Bruce Alexander - The Color of Death

“All I can say, sir, is that she seemed quite sure.”

“Yes, well … perhaps.” He lapsed into silence, but I said nothing, for it seemed quite certain that he would have more to add. “The fact is,” he resumed (confirming my supposition), “I do remember this fellow John Abernathy. I remember his voice as he called curses upon me. He was angry at me because of the case I had assembled against him. I had a number of his robbery victims from years past right there in magistrate’s court. One after the next, they identified him as the thief who had robbed them at sword-point, at pistol-point, whatever. The case against him was as sure as any that ever I sent on to Old Bailey. I’ve no idea what happened to him there, however. I was on to other things. He could have been sentenced to transportation, rather than the rope, I suppose.” He tested that in his mind for a moment. Then did he add: “Not really very likely, though.”

“Perhaps I might invite Maude Bleeker here, sir,” I suggested, “and you might hear her story for yourself.”

“No! no! no!” He flapped his hand irritably. “It would do no good, or very little, unless we knew what had become of Mr. Abernathy — how he had been sentenced, et cetera. And Jeremy, I fear I must ask you to find that information for me. It will be in the file. If the cook is correct, and all this happened twelve years past, then you shall have to look for it in the cellar.”

My heart sank. I greatly disliked digging through the files in the best of circumstances. But what to me was quite the worst was searching through those dusty files in the cellar; I had no idea how I might go about it, now that Clarissa had rearranged them.

As if reading my mind, Sir John remarked, “It will give you an opportunity to learn the new filing system. I’ll urge Clarissa to help.”

Through it all, Mr. Donnelly had stood and listened, apparently quite fascinated, to my report to Sir John and the discussion that followed. Sir John had stated his intention to sit up and have dinner with “the family.” The surgeon had consented, and in celebration Annie had made a special trip to Covent Garden that she might get from our butcher, Mr. Tolliver, a piece of meat worthy of the occasion. And so, I buttoned Sir John’s shirt and helped him gingerly into his coat.

Mr. Donnelly asked the magistrate s permission to take me downstairs with him. “I have,” he said, “a few things to discuss with Jeremy.”

Sir John, assuming those few things would have to do with his treatment, granted permission indifferently, though he warned the surgeon he would not likely take any of the cures that were prescribed. “Food and drink are all I shall allow inside me,” said he. “I saw what the learned doctors did to my poor Kitty.”

(He referred, reader, to his dear first wife, who had died of a tumor four years before; she was grossly mistreated by a series of doctors with potions and medicaments until Mr. Donnelly came along and properly diagnosed her malady, yet was too late to do more than ease her passing.)

“I shall keep that in mind, Sir John,” said the surgeon. “In the meantime, do you wish to be assisted up to your bed for a rest before dinner?”

“No, I shall take my rest here at the table. Annie should be along soon to keep me company.”

And thus did I accompany Mr. Donnelly down the stairs and to the door to Bow Street. It was there at the door, in the dim light provided by the small window above the lintel, that we had our discussion.

“I called you down,” said he, “because I have two matters that I wished to talk to you about.”

“By all means, let us talk, sir.”

“The first matter has to do with Mr. Robb.”

“Robb?” Oddly, the name meant little to me, spoken thus by him. Yet it took but a moment to puzzle my way to the proper answer. “Ah,” said I, ” you mean the butler at the Trezavant residence. I knew him as Arthur.”

“Yes, he is the one. I saw him earlier today at St. Bart’s, and I must say I was not pleased by his condition. He speaks and is occasionally conscious, though perhaps not fully. I’m told by the caretakers at the hospital that these periods, short at best, are becoming rarer and, well, shorter. I believe that he is slipping into a coma state — a deep sleep from which he will never waken. Death will soon follow.”

“There is nothing that can be done to save him?”

“I know not what it would be. He is old — I have no idea how old. His brain has had a great shock. He has only taken a bit of water since his arrival in St. Bart’s, and if he goes into a coma, he will not be able even to take that. Without water, without nourishment, he will surely die of thirst or hunger.”

“How terrible,” said I.

“Yes, it is, but I do not tell you simply to draw sympathy from you. I know that you have questions for him. My advice to you is to go to him at the hospital and put them to him during one of his intervals of consciousness — that is, if you can catch him during one of these.”

“I shall,” I promised. “I’ll go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow may be too late.”

“Oh … well, do they allow visitors at night?”

“I foresaw this,” said he, as he removed a letter from his pocket, “and wrote out a kind of pass for you which should enable you to visit Mr. Robb at any time of the day or night.”

Taking the letter as it was offered, I thanked him and promised to get to St. Bartholomew’s as soon as ever I could. “But,” I added, ” you heard of my duties of this evening.”

“I did, yes, and that brings me to the second matter I wished to speak to you about. When I found you there at the Trezavant house, doing the sort of work always done in the past by Sir John, I thought, Indeed, why not? Sir John could not go. Jeremy has always been with him on these visits to the setting of the crime and knows which questions to ask; and I’m sure you did a good, workmanlike job there.”

“Well, I tried, but — ”

“Let me finish. That was my impression then, but as I listened to your report to Sir John, I was struck by what you had accomplished with your investigation. You’d made it your own. You brought important information to him. He knows it, and will use it, though he would not let you see that.”

“But why?” I interjected. “Why is he so guarded with me? Why will he show no enthusiasm — no satisfaction even — for what I bring him? No matter what it may be, he always gives me the feeling that somehow I have fallen short. Wasn’t it so today?”

He conceded it was so. But then he continued: “I had a teacher at the University of Vienna, a teacher of anatomy, which for one who wishes to be a surgeon, is probably the body of knowledge most important of all. His name was Grabermann, which translates roughly as gravedigger, if I’m not mistaken. In any case, I was quite certain that he was digging my grave for me. Though I tried to please him, studied tirelessly for his lectures, and answered all his questions correctly, I was constantly exposed to the bite of his sarcasm. He never accepted what I had to say without some belittling comment, and sometimes such were tossed out quite gratuitously. His object? Well, I never could quite grasp what was his object. And so, you can imagine my surprise when I heard from one of my friends, also a medical student, that he had heard our Professor Grabermann commending me to another member of the medical faculty as ‘the most knowledgeable and promising of all his students.’ I was astonished, so much so that when his course of lectures in anatomy was done, I went to him and asked him how I might reconcile his treatment of me with his opinion of me. He thought that very bold and said so, but because it was bold he responded. ‘My dear young fellow,’ said he to me, ‘I kept returning to you for answers to my questions for I could be sure that you would give me the right answers. Yet I could tell that you wished most of all to please me with the answers. You sought my approval, where as my personal approval had nothing to do with the subject of anatomy, nothing at all. And so, Herr Donnelly, I derided you, made sport of you before the class so that you might understand that anatomy was all-important and my approval, nothing.’ “