She eyed them both carefully. “Is he dangerous?”
“Possibly.”
“Hmm. Come with me.” She led them out of her dressing room and down a set of steps into a gloomy basement room filled with packing crates. “That’s the thing we want in the corner there,” she said, indicating a flat board stood upright between two cases. “You lads bring it out here where we have some space.”
It was heavy, and after a bit of grunting and dragging, they managed to heave the thing into the centre of the room. It had a hefty metal base from which protruded a lever that altered the angle of the board. Miss Buki instructed them to set it to forty-five degrees. Manacles dangled from its corners and a thick leather belt hung loose at the middle. For all the world it looked like a machine of terrifying torture, or perhaps a piece of medical equipment from Bedlam.
“This was used some time ago as part of a conjuror’s act,” explained Miss Buki. “He would ask a member of the audience to chain him up, and then he would wriggle free in under a minute. But don’t worry. Unless your friend here is a master of escape, he shan’t be getting free without our help.”
Mansfield looked acutely uneasy as he stepped up onto the device and Miss Buki fixed the leather belt and manacles on him. Lazarus was far from comfortable himself and admired his friend’s courage and trust in this woman.
Once her willing volunteer was fully secure, the hypnotist stepped back and began her slow, sleek talk, with suggestive references to calm beaches, trickling rivers and all the beautiful and peaceful things in life. Mansfield’s eyelids began to droop as he fell deep into slumber, just as Lazarus had seen the three audience members do upstairs.
“Open your eyes, please,” said Miss Buki, “and tell me whom I have the pleasure of addressing.”
Mansfield slowly opened his eyes, saying nothing, and for an instant, Lazarus feared that the process had not worked. Then the man on the table tried to move and, finding himself restrained, unleashed a barrage of enraged jerks and heaves, yanking at the chains and writhing in the leather corset. The person called Mansfield had totally vanished, leaving only the expression of a demon before them who fixed a terrible stare full of loathing upon Miss Buki.
“Is your name Mansfield” Miss Buki asked and Lazarus silently commended her for retaining her composure in the face of such a caged animal.
“Fuck off, witch!” said the creature in a voice as chilling as icy cold water running over sharp rocks.
“Are you Mansfield?” she repeated.
The man barked a cruel laugh. “I am not, but he is chained to me as I am to him and as both of us are to this infernal gurney! I am Mansfield’s rage, his pain and his anger. I am his fear, his loathing and his hatred!”
“Why have you taken up residence in his body?”
“I have always been there, just as I am in every single person, since the human race crawled from apedom. I am their evil, their malice and their secret desire for all things unclean and degenerate. In a manner of speaking, I am Satan!”
Lazarus stepped forward, angry. “Do you make him kill, you bastard?” He felt Miss Buki turn hers eyes suddenly upon him.
The creature looked at Lazarus with its black-pupils. “A mere side effect. Unfortunate for them, but intensely gratifying for us. The whores were not part of the plan, but Mansfield so enjoys the exotic things in life. Now, with me by his side, he has been able to fulfill his desires to the maximum. He has such a hatred for those tarts that it almost rivals his love for them. Did you know that his father died of syphilis?”
“What side effect?” Lazarus asked. “What plan?”
With that, the creature began to giggle manically.
“Who are you?” Miss Buki demanded. “Do you have a name?”
The creature ceased its mirth and then spoke with deadly sincerity. “My name is Hyde!”
Try as they might, they could get no further sense out of him. Miss Buki used her calming technique to send the creature back into the darkest parts of Mansfield’s mind and eventually Lazarus’s friend returned to them, sobbing with exhaustion.
“What have you brought me here, mister?” Miss Buki asked Lazarus. She looked frightened. “What was all that about murder? In God’s name sir, is this the Whitechapel killer?”
“Yes,” Lazarus replied. “And no. As you can see, there is more than one person within the man before us. I must ask you to keep this to yourself, Miss Buki. I want to cure my friend, but if you breathe a word of this to anyone it will be the gallows for him or the rest of his life in Colney Hatch.”
Miss Buki nodded slowly. “I also believe that there is more to this. His mind seems to have been… tampered with. Perhaps someone else with my skills has conditioned his mind in such a manner that murder flourishes from his fingertips.”
“Is that possible?”
“Certainly. People can be set in motion much like machines, with the right knowhow. You have heard of those poor creatures in the Americas? They call them mechanicals but they were people once, just as you and I.”
“Yes. Before their bodies were corrupted by machinery.”
“Not just their bodies. Their minds, too. How else do you think they blindly follow the orders of the monsters who mutilated them? Their minds have been altered beyond repair so that they are no more than puppets dancing on invisible strings. Both the United and Confederate States employ scientists far more accomplished than I to corrupt the minds of their subjects and create an army of hollow slaves.”
“Like the zombis of Africa,” Lazarus said.
“Exactly.”
“God, I wonder what was done to poor Mansfield, and by whom?”
“And to what purpose?” added Miss Buki.
“Why would anyone condition a man to kill prostitutes? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“But he said that the killings were just a side effect and weren’t part of the plan.”
“Plan,” Lazarus mused aloud. “What plan? Is there no way we can undo what was done to him?”
She shook her head. “He is not totally beyond salvage, for he is his own man most of the time with this Hyde character lurking just beneath the surface. But without knowing what signal sets him off, we have no way of stopping it taking control. I suggest that you remove him from his normal environment. That way you may be able to cut him off from the stimulus. You must promise me that you will do this, for the love of God! Don’t let him kill again or I will be forced to tell what I know.”
“I’ll arrange something. What was that you said about a stimulus?”
“Whenever somebody is hypnotized there is always a stimulus keyed in to make them react. You saw me snapping my fingers on stage to bring those poor fools back to us. It works in reverse too, I can condition a man to act a certain way in response to a stimulus.”
“What other kinds of stimuli are there other than snapping fingers in their faces?”
“Oh, anything really. Usually it is sounds, but it can be sights and smells too. Any sensory input.”
Mansfield groaned.
“Let’s get him loose from this thing,” Lazarus said. Mrs. Buki seemed reluctant. “Come now, woman, Hyde has retreated for now. He’s harmless, I promise you.”
“You place a great deal of trust in your friend,” she said as they loosened the manacles and the belt. “One can’t help but wonder if you had not trusted him so in the first place, some of those poor girls might have been saved.”
Chapter Eleven
In which an investigation begins
November 25th, 1863
After an unremarkable couple of days that tested my patience to the extreme, I am finally up and about. I have so much to report that I have neither pencil nor pages sufficient to write it all down, and so I must push ahead with a description of the place I find myself in.
It is a city in every sense of the word, clinging to the mountains like moss in the cracked face of a boulder. The majority of its houses are of simple bamboo construction much like e
lsewhere in Siam, but the heart of the city is a complex of stone buildings that comprise the royal palace and ‘wat’ or temple. It is a place the like of which I and, I may hazard a guess, even Henri Mouhot, would have doubted the existence of, for it hearkens back to a distant era in Siam’s history.
The entrance faces east and is of huge wooden doors, brightly painted. In fact, the citadel is of exquisite artifice. White lime-coated walls ring it, with roofed galleries of terracotta tiles painted in blues and greens. The temple is of five towers in the shape of beehives that rise up higher than the whole city, plated in gold leaf so that they glitter like gilded honey drizzlers. I have been told by Kasemchai that these five towers represent the five peaks of Mount Meru in Hindoo mythology. But this is no relic of Siam’s old religion, converted to the Buddhist faith like so many others in this land, and in neighbouring Cambodia. The king and the people who dwell in this mountain stronghold are indeed Hindoos; remnants of the old religion who, due to their seclusion and cunning ways, have remained unchanged by the conversion of the whole of South East Asia to Buddhism.
As soon as it was known that I was well enough to be up and about, I was taken to the royal palace for an audience with the king. I was led to a carpeted audience chamber where a good number of officials crawled around on the floor in the manner of the Siamese in the presence of royalty. Kasemchai was by my side to act as translator, for nobody in this mountain city speaks English or French. We prostrated ourselves but as soon as my forehead touched the carpet the king bade me rise.
King Harshavarman is in his forties, strong-looking but he is at present struck by some malady which means he is unable to rise from his throne, or even his bed some days. His bald head is often beaded with sweat and he sometimes doubles over as if in great abdominal pain.
His condition did not prevent him from thanking me profusely for saving the life of his eldest son and heir, Prince Ksitindraditya, and presenting me with the skin of the beast I had slain with my improvised bamboo spear. It lies at the foot of my bed as I write this, and I look forward to bringing it back to Bangkok to see what Michael makes of it.
My audience with the king was short, as he is very ill indeed today and had to be taken back to his bedchamber while the palace physician was called for. The rest of the day was taken up by a tour of the citadel, including the great temple which really is a building of remarkable workmanship.
Every surface of its interior is covered with intricate carvings depicting scenes from the Ramayana, images of Shiva (the god to whom the temple is dedicated) astride his bull, Nandin, and episodes from the life of the earliest ruler of this city who built the temple and palace. He must have been a great visionary, or at least had some very cunning architects for the blocks of stone that comprise the temple are glass-smooth and are fitted together seamlessly so it appears as if the whole building is a single block of stone, hollowed out and carved with its decorations. Only the drilled holes found in some blocks indicate the method used in hauling them into place.
Kasemchai, translating the words of our guide, gave me a little lesson on the history of this fascinating city. Founded sometime (as close as I can guess) in the twelfth century by European reckoning, the ‘Midnight City’, as it translates to in our tongue, was one of the furthest and most remote temple cities of the Khmer Empire. Its secluded location retained its religion and independence during Siam’s following centuries of upheaval. It survived the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, the rise of the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya empires and the eventual domination of the current kingdom of Siam.
The kings of the Midnight City have long held the belief that their survival lies in independence and isolation through secrecy. I was alarmed to learn that I am the first white man ever to be admitted to the citadel, and it was only through my saving of Prince Ksitindraditya’s life that I am allowed here at all. Kasemchai seems to be their only contact with the outside world.
A great trust has been bestowed upon me in letting me into their lost world. Our guide tells us that King Harshavarman fears that should his existence become known to King Mongkut, he would be forced to become a vassal and his daughters would end up in the latter king’s harem. It is therefore a secret I will carry with me to my grave and pray that my private journal never falls into anybody else’s hands. This is for my diversion only and when I am old and grey I will destroy these papers.
As soon as they got back to their lodgings in Limehouse, Lazarus sent Mr. Clumps to the nearest chandlers to purchase several lengths of chain.
“Is he dangerous, then?” Mary asked, eying the slumbering Mansfield on the bed, drowsy once again after his recent episode.
“You’ve been good to us, Mary,” Lazarus said, “and you deserve an explanation. My friend is very ill. Miss Buki used her hypnotism on him and we discovered that he has another personality within him that occasionally fights its way to the fore.”
“Another personality?” said Mary, struggling to understand. “Like a secret life?”
“More than that. He has no idea of what he says or does when his other personality takes over.”
“How queer...”
“Sometimes he becomes... energetic and must be restrained.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t belong in Bedlam?”
“No, of that I am not sure. But he’s my friend and I want to try and help him before I have to make that drastic decision. Bedlam and its ilk are terrible places. But I need your further help, if you’re willing to give it.”
“I dunno, it seems a bit dangerous...”
“I promise that he is no threat to you. Why, I cannot explain, but I am hoping that together we can find out.”
“What do you need me for?”
“I need your knowledge of other ladies in your profession, specifically in Whitechapel. What they do, how they act, how they smell...”
“Smell?”
“I don’t mean to be crude. You smell very lovely, I must say. But there is something that triggers Mansfield’s episodes and it is something about the women in Whitechapel. Maybe something about the places in which they, um, conduct their business transactions. Maybe it is a personal possession they all hold in common. Maybe it is something they all say, a slang term perhaps, that sparks off his mania.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Mary very slowly. “Something we Whitechapel bag-tails do, or say, or own, makes your friend here go off on one? Why am I safe? How do you know that I won’t ‘spark off his mania’ or whatever it is?”
“Because if you could then you would have done so already. No, there is something that only some working girls have in common, not all.” He fumbled around in a drawer for a pencil and paper and a bundle of newspaper clippings. Mary watched him in silence as he began to write down some addresses, referring to the clippings frequently. “You understand that I only ask you to help me for time is so short. Ordinarily I would conduct my own investigations, but Mansfield’s life hangs on our swift action.”
“You talk an awful lot like a copper,” she said, rising. She looked over his shoulder at the names and addresses he was scribbling down. “Polly Nichols - 56 Flower and Dean Street, Elizabeth Stride - 32 Flower and Dean Street, Catherine Eddowes - Casual Ward in Shoe Lane.” She stopped and her eyes grew wide. “I knew it,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “He’s the Ripper isn’t he? My God, you’ve got me in a room with the bloody Ripper!”
“Mary, wait!” Lazarus cried as she bolted for the door, flung it open and rushed out into the street. He fumbled with his key to secure the door behind him, not for a second considering leaving Mansfield—the Ripper—alone and unsecured in a Limehouse bedsit.
Mary clattered down the street, her boots carrying her across the cobbles at a breakneck speed. Lazarus hurried after her. He couldn’t let her go now, not after what she knew. She was probably on her way to the police station. Within an hour the news would be all over London that Mansfield was the killer. He had to stop her.
“Wait!” he cried
again, seizing her by the elbow and spinning her around. She struggled to get free but he pinned her against a wall plastered with advertisements, aware of her similar manhandling at the hands of another man the day they had met. “Please hear me out!”
“You’re as mad as he is!” she cried. “Sheltering that monster! And I helped you! Oh, Lord, you played me for a dolt, didn’t you? Find a dim-witted bag-tail and trick her into helping the very man who all women despise, is that the game?”
“No! I wasn’t sure Mansfield was the killer until the night of the double murder. There was no ulterior motive to my befriending you. Just two paths in this dreadful city crossing for a moment and in that moment two souls seeing a friend in the other, I swear! Now I beg you not to do anything rash. If you breathe a word of what you know it will mean the death of my friend. And I believe my friend to be innocent!”
“Innocent! Have you not read your little clippings? Have you not read of how he carved them up? Of how he ripped out their guts and scattered them about? And these were women like me! Women I have passed in the street, shared dosshouses with, shared punters with. How can you say with any certainty that I’ll not be next?”
“Because he hasn’t shown the slightest interest in you!”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel safe, is it?”
“I told you that he requires some sort of stimulus—a sight or a smell or a sound—and that is a stimulus that you have not provided.”
“Not yet. But we don’t know what the bloody stimulus is! I might do something tomorrow or the day after that’ll have him after me with his knife!”
“Then help me find out what that stimulus is. Help me to help him and we can bring his madness to an end as well as his reign of terror over the streets of Whitechapel.”
“What would you have me do?”
Onyx City (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 3) Page 10
