Beloved Poison

by E. S. Thomson

  ‘I—’

  He waved a hand. ‘We have a witness.’

  I thought of the girl who had come for the herbs, the girl who brought the coffin. ‘You’ve twisted her words,’ I said.

  ‘I take them at face value. You did not perform. You never did when you went there, and you went there often, whilst in another room Dr Bain disported himself with vigour. You say it is because you would not? I suggest that it is because you could not. And yet Dr Bain was a man with no such peculiarities. What man would not be piqued by the hot-bloodedness of a companion when he himself was impotent?’

  ‘Do you think impotent men often feel moved to murder their more priapic brothers?’

  He did not look at me, but dipped his pen in the ink pot and wrote something on his paper. I felt sick. No doubt he had taken my words to be a confession of impotence, the fool. And if I admitted I was a woman would that help my cause? No. I would become an object of horror, a monster, a victim of suppressed hysterical urges, my mind undone due to the pressures of living a man’s life whilst inhabiting a woman’s body. Things would be far worse for me if I disclosed my true identity. That revelation, it seemed, must be saved for after the gallows.

  He paused in his scribbles, and looked up at me. ‘And so you killed him with tincture of bloodroot.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘Later, returning to the place, you pretended to find his body and raised the alarm.’

  ‘I did find the body! There was no pretence—’

  ‘And that some time later you likewise poisoned Mrs Annabel Catchpole—’

  ‘Mrs Catchpole was killed by curare,’ I snapped. ‘Dr Bain, I strongly suspect, was killed by aconite.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Curare. Chondrodendron tomentosum. A species of tropical liana, deadly only if it enters the blood. Aconite is a flowering plant widely found in Britain. It tastes bitter, but unlike many toxins can be absorbed through the skin. They were killed by different means.’

  He peered at me over his spectacles. ‘Aconite?’

  ‘Aconite. Monkshood. Wolfsbane. Call it what you will.’

  ‘I will call it murder, Mr Flockhart.’ He stared at me as if I were mad. ‘Your specialist knowledge of poisons is noted. As well as your ready access to it.’

  ‘St Saviour’s is full of men with specialist knowledge of poisons,’ I said. ‘Each of them has ready access to the stuff. You may as well arrest the entire medical staff of every hospital in the city.’

  ‘As for the death of Mrs Annabel Catchpole—’

  That, I had to admit, did look peculiar. Other than the attendant who had taken her clothes and locked her in for the night, I was the last person to have seen her alive. The salve was still in my room at the apothecary. Would they have looked for it?

  ‘The pot of salve you left for Mrs Catchpole was found to contain enough poison to kill a cart horse—’

  My face drained of blood. I felt his gaze upon me. They had been to my room. ‘But I didn’t put the poison in that salve.’

  ‘But you gave it to her. There are witnesses. And the constable found it in your apothecary.’

  I closed my eyes. ‘I didn’t put curare in it.’

  ‘How else did it get there? There is no mistaking it. ’

  I shook my head. I knew the adulterated salve had been placed there that evening at Angel Meadow, swapped for the one I had prepared myself, but as for who had done so—

  ‘The salve is poison. Dr Graves has demonstrated its efficacy. He rubbed a quantity of the stuff into a wound on the leg of a dog and we saw the terrible effects for ourselves.’

  I could imagine the spectacle: the grinning Dr Graves, the gasps of the assembled crowd, the agony of the beast as the paralysis took hold. How could sensible explanations possibly compete against such theatrics? But the man was talking again, and I was obliged to listen. ‘An attendant at Angel Meadow has confirmed that the pot of salve found in your room was the same stuff you brought to Mrs Catchpole, which you then removed from her room as she lay dead on the floor. Why would you remove the stuff if it was not to conceal your crime?’

  ‘And would I not throw the salve away, rather than keep it at home?’

  ‘Perhaps you had other victims in mind.’

  I could see the logic of his thinking, even though the conclusions he drew were mistaken. ‘And Joe,’ I said. It was hardly worth the asking. ‘Why would I kill Joe Silks?’

  ‘We don’t yet know. But you were seen in Prior’s Rents, looking for, and then talking to, the vagrant known as Joe Silks. Witnesses say there was shouting. Threats were uttered.’

  I said nothing. No doubt there were plenty of people in Prior’s Rents who might be persuaded to testify to anything.

  ‘His head was bludgeoned,’ added the prosecutor.

  ‘It was crushed by his fall,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’ He grinned, as though he had just tricked me into a full confession. ‘Was it really? Do you admit that you were out in the full moon that night? The night Joe Silks was murdered? You might as well. We have a witness.’

  ‘Who?’ I cried, astonished. ‘Who can possibly have seen me doing something I patently did not do?’

  ‘The sexton of St Saviour’s parish church saw you. You and Silks. Shortly before you clubbed the unfortunate child about the head and dumped him into the open graves in St Saviour’s churchyard.’

  I opened my mouth, but I could not speak. Old Dick had seen two people, certainly. ‘Man and boy’ he had said. It might mean anyone. ‘It wasn’t me he saw,’ I whispered at last. ‘I had no reason to murder Joe Silks.’

  ‘I’m sure I can think of one,’ said the man. ‘Besides, it hardly matters. You’re going to hang anyway. One of these will bring you to the rope, you can be sure of that.’

  I sank to my knees in the filthy straw. How had I come to this? Not two weeks earlier I had been the apothecary at St Saviour’s Infirmary, attending to the sick and making up prescriptions just as I had day after day, year after year for almost as long as I could remember. Now three people had been murdered and I stood to hang for it. Should I put my faith in the ability of the law to discover the truth? But the law was a stupid and arrogant beast, and I had no confidence in it, nor in the dolts that purported to practise it. The magistrates were drunks, the witnesses narrow-minded, and easily led. Evidence was sensational, and entirely subjective. And my bloody highwayman’s appearance would do nothing to further my cause. Does he not look like the very Devil, they would say, with his tall, thin scarecrow body and his crimson mask? If my face was repulsive and devilish, was that ugliness not matched on the inside? No wonder one such as I might be capable of villainy . . .

  ‘Who speaks against me?’ I said. My voice was hoarse, my throat dry as bone. ‘Dr Magorian, no doubt?’

  The prosecutor nodded. ‘Dr Magorian brought his concerns, and his deductions, to our attention last night. He is a man of great reputation,’ he said. And then added in a more conversational tone: ‘The magistrate was cut for the stone some years ago. If it were not for Dr Magorian’s skill and precision . . . the magistrate has often said that he owes his health, and his happiness, to Dr Magorian.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s eternally grateful,’ I said bitterly.

  Dr Magorian. It could be none other. It was Dr Magorian who was Dr Sneddon’s successor. Dr Magorian who had used Dr Sneddon’s old notes to line the coffins, though why he might make such peculiar mementoes was still a mystery. Had he murdered Dr Bain? It seemed likely. And yet why would he do such a thing? They had known each other for years without evidence of any deep-seated animosity. It made no sense to me. Still, we were close on his heels. Ensuring that I was charged with the murders he had committed, merely revealed his guilt and desperation. But I could not prove it – not yet, and certainly not from inside Newgate.

  I told the prosecutor to go. I had spoken recklessly, and I knew it. My own wits were all that might save me now.

  Will came. I was
taken to meet him in the yard, where I was permitted to speak to him only through the grating of a cage. The place was crowded with my fellow inmates. To the left, a tall thin man with one eye was muttering through the bars to a ragged old beldam with a pipe clenched between her gums. To our right a great towering hulk of a man was being admonished by a female visitor so small and filthy I thought at first she might be a child. But the profanities that issued from her lips were nothing I had ever heard, even from Joe Silks and his friends, and when she turned to look at us we saw a face so destroyed by gin and the pox, I could not begin to imagine what their relationship might be.

  ‘Dr Hawkins is doing all he can to help you,’ said Will. ‘And I.’ He had brought with him one of Mrs Speedicut’s pound cakes and some small beer from the infirmary brewhouse. He passed them through the grating.

  ‘Dr Magorian went to the magistrate,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. But I don’t understand why. What does it matter if Dr Sneddon’s notes were found in a foolish totem like a toy coffin?’

  I gripped the iron bars. ‘Will, we have to think. Think. Why would Dr Magorian murder Dr Bain? What is the connection between that murder and the words in the coffins? We must link the two.’

  He licked his lips. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then let us think more generally and hope that might lead us forward. Why would anyone commit murder?’

  ‘Love?’ he said. ‘Hate? Greed? Jealousy?’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘But Dr Magorian has plenty of money. I can think of no reason why he might be greedy for more.’

  ‘Jealousy?’

  ‘His reputation is extraordinary. He counts members of the aristocracy as his patients – I’ve always been surprised he bothered with St Saviour’s at all.’

  ‘And yet what if that reputation was threatened in some way? Would he not do all he could to protect it?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘And what of Dr Bain’s relationship with Miss Magorian?’

  I had vowed to myself that I would say nothing about that to anyone. Even Will did not know the extent of it. But he was right. ‘It cannot be discounted,’ I said.

  ‘That brings us to love,’ said Will.

  ‘The most powerful, irrational and destructive motive of them all.’ We fell silent. ‘I have to get out,’ I said at last.

  ‘Jem,’ said Will. ‘You were the last person to see Mrs Catchpole alive. The salve was found in your room. It does not look good for you.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not making you feel any better, am I?’

  ‘I need to know the truth,’ I said. ‘I don’t expect you to come here and pretend that all’s well.’ I put my head in my hands. ‘Why did I take that salve?’ We stood without speaking. ‘How’s my father?’ I said after a moment. ‘Does he know I’m here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can he come to see me?’

  ‘I doubt I’ll be able to keep him away.’

  ‘And how does he seem?’

  Will shook his head. ‘Your father is not what he was, Jem.’

  I rubbed my face to keep the tears away. ‘Dr Bain,’ I said. ‘He holds the key. We must ask ourselves what Dr Bain knew. When he looked at the coffins, that first time in the apothecary, he turned pale. I assumed it was because Dr Catchpole had just split his head open, but perhaps it was something else.’

  ‘You think he’d seen the coffins before?’

  ‘Possibly. But let’s put that aside for now. Dr Bain takes the coffins. Why? To examine them? To prevent anyone else from having them? Whatever the reason, there was something familiar about them, something wrong, and Dr Bain knew – or at least suspected – what it was.’

  ‘You knew him more intimately than anyone—’

  ‘But there was plenty I did not know about him. You recall that night when we were at his house? When you uncovered the hook, the rope, the mattock? The tools of the resurrection men. He must have been one himself.’

  ‘You had no idea?’

  ‘None at all! Though many students were obliged to procure their own bodies for dissection – there was no other way to learn.’

  ‘Old Dick said as much,’ said Will. ‘He said it was “always medicals” looking for bodies.’

  And so it was. The resurrectionists had passed into history as reckless and uncouth men, but that picture was far from true. ‘I don’t judge Dr Bain too harshly if he became an expert in digging up the dead,’ I said. ‘But I do say that he most certainly had secrets, perhaps ones he too would have liked to keep hidden.’

  ‘And there is also his second visit to Lily,’ said Will. ‘She was quite clear about what he said. “Not again. Not this again.”’

  ‘Which confirms that he had seen the coffins, or something similar, before. But where? And when?’

  ‘Not recently,’ said Will. ‘It can’t have been recently as the boxes were old. Perhaps before he came to St Saviour’s?’

  ‘He’s always been here. His father was a scrivener on St Saviour’s Street. He died when Dr Bain was a boy—’ I stopped.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hoots toots mon,’ I murmured.

  Will looked perplexed. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Edinburgh,’ I said. ‘Dr Bain studied at Edinburgh Medical School before he came to London.’ I gripped Will’s hand through greasy bars of the grating. ‘I must see my father. Dr Bain lodged at the apothecary – years ago, while I was with the wet nurse in the country, after my mother died. He was a student, and had just come down from Edinburgh. My father must know something about that part of Dr Bain’s life – why he left that city. Edinburgh is the finest place in the world for a medical education. Why would one leave before one had finished, especially when one was as capable a student as Dr Bain?’

  I ripped off a hunk of Mrs Speedicut’s pound cake and took a bite. It was as dry as sawdust, as I knew it would be. But it tasted of home.

  In the afternoon, I was told I had another visitor.

  ‘Special treatment,’ said the warder. He grinned at me. ‘He paid ten guineas for it too.’

  I was taken into the ward where I had spent the night. A dozen men were sitting on benches before a smouldering fire, the sleeping mats and blankets rolled away. Against the wall, standing far from the others, was a tall, thin, old man. For a moment I wondered who he was, he was looking at me so strangely. And then I realised. ‘Father!’ I sprang towards him.

  For the first time that I could remember, he held me to his heart. ‘Ten guineas, Father?’ I mumbled the words against his chest.

  ‘I would give all I have to hold you without the impediment of bars and locks.’

  He was skin and bone beneath my hands. I had seen him only two days previously, but in that short time he had aged. His illness, compounded by care and worry, had eaten him alive. Its progress had not been arrested by Dr Hawkins’s efforts, and it was apparent that he had not slept for days. I could not blame him, or Dr Hawkins, for trying to find a remedy, but I could not find it in my heart to pretend that I saw anything in his countenance but death.

  He took my face in his hands and kissed my forehead. His eyes were filled with tears. Then he said, ‘Things are worse for you than you realise, my dear.’

  ‘But I’m guilty of nothing but trying to discover who murdered Dr Bain.’

  ‘I know.’ He stroked my hair. ‘I know.’

  We sat together on either side of a trestle table. Around us, men gambled and swore, fought and shouted. The place was ill lit, and in the darkened corners shadows moved and grunted. My father looked about, appalled. ‘How in Heaven’s name did we end up like this? You to hang, me to go mad.’

  ‘Let’s not think of it,’ I said. ‘But I must ask you some questions.’

  He rubbed his eyes. His skin was grey, papery dry and flecked with dark flaky patches. It cleaved to his skull as though all moisture had been sucked from him. His eyes seemed huge, pale and anxious in their dark-ringed sockets, the lids membranous above gaunt cheeks and
lips puckered and drawn.

  ‘Father,’ I said. ‘Can you remember when Dr Bain shared your lodgings? When he had my room at the apothecary?’

  ‘Of course. He was a student. One of Dr Magorian’s most promising.’

  ‘And before he came to London he studied at Edinburgh, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. But he didn’t finish his studies there.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about the place? Did he ever talk about why he left and came to London?’

  My father looked at me in silence. All at once his eyes were vacant. It was as if his spirit had left his body and walked away, leaving nothing but an empty husk. ‘Father?’ I said. He glanced from side to side, his features resolving into an expression of alarm and perplexity, and I realised that he did not know who I was or why he was there. I had never seen him look so startled, so afraid. ‘Father.’ I took his hand. ‘It’s Jem.’ All my life he had been stern and self-assured, a tall taciturn man, austere, unforgiving, disappointed. But he had been strong; resolute and decisive. Over the preceding weeks I had watched those attributes slowly diminish; standing by hopelessly I had seen him become a different man – vague, undecided, lost.

  ‘Fight it,’ I whispered, holding his hands between my own. ‘Do not give in to it.’

  He blinked, I felt his fingers respond, and I saw in his eyes that he had come back to me – for the moment. ‘I cannot,’ he whispered. The tears ran down his face too now, dripping from his chin onto the filthy straw.

  ‘You must.’ I spoke sternly, the way he spoke to Gabriel. ‘Father, you must help me. You must remember. Did Dr Bain talk to you about his time in Edinburgh? What did he tell you? What did he say? What happened when he was there? Why did he leave?’ I took him by the shoulders. ‘Father!’

  My father swayed in my grasp like a reed. ‘Dr Bain?’ he said. ‘He was only with me for a short while. After your mother died; while you were away.’

  ‘When? When was he with you?’

  He shrugged, too tired to speak.

  ‘You were married in 1824. I was born in ’25.’

  ‘Then he was there just after that, ’21 and ’22. He helped in the apothecary while he completed his studies. He was very able, very knowledgeable. Hard working too. He helped me with the prescriptions, and I gave him food and lodgings. We were company for each other in the evenings. It suited us both well enough.’