Beloved Poison (44 page)

She had put her bag beside the chair. Now, she took it up and rested it on her knee. ‘I have something here that will explain everything,’ she said. ‘It’s easier if you read it, than for me to try to put it into words.’

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘A journal, of sorts. I kept it during those . . . those difficult years. It explains what took place and why, far better than my own colourless narrative might, especially after so much time has passed.’ She pulled a heavy, hard-backed book from her bag and handed it over. ‘You’ll understand, after you’ve read it, that I can’t let you keep it.’

‘You expect me to read it now?’

She smiled. ‘You have something more pressing to attend to?’

I held the book tightly in my hands, my eyes fixed upon the white gloved fingers that had passed it to me. It was some ten inches high, and bound with brown morocco. The cover was worn, stained with mould spores and splashes of ink. I opened it, but there was no inscription on the fly leaf, no acknowledgement of ownership. The pages were thick and yellowed, corrugated here and there, as though it had once lain somewhere damp. A floury, dust-like residue was faintly perceptible on my fingertips.

‘Will you not read it?’ said Mrs Magorian, when I showed no sign of turning the pages. ‘Do you not wish to know what you stumbled upon? Why so many have died?’

‘If I might ask you—’

‘No, you may not,’ she said. ‘Everything is in this book. Read it, and you will find the answers.’

But still I waited. ‘Dr Bain saw the coffins and he knew it was your handiwork, didn’t he?’ I said.

Mrs Magorian pressed her lips together. Her eyes flickered to the book in my lap. ‘Yes,’ she said. She spat the word out, as if it had lodged in her throat for years. Again I waited. The desire to explain, to confess, was a powerful one. If I could curb my urge to step into the silence with questions then she would tell me everything. I held my breath.

‘Dr Bain lived with Dr Magorian and I in Edinburgh,’ said Mrs Magorian. ‘Dr Bain was a gifted student, and an excellent anatomist. But he had no money. Everything he had he spent on fees for the medical school. When we first met him he lived in rooms in some draughty garret in the Old Town. And so my husband took him in as his assistant.’ She stopped. She seemed to be recoiling from me, withdrawing into herself. ‘It is in the journal,’ she said. Her voice was soft, hopeful. ‘Will you not read it?’

But that would never do. Perhaps if I provided her with some mistaken information: could she resist the desire to correct me, to point out where I was wrong and tell me what had really happened? ‘Dr Bain excelled, did he not? He soon put your husband to shame—’

‘He did nothing of the sort,’ she cried. ‘He helped my husband at the anatomy school. He prepared specimens and gathered subjects in exchange for board and lodging, and his medical education. He had much to thank my husband for.’

‘He was a resurrectionist?’

‘An excellent one, my husband said. Fast. Strong. Willing. He had a way with the resurrection men too. They were a rough lot, but Dr Bain got along with them well enough.’

‘Dr Graves too?’

‘Dr Graves.’ She shivered. ‘He was a different matter. He relished his work amongst the dead. Dr Bain merely did what was required.’

‘And your husband?’

‘What of him?’

‘He was interested in the physiology of the
gravid uterus
?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was as sharp as a mouse trap. She heard it, and fell silent. But I had her now. She could not back out, though she might wheedle and coax all she liked. I smiled to myself. She had started her confession. She would not stop till she had finished.

‘Why the
gravid uterus
?’ I said. ‘Men midwives are not something the profession exalts. I am surprised your husband was prepared to settle for a branch of medicine so despised by his colleagues.’

She was unable to let the insult pass. ‘
Why?
’ she cried. ‘It was for me, of course, that’s
why
. He chose that specialism for me. I could not have children. And yet if he could understand the way the womb functioned, if the process of conception and gestation could be fathomed, perhaps there would be some hope.’ She smiled, but there was a glint in her eye that I did not like. ‘The way Dr Hawkins will dissect your father, in the hope that what he finds will somehow explain the poor man’s suffering, and will provide
you
with answers, with hope.’ She sighed. ‘For the future is bleak for you, is it not, Jem? We’re not so different, you and I. Always hoping, always searching for a cure for our affliction. But Dr Hawkins will find nothing, as you well know. How will you bear it?’

But I did not want to talk about my father. I did not want to think about his illness – my illness. To think of such things would rob me of my rationality, and that I could not allow. I closed my eyes. ‘What happened in Edinburgh?’

She licked her lips. ‘My husband wanted a pregnant female subject. One was procured.’

‘Murdered?’

‘Saved from the evils of the world is a better description.’

‘Who was she?’

‘A prostitute.’

‘Dr Bain brought her?’

She laughed. ‘How I wish I could say “yes”. “Yes, your precious Dr Bain killed a whore and she ended up on my husband’s dissecting table.”’ She shook her head. ‘Dr Bain did not kill anyone. But my husband could see my need, my longing. He found the girl. He did what was necessary and he did it without hesitation. Naturally, without its mother to sustain it, the babe in her womb died too.’ She looked down at her hands, her expression troubled. ‘I was sorry. Not for the girl, you understand, she was as full of vice and sin as any of them and had no useful purpose other than to show us the mechanisms within a woman that support life. But her child was quite innocent. And for that I
was
regretful. And so I made a small coffin and a doll – the same as those you found – as a token. An acknowledgement.’ She was wringing her hands again now, twisting the rings beneath her fine leather gloves. ‘Somehow, Dr Bain must have seen it. Perhaps I left the box out in the library; perhaps he saw me hide it in Greyfriars kirkyard that Sunday, I don’t know. But Dr Bain suspected the means by which the girl had come to the dissecting table; he was aware of the talk of the resurrectionists; he had heard the rumours about the town and he knew my husband’s professional interests intimately. He said nothing about it at the time.

‘But Edinburgh is a small place and it is impossible to do anything without an acquaintance finding out about it. Even the most secret of acts cannot remain a secret for long. It appeared that the girl’s mother had seen her with a man shortly before she disappeared. No one knew who the man was, but inquiries were made. In the course of these it transpired that Dr Graves was one of her regular . . .
visitors
.’ Her disdain, for Dr Graves, and for the girl, was clear and she said the word with a sneer, as though even the euphemism was worthy of contempt. ‘And so the gossip started. Dr Graves had nothing to do with the girl’s disappearance, but the scandal followed him nonetheless, and from there it reached Dr Bain, my husband, the anatomy school. Nothing was proved, of course. The girl was gone, and no one knew where she had ended up. But people make up what they cannot prove. We could stay in that city no longer.’

She lowered her gaze to her hands, her fingers restless in her lap, and there, before me once again, was the passive, cringing Mrs Magorian I had always known. ‘Poor babe,’ she said. ‘I had to mark its passing, to acknowledge its life.’

‘Rue for regret, wormwood for sorrow, the petals of the black rose—’

‘Yes. So you knew their meanings? Well, well.’ Her voice was sharp again, her mouth pursed in irritation. ‘My little
memento mori
was neither here nor there. Dr Graves, Dr Bain, my husband, all of them had too much to lose from the affair. We knew what had happened to Dr Knox. Burke and Hare had ruined a great man’s reputation; I was not about to see the same thing happen to my husband. So we left Edinburgh and came here. The medical world is small, but not so small that we could not escape the rumours.’

The book lay in my lap. Mrs Magorian’s gaze rested upon it, but she seemed no longer to see it. She did not urge me to open it, but waited, silently, for me to speak. Did she expect absolution from me? Did she hope I would understand that what had taken place had been done in the name of scientific inquiry? Did she believe such worthy objectives put murder beyond the commonplace morality of men?

‘So you came to St Saviour’s,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘They were delighted by my husband’s reputation as an anatomist. And his speed and skill as a surgeon were widely acknowledged. They recognised his value immediately. Dr Sneddon was instrumental in getting him the post. Dr Graves also found a position easily enough, thanks to my husband, and Dr Bain was able to resume his medical education.’

‘But Dr Bain did not work for your husband again?’

‘He did not.’

‘And Dr Graves?’

‘Continued as before. Bodies were needed. He was well acquainted with the manner of the resurrection men and soon found out their haunts. He ensured a steady supply. The graveyards of London are more numerous than those he was used to.’

‘And your husband’s research continued? He took Dr Sneddon’s position after that doctor died. He carried on Dr Sneddon’s work too?’

‘Yes. We’ve known about you all along.’

I did not respond. ‘And you?’ I said. ‘What was your role?’

‘I was his wife. I supported him in his work. He is a brilliant man.’ Her face was illuminated with pride. ‘And he wanted me to be happy. A baby would make me happy, but we needed to understand more. I conceived, yes, but it came away. So much blood.’ Her face turned pale. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her lips with it. ‘He said he could help me. I knew he could find a way if the process itself, the creation of life, could be understood.’

The creation of life, I thought. What could he possibly know about such a thing? It was not for Dr Magorian to decide who should die for the sake of medical understanding. ‘Dr Magorian found his own subjects, didn’t he?’

Mrs Magorian sat back in her chair. Her face was stony. ‘This city is unlike any other,’ she said. ‘Edinburgh was small. Everyone knew everyone else. But here—’ She held her arms wide. ‘Here is all the world! A great teeming dung heap. So many people, so much noise and chatter and vice. Such want and poverty. The poor are everywhere. They thrive and breed like vermin in those great filthy rookeries. Why are they allowed to get children when I have none? Why would God favour a drunken slattern over me?’ Her hands were clenched in her lap. ‘The girls were easy to find. They would ply their trade no matter what their condition, no matter what the weather. He brought them home. He preserved what he needed from their bodies, wrote up his notes and findings, and then together we put them into the churchyard.’

‘You were dressed as a boy.’

‘So much easier.
You
know that much.’

‘Six times,’ I said. ‘And, for each one, a coffin, a doll. Each doll wrapped in a bloody fragment of their mother’s chemise.’

‘They were pregnant, each of them. They were no use to us otherwise. But I could not let them go into the ground without some kind of memorial. My husband thought me foolish, but I would not be persuaded. I was sure they would never be found. And if they were, who could possibly guess their meaning?’ She twisted her handkerchief into a rope. ‘I didn’t guess that Dr Bain would do so.’

‘And Eliza?’ I could hardly bear to hear what might follow. ‘What of her?’

‘I love her as if she were my very own,’ said Mrs Magorian. Her voice was tense, her eyes ice-blue gimlets.

‘She’s – she’s not yours?’

‘She’s not my flesh and blood, though she
is
mine. In the end, though he could not provide me with our own baby, my husband gave me what I craved, what I longed for above anything else. Can you understand that longing, Jem?’

She spoke my name tenderly, as if we were somehow in accord, as though I too could comprehend what it meant to bear the pain of childlessness. But I would not be drawn into an endorsement of murder. And who was Mrs Magorian to assume that a woman’s fulfilment might come only through motherhood? Who was she to assume she might prove a better mother than the girls her husband had murdered? My questions caught in my throat.

But Mrs Magorian anticipated me. ‘Eliza
is
mine,’ she cried. ‘I was at her birth. I saw her mother’s pain. I felt it as if it were my own.’

All at once, I became conscious of a movement at the door; a change in the shadows. I did not look, did not shift my gaze from Mrs Magorian, but I knew, at that moment, that we were no longer alone. Mrs Magorian was oblivious, sitting forward, her white-gloved hands spread like pale starfish, clutching the arms of the chair. Her voice was high pitched, her words tumbling out, sharp and urgent. How long had she kept that knowledge to herself? How long had she been unable to speak about it to anyone? I knew what it was to keep a secret: the desire to talk, to let it go and feel the relief of being free of it, even for a moment, was so profound, so all consuming . . . and now, here was a chance to confess, to explain, to unburden. I knew she would seize that chance as a drowning man might seize at a rope end.

‘There was a girl. My husband tried to take her, but somehow she escaped him and she ran – faster than I thought possible for someone so far along in her pregnancy. She ran through the fog and out into the street, almost under the wheels of a cab. But it was dark and the fog was thick, the cab man must have felt the jolt, but he didn’t stop. When my husband reached her, the girl was unconscious but breathing. He took her in his arms and brought her round to where I waited, at the end of Wicke Street, in the carriage. He drove us home. In the carriage, I cradled the girl’s head; I stroked her belly and soothed her as she lay there. But then she regained consciousness. She was frightened, and she was strong. She had no idea where she was and she would not be calmed. Her front teeth were missing and I knew she had lived a violent life, that she was used to fighting; I would be no match for her, even in her condition. Suddenly she leaped at me, scratching my eyes and screaming, clawing at me as if she would tear a way through me and out of the carriage. I cried out for my husband to help, but he couldn’t hear and he didn’t stop.