The head manservant came up to me. “What's occurred?” I asked him.
He told me the awful news. “Mrs. Frankenstein is dead. She and the little boy have been murdered. They are in her bed, both of them, with their throats cut. Both,” he said, his voice trembling, “lying there in sheets all drenched with their blood—”
“But who—?” I asked.
“We do not know. A maid woke after the household had gone to bed, thinking she heard the sound of glass breaking downstairs. She roused me and another manservant. We lit candles and went downstairs. There we found the window of the long drawing-room, the salon, broken. It was plain an intruder had entered—”
“And Mrs. Frankenstein—the boy?”
“As we blundered about downstairs in the darkness we heard a scream. Another maid, searching about upstairs had opened the door of her room and found her there, with the boy.”
I ran upstairs. I found Victor, in a room full of men staring down at the blanched face of his wife, her throat cut. The little boy, whom she had evidently taken into her bed, to comfort him, or herself, still clutched her, as if in fear. His throat also was cut.
It fell to me to drag my poor friend from the deathbed of his family, where a doctor who had been hastily summoned bent over the bodies and the smell of fresh blood filled the air. Even as I tried to get him from the room, where his wife and child lay grey and ghostly in their own blood, heavy feet overhead indicated that a search continued for the individual who had committed this atrocious crime.
It is a scene which even now I flinch to recall.
No one was found in the house, only an open attic window in the bedroom of the servant who had first been aroused by the sound of breaking glass. It was concluded that the murderer, having entered by the window of the drawing-room, had run upstairs, done his dreadful work and then, as the servants blundered about downstairs in the darkness, had run up to the attics, and made his escape from there, either clambering over the rooftops of adjacent houses or making his way perilously down the front of the house. Whatever he had done—and he was evidently a man of some speed and agility—by the time the open attic window had been discovered he was long gone; the prospect of finding him was small.
That, though, hardly concerned me, for I was with Victor, whose agony was terrible to witness. We could not use the pleasant room upstairs, made charming by his wife and so redolent of her character and taste. We were, perforce, in the very salon into which the murderer had first come. This room, created perhaps as a ballroom, was some thirty feet long and sparsely furnished. There was a sofa in front of a vast, empty grate. A spinet stood against a wall. Overhead were big chandeliers, uncandled and swathed in cloth. Because of the room's great size it was rarely used by the Frankensteins, who did not entertain on a grand scale. In this bleak apartment, snow drifting past its long windows over the darkened garden, I sat with my poor friend, able to do nothing to ease his pain. What was worse, perhaps, than the grief he felt for his wife and child were the torments of inexplicable remorse he suffered. “My fault—my fault. Oh, my poor Elizabeth, my little child, what have I done to you?” he repeated over and over again. He sat on the floor, his head buried in the upholstery of a long, armless sofa.
As I busied myself with lighting a fire, I heard him moan, “Better to have ended it then—when my crime was fresh.” At first I thought these agonies of guilt were caused by his having been away from the house at the time of the murder—at his club—unable to bear returning home to his wife under the burden of his love for Maria.
A normal man in such a dreadful situation might well have reproached himself in that way. Yet he did not directly accuse himself of having been absent when his wife and child died, nor did he speak of finding out and punishing the man who had done this deed. His agony seemed connected with some guilt he could not name, with a punishment he had earned but which had been visited, instead, on Elizabeth and his son.
I did what little I could to comfort him and form a buttress between him and those who came to discuss the crime, ask if he had any enemies, establish if there had been robbery, as well as murder, done in the house.
As dawn came I was at the drawing-room window while Victor lay on the couch, his despairing countenance down which tears continually poured turned to the ceiling. Glancing out, I thought I saw a figure in the trees beyond the lawn. There was little light and some mist about the dark trunks of the trees, so it was difficult to see the huge form of a man among the tree trunks, especially as he stood so still. I closed my eyes and opened them again. I still believed what I saw there was a man—and not just a man but that ogreish figure I had seen earlier outside the theatre.
“My God, Victor!” I cried out. “I believe he is there, among the trees—the murderer!”
Victor jumped up and came towards me. I turned, left the room, ran down a passageway and pulled back the bolts of the door leading to the garden. But by the time I had got them undrawn and hastened outside there was no sign of the figure I thought I had seen. I ran across the snow-sprinkled lawn to the trees but no one was there. If he had been there, and I was still not quite sure of what I had seen, then he had escaped over the garden wall, where I found the bent-back branches of an elder bush growing close to some old crates piled up against the wall, which might have assisted him in scrambling over. I thought I saw his footprints on the path leading to the wall, but in the dim light with snow falling, then melting on the earth of the path the marks were hard to read.
I went slowly back to the house, thinking of that great, limping figure I had now seen, I thought, three times. Or had the figure been on this occasion the product of my imagination, worked on by fatigue and emotion? But if it was that same hideous creature I had seen before, was he the author of this dreadful crime? When I re-entered the drawing-room Victor was still by the window, ashen and hopeless. The early light showed deep lines carved on his face, lines which had not been there the evening before. He seemed twenty years older.
“I thought I saw a hulking brute out there.” I told him. “I may have been mistaken. At any rate, if he was there before, he is gone now.”
Victor shivered. I took him to the fire and put a rug over his shoulders. As I did so I said, “It may be imagination, but I believe I am haunted by a vast and ugly individual. I saw him once two months ago, by the river near this house, then last night, outside the theatre.” As I described my encounters with the man and his appearance Victor's eyes seemed to sink deeper into their sockets and he entered a state of profound and deadening despair. Then he said in a low voice, “Then he is back.”
“You know him?” I said, startled. “Who is he?”
Victor stood, went to the window again.
“Who?” I asked. “Who, Victor? Who is this enemy?” For I assumed this man and the murderer were one and the same.
Victor turned to me and through the half-dark of the room said, “Do not ask who, Jonathan. Ask rather what—what fiend—what thing—is that?” And then merciful nature came to his rescue and he fainted.
S E V E N
VICTOR LAY ILL for many days. I insisted I must summon his parents from Switzerland, but this he would not allow. When I pressed him to ask them to come, he became agitated, so I assumed temporary responsibility for his health for a time. My first thought was to persuade him to leave that house in which his wife and child had been slain. I even wondered if the murderer would return to strike again, for it was very obscure what the man's motive had been in killing an innocent woman and child, and I had become doubtful whether the matter could be as simple as a thief interrupted and killing those who might identify him. Victor, though, refused to remove to Mrs. Downey's, who had sympathetically agreed to assist a man she did not know. He was so insistent about staying where he was that I yielded, thinking more argument would impede his recovery and instead hired, as well as nurses for Victor, two sturdy watchmen to protect him.
For the first week he lay in a raging fever, but later improve
d, at which point I felt it safe to ask him who he thought the man in the garden might have been and whether he thought he had any part in the murders. But he only replied, “I cannot tell you. To tell you anything would mean telling you everything and that I cannot do—cannot.” And with that he turned his wasted face from me on the pillow.
“Victor,” I persisted, “tell me, I implore you. Describe the man. Say what he is to you.”
He turned a tear-stained face to me and whispered, “Jonathan—please leave me.” And I was forced to go, though I could not believe that with such a weight as seemed to be pressing on his mind, my friend's recovery could be either quick or complete.
Meanwhile, Hugo and Lucy Feltham, who had heard of the death of Elizabeth Frankenstein and her son, arrived in London to stay with Victor and do what they could for him. Slowly he recovered his health.
E I G H T
IT WAS AT THIS TIME that Mrs. Downey's sister Mrs. Alice Frazer arrived from Scotland. Mrs. Frazer did not generally travel with her husband since they had one of those comfortable marriages whose happiness depends to some extent on the couple spending considerable portions of their time apart. Therefore she always brought with her on the long journey south a stout young man, twenty years of age, Donald Gilmore by name, who protected her while traveling and accompanied her about London when she wished to go out alone. However, once in town there was little for Gilmore to do, so the custom was that, since he was a skilful man especially as regards carpentry, Mrs. Downey would set him to repairing her house where repairs were needed.
Some two weeks after the murders, an afternoon was dictated by Mrs. Feltham to be Victor's first excursion into the outside world since his illness. Therefore a party consisting of Victor and Hugo and Lucy Feltham arrived at the front door in Gray's Inn Road. Young Gilmore was at the open door, in the act of filing off the bottom, for it had begun to stick. I had just gone out into the hall to look into the street to see if the guests were arriving when their carriage drew up. I therefore saw all that happened as they descended. Victor, well muffled up and appearing still very weak, began to walk to the door leaning on Hugo's arm. It was then that Gilmore, seeing three people intending to enter the house, straightened up and stood beside the door to allow them through. As they walked past him into the hall Gilmore glanced at Victor, whose scarf was half pulled up over his face, then peered at him searching. To the astonishment of all of us, he cried out harshly, “Frankenstein!” and raced in a state of obvious fear down the steps of the house and out into the street. I heard him cry out again from the street, as he went running off, “Frankenstein!”
Mrs. Downey, who had come to the parlor door to greet the guests, asked in a bewildered manner, “What was that? Where is Gilmore?” But none of us, of course, could tell her. I shut the front door and we went into the parlor for tea. Once Victor was settled in front of the parlor fire she asked him how he came to know the man, Mrs. Frazer's servant, but Victor professed as much bewilderment as the rest of us and said that, inasmuch as he had observed the man in the doorway, whom he had taken to be a carpenter employed from outside the household, he had no idea who he was.
“A mystery indeed,” Mrs. Downey remarked, pouring the tea. “Yet he knew your name, Victor. Is that not curious?” Lucy Feltham persisted, but Mrs. Downey, seeing her guest to be uncomfortable and knowing him to be barely recovered from a serious illness, capably turned the conversation in other directions and under her agreeable guidance the short visit passed off well. Victor, though subdued, seemed in a little better spirits. Later we prevailed on Mrs. Downey, who played and sang charmingly, to entertain us all.
Nevertheless, after our guests had taken themselves off, Mrs. Downey, having ascertained from the maid that Gilmore had not returned, looked at me gravely and began to speculate about why he had run away. “My sister will be most upset if he does not come back,” she said, “for he has been with her since boyhood. His father, an Orkney boatman, was drowned at sea when Donald was twelve years old and as his mother was also dead the village sent him off to his only surviving relative, my sister's butler. Mrs. Frazer found some work for him, helped, I believe, with his education, which was utterly lacking when he came, and he has been with the household ever since.” And then each of us repeated the same thing to each other several times—I, “How can it be that this young man who spent most of his time in the wilds of Scotland, could have come across Victor Frankenstein?” and she, “Young Donald is the steadiest fellow in the world. What can have prompted such behavior?”
When Mrs. Frazer returned she was very astonished and put out by Gilmore's disappearance. She could not account for her servant's recognizing Victor, or understand why the sight of him could have caused him such fear. Next day, we concluded, if the man had not returned we must try to find him, but when we retired that night Gilmore had still not come back to the house.
However, the following morning at breakfast a maid reported she had earlier let the shivering Gilmore in, though, she added, he had not been prepared to enter the house until she had assured him that the man he called “the doctor” was not inside. “I would rather walk back to Scotland,” he had said.
I suggested we have the man up and ask him together what all this was about. Poor Gilmore, summoned, came into the room twisting his hat in his hands. He was a short, stalwart, red-haired young man, ordinarily cheerful and good-humored, but less so now.
Mrs. Frazer opened the proceedings by telling him roundly he had behaved very badly in running off without permission and staying out all night. She told him she knew him to be a most reliable and honest young man but did not understand what had come into him. She could not have him running the city streets at night and very much required an explanation. He replied without confidence, but respectfully, that she must forgive him—he could not give her the explanation she desired.
Mrs. Frazer's color rose. She had, she said, requested an explanation, now she demanded one. Gilmore looked at the carpet and then met her eyes, “Madam—I cannot.”
Stirrups and reins were rapidly being lost. I saw Gilmore's dismissal by an angry mistress looming when he looked towards me and appealed, “Sir,—it is a dreadful story unfit for the cars of ladies. This is why I cannot speak. It is a horrid tale I have not told before, not even to my uncle and aunt, for they would be very grieved to hear it.”
The ladies, Mrs. Downey and Mrs. Frazer, looked demanding and demure all at once, as ladies will when told a subject is not fit for their ears. Mrs. Frazer then said that however unsuitable Gilmore's story might be, as his mistress she had a right to hear it, for unless she did, how could she judge if he was still fit for her service? She declared she was not prepared, when she left London, to find herself embarked on a long journey back to Scotland with a henchman who might take it into his head to run off at any moment. Distressed, he protested he would never do any such thing.
To cut all this short, I suggested I would take Gilmore off to a quiet spot, examine him and his reasons for disappearing and then tell his mistress only what it seemed suitable for her to hear. This proposition was icily agreed to by Mrs. Frazer and her sister. Under their reproachful eyes Gilmore and I left the room and repaired to a nearby inn. There I ordered him a pint of ale, and as soon as our tankards were brought and we were settled at a table near the fire I asked him to explain himself.
With his honest eyes on me, speaking in the soft tones of the Orkneys—and speaking well, for he was an intelligent young man—he told me a story to upset all my previous notions of Victor Frankenstein—a dreadful story.
N I N E
WE WERE ALONE IN THE TAVERN as Gilmore began his tale. He said, “I met the doctor, Frankenstein, before I came to the mainland, when I was a boy living with my father in the Orkneys. My mother was dead, having lost her life in bearing me. It was a poor life. Our bleak little hamlet on the coast was connected to the main island by a causeway which was uncovered by the tide only twice a day. It was a very hard life. We were
no more than ten families and even then the sea and the land could barely keep us. We lived mainly by fishing in our rough seas; the land was not fertile. It was riches among us to have a full set of saucepans, sufficient bedding to keep us warm at night; luxury to have enough fuel in winter and enough to eat. I tell you of our poverty and the uncertainty of our lives to explain—excuse—the work my father did later—for Dr Frankenstein.”
“Frankenstein came to the island?” I asked.
“He lived there.” Gilmore told me. “He came one day with wagons and took over a large, empty house on the hill above the village. This had in olden times belonged to a smuggler who had made his living through contraband and robbing wrecks—sometimes wrecking ships himself for his own gain. But he had been caught and hanged some years before and a stop put to him and to that trade. Dr Frankenstein brought with him three sturdy henchmen who did all the work of the place. So—he moved into the house.”
Gilmore paused, wrestling with his feelings and finally said, “My father was not a gentle man, nor a clever one, but he loved me and was anxious for me, motherless as I was, with only one other living relative in the world, my uncle, and he a man neither of us had seen or heard from for many years. My poor father feared what would become of me if he were to die at sea while I was still young. So he became fixed on money, saved every penny he could of the little we got. His idea was to get somewhere else, perhaps even as far as America, where there was an opportunity to escape the trap of poverty and hardship in which we were caught.
“Then the doctor moved in and father began to work for him in ways he should not. This is why I have never even spoken to my uncle of this, for he would be distressed if he knew what my father had done—and what, I regret, I did to help him. And for many years I was afraid of the law, though now I am older I do not think they would be hard on a man like me who did what he should not when a boy under his father's orders. But as a lad I would lie awake at night, dwelling on what had happened over in Orkney. It was like a nightmare but true and far worse than any dream.”
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