“Scotland?”
“Dr. William Macewen, who is fairly prominent in the field. Dr. Macewen has attempted to remove brain abscesses.”
“My uncle knows him, Sherlock. He mentioned that he intended to see him on this visit to Scotland.”
Sherlock arched a brow. Then he said, “Dr. Macewen referred James to Dr. John Hughlings Jackson here in London. He has treated epileptics, and a few years ago accurately diagnosed a frontal lobe tumor in a young boy. The parents refused to allow him to operate and the boy died, but they did permit an autopsy and Jackson was able to confirm his diagnosis.”
“Jackson,” I said. “Sherlock, I have heard that name as well. Yes, now I remember. Uncle attended a meeting at the Hunterian Society, right around that time that we... that I met you. Dr. Jackson delivered the Hunterian Oration. He also delivered the Goulstonian lecture to the Royal College of Physicians a few years ago. Neurology is in its infancy, but Dr. Jackson is a pioneer in the field.”
Again, Sherlock arched an eyebrow and nodded.
I recalled that Uncle described Dr. Jackson as an innovative thinker and a prolific writer. He’d read all of his articles in The Lancet.
“I did some research,” Sherlock said.
Of course, he had.
“Dr. Jackson will soon be one of the initial contributors to a new medical journal, The Brain Journal, dedicated to clinical neurology. Its inaugural issue is scheduled for publication later this year. And your uncle is acquainted with him?”
“Uncle is a bit like your brother Mycroft.”
Cutting me off, he scoffed, “He is nothing like Mycroft.”
“I mean, Uncle knows... well, just about anyone who is anyone in the medical field.”
“I must speak with him then, when he returns. When is he coming back to London?”
“Tomorrow evening, I believe. Aunt Susan was disappointed with the schedule. She wanted us to make a day trip on the Princess Alice to Rosherville Gardens at Gravesend.”
All of a sudden, it struck me - something Effie had written about a boat. I shuddered now, remembering her prediction, her warning. I shook off the creeping evil feeling.
“To where?” Sherlock asked.
I had to smile. Sherlock hated to fill his head with trivial things and certainly a lazy afternoon aboard a paddleboat, moving at a leisurely pace along the Thames, or a day of traipsing through pleasure gardens and watching tightrope walkers or listening to the ‘drivel’ of fortune-tellers would not be a priority for him. He had never believed any of Effie’s predictions, though he’d been shaken by her foretelling of the two horrible train collisions of 1874.
“Never mind,” I said. “Did the victim’s wife further elabourate on James’ condition?”
“No. She was quite weepy and rather incoherent.”
“Poor woman,” I said.
“I would rather think to say ‘poor man.’ He might be alive today had she not convinced him to forego the operation Dr. Jackson offered to perform.”
“But we know that Mr. Dixon was poisoned, Sherlock. He did not die of the tumor.”
Then I realized we had not even opened the skull. We had not examined the brain.
“Indeed, he was poisoned. And I believe that when the other bodies are exhumed and I speak to the relatives, we will find some common denominator. The reason that all of them were poisoned, I suspect, was that they had in common something that could not be cured.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, though I knew exactly where he was going.
“If teach man knew that his life was coming to an end, perhaps each of them wanted it to end sooner rather than later... and without suffering. Perhaps they sought the killer out.”
I gulped down a glass of water for suddenly my mouth was dry as sand. “Sherlock, what you’re saying... I have been wondering... thinking-”
“Do not hesitate, Poppy. I realize that most women are secretive but you are not most women. Speak your mind.”
“Well,” I said, “If you are right and all of these men were facing a slow and miserable but imminent death... if they were indeed suffering and unwilling to suffer more-”
“The statue... the Four Truths. You think that is the link. So do I.”
“I don’t know, but-”
I stopped and drank more water. He peered at me, studying my face, piercing through me with those intense blue-grey eyes.
“I am just parched, Sherlock,” I said, draining the glass. “Now I do not know... but if they all were suffering... what if they knew that it would continue right up until death, and they wanted to just put an end to it and they found someone - ?”
“Euthanasia, yes. I concur.”
I nodded, but the word being spoken out loud made me nauseous.
“They were all found in the same way. All of them were peacefully at rest, as if in a coffin,” he muttered, his face shadowed by his racing thoughts. “And the bird and the Buddha were placed right next to their heads! Poppy, you are more brilliant and logical than I thought!”
His face lit up like a child’s viewing fireworks for the first time.
“Could they all have had brain tumors? Could each one of them have been diagnosed with that or something similar?” He was not speaking to me now. He was thinking out loud, probing his brain for the answer. “I think this is a distinct possibility. Poppy you are becoming a most valuable assistant.”
“Is that what I am now?”
“Is that something you do not wish to be? I did not mean it as a term of reproach. Does that moniker somehow demean you?”
“No, I didn’t say that, Sherlock.”
But secretly, I still hoped that I might be so much more.
“So, as I said before,” I said quickly to steer us back to Mr. Dixon’s demise, “you likely have the what, where, when. Perhaps the why is that the victims wished to end their lives. But not who killed these men or why he - or she - did it.”
“Someone who would kill for mercy’s sake.”
“Killing
