Interviewing the Dead

by David Field

  ‘That would be nice,’ Sarah replied. ‘And you’ve been so kind that I hope you’ll find happiness with this woman that you’ve already met.’

  ‘If your door to the world beyond is still open, you might ask her name,’ Matthew teased her.

  Sarah closed her eyes again, then smiled. ‘Your grandfather says that life wasn’t meant to be easy and that he doesn’t do requests. But keep your eyes open for a harp.’

  7

  Matthew hurried upstairs to the tea room with this latest information. Carlyle and Jennings were the only two there, given the lateness of the hour, and Jennings spoke for them both when he asked, ‘Well?’

  Matthew poured himself a cup of tea, making them wait for his answer.

  ‘He’s clearly got nothing of value for us, else he would have blurted it out immediately,’ Jennings observed gloomily, but Carlyle was looking intently at the back of Matthew’s head.

  ‘On the contrary, my dear fellow — his neck pulse is vibrating like the chimes on a grandfather clock — that’s always a sign of tension and I believe that he’s discovered something of interest.’

  Matthew turned back from the tea urn, carefully added milk to his tea and took a seat at the table. ‘You should take Dr Carlyle along with you to interviews with those suspected of crime,’ he grinned as he placed the mug on the table and delivered his news. ‘Sarah Gibbons — or Sarah Barlowe, to employ her correct name — was indeed in league with the man pretending to be her husband, whose real name is Bartholomew Slater. I think you’ll find that they already have a few entries in the Hall of Fame maintained by Scotland Yard, since on her own admission they’ve been in a criminal partnership for the past twenty years or so. The Spiritualist nonsense was just the latest dishonest scheme.’

  ‘So we can conclude that those alleged visitations from the spirits of the dead really were fake?’ Jennings suggested.

  Carlyle snorted. ‘Any rational man would have concluded that from the very start. But it doesn’t tell us “who”, “why” and — of the most interest to me — “how”.’

  ‘As for the “who”,’ Matthew replied, ‘Sarah told me that Slater was paid to do it by someone he knew from his former criminal life.’

  ‘Even if we tip Slater upside down,’ Jennings observed, ‘he won’t tell us who that was. “Honour among thieves”, they call it, but in my experience it’s more a case of the likely consequences of peaching on someone bigger and more powerful, than you. The disadvantage of running with “the big boys” in the criminal underworld.’

  ‘The “why” seems pretty obvious, to me at least,’ Matthew observed. ‘It must have been some rival brewery. That much is obvious from the fact that only Bennings Brewery pubs were targeted and are virtually empty of customers these days.’

  ‘That gives me something to work on, at least,’ Jennings said. ‘I’ll enquire of all the directors and senior staff of Bennings regarding who their obvious trade rivals are. Other breweries, for a start.’

  ‘Don’t eliminate the possibility that the real culprit came from inside the brewery,’ Carlyle told him. ‘Someone with a grudge — perhaps someone recently dismissed.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Jennings replied with heavy sarcasm, ‘although I have been known to conduct successful criminal investigations in the past.’

  ‘That still leaves us with the “how”,’ Carlyle reminded them.

  Matthew told them, ‘I may have a line on that as well.’ He basked in the moment as both men looked enquiringly at him, then gave Carlyle the benefit of what he hoped was a superior smile. ‘Sarah mentioned some new drug that’s just come into the docks, something that Slater had acquired. He told her that it makes people see things that aren’t there and that once she’d done the fake séance the drug would take care of the rest.’

  ‘Excellent!’ Carlyle enthused. ‘Precisely what I predicted! It’s some form of hallucinogen that has post-hypnotic effect.’

  ‘Could I get that in English?’ Jennings asked.

  Carlyle extracted a cigar, cutting the end off it with some sort of small cutter extracted from his waistcoat pocket, reaching into his topcoat for some matches, then lighting the cigar and blowing smoke towards the ceiling.

  ‘Hallucinogenic drugs cause hallucinations. “Seeing things that aren’t there”, to quote Sarah Barlowe. That’s the easy part for you, Inspector, since I’m sure you’ve heard of “opium dreams” and suchlike. The really interesting part is its combination with a trick employed by stage “hypnotists”, as they now seem to be calling themselves. “Mesmerists”, to use the old term. As I’ve already explained to you both, they plant an idea in someone’s head that they’re going to experience something and they do precisely that when they come round from the mind control of the performer. Hence the term “post-hypnotic”.

  ‘It would seem that Sarah Barlowe has adapted the same technique and that whoever supplied this drug knew that if she planted in the public mind the prospect of horrible beings rising up from the Underground network, then people would believe that they’d seen them once the drug had been administered to them.’

  ‘Then I should attempt to get some of this drug?’ Jennings asked.

  Carlyle sighed. ‘I thought we’d already established that. The problem then will be testing it.’

  ‘You seem to have everything you need down in your mortuary,’ Matthew commented. ‘Including a very protective guard on the door.’

  ‘That isn’t the problem,’ Carlyle told them. ‘It’s a matter of ethics. That may sound to you like a county to the east of here, but for a medical man such as myself it means that I can’t test the drug on human beings.’

  ‘Why not?’ Jennings demanded.

  Carlyle smiled. ‘For the same reason that you’re not supposed to beat suspects with your clubs to get confessions out of them. We servants of the public are subject to certain stringent rules and one of them in my case is that new substances — particularly those whose properties are not fully known — cannot be tested on human beings.’

  ‘Then how can medicine advance?’ Matthew queried. ‘For example, chloroform. How did you get to learn of the medical properties of that wonderful drug that has been so valuable in surgery without testing it first on human beings?’

  Carlyle lowered his gaze as he supplied the answer. ‘If you’re a lover of little furry animals, then you don’t want me to explain. But let’s just say rats, since we have plenty of those here in London and nobody seems to like them.’

  ‘But you can’t practice on humans?’ Jennings asked, with a responding look of disdain from Carlyle.

  ‘I’m not sure I approve of the description “practice”, but yes, you’re correct. Which means that even if we succeed in getting a supply of this drug that’s being inflicting all this damage, I won’t be able to test it.’

  ‘Not even on rats?’ Matthew asked.

  Carlyle gave him a disappointed look. ‘Think constructively, man. I need to confirm that when this drug is consumed it alters a person’s perception of reality — makes them “see things”, in the vernacular. Since I’m not aware of any breed of rat, rabbit or other furry creature that can talk, how will I know what it’s experiencing when I give it a dose?’

  ‘What’s the legal position if you have a human volunteer?’ Matthew asked thoughtfully.

  Carlyle raised both eyebrows as he replied, ‘Don’t even suggest it, young man, if you value your sanity.’

  ‘I’m prepared to become your new rat, if it will move this thing forward,’ Matthew insisted. ‘I need to clear the atmosphere of all this bogus nonsense about returning spirits, because it’s contrary to God’s teaching.’

  ‘So do you want me to acquire some of this drug, or what?’ Jennings asked.

  Carlyle nodded. ‘Yes, obviously, but I’d prefer to try it out on someone whose days are numbered. Perhaps someone condemned to the gallows.’

  ‘Now who’s being unethical?’ Matthew asked.

  Carl
yle shook his head. ‘Don’t think it hasn’t been done already. Your naivety does you credit in one sense, but it hardly moves forward the spirit of scientific enquiry.’

  ‘I was under the impression that I’d already volunteered to do that,’ Matthew reminded him.

  ‘I’ll instruct men to seek out this new drug first thing tomorrow,’ Jennings offered, ‘but it would help if I had a name for it.’

  ‘Sarah Barlowe said only that it had a foreign sounding name,’ Matthew replied.

  Jennings gave a hollow laugh. ‘They all have fancy names. “Puff-Puff”, “Dreamy Juice”, “Dark Angel” and so on. Wish me luck.’

  ‘But you won’t be doing it yourself, from what you said,’ Carlyle reminded him. ‘Your main task, as I understand it, will be to enquire of the directors of Bennings Brewery who might have a grudge against them. My task will be to isolate and identify the drug, if and when you can get me a supply.’

  ‘And my task, apart from sampling the stuff when you acquire it?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘Your first task will be to join me in my coach, which is hopefully still drawn up outside. We can drop you off at home, depending upon where you live — I never enquired.’

  ‘Clerkenwell,’ Matthew told him. ‘But is there nothing else I can be doing?’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Carlyle replied. ‘You can steel yourself to act as a whipping boy for my daughter again, the next time the two of you meet. And so let’s all get some sleep — it must be well after midnight.’

  8

  Back home, although physically exhausted, Matthew found that sleep eluded him. He was too mentally stimulated to sleep, as he replayed in his mind every word of the prediction he had received from Sarah Barlowe. So far as he could tell she was being genuine, but what she had imparted had left him confused.

  As a Wesleyan preacher with no attachment to a particular church, he existed on a miserly stipend which was all that his chosen religious organisation could afford. He was uncomplaining, given that he had chosen this life in full knowledge of the financial sacrifice he would be making in the interim and even when given his own benefice the salary would be less than that of the average law clerk. He was acutely conscious of how much he owed to his parents, keeping him in food and clothing without his being able to contribute to the family business, or even the household expenses. He was even more conscious that he was a very poor prospect indeed for any young lady who might capture his affections and he had learned that lesson brutally only two years previously.

  Her name was Nerys Jenkins and she had broken his heart. Even now he could sense tears welling to the surface as he remembered her cute little round face, framed with long black curls that he’d loved to run his fingers through, when she allowed that. She had an entrancing little dark birthmark — or it might have been a mole — on her left cheek and it would dance around as she laughed gaily. Her full soft mouth had been a delight to kiss and her lilting Welsh way of speaking had held him entranced. He would have loved to have had children by her, but someone else had beaten him to it.

  They’d first met when his sister Caroline had brought her home from her ladies’ finishing school where Nerys boarded while her father pursued his career as a commercial solicitor in Liverpool. Caroline’s friendship with Nerys had deepened during their final year of school and Nerys had been invited to stay with the West family over that last Christmas before Caroline began art school and Nerys went back to Liverpool with earnest promises to save her heart for Matthew.

  They’d fallen in love under the mistletoe and held hands during the Watchnight service at the local Methodist church, then kissed deeply and often under the street lamps on their way home through the falling snow.

  The letters had been frequent and gushing at first and Matthew still had every one of them tied with ribbon and hidden in a cardboard box under his bed. She never failed to tell him how much she loved him and how much she was missing him, until suddenly a week arrived in which the longed for letter failed to land on the carpet at the foot of the stairs.

  It was the following week before a letter arrived, seeking his forgiveness in a strangely formal way for her failure to write the week before, because of ‘complications at home’. The ‘complications’ had proved to be her father taking a gun to his head when his embezzlement of clients’ money had come to light and Matthew wrote back immediately, offering her marriage and a home in London.

  He’d waited a month with his heart in his mouth before the final letter dropped onto the carpet like an exploding bomb. His beautiful darling Nerys had become engaged to the son and heir of a shipping merchant in her home town and she’d pleaded for his forgiveness. ‘This way Mother and I will be secure in life’ she had written, ‘and I hope you won’t think me too mercenary when I remind you that your chosen career is one in which penury will be at your door every day. I’ve recently experienced that already and I owe much more than that to Mother. Please don’t think too badly of me, my darling Matthew, and know that my memories of our brief, if unfulfilled, time together will rank among the happiest in my life.’ He didn’t need to reach under the bed to secure the final letter and re-read it, since every word was etched in his memory, like a eulogy on a tombstone.

  He sank back onto the pillow. What had Sarah Barlowe said about a harp? Wasn’t the harp symbolic of Wales, the country of Nerys’s birth? Was she unhappy in her marriage and secretly yearning to return to London? If it came to that, perhaps she hadn’t ended up married to that shipping type who Matthew hated with a passion, sight unseen. Perhaps she was still available and aching to hold him in her arms again.

  Matthew rose late the next morning and declined his mother’s generous offer to cook a second breakfast after having cleared the dining table half an hour previously. He had no official duties that day, fortunately, but he decided to take himself down to the Mission anyway. It was his experience that absorbing himself in the misery and tribulations of those less fortunate than himself was the perfect antidote to feeling sorry for himself, and he would find himself recreating the perfume of Nerys’s luxuriant long black hair in his mind if he didn’t pull himself together. It was time to drown his pathetic personal grief in the more substantial and current misery of others, he’d decided.

  Down at the Mission he announced his availability to minister to any poor soul in need of spiritual guidance who might wander in from the street, then strolled idly down to the notice board for want of anything else to do. As usual, it displayed the vacant benefices that existed within the Wesleyan Church, for which individuals like himself, with no fixed living, might apply, and he tried to convince himself, as he ran his eye over them, that he was not hoping to find one in the Liverpool area. If he had been, he would have been disappointed, although he wasn’t even sure where Wallsend on Tyne actually was. He knew Derby to be somewhere west of Nottingham, but if he was to find a permanent ministry, with a commensurate increase in income, then it would probably have to be Spitalfields. If he could be bothered, that is. Suddenly there seemed to be little point in it all, but if he could be of comfort to others while suppressing his own personal heartache, then why not?

  Without realising it, he found himself kneeling in prayer in the back row of the modest chapel that was the spiritual heart of the Mission and there were tears rolling down his face. This wouldn’t do, he told himself sternly, as he extracted a handkerchief and held it firmly to his face. He lifted his eyes to the simple image of Christ the Fisherman on the shores of Galilee and reminded himself of the suffering that He had endured, the humiliation, the public ridicule and the rejection by His own people. If the man who had inspired his life this far could endure that, then Matthew could willingly shoulder his own personal cross of loneliness. His God was a God of compassion, humility and good grace whose only son had borne the sins of the entire world on his shoulders. Surely rejection by a pretty Welsh girl was nothing by comparison.

  He felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and looked up into an empty cha
pel.

  ‘There’s a police officer asking for you,’ came a voice above his right shoulder and he looked up into the eyes of the Mission superintendent. ‘Whatever he wants you for, don’t make a habit of it,’ he was advised as he rose to his feet. ‘The people for whom this Mission is intended will stay away if we acquire a reputation for attracting police to the place.’

  Matthew followed the superintendent. Inspector Jennings was waiting for him in the office and he advised Matthew that he’d called with a police coach to transport him to the London Hospital.

  ‘I’ve done my bit,’ he grinned at Matthew. ‘Now it’s your turn and Dr Carlyle wants you to honour your promise to become a laboratory rat.’

  ‘Am I to assume that you’ve found the offending drug?’ Matthew asked as they rattled north up Cannon Street on the way to the hospital.

  Jennings grinned. ‘It proved easier than we had feared. The man Slater was only too anxious to name his supplier when we offered to forget all about his part in the faked séance.’

  ‘So that leaves him free to go after Sarah Barlowe?’ Matthew asked, horrified.

  Jennings shook his head. ‘Not exactly. For one thing, he’s got no idea that Barlowe peached on him and for another we discovered that he’s wanted in at least three police districts for drug dealing, receiving stolen property and “standover” tactics with local shopkeepers. When we handed him over to Bethnal Green they gave every indication that they were about to organise a celebration party.’

  ‘And he named his supplier?’

  ‘He most certainly did. We kicked down a certain door in Limehouse in the early hours of this morning and not only was “Chummy” there in person, but we found a considerable quantity of pink stuff hidden in his outside privy. I took it to Dr Carlyle as a breakfast gift.’

  ‘Have you had any sleep?’ Matthew asked.

  Jennings shook his head. ‘I’ve made an appointment to do that once I deliver you to the hospital. The doctor was already lighting gas burners and giving that pretty daughter of his instructions as I was leaving and he was about to head off for that library in Westminster that he reckons his uncle founded. He should be back by the time that we get there.’