Come See the Living Dryad

by Theodora Goss

  Her diary contains no dates. It is rambling and impressionistic, written in large looping letters made by a woman who had difficulty simply holding a pen. There are misspellings, although her grammar is almost self-consciously correct, for which, I suppose, we must thank Lewison: he taught her to write. Nevertheless, the entries are suggestive.

  What they suggest is that Daphne Merwin was not killed by Alfred Potts.

  —The British Freak Show at the Fin-de-Siècle, D.M. Levitt, Ph.D.

  This cannot continue. I will speak to him, I will tell him that he cannot have us both.

  Think of the publicity! he says. Think of the money we will make! But I do not care about that.

  I would rather be back on the streets of London, begging for crusts of bread. Am I insensate, a piece of wood for him to move about as he wishes? Am I the mythical creature he likes to call me? No, I am human, whatever I may appear to be. I breathe, I feel, I love.

  I will not let him treat me like this. I will not let her speak to me as she has in the past few days. She has been boasting about how successful she will be, more successful than I am. She has been wearing my dresses, neglecting the child. My child—who deserves better, who deserves everything. I cannot let this continue.

  I will speak to him and tell him so.

  WESTERN UNION

  MISS LETITIA MERWIN

  CLOVERFIELD, V.A.

  JUNE 23

  SENDING YOU DAISY CARE OF IRISH NURSE ARRIVING U.S.S. MERRIMACK AT NEWPORT JULY 3RD WILL SEND CHEQUE FOR EXPENSES SOON AS NEW SHOW OPENS AT ALHAMBRA LOVE LEWISON

  MISS LETITIA MERWIN

  CLOVERFIELD, V.A.

  JUNE 24

  ALSO REMEMBER WATCH FOR SYMPTOMS SHE MAY BE AS DISTINCTIVE AS HER MOTHER IF SO SEND WORD IMMEDIATELY IMAGINE THE SENSATION A CHILD DRYAD

  The evidence from the Merwin murder case is collected in a small box in the basement storage facility of the Metropolitan Police. In the summer of 2014, I traveled to London for two weeks on a research grant. I visited the neighborhood in Spitalfields where Daisy Potts, who would become Daphne Merwin, spent her childhood. It is now filled with restaurants—Indonesian, Albanian, Bangladeshi. I stood near the corner of Brick Lane Market, thinking of what it must have been like for Daisy, begging here, almost blind, until Lewison Merwin found her.

  I visited the house in Marylebone where she had lived, but it was now a dentist’s office, with flats on the upper floors. I visited Leicester Square, where the Alhambra used to stand. Even Newgate, where Alfred Potts was hanged for her murder.

  Then I went to the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police. It had been difficult to get an appointment. The head of my department had written a letter describing my research, on university stationery. When that received no response, I asked a friend at Oxford, with whom I had gone to graduate school, to intervene. I thought Oxford would mean more than a regional American college. At long last I received an e-mail from the head archivist: I would be allowed to examine the evidence for two hours, 4:00-6:00 p.m., on a Thursday afternoon. A camera would be allowed, without flash.

  The junior archivist who met me in the waiting room was a serious young woman in glasses with thick black frames. Her badge proclaimed her Dr. Patel.

  She handed me a similar ID badge, conspicuously marked TEMPORARY, with my name on it: Dr. Daphne Levitt, University of Southern Vermont.

  “I’ve never been to America,” she said as we rode down the elevator. “I would be a little nervous, especially in New York. You have so many shootings!”

  “Not so many where I live,” I told her. “My university is in a small town up north. They mostly shoot deer there. And street signs.”

  She looked at me as though scandalized that I would joke about such a thing.

  “Your job must be so interesting,” I said. That is my magical phrase. As an introvert, I’ve always found it supremely useful at parties. Once I say it, I don’t have to talk for the next half hour.

  She described it to me enthusiastically, but I only half-listened. I was wondering what I would find in the evidence box, and whether it would help me solve the Merwin case. When I started writing this book, I asked my mother to send me Daphne’s diary. I had not read it since I was a teenager. Then, I had only been interested in the disease itself, in what might happen to me if the Lewandowsky-Lutz progressed. But something about the newspaper account of the trial kept bothering me, and when I looked at the diary again, I saw it. Daphne had mentioned a brother. Could it be Alfred Potts? If so, Lewison had lied. Why?

  I followed Dr. Patel down a long beige hallway that reminded me of middle school, and then into a room filled with shelves, rather like university library stacks except that all of the shelves were filled with carefully labeled boxes. We walked down one of the rows while she scanned them. “There,” she said, and took down a box labeled Merwin, Daphne 1888.

  I had expected an evidence box out of Dickens, yellowed and moldering, but this was thoroughly modern.

  “Everything was recataloged in the 1990s,” she said, I suppose in response to my expression. Perhaps the Metropolitan Police trained even archivists to read people.

  She carried the box to a long table under fluorescent lights. “Just a moment,” she said, as I reached for the lid. From a nearby cabinet, she produced two surgical masks and gloves of some artificial material that felt like plastic trying to be cotton. When I was properly outfitted, I sat at the table and opened the box.

  In it were the items the police had collected on the day of Daphne’s murder. At the top of the box, protected by a plastic sleeve, was a stack of yellowing papers. On the first sheet of paper was written, in a sloping nineteenth century hand,

  Evidence in the death of Mrs. Lewison Merwin:

  Item 1: Nightgown torn by knife, with bloodstain.

  Item 2: Branches broken from the body of Mrs. Merwin in altercation.

  Item 3: Photograph of Mrs. Merwin.

  Item 4: Statement of Professor Merwin.

  Item 5: Statement of Lucy Barker, housemaid.

  Item 6: Statement of Mrs. Polansky, neighbor.

  Item 7: Statement of Alfred Potts, suspect.

  Item 8: Statement of Alice O’Neill, barmaid.

  Item 9: Kitchen knife stained with blood.

  I opened the sleeve and drew out the stack of papers. Beneath the list was the statement of Lewison Merwin, describing how he had found his wife in the parlor, stabbed to death. He had been out of the house all morning, attending a business meeting at the Alhambra, where Mrs. Merwin had shows three nights a week. Under his statement was written, Husband clearly distraught. I took photographs of each page with my iPhone. Next was the statement of Lucy Barker, describing how she had answered the door at around ten o’clock and found Alfred Potts on the doorstep. She had not wanted to let him in, but her mistress had insisted, out of the goodness of her heart. She was always one to help the poor. Lucy had given him a meal in the kitchen at Mrs. Merwin’s request, at which point he must have taken the knife, and no, she could not have watched him more carefully. She had lunch to prepare, hadn’t she? Then he had gone out into the garden. She had heard nothing more until noon, when Professor Merwin rang the bell and she had let him in. A few minutes later, he had run into the kitchen, saying that her mistress had been stabbed. Of course he was upset, Mrs. Merwin had been stabbed, hadn’t she? He had asked for a towel and hot water, but by then there was nothing to be done. Mrs. Merwin was dead. No, she had heard no sounds of an altercation in the parlor. The kitchen was in the basement, on the other side of the house, so why should she? And now if he could stop bothering her, she needed to feed the child. Under her account was written Seems devoted to her mistress. UGLY! The statement of Mrs. Polansky was short: she had been sitting in her parlor at around 11:30 when she had heard a man and woman arguing next door at the Merwins’. The walls were that thin, to the shame of these modern builders. Yes, she remembered the time because she had a grown son who was a clerk and came home for lunch, so
she kept looking at the clock, knowing he would return around quarter till. No, she could not hear what was being said, but one voice was deep, a man’s voice, and the other she thought was Mrs. Merwin’s. A nice lady, although one couldn’t exactly invite her over for tea, could one? Under her statement was written Not English—Polack? The statement of Alfred Potts was not much longer. He had gone to the Merwins’ house asking for money, had been given money out of the hall table drawer, and had left, that was all. He had gone to the pub, where he had been sitting on this [objectionable language] chair ever since, as Alice could tell you. Asked why he had gone to the Merwins’, which was half across town, rather than begging in Spitalfields, where he was no doubt better known. He had assaulted the officer and sworn in the most inventive and objectionable terms. At that point, he had been arrested. Under his statement was written DRUNK. The statement of Alice O’Neill was also short: Alfred Potts had come into the pub at 11:00, sat down in that chair right there, and had been sitting there ever since. Under her statement was written Known to police as Alice O’Connell, Alice Ferguson.

  Dr. Patel sat patiently while I photographed each page. At the bottom of the stack was the photograph that forms the frontispiece of this book. It is the only photograph we have of Daphne Merwin, since in her advertisements she was usually drawn in a way that exaggerated her arboreal qualities. When I first located it on the internet, on a website devoted to freak show history and paraphernalia, I printed out a copy and pinned it to my office bulletin board. But this was one of the original prints. It shows her seated on what looks like a column with a Corinthian capital, about the height of a kitchen stool, wearing a long white gown that leaves her arms bare. She is holding her arms up as though they were a bifurcated trunk with branches and twigs growing from them. Her skin is rough and bark-like to the elbows, but perfectly smooth above. Her hair is done up in the Victorian idea of a classical chignon. The gown is floor-length, but she is raising one foot so you can see the thick, gnarled growths on her toes. They do, indeed, look like tree roots. You have to give Lewison Merwin credit for one thing: he did a good job pruning her. The branches are thinned out, trimmed back in places. Despite their weight, she could lift her arms. She could walk. If you look closely at the original photograph, you can see what is not obvious from the online version: the rough skin on her forehead. But it does not grow down to her eyes. She could see. She could even have a child. She looks off to the side rather than at the viewer, but her chin is raised, elegantly, proudly. If you ignore the growths on her arms and feet, it is the photograph of an ordinary, if very attractive, Victorian woman.

  “My God,” said Dr. Patel, leaning across the table. “What was wrong with her?” She had been quiet for so long that I had almost forgotten she was there.

  “Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia,” I said. “Or, you know, being murdered. Can I take out the nightgown?” I had now photographed every piece of paper in the stack. I slipped the stack back into the plastic sleeve and set it aside. It was time to look at the physical evidence.

  “Yes, as long as you’re wearing gloves,” said Dr. Patel. Now she was leaning forward, clearly interested. I pulled the nightgown out of the plastic bag. It was made of a thin white cotton batiste, very finely embroidered: an expensive article in the 1880s.

  “You see all these buttons on the shoulders,” I said, as though lecturing one of my students. “She couldn’t have pulled the nightgown over her head. It had to be buttoned up, probably by her maid.”

  “A wound that deep would have killed her almost instantly,” said Dr. Patel, looking with professional curiosity at the place where the nightgown was torn. Around the tear it was bloody, and blood had soaked down one side, probably where it had dripped and pooled. “You see, the knife went right in: the hole isn’t ragged. But there’s a lot of blood. It would have been a deep, clean wound.” She put on a pair of fake-cotton gloves, pulled the plastic sleeve of papers toward her, and started reading through them.

  I imagined Daphne Merwin lying on the floor, with a deep, clean wound in her chest, bleeding her life away while my great-grandmother lay in her cradle upstairs. Did she cry out? There is no record of any cry, so maybe she was too startled, maybe she died too quickly. Who stood over her, watching her die? That was the question I wanted to answer. I folded the nightgown and slipped it back inside the plastic bag. It had told me only that Daphne was indeed stabbed—and that the Living Dryad had bled like an ordinary woman.

  Below the nightgown were two other plastic bags, both containing pieces of linen. Perhaps wrapped around whatever was inside? I lifted the one on the left, distinguishable from the other only because it was more square than oblong. I unwound the linen. Inside were a bunch of horny, bifurcating growths.

  “Some of her branches,” I said in response to Dr. Patel’s inquisitive expression. “Parts of her, hardened like keratin, almost like your nails? They must have broken off during the struggle.”

  “There was no struggle,” Dr. Patel responded, frowning above her glasses. “Not judging by those bloodstains—just stabbing and bleeding. She wouldn’t have had time to fight back. Can I take a look?”

  “I’m glad you’re here, because bloodstains don’t tell me anything,” I said. “Then I suppose these must have broken off when she fell, after she was stabbed?” I pushed Daphne’s branches toward Dr. Patel and turned to the third and final plastic bag, knowing what it must contain: the murder weapon. While I unwrapped it, she examined the broken growths. It made sense that she would be curious—after all, how often did you hear of a person like Daphne Merwin, a malnourished nineteenth-century orphan with a full-blown case of Lewandowsky-Lutz, turned into a living myth? And then a murder case.

  I unwound the final piece of linen. Here was the knife that had killed her. I laid it on the table in front of me.

  It was about seven inches long, four of handle and three of blade: a sharp, curved knife that would inflict a particularly vicious wound below the skin. The blade and part of the handle were stained an ancient, rusted red.

  “That’s a strange-looking knife,” said Dr. Patel. She had the branches spread in front of her and was lining them up, like a child playing with twigs.

  “It is,” I answered. “The Victorians often used very specific tools. I wonder if it had some sort of specialized use in the kitchen …”

  I took a picture of it with my phone. “Can I use your Wi-Fi? I want to do a Google search, but it says I need a password. I can’t get a cell signal down here.”

  “You won’t, in the basement of one of these old buildings,” said Dr. Patel. She pulled off one glove and held out her hand. “Here, I’ll type in our guest password.”

  When she handed the phone back to me, I did a Google image search.

  And there it was, the same knife, with the wicked curved blade, although without the bloodstains of course. The Orchardman’s Best Friend, regularly (35, on sale for (25 until Thursday, Home Orchard and Garden Supply, Berkshire. By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen.

  “It’s a pruning knife,” I said. I stared down at the image on my screen, then showed it to Dr. Patel. I think, at that moment, the truth was just beginning to sink in. “You see, he used to prune her …”

  “Well, that makes sense,” she said. She held up one of Daphne Merwin’s branches. “These ends are cut, not broken. The … growths didn’t break off during a fight. They were cut off, probably with a blade just like that.” She peered at my phone screen, and then at the knife, with the intellectual curiosity of a born scientist who dissects reality for the sheer pleasure of understanding. I could not be quite so dispassionate, but whatever I was feeling, looking down at the weapon that had killed my great-great grandmother, I put aside for the moment. This was not the right time.

  “Let me start at the beginning. You see, she left a diary …” I told Dr. Patel everything I had learned so far about Daphne and the Merwin household. “So he’s pruning her,” I concluded. “They quarrel, and he stabs her with t
he knife. All it would take is him going out again, maybe through the back door into the alley, then coming back half an hour later. Lucy Barker verifies the time of his arrival, identifies the knife as one of the kitchen knives, and tells the police about Alfred Potts’s visit earlier that day. All it would take is Lucy lying for him.”

  “What happened to Lucy?” asked Dr. Patel.

  “She died two years later, of a laudanum overdose. Accidentally—or so it was assumed at the time. Perhaps it was suicide—perhaps she felt guilty for her part in the murder? I suppose you could call her an accessory after the fact.”

  “Are you sure it was murder?” Dr. Patel tapped the papers piled on their plastic sleeve with one gloved finger. “The statement of Mrs. Polansky describes some sort of altercation. Perhaps he stabbed her on impulse? That would make it a case of manslaughter.”

  I stared down at the knife. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, for sure.” Anyway, did that sort of legal distinction matter? Whether he had planned to do it or done it on the spur of the moment, Lewison had stabbed Daphne Merwin. I was sure of it.

  “What happened to Professor Merwin after Eve’s death?”

  “He wasn’t a professor—he just claimed to be. And he returned to America.” As though nothing had happened, as though he could go on with his life. Yet that was what people did, wasn’t it? Go on? Although Eve had not been able to …

  “He must have been a clever, charming man, to attract two such women,” said Dr. Patel. “But unscrupulous. Men like that often are.”

  “Why didn’t the police officer who originally investigated see this?” I said. “It was right there in front of him.”

  Dr. Patel smiled—now she was the one lecturing a student. “One of the first things they teach us is that people don’t see what’s in front of them. They see what they expect to see. It’s very hard to get beyond that.”