The Lamplighter

by Anthony O'Neill

  He did not even bother to wake up. He pushed himself deliriously out of bed, performed his ablutions in a daze, dressed mechanically, drained a glass of cold tea, and by the time Pringle arrived he was already brushed, combed, freshly soaped, and ready for action.

  “What is it?” he asked, opening the door before his assistant was able to apply a frantic knock.

  Pringle looked astonished, no doubt by the Inspector’s uncanny prescience. “It’s…it’s the Todd woman,” he said, catching his breath.

  Groves frowned. “What of her?”

  “I think,” Pringle said, still with some difficulty, “that it’s best you find out for yourself, sir.”

  Groves grunted, vaguely irritated by the dramatics but relieved to have the chance to assess the new development free from distortion. He locked the door behind him quietly, mindful of not waking his sisters, and took a bracing look at the fading stars. “Let’s be on our way, then,” he said, careful to betray not a hint of emotion, and with great energy he took off up Leith Walk with Pringle fighting to keep pace beside him, drawn by some overpowering instinct to Candlemaker Row.

  Thoughts of the insidious Evelyn Todd had barely had a chance to leave his mind from the previous day. It had begun as early as his arrival at Central Office, with a telegram from the Head Constable of the Monaghan police:

  CI GROVES EDINBURGH CITY POLICE

  E TODD POSTULANT DISMISSED ST LOUIS

  CONVENT 1878 STRANGE TENDENCIES

  SUMMARY ARREST 1881 ASSAULT OF SUITOR

  NO CHARGES SENDING LETTERS HC CURRAN

  Groves was just coming to terms with this when a constable entered with a report, gleaned from a meticulous examination of police records, of her further criminal activity. Two years previously, when she was residing in a lodging house in Bell’s Wynd, she had been arrested for releasing the parrots of the caged-bird seller in St. Giles Street. According to her own testimony she had been strolling through the area on a Saturday afternoon when, spying the rows of cramped and listless birds, she had been overcome with the urge to free them from captivity. She could not properly recall what had happened next, but the bird seller—a hunchbacked crone of sixty, a fixture of the area—claimed the young woman had methodically unlatched every single door and shaken each cage in “an animal frenzy” and “could not be beaten off for the love of God,” until all her prize birds—“parrots of the rainbow’s spectrum”—had been dispersed into the smoky skies.

  Tried before the Police Court, Evelyn had presented a picture of genuine remorse, fully accountable for her indiscretion and willing and eager to compensate the victim. It was noted that her act of avian emancipation had accomplished little, in any event, as for days afterward the frozen cobbles had been littered with parrots and the city’s cats had returned home with colored bundles. The notoriously lenient Bailie Ryan, taking into account Evelyn’s disposition and circumstances and observing that she had not been motivated by notions of personal gain, had ordered her to pay two pounds in damages to the bird seller and a five-shilling caution for future conduct or suffer five days’ imprisonment. Evelyn herself had then claimed she would voluntarily contribute another five shillings to the St. Mary’s poor box, further appealing to the Bailie.

  Tracking down the arresting constable, Groves was unsurprised to learn that Arthur Stark had been in the public gallery that day and afterward was seen introducing himself to Evelyn, her criminal act thus leading directly to her employment in the bookstore.

  Baffled by her contradictions, in any case, Groves decided he could no longer avoid a visit to Dr. Stellmach, the Wax Man’s source on criminal behavior, to take at least a token academic reading of her mental state. Arriving at noon at the doctor’s cluttered terrace house on Regent Road, he found his host a most curious little figure, beetle-browed, poorly shaved, and gifted with a startling Beethoven-like coiffure that Groves, for all his fatigue and confusion, could not help staring at enviously. The two men sat in a parlor sprayed with the spidery shadows of thick lace curtains.

  “This lady you speak of,” Stellmach asked, “would you know the background?”

  Groves tore his gaze from the man’s hairline. “She is an orphan. Her mother was a prostitute.”

  “A prostitute.” Stellmach clicked his tongue meaningfully. “What became of her?”

  “The mother? She died of cholera.”

  “The father?”

  “He’s…” Groves thought the better of mentioning his suspicions, “…unknown.”

  Stellmach nodded somberly. “There exists a degenerative streak in those born to the prostitutes. A taint of the nerves.”

  “Aye,” Groves agreed, pleased with the word taint.

  “The taint, it works through the system like an infection. The daughter you speak of, is she a prostitute herself?”

  “Not that I am aware of.”

  “Is she celibate?”

  “That,” Groves said uncomfortably, “is not for me to say.”

  “Does she have the aspects of a maiden?”

  “Her aspects are…contrary. She was a nun at one stage.”

  There was an upstairs noise at this point—a woman in heels—and Stellmach rose to ease the door shut before returning to his seat, where he coughed and went on, in a strangely furtive tone. “A nun, you say? Does she have any particular friends?”

  “Particular?”

  “The nuns, they are known to have what are called ‘particular friends.’”

  Groves was not sure what he meant, but noted that the man spoke with some relish. “She is no longer a nun,” he said.

  “You are sure she has no particular friends?”

  “I…I am aware of no friends.”

  Stellmach looked disappointed. “Is she pale?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Tired-looking? Dark circles under the eyes?”

  “Aye.”

  “And she wears the tight clothes, heavily laced?”

  Groves had always imagined they were tight, and he nodded vaguely.

  “Does she have obstructed menses?”

  “Good Lord, man,” Groves said, trying to imagine himself asking such a question, “what does that have to do with it?”

  But at this Stellmach sighed wearily, well acquainted with such skepticism. “It is all part of the modern malady,” he explained, leaning back and fingering his suspenders, “which I have written about in great detail. The woman raised on cheap romances and lurid gossip. The heavy drinking of coffee, sugar, and spiced breads. The constricting clothes. The unhealthy contrast of heat and cold in the northern cities. The breathing of foul air and dust. This is the combination which brings about the disequilibrium of the nervous system. With the imbalance comes the upsets of the gastrointestinal tract, the disrupted menses, the volatile disposition, the frailty, the distemper. This is the foundation of the woman’s mental instability, combined in many cases with the degenerative taint and the inherited moral degeneracy.” His eyes flared. “May I proceed with my questions?”

  Groves could not but admit that the doctor had spoken with some authority. It was strangely exciting, in fact, to have Evelyn stripped of her enamel coating and her malfunctioning clockwork innards exposed. “Aye,” he said. “Go on.”

  Stellmach stroked his chin. “Does the lady show symptoms of seizure? Grand movements?”

  “She is flighty at times.”

  “But no convulsions? Blackouts? Hallucinations?”

  “Not while I have been present.”

  “Where does she work, if she has no husband?”

  “She works for a bookseller.”

  “And before this?”

  “She washed dishes. She was a match dipper.”

  “A match dipper?” Stellmach tilted his head suggestively.

  “Aye. Is this important?”

  “Match dippers breathe the fumes of the phosphor and suffer hallucinations, Inspector. The lady, does she have any medical conditions? Does she take laudanum? Morph
ine?”

  “Not that I’m aware…”

  “Does she visit a doctor?”

  “I’ve not asked.”

  Stellmach looked displeased. “These are things you will need to establish, Inspector. It is not easy to reach the accurate conclusions without all the proper information.”

  But Groves disliked the implication that he had been less than thorough in his investigation. “In case you don’t know,” he said testily, “the Lord Provost himself has declared this a case unlike any ever seen in this city. I personally have been occupied with all manner of leads and I am here only because it is my duty to investigate every possibility. You came highly recommended to me.”

  “By Chief Inspector Smith?” Stellmach asked with obvious affection, to the further irritation of Groves.

  “By him, aye,” Groves said, and inhaled. “Listen, man—can I rely on you to hold a secret?”

  “It is an oath of the profession.”

  “It is my suspicion,” the Inspector stated, “that the lady I speak of is not just tainted, and not just unstable, but capable of the most ferocious strength, the most violent acts, and that is what I am here to discover.”

  Stellmach considered. “You say she is generally delicate, that is so?”

  “Most often she gives that appearance, as I have already said.”

  There was a further indication of movement above, and in response Stellmach leaned forward in his chair. “This can be deceptive, Inspector,” he whispered, as though terrified that an incriminating word might escape the room. “A mask, you see. The fairer sex, they have mastered the stealth of hiding strength. The woman, she throws around her the veils of delicacy and virtue, when in fact she is the incarnate predator. She fans herself in the heat and she will not step over a puddle in the wet, but she has a tolerance for discomfort that far exceeds the man. She puts on the air of innocence when in fact her mind churns constantly with schemes. But the powers she harnesses she does not apply to noble pursuits. The energy the man feeds into creativity and manufacture, the woman channels into discord and destruction. She is the great deceiver.”

  Chilled, Groves wondered if Stellmach had chosen the last words knowingly.

  “But this is something that the woman herself, sometimes she is not aware,” the doctor went on. “This is the performance that the society has her play and which she struggles to maintain night after night, and she tries to nail down her instincts, she deprives herself of her illicit nature, and she becomes agitated and unruly. In many cases there is no telling of what the woman in the state of hysteria is capable. Have you ever visited an asylum, Inspector?”

  “I have been to a madhouse.”

  “Then you will know that the madwoman, she claws and fights like the cornered beast, like no man is capable, and the doctor who attends to her puts his life in danger.”

  Here Stellmach unbuttoned his sleeve—rapidly, as though fearing he might be caught—and exposed a remarkably hairy forearm, decorated with livid tooth marks. “I was an intern, Inspector, and stronger in those days than I am now…but the woman, she was like a wolf, and she could not be fought off.”

  Groves recalled the words of the priest—that the monsignor had been torn apart “as if by wolves”—and those of the caged-bird seller—that Evelyn “could not be beaten off”—and he felt strangely queasy. He watched Stellmach refasten his cuff.

  “Then you believe the lady I have mentioned,” he asked, “for all her delicacy, might have been able to kill like a savage beast?”

  There was another noise—the creak of someone coming down the stairs—and Stellmach, visibly ill at ease, answered in a hastening tone, “I would need to examine her and measure her skull, for there are many physical traits of the born killer, but many times the real indications are buried deep, and the examination would need to be very detailed.”

  “But you would not discount it?”

  “Her madness could be so great that she is capable of transformation.”

  “Transformation?”

  “I am most serious.”

  “What sort of transformation?”

  Stellmach spoke earnestly. “The great powers of women, the hidden powers, have been known for centuries and recorded in detail, but not in the medical texts, and you must know where to look.” He snapped up a pen and hunted frantically for a piece of paper. “May I write for you a list of books?”

  “Books?” Groves tightened instinctively.

  “The hidden history of hysteria, Inspector, which the other doctors ignore. It would be very good for you to visit the library and examine the evidence with your own eyes and tremble at the powers woman has unleashed over thousands of years, and which, under many names—”

  But here he stopped, and froze as if caught in some crime, because the door knob had turned and a woman thrust her head into the room, I took it to be his frau, and she asked in a barking tone if he was ready to escort her to Jenners for Christmas shopping, and he smiled and begged her indulgence, saying he would only be another minute or two, and with great haste he scribbled out a scrawl of titles on a blank sheet, before ushering me out the door like I was a drunken sailor.

  The listed books had daunting names, many in noxious Latin, and Groves had little intention of tracking them down until he returned to Central Office and was apprised of the reports, still surfacing from the Old Town in general and in particular from the Cowgate, of a monstrous figure glimpsed in the mist and shadows of the previous night. Descriptions were characterized only by a confounding lack of consistency: batlike, reptilian-skinned, scaled, silky black, beetroot red, bovine-eared, elegantly attired, man, ghoul, beast, apparition. Further, the wave of sightings seemed to unleash a tide of previously unmentioned encounters and memories: an ogrelike creature seen galloping in the Pentland Hills, an inhuman creature pursued by dogs near St. Bernard’s Well, a ghost of formidable size inhabiting the mock Warlock Weir’s House at the summer’s International Exhibition (though claims of the last were easily attributable to canny publicity on the part of the organizing committee).

  Moreover, he was informed that, as the investigation into Ainslie’s business dealings had unearthed a ganglion of fraud, debt, and shady associations, Sheriff Fleming had made an approach to Seth Hogarth seeking more information, only to discover that the great tragedian was in St. Heriot’s Hospital after tripping over a floorboard and plunging into the orchestra pit. The very idea that this might have been a cunningly contrived murder attempt, deliberately conceived to ensure the actor’s silence, now troubled Groves deeply (as indeed did the Sheriff’s investigation itself, which embarrassed him with its thoroughness). He declared his own intention to file a comprehensive report, and headed with a sense of escape to the library.

  Though in truth he had little need for spectacles, the sensitive nature of his visit made him suddenly inclined to secrecy and, convinced his was a visage known all over Edinburgh, he procured a thick pair of lenses and a worsted jacket with an upturned collar, and made the brief journey to the Signet Library stumbling over runnels and buffeting hushed onlookers awaiting a verdict outside the Justiciary Court. Sweeping up to the top of the triumphal staircase, he was immediately intimidated by the deep ranks of books, the coffered dome, the pompous portraits and unforgiving silence, and he retreated cravenly to a corner, deposited himself in a leather-bound chair, and through his absurd glasses tried to make sense of the procedures without having to call for assistance. Ascertaining that a sheaf catalogue system was in place, and with Dr. Stellmach’s scribbled list concealed in one hand, he was eventually able to locate the desired books—most of them grouped closely together—and he was on his way out the front door when he was informed that he was not permitted to leave the premises with such valuable items. Here he could have invoked his position or even his redoubtable fame by disclosing his true identity, but he prudently elected to sidle over to one of the substantial reading desks, arrange his miniature ziggurat of musty-smelling titles, and remove h
is pad and pencil to jot notes.

  He read as a majestic shaft of sunlight, thickly populated with motes of dancing dust, swept across him like the beam of a slowly rotated lamp. The books were in scarred leather bindings and loaded with exacting typescripts and incomprehensible words. There was Anatomy of Melancholy, Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft, The Kingdom of Darkness, the Compendium Maleficarium (three volumes), Saducismus Triumphatus, and the only title he was halfway acquainted with, the Scottish favorite Satan’s Invisible World Discovered by the Reverend Sinclair, former professor of philosophy and mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. He struggled gamely at first, intending with great ambition to read every page before the sunlight faded, but he was soon frustrated, Stellmach’s point eluding him, until some of the woodcuts slowly began to snare his attention and he incrementally became absorbed. These were books concerned with the folklore and perfidy of witches from the darkest ages to the most recent century, with frequent mentions of Edinburgh that invariably quickened his heart. He read of sabbats, orgies, seductions, shape changing, curses, spells, invocations, and nightmares and illicit dreams visited upon virtuous men. He read of Satan’s propensity for capturing the minds of mournful maidens and leading them down the paths of iniquity. Of women who made stews of boiled children, walked on their backs, spoke in arcane languages, thrashed about, vomited strange objects, gushed blood from their orifices, and visited upon their enemies the most appalling species of violence. Of the Scottish witches Agnes Simpson, who raised fierce tempests; Isobel Grierson, who turned herself into a cat (the book did not suggest of which variety); and Isobel Gowdie, who soared through the skies and suckled Satan in 1662.