Beloved Poison

by E. S. Thomson

  There, perched on plush maroon cushions like a crow in a boudoir, was Mrs Magorian. She was sitting upright, her pale blue eyes fixed upon me, her mouth pursed in a bitter smile. Across from her sat Eliza, dressed in black from neck to toe, her face stony. I stared at her, at her face stained with tears, but at that moment I could think of no one but my father, dead, disgraced; murdered, just like Dr Bain, Mrs Catchpole, Joe Silks. My voice, when I spoke, was raw with rage and sorrow, so that I hardly even recognised myself.

  ‘Six coffins. Six effigies. Six girls buried beneath the churchyard wall. Buried by your husband, madam, and by you!’ I knew people had stopped to listen, I could feel them at my back watching, muttering amongst themselves, and I was glad. I raised my voice to the volume of a street vendor. ‘You think no one knows what you’ve done? You think it’s all in the past? Well, I will drag it into the present and then I will drag you to the gallows, and the world will know what you are!’

  Her eyes flickered, as if she had blinked, though I had not seen her eyelids move.

  ‘He was seen, madam,’ I shouted. ‘In St Saviour’s churchyard. And you with him.’

  ‘I?’ Her lips curved slightly, as if she were amused by my accusations.

  ‘Oh, don’t trouble to deny it,’ I cried. ‘Don’t insult me. It was you who accompanied him. It was you who flung Joe Silks into the pit.’

  Eliza put out her hand to me. ‘Jem, please. Can’t you see she’s frightened—’

  I shook her off. ‘Frightened?’ I spat the word out. I did not look at Eliza now but kept my eyes fixed upon her mother’s face. I could not weaken, and I would not feel pity. ‘Twenty years ago your husband killed six girls. I don’t know why, but I’ll not rest until I find out. And there will be no escape for you in this world, or the next, until I do.’ I raised my hand, my bloody face fearful to look upon, and I pointed at her heart. ‘I will follow you wherever you go. Wherever you look, I will be there. In your nightmares you will see me, and I will worry you and haunt you, and I will uncover every one of your secrets. Make no mistake, but I will find out. And when I do—’ My hand was shaking with fury, and it was all I could do to stop myself from reaching in and dragging her off her cushions, out of the carriage and into the mob. ‘When I do, you will watch him hang, as I have watched my father hang. And then you will follow him to the gallows and you will die, alone, in shame and fear, with nothing but a felon’s grave and an anatomist’s knife awaiting you.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dr Hawkins took my father’s body directly to Angel Meadow. He used one of the hospital’s carriages. I made my own way there, with Will for company. I could not speak. I felt as though I could hardly move, and if it had not been for Will I might still be standing, staring up at the gallows.

  Dr Hawkins was in his room at the top of the building. There was a tray of tea waiting for us. I wanted nothing, but Will forced me to drink a cup of the stuff, hot and sugary, and my mind began to clear. I forced myself to attend to what was going on. I had not been to Angel Meadow since Mrs Catchpole had been found dead. I had to be alert.

  ‘He’s downstairs,’ said Dr Hawkins. ‘Would you like to see him?’

  I nodded.

  ‘But first . . .’ Dr Hawkins was standing with his back to the window, so his face was in shadow. ‘Your father loved you, Jem,’ he said. ‘Though I know he did not always show it.’ He turned to his desk and picked up a box. ‘He asked me to give you this.’

  It was a box of polished yew, smooth to the touch and coloured a rich amber. I had never seen it before, though I could tell before I opened it that it had been well-handled – the catch was discoloured with the repeated pressure of a thumb, the hinges loose from opening and closing. But it was oiled and cared for, as though what was inside was too precious to be left untouched. Somehow I knew, even before I opened it, what would be inside.

  It was a miniature, a small portrait of a young woman, no older that I. She was sitting on a chair, wearing an olive-coloured dress sprigged with summer flowers. Her eyes were green, her face pensive but happy, her hands resting on the bulge of her pregnant belly. I looked at her, in silence, for a long time. Then I put the picture away. ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ I said. I held the box to my heart. It was all I had of them now.

  In a daze, I followed Dr Hawkins down the long, winding flights of stairs to the basement. My father had been stripped and washed and wrapped in a sheet of white cotton. His end had been swift. Dr Hawkins, up on the scaffold, had ensured the rope broke his neck as he fell. And so, in death, he looked very much as he had in life – joyless, austere, with a scornful, pinched look about the nostrils. I did not touch him, or kiss him. I did not cry. In fact, I felt a peculiar sense of detachment.

  ‘Take what you need from my father, Dr Hawkins,’ I said. I thought of the small plot where my mother lay against the church wall, and into which I would lay my father’s earthly remains. South facing, the honeysuckle and rosemary grew ever-green upon it, the daffodils dancing in the cold spring breeze, and I was glad he had found peace at last.

  But he had abandoned me to my troubles and they were as numerous as ever around me. I had still to prove his innocence, and mine. There was no time to sit about. I had publicly accused Dr Magorian – and his wife – of the most terrible of crimes. As I had finished my speech to Mrs Magorian I had smelled the doctor’s sugary breath and felt a shadow fall cold across me; I knew he was behind me and had heard everything. He had not said a word. Instead, he had pushed me aside, climbed into his carriage and driven away, slowly, through the seething crowds. But he had failed to see me hanged, and he knew I would not remain silent. Well, let him come for me, I thought. Let him seek me out, for I was ready for him. He would betray himself and I would be there to cut him down when he did.

  Will and I marched across the lawn between the wings of the asylum, towards the dark perimeter wall and the tall heavy gates.

  ‘Mr Flockhart.’ The voice came from behind us. ‘Mr Flockhart?’ I turned. A woman dressed in the black and white uniform of the ladies’ attendants was hurrying after us across the grass. She came up, panting, her hand to her side. She looked familiar, though I could not place her, and my mind was too full of sorrow and despair to pluck from it any useful recollection. ‘I heard you were sent to prison,’ she said. ‘And then your father after you.’

  I nodded. What did she have to say to me? Everyone believed my father was guilty of the crimes he had confessed, and I had no wish to discuss the matter with the gossip-mongering servants of the asylum. I opened my mouth to tell her so, but she spoke first.

  ‘I knew your father,’ she said. ‘He was a kind man, always good to me, and to my mother when she lay dying. He gave her the medicines she needed out of his own pocket.’

  ‘He had a good heart,’ said Will. I knew he was watching me, trying to protect me, and I was grateful for it. He took my arm. ‘But if you would excuse us—’

  ‘Wait a moment, Will.’ There was something else, I was sure. The woman was wringing her hands, a look of concern shadowing her features. ‘Yes?’

  She said, ‘I know he didn’t do those things. Those things everyone says he did. He’s not the first innocent man to hang and he won’t be the last, but he didn’t kill anyone. Nor you.’

  Was that all that she had to say? Suddenly, I felt furious. Did she expect me to be grateful? To thank her? Did she think her vague platitudes, her feeble ruminations on loss and death were of value to me? I knew Will could sense my annoyance, for he put an arm about my shoulders and made as if to steer me across the grass to the doors. ‘Thank you for your kind words,’ I said. My voice was flat and insincere, even to my own ears.

  ‘If you would excuse us,’ said Will.

  ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ she said.

  I shook my head

  ‘I was Mrs Catchpole’s attendant, the night you came to see her.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. But I was called home that very night. My mo
ther was ill, so I wasn’t here to see to Mrs Catchpole the next morning, and I didn’t know she was dead till I came back yesterday.’

  ‘It must have been a shock,’ said Will.

  ‘I’m sorry you weren’t told sooner.’ I murmured the bland sentiments dutifully. But my mind now felt as clear as a glass. Something was coming, I felt sure of it. Something that would help us move beyond groundless accusations at last.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t really much of a shock,’ she said. ‘The people here do all sorts of things to themselves during the night, though I’d not have said Mrs Catchpole was likely to harm herself. But they said it was you who’d poisoned her, then they said it was your father, that he’d admitted everything, and I couldn’t believe that either. Never heard such nonsense! I said as much, but no one listens to me.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ I said.

  The woman continued, as though I had not even spoken. ‘Your Mrs Catchpole said something to me the evening before she died, the night you came to see her, when the other ladies were there too. You remember? And then I saw you coming out of Dr Hawkins’s office just now and I thought it was my duty to tell you—’

  ‘Yes?’ I felt my skin prickle.

  Will gripped my hand so tightly that I nearly cried out. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Well, I was brushing her hair, the way she liked me to. She was in her nightdress, sat before me. She seemed happy enough, less melancholy than she had been when she was talking about that Dr Bain every minute. She was humming a song, in fact, in time with the brush strokes. And then she ups and stops, just like that, and she says: “Cartwright, I’ve just remembered something. Mr Jem was asking me about it earlier and I couldn’t recall a thing, but all at once I can see what it was quite clearly.” “What’s that, ma’am?” I said. “Well, he asked me what was different about the room, about Dr Bain’s room, and I couldn’t think. All I could see was Dr Bain in his chair, and my husband bending over him.” And she started up with her hands again then, rubbing them over and over like she were washing them clean.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Will. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Well, she frowns and bites at her fingernails and then all of a sudden she says: “I remember there was something different.” Of course, I asked her what it was. “A bonnet,” she says. “It was a bonnet. On the table top. A wide one, pale blue with a little veil.”

  ‘To be honest, sir, I thought she was a bit confused, what with all the visitors and Dr Catchpole taking on so in front of everyone. But she was quite certain. “I know what I saw, Cartwright,” she says. “I saw a blue bonnet.” “Well, whose might that have been?” I said to her, and she looked at me all peculiar-like and her voice was all sharp and angry, she says: “I know exactly whose bonnet it was, Cartwright. It was Miss Magorian’s.” Well, I tried to persuade her, sir, but she wasn’t having it. “Who else’s bonnet might it have been?’ she said. “I know Eliza Magorian’s blue bonnet when I see it.” And she was angry, I could see it, so I said nothing more. I didn’t want to set her back, sir.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Will. I could see him looking at me, but I did not move, or speak. I felt my skin turn cold and my heart seemed to have stopped within me.

  ‘Well,’ said Cartwright, ‘she was silent after that. Thoughtful, like, but she’d not let go of it, and she kept saying to me: “I must tell Mr Jem tomorrow. I must be sure to tell him,” as though she couldn’t get it out of her mind, or at least didn’t want to forget it. But of course, she couldn’t tell you, sir, could she? She couldn’t say anything to anyone.’

  I knew he would come for me that evening. Would she come with him? It was quite possible. I was not afraid; I would face them and draw the truth from them even if they killed me for it.

  ‘I’ll stay with you,’ said Will.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is my business. Besides, you have your own work to attend to.’

  ‘But who knows what will happen? Four people are already dead; will you be the fifth?’ He raised his hands, as if in surrender. ‘I won’t interfere. It’s a precaution, that’s all. You’d be wise to take it.’

  He would brook no argument, and in the end I relented. In the meantime, I took my mind off everything with work. There was plenty to do: the herb drying room had to be cleaned out and reorganised, especially as the governors insisted that I was to leave St Saviour’s as soon as possible. All the herbs in the drying room and the apothecary had been bought by my father and me. I would be sure to take them, wherever I went. Besides, the infirmary was already being emptied in readiness for its removal and eventual demolition. The mound of corpses in the churchyard had hastened the process, as the governors were concerned that the miasma was injurious to the health of us all. The world was in turmoil. The scandal that hung over the place – the murders, my father’s confession – had given St Saviour’s a terrible notoriety. Crowds of onlookers still gathered outside, pointing and staring; the physicians and surgeons, the hospital governors, still arrived with the blinds drawn down on their carriages. The patients muttered together, looking at one another fearfully. When I entered the ward, the place fell silent, as if I carried in my pockets poisons to be randomly administered. Out-patients was no different. It appeared that people were prepared to remain ill, or to walk for miles to go to another hospital, rather than be attended by someone by the name of Flockhart.

  Our work in the dry and dusty space of the herb drying room made us thirsty, and at five o’clock I sent Will out for some beer. I knew he would go to Sorley’s, and that Sorley would keep him talking, and I was glad to think of him safe. But there would not be another chance. I stood at the window and looked out across the city, at the darkening sky and the familiar crooked vista of rooftops and chimneys. I heard the stair creak, the scrape of a boot upon the treads, and I knew the time had come.

  I learned later that Dr Magorian had seized poor Will as he left the building, bludgeoning him with the weighted head of his stick, and dragging him into the chapel, that cold, junk-filled place where we had found those six small coffins so many weeks ago. But it was not Dr Magorian who came to me that evening.

  I had wondered whether she would wear the cream hussar trousers, and the short Spencer jacket, but she was dressed as she always was, neat and tidy in her navy blue wool coat; her hands sheathed in white kid; her bonnet pinned to her shiny hair. She clasped her hands, holding them tight beneath her breast, the fingers moving over one another in a repetitive motion, as if trying to rid them of the sticky filaments of a spider’s web. Hooked over her arm was a bag. It swung against her skirts, slow and heavy. She stood in the doorway, her face bone-white in the lamplight, her eyes darting back and forth, searching the shadows for eavesdroppers.

  ‘Will you take a seat, Mrs Magorian?’ I indicated the chair before the stove. As Dr Bain had done on the night he died, I moved a pile of books onto the table top so that the woman might sit down. But whereas I was sure that Mrs Magorian’s appearance at Dr Bain’s house had been unexpected, all that day I had been waiting.

  I sat opposite her. Mrs Magorian looked at me in silence. Had she expected a bustling show of bourgeois courtesy? Tea and cakes? Inquiries about the weather, the state of the roads and the reliability of servants? She wrung her hands together, her gaze still restless. I lounged in my chair, my legs stretched out before me. How well she played the game! But I was as skilled as she. I had acted a part all my life and I could recognise a fellow player when I saw one. There would be no secrets at St Saviour’s, not now. I would hear her confession, and then I would decide what punishment she deserved.

  ‘Where’s your husband?’ I said.

  ‘This is not his concern,’ she replied. Her hands stopped moving. She watched me now as a snake might watch a mouse.

  ‘My father’s dead,’ I said. ‘You killed him as surely as you killed Dr Bain.’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s none of my doing.’

  I felt rage flame inside, as though my blood had been set alight. But
anger would not serve me now. I must stay calm and clear headed. And so I swallowed my fury and answered flatly: ‘It’s no one else’s.’

  Mrs Magorian clicked her tongue, as if bored by my stupidity. Let her think me stupid, I thought. She will soon learn otherwise. ‘I’m here,’ she said, ‘to explain.’

  All at once the trembling bird-like woman had vanished. She looked at me without flinching: the downward gaze she usually had, the subservient bobbing of her head, the slight cant of her body, had all disappeared. Her voice, usually so soft and apologetic, was brisk and commanding. ‘Your father sacrificed himself for you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps that will do something to help you understand the love a parent has for their child. And, given what you are, maybe you can also understand how much a woman longs to be a mother – and the pain of realising that that can never be.’ Her lips twitched in a knowing smile. But I would not let that distract me, not now.

  She had put her bag beside the chair. Now, she took it up and rested it on her knee. ‘I have something here that will explain everything,’ she said. ‘It’s easier if you read it, than for me to try to put it into words.’

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘A journal, of sorts. I kept it during those . . . those difficult years. It explains what took place and why, far better than my own colourless narrative might, especially after so much time has passed.’ She pulled a heavy, hard-backed book from her bag and handed it over. ‘You’ll understand, after you’ve read it, that I can’t let you keep it.’

  ‘You expect me to read it now?’

  She smiled. ‘You have something more pressing to attend to?’

  I held the book tightly in my hands, my eyes fixed upon the white gloved fingers that had passed it to me. It was some ten inches high, and bound with brown morocco. The cover was worn, stained with mould spores and splashes of ink. I opened it, but there was no inscription on the fly leaf, no acknowledgement of ownership. The pages were thick and yellowed, corrugated here and there, as though it had once lain somewhere damp. A floury, dust-like residue was faintly perceptible on my fingertips.