Inspector of the Dead Read online

  Not accustomed to being addressed with a term of respect, the dazed man lowered his hands from his cheeks. He worked to focus his thoughts. “Last night. A little after midnight.”

  “Excuse us for a moment,” Ryan told the owner.

  He motioned for Becker, Colonel Trask, and the constable to step a distance away.

  Keeping his voice low so that the owner couldn’t hear, he asked Becker, “Do you understand?”

  “A little after midnight. That’s the same time Commissioner Mayne and his family were attacked,” Becker answered.

  “The commissioner and his family were attacked?” the colonel asked in alarm.

  “At their house in Chester Square.”

  “But Chester Square is at least three miles from here. After yesterday’s snowfall, it would have taken an hour to travel that distance,” Colonel Trask said.

  “Exactly. The man who attacked the commissioner and his family couldn’t have been in this tavern at the same time. More than one person was involved. The same as with the murders yesterday.”

  Ryan gave Becker a warning look, hoping that he wouldn’t say what both of them were obviously thinking. Young England was very real.

  He turned toward Thaddeus Mitchell, who straightened after having leaned forward in an effort to hear what the group was saying.

  Ryan pointed toward the words written in blood on the counter. “Mr. Mitchell, did you see who did this?”

  “Yes. But what I saw is as crazy as everything else that happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Notice how thin the finger marks are. A beggar boy wrote that name.”

  “A beggar boy?”

  “Before everything happened, the boy came in here, saying he needed to find his father. He looked around, but he didn’t find his father. He told me that his father had said he’d be coming here. His mother was sick, and the boy needed to make his father go home to take care of her. Would I let him stay out of the way in a corner until his father showed up? Well, the pitiful way he asked, I figured it would be all right as long as the father didn’t take too long. So the boy stayed over there.”

  Thaddeus Mitchell pointed toward a corner near the counter.

  “When people started falling down and screaming and attacking each other, the boy suddenly leapt onto the counter, rubbed his hand in blood on it, and wrote that.”

  Becker leaned over the counter, reading the name in the blood. “John William Bean Junior.”

  “Whoever he is,” the owner grumbled. “I know all my customers, but I never heard of him.”

  “I have,” Colonel Trask said. “That’s why I sent my note.”

  Ryan nodded. “Six years ago, John William Bean Junior tried to shoot the queen.”

  NINE

  Bedlam

  “Good day, My Lord,” De Quincey said.

  Lord Palmerston frowned as he descended the staircase toward his front door.

  “Why are you and your daughter waiting? No need to thank me for allowing you to continue staying here. I simply feared that your obvious poverty might have embarrassed the queen into offering a room. Now if you’ll excuse me, my impending duties as prime minister…Wait. Have I possibly misinterpreted? Can it be that you decided to travel back to Edinburgh after all, and that you’re finally saying good-bye?”

  “My Lord, I am here to do you a service.”

  “Then you are finally leaving,” Lord Palmerston said with delight.

  “In a manner of speaking. We wish to take a short journey to the place where you frequently threaten to send me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “But to go there, I need a note of permission from you—and cab fare.”

  “To go where? For heaven’s sake, stop confusing me.”

  “My Lord, I wish to go to the madhouse.”

  Bethlem Royal Hospital dated back to 1247, when it was originally a house for the poor. Its name—an abbreviation of Bethlehem—was often mispronounced as Bedlam, a word that people associated with deranged behavior after the hospital became Britain’s first institution devoted to the insane. In 1815, Bedlam acquired a new facility below the Thames, at St. George’s Fields in Southwark. “Fields” was an accurate description, for to offset the building’s gloom, a park stretched before it. Bleeding and purgatives were standard treatments, voiding the foul humors that were believed to cause insanity. Neighbors often complained about “the cryings, screechings, roarings, brawlings, shaking of chains, and swearings” that came from the building.

  Bedlam’s entrance was south of Westminster Bridge, near the intersection of Lambeth and Vauxhall Roads. Leaning from a cab as it entered the grounds, De Quincey ignored the slush-covered lawn and focused on the large building that he and Emily approached.

  “It resembles Buckingham Palace,” he commented.

  “I’m glad that I’m the only one who heard you say that,” Emily told him.

  “But it does,” De Quincey insisted as the cab drew closer. “It’s nearly as tall and wide as the palace.”

  He raised his laudanum bottle to his lips.

  “Give that to me,” Emily instructed. “If a supervisor sees you drinking from it, he’ll take it from you, fearing that you might offer it to a patient.”

  De Quincey reluctantly handed it to his daughter while he continued to stare out the window toward the imposing structure.

  “Finally Lord Palmerston gets his wish. Perhaps the madhouse is indeed where I belong.”

  The cab reached the end of a treed lane. The leafless branches were as dreary as the soot that darkened the slush.

  Emily descended from the cab and paid the driver with coins that Lord Palmerston had grudgingly given her. Then she and De Quincey studied the steps that led up to the stone building’s ominous entrance.

  “After Edward Oxford shot at the queen in 1840, rumors spread that his incarceration in Bedlam was not a punishment,” De Quincey said. “Some newspapers claimed that he enjoyed excellent food and wine. Some even maintained that tutors instructed him in German and French. John Francis, the next man who shot at Her Majesty, hoped that his arrest would put him here also, relieving him of debt.”

  “Surely anyone who actually saw this gloomy place would understand the truth,” Emily said. “The third man who tried to shoot Her Majesty—did he wish to come here also?”

  “John William Bean Junior? His seventeen years were filled with biblical affliction. He was a hunchbacked dwarf, and all he wanted was to die.”

  “A hunchbacked dwarf?”

  “His arms were spindles. His back was so crooked that he needed to walk with his head down, his face peering at the gutter. He couldn’t earn a living. His brothers mocked him, prompting him to run from home and sleep in fields. One week, he somehow survived on only eight pennies that he gained from begging. In desperation, he managed to obtain an old pistol and gunpowder, but he couldn’t afford bullets, so he crammed clay pieces of a tobacco pipe into the barrel. Only seven weeks after John Francis shot at the queen, he waited for the queen’s carriage to pass him on Constitution Hill. Then he stepped forward and pulled the trigger.”

  “Good heavens,” Emily said. “Was the queen injured?”

  “Thankfully, no. Like so many things that went wrong in Bean’s life, the powder failed to ignite. He fled, but not before witnesses saw what he’d attempted to do. In a grotesque spectacle, the police searched all of London for hunchbacked dwarves, arresting dozens before they finally located him.”

  Emily shook her head as if the idea of the police arresting dozens of hunchbacked dwarves proved that the world was indeed going mad.

  “Lacking the courage to end his suffering by killing himself, he hoped that the government would end his life for him, hanging him or at least putting him in Bedlam, where he wouldn’t need to worry about his next meal,” De Quincey said.

  “Did he get his wish?”

  “No. Bean was sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor in prison.�
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  “Hard labor? A hunchbacked dwarf?”

  “The government wished to make people understand that there were severe consequences for attempting to shoot the queen. After Bean was released, his health declined until he attempted what he hadn’t been brave enough to try earlier—to put an end to his wretched life.”

  “How?”

  De Quincey shrugged. “It’s of no matter.”

  “Father, the evasive look in your eyes makes me insist that you tell me how he tried to kill himself.”

  “With laudanum.” De Quincey stared at the columns of the forbidding entrance. “We’ve postponed this long enough.”

  Bedlam had an administration area at the core of the building. Galleries stretched to the left and the right, extending for a considerable distance. Windows admitted sunlight, revealing numerous people along each gallery who were waiting to see patients.

  Emily approached a man behind a desk. He had spectacles perched on the tip of his nose and peered over them toward the trousers that showed beneath her bloomer skirt.

  “May I help you?” he asked doubtfully.

  “My father and I have a note from Lord Palmerston.”

  The name had its usual effect. Sitting straighter, the clerk hurriedly reached for the note. After reading it, he told them, “You’ll need to see Dr. Arbuthnot about this. Wait here.”

  He quickly crossed the entrance hall, knocked on a door, and entered.

  To the left, in a distant region of the hospital, a woman wailed. Visitors stopped talking and frowned in the direction of the wails, their echo becoming shriller. Even after the anguished outburst stopped, everyone remained motionless.

  The spectacled clerk returned. “Dr. Arbuthnot will see you.”

  He led them into a cramped office, where an elderly man stood to greet them. His scalp was as hairless as the half-dozen skulls on a shelf next to his desk. A large diagram of the human brain hung on a wall, its sections neatly labeled.

  Emily noted that there were books with titles such as On the Functions of the Cerebellum and A System of Phrenology. She introduced herself and her father.

  “De Quincey. The name sounds familiar,” Dr. Arbuthnot said.

  “I can’t imagine why.” Emily gave a warning look to her father, who turned his attention to the skulls on the shelf.

  “The note giving you permission to speak to Edward Oxford is extremely unusual,” Dr. Arbuthnot said. “The government has been very restrictive about who can see him. His mother was allowed to visit him only once a month, and only through a barred opening in a door, with her son sitting several feet away. Often she complained that she couldn’t hear what he said. Apart from her, no one from outside has been authorized to see Edward Oxford since he was admitted in eighteen forty.”

  “No one in fifteen years? Not friends or newspaper reporters?” Emily asked.

  “Especially not newspaper reporters.”

  “And the same conditions apply when we see him? A barred opening in a door? He must sit several feet away from us?”

  “Those are my instructions. Mr. De Quincey, your face glistens with perspiration. Do you feel ill?”

  He did indeed look ill, his features drawn, his face resembling moisture-beaded, aged ivory. As in their coach ride to the queen’s dinner, Emily had the unnerving sense that her father was in a half state between living and dying.

  “I need my medication,” he said.

  “Perhaps our pharmacy can supply it for you.”

  “My father already has ample medication,” Emily informed the doctor.

  De Quincey’s feet moved restlessly as he studied the numerous books on the shelves. “Dr. Arbuthnot, do you consider Edward Oxford to be a lunatic?”

  “He has an indentation on the side of his forehead that indicates diminished capacity.”

  “So you believe in phrenology, as some of the titles on your shelves indicate,” De Quincey said.

  “It’s the only way to make a science of studying the mind. Since we can’t expose a living brain and examine it without injuring and perhaps killing the patient, the alternative is to measure the outside of a skull and then infer which portions of the brain are under- or overdeveloped, the negative and positive pressures causing the skull to assume its shape.”

  Dr. Arbuthnot took a skull from a shelf and pointed toward a protuberance at the back. “This is the result of an overdeveloped cerebellum, the source of uncontrolled emotions. On each of these other skulls, I can show depressions or protrusions that indicate similar abnormalities within a brain.”

  “But surely the mind is more than the shape of a skull,” Emily proposed. “How do you account for ideas?”

  “They’re galvanic processes. One day we’ll be able to measure them.”

  “Are you referring to electricity?”

  “England’s own Michael Faraday pioneered theories about electrolysis,” Dr. Arbuthnot replied. “The brain functions because of it. When parts of the brain are under- or overdeveloped, the flow of electricity becomes uneven, causing unusual and sometimes dangerous behavior.”

  “Fascinating,” Emily said.

  Dr. Arbuthnot looked pleased, distracted by Emily’s blue eyes.

  “How do you use these theories to treat your patients?” she asked.

  “Because it’s impossible to cure a physical defect in the brain, all we can do is try to keep our patients subdued. Sometimes restraints are the only method, but the current thinking is that hydrotherapy is effective.”

  “Soothing baths,” Emily said.

  “Essentially. A hot bath can be a useful relaxant. Sometimes the shock of a cold bath is required in order for a subsequent hot bath to do its work.”

  “And will this treatment produce a cure?” Emily asked.

  Dr. Arbuthnot looked startled. “There is no such thing as a cure for mental illness. Perhaps one day we’ll be able to perform surgery to correct a physical defect in the brain. Until that time, mental affliction is a lifelong curse.”

  “But don’t you think that talking to patients might help them?”

  “Talking to them? What possible use could that be?”

  “My father has a theory about dreams.”

  Dr. Arbuthnot shook his head in confusion. “Dreams? I miss your point.”

  De Quincey used a handkerchief to wipe sweat from his brow.

  “Are you certain that you’re not ill?” the doctor asked.

  De Quincey chewed a pill that he removed from a snuffbox. “There’s a mountain in northern Germany called the Brocken.”

  The doctor looked more baffled. “I have not been to Germany.”

  “The peak has interesting rock formations, huge blocks of granite with names such as the Sorcerer’s Chair. A spring is called the Magic Fountain.”

  “This sounds like a children’s story.”

  “I assure you it’s an actual place,” De Quincey said. “On a June morning, if you hiked to the top and gazed across the valley toward a neighboring peak, you would see the monstrous Specter of the Brocken.”

  “Yes, a children’s story. I’ll take you to Edward Oxford.”

  “The specter’s threatening gyrations in the mountain mist have caused many a heart to beat faster.” De Quincey chewed another pill. “An astute witness sometimes realizes what is happening. Occasionally a guide will relieve the anxiety of those who hired him by explaining what they see.”

  “And what is the explanation?”

  “On June mornings, the sun rises behind the observers. Their shadows are cast upon the swirling mist. Magnified, the shadows reflect every motion of the observers, but in a grotesque, unnatural way that at first doesn’t seem connected to the people whose shadows have been cast.”

  “So there you have it. A scientific explanation,” Dr. Arbuthnot concluded.

  “My father believes that dreams are like those shadows,” Emily said.

  “Dreams? Shadows?”

  “Troubled people might fail to see how a nightmare is
a reflection of their personalities,” De Quincey explained. “But if the reflection is explained to them—or better yet, if they are encouraged to understand how their nightmares are distortions of the elements in their personalities that trouble them—then they might experience the first steps to being cured.”

  “Mr. De Quincey, I take it that you are not a physician. While your theories are amusing, they have no basis in science. Dreams and nightmares are merely phantoms created by electricity.”

  “How foolish of me to think otherwise. Then let us forget about interpreting dreams. Consider that Edward Oxford was frequently beaten by his father and often saw his mother beaten. The shock of this persistent violence could explain why he was too unstable to hold jobs, why he frequently burst out into hysterical laughter, and why he enjoyed tormenting others.”

  “Surely you’re not suggesting that because Oxford’s father beat him and his mother, he felt compelled to inflict violence on others until at last he focused his anger by shooting at the queen.”

  “Doctor, you express the idea far better than I ever could,” De Quincey said.

  “The idea is nonsense. Are you seriously proposing that by being encouraged to discuss the violence inflicted upon him in his youth, Oxford would understand his motives for shooting at the queen and no longer wish to do it?”

  “The theory is worth considering.”

  “Well, to repeat, you are not a doctor. If you wish to see Oxford, you’d better do so now. I have an appointment in a half hour.”

  When they emerged from the office, a woman again shrieked from the hospital’s left wing. Once more, visitors stared toward the unseen source of the commotion. Dogs sleeping under benches raised their heads in distress.

  “Our female patients are over there. Our male patients are in the opposite wing,” Dr. Arbuthnot said, leading the way past visitors.

  Sunlight streamed through windows, illuminating paintings that showed soothing streams and meadows. Birds chirped in cages.

  “Emily, the birds…” De Quincey said.

  “…are not in your imagination,” she told him.