Murder (17 page)

I had to make plans. I determined to start by reading Harrington’s letters properly – but first, I had to clean out the cellar, scrub away the smell of my guilt. Then I would release Mrs Parks from my service with a generous parting gift.

Now I was on my feet and moving and I had a sense of purpose, and I felt stronger already. This thing would not beat me; I would not become a monster. I would find a way to live like a decent man.

Some hours later, sweaty and exhausted from my exertions, I threw the sack of remains into the river. There was nowhere else for them to go. I stared at the inky water. I was going to have to make the river my friend.

Yesterday morning at 9 o’clock the woman Dyer, who was convicted at the Central Criminal Court of the murder of a child which she had adopted, was executed at Newgate. It will be recollected that Dyer had carried on the business of baby-farming at Reading
.

… I should dread the vagueness that heralds the approach of the fever that leads to my dark deeds. I used to. I used to fight it, drag it out as long as possible before I was overwhelmed. Now, I find I am simply weary and welcome it. I let the other, this terrible demon behind me, take control. I think that perhaps fighting it for so long has weakened me. More than that, I fear that my weakness has allowed some part of its wickedness to seep into my soul, for I have begun to enjoy the darkness, the long nights where secrets can breathe and respectability slumbers
.

Sometimes I watch Juliana as she lies in our bed sleeping. She is sweet and beautiful and I still love her. I’m sure I must do beneath my numbness. Love does not die so easily. The fact that she still loves me despite my illnesses and erratic behaviour are proof of that. She does not know how dangerous I am, how as I watch her breathe, her soft skin rising and falling with the action, I want to tear into her skin with my bare hands and see her flesh from the inside. I want to see her eyes widen in fear. I want to feel the powerful surge of the creature that clings to my back – the one they all
see
in the end. The very thought of it can make my mouth water. These thoughts are terrible in themselves, but she is carrying our child. Her pregnancy is making her ill and I should be more sympathetic but all my warm emotions are deadened. They are things I have a memory of but can no longer touch.
I watch my sleeping pregnant wife and fantasise about slicing her breasts off and feeling those pleasurable shivers as the monster feeds, as I did with Elizabeth when from somewhere deep inside I watched myself pull our unborn bastard from her womb. I am a killer. I can no longer blame it on the visitor I carry. The Upir and I are no longer distinguishable
.

I am remembering more and more as time passes. It is as if the creature and I truly are becoming one – symbiotic. I feel old so much of the time, and cynical, as if somewhere just out of reach I have thousands of years of life and knowledge that I can’t quite grasp but weighs me down all the same. I know I have had blood on my hands. I know I have squeezed the life out of strangers. I know that I am cursed and doomed and yet I can’t open my mouth to speak.

I do believe that this demon is a kind of drug. Perhaps we provide the pleasure for each other. For when I relax – when I enjoy my madness for want of a better word – then I feel free and powerful and unstoppable.

This is my greatest fear: I have become unstoppable. No, perhaps my greatest fear is that I no longer wish to be stopped.

I have lost any belief that you are receiving these letters, and much of the time I no longer care. I no longer truly understand why I write them except maybe to retain one last thread of my unravelling humanity. I believe that this will be my last. There is very little more that I can say. However, if you do find yourself with this sheet of sorry paper in your hands, take only this from it.

Do not come to London, Edward. Do not try and find me. No good could ever come of it. There is only wickedness here.

Your friend,
James Harrington
.

‘I think he may be overworking,’ Henry Moore said. ‘What do you reckon?’ He hadn’t taken his coat off and for that I was glad. I did not want him staying long.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen him very much since I was ill,’ I said. It was the truth. I had been to the wharves to see Juliana on several occasions, eager to re-establish our relationship now that Edward Kane was temporarily absent, but I had not been to the house yet, or seen her father, for all his care of me during my sickness. ‘I have dined with him only once this month – I fear I have had far too much work to catch up on for much socialising.’

Moore nodded and glanced up at the bookshelves of my sitting room, where volumes of mainly unread poetry sat alongside novels and plays. Most of my medical journals were kept in my study. ‘I should read more,’ he said, pulling a slim blue book free and turning it over in his hands. ‘But then I suppose the same is true of most men.’ He reshelved it and turned back to me. ‘You didn’t think he was slightly erratic, then? When you saw him?’

‘Not that I recollect,’ I said, but if I were honest, I would have to admit that I could barely remember our dinner at all. I had still been reeling from my personal discoveries. ‘I am presuming, however,’ I continued, ‘that you have been finding his behaviour odd.’

‘He seems distracted,’ Moore said. ‘I’d like your opinion though.’

‘Of course. I shall arrange to see him in the next week or so, and let you know what I think.’

Edward Kane’s words at our last meeting came back to me. He had been worried about Charles’ drinking and had asked my help, but I had been so absorbed I had barely listened, and I had promptly forgotten my promise. Now it appeared Kane was not alone in his worry.

‘Thank you. And you’re well, Thomas?’

‘Certainly better than I was last month.’ I smiled. ‘But I fear my recovery is slower than it was when I was a young man. In fact, I was about to lie down for an hour or so when you arrived.’

‘Then I shan’t keep you any longer.’ He squeezed my arm in a surprising and unusual gesture of affection. ‘But I’m glad you’re better. You had us all worried for a while there.’

He glanced back briefly at the slim volume that had grabbed his attention and I took the book down and pressed it into his hand. ‘You were right. We should all read more. It can be very good for the soul. And also, I think you will enjoy this one.’

He took the book and left, declaring that he would start reading it that very night, and I smiled as I closed the door. I was glad he had taken it. Mr Stevenson’s
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
was a little too close for my comfort these days, and I was happy the text was no longer in my house.

I left it ten minutes to make sure Moore was not going to return for any reason before I started to make my way to the cellar, whence I had been headed before my friend’s unexpected visit. I took one of the new lamps from the kitchen and went down the stairs to where my work awaited me.

After my initial terror on finding the poor cats had eased, my first thought had been to return to Leavesden, to force the thing back onto Kosminski, but my request for a visit had been politely declined and there was no way I could force myself into that institution without causing the medical staff to think me as insane as their guests.

After several long dark nights of fear and laudanum I decided that I must approach my new situation in a scientific manner. I would not think in terms of demons and creatures – I vowed I would never even
think
the word
Upir
when considering the thing that I could almost see, the weight I could feel on my back – but instead I would treat my condition as one of parasitical infection, which if handled carefully, could at least be managed. I had studied Harrington’s letters thoroughly and it was clear to me that he had lost control by fighting the urge for blood for too long; it had made him too weak to fight the thing’s desire for wickedness. I would not make that mistake. I intended to feed it little and often – not too much, but enough to keep me healthy and free from fever.

The one thing I was certain of was that I would not take human life. I was a doctor. Although I spent much time analysing the dead, my vocation was the preservation of life. I would not become a monster like James Harrington. I would learn from his mistakes; I would live with this condition and I would remain the master of it.

At the bottom of the stairs I lit the two gas lamps I had left there, and yellow light illuminated the small underground room. In the corner a mop and bucket stood ready with carbolic soap and jar of bleach I had mixed. I had spread old newspapers across the floor under the wooden table, that I would burn in the brazier in the garden when I was done.

The dog lay on the table where I had left it in the early hours of this morning. Its bared teeth had frozen into a rictus grin and I shuddered slightly looking at it, just as I had when I had pulled the knife across its throat. But I knew that the parasite that clung to me had enjoyed the fear and pain in the animal’s last moments; that was what it fed on and so it could not be avoided. I took some comfort in the knowledge that the dog would have died anyway.

I picked up my scalpel and started to cut through its stomach. I had work to do. The monster needed feeding and it liked its meat fresh.

The dog had not been difficult to source. My addiction to the smoke of the poppy, both recently and in those dark times past, had led me into many of the poorest parts of London, and it was to these I returned when I worked out what needed be done. In the steamy pubs of the East End it did not take me long to find out where I could go to gamble a few pennies on fighting dogs, and it was there I met the burly, gruff man introduced only as George who would facilitate my needs. He was a swarthy, well-built fellow missing most of his teeth, but his eyes had a granite sharpness I recognised in the intelligent among the criminal classes. He might not be well-educated as my class would recognise it, but the back alleys of the East End were his place of business and he ruled it like a prince.

Once a week, in a grimy cellar that stank of beer and stale sweat, I joined the crowd that would squeeze in to bet on an illegal dog-fight.

‘’e won’t fight again,’ he had said to me when I expressed an interest in buying the badly injured bull terrier. ‘’is leg’s fucked.’

‘I don’t want to use him to fight,’ I had replied. We had left
the den and were out in the cooler air of the night, which felt almost as fresh as the countryside compared with the reeking atmosphere inside. ‘I would like one dog every ten days, and I would rather not have to come here to fetch it. We could arrange a place to meet – somewhere discreet. And I would rather you came yourself than sent a lackey.’

He had sniffed and lit a pipe as he watched me thoughtfully. ‘You a toff or something? Government?’

‘Neither,’ I had replied. ‘I am just a private man.’ I took out several coins from my pocket. ‘And I pay well for my privacy.’

‘And I’m a businessman,’ he said gruffly after a moment. ‘If I weren’t then I’d probably wonder what a gent like you would want with a useless cunt dog every week or so.’ He took another long draw on his pipe and then smiled as he blew out the smoke. ‘But I find wondering can be bad for business.’

‘Then we shall get along well.’

After brokering the deal with the owner, who was more than happy to be paid for a beast he would no doubt be dumping in the river anyway, George muzzled the dog and I found a cabbie who for the right money would take us somewhere near to where I lived. The dog would have to walk the last of the way home, which it did quite obediently, dragging its torn and broken rear left leg along behind it. When I took it down into the cellar and cut its throat, I was sure there was more than a little relief in its eyes.

At any rate, that was what I chose to believe as I sliced through the dead creature and pulled out its slick, cold entrails and held them up for the parasite to admire. It had been a long month of slow acceptances on my fate, but I did not wish to cause any living creature to suffer more than it had to. The fighting dog would have died, whether at my hand
or its owner’s; now I just had to ensure that it had suffered enough to satisfy the parasite on me. It would have to.

Still, I felt happier later that night when I had finally deposited the dismembered carcass into the water and the cellar was scrubbed and once again clean and I felt almost my normal self again.

Even though it was gone midnight by the time I was done and my back and arms ached, I poured myself a brandy and relaxed in my study for a while. My thoughts turned to Henry Moore’s visit and his concerns about Charles Hebbert, and I found myself once again thinking of the lies Charles had told about being at the club and how Jasper Waring had seen him wandering the streets of Whitechapel during the long weeks of Jack’s bloody summer.

‘Jack’ had stopped when Harrington died. The priest had said that the parasite brought a mayhem in its wake that enhanced the wickedness in those around it. Now that I had no choice but to accept that the creature existed – for it was either that or consider myself insane, which could not be true for I had never felt more sane in all my years – then I could see the logic of my suspicions of Hebbert with fresh eyes. When I had first felt those awful bouts of dread and anxiety that had forced me to the opium dens in the beginning, the priest had called it a kind of gift – as if I saw a little of what Kosminski did, but on an emotional level, rather than suffering the visions that so plagued him. What if Hebbert had something similar? What if he was capable of absorbing some of this wickedness that was now attached to me?

It struck me, as I sat there while even the night itself appeared to sleep, that our lives were all webs of lies and deceit. I considered myself a good man and yet I had killed
the husband of the woman I loved. James Harrington had murdered women under our very noses. What secrets did Andrews have? And Moore? It was not such a great leap to consider Hebbert to be Jack the Ripper, that most notorious of all London killers. I thought again of the book I had pressed upon Moore as he left, the tale of a man of two halves, one struggling to control the other. Perhaps it was as true of all of us as it had become for me. I did not know if I found comfort in that or whether it should make me shiver. Perhaps both.