Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“The brother?” I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. “Yes. I have seen him. He is not a fiend. He is as innocent of this crime as you are, Fred.” At this moment, I sank my head and wept.

Fred became agitated, hopping from one leg to the other. “Would you care for more butter, sir?” He rushed out of the room, and came back with a handkerchief that he placed delicately beside my chair. I cried for myself-I cried for Daniel-I cried for Harriet-the whole storm of tears all the darker for the absence of any possible relief. Mr. Garnett had advised me to leave London, and for an instant I thought of travelling to Marlow to be with Bysshe, but a moment’s consideration dissuaded me. I still wished to encounter the creature: if I could not placate him, or persuade him to retire to some solitary place, I would somehow have to end the life that I had created. There was no other course. He had overturned my electrical machines in the Limehouse workshop, but might there be some way of harnessing the batteries and of destroying him?

IN MY EAGERNESS to hear news of Daniel I went back to Bartholomew Close the next day, where Mr. Garnett welcomed me with a grave countenance. “I can offer you very little hope,” he said. “The evidence is very powerful. It seems that your friend-that Mr. Westbrook-has almost confessed to the crime.”

“How could he confess to that which he did not commit?”

“When he was apprehended at the Serpentine, he was confused and scarcely intelligible.”

“He had just been rudely awaken from sleep.”

“He muttered that something dreadful had happened to his sister.”

“A premonition. A vision.”

“The law places no trust in visions, Mr. Frankenstein.” He went over to the window, and once more looked over the churchyard of St. Bartholomew’s. “Will you be staying in London, after all?”

“I must remain for a few days.”

“Of course. The funeral of Mrs. Shelley is to be conducted on Friday. Would you wish me to accompany you?”

“No. That is kind of you. But I will go with Bysshe.”

“At the church of St. Barnabas. In Whitechapel.” He wrote down the locality, and the time, upon a card. “Please pay my compliments to Mr. Shelley.”

AS SOON AS I RETURNED to Jermyn Street I summoned Fred, and asked him to travel with all possible speed to Marlow. “Change coaches if you must,” I told him. “Fly like the wind. Take this note with you.” I scribbled a message begging him to abandon his isolation and return for Harriet’s funeral. “Do not rest,” I said as I pressed the note into his hand.

“I am here,” he said. “But I am gone already.”

“Mr. Shelley will not be difficult to find.”

“Odd cove, I shall say. Dressed in blue. Cravat untied.”

I awaited their return with eagerness. Mr. Garnett was a good prognosticator: the fogs did arrive, early that afternoon, and I could see nothing from my window but the curling grey and green vapours stirred by a fitful wind. I could make out the figures in the street only vaguely, just as dark shapes against the shifting miasma. There were occasions when a figure taller, or faster, than others arrested my attention. Could it be the creature pacing up and down beside my door? In my restless state of mind I could almost have welcomed the confrontation-I was resolute in my intention to tame him.

On the following afternoon I heard the step of Fred upon the stairs. He came into the room alone. “Where is Mr. Shelley?”

“He sends his regrets, sir. He was ever so tearful.”

Fred then handed me a letter, addressed to me in Bysshe’s characteristic large and sprawling hand. He apologised for remaining in Marlow, but blamed his wretched and enfeebled state; he did not have the strength to attend Harriet’s funeral, which would only add another burden of woe to the sorrow he now felt. Although he bitterly remonstrated with himself for his incapacity, he knew that it would be a blow to shatter him:

I cannot as yet comprehend Harriet’s death, and to see her lowered in a few feet of churchyard earth, and to hear the nonsense of the parson, would diminish the significance of her loss to me.

He then went on to inform me that the Godwins had taken a house at Marlow to be near him:

I have spoken before of Mr. Godwin, the social philosopher. He is a great exponent of Progress, and offers me much comfort. He is accompanied by his daughter, Mary, who is the child of the revered Mary Wollstonecraft. Mr. Godwin tells me that she has all of her mother’s fire and intelligence. I can quite believe it. Pray kiss the Westbrook sisters for me. I will be writing to them. Your ever devoted Bysshe.

I was surprised by the brevity of the letter, and by Bysshe’s reluctance to be present at the funeral, but I ascribed both to his overwhelming grief.

I ATTENDED THE FUNERAL on that Friday morning, in the little church of St. Barnabas just beyond the Whitechapel High Road. Harriet’s sisters were blank with grief. Emily was carrying the infant, Ianthe, who remained quite silent throughout the ceremony. Once I had looked upon Emily with affection, but the faint stirrings of that emotion had long since left me. Their father seemed more robust and, if I may say it, more cheerful than on the occasion when I had last encountered him. It was snowing thickly when we stepped into the churchyard, and the open grave was already fringed with white when poor Harriet’s coffin was laid into the soil. Just as it reached the level earth there was a sudden rustling in the bank of trees behind us, as if someone or something was thrashing in the branches. I am convinced that all of us at that moment experienced a sudden horror-for me it was evidence of the creature, as I thought, but for the others the object of some unknown fear.

“A fox,” Mr. Westbrook said in a loud voice. “The little foxes that spoil the vines.”

Emily came up to me afterwards, still holding Ianthe in her arms. “Daniel’s trial is set for Monday morning,” she said. “Will you come?”

“Of course.”

“Is there hope?”

“I cannot pretend to you, Emily, that I harbour any.”

“I thought not. But you will be there?” I promised once more to attend. “Mr. Shelley has written to us about Ianthe.”

“He told me so.”

“He strongly desires that we should continue to be her guardians. It is what we wish to do.”

“She could have no better care.”

“We will teach her to respect her father and to venerate the memory of her mother.” I was struck, as I had been on first meeting her, by Emily’s strength of purpose.

I WENT TO THE COURT OF JUSTICE at the Old Bailey on that Monday morning; the Sessions House, where the trial was to be held, looked to me more like a cardboard puppet theatre than a place of justice. The judge was adorned with scarlet and white, and he held a linen handkerchief up to his nose to ward off the lingering putrescence of gaol fever. The jurors sat on two rows of benches on the left-hand side of the court; they were London rate-payers, of course, with all the smugness and self-sufficiency of their type. There was a large crowd in the body of the courtroom itself, made up of shopmen and apprentices, of vagrant boys and ballad singers, of anyone who had no other pastime or occupation that afternoon. There were reporters and sketch-makers there, too, all of them causing an incessant bustle and noise. It was very like watching the activity of a London street. On the right-hand side of the court was a small wooden witness box into which, much to the excitement of the spectators, Daniel was now led. His wrists were bound with manacles, and he was wearing the same clothes that I had seen on him in the cell at Clerkenwell. The judge then called all those present to be silent, as a prayer was intoned by the clerk of the court to the Divine Judge who-it must be presumed-would watch over these proceedings. Daniel did not join in the prayer, but stood calmly looking down at his manacled hands. Then, in a round and portentous voice, one of the attorneys sitting at a table immediately beneath the judge began to read out the charges. Daniel stood almost at attention, without any perceptible movement; he was intent upon every word, as if it were a story of someone else’s crime. When the attorney had finished his account, Daniel looked around at the court with an expression of impatience.