Soul

by Tobsha Learner

  A murmur swept through the court. Samuel glanced down. The judge was shuffling in to take his chair; his potbelly seeming to balance on thin spindly legs occasionally visible beneath his gown, his face a pockmarked mask below the powdered wig.

  The hammering of his gavel brought the scraping of chairs, the clearing of throats and the low murmuring of those who had congregated along the wooden rows to an end. A court official in black robes stood up.

  ‘The fourth day of the trial of Mrs Colonel Lavinia Huntington and Aloysius O’Malley, both of whom stand here today accused by the Crown of the murder of the late Colonel James Edwin Huntington on the sixteenth day of September in the year of Our Lord eighteen sixty-one.’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘The prosecution calls to the witness box Doctor Jefferies, a noted phrenologist,’ he announced portentously.

  Turning, Mr Erasmus Elijah Cohen studied the pale young woman. She must have been a beauty once, he observed, but anxiety had etched her face and her skin was drawn. Mr Cohen’s forte was moral outrage: he was rumoured to be able to make a martyr out of an assassin, as long as there was enough raw material for him to construct a heart-wrenching fiction, the basic requirements being that the accused was female, young, of pleasant demeanour and preferably of genteel origin. Of Mrs Huntington’s innocence he had not a doubt, and if there was any ambiguity he had not allowed it to penetrate his reasoning—like all good defence barristers.

  As for the Irishman, his was a harder case to prove. Aloysius O’Malley’s sudden dismissal gave him some motive, as did the accusation that he was Mrs Huntington’s lover. However, four witnesses had placed him ten miles from the scene at the time of the murder.

  Erasmus Cohen reached over and squeezed Lavinia’s hand reassuringly. ‘Fear not.’

  ‘But he has examined me and will have damning evidence.’

  ‘Phrenology, my dear girl, is the science of absolute speculation. In other words, total tosh, and I intend to expose the charlatan.’

  Dr Jefferies, several charts tucked under his arm, the shiny orb of his bald head looking particularly prominent, took his place in the witness box. The prosecutor, Mr Abby, an ambitious zealot of some forty years with the unpleasant habit of finishing each sentence by poking the air with a long, sharp index finger, as if reiteration meant truth, strode to the front of the jury box. He waited until Dr Jefferies had finished proclaiming the obligatory oath then launched into his examination of the witness.

  ‘Is it true that on the fifteenth of April this year you assessed the accused at the request of her husband for symptoms of hysteria?’

  ‘It is true.’

  ‘And this visit had been preceded by an act of violence committed by Mrs Huntington upon her husband, unprompted by any provocation of his own.’

  Erasmus Cohen leapt to his feet. ‘Objection! Your Honour, unless Dr Jefferies was witness to that act of violence, there is no way of verifying the statement.’

  ‘Objection sustained. Dr Jefferies, pray continue.’

  The phrenologist nodded importantly. ‘Colonel Huntington, who himself was a respected expert on phrenology, had expressed a concern that because of the violent and unpredicted mood swings of his wife, which had culminated in an injury to his head, so he told me, and Mrs Lavinia Huntington’s physical restlessness and nervous disposition, which appeared to have worsened since the birth of her child, that she may possibly be suffering from hysteria. He requested that I examine her skull for such characteristics—’

  ‘Which you did.’ Mr Abby seemed disinclined to be left out of proceedings.

  ‘Indeed.’ Dr Jefferies unrolled two charts and a court clerk then hung them from a display stand for all the court to see.

  The phrenologist pointed to the first chart. ‘This shows the skull of a normal woman—one, in fact, who displays a great facility for maternal warmth, indicated in the dip just here at the left of the cranium. The other chart shows Mrs Lavinia Huntington’s skull. Here is the equivalent area: note there is a slight rise—this would appear to indicate that Mrs Huntington was, and is still, lacking in maternal love.’

  Again Erasmus leapt to his feet. ‘Objection, Your Honour. This is irrelevant information. A lack of maternal affection does not make one a murderess.’

  ‘Objection sustained. Continue, Dr Jefferies.’

  Dr Jefferies shifted his finger to another area on the second chart. ‘But what we are concerned with today is this projection. Set firmly in the right lobe, it is a clear indication of severe hysteria—almost certainly untreatable.’

  The prosecutor, watching the jurors’ reaction, waited until the phrenologist’s words had taken effect, then turned to the judge. ‘Thank you, Your Honour. That is all for today.’

  Mr Cohen stood. Posing with his chin in his hand, he seemed the embodiment of classical contemplation. After a long sigh, he turned to Dr Jefferies.

  ‘Tell me, why would Colonel Huntington, himself a minor authority on phrenology, allow his wife to continue to assist him if he thought she was mentally unstable?’

  ‘That is a question that lies between a man and his wife. I suppose that he loved her.’

  ‘Would it not be that he trusted her?’ The defence lawyer directed the question towards the twelve seated men, as if they were the great moral arbiters upon whom he depended.

  ‘Dr Jefferies, you are considered to be an impeccable authority in your field?’ he continued.

  ‘I am indeed.’

  ‘In that case, would you agree to a little test?’

  ‘Objection, Your Honour,’ the prosecutor shouted to the bench.

  The judge, after glancing at Erasmus, shrugged. ‘Objection denied. Continue, Mr Cohen.’

  ‘Dr Jefferies, I repeat, will you agree to have your professionalism put to a little harmless test?’

  ‘I will.’

  Erasmus turned to his assistant, a thin dark Hebrew who looked as if he might be his son. At a nod from the barrister, the youth pulled the top half of a skull from a sack at his feet. There was a ripple of expectation throughout the courtroom. With a flourish, he handed it to Erasmus who then placed the skull on the witness stand before Dr Jefferies.

  ‘I wish you to diagnose the skull before you,’ he said, ‘from a phrenologist’s point of view. That is, to describe in as much detail as you can deduct from the cavities and bumps of the skull the psychology of its original owner.’

  Picking up the skull, Dr Jefferies, his eyes shut, ran his fingers across the white bone almost as if he were caressing it.

  ‘It belonged to a Caucasian female, approximately thirty years of age at death,’ he pronounced. ‘She was affectionate, poetic, given to frugality. She had an overly developed penchant for spirituality—moreover, for any religious activity—but also was not unknown to suffer occasional fits of rage. In fact, I would venture to say that she might have been an artist of some kind.’

  ‘Indeed, Dr Jefferies, she was an artist of some kind.’

  The spectators gasped at the prophetic skills of the esteemed scientist. Acknowledging the faint applause, Dr Jefferies smiled smugly. Erasmus raised his arms to silence them.

  ‘She was an artist of some kind, sir, because the skull belonged to Bobo, a deceased member of the troupe of performing chimpanzees with Monsieur Flaubert’s travelling circus.’

  The spectators’ admiration swung instantly to ridicule and the courtroom was filled with loud laughter. Banging his gavel, the judge tried in vain to regain order, while Erasmus shouted over the commotion.

  ‘I put it to you, sir, that the art of phrenology is an unproven science! It is mere conjuncture, open to manipulation of the most unethical kind!’

  Dr Jefferies, flushed, spun around in the witness box. ‘How dare you, sir! I have it on the utmost authority that Colonel Huntington was indeed attacked by his wife, and indeed she did, and still does, suffer from hysteria!’

  ‘While you, sir, suffer from a surplus of imagination!’ the barrister fired back.

  His
eyes glued to the two accused, Samuel observed Lavinia’s glance towards the rows behind him. He turned to see a cleric sitting there, a man in his late fifties with an air of anguish about him that isolated him from those around him. Lavinia faltered as she met the man’s eyes, and she seemed to shrink further into her prison smock. The cleric soberly indicated his heart then the leather-bound Bible he held in his left hand, and Samuel realised this must be Lavinia Huntington’s father, of whom Aloysius had spoken.

  71

  Los Angeles, 2002

  GABRIEL STRETCHED ACROSS THE BED. He’d been back from the laboratory for a hour, but the contents of the envelope kept skipping across his mind like an unsolved puzzle. His mother was at the back of the apartment preparing coursework; through the wall he could hear the muffled sound of his neighbour arguing with his wife; the day’s research lay filed and finished in the briefcase at his feet; the shifting planes of normalcy that constructed Gabriel’s world seemed more or less intact. Except for Julia; except for the niggling thought that beat just under his consciousness.

  He switched on his favourite Death Metal album and lay there as the music bored its way through his brain; a pounding rhythm that lulled him into a torpor. Then he reached for a spliff he’d rolled that morning. Still with the headphones on, he went to the window and pulled it open. It was a classic Californian fall afternoon; there was the faint smell of wood fires on the breeze, and a humming bird suddenly appeared, wings whirling invisibly as it hovered over a late-blossoming bird of paradise plant. Gabriel switched off his Walkman, thinking the barely audible beat might scare it away. They were magical, he thought, these creatures, part-bird, part-insect—an example of the wonder of evolution, adaptation by default.

  The colours of the small overgrown yard intensified by a couple of notches and he exhaled. The anxiety was still there, but this time he could see it clearly. And the shape of it was Julia—Julia and her ex-husband. With his hands on the window sill, Gabriel leaned out, closed his eyes and sucked in all of the horizon with one breath. The scents, sounds and the warmth of the sunlight jangled in his mind, a myriad of sensation, and the restlessness and energy of youth shot down to his heels.

  It was then that he remembered Julia’s face the last time he saw her—her forced laughter, her fingers twisting the phone cable as she talked to Klaus. Apprehensive, Gabriel reached for his cell phone and rang both her numbers—first her cell then the landline. Both were switched off.

  ‘It seems sensible, you know, to put the house on the market, get the best price we can, then go fifty-fifty,’ Klaus said, scooping up a forkful of rice.

  ‘Despite the fact that it was my inheritance and my income that paid for most of it.’

  ‘I’m not responsible for the divorce laws in this state. But I am leaving you most of the furniture.’

  Julia’s fury rose, uncomfortably like bile. She stared at her plate; her food was almost untouched. Hoping Klaus wouldn’t notice, she poured them both another glass of wine. It was still their first bottle. She planned to get him drunk; that way it would be easier. Oblivious, Klaus cheerfully helped himself to another serve of paella.

  ‘I’m so glad we can be civilised about this, and that we can be friends. I mean, you have to understand that my feelings might have changed but the depth of them hasn’t.’

  Julia looked down at the knife, resting across her dish stained with the saffron of the paella. It was sharp, razor-sharp.

  ‘In fact, both Carla and I are looking forward to having you in our lives. And, of course, our child’s…’ It was then that he noticed her trembling hand.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Fine. I’d like that.’

  Klaus reached out and rested his fingers over hers. His touch was completely neutral, almost paternal.

  ‘What you have to comprehend is that some events are out of our control, Julia.’

  Julia pulled her hand away and stood suddenly, the chair shrieking as it scraped back across the wooden floor. ‘I think it’s time I opened another bottle.’

  ‘Really? But we’ve only just finished this—’

  ‘Ahh, but this one’s special. A Margaux.’

  ‘You sure? I mean, you might want to open it when you’ve finished the report, or maybe have someone more deserving to celebrate with?’

  ‘Believe me, I regard this as enough of a celebration.’

  Julia moved into the adjoining kitchen, where she leaned against the wall, her will momentarily wavering as she struggled with a pervading sense of predetermination. What was the sequence of events that had led her to this juncture? Did it matter? Klaus had betrayed her, had betrayed their child and their marriage. How could he sit there now, indifferent to the terrible destruction he was responsible for? What did she have left?

  Gabriel’s calf muscles burned as he laboured up the hill, the bicycle wheels flattening against the tarmac with his weight. He reached the crest and freewheeled wildly down the other side. Nothing could halt the instinctive momentum propelling him towards Julia’s house.

  72

  London, 1861

  MR HAMISH CAMPBELL TOOK THE witness stand. Despite a certain gauntness, the young man appeared composed. In fact, his grieving reverberated far deeper than he could have possibly imagined. This had been his only solace: that their affection had made him conscious that he was capable of such a depth of emotion. After the Colonel’s death, he had retreated to the sanctuary of his parents’ house in the North country; his father’s unquestioning joy and pride at the return of the prodigal son a balm to the terrible absence Hamish would now carry forever.

  The student had not forgotten his own ambitions, but his mentor’s death had given him cause to reconsider both his studies and his future plans. He had resolved to complete his lover’s writings, continuing in the manner he imagined the Colonel would have wanted.

  Under the scrutiny of the whole court he tried to stop his legs shaking. Thankfully, they were hidden by the high podium. He was there after much persuasion by the prosecution, but he also wanted justice. Had James accidentally killed himself? Why had he chosen Lavinia to assist at the ritual and not himself, even after Hamish had tried to warn him of the dangers?

  He could not know the Colonel’s mind—least of all now—but he did know that James Huntington had deserved to live a full life. Pouring his grief into a public crusade, which had involved letters to The Times, a lecture at the Institute for the Advancement of Science, as well as several more private campaigns at the Carlton, Hamish Campbell had convinced himself that Lavinia was guilty.

  Up in the public gallery, a tall, once-handsome, red-headed woman dressed in a tight-fitting day dress, slipped through the door and wound her way to an empty seat next to the Reverend Kane. The cleric sat with his Bible clutched in one hand, his jaw set tightly against the indignity of the circumstances. Turning to acknowledge the woman’s presence, he startled and dropped his Bible.

  ‘Meredith?’ he said aloud, only to be hushed by the surrounding spectators.

  Meredith Murphy bent down and retrieved his Bible. ‘The devil herself, back from the grave,’ she replied as she handed back the sacred book.

  In the witness box, Hamish Campbell was giving evidence about the rite the Colonel had been engaged in at the time of his death. He sensed a wave of support from the jurors, a gleam of friendly recognition for a well-dressed gentleman of refined appearance, someone from their own class, someone for whom they felt some natural empathy.

  ‘Colonel Huntington had informed me that he intended to carry out the ritual, which was based on a similar experience he had undergone when living with the Bakairi tribe in the Amazon jungle,’ the student’s voice rang out confident.

  ‘And had he also informed you that he had asked his wife to assist him in this instance?’ Erasmus encased his question with a polite, non-accusatory tone.

  Hamish hesitated, then glanced over at Lavinia, who looked back at him blankly. This was the first time he had seen her sinc
e the constable had banged on his door to inform him of the terrible event.

  ‘He had.’

  ‘And why, do you think, he chose her and not you, his associate, to assist him?’

  ‘I can only surmise it was because she had been preparing a pamphlet, under his instruction, on the hallucinogenic flora involved in the preparation of the brew used in the ritual. I believe he wanted her to bear witness as a scientific observer.’

  ‘Surely it was because he trusted her? Because he trusted her with his life?’

  ‘If so, it was a trust ill-placed,’ Hamish retorted passionately.

  The court broke out into a commotion and the judge was forced to bang his mallet furiously. ‘Order! Order!’ he cried.

  The room quieted. Erasmus paced up and down in front of the jury.

  ‘Tell me, would it not be true to say that the deceased and yourself had a close…a very close friendship?’ he asked Hamish.

  ‘As is appropriate between a mentor and his protégé.’

  ‘Protégé. A grand word, Mr Campbell. Is it not also true that Colonel Huntington was known to indulge frequently in the consumption of opium, and that you joined him on these occasions?’

  ‘I don’t see how that is relevant.’

  ‘It is relevant, Mr Campbell, because it may be possible that Colonel Huntington suffered an accidental death at his own hands.’

  ‘Colonel Huntington was experienced in these matters.’