Doktor Glass (8 page)

Durham raced along the left-hand gate and jumped over the gap, windmilling his arms to gain momentum. He slipped on the far gate’s planks but grabbed the rail and stumbled to the opposite bank.

Langton saw the gap increase. He drove his feet into the slick cobbles and sprinted for the receding right-hand gate. A final leap, his arms outstretched, every muscle yearning. Below him, a cauldron of boiling white water.

Time slowed. He saw the gate pulling away; he would never reach it. Then the worn edge of the right-hand dock gate slammed into his stomach and drove the breath from his body. His fingers clawed the wet wood. Splinters dug into his hands until he found purchase. Inch by inch, he pulled himself up onto the planks of the right-hand gate and scrambled to his knees.

He dragged air into his lungs and looked back as the incoming ship’s hull of tar-black wood and rusty steel slid past less than a foot away. He had time to see the foreign sailors’ openmouthed surprise. Then he ran on. He thought he saw Durham a hundred yards or more ahead before the crowd closed in. He pushed his way through the dockers and climbed up onto the hexagonal clock tower.

Whichever direction he turned, he saw no trace of Durham. He
slumped down with his back to the bricks and his arms wrapped around his aching stomach. He looked up when he heard his name called. “Here.”

McBride, panting and sweating, leaned on his own knees and finally said, “No sign of him?”

Langton shook his head.

“You were lucky, sir.” McBride slumped beside him, ignoring the looks of the curious dockworkers. “Another second or two and that ship would have had you.”

Langton didn’t answer for a minute. He concentrated instead on slowing his racing heart and easing the pain in his stomach. Then, “You have his address?”

McBride patted his coat pocket.

“When we return, take the hansom and two men with you,” Langton said, “and remember that he’s more than willing to fire on us.”

“Oh, I’ll go prepared, sir.” McBride got to his feet. “You really think he’d go back there?”

“Probably not, but see what you can find. I think there’s more to these two men than mere coincidence. Pass Durham’s description on to the desk sergeant; I want every constable looking for him.”

“Leave it to me, sir,” McBride said as he helped Langton up.

Climbing into the back of the police hansom parked by the main gates, Langton wondered why Durham had run off like that. What had scared him?

Almost despite himself, Langton allowed his gaze to slip back to the Span. Salisbury’s warnings sounded again in his mind, but he couldn’t help the direction of his thoughts: The Span lay at the bottom of this.

W
HEN THE HANSOM
pulled up in the courtyard at Victoria Street headquarters, Langton left McBride with the desk sergeant and strode through the lobby, glancing at the hard wooden benches fixed to the walls where the ragged public sat huddled against the chill. He didn’t recognize anyone. Before he could climb the stairs to his office, McBride called him back.

The desk sergeant leaned over the brass rail of his high wooden desk. “Begging your pardon, sir, but Doctor Fry asked for you.”

Langton descended to the basement and found Doctor Fry in the cluttered office. “You left a message?”

Fry looked up from the Imperial typewriter balanced on his desk’s uneven plateau of papers and files. “Langton, how did you fare with Caldwell Chivers?”

Eager to get upstairs and see Forbes Paterson, Langton said, “The Professor was very helpful, thank you. He identified the marks on the victim’s neck as electrical burns.”

“For what reason?”

Langton hesitated, then said, “He mentioned the Jar Boys.”

Fry nodded and began to clean his pince-nez with a handkerchief. “I thought as much.”

“You knew?” Langton crossed to the desk. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Would you have believed me?”

“Well…”

“Exactly. And I couldn’t be sure. Caldwell Chivers has a great deal of experience in the subject. In fact, he’s quite an authority.”

Again, Langton wondered how and why the Professor knew so much about the Jar Boys. But he wanted to talk with Forbes Paterson. “Was that all you wanted?”

“Not quite.” Fry rummaged in desk drawers until he pulled out two crumpled sheets of yellow paper. “I queried London about the dead man’s fingerprints and received these replies. Look.”

Langton went to tell Fry that they had already identified the man, but he read the first telegram:
Positive match found. Details to follow.
“So?”

Fry held out the second telegram. “This arrived an hour or so after the first.”

“‘No match found.’” Langton read out the contents and looked at Fry. “I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I. Especially when I compared the senders’ details.”

Langton scanned the first telegram and saw the sender’s address: The Home Office, Queen Anne’s Gate. But the second came from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. “Why would the FCO show interest in a criminal investigation?”

Fry smiled. “I rather hoped you could tell me.”

Langton thought for a moment, then asked, “May I keep these?”

“By all means. Oh, I’m just finishing my report on your second customer, the sailor.”

“Stoker Olsen?”

“That’s the chap,” Fry said. “Neat job: a single puncture straight through the ribs to the heart. They knew what they were doing.”

“And the weapon?”

Fry unrolled a muslin bundle on his desk to reveal a sliver of brown-tinted steel perhaps ten inches long. “Sheffield steel with an edge on both sides. It’s used to remove tissue or lesions from around a bone.”

He picked up the weapon by the engraved handle, using the muslin as a glove. “You see, the surgeon scrapes it along the length of the bone—the tibia, say, or the fibula—and cuts the tissue, thus.”

At the final lunge, Langton winced. “So, a surgeon’s property.”

“At one time, certainly, but who’s to say how it ended up in the hands of a murderer?”

After thanking Fry, Langton climbed the stairs to his office. He had much to add to the case file, and much to consider. It was not to be; the office boy, Harry, limped up to him in the corridor. “A lady to see you, sir. I asked her to wait in your office.”

“Did she give a name?” Langton asked, already thinking of Mrs. Grizedale.

“Sister Wright, sir.”

Langton found her sitting in his office. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Sister. I had no idea you might call on me.”

“That’s quite all right, Inspector.” Sister Wright had stood up as Langton entered the room, but she returned to her seat and set her gloves and purse on her lap. She wore a long skirt and matching coat of grey wool, and a simple hat in a darker grey. Somehow, the outfit seemed reminiscent of her uniform, as though she were not quite off-duty. “I knew you would be busy, but I hope you can spare me a few minutes.”

“Of course. Are you not working today?”

“My duties begin at seven this evening,” she said. “Although I usually go in a little early.”

How early?
Langton thought. He could see no ring on her finger, and she reminded him of the nurses in the Transvaal field hospitals and convalescent units: women, some no more than girls, who focused on their work alone. Like nuns, they saw their duties as a calling more
than a vocation. Without their dedicated attention, many men would not have returned from the war. Langton was no exception.

“How may I help you?” Langton sat behind his desk slowly, wincing at the pain in his abdomen.

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing, just a slight accident while chasing a suspect,” Langton said. “Go on, please.”

Sister Wright hesitated, then began, “Firstly, I must ask you not to mention my visit to the Professor. I realize I have no right to put you in this position, but the Professor hates the thought of people speaking behind his back, even if they have his best interests at heart.”

Intrigued, Langton said, “You have my word: Whatever passes between us shall remain here.”

Sister Wright’s face broke into a smile that made her seem ten years younger. “I knew I had not misjudged you, Inspector.”

“So…”

“So. I think the Professor might have given you the wrong impression last night, or rather this morning—hours lose their rhythm in the Infirmary. He has led a long and varied life, a life dedicated to relieving pain and helping people. I have worked with many doctors, but never have I met such a selfless surgeon as Professor Caldwell Chivers.”

Langton gave no response as he wondered why she felt it necessary to defend the Professor.

Sister Wright continued, “We fight every day to save lives and snatch people back from the very brink of death. Sometimes we do not succeed. I know that hurts the Professor; he’s not like those men who can inure themselves to death. You’ve met such men, haven’t you, Inspector? And not just in your work here.”

Remembering the Transvaal, Langton nodded.

Sister Wright leaned forward in her chair. “The Professor cares. Perhaps, sometimes, he cares too much. He lets himself become
distracted by certain…ideas. Ideas that in daylight might seem grotesque or even dangerous.”

“The Jar Boys?”

Sister Wright looked at the floor. “I’m afraid so.”

“I’ve heard of their existence from others,” Langton said. “It seems that many believe in them.”

She smiled at him. “Many believe in fairies and other sprites and spirits. Why, even voodoo, that bizarre belief in the undead. I wonder sometimes if those beliefs stem from a need deep within a person, if perhaps they simply see what they wish to see.”

Langton didn’t doubt her. In the Transvaal trenches and deserts, he had witnessed the transformation of levelheaded men into wrecks desperately grasping at anything that would relieve their daily suffering. They talked of ghosts, spirits, angels, the afterlife, Egyptology, religions and sects from around the world. They had that need.

Did the Professor really live under so much strain? Strain and stress enough to drive him to the outer fringes of belief? Langton chose his words with care. “The Professor is obviously respectable, hardworking, sane.”

“As sane as you or I,” Sister Wright said. “But he seeks so hard to help his patients that he sometimes loses his perspective.”

“But you trust him.”

Sister Wright stared at him. “With my life.”

Again, Langton wondered why she had come here. He had the sense of things unsaid, of facts or suspicions behind her words. Perhaps she didn’t register their existence herself. “Do you believe in the Jar Boys?”

She thought for a moment. “I understand why people believe in them. I understand the reason for their existence.”

That didn’t really answer Langton’s question, but he did not want to press the subject. “Could you tell me some of the other areas that interest the Professor?”

Sister Wright twisted her hands in her lap. “I’m not sure that I should.”

Langton waited.

Sister Wright glanced through the window to Victoria Street and then nodded. “He has a great interest in Egyptology, in the Orient and its philosophies: Buddhism, particularly Zen; Hinduism from India; the works of Confucius and Sun Yat-sen. Acupuncture, the stimulation of nerve points throughout the body, and the Chinese belief in
qi
, or the force within us.”

“That is quite a list.”

“It is only the tip of his knowledge,” she said. “He is a true polymath.”

Langton could see her respect for the Professor in her eyes, and that made him pull back from the questions he longed to ask. Instead, carefully, he said, “Have his interests ever led him astray?”

“Astray?”

“Has he ever…Have his interests ever affected his patients?”

“Never.” The word came hard and sharp. “His patients have never suffered.”

Langton saw he would get no further than that at this stage. As Sister Wright gathered her gloves and purse to leave, Langton said, “Thank you for telling me all this. I appreciate your honesty.”

“I wanted you to know.”

“May I ask one final thing, Sister? It isn’t about the Professor.”

She tilted her head to one side and waited.

Langton said, “When we saw the man’s body, you seemed to recognize the tattoos.”

Sister Wright stood up and set her gloves and purse down on the chair. With efficient movements, and before Langton could stop her, she unbuttoned the jet buttons at the side of her dress. The grey wool fabric fell open.

Langton raised his hand as if to stop her. His pulse raced in his
throat. The sight of her skin silenced him. For, between the edge of the white lace bodice that covered her breasts and the slender curve of her throat lay a network of fine scars; the wan office light turned them silver.

“I joined the nursing corps at sixteen,” Sister Wright said as she closed her dress. “We treated the injured Boers alongside our own brave troops, showing no aversion or favoritism. That didn’t stop the Boers and their Irregulars that overran our field hospitals from…from…”

She turned away and rebuttoned her dress.

“I’m sorry,” Langton said. “I’m so sorry.”

Sister Wright turned and gave a tight smile. “We survive, Inspector. We go on with our lives, for we have no choice.”

Sarah’s image filled Langton’s mind.

“Inspector? I must go.” Sister Wright stood at the door and waited for Langton to open it. She held out her hand. “I hope I haven’t made a mistake today.”

“I promise that you haven’t.”

With one final smile, she left him. Langton saw Harry giving him a strange look. He closed the frosted door and rested his back against it.

His estimation of the sister had increased. Whatever reason she might have had for visiting him, whether conscious or unconscious, was unimportant, in a sense. She had revealed to him a major part of her life, given him a glimpse of the horrors that had shaped her. He doubted she would do that for just anybody. Why for him?

At least she seemed to have survived the experience, not just physically but mentally. Some of the survivors who returned home had found no solace from the war, no dwindling of their memories. Unable to resume their interrupted lives, they drank, took opium, fell into crime or through the fabric of society to the depths below.