Alchemy: an historical psychological suspense thriller of perfect murder

by Chris James

  ‘In the family tomb, sir.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  As if you didn’t know, Percy Ponsonby, QC.

  ‘What from?’

  ‘Cancer, sir. It ate away his whole face,’ Rachman said, turning to the judge again. ‘It was horrible, my lord.’

  ‘Your witness,’ said Mr Ponsonby to the defence, sitting down with a smirk on his face.

  Get in there, Mr Ecclestone. Get in there, sir.

  Defence counsel leapt up. I was delighted to watch Mr Ponsonby squirm. ‘Mr Rachman, do you have any knowledge of the accused,’ pointing towards the dock, ‘ever having treated Master Muxlow?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Rachman said. Mr Ponsonby tutted and showed his disgust.

  ‘And have you ever had a spell cast on you by the accused, Jacob Silver?’

  Rachman cowered back in the witness box. Then, a whisper, ‘N-no, sir.’ Titters rose from the gallery.

  ‘Quiet!’ yelled the judge.

  ‘Louder, please, Mr Rachman.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Rachman called out.

  ‘You are sure of that?’ He was. ‘And can you name anybody, one pupil, master or member of staff, dog, cat or hamster for that matter, who was, or was rumoured to have been, put under any spell at Greenwold College by Jacob Silver?’

  Rachman paused, looked over towards Mr Ponsonby and shrugged as if to apologise to the prosecutor. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No more questions, m’lud.’ Mr Ecclestone sat and glared at Mr Ponsonby.

  Well done, Eustace. Well done!

  ‘The witness is excused,’ said the clerk.

  Mr Ponsonby flicked through his notes and consulted with junior counsel behind him.

  ‘Any more acts before lunch, Mr Ponsonby?’ the judge asked.

  I noticed Mr Ecclestone slamming his hand over his mouth, presumably to avoid laughing out loud.

  ‘Acts? Er... Am I to take it your lordship is referring to witnesses?’

  ‘If it pleases,’ the judge added, a broad smirk on his face. Defence counsel grinned at the judge. Mr Ponsonby was not so amused. Before he could summon a rejoinder:

  ‘Then we shall adjourn until two o’clock,’ the judge said.

  ‘All stand!’ called out the usher.

  Jacob’s hateful chains clanked as he rose, and he glared piercingly into Rachman’s eyes across the courtroom, the little man frightened he might turn into stone, perhaps. Rachman crossed himself repeatedly as he fled from the courtroom.

  I saw him later, fleeing to the sanctity of an alehouse. I presumed he would seek to drown all thoughts of the devil in pursuit.

  Bless him.

  Chapter 3

  Emily lay in a huge four-poster bed surrounded by collectibles. Lord Bedford had an eye for a bargain. Louis XIV cabinetry and chairs, drapes from Lady Hamilton’s own boudoir, Emily was reminded almost daily, and pictures that had once adorned the walls of the most wealthy now suffering hard times, apparently.

  Lady Bedford, sister of Emily’s mother, never missed the opportunity to boast of an item’s provenance. She led Jacob into Emily’s opulence with his sketchbook.

  ‘Someone to cheer you, Emily,’ Lady Bedford announced. She then dragged a Louis XIV gilded chair about as far away from the bed as was possible and commanded, ‘You will sit here, Master Jacob, while I’ll go and fetch Rosemary to sit with you both.’

  Emily smiled and struggled to sit up in bed, a large swelling on the back of her head, delighted to see Jacob. No sooner Lady Bedford had left them, Jacob went and sat on the bed.

  ‘Everybody’s talking about you. You’re very brave,’ Emily said, taking one of his hands.

  ‘But Bateman–’ Jacob began.

  ‘Shh. Don’t fret over that bully. He almost killed my brother, did you know?’ Jacob nodded. ‘God works in mysterious ways.’ Emily took his other hand, Jacob fearful, initially, that milady would return and catch him, but relaxing once indulging in what lay before his sharp artist’s eye.

  ‘I never forgot you,’ Jacob said shyly, producing sketches of Emily with her striped parasol from inside his sketchbook.

  Emily giggled, as she looked at each in turn. ‘These are wonderful. But she’s far too beautiful to be me.’

  ‘Never. And I’ll finish a portrait in oils, next time,’ Jacob said enthusiastically, ‘show the world how beautiful you are.’

  Although pale, Jacob thought Emily looked radiant and he was totally content to sit and do little else other than admire her beauty. For the first time he could see deep into Emily’s eyes, the sparkle there; deep pools of brilliant green, chips of emerald melded with joy; and in them an excitement for living. Vibrant and brilliant, he had loved those eyes from the very moment he caught sight of her in the National Gallery. Now, an eternity later, and after a chance meeting he had never imagined possible, he was with her, beside her; touching, feeling, and caressing if he so dared. He spoke softly to her, about her brother, his kinship, life at the school, omitting the darker side of life there. He made her laugh – all the while studying her every move ready to encapsulate them in his sketch. As he looked deeper and her pupils expanded, he felt the warmth from within and, if his study of the biology behind those pupils was correct, he was elated to find she was as much pleasured by his presence as he was hers. For one so young, Emily struck him now as so advanced in years. Barely older than he, she was comforting him over the nightmare of Bateman, disregarding her own brush with death. What a fine woman this young girl will turn into, he decided.

  But what Jacob did not see was the excruciating yet secret pain Emily concealed behind those glorious eyes. A pain so bad, so overpowering, however brave the girl was bearing it, she would need him and every ounce of his healing powers, and all those he could make available to him, to endure her condition much longer. The bump on her head was a godsend. It distracted her from her real ailment, the secret about which all in this household knew very little – except Lady Bedford. Rebecca, her own sister, knew of some ailment, but not what it was, and certainly not how serious it was. Deadly serious. The news of it had been held back, for fear of upsetting Rebecca unnecessarily, on her mother’s order.

  But Emily herself felt this youth, Jacob, this young dream of an admirer sitting with her now, deserved to know. She would tell him she was ailing, she determined. He deserved that. And he deserved better, a whole woman. And he must be free to develop a love such as theirs might have been, with another. Some very lucky, other young lady. While that very thought distressed her, at the same time it made her feel proud that, one day, if all she wished him came true, he might compare another’s affections with what they shared now. That he would learn of her woes was inevitable. So it was better coming directly from her. She would tell him – as soon as the time was right.

  What Emily could not have known then during these earlier private liaisons, was that the brilliant genius before her now would become so besotted and so obsessed that he, and he alone, had the means to save her, from this and any other ailment she might succumb to.

  ‘At least I have you all to myself,’ he said, edging himself away and retrieving sketching materials from his bag.

  ‘My hero,’ Emily said, not taking her eyes off him.

  Hearing someone approaching outside the door, Jacob was forced to dash back to the Louis XIV chair as Lady Bedford entered.

  ‘Now, Master Silver, I can’t find Rosemary and Emily must rest. I can only allow a few minutes more.’ Lady Bedford said, turning to leave again, her numerous silk skirts swishing behind her.

  ‘I’m grateful, milady,’ Jacob said, pretending to be engrossed in the chair’s architecture.

  ‘Yes, exquisite, isn’t it? Napoleon Bonaparte thought so too, when he sat on that very chair,’ she said, finally leaving but ensuring the door was left wide open, this time.

  ‘And his seductress, Josephine, slept in this very bed, Jacob,’ Emily added, laying back and stretching out her arms seductively. ‘Isn’t t
hat interesting?’

  ‘And who’s Rosemary?’ Jacob asked, amused.

  ‘Our maid,’ Emily said.

  ‘Your brother lent me this jacket and tie. Is her ladyship still afraid that, as well-dressed as I am, I’ll kidnap you?’

  ‘Would you?’ Emily joked. ‘Go on, I dare you. Drag me off and…’ she paused. ‘Actually, I’m not sure what’s supposed to happen then.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll think of something, I’m sure,’ Jacob said. Emily giggled. ‘Anyway, I’ve no need,’ Jacob continued. ‘When I’ve finished this I’ll have a true likeness of you all to myself. Permanently. Take it wherever I fancy. And better, it won’t disagree with anything I desire to do to it.’ He laughed, continuing to sketch.

  ‘But I thought the finished painting would be mine?’ Emily complained, pouting her lips.

  ‘I’m only teasing,’ Jacob assured her. After a while he took two small vials from his satchel and smuggled them under the blankets by her hand. He whispered, ‘Two drops, no more. Twice a day. You’ll feel a lot better.’

  ‘Just seeing you makes me feel better,’ Emily said, reaching out for his sketch. ‘And I doubt I would object to anything you cared to do with me,’ pulling at his shirt so hard that he fell onto her. She grabbed the sketch.

  Jacob snatched it back. ‘When it’s finished,’ he teased. Though the door remained wide open, Jacob chanced leaning right over her, laid back in the bed. He looked deeply into her eyes, caressed her face, watched her pupils expand. He kissed her cheek softly, gently – a pillow of wholesome cream.

  Emily pulled him to her, stared into his eyes and ran a finger softly over his lips.

  ‘You really are the most beautiful man.’

  And so, so gently their lips touched, her tongue teased his mouth – and Jacob was lost in the paradise of his first kiss.

  Rosemary giggled from the landing and popped into an adjacent room.

  Jacob shot off the bed and rapidly tidied his clothes as he bid the giggling Emily good day and rushed towards the stairs.

  ‘Her pupils! I knew she liked me,’ Jacob told the professor, as his tutor pounded a mortar and pestle angrily. He unrolled his sketch of Emily. ‘Don’t you think she’s beautiful?

  ‘A distraction!’ shouted the professor. ‘We’ve work to do. Science. Discovery. Remember?’

  Jacob rolled up the sketch. ‘But I need some recreation, or life would be quite dull.’

  ‘Dull?’ the professor shouted, throwing down his tools. ‘I can make your art revered the world over, make you immortal. And you find that dull?’ Fuming now. ‘Leave this place. Go play with your trollop!’ He swept glassware crashing onto the flagstone floor.

  Jacob turned to leave, got only a few paces, and then turned back. He slipped an apron over his head, knelt and began to clear up the broken glass.

  Jacob was sure that the elderly professor taught the only way he knew how. When he spoke, the pupil was expected to listen. He never repeated himself. One was expected to find out what one had missed or misunderstood from the dozens of ancient volumes on chemistry and alchemy lying around the place. Jacob soon learned there was no room for distraction, in particular of the feminine kind, in the professor’s classroom; or in one’s life, if the tutor had his way.

  Jacob wondered what kind of life the professor’s was, burrowed deep down there in the catacombs. He lived like a white-haired mole, blind to all activity above ground. The man had not introduced him to a soul and Jacob had never seen him talking to other pupils or colleagues, above the ground or below it, apart from the matron on that first night. What had been made clear on many occasions was that Jacob’s tuition, where he had a professor of science all to himself, was to be kept secret.

  ‘Don’t speak of your tuition here in this sanctuary to a living soul, you understand?’ the professor warned him as he left one night, ‘or else they’ll all want the same.’

  ‘There are two other brighter boys that could be as worthy as I of your personal tuition, Professor,’ Jacob had suggested at one stage, aching for a companion with whom to share his discoveries.

  ‘There’s only room for one, Master Silver,’ the Professor had replied sternly. ‘Remember that. The moment your secret is disclosed will be the day you leave.’

  Jacob never had reason to question the professor’s outstanding mind. The old man never referred to notes and yet knew the answers to all things. On occasion, Jacob had thought to outwit him, asking impossible historical questions no one could possibly know all the answers to; questions relating to wars and plagues, revolution and scandal.

  ‘I have to write at least a thousand words about the Krakatoa phenomenon,’ Jacob enquired innocently during one session. The professor stopped the lesson on sulphuric acid and built a mound of ash over a Bunsen burner.

  ‘Watch closely, but keep well back,’ he said, as he ignited gas flowing through the ash. The pile of ash became molten in minutes, dripping off the bench before exploding into the air. ‘That’s Krakatoa. Just imagine it several billion times larger and below the surface, rising out of the ocean.’ The professor gave him five thousand words, explaining in detail, with great drama and much gesticulation, what had occurred, precisely at what hour, who reported it, the effect on world climate and the drop in temperatures throughout the world.

  ‘What do you know about the South Sea Bubble?’ Jacob asked the following week, toying with his tutor again. Jacob was fully aware of the swindle from the last century, and what caused it, but the professor explained everything remotely connected to it and rattled off the names of twenty or so noblemen who had lost significant fortunes when the bubble burst. Once again, it was as though he had stood there and watched those events occur. On other occasions, Jacob raised questions on ancient concoctions he had found right at the back of Alchemy, sure the professor would have forgotten something. But whether the data was five hundred years old or five thousand, the professor did know everything about it.

  ‘That was something its inventor, Karl Skillet, swore would remove bunions in one lunar month,’ the professor explained about one such potion. ‘He applied it to his assistant, Erica Banoile, at an exhibition in Paris in the month of May, 1386, at four o’clock in the afternoon. Remarkably, Miss Banoile was able to peel off her particularly enormous bunions after only eight days – and Skillet was paid a fortune for his invention. But it was a fraud. When he was sentenced to prison, his assistant admitted her bunions had been glued on. Now, does that answer your question, Master Silver, or are you simply hoping to waste more of my time?’

  And so it was with anything Jacob found in Alchemy. The professor was infallible. He knew every potion, every charm, and every ingredient however anciently described and in whatever language – for there were many. He could quote instances of any potion’s uses, whether it was a cure or prophylaxis, dates it was first concocted, whether and when it was improved or failed, the names of the alchemist and sometimes his assistant, and the reason for their exaltation or eventual downfall – most often their downfall. The professor was a living pharmacopeia and encyclopaedia combined, and no person alive had more respect for his knowledge than Master Jacob Silver.

  And later, through lessons learned, no person alive would have more respect for Master Jacob Silver than the professor, for Jacob’s superior mastery of Alchemy.

  After building a repertoire of half a dozen concoctions that the lesser old masters might have cheated with to draw people into their art against their will, Jacob became aware that the professor had an ulterior motive for making his prize student continue to toil on the treasures described in Alchemy. It concerned an item comprised of five lines, labelled essential ingredients ~ the catalyst. The rest of that page was in Latin, but the questionable piece was not in any language or script that Jacob was aware of, it was a jumble of characters from many cultures. Jacob had asked himself: If these ingredients were that essential, then why hadn’t the author written them in plain language? It would remain a mystery a lot
longer.

  However hard Jacob tried to race ahead, the professor would haul him back to that page and those five lines.

  ‘Find a solution, boy! There is so little time,’ the professor had shouted after Jacob’s persistent refusal to attend to it. ‘Think, boy! It’s what you’re here for! It’s what we are all here for!’

  Only then did it occur to Jacob that here was the first and only occurrence during their working together, that the professor was beaten. This puzzle, he hadn’t solved. And had claimed he was running out of time.

  ‘He couldn’t solve it,’ Jacob screamed to himself on the way back to his dormitory one night, ‘so how the devil am I supposed to?’

  As September arrived, Jacob became aware of additional pressure upon him from the irritable professor: apparently it was imperative that the five lines of essential ingredients were deciphered before the twenty-ninth of the month – Michaelmas Day. Short-tempered and more aggressive as the fateful day approached, the professor gave him a hard time at every opportunity, until, fearful of the repercussions, Jacob declared openly that he had no idea what the solution was. Cursing, the professor threw another tantrum, breaking whatever was within reach. A beaker of acid overturned and smashed on some stone steps – the pair having to flee out into the fresh night air for fear of choking to death.

  Jacob was convinced that the five lines in question were not ingredients at all, but an absurd attempt at disguise; red herrings, detractors to the worthy student. And so he, Jacob, continued to ignore them. He determined that these five lines of gobbledegook made no difference whatsoever, not an inkling, to the subject matter before or after. They were a fool’s errand. And he just wished the professor would forget them, as he told him often he should, and stop pestering him; let him move on to complete the book.

  ‘What difference would it make whether we solved it Michaelmas Day or Christmas Day?’ Jacob had asked the professor the day after Michaelmas Day. The old man had been in a black mood all day.

  ‘Because it’s another opportunity lost!’ the professor had shouted and stormed off.