Beloved Poison (35 page)

I lay there trembling, while whatever vile practices my fellow inmates indulged in went on around me. There was no sleep to be had – how anyone might sleep at all in that infernal place I had no idea. My mind was almost deranged with fear. I had not expected this, had not foreseen this at all. I screwed my eyes shut and stopped up my ears as the noises around me grew in volume and torment.

The next morning, the warders took me out to another, quieter place where the howls and debauches of the inmates were not so loud as to prevent communication. The bars upon the windows there were so thick as to admit scarcely any light at all. I sat on a wooden stool at a rough trestle table, my ankles and wrists in irons once more. After a moment, another warder brought in a candle. He was followed by a tall, thin, bespectacled man. I could see immediately that he was a man of the law, though I could not say what kind.

‘Who is my accuser?’ I said.

‘You will know that soon enough,’ said the man, sitting down opposite me. ‘The evidence will be discussed in a court of law and you will have the opportunity to defend yourself. But I have some questions to ask you first.’ He pulled out a sheaf of papers which bore line after line of close-written scribbles. The lies of my accusers, no doubt. He took out his pen and ink and positioned himself close to the candle so that he might amend his account as he saw fit. ‘The night before the deceased, Dr James Bain, was found dead at his home on St Saviour’s Street, it has been averred that you went with the aforementioned Dr Bain to the home of one Mrs Roseplucker, on Wicke Street.’

‘Yes, I did,’ I said. ‘But can you not speak plainly? Are we to be here all day while you “aver” this and “aforemention” that?’

He looked at me over his spectacles. ‘It is averred that you and he were working on a book about poisons together.’

‘So we were.’

‘And that it was his intention to publish it without acknowledging your assistance.’

‘We had a long way to go before it was ready for publication. We had not discussed the matter of authorship.’

‘But I argue that you
had
discussed it, and that you were most put out when Dr Bain said he was to publish the work without your name on it. His colleagues have confirmed that he spoke of it to them the day before he died.’

‘Lies,’ I said.

‘And I also suggest that you were jealous of Dr Bain – jealous of his professional abilities, his position at St Saviour’s, his popularity with the opposite sex. You were unable to perform the office of a man, were you not, when you visited Mrs Roseplucker’s house?’

‘I—’

He waved a hand. ‘We have a witness.’

I thought of the girl who had come for the herbs, the girl who brought the coffin. ‘You’ve twisted her words,’ I said.

‘I take them at face value. You did not perform. You never did when you went there, and you went there often, whilst in another room Dr Bain disported himself with vigour. You say it is because you
would
not? I suggest that it is because you
could
not. And yet Dr Bain was a man with no such peculiarities. What man would not be piqued by the hot-bloodedness of a companion when he himself was impotent?’

‘Do you think impotent men often feel moved to murder their more priapic brothers?’

He did not look at me, but dipped his pen in the ink pot and wrote something on his paper. I felt sick. No doubt he had taken my words to be a confession of impotence, the fool. And if I admitted I was a woman would that help my cause? No. I would become an object of horror, a monster, a victim of suppressed hysterical urges, my mind undone due to the pressures of living a man’s life whilst inhabiting a woman’s body. Things would be far worse for me if I disclosed my true identity. That revelation, it seemed, must be saved for after the gallows.

He paused in his scribbles, and looked up at me. ‘And so you killed him with tincture of bloodroot.’

‘No—’

‘Later, returning to the place, you pretended to find his body and raised the alarm.’

‘I
did
find the body! There was no pretence—’

‘And that some time later you likewise poisoned Mrs Annabel Catchpole—’

‘Mrs Catchpole was killed by curare,’ I snapped. ‘Dr Bain, I strongly suspect, was killed by aconite.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Curare.
Chondrodendron tomentosum
. A species of tropical liana, deadly only if it enters the blood. Aconite is a flowering plant widely found in Britain. It tastes bitter, but unlike many toxins can be absorbed through the skin. They were killed by
different
means.’

He peered at me over his spectacles. ‘Aconite?’

‘Aconite. Monkshood. Wolfsbane. Call it what you will.’

‘I will call it murder, Mr Flockhart.’ He stared at me as if I were mad. ‘Your specialist knowledge of poisons is noted. As well as your ready access to it.’

‘St Saviour’s is full of men with specialist knowledge of poisons,’ I said. ‘Each of them has ready access to the stuff. You may as well arrest the entire medical staff of every hospital in the city.’

‘As for the death of Mrs Annabel Catchpole—’

That, I had to admit, did look peculiar. Other than the attendant who had taken her clothes and locked her in for the night, I was the last person to have seen her alive. The salve was still in my room at the apothecary. Would they have looked for it?

‘The pot of salve you left for Mrs Catchpole was found to contain enough poison to kill a cart horse—’

My face drained of blood. I felt his gaze upon me. They had been to my room. ‘But
I
didn’t put the poison in that salve.’

‘But you gave it to her. There are witnesses. And the constable found it in your apothecary.’

I closed my eyes. ‘I didn’t put curare in it.’

‘How else did it get there? There is no mistaking it. ’

I shook my head. I knew the adulterated salve had been placed there that evening at Angel Meadow, swapped for the one I had prepared myself, but as for who had done so—

‘The salve is poison. Dr Graves has demonstrated its efficacy. He rubbed a quantity of the stuff into a wound on the leg of a dog and we saw the terrible effects for ourselves.’

I could imagine the spectacle: the grinning Dr Graves, the gasps of the assembled crowd, the agony of the beast as the paralysis took hold. How could sensible explanations possibly compete against such theatrics? But the man was talking again, and I was obliged to listen. ‘An attendant at Angel Meadow has confirmed that the pot of salve found in your room was the same stuff you brought to Mrs Catchpole, which you then removed from her room as she lay dead on the floor. Why would you remove the stuff if it was not to conceal your crime?’

‘And would I not throw the salve away, rather than keep it at home?’

‘Perhaps you had other victims in mind.’

I could see the logic of his thinking, even though the conclusions he drew were mistaken. ‘And Joe,’ I said. It was hardly worth the asking. ‘Why would I kill Joe Silks?’

‘We don’t yet know. But you were seen in Prior’s Rents, looking for, and then talking to, the vagrant known as Joe Silks. Witnesses say there was shouting. Threats were uttered.’

I said nothing. No doubt there were plenty of people in Prior’s Rents who might be persuaded to testify to anything.

‘His head was bludgeoned,’ added the prosecutor.

‘It was crushed by his fall,’ I said.

‘Oh?’ He grinned, as though he had just tricked me into a full confession. ‘Was it really? Do you admit that you were out in the full moon that night? The night Joe Silks was murdered? You might as well. We have a witness.’

‘Who?’ I cried, astonished. ‘Who can possibly have seen me doing something I patently did not do?’

‘The sexton of St Saviour’s parish church saw you. You and Silks. Shortly before you clubbed the unfortunate child about the head and dumped him into the open graves in St Saviour’s churchyard.’

I opened my mouth, but I could not speak. Old Dick had seen two people, certainly. ‘Man and boy’ he had said. It might mean anyone. ‘It wasn’t me he saw,’ I whispered at last. ‘I had no reason to murder Joe Silks.’

‘I’m sure I can think of one,’ said the man. ‘Besides, it hardly matters. You’re going to hang anyway. One of these will bring you to the rope, you can be sure of that.’

I sank to my knees in the filthy straw. How had I come to this? Not two weeks earlier I had been the apothecary at St Saviour’s Infirmary, attending to the sick and making up prescriptions just as I had day after day, year after year for almost as long as I could remember. Now three people had been murdered and I stood to hang for it. Should I put my faith in the ability of the law to discover the truth? But the law was a stupid and arrogant beast, and I had no confidence in it, nor in the dolts that purported to practise it. The magistrates were drunks, the witnesses narrow-minded, and easily led. Evidence was sensational, and entirely subjective. And my bloody highwayman’s appearance would do nothing to further my cause.
Does he not look like the very Devil,
they would say,
with his tall, thin scarecrow body and his crimson mask?
If my face was repulsive and devilish, was that ugliness not matched on the inside? No wonder one such as I might be capable of villainy . . .

‘Who speaks against me?’ I said. My voice was hoarse, my throat dry as bone. ‘Dr Magorian, no doubt?’

The prosecutor nodded. ‘Dr Magorian brought his concerns, and his deductions, to our attention last night. He is a man of great reputation,’ he said. And then added in a more conversational tone: ‘The magistrate was cut for the stone some years ago. If it were not for Dr Magorian’s skill and precision . . . the magistrate has often said that he owes his health, and his happiness, to Dr Magorian.’

‘I’m sure he’s eternally grateful,’ I said bitterly.

Dr Magorian. It could be none other. It was Dr Magorian who was Dr Sneddon’s successor. Dr Magorian who had used Dr Sneddon’s old notes to line the coffins, though why he might make such peculiar mementoes was still a mystery. Had he murdered Dr Bain? It seemed likely. And yet why would he do such a thing? They had known each other for years without evidence of any deep-seated animosity. It made no sense to me. Still, we were close on his heels. Ensuring that
I
was charged with the murders
he
had committed, merely revealed his guilt and desperation. But I could not prove it – not yet, and certainly not from inside Newgate.

I told the prosecutor to go. I had spoken recklessly, and I knew it. My own wits were all that might save me now.

Will came. I was taken to meet him in the yard, where I was permitted to speak to him only through the grating of a cage. The place was crowded with my fellow inmates. To the left, a tall thin man with one eye was muttering through the bars to a ragged old beldam with a pipe clenched between her gums. To our right a great towering hulk of a man was being admonished by a female visitor so small and filthy I thought at first she might be a child. But the profanities that issued from her lips were nothing I had ever heard, even from Joe Silks and his friends, and when she turned to look at us we saw a face so destroyed by gin and the pox, I could not begin to imagine what their relationship might be.

‘Dr Hawkins is doing all he can to help you,’ said Will. ‘And I.’ He had brought with him one of Mrs Speedicut’s pound cakes and some small beer from the infirmary brewhouse. He passed them through the grating.

‘Dr Magorian went to the magistrate,’ I said.

‘Yes. But I don’t understand why. What does it matter if Dr Sneddon’s notes were found in a foolish totem like a toy coffin?’

I gripped the iron bars. ‘Will, we have to
think
.
Think
. Why would Dr Magorian murder Dr Bain? What is the connection between that murder and the words in the coffins? We must link the two.’

He licked his lips. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Then let us think more generally and hope that might lead us forward. Why would anyone commit murder?’

‘Love?’ he said. ‘Hate? Greed? Jealousy?’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘But Dr Magorian has plenty of money. I can think of no reason why he might be greedy for more.’

‘Jealousy?’

‘His reputation is extraordinary. He counts members of the aristocracy as his patients – I’ve always been surprised he bothered with St Saviour’s at all.’

‘And yet what if that reputation was threatened in some way? Would he not do all he could to protect it?’

‘Quite possibly.’

‘And what of Dr Bain’s relationship with Miss Magorian?’

I had vowed to myself that I would say nothing about that to anyone. Even Will did not know the extent of it. But he was right. ‘It cannot be discounted,’ I said.

‘That brings us to love,’ said Will.

‘The most powerful, irrational and destructive motive of them all.’ We fell silent. ‘I
have
to get out,’ I said at last.

‘Jem,’ said Will. ‘You were the last person to see Mrs Catchpole alive. The salve was found in your room. It does not look good for you.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not making you feel any better, am I?’