I smiled. “Clever.” Then I forced a frown. “Clever, but dangerous. If the boys’ ruse were-”
He waved me off. “They are the clever ones. I chose them carefully. The boy who pretended to be hurt should be an actor and the other one... well, I discovered not long ago that he reads quite well and retains every word, as if his mind could photograph them.”
“Truly?”
“He did not spell correctly each symptom or disease, but I availed myself of medical textbooks your brother loaned me months ago and looked up the necessary details. Now, the second victim was Jonathan Hartwig. He came to England after America’s Civil War ended. Well, he was sent here to live with relatives by his mother because no one could handle him. Mr. Hartwig was a soldier in the Union Army. He spent considerable time in a Confederate prison camp called Andersonville.”
Instantly, I recalled the photographs of prisoners of war that Uncle had in his possession. Emaciated, broken, all with vacant stares as if their minds, their very souls had been extracted.
“This place, this prison in the state of Georgia, was under the command of a vicious, savage man named Henry Wirz. Some fifty thousand soldiers languished under the brutal torture of this man; nearly fifteen thousand perished.”
“Dear God.”
“Yes, if there is one, one might wonder why he did nothing about it. At Wirz’s violent hands, Mr. Hartwig endured countless beatings, starvation, and every form of cruelty and deprivation. He was finally released when the camp was closed in April of 1865, but the effects have lingered. He had what they call in America a ‘soldier’s heart.’”
“Uncle has explained this to me,” I said. “It is when a person’s mind simply cannot manage horrors he saw and the suffering he endured, which is beyond the range of any normal experience.”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “Severe traumatic events, the repeated threat of death. Now, according to a cousin with whom I conversed, Hartwig was tall of spirit before the war. Studious, a treasurer of books. They were an appendage to his well-being. He had planned to become a professor of rhetoric. Yet, he felt compelled to do his duty. He was captured and sent to Andersonville in the fall of 1863. The cousin could not recall exactly which battle or campaign he was involved at the time.
“When he returned home, he had changed completely. He could not read or even speak coherently. He complained that he could not seem to purge the terrible memories and that he had frightening nightmares. His brother took him hunting as a diversion, and Hartwig went completely out of control at the sound of the guns firing. His family thought he might benefit from a complete change of scenery and sent him here, to England, to the family farm in Dentdale, deep in the northern Pennines.”
“In Yorkshire.”
“Yes, near the Tyne Valley. I know it well,” he said.
I had never been, but my father and brother had gone on a hunting trip there, more for Papa to bird-watch than to hunt. Papa had described the lush valley of High Gup Gill and the beautiful rivers and wild alpine plants that grew nowhere else. And birds, of course. Pied flycatchers, redstarts and wood warblers, and glorious songbirds like song thrush, mistle thrush and blackbirds.
“It’s supposed to be so beautiful there. So restful. But Mr. Hartwig still found no peace?”
“Unfortunately, no. This affliction of his mind - it is quite persistent. It displays itself in amnesia, negative feelings about oneself, lack of interest in much of anything,” Sherlock explained. “They said that Hartwig seemed to feel alienated, that he was easily startled, had grave problems with concentration, and could become violent and aggressive. And he suffered from the recurring nightmares and sleep disturbances.” He shook his head. “What a waste of a young mind. He was but twenty when he came home.”
“So he is - was just thirty-three when he died?”
“Yes. He was unable to adjust, even in the peaceful surroundings. He ran away and the relatives could not find him. Somehow he made his way to London earlier this year. He may have been living on the streets. It is highly improbable that he could find employment, other than perhaps as a cook or washing dishes in a pub. Somehow he made his way to a Dr. Elkins who could not help him.” He shook his head again.
“The third victim, Arthur Flincher, saw the same physician who treated Dixon, Dr. Price. Flincher suffered from a disease with which I am not very familiar, a shaking palsy first detailed by a Dr. James Parkinson over fifty years ago. It causes-”
“Tremors, slowness of movement, rigidity and postural instability. Yes, I know of it. Many also suffer from incontinence, blurred vision, uncontrollable eye movements. There is no cure.”
Nodding, he said, “And the fourth victim, the man discovered a week before Dixon, one Andrew Baker, sustained a head injury in a carriage accident. He was, according to his family, never the same. According to the notes of his physician, a Dr. Aldridge, he lost many of his cognitive functions and was dismissed from his employment. Now, we are still tracking down the medical history of the first victim, a man named George Blake, and that of the sixth victim whose name Mr. Carttar has not revealed to me. I shall find it out, naturally, and I am certain his death will be of similar circumstances.”
“So,” I soliloquized as I paced, “their difficulties were all related somehow to the brain, and all experienced
