The Frankenstein Murders (31 page)

On the back of the cameo portrait of Elizabeth, Victor had drawn her likeness, only it was a likeness that more resembled the images he described from his nightmare:

I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her, but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.

Ernest Frankenstein appeared open and honest, and yet I could not but feel he was also enigmatic, both pushing me towards an understanding and yet in the same moment hiding more than he told. At times during our meeting, he seemed almost to be laughing, but then laughter and tears can often be mistaken. Ernest Frankenstein had truly been made an orphan by the actions of an orphan creation of his own brother. Is it only coincidence that Ernest Frankenstein was in France and then St. Petersburg? Could he too be seeking that which I seek? Had he also searched for the DeLaceys and then arranged to be stationed in the north. Perhaps his hope is to both find and hide any further evidence of his brother Victor's activities in order that no more shame fall upon the name Frankenstein and that the name can disappear into gentle anonymity.

Mutt maintains an interest in undertaking the impossible task of searching any place on the coastline where the monster might have landed and will continue to search for anyone who can give a definitive sighting of the murderer. Admittedly, I was pleasantly surprised at Mutt's unwillingness to give up the chase, yet I cannot condone such action. Regretfully, I begin to perceive this entire investigation as time and money expended on a most unsatisfactory and disappointing end.

Regardless of the outcome, yet one duty remains to me at the end of this investigation, the recollection of which has triumphed over my despair. Victor Frankenstein and I both created life and abandoned it, but there is one larger difference between my creation and his. I am determined to see this thing to the end, then I shall return to England and be a proper father to my son. I will look after him as he needs to be looked after. I must see properly to what I brought into the world. All that I do I have done for the dead. From henceforth I must be for the living as for too long has my little son been without his father. I created a rational being and was bound towards him to assume, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being.

And now I am left with my copious notes, with nothing more to add than two letters and a newspaper article, which Mutt has only just brought to me.

Dear Mr. Freame,

My letter brings sad tidings: Dippel has died. Not the day after your visit, Dippel's family appeared at the asylum and had him released into their care. Admittedly, I was reluctant to let Dippel go, as I have always felt his to be a case of special interest. I made a point of visiting Dippel's relatives in their home, and inspecting the room they had prepared for him. In all ways it provided superior accommodation for Dippel than I could provide at my asylum, and the keeper they arranged for him seemed a strong, competent, and reliable person. In every way I felt Dippel was fortunate to have a family who would seek him out in his deplorable condition and was willing to care for him.

After I received your letter, I went again to visit with Dippel's family and found the house in mourning. It appears that Dippel had one of his violent fits again, only much greater than he had had in the past. They showed me the destruction he had wrought in his room. Great gouges had been taken out of the walls where he had thrown the furniture. The violent fit ended only when Dippel had exhausted himself, and then he curled himself up in a corner, as you have seen him do, and died. It is likely that the exertion was too much for his heart and body, both of
which had been compromised by his many fits and reluctance to eat.

Answers from Dippel himself are now a complete impossibility, but I can provide you with what information I have. You asked me why Dippel cries and mourns when you feel it is likely he murdered innocent people in order to first get fresh cadavers for Victor Frankenstein. The acts of murder perhaps represent a way for Dippel to seek some sort of revenge on Frankenstein, who Dippel may have believed abandoned him. Indeed, the criminal, even the criminally insane, can show true remorse after killing. It is not at all uncommon for the guilty to mourn the deaths of those he has murdered. Could Dippel have murdered Henry Clerval? I have compared the date you gave me with that of Dippel's confinement in the asylum and have confirmed that Dippel did not come to me until some weeks after Henry Clerval was murdered.

Dippel was at liberty to commit murder, but as to whether or not his madness drove him to commit such a crime is another issue. It is certainly not out of the question for the mad to commit all manner of crimes, including murder, however, I wonder if this is truly surprising considering the treatment they are often given, treated as criminals and wild beasts instead of being provided with meaningful activity. In many places, madness is being examined in a new light; there are reforms in France, where the chains of inmates that held them captive for some thirty or forty years have been removed. There is also a belief in the connection between madness and genius that ignites the creative spark, that the line between the two is a fine one.

It is a great time for science. Mankind has come to know a great deal about the parts of living things, and yet we still do not know what the process is that makes the entire being function as one. Understanding one part of any type of life does not illuminate how the entire being is explained. I can dissect a human hand and tell you all the parts and how they are connected and how they
function, but this tells you nothing of the body from which the hand came, nor the soul that animated that body. When you speak of this murderer you see, you are speaking of a whole being, not simply a collection of parts, and a human being's behaviour will not be dictated, nor can it be divined simply by a study of the pieces put together to create this being. Your efforts would be better spent examining the entire person. What good did it me to know Dippel's height or hair colour, or the shape of his head, or the size of his hands. No, if I truly wished to know Mr. Dippel, I needed to look at him as a whole man.

Our understanding of the world comes entirely from our own minds. We do not see with our eyes, they are merely aids for vision, like glasses. We see with our minds. Look not with your eyes, but with your mind, and perhaps you will be better able to find Victor Frankenstein's monster. The mind is a powerful thing — it can motivate us to great and awful things. Victor Frankenstein fled from his monster, but it was his emotions, his fear, that caused him to flee, for the creature offered him no harm. No more than any thing newly born can harm. Perhaps it was also fear in the mind of the young man Henry Clerval that robbed him of his powers to react in order to defend himself. This fear of seeing the monster and of pain and death effected a sort of paralysis and so the young man did not, or could not fight back.

The creature is a reflection of the creator — if it was ugly, then it was a mirror of Victor Frankenstein's immorality, which would seem to work against his fantasies of success, control, and ultimately the veneration of others. Perhaps upon seeing his creation, Victor Frankenstein realized that all these hopes were lost to him. No one would applaud the creation of such a monster. In a sense, the reality of the monster is immaterial. The monster represents loss of control, needs, vulnerability, imperfection — qualities not to be tolerated. The murderer, on the other hand, was sure of himself, with confidence that he could easily dominate his
victims. Manipulation, domination, and control, elements that give him a heightened satisfaction he does not achieve from anything else in his life. Victor Frankenstein's monster certainly has no control over any part of his life.

You have asked me if the story Victor Frankenstein has told indicates that he was a madman. This I cannot truly answer without having the person in question before me to study fully. At best, I can confirm that the story has many elements that would seem to indicate that they are the workings of an unwell mind. What concerns me most are the extremes of emotion of which Victor Frankenstein was capable. In all of us is the capacity for great calm and peace and yet also the capacity for great rage and violence. For most of us, there is a self-control that disallows the more violent anti-social behaviour from appearing. In the cases of Dippel and the other inmates of whom I have made you familiar, this ability has been hampered in some manner. Their rage cannot be controlled by them, and so must be controlled by others means, if at all.

You have undertaken no small task in your attempt to solve murders committed so long ago, and under such strange and complex circumstances. In every way, your quest is of the greatest interest to me, and I would be glad to hear more of it. If upon your return you would care to visit once again, I would be glad to have you. This time, I can promise a reception more fitting for a guest. I commend your efforts and wish you every success.

Your servant,

Dr. H. Bosch

The body of a ship's cook was found in the early morning hours. The front door of the house had been left open, so that passersby could easily see the motionless form of the sailor at the bottom of a steep set of stairs. At first, it was thought that the sailor in his drunkenness had fallen to his death. Then marks upon his neck were found, and this suggested that the man had been strangled before he fell or was pushed down the staircase.

The magistrate soon came to know that a ship's surgeon, by name of Johanssen, had been seen regularly at the cook's home, and often brought gifts of rum. Both men had at one time been crew aboard the same ship chartered by an English captain named Walton. The cook has not been the first sailor from that voyage to fall victim to a strange and mysterious death. At least four others have died in a series of strange accidents. Although no charges have yet been laid against Surgeon Johanssen, the magistrate has chosen to keep the man behind bars.

Dr. Bosch's letter and the short article from the newspaper caused me to be up all night in fevered thought, reading through the journal and letters and also my notes yet again, while the rest of the inn was silent except for the blowing of the wind through the trees. The pile of documents, including Captain Walton's journal, sit before me on my desk, the edges of the pages beginning to show the wear from having been handled by many hands and read many times, and the ink appears to have faded as if worn from so many eyes, including mine own, peering at the words. The images of all that has passed seem to flit about the room, casting shadows like a pantomime of all that has occurred, that I have been told, and what I conject; and which story is true? Like Victor, I shall call upon the shades of the murdered — William, Henry, and Elizabeth — to help me execute the last steps and conduct me in the work that I must do. What Victor could not accomplish, I will.

One image keeps coming to the forefront of my mind: bruise marks left about the neck of the dead. In Ingolstadt, I was grabbed about the neck. In Archangel, Ernest Frankenstein was attacked and grabbed about the neck. Hek the cook was found at the foot of the stairs badly bruised all over, as well as about the neck. What, indeed, if he did not fall but rather was pushed, and then strangled to finish the job? What if in all cases the strangler was the same person? Is it just coincidence
that the modus operandi is the same for the murders of Henry, William, and Elizabeth? What if a murderer thought to have perished in the icy north, is responsible for all of this?

There is no question that Henry Clerval was murdered by an unholy creature, as Mr. Clerval put it so well. Victor Frankenstein was at the core of all three murders and is in every manner responsible for them. Had he but once taken responsibility for his actions, in the place of hiding behind his self-acknowledged genius, all of the grief caused Mr. Clerval's family and his own would have been avoided. I am now convinced of this. Victor refers to his creation as a lifeless thing at his feet, a creature, a wretch, a miserable monster, a demonical corpse, a scoffing devil. But the monster had a name, and I have known it all along. It is only now that I am able to see with clarity. I find a tragic irony to have come so far and done so much when all along I had the answer before me, had I but chosen to see it.

Dr. Bosch's letter provoked me to look more closely in a certain direction. My primary focus had been on discovering a “villainous associate” of Victor Frankenstein; this seemed the most likely answer. For some time, I was deceived and figured Dippel the most likely person to have committed all three crimes. I was wrong; Dippel was not the murderer. He knew who was. Now he lies with his tongue silenced for eternity. The concept of life from death distracted me when the answer was before me all the time: the villain has always ever been completely evident. I have developed a new understanding of the murderer-monster, and am convinced of the rightness of my beliefs. Dr. Bosch enjoined me not to see with my eyes, but with my mind. Robert Walton was deceived by the light and shadow of the north; he saw only Victor's greatness, because that is what he wanted to see.

At the beginning of his acquaintance with Victor Frankenstein, Robert Walton described his new friend with these words:
such a man has a double existence.
Could he have at that moment understood
fully the truth of his perception and words? Walton also described Victor as having eyes with
an expression of wildness and even madness.
More damning were Walton's comments on Victor's behaviour: