Alchemy: an historical psychological suspense thriller of perfect murder

by Chris James

  ‘So how did the accused describe Emily’s condition, sergeant?’ Mr Ponsonby asked Sergeant Beck.

  ‘ “I was in shock,” he said, and apparently collapsed. He went on to tell me:

  “When I finally regained consciousness and had my wits about me, Emily looked radiant in a long evening gown, a glowing aura about her. She had matured somewhat, but, to me, she was absolutely beautiful, as magnificent as when I’d last seen her.

  “There was music, a huge orchestra. I don’t recall how Betsy,” his housekeeper, sir, “had arranged everything – but it was a wonderful reception. At least a hundred guests were there, smiling, applauding and congratulating me.”

  ‘For clarity, I asked him to repeat where, exactly, this reception was held. He replied:

  “At the house, moments after she came through the door.”

  ‘Your house? I questioned. A hundred guests, you say? Anyone we know?’ He replied:

  “Half the aristocracy was there. And no sooner had we gone through to the ballroom there was Her Majesty, patting a seat for Emily to sit beside her.” ’

  Coos and murmurs rose from the court. Her Majesty was there? I was amused at first, but this was the first occasion during the trial when I began to doubt Jacob’s sanity.

  ‘Sergeant, I must ask you: How did you feel after hearing this?’ Mr Ponsonby asked.

  ‘I asked him again: Did you say: Ballroom? And he looked at me strangely. I suspected he was playing with me; trying to impress me how so upper class he was, perhaps. After getting him to confirm things again, I wondered if he was intoxicated in any way, taking anything – anything that would make him speak of such nonsense.’

  ‘Such nonsense?’

  ‘It’s a flat above a shop. I’ve been there. All right, it’s a big flat, but there’s no room for an orchestra, let alone a hundred guests. And as for Queen Victoria, in the ballroom? Huh! There was no sign of alcohol on his breath. I thought he was hallucinating or spinning a yarn, sir.’

  ‘Up until then, how would you have described his mental state during the interview?’

  ‘He was obviously an intelligent young man, well-spoken and lucid. He didn’t slur his speech at all, or seem to suffer any symptoms of intoxication. He was alert, and answered all my questions promptly and politely.’

  ‘What did he then go on to say about Emily’s condition?’

  ‘He said that she was unwell, not on her feet. She was in a bath chair, attended to day and night by the housekeeper. But he swore he would never let her out of his sight again.’

  ‘Who brought up the question of marriage?’ asked the prosecutor.

  ‘According to the accused, he, Jacob Silver, asked Miss Emily first, on Christmas Day, 1892 to marry him. But apparently she wasn’t ready for marriage. Later, he said that Emily sent him a note asking him to marry her. That would have been early March, 1893.’

  ‘But they didn’t marry, did they?’

  ‘No. A visitor arrived soon after they agreed to marry. Silver’s exact words were:

  “A visitor arrived who would change everything – and kill my darling bride.” ’

  And I was confident that, after we had heard more about this visitor, Jacob would be vindicated.

  Chapter 10

  15th March, 1893

  An eerie mist swirled around dark, ominous shadows in the cobbled street as the afternoon sun struggled to break through dense fog. A carriage pulled up outside the closed shop as thick yellow smoke billowed up from basement windows.

  Down in the basement laboratory, Jacob, almost twenty-three, coughed and spluttered in a thick yellow smog.

  ‘Emmy! Gagging here! Ask Betsy to help me open some windows.’

  ‘Too much sodium I fear, Master Silver.’ The man’s gravelly voice startled him. He peered into the fog. As it cleared. . .

  ‘By heavens! I don’t believe it! Emmy! Emmy! A visitor.’ The two men greeted each other fondly. ‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ Jacob enthused, standing back to admire his old mentor.

  ‘But you have, Master Jacob. Most surely,’ replied the professor, now having to look up at Jacob standing a foot taller than he. He gaped around the laboratory at all the equipment, stroking his scraggly white beard. ‘And just look what we have here.’

  Jacob led the professor to each bench on a conducted tour. ‘Mould on saddles cured the horses’ saddle sores. I’ve managed to grow it and bottle it. I’m preparing a thesis for the Pasteur Institute in Paris.’ At another cluttered bench, ‘Bits and pieces sent me for analysis. I’m working with scientists all over Europe.’

  Jacob pulled down a brass lever attached to the wall. Loud clanking and hissing filled the room as the whole wall opposite slid back to reveal various experiments on benches.

  ‘Works by compressed air. My father kept this room for dangerous experiments.’ He pointed down some stone steps. ‘The river’s just down there, if I need to put out a fire.’ Stepping inside the exposed anteroom, they walked over to a piece of rock in a glass case. ‘Working with a young Polish lady living in Paris, Marie Curie. She calls it radioactivity. Determined young lady, pesters me the whole time. Never gives up.’

  After Jacob closed the wall again, the professor found Alchemy lying on a bench and tapped the cover.

  ‘And. . .?’

  Jacob puffed out his chest. ‘The theory put into practice, my dear professor! Come, my turn to enlighten you.’

  From the street, Jacob called back inside the open shop door, ‘Emmy, we have business at the gallery and shall return soon,’ before closing the door behind them and hailing a hackney cab.

  ‘Not to be. . . You’re walking–’

  ‘The old leg irons?’ Jacob laughed, doing a little hop and a skip. ‘Tonics I made. Re-grew the bones. And calcium carbonate. Ten spoonfuls a day. Farted like a pig. Betsy kept her distance. But not bad, eh? Sells like hot cakes.’

  A hackney cab pulled up alongside them, the horse sweating. As they embarked, ‘Savoy!’ Jacob called to the cabbie.

  The professor waved to Betsy, smiling at them through the shop window as they left.

  *

  When I entered the gallery that morning with the professor, Jean-Louis was greeting a distinguished couple.

  ‘Monsieur, madame. Quel plaisir de vous rencontrer à nouveau.’

  ‘One day, a real Frog will come in and castrate him,’ I laughed, leading the professor through a selection of modern art. I hadn’t noticed these particular offerings before, and feared that Jean-Louis’ eye for quality was failing. Macabre horror paintings, scenes from the Ripper murders almost five years earlier, left nothing to the imagination. Blood and guts and yet more vivid, scarlet blood. A scrawled signature meant nothing to me.

  ‘Why such talented artists feel the need to shock is beyond me. Jean-Louis will have his gallery wallowing in the gutter,’ I told the professor.

  I led him to a larger salon and my own special exhibition. I smiled when the professor stopped abruptly, stunned, his mouth wide open.

  ‘Odd, I know. But it’s an experiment,’ I started to explain.

  All in a line, two yards apart, twelve of my portraits, absolutely identical. And all of my favourite subject – Emily.

  A crowd had gathered around the painting at the far end, but there was not the slightest interest in the first eleven – as was always the case whenever I visited. I led the professor towards the crowd at the far end.

  As we walked past the first eleven portraits, ‘All identical in the minutest detail. These first eleven are for sale. A hundred guineas – half the normal price,’ I told my former mentor, before we mingled with the admirers of the twelfth painting.

  ‘This one is not for sale. My Prized Emily, I call it. Watch this,’ I said, catching Jean-Louis’ attention. The gallery proprietor waded into the crowd.

  ‘Mesdames et messieurs, puis-je présenter l'artist. Zhaycoooob Seelverrr.’ Jean-Louis bowed in front of me.

  The crowd became almost hysterical, clamber
ing over each other to touch me. A refined woman fell to her knees, to my surprise, and pulled at my cloak.

  ‘Sir, please, sir. Sell me this. . . this masterpiece, I beg you!’ she pleaded, with tears in her eyes.

  ‘For my dying mother, sir,’ another lady called out, as she shoved the kneeling woman aside, her purse held high. ‘I offer a thousand guineas, sir. I can leave a substantial deposit.’

  I backed away as two gentlemen, one in a dog collar, made their demands.

  ‘For the archbishop, sir. He must be given priority,’ said the cleric.

  Very upright and distinguished, the next gentleman wore a cravat bearing a coat of arms. ‘I represent Juan-Carlos Fernando Frederik Geraldo Francisco Laurencio the Fifth, Count of Catalonia, squire, and I’m instructed to pay whatever price you demand.’

  I broke free and led the professor to the street door. ‘Potion One – Desire. Quod erat demonstrandum, Professor,’ I told him.

  Jean-Louis was grinning by the door, rubbing his hands together. I took him aside and quietly told him, ‘Sell it. Highest bidder. It’s time to move on.’

  A few minutes later, the professor and I were enjoying tea and cucumber sandwiches in the orangery at the Savoy, overlooking the River Thames.

  Something must have upset the professor, for he neither ate nor drank.

  ‘A most frightening experience,’ he exclaimed, as he dabbed sweat from his face.

  ‘Frightening?’ I asked, laughing.

  ‘Those women. Throwing themselves at you. Gross and immoral.’

  I laughed out loud, banged the table. Not for the first time, snooty diners around us turned up their noses. A very elderly woman close by, dripping in diamonds, eyed me through her monocle, scowling.

  ‘The look on that old trout’s face,’ I said to the professor as I pulled out a sketchbook and some crayons. This was too good an opportunity to miss. My hand flashed across the page as the professor looked at his cucumber sandwiches and turned up his nose, pushing the plate aside.

  As I was finishing the sketch, the professor looked startled when two women came up behind me, giggling as they peered at the sketch forming on the page.

  I turned to see them point at the diamond-clad octogenarian opposite and walk away laughing.

  A waiter approached me, whispered in my ear.

  ‘A complaint, sir.’

  ‘From whom, pray?’ He indicated with a discreet nod. ‘And who is the good lady?’

  Once he gave me a name, I stood and bade the professor follow. ‘Lady Jane of Sherston demands we be thrown into the street, Professor. Shall we?’ I made my way to her table and dropped the finished caricature into her lap. A toff at her table took it, unfolded the silver sixpence I had enclosed in one corner, and read out loud:

  ‘A tanner to smile, Lady Jane.’

  What didn’t help the old lady’s embarrassment was his insistence in showing the drawing to all and sundry.

  The whole place was in uproar before an attendant thrust my cloak into my hands and hurried us off the premises.

  *

  Soon after Jacob and the professor had left the gallery that afternoon, Jean-Louis sent the Count of Catalonia’s agent to enquire as to what price he was willing to pay, and then placed the prized Emily on an easel in the window, writing a price ticket he was sure was unattainable – unless a blind man should take a fancy to it.

  ‘Some fool may care enough for it,’ Jean-Louis declared, as barely fifteen minutes later a liveried carriage pulled up abruptly in the Strand outside and an upper-class, genteel woman in her mid-twenties disembarked, rushed over to the window and stared inquisitively at the portrait.

  With a snooty air of superiority she wafted into the gallery demanding attention. An assistant was soon put in his place and sent running for the proprietor.

  Jean-Louis attended the lady and bowed as deeply as he felt she deserved. ‘Madame, bonjour. A votre service,’ he said in his best French, offering a hand to lead her to a comfortable chair from which to peruse. His hand and chair refused, the lady produced her business card.

  ‘I represent a collector,’ she began, avoiding eye contact. ‘In your window. Twenty thousand guineas. Yet the artist’s unknown.’

  ‘Unknown to madame, perhaps,’ Jean-Louis quipped, having exhausted his continental vocabulary, ‘but zis very day an agent for El Conde de Cataluña comes to buy it.’

  ‘And you suppose I would fall for such a trick?’

  At that very moment, the door opened and in walked the count’s agent. ‘If it is a trick, madame, then I am the one tricked. For here is the count’s agent, now. Excuse me, one moment.’

  But before Jean-Louis had completed his turnabout to go and greet the noble agent, ‘Twenty thousand it is, then,’ the young lady barked, pulling a cheque book from her handbag and hastily scribbling.

  Jean-Louis, perplexed, hovered – but the bird in the hand was worth more than the count’s in the bush. ‘Un moment, s'il vous plaît, madame,’ Jean-Louis said as subserviently as he knew how, bowing again before he left her side to escort the count’s agent deeper into the shop, out of harm’s way.

  Returning to the genteel lady, Jean-Louis swept her into his office and closed the door. The count’s agent, suspecting skulduggery, crept back to the closed office door, pressing his ear against it.

  He gasped.

  His noble employer had been promised first refusal of that twelfth portrait in the long line of Emily’s, the one now whispered about behind that office door, the first day it was displayed. The count had considered it a miracle, the portrait bearing a remarkable resemblance to his granddaughter, deceased only days before. Fuming, the trusted agent strode over to the easel in the window, whipped out a canvas bag bearing a coat of arms from inside his coat and quietly prised the portrait out of its frame, concealing it inside the bag.

  Outside, the gentlewoman’s carriage waited patiently at the kerb. A footman and coachman gossiped idly. But from the window of the carriage, a veiled, elderly lady observed the count’s agent as he slyly wafted deeper into the gallery, selected a lesser Emily off the wall, prised that one from its frame, and brought it back to the easel, where he secured it in the empty frame there, replacing the priceless portrait with a mere imitation. Then, clutching his crested bag, he quietly sneaked out of the front door and closed it behind him, dissolving into the shadows of the Strand.

  Turning towards the nearby Savoy Hotel, the agent frequently glanced furtively over his shoulder, the bag held tightly under his arm.

  The footman leaping out in front of him quite startled him – the dagger suddenly pricking into his throat, more so. Terrified, he sought a means of escape. The coachman, who pressed up close behind him wielding a horsewhip, had him trembling, stuttering and shooting his arms into the air. The crested bag dropped on to the pavement. The dagger drawing a trickle of blood from his throat ensured little resistance.

  ‘Our Emily, honourable sir,’ the coachman urged from behind, ‘and not a whisper, or the next breath will surely be your last.’

  Back in the gallery, Jean-Louis, twenty thousand guineas happier, glided across the gallery floor waving and blowing on madame’s freshly-inked cheque, two steps behind his lady client.

  ‘I’m sure the portrait will give your client so much pleasure, madame,’ he gushed, until he saw the enraged expression on madame’s face.

  She didn’t say a word. She jabbed a finger at the portrait now resting on the easel, snatched the cheque from his fingers, turned and stormed to the door. Aghast and puzzled, Jean-Louis would never forget her icy stare before she stomped out of the gallery and slammed the door behind her. He watched open-mouthed through the window as a footman opened the carriage door and his lost client, together with twenty thousand guineas, climbed inside.

  ‘The man is a bounder and a scoundrel!’ the young lady said to the elderly veiled lady inside the carriage. Dressed all in black, the old lady clutched a canvas bag bearing a familiar coat of arms. Once
her companion was seated comfortably beside her, she lifted out the extraordinary prized Emily portrait.

  The young lady’s eyes widened in shock, her jaw dropped open.

  ‘Thank you so much, Rebecca dear,’ old Mrs Muxlow said tenderly, ‘I shall treasure it until my dying day.’

  The carriage continued down the Strand.

  Chapter 11

  We returned to my laboratory in good spirits. I knew Emily would be concerned how much longer our uninvited guest would keep me from her. Since her proposal to me, she had become more possessive than ever and I needed good reason not to always be with her.

  ‘Yes, my darling, I’m back,’ I called up the stairs, ‘I won’t be long.’ And when I finally closed the door, I explained to the professor, ‘She doesn’t like to be left alone, dear thing.’

  The professor seemed to understand, but was pulling at his beard and I sensed he had something he needed to get of his chest. He opened our old scholarly book at the page headed ‘Immortality’.

  ‘This particular piece is the work of Paris’s finest alchemist, Perenelle Flamel. Extraordinary woman. Rumoured to have made her husband, Nicolas, immortal.’

  ‘Yes, I was aware. She died just under five hundred years ago, in 1397. But strange, is it not, that Nicolas, a popular scribe of his day, recorded not a word about immortality in any paper he wrote during his whole lifetime. I’d wager the tale is not true. Rumour and gossip, you ask me.’

  ‘But perhaps that was the Flamels’ intention,’ the professor argued, searching inside his pocket and bringing out a fold of papers. ‘Keeping it secret.’

  ‘The discovery that has evaded all mankind – and a news scribe wants to keep it secret? Come, come. He would want to shout it from the rooftops. Look how many papers he would have sold. Malicious rumours. Mark my words.’

  The professor unfolded a faded sepia facsimile of a manuscript and passed it to me.

  ‘Couldn’t agree with you more, Master Jacob, except. . .’ he delighted in spreading out the document before me, ‘this surfaced in the Vatican archives, two hundred years later.’

  Written in Latin, some of the lettering was faded but the message was quite clear. I held it up to the gaslight and read out loud: