Authors: David Pirie
The Night Calls (16 page)
I took her in my arms then and she wept. Of course I could not tell her what I suspected. Until I had conclusive evidence, it would only be terrifying her with my own notions. And the last thing I wanted was for her to come running back to Edinburgh where she was surely most at risk. I thanked God that here she at least was away from him. If only we could help her sister to escape.
Sometime later that afternoon the sun came out and we went to the beach house and perhaps, because of this confidence, something had changed. Our manner together was slower, more languid, as if we were both in a kind of dream. We started to talk of Africa and her memories of it.
‘Have you ever thought,’ she said, as we stared out, ‘that we do not know what we will remember? Now I think I will recall this beach and this hut and both of us here and the things we have said.’ She turned. ‘And your eyes reflecting the colour of the sand. But who knows? Perhaps I will only remember the dull book I read before you came.’
The words made a big impression on me. I wanted so much to give her things she would remember. And so in reply to this, without any preparation, I asked her to marry me.
For a moment she looked shocked. We had an understanding, but I had not before thought it right to introduce the subject formally. She moved back and away from me. ‘Do not mock me,’ she said.
But I put my arms round her, and she knew it was true. The next few hours were full of plans and kisses and laughter and fevered talk. And later, for some reason, as we were walking on the beach, she sang a song under her breath.
And one could whistle
And one could sing
And one could play on the violin
Such joy there was at my wedding
On Christmas day in the morning
My heart pounded with excitement as I rode the train back to Edinburgh, but there was news awaiting me. Bell had been to see Lady Sarah and found her feverish and agitated, while Carlisle had almost made up his mind to seek a second opinion. No final decision had been taken, but the Doctor felt it would only be a matter of days. If there was further deterioration, Elsbeth must be informed at once, and no doubt Sir Henry would bring in a doctor more to his liking, one who would essentially act as his lackey. After such a wonderful day, I dreaded the prospect of returning to Dunbar with news of this kind.
Of course, I wanted to see Lady Sarah but Bell counselled against it, for we both knew how her husband would react. The next day I found the very idea of going to lectures intolerable. I wanted to act. After pacing the university in a state of agitation, I decided I had to do something and so, without much hope, I set out once again through the city to try and find word of Agnes Walsh.
After visiting the usual streets with absolutely no result, I was soon searching further afield. As before I received only blank glances and shaking heads, but one woman who was cleaning her step, not so far from the dockside brothel I had once explored with Bell, went rapidly inside and slammed the door.
Yet I felt I must persevere, and the memory of that day fades into others like it. At night I made frantic notes on the case, striving for a way through, looking for some connection I had missed. Some weeks earlier my father had, for the first time, been taken to an asylum and I found some solace of a self-pitying kind standing in his now abandoned study, staring forlornly at the odd paintings, wondering if he would ever return to us and to his room. During the day and evening I continued to roam the streets.
Eventually, having failed so miserably to extract any information from the women I approached, one windy afternoon I turned to other sources and started asking among the beggars who congregated on the corner where poor Samuel had fallen. They at least talked to me, but it was clear they had never heard of Agnes Walsh. At last I gave up and had started on my way home in a dejected state, when suddenly from behind me there came a great cry. ‘Please, help, oh, please, sir.’
I whirled around to see a woman running after me. She was wearing bright clothes but her face was pale and frightened and she looked quite distraught. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I have seen you here before, sir. You said you were medical. You were asking for Agnes, sir. Agnes Walsh.’
It was the first time any of these women had ever mentioned the name aloud. I was amazed.
‘Yes,’ I said at once as she came up to me panting for breath. ‘I have been trying to trace her. Do you know where she is?’
‘No.’ The woman looked at me beseechingly. ‘But I know someone who knew her. And, sir, if you are medical, we are in need of a doctor. My friend, she is taken very ill. She is near, sir, please, will you come?’
We hurried down a side street, then a wynd and into a small rooming establishment. I had never seen it before but it was the kind of place we had tried so often when seeking an answer to our puzzle. She led me at once to a small untidy sitting room, which smelt foul, and here all was commotion. A woman in a purple dress was holding another, who was bent double and vomiting into a yellow ceramic basin. The invalid was wrapped in a blanket but a nightgown lay on the floor beside them.
‘This man will help,’ said my guide, and the woman in purple turned and I saw her look of fear. ‘Oh please, sir, she is taken so poorly.’
I moved quickly to the other woman, who was still retching. Some of the filthy water slopped out on to me but I felt her forehead, which was cool, and her pulse was steady.
‘You’re not feverish,’ I said. She retched again but nothing came. ‘I am only a student doctor, but it is something you have eaten.’
‘It is something she has eaten all right,’ said the woman in purple, who had dark hair and dark eyes.
And now the poor girl who was so afflicted straightened up, breathing heavily. She was very pale, staggered a little, but managed to reach a chair and sat down in it with a great groan of relief. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh. Ah … Ah feel a wee bit better. But I thought it wouldna stop.’
I could see the worst had passed. ‘You will feel very weak, you must sit quietly.’
‘Aye, I will, sir. Thank you. Aye, I feel better now. It was like it would go on for ever.’
‘What was it you ate?’ I asked. ‘For we should make sure nobody else takes it.’
The dark woman in purple gave a bitter smile at that. ‘Aye, we should that. You’d better tell the truth, Kate.’
Now Kate, who had been sick, looked away from me, still giving little gasps for air. But her friend put a hand on her, half of comfort and half remonstrance.
‘Come on, you must,’ she urged.
‘Yes, please tell me.’ For I had caught the eye of the woman who brought me here and recalled her tantalising words. ‘I would like to hear. What has done this?’
Kate looked up and the woman in purple pointed at the nightgown lying on the floor. Kate nodded. I was baffled until the woman went over to it and took something out that had been lying underneath. I stared in astonishment.
For she was holding a little red box, its top embroidered in scarlet. It reminded me of nothing so much as the box Lady Sarah had been holding in her bedroom, though I had only seen that briefly. I took it from her eagerly and opened it. It was a pill box, but to my disappointment it was empty.
‘Where did you get this?’ I asked Kate, making an effort to sound less excited than I was.
Kate didn’t answer for a long time, though some of her colour was returning. ‘A gentleman,’ she said at last. ‘He was a gentleman.’
‘She has the rest of the pills, sir, but she has hidden them,’ said the woman in purple to me before turning back to Kate. ‘You must give them up now.’
‘She is right, Kate,’ I said but I spoke gently. I hardly wanted to scare the girl at this stage. ‘Did you know this gentleman?
Kate nodded. ‘Aye, sir, I kent him from afore. I used to work at the madame’s and he would come there a good deal once.’
‘At Madame Rose’s?’ I felt slightly giddy, as if I had gulped a glass of water and found it was brandy.
She nodded. ‘He is a good-looking gentleman. Some said he was a lord. We had not seen him for a while. Since his particular friend left.’
‘And that friend,’ I said, ‘his friend was Agnes Walsh?’
There was a palpable reaction in the room to the name. Both women fixed their eyes on Kate.
‘Aye, sir. But she had left. We never speak o’ her, but ah ken where the grave is. Near Greyfriars.’
‘Her grave?’ I could not restrain my excitement now. ‘So she is dead?’
The woman who had brought me here nodded. ‘She died some months ago, but nobody talks of her for she had the pox and she brought us all bad luck.’
Naturally I asked how she died, but here there was only confusion. Kate supposed Agnes had drowned herself, but the woman in purple contradicted her and said she had died of her own disease. Clearly Agnes Walsh had become something of an outcast in her last weeks, her condition was hardly something these other women wished to advertise. I asked them again about the mysterious man who had liked her. Kate was the one who knew him best, but she had not seen him since she had left Madame Rose’s, and then, by chance, they had met last night when he stepped out of a hansom. She had been standing, hoping to attract some custom, and she thought he must have stopped for her.
‘He asked if I was clean. And I said I was. Then he come here and paid and we lay on that bed, sir. He talked to another girl here too. Harriet. I think he likes her, but she’s no here. Then after we got up, I said how I felt a little poorly, and he tells me he knows doctors. And he gave me the pills. Said it was for my liver, sir.’
Evidently she had held back from taking one until earlier that day, then had taken only a small amount, yet its effect had been dramatic as I saw. Now I begged Kate to give me the pills, but for some reason this seemed to frighten her. ‘You are a student, sir.’ I cursed the fact I had told them this. She shook her head. ‘It is the business of a doctor, sir. A proper doctor.’
The other women remonstrated with her, but Kate was adamant, for, as her strength returned, so did her anxiety. At once I told them I would return with one of the most distinguished doctors of the town, and on no account must she touch the pills before then.
As luck would have it, Bell was not in his room but in the square outside, where I saw him striding with his retinue, towards one of the larger lecture halls. I managed to reach him almost as he entered.
‘Dr Bell! I must talk to you.’ He turned and I saw his reaction. It was only now that I realised what a sight I was. Not only had I been running: my shirt and jacket showed abundant traces of the foul contents of Kate’s basin.
But Bell came over to me. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘I have a lecture to give.’ The other doctors were waiting by the entrance, obviously perplexed, but they could not hear us.
‘It is Carlisle. I am sure of it. He has killed twice. Another woman has been very nearly poisoned today. And he may yet kill his wife.’
I produced that sinister red box from my pocket as I spoke. Bell stared at it. I had described the box I saw at Lady Sarah’s to him and he was quick enough to make the connection. There was just a moment’s pause and then he turned and made his way back to the other doctors. ‘I am afraid,’ he informed them with due gravity, ‘I have an urgent medical case that cannot wait. You will have to step in for me, gentlemen.’
As a hansom drove us back through the narrow streets to Kate’s little dwelling, the Doctor sat back, eyes closed, listening to my story. He opened them only to study the pill box which I had shown him. For some reason he was particularly interested by the inside lining and smelt it judiciously.
I suppose I had expected praise, but none was forthcoming. He merely remarked that it was fortunate I had caught him before the lecture and soon we were back in the wynd, rapping on the door. Fortunately Kate herself answered, and at once the Doctor exuded charm and authority. ‘I am Dr Bell,’ he said, smiling. ‘The Professor of Operative Surgery. And I understand you have been ill, madam?’ Kate, who looked much better, was so impressed by this imposing figure in black hat and coat that she could not quite bring herself to answer, but simply nodded and curtsied and led him once again into that little room.
It was tidier now, and, though still cramped, the basin was nowhere to be seen. Bell made her sit down and sat close beside her, talking in a low voice as he enquired diligently into her symptoms. When he was quite satisfied she was over the worst, he proceeded to hear her story much as I had heard it. But he remained utterly patient, asking only the occasional question about the man’s appearance which elicited little except that he was good-looking with thick dark hair.
At last, he told her gravely that it was essential that he saw what remained of the pills she had been given. She nodded and turned away from us. I still do not know quite where she had them, perhaps in some pocket, but when she turned back she was holding four pills.
The Doctor took them eagerly in the palm of his hand and smelt them.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘Kate. I am glad to see you are stronger. But you will tell me exactly what he said to do and what you did and when.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the girl, who I was beginning to admire a little. There was clarity in her blue eyes and a certain determination in her face. In fact, I reflected ruefully, she had probably been quite right to reserve her pills for someone who wielded more authority than I did. ‘He said to take the three, sir. But I didn’t take them till this morning. I was going to do as he said but the smell of them put me off, sir …’
The Doctor leaned forward. ‘So what did you take.’
‘I only took a bit of one.’ She kept her eyes on him, a little frightened now as if he would scold her.
‘You are sensible, then,’ said the Doctor. ‘What happened to the rest of that one?’
‘I put it in the gutter, sir, when I slopped out my bowl.’
I am sure Bell was disappointed but he did not show it.
‘Now you may take these, sir,’ she went on, ‘but I’m nae wantin’ to talk to no one else, sir. I’ll say no more to no one.’
Bell looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I agree to that. But I may well come back to see you for there will be other questions I need to ask.
It was not in fact till the next morning that Bell and I finally discovered the semi-derelict graveyard where Agnes Walsh was buried. It was situated off Keir Street only a short distance from Greyfriars Church. The place was grim, with weeds and trees and rubbish from the nearby Cattle Market strewn among the headstones. Not that there were many of these, for most of the graves were barely marked. It took an hour for us to find the tiny cross stuck hastily in one corner by a low wall amidst some sacks and other rubbish. I say a cross, but it was scarcely more than a piece of wood sticking out of the ground with hastily carved initials.
AW
Something about that piece of scratched wood in all that dereliction spoke poignantly enough of human waste, and we stared down at it silently. The Doctor had, in any case, said little since our talk with Kate.
Eventually we found a cab at the end of Keir Street, and once we were in it and had turned south, the Doctor removed a piece of paper from his coat pocket. I stared at the slanted official writing. It was a report by the physician who had examined Agnes Walsh on her death bed.
‘As with your beggar, the doctor thought it was alcoholic poisoning,’ said Bell as he took out that horrible red box I had obtained from Kate, now once again containing the pills.
‘Whatever these contain,’ he continued gravely, ‘and I have no doubt it is lethal, I ought to warn you that we are still on very treacherous ground. Our mysterious man appears to poison prostitutes and itinerants. No wonder he thought that implicating Crawford would prove a wonderful distraction. But the only witness has refused to speak out and, in any case, would never be believed. You can be sure nobody will go on oath to admit Carlisle visited loose women. They have their businesses to protect. As for Lady Sarah, well perhaps it was some patent medicine you saw. Can you be absolutely sure that the box was the same? Think very hard, it may be critical.’
I took the box from him and stared at it. Of course I could not be absolutely certain, but there was something about that plush red upholstered lining which repelled me.
‘Of course,’ I said, weighing my words judiciously, ‘I only caught a glimpse, but even so the similarity seems striking. And is there not something horrible about it?’ Bell nodded and looked at me with his hooded eyes. ‘Has Lady Sarah been sick in such a way?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘At times, and it was something that puzzled me greatly. Poison would explain a great deal and offer hope for her. We will go there directly.’
I looked somewhat amazed. ‘Of course I will need you, for you saw it and I did not. In any case I am quite sure I have only a day or so left in charge of her case so we need hardly stand on ceremony.’
I was pleased by his tenacity, but I hated to imagine the kind of doctor who would be appointed in Bell’s place, someone who would do Carlisle’s bidding, perhaps even shut her away. In that eventuality, I knew too Elsbeth would insist on returning at once, while Carlisle would do everything in his power to stop me seeing either sister.
Carlisle’s repellent manservant Drummond was surprised to see us. ‘Sir Henry is not in, Doctor Bell,’ he intoned without the trace of any greeting.
‘That is no matter,’ said the Doctor, who had the measure of the man. ‘I merely wish to attend to my patient.’
Drummond could hardly oppose this and stepped back to let us in, but he managed a scowl at me.
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