comrades, must ultimately have fallen to some other hazard yet to come.

  I suggested as much to Sir Owain.

  “Good God, man,” was his response. “Don’t breathe a word of that to the others. As if this weren’t trial enough. I can’t believe you’re out to make it worse.”

  His wife and son were in a tent some way from the beach, where they would not be forced to witness the sad spectacle of the passing dead. But I saw the boy standing by the tent and staring at the waters anyway, while his mother lay prostrate inside. All the symbols of civilization-a picnic hamper, wine bottles, cruet sets, parasols, trunks with changes of clothes-passed before his gaze and were carried away, as if offered in sacrifice for the use of the drowned in the afterlife.

  That evening, I overheard Sir Owain speaking to his wife and son. I did not deliberately eavesdrop. Voices carry through canvas, and it was impossible not to hear.

  I heard him say, “We’ve suffered a setback, I won’t deny it. I cannot promise you all of the comforts I’d intended to provide. But I swear to you. Our safety is not compromised and our purpose has not changed.”

  Mrs. Lancaster said something in return, and I could not hear what.

  The next morning I looked out across the river and saw the head of that rocking horse floating by, upright and bobbing like a seahorse, badly battered and with its body mostly submerged in the water. In the same moment I saw that Lancaster’s boy was in the river up to his knees, trying to reach it.

  I called out, “Are you mad, boy? What do you think you’re doing?” and I waded into the water and dragged him back to the shore. Though the river was slower here, it was far from safe. There were undercurrents, and there were parasites. The rocking horse was already gone.

  Later that day, Sir Owain sought me out.

  He said, “Simon has demanded that I dismiss you.”

  I thought at first that he was making some wry comment and that thanks would follow. But then I saw that he was serious.

  I said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “Please,” he said. “If my son is ever to be disciplined, I’d prefer you don’t interfere.”

  “I didn’t discipline him,” I said. “I pulled him from the water before he took the step that would see him drowned or carried away. If you want him to learn anything from this misconceived adventure, show him how to look after himself or teach him some gratitude.”

  I cannot tell you Sir Owain’s reaction, as at that point I turned my back on him and walked away.

  With our five boats, our mixed party of survivors, and our salvaged equipment, we continued down the river. In shallow water near the next night’s camp, Sir Owain spied one of his instrument cases and, seeming to forget all tragedy, exulted in the possibility that he might still achieve something of the scientific purpose of the expedition.

  But when the case was recovered, everything inside proved to be smashed or damaged in some way.

  “Ruined,” I heard him say. “All ruined.”

  That night some animal moved through the jungle close to our camp, smashing and breaking trees. We reached for our remaining guns and leapt to our feet. But as much as we did not want to leave the light of our campfire, the intruder did not wish to approach it and we were spared a confrontation.

  The next morning we contemplated its wide trail, and two of the camaradas set out to follow it. Sir Owain called me over and asked for my thoughts.

  I said, “There’s no single animal of such a size. Not in this jungle. Unless the rumors are true and the Megatherium survives.”

  “Megatherium?” he said. “Never heard of it. Is it a dinosaur?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s one of the largest mammals ever known. Believed to have been extinct for over five thousand years, but some say that the Amazon basin is vast enough and wild enough for some areas of it
s ancient habitat to survive unchanged.”

  “Herbivore or carnivore?”

  “Herbivore,” I said. “The Megatherium’s stance was like a bear’s, but it was the size and weight of a bull elephant.”

  He nodded, and kicked thoughtfully at the trampled ground, and then looked at all the stalks and branches that the creature had broken in passing.

  “That could have done it, all right,” he said.

  “Could have,” I said. “If one even exists.”

  “What do you think, Somerville? What if a man could bag such a beast and drag it home?”

  He was serious. I thought for a moment that he was speaking hypothetically, but he was not.

  I said, “Owain. Look at what’s been lost. Forget about your standing and your reputation for once. We’ll be lucky if we all survive.”

  He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. With the manner of a man who is judging what he’s looking at, and thinking little of what he sees.

  He said, “Don’t make me regret bringing you along, Doctor Somerville. You can be such an old woman sometimes.”

  The two camaradas did not return. I have no idea why, and nor did anyone else. I don’t believe that they ran away. It made no sense for them to leave the boats. Without the river there was little chance of crossing this jungle and surviving the journey.

  Sir Owain talked about going after them, not for the sake of the men but for the beast they’d followed. If he could not bag it alive, he’d have a trophy. I could see that he’d begun to look for some outcome, any outcome, that might save his face and justify his losses on our return to civilization. He was probably writing the Royal Society speech in his head. My dear lost colleagues and loyal servants, I mourn them all; and I dedicate this triumph to their memory.

  Meanwhile, his son had begun to suffer painful eruptions on his bare legs. Though he’d dubbed me the party’s physician, Sir Owain had now started to behave to me as he behaved to all critics, by sending the odd sarcastic shot in my direction (“We might have some tea, if Doctor Somerville doesn’t think it too dangerous,”) but otherwise choosing largely to ignore my existence. He said to his son, “It’s just bug bites, boy. Get some lotion on them and stop your complaining,” and so the boy came to me on his own.