The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (30 page)

“Her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death
. Those are the words of the queen. Not mine.”

“I am afraid that Martha may not have been a suicide.”

She stopped, and was seized with a fit of coughing. It was as if she were trying to expel something from her body. After a few moments she recovered.

“You mean that someone has killed her?”

“I believe so. Yes.”

“I knew it. I knew it when I saw her in the weeds.”

“What made you suspect it?” I was eager to hear her account, touching, as it might, upon my own secret.

“The face at the window,” she replied. “It was no dream. No phantasm. I am sure of that now. I had tried to comfort myself, and you, with my explanation last night. But it was not a face I had ever seen before in my dreams.”

“Can you describe it, Mary?”

“It seemed crumpled, creased rather, like a sheet of paper hastily thrown away. The eyes were of such malevolence that even now I shudder.”

It was clear enough to me that she had seen the creature. He
had come to the house at Marlow in pursuit of me and my friends, with the object of performing another act of vengeance. “You must tell the constables everything you saw,” I said. “There will be a search for this demon.” I had conceived the hope, only half-formed, that the creature might be taken and killed by the mob—or that in some other way he might be destroyed by the forces of the law.

“Demon? No. He was a man, I believe, but one of terrible appearance.”

“We must speak to the constables as quickly as possible. They may be able to capture this man before he can flee.”

“It is possible, Victor, that he wished to murder me. Only my scream prevented him. But then poor Martha—” She said no more. We walked the rest of the way in silence.

WHEN MARY AND I CAME BACK
into Marlow, we saw the commotion by the side of the bridge. A small crowd had gathered on the path sloping down to the river. I could see Bysshe in animated conversation with an elderly gentleman in rusty black who, as I discovered later, was the watchman of the high street. As we came up to them I realised that the crowd had formed a circle around the body of Martha. Mr. Godwin and one of the parish constables, in tall hat and blue surtout, were standing beside the corpse and looking down upon it with scarcely concealed relish.

“Look into her eyes, Mr. Wilby,” one of the women in the crowd called out to the constable. “You will see the face of the murderer there.”

“You do it, Sarah,” he replied. “You are the wise woman. Not me.”

“These superstitions,” Mary whispered to me, “are very strong.”

Sarah had obliged the constable by coming forward and kneeling down beside the body. She peered into Martha’s open eyes, and then suddenly jerked her head back. “I see a fiend,” she said.

Mr. Godwin laughed. “If it is a fiend, Mr. Wilby, you will not be able to catch him.”

“We will have difficulty, sir. That is sure enough. Be good, Sarah. Stand up now.” The crowd were murmuring, unsure whether to accept or to ridicule the woman’s verdict. I decided now to act. I walked up to Mr. Godwin and the constable. “Miss Godwin,” I said, “has something very important to tell you. She saw the murderer last night. Outside her bedroom window.”

“What?” Mr. Godwin seemed offended. “Why did Mary not tell me of this?”

“Before we found Martha’s body, sir, there was no possible reason to alarm you. She thought it might have been a dream.”

“Where is this lady?” Mr. Wilby was very solemn.

“She is conversing with Mr. Shelley. There.” The constable walked over to her, and they stood together in earnest conversation. Bysshe seemed strangely excited; his eyes were bright and, as he approached me, I saw that his face had the faintest flush. “I should have searched the garden,” he said. “I should have caught this madman before he came upon Martha.”

“We had not the slightest notion that he was real, Bysshe.”

“I should have trusted Mary.”

“She did not even trust herself. She considered it to be a vision. A dream.”

“But she sees into the heart of things. She knew that some dreadful event was about to take place.”

“It is too late for this, Bysshe. All our efforts must now be bent on finding the killer.”

“He will have fled. I am sure of it.”

“But we may find traces of his presence. He may be hunted down.”

“Hunted down. That is a good phrase.” He glanced at Mary, still standing with the constable. “I will keep her safe. I will protect her.”

Mr. Wilby began to organise a party of men for the search of the immediate neighbourhood; it was composed of shopkeepers, boatmen, and other workmen of the town. In addition three men were sent out to inform the inhabitants of the outlying villages. The constable hoped that there might have been sightings of the killer in the locality, even if the villain himself was not found. Inwardly I exulted. The creature was no longer the embodiment of my private despair; he had to some extent become a public agent, an object of concerted horror and suspicion. I joined the band of Marlow townsmen, and explained to them that they should begin their search along the stretch of the Thames where we had found the body of Martha. For a moment they were suspicious of my Swiss accent, but Bysshe reassured them that I was a good friend of him and of England. So they willingly followed me along the towing path until we reached that spot where Martha had risen among the weeds. There was no sign of disturbance in the vicinity. The recent fall of rain had left a film or haze of moisture over the trees and bushes around us, and all was still. We advanced further along the path and, following a slight bend in the river, came upon a water meadow where the grass had grown tall. “Something has been here,” I said. “Do you see the dark line in the grass? Something has left a track.”

“A cow,” one of the men suggested.

“I see no cattle. And there are no horses in the fields.” When we approached the track I noticed that it was discontinuous.

“Do you see,” I said to them, “how the grass has been trampled down in sequence, with gaps between each mark? It is as if someone has proceeded in leaps and bounds.”

“Hopping. Like a hare.” It was the same man who had spoken before; he wore the garb of a market trader, with a red scarf tied loosely around his neck. “Who could leap such a distance?”

“It would take great strength and energy, I grant you.”

“No man on earth could do it, sir.”

“I am not so sure,” I replied. “It has been said that murderers, after committing the deed, are possessed of enormous energy.”

“So we follow the trail, do we?”

“Most certainly. Make sure that your guns are primed. He may be ferocious.” I had the faintest hope that, if the creature could be injured or in some way rendered insensible, I might be able to act upon him. Could I remove his cerebral hemispheres, taking away all his powers of speech and motion? We walked in his track to the edge of the meadow, where our advance was checked by a broad channel of water running between the fields. “The bank has been disturbed here,” I said. “Do you see the loose stones and earth? There is a depression, where he has sat down.”

“Finding his breath, I imagine,” one of the men replied.

“Or reflecting upon his next move. Where did he go?” I could see nothing in the field ahead, but then I noticed that the waters of the channel were muddied. “He has gone in,” I said. “He has followed the channel. It was deep enough for him to remain hidden.”

“Why would a man wish to take to water rather than land?” the man with the red scarf asked me.

“He may be no ordinary man.”

“A water demon then?” He was smiling at me.

“I cannot tell.”

Then we heard laughter—it was the most serene and melodious laugh that I had ever heard. And then came his voice. “I have been waiting for you, gentlemen. Do you wish to see me now?”

“Prepare your guns,” I said.

One of the men then shot wildly into the field. On the sound of the report I saw a movement in a copse some distance away—he had projected his voice by some physical means unknown to me—and then a dark shape bounded off. “He is gone,” I said. “You must alert the villagers in the neighbourhood. We do not have the means to overtake him.”

The men were disturbed by the manner of the creature’s flight—so sudden and so swift—and were subdued as they returned to Marlow. Some of them wondered out loud how any man could run at such a speed. “He must be possessed,” I said. “I have heard of such cases.”

I walked back slowly to Albion House, where Bysshe and the Godwins were sitting in the drawing room. “Mary wishes to return to London,” Bysshe said as soon as I came into the room. “She has become nervous of this place.”

“I do not believe the creature—the man—will come back,” I replied. “We saw him fleeing across the fields.”

“You saw him?” Mary was looking at me with the intentness I had noticed before. “What was he? What did he wear?”

“We saw only his running form. I believe that he was wrapped in a dark cloak. But I cannot be sure.”

“Did he speak?”

“Yes. He said something like, ‘I have been waiting for you, gentlemen.’ Then one of my party fired. He ran. That is all I can tell you.”

“Does that satisfy you, Mary?” her father asked.

“I will feel safe only in London, Pa. Here we are too—too vulnerable.”

“You and Fred can stay on,” Bysshe said to me. “You have only just arrived. And I doubt that the villain will come for you.”

“His actions are not predictable.”

“You think not?”

“That is my assumption. I am afraid, Bysshe, that I share Mary’s anxiety. Where is Fred?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Excuse me for a moment.” I went down into the kitchen where Fred was sitting at the table, stirring a bowl of milk pudding. “Are you composed, Fred?”

“She was a good girl. I liked Martha, Mr. Frankenstein. She was a cheerful one.”

“Did you hear anything in the night?”

“Not so much as a bed bug. The ham makes me sleep. The first thing I know of it is when the constable comes to the house. He was all in a sweat. When he told me, I could have fainted away. But I steadied myself. Was she bloated, sir? I’ve seen a few from the Thames.”

“She was bruised.”

“Where, sir?”

“Around the neck.”

He continued stirring the milk pudding. “That was not nice.”

“Not nice at all. The others are going back to London, Fred. Mr. Shelley has suggested that we can remain at Albion House.”

“Nothing here, sir. Just fields.”

“So you would like to return with them?” He looked at me. “Very well. We will go back.”

In truth I had no desire to be left in Marlow. I knew well enough that there was no safety from the creature, in any place on earth. But in London, at least, there was comfort in the massed ranks of people. Here, in the open, I felt afraid.

We could not, as it transpired, return at once. The parish constable came to inform us that, two days hence, we would be obliged to attend the coroner’s inquest; it would take place in an upper room of a public house along the high street.

“This is very unfortunate, Mr. Wilby.” Mr. Godwin had decided to remonstrate with him. “My daughter is in very low spirits as a consequence of this affair. She wishes to return to London.”

“It cannot be helped, sir. All Marlow is in a fever over this case. Justice must be seen to be done, sir.”

“Where is poor Martha?” Mary asked him.

“The deceased is lying in an ice-house. Behind the butcher’s shop in Lady Place. She will be a little damaged, but she will last.”

We spent the next two days in a state of some gloom; the rain continued, more intensely than before, and on one afternoon Bysshe read to us some stanzas from the poem he was then composing. Certain lines struck me very forcibly:

“I curse thee! Let a sufferer’s curse

Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse,

Till thine Infinity shall be

A robe of envenomed agony;

And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,

To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.”

“Very good,” Mr. Godwin remarked. “Very strong.”

“It is a powerful curse,” Mary said. “It issues from a broken heart.”

“I see the curse,” I said, “like a smoking plain, filled with fires and fissures from which billows of livid smoke erupt.”

They looked at me in surprise, and then Bysshe continued reading.