Interviewing the Dead

by David Field

  ‘Have you ever stopped to wonder why, as a matter of interest?’ Carlyle asked as he took up Matthew’s earlier invitation to consume the second brandy, and when Matthew shook his head he continued. ‘If it is a tenet of the Christian faith that communicating with the dead is a forbidden sin, does that not also imply that it is possible?’

  Matthew fell silent.

  Carlyle smiled one of his gloating smiles. ‘Far be it from me, as a man of science, to argue for the possibility of conducting conversations with one’s deceased favourite maiden aunt through the agency of a money-grabbing charlatan, but it is, is it not, consistent with the Church’s sales campaign regarding the existence of life after death and the importance of being good in this life because the next one will bring its rewards?’

  ‘I, for one, believe firmly in life after death,’ Matthew replied somewhat stiffly, as he heard his life’s work being held up for scientific ridicule, ‘but equally I do not believe it to be possible to communicate, in any form, with those who have passed over. Even less do I believe that any of those entities that might manifest themselves would be so malevolent.’

  ‘So you would be prepared to subscribe to my poison theory?’

  ‘In the absence of any other theory, yes, certainly. Definitely in preference to any suggestion that creatures have been conjured up from their graves.’

  ‘This is all to the good, since I wish to recruit you into my team,’ Carlyle said.

  Matthew’s jaw dropped open. ‘Me? Surely I am the exact opposite of everything you are. You are scientific — clinical — and, if I might venture to say so, somewhat cold in your approach to matters that excite wonder in others. I, on the other hand, tend to follow my heart and am easy prey to those who would exploit my somewhat naive view of life. People will come to me for support, love, sympathy and hope, while to you they would come for a dispassionate diagnosis of their illnesses and a logically selected remedy for same.’

  ‘Precisely!’ Carlyle enthused. ‘Do not for one moment imagine that I am seeking logical deductions from you, or some sort of scientific second opinion. Your value to me is precisely as the man you just described yourself to be. Warm, human, gullible, impetuous, approachable — and above all, compassionate. The alkali to my acid.’

  ‘But how can I be of value to you, exactly?’

  ‘By engaging me in conversations such as this, for one thing. Assisting me in the reasoning process. There is a fundamental principle of scientific experimentation that requires that in order to prove that something is true, one sets out to prove that it is untrue. Or vice-versa. For example, when you have eliminated every ground for believing that the moon is made of cream cheese, you have, in the process, proved that it is not. You understand?’

  ‘I think so. But how does that work in the present context?’

  ‘Simple. I hope eventually to demonstrate that these unfortunate victims of “plague pit manifestation”, for want of a better expression, were poisoned and that their dreadful experiences were chemical rather than supernatural. You will convey to me every argument you hear out there on the streets for those experiences being genuine visitations from another world. In knocking them down, one by one, I will be working my way slowly and resolutely towards the proof of my original thesis. You will undertake to be my religious muse?’

  ‘Yes, whatever that means,’ Matthew agreed. ‘But I fear that what I came here to tell you merely confirms that one can experience one of these plague pit manifestations without being drunk. It tends to support your poison theory.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, earlier today I met with a woman who’s in one of the wards of this hospital, being treated for a broken leg. She got it by falling into a trench while she wasn’t looking. And she wasn’t looking because she believed herself to be pursued by one of these plague horrors and her belief in that continued even after she fell into the trench and was suffering the pain of a broken leg. She swears that she’d only consumed a glass or so of beer, which for a reformed old soak like her was something to be proud of, believe me.’

  ‘And you believe her?’ Carlyle asked cynically. ‘In my experience those most likely to underestimate their consumption of alcohol are alcoholics.’

  ‘My experience also,’ Matthew confirmed with a nod. ‘But you’ll have to trust in my powers of naivety when I say that I’m inclined to believe her. And if she was telling the truth, then we can eliminate all but beer as the means by which all these people were poisoned.’

  Carlyle smiled. ‘You are proving to be of considerable value to me already. If we add the hypothesis that the poison is administered in beer to your earlier observation that most of its victims had visited public houses at some time prior to their experience, then we are narrowing down the quarry considerably. Whatever the poison is, it is soluble in beer and someone has it in for hardened beer drinkers.’

  ‘Not “hardened”, in the case of this lady,’ Matthew corrected him. ‘But there’s something else I noticed too. All the public houses with which these manifestations are associated lie south of Whitechapel Road.’

  ‘Again, I’m indebted to you for your logical application of local knowledge, if you’re not offended by being called “logical”. Can we yet conclude that someone’s putting poison in beer barrels?’

  ‘Obviously not,’ Matthew replied.

  Carlyle raised both eyebrows as he replied, ‘Please add considerably to my estimate of your powers of deduction by telling me why not.’

  ‘Because if the barrels were poisoned, then everyone drinking from that barrel would have finished up having these terrible visions. As it is, only a few did.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Carlyle said. ‘But we cannot, at this stage, eliminate a connection with public houses and perhaps the breweries that supply them. And a lunatic who’s going around certain pubs in the East End to put people off drinking. Perhaps a man of the cloth like yourself, seeking to enforce temperance?’

  ‘We would never do that!’ Matthew insisted vehemently, raising a cynical smile from Carlyle.

  ‘Really? The Church has never sought to keep people on the straight and narrow by fear? Not too far from here, in Smithfield, the former Queen Mary had hundreds of martyrs burned alive for their faith, seeking to keep the stragglers in line.’

  ‘That was the Catholic Church,’ Matthew reminded him. ‘My form of Protestantism is just the opposite. It picks up those who have fallen by the wayside, in the manner of the Good Samaritan. We give hope to the downtrodden, the abandoned, the minorities in this society of ours.’

  ‘My daughter would approve of that, even though her mother was of the Anglican faith,’ Carlyle said.

  ‘I don’t think that your daughter exactly approved of me at our first meeting,’ Matthew replied ruefully.

  ‘That’s just her manner,’ Carlyle explained. ‘She and her friends are dedicated to advancing the role of women in society.’

  ‘Is that why she works alongside you here?’

  ‘Precisely why. At present my profession is all but denied to women, along with matriculation from any medical school worthy of the name. A few female pioneers, it is true, but they are struggling in this male dominated profession that I follow. So Adelaide is working alongside me to prove that women are capable of such work, but are being held back by male suppression. In her opinion and that of her little coterie of friends who meet regularly at our house in Hackney, women are a minority group, an oppressed race, and so she’d be delighted to learn of your work among the less elevated in our society.’

  ‘Even if she disapproves of my method of knocking on doors?’ Matthew grinned.

  Carlyle laughed lightly and nodded. ‘Even then. Please do not be misled by her manner, since she inherited her fiery independence from her mother, in addition to her red hair. They came from the same box labelled “firebrand” and her mother would have been proud to see Adelaide flying the flag of her convictions.’

  ‘She is no longer with us?’
Matthew asked.

  Carlyle’s face saddened. ‘No, indeed. She died of a fever some years ago now and to my eternal regret I was unable to save her, despite all my so-called medical skill. “Physician heal thyself”, isn’t that what the Bible tells us?’

  ‘For a man of science, you seem to have a commendable religious background.’

  ‘That was Kathleen’s influence as well,’ Carlyle explained. ‘She’d been raised in a strict Protestant family in Belfast. She was forever campaigning for me to accompany her to St John the Baptist’s, round the corner from the family home. I went a few times, but only on compulsory occasions such as Christmas and Easter. I will not offend you by disclosing my opinion of the unthinking drivel that was preached there.’

  ‘And Adelaide?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘She turned her back on the place for the final time when she learned that women are not allowed to be ordained.’

  ‘That’s something else we might have in common,’ Matthew told him. ‘I fail to see how the love of God that is so beautifully manifested in those who are blessed with the privilege of nurturing children should not qualify women for equal status in the Wesleyan movement.’

  This time Carlyle laughed out loud. ‘Adelaide would grudgingly praise you for expressing the latter sentiment, then blast you where you sat for suggesting that the main role in life of women is to suckle infants. Beware of Adelaide’s scathing tongue on your next visit here.’

  ‘I’ve already experienced it,’ Matthew admitted with a rueful grin.

  ‘Well don’t let her put you off visiting here again and soon,’ Carlyle replied. ‘We have much work ahead of us.’

  4

  ‘Have you heard any more about those terrible goings on around Aldgate?’ George West asked as Matthew sat down at the tea table.

  ‘Leave the boy alone,’ Alice instructed her husband as she leaned across the table to place a plate of bread and butter in its centre. ‘Just because he’s doing God’s work doesn’t mean that he needs to concern himself with all that wicked business — reading tea leaves and pretending to summon up the dead.’

  ‘Those two don’t belong in the same category anyway,’ Charles pointed out as he stirred more sugar into his tea. ‘Aunt Marge used to read tea leaves, before she got too addle-brained and had to go and live in that special place in Surrey.’

  ‘Show some respect for your elders,’ George grumbled, in defence of his older sister. ‘You may be like that one day. And you haven’t answered my question, Matthew.’

  Matthew pursed his lips in a non-committal gesture. ‘It’s spread beyond Aldgate, Father. There have been incidents all over the East End and I recently met a surgeon from the London Hospital who thinks that there’s some sort of poison involved. A poison that makes people see things that don’t exist.’

  ‘We have to hope that they don’t, anyway,’ Alice shuddered as she joined them round the table. ‘But don’t people get like that anyway when they’ve had too many in the pub?’

  ‘Talking of pubs,’ Caroline interrupted as she came in from the hall and laid a large sketchpad down in front of her father, ‘could you make an engraved block for each of these illustrations? They’re three of the pubs that have received ghastly visitations lately.’

  George looked down critically at what she had produced, turning each page slowly and nodding. ‘I suppose I could, but why?’

  ‘Well,’ Caroline announced, ‘I thought we might offer them to that writer who’s doing that book all about the plague pit business. You know, the one who commissioned you last week, the one that Charles was telling me all about? I thought that if his book came out with my illustrations in it, it would improve my chances of getting art work from the dailies.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ George hedged as he handed the sketchpad back to Caroline. ‘Ask your brothers.’

  ‘Can’t it at least wait until we’ve eaten?’ Charles complained as he hunched defensively over his pork chops to prevent Caroline from laying her sketchpad in front of him. ‘Or ask Matthew. He gets around the pubs more than I do, selling salvation to drunks.’

  Matthew moved his tea plate to one side and sighed inwardly, as Caroline plumped her latest artwork down in front of him. He looked at the first of them — a neatly executed pen and ink sketch of the ‘Dog and Duck’ in Leadenhall Street — and nodded. ‘You have a fine hand at this sort of thing. Perhaps you should consider offering this to the brewery whose advertising signboard you’ve given such prominence to; they might offer you some money for it.’

  ‘They’ve already got plenty of that sort of thing, in that glossy brochure I turned out for them last week,’ George told him. ‘Where do you think Caroline got the photographs to copy from?’

  A sudden thought crossed Matthew’s mind as he flicked over the pages to the other two illustrations. They were of ‘The Grapes’ in Goulston Street and ‘The Infantryman’ in Gower’s Walk, and each of them proudly displayed an advertisement hoarding for ‘Bennings Brewery’. He looked up quickly and addressed his father once again. ‘You produced a brochure of some sort for Bennings Brewery, did you say?’

  ‘That’s right. They’re proposing to offer shares to the public and the brochure I produced on my best glossy paper had illustrations of all their pubs.’

  ‘Including the ones in the East End?’ Matthew asked eagerly.

  George nodded. ‘That’s the only place they’ve got them. They’re hoping to expand further north when they get the share income. Why?’

  ‘Can I see a copy of that brochure?’

  ‘Of course — they’re in a stack in the printing office that’s waiting to be delivered to the customer.’

  Matthew rose to his feet quickly, dropped his napkin down on the table, apologised to his mother for leaving his tea only half eaten and hurried downstairs as directed. He selected the topmost completed brochure and thumbed through it, nervously turning each page and scarcely able to believe what his eyes were taking in.

  It was as if someone had already chosen to photograph all the public houses associated with terrifying encounters with creatures from beyond the grave. Apart from the ones already copied into pen and ink artwork by Caroline he found ‘The Barleycorn’ in Duke Street, Aldgate, ‘The Plough’ in Jamaica Street, Stepney, ‘The King Charles’ in Cannon Street and ‘The Anchor’ in Wapping Way, where Violet Cummins had consumed a modest couple of beers before falling into a gas-laying trench down the road. All owned and managed by Bennings Brewery. Unless there were dead people out there on some sort of commercial mission, this was a fact too coincidental to overlook.

  The following morning, hot and sweaty despite the morning chill, Matthew was harassing the duty desk sergeant in Leman Street Police Office with an urgent demand to speak with Detective Inspector Jennings from Scotland Yard. ‘I believe he’s based himself here temporarily,’ he added.

  ‘That’s correct,’ he was told, ‘but who are you and what do you want?’

  ‘My name’s Matthew West and I’m a Wesleyan minister. He and I met two days ago at the London Hospital — tell him it’s about the Aldgate ghost sightings.’

  ‘Them things!’ the sergeant muttered. ‘We gets people in here every five minutes what reckons they’ve seen one o’ them things, usually after the pubs chucks out. I tell ’em if they wanna see a really ’orrible sight, they should call on the wife’s mother in the mornin’, afore she ’as time ter put ’er face on. ’Ang on there while I send the boy up.’

  The young constable allocated to front desk duties was dispatched with Matthew’s message and returned a few minutes later with an invitation to accompany him up the main staircase. Two flights up they turned down a long corridor whose double entrance doors were marked ‘Detective Branch’ and John Jennings was waiting outside the door of the office he was occupying temporarily during his allocation to Leman Street.

  ‘The constable said that it seemed urgent,’ Jennings prompted Matthew, who nodded and took the chair indicated in front
of the already cluttered desk, thankful that he wasn’t the only early riser involved in the Aldgate matter.

  ‘I think I’ve got something you can use in your investigation, ‘Matthew told him excitedly as he waved the brochure he’d brought from home. ‘It looks as if each of the pubs in which a phantom has made its appearance belongs to the same brewery! “Bennings”, who have their premises in Cable Street, just round the corner from here. Could it be that someone’s targeting just their pubs, in some sort of commercial vendetta? I read in the paper that those pubs where there have been incidents are almost empty of customers.’

  ‘It would certainly make life easier, if that’s the case,’ Jennings said. ‘But let’s see if your theory holds water. There was another case last night, when a drunk in a pub in Brooke Street, down in Shadwell, suddenly attacked a poor innocent woman who was sitting quietly in a corner, accusing her of being “one o’ them Devils from Aldgate”, as he put it. Some of the other men in the bar pulled him off her and in the struggle he was choked to death. At Dr Carlyle’s request I’ve had the body sent down to the London Hospital, but if you’re right, you should be able to name the pub.’

  Matthew flicked quickly through the brochure. ‘Brooke Street, Shadwell, you said? Then that makes it “The Lighthouse”. Am I correct?’

  ‘By God, you are!’ Jennings said, prepared to take him more seriously after apologising for his blasphemy. ‘So we would seem to have a motive, assuming that all this “revenge from the grave” stuff is a load of nonsense. We have the “why” — now all we need is the “who”.’

  ‘And the “how”,’ Matthew reminded him. ‘To me, the most intriguing thing is the “how”. How can people be induced to see things that aren’t there? Hypnotism? Or a poison of some sort? Dr Carlyle seems to favour the latter.’

  ‘He certainly does, which is why I had the latest corpse delivered to him. There are enough eyewitnesses from “The Lighthouse” to absolve those responsible for the death from any criminal charges, but perhaps Dr Carlyle can tell us if there was poison involved and if so, what it was. That will give me even more to go on when I set about running down the person responsible.’