‘So it doesn’t mention him being shot, then?’ I said, remembering the corpse in the iron coffin, and the round hole in its forehead. ‘Not shot and then eaten?’
‘Nothing about that at all. But it’s quite possible the newspaper didn’t get the story entirely right. Some of the specifics may have been missed or left out.’
Lockwood nodded. ‘That whole rats story sounds daft to me. Find other newspaper accounts?’
‘Not as many as you might expect. You’d think the rats would have made all the front pages, but there’s very little. It’s almost as if the story was being deliberately suppressed. But I did find a few references, some extra details. One theme that keeps coming up is that Bickerstaff had a nasty habit of hanging around graveyards after dark.’
‘No shame in that,’ I said, crunching on a gherkin. ‘We do that too.’
‘We aren’t seen creeping home after midnight with a bulging bag over our shoulders, and grave-dirt dripping from our shovels. One paper says he’d sometimes have a servant lad with him, poor kid dragging heaven knows what behind him in a heavy sack.’
‘Hard to believe no one arrested him,’ I said. ‘If there were witnesses . . .’
‘It may be that he had friends in high-ish places,’ George went on. ‘I’ll get to that in a minute. Anyway, a couple of years later the Gazette reports that someone went into Bickerstaff’s house – it had been standing empty; I guess no one wanted to buy it – and discovered a secret panel in the living room. And behind that panel they found . . .’ He chuckled, paused dramatically. ‘You’ll never guess.’
‘A body,’ I said.
‘Bones.’ Lockwood took some crisps.
George’s face fell. ‘Yeah. Oh, I suppose I’d given you the clue. Anyway, yes, they found all sorts of body parts stacked in a hidden room. Some of them seemed very old. This confirmed that the good doctor had been going round digging up things he shouldn’t, but precisely why he should do so wasn’t clear.’
‘And this didn’t make the headlines, either?’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ve got to admit that’s odd.’
‘What about Bickerstaff’s friends?’ I said, frowning. ‘Didn’t Joplin say there was a whole gang of them?’
George nodded. ‘Yes, and I made progress here. One article gave the names of two of his supposed associates, people who were meant to have been at this final gathering at his house. They were young aristocrats named’ – he consulted some notes for a moment – ‘Lady Mary Dulac and the Honourable Simon Wilberforce. Both were rich, with reputations for being interested in strange ideas. Anyway, get this . . .’ George’s eyes glinted. ‘From other references I’ve found it seems Bickerstaff wasn’t the only one to disappear in 1877. Dulac and Wilberforce also vanished around that same time.’
‘What, as in never-seen-again vanished?’ I said.
‘Right. Well, certainly in Wilberforce’s case.’ He grinned at us. ‘Of course there were rewards offered, questions asked in Parliament, but no one seems to have openly made the connection with Bickerstaff. Some people must have known, though. I think it was hushed up. Anyway, now we move on ten years, to the sudden reappearance of Mary Dulac . . .’ He rummaged in his stack of papers. ‘Where is it? I’m sure I had it. Ah, here we go. I’ll read it to you. It’s from the Daily Telegraph, in the summer of 1886 – a long time after the Bickerstaff affair:
‘Madwoman Captured: The so-called “Wild-woman of Chertsey Forest”, a scrawny vagabond whose demented howls have caused consternation in this wooded district for several weeks, has at last been apprehended by police. Under interrogation at the town hall, the lunatic, who gave her name as Mary or May Dulac, claimed to have been living like a beast for many years. Her ravings, matted hair and hideous appearance disturbed several gentlemen present, and she was quickly removed to Chertsey Asylum.’
A silence fell after George finished.
‘Is it just me,’ Lockwood said, ‘or do bad things happen to people who have anything to do with Bickerstaff?’
‘Let’s hope that doesn’t include us,’ I said.
‘I haven’t got to the bottom of the Dulac business yet,’ George added. ‘I want to go to Chertsey, check out the Records Office there. The asylum was shut in 1904. Among the items listed as being removed from its library and taken to the Records Office at the time was something called “The Confessions of Mary Dulac”. To me, that sounds worth reading.’
‘It certainly does,’ Lockwood agreed. ‘Though I suppose, being a madwoman’s confessions, it might just be about eating bugs and things in the woods. Still, you never know. Well done, George. This is excellent.’
‘It’s just a shame there’s nothing about that mirror,’ George said. ‘It killed that guy Neddles in the cemetery, and it did something weird to me. I can’t help wondering if it was involved in Bickerstaff’s death as well. Anyway, I’ll keep looking. The only other interesting thing I found out was about that hospital Bickerstaff worked at – Green Gates Sanatorium on Hampstead Heath.’
‘Joplin said it burned down, didn’t he?’ I said.
‘Yeah. In 1908, with quite a loss of life. The site remained undeveloped for more than fifty years, until someone tried building a housing estate there.’
Lockwood whistled. ‘What were they thinking? Who builds houses on the site of an old Victorian hospital that burned down in tragic circumstances?’
George nodded. ‘I know. It’s almost the first rule of planning. As you’d expect, there were enough supernatural disturbances for the project to be shelved. But when I was looking at the plans I discovered something. Most of the site’s just grassland now: a few walls, overgrown ruins. But there is one building standing.’
We looked at him. ‘You mean . . .’
‘Turns out Bickerstaff’s house was set slightly away from the main part of the hospital. It wasn’t touched by the fire. It’s still there.’
‘Used for what?’ I said.
‘Nothing. It’s derelict, I think.’
‘As you’d expect, given its history. Who in their right mind would go there?’ Lockwood sat back in his chair. ‘Great work, George. Tomorrow you nip down to Chertsey. Lucy and I will try to pick up Jack Carver’s trail – though how we’ll do that, I haven’t a clue. He’s well and truly disappeared. Right, I’m off upstairs. I’m totally bushed, plus it’s high time I got out of these shorts.’
He made to rise. At that moment there was a knock at the front door. Two knocks. A brisk tap-tap.
We looked at each other. One after another we slowly pushed our chairs back and went out into the hall.
The knocking came again.
‘What time is it, George?’ Lockwood didn’t need to ask, really. There was a carriage clock on the mantelpiece, a grandfather clock in the corner and, from his parents’ collection, an African dream-catching timepiece that told the hour using ostrich feathers, cheetah bones and a revolving nautilus shell. One way and another, we knew what time it was.
‘Twenty minutes to midnight,’ George said. ‘Late.’
Far too late for any mortal visitor. None of us actually said this, but it was what we were all thinking.
‘You replaced that loose tile in the iron line, of course, Lucy,’ Lockwood said as we looked down past the coats and the table with the crystal lantern. The only lights in the hall were the faint yellow spears spilling out from the kitchen. Various tribal totems hovered in the fuzzy half-dark; the door itself could not be seen.
‘Almost,’ I said.
‘Almost finished?’