“Mr. Cola, sir, I must ask you a question. How much does Dr. Lower pay?”
I took a moment before I understood what she was talking about. “You mean…?”
“I understand he buys bodies,” she said, frighteningly calm now. “How much does he pay? Because I am willing for him to have mine if he will undertake to look after my mother. Please do not look so uncomfortable. It is the only thing I have left to sell, and I will not be needing it,” she concluded simply.
“I—I—I do not know. It depends on the condition of—ah…”
“Will you ask him for me? I am thought to have sold my body while alive, so it will hardly be a scandal if I sell it again when I am dead.”
Even Lower, I think, would have had trouble with such a conversation; I found it quite beyond my powers. Could I say that, after the pyre, even Lower would not want what remained? I stammered that I would mention it to him, but was desperately keen to change the subject.
“You must not abandon hope,” I said. “Are you planning what you will say?”
“How can I?” she asked. “I barely know what I am charged with; I cannot know who is to give evidence against me. I have no one on my side, unless someone like yourself, doctor, will attest to my good character.”
A fraction of a second’s hesitation was enough for her. “There you are,” she said softly. “You see? Who is to help me?”
She looked intently at me as she waited my reply. I did not want to respond; it had not been my intention of coming, but somehow I could not resist her. “I do not know,” I said eventually. “I would have liked to, but I cannot explain Dr. Grove’s ring.”
“What ring?”
“The one stolen from his body, and discovered by Jack Prestcott. He told me all about it.”
The moment my answer registered I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that my suspicions were true, and that the magistrate had done his job well. She had murdered Grove. She turned pale when the import of my words hit home. She could have explained almost everything else in one way or another, but she could find no answer to this charge.
“Well, Sarah?” I said when she kept silent.
“It seems there is no escape for me, then. I think it time you went away.” It was a resigned, pathetic statement, very much the words of one who realized her deeds were finally proved beyond doubt.
“Are you not going to answer? You will have to answer the court if you do not answer me. So how do you defend yourself against the charge that you killed Grove for revenge, and stole from his body as it lay on the floor?”
The whirlwind which hit me then was one of the greatest shocks in my life. Suddenly transformed from submission, the true features of the girl were suddenly revealed as, snarling with hatred and frustration, she lunged at me, tearing at my face with her nails, eyes wild with madness. Fortunately the chains around her wrist and ankle restrained her, or I swear she would have had my eyes out. As it was I fell backward onto a foul-smelling old woman who instantly reached inside my coat for my purse. I cried out in alarm, and within a few seconds a jailer came in to rescue me, kicking the prisoners, and clubbing Sarah to calm her down. She fell back onto the pallet, screaming and crying harder than I have ever heard any person cry before.
I stared appalled at the monster before me, then collected myself enough to assure the anxious jailer that I was unhurt, apart from a scratch down my cheek, and stood at a safe distance, gulping the foul air to get my breath back.
“If I ever had any doubts about you,” I said, “they are gone now. For your mother’s sake I will speak to Lower. But do not expect anything further from me.”
And I left, so glad to escape the hellish place and the demons within it, that I went straight to the nearest tavern to recover myself. My hands were still shaking half an hour later.
Although my mind was now at rest about the girl’s guilt, I cannot say that I was contented in any other way. On the contrary; to be in the presence of such evil is profoundly disturbing, and the manifestation I had witnessed was not forgotten so easily. When I left the tavern, I was much in need of company, to have my mind taken off the sights and the sounds I had encountered. Had my relations with Lower been easier, his natural manner would have restored me. But I had no desire to see him and did not do so until I remembered the girl’s request; for my patient’s sake, and because I had given her my word, I felt obliged to deliver the message, however futile it might be.
Lower, however, was not to be found in any of his usual haunts, nor was he in his rooms at Christ Church. I asked, and eventually someone told me that he had seen him with Locke and the mathematician Christopher Wren an hour or so previously. As Wren still maintained rooms at Wadham, I should perhaps try there.
I was keen to meet this young man in any case, as I had heard much about him during my stay, and so I went there, asking at the gate where he was and whether he had company. He was with friends, I was told, and had asked not to be disturbed. Porters always say this, of course, so I ignored the advice and walked swiftly up the stairs to the gatehouse room where Wren lived, knocked and went in.
The shock upon entering was considerable. Wren, a short, neat man with flowing locks and a not unpleasing countenance, looked annoyed as I walked into the room and stopped, staring, at the sight which I beheld. Locke had a kind of smirk on his face, like a child caught in some prank, glad to have his naughtiness known to the world. My friend, my very good friend, Richard Lower, at least had the goodness to be discountenanced and embarrassed to have his deceit so exposed that there was no possibility of any doubt about what was taking place.
For on a wide deal table in the middle of the room, a dog was strapped, whining piteously, and rolling its eyes in distress as it struggled to free itself. Next to it was another, more resigned to the torture it was being forced to endure. A long thin tube ran from the neck of one to that of the other, and blood from the incisions made in the necks of each had splattered onto Locke’s apron and onto the floor.
They were transfusing blood. Repeating my experiment in secret. Concealing their deeds from me, the person who had best right to be informed of what they were doing. I could not believe I had been so betrayed.
Lower recovered first. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said without even having the courtesy to present me to Wren. “I must absent myself for a while.”
He took off his apron, and threw it onto the floor, then asked me to accompany him into the garden. I dragged my eyes from the scene that so assaulted my spirits, and followed angrily down the stairs.
We walked around the gardens, criss-crossing the box hedges and patches of grass at random for several moments while I kept silent, waiting for him to explain himself.
“Not my fault, Cola,” he said after a very long while had passed. “Please accept my apologies. It was unforgivable of me to behave in such a way.”
The shock had still not passed, and I could find no words.
“Locke, you see, told Wren of the experiment we—you—had devised for Mrs. Blundy, and he was so excited that he insisted on repeating it. It detracts not a whit from your own achievement, you know. We merely plod along in your footsteps, emulating the master.”
He grinned sheepishly, and turned to see how his apology was being received. I was resolved to remain cold.
“The barest courtesy demanded that you inform me, even if you could not bring yourself to invite my attendance.”
A grimace replaced the smile. “True,” he said. “And I am properly sorry for it. I did look for you, but didn’t know where you were. And Wren wants to go back to London this afternoon, you see…”
“So you betray one friend to accommodate another,” I interrupted coldly.
This justified comment disconcerted him considerably, and he pretended to become angry. “What betrayal? Once an idea is conceived, it does not remain the property of the person who imagined it first. We do not deny your achievement, nor did we plan to keep it a secret from you. You were not there; that is all there is to the matter. I did not know that Wren was so keen to try it out until I encountered him this morning.”