The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (22 page)

I turned back and ran towards the inn, in my haste stumbling over the root of a tree; as I rose from the ground I looked back fearfully over my shoulder. The boat, and its occupant, had gone. They must have been swallowed up in the mist which now crept over the further shore. Still I hastened back to the inn and, although I knew that nothing could hold him at bay, instinctively I locked the door of my chamber. This visitation was evidence of some terrible event. I was sure of it. His bloody hands were the token of some crime perpetrated in
vengeance. I went to my window, overlooking the garden and the lake, but he was no more to be seen. My first impulse was to flee, but then I checked myself. I could not spend the rest of my life in headlong flight from my persecutor; even the fate of Cain was less terrible than that.

I decided to return to London, and there verify any deeds he might have committed. I was in a sense curious about the nature of his exploits, since he may thus have displayed something of his debased temperament. I might discover at first hand the nature of that which I had created. But these were fugitive thoughts, not to be expressed even to myself in a definite form. I was still too much in a whirlwind of fearfulness and foreboding.

I discovered that the next carriage to London left from Kendal on the following morning; so for the rest of that day I stayed in my room, looking steadfastly at the lake for any further sight of him. There was none. I suspected—I knew—that he would follow me back to London, just as he had traced me to this secluded place. How he travelled I had not the faintest idea, but I believed that he was still possessed of some preternatural strength. My apprehension rose as, on the following morning, I boarded the coach and began the journey southwards.

WHEN EVENTUALLY I BEGAN
to smell London, among the fields and market gardens of its periphery, my fear increased to an alarming degree. It was as if I had smelled
him
. We came by way of Highgate, and from the hill I could see the great immensity boiling and smoking ahead of me. If I went down once more into its streets, its entrails, would I ever be free again? The
encroaching sound was like that of a vast herd of beasts; among them, too, I knew that he would soon be dwelling.

From the Angel I took a carriage to Jermyn Street. I approached the house with some trepidation, since in my imagination I had seen him putting it to the torch or inflicting some harm upon it. But it stood as chastely as before, shuttered and locked in the quiet street. I took my keys, and entered. As I climbed the stairs, I heard a faint sound. Then, as I climbed higher, I realised that there was someone talking in a low voice in my rooms above. I could hear a voice, quiet, thoughtful. There was then a sudden movement, alarming me for that instant, and then at the head of the stairs appeared Bysshe and Fred.

“Thank God you are here, Victor!” Bysshe’s troubled voice aroused all my own fears.

“What is it? Whatever is the matter?”

“Harriet has been killed.”

I swayed upon the stairs, and clutched the banister for support. “I don’t …”

“She was found in the Serpentine. Foully strangled.”

“I met him in the street, sir,” Fred was telling me. “He begged a place of privacy.”

I was scarcely listening to him. “When did this thing happen?”

“Four nights ago.” So I had seen the creature, standing by the corner, on the morning after his crime. “And there is worse.”

“What could be worse?”

“Her necklace, the instrument that killed her, was found in Daniel Westbrook’s pocket.”

“Her brother Daniel? No, that is not possible. That is beyond reckoning. He adored her. He protected her.” I climbed the stairs slowly, my hand over my eyes; at that moment, I did not wish to see anything of the world.

“He has been locked away in Clerkenwell,” Fred said.

“It cannot be so.” I had a sudden vision of the creature, waving at me from the lake with bloodstained hands; I ran up the stairs, and rushed over to the basin in my bedroom where I retched violently.

Bysshe followed me in. “Ianthe has gone to Harriet’s sisters. It is her best possible home. After the funeral, I do not know.”

“And you?”

“Fred kindly agreed that I might stay here. Until your return, of course.”

“No. It is not safe for you here, Bysshe.”

“Not safe?”

“I think, Bysshe, that you must leave London. Until your grief is allayed. There are too many memories for you here. What have you done with Harriet’s clothes?”

“Her clothes? They are hanging still in our lodgings.”

“Fred will collect them. He will give them away on the streets. It is the only course, Bysshe.”

I must have been talking wildly, because he laid his hand upon my arm. “That will not lessen my grief, Victor. How could it? She is absent from me every waking moment. I saw her body on the bank by the water.”

“It is a beginning. I will accompany you now to the coaching office. I will purchase a ticket. I have heard you speak of Marlow, by the Thames. Did you not stay there for a boating holiday?”

“Yes. In my school days.”

“There you must go. Do you have money for your journey?”

He shook his head. “I have exhausted my allowance.”

I took out my purse of sovereigns, and gave it to him. “That will suffice.”

Before he had time for reflection or for argument, I accompanied him to the office on Snow Hill and persuaded him to board a post-chaise. I knew that he must leave the city. As my friend and companion, he was not safe from the vengeance that had been wreaked upon Harriet.

I DID NOT WISH TO RETURN
to Jermyn Street. Not yet. Instead I made my way to the Serpentine in Hyde Park; it is a modest stretch of water, longer than it is broad, populated by wildfowl of every description. I walked along its length, hoping to locate that spot where Harriet had been strangled and thrown into the water; I wished to see if I could find any traces of the creature. I had no doubt that he had followed Harriet and had murdered her: I knew it as soberly and as exactly as if I had witnessed the deed. He was the murderer. I could not doubt it. Yet in that sense I was also the murderer. I had fashioned the instrument that had killed Harriet, just as surely as if I had put my own hands around her neck. What was I to do? I could proclaim my guilt, but I would be deemed a madman in thrall to all the ravings of insanity. I would not save Daniel Westbrook.

There was a dark stretch of the bank, beneath a foot-tunnel, to which I made my way. There was a slight movement among the trees and bushes that bordered the water here, and a barely
perceptible sweeping sound suggested that something was walking there with slow and steady step. Something was keeping pace with me. Then I glimpsed him, in hat and cloak, his white furrowed face turned towards me for a moment before he bounded away. No other proof was required. He wished to see my tears, and perhaps to exult over them. Yet he also had some facility to anticipate my thoughts. Why else had he waited for me to come to the scene of his crime?

Once more the utter impossibility of revealing this to any living being left me feeling bewildered and abased. I would be locked away in Bedlam, where in the end I might even seek for madness as a relief from my sufferings. In my wretchedness, however, I began to sense within myself an unexpected purpose and a fresh courage. I would return to the workshop along the river, and wait for his appearance. I would question him. I might even implore him to leave for ever the scene of his desperate crime. I did not for one moment think him capable of argument, but he might be open to command. If I were his creator, he might learn obedience.

YET IT WAS MY DUTY
first to visit Daniel Westbrook in his prison cell, and offer him what comfort I might provide. On the next morning I made my way to the New Prison at Clerkenwell, furnished with payment for his gaolers as well as books and wholesome food for Daniel himself. He had been placed in a cell below ground, and I was led down a gloomy passage way; it was lit by torches, and smelled of urine and fetid air. “More fierce than Newgate,” the gaoler whispered to me.

Daniel was in a small cell at the end of the row; he jumped up from his plank-bed when I entered, and embraced me. “It is so good of you, Victor, so good of you.”

“It is not good. I am not good.” I scarcely knew what I was saying, faced as I was with the unwitting and innocent victim of my own crime.

“You know what I am accused of?”

“Take your time. I fervently believe in your innocence, and will essay every means in my power to free you.”

“They say that I murdered Harriet, Victor!”

“Tell me what occurred.”

“I had gone to the Serpentine to meet her. We often walked there together in the evening. She was not at our usual meeting place. I was fatigued after my day’s work; I slept beneath a tree-lulled to rest by the sound of the water—but then I was roughly shaken awake. It was a party of the watch. To my horror I saw that my hands were smeared with blood. When they searched me at their office, they found a necklace in my pocket. It was her necklace, Victor. How could it have been in my pocket? At first they considered me no more than a thief or footpad. But then her body was found in the water. She had been strangled with the necklace, and had bled copiously from the nose. Who could think it, Victor? Who could accuse me of murdering her?”

“There has been some terrible miscarriage here, Daniel. Some wilful perversion of facts. Do you have a solicitor?”

“I have no funds—”

“Leave that to me. What are your circumstances here?”

“Look around. My only comfort is that the gaol is used for democrats and revolutionaries. But they have no fellow feeling
for me. They look upon me with horror. As the murderer of my sister.”

As I stood in the wretched cell, with its floor of beaten earth, I resolved to use any and every means to save Daniel from the executioner. I believed that I understood the sequence of events. The creature, having committed the crime, had decided in his malevolence to throw the suspicion upon someone else. Or perhaps in some primitive sense he believed that he might avoid the guilt by placing it upon someone other. Who could fathom his reasons? Had he known that Daniel was Harriet’s brother, or had he come by chance upon his sleeping form?

When I took my leave of Daniel I glanced back at his dimly lit cell, where he seemed to be the most isolated and wretched being on the earth. And I had placed him there! It was my crime for which he was to be judged, and my doom to which he had been assigned. If I could have changed places with him, I would have done so without hesitation.