Sherlock Holmes: The Army of Doctor Moreau

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Mann and I made our way to Liverpool Street Station and boarded the one o’clock train to Billericay.

En route, Mann entertained me with stories of his country career. It was clear that he hankered for the crimes of the city despite the fact that he couldn’t bear the thought of living there. “One must choose to cater for the soul or the brain,” he said. “The former is never happier than when surrounded by green, but the latter begins to fossilise.”

He kindly insisted on sharing his sandwiches—there was no dining car on such a local service of course—and it was an enjoyable journey, watching the buildings give way to fields as we munched on tongue and chutney.

On arrival at Billericay, Mann led me to the police station, a small building just off the main high street.

It was a charming little place and I could see why Mann was comfortable there. Still, having becoming utterly converted to city life I think I would have become bored of “Mrs Wilkinson’s Tea Shoppe” and the company of the tweedy old squires seen through the window of the Dog and Sheep.

The station contained a small, open-front office manned by a large officer whose lustrous sideboards made him appear positively ovine.

“Afternoon, Sir,” he said. “Fine time in the city was it?”

Mann smiled at me. “To Constable Scott, London is a mythical place, a foreign land.”

“They certainly do things differently there,” Scott agreed. “I can’t say as I’ve ever fathomed what people see in it.”

You would have thought Billericay was a remote Scottish island, not a market town a stone’s throw from the capital.

Mann led me through to his office, which was filled floor to ceiling with well-stocked bookcases. I glanced along the shelves and saw everything from military history to gothic romances.

“I like to read,” he admitted, “and the missus says I can’t clutter the place up at home.”

“Married life, eh?” I said with a smile, falling into the usual male banter.

“Ah,” he said. “So there is a Mrs Watson then, eh?”

“There was,” I replied, feeling suddenly awkward, as all widowers do. People don’t like to hear about loss, they rarely know how to respond to it.

Mann handled it better than some. “Sorry to hear that,” he said with a smile. “You always think you know the people you read about, of course you only know the half of people’s lives.”

“The half they choose to tell you.”

“Indeed.”

Sensing that the best way forward was to move on, he reached for a folder of notes that sat in the tray on his desk. “On the matter of Edward Prendick, perhaps it’s better if I walk you through the affair. I have my notes here, for whatever help they may offer, and I still have a key to his house courtesy of the dead man’s solicitor.” He took the latter from a drawer in his desk and dropped it into his overcoat pocket. The folder of notes under his arm, he gestured to the door. “No sooner are we arrived than we head off again,” he smiled. “It’s a short walk to the house but I can give you the background on the way.”

It was important, I felt, that we had one thing clear above all others:

“Is there any chance that the body found was not that of Edward Prendick?” I asked. “Had the acid disfigured enough to disguise his identity?”

“It did considerable damage of course,” Mann agreed, “but the face was clear enough. The man we carried out of here was certainly Edward Prendick.”

Which meant that the list of those theoretically able to replicate Moreau’s work was most definitely reduced to two, the man himself and his assistant Montgomery, both of whom were supposed to have died on the island but we would never know for sure, not now that the one and only eyewitness was confirmed dead.

I had been sure that an investigation into Prendick’s death would reveal flaws, a big enough crack that the man himself could have slipped through it. I trusted Mann’s work, though, he was astute enough; if he said Prendick was dead then I had little doubt that was so. But was it suicide or murder?

We headed back out onto the high street, the sweetness of the shop windows, the fragile, lacy appearance of a town built on grace and gentility, not matched by Inspector Mann’s conversation.

“Edward Prendick,” he said, skirting past the doorway of a fishmonger and avoiding an ejected bucketful of crushed ice, “was known to the few locals that had cause to know him at all as George Herbert. He wished to keep his identity a secret and, having been frequently quoted in the press around the time of his rescue, he felt it best to maintain a pseudonym. It wasn’t difficult given that he barely interacted with anyone from the town. If a man says his name’s Herbert who has cause to disagree?”

We turned off the main street and began to walk towards the church.

“Every town has its reclusive citizens,” Mann continued. “The rural life appeals to many different personalities but there will always be those who choose to live somewhere simply because it’s a place where others aren’t.”

Looking at the hustle and bustle of the streets, I couldn’t help but feel Mann was exaggerating. As someone who had spent time on Dartmoor I knew real wilderness when I had cause to be stuck in it.

“Of course,” he said, as if predicting such an argument, “Billericay itself is a positive circus of activity, but some of the small villages that fall within my purview are empty places indeed—collections of houses with silent, unfriendly people in them. All staring out of the windows at one another and refusing to make conversation.” He grinned. “Luckily they’re mostly so shy they don’t bump each other off either!”

Past the church was a narrow track that led out into the surrounding fields.

“Prendick had the best of both worlds as you’ll see. He bought Moon Cottage some years ago, an old farmhouse with absolutely nobody on his doorstep. He had nothing around him but fields.”

And very pleasant fields they were too, I thought, as we marched across them.

“Only two people dealt with him on a regular basis,” said Mann. “Mrs Alice Bradley who worked as a home help, cleaning up a bit twice a week and Harold Court, the local postmaster.”

“He received a lot of post?”

“Indeed, chemicals, equipment, specialist items. A lot of it needed to be signed for. Which is why Court was in a position to identify the body—he knew him well enough.”

“Had he received any post on the day he died?”

“Hard to say for sure. Bear in mind the body wasn’t discovered for some time and it was difficult to be precise as to the time of death. Normally, Mrs Bradley visits on a Tuesday and a Thursday. That week she was visiting her sister in Northampton and so Prendick would have had no visitors for ten days. We know he collected a parcel from Mr Court on the Wednesday. Mrs Bradley visited the following Thursday and found him dead. The local coroner—who’s a good man, though I know we country folk are assumed lacking by the powers that be in the metropolis …”

“Not by me,” I insisted.

He smiled. “Well, he claims Prendick could have died on the Wednesday but he wouldn’t want to guarantee it either side of twenty-four hours or so.”

We were clearing the crest of a hill and I could see a small cottage in the distance, still a good few minutes’ walk away.

“Moon Cottage?” I asked.

“The very same,” Mann agreed, leading us down the following slope.

“You’re wondering,” he continued, “whether Prendick received anything by the post that could have driven him to suicide.”

“A man must have some encouragement to consider selfdestruction.”

“Indeed he must. But remember that Prendick may already have had it. He chose this life of solitude because he feared the world and everything he found in it. That was clear enough from the report he wrote of his rescue. He was a man who had faced the most unforgiving ridicule, in fact there had been talk of his being committed.”

“He was already deeply damaged.”

“Indeed. Which is why, as grotesque as it might seem, I am inclined to agree with the court’s ruling that it was suicide.”

We had almost reached the house by now and Mann drew to a halt to elaborate his point. “I agree that acid is an agonising choice of weapon, but Prendick showed considerable signs of mania as you’ll soon see. Such people often choose to inflict great pain on themselves, a spiritual purging of some deluded sort.” He counted the points off on the fingers of his gloved hand. “Add to that the fact that the place was locked up securely from the inside; we had to put a window through to get in.”

“That could have been done simply to mislead?”

“Locked-room mysteries are all very well in fiction, Doctor, but they’re not usual in the real world. Besides, it would have been a pointless effort in this case as we would have been inclined towards suicide anyway. The state of the walls—well, you’ll see that in a minute. Finally, drinking acid may be vicious but it’s hard to force someone else to do it. You haven’t the benefit of seeing the body but it was ingested cleanly. If someone forced it down him one would expect signs of splashing, burn marks to the face and lips. As it is the damage was consistent with his drinking it calmly and slowly, incredible in itself given that it must have hurt from the moment it hit his palate.”

“Another sign of mania perhaps,” I said. “It’s amazing what the human body can achieve when the mind is damaged. I’ve seen poor, deranged people commit the most terrible acts of self-mutilation and be almost completely unaware.”

“My thoughts exactly.” We walked the last few steps to the house and Mann removed the key from the pocket of his coat. “And you’ll see just how deranged Prendick was once we get inside.”

He was quite right—the sight of the place beyond that heavy door was as chilling as any murder scene. The entrance hall was simple enough—a slate floor, a large table in its centre with a lacklustre vase of dried flowers on it. But there the normality ceased. In a band around the walls someone had written the same phrase over and over again: Fear the Law. The letters ranged from the minute, precise hand of an obsessive, to the wild daubs of a man gripped by a terrifying rage.

“I’m pretty sure he wrote them himself,” said Mann, “not only because it was a phrase that cropped up frequently in his original statement to the sailors who rescued him, but also because the words are written at the right height, and he had a habit of using a typographical ‘a’ with the curl at the top rather than the more conventional handwritten style.” He opened the folder of notes he had been carrying. “I have a number of address labels from the post office that show him using the same form. Not conclusive perhaps but as close as I need to be satisfied.”

“Surely the cleaner …”

“Had never seen the like! I assume the writing was the first symptom of the mania that brought him to kill himself.”

“But what brought it on?” I thought back to our previous conversation. “You say he received some post on the Wednesday —what was it?”

He checked his notes again while I walked around the entrance hall, reading the daubs on the wall. “A parcel of aluminium phosphide …”

“Rodenticide,” I said. “Any sign of traps around the place?”

“Everywhere. According to Mrs Bradley, he was obsessive about them.”

“Terrified of animals,” I said. “Given his history, that would make sense.”

“Indeed it would.” Mann closed his notes and wandered to the window. It was clear this wasn’t a thought that had occurred to him. “Maybe he saw something—a rat or mouse perhaps—through the window. An animal could have been his trigger, you think?”

“If it was then it’s surprising he survived so long.”

Mann turned and raised an eyebrow. Then nodded. “Living out here he must have come across all manner of creatures,” he agreed. “If he were that fragile a flock of Old Brandon’s sheep would have been enough to have him reaching for the acid cabinet.”

“Any other post?”

“A religious pamphlet, a chemistry journal and a copy of The Times.”

“He was a subscriber?”

“I presume so. To be honest I didn’t check. You’re wondering whether someone sent it to him specifically?”

I shrugged. “If someone were trying to get a message to him, or intimidate him somehow then that could be a method. Of course, it all rather depends what was in the paper.” The obvious thought occurred to me. “Anything about the mutilated bodies found in Rotherhithe?”

“I would have thought so,” he said. “What paper isn’t filling its column inches with that story? You telling me there might be a link?”

“There might at that,” I agreed. “Though I’m probably not allowed to say more.” The look on his face was not favourable. “I know,” I said, holding my hands up in a placatory fashion, “I have no wish to be secretive, but Holmes and I have been employed in a governmental capacity and I genuinely don’t know how much I should say.” The minute the words were out of my mouth I found I was regretting them. Mann was clearly a decent fellow and I had no doubt he would be trustworthy. But then that was hardly my decision to make.

“Policemen do not take kindly to being kept in the dark, Dr Watson,” he said. “It’s inimical to their profession.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. “And if it were up to me …”

“Aye, well, it seems to me that, as you’re a private individual, I shouldn’t even be letting you in here.” He looked at me pointedly. “But I made an exception.”

I sighed. It was extremely tempting simply to unburden myself on the man. But, aside from my gut instinct, what did I really have to go on? I had met him on only two occasions, and on both of those occasions he had seemed a capable officer and a reliable fellow. But that was hardly enough when I had been sworn to secrecy by one of the highest figures in the country.

“I understand how you feel,” I said eventually. “And if I have to leave, then so be it. But I really can’t say more for now. I have been sworn to secrecy and I cannot break that vow, however much my personal estimation of you insists it would be safe to do so. It is not my secret to keep and therefore the decision as to who knows and who does not is not mine to make.”

He nodded and, after a moment, smiled. “Don’t twist yourself in knots over it. I suppose I should be glad of the fact that you won’t betray a trust so easily, it proves that I was right to share police information with you. Doesn’t mean it’s not extremely irritating, mind, but let’s forget it …”

I was relieved and said so.

“It won’t be the first time a simple copper from the countryside has not been privy to the same information as everyone else,” he said. “In fact it happens so often you’d think I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.”

He led me through into the next room, a small library and office that betrayed the state of its owner’s mind as clearly as the entrance hall had. Books were cast all over, paper thrown everywhere. It was as if a small stick of dynamite had detonated in there—indeed, some of the pages were burned, which only increased the illusion. Of course the dynamite in this case had been none other than Edward Prendick, a man whose moods had clearly been easily combustible.

“It’s hard to tell whether he was trying to destroy something in particular or just on a rampage,” said Mann. “The rest of the house is in a similar state.”

I stooped down to look at some of the papers; for the most part they were chemistry text books, Prendick’s own notes and part of what must have been an obsessive collection of old newspapers and magazines. “He was certainly a hoarder,” I said, rummaging through a pile of yellowing newspapers. “There are what must be a year’s worth of copies of The Chronicle here.”

“For a man who disliked society so much,” said Mann, “it seems strange he took such an interest in it.”

I could see his point, but it seemed more likely to me that Prendick’s motivations had been different. I didn’t think he was monitoring current affairs out of general interest. Rather he was monitoring the news for mention of something in particular. If he had been as shaken by Moreau’s work as had clearly been the case, was it not natural that he might look for evidence of it? Perhaps another scientist might stumble upon the same methods, or the creatures he so feared might make their way off their island and come in search of new pastures. Prendick’s fear was all-consuming. If he hadn’t been mad when they lifted him off his makeshift raft in the ocean, then he had certainly become so during the years after.

The question remained though: was it suicide or murder? All the evidence pointed to the former but there was still a big part of me that sensed the hand of another—someone who might have driven Prendick to the chemistry supplies and a lunatic urge to destroy himself. I was convinced the answers must lie in the last-known postal delivery.

“I don’t suppose you still have the mail he received?” I asked.

Mann nodded. “We haven’t the space out here to keep all our evidence ad infinitum, but we haven’t cleared anything of Prendick’s out yet. Given the court’s ruling, you can help yourself to what you like. I’ll have no use for it.”