The Medea Complex (18 page)

Dr George Savage

March 2
^nd
, 1886

The Cell

As the warden draws back the bolt on the cell door, a mess
of stinking rags huddled in the corner jerks at the sound.

“Stanbury?”

Silence.

“What happened, Stanbury? Did you drink alcohol with the
chloral I gave you? Did you take it the night Anne disappeared?”

He shifts slightly.

“Stanbury?” I reach out to him, recoiling as a terribly
strong, faecal stench assails me. Embarrassed at my own reaction, I take a deep
breath through my mouth, and ask him as gently as I can what happened.

He still doesn't move.

“Stanbury!”

A voice comes from underneath the blanket.

“He's got the ring, Doctor. The ring. They know everything.”

“What are you talking about? What ‘ring’?” I suppress my
frustration. “Focus, will you? Did you take the chloral together with the
alcohol? This is important Stanbury; you could end up in prison or worse. I
need you to tell me.”

“No, no, no. I didn’t.” He shrugs the blanket off him and
moves towards the light, his whole body shaking. As he draws closer, I suppress
a gasp. His eyes are almost completely red; riddled with burst blood vessels.
“Remember, you told me not to mix them. I couldn’t give up the drink so I never
took it. At least, not that time.”

I breathe a silent sigh of relief. Thank god. If he admitted
taking chloral and drinking, then my reputation would be in tatters. Never mind
the fact I told him not to combine the two: alcoholics are notorious for not
abiding to instructions. I would therefore be deemed negligent for putting it
into his hands. If the governors found out I prescribed the drug to him, and he
had killed his wife whilst under its influence…

I would lose my job, and be shamed. Mr Stanbury would be let
off of course, the medico-legal world knows that chloral plus alcohol equals
temporary insanity. I could even be deemed an accessory to the murder.

I mentally shake off my concerns.

There is nothing to worry about.

He said so himself: he didn’t combine the two.

Then what happened?

I look at him more closely. The last time I shook hands with
this man, he met my gaze and told me he had stopped drinking; yet the sour
smell of recently ingested whiskey had danced on his breath. I had chosen to
ignore it; too excited was I in my want to return him to his wife. I was
selfish and overeager to discharge Lady Stanbury into his care. How could I
have been so blind? I was a fool to think he could ever have forgiven her.

He lied then, and he is lying now.

I am a doctor specialising in psychiatry. My gift lies in
detecting personalities and secrets, digging up the truth and seeing people for
what they truly are. Why did I not see in him the need for revenge, rooted in
blood, anger and ale?

The first day in my office.

‘
I hate her for what she has done.
’

That day in Asquith Manor.

“The servants all hate me. None of this belongs to me.
Our marriage was a sham.”

The hatred was always there.

Mr Stanbury clears his throat, a deep, phlegmy sort of
grunt.

“I need a drink, Doctor. My hands won’t stop shaking.” He
stretches them out towards me. The grime and dirt does little to conceal the
giveaway symptom of Delirium Tremens. I fondle the paper in my pocket. The
certificate I am about to fill.

 “I'm worried I'm getting really sick, Doctor.  I didn't do
anything…it's all a conspiracy. Anne is alive, it all makes sense now. They
took the ring for God's sake!”

“You’re feeling ill because you’re withdrawing from the
alcohol. I can’t give you any, Stanbury. I’m sorry.”

You’re a liar, I think. And I don’t wish to help you. You
are not insane, you are a cold-blooded murderer.

“Yea, I didn’t think so.” He curls his arms around himself.

“Stanbury…who are ‘they’?”

He uncoils himself and screams, then punches the wall.

“My damned father-in-law! The policeman! My wife! The maid!
All of them, they’re all ‘they!”

It’s worse than I thought.

He may actually be insane.

“Do you remember being brought here, Stanbury?”

“Yes, of course I do!” He paces with renewed life. “It was
my wife that had amnesia, not me!”

Reaching into my pocket, I take out my notebook and pen,
ready to write, when he crosses over to the bars and shakes them.

“I am not your goddamn patient! Don't be writing anything,
listen to me! You have to get me out of here! I'll tell you the whole story as
long as you promise to save me Doctor; you have to save me from this mess I
find myself in. I didn't kill anyone, I didn't! Is it not enough that my own
flesh and blood has been torn from me? Is it not enough that my wife hates me,
and has plotted against me to put me in such a position? Is it not enough that
I am sober?”He throws himself onto the floor, begging me with his eyes and with
his hands. The anger flows out of him as quickly as it came, and his body
starts to shake with great, heaving sobs.

I drag a chair over to the bars, and instruct him to tell me
everything, right from the beginning.

“I don’t have a chair, Doctor.”

“That’s quite alright. Sit on the edge of the bed; we can
hear one another just fine. I want you to tell me what you believe has happened
to Anne.”

He sits, and looks at me imploringly.

“I'll tell you everything Doctor, everything. I didn't kill
my wife. You must believe me.”

**

Edgar finishes telling me his story, and my head hurts.

His tale is wild and utterly unbelievable. To consider it
would imply that Lady Stanbury is alive.

But it would also mean she was never mad: just very clever.
That she deceived me. But how? She had all the signs and symptoms of puerperal
mania. She killed her baby. That much is an absolute fact. I’ve seen the
pictures. There was a dead baby on her kitchen floor. I diagnosed her. She had
amnesia, hysteria, mania. Therefore, it cannot be true.

It is physical impossibility. I have never met a woman
intelligent enough to do such a thing, and don’t expect I ever will. Mother
Nature simply did not equip them with such foresight nor acumen.

“You purposefully set out to seduce Lady Anne?”

He nods his head.

“Yes, and it was easy. Laughably so. I'm ashamed, Doctor,
but at that time I truly didn't have a sense of moral honour. I always meant to
deceive the woman, but it was sheer luck that she happened to walk into the
theatre that day. Yes, I got a job there on purpose, knowing that she liked to
visit, but never did I imagine she would do so on my shift!  Yet she simply
brought forward the inevitable: it was always going to happen between us...an,
erm, a meeting, that is.” He wipes his eyes on a dirty, snot-ridden sleeve.

“I didn't know when, or exactly how I was going to engineer
a meeting between the two of us, though. After all, how is a commoner supposed
to meet a woman of such a social position? I guess I imagined that one day I
would apply to the house for some work on the land, or perhaps dress myself up
in some mock finery and pretend I was new to the area. I hadn't really
considered the details. And my father was no help in the logistics of the whole
farce, bugger him. But fate stepped in, as it seems want to do, and I took the
opportunity.”

“So, you seduced her for her money?”

He shakes his head, and laughs mirthlessly. “Her money?
Doctor, there is so much you don't understand. Why, if I wanted money, a man
can always rob a bank, can he not? No, no...it wasn't about the money. At
least, not at first.”

He made it abundantly clear that it was five minutes ago.
This newer, wilder tale is simply an attempt to justify his actions.

I humour him.

“Well, what was it about, then?”

“Her. Me. Her family. My family. I’ve already explained. A
woman left destitute to die alone in France, many, many decades ago. Revenge. A
romp between the King and his mistress.”

“What King?”

“William IV, Doctor. The uncle of our Royal Majesty, Queen
Victoria.”

I sigh, ready to leave and give my opinion to the
Superintendant. I’ve had enough of this family. I just want to get back to my
home. My hospital. A niggle itches at my memory, his mentioning of the King: as
intangible as a dream, fleeting, untouchable, and I let it go. I change tact,
referring him to the more pressing matter of Lady Stanbury.

“Did you follow Anne for long?”

“I didn't have to. My father has been telling me all about
her my whole life. I was born to be her husband, Doctor. He gave me no choice.
He showed me Asquith House when I was ten years old. I knew everything about
her; where she went, whom she visited, her hobbies-”

“You said your father was dead.” I say it as a statement of
fact.

“Yes, well I had to. That’s what he wanted me to say. The
man is alive and unfortunately, reasonably healthy. I can give you his address,
if you like.”

“So you lied.”

“Yes, I lied. But I shouldn’t be hung for a mistruth! You
must find my father; he will confirm everything I’ve told you. Please, you have
to help me. This is a damned bloody set-up! They want me dead; they want me out
of the way!”

At the risk of pandering to a desperate man, I write the
address and he calms slightly. I don’t question him any further; I can’t
possibly ask him where he put her. Not now. At least this will prove, one way
or another, whether his story has even a small measure of truth to it. Perhaps
then, I can follow it further, though I don’t expect anything to come of it. I
tell him I must leave, and he nods.

“I loved that bitch!” he calls as I walk away, further
reinforcing his guilt. I fill out a certificate and hand it to Inspector Jones
along with the address of his father.

“Sane, ey?” He smiles, and folds the paper in four before
slipping it into a pocket. “Bloody shame, isn’t it. Poor woman.”

I nod, eager to leave. Yes. He is sane. He is responsible.
Drink often gets blamed for producing insanity, but not in this case. Crime
itself is not proof of a defective mind.

I turn away, but the Inspector stops me with a hand upon my
arm.

“Hold up, Doc. Our boy in there is suffering from alcohol
withdrawal, isn't he? Is there anything I can do to make him feel better? It
must be bloody awful if not havin' a beer can do that to you. Do you reckon he
feels as bad as he looks?”

“Just some hearty food and plenty of water. Thank you. Very
kind of you.” I give him a half-hearted smile, and take another step towards
the door.

“Wait a sec! If I drink too much beer, will I get like that
too?” He looks worried. “Especially with my erm, water problem. Bit
embarrassing. Don’t want to discuss it with the lads.”

I pat him on the back.

“No. Mr Stanbury has been drinking spirits very heavily, for
a period of some months. I shouldn't worry. You're quite alright to have a beer
or two, though I would advise you to have a doctor look at your...you know.”

His face brightens, and yet the smile doesn't quite reach
his eyes.

“Thanks so much Doctor. You've just made my day. In that
case, I’m off to the pub.”

As I leave the building, a very strong sense of unease
cloaks me under its shadows; a sense of something being very, very wrong.

I mentally rebuff myself, and shrug it off.

My work here is done.

Beatrix

March 3
^rd
, 1886

Asquith House

Forcing the last of my clothes in, I add a purse of lavender
for the finishing touch. The contents threaten to burst at the seams, and in an
effort to flatten them even further I sit on the suitcase. My eyes start
stinging again and I wipe my handkerchief over my face, sniffing.

“Miss? Oh, miss!” Betty comes running in and jumps upon me,
crushing me in her embrace. “Miss, ye' don’t 'ave 't leave, do 'ye? Oh miss, I
couldn' bear it 'ere without 'ye!” A tear trickles down a red and flushed
cheek. Her bottom lip wobbles, and she holds something in her hands. It
scrunches as she moves against me.

"What do you have there, Betty?" I gently push her
away from me.

"What?" She stares down at her hand, and opens it.
A ball of paper falls to the floor. "It's nuthin', Miss. Stupid idea,
anyway." She draws back a tiny foot to kick it, but I am quicker than she.
I snatch it up, and open it.

It is a child's drawing, but one that could have been drawn
by a girl or boy much younger than Betty.

"Oh, you darling thing..."

She starts to cry.

"I thought if I cud' just draw 'er well enough, then I
cud' make lots of them an' put 'em on trees, and give 'em t' people and stuff
and maybe someone wud find 'er but I'm not good enough, it doesn't look
anythin' like 'er! And I don't know 'ow t' write, so 'ow cud' I put 'missing'
at t' top, anyway?" She takes it from me and crumples it back into a tight
ball. "And now it doesn't matter, cos you're leavin' me too!"

I don't have the heart to tell her that a poster, no matter
how well depicted, would be useless. Instead, I focus on the second issue.

“I have to go, Betty. What's a Lady's maid without a Lady?”

Her lip sticks out even further, and she embraces me again,
harder.

“It's like a sock without a shoe, Betty," I say, into
her hair.

She stops crying for a moment and looks at me, her arms
entwined behind my neck, her sweet breath blowing gently upon my nose.

“Or, like, like...” She leans back, blowing out her cheeks
and rubbing her eyes with the back of her grubby little hands. The poster is
all but forgotten. She tentatively joins in the game. “Like, Miss...the grass
without the sun?”

I smile.

“A duck without water.”

“A man without a hat.”

“'A man without a hat', Betty?”

She giggles.

“Well Miss, they don’t 'alf look funny when they take 'em
off.”

“Don't be saying that to Lord Damsbridge now, he's quite
paranoid about that bald spot of his!”

She bursts into happy squeals of laughter. Oh, the beautiful
innocent fickleness of youth!

“Miss, 'ye know what else?”

“I know that you've helped flatten my suitcase, you fat
lump.”

She laughs even harder, because she knows she's anything
but.

“But Miss, they’re even stranger without their clothes on!
Men, I mean.”

“Betty!” I swipe her gently across the ear. “How would you
know that?”

“Well, ye' remember tha’ mornin' when none of us cud find
Lady Anne? I mean, Lady Stanbury?”

“Yes?”

“I crept into Mr Stanbury's room like, 'cos I could 'ear 'im
shoutin' at Mr James an' I was, erm...I was-”

“Poking your little nose in other people’s business?”

She blushes.

“Well, p'raps a little...aye, I was...but I saw 'im naked,
Miss!”

“Who, Mr Stanbury?”

She nods furiously, and starts talking even faster; unsure
whether she is in trouble or not.

“Only from behind though Miss, and I thought I might 'o seen
a bit of blood on 'im, now I think about it.” She hops off me, and looks to the
floor. “On 'is hands, like.”

How could she have seen that?

“'Ee 'ad 'is back 't me, and he was bent over like, takin'
off 'is clothes. I didn't see that much o' 'im Miss, not really, only his back
and his erm...behind bits, his bottom...and well, when 'ee threw t' dirty
clothes' out o' 'is way, I noticed 'ee 'ad dried blood on 'is fingers.”

“Did you tell the police?”

“No, Miss. Nobody asked me. I mean, even them Inspectors
what came round askin' everyone like, they dinnae ask anythin' off' me, not
afta' I spoke wiv' them in t' police station.”

“Would you be willing to tell them?”

“Oh yes Miss, 'o course. I'd kill Mr Stanbury wit' me' own
'ands, so I would, if I got t' chance. I never liked 'im, but nobody ever
listen's t’ children, do they? Especially just a maid, like me.”

“They'll listen now, Betty. I promise.”

I sweep her into another hug, and the both of us hold tight,
neither wanting to let the other go.

“Betty?”

“Yes, Miss?”

“Can you keep a secret? A really, really big one?”

Her lip threatens to wobble again, but she smiles and makes
the sign of an 'x' in front of her chest.

“Cross 'me 'eart, Miss.”

I whisper into her ear.

“I'll be back someday to look after you, I promise.”