Alchemy: an historical psychological suspense thriller of perfect murder

by Chris James

  ‘A mere drop would cause hallucinations. A teaspoon or two of some of them would poison an individual. Half a cup would just about do all this lot in,’ said the doctor, waving around the court with a wide grin on his face. Gasps came from the public gallery and some people crossed themselves. The judge sneered and pushed his glasses up his nose.

  Mr Ponsonby held up a jacket and turned it inside out to reveal a line of corked glass vials supported by webbing, sewn into the lining. He passed it to Dr Pincher.

  ‘You examined this selection of potions, doctor?’

  ‘Yes. I identified all the ingredients of Exhibits 16 to 22,’ the doctor said, pointing to the table, ‘contained within these glass vials.’

  ‘And this?’ said Mr Ponsonby, taking back the jacket and passing the witness the bottle of pale green liquid.

  Coloured light danced over the doctor’s face as he waved it about. ‘Closely resembles absinthe, sir. But in this case, seventy per cent proof. Considered to be an addictive psychoactive drug. The Green Fairy. But in this–’

  Laughter erupted from the gallery as, up here, they imitated a toast, chinking imaginary glasses of the stuff.

  ‘But in this particular sample, the chemical compound thujone, from the exhibited jar Number 16, normally present in absinthe in trace amounts is way, way above tolerable levels.’

  ‘And what, in your expert opinion, doctor, would be the effect on anyone drinking this adulterated concoction?’

  ‘Well, absinthe is the favoured tipple of many artists and bohemians, well known for its hallucinatory properties,’ the doctor continued as he tapped the bottle. ‘A mere few drops of this concoction would likely have a nun swinging naked from the chandeliers in Saint Paul’s Cathedral during Sunday Mass.’

  Raucous laughter rose from the gallery as vulgar men and women shouted and reached out for it.

  ‘Make mine a double, guv’nor!’ one toothless old lady called out.

  ‘I’ll ’ave a pint for the missus, mate!’ a stout man shouted.

  Even Mr Ponsonby found himself smiling as the room filled with laughter. The judge, not at all amused, hammered his gavel for a good few moments before order was restored.

  ‘And suppose, doctor, one were to consume this concoction regularly,’ Mr Ponsonby continued, staring at the accused, ‘habitually?’

  ‘It is my professional opinion that any person consuming such a mixture would find their mind distorted, and probably not be in any fit state to do anything about it. It would be akin to suffering an exaggerated bout of the DTs – delirium tremens; bottle-ache, barrel fever. Delirium from acute alcoholic poisoning.’ He pointed up to the public gallery, ‘I’m sure they can tell you what that’s like,’ and laughed. ‘It would distort their vision and impair their judgement, perhaps beyond repair. Hallucinations might last months, possibly becoming permanent. Frankly, they would be considered quite mad.’

  ‘And if this noxious substance were withdrawn suddenly, say? Like it might be if the person were incarcerated, for example?’

  ‘Provided the brain wasn’t already damaged permanently, that person would suffer severe withdrawal symptoms until hopefully returning to normal,’ the doctor proposed, the bottle standing on the ledge in front of him, adding: ‘Those withdrawal symptoms would be horrific, mind. He or she would have to be secured to keep them from harming themselves.’

  ‘But they could return to… to normality?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But there’s an equal chance they wouldn’t.’

  Then Jacob had been tortured so – hung out to dry. This explained his terrible appearance, his sunken, black eye sockets and pale face, a profound change from when I had seen him last in my own home.

  ‘Dr Pincher, did you find this same concoction, this same elixir shall we call it, present in any other samples given you?’

  ‘It was present in each of the five jars – the liquid in which the five severed heads were suspended; in a glass in a bathroom cabinet next to a toothbrush; a cup in the kitchen, another in the laboratory; and traces were found in the accused’s blood, from a sample taken.’

  ‘Traces in his blood?’

  ‘Sufficient to determine that the accused would have been a regular consumer of the elixir – and without doubt addicted.’

  ‘As he admits, Dr Pincher. Could you draw any conclusions from it being the suspension liquid inside the five jars?’

  ‘The accused admitted to tasting samples from Emily’s jar. As her head decomposed, a stronger concoction would have resulted – and only that version would have appealed to him; or more simply explained, have given him the kick he desired. It is my opinion that, given the volume found in his blood, he likely drank from all the jars.’

  ‘Can you be sure of that?’

  ‘No, to be fair. No, I can’t. But why not? His state of mind then, meant he was dependent on the stuff. And here it was in abundant supply. Cups and glasses everywhere proved he had imbibed regularly.’

  ‘No more questions, m’lud,’ Mr Ponsonby called out and promptly sat down.

  The behaviour described was disgusting. I desperately needed fresh air. Jacob had admitted his addiction but the prosecution were making far more of it than was the case. Surely?

  Chapter 8

  Bloodshot eyes sunk deep into his skull, Jacob painted furiously. Another picture of Emily erotically posing on the chaise rapidly took shape on the canvas, her delicate arm draped over the back. His eyes flicked back and forth – from easel to chaise.

  But the chaise was empty.

  Emily’s infectious giggle echoed through the air. Her voice in his head, teasing: Angel? Jacob was intoxicated with her. Then father’s voice: Find the secret… The professor’s: I can make you immortal and you find that dull? Everyone competed for his attention.

  On the canvas, Emily laughed and giggled, teased and tantalised him, slid her blouse off her shoulder and fondled her breasts; pouted her lips.

  Jacob drained the last of the green nectar into a bowl, sucked it dry. But it seemed like it was only a few minutes before he grimaced and shrieked as Emily faded – became transparent. In panic, his brushes flashed across the canvas, desperately trying to capture what they could until, finally, she disappeared altogether.

  Housekeeper Betsy entered carrying the apothecary’s bible: the pharmacopoeia. She flopped onto the chaise and took up Emily’s exact pose in the portrait, an arm as thick as Emily’s waist draped over the back – a beached whale imitating the angelic mermaid.

  ‘Paint her enough, Master Jacob, and she’ll surely stay,’ Betsy breathed to herself. Tapping the book, she beckoned Jacob to come sit beside her.

  ‘Got three with whooping cough, two mumps, a measles, and a chicken pox. Knock up something by teatime, there’s a good boy.’

  At dinner, after Betsy served Jacob a huge meal followed by his usual tall glass of pale green nectar, she plonked Alchemy next to him.

  ‘Finish up your medication, won’t you? There’s a dear.’ she said, pushing the glass close to his hand. ‘And you won’t forget your studies, Master Jacob, will you?’ She opened the book at ‘Immortality’. ‘You promised your father,’

  Jacob screwed up his face, puzzled. But Betsy left the room before he could ask how she knew about his promise to his father. After a few sips of his nightly nectar, the matter dropped out of his head completely, along with anything else of importance.

  Later, in the laboratory, Betsy stood at his elbow egging him on, throwing in ingredients while Jacob stirred the pot. She offered a spoon of steaming brown sludge up to Jacob’s mouth. After slurping the spoon dry, Jacob lost his balance, the room twisting and turning.

  ‘Long as it don’t kill you, we know it’ll do,’ said Betsy, giving a raucous laugh.

  And so it was, day after day: customers’ requirements demanding he spend hours in the laboratory between heavenly painting sessions up in the studio; Emily’s giggles as much a necessity to his happiness as the green stuff until suddenly, something
he never dared dream of occurred – his inspiration dried up. Emily no longer came to him. She refused to appear on the canvas, no matter how much nectar he poured down his throat, no matter how strong his demands. She wasn’t coming out to play.

  The shop, open nine months, was now making a little profit but he had become accustomed to living at a much higher standard compared to that of his parents. Wine accompanied every meal; as did a cigar afterwards and a glass of port or two, not forgetting the all-important potion that he had relied on for so long. And Betsy needed paying, of course. He was becoming a celebrity, he considered, and so had invested in new clothes for his gallery appearances, although of late, most often due to his addled and addicted state, he was able to attend on only very few occasions.

  And as Jacob’s inspiration dried up, Jean-Louis’ demands increased for more works of Jacob’s special erotica for his gallery. He was beginning to lose patience with the young artist and refused an advance, after Jacob had requested one.

  ‘We need more port,’ Jacob asked Betsy on her way out one December morning, ‘there’s none in the house. And sherry. It’s Christmas. Get them to send a bottle or two, if you will.’

  ‘I’m off to the wine merchant’s now, Master Jacob, to pay off a little towards his account,’ Betsy said in a huff as she scooped up what little change there was out of the till. ‘He insists there’s no more credit until the account is cleared. And the grocer took that side of bacon back, that you ordered, since I couldn’t pay. We must cut back, Master Jacob, Christmas or no. Cut back or close down. You choose.’

  Before Jacob could complain, an advertisement he spotted in The Times would prove to save his bacon. A symposium of science was to be held at the Crystal Palace in ten days’ time on New Year’s Day, 1890, and contributors were welcomed to submit applications. Noting numerous well-known quacks and clairvoyants had already been accepted, Jacob decided to make an application to contribute. He would speak about the history of modern medicine. His application was accepted.

  After preparing meticulous notes, his lecture proved an enormous success. Wiser men than he stood to give him applause. Another contributor asked to speak with him after his presentation; he was a senior official from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, a foundation that had opened recently, in 1888. Jacob had heard of Louis Pasteur and his work on anthrax and rabies, pasteurization fast becoming a universal process it seemed. After cunningly avoiding questions about which college of medicine he had studied at, Jacob was surprised by his admirer’s request to consider joining their institute as their London representative. They wished to study English strains of diseases they were attempting to eradicate – and Jacob was an apothecary who lived at the heart of the densest populated area in all England, harbouring every disease under the sun. What better? No sooner had they finished speaking when a very talkative Polish woman, in her twenties, joined them, a personal friend of Louis Pasteur she claimed – Marie Curie. She, too, complimented Jacob on his presentation and soon had Jacob engrossed in what she and her husband were studying, something they had decided to call: radioactivity. By the time Jacob left the Crystal Palace that day he had made the acquaintance of no less than four scientists from Europe, including the Pasteurs and the Curies, all agreeing to share experiences and experiments. Two had promised him a small income to assist with expenses. He had learned a profound lesson from all the important speakers that day: not to let the imagination stifle progress – let it run wild – exciting discoveries did not lay in the mundane.

  After Crystal Palace, Jacob flung himself back into studying the sciences, down in his laboratory. And he did let his imagination run wild – imbibing prolifically in his favourite nectar. For a while, since she had refused to come at his beckoning, Emily was put aside.

  By New Year’s Eve, 1890, Jacob was selling patents of his own medicines. Working with a Dr Adolf Behring from Berlin, whom he met at the Crystal Palace Symposium, he had assisted in the discovery of an antitoxin for diphtheria, a disease labelled the scourge of the nation at the time. He left Dr Behring to work privately on his own, against a disease that had devastated many and in which he had a very personal interest – polio. Needing to prove his results to himself, alone in his laboratory while revellers celebrated in the street, he injected his own body as a human guinea-pig – a fact not divulged in his patent application, later. That night was one of extreme torment as his mutilated knee and shin bones started to grow again. It was more than he could endure – but morphine was close at hand. The final test, three agonising months later, attempting to walk without the leg braces that had supported him for almost five years, was as emotionally painful as the bone distortion itself. But it worked. He cried for hours with sheer joy, fearful of going to sleep and waking up to find it was all a dream; continually rubbing his new legs to satisfy himself the leg irons had really gone.

  By March, 1891, the Pasteur Institute had agreed to assist with further testing and licensing of his discovery to enable marketing of the drug throughout Europe. It was by no means a cure for polio, it was more of a repairing agent for those it left crippled, and since scientists at Pasteur’s saw no cure or vaccine on the horizon, they felt it worth the investment. By December that year, Silvesteur, the product of their joint venture, was on apothecaries’ shelves to support its launch in all the medical journals. For the first time, Jacob felt assured about his future.

  Visiting his attic studio for the first time in over a year, he stood at the easel staring at a half-completed portrait of Emily – dying to share with her his joy over his legs and his discovery. But Emily wouldn’t materialise, however much he desired her to. He became distraught, fearing life without her, that he might never see her again. Despite the possibility of untold wealth, he considered life unbearable without his Emily. He turned to his faithful nectar again, but it failed him, no matter how much he drank or how haphazardly he topped up the ingredients, hoping to trigger her vision to appear. Finally, he came to the conclusion that the nectar itself was the cause of his lack of inspiration – his body having built an immunity to it.

  ‘No more of this nectar,’ Jacob instructed Betsy one night in early April, 1892, pushing the green glass away. ‘I have no need of it. I must have Emily, the real Emily. I must find her – wherever she is.’

  That night he wrote a letter to his old friend Muxlow at the college, apologising for not keeping in touch but begging him to pass his best wishes to Emily. He explained about his new legs and his successful branded medication and pleaded for an address where he might write to Emily, with a view to asking her to join him.

  That same night, Betsy sat by the oil lamp in her room and penned a letter that would change both their lives forever:

  I think the time is right for the mistress to join him.

  On the fifteenth of April, 1892, late in the afternoon, Betsy Pollock served Jacob with a huge glass of a decidedly darker-green nectar.

  ‘I thought we’d agreed I didn’t care for this anymore,’ Jacob complained.

  ‘Try it,’ Betsy said persuasively, ‘I’ve used a different recipe. It’ll calm you.’ She passed him the glass. ‘A very pretty young lady came into the shop today, asking after you,’ Betsy said, urging him to finish the drink. ‘I asked her to call back this evening, when you were free.’

  ‘Pretty girl? Asking for me?’ Jacob asked, his eyes glazing over, the nectar getting the better of him. ‘Did she leave her name?’

  ‘No, master. She didn’t.’ Betsy, content her master’s curiosity was at its highest, waited a few minutes before placing a gramophone record on a turntable and wound the handle. An orchestra playing a spirited waltz soon filled the room.

  ‘Master Jacob,’ Betsy said, nervously wringing her hands together. ‘A surprise for you.’ She opened the drawing room door and brought in a visitor to join them.

  Jacob, by now heavily intoxicated from the new beverage, screamed in terror, gripped his face in his hands and fell to his knees.

  The Tri
al: Day 3

  Mr Ponsonby continued questioning Sergeant Beck.

  ‘Sergeant Beck, may we please now move on to what the accused said concerning the time when Emily Muxlow joined him in London. When did he say she had returned?’

  ‘Silver was certain of the date, he didn’t have to think about it. It was the fifteenth of April, 1892, he said.’

  ‘Sergeant, let us be clear about the dates here. Emily had been ill, and apparently close to death, according to the accused, in February, 1888, having fallen into an icy river in Northamptonshire in the middle of a fierce winter, while recuperating from some other illness.’

  ‘That is what Silver led me to believe, sir, yes.’

  ‘Despite all these difficulties she had to overcome, she joined the accused, he told you, four years later, in London. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir. At his apothecary’s shop. He lived above, sir.’

  ‘Did he say why she took so long, before joining him?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Did he say he had invited her?’

  ‘He had written to the young lady’s brother, but as yet, had no reply.’

  ‘Did he know she was coming on that day?’

  ‘No, sir. He made it clear it was a complete surprise.’

  ‘Very well. Now, what was his reaction, when she, completely out of thin air, surprised him on his doorstep?’

  ‘He said he screamed. Screamed out loud. The shock, you see.’

  Chapter 9

  The new concoction Betsy had prepared for me was far more powerful than anything I’d taken previously. It seemed to take control of me. My arms and legs felt quite numb. I told her I wanted no more, pushing her hands away, spilling some – but she kept insisting, topping up the glass until I had consumed what she considered a full measure. I felt powerless to stop her. And I was losing what little control I had left of my limbs. My head was in a spin, the room revolving about me.

  After only a minute or two, the revolting taste and smell of the obnoxious nectar on my lips had me gagging and retching. I tried to stand up but my legs failed me, my whole body trembled.