An Instance of the Fingerpost Read online

  The magistrate was decidedly stiffer than he had been only that morning. Once the formalities were over, he led us into the little room, and sat us both down.

  ‘You work very late, Sir John,’ Lower said amiably.

  ‘Not through choice, Doctor,’ he replied. ‘But this is a matter which cannot wait.’

  ‘It must be serious, then.’

  ‘It is indeed. It concerns Mr Crosse. He came to see me this afternoon and I wish to check his credentials as he is not a gentleman, although, no doubt, eminently trustworthy in all respects.’

  ‘Examine away, then. What about old Crosse? He is as good a man as I know, and gives false weight only rarely, and then only to customers he does not know.’

  ‘He brought his ledger of sales from his shop,’ the magistrate said, ‘which shows quite clearly that a substantial quantity of arsenic was bought four months ago by Sarah Blundy, a serving girl of this town.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Blundy was discharged by Grove for ill behaviour on that same day,’ the magistrate continued. ‘She comes from a violent family.’

  ‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ Lower said, ‘but have you asked the girl? Perhaps she has a perfectly straightforward explanation.’

  ‘I have. After I talked to Mr Crosse, I went straight there. She said she bought the powder on Dr Grove’s instructions.’

  ‘Which may be true. It would be difficult to contradict.’

  ‘It may be so. I intend to see if Dr Grove kept a ledger. The cost of the powder was near a shilling, and an item that expensive might well have been noted. You can vouch for Crosse? He is of good character, and unlikely to bear false witness out of malice?’

  ‘Oh, no. In that respect he is utterly trustworthy. If he says the girl bought arsenic, then the girl bought arsenic.’ Lower said.

  ‘Did you accuse the girl directly?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Sir John replied. ‘It is too early for that.’

  ‘You think it a possibility?’

  ‘Maybe so. Might I ask why neither of you mentioned to me the report that she had been seen entering Dr Grove’s room that night?’

  ‘It is not my job to report tittle-tattle,’ Lower said sternly. ‘Nor yours to repeat it, sir.’

  ‘It is not that,’ Sir John replied. Warden Woodward told me, and brought Mr Ken to repeat his accusation.’

  ‘Ken?’ I asked. ‘Are you sure he was telling the truth?’

  ‘I have no reason to doubt him. I am aware he and Dr Grove were at odds, but I cannot believe he would lie on such an important matter.’

  ‘And what did the girl say?’

  ‘She denied it, of course. But she also would not say where she was.’

  I remembered that she would not tell me either, and my heart filled with foreboding for the first time. Even the most terrible immorality, after all, would be worth while owning if it diverted suspicions such as these. So what could the girl have been doing, assuming, that is, that she was not lying to cover her guilt?

  ‘In which case it will be her word against Ken’s,’ Lower said.

  ‘His word will naturally carry the more weight,’ the magistrate pointed out. ‘And, from the gossip I have heard, it seems the girl had a reason, however perverted, for such a deed. Do I understand that you are treating the mother, Mr Cole?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I recommend that this cease instantly. You should have as little contact with her as possible.’

  ‘You are making an assumption about her culpability,’ I said, alarmed at the turn the conversation was taking.

  ‘I believe I can see the beginnings of a case. But culpability is not my task, I am glad to say.’

  ‘The mother still needs a doctor,’ I said. I did not add that my experiment required constant attention as well.

  ‘I’m sure some other physician will do. I cannot prohibit you, but I beg you to think of the awkwardness. The subject of Dr Grove will undoubtedly be raised should you encounter the girl – if she is responsible she is bound to want to know how the investigation is progressing, and whether you suspect what was done. You would then be placed in the position either of dissimulating, which is undignified, or giving away information which might cause her to flee.’

  I could see the sense of that, at least. ‘But if I suddenly stop attending, that might arouse her suspicions also.’

  ‘In that case,’ Lower said cheerfully, ‘you will have to come with me on my tour. It will get you out of the way, and the girl will not suspect your absence.’

  ‘As long as you come back. Mr Lower, will you stand surety for your friend? Ensure his return to Oxford?’

  Lower agreed readily, and by the time we left the house, the matter had been settled between them without my being consulted in any way. The next day, it seemed, I would leave on tour, and Lower would persuade Locke to attend to my patient and take whatever notes were required on her condition. This inevitably meant telling him what we had done, which made me uneasy, but there was no alternative. He went off to find his friend, and I returned, heavy at heart and alarmed by the turn of events, to my lodgings.

  Chapter Fifteen

  * * *

  DESPITE ITS INAUSPICIOUS beginnings, the medical journey of the next week initially proved to be of great value to my troubled state of mind. I discovered that, in only a brief space of time, the atmosphere of Oxford had settled on me, rendering me as melancholic as most of its inhabitants. There is something about the place; a dampness that is oppressive to the spirits, which bears down most powerfully on the soul. I have for long had a theory about the weather which, if God spares me, I would like to develop one day. I do believe that the wetness and greyness of the climate will forever preclude the English from making much of a stir in the world, unless they abandon their island for more sunny climes. Transport them to the Americas or the Indies, and their character is such that they could rule the world; leave them where they are, and they are doomed to sink into lassitude. I have personal experience of this in the way in which my normally cheerful temperament became dampened by the experience of residing there.

  None the less, finding myself astride a horse on what seemed like the first day of spring after a long hard winter, in the open countryside that begins the moment you cross the old, dangerous-looking bridge after the college of St Mary Magdalen, was a wonderful tonic. Moreover, the wind had finally shifted from the north to the west, removing the ill effects of this most deadening of airs. I must add that the prospect of having nothing to do with Sarah Blundy or the corpse of Robert Grove for a few days also helped.

  Lower had organised the expedition well in advance and rushed me off that first morning, pushing the horses hard until we arrived in late afternoon at Aylesbury, in the next county. We put up in an inn, where we rested ourselves until the execution the next morning. I did not attend, taking little pleasure in such spectacles, but Lower did: the girl, he said, made a wretched speech and quite lost the sympathy of the crowd. It had been a complicated case and the town was by no means convinced of her guilt. She had killed a man whom she said had raped her, but the jury judged this a lie because she had fallen pregnant, which cannot occur without the woman taking pleasure in the act. Normally her condition would have spared her the gallows, but she had lost the child and also any defence against the hangman. An unfortunate outcome, which those who believed in her guilt considered divine providence.

  Lower assured me his attendance was necessary, a hanging is a detestable sight, but one of his many fascinations was when exactly the moment of death occurs. This related directly to our experiments with the dove in the vacuum pump. Most of those hanged asphyxiate slowly at the end of the rope and it was a matter of some considerable interest to him – and to physick in general – how long it takes for the soul to depart. He was, he assured me, a considerable expert in the matter. For this reason, he positioned himself next to the tree to take notes.

  He also got his corpse, once he had tipped the offici
als and paid a pound to the family. He had it carried to an apothecary of his acquaintance and, after he prayed in his fashion and I in mine, we began work. Some anatomisation we performed there – I took the heart while he cracked open the skull and drew some delightful sketches of the brain – then we jointed the rest and placed the portions in several large vats of spirit which the apothecary undertook to deliver to Crosse’s shop. He also wrote a letter to Boyle telling them the vats were on their way and should on no account be opened.

  ‘I don’t know that he will be so very pleased,’ he said, once he had washed his hands and we had retired to the inn for food and drink. ‘But where else could I send them? My college refuses to have corpses on the premises for any length of time, and if I sent it to anyone else they might well practise on it before I return. Some people have no shame in these matters.’

  As for the rest of our trip, there is little point in going into details. The patients came in thick and fast once we had established ourselves in the various inns on our route and I returned ten days later sixty-five shillings the richer. The average fee was fourpence, nobody ever paid more than one and sixpence, and when I was paid in kind I had to sell the various geese and ducks and hens at a discount to local traders (we ate one goose, but I could hardly return to Oxford with a farmyard menagerie trailing behind me). All this should give an idea of how many patients I treated.

  I will retell the events of one day, because they were of significance. This was in Great Milton, a small settlement to the east of Oxford, to which we had repaired because a distant branch of Boyle’s family owned a property there, assuring us a comfortable bed for the night and a chance of ridding ourselves of the lice which we had acquired over the previous days. We arrived about seven in the morning and went straight to our separate rooms at the near-by inn, while the innkeeper sent a messenger around the village announcing our presence. We had barely prepared ourselves when the first patient arrived, and by the time he had been dealt with (Lower lanced a boil in his fundament, to which treatment he responded with rare good humour) there was a queue forming at the door.

  That morning I extracted four teeth, drained several gallons of blood (fancy notions about therapeutic efficacy get you nowhere in the country; they wanted their blood let and that was what they were determined to have), bound wounds, tasted piss, applied salves and took in seven shillings. A brief pause for lunch and then we were off again; lancing sores, wiping pus, setting joints and taking in eleven shillings and eight pence. Throughout, all of Lower’s grand theories about the new medicine were abandoned. The patients were not interested in the benefits of iatrochemical potions and were disdainful of innovation. So, instead of prescribing careful concoctions of mercury and antimony, we rebalanced humours like the most hidebound of Galenists, and consulted the stars with a fervour worthy of Paracelsus himself. Anything which might work, for we had not the leisure to consider novel approaches, nor the reputation to apply them.

  Both of us were exhausted by the end and even so we had to skulk out through the back of the inn to avoid still more patients waiting their turn. The old couple in charge of the house had promised us a hot bath when we introduced ourselves at midday and I was eager to take up the offer: I had not immersed since the previous autumn and felt that not only could my constitution stand it, my morale would be immeasurably lifted. I went first, taking the brandy bottle with me so as to save time, and felt very much better when I emerged. Lower was less carefree about bathing, but the itching in his skin from the lice was such that even he decided to take the risk.

  I stretched out in a chair while Lower took his turn in the tub, and was almost asleep when Mrs Fenton, the servant, told me that there was a message for me, brought by a servant from the near-by priory.

  I groaned. This sort of thing happened all the time; the gentry and families of higher quality would want to avail themselves of the services of a passing physician, but naturally found it beneath them to wait with the rabble. So they would send a message desiring our presence. We attended on them rather than the other way around and charged heftily for the privilege. Lower invariably took most of this trade, he being English and wanting to make connections for the future, and I was happy to allow him that task.

  This time, however, he was in the bath and, in any case, the servant said quite pointedly that my services in particular were desired. I was flattered, yet again amazed at the speed with which news travels in the countryside, and quickly fetched my bag. I left a message for Lower that I would return in due course.

  ‘Who is your master?’ I asked, wanting to make polite conversation as we walked back up to the main street of the village, then down a smaller road to the left. My teachers had often recommended this course: by careful questioning of servants, it is often possible to reach a full diagnosis even before you see the patient, thus earning a wondrous reputation.

  This time the technique was of little use, as the servant, an old but powerfully built man, did not reply at all. Indeed, he said not a single word until we had walked all the way up to a medium-sized house on the outskirts of the village, gone through the large door and I had been shown into what the English call a parlour, a public room for the reception of guests. Here he broke silence, asked me to sit, and disappeared.

  And so I did, waiting patiently until the door opened and I found myself in the presence of Europe’s foremost murderer, if Mr Wood’s tales were to be believed.

  ‘Good evening, Doctor,’ John Thurloe said to me in a quiet, melodious voice as he came into the room. ‘It was kind of you to come.’

  Although I could study him properly for the first time, none the less I stood by my original assessment. Even knowing his reputation, he still did not at all look like any sort of evil tyrant. He had watery eyes that blinked as if unused to the light, and the meek expression of one who wished desperately to be treated with kindness. If pushed, I would have placed him as a gentle prelate, eking out a quiet, but worthy existence in a poor parish, forgotten by his betters.

  But Wood’s description had penetrated my mind, and I found myself gaping, almost awestruck.

  ‘You are Dr Cola, are you not?’ he went on as I said nothing. I eventually managed to reply that I was, and ask him what was his trouble.

  ‘Ah, not a problem of the body,’ Thurloe said with a faint smile. ‘More a problem of the soul, you might say.’

  I ventured that this was hardly my area of expertise.

  ‘Indeed not. But you may be able to render some assistance. May I be frank with you, Doctor?’

  I spread my hands as if to say, well, why not?

  ‘Good. You see, I have a guest, who is sorely troubled. I cannot say that he is welcome, but you know how it is with hospitality. He is cut off from the society of his fellow men, and finds my company insufficient. I cannot blame him for this, as I am not an interesting conversationalist. Do you know who I am, by the way?’

  ‘I am told you are Mr Thurloe, Lord Cromwell’s Secretary of State.’

  ‘That is correct. Anyway, this guest of mine needs information which I cannot provide, and he tells me that you may be able to help.’

  He had completely lost me, of course. So I said I would willingly oblige. But surely, I continued, Great Milton was not so very cut off from civilisation? Thurloe did not reply directly.

  ‘I understand you knew a gentleman by the name of Robert Grove. A fellow of New College, recently deceased. Is that correct?’

  That Thurloe should have heard of this amazed me; but I said that, yes, I did.

  ‘I hear there is a question mark over the matter of his death. Would you care to tell me the circumstances?’

  I could see no reason why I should not, so I summarised everything that had taken place, from Lower’s investigations to Sarah Blundy’s conversation with me and the magistrate. Thurloe sat impassively in the chair as I talked, hardly moving at all, an air of the most complete tranquillity upon him; I could barely tell whether he was listening or was eve
n still awake.

  ‘I see,’ he said when I had concluded. ‘So if I understand you correctly, when you left Oxford, the magistrate had questioned this Blundy girl, but no more?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Does it come as a surprise to learn that she was charged with the wilful murder of Dr Grove two days ago? And is now in prison awaiting the assizes?’

  ‘It would astonish me,’ I replied. ‘I did not know the English law worked so swiftly.’

  ‘Do you believe the girl is guilty?’

  What a question. One which I had asked myself on many occasions during my journey.

  ‘I do not know. That is a matter for law, not reason.’

  He smiled at this, as though I had made some cutting remark. Lower told me later that he had been for many years a lawyer, before the rebellion had swept him into office.

  ‘In reason, then. Tell me what you think.’

  The hypothesis is that Sarah Blundy killed Dr Grove. What evidence is there? There is a motive, in that he discharged her from his employ, although many servants are discharged and fortunately few take such revenge. She acquired arsenic on the day she was discharged. She was in New College on the evening of Dr Grove’s death and was reluctant to own it. Certainly, the evidence supports the hypothesis proposed.’

  ‘Your method has a weakness, though. You do not mention all the evidence. Only that which supports the hypothesis. As I understand it, other facts support an alternative, which is that you could have killed him, as you were the last person to see him, and also had access to the poison had you wanted to kill him.’

  ‘I could have, but I know I did not, and I had no reason to do so. Any more than Dr Wallis had, or Lower or Boyle.’

  He accepted this point – although why I was telling him I did not know – and nodded. ‘So it is the combination of different qualities of facts which you believe important. And you conclude that she is indeed guilty.’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I am very reluctant to do so.’