by Pirie, David
‘Is it?’ The Doctor could be blunt when he wanted to.
Yet Greenwell took no offence. In fact, somewhat to my surprise he turned, smiling, to me. ‘I would like very much’, he said graciously, ‘to give Dr Doyle the answer to that question. Miss Grace’s feelings for me have cooled a little since she met you, sir. You would, of course, expect me to dislike you for that. But you would be wrong. I judge her taste to be extraordinary. Therefore I think well of you. And that is what I intended to say had I come to see you. I feel strongly that any woman must be allowed to make up her own mind. Naturally I have every hope she will arrive at a decision in my favour very soon, but it is up to her. I hope that answers the question.’
‘Admirably.’ The Doctor seemed somewhat amused by this reply. For myself, I found it impossible to take these words seriously. Certainly Mr Greenwell’s tone sounded genuine but there was, for me, something too smug and self-satisfied about the speaker’s mode of expression to be wholly persuasive. I noticed, too, that he ignored the Doctor’s reply, making it perfectly clear he was waiting for mine.
‘The sentiments are certainly handsome.’ I struggled to find the words. ‘But from bitter experience I know quite well how a man can say one thing and do another.’
For a moment he looked almost wounded and then again came that smile. It was not a superior smile, rather it was sweet and affecting, so I must admit to bias when I say that I had begun to detest it. ‘Then I can only ask you to judge me by experience,’ he said. ‘I am delighted you are helping to ensure Miss Grace’s safety. I have heard these stories that she is being followed. Awful in view of what happened. Almost like … some visitation if you believe in such things.’ As he said this, his eyes seemed to darken and I sensed another aspect to him. Was it fear or something else? ‘As I say, my property borders on that part of the wood but I have seen nothing.’
‘And you have no idea’, asked Dr Bell, ‘who might be interested in her movements?’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘But I cannot bear to think of her being hurt.’
‘Good,’ I said, ‘for we are determined to ensure no harm comes to her.’ With that we bade goodbye to him and walked off to where our cab was waiting as arranged.
On the journey back, I could see Bell was turning over what he had heard in his mind but and I was determined to voice my doubts about the man. ‘I do not trust him.’
Bell looked up from his ruminations. A little smile played on his lips. ‘I wonder if you are not a little biased, but I agree he seems somewhat concerned by our activities. So let us expedite them. Tomorrow, you should return to your observation post on the road, this time, I trust, with better results.’
That night, knowing my curiosity about the case, Bell asked if I would like to see some of the documents he had on the Abbey Mill murder. I agreed at once and found that much of it covered the ground he had described. But there was, I will admit, one other item that took me unawares, although the description of Miss Grace’s condition when they found her, barefoot and bleeding, was very affecting. It was a copy of a letter that had been seized in Coatley’s condemned cell. I still recall the slanted handwriting, the large, childish letters, but most of all how could I ever forget the words, repetitious, almost infantile?
I am glad of what happened, I rejoice in what I did to you all. It is a wonderful act and what pleasure it gives me. I go to my death singing, triumphant.
How desperately I found myself hoping Miss Grace had not known of this. The gloating exultation of the thing recalled memories of my own I had no wish to relive. Of course, it was only a copy, but before I went to bed I took the file containing it and put it back where Bell could find it in the morning. I would cheerfully have slept in a morgue or a cemetery rather than lay my head down anywhere near that note.
THE BLACK HOUSE IN THE WOOD
Next day we had planned that the Doctor should interview Miss Grace at my house and see if he could discover anything of interest, while I took the opportunity to watch her progress on the road as she cycled along it towards the town. Miss Grace’s appointment with the Doctor was for two and I set out shortly after twelve. The morning had been sunny but by noon it was overcast and the clouds were gathering ominously as I rode a bicycle procured by Baynes along that grey and unpleasant stretch of road leading to the wood.
I was still stung by the Doctor’s scathing comments about my mistakes before and felt utterly determined that this time I would do better. So I laid my plans carefully. First I surveyed the ground, concentrating most of my attention on a lonely strip of hawthorn hedge. I wanted to establish exactly how much of the road was visible from it and soon I settled on a spot behind it that was far closer to the thoroughfare than my previous vantage point. The place was fully protected from view but I could still reach the road itself in moments, for I had already decided that if I encountered the figure again, I would try to get in front of it. Perhaps I might not succeed in forcing it to swerve or stop, but at the very least I would get a close view.
I had more than an hour to wait, so I took up my position and soon found myself lost in my own reflections. I thought of how much I had disliked Guy Greenwell and this in turn compelled me to confront a truth I had been carefully avoiding, namely that my concern for Miss Grace’s well-being was no longer strictly medical. She was the first woman I had allowed myself to think of in this way since that time in Edinburgh.
Of course, I was aware such feelings were utterly improper between doctor and patient. But as I lay there and the clouds gathered overhead, I recalled with a smile some remarks made by one of our more perspicacious teachers in Edinburgh, an expert in pathology called Andrew Maclagan. Once, with a twinkle in his eye, he had informed a group of medical students that we could confidently expect all kinds of thoughts and fancies to pop into our heads during our treatment of patients. ‘You may feel’, he announced, ‘an overpowering desire to box a patient’s ears, fall into their arms or kick them down the stairs. In themselves, none of these fancies matters a jot. The mind is a capricious thing and we cannot always hope to control it. Your only task, gentlemen, is to make absolutely and utterly sure that never under any circumstances do such thoughts become deeds.’
I knew quite well, as Maclagan had taught, that no doctor can police his own heart. But I was also determined at all costs to observe his practical advice. At that time in my own life, I honestly did not think I could go on living if any feelings of mine should in some unforeseen way hurt or endanger another young woman.
I was so rapt in these reflections that I was almost startled when I saw her cycling into view and realised how much time had passed. I felt foolish for being caught unprepared but I kept low and she passed me, looking intent, her eyes straight ahead. At once I turned my attention to the road behind her. My heart jumped. For the figure was there, just as I had seen it before, travelling at speed about thirty yards away along the road, looking odd and ungainly. The hood and cloak were black while the head made a bobbing motion as it moved.
I ducked down again for if it saw me now it could easily turn round and I would lose my chance. Miss Grace was already at the corner. With my heart beating I waited a few seconds. Then I reared up out of my hiding place and sprang out into its path, desperately hoping I looked braver than I felt.
I was prepared for anything including being run over or attacked, but not for what I saw. The road was entirely empty. There was nobody and nothing there. The clouds had got up a wind and it blew through the grass, and the rooks called out from high in the wood, but again it was as if the figure had never been here at all. In vain I turned in every direction, hunting for some sign of what I had seen. It was useless. There was not the slightest trace of the cyclist.
My first emotion had been fear. Now, as I stood staring around in that road, a sense of terrible failure eclipsed it. Ever since the Doctor denounced my first attempts to observe the cyclist I had been determined to redeem my reputation. Here had been my opportunity and what had ha
ppened? At the critical moment, while I should have been preparing for action, I had indulged in a complacent daydream on a subject many would regard as morally reprehensible. As a direct consequence I had been taken by surprise and effectively achieved nothing at all.
Desperate to act, I made for the wood adjoining the road. Some sanity was now returning and I knew that here lay the only possible solution. The highway was clear, the moor empty and there had only been a few seconds in which to disappear. Somehow, as before, the figure had cycled straight into the wood. Yet there was absolutely no sign of any path through the undergrowth and I had heard no noise at all. Bell had spoken of the figure carrying the bicycle, but even so, surely there would be evidence of a trail?
I walked up and down that small stretch of road endless times, forcing myself to observe every detail. This told me nothing very much. But finally I thought it possible that I did detect a soft impression in the moss that might have been made by tyres. As before, these marks led absolutely nowhere but in my humiliation I was prepared to clutch at any straws so I set off boldly into the trees.
I walked for about an hour without covering much ground. I would have given up if I had not been feeling so frantic, for it was hard going. But I knew just a single clue – a match, a footprint, a piece of paper – could make my return easier to bear. The wood was becoming a mass of nettles and brambles. In places the latter were up to ten feet high and twisted together in a way that made it almost impossible to force a way through. Somewhere, of course, I knew there would be an easier path but for some reason I was utterly determined to maintain a line with the tracks I had seen by the road.
Looking back now, there was no conceivable logic to this approach for, even if the cyclist had made those tracks in the moss, why should he proceed in a straight line? But I was in no mood for logic, for I was driven by my own sense of failure. I was, in truth, a slave to that pitiful superstition that any heroic struggle, in this case against briars and brambles, must in the end yield its reward. More shamefully, a part of me probably hoped that the sight of my torn clothes and scratched arms would mitigate the Doctor’s criticism. If so, I was deluding myself for he would have seen through it at once.
But even the most misguided effort can sometimes be rewarded and on this occasion mine was, though hardly in the way I expected. I had come to yet another obstacle in the form of a holly tree when I heard a noise. It sounded like a bird fluttering in the distance. By itself this was not remarkable as the wood was full of crows, but the noise was too soft and too regular to be a bird. And it seemed to be coming from a short way ahead. I pushed between the holly and a clump of nettles, and straightened up. There was a giant shadow ahead of me. It took only a little time to realise it was being cast by some kind of building.
The light was fading so I moved quickly on, hoping I might have time to explore the place before darkness fell. Soon I emerged from the trees, though the briars were still thick, and could make out the structure quite clearly. It stopped me in my tracks.
The worst operation I ever attended took place in a grim, whitetiled basement theatre in Edinburgh’s old infirmary building. The surgeon was a man called Ian Taller, who was often far too leisurely for my liking and on this occasion he was searching without success for a tumour or an abscess in the patient’s abdomen. With this in view he had slit open the man’s stomach and was burrowing around with his hands, even though it was clear to all of us that the patient was far too ill to sustain the shock of it. The poor man lay on that table gasping for breath and, though he was more or less unconscious, I still recall feeling a terrible sense of his indignity as he lay there dying with his organs horribly exposed to the staring students. Sure enough, he was dead within a few minutes, Taller sewed him up perfunctorily and he was wheeled away.
It may seem an odd story to tell in trying to describe an abandoned cottage, but the structure in front of me had the same air of dereliction, decay and death as that man lying exposed on the table. Some old houses are picturesque ruins; others are piles of bricks. This was neither. The building was still standing and it had two storeys. But although once it might have been a rose-arboured paradise, now you could not for a moment imagine anyone sane wanting to go within a mile of the place.
Even apart from the brickwork, a horribly mottled tapestry of crumbling stone with sightless gaps for windows, everything in front of me was dark and decayed and dismembered. It was enough to make you wonder how any structure on earth could ever have grace if it could be broken and degraded in this way. But at least the noise that had brought me here was louder and I could see its source. Someone had tied a strip of material to the upstairs window and it was fluttering and flapping in the wind.
I was glad there was still some daylight as I entered the cavity which had once been a door. But inside the place it was dark enough. There was no floor to speak of, but broken masonry and glass crunched under my feet as I tried to grope my way towards the staircase. The dereliction around me was bad, but the pathetic touches of humanity that remained seemed even worse. I brushed past some hanging patterned wallpaper that was wet and faded but still clung to the black wall.
The stairs seemed to be solid and I could still hear that flapping noise above me. I shouted a hello, more to keep up my own spirits than in the expectation of any reply. My voice echoed a little but it met with utter silence. I climbed the creaking stairs slowly and they held my weight, though the banister was broken and offered no support.
At last I reached the top. Ahead was a dark landing with three rooms leading off it. From what I could make out, the cloth I had seen was hanging from the room at the end of the landing. Slowly I walked towards it, turning to look in the other rooms as I passed. The first was empty except for the dirt and debris that lay everywhere in that foul place. The second had the ancient shell of a bed and mattress, though nobody now could possibly have lain on it.
Finally I reached the door of the last room and stood there staring in. It was just as dark and intimidating as all the others but tied to the remains of the window frame was what looked like a strip of jet-black cloth, which swirled and fluttered in the wind. I moved forward at once to get a better view of the thing.
The noise erupted from behind me just as I reached it, a horrible gutteral scream. I whirled round but already the thing was on me. I saw just a glimpse of cloak and hood but little of a face; indeed, I had the uncanny impression that the eyes were socketless folds of skin.
Then I lost my balance and was reeling back against the glassless window. My hands clawed for support but there was none and I fell headlong. Next there was searing pain in my legs and arms, and the air was knocked out of me. A sharp dagger stabbed at my cheek, narrowly missing my eye.
Even as I struggled to get up, I thanked God, for I had landed in more of the briars I had been cursing earlier. They slashed my face and legs, but my thick coat protected me from the worst of them and they saved my life, for they broke my fall from that window.
Once I had staggered to my feet and established no bones were broken I am afraid all thought of further self-justifying bravery went clear out of my head. There was, as I had suspected, an easier path back, with brambles that reached only to my knees rather than over my face. I had never dreamed I would be so glad to see that road.
An hour or so later I was standing outside that hellish house again in the darkness and rain, taking great gulps of brandy from a flask offered me by Baynes, as police carrying lanterns weaved around us.
‘I still say’, said Baynes, ‘you could have seen Cullingworth. He is perfectly capable of donning a hood and he was out all day.’
‘If only’, I said, feeling better for the brandy, ‘I had seen more of him.’ I was actually thinking that, had I not been pushed, I might well have dived out of the window on purpose rather than face the figure in that room at close quarters, but given the circumstances I did not think in my heart that made me a coward.
Not far away from us, dressed warml
y against the night, the Doctor was studying the ground by the door with the benefit of a lantern. He kept shaking his head and eventually he came over.
‘The ground is devilishly hard to read here because of the rain, Doyle. But you may consider yourself fully redeemed as an investigator and I think we can now agree the case is serious.’
‘Yet I still failed to see him,’ I had not forgotten my sense of humiliation earlier in the day.
‘Hardly your fault. It certainly seems to me he will not let anyone close. And we can only thank providence for these bushes or he would surely have broken your neck.’
We were interrupted by Inspector Warner, who announced there was nothing at all to be found in the house. ‘I am sorry for what happened to you, sir,’ he said. ‘But whoever was there has gone.’
The Doctor was not surprised and turned back to me. ‘Before we go, Doyle, I wonder if I could ask you to face this house once more with a couple of stout policemen and a lamp? I want to be precisely sure of what you saw.’
So it was that I found myself again in that upstairs room, standing opposite Bell by its glassless window. It was, so far as I could tell, exactly as it had been before.
‘Our friend was obviously behind the door,’ said Bell. ‘But what took you to the window?’
It was only now that I realised I had forgotten about the fluttering cloth. ‘There was a black piece of cloth, a scarf possibly. It fluttered here, making a noise in the wind.’
‘We found no black cloth,’ said Warner.
But Bell was already making a minute examination of the window and its frame. ‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘There are some tiny strips of material here.’ He gathered them up with considerable care and evident satisfaction.
