Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire Page 7

  'Yes,' I mumbled. 'Forty years old, but still a very useful book.'

  'And one which admits to the existence of cases where men and women have burst into flame for no obvious reason. No doubt you have also had reason to consult Beck and Beck's Elements of Medical Jurisprudence in the course of your adventures with Mr Holmes?'

  'Well . . . yes.'

  The Doctor's voice was gentle, but remorseless. I could not help but contrast his style of debate with that of Holmes, whose superior attitude and scathing criticisms frequently cowed me into submission. Mac watched our verbal duel, entranced.

  'Those eminent gentlemen also believed in spontaneous human combustion. You may even have read an article on the subject in the Bulletin de la Societe Medico-Legal de France last year.'

  'I do know that Casper's Handbook of the Practice of Forensic Medicine well and truly trounced the idea.'

  'Did it?' The Doctor took a sip of his sarsaparilla. 'And how did Casper explain the bizarre fate of Nicole Millet, a landlord's wife whose charred body was found on Whit Monday in 1725 in Rheims in an armchair that did not have a single burn upon it? Or that of Grace Pett, a fisherman's wife who burned to a cinder on the ninth of April 1744 in Ipswich, near a paper screen that was not even singed?'

  Mac's eyes were starting from their sockets, and I was dimly aware that nearby conversations were dying away as the habitués of the Tank became aware of our morbid conversation.

  'By 1763,' the Doctor continued, 'enough people had died that Jonas Dupont of Germany published a book on the subject entitled De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis. You yourself, Doctor, may have come across a report in the 1835 issue of the Transactions of the Medical Society of Tennessee concerning a Mr James Hamilton, who was out walking one day when a flame burst like a lighted gas-jet from his leg. Mr Hamilton was lucky enough to be able to extinguish the flame, but the Countess von Gorlitz was not so fortunate. You might have read about her in the edition of The Times dated 18 April 1850, Inspector. She burned to a cinder on the other side of a curtain to her husband without him noticing a thing. Doctor Watson, of course, would be familiar with the more detailed reports of her death carried by The Lancet and The London Medical Gazette.'

  Silence had descended across the entire room. The Doctor's voice -

  hushed, and yet penetrating - commanded the attention of the assembled multitude. My mouth was dry, and I drained my tankard of porter in a single gulp. I took a deep breath and wiped my moustache. The smell of roast beef somewhere in the vicinity made me acutely and incongruousfy aware of how long it had been since I had eaten.

  'And what of Mrs Rooney, whose cremated corpse was discovered in a friend's living room on Christmas Eve 1885 - less than two years ago, gentlemen - in Seneca, Illinois, along with the body of her husband, who had slept through her death but died of asphyxiation from the smoke. There were no signs of fire in the room, save for the burnt floorboards beneath her and a slight scorching to a tablecloth, and nothing remained of her but a blackened skull, part of a vertebra, a foot and a mound of ashes.'

  The Doctor's voice rolled around the final syllables as if he were pronouncing the crack of doom itself. The bar was silent, its inhabitants frozen with drinks half-way to their mouths, or cigars dropping glowing ash upon their waistcoats, spellbound by the Doctor's recitation. I felt the cold hand of terror clutch at my heart: such things should not be, not in Victoria's England, not in a rational scientific world. They belonged to an older, darker age.

  'Another drink, anyone?' said the Doctor brightly. 'I appear to have finished my sarsaparilla.'

  As conversations sprung up again across the room and the Doctor made for the bar, Mac's eyes met mine.

  'Well; I'm convinced,' he said. 'And I've got enough evidence to silence Bradstreet. He's a superstitious man, and much afeared of the medical profession. If I can quote references at him the way your friend here did to us, there'll be no case to answer.'

  The Doctor returned with a pint for each of us and another sarsaparilla for himself.

  'What is the matter, Doctor?' I asked, noting his frown.

  'Don't drink anything,' he whispered. 'I think somebody is trying to poison us!'

  'Great Scott!' I cried. Inspector MacDonald lowered the glass from which he was about to sip.

  'What makes you think that?' he asked carefully.

  'I caught a whiff of the porter as the barman pulled the pints,' the Doctor hissed, his gaze darting around the room. 'There's strychnine in it! We may already have ingested a lethal dose from the last round.'

  MacDonald laughed, and dug me in the ribs with his elbow. I could not help smiling.

  'You're obviously new to city ways, Doctor,' he said. 'You'll find strychnine in most London beers. Gives it a bit of body.'

  The Doctor gulped, and took a sip of his sarsaparilla.

  'I trust that soft drinks are safe,' he said.

  The conversation moved into other channels as we drank, and we parted as dusk fell. The Doctor and I decided to walk back to Baker Street together, the evening being so pleasant and our spirits buoyed up with drink. As we strolled, I leaning upon my stick, he swinging his umbrella, he gave me a running commentary on the buildings that we passed, illuminating minor corners of history with a sharp, incisive wit that made the city come alive in a way that I had never experienced before. He spoke with such conviction of times past that I could almost see him there, conversing with Samuel Pepys or Isaac Newton as he did with me that night. I, in turn, regaled the Doctor with tales of the cases in which Holmes and I had become involved, including some which were so sensitive or so bizarre that I could never allow them to be published. The affair of the painted pit pony, for instance, piqued the Doctor's interest, as did the strange case of Isadore Persano, the well known duellist, who was found, stark staring mad, holding a matchbox which contained a worm unknown to science.

  The Doctor asked about unsolved cases and I found myself describing one of Holmes's rare failures which I have occasionally thought of writing up under the title The Affair of the Walking Ventriloquist's Dummy. Looking back on it now, I have the feeling that the Doctor knew more about the case than I then believed. I have since discovered that nothing about the Doctor is beyond question.

  We found ourselves walking around the edge of the Serpentine as Big Ben struck eight. The wind had risen, the water was choppy and the darkness hid the far side of the lake from us, so that we might have been standing on the edge of some huge ocean. I remembered how, two years beforehand, Lestrade had unsuccessfully dragged the lake for Hatty Doran's body during the case that is listed in my notes under the title The Affair of the Noble Bachelor, and I shivered at the memory.

  'Lord St Simon deserved his fate,' the Doctor murmured.

  I nodded sagely, then stopped in surprise.

  'How do you know that?' I asked him.

  The Doctor stopped and turned to face me. His face was shadowed by his hat, but I could swear that he was smiling at me.

  'I read it in The Strand Magazine.'

  'I do not see how,' I replied stiffly, 'for the details have never been published, to my knowledge.'

  'Then perhaps I deduced it from the way you stared at the water, and from the expression upon your face.'

  I was about to remonstrate with him for this impossible explanation, and then I remembered some of the deductions which Sherlock Holmes had made, based only upon the scantiest clues, and I held my tongue.

  The Doctor gazed out over the Serpentine. Across the other side of the lake, someone had lit a fire. The tiny orange glow put me in mind of the moment when Mrs Prendersly had opened her mouth to reveal a hellish tongue of flame. I tried to remember how beautiful she had been, how entranced I had felt, but all I could see was flesh charred black, like an overcooked side of beef The aroma of roasting meat rose once again to my nostrils: with revulsion I realized that it was the smell of Mrs Prendersley's cooked body which had somehow become impregnated into my clothing, like the odour of
a strong cigar, and I felt my gorge rise. I pulled my hip flask out of my pocket and swallowed a burning mouthful of brandy.

  Gradually my stomach relaxed. Beads of sweat stood out on my forehead, and I felt hot and weak.

  'I cannot accept it,' I muttered finally. 'I am a physician. There must be some cause for Mrs Prendersley's death.'

  'You find yourself paddling in the shallows of mystery, unaware of the currents, oblivious to the nearby depths. As Shakespeare so nearly put it: there are more things in heaven and earth, Watson, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'

  'Nonsense,' I blustered unconvincingly. 'The world is rational. Everything has a cause, a reason. All that remains is to discover it.'

  The Doctor said nothing, but raised his arms over his head so that his umbrella was pointing at the tumultuous clouds overhead. A fresh gust of wind stirred the ripples of the jittering lake to greater heights. He chanted something in the teeth of the wind, hurling the words into the skies. Slowly he lowered his arms towards the water. I moved back, suddenly aware that I was alone with a madman and that my revolver was in the drawer of my desk back in Baker Street.

  The tip of the Doctor's umbrella touched the water, and the waves vanished in a circle around it, some twenty feet across. Where there had been a storm in miniature upon the face of the Serpentine, a spreading area of the lake lay placid and still. I stared, astounded, at the transformation.

  'I don't believe it!'

  The Doctor turned towards me.

  'There is a reason for everything,' he said. 'But not necessarily an obvious one. I will see you tomorrow.'

  And with that he walked off, into the dark. I gazed after him for a few moments, then back at the lake, where feathery ripples were just beginning to stir its surface. A gust of wind caught my hat and almost snatched it from my head.

  The fire which had been lit across the far side of the lake glowed with an inviting warmth. I was tired and cold, mystified and hungry, and I wanted to be home. I flapped my arms a few times to get my circulation moving, then turned to leave.

  A spindly figure scurried in front of the fire.

  A sudden shudder ran through me, but it wasn't due to the cold. That shape

  . . . Although I had seen it but briefly, there had been something unnatural about it, something thin and febrile, and urgent. I listened intently, but apart from the rustle of leaves and the occasional cry of a goose, I heard nothing.

  Eventually, feeling rather foolish, I walked off towards the nearest gate, and a hansom to take me home.

  '. . . And I cannot tell you how unsettling it was to see the lake go from a state resembling the English Channel in winter to one like my shaving bowl in the morning!'

  Holmes glanced across reprovingly from the other side of the table. We had just polished off a brace of woodcock with all the trimmings, accompanied by an appealing little Montrachet and followed by a spotted dick with custard. I was replete and content, and had spent most of the meal regaling Holmes with the events of the day.

  Holmes had eaten well. He varied between times of immense gluttony and periods when he would pick at his food like a bird, but today, to the great pleasure of Mrs Hudson, he ate all that she placed before him with relish.

  He had kept up a constant.string of questions concerning my tale -

  descriptions of Mrs Prendersly's room, her clothes, the weather, any unusual sights or sounds in the room - but I could tell that he was no nearer an explanation of her death than I was.

  'That,' he said tersely, 'is perhaps the simplest element of this entire case.'

  'Nonsense, Holmes. The man is a magician. He has powers beyond human imagining. I would not be surprised...' and I lowered my voice, as if the Doctor could hear me from wherever he had gone for the night, '. . . if he was responsible for that poor woman's fate. Who knows what powers he might have?'

  'No more than any other mortal.'

  Holmes retrieved his slipper from the fireplace. Whilst Mrs Hudson cleared the plates away and retired, he removed tobacco from it and packed it into his old black clay pipe, the unsavoury companion of his deepest meditations. I poured myself a glass of port to round the meal off.

  'You have mistaken the superficial for the deep,' he explained, applying a match to the bowl and sucking deeply. 'Ah, that is better. This death is a nasty business, quite a four-pipe problem. No, the matter of the lake is easily solved. You have all the information in your hands, Watson. You are starting from a position where you do not believe it is possible, then trying to explain it. I, however, assume that it is perfectly possible, then attempt to use whatever clues I have to cast light upon the means.'

  'I'm not sure I follow.'

  'Let us start from the facts. The lake calmed. What can have that effect upon disturbed water?'

  'Why . . . nothing, surely. Nothing but witchcraft.'

  'I have told you before, Watson, there is nothing in this world but that which we make ourselves. Have you never heard of the phrase, "pouring oil on troubled waters"?'

  'Why, yes. I had always taken it for a figure of speech.'

  'One with a basis in truth. Oil can indeed calm waves, if of the correct consistency. It reduces the surface tension of the water, decreasing its ability to form peaks and troughs.' He sucked noisily upon the pipe. 'I would commend you to a study of the classics, Watson, especially Bede's Ecclesiastical History of AD 731, in which he relates how St Aidan gave a vial of oil to a priest who was about to undertake a sea voyage, saying:

  "Remember to throw into the sea the oil which I give you, when straight-away the winds will abate, and a calm and smiling sea will accompany you throughout your voyage". A veritable miracle, for those unaware of the trick.'

  'But the Doctor . . .?'

  'His umbrella was hollow, and contained a reservoir of oil. The raising of hands and the chanting were designed partly for atmosphere and partly to distract your attention whilst he used some form of release mechanism to liberate the oil. Benjamin Franklin, the American inventor and politician, used to carry out the same trick, I am reliably informed, and for the same reason: to impress credulous observers with his powers.'

  'But Holmes,' I protested, 'this is all pure speculation.'

  'Not so, Watson. Remember the pool of oil in our coat rack earlier, when the Doctor removed his umbrella? A leak, I think you will find.'

  He smiled triumphantly, then frowned as his mind recalled other matters.

  'If only the death of Mrs Prendersly were as amenable to reason.'

  'Did you have any success with your own expedition?' I ventured.

  'A certain amount,' he replied, moving from the table to his favourite chair, close to the fire. 'After checking that Doctor Minor was still safely ensconced within the high walls of Broadmoor, I had decided to take a look at Mack "The Knife" Yeovil, one of the men who supposedly hold the security of the Library in their hands and who, incidentally, are involved in much of the pickpocketing, extortion, prostitution and gaming between here and Whitechapel. An odd choice by the Vatican, one might say'

  I settled back in my chair whilst Holmes described, in dry and humourless terms, a picture of the dregs of society upon which Dickens could have dined out for years. Despite his jibes at my nascent literary hobby, Holmes had no ability at story-telling. Thus, for the sake of my readers, I have refrained from repeating Holmes's words as he spoke them: rather, I have taken the broad flow of events and woven them into a more pleasing narrative. This, then, is what he told me.

  The smell of roasting chestnuts and excited animals hung like a miasma over the Hackney marshes. Holmes, disguised in fake whiskers, shabby moleskin trousers, a check shirt and a leather jerkin, moved through the crowd with a sullen expression on his face and a cloth cap pulled down over his eyes. He had been working his way gradually inward from the fringes of the throng for some time: moving slowly so as not to excite suspicion and keeping his ears alert for any conversations which might prove of interest.

  It had taken n
o great stretch of his abilities to determine the location of Yeovil. The entire underworld had been buzzing for months with word of the bareknuckle fight to end them all. The location had only been decided at the last moment, in order to deny the police the chance of stopping it, but all anybody had to do on the day was to ask in any pub or bawdy house, and they would be told. 'Ackney's the place. Go to 'Ackney. Everybody'll be there.'

  Everybody, in this instance, would certainly mean the man who headed one of the biggest and most dangerous gangs in London. Hackney was traditionally on Yeovil's patch, although the word over the past few days was that Mr Jitter was also going to be there, and that some rough justice would be meted out to a couple of unfortunates who had transgressed the brutal and unwritten code of the underworld. Holmes had a shrewd idea who those people might be.

  A train from Liverpool Street had deposited Holmes within walking distance of the fight, and the steady stream of people heading into the low bushes and sparse grassland of the marshes was sign enough that he was in the right area. He slouched along, hands in pockets, watching, without appearing to, for Yeovil or Jitter.