“Finding his breath, I imagine,” one of the men replied.
“Or reflecting upon his next move. Where did he go?” I could see nothing in the field ahead, but then I noticed that the waters of the channel were muddied. “He has gone in,” I said. “He has followed the channel. It was deep enough for him to remain hidden.”
“Why would a man wish to take to water rather than land?” the man with the red scarf asked me.
“He may be no ordinary man.”
“A water demon then?” He was smiling at me.
“I cannot tell.”
Then we heard laughter-it was the most serene and melodious laugh that I had ever heard. And then came his voice. “I have been waiting for you, gentlemen. Do you wish to see me now?”
“Prepare your guns,” I said.
One of the men then shot wildly into the field. On the sound of the report I saw a movement in a copse some distance away-he had projected his voice by some physical means unknown to me-and then a dark shape bounded off. “He is gone,” I said. “You must alert the villagers in the neighbourhood. We do not have the means to overtake him.”
The men were disturbed by the manner of the creature’s flight-so sudden and so swift-and were subdued as they returned to Marlow. Some of them wondered out loud how any man could run at such a speed. “He must be possessed,” I said. “I have heard of such cases.”
I walked back slowly to Albion House, where Bysshe and the Godwins were sitting in the drawing room. “Mary wishes to return to London,” Bysshe said as soon as I came into the room. “She has become nervous of this place.”
“I do not believe the creature-the man-will come back,” I replied. “We saw him fleeing across the fields.”
“You saw him?” Mary was looking at me with the intentness I had noticed before. “What was he? What did he wear?”
“We saw only his running form. I believe that he was wrapped in a dark cloak. But I cannot be sure.”
“Did he speak?”
“Yes. He said something like, ‘I have been waiting for you, gentlemen.’ Then one of my party fired. He ran. That is all I can tell you.”
“Does that satisfy you, Mary?” her father asked.
“I will feel safe only in London, Pa. Here we are too-too vulnerable.”
“You and Fred can stay on,” Bysshe said to me. “You have only just arrived. And I doubt that the villain will come for you.”
“His actions are not predictable.”
“You think not?”
“That is my assumption. I am afraid, Bysshe, that I share Mary’s anxiety. Where is Fred?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Excuse me for a moment.” I went down into the kitchen where Fred was sitting at the table, stirring a bowl of milk pudding. “Are you composed, Fred?”
“She was a good girl. I liked Martha, Mr. Frankenstein. She was a cheerful one.”
“Did you hear anything in the night?”
“Not so much as a bed bug. The ham makes me sleep. The first thing I know of it is when the constable comes to the house. He was all in a sweat. When he told me, I could have fainted away. But I steadied myself. Was she bloated, sir? I’ve seen a few from the Thames.”
“She was bruised.”
“Where, sir?”
“Around the neck.”
He continued stirring the milk pudding. “That was not nice.”
“Not nice at all. The others are going back to London, Fred. Mr. Shelley has suggested that we can remain at Albion House.”
“Nothing here, sir. Just fields.”
“So you would like to return with them?” He looked at me. “Very well. We will go back.”
In truth I had no desire to be left in Marlow. I knew well enough that there was no safety from the creature, in any place on earth. But in London, at least, there was comfort in the massed ranks of people. Here, in the open, I felt afraid.
We could not, as it transpired, return at once. The parish constable came to inform us that, two days hence, we would be obliged to attend the coroner’s inquest; it would take place in an upper room of a public house along the high street.
“This is very unfortunate, Mr. Wilby.” Mr. Godwin had decided to remonstrate with him. “My daughter is in very low spirits as a consequence of this affair. She wishes to return to London.”
“It cannot be helped, sir. All Marlow is in a fever over this case. Justice must be seen to be done, sir.”
“Where is poor Martha?” Mary asked him.
“The deceased is lying in an ice-house. Behind the butcher’s shop in Lady Place. She will be a little damaged, but she will last.”
We spent the next two days in a state of some gloom; the rain continued, more intensely than before, and on one afternoon Bysshe read to us some stanzas from the poem he was then composing. Certain lines struck me very forcibly:
“I curse thee! Let a sufferer’s curse
Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse,
Till thine Infinity shall be
A robe of envenomed agony;
And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,
To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.”
“Very good,” Mr. Godwin remarked. “Very strong.”
“It is a powerful curse,” Mary said. “It issues from a broken heart.”
“I see the curse,” I said, “like a smoking plain, filled with fires and fissures from which billows of livid smoke erupt.”
They looked at me in surprise, and then Bysshe continued reading.
ON THE MORNING OF THE CORONER’S INQUEST, there was great excitement in the town. A crowd had gathered outside the public house, the Cat and Currant, where the proceedings were to be held; but, as soon as the beadle saw us, we were led with great ceremony through the townspeople and in single file mounted the staircase to the first-floor room. It smelled strongly of sawdust and spirits, with the aroma of beer and tobacco somewhere in the mixture; some tables had been pushed together in the middle of the room which, the beadle informed us, were reserved for the gentlemen of the jury. The coroner then walked in. He was dressed in clerical garb, and Bysshe whispered to me that he was indeed the rector of the parish church; he had seen him in the garden of his vicarage, pruning his vines. That gentleman was followed by the jurors; they entered the room with an air of solemn distinction, although I had seen one or two of them drinking ale in the parlour when we had first arrived. Then the people of Marlow crowded in, taking up every particle of space until the air became almost insupportable. Bysshe pointed out to me two or three gentlemen sitting at a table evidently reserved for them. “Penny-a-liners,” he said. “You can tell them from their cuffs. They will be reporting this for the public prints. The news has reached London.”
“Gentlemen-” The coroner began to speak.
“Silence!” called the beadle.
“Gentlemen. You have viewed the unfortunate young woman known as Martha Delaney.”
“I never knew her last name,” Mary whispered to me.
“You are impanelled here to ascertain the causes of her lamentable death. Evidence will be given before you, as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will give your verdict according to that evidence and not anything else. Anything else must be disregarded and blotted from the copybook.” Bysshe gave me an odd look of merriment. “A young lady is present here.” Bysshe assumed an expression of intense seriousness. “A young lady who may have seen the perpetrator of this foul crime. May I ask you to rise, Miss Godwin, and take the oath?” There was a general murmur of approval, from the people of Marlow, as Mary stood beside the jurors and recited the oath. But there was absolute silence when she recounted the events of that night. She had glimpsed a face at the window-“a leering countenance,” as she put it. When her scream woke the others in the house (she refrained from saying who they were) the intruder was gone. Mary had great skill in narrative, and added little touches of description to the simple story. Then she nodded to the coroner and resumed her seat, while the penny-a-liners were still busy with their pens. “Thank you, Miss Godwin, for that affecting testimony. Now I will call an eminent gentleman who, I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery of the death was made. I will call Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley.” There was a murmur of interest among those assembled, and evidence of the keenest attention among the penny-a-liners; they were no doubt aware, or had been informed, of the fate of Harriet. Bysshe stood beside the table of jurors but, when asked to take the oath, replied in a calm clear voice. “I will say to you, sir, that I swear to tell the truth before the eyes of my fellow men.”