The Frankenstein Murders (28 page)

In his hand he held an ancient pistol that looked as if it would sooner fall apart than fire. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Mutt's entire frame tensing in readiness to pounce upon the prone man. Almost imperceptibly, I shook my head as signal that Mutt should remain where he was.

“Calm yourself, Mr. Hek,” I soothed. “I am Edward Freame, and this is my associate William Moutton. I have come to ask you a few questions and mean you no harm. If you are unwell, then perhaps you can tell me the whereabouts of your shipmates so I might speak with them.”

“Dead, all dead. Bjorn Gustarn, dead. Ivor Thoorenson, dead. Dead, dead, dead,” the cook said in a sort of mournful song, half closing his eyes. It appeared that any hope of lucidity in Hek the cook had ended, if indeed it had ever begun. The man was very evidently well on the way to having drunk himself into madness. The drink Mutt had provided had animated the flesh, but the mind was not lucid.

Mutt chose that moment to grab the pistol, which in truth had all but fallen from the older man's weak grasp. Before I could continue my interview with Hek, we were interrupted by the sound of footsteps entering the building through the front door, which we had left open. Expectantly, both Mutt and I turned to face the chamber door, Mutt almost instinctively raising the useless firearm. The door opened to reveal a man of middle age who strode confidently into the room, acknowledging Mutt and I with a nod. He went directly to the bed and leaned over to inspect the cook carefully.

“They told me at the tavern that you would be here,” the man said, handing Hek a bottle not unlike the one Mutt had fetched just minutes before. “It leads him to an early grave, but I find I cannot keep him from it no matter what I have tried. I suppose it is the one thing that brings him release from his terrors.”

The advent of a fresh bottle once again brought some animation to the cook, who managed to raise himself enough to suck at the neck of the bottle without spilling its precious contents. The other man watched for a moment with a look upon his face that seemed at once pitying and contemptuous. He then turned to face Mutt and I fully.

“I am Johanssen,” he told us by way of introduction. “I was surgeon aboard Captain Walton's ship. The best you will get from Hek are muddled notions, which have only grown worse along with his dependence upon the drink. Perhaps I can answer your questions?”

The surgeon had led us to another room, in what had once been the kitchen but now was in a state of cluttered disuse, where we might sit and talk. What little furniture remained was covered in dust and rodent droppings. The surgeon looked slowly around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

“Many times I have entreated Hek to leave this place. I have rooms in another part of the city, and there is place enough for him, but he refuses. He will die here,” the surgeon's words were said in a calm, clear voice, and so it was hard to know what his true feelings were.

“You both sailed with Captain Walton,” I prompted Surgeon Johanssen.

“Yes, it was to be the first and last time for both of us,” he told me flatly.

“Did you ever have an opportunity to speak at length with your Captain?”

“Before the arrival of Victor Frankenstein, Captain Walton would speak a little with me in the time that I could spare. Sailing is a dangerous undertaking, Mr. Freame, where even the most ordinary of activities can turn harmful, and even deadly. There is much aboard a ship to keep a surgeon fully occupied.”

“Of what did you speak?”

“I said very little, but on occasion, the Captain would tell me something of his dreams and goals. It was from him that I first learned of the legend of Ultima Thule, the end of the earth and a polar twilight land. Walton told me of men who had searched vainly for it in Scotland, Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, and Russia. What they sought was not only the end of the earth, but a sort of paradise inhabited by a pure and superior race of man.

“There was more he wished to tell me, but as I said, I had other, more pressing, duties, and then we found the man on the ice.”

“Victor Frankenstein,” I said more as a statement than as a question.

“Yes, Victor Frankenstein appeared suddenly next to the ship, nearly frozen to death. He was exhausted and on the edge of death. We put him by the cook stove chimney to thaw, and then he was taken below deck where he remained for the rest of the voyage. At first, I looked after him myself, but then only Captain Walton could look after the man we had rescued.”

“Did you get the opportunity to speak with Victor Frankenstein?”

“When I cared for him, Victor Frankenstein was in no condition to speak. Once he had recovered, he rarely spoke to anyone except the Captain. The Captain went so far as to order us to keep away from the man we had rescued, and told us we were not to question him. Eventually, only Captain Walton was allowed to enter the cabin where Victor Frankenstein stayed. The Captain even took Victor Frankenstein all his meals and waited upon him as if a servant.

“Eventually, the Captain was almost always below decks with the other fellow. It fell to the mate to look after everything else. There we were, surrounded by mountains of ice, I had never seen anything like it. Then a half-dozen of us sailors, Hek the cook included, confronted Captain Walton and told him we wanted no piece of the voyage. We insisted that it was too dangerous to try to go further. Victor Frankenstein had lain passively with his eyes
closed until that moment, then he lit into use like a demon from hell. His eyes were wild with fury, and his hands curled into claws until I was certain that had their not been six of us together, he would have gone after us. Captain Walton ordered us to leave the cabin and that he would speak with us later. Their loud voices were heard long after we had left the two men alone. Captain Walton did as we asked though, for he knew if he did not he would certainly have a mutiny on his hands. Then Victor Frankenstein died.”

“Did you examine the corpse of Victor Frankenstein?”

“Captain Walton allowed no one near the body until after it was nailed in the coffin he made with his own hands. And then only Melinkov and Thoorenson were allowed to assist him carry it above deck. The Captain weighted it well, for it sank almost instantly upon hitting the water,” the surgeon told me.

“Captain Walton claims to have seen a sledge on the ice before Victor Frankenstein was rescued. Did you also see this sledge and the person upon it?” I asked.

“Certainly I did not see anything like you describe. Perhaps some of the others on board saw something, but if they did, they said nothing of it to anyone. Otherwise, I would most definitely have heard of it myself,” the surgeon told us.

“And where are the other men? I would speak with them.”

“Hek is almost entirely drunk at all times now, but some of what he says holds truth. Every one of the other men who was with us when we confronted Captain Walton is now dead,” Johanssen told me. His hands gripped the edge of the table so strongly that his knuckles turned white with the effort. Otherwise, the man appeared as calm and controlled as he had from the moment he first arrived, “Gustarn drowned while fishing near his home, Thorvarssen apparently threw himself from his garret window, Slenkov hung himself, and Melinkov died after a fight in the tavern. Only Hek and I are left, and Hek can only just barely be
considered living.” A sort of morbid smile played across the surgeon's lips as he spoke.

“I expect soon to meet with your former master, Captain Robert Walton,” I told him. “But perhaps after I have spoken with him I might like to speak with you again.”

The surgeon nodded his assent to this suggestion. He remained seated, looking at the stairs as Mutt and I left the house.

“Go with care, Mr. Freame,” the surgeon said solemnly. “And you would do well to keep your large friend with you, as well.”

As I entered the room, Captain Robert Walton started forward towards me, smiling in a warm and open manner. I raised my hat, surprised at the warmth of his greeting, although not insensible to the reason behind it. This was a man with whom, and for some time, I had eagerly awaited meeting and speaking — a man who might answer many of my burning questions. As soon as I had lifted my hat, Captain Walton paused momentarily, as if not sure what next to do. A puzzled frown played across his features, but he recovered quickly and briefly shook my hand. Upon the one large table in the room, many maps and charts had been spread out. My desire to inspect these charts was unnaturally strong, but I could not think of an immediate way to view them without expressly demanding that Captain Walton show them to me. I therefore resolved to wait for an opportunity in our conversation where a request to be shown the charts might be appropriate.

I could not help but compare the living person to the portrait that hung in his sister's parlour. The young man in the painting shared little in common with the hardened sailor who sat before me. Gone were the soft looks of an easy and comfortable life, and in their place Captain Walton had gained the appearance of a man who has endured and suffered. His eyes in particular had changed from the open countenance he had held as a young man, and
had transformed into a certain look of wariness, perhaps even craftiness, acquired through age and experience. Captain Walton no longer had the appearance of a romantic and confirmed poet, but more that of a man who hungered after an elusive goal.

“Like me, Mr. Freame, you have travelled far from home. I see in you yet another adventurous spirit such as mine. Victor Frankenstein too was an adventurer, but alas the untimely extinction of his glorious spirit was unavoidable. In Victor I found a soulmate, someone who could understand my dreams as no one else could.

“You cannot imagine how immeasurably the words that Victor spoke to me altered my life and affected me; they still affect me to this day. When I met Victor Frankenstein, he was a wreck of a man, only a shadow of the greatness he had been, but that greatness emanated from him still and riveted me to my seat as he spoke. The passions he felt, the pain he suffered, I suffered too, and I wished that I could unburden him of some of his cares and worries. I had completely determined to nurse him back to health, and did my best to help him rally again, but as the end of his story came, so did the end of his life.”

I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it from Captain Walton, if Victor Frankenstein was buried at sea.

“Yes, Victor Frankenstein was buried at sea. With my own hand I bound his wasted body in sailcloth, and built the coffin that was weighted and consigned overboard in the frozen seas of the north.” Captain Walton's voice had grown strangely flat and toneless, and he averted his face from mine.

“Before Victor Frankenstein died, did he tell you all?” I asked. This question had the effect of prompting the Captain to face me once again.

“If by this you mean did he tell me his secret for bringing life to the dead, no he did not. He refused from the beginning to share this knowledge and never once did he change his mind.”

“Please Captain, would you tell me the strange story of finding Victor Frankenstein, and of the time you spent together?” I asked.

“But you have read the journal, have you not?” the Captain said in what was meant to be a light, cajoling tone, but the quavering of his voice revealed a stronger emotion behind his words. He had also picked up a letter opener from the desk and toyed with it absent-mindedly as he spoke.

“Yes, many times in fact. My hope is that in the time that has passed since you wrote those words, other memories, not contained in your journal, will have emerged. I seek details not recorded in the hopes that they might help me better understand.”

“Truly, Mr. Freame, I am a very busy man. It does no good to dwell in the past or look for things that cannot be found. We must move on! Can you not content yourself with my journal? The complete story is all there.”

“And yet so much has been left out,” I countered. “For is it not true that Victor Frankenstein realized that he also had much to hide, details so repulsive that even you, Captain Walton, his most compassionate — perhaps only — friend in the world, would turn from him. And so in fact, Victor Frankenstein's tale to you was incomplete.

“It is directly because of this incompleteness that I was charged with investigating one of the three murders mentioned in Frankenstein's story. Where you, Captain Walton, put down your pen, I took up mine to document that which had been left unanswered and unsaid: the murder of Henry Clerval, and by association, the murders of William Frankenstein and Elizabeth Frankenstein, and also the death of the servant girl, Justine Moritz.”

The Captain chose to remain silent, intently scrutinizing the letter opener as if he had only just then truly seen it.

I let the Captain know that I would not be moved until he had told me what I wanted to hear.

“Fine then, I will retell the story, but you will not learn any more than I have already set down in my journal,” the Captain said with some exasperation. “I arrived in St. Petersburg at the beginning of December, and reached Archangel through terrible snows that winter. By July, I was well on my way on my voyage. All in all, it took me over seven months to get underway, but this time it shall take me less as I now know better how to arrange such matters.

“After my ship left from Archangel, we were not out a fortnight when we were surrounded by fog and entrapped in ice; huge slabs that closed slowly but inexorably around the ship. A storm whipped up, while sirens of wind and snow and seawater lashed at the ship. This was the first time in my life when I was faced with the truth of human impotence in the face of nature's brute force. It was at that time that I and my crew first saw the sledge of what we would later know to be that of the monster. Soon after that, we spied another sledge like the one we had seen before. This one came close by the ship and we were able to rescue its driver, who I would later come to know well as Victor Frankenstein. We continued to watch for the other sledge, but it was never spotted. The ice had broken up severely, piling up on itself like great mountains of splintered glass. I was certain that the other sledge and its driver perished in the icy seas. We were so fortunate to be able to rescue him.”