Interviewing the Dead Read online

  INTERVIEWING THE DEAD

  Carlyle & West Victorian Mysteries

  Book One

  David Field

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  MORE BOOKS BY DAVID FIELD

  PROLOGUE

  The excited chatter inside the public meeting room in London’s Whitechapel subsided into low murmurs of anticipation as the gaslights were dimmed. Into the circle of light in the centre of the stage walked the woman whose appearance had been eagerly anticipated since the doors first opened.

  Sarah Gibbons was portly, aged in her mid-forties and dressed from neck to toe in funereal black. She raised her head and greeted the audience. ‘Good evening, friends — both those in body and also those from the spirit world who will be joining us this evening. I ask you all to please join hands with those on either side of where you sit, in order to complete the circle of friendship.’

  The audience did as they were instructed, since by all accounts Sarah Gibbons knew her stuff. This was her third visit to Whitechapel in as many years and a good number of those attending had witnessed her earlier triumphs in bringing forth the souls of the dead to impart messages of love, comfort and reassurance to those they had left behind.

  The proceedings began with a hymn — a somewhat scratchy and tuneless rendition of ‘Lead Kindly Light’, accompanied by a small girl whose legs were barely long enough to reach the pedals of the portable harmonium on which she pumped out the tune with enthusiasm. This was followed by a loud and emotionally charged prayer by the medium herself, before she got down to what everyone had come to witness.

  ‘I have a small boy here in spirit, who says his name is Daniel,’ Sarah announced with a seraphic smile. ‘He is brought through to us by my Doorkeeper, Little Cloud, who tells me that Daniel is very shy. He loved to sit by the side of the road on Tower Hill and watch the Beefeaters parading inside the Tower walls. He was only nine when he passed over, sadly run down by a horse as he was making his way home one late October evening. Can anyone here tonight take him?’

  ‘I can!’ called out a middle-aged woman three rows back from the stage. ‘It’s my Danny, what was taken from me two years back. ’E were a lovely little lad, so ’e was, an’ not a day passes what I don’t ’ave a little tearie when I thinks as ’ow I come ter lose ’im.’

  ‘God bless you, dear,’ Sarah replied. ‘Danny says to tell you, as proof that he’s really with us this evening, that there’s something of his that you keep in a special drawer in your main room. Is that right, dear?’

  ‘Yeah!’ the woman confirmed. ‘It’s ’is ol’ cap what ’e aluss wore on ’is ’ead. I keeps it close to me ’cos it’s still got some of ’is ’airs inside it.’ This was sufficient to reduce the woman to inconsolable sobs.

  Sarah looked further back into the audience, then raised her arm and pointed to a young man dressed in labourer’s garb halfway down the hall. ‘I want to come to you, sir and I’m getting the name “Isaac”. Can you take that, dear?’

  ‘Sure can,’ the young man confirmed. ‘Isaac were me granddad — ’e worked in the Catherine Docks.’

  ‘And you have a very precious keepsake from him, he tells me,’ Sarah continued. ‘He’s telling me that you’ll never be late for work again. Does that mean something to you, dear?’

  ‘Sure does,’ the youth replied, as he extracted a fob watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘It were this, what ’e left me in ’is will. It never left ’is pocket when ’e were alive, an’ it’s never lost a second o’ time in the four years what I’ve ’ad it.’

  Sarah whispered something inaudible to her invisible spirit guide, then said, ‘God Bless you’ out loud, before fixing her gaze on something at the back doors of the meeting room.

  ‘Oh dear God!’ she whispered hoarsely and half her audience turned to look at the empty space into which she was staring with an expression of horror. ‘I’m sorry, friends, but I have to share this with you, because it comes from a tortured soul who died many years in the past. I can see him now before me and his face is covered in hideous boils, while his body is a human skeleton with old grey rags hanging off it. He says his name is Thomas and he wants to speak through me directly.’

  Her body shuddered violently, then jerked upright as if someone else had entered it. The voice that emerged was echoing and it delivered its message in croaking tones that suggested a man in his last minutes of life.

  ‘Cursed be they that disturbed our bones!’ the disembodied voice called out. ‘Three hundred years we were sleeping there, since the great sickness took us. Nestled peacefully in the loving arms of the Redeemer, until the wickedness and greed of those who succeeded us led to the uncovering of our bones, all in the name of progress. You may run your metal rails where our pathetic earth bodies once lay and allow your steaming monsters to pollute the air as they progress down the pathways of Mammon, but cursed be the hands that left our mortal bones to bleach in the sun like unwanted trophies. We have returned to haunt those places where we lived, those graves into which we were so rudely and hurriedly cast. Woe betide those among you who shall set eyes upon our shades, for you shall be summoned to die horribly and be dragged through the gates of Hell!’

  As Sarah Gibbons sank towards the platform floor in a rustle of silk, a middle-aged man hurried on stage to hold her up and lead her gently but firmly behind a side curtain.

  ‘Forgive us, friends and neighbours,’ he said, ‘but what Sarah has witnessed is the opening of the gates of Hell itself. Please disperse quickly to your homes and lock your doors!’

  The stampede through the side doors led to several injuries, as the audience raced from the unseen horror that the medium had so graphically described. Within five minutes only the newspaper journalists remained, furiously composing with pencil on notebook the copy that they would race to the nearest telegraph office in order to dictate to their editors in time for the early editions.

  1

  The West family were sitting at breakfast, reading the morning’s news. Next to the update on the forthcoming General Election, with the latest odds on the Marquess of Salisbury retaining his majority against the verbal broadsides of Liberal leader Gladstone, was the dramatic headline: ‘Risen Plague Victims seek Revenge on the Living!’

  ‘So what do you think?’ George West asked of his sons Matthew and Charles as they finished their breakfast.

  ‘What do we think about what?’ Matthew asked, his mind more on the homily that he was due to deliver later that morning.

  ‘This business down in Whitechapel last night,’ George replied. ‘You should know more about it than most, being a clergyman.’

  ‘I haven’t had chance to read the article,’ Matthew said. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘This psychic woman reckons that the dead folk from a plague pit are going to rise up and smite us all for our wickedness.’

  ‘What plague pit’s that?’ Charles asked, as he speared his second sausage.

  ‘The one down at Aldgate Underground Station,’ George replied, reaching for more toast. ‘I remember all the fuss at the time they were digging it. I was a junior compositor on The Herald at the time and the letters to the editor came flooding in, both for and against. Some were of the opinion that we shouldn’t be disturbing the bones of the dead, while others were insisting on a better transport sy
stem than buses clogging the streets and fouling the roadways.’

  ‘I can certainly agree with the latter,’ Matthew muttered, putting on his overcoat. ‘It will take me the best part of forty minutes to get down Farringdon Road, change buses at Ludgate Circus, then wend my way through the clutter of St Paul’s and the Tower until I finally reach my destination.’

  ‘Perhaps you picked the wrong trade,’ his brother Charles quipped. ‘But I’m glad you did, because otherwise, as the older son, you’d be giving me orders in the family business.’

  ‘I’ll leave printing to you and Father,’ Matthew said, ‘while I follow in Grandfather’s footsteps. Anyway, I’m late already, so I bid you both a good morning.’

  As the horse bus clumped and swayed its way down Farringdon Road, away from his family home in Clerkenwell, Matthew wondered whether or not Charles might have a very valid point. As a Wesleyan preacher, Matthew had little in the way of material wealth and at present didn’t even have an established living to support him, simply a meagre stipend to spread the ‘Good Word’ among the poor of the East End. Charles, on the other hand, had a secure position with prospects in the printing business that their father had striven day and night to establish and which was now flourishing.

  The distant bells of St Paul’s were ringing out ten of the forenoon as Matthew hurried up the steps of the East End Mission building in Cable Street. It was part of his duties to conduct Bible classes for those from the surrounding slums of Shadwell and Wapping who were interested in them. In the main, the attendees drifted in out of the cold and wet, prepared to tolerate an hour of Matthew’s teaching in exchange for a meal served in the canteen free of charge. The food was basic but edible and Matthew himself was grateful that for once he was not relying on the charity of his indulgent parents George and Alice to keep body and soul together.

  The usual half dozen or so were waiting for him in the assembly room when he arrived. He recognised ten-year-old Jamie Froggat and, next to him, Maggie Dunlop, who was hopefully sober at this hour of the day before beginning her day’s soliciting in the nearby gin palace. Behind them were two foreign-looking men whose attire suggested that they had come into the London Docks as mariners. Matthew hoped they spoke some English. And then there were two more ‘general labourer’ types.

  Right at the back was a man sitting alone, who looked decidedly overdressed for the occasion. Matthew’s first thought was that he was either the new superintendent of the Mission, who Matthew had yet to meet and who had probably been sent in to monitor the quality of his ministry, or perhaps some ‘toff’ from the West End who had come down here slumming the night before and was waiting for his hired coach to arrive. He was dressed like a city banker, in a formal three piece suit and his shortly trimmed grey hair set him apart from the rest, suggesting that he could afford regular personal grooming.

  Matthew began with the passage in the Gospel of St John in which Jesus passed the hand of blessing over several water storage jars and converted their contents into wine. Having completed his tale, he sought, as usual, to make it meaningful for the group in front of him.

  ‘So what does this miracle have to tell us about our Lord’s work among his people?’ he asked optimistically.

  There was a short silence before Jamie Froggatt said, ‘That ’e were a magician?’

  ‘A magician of sorts, certainly,’ Matthew replied encouragingly. ‘But where did his magic come from? Is this deed not worthy of being described as a “miracle”? Like when he brought Lazarus back from the dead?’

  ‘Not ter mention them demons down in Aldgate,’ one of the labourers chimed in.

  Matthew responded with, ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Them dead folks what was chucked inter the ground durin’ the plague,’ the man persisted. ‘We come ’ere this mornin’ ter see if yer can assure us that they won’t be comin’ back up ter get us, ’cos if they will we’re clearin’ off.’

  Matthew thought quickly. ‘The Lord would not allow His children to be overcome by evil such as was suggested in today’s papers, if that’s what you’re referring to.’

  ‘An’ yer knows that fer sure, does yer?’ the man challenged him. ‘That medium woman were pretty convinced about it. “Coming up from the Gates of ’Ell” was ’ow she described it, accordin’ ter the papers. Can yer talk ter them what’s dead, like she done, an’ assure us that it won’t be ’appenin’?’

  ‘I certainly don’t talk to the dead,’ Matthew told him, ‘because “necromancy”, as it’s called, is an abomination and a sin in God’s eyes.’

  ‘But if you can’t and she can,’ the man persisted, ‘then why should we believe you, when yer sez it won’t be ’appenin’?’

  Matthew was disconcerted to notice that the smartly dressed gentleman was quietly smiling, as if the questioner had a valid argument. ‘I can assure you that the evil deeds such as you’re describing are the work of the Devil,’ Matthew responded weakly, ‘and that if the souls of the long dead do indeed emerge from Aldgate Underground, then it won’t be as the result of God’s bidding.’

  ‘But yer can’t say fer definite that it won’t be ’appenin’, can yer?’ his interrogator persisted.

  Somehow Matthew felt that he’d lost some important ground and a great deal of credibility. For the rest of the session he focused on God’s miracles in the modern world, but couldn’t shake off his sense of his own inadequacy at a time when his ‘flock’ required reassurance.

  In due course the handbell rang down the hallway and his humble congregation wandered off for their reward, with the exception of the smartly dressed gentleman who was presumably not in need of a bowl of stew. Instead he rose slowly from his seat, brushed down his frock coat and wandered up to the front, shaking his head in mock sympathy.

  ‘Your religion supplied no reassuring answers, did it?’ he said.

  ‘Obviously not,’ Matthew replied, ‘but I meant what I said. Visitations of evil are the work of the Devil, not God.’

  ‘And can we conclude that science has demonstrated that neither of them exists?’ the man challenged him.

  Matthew heaved an inner sigh of relief. No superintendent of the East End Mission would have denied the existence of God. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

  The man withdrew a business card from his waistcoat pocket and handed it over. It read ‘Professor James A Carlyle, Surgeon’, with addresses at both the London Hospital up the road in Whitechapel and Victoria Park Road in fashionable Hackney.

  Matthew looked back at Dr Carlyle with a puzzled expression. ‘What brings you here today?’ he asked.

  Dr Carlyle gave him the benefit of a superior smile. ‘Like those in your congregation, I was curious to learn if those who promote God over science had any reassuring explanation for the ramblings of that mad woman in Leman Street yesterday evening.’

  ‘There is no need to “promote God over science”, as you put it,’ Matthew bridled, ‘since only God can save mankind.’

  ‘Really?’ Dr Carlyle challenged him with a taunting smirk. ‘Like he saved the tens of thousands who died like vermin of bubonic plague in an age of medical ignorance — those who died in such numbers that the only response of the authorities at the time was to dig a large hole and throw in the corpses, thereby guaranteeing increased infection from the putrefaction on which the fleas and rats subsequently dined?’

  ‘Clearly not,’ Matthew conceded hotly, ‘but I might argue that God in his wisdom has imbued men of science such as yourself with the skills and experience to conquer such ignorance as formerly existed and ensure that any future contagions can be more efficiently combated.’

  ‘I can assure you,’ Dr Carlyle replied stiffly, ‘that my medical “skills and experience”, as you call them, came directly from my professors at the University of Edinburgh, where I spent seven long and expensive years sitting at the feet of the masters. It had nothing to do with God.’

  ‘There is clearly no point in our arguing like this,’ Matthew
concluded. ‘We shall never agree, so you cling to your beliefs and allow me the luxury of my faith.’

  ‘And that’s all it is, isn’t it?’ Dr Carlyle replied. ‘Blind faith? An unscientific hope that one day what you are hoping for — what you have built your entire career on — will prove to be the truth. But then you’ll be dead and won’t be able to return and crow that you were right all along. However, in fairness to yourself, you endeavour to be of assistance to others in this life, if only to inoculate them with your optimism.’

  ‘I do more than that,’ Matthew protested and was surprised to see Carlyle’s stern patrician face break into a smile.

  ‘I am aware of that,’ he confirmed. ‘You are, like me, a member of the “Charity Organisation Society”, are you not? I seem to recall seeing you on a previous occasion at a meeting of the Shoreditch Branch. You spoke most movingly regarding the plight of those living in that dreadful “Old Nichol” slum. I would welcome a further opportunity to discuss it with you on a future occasion. Feel free to visit our Hackney Branch on any evening, since that is where you will usually find me after supper. In the meantime, we may, I think, agree on one thing, whatever may be the differing standpoints from which to come to the same conclusion.’

  ‘And that is?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘That the souls of the dead are not about to emerge from the depths of Aldgate Underground Station.’

  2

  The screams of terror were audible even above the discordant tinkling of the out of tune piano in the corner of the ‘Dog and Duck’ public house in Leadenhall Street. Through the back door staggered one of the locals, Amos Ridley, in the grip of a nightmare.

  ‘Out there!’ he screamed. ‘It’s follerin’ me in! An ’orrible fing all covered in rags! God save me! Merciful God, save me — don’t let it get me!’

  He collapsed into the sawdust and the crowd at the end of the bar shot backwards in all directions. One brave soul kicked shut the door to the rear entrance that gave access to the privy out at the back, while others ran through the front door and into the street.