by Tessa Harris
Mounted on one of the ponies, he had crossed the bridge over the lake, keeping an eagle eye open for his sister. It was a fine clear day in May, but there was still a chill in the air and just as the pony’s hooves had begun to rattle over the wooden bridge a gust of wind blew up. It caught the green reeds that fringed the lake and made them rustle in unison. Will looked at the black-domed heads of the reeds nodding in the breeze, then looked again, this time more intently. His attention had been called to something caught in the foliage: a piece of dark material, like a half-deflated balloon, that was trapped in the bullrushes. Nudging his pony closer, he dismounted and walked toward the water’s edge. It was then he realized the material belonged to a skirt. He stopped dead in his tracks and his horrified eyes traced the outline of the skirt to an arm, then to long, loose hair, and he knew. He began to scream, as if the noise might waken his sleeping sister. She was out of reach, just beyond the parapet of the bridge in water too deep for him. He looked for a branch, a stick, so that she could grab ahold of it and he could pull her ashore. He could not see one. He was helpless. He screamed once more. This time James Lavington heard his anguished cries from the first floor of his cottage. He opened his bedroom window that overlooked the lake and saw the boy fixed to the spot, wailing hysterically.
“I’m coming, boy. Hold on,” he called out and he had hurried as fast as his disabled leg would allow him to where Will stood frozen with terror, glaring at the reeds.
“Oh sweet Jesus,” cried Lavington when he saw the folds of material and the hair that swirled in the gentle current.
They waded in, Amos Kidd and his father, and dragged her out, like a large wet rag doll, her dark hair streaked with green weeds. They heaved her onto the bank facedown as if she were a sack of potatoes, and then fell exhausted themselves onto the grass. It was then that Will had rushed forward and thrown himself onto her body, turning her over with all his might so that he could see her face. Her eyes were closed. He had to wake her. He began pushing her, pulling her, trying to rouse her, frantically calling out her name. His mother had rushed forward, too, prizing him away from his sister. She had lifted her head up and cradled her daughter’s milk-white face in her hands.
“No. No,” cried Hannah, rocking her daughter gently, as if she were a babe. It was then that Will had seen the bulges in his sister’s apron pockets, while his mother was too enveloped in her grief to see him put in his hand and reach inside. His father came now to comfort her, drenched to his waist and eyes full of tears.
“Beccy!” screamed Will and sat up in a cold sweat in bed.
His mother came to him once more as he lay on a straw palliasse in the corner of the room, opposite his sister. In her hand she carried a mortar.
“Hush now. You’ll wake Rachel,” she whispered, kneeling by the mattress. “Take this,” she soothed and she spooned the bitter mixture into her son’s mouth as she did most nights. “ ’Twill make you feel better,” she would say, and it always did. A few minutes later sleep would come to him like a welcome visitor that would not leave until the daylight appeared.
“I miss her,” said Will. His coppery hair was disheveled and stuck out at angles all over his large head.
“We all do,” replied Hannah, her voice cracking with emotion. She stroked his cheek for a moment and kissed his freckled forehead before returning to the warmth of the fire.
Will rolled over in bed to await the inevitable arrival of sleep that always came after his mother’s remedy. As he did so, he felt under his mattress and touched the flat stones that were as cold as his sister’s cheeks the day they pulled her from the lake. Now they lay underneath him, those smooth, small slabs that he had found in Rebecca’s apron pockets, sandwiched between the mattress and the floor. His hand felt for them in the darkness and he shivered as he touched their cold, level surfaces. Somehow they made him feel closer to her, even though she had gone to another place.
Chapter 20
“So, we are to lose you to Oxford again,” said Dr. Carruthers over breakfast the following morning. Thomas detected a note of disapproval in his voice.
The young New Englander was toying with a rasher of fatty bacon on his plate, but had no appetite for it. He knew he had to return to Boughton Hall before the inquest convened. He would take the coach up to Oxford that very morning, so that he could endeavor to track down the poison used to kill vermin on the estate. He would need a sample of it to test.
Dr. Carruthers sipped the coffee Mistress Finesilver had just poured him. He was aware that Thomas had postponed a lecture he was due to give at the College of Surgeons the day before because he was working on solving the riddle of this purgative.
“Remember you have a duty to your students,” he warned his protégé.
Thomas rested his fork on the side of the plate. “Indeed, I would never forget, sir, but I also have an obligation to the court. It is relying on me to determine how a young man died.”
The old doctor let out a deep sigh. “You are not a lawyer, Thomas,” he countered, obviously annoyed.
“But I seem the only one who may be capable of clearing up this awful mystery,” protested Thomas. He found himself pointing the fork aggressively at his mentor and was glad he could not see his uncharacteristically fiery gesture.
Abashed, he put his knife and fork together carefully on the side of the plate in an act of closure. “I must take my leave now, sir,” he said, rising from the table. “I shall be back by the end of the week.”
Dr. Carruthers nodded and wiped his mouth with a napkin. He hoped his student’s brilliant young mind would not stray from the path of anatomy and serious study. Murders were best solved by lawyers and constables, he told himself, not by scientists.
Back in his laboratory, Thomas began to pack his bag with the necessary implements and ingredients he would need to carry out experiments on any samples of poison he might find at Boughton Hall. A sense of panic was rising within him as he rushed to strap ampules and phials securely into their correct cases. When he performed in front of students in the anatomy theater he was a priest. His chalice was a knife and the actions he executed were rituals; above reproach and incontrovertible. His unquestioning congregation held him in awe. They merely watched his skill and precision as he teased out long lengths of tubules and sliced through cumbering flesh. To them he was an apostle of the great Vesalius who, more than two hundred years before, had performed the first postmortem dissections. He was respected and revered on his own hallowed ground.
A court, however, was foreign territory, full of nonbelievers and infidels. His audience would be made up not of students eager to learn, but of curious meddlers and bloodthirsty gossips. And he, with his science and his theories, would be regarded as no better than a common charlatan, who peddled false remedies and cure-alls at fairgrounds and markets.
Thomas shuddered at the very thought of taking the stand as he began collating his notes. He had just packed the last sheaves into a bag when a knock came at the door. He was annoyed. “Yes, Mistress Finesilver,” he called out brusquely. The door swung open and, sure enough, there she stood, her face pinched and unsmiling as usual. Yet instead of telling Thomas that she had darned his stockings for the very last time, or that his hot meal was growing cold, she announced he had a visitor.
Immediately Thomas put down the last of his notes and turned toward the door. He was struck straightaway by the young man’s resemblance to Lydia: the high cheekbones, the loosely curled hair, the same heart-shaped face.
“Please, come in,” said Thomas, holding out his hand. Francis Crick took it, slightly bemused. He recognized the young man from his attendances at his lectures.
“You bear a great resemblance to your cousin, Mr. Crick,” ventured Thomas.
“You speak of Lady Lydia?” The young aristocrat seemed shocked. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do,” he mused.
“You were the one who recommended me to her ladyship, were you not?”
“Yes. Yes, I was,” said Fr
ancis, not knowing whether he might be castigated.
Thomas paused. “Thank you for your confidence in me,” he said, nodding his head.
“You are a great anatomist, Dr. Silkstone,” replied the young man genuinely.
Thomas smiled. “No, not great, just inquisitive.” He fastened the clasp on his bag and turned to the student. “And true to my nature, I must ask you what brings you here, Mr. Crick.”
Francis straightened himself, as if he had suddenly remembered the reason for his presence. “I am come on a mission on behalf of my cousin,” he announced in what Thomas thought was a somewhat formal manner. The doctor’s curiosity was roused. “Go on,” he urged.
The young man plunged a hand into his coat pocket and retrieved a gray drawstring bag. Handing it carefully over to the doctor, he said: “Lydia wanted you to have this.”
Thomas remained silent, but took the bag warily and laid it on his desk. Inside was a small, clear glass bottle with a cork stopper. Sitting down, he held the bottle up to the light. Inside the liquid was colorless. It could have been water, or pure alcohol, save a few minute impurities that floated in it.
Francis eyed Thomas nervously as he began to uncork the bottle. It only took a second before the doctor knew for sure what was contained inside. His head jerked back involuntarily, as if someone had punched him in the face. So strong was the smell that it sent his senses reeling. It was an unforgettable, unmistakable smell. It was a smell like bitter almonds. It was the smell of cyanide.
“And this was made at Boughton?” Thomas choked. Francis, too, could smell the pungent odor. He turned away, panting. “Yes. Captain Farrell made it in a still. He would make the poison from black laurel cherries every autumn.”
This knowledge came as a revelation to Thomas. “So, there is a still at Boughton where cyanide is made?”
Francis nodded. “There was,” he replied hesitantly.
Thomas placed the cork back into the bottle neck. “There was?” he repeated. “So, where is it now?”
Francis looked awkward. He knew the information he was about to divulge would be incriminating for his cousin’s husband. “Captain Farrell had it destroyed after Edward’s death and all the poison with it.”
Thomas paused to process what he had just heard. “I see,” he said thoughtfully. “So, where did Lady Lydia find this bottle?”
“There is a place called the pavilion on the estate. ’Tis like a summerhouse. She found it there,” said Francis gravely.
Thomas held the bottle up for inspection once more. “Then no one else knows that this bottle exists?”
“No one.” Crick shook his head solemnly.
Thomas banged his palms down flat on his desk. “Then we must get to work,” he said emphatically.
Two large preserving jars sat on Thomas’s desk. He had been about to pack them into his bag when his unexpected visitor arrived. One contained a section of the earl’s stomach, the other part of his liver.
“I can test the deceased’s organs for traces of this substance,” said Thomas, looking at the brownish objects that floated anonymously in preserving fluid. But just as he had uttered these words he saw the pained look on Francis’s face when he realized that his cousin’s remains had been reduced to tissues in sample jars. To be a good anatomist, or indeed a surgeon, Thomas had learned that compassion must be distanced and emotion suppressed, but he recognized that these were exceptional and traumatic circumstances. He laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You do not have to assist me,” he said softly.
Francis looked at him vacantly for a moment; then, as if a sudden resolve had seized hold of him, he replied: “We must do what we can to find out what killed Edward.”
Thomas nodded, satisfied in the knowledge that the young man who stood before him had the makings of a good surgeon. “There are two aprons hanging up over there,” he said, pointing to the hooks on the far wall. Francis allowed a smile to flit across his face before he obeyed the surgeon’s order.
Meanwhile Thomas transferred the sample jars over to his workbench and carefully opened the one containing the dead man’s stomach tissue. Surely if cyanide had been added to the purgative, he would have smelled it during the postmortem, he told himself.
Francis brought the aprons over and together they put them on. Next Thomas laid his instruments out on the bench and using tweezers lifted the large section of stomach out of the jar and onto a porcelain dish. Now he was looking at this pulpy bag with fresh eyes and a heightened sense of smell. He lifted the dish and sniffed, then passed it over to Francis.
“One in six people is not capable of smelling cyanide,” Thomas told him, “but I do not believe we would both suffer from anosmia, especially as we both detected the odor from the bottle.”
At that moment the latch on the laboratory door clicked open and Dr. Carruthers appeared. “Are you still there, Thomas?” he called.
“Indeed, sir,” he replied, wiping his hands on his apron and walking over to greet the old doctor.
“I did not want us to part on difficult terms,” said Carruthers, taking Thomas’s hand.
“There is no bad feeling on my part, sir, let me assure you,” replied Thomas, feeling a little embarrassed that such a conversation should be taking place in front of one of his students. He changed the subject as quickly as he could. “You have come at an opportune time, sir,” he continued.
“How so?” replied the old doctor, making his way slowly into the center of the laboratory. His progress was suddenly halted, however. Like a rabbit that has sensed the approach of a fox, he stiffened and sniffed the air, his nose twitching violently. “Heavens above, I smell cyanide,” he exclaimed.
Thomas and Francis shot a glance at each other. “ ’Tis something I’ve not smelled since I did a postmortem on a young fellow who drank a tankard of the stuff in the winter of ’72.”
Thomas’s eyes opened wide. “Sir, you’ve performed a postmortem on a cyanide death?”
“Unrequited love, I believe. Messy business,” reflected the old doctor, unaware of the significance of his revelation.
“And do you still have the stomach?” Thomas realized that this postmortem took place eight years ago. It was too much to hope that the sample still remained.
“Still have the stomach?” repeated Dr. Carruthers. Thomas held his breath. “Of course I do,” he chuckled, as if there was any question that he had not kept it.
“You’ll find it on the top left-hand shelf in the cupboard in the storeroom,” he revealed.
Thomas smiled broadly with relief, knowing he should never have doubted his mentor.
The storeroom lay through another door and down a narrow passage. Thomas rarely ventured into it. Dr. Carruthers often referred to it as his “medical encyclopedia” and Thomas had vowed one day to familiarize himself with the contents of all the mysterious jars and carboys it held, but he had simply been too busy.
The young anatomist and his student ventured into the damp, windowless room. Holding his candle aloft, glass containers came into view one by one, each labeled in Dr. Carruthers’s spidery scrawl and there, sure enough, on the top left-hand shelf was a jar labeled “stomach—cyanide poisoning.” He could scarcely believe his luck.
As Francis Crick held the candle, Thomas carefully reached up for the container and gently brought it down. Taking it to the light of the passageway, the two men inspected the macabre cargo. There it was: the perfectly preserved stomach of someone whose life had been so blighted that he had killed himself in one of the most agonizing ways imaginable.
Back in the laboratory Thomas and Francis returned to the workbench.
“You’ve found it, then?” asked the old doctor, smiling.
“Indeed we have,” replied Thomas, eagerly prizing off the lid of the jar.
Even after eight years in preserving fluid, the smell was still unmistakable. The acrid odor immediately wafted into the air.
Thomas lifted the sample carefully onto another dish. The
most striking difference between this sample and that of Lord Crick’s was the color.
“Well, look at this,” whispered Thomas to himself as much as to Francis. The mucosa of the stomach was a deep inky blue, with a heavy staining of the fundus, yet the antrum was spared.
“ ’Tis a deep blue if I remember correctly,” ventured Dr. Carruthers, now sitting at the desk.
“Indeed it is,” replied Thomas, surprised by the comparison. “It bears no resemblance whatsoever to Crick’s stomach. So ’twas not rat poison that killed him.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Francis.
“This is proof, Mr. Crick,” he countered. “A negative proof, but proof all the same.”
“So, what did kill Edward?” asked the student.
“That,” replied the young doctor, “is what we still have to find out.”
Chapter 21
If death, mused the great thinker Dr. Samuel Johnson, is merely a gateway on the path from life into eternity, a portal from mortality to immortality, then what does it matter how a man dies? The act of dying is not of importance. It is how he lives that counts.
“What say you to that, Mr. Crick?” asked Thomas at the end of a long afternoon in the laboratory.
The young student had remained to assist him in his tests on the contents of the jar of rat poison. The process of elimination was a laboriously slow one, as the liquid had to be broken down into its various components and each one tested for its toxicity. Now, however, at least one conclusion could be scientifically proven. Edward Crick did not die from cyanide poisoning. Dr. Carruthers’s specimen had proved vital to Thomas in this respect. It was the one aspect about which he could be certain should he be questioned in the witness stand at the forthcoming inquest, assuming the matter of the still and the rat poison came to light.
