The Frankenstein Murders (9 page)

Inside the third cottage, there was little to see; the place had been abandoned, the lab dismantled by Victor Frankenstein himself after he had destroyed the creature he had promised to bring to life. I looked about the room, my eyes seeking even the smallest fragment of something that would give me a clue to Victor Frankenstein's work. There was little evidence that this was the place in which Victor Frankenstein had spent many solitary weeks, with the only contact which was required being for the procurement of nourishment and other necessities. In that period of near constant solitude, he worked at his second monster, laboriously putting together the pieces without the knowledge or support of anyone.

Resting for a moment on a crude stone seat built into the low cottage wall, I imagined the room as it must have been when Victor Frankenstein resided there, the cramped space made even more so with the addition of equipment and materials. The only table would have been completely covered by the overpowering presence of the creature Victor was intent upon building. In such a small space, he could never have escaped, as the monster would have always been in sight; everywhere would have been the smell of the decay of human flesh. My eyes scanned the bare floor and walls, coming to rest on a small image etched into a stone on one side of the cold fireplace. The image was rough, giving the impression that it had been hastily done, and at first I could not make out what it represented. After studying it for some moments, I discerned that it was a representation of a chimera — the mythical beast with the heads of a lion, a serpent, and a goat. I believed it was unlikely that any of the local inhabitants had been responsible for this work, but wondered why Victor Frankenstein would leave such an image as the only record of his stay in the cottage.

While in Scotland, alone on this remote island, Victor Frankenstein admitted to having obscure forebodings of evil. If he truly believed to have created a monstrous being, capable of wringing the life out of a defenceless boy, it should have more than warranted
forebodings, and made the evil anything but obscure. The source of his foreboding should have been quite obvious, if not physically evident at the time. The first monster had followed Victor Frankenstein to the island, and he saw his monster in the moonlight. It was then that Victor declared his desire not to bring another creature like it into the world; he tore the female monster to pieces. He then locked the cottage door behind him and left the island, dropping into the sea the body parts in a basket weighted with rocks.

Frankenstein described how he had carried with him chemical instruments and materials collected in London, yet no mention was made of the cadavers he would have needed. If human body parts figured among the contents of some of the packages Victor carried with him as he travelled, then surely the smell would have been noticeable, if not the cause of many curious looks and questions. Perhaps in the letters from Henry Clerval to his father I might find some verification of Victor Frankenstein's unusual luggage.

I followed a path of flat yet irregular shaped stones, taken from the beach, to the only cottage with smoke rising from its chimney. Chickens milled about the doorstep, but the people who had seen me earlier had busied themselves elsewhere. My knock resulted in a quick exchange of indecipherable words from inside, followed by the opening of the low wooden door, which had recently been painted bright red, swinging on hinges of iron that made a sound not unlike a human moan; I had to lower my head considerably to get through. An old woman peered up at me before retreating more deeply. She spoke again to someone, but her accent was so thick and low the only word that stood out was “fetch,” which she repeated three times.

The day had grown bright in the time I spent inside Frankenstein's cottage, and so it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dimness of the second cottage. A large and open fireplace with a wooden mantle, where a small smoky fire burned, was at one end of the building. Heavy, rough-hewn wooden furniture took up much of the space, and, like the door, had recently been painted in bright colours. A large shiny kettle had been slung over the fire, with a smaller matching kettle on the hearth waiting to be filled.

Auld Liam Connelly, small clay pipe clenched between his
teeth, sat in a corner near the fire, repairing a wooden bucket. His weathered face made his exact age hard to determine. His eyes, bright and attentive like a child's, told me little would pass his notice. The hands that worked on the bucket had been roughened by fishing and farming. The woman who had opened the door was equally weathered with similar features, her sex evidenced only by her dress and hair, and a basket full of potatoes at her feet that she peeled methodically with a small sharp knife.

Giving as few details as possible, I explained that I was charged with investigating Victor Frankenstein's activities while on the island and would be grateful for any information Liam could provide. Wordlessly, he selected a piece of wood from the haphazard pile in the corner and tossed it on the fire. Rather than add to the flame, it increased the smokiness of the room, causing my eyes to smart. Soon, the smoke was so dense as to obscure considerably my vision, to the degree that I could only discern moving body parts: a hand turning a bucket or wielding a knife, a foot tapping the floor, a head swivelling slowly upon a neck.

When minutes passed and yet still nothing was said, I began to ask more specific questions about Victor Frankenstein's actions. From the older man's short, almost cryptic responses, I was able to glean that Victor Frankenstein had arrived with many boxes and trunks. The fact that Victor had also brought a small sailing craft for his own personal use was also confirmed, as was the fact that Victor had been accustomed to venturing out on lone sea voyages and that these same sailing trips could last for hours or days. Liam could not, or would not, provide any information of where Victor went, or what he did.

I asked Liam what Victor Frankenstein's occupation was while he was here, when he was not sailing.

“He kept to himself and minded his own business.” I felt in this blunt response a criticism of my own behaviour.

“He sailed. When he was out, he locked the door and discouraged visitors. Nor was he one to pay a visit,” the woman added sharply, never looking up from her work.

Her words gave me cause to wonder if Victor Frankenstein's many marine excursions related to his need for body parts. In a large city such as Ingolstadt, it is imaginable that he moved about secretively, carting stolen body parts, but in the Orkneys, where the towns and villages are so very small and remote, and the inhabitants so watchful, it would be near impossible. Fearing, however, to entirely end what little response I received from the Connellys, I refrained from taking this line of questioning with them, and resolved to ask my Kirkwall landlord if anyone went missing from the islands during Victor Frankenstein's residence.

Much of what I needed to ask demanded that I speak with the person who had provided the testimony that had made Victor Frankenstein a free man. My inquiries to this end were continuously ignored until neither Auld Liam nor the woman would look directly at me. They moved and spoke to one another as if I were not present. I asked of them who it had been that was taken to Ireland by Alphonse Frankenstein to act as witness in evidence of his son's innocence. We sat in the least companionable silence imaginable, they resolved not to answer, and I resolved not to move until they had.

“There is no one here who can tell you aught of that,” Liam muttered, again his eyes never looking my way.

Once again, I implored them where I might find the witness or for them to provide the witness's name. I repeated the importance that I find and speak to the witness who spoke on Victor Frankenstein's behalf. My words had no effect.

I had no authority or menace or influence of any manner with which to compel them to tell me what I needed to know. Nothing more could be gained by remaining on the island. Before quitting the cottage, I asked them if they had seen anyone with lustrous
black hair, skin that barely covered the arteries, pearly white teeth, yellow eyes, and straight black lips. If possible, this question made them even more reticent and uncommunicative. I knew I would get no more information from them. They took no more notice of my exit from the room than they would have of a draft of north wind escaping through a tiny chink in the wall.

As I waited for the boat I had hired to return that I might leave the island, I took one last long look at the simple cottage that had been Victor Frankenstein's home and laboratory for a short time. No tree or hill obscured my vision, and so my view of each of the three cottages was uninhibited. Victor Frankenstein might have convinced himself that his actions went unnoticed, but on so small an island, I felt that was highly unlikely. Except while locked away within his cottage, every step Victor took would have been noticed. My disappointment at the unwillingness of the residents to speak with me was so great as to be overwhelming and not without an almost debilitating feeling of anger and frustration. To my astonishment, I felt my arms stiffen at my sides as my fingers curled and dug painfully into my palms. More alarming was the sudden and irrational fear that my appendages would act of their own to acquire through physical force information the old man and woman would not provide me of their own accord.

As the boat slowly pulled away from shore, I felt the fever in me diminish and a sense of calmness and self-control return, clearing my mind entirely of its temporary disquiet. Looking back at the island from a new perspective, I was able to reconsider its bleak and empty isolation. In this way did I become entirely convinced that no second monster could ever have been created in that remote location. Although unsure of Victor Frankenstein's true activities while in residence there, stitching together human body parts was not among them. The truth behind the creation of the first monster remains to be confirmed or denied, yet I came away from the island certain that the story of the second
monster's creation was indeed nothing more than a fabrication. Overwrought, overtired, mournful, and self-exiled in the Orkneys, Victor Frankenstein could only have driven himself to a dangerous state of mind where fantasy prevailed.

One of the most unexpected and violent of murders occurred Saturday near the town of Larne, Ireland, with repercussions both strange and unique. The victim, Mr. Henry Clerval, a gentleman of Geneva, had been first in England on a travelling holiday for purposes of visiting friends and acquaintances, and at the same time to further his business of an enterprise in India. Upon the conclusion of his tour, Mr. Henry Clerval was to have sailed to India, whereupon he would take up entirely the responsibilities of his enterprise. Mr. George Clerval, Henry Clerval's father, is a well-respected gentleman who has had much commerce between England and Geneva for almost two decades. On March 27, Henry Clerval, in the company of his friend Mr. Victor Frankenstein, also of Geneva, left London and headed north, travelling through Oxford, Derby, Cumberland, Westmorland, Edinburgh, and finally arriving at Perth. Here, the two men parted, Victor Frankenstein to head yet farther north to the Orkneys, while Henry Clerval remained with a friend in Perth. After remaining with his friend for some eight weeks, Henry Clerval chose to join Mr. Victor Frankenstein in the Orkneys.

Henry Clerval was not seen again until two nights later, when a group of fishermen returning from a night's work came upon a lifeless body left on the shore. The fishermen who had headed back to shore after ten o'clock did not land in the harbour, but in a creek two miles distant. As they walked to town, one of the men struck his foot against something
and fell upon on the ground. The other fishermen came to his assistance, and by holding up their lanterns came to discover that he had fallen over the body of a man. The men supposed that they had found a victim of drowning, whose body had been thrown to shore by the waves, but upon closer inspection, they found that both the body and clothing were dry; the body was not yet cold. They immediately carried the man to a nearby cottage and tried in vain to revive him. The victim was young, about five and twenty, and handsome. Except for the black bruise marks made by fingers on his neck, there were no markings on the young man's body.

Early the following day, Victor Frankenstein, also unknown in town, sailed into the harbour. He was immediately taken to the Magistrate, Mr. Kirwin, and given the account of the gentleman who had been found murdered the night before. Mrs. Magee, the widow of a fisherman, deposed that she lived near the beach and was standing at the door of her cottage waiting for the return of the fishermen about an hour before she heard of the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat with only one man in it push off from the part of the shore where the body of Henry Clerval was later found. One of the fishermen, Daniel Nugent, swore that just before he fell over the body of Henry Clerval, he had seen a boat with a single man in it not far from shore, and that the boat was in the same style as that in which Mr. Frankenstein had landed.

Several other men were examined concerning Mr. Frankenstein's landing in the harbour and they agreed that, with the strong north wind that had arisen during the night, it was very probable that Mr. Frankenstein had beaten about in his boat for many hours and had been obliged to return nearly to the same spot from which he had departed. They suspected that Mr. Frankenstein had brought his friend Henry Clerval's body from another place, and it was likely that, as Mr. Frankenstein did not appear to know the shore, he might have been obliged to put into harbour, ignorant of the distance between the town and the place where he had deposited the corpse.