by Tessa Harris
“Ve need to find out who vas responsible for ze captain’s death,” she said, reaching for the calling card propped up against the mantel clock. “And I think I know ze man who might be able to tell us.”
Hardacre’s apothecary shop lay not five minutes away from Hollen Street. Over the past few weeks it had become a regular haunt of Oliver Carruthers. Mr. Hardacre was, by now, used to welcoming the erudite gentleman from India, with his tall frame, slightly stooped gait, and melancholy air. The main thing was he always left happy, even though he might have been a shilling or two lighter.
That morning, as soon as the apothecary clapped eyes on his regular customer, he signaled him into the back of his shop. Dipping low through an archway screened by a thick velvet curtain, the professor was received by Mistress Hardacre, a homely woman with a large bosom and a broad smile. She led him into a darkened room, where the heavy red drapes were always drawn and the banter was always the same.
“Good day, Professor. A fine day, sir.” Or: “A cold day, sir.” Or: “A wet and most miserable day, sir.” But whatever the weather outside, Oliver Carruthers knew that he could always look forward to the warm embrace afforded by the bountiful poppy.
As usual he settled himself onto a sizable daybed to enjoy a pleasurable smoke. Mistress Hardacre handed him a freshly prepared pipe, and he lit it, as he always did, with a relish and anticipation of the ecstasy to come. In such a state he would spend a good two or three hours each day, drifting off into a state of unparalleled pleasure afforded by the opium. Sometimes he was joined by other gentlemen—Mr. Markham from Benares, for one, might occasionally imbibe—sometimes not. It did not trouble him because his mind was elsewhere, flying over the mountains of the Himalayas or swimming in the coral seas of the Bay of Bengal. Swathed in the sweetest of exotic smells, he became oblivious to all his troubles. The past and the future became irrelevant. He was living in the glorious moment. Nothing else mattered. Nothing and no one. For a few hours each day he could be at peace with himself and all was right in his fantastical world. The problem was that reality, when he returned to it, was becoming increasingly difficult to bear.
Chapter 45
Thomas’s eye sockets felt as though they were full of gravel, and his chest wound was throbbing again. He had spent the rest of the afternoon in the laboratory, writing up his postmortem report on Flynn. He therefore welcomed the tapping of Dr. Carruthers’s stick on the flagstones outside. A moment later the door opened and in his mentor walked.
“I heard what you said to Sir Theo,” he told Thomas without ceremony.
Thomas looked puzzled. “Oh?”
“That you are at a complete loss when it comes to getting to the bottom of Sir Montagu’s murder, not to mention the other terrible goings-on.”
Thomas was glad the old anatomist could not see his expression. He hated to admit defeat, but on this occasion he felt his dogged determination alone was not enough to solve all four murders. He needed a stroke of luck—a coincidence, an unintended consequence—to fire him up once more. He was going ’round in circles, chasing his tail, looking for a motive for murder. And he feared that the longer he did so, the more likely it was that the killer or killers would strike again.
“Do you have chalk, dear boy?” asked his mentor, settling himself down on his customary stool.
A large rectangle of slate covered one wall of the laboratory above a workbench. It was where Thomas sometimes formulated his physic and made various calculations, or left aide-mémoires to himself. He reached for a piece of chalk from a jar. “I am ready, sir,” he said, walking over to the slate.
“Then let us get to work,” pressed Carruthers. “We have four men dead, and you have conducted four postmortems. Is there anything that links all of them?”
Thomas, his sheaves of notes in front of him, had asked himself the same question many times over. The answer remained unchanged. He began to write on the slate. “In the cases of Sir Montagu, the servant, and Flynn, there were traces of the same coir rope on the bodies. In the cases of Sir Montagu and Lupton, the injuries were inflicted by a curved blade. In the case of the servant and Flynn, Indian torture methods were employed. There was also an Indian word carved on the servant’s chest.” He chalked up the word “gaddar” on the board, then went on: “The bloody footprints in Sir Montagu’s study may have been made by an Indian slipper. The smell of opium was also detected at the scene of Sir Montagu’s murder and on the servant’s body.”
“So your thoughts at the moment veer to . . . ?” The old anatomist threw out an open-ended question as Thomas studied his jottings on the slate. When the reply came, it reconfirmed his initial suspicions.
“India,” said Thomas. “The motive for these murders lay there.”
“India?” repeated Carruthers. He rubbed his chin in thought; then, as if picking up on the thread of Thomas’s thought, he began to nod vigorously. “Flynn was with Farrell and Lavington in India, yes?”
“Yes, sir.” Thomas nodded.
“And Motte, too?”
Again Thomas nodded. “Yes, he was known to them, as well.”
“But Motte is in jail, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So who else may be caught up in this tangled web?”
The chalk remained poised over the slate as Thomas considered his mentor’s question.
“Did you not mention other East India Company associates?” asked Carruthers.
For a moment Thomas was puzzled; then he grasped the old doctor’s meaning. He thought of the awkward dinner party and how he had been rounded upon afterward by two of Hastings’s allies: the weasel-faced opium smoker and the bottle-bloated military man, who clearly pulled strings on behalf of Warren Hastings. “Markham and Scott,” he murmured. He paused to gather his thoughts. “They were probably trying to track down Flynn, too. You are right, sir, although Markham arrived in England too late to have killed Sir Montagu.”
“And Scott?” asked the old anatomist. “Did you not tell me that he was sent on ahead to prepare everything for Mrs. Hastings’s visit?”
Thomas’s eyes opened wide. “I most certainly did,” he said, remembering that he had read out a newspaper report to that effect to his mentor a few weeks back. He hurried to a drawer and rifled through it, pulling out an old newssheet and scanning it quickly. “You are right, sir,” he said, slapping the paper.
Carruthers nodded his head. “So it is possible that he commissioned the murder. He must have several men, Indians, under his command.”
Putting down his chalk, Thomas marched over to his desk and picked up a note he’d received earlier in the afternoon. It was an invitation to take supper with Marian Hastings at South Street the day after next. “Yes, sir,” he replied. “The governor-general’s cronies certainly have some questions to answer.”
“But you do not sound convinced?” The old anatomist, sensing that Thomas was holding back, handed him the opportunity to raise a very thorny issue.
Thomas took it, even though there was no easy way to put it. He braced himself. “There is one other person within the frame of my suspicion, sir.” He could not believe that his words had tumbled out so clumsily.
“Oh?”
Thomas saw his mentor’s nose twitch. He sniffed trouble, he could tell. But the die was cast.
“Professor Carruthers.”
“Oliver?”
“You are aware, sir, that your brother smokes opium?”
Carruthers frowned and puffed out his chest defensively. “’Tis not a crime to partake of the poppy,” he huffed. “Did not the great Dr. Johnson say only recently that ‘no happiness in the world can surpass the charms of this agreeable ecstasy’?”
Thomas disagreed. “No, sir, ’tis not illegal to smoke opium. But you know as well as I that such narcotics can sometimes prove addictive, not to mention poisonous. They can also induce the most irrational and pernicious behavior in people.”
Both the old anatomist’s brows shot up simult
aneously, and he nodded slowly. “And these latest killings bear all the hallmarks of a crazed mind acting under the influence of narcotics.”
Thomas nodded. “Certainly the deaths of the Indian and of Flynn showed utter depravity which may well have been induced by opium.”
Dr. Carruthers’s brow dipped. “Surely you cannot be suggesting. . . ?”
Thomas felt his chest tighten. “This is not easy for me, sir. And I know it cannot be easy for you to hear, either . . .” he began.
“But . . .” The old anatomist straightened his back as if tensing himself for an assault.
Thomas reluctantly took the plunge: “. . . but we are conjecturing that whoever murdered Sir Montagu, the Indian servant, Lupton, and of course Flynn had recently arrived from India. Furthermore the person, or persons, was well versed in Indian customs and methods of torture and may have acted under the influence of opium as they carried out these heinous crimes.”
Dr. Carruthers remained stony-faced. “You will need more than that for a conviction.”
“I fear there is more, sir,” replied Thomas. “Apparently the professor’s servant was tasked to boil his master’s clothes in the copper the night after the murder of the Indian.”
Carruthers inhaled deeply. “Who told you that?”
“Mistress Finesilver mentioned it, sir.”
“Blah! That woman!” barked the old anatomist, sticking out his tongue to show his disapproval. “I do not believe it.” He hit the floor hard with his stick. “I cannot believe it, Thomas! What possible motive could Oliver have for murder?”
Thomas knew he needed to recap. The doctor was not cognizant with all of the facts. “Whoever killed Sir Montagu may have done so thinking he was James Lavington, sir.”
“What? The braggart lawyer who did for Farrell?”
“The very same, sir. Captain Flynn only discovered he was dead when he visited Boughton. There was no question that he arranged for the theft of the diamond. But it always puzzled me, if the diamond was in Flynn’s possession, why he should return to kill Sir Montagu. It made no sense.”
“And what did you conclude?”
“That whoever killed Sir Montagu mistook him for James Lavington, because they believed he had whatever they wanted in his possession. At first I thought it was the diamond. I supposed Flynn’s servant had been so cruelly tortured in order to obtain information about the stone. But no. Lupton was set on Flynn’s trail and was lured into a trap in the warehouse. He was a hindrance. No more. That’s why he was attacked but allowed to escape, only to bleed to death. That leaves us with Flynn himself. Again he was tortured, but I found the diamond stuck in his gullet.”
“Good God, no! The diamond? In his gullet?”
Thomas had not had time to inform his mentor of his findings earlier. “I was as shocked as you, sir.”
The old anatomist shook his snowy head. “But that means the diamond was not the motive for all these murders.”
“Precisely, sir. The killer, or killers, is after something else.”
“A bigger prize?”
“Much bigger.”
“And you know what?”
“I believe I do.” Thomas backed away from the slate. “I believe Michael Farrell had in his possession an ancient Sanskrit map of a region that was virtually unexplored, just north of Golconda, and certainly unexploited. He had heard that the most enormous gemstones, bigger than anything as yet mined, were still to be unearthed.”
“You sound most sure of yourself,” remarked Carruthers, tapping the flagstones with his stick.
“I have something here,” replied Thomas, crossing over to his desk and pulling out a small leather-bound book. “I came across this account of an excursion undertaken by Thomas Motte.”
“Motte?” repeated the old anatomist. “The man married to Mrs. Hastings’s companion?”
“The same Thomas Motte who now lies in a debtors’ prison,” said Thomas with a nod. “He was employed by Lord Clive on a mission to Sumbhulpoor to open a trade in diamonds with that country. He wrote a detailed account of his travels, and I happened to find a copy in the library at Boughton.”
On his last visit to the hall, Thomas had trawled the well-stocked shelves looking for works pertaining to India. Quite by chance he stumbled across an intriguing document entitled Narrative of a Journey to the Diamond Mines at Sumbhulpoor in the Province of Orissa. He went on: “I had hoped to discover something about Indian curved swords in light of the postmortem on Sir Montagu, but events overtook me. I pocketed the work, but the volume remained closed,” he explained.
It was only since the ill-fated dinner party with Marian Hastings that he had realized its significance. Earlier in the day, he had managed to grab a few minutes to read the account and had been amazed by what he found. He set the book down by his mentor and opened it. “Motte tells how he journeyed to a far-off land where he found several mines full of priceless stones. It is said he also came back with a map.”
“Interesting,” commented Carruthers.
“And when Farrell and Lavington returned to England, I do not believe they returned empty-handed.”
“No?”
“By fair means or foul, Farrell managed to obtain the map—a map that, unbeknownst to Motte, is the key to the ancient diamond mines.”
“And you think this map is here, in England?”
“I firmly do. And I believe the killer does, too.”
Carruthers took a deep breath, as if to ready himself for what he was about to say. “By ‘killer,’ you mean my brother?” The words left his mouth like ashes.
Thomas had been uneasy about Mistress Finesilver’s complaint that Sajiv had been boiling clothes for his master, but when the professor had produced a curved dagger at tea, his suspicions were aroused even further.
“There is only one way to find out if that is so, sir.”
His mentor nodded slowly. “You want to set a trap?” He always read from the same page. “You want to set a trap for my brother and his naukar?”
Thomas loathed himself for suggesting it, but as much as it pained him, he hoped such a gamble would be worth the risk.
Dr. Carruthers sighed deeply, mulling over the proposition. He closed his watery, unseeing eyes, as if to blur the thought. Finally he replied: “I will, but only to prove you wrong.” He jabbed a finger toward his protégé. “A negative proof will suffice on this occasion.”
Thomas very much hoped that would be the case. “I know it is hard for you, sir.”
Carruthers managed to pull his lips into a smile to reassure the doctor that he understood the need to take such action. “What do you propose?”
Still feeling uneasy about such underhanded methods, Thomas nevertheless outlined his plan. “I suggest you tell the professor that an acquaintance of Flynn’s has come forward with some of the captain’s effects and that among them was a map. Tell him it is stored here, in the laboratory, and will be taken to the coroner on the morrow. If the map is still here in the morning, then the professor will be exonerated. He will not realize he has been tested and will be none the wiser.”
“And if it is gone?”
“Then your brother will not be the honorable man I believe him to be.”
The old doctor lifted his head toward Thomas. “I have your word that, if the map remains, he will never know of this?”
Thomas walked forward and shook his mentor’s hand. “My word.”
“Very well.” Carruthers nodded emphatically.
Just as Thomas patted his mentor on the arm, Franklin, who had been shuffling in the corner by the window, let out a squeak and ran for his cage.
“What ails the rat?” asked the old anatomist.
Thomas looked toward Franklin, suddenly eclipsed by a shadow. The loss of light from the window high up in the wall had unsettled the creature. Thomas looked up to see the shadow fall away. “A fly, sir. Only a fly,” he replied, even though he had the distinct impression someone had been listening to their
conversation.
Chapter 46
The offices of Hoxton & Fothergill lay within the vast precincts of Lincoln’s Inn. Lydia recognized the place from her dealings with the late Charles Byrne, also known as the Irish Giant. As her carriage swept through the New Archway, she saw dozens of lawyers swathed in black gowns scurrying about. The very sight of them filled her with dread after all she had suffered at the hands of at least three of their kind.
Sir Theodisius, seated beside her in the coach, patted her hand reassuringly. “You look nervous, my dear.”
“Should I not be?” she asked with an anxious smile.
He shook his head. “This is a mere formality. I am sure of that.”
On their arrival a somber-looking clerk led the pair of them into a dark office. Much of the daylight was blocked out by piles of legal ledgers and bills that leaned precariously in front of the small windows.
Behind a commodious desk that made him look even smaller than he actually was sat Gilbert Fothergill. If Sir Montagu had been a raven, then his clerk was a sparrow, all disheveled and fidgety, thought Lydia. He rose to greet his visitors. Although he had spent much of his time in Sir Montagu’s employ, it seemed he was also in partnership with another solicitor, and now acted as the deceased’s attorney.
“My condolences once again, m’lady,” he told Lydia. She nodded graciously, even though she felt nothing but loathing for the little man. He had, after all, colluded to have her committed to Bedlam. He was not to be trusted. “So,” he said, busying his hands with the papers in front of him, “shall we begin?”
“The sooner, the better, man.” Sir Theodisius felt almost as much contempt for Fothergill as Lydia, although he was prepared to show his feelings.
“Very good, sir,” he replied, peering over his spectacles. He cleared his throat. “I, Montagu Henry Ambrose Malthus, being of sound mind, do hereby revoke all former testamentary dispositions made by me and declare this to be my last will and testament.” Fothergill’s eyes darted from Lydia to Sir Theodisius and back.
