Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“I’ll take a pot of porter,” said Scadger.

I asked for gin, the spirit being by no means my favourite, but the only thing I could think of that would be tolerated by my weak West Ender’s constitution. Many a man on my side of the Thames, unaccustomed to the insalubrious potations of the East End, had lain writhing upon their cramping beds from having imbibed the sort of befouled labouring man’s beverage that conversely passed without complaint through the tempered tracts of those, like Harry Scadger, whose digestive systems had become inured to the effect.

After taking a drink of his dark brown beer and wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Harry looked me squarely in the eye and said by way of brief prologue: “Three, no — almost four weeks ago my son David was playing upon the bank of the Thames where it wends closest to the apricot grove. He wandered up a little farther than was his usual habit and there he discovered it— her— lying there at river’s edge.”

“ Her ?”

“The body of a dead woman. She was drest in clothing I had never seen worn by a woman in the Dell. And there was a small, thin, leatherish sort of valise of a very odd make, which lay next to her. All was wet: the corpse, the valise. She had apparently been carried along by the river and then deposited in this spot. David left the body to come fetch me. Perhaps twenty minutes passed before he returned with me in tow.

“By that time someone else had arrived and was inspecting the body on his own. It was Dr. Chivery from Oxbridge. The professor was so attentive to his investigation that he didn’t take notice of us at first, but finally he did look up with a slight start and asked what David and I knew about her.

“We could offer nothing more than that which we could all see with our own eyes. Dr. Chivery had already gone through the valise and was now clutching in his trembling, attenuated fingers two soggy pieces of paper that he had obviously removed from the case.

“‘And what is it that you have found out?’ I asked.

“‘Nothing good,’ the professor answered cryptically. ‘And you and the boy will only make matters worse by divulging any of what you see here. It is of paramount importance that we keep knowledge of this dead woman’s presence to ourselves. Now we must find a place to bury her — someplace where her grave will never be discovered or disturbed.’

“I suggested to Chivery that it might be better to fetch the sheriff, but he remonstrated vehemently against that course, having convinced himself that there should be additional calamitous consequences should a public report be issued and an inquest held. ‘Trust me, I beg you,’ he concluded.

“Together David and the Professor and I dragged the woman quite some distance from the river, and using two broken shovels from my brothers’ work hutch, we buried her in a secluded spot near the timbermen’s sward. When the deed was done, I asked Chivery if I could see the papers that were now tucked into one of his pockets — the papers that had so disquieted him. He shook his head. ‘There is something that I must do,’ said he. ‘Something that these papers compel me and only me to do.’

“As much as I desired to read what frightening words had been put upon those leaves, I agreed not to deter Chivery from his self-appointed mission, not even guessing what that mission might be. You see, Frederick: I did have good reason to trust this man. When I was a boy, he had been my teacher. He didn’t remember me , considering me in this later year just one of many members of a large family clan — nameless to him except that I be a Scadger. But though his fading memory would not recall it, he and I had had a richly productive season together, which I shall limn for you shortly. I mention it here to give reason for why I would extend to the professor every consideration for the course of action he chose for himself to the exclusion of my son and myself, and trusting that the course should be the right and proper one.”

“And what day was this, Harry? Try to remember the exact day.”

“It was a Wednesday. I should like to say that it was the first Wednesday of last month.”

I drew out my pocketbook, which carried a small calendar card within it. “June 4. Two weeks later Chivery was removed to Bedlam. I happen to know a little something about those intervening days. He spent a good many of them neither eating nor sleeping, but writing his equations in a mad fury upon the board in his classroom. Those who observed him said that he was carried away, in a most wild and obsessed state.”

“Surely it must have been something upon those papers that put him into such a frenzy,” said Harry.

I nodded. “And here is something more: I saw the continuation of those ravings upon the wall of a cell at the asylum when Sir Dabber and I visited that place just yesterday. I wager he’s writing still, in whatever new room they have put him. What happened to the valise?”

“We kept it, David and me.”

“And what else was in it?”

“Small personal items as a rule. All from the Outland: a very colourful photograph set into a shiny metallic frame: photographic likenesses of a young man and woman wearing the same odd clothing as the dead woman was wearing — spare and indecorous, though the colours be bright. There were these things as well: empty folders and transparent packages of tissue paper, and a most remarkable pen, which writes from ink held inside. I know that there were mechanical pens of this sort in the earliest days of our valley history, but it is rather astonishing to think of how sophisticated this pen is by comparison, for it does the job of releasing its ink so efficiently. Oh, and a little ceramic doll now in the possession of my youngest girl, Louisa — it is the figure of a little boy, perhaps eight or ten inches high, standing with a grin. He wears a uniform of some sort, and holds a stick. It is too narrow to be a cricket bat, so David and I have deduced that it must be suggestive of an American baseball bat. Oh yes, and his head sits detached upon a spring and bounces when you touch it.”

“I should like to see it.”

“I’ll shew you each of these things when we return to the mews. These and the mechanical objects which also lived within the case — objects for which I could not readily glean a purpose, except for the one that seemed to be some sort of small calculating device.”

I nodded my head with great interest. “Yes, yes. I’ve recently seen such a device as this myself, and have even had the opportunity of making an arithmetical calculation upon it.”

Harry Scadger ran his hand through his thinning, blond hair, and leant back a little in his chair. “I should like to know what was on those papers— the ones that put Dr. Chivery into such a state of agitation, and which in the end resulted in his being committed to Bedlam.”

“As would I. For the time being, though, there is no getting to him. He is sealed away in much the same manner as are others who have important things to tell, should they only be given leave to speak.”

“Others?”

“Yes. Returnees from the Outland, deliberately cordoned off from the rest of us.”

“But they are sick.”

I shook my head. “I strongly suspect now that the sickness is a fabrication, a pretext for their incarceration. Do you know the dead woman’s name? Does it appear on anything in the valise?”

Harry nodded. “Michelena Martin. I’m glad that I told you of her, Frederick. You are the right man to know. But there is something else as well — something having nothing to do with her, that I must discuss with you.”

“Yes?” I drew back. I took a pull on the gin drink. It tasted fœtid in my mouth and I could hardly bring myself to swallow the vile liquid. It was the sort of concoction one put upon a wound to heal it faster. I could not believe that it shouldn’t burn its way through my tract like lye or acid.