The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

16

WHEN MARY AND I CAME BACK into Marlow, we saw the commotion by the side of the bridge. A small crowd had gathered on the path sloping down to the river. I could see Bysshe in animated conversation with an elderly gentleman in rusty black who, as I discovered later, was the watchman of the high street. As we came up to them I realised that the crowd had formed a circle around the body of Martha. Mr. Godwin and one of the parish constables, in tall hat and blue surtout, were standing beside the corpse and looking down upon it with scarcely concealed relish.

“Look into her eyes, Mr. Wilby,” one of the women in the crowd called out to the constable. “You will see the face of the murderer there.”

“You do it, Sarah,” he replied. “You are the wise woman. Not me.”

“These superstitions,” Mary whispered to me, “are very strong.”

Sarah had obliged the constable by coming forward and kneeling down beside the body. She peered into Martha’s open eyes, and then suddenly jerked her head back. “I see a fiend,” she said.

Mr. Godwin laughed. “If it is a fiend, Mr. Wilby, you will not be able to catch him.”

“We will have difficulty, sir. That is sure enough. Be good, Sarah. Stand up now.” The crowd were murmuring, unsure whether to accept or to ridicule the woman’s verdict. I decided now to act. I walked up to Mr. Godwin and the constable. “Miss Godwin,” I said, “has something very important to tell you. She saw the murderer last night. Outside her bedroom window.”

“What?” Mr. Godwin seemed offended. “Why did Mary not tell me of this?”

“Before we found Martha’s body, sir, there was no possible reason to alarm you. She thought it might have been a dream.”

“Where is this lady?” Mr. Wilby was very solemn.

“She is conversing with Mr. Shelley. There.” The constable walked over to her, and they stood together in earnest conversation. Bysshe seemed strangely excited; his eyes were bright and, as he approached me, I saw that his face had the faintest flush. “I should have searched the garden,” he said. “I should have caught this madman before he came upon Martha.”

“We had not the slightest notion that he was real, Bysshe.”

“I should have trusted Mary.”

“She did not even trust herself. She considered it to be a vision. A dream.”

“But she sees into the heart of things. She knew that some dreadful event was about to take place.”

“It is too late for this, Bysshe. All our efforts must now be bent on finding the killer.”

“He will have fled. I am sure of it.”

“But we may find traces of his presence. He may be hunted down.”

“Hunted down. That is a good phrase.” He glanced at Mary, still standing with the constable. “I will keep her safe. I will protect her.”

Mr. Wilby began to organise a party of men for the search of the immediate neighbourhood; it was composed of shopkeepers, boatmen, and other workmen of the town. In addition three men were sent out to inform the inhabitants of the outlying villages. The constable hoped that there might have been sightings of the killer in the locality, even if the villain himself was not found. Inwardly I exulted. The creature was no longer the embodiment of my private despair; he had to some extent become a public agent, an object of concerted horror and suspicion. I joined the band of Marlow townsmen, and explained to them that they should begin their search along the stretch of the Thames where we had found the body of Martha. For a moment they were suspicious of my Swiss accent, but Bysshe reassured them that I was a good friend of him and of England. So they willingly followed me along the towing path until we reached that spot where Martha had risen among the weeds. There was no sign of disturbance in the vicinity. The recent fall of rain had left a film or haze of moisture over the trees and bushes around us, and all was still. We advanced further along the path and, following a slight bend in the river, came upon a water meadow where the grass had grown tall. “Something has been here,” I said. “Do you see the dark line in the grass? Something has left a track.”

“A cow,” one of the men suggested.

“I see no cattle. And there are no horses in the fields.” When we approached the track I noticed that it was discontinuous.

“Do you see,” I said to them, “how the grass has been trampled down in sequence, with gaps between each mark? It is as if someone has proceeded in leaps and bounds.”

“Hopping. Like a hare.” It was the same man who had spoken before; he wore the garb of a market trader, with a red scarf tied loosely around his neck. “Who could leap such a distance?”

“It would take great strength and energy, I grant you.”

“No man on earth could do it, sir.”

“I am not so sure,” I replied. “It has been said that murderers, after committing the deed, are possessed of enormous energy.”

“So we follow the trail, do we?”

“Most certainly. Make sure that your guns are primed. He may be ferocious.” I had the faintest hope that, if the creature could be injured or in some way rendered insensible, I might be able to act upon him. Could I remove his cerebral hemispheres, taking away all his powers of speech and motion? We walked in his track to the edge of the meadow, where our advance was checked by a broad channel of water running between the fields. “The bank has been disturbed here,” I said. “Do you see the loose stones and earth? There is a depression, where he has sat down.”

“Finding his breath, I imagine,” one of the men replied.

“Or reflecting upon his next move. Where did he go?” I could see nothing in the field ahead, but then I noticed that the waters of the channel were muddied. “He has gone in,” I said. “He has followed the channel. It was deep enough for him to remain hidden.”

“Why would a man wish to take to water rather than land?” the man with the red scarf asked me.

“He may be no ordinary man.”

“A water demon then?” He was smiling at me.

“I cannot tell.”

Then we heard laughter-it was the most serene and melodious laugh that I had ever heard. And then came his voice. “I have been waiting for you, gentlemen. Do you wish to see me now?”

“Prepare your guns,” I said.

One of the men then shot wildly into the field. On the sound of the report I saw a movement in a copse some distance away-he had projected his voice by some physical means unknown to me-and then a dark shape bounded off. “He is gone,” I said. “You must alert the villagers in the neighbourhood. We do not have the means to overtake him.”

The men were disturbed by the manner of the creature’s flight-so sudden and so swift-and were subdued as they returned to Marlow. Some of them wondered out loud how any man could run at such a speed. “He must be possessed,” I said. “I have heard of such cases.”

I walked back slowly to Albion House, where Bysshe and the Godwins were sitting in the drawing room. “Mary wishes to return to London,” Bysshe said as soon as I came into the room. “She has become nervous of this place.”

“I do not believe the creature-the man-will come back,” I replied. “We saw him fleeing across the fields.”

“You saw him?” Mary was looking at me with the intentness I had noticed before. “What was he? What did he wear?”

“We saw only his running form. I believe that he was wrapped in a dark cloak. But I cannot be sure.”

“Did he speak?”

“Yes. He said something like, ‘I have been waiting for you, gentlemen.’ Then one of my party fired. He ran. That is all I can tell you.”

“Does that satisfy you, Mary?” her father asked.

“I will feel safe only in London, Pa. Here we are too-too vulnerable.”

“You and Fred can stay on,” Bysshe said to me. “You have only just arrived. And I doubt that the villain will come for you.”

“His actions are not predictable.”

“You think not?”

“That is my assumption. I am afraid, Bysshe, that I share Mary’s anxiety. Where is Fred?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Excuse me for a moment.” I went down into the kitchen where Fred was sitting at the table, stirring a bowl of milk pudding. “Are you composed, Fred?”

“She was a good girl. I liked Martha, Mr. Frankenstein. She was a cheerful one.”

“Did you hear anything in the night?”

“Not so much as a bed bug. The ham makes me sleep. The first thing I know of it is when the constable comes to the house. He was all in a sweat. When he told me, I could have fainted away. But I steadied myself. Was she bloated, sir? I’ve seen a few from the Thames.”

“She was bruised.”

“Where, sir?”

“Around the neck.”

He continued stirring the milk pudding. “That was not nice.”

“Not nice at all. The others are going back to London, Fred. Mr. Shelley has suggested that we can remain at Albion House.”

“Nothing here, sir. Just fields.”

“So you would like to return with them?” He looked at me. “Very well. We will go back.”

In truth I had no desire to be left in Marlow. I knew well enough that there was no safety from the creature, in any place on earth. But in London, at least, there was comfort in the massed ranks of people. Here, in the open, I felt afraid.

We could not, as it transpired, return at once. The parish constable came to inform us that, two days hence, we would be obliged to attend the coroner’s inquest; it would take place in an upper room of a public house along the high street.

“This is very unfortunate, Mr. Wilby.” Mr. Godwin had decided to remonstrate with him. “My daughter is in very low spirits as a consequence of this affair. She wishes to return to London.”

“It cannot be helped, sir. All Marlow is in a fever over this case. Justice must be seen to be done, sir.”

“Where is poor Martha?” Mary asked him.

“The deceased is lying in an ice-house. Behind the butcher’s shop in Lady Place. She will be a little damaged, but she will last.”

We spent the next two days in a state of some gloom; the rain continued, more intensely than before, and on one afternoon Bysshe read to us some stanzas from the poem he was then composing. Certain lines struck me very forcibly:

“I curse thee! Let a sufferer’s curse

Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse,

Till thine Infinity shall be

A robe of envenomed agony;

And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,

To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.”

“Very good,” Mr. Godwin remarked. “Very strong.”

“It is a powerful curse,” Mary said. “It issues from a broken heart.”

“I see the curse,” I said, “like a smoking plain, filled with fires and fissures from which billows of livid smoke erupt.”

They looked at me in surprise, and then Bysshe continued reading.

ON THE MORNING OF THE CORONER’S INQUEST, there was great excitement in the town. A crowd had gathered outside the public house, the Cat and Currant, where the proceedings were to be held; but, as soon as the beadle saw us, we were led with great ceremony through the townspeople and in single file mounted the staircase to the first-floor room. It smelled strongly of sawdust and spirits, with the aroma of beer and tobacco somewhere in the mixture; some tables had been pushed together in the middle of the room which, the beadle informed us, were reserved for the gentlemen of the jury. The coroner then walked in. He was dressed in clerical garb, and Bysshe whispered to me that he was indeed the rector of the parish church; he had seen him in the garden of his vicarage, pruning his vines. That gentleman was followed by the jurors; they entered the room with an air of solemn distinction, although I had seen one or two of them drinking ale in the parlour when we had first arrived. Then the people of Marlow crowded in, taking up every particle of space until the air became almost insupportable. Bysshe pointed out to me two or three gentlemen sitting at a table evidently reserved for them. “Penny-a-liners,” he said. “You can tell them from their cuffs. They will be reporting this for the public prints. The news has reached London.”

“Gentlemen-” The coroner began to speak.

“Silence!” called the beadle.

“Gentlemen. You have viewed the unfortunate young woman known as Martha Delaney.”

“I never knew her last name,” Mary whispered to me.

“You are impanelled here to ascertain the causes of her lamentable death. Evidence will be given before you, as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will give your verdict according to that evidence and not anything else. Anything else must be disregarded and blotted from the copybook.” Bysshe gave me an odd look of merriment. “A young lady is present here.” Bysshe assumed an expression of intense seriousness. “A young lady who may have seen the perpetrator of this foul crime. May I ask you to rise, Miss Godwin, and take the oath?” There was a general murmur of approval, from the people of Marlow, as Mary stood beside the jurors and recited the oath. But there was absolute silence when she recounted the events of that night. She had glimpsed a face at the window-“a leering countenance,” as she put it. When her scream woke the others in the house (she refrained from saying who they were) the intruder was gone. Mary had great skill in narrative, and added little touches of description to the simple story. Then she nodded to the coroner and resumed her seat, while the penny-a-liners were still busy with their pens. “Thank you, Miss Godwin, for that affecting testimony. Now I will call an eminent gentleman who, I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery of the death was made. I will call Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley.” There was a murmur of interest among those assembled, and evidence of the keenest attention among the penny-a-liners; they were no doubt aware, or had been informed, of the fate of Harriet. Bysshe stood beside the table of jurors but, when asked to take the oath, replied in a calm clear voice. “I will say to you, sir, that I swear to tell the truth before the eyes of my fellow men.”

“This is very irregular, Mr. Shelley.”

“I hope and trust that I will follow the principles of the utmost honesty in anything I may say.”

“Mr. Shelley is the son of a baronet, gentlemen,” the coroner informed the men of the jury. “Are you content to accept his unsupported word?” They were content. So Bysshe narrated the story of our recent journey down the Thames, and the discovery of Martha’s body among the weeds; he particularly noted the marks of bruising about her neck and upper torso. Then one of the party tracking the path of the creature was called-it was he who had fired the shot into the field-and he described the pursuit and flight of the supposed killer. He described him as “monstrous big” with a “wonderful celerity.” In his opinion we were dealing with an escaped convict, or a lunatic, hiding in the woods beside the river. The session was quickly concluded, with a verdict from the jury that the young lady, Martha Delaney, had been killed unlawfully by person unknown. She could now be buried in the churchyard.

Bysshe hired a carriage for our return to London. He intended to lodge with the Godwins, at their house in Somers Town, until he could find accommodation of his own. I suspected, however, that he would wish to remain in the closest possible proximity to Mary Godwin. Fred and I disembarked at Jermyn Street, to the great delight of the crossing sweeper’s dog that had formed an attachment to Fred over the last few months. The dog jumped against him, and left traces of mud and mire on his serge breeches. “That reminds me, sir,” he said as we climbed the stairs. “I have left your laundry with Ma.”

“Then you must fetch it, Fred. I need clean linen after Marlow.”

“The country is a dirty place, sir. It abounds in soil.”

“We are fortunate, then, to live in a clean city?”

“Oh, yes. The mud in London don’t stick. Look. I can brush it off.” After he had unpacked, and taken up the linen in a great bundle, he made his way to Mrs. Shoeberry.

There had been a marked change in my constitution, I discovered, after the journey to Marlow. I was no longer so listless, so devoid of energy. The murder of Martha served to inflame my desire for vengeance and, in the carriage, I had consulted with myself over all possible means of fulfilling it. It was then I decided upon a course of action. I would return to Limehouse, where I would reconstruct my shattered equipment in the hope of reversing my experiment and reducing the creature once more to lifeless matter. The more I contemplated the venture, the more fervently I embraced it. Would it be possible to build an engine that by means of magnetic force might extract the electricity from the body of the creature? Or was there some way of discharging a negative energy that might balance the power of the electrical fluid already within him? I determined to begin my studies anew, with the single purpose of destroying that which I had created. I also conceived a scheme with which I might trick and deceive the creature. If he visited me in Limehouse, I would welcome him. I would tell him that his frightful acts had forced me to revise my judgement, and that I was willing to create for him a bride as long as he swore a solemn oath to depart these shores for ever. I might even be able to persuade him to endure certain experiments; I would assure him that these would have to be undertaken before I could start work on his female double. He would then be within my power. Such were my enthusiasm and optimism that I considered travelling down to the estuary, and there confronting him in his hidden retreat with the news of my intentions. I had no compunction about deceiving him. Had he not already betrayed me in as deadly a fashion as I could envisage?

I heard the voice of Mrs. Shoeberry. She was trailing her son up the staircase, all the while complaining of her “poor knees” that could hardly stand the strain of climbing. “Well, here you are, sir,” she said when she came onto the landing. She seemed surprised to see me in my own lodging. “I have laboured long and hard over your linen, sir. Fred, give Mr. Frankenstein the parcel. All crisp and white like a snow field.”

“I am glad to hear it, Mrs. Shoeberry.”

“The sheets are perfection. You will sleep as cleanly as a nun.”

“I hope so.” I took her into the drawing room and paid her a florin, which she accepted with alacrity.

“I hear, sir, that you have been in strange parts.”

“Ma!”

“It is my way to converse with my gentlemen, Fred. I am not a post.”

“We have been to Marlow, if that is what you mean.”

“I don’t exactly know where that is, sir.”

“Along the Thames.”

“Oh, the Thames, is it? Quite a long river, sir.” It was clear to me that Fred had not informed his mother of Martha’s death; it was no doubt too explosive a topic. “There is an awful lot of water in the Thames, sir. Mark my words.”

“Undoubtedly, Mrs. Shoeberry.”

“And to be plain, sir, we don’t quite know where it all comes from. There is a deal of dirt in it. It is ever such a hindrance to us laundry women. I never go down to the stairs no more. I would come back more dead than alive. Filthy smell, sir. Pah!” She mimed all the symptoms of disgust, much to Fred’s annoyance.

“You must get back, Ma,” he urged her. “Little Tom will be missing his tea.”

“Stop your pushing and your pulling, boy. Mr. Frankenstein and I are enjoying a quiet chat.” Her eyes roamed about the room. “I shall look after them shirts as if they were my own, sir. Do you happen to have an ounce of spirits about you? This rain has upset my constitution. Women are frail, sir, in wet weather.” I went over to my cabinet and poured her a glass of gin, which she swallowed in a moment-taking care afterwards to lick her lips, in case any of the precious fluid had escaped her. “The water gets into our bones.”

“Ma, I have to prepare Mr. Frankenstein’s supper.”

“Oh? What are you having, sir?”

“What am I having, Fred?”

“Pork chops in onion gravy. With a good head of crackling.”

“That’s sumptuous, that is. Make sure the crackling is moist, Fred. It draws up the richness.”

“We must not detain you any longer, Mrs. Shoeberry. I know you are a very busy woman.”

“Busy? I am like a cartwheel, sir. Always turning.” Fred left the room and began to descend the stairs, with the clear understanding that his mother should follow. “Yes, boy,” she said. “Don’t fluster me. You will make me all of a quiver.” She went out of the door, and then stopped. “I will starch your cuffs, sir. They will be so stiff that you will not know them.”

“I am obliged, Mrs. Shoeberry.”

ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING I took once more the familiar way to Limehouse, but fired now by a new eagerness to embark upon the means of destroying the creature. The workshop was still in disarray, of course, but there was no evidence of further incursions by him. All lay in disorder. The pieces of the electrical columns, constructed for me by Francis Hayman, lay upon the floor. They had some marks of the elements, where the rain had blown upon them, but I observed that each part was still intact: the discs, the cakes of wax and resin, the vitreous glass and metal lay in separate pieces. There was rust upon the metal, but it would be easily removed. If I could enlist the aid of Hayman once again, I could re-create the conditions of my original experiment. But first I needed to restore the workshop itself. Over the next few days, with the help of the workmen who had rebuilt the interior so many months before, I repaired the walls and replaced the shelves and cabinets. I told them that a gang of scuffle-hunters, the local name for the river thieves, had broken in and searched for money. They warned me of the dangers of working by the Thames, and placed a great padlock upon the newly fitted door.

I called upon Hayman at the offices of the Convex Light Company in Abchurch Lane. Here I explained to him the injury to the equipment he had constructed for me-blaming once more the activities of the scuffle-hunters-and asked his help in restoring it. Then I asked him the question that most concerned me. “Have you debated, sir, on the possibilities of a negative fluid?”

“You will have to be more precise, Mr. Frankenstein.”

“What I mean is this. We believe the electrical fluid to be transmitted in wave form, do we not?”

“That is the theory. Although some deem it to be comprised of particles.”

“Let us assume it to be waves. Would I be right in conceiving of these waves, in effect, as a series of curves?”

“You are close. I am convinced that there are innumerable magnetic curves, packed so closely together that they seem to form an indivisible line.”

“But each curve could in theory be traced and measured?”

“In theory.”

“It would have a high point and a low point?”

“There will be parabolic and hyperbolic arcs.”

“Precisely my meaning. And what, Mr. Hayman, if they were reversed?”

“You astonish me, Mr. Frankenstein. It would entirely change the nature of the electrical fluid. But it could not be done. The laws of physical science stand in the way.”

“I am used to defying such laws.”

“Truly?”

“I mean only that like you I wish to make advances in our knowledge of the world. All physical laws are provisional, are they not?”

“How far have you proceeded, sir, with your original research?”

I had told him, in the course of our earlier conversations, that by means of the electrical fluid I wished to restore life and energy to animal tissue. “I have made some small steps,” I replied. “I have found it possible to restore animation to certain fish. But for a short time only.”

“Carry on with the work, Mr. Frankenstein. It is of the utmost interest and importance to the rest of us. Be assured of that.”

He agreed to visit the Limehouse workshop on the following Sunday, and to assist me in the restoration of the broken equipment. On his arrival, as I had hoped, he concluded that the damage could be repaired without undue effort; in fact, he began the task at once. “Sunday,” he said, “is my day for private working. I gain strength from it. Work is my church.”

“I am glad to hear it, Mr. Hayman. There is much to be done.” He worked tirelessly throughout the day, carefully testing and retesting every constituent of the electrical columns.

“It is fortunate,” he said, “the original elements are so sturdy. Their assembly is helped immensely by their durability.”

“That is your genius, sir. You were the artificer.”

“Genius has nothing to do with it. Just common sense, sir. And practice. It resolves all knots.” I knew that to be the English way. Yet I believed also that passion, and imagination, had their place in the investigation of science. What is a natural philosopher without vision? “I have been considering, Mr. Frankenstein, your questions on the electrical fluid. You recall that you asked me the effects of the waves being reversed, as it were?”

“I do indeed.”

“I have done the mathematics. And in theory there should be no discernible difference in the nature of the fluid. But its direction would be utterly changed. It would flow inward rather than outward.”

“How is that possible?”

“This is the puzzle. What, in this case, is inward? Does it mean that it would return into itself? But, since we do not understand its nature, the concept is meaningless to us. Does it mean that it would harbour its powers in some infinitely small space? Then it might pose an extreme hazard. Or would it change its nature and become some wholly new and unknown force? Here I will leave common sense behind, Mr. Frankenstein. I thank God it will never be accomplished. It might wreak unexampled havoc on the world.”

“And you believe that it cannot be done?”

“Undoubtedly. Faraday himself could not accomplish it.”

He had not completed the work, by the end of that day, and he pledged to return on the following Sunday. I spent the intervening days in intense study of the electrical phenomena; I visited the library of the Royal Society, where I was shown the latest treatises of Hans Oersted and Joseph Henry; I studied the details of the Wimshurst Machine and the Electric Rocking Machine. In the last few months Oersted had in fact published his experiments on what he called the “magneto-electrical field,” having created trials in which a magnetic needle had moved at right angles to a current of the electrical fluid. Could the power and direction of the current thus be measured and, if measured, changed? The mighty Newton had observed that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction-could not the power of magnetism therefore change the direction of the fluid?

On the following Sunday Hayman completed the work. He had added further refinements, too, in the capacity of the voltaic batteries and in the substitution of bitumen for some of the wax and resin. “I hope you can continue your work in peace,” he said. “There are many who fear the electrical fluid. They deem it to be monstrous. An attempt to distort God’s laws.”

“I have no intention of creating a monster, Mr. Hayman. Quite the opposite.”

After he had gone I sat down upon the long wooden table restored by the workmen. Here the creature had risen from death. It was here that he would be once more returned to silence and darkness. I heard the sound of the Thames as the tide came up, lapping against the wooden piles of the landing stage, and for the first time it afforded me the sensation of expectancy and hope.