Doktor Glass (5 page)

One question would not leave his mind. It returned again and again like a moth beating at an electrolier’s glass globe: Why would anyone
want
to capture another person’s soul?

And that led to another question: What would they do with it?

Elsie, the young maid, opened the door of Langton’s house. The hall gaslight gave her two spots of color high in her cheeks. “Evening, sir. There’s a visitor.”

Slipping out of his Ulster, Langton said, “At this time of the night? Who?”

Elsie took the coat and looked away. “Sergeant McBride, sir. He said it was urgent, so I took the liberty of putting him in the front sitting room, sir. Hope I did right.”

Langton couldn’t help a slight smile. “That’s quite all right, Elsie.”

“Could I get you anything, sir? Cook made a nice pie, steak and kidney. It’s in the larder.”

Langton wondered why he kept a cook on his staff when he never ate anymore. Perhaps because Sarah had taken her on. Perhaps because to let Cook go would be to admit to change. “Thank you, Elsie, I’m not hungry. That will be all for tonight.”

She turned away, blushing deeper. “Oh, I’ll stay up for a while yet, sir, in case there’s anything you and the sergeant need.”

Langton found McBride standing by the fire in the front room. “I asked if I could wait, sir. Wasn’t Elsie’s idea.”

Langton glanced at the sideboard in the corner, remembering the ranked bottles, then waved McBride to a chair. “You have news?”

“A few things, sir. Remember Olsen, the stoker on board the
Asención
, the one who said he saw a small boat in the dock just before the body washed up?”

“What did he have to say?”

“Not as much as we’d hoped, sir. He’s dead.”

“The drink?”

McBride shook his head. “Someone slid a knife in his back while he was asleep, sir.”

Langton stared into the fire. He didn’t like coincidences; he didn’t trust them. “Did anyone have a grudge against him? Any of the other sailors?”

“If they do they’re not saying, sir. Nice clean wound it was, too: straight through the back of the ribs and into the heart.”

“The weapon?”

“Got it down at the station, sir. A narrow blade, a piece of Sheffield steel long as my forearm.”

Langton tried to remember what the stoker had told McBride. If a small boat had dumped the faceless corpse into the dock, it could have come from a thousand places along the river, if not from one of the hundreds of moored ships. Langton could spend weeks
searching even if the stoker had given a good description. All they had now was fog.

“Did any strangers board the
Asención
?”

McBride scratched his head. “Funny you should say that, sir. The captain put a man at the top of the gangplank, just like in every port. Third mate, sober and trusted. Seems he heard someone calling for help, splashing around, and thought it was a sailor worse for drink. So he rushes off to starboard with a life preserver in his hand.”

“And found nothing.”

“That’s right, sir.”

That would give someone time to board the ship and search for Olsen, who probably slept close to the boilers and the coal hoppers, as stokers did on most vessels. But was Langton being too fanciful? Could there really be a connection between the faceless corpse and the death of the stoker? If such a connection did exist, Olsen’s killers must have learned of his sighting and his identity within hours. And then acted.

“There was something else, sir,” McBride said, fishing in his jacket pocket and producing a crumpled envelope. “I found this waiting for you when I got back to the station.”

Copperplate handwriting, blue ink on cream paper. In the top-right corner, embossed gilt script:
Professor H. Caldwell Chivers.
“We’ve been summoned, Sergeant.”

“Sir?”

Langton folded the note into his pocket. “It seems that the Professor wishes to see us tonight.”

*  *  *

S
EATED WITH
McB
RIDE
in the rear of a jostling hansom cab, Langton thought of the few people who had known of Stoker Olsen’s information. He could see the group standing around the faceless corpse at Albert Dock, could picture their faces: the docker, Connolly; Perkins,
the assistant piermaster; Olsen, clutching the lamppost to keep himself upright. And McBride, of course.

With his elbow, Langton wiped a clear patch in the cab window’s condensation. Lights glimmered like swollen eyes in the fog that had thickened and now clogged every street, pressed down on the city like a soporific pad over a patient’s mouth. Langton envied the sleeping inhabitants. He envied the sweet ignorance of their slumber.

After the driver halted the cab at the corner of Hope Street and Hope Place, Langton paid him and stood on the snow-crusted pavement looking up at the Infirmary. A high, wide building in red brick and local sandstone, with a single electric globe burning above the side portico. A dimmer light glowed yellow in an adjacent window, no doubt the night porter’s quarters.

Despite himself, Langton remembered the last time he had visited this place. Running through the stifling streets, unable to hail a cab, then stumbling up the steps to the emergency ward. All in vain.

“Sir? Is everything all right?”

Langton uncurled his fists in his pockets and made for the steps. “Come on, Sergeant.”

Inside the echoing marble lobby, the old porter yawned as he slid aside the glass panel. “Emergency?”

“No, we’re here—”

“We only see emergencies after ten at night, gents. Proper hours is seven till ten.”

Langton retrieved his warrant card and said, “Professor Caldwell Chivers said he’d wait for us.”

“Oh. Right, sir.” The porter pulled on half-moon spectacles and checked his ledger. “The Professor is still signed in. You might find him in Theater, sir. Take those stairs on your left, third floor. Or he might be in Casualty.”

Langton and McBride followed the directions. Their boots echoed from the white-tiled walls. They passed the open doors of long, cold
wards lit by dim electric lights, where patients became indistinct mounds beneath grey blankets. Young nurses in white looked up from their desks as if berating the policemen for disturbing the sick with their steps. The reek of disinfectant flooded every corridor.

On the third floor, two sets of wooden doors with frosted glass portholes opened into the operating theaters. Inside, Langton saw a short corridor leading to a ward with a handful of white-shrouded beds, each with a nurse attending. On the left, an office of dark wooden file cabinets, bureaus, bottles behind locked glass. An empty birdcage hung from a hook in the corner.

Langton saw the woman’s hands first, in the light thrown by a lamp of green glass: small and delicate, they moved through the lozenge of bright light on the desk, turning pages, making small entries in the massive ledger. Then Langton took in the dark blue dress, the apron and cap of starched white cotton. When she looked up from her seat, half hidden in shadow, the woman’s eyes shone like stars. “Can I help you?”

Langton stepped into the office and introduced himself and McBride. “Professor Caldwell Chivers asked to see us.”

“He did?” The woman set the pen down, rose from her seat, and brushed an errant wisp of escaping black hair back behind her ear. “He’s just finished an operation and I hate to disturb him. He’s had perhaps four or five hours’ rest in the past twenty-four.”

Langton wondered if the woman had managed any more sleep than that herself; fatigue obviously pulled at her body. “I think it’s important. Miss…”

“Wright. Sister Wright.” She shook Langton’s hand and nodded to McBride. “I take it this is important?”

“It’s part of a murder investigation.”

“Ah, the faceless man that was brought in…”

“Exactly.”

“Then please follow me, gentlemen.”

She led them back the way they had come, along deserted
corridors and through an unmarked door. The room beyond could have come straight from a gentlemen’s club: leather armchairs, wooden paneling, newspapers and periodicals strewn over cluttered tables. The smell of cigar smoke.

An elderly man lay slumped in one of the vast armchairs with his long legs stretched out toward the fire. His posture, his crumpled white shirt and unbuttoned waistcoat, all implied drowsiness, if not sleep, but the man looked up as Sister Wright approached.

“Professor, Inspector Langton here said you’d arranged to see him.”

“Of course, my dear. Thank you.” Professor Caldwell Chivers stood up, smoothed his crumpled clothes, and ran a hand through sparse white hair. “Forgive my appearance, Inspector. We’ve had quite a day, haven’t we, Sister?”

Sister Wright smiled but said nothing.

“Thank you for seeing us,” Langton said. “I gather you’ve discovered something?”

Caldwell Chivers buttoned his waistcoat and reached for his jacket. “Perhaps we should take a look at our mutual friend together.”

Sister Wright followed them after brushing dust from the Professor’s shoulders. “You know you should rest, Professor.”

“I’ll have plenty of time for rest when I retire,” Caldwell Chivers said, smiling.

“Then at least let me order you something from the kitchens.”

“My dear, I promise that I will leave for home as soon as our business with the good inspector here is over.”

Langton glanced at the sister as she looked to heaven and shook her head. She and the Professor had obviously worked together for quite some time: Their bond was apparent, almost like that of an affectionate, exasperated married couple. Inside Langton, a twinge of regret, almost of jealousy.

A brief walk brought them to a cold room near the Infirmary’s theaters. The Professor switched on banks of electric lights that
flooded the chamber. The faceless man lay on a long zinc table with upturned edges and drains leading to a floor sluice.

The Professor selected a slender knife from the surgical steel instruments arrayed in wall cabinets and approached the body. “Your Doctor Fry was quite accurate in his prognosis: We have here a middle-aged man with a failing liver, perhaps not very far from terminal cirrhosis. Caucasian, but he’s obviously spent a great deal of time under the sun. A Boer, from the tattoos.”

“The Orange Free State Irregulars of eighty-six,” Sister Wright said.

Langton stared at her; she stared back, unflinching, but didn’t volunteer an explanation of how she knew.

The Professor continued, “Cause of death was poisoning, a compound of hyosine and an opiate derivative. Slow acting. Paralysis would have set in first, followed by gradual loss of consciousness and then asphyxiation.”

“So he would have been conscious but unable to move?” Langton asked.

“In my opinion, yes. For a short time.”

A truly horrible image reared up in Langton’s mind. “Do you think…Was he awake when they did this to him?”

The Professor looked down at the excised face. “It is possible. I see little motive for it, other than madness, but it is quite possible.”

Langton shook his head. What kind of men were they dealing with here?

“These are the most intriguing aspects.” The Professor pointed the long knife at the dark patches on the dead man’s neck. “They appear to be burns. Low-voltage electrical burns unless I’m much mistaken.”

“Why torture him further?”

The Professor hesitated, then said, “I don’t think it was torture. I can’t be sure, but…Inspector, have you ever heard of the Jar Boys?”

*  *  *

L
ANGTON STILL COULDN
’
T
believe the Professor’s words. Even now, sitting in the dining room of the Professor’s Upper Parliament Street mansion, he refused to accept the coincidence. For that must be the case; hearing two references to the apocryphal soul snatchers must be strange accident and no more. There could not be a connection.

He glanced at the ornate clock on the mantel: two fifty in the morning. Langton had sent McBride home; Sister Wright had stayed at the Infirmary. So now the world shrank to the luxurious, eclectic dining room of the Professor. Egyptian effigies stared back from the shadows, their gilt decoration reflecting the flames.

Although he longed to ask questions, Langton waited until the Professor had finished his sandwich and poured out another glass of claret for both of them. The Professor leaned back in his chair and pushed the plate away. “Fine piece of beef. Hungrier than I realized. You get so intrigued by the day’s cases that everything else is forgotten; no doubt the same happens in your line of work.”

“That’s true,” Langton said, fighting his impatience.

“Are you a superstitious man, Inspector?”

Pushing away the memory of Mrs. Grizedale, Langton said, “Not as a rule.”

“No, nor me.” The Professor sipped his claret and leaned his head against the chair back. “I’ve lived a long life and I’m more open-minded than perhaps I once was. I’ve lost a great deal of my natural cynicism.”

Langton waited. The clock ticked.

The Professor continued, “I first heard of the Jar Boys thirty-odd years ago. You might recall the work of Tesla, Marconi, and Hertz in the field of radio communications.”

“We traveled on ships that use their equipment.”

“Quite. At the time, little was known about electromagnetic emissions. Edison, the American, made extravagant claims, and Faraday showed some promising experiments, but many people mistook their work for magic or misdirection. Some still do.”

Langton remembered attending Crystal Palace, where he and Sarah had marveled at the latest inventions and feats of engineering, not least of which had been the palace itself. Some of the watching crowd had jeered the Marconi Company demonstrations, calling them street magicians and worse.

“You know how their apparatus works?” the Professor asked.

“To a degree; one piece of equipment emits some kind of message while the other accepts it.”

The Professor nodded. “In essence, yes. Speech, or teletype data, is reduced to electrical pulses and transmitted; the receiving station uses an ‘aerial’ to capture the transmitted waves and render them back into speech or information. This is the basic operation of radio.”