Printer's Devil Court

by Susan Hill

  Seconds later, I seemed to be dissolving too and then the stones around me and the walls of the church, all seemed to shimmer and fade and then go black.

  I surfaced from a swirl of nightmares to find Laurie bending over me and as his features materialised from the mist, I realise that I was in my bed at the Club. He told me that he and some fellows had taken a short cut home from their evening at the hospital dinner and found me lying insensible. Having checked that I was not injured but had merely fainted, they had carried me back between them.

  I recovered quickly, my head cleared and after drinking some brandy and hot water, I sat beside the fire. It was then that I told the whole story to Laurie, from the events in my days at the hospital and Printer’s Devil Court. When I reached the climax of the tale, with Rafe transferring the contents of the phial to the dead young woman, Laurie started up.

  “Walter Powell!” he exclaimed. “That name is known in the medical world — though I know you never hear a word of these things, buried as you are in the country. His name is known and so is that of his cohort, Rafe McAllister. They were apprehended in the course of stealing a body from the mortuary at St Luke’s and from taking away a patient who was on the point of death, without permission or authority. “A night porter gave testimony and one of his fellows swore to having seen the two men about their dreadful business more than once. He had alerted the hospital authorities but nothing was done. In fact, that porter was dismissed — I dare say he was believed to have had a breakdown.

  “Nothing more was reported for over a year, when the two men were caught and police were called. I only know all this from hospital legend and reading up old newspapers. A macabre and distasteful business and quite inexplicable. I was mildly interested. I like to study peculiarities of human behaviour, as you know, but I came to the conclusion that it must all have been some money-making lark — that or blackmail, though God knows how or what. The days of Burke and Hare are long gone.”

  “Did you hear what happened to the two men? Presumably they went to jail.”

  “I have no idea — I gave up reading about it — I’m far too busy. I know they were given bail on the usual conditions, that they surrender their passports and report to the police but more than that…” Laurie held out his hands.

  “Meanwhile, Hugh, you are obviously sickening for something. Whatever caused you to pass out must be investigated — I am having you in St Luke’s first thing tomorrow.”

  It was clear that he had not taken my story seriously but put it down to the ravings of a man with a feverish illness of some kind. But I knew that the scene was no delusion. It was as real as the furniture in that Club bedroom.

  “I have no need of any hospitalisation, thank you Laurie. I am tired and a little chilled. A good night’s sleep will sort that out and I will be right as rain tomorrow. I will return to my quiet, dull ways in the depths of the country, where no ghost has ever troubled me.”

  He knew that I meant what I said and got up to leave, but at the door he turned. “I do not believe in ghosts,” he said, “nor in the raising of the dead to life.”

  “No. Until tonight, nor did I.”

  He sighed and left, saying that he would check on me in the morning before he would countenance my going home. As soon as he had gone, I felt restless and anxious, not for myself but for the young woman, whatever —whoever, she was. She had asked me for help. Did she linger about the churchyard night after night searching and pleading? I dressed and went downstairs. The night porter’s cubby-hole had a low light showing within and the man was leaning back in his leather armchair, eyes closed, snoring gently, but as soon as I started to creep towards the outer door, he woke.

  “Are you well, sir? What can I do for you?”

  “I need to take a turn in the air. Would you be so kind as to let me out?”

  He looked perturbed.

  “I should not be gone long but I find this is usually the way to settle myself if I am restless.”

  He unlocked a side door to the main entrance and told me it would be open and he himself awake, on my return. “Don’t stay out too long, sir, or hang about the back streets — you never know, at this hour.”

  I knew that I would see her. She was wandering anxiously among the graves, just as before, leaning down to read the inscriptions. I made no sound but she turned, as if sensing my presence. Her expression was lost, distraught and she lifted her arm up.

  “Help me. I cannot find…find…” The voice was old, as before, that of an old man. It was still so very strange and unnerving but I forced myself to remain calm.

  “What are you looking for? You know that if I can help you I will.”

  She covered her eyes with her hands.

  “Don’t be afraid of me.”

  She said nothing.

  “Tell me your name again.”

  “I have… I am… nothing.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I am… not. I have… not.” She gave a long and weary sigh and her whole body shuddered. “The wrong life.” The words came out after a great effort. “Help me … I must… must… find.”

  What those two men had tried to do was not possible, and it was madness, terrifying and unimaginable, but that their terrible experiment had somehow succeeded in part, I could not now doubt. The life force they had captured and transfused was no mere anonymous breath or spark, it was imprinted with the character — the being, the soul even — of the dead man. Was this young woman still alive or had she died a second time and this for good? Had she been unable to rest, or move on until she was rid of “the wrong life” and re-united with her true self? Was she a ghost? But she spoke. Does a ghost speak? How could I know?

  The next moment, again, she was no longer there. Had she slipped away, out of the side gate? Gone into the church perhaps? But I would have seen her, sensed some movement. She had not passed me. The moon was behind clouds, it was pitch dark but my eyes were so well adjusted to it that I could make out the graves, the wall, the church tower. I waited. I called out, but my voice sounded oddly hollow and unreal, fading into the emptiness.

  The next morning, I told Laurie I had changed my mind and wanted to stay another night. I needed to look up a few bits of information in the hospital records.

  I found everything. The old man was listed as Patient A 207. He had been certified dead by Walter Powell M.D. Touchingly, although I learned that the A stood for Anonymous, he had been given a burial name — John.

  A young woman, patient A194, was recorded a couple of days earlier, having been picked up from the street in an unconscious state. A locket had been found on her person with the name Grace barely visible on it. But there was no record of her death until several years later when again she had been found out of doors, suffering from malnutrition and hypothermia. The death certificate had been signed by a P.R. Ross M.D. but there was a pathologist’s report inserted — a post-mortem had been requested by the Coroner, as was by then becoming usual for those found dead on the streets of London. The body was that of a young woman aged around twenty-five to twenty-eight. She was severely malnourished, but this would not have accounted for her having the vocal cords, larynx and lungs of someone over seventy years, who had been a heavy tobacco smoker. “Inconsistent with other findings” was jotted to one side in the pathologist’s usual barely legible hand.

  I closed the record book with a strange feeling of relief. I had to find one further piece of information and then I would have all I needed to bring the whole business to a conclusion. If I was insane, hallucinating or suffering the effects of a brain injury, then I had no symptoms. I had a clear head, a calm mind, a steady pulse and a resolution as firm as I had ever known.

  I did not mention any of it to Laurie. We ate supper together, during which he was full of medical talk. He glanced at me sharply once or twice, but I thought that everything about my demeanour and easy conversation put him at ease. When I told him that I was to travel home the next day on the la
te morning train I saw the relief in his eyes and I understood it fully. How could he possibly have believed my story? He was, like me, a doctor and a scientist and he knew far more than I did about delusional states. Although the boundaries of what was possible in medicine had been pushed farther than I would have ever thought possible as a young doctor, they surely could never extend to raising the dead. If what Walter and Rafe had done was real, we had better throw away all our textbooks and templates and prior assumptions, for the very ground on which we stood was unstable. Whatever the truth, whatever I had seen, I knew I must make a last attempt to lay it all to rest. If I did not, I feared I would never sleep again.

  Just after one o’clock in cold clear moonlight I was waiting for her again, and again she seemed to materialise in an instant and was wandering among the graves as before. When she looked up and saw me, she beckoned. She wore the same thin grey clothes, her feet were bare and her flesh had a faint blue sheen.

  “Help me — please help me.”

  “I can and I will,” I said, going over to her, “but this is not the place. You must follow me.”

  The old churchyard led, through an opening in the far wall, to a more recent burial ground, with some twenty identical gravestones, little worn or touched by the moss and lichen. I had discovered that the hospital had taken over the space for the burials of patients whose identities were unknown, of whom there used to be many more than there are now. I led the way to two of the graves, marked simply ‘John’ and ‘Grace’ above a date and a simple cross.

  She was standing beside the entrance and I beckoned to her. She said again “Help me, please help me,” in that old, croaking voice, her eyes vacant. I still shuddered to hear it as I looked at her beautiful face. Then, with steps that seemed hardly to touch the ground, she came close to me and as she did so, and for the first time, I smelled the smell of death and decay upon her. I did not shrink back. She approached the grave marked John and at once recoiled. I edged closer, speaking to her as reassuringly as I would to a child. I thought that I now understood what was wrong, though I was working more or less on blind instinct and I had a notion of how she might find her rest and resolution at last. She turned to me, looking fearful.

  “No,” I said, speaking in as quiet and reassuring voice as I could. “There is nothing for you to be frightened of. In this grave is the body of the old man whose life you were given. I can explain it no more clearly — it is beyond my understanding.”

  She bent to read the inscription and I saw her whole being begin to tremble as she reached out her hand, as if to trace the outline of the lettering. I moved slowly along to the grave marked Grace and stopped beside it and as I did so I felt that same deathly chill wrap me round. She was standing very close to me and it seemed as if her breath was becoming fainter. The cold grew more intense. I was afraid myself now and felt unreal, as if I was standing beside my own body, but I managed to speak, though it was hard and I could only get out a few words.

  “Grace. Find. Go.” My chest seemed to be tightening and my throat about to close up. “Back. Give. Back.”

  I could say no more. My brain was working slowly, in flashes of consciousness between terrible stretches of darkness. I knew what she must do, and that I was trying to help her, as she had begged me. She took a couple of steps forwards. I did not see her turn again and now she was beside John’s grave. I stared. Nothing happened and the bitter cold was binding me with iron bands and the constriction in my chest was agonisingly painful. She glanced once more at her “own” grave and I saw intense suffering and distress in her face, before she took a single further step, so that now she was standing right on the burial place. And then she had gone. She was no longer there. Nothing was there. At once, the chill that had held me lifted, and the pain and constriction were loosed.

  I came to as if I had woken from sleep but not from any dreams. I was fully conscious of where I was and of everything that had happened. Whatever help Grace had needed, I felt sure I had given it to her, but I could do no more and I made my way towards the passage. The clouds had almost cleared and the moon shone with a soft hazy light. I looked back. Above the grave of John was a pale mist, not visible in any other part of the churchyard. It had no form and there was no sense of “presence”. It was like the mist that sometimes happens over the surface of water at dawn. As I looked, it began to dissolve and I felt an uneasy calm. Whatever I had done, whatever had happened, I believed that the young woman had now found her peace, and that both she and the old man were somehow whole and restored.

  2

  At home, work and country life absorbed me again and although I cannot pretend that I forgot about what had happened or that my sleep was always untroubled, on the whole I was fairly at ease. A year passed. We saw a Laurie infrequently — he was rarely free from the hospital, and when we did meet, he and I never referred to what I had told him.

  One bright, clear morning in October, I opened a letter addressed to me alone, in Laurie’s hand, which was somewhat surprising but I told Eleanor I had been expecting some medical information from him, and because I had a sense of foreboding I delayed opening it until I was alone.

  My dear Hugh

  In haste, but I thought this might interest you. The names caught my eye in the paper and remembering your strange stories, I looked at the records for the era at St Luke’s of those two doctors you knew. As you remember, Powell and McAllister were arrested, charged and bailed on various dreadful suspicions. They were both dismissed from the hospital and subsequently struck off the medical register “for behaviour in a manner so as to call the profession into disrepute”.

  They were accused of gross misconduct in relation to the certification and preparation of deceased patients and the improper disposal of their remains, but there must have been far more to it, none of which could be proved.

  I confess that I doubted your tale until I came upon this and of course, I am sure you are not surprised to hear that I still believe parts of it to be entirely fanciful — you could never resist embellishing a good story, as I recall from boyhood! I wondered what had happened to Powell and McAllister — who I assumed must have been imprisoned for some years but later released.

  Such men often disappear abroad, where they do not find it as difficult as it should be to continue practicing medicine. I asked frequently if any older members of the hospital medical staff recalled them and eventually an eminent pathologist, sometime retired, raised an eyebrow and said that such things were best forgotten but then he added, “Their bodies were washed up just a few days after they were released on bail. I performed the post mortems. As I recall, both of the stomachs were full of strychnine and their hands and arms were held together by chains.”

  I asked if he had suspected murder.

  “Who knows? But for my money it was a clear case of joint suicide. They were unable to live with themselves any longer and the world was well rid of them.”

  The case may not be closed in police files but I am inclined to take the pathologist’s view. So there you have it — a melancholy little tale but I hope you’re interested to hear the end of it.

  I had always known that what Walter and Rafe were dabbling in was evil and dangerous and there was no doubt in my mind now that the pathologist was correct. They had taken their own lives out of shame, guilt and terror of what they had done. It would have led to worse. They had stopped themselves in the only certain way. I felt nothing but cold contempt for them. I like to think that I am a compassionate man but in this, my heart was hard.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Here, the small book ends. When eventually I read it, after my stepfather’s death, I presumed that there was no more to be added.

  Whatever the truth of his story that was it — “a story”. Many a writer has told a tale in the first person and his own voice, as if he is recounting real events but I was entertained by the way Hugh had done it, presumably as a diversion from the often humdrum life of a country doctor. Why he had chosen
this particular topic on which to base his fiction I had no idea but it was as good as many others and makes for a creepy tale.

  At least, that was what I thought when I received the little book. I read it, put it away on the shelf and forgot all about it.

  Hugh died at the age of ninety-two, pretty well and in command of his faculties until almost the end when he became confused and not always fully aware of us or his surroundings. I thought he had suffered a small stroke, though if so, it did not cause him any physical problems and he continued to read and write letters to old colleagues, to play chess, do The Times crossword and to enjoy visits from Toby and myself. Toby, having retired from the Army and married, bought a small farm only half an hour from Hugh and Eleanor. I continued to work in London at St Luke’s, but I drove down to the country every other weekend, now that my parents were becoming increasingly frail.

  My mother died a year before Hugh and of course, not only did he miss her greatly but he seemed to have a strong sense that he was nearing his own end. He stayed in the old house looked after by two wonderful women from the village and the visiting nurse, and I then went down every week. Toby or Joy, his wife and their two daughters, visited almost every day. I think that Hugh was as content as he could be and always seemed sanguine and philosophical and quite often downright cheerful.

  He still took a daily walk around the village and even a little further afield when the weather was mild. He was well known and loved over a wide area, and often met with former patients and their descendants on his walks. They would stop their cars for a chat and frequently give him a lift home.

  I was due to go down as usual for the weekend when very late on a Thursday evening I received an urgent phone call from Toby, to tell me that Hugh was extremely ill. Mrs Barford had popped in to see him at half-past-three and he said he proposed going out for a last walk. It was early October, the sun had been shining all day and there was as yet no hint of winter frosts or chill winds. She had reminded him that it was dark by five now and that she would have his supper ready, as usual, for seven o’clock. She last saw him making his way across the garden, and through the gate which led to the orchard — a favourite walk of his. From the orchard, the path led to the church and he could then return home via the body of the village, in a circular walk.