The Frankenstein Murders (6 page)

The harassed-looking nanny who had followed the children into the room had no influence on their behaviour either — the
children were completely democratic in that they ignored all adults equally, regardless of title or status. Mrs. Saville, as if completely oblivious to the disruption, beamed with grandmotherly benevolence and contentment the entire time. Her words, however, did not demonstrate the same benevolence.

“Nicholas and Charles, how can you be so teasing? And Walter, how can you be so silly? Please children, do not run about in the wild manner that you are suffered when we do not have visitors,” Mrs. Saville admonished, but her words were to no avail. Only once the children had thoroughly sated themselves on cakes did they allow themselves to be gathered up and herded out of the room.

Determined to finish the interview and find some piece of information that would make my visit worthwhile, I steered Mrs. Saville back to the topic we had been discussing before our interruption. I asked if her brother was planning another voyage.

“Yes, yes. Robert is away seeking financing for yet another voyage. He is quite confident to get the money he needs. He has gone to the continent. Certainly he told me the place, but the name quite escapes me now. He was to write as soon as he arrived. He was to go to some place with an unusual name. I believe it started with a P or a B, or perhaps it was a V.”

I suggested Belgium, or perhaps Poland.

“Yes, that must be it. He will soon write and I will know for certain. Robert has been a devoted and consistent correspondent, which is good, because with his northern enterprises he has had occasion to write many letters in the course of the year! He always writes such charming, long letters.

“I read Robert's letters from the north with wonderment,” she confided, “I could hardly believe the tale as true. The journal I did not read fully, the story saddened and frightened me so. Truly, the story rendered me quite speechless; I have not stopped talking about it since.”

I cannot but observe that this must be the case.

“Not long after I received the last of the letters and his journal, I got another letter. Short. Not at all his normal style. He entreated me to send his letters to Ernest Frankenstein, the only living brother of Victor Frankenstein. In it, Robert addressed Ernest Frankenstein and reiterated his close friendship with Victor Frankenstein in those final days.”

I told her that I had not seen the letter directing her to send on the journal to Ernest Frankenstein. It was not with her brother's journal.

“Perhaps I can find it for you. I am certain I kept it,” she said, going over to a table, the entire surface of which was covered with a variety of documents in no discernable order.

I could well believe that she had kept the letter, for judging by the disarray of the house, it appeared that nothing was ever thrown away.

“I have not his skill at penmanship. My ideas flow so rapidly but then are lost before I get them to paper,” she said, busy rummaging through the piles of papers. “The letter must be here somewhere.”

Having had no luck in her search for the letter, she moved to her writing desk, piled thick with letters and envelopes. The drawers so full they could not close properly, papers protruding from every crevice.

“You see, my dear Mr. Freame, my poor boy was deeply disturbed by the passing of his friend,” she said as she began to sort through the drawers. “Here it is. As you can see, Robert's handwriting is far from the normal clear script I took such pains to teach him. I can barely read it myself. I was reluctant to send a letter in such a state to Mr. Frankenstein's bereaved brother along with the other letters Robert sent me.”

I asked if I could keep the letter, and when she appeared uncertain, I made her another suggestion that I might copy it out for my own records.

She appeared much relieved by my suggestion to copy the letter and agreed to it. After pen, ink, and paper were found with surprisingly little difficulty, I undertook to copy the contents of Robert Walton's letter.

“It took Robert some time to settle things in Archangel, and then he spent nearly a fortnight in St. Petersburg on some business for an acquaintance. I was quite glad when he returned home. How altered dear Robert was after his adventure. Often, I would find him sitting alone, staring pensively at the fire or out a window.”

I asked her if he spoke much about his time in the north?

“No, and I did not like to ask him. Any mention seemed to agitate him. He was ever so thin. It took weeks for me to fatten him up again. He was so nervous, and then the depression set in again. He would wander around the house as if he were looking for something, or stare out the windows in expectation of something, I know not what.”

With delicacy, I suggested that he feared the monster would come to get him.

“No, now I doubt that. He barely mentioned the voyage at all, particularly that part. Except to confirm that I had sent along the letters and journal to Ernest Frankenstein.” Her discomfort with this line of questioning was made evident in the way she touched her cap as if to make certain that it had not fallen off, or in wonder that it was there at all.

“Oh, but he was so nervous. Often, he would not get a proper night's sleep, but rather take long walks. Then he decided to take up his dream again after he received a letter from one of those distant places he had been. Someone offering to help him arrange and finance yet another trip. Then he received a letter from an old and dear friend, or that is how he put it, and he was immediately planning to travel again. I was loathe to let him go, but his spirits rose so much, and his health improved remarkably that I thought it best to say nothing and let him go again. But I can assure you,
Mr. Freame, at my time of life, it is not so pleasant to have one's family travelling about all over.”

I asked if she might remember the name of the friend, as I may well need to speak with him.

“Oh, I do not recollect. Herdingle, or Hartopple. Not a usual name. Not at all an English name. Perhaps Scottish? Perhaps my husband would recall, although I don't know that Robert mentioned it to him. Mr. Saville is not so understanding of Robert's passions.”

At this time, I felt I had learned what little there was to know from Mrs. Saville. I had gained an insight into the woman who had raised Captain Walton, and so perhaps some inkling of the kind of man he is. I took my leave of her, but this could not happen until I heard her many profusions of a most delightful and excellent visit and she had entreated me to visit again.

I asked Mrs. Saville if she would do me the favour of writing to me with the details of her brother's whereabouts that I might arrange a meeting with him.

She readily agreed to my request, and I quickly took my leave from her, making sure to wish her whole family well, particularly her brother in his new endeavour.

I left the cottage with no little amount of frustration at being thwarted so soon in my investigation, that my wish to speak with Robert Walton had to be put off until he was located. But I continued with my plans to journey to Scotland and Ireland, and resolved that when I heard from Mrs. Saville I would make new arrangements to see him.

My Dear Sister,

I write these few lines to say that I am safe and well. Matters of business make it so that I must remain in St. Petersburg longer than I first had anticipated. My every wish is to return to England and to home, and I am most grateful for your care and solicitations for my health and well-being.

I would ask of you one small favour. Take all the letters and the journal that I sent ahead to you and package them up so that they may be sent, along with the letter I have included with this, to Ernest Frankenstein of Geneva. He is the brother of my friend Victor who, as you know, I met under such exceptional circumstances in the north. Ernest Frankenstein is the last surviving member of the Frankenstein family, and he and those that he would tell should know the truth of the matter and how his brother died bravely, facing that which he had done.

No further disaster has accompanied the end of my voyage, which you (perhaps rightly so) regarded with such evil forebodings. In many ways, the ending has become much more fortuitous than I could have imagined. A few short weeks more remain until I will find myself in your company once again.

Robert Walton, St. Petersburg

Dearest Edward,

We are not so far from London to be completely unaware of your great success. I must congratulate you on your investigation into the murder of Lady Chesterlock. Only the very greatest of fiends could have dealt such a horrific death upon his father's widow. But now you are famous and have been much talked about in town. Everyone I meet quizzes me about you and demands to know when you will next visit so that they might know more about your investigations.

Our family does well, and we are all in good health. It has been ages since you were last here, and we are dying to see you again, particularly one small boy who is rapidly becoming the complete likeness of his father. Little master Freame is outgoing and open with everyone he meets, not at all like his father's aloof and distant manner. Indeed, he is growing up to be quite the charmer, and is already a favourite among the little girls in the neighbourhood. He has grown so tall I wonder that you will recognize your own son.

You really must visit us, Edward, before you embark on your next endeavour. Not for some paltry two or three days, but for a proper stay. Even here in the country you are sure to find employment to suit you. In the next village there is said to be a
certain hall where every evening at midnight the rotten corpse of a young serving girl and her infant child rise from beneath the floorboards of the ballroom, where an ancestral owner of the building buried them. Would this not be worth investigating? Surely, it would be less taxing than travelling to countries afar. I fear you work far too hard and dedicate too much of your time to these investigations.

I, as a most caring and concerned sister, beg of you, both for the sake of yourself and your son, to delay no longer in visiting us.

Affectionately yours, your sister,

Susannah

I visited Edinburgh with languid eyes and mind; and yet that city might have interested the most unfortunate being. Clerval did not like it so well as Oxford, for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing to him. But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its romantic castle and its environs, the most delightful in the world, Arthur's Seat, St. Bernard's Well, and the Pentland Hills compensated him for the change and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. But I was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey.

The great road to Edinburgh provided an impressive efficiency in travel. As the coach passed through a valley in the northern regions of England, the tailor and his wife, who shared the coach, called my attention to the ruins of a cottage, of which only the stone fireplace and chimney remained upright. The importance of that ruined cottage, my companions explained, arose from the fact that it had been the dwelling place of a known witch. It has long been my observation that most everyone has a story like this to tell and that even the smallest village in England has its share of the unusual, the unexplained, and even supernatural occurrences: spectral ladies in white who appear in dark hallways wailing for some lost lover, ghostly horsemen riding by the light of the moon, hideous beasts brought forth to unleash their wrath upon the unwary. Not for the first time I wondered to myself if such a multitude of stories truly proved the existence of the supernatural or, rather, of the human need to believe in such stories.

I encouraged the tailor and his wife to tell me more of the witch. They agreed and shared a tale of a solitary old woman who told fortunes for coins and placed curses upon people and livestock whenever she was vexed. The witch died when her cottage burned to the ground; but afterwards began the sightings of her ghostly shape leaning over her fire late at night. This story not only diverted me
from the tedium of my long journey, it had the effect of prompting the corpulent young man who shared a seat with me to relate the story of a supernatural being, said to haunt a manor. The beast was in the shape of a large dog, but no ordinary dog — one called forth from the fiery depths of hell with the size, ferocity, and strength of a bear; this creature murdered unsuspecting victims who walked alone on the moors at night. The black beast with devilish, glowing red eyes was said by some to have been sent from hell to haunt a wicked family of the ancient manor, while others claimed it was the tortured sole of a man who had done evil deeds in his life and so had been cursed to roam the earth as a beast.

As the young man, the tailor, and his wife told their tales, my own thoughts naturally turned to my own investigation, and how with great facility the incidents related to the Clerval case could be considered supernatural. How easy it would be to determine that the murders — and even Victor Frankenstein's avowed contortion of nature — were the result of supernatural forces and thereby solve, if such can be considered a solution, the case. Indeed, significant parallels between the story of the hellish dog and Frankenstein's monster existed: two large, unnatural beasts preying upon the innocent. An insubstantial solution of such a kind would serve no purpose; the truth will be found in the facts I unearth. Once I have solved the Clerval investigation and returned to England, I will investigate the ghost witch, finding it to be a lone vagabond warming himself by a fire, and the beast of the manor nothing but a rabid and mangy dog.