Peter Ackroyd - The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

“I have not seen Martha this morning,” Bysshe replied. “She will be at the market.”

“I will speak to her when she returns.”

We did not mention the incident in the night, but I noticed that Miss Godwin and Bysshe exchanged glances of a private kind: I could not help but think that my friend was growing greatly attached to her. After the meal was over Bysshe repeated his proposal for an expedition on the river. The storm had passed, and the sky was clear. What better morning for a jaunt upon the Thames? Mr. Godwin was enthusiastic at the prospect, and so his daughter dutifully assented. I merely followed the general wish.

We sauntered from the house down the main street towards the river. The Godwins walked ahead, and Bysshe took the opportunity of discussing with me the events of the previous night. “Mary has seen phantoms before,” he said.

“Do you mean ghosts? Spirits?”

“No. Creatures that seem to be of flesh and blood. But they are not truly alive. She dreams of them often.”

“She has not seen one in reality?”

“Of course not. Whatever are you thinking?”

“Thinking of nothing.”

“She knows that they exist only in her sleeping mind. But they scare her. Ah, the river beckons.”

Bysshe had hired a skiff for the duration of his stay, and he kept the vessel by Marlow Bridge. It was large enough for us all, and he took the oars with some aplomb, guiding us from the bank into the main current of the river. In his enthusiasm he began to recite a poem that I did not recognise, but that seemed to be of his own composition:

“O stream,

Whose source is inaccessibly profound,

Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?

Thou imagest my life!”

“That is very fine,” Miss Godwin said. She trailed the fingers of her left hand in the water. “Where is the source?”

“Some say that it is Thames Head. Others insist that it lies at Seven Springs. There is great debate about the matter.”

“Which do you favour?” she asked him.

“I do not understand why a river cannot have two sources. A living being requires two parents, does it not?”

“It is believed,” Mr. Godwin said, “that some molluscs are auto-generative.”

“Too painful to contemplate,” Bysshe replied. We passed a small island in the middle of the river, where two swans were resting. “Faithful until death,” he said.

Miss Godwin looked at him for a moment, and then resumed her contemplation of the water. “It used to be said that the swans greeted the ships sailing home with song,” she said to no one in particular. “But how can that be so?”

“Precisely,” Mr. Godwin said. “They are mute swan.”

“I hope to have a swan-like end, fading in music,” Bysshe replied.

“I would rather prefer swan pie.”

So we continued downriver, following the current. Miss Godwin seemed to be lulled to sleep by the movement of the water, and for a moment closed her eyes. I hoped that she was not dreaming of phantoms. “What was that?” Bysshe asked suddenly.

Miss Godwin opened her eyes very wide. “What?”

“Over there. By the bank. I thought something reared its head and then went under the water.”

“An otter,” Mr. Godwin said. “I understand that they are common here.”

“It did not seem to be an otter. It was too big. Too awkward.” I looked in the direction Bysshe was pointing, and I did indeed notice some perturbation on the surface of the river; it was as if something had gone down to the bottom leaving its wake behind. Mary took her hand out of the water.

Bysshe eased the boat forward with a barely perceptible movement of the oars; the river was muddied, and I could see where the bank had been eroded by more than usual motion. And then I felt the first drops of rain. The sky, so clear before, had suddenly become overcast. The water turned from a lucent green to slate grey, and a cold breeze brushed across us. Bysshe looked up at the sky and laughed. “You see, Mary, you are especially favoured. The river wishes you to see all of its moods.”

“It is only a light rain,” she said.

“We will recline beneath the willow boughs. Here is the spot.”

He manoeuvred the skiff beneath the trailing branches of a willow leaning over the water; it was a natural shelter, of a kind I would once have relished, and my companions seemed happy to remain secluded amid the gentle pattering of the rain around us. Then Miss Godwin spoke in a low voice. “What is that? Oh God, what is it?”

Her eyes were fixed upon a stretch of water just beyond the tree. There was a hand among the trailing weeds, apparently clutching at them; and then on a motion of the current a face broke the surface of the water. A few moments later the whole body emerged, with a white linen nightgown billowing around it. “God, God, God.” Miss Godwin chanted the word.

“What is this frightful thing?”

I do not know who spoke. The words might have come from my own mouth.

Bysshe leapt from the bench and quickly steered the skiff towards the body; then with the oars he managed to push it against the bank, where it was caught amid the roots and weeds. He jumped from the boat onto the bank, and managed to haul the corpse on shore before it floated further downstream. “It cannot be,” he said. “This is Martha.” He stepped back, and stood at a short distance from the body without saying anything further. Miss Godwin clung to her father, and pressed her head against his jacket.

“Whatever has happened?” Godwin seemed genuinely puzzled, as if he had come upon a calculation he could not settle. I clambered out of the boat onto the shore, and surveyed Martha. Her body had been pinched and bruised in death, no doubt by immersion in the water, but there were also livid marks around her neck and upper thorax. I had no doubt that she had been strangled before being consigned to the river; Harriet Westbrook had met approximately the same fate in the Serpentine.

“I saw her last night,” Bysshe said. “She was eating ham in the kitchen.”

“With Fred.”

“She was brimful of laughter, as usual. What is to be done, Victor? What are we to make of this fearful thing?”

“We will be steady, Bysshe. We will take the body back to Marlow, and alert the parish constables. We must leave the matter in their hands.”

“Why would she have wished to drown herself?”

“I do not know that she did.”

“Could she have fallen into the river in some terrible accident?”

“Do you see the marks upon her neck and body? She was held in a powerful grip.”

He looked at me in horror. “Is that possible? That she was destroyed by someone?”

“I believe so. Now is not the time to debate, Bysshe. We must act with urgency. Come. Help me with the body.”

“I cannot touch her, Victor. I cannot.”

Miss Godwin would not stay in the skiff with the corpse of Martha. But with the help of her father I managed to place the body in the boat. It was agreed that Bysshe and Mr. Godwin would take it back to Marlow, while Miss Godwin and I would walk back along the bank to the town. We watched as the skiff slowly made its way upstream with its unhappy burden. She was silent as we began our walk beside the bank. “I know it is wrong of me,” she said eventually, “but I cannot help thinking of Ophelia. There is a willow grows aslant a brook. You know it, Mr. Frankenstein?”

“Please call me Victor.”

“We have gone beyond ceremony, I think. You shall call me Mary.”

“Ophelia drowned herself, did she not?”

“Her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death. Those are the words of the queen. Not mine.”

“I am afraid that Martha may not have been a suicide.”