The Night Calls Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE - 10.07 a.m., 14 October 1898

  PART ONE: HIS COMING

  THE TUNE FROM ANOTHER WORLD

  THE STRANGE STUDENT

  HAIR AND KNIFE

  THE COINS IN THE GUTTER

  PART TWO: HIS GAME

  THE ROOM OF BLOOD

  THE ANATOMY LESSON

  THE RIOT AND THE PUZZLE

  THE PROBLEM OF LADY CARLISLE

  THE SIGN IN THE BEDROOM

  THE LAIR AT HOLY WELL HOUSE

  THE RED CARDBOARD BOX

  PART THREE: HIS MOVE

  THE HOUSE ON THE WAVES

  THE NATURE OF INFECTION

  THE QUEST FOR AGNES WALSH

  THE STRANGE MEDICINE

  THE EXHUMATION

  THE CARLISLE FAMILY SECRET

  THE FIGURE IN THE UPSTAIRS ROOM

  THE WRITING ON THE SAND

  THE DEAD TIME

  A CRIMINAL RECTITUDE

  THE GIFT FROM THE LABYRINTH

  MR ARTHUR DOYLE

  HERE BUT YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME!

  PART FOUR: HIS HELL

  THE MURDER ROOM

  THE DEN AT REHEBOTH CHAPEL

  THE BODY OF HARRIET LOWTHER

  THE LEAGUE OF HOPE AND SORROW

  THE MESSAGE FROM HELL

  THE LEAGUE OF HOPE AND SORROW

  THE NIGHT CALLS

  THE WAREHOUSE TO ANOTHER WORLD

  THE HEAD

  THE POOL OF WILL

  THE UNCLE

  Also by David Pirie

  A Historical Note

  Copyright Page

  For TW

  PROLOGUE

  10.07 a.m., 14 October 1898

  I woke up early this morning and it was almost as if he stood there in the room. The feeling of fear and dread in me was so palpable.

  A few feeble rays of early sunlight gleamed on the mantelpiece of the dressing room where I have slept since my wife became ill. My window was ajar and, as the curtains shifted slightly in a breeze, I kept telling myself there was nothing unusual. Yet I felt his presence so keenly that I almost expected him to be crouched on the sill behind them. It is strange to think that the reader of these words has no idea of who he is or what he has done. Of how many women have died in what vile circumstances. And of how I will be dead – yes, perhaps, if I am fortunate, long dead – before this is ever read. All I can tell you is that if Satan himself were behind those curtains, I do not believe I would have been more frightened.

  Some weeks ago I received a parcel containing a picture from one of my stories. There was writing disguised in the picture and, though he had contrived a puzzle for me, it was effectively an announcement of his return. Last night another parcel came. This time the handwriting with its wild vowels and fanciful elongated consonants, was unmistakable. I can be absolutely sure now he is coming back. The man who destroyed so much of my young happiness and hope, and who stands for everything in the future that the Doctor fears and despises, has returned.

  Of course in my heart I suppose I had known as soon as I deciphered the first puzzle, but I shrank from the knowledge. I thought he was dead; there could be no reason to think otherwise, but now I can be absolutely sure it was a deception. And his timing as always is lethal. There is a reason – to do with my personal life – why he might have chosen this time. Knowing the author of those parcels, I would be surprised by nothing, but I cannot allow myself to entertain such fears. They will only paralyse me.

  As soon as I was certain of his return, my mind naturally turned to the Doctor. But the loss of his son affected him so badly that I have decided for the moment to deal with this on my own. The postmark on the second parcel was Dumfries in Scotland and, given my tormentor’s propensity for games, I believe I may have a little time before he makes a firm move. And so I must leave word of my encounter with him. It is a strange unnerving story, set in many different places, which encompasses horrors I have always fervently wished to forget, horrors enough for several tales. Nothing about it was constant; lulls would be followed by a sudden descent into the blackest hell. Inevitably there were connections to my working life and I suppose it was no coincidence that I wrote the death of my own fictional detective just a few month’s after a black flag outside Newgate appeared to bring our ordeal to an end. Of course, I am aware that to describe all that took place is to break the Doctor’s trust, for I swore confidentiality. But I do so now because I cannot be sure what will happen to me.

  Therefore I got up, assured myself that my wife was untroubled – indeed she was still asleep – and came down to my study where I stared at the parcel before me. Then, like a diver not wishing to think before he plunges into an icy pool, I tore it open. Unlike the one before, there was fine tissue paper inside and I felt something within the paper.

  At once I dreaded what I might find, for more than once he has sent human remains. But it was not like that. In many ways it was far worse.

  Inside the parcel was a pale blue silk scarf.

  I did not flinch or cry out. I suppose a week or so earlier I would have, but not now. Partly because I was prepared for anything, but I also had to pause to take in the enormity of it. I could recall the garment below me so clearly. Once again I was back on a beach long ago. And I heard a song.

  And one could whistle

  And one could sing

  And one could play on the violin

  Such joy there was at my wedding

  On Christmas day in the morning

  But that was enough. I thrust the garment aside, telling myself that only my own application of the Doctor’s principles could have any hope of defeating the man. I am not someone who resents progress. In many ways the fabric of our lives has seen improvement in my time. But the idea of a murder for no reason – the idea of a man killing a series of women for nothing more than a minor thrill — was, when the Doctor and I first came together, as incomprehensible as it seemed impossible. There had been barbarism and bloodlust in the mid-century, of course, and plenty of it, just as there was in the last. But murder as a casual and sophisticated game had not yet been invented or even foreseen. He was one of the first to give us that, perhaps he was the first, which is why his shadow seems cast over the start of the next century.

  And so it is that I put the parcel to one side and take up the box I have long dreaded to open. The first item I see is a map, though of a bizarre kind. Hand-drawn, it marks in a curious way the streets and byways and medical buildings of Edinburgh. Some of the streets are tinged with scarlet, others with black, some of the names are odd, others conventional. It is in fact a diagram marking the dark night-world of the city and the scene of several of his crimes, starting in 1878.

  Beside it there is a sketch of what seems to be a labyrinth – which indeed it was, though I reflected often enough that I would far rather face a monster in there than what I found. This drawing in fact follows the corridors and cupboards and staircases and roof-spaces – yes and the bedrooms – of a notorious Edinburgh establishment, a building long since shut down, called Madame Rose’s.

  It is unnerving to see these things again, for I know where they lead. I have placed them beside the scarf, which lies there mocking me as I go back to that time when I was just a young and somewhat disillusioned student in my second year of medical school. How aimlessly I walked the streets that winter. Until there came a night I shall never forget, when I heard that lilting, other-worldly music from a beggar’s violin, and I am sure even then I sensed him somewhere. Waiting …

  PART ONE: HIS COMING

  THE TUNE FROM ANOTHER WORLD

  I always think of the beggar as the beginning. His name was Samuel and, with his ancient red shirt and sky-blue eyes,
he stood there like some vision from heaven on the corner of one of the most colourful and depraved streets in the whole of Edinburgh. I never once heard him play a real tune, only a series of wild and rambling flights of musical fancy which sounded eerie enough in themselves but all the more so in that spot, only yards away from the town’s more notorious brothels and drinking dens.

  The night I first heard him, I stood there for a long time, drinking in his music. To me it sounded a hundred times more spiritual than all the empty catechisms of the Jesuit boarding school I had just left. And the playing healed some of my anguish, for it so happened that evening had been particularly miserable at home.

  My mother was away delivering some mending. And for some reason I never fathomed, my small brother Innes, then still a very young child, climbed the stairs and ran along the red corridor which led to my father’s study. For some years our house had been blighted by my father’s condition. Now he was barely able even to speak, his mind utterly fogged by drink and near-insanity. Yet, unusually for him, he happened on this occasion to hear the infant playing and opened his door.

  Both of them undoubtedly had a shock as they faced each other. By this time my father, with his lank beard, unshaven pallor and stale clothes, was rarely sane or sober enough to venture downstairs. No doubt my mother was relieved that her four younger children, Innes and his three sisters (for the two older girls were seldom at home), saw him so rarely. I am sure at times he would hardly have recognised them.

  Even so, beyond a little fright for both of them, the incident might well have come to nothing. Except that someone else now appeared. Our so-called lodger Dr Waller, who was then in his midtwenties and not so much older than myself, had come out of his room and witnessed this unlikely meeting. I say ‘so-called’ lodger for really it was more as if we were his lodgers. For some time, Waller had paid the entire rent for the house as a favour to my mother and, though he was careful to be civilised and even fawning with her, I knew quite well in my heart he felt an unspoken power over all of us. Nor was he by any description a kind man. I will acknowledge that he was cultured, and when I was away I had on occasions corresponded with him about literature. But by this time I knew that his mask of sensibility concealed much that was arrogant and inhumane, including a deep distaste for children, which ensured that they generally kept out of his way.

  I can still see the little tableau in my mind’s eye framed in the dim light of the flickering corridor lamp. Innes was still, puzzled by these figures. My father was about to retire, the shadows playing over his whiskered head. But Waller stood upright beside them, a look of great irritation on his face. And then, quite suddenly, without the slightest provocation, he slapped Innes hard around the face and sent him, howling, away. After that, he gave my father a brutal shove that sent him back into his room and closed the door.

  I am quite sure to this day Waller did not know he was observed, and the sight confirmed all my suspicions. I had always strongly suspected that my father’s illness and our poverty suited the man admirably. It had allowed him to rule a roost of his own without all the tiresome effort of building one for himself. As he slammed my father’s door, he had never looked to me so much like a sadistic jailer.

  And then he saw me and we faced each other with poor Innes’s sobs still ringing in my ears from below.

  Given Waller’s arrogance, and his position of authority, you would think perhaps that I, then an eighteen-year-old student, would often have come into conflict with him. This was the opposite of the truth. My mother had enormous faith in the man, and never tired of reminding me of the unpleasant fact that he had kept us from the workhouse. So for her sake he and I both generally kept an uneasy peace. The night I describe was one of the few occasions our hostility erupted into the open.

  I walked towards him in fury at what I had observed and told him he had absolutely no right to strike Innes. ‘You are not even his father any more than you are—’

  I could not go on for I knew at once that I had given him his opening. Waller was aware I had been about to challenge his position in our house, and he stared at me, his brown eyes gleaming. ‘Any more than what? Would you like to consult your mother? I think you will find she enjoys my company here in this house.’

  I wanted to strike him. He was, as I have said, only a few years my senior, yet he was not a physical man, and always dressed with the meticulous care of someone much older. Tonight, as ever, he was immaculately groomed and coiffured, not a whisker of his thick dark hair was out of place. I clenched my fists, longing to let fly with a punch that would have ruffled that fine appearance. But, as ever, the thought of my mother restrained me and I offered no answer.

  ‘And where would you be? Where would that child be?’ he continued. ‘Where would your father and mother be if I were not here?’

  Still I would not reply.

  ‘I will tell you, you would be in the workhouse. I wonder if you realise, Arthur, I am not exacting even a farthing for what I have done for you personally. I could, if I wished, insist it came out of any future earnings you make as a doctor – that is, if you make any at all.’ And with that he turned and walked away.

  I am sure the exchange had only occurred because my mother was out of the house. Even Waller would never have dared to express his own sense of power and supremacy so crudely in her presence. Of course, I could have tried to tell her, but I knew from countless arguments on the subject she would not have listened. And the bitter truth was that, even if I could have persuaded her to see the dreadful hypocrisy of our arrangement, I would only have hurt her more deeply. What, after all, was the alternative?

  So, as often before, I took to the streets. And it was this very night, with my emotions already stirred, that I first heard Samuel’s music and stood there on the pavement, quite overwhelmed by it.

  After a little I offered the player a coin I could ill afford, but he only wished me to buy him a cup of something warm. Naturally I thought he meant strong drink but it turned out he was an abstainer, or near enough, and we went to a little stall, not far away, where he had a mug of some hot cordial, made from blackberries. As I handed him his cup, I told him his music sounded like it came from another world.

  The large genial stallholder laughed at this. ‘That’s what I say, sir. Why can he not play an air like everyone else?’

  He moved away as Samuel looked over the steaming mug at me with a twinkle in his faraway eyes. It was impossible to tell his age, twenty-three or sixty-three. ‘Another world? D’you believe in one, sir?’

  The question was as unexpected as its speaker. I did believe in something, I knew that, but the discipline and eagerness for hell that I had seen at Stonyhurst, my Catholic boarding school, had clouded my vision.

  ‘I do not know,’ I said simply. ‘Do you?’

  He smiled. ‘Well, as for my music I was taught by a man who sailed wi’ me. And aye, I believe in something. Something else. But I hope to bide hereabouts in this world a wee while longer. For I like to watch all that goes on. Some strange things there are too, sir, but the police willna hear o’ them from me.’

  With that he downed the drink and was soon back to his post where he raised his violin and took up an even sadder and more poignant form of that strange music. I walked on, trying to avoid the eyes of the women in the doorways as I reflected on his last remark. There was no doubt that any beggar on that street would see some odd sights, but his mention of the police inevitably brought my mind around to a subject I had been avoiding and to a person I had not seen for many weeks.

  Dr Joseph Bell was the extraordinary teacher at the university, who had first asked me to be his medical clerk, and then in great confidence initiated me into his pioneering study of criminal investigation, or what he called his ‘method’. I was of course intrigued and flattered, all the more so after he allowed me to accompany the police on a highly confidential case. But, although I was impressed, I had never from the beginning quite been able to accept the vast
claims Bell made for his system of deduction. And so it was that one afternoon in February, shortly after he took me into his confidence, I had been bold enough to try and test the man’s deductive powers.

  Among the many claims Bell made for his precious method, one of the most outlandish was that a close study of any object could lay bare the character of its owner. I was highly dubious of this and had therefore offered him my father’s watch as a trial. It had been recently cleaned so I felt absolutely confident that he could get nowhere with it. However, Dr Bell proceeded to use every mark and feature of that watch – certain indentations, some pawnbroker’s notches, the tiny scratches around the key – to expose in unbearable detail its owner’s mental condition. It was utterly horrifying to me to hear the secret my family had struggled to conceal being analysed and reviewed in so casual a fashion. To his credit, the Doctor saw my anguish and tried his best to make me aware he had been indulging in pure deduction. But even so, for some time after that day, I did my best to avoid him and pleaded my studies as an excuse.

  Now, with the fiddler’s melancholy notes still in my ears, I thought of that incident with the watch once again. And I found that I missed my jousts with Bell even if, despite my painful lesson, I still had doubts about the man’s ‘method’. Perhaps he had won that particular contest, but was there not, even here, some plain old-fashioned luck? After all, in his attempt to divine human character from an inanimate object, I had fed his ego by handing over a damaged artefact. But supposing that cursed watch had belonged to some fussy old solicitor rather than an artist whose mind was giving way? If the thing had been in utterly pristine condition, what could Dr Bell have had to say then beyond some vague and useless observation? Much of my old spirit returned as I remembered how disconcerted the Doctor had looked at first when he realised it had been cleaned. Supposing it had not only been cleaned, but bore no marks whatsoever? Bell’s expression might well have remained just as unhappy for the whole test.