The Devil's Making (11 page)

‘Why no appointment book?'

‘Lee not know.'

‘Why no letters from patients, no medical notes? Have you tidied these up?'

‘Naw. Lee not tidy up. Lee leave everything exactly as is. Doctor not keep notes. Not like paper.'

‘Doctor receive letters?'

‘Not many letters. After reading, burn them.'

‘Burn them? All?'

‘Doctor not like paper. Doctor
alienist,
' Lee said carefully. ‘
Phrenologist.
Doctor see people privately, very privately.'

‘You know the names of any patients?'

‘Lee never say.
Strictly
confidential. But not know. Doctor never say names to Lee.'

‘But would you recognise them? Know their faces?'

‘Lee easily confused white people faces.'

I almost laughed. ‘Woman? Man?' I asked.

‘Some women. Some men.'

I felt hot and bothered standing in a dead man's bedroom talking to this Chinaman. I turned and left the room. Lee followed me downstairs. I went back into the consulting room for a final look. Nothing much I had not noticed. As before, Lee stood just inside the doorway.

‘You liked Dr McCrory?' I hazarded.

‘Like? Not like, like – no difference. Good master. Pay four dollahs a day.'

Somewhat more than my own salary. And why not?

‘You went to the Indian camp with the doctor?'

‘One time.'

‘You walked, or took horses?'

‘Walk. Nice day, not far.'

‘And why did the doctor visit the Indians? Or, first, how did he know they were there?'

‘Everybody know Indians at Cormorant Point. Often Indians come down. Trade. Doctor interested in medicines, herbs, plants. He look for Indian medicine man.'

‘How about Chinese medicine?' I interrupted, trying to put Lee off balance. ‘He was interested in that too?'

‘Of course. He come with Lee to Chinatown, buy medicine. Seahorse, jellyfish, ginseng, rhinocerous horn.' Seeing me puzzled, Lee added, ‘In powder, for medicine.'

‘What are those medicines for?'

‘Seahorse for long life, wisdom. Jellyfish for blood. Ginseng, long life, much life. Rhinocerous horn for make children.'

‘Make children?'

‘Congress, man-woman. Make man big, strong, last long time.'

I almost asked, ‘Why last a long time?' then realized what it meant. ‘Where are these medicines now?' I asked.

‘In kitchen. I show you.' Lee led the way into the kitchen. I had already given it a look over – stove, table and chairs, chopping blocks and cleavers, shelves of tinned and dry food, bins of grain and potatoes. What I had thought was a very large collection of spices was a kind of medical dispensary. The bottles were labelled on the top, paper stuck onto their corks, which is perhaps why I had not noticed. Valerian, fenugreek, tiger lily – scores of names of plants.

‘The plants Dr McCrory bought from the Indians. What were they for?' I asked.

‘Make sleep. Make strong. One like rhinocerous horn.'

‘Who did he get them from?'

‘Squaw, chief's wife.'

‘She took him into the forest to search for them?' I had a pained feeling, thinking of the lambskins in the desk drawer and of what I knew of Indian morals. But why did I want these Indians to be innocent?

‘Not when Lee there, not first time. Maybe after. He bring back plants each time.'

‘What else did he do on the first visit?'

‘Talk with chief – chief called Wiladap.'

‘Wiladzap,' I corrected.

‘Wiladzap. He knew all about breath of life. Animal magnetism. Ch'i.'

‘Ch'i?'

‘Chinese word for breath of life.'

‘And the Indians were friendly?'

‘No. At first not want to talk much. Doctor disappointed. He say to Lee he go back again, talk more, bring more dollahs – not bring Lee. He think Indians frightened Lee's yellow face.' Lee was still smiling broadly.

‘And he went always alone? No one else with him?'

‘First time Lee. Then by self.'

‘Where were you yesterday?'

‘Here.'

‘All right. You must come with me now, to make a deposition. Just one more thing: show me where you live.'

Lee shifted slightly on his feet, looking oafish. ‘Too humble for see,' he said, playing stage-Chinaman again.

I lost my patience. ‘Stop the play acting. Show me where you live.'

Lee led the way out of the back door from the kitchen. His quarters were in a shed, near the outhouse, in an overgrown fenced garden – once presumably the vegetable plot of the failed English colonist. Lee pushed the door open. Small, lit by one window, with only a bed, wardrobe, table and chairs. It was indeed humble, but clean and not unpleasant. There was a smell of incense. There were some burned joss sticks in an enamelled vase. Some fine pottery on a shelf.

I looked under the bed. There was a carpet bag which I pulled out and opened. In it were some fine silks. In one of them was wrapped a knife with a curved blade about six inches long. The blade looked too narrow to have made those wounds in McCrory – more suitable for filleting, I thought callously – but I re-wrapped it in its silk and dropped it in my capacious tunic pocket. Lee was looking at me with the same smile. ‘I have to take this,' I said, ‘for examination.'

‘Everybody have knife.'

‘Of course. I have one myself. Now what about this?'

In the bottom of the bag was a tin money box, locked, quite heavy to lift out.

‘Do you have the key?'

Lee reached into a fold of his blue robe, brought out a big key ring, and held it out to me, pushing one key forward.

I opened the box. In it were 20 gold sovereigns, and a quantity of silver dollars – 80 or so.

‘You save your pay?'

‘Yes,' Lee nodded his head vigorously. ‘Send home to China, venerable father, mother.' He bowed.

‘And where did the doctor keep
his
money?'

‘In pockets.'

I held up the moneybox and looked at the manufacturer's address on the bottom.

‘San Francisco,' I said. ‘Where the doctor came from.'

‘San Francisco, many Chinaman,' Lee replied, quick as a shot.

I could not help smiling. I decided to leave it at that. I went back to the house for a few copies of
The Zooist
and a book on
Medical Physiology,
which I thought might come in useful. I waited while Lee locked up shed and house, then we walked down town together.

*   *   *

I am left uneasy by Lee. He is a caricature Chinaman. I suppose the nickname Celestial is based on such caricatures: the smiling face telling you that all is serene. “God's in his heaven, All's right with the world” as boring old Robert Browning put it. But if Lee is a caricature who else is? Parry is a caricture Welshman – all sound and fury. I dare say Freezy is a caricature ‘Injun', decapitating his squaw, for effect. Begbie and Pemberton are caricature English and Anglo-Irish, respectively. The Captain of the Ariadne! And I suppose I am the caricature Oxford man of the 1860s, all agony and doubt. But is Darwin a caricature? Is Wiladzap? Wiladzap draws me to him. He is himself, not a caricature. But the others – Parry, perhaps even Pemberton (I hope not) see him as the noble savage gone wrong, as all noble savages around here have gone wrong. They have Freezy's example.

Perhaps we all have to be caricatures. As we stand for something – the navy, our country, the law, the church – we become actors on the stage of the world. But what when we are not acting? Although I am Acting-Sergeant Hobbes when on duty – and not all the time when on duty, as I have my thoughts to myself – I am still Chad. There are times when we don't act. Perhaps Mr and Mrs Pemberton together in bed – why do I think of that? – don't act. Or Begbie when he is up in the Cariboo, living rough. Were Lukswaas and I acting last night when we were like children imitating the sounds of birds?

What was McCrory acting? The alienist. The magician. His library was just a lot of stage props. His researches in the forest for herbs were for more stage props. But was he acting when he was killed? Who killed him? A savage. So someone – Wildazap or some other Indian, gone mad in the blood-rush of acting the medicine-man – lost his senses and became a force detached from being man or even animal – and stabbed him, bit his arms, slashed his flesh, cut off his member, stuffed it into his still living mouth. Why? I was taught in Jurisprudence about
mens rea, ‘
the mind in the thing'. In Common Law you cannot convict of murder unless you can demonstrate
mens rea.
If a man is insane and he doesn't know what he is doing he can only be convicted of manslaughter. Hence the necessity for Pemberton and Parry to find a reason why Wiladzap killed McCrory. McCrory was attempting to seduce his wife – therefore Wiladzap killed him. He cut off that member that had dared rise at the sight of his wife, and stuffed it into the disgusting mouth that had blabbered of seduction. And as for the extra bits, the biting of the arms, the slashing across the belly, they were just the mad rage of the savage. But the law cannot have it both ways: either Wiladzap had
mens rea
and ruthlessly killed McCrory, or he was a raving mad, savage witch-doctor. Not both. Yes both. The law in Victoria
can
have it both ways. Detective Constable Chad Hobbes is not a good enough lawyer – he is not a lawyer at all! – to argue this one. And who – McCrory or Wiladzap – was the witch-doctor?

7

The next morning I rode out Cedar Hill Road as far as Mount Douglas, stopping at each house to ask if people had seen the alienist pass on the day of the murder or previously. A few had vague recollections. The best was a woman who claimed her geese honked every time someone passed along the road, causing her to look out. She therefore remembered every passer by. She had seen the alienist on his first excursion, some weeks previously, and had been intrigued by the Chinaman's silk robe. The other times the alienist had been alone, both coming and going. He always walked briskly, but if he noticed her he would take off his hat. She realised he must be an American, by his clothes, his walk, and the fact that he carried no walking stick. I asked if she had noticed anyone else passing by, either just before or just after McCrory. She had not. Most passers by were local farmers on foot, on horseback, or driving their carts or buggies. Then there was her neighbour, Parson Coulter (whose very English wife I had just talked to), of St Mark's church, and the curate, Mr Firbanks, who lodged a few houses down. Yes, she had been visited by some Indian women. All the neighbours had. Cleaner than usual, very polite, and selling the most beautiful baskets and silver bracelets, and carved stone brooches which were ‘barbarous.' But she would not open her door to them
now.
It was a scandal, allowing them to stay at Cormorant Point, less than two miles away. Her husband had got the guns down and given them a good cleaning.

I rode back into town on just such a sunny day, of flowers, ravens cawing, and robins singing, as when I had come out along the same road with Parry and Harding. The other time, at night, seemed however to have occurred in another world. I did not think of it much, although when I did I felt happy, then uneasy.

I had a funeral to attend. The alienist's body, although it had been removed to the undertaker's late on the first night, and submersed in some kind of preservative, had evidently become too disgusting to leave unburied. It had been decided – with no evidence other than that perhaps McCrory was an Irish name, and that he had red hair and beard – that he was a Catholic. At least the Catholics, who were mainly Irish-Americans, had been willing to take him on, the funeral expenses paid from his bank account.

The cemetery was no more than a field with a few slabs and stone Celtic crosses, and many wooden crosses, all close together. The coffin was a deal box, the undertaker's cheapest. But it and the buggy it was lying on were covered with a profusion of wreaths and flowers. And there was a good crowd in attendance – all men, as was the custom. But they provided no material for speculation since in effect every worthy of the town short of the Governor himself had chosen to turn up, out of respect or curiosity. Even the fussy Dr Helmcken and Dr Powell were there, in solidarity with their fallen medical brother. The pall bearers were four of my convicts from the jail, out on parole, wearing borrowed clothes, and enjoying every minute. They stood turning their heads this way and that in the fresh breeze, like horses let out into a field after too long in the stables.

The service was conducted by an Irish priest, in church Latin. The old me might have found it professionally interesting. But by now, apparently, I was a new me. I was itching to get a look at the flowers and wreaths. Eventually, after the coffin had been lowered into a mucky grave, and the crowd were picking their way out of the cemetery along the cart ruts, I had my chance. The wreaths were stacked to one side as the gravediggers began filling in the hole. Most held the cards of notables – the people at the funeral. Some were without cards. Then there were bunches of the garden flowers currently in season: mainly tulips, of all colours, long stalked primulas, and forget-me-nots. I wished it had been the custom for women to attend funerals. That would have been interesting, I sensed, remembering the boxes of lambskin sheaths. Perhaps the alienist had gone with prostitutes. But he would not have needed a sheath for that. It would have been bad value, I supposed, for the money. Or perhaps sheaths prevented venereal disease … I turned over in my mind the possibilities of tracing the origins of the bunches of flowers, but gave up the idea. They could have been delivered by messengers to the sexton's door at the church, or at the undertaker's. Furthermore, they were all similar. Domestic flowers in Victoria were profuse but not varied.