The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (41 page)

“The doctor will be welcome, will he not?” I asked him.

“Oh yes, sir. Ever so welcome. I hope he eats cutlets.”

WHEN POLIDORI WAS SETTLED
, I told him that I was obliged to return to my work. He nodded. He seemed to require no further explanation. So at twilight I travelled east to Limehouse. I had locked and bolted the workshop, to prevent the intrusion of neighbours, and I had barred the windows to forestall inquisitive eyes. So everything had remained untouched. I began at once to charge the electrical columns, and I was pleased to see them glow with new life. Within a few hours I was able to begin my experiments in altering the direction of the electrical fluid; I observed, for example, that by changing the position of the metallic plates and circuits that surrounded the columns, there was some momentary deflection in the fluid. I continued this work late into the night, but I could achieve nothing further. I needed greater force than any I could yet summon. I surmised, too, that I needed to discover another source of electrical attraction that would bend the fluid to its will. All this lay ahead of me.

I decided to walk back to Jermyn Street, hoping to clear my head in the quiet hour before dawn. Yet a strong wind had risen. As I walked through the streets, every falling leaf seemed to cast its shadow as it was dashed to the ground by the wind. I could see my own shadow, too, against the brickwork. It was bent
forward, hastening onwards as if it had an existence of its own. And then once more he was walking beside me. He said nothing to me, but matched me pace for pace. “I have kept my promise,” he said at last in that clear sweet voice I had come to know so well. “You see. I will always be closer to you than you can imagine.” He stood still, and waited until I had taken a few steps further down the street. When I turned around, he had gone.

WHEN I ARRIVED
in Jermyn Street, I was surprised to find Polidori in my study.

“My apologies, Victor. I wandered to your room quite by chance. I am in a wandering vein.” He seemed uneasy.

“You may wander where you will. I have no secrets.”

“Truly?” He looked at me warily, and not without a trace of malice.

“Why should I lie to you?”

“You are deep, Victor. Very deep. I do not think I will ever reach your depths.”

“There will be no reason ever to try.”

“I do know that you suffer from nervous fear.”

“Oh, I suffer from many things.” I cleared my throat. “I admit that there are times when I experience fear.”

“Are you afraid now?”

“Of what?”

“Of me.”

“Whatever is your reason for saying that?”

“You suspect me of something.”

“Suspect?”

“You tell me that you have no secrets. But you are afraid that I will find them out.” He laughed, but he was looking at me intently. “Have you ever done a wicked thing, Victor? Just to prove that you
could
do it?”

“Byron has asked me the very same question.”

“He is obsessed with the idea. He told me the story of one Monro, a clerk in holy orders. Did he tell you?”

“No.”

“It was some years ago now. Before you and I arrived here. This clerk had quite lost his faith. In his heart he said, there is no God. Yet still he took part in the services, gave out the wine and bread to his parishioners, preached from the pulpit on the Last Judgement and salvation.”

“A most arrant hypocrite.”

“He knew this. He reproached himself with bitter laments. He wept. He cut himself with knives. All this he confessed later. He had a great desire to free himself from his torments. But how was he to break free? By degrees he conceived a scheme—no, it must have happened all at once. He hit upon an act of the utmost unreason.”

“Go on.”

“If he were to commit a crime of malignant evil, without motive, he would be able to redeem himself. Say that he were to kill a child, for example. He would take no pleasure in it—he would choose a child at random, and then stifle it. Then he would be free of God. And what if he did take pleasure in the act? He would, as he put it to himself, become a god. There was no force in the universe higher than himself. There were no consequences to his action—no punishment, no shame, no guilt, no hell. He would have gone beyond the gates of good
and evil. He would prove that all is allowable. That is what he said to himself.”

“And did he commit the crime he longed for?”

“He murdered an old woman. According to his testimony he picked her out of the crowd, one evening at twilight, and followed her home. He had taken off his clerical garb, and wore a simple coat and breeches. She lived alone in a cottage just beyond Hammersmith. It was there that he killed her. He stabbed her repeatedly with a knife taken from her own kitchen, and then made his escape under cover of darkness. The crime was widely reported but the murderer could not be discovered. The clerk, meanwhile, continued his ordinary life at the church. But he exulted. He led the divine service with greater fervour, and preached more eloquently than ever. He had found his salvation in one unreasonable act.”

“But then how was he apprehended?”

“This is the curious thing. He felt no remorse. He felt no guilt. Not even shame. On the contrary, he felt proud. So then, as the weeks passed, he experienced an overwhelming desire to tell his crime. He wished to announce his part. He wished to put it into words. He tried to restrain himself. But the desire to speak—to utter the final chapter, as it were—proved overwhelming. One Sunday morning, in his church, he mounted the pulpit and divulged his deed to his parishioners. He produced the knife from the folds of his cassock.”

“And then?”

“He was arrested and questioned. He was taken before the Lunacy Commission. He is now in St. Luke’s Hospital for the Insane.”

The story made a strange impression upon me. I excused
myself and retired to my bed, but I could not sleep. I had been seized by a sudden fear that banished all thought of repose—what if I felt an overwhelming need to speak and to confess? In that very thought I planted the seed. Yes. Of course I wished to divulge all the horrors for which I was responsible. To unburden myself of the fact that I had brought life to this creature. But did I sense within myself triumph rather than guilt? Of this I was not sure. I believe that I burned with a sudden fever and, when eventually I slept, my dreams were frightful.

I AWOKE LATE
on the following morning. I could hear Polidori talking to Fred in the kitchen, and I listened more eagerly. Polidori was questioning him about the customary routine of my day—my meals, my hours, and so forth—and I sensed that Fred was reluctant to answer him.

I rang my bell and waited.

“Yes, sir?” Fred put his head around the door.

“The usual,” I said.

He brought in the tea, and began preparing the soap and razor. “You are entertaining our guest, Fred. What were you discussing?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Nothing can come of nothing.”

“Sir?”

“Speak your mind.”

“He says he is concerned for you. Doctors, he says, are always concerned for others. Then he says something about equations. I don’t know what equals what, sir, and I told him so.”

“And what else did you tell him?”

“I told him nothing that was a lie, sir. But nothing that was a truth neither.”

“You have done well, Fred. Now watch Dr. Polidori when I have left the house.”

I DRESSED MYSELF
and walked towards Covent Garden. It was the day that Londoners call Sweep Fair and, much to my disquiet, I saw a gaggle of climbing boys at the other end of the Piazza. They were a queer sight. Their clothes were in rags, so sooty and black that they betrayed their profession at once: they might just have been dragged out of a chimney, except that they were trailing white ribbons, tied to their arms and legs. There was silver foil on their hair, and their cheeks were painted. As I walked closer to them, I could see patches of gold and silver foil plastered to their dirty clothes and faces; it was altogether a most forlorn spectacle. Then, to the sound of drums, the boys began their march. They waved their climbing tools, their rods and brushes, in the air above their heads; they sang some frightful song, full of oaths and execrations, at which the spectators laughed. Then I saw Polidori, just by the portico of the church there. He was looking around with great eagerness, and I knew at once that he was searching for me. He had been following me. I turned the nearest corner, and hailed a cab for Limehouse.

IT WAS LONG PAST MIDNIGHT
when I returned to Jermyn Street. I called for Fred, but there was no reply. I went over to the
window and looked down at the dark street; for a moment I thought there was a movement among the shadows, but then the moment passed. So I retired to bed.

On waking the next morning, I noticed that my clothes had not been laid out. I arose quickly, and left my room: the kitchen door was open, but there was no sign of Fred. He had never absented himself before, and I could think of nothing that would have detained him for the whole night. I dressed myself and went out into the street, with no definite course of action, and wandered into Piccadilly. There was a coffee-stall there, by the corner of Swallow Street, that I knew to be patronised by Fred. “Have you seen my manservant? Fred Shoeberry?” I asked the young girl pouring the coffee into tin mugs.