A Taste for Monsters Page 11

  “I can translate,” I said.

  Mr. Merrick nodded his approval.

  “A perfect solution,” Professor Sidgwick said to me, and then to Dr. Treves, “I would not want to take your valuable time away from your patients or the management of this hospital.”

  “I see.” Dr. Treves looked about himself as if he’d forgotten something, and then rose to his feet. “I thank you again for coming, Sidgwick.” He offered the professor a tip of his head. “I shall be in my office when you are concluded.”

  “I shall seek you out there,” Professor Sidgwick said, returning his nod.

  Dr. Treves left the room, and Professor Sidgwick turned his gaze on us with a gentle smile. Then he took the seat the doctor had just vacated. “I am no medium or psychic,” he said. “But one does not need to be to feel the fear in this room, or to know that you did not summon me to discuss philosophical questions on the afterlife.”

  “No,” Mr. Merrick said. “I asked you here because I am haunted.”

  “He says—” I began, but Professor Sidgwick held up his hand.

  “I understood that, Miss … ?”

  “Fallow,” I said.

  “I understood that much, Miss Fallow.” He turned back toward Mr. Merrick. “Do you mean to say that ghosts or spirits have made their presence known to you in some way?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Merrick said.

  “In what manner?” he asked. “Is their presence observed indirectly, through the manipulation of objects, or is it direct? Do you hear or see them?”

  “It is quite direct,” Mr. Merrick said. “I hear and see them as I hear and see you.”

  There, the professor turned toward me for interpretation of Mr. Merrick’s speech, which I provided.

  “I see,” the professor said. “You must forgive me for the following questions, but I am a philosopher, and we of the Society for Psychical Research approach these matters with scientific rigor.”

  “I understand,” Mr. Merrick said.

  “Did anyone else perceive these spiritual manifestations?”

  I spoke up. “I did, sir.”

  “And are your perceptions in agreement with each other?”

  “They are,” I said.

  “Were any hallucinatory or inebriating substances in use at the time by either or both of you?”

  “Not at all,” Mr. Merrick said, sounding a mite affronted.

  “My apologies, once again,” Professor Sidgwick said. “But such questions must be asked. Now, what time of night was this?”

  “How do you know it happens at night?” Mr. Merrick said, which I then translated.

  “While ghosts and haunted houses are not my area of specialty within the society,” he said, “I am familiar with the common features of the phenomena. Hauntings almost universally occur at night.”

  “Why is that?” Mr. Merrick asked.

  “I suspect it can be attributed to our greater attention to fears at night.” The professor straightened his back against his chair. “A particular noise—a creak on the landing, let’s say—which is considered banal during the day, becomes suddenly ominous at night. Doors that slam during the day are attributed to a draft, but at night they are blamed upon ghosts.”

  “It sounds as if you don’t believe in spirits,” Mr. Merrick said.

  After I’d translated, the professor frowned. “It is not a matter of belief,” he said. “It is a matter of evidence. I am a skeptic, and in my experience nearly all psychical phenomena are proved to be the result of willful deception, a desire to be deceived, or an overly fertile imagination.”

  “We did not imagine these ghosts,” I said. “And they don’t both come at night.”

  The professor angled his head toward me. “No?”

  “No,” I said. “One comes at half past three, but the other after half past five in the morning, when the sun is up.”

  “I see,” he said. “Those times specifically?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Merrick said. “As if on a schedule.”

  “I see.” Professor Sidgwick pulled a small notebook out of his pocket along with a pencil nub. “And how often do they come?”

  “Every morning,” I said. “Since the first murder.”

  “Pardon me, murder, you said?”

  I nodded. “Yes. These ghosts are the victims of Leather Apron. Well, whatever he’s called now.”

  “You refer to the recent Whitechapel murders?” The scratch of the professor’s pencil in his notebook was quite loud. “You think these apparitions are the ghosts of the victims?”

  “They are,” Mr. Merrick said.

  “You seem quite certain,” the professor said.

  “We are,” I said.

  “Why might that be?” the professor asked.

  “Because they answer to their names,” I said.

  Professor Sidgwick ceased writing and looked at me directly. “Am I to understand you have communicated with these spirits?”

  I was growing somewhat irritated at the slowness of the interview. “Mr. Merrick speaks with Polly Nichols quite a bit. Annie Chapman is a different matter.”

  “This whole affair seems a different matter than what I typically encounter.” Professor Sidgwick stroked his beard in an absent way. “Let us adjust our method of inquiry. Why don’t you first tell me about these visitations as you have experienced them, and I will ask my questions afterward.”

  That seemed a more sensible approach to me, so Mr. Merrick and I together related the details of the haunting, how Polly had come first, and the repetitive conversations with her that had followed, and then Annie Chapman’s alarming appearance. Throughout our narrative, Professor Sidgwick nodded and scribbled more notes in his little book. Even after we’d finished, he went on writing for another moment or two before returning his attention to us.

  “This case of haunting is quite unique in many regards,” he said. “The first is that it does not seem tied to a specific location. Neither of these women had connections with the hospital, correct?”

  “As far as we know,” Mr. Merrick said.

  The professor continued. “It seems, then, that this is a haunting of a person, rather than a place. I would assume that person to be you, Mr. Merrick.”

  “Why me?” Mr. Merrick asked.

  “Let us hold that question for a moment.” Professor Sidgwick glanced back at his notes, as if finding his thoughts there. “Another unique aspect of this case is the level of awareness the spirits seem to possess. In my experience, the only ghosts who converse are those who speak through a medium, and those tend to say exactly what the listener is hoping to hear. Ghosts in haunted houses are often more … inscrutable.”

  “I’d say these ghosts are inscrutable,” I said.

  “But are they?” Professor Sidgwick leaned forward excitedly. “This Polly seems to know exactly what she’s about. It’s her wedding day. Likewise, Annie is missing someone named Johnny. That is already a great deal more than many apparitions reveal. Most seem content to simply knock stuff about and otherwise cause a racket.”

  “But why do they haunt me?” Mr. Merrick asked.

  “They are drawn to you, Mr. Merrick, like a moth is drawn to a flame.”

  “But why?” Mr. Merrick’s tone had become plaintive.

  I looked at the mantel, with its hoard of cards and portraits, and especially the portrait of his mother. I thought of the way I was drawn to Mr. Merrick, not by his looks, but by the gentleness of his soul, and the way he refused to believe the girl in Charles’s song could be in the wrong.

  “I would assume an affinity of some kind exists between you and the spirits,” the professor said. “But what that might be …” He shrugged.

  In that moment, I thought I knew, and believed it had something to do with what Matron Luckes had said about Mr. Merrick’s general infatuation with women. In a manner of speaking, he loved them all, quite innocently and perhaps even worshipfully, and he assumed the most nobility and grace of them, always. That, it se
emed to me, could explain why the spirits of these women were drawn to him, for among all the dark souls in Whitechapel, his was inclined to be the kindest toward them.

  “What can I do for them?” Mr. Merrick asked.

  “I should like to stay and observe,” the professor said. “I would see these spectres for myself before I make any recommendation to you. If you are amenable to my presence here.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Merrick said. “Please, stay. I will be glad for any wisdom you have.”

  “I take it you haven’t mentioned these visitations to Dr. Treves?”

  “No,” Mr. Merrick said.

  “I assume you would prefer to keep him in ignorance?”

  “I would,” Mr. Merrick said. “He is a very practical man, and I doubt he would encourage this.”

  “You confirm my own assessment of him,” the professor said. “In that case, I shall simply tell him I wish to continue our discussions into the evening. I am only in London for a short time, you see.” He gave us a conspiratorial wink. “Meanwhile, I shall go and procure some instruments that I’ll need. I wish there were sufficient time to enlist a photographer. Or perhaps even acquire and test one of Charles Hinton’s tesseracts.”

  “What is a tesseract?” I asked.

  “A crystal cube through which ghosts are said to become visible in the fourth dimension.” He waved his hand dismissively. “I would not expect you to understand—”

  “A fourth dimension?” I said. I remembered some of my mathematics from school, as well as the lessons given me by the tutors my father once hired, knowledge I hadn’t once needed in my life on the streets. “There are but three dimensions, are there not?”

  Professor Sidgwick’s eyebrows jumped. “You surprise me, Miss Fallow. I’d not expected a maid to know of such things.”

  “I was not always a maid,” I said.

  “Apparently not,” he said. “Yes, we perceive three dimensions. But imagine how we, in our three dimensions, would appear to something or someone possessing only two.” He tore a blank sheet from his notebook and handed it to me. “For example, what impression would a sphere leave as it passed through this two dimensional piece of paper?”

  I looked at the paper, and imagined it bisecting a sphere. “The sphere would appear as a circle.”

  “Precisely!” Professor Sidgwick said. “Someone or something in two dimensions would have no way of perceiving an object in three dimensions. So it goes with a fourth dimension, which is outside our normal perception. A fourth dimensional being passing through our plane of existence would appear to us as possessing only three dimensions. A tesseract is a tool for visualizing the world in four dimensions.”

  In my attempt to comprehend what he was saying, I roused the old machinery of my mind that I’d long since left to rust, and found it still worked. “Then … do you suppose ghosts are four-dimensional beings?” I asked.

  “Some suspect that,” he said. “But if they are, I highly doubt a crystal cube would reveal them. I mentioned using the tesseract only because I wish to disprove it as a legitimate tool of psychical research.”

  “I am quite lost,” Mr. Merrick announced.

  “Not to worry.” Professor Sidgwick chuckled and stood. “It isn’t at all important to our purpose here, really.” He strode toward the door. “I am meeting some associates for dinner, but I shall return afterward, and we will wait together for these ghosts to make themselves known.”

  “Thank you,” Mr. Merrick said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Not at all, my dear fellow. I hope our efforts might bring you some relief.”

  That was my hope as well, for I worried over the continued toll of the haunting on Mr. Merrick’s health. The interview had seemed to invigorate him, though, and in the hours following the professor’s departure, Mr. Merrick was in much better cheer than I had seen him in several days, and we passed the time in our usual way before the hauntings had started.

  Then, as he had promised, Professor Sidgwick returned after dinner, exclaiming as he stepped into the room, “My, God! The whole city’s gone mad! Policemen everywhere! Mobs calling themselves ‘vigilance committees’ roaming the streets, going on about the Jews. These murders are a ghastly business to begin with, but why is mankind’s response to a bad situation always to find a way to make it worse?” He had brought with him a few newspapers, along with several instruments wrapped in cloth. These he carefully laid out on Mr. Merrick’s table, after he had calmed, and I inquired as to their functions.

  “This is a barometer,” he said, indicating a device like a large pocket watch. “It measures air pressure. Some believe spirits have an effect on the density of air in a room. This here is a thermometer, of course.”

  “The ghosts do cause a chill in me,” I said.

  The professor nodded. “That is quite commonly reported.”

  “And when they appear, my … my jaw hurts. My scars.”

  He looked at my disfigurement then, finally giving it the scrutiny others gave continually, and I felt suddenly quite conscious of my ugliness. “Are there other times it hurts in this way?” he asked.

  “When the weather turns,” I said.

  “My, my. That is quite fascinating.” He gently tapped the barometer’s glass face. “Weather changes are also associated with changes in air pressure, you see. Perhaps you are a human ghost detector, Miss Fallow.”

  It amazed me there might’ve been a scientific reason for the pain I’d experienced, but also reassured me that I could perhaps anticipate a ghostly presence in that way.

  Mr. Merrick called from his armchair, “Might I see these instruments?”

  “Of course,” Professor Sidgwick said, and carried each of them over in a cradle of cloth between his hands. “I borrowed these, so I must be careful with them.”

  Once Mr. Merrick’s curiosity had been satisfied, the professor arranged the instruments around the room and took readings from them, which he scratched into his notebook. “We must establish a basal measurement,” he said, “against which we will monitor for changes.”

  It did not appear that the threat of haunting frightened the professor at all, but rather energized him.

  Once he had established the tools of his science, we settled in to wait, and Professor Sidgwick handed me the newspapers. “I thought the current facts on the murders might inform our investigation of the ghosts of their victims.”

  I accepted the papers from him, though I had no desire to read them for the bloody and sensational. The only question I wanted answered just then was who Johnny might be. I started with the Evening News, and then moved on to the Star, and finally the Times. Not one of them reported anything about Annie Chapman’s life. They mentioned that her funeral had taken place, but said nothing about the family and friends who might have attended it. Instead, the editors railed against the incompetence of the police and speculated on suspects the coppers had either questioned or taken into custody; that poor Jew Pizer had been released from jail but not the public’s mistrust; and the fictional character of Mr. Hyde had even been accused. The papers did recount the most gruesome aspects of the murders, as if their readers needed reminding, on the very same page that they denounced the city’s high society for not caring about the murdered, claiming that if the first victim had been a true lady instead of a streetwalker, the maniac would not have had the opportunity for a second.

  I closed the papers in disgust.

  “Is there nothing in them?” Mr. Merrick asked.

  “Nothing worth mentioning,” I said.

  “That banker Samuel Montagu has offered a reward of one hundred pounds for the capture of the killer,” Professor Sidgwick said. “Probably as much an attempt to restore the city’s goodwill toward his Jewish brothers and sisters as it is an incentive for justice. Not that there was ever a just amount of goodwill to restore. Simply a ghastly business, all the way ’round.” He stroked his beard for a few moments. “Does that phonograph work?”

  “It
does,” Mr. Merrick said. “It was a gift from the famed actress Madge Kendal.”

  “Indeed?” Professor Sidgwick crossed the room and looked at the device. “This is Edison’s design, if I’m not mistaken,” he said. “What is on the cylinder?”

  “It is Handel,” Mr. Merrick said. “An oratorio called Israel in Egypt.”

  “I’ve not heard a phonograph before.” Professor Sidgwick reached for the hand crank. “Would you permit me?”

  “Of course,” Mr. Merrick said.

  The professor turned the crank and the cylinder rotated in reply, and out of the flaring horn emerged the sound of music and singing, but it was muffled and distant. At the first few notes, I felt a wonder and delight at the sounds emerging from this machine, but soon the lack of natural, vibrant beauty in the music struck my ear as though someone had canned the concert like so much pea soup.

  When the cylinder ended, the professor ceased cranking the handle and stepped away from the phonograph. “That is the closest thing to a ghost I’ve encountered,” he said. “That is the sound of someone reaching out to us from the past. Haunting, is it not?”

  “I do not care for it,” Mr. Merrick said. “I much prefer Charles’s music. But please do not tell Mrs. Kendal. I would not want to seem ungrateful.”

  I had to interpret those words for the professor, who then reassured Mr. Merrick that he would keep his confidence. Mr. Merrick asked if I would read to him, which I did, while Professor Sidgwick went about fussing over his instruments. The night progressed at an adequate pace, its mood lifted over previous nights by the professor’s presence, and at midnight I felt fatigue setting in. My eyes tried very hard to close against my will, while Professor Sidgwick’s energy appeared boundless, and he prodded me awake when I began to drift to sleep.

  “Tell me about your upbringing,” he said. “Your schooling, specifically.”

  “There isn’t much to tell.” I tried and failed to suppress a yawn. “I received a quality instruction until my father could no longer afford it. He believed firmly in the education of women.”

  “As do I,” Professor Sidgwick said. “Wholeheartedly. Indeed, thirteen years ago I founded Newnham College at Cambridge. It is a women’s only college, and a fine institution.”