by A S Croyle
“My uncle knows him, Sherlock. He mentioned that he intended to see him on this visit to Scotland.”
Sherlock arched a brow. Then he said, “Dr. Macewen referred James to Dr. John Hughlings Jackson here in London. He has treated epileptics, and a few years ago accurately diagnosed a frontal lobe tumor in a young boy. The parents refused to allow him to operate and the boy died, but they did permit an autopsy and Jackson was able to confirm his diagnosis.”
“Jackson,” I said. “Sherlock, I have heard that name as well. Yes, now I remember. Uncle attended a meeting at the Hunterian Society, right around that time that we... that I met you. Dr. Jackson delivered the Hunterian Oration. He also delivered the Goulstonian lecture to the Royal College of Physicians a few years ago. Neurology is in its infancy, but Dr. Jackson is a pioneer in the field.”
Again, Sherlock arched an eyebrow and nodded.
I recalled that Uncle described Dr. Jackson as an innovative thinker and a prolific writer. He’d read all of his articles in The Lancet.
“I did some research,” Sherlock said.
Of course, he had.
“Dr. Jackson will soon be one of the initial contributors to a new medical journal, The Brain Journal, dedicated to clinical neurology. Its inaugural issue is scheduled for publication later this year. And your uncle is acquainted with him?”
“Uncle is a bit like your brother Mycroft.”
Cutting me off, he scoffed, “He is nothing like Mycroft.”
“I mean, Uncle knows... well, just about anyone who is anyone in the medical field.”
“I must speak with him then, when he returns. When is he coming back to London?”
“Tomorrow evening, I believe. Aunt Susan was disappointed with the schedule. She wanted us to make a day trip on the Princess Alice to Rosherville Gardens at Gravesend.”
All of a sudden, it struck me - something Effie had written about a boat. I shuddered now, remembering her prediction, her warning. I shook off the creeping evil feeling.
“To where?” Sherlock asked.
I had to smile. Sherlock hated to fill his head with trivial things and certainly a lazy afternoon aboard a paddleboat, moving at a leisurely pace along the Thames, or a day of traipsing through pleasure gardens and watching tightrope walkers or listening to the ‘drivel’ of fortune-tellers would not be a priority for him. He had never believed any of Effie’s predictions, though he’d been shaken by her foretelling of the two horrible train collisions of 1874.
“Never mind,” I said. “Did the victim’s wife further elabourate on James’ condition?”
“No. She was quite weepy and rather incoherent.”
“Poor woman,” I said.
“I would rather think to say ‘poor man.’ He might be alive today had she not convinced him to forego the operation Dr. Jackson offered to perform.”
“But we know that Mr. Dixon was poisoned, Sherlock. He did not die of the tumor.”
Then I realized we had not even opened the skull. We had not examined the brain.
“Indeed, he was poisoned. And I believe that when the other bodies are exhumed and I speak to the relatives, we will find some common denominator. The reason that all of them were poisoned, I suspect, was that they had in common something that could not be cured.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, though I knew exactly where he was going.
“If teach man knew that his life was coming to an end, perhaps each of them wanted it to end sooner rather than later... and without suffering. Perhaps they sought the killer out.”
I gulped down a glass of water for suddenly my mouth was dry as sand. “Sherlock, what you’re saying... I have been wondering... thinking-”
“Do not hesitate, Poppy. I realize that most women are secretive but you are not most women. Speak your mind.”
“Well,” I said, “If you are right and all of these men were facing a slow and miserable but imminent death... if they were indeed suffering and unwilling to suffer more-”
“The statue... the Four Truths. You think that is the link. So do I.”
“I don’t know, but-”
I stopped and drank more water. He peered at me, studying my face, piercing through me with those intense blue-grey eyes.
“I am just parched, Sherlock,” I said, draining the glass. “Now I do not know... but if they all were suffering... what if they knew that it would continue right up until death, and they wanted to just put an end to it and they found someone - ?”
“Euthanasia, yes. I concur.”
I nodded, but the word being spoken out loud made me nauseous.
“They were all found in the same way. All of them were peacefully at rest, as if in a coffin,” he muttered, his face shadowed by his racing thoughts. “And the bird and the Buddha were placed right next to their heads! Poppy, you are more brilliant and logical than I thought!”
His face lit up like a child’s viewing fireworks for the first time.
“Could they all have had brain tumors? Could each one of them have been diagnosed with that or something similar?” He was not speaking to me now. He was thinking out loud, probing his brain for the answer. “I think this is a distinct possibility. Poppy you are becoming a most valuable assistant.”
“Is that what I am now?”
“Is that something you do not wish to be? I did not mean it as a term of reproach. Does that moniker somehow demean you?”
“No, I didn’t say that, Sherlock.”
But secretly, I still hoped that I might be so much more.
“So, as I said before,” I said quickly to steer us back to Mr. Dixon’s demise, “you likely have the what, where, when. Perhaps the why is that the victims wished to end their lives. But not who killed these men or why he - or she - did it.”
“Someone who would kill for mercy’s sake.”
“Killing is not mercy,” I said.
“Isn’t mercy the very essence of euthanasia, Poppy? A merciful and serene end to a life that is no longer worth living?”
Once again, everything I had found in my uncle’s desk and library, and his own words, rushed back to me.
19
Uncle Ormond and Aunt Susan were due home late Sunday afternoon or early evening. I spent most of the day contemplating if I should voice my suspicions to Uncle. The logical side of my mind reverberated a resounding ‘No!’ and my emotions kept step. How would I even broach the subject?
Uncle, I noticed you have several recent additions to your library, many of which relate to Tantric Buddhism, the Four Truths and the human condition, to-wit: suffering? Would you care to elabourate on these recent acquisitions and your intense interest in Eastern religion?
Or...
Uncle, why the sudden attentiveness to Buddha and the concept of eliminating suffering? Is there some personal reason for this concentration on the subject?
Or...
Uncle, five men have recently been murdered. Poisoned. In fact, I just assisted the Coroner with an autopsy of one of the victims. Have you heard anything about these events and would you care to share your thoughts?
Or...
Uncle, what are your feelings about euthanasia? Did you kill five men to relieve them of their suffering?
None of those questions could ever cross my lips. I knew that.
I tried to eat something. I couldn’t. I tried to nap, but sleep eluded me, as it had the night before. I spent most of the day reading the books Uncle had purchased on the subject of Buddha and its doctrines. In the late afternoon, I decided to go for a walk.
When I arrived at the steps of the British Museum, I took a deep breath, and went directly to the display case that housed the Buddha. It was a truly beautiful artefact, worthy of its place in the museum.
My mind kept roiling back
to the Four Noble Truths and what I had read in Uncle’s books. The Truths were the essence of the religion and the philosophy entwined within it, and from my meager understanding, I gleaned that those who follow the doctrine believe that suffering simply exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and there is a way to bring about its end. Those who followed the religion did not think of suffering as negative but sensibly regarded it as a part of the world, the world as it is, and something that can be rectified. Pleasure is fleeting and leads only to an ultimately unquenchable thirst. In the end, all that is certain and unavoidable are aging, sickness, and death.
Buddha set forth a way, through the Truths, to deal with the suffering we face, be it physical or mental or emotional, and said that desire and ignorance lie at the root of suffering. He taught that without the capacity for mental concentration and insight, one’s mind does not evolve and cannot grasp the true nature of things. Vices like greed and lust, hate and anger are derived from this ignorance.
It was a very reasonable and utilitarian way to approach the human condition and, though Sherlock subscribed to no religion that I knew of, it was not unlike his own tenets. Ignorance, to Sherlock Holmes, was the weed in the garden that invaded and blighted everything within it. He himself was ignorant of many things, but it was out of choice, for he focused on his own narrow interests and that which was necessary to his work. Nevertheless, he hoarded little packages in his brain attic, like my mother, who liked to purchase odd little gifts throughout the year and put them away for some occasion in the future when she might need them. And like Endelyn Stamford, Sherlock might forget for a time what he stowed away, but he always, always had a vague perception of what was tidied away in storage.
For a short time, I walked along Great Russell Street, and then turned left on Montague, the street where Sherlock lived. I toyed with the idea of dropping in, but he would likely be in the lab at St. Bart’s anyway, fixated on his analysis of the results of the autopsy of James Dixon. I found my way to Russell Square, to Queen Square and Ormond Street, wondering as I always did if this was from whence came Uncle’s name. After a very long meander, I somehow found myself at the Langham Hotel, where I had dined with Sherlock when he briefly visited London after the dog-bite incident that had initially brought us together.
At that time, the deep wound left behind by my dog and the sprained ankle that had not yet healed required that Sherlock remain on crutches but he had still made his way by train to London for a short visit. Over dinner, we discussed the baby farming investigation. Then a page and I helped Sherlock to his room. It was there he admitted he had feelings for me.
He showed me some books he had ordered to read during his visit. He talked about the room he was in - supposedly haunted. Just before I left, he encircled my wrist with those long fingers of his and said, “I just wanted a moment alone with you. You are a woman of soul and you touch mine - if indeed I have one - in a most unusual way.”
And then he pulled me close. My lips were an inch from his and I could feel the heat of his breath on my cheek.
I could have cried out, but I did not. Instead, I brushed my lips tenderly against his cheek. Then I ran from the room because I realized at that moment how much he meant to me... and how dangerous those feelings were.
Now, standing at the entrance to the hotel, all those recollections flooded back. I quickly turned to make my way home. As soon as I arrived, I took Little Elihu for a short walk, but suddenly I was exhausted and hoped that savoring those tender moments at the Langham, memories that were burned into my brain, would help me drift to sleep. I took off my dress, slipped into bed in my petticoats, and fell into a deep slumber.
I woke to hard knocking at the door. Night had fallen and there was no indication that Uncle Ormond and Aunt Susan had returned. I wondered if they had forgotten their key. I threw on a dressing gown and slippers, dashed to the door and opened it.
My brother Michael stood there, hair askew and plastered to his forehead, his face ashen in the pale light of the gaslamp above the entryway.
“Michael, what is it? What’s wrong? Is it the baby?”
“No, he’s fine. But Poppy, there has been a terrible disaster on the Thames.”
“What?”
He brushed past me and we stood in the foyer. “A paddleboat. A paddleboat and some kind of iron cargo boat collided.”
“What?”
“Just a few hours ago,” Michael said, breathlessly. “Around half seven near Tripcock Point and Galleons Reach.”
“My God, Michael, no!”
“I am on my way to Roff’s Pier, to the steamboat offices, to see if I can be of assistance. Will you come?”
I cast off my slumber with my slippers, hastily changed and grabbed Uncle’s medical bag, which, unlike my own, contained the most advanced surgical instruments and medications.
When we got to the pier, it was chaos and mayhem. Hundreds of people had already gathered to try to learn more about the extent of the wreck on the river and to try to find relatives and friends who had been aboard the Princess Alice.
The boat named for the princess, I thought, again recalling Effie’s words.
20
I had thought that no horror could match what I had witnessed in Norfolk at the train collision. Too soon, I was proved wrong.
Chaos, panic, and mayhem really do not adequately describe the scene on Roff’s Pier. Londoners were accustomed to fog, fire, riots, murders, and war - certainly war - but to witness the aftermath of this catastrophe right here on the Thames, to know that hundreds of passengers who had gleefully boarded the paddleboat near London Bridge that morning would never be seen again, was unfathomable.
Uncle had, over the years, become somewhat calloused to affliction and pain, and at the train wreck, I had somehow forced myself to harden, to momentarily filter out the gore and tragedy and misery enough to treat the injured, to move from one patient to the next, as is required in triage situations. My uncle’s words at the train wreck when I started to fall apart echoed in my mind now. “Get hold.”
But I was still often governed by my emotions, still vulnerable to empathy, perhaps because I refused to lose it, choosing rather to harbour that attribute to some degree, or perhaps Sherlock had awakened in me emotions that I had chosen to bury before.
Although Sherlock’s general admonishment of religion still rang in my ears, I found myself briefly given to prayer. Though my great joy came from immersing myself in living in the present and how I might impact people’s lives and be of help through my profession, and though I was reluctant to rely upon any promise of a ‘better place,’ I suppose I was unable to entirely abandon my faith. The particular brand of despair I was about to face once again - irrevocable injury and loss, fear, grief, sorrow and death... and the inconsolable people who were left behind... forced me to summon to my mind a kinder motif in the hereafter for the lost souls. I longed to believe in heaven, in a spot in the beyond with trees ripe with buds that hang like tapioca pearls and rosy blossoms. A place with humming rivers and streams, where babies, pink and wrinkled, remain forever nestled in soft grace and peaceful slumber. A place where aching eyes lift to the white trails of drifting clouds as the heavens filled with the sound of a choir of angels, whose throats swell with a fiercely joyous hymn.
As I treated the people who had almost drowned, I could not help but ponder those still in that river, and the immensity of the loss was almost too much to bear. It seemed to me that even the most heartless and insenstive person would forever see this madness in his dreams.
But there were those who found it within themselves to gather the facts and tell the affrighted, waiting world the number of casualties, the details, the news as it evolved. This task, and discerning exactly what had caused the calamity, fell to the reporters, spewing the information to the telegraph clerks at the post office, and to the authorities. And, of cours
e, to Sherlock Holmes.
I did not seek out Sherlock nor did I see him at the London Steamboat Company’s office at the wharf. Michael and I were too occupied with the mission at hand. Other doctors arrived quickly to lend a hand, of course, as well as clergy, police and the entire Woolwich community, who had congregated on the shore, most waiting for a scrap of news of loved ones. The sorrow on each face was palpable.
I was reminded of something Effie used to say. How drastically life can change in the span of a single moment.
At Rosherville Gardens at Gravesend - the very gardens which my uncle, aunt and I had talked about visiting that fine, sunny day until a glitch in Uncle’s schedule prevented it - the news had cast a black pall over the area. The music and dancing stopped... for some, forever.
We had few details at that point. We knew that a steamboat, the Princess Alice, a 252-ton Paddle Steamer and one of the most popular of the excursion pleasure crafts on the Thames, left Gravesend at about six o’clock in the evening and was within sight of the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, by eight. She was filled with some seven hundred merry day-trippers, many of them children eating oranges on deck and parents. No one was worried. On the bridge was Captain Grinstead, who had twenty years’ experience, and Mr. Long, his first mate. It had been a perfect sunny day, the river was smooth as glass, and they had spent a joyful day at Rosherville, officially known as the Kent Zoological and Botanical Gardens. It was advertised as “The Place to Spend a Happy Day.” As the sun sank, many sang and danced while the ship’s band played as the steamer cruised up river. None anticipated that the trip home would be cut short at Tripcocks Point near North Woolwich.
Between London Bridge and Gravesend, the river winds with its biggest bend at Gallion’s Reach. The ship hugged the bank to fight against the ebb. The moon was rising and she was in sight of North Woolwich Pier, half-way down the Reach near the city’s gasworks at Beckton when a Collier, the Bywell Castle, approached Tripcock Point. The Bywell was heading down river. The two ships were near the middle of the river.
