Supping With Panthers (37 page)

Alvediston Manor,

Near Salisbury,

Wiltshire.

7 July.

My dearest L,

You are funny. Why would I blame you? I’m hardly the man to forbid you anything. If I were, I doubt you would have married me. Dammit, Lucy, you’ve always been strong-minded. That’s the way I like you. I could never bear to carry on like the Pater, dishing out orders all the time. Hate orders, always have done. It’s perfectly true, I didn’t want you to visit my parents’ house again; but that wasn’t because I was afraid you might intrude or any of that rot, only because I feel there’s something wrong there and I don’t want you mixed up in it. And I was right, wasn’t I? You shouldn’t have gone. ‘Some shadow of evil’ – yes, I liked that. Nice phrase. Puts it pretty well.

But actually, Lucy, it seems the shadow may be lifting soon. I’ve had the most splendid news, you see. Got a letter last week, from India. Not from the Pater himself (he’s off slaughtering the heathen somewhere on the frontier), but from some other chap I’ve never heard of, a subaltern of his. It appears that my sister may not be dead after all. She’s been seen, apparently, up in that region where she disappeared. It’s not absolutely certain but sounds pretty hopeful, according to this subaltern, and they’ve sent off a mission into the hills. Really, Lucy, have you ever heard more ripping news? I can’t wait for you to meet Charlotte. I’m sure you’ll turn out the most tremendous friends.

I’ve been in such a state of excitement over this letter that I’m a little behind on my business down here. I’ll certainly aim to have everything over and done with in time for Mr Stoker’s dinner party, though. And, yes,
of course
I remember Jack Eliot. We met in your dressing room. He was in India too, wasn’t he, up in the hills? Maybe he knows the region where poor Charlotte disappeared. I’ll be able to ask him at the very least.

Darling Lucy, I’ll be back soon. I miss you more than I can put into words. But you know that.

All, all love, my dearest, to you and Art,

Your doting husband,

NED.

Dr Eliot’s Diary.

16 July.
– For just over a week, I have been working hard on my research, attempting to recapture the spark of understanding I had felt with Lilah, which at the time had seemed so genuine. But the toil has been fruitless. Lord Ruthven’s leucocytes have remained unchanged, which should have acted as a spur to my theorising, but instead has served to paralyse my thoughts. I can see no way past the problem they represent. There is a sample beside me on my desk as I speak. Beneath the microscope the cells seem to mock me with their unceasing movement, while all around sheets of paper covered with scribblings mount up on my desk. They amount to nothing; I am lost in a maze which I cannot understand.

Yesterday, so dull and distracted did I feel that I went so far as to call on Lilah again – purely to see if she could lighten my spirits. There was no difficulty in finding her warehouse this time. I had not realised, until I was with her again, how much I had missed the stimulation she provides. We sat in the conservatory, Suzette with us, scribbling notes in a magazine:
A Study in Scarlet
again. I promised her I would read it. There was only limited opportunity for conversation of the kind that Lilah and I shared last week, for I could spare only a few hours away from the surgery. But Lilah is always intriguing company; we were together long enough for me to recapture the spark I had enjoyed before. But now it is faded again; and I feel nothing but distraction and bafflement

Only the discharge of Mary Kelly this afternoon, after a satisfactory recovery, has served to lighten my mood. But even so, I am still unable to explain the cause of her relapse, nor am I confident that she is wholly cured. I have warned her on no account to return to Rotherhithe, nor to travel near it, even along the opposite bank of the Thames. For her own comfort of mind, I have agreed to take possession of a spare key to her room in Miller’s Court. I have placed it prominently next to the clock in my rooms.

20 July.
– No choice in the end but to take the afternoon off. I had been trying to concentrate on my research, but the inspiration was as absent as before; the longer I worked, the greater my sense of depression grew, and I was getting nowhere. I went for a long walk, to try to order my thoughts.

Passing through Covent Garden, I called on Stoker, but he was busy and so I continued my walk across Waterloo Bridge and back along the Thames. Without really having intended it, I found myself in Rotherhithe. I called on Lilah. To my surprise, the door was answered by Polidori. He did not seem pleased to see me.

‘She’s not in,’ he snarled, and would have slammed the door in my face had I not blocked it with my foot. ‘If you don’t mind,’ said Polidori, as rudely as before, ‘I’m rather busy.’ He turned his back on me and I saw that behind him, standing in the hall, was a man I recognised from the opium den. His eyes were open but quite without sense, and his head lolled as though his neck had been broken. Instinctively, I stepped forward to see what assistance I could give him, but Polidori pushed me roughly aside and took the man by his arm. ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ he told me, speaking close to my face so that I received the full blast of his breath and had to look away. From the corner of my eye, I saw Polidori grin and turn back to his companion. ‘He can’t handle his smoke. Had a bit too much of it, haven’t you?’ He slapped the man on his cheeks, but the addict made no reply. Polidori lifted his chin and breathed full on his face; but still the man stared as dully as before.

‘He needs help,’ I said.

‘Not yours, though,’ replied Polidori rudely. ‘I thank you, Doctor, but I do have some medical training of my own.’

‘Then at least let me help you.’

‘Oh! So your knowledge of opium is the equal of mine? You understand the principles of addiction as well as me? You have devoted a lifetime to studying it, perhaps? No. I didn’t think so. Very well, then, would you please’ – and even his expression of politeness remained a mocking leer –
‘fuck
off, Doctor, and not pester us?’ He brushed past me and began to lead his patient across the hall, towards a door that I recognised from my first visit; it led to the room in which Stoker and I had discovered George.

‘What will you do with him?’ I called out.

Polidori paused in the doorway; he glanced back at me. ‘Why, what do you think?’ he asked. ‘Dry him out!’ He hissed with laughter, then slammed the door in my face and I heard a key tum in the lock.

‘Why does he upset you so much?’

I looked round. From the balcony above the hall, Suzette was watching me. I shrugged.

Suzette held out a hand. ‘Come and wait for Lilah with me.’

I sighed; then I walked across the hall and up the stairs. ‘You
do
hate him, don’t you?’ asked Suzette, as she reached up to take my hand.

‘I don’t hate anyone,’ I replied. ‘That would be a waste of time.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it is always a waste of time to surrender to emotion.’

Suzette considered this. Her solemn face wore a frown. ‘So what should you surrender to instead?’

‘Your judgement.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of what you estimate someone’s effect to be on their fellow men.’

‘And if it’s bad, you should hate them?’

‘No. I said – never hate. Attempt to … counteract.’

‘Counteract’ Suzette repeated the word, as though impressed by its length. ‘And so you want to … “counteract” … Polly?’

I stared into her wide eyes. She was very young, but I was uncomfortable with the way the conversation was turning. I had the sense – extraordinary with a child – that she might almost be playing with me. ‘I don’t trust him,’ I said at last, ‘that is all.’

Suzette nodded solemnly. We had reached the main room by now. I sat on a divan and Suzette clambered up to join me. She continued to fix me with her unblinking gaze. ‘You don’t trust him because he gives people opium, do you?’

‘Opium?’ I frowned. ‘You’re too young to know about that’

‘But I live next door to Polly’s shop. How could I not know about it?’ She hadn’t smiled, but I thought I could detect a glint of amusement in her eyes. ‘Besides,’ she added, fiddling with a ringlet in her hair, ‘Lilah tells me that it’s good to know things.’ She looked up at me again. ‘Do you think it’s not?’

‘It’s not good to know about opium, no.’

‘But you do.’

‘Yes. Because I have to know about what makes people ill.’

‘Have you taken it yourself, then?’

I frowned, but her expression remained as interested and solemn as before. ‘No,’ I said at length.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I prefer my brain to be clear and sharp. I do not want it clouded. The desire for opium becomes a craving, Suzette. Do you understand what a craving is?’ She nodded. ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘I have a craving, but it is for a
natural
excitement, for the stimulation of my reasoning powers. You understand that, don’t you, Suzette? I have seen you playing chess – you like problems and puzzles, just like me.’ Again she nodded slowly. ‘Then promise,’ I said, ‘never,
never
take opium.’ I tried to look as stem as I could. ‘If you must be an addict of anything, then be an addict of the excitement that your own powers can give you – an addict of mental exaltation.’

‘Like Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Yes,’ I said, not wishing to admit that I had failed to read the story yet. ‘If you like.’

Suzette nodded. ‘So in that case …’ she said, fiddling with her ringlet again.

‘Yes?’ I encouraged her.

‘If you like to feel all sharp and alert …’

‘Yes?’

She looked up at me. ‘Do you like to take cocaine?’ she asked.

She must have observed my surprise. But still she didn’t blink, and her face remained the picture of innocent inquiry it had been before. I looked away and thought that George had been right after all, she did need a nanny – at the very least. And just as I was considering that I would tell Lilah this, I heard footsteps approaching up the steps outside, and Suzette scrambled from die divan and ran across to die door. ‘Lilah!’ she cried, as the door opened. She reached up to hug Lilah, and Lilah swept her up in her arms. Behind them, I realised, still on the balcony, stood a man. He was in evening dress, dark-faced and bearded, with a turban round his head. It was the Rajah: I recognised him at once.

And then, a fraction of a second later, I remembered that this man was actually George. Such errors of the memory are always suggestive; on this occasion especially so for, staring into his face, I was struck as I had been before by the transformation in my friend’s appearance. Quite simply, I could not recognise him; instead of the honest, jovial features of Sir George Mowberley, I was staring at a man stamped with jealousy and lust. ‘George,’ I said, almost inquiringly. I held out my hand; George stared at it, and his lip seemed to quiver as though with hatred for me. Then he controlled himself and took my hand; as he shook it I suddenly shuddered, for I was struck – I couldn’t say why – by a most extraordinary surge of dislike and fear. I remembered how both Lucy and Stoker had described their response to the Rajah; now I too, even while aware of his true identity, found myself affected in a similar way. George must have noted my revulsion, for he began to frown; to cover myself, I started to compliment him on the quality of his make-up and dress. I smiled as good-humouredly as I could manage. ‘Quite unsettling.’

‘Yes,’ said Lilah, taking his arm, ‘you look perfectly sinister.’ She reached up to kiss him, long and lingeringly. George tried to hold her, but as he did so Lilah slipped away from his grasp. ‘Not in front of the child,’ she murmured.

‘Damn the child.’ George glared at Suzette, then muttered something else beneath his breath. Suzette suddenly began to laugh. George’s frown deepened, and I saw how his hands were clenched into fists.

Lilah must have observed it too, for she took George’s arm again and began to guide him away. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘we must wash that make-up from your face.’ She led us into the conservatory. As I accompanied her, I observed how she too seemed changed, though nothing like as profoundly as George. She had painted her face, not thickly but strikingly; her hair had been deliberately set to seem unstyled; her jewellery I recognised as Kalikshutran gold. Her dress, even more daringly than before, was in the latest
décolleté
style. She seemed quite unlike the woman I had sat with on my previous visit. Again, I found the transformation unsettling to behold.

We stood by a fountain, while George bent down and wiped the make-up from his face. I observed, before it was washed away on the fountain’s flow, how the paint stained the water in the manner of blood. Interesting, especially in view of what Lucy saw in Bond Street when George had been
applying
the make-up; hard to explain, since the finish on the face looks nothing like blood. I was relieved when George had completed his ablutions; as he sat down beside us, he seemed his old self again. No – almost his old self, I should say, for there remained in his eyes the gleam of suspicion, and his features seemed even more gaunt than before. He is still clearly weakening. I requested him to visit me within the next few days. He promised me that he would, once his Bill was passed; it seems the vote on the measures is due for next week. Whether George does come, of course, I can only wait and see.

I rose and excused myself shortly afterwards. The situation is potentially awkward. Evidently, if I am to see Lilah in the future, it must be when I don’t have to share her with George. God knows what he has been imagining.

24 July.
– An unpleasant incident, which I am almost embarrassed to record.

A couple of days ago, I had finally obtained a copy of
Beeton’s Magazine;
that same evening, I spent an idle hour skimming through
A Study in Scarlet.
By an odd coincidence, it turned out to have been written by Arthur Conan Doyle. I haven’t seen him since our university days. His hero, Sherlock Holmes, is an obvious caricature of Dr Bell, for their deductive methods are exactly the same. Evidently Doyle did gain something from Bell’s lectures, after all.