‘You could let me go. You know I can keep secrets. I never informed a soul about Mabel, though you told Thomas about my mother.’ I surprised myself at how quickly I moved to anger when it appeared my crying had no effect.
‘I never said a word to him about you.’ His voice echoed across the attic. It was a little strange that the man who had just murdered my husband should be offended at an accusation that he was a gossip. ‘I kept my word,’ he said. ‘I always do…’
Now that his knife was clean to his satisfaction, he pointed it at me as he spoke. ‘Your husband – badly chosen, I might add – knew everything. He had that housekeeper of his track down a woman from the Nichol and the woman told the housekeeper all about the little brown-eyed girl who had to be dragged out screaming, by her feet, from under a bed in a puddle of her own piss. As I said before, your Dr Lancaster and I weren’t drinking partners until recently, and even then it was business.’
He glanced up at Thomas, who was still swaying between us. I’d been trying not to look, but when I did, I saw that his eyes bulged like a frog’s and his tongue protruded from his mouth. How humiliating Thomas would have found this; a man so precious of his appearance was now so ugly in death.
‘What of the specimen then, the baby in the jar? I saw that here, in this attic, the night I was pushed down the stairs, and yet when I came to see you, it was in your office, on the shelf in your collection.’
‘Is that why you missed the appointment?’
‘I had no one left to trust.’
‘I rescheduled other patients for that. Who else have you told about your theories?’
‘Who else have I to tell?’ I said, shaking my head at the bizarre situation I now found myself in. ‘I thought the specimen had been cut from Mabel and that was why she hadn’t written, because she’d died and that’s how you came by it, and I had sent her to you.’
‘She was treated by a friend of mine, a Romanian, as qualified as myself – more so, in the practice of such procedures. You’ve met her: my housekeeper, Irina. She informed me that your friend left that place alive, and that there were no problems.’
‘And yet she hasn’t written,’ I said.
‘The girl got what she wanted, why would she write? You have been causing me headaches, Susannah, with your wild theories and indiscreet husband. You aren’t mad – a little off the mark, but not mad. I was sent here to deal with the issue at hand and dispatch whoever I found in the house with him. You know, I haven’t been sleeping, Susannah.’
Thomas’s body had finally stopped moving. I had a fear that Dr Shivershev was only telling me all this, explaining things to me, to alleviate whatever guilt he would suffer by killing me, as if I would skip to my death so long as I had an understanding of his motive, so long as it had been explained to me. I was still thinking on what I could do to change the inevitable outcome, so I let him speak and didn’t interrupt.
Dr Shivershev and Thomas worked for the same organisation, unbeknownst to each other at first. Dr Shivershev had been recruited many years ago, but Thomas had only recently been invited to join the secret brotherhood of scientists; he was very much on probation, a foot soldier in a hierarchical organisation. The brotherhood operated as a selective band of brothers; they helped each other in all things and swore loyalty to one another and their cause. At its core, their cause was about true freedom. A man could be who he wanted: the rules that applied to ordinary people were not for them, and no religious or moralising theories were assumed. But this camaraderie was not to be abused. Rules may not have applied in the normal sense, but a man was expected to keep his own house in order and remain discreet. Both edicts Thomas would come to find impossible to uphold.
The foetus specimen, found by Thomas, was an attempt to ingratiate himself with Dr Shivershev. He wanted a favour.
Thomas had complained to anyone who would listen of the difficulties he was having with his ‘common’ wife. He’d been seduced by a temptress, so he told his colleagues, who had her sights set on bettering herself. He needed to be free, and so he foolishly complained to his fraternity of brothers long before he had earned the currency to do so, establishing himself as a whining pain. He asked that they order Dr Shivershev, as his wife’s physician, to help him have her certified a lunatic, so she could be interned in an asylum.
The brotherhood did indeed assign Dr Shivershev to assist, but his real task was to deal with Thomas. Thomas had become a liability: unpredictable, unreliable, and most of all a risk. A squawking parrot of a man-child. He had been overheard speaking about the brotherhood socially, and his work was sloppy and lacking in the professionalism and rigour expected of a loyal brother. It was therefore agreed that he would have to be dispatched, and his troublesome wife along with him. The removal of the servants in his household was an absolute requirement to ensure that the evidence matched the motive. It must be clear that Thomas had gone on a murderous spree before hanging himself due to humiliating financial and professional difficulties.
Dr Shivershev said that this was to be his last assignment for the brotherhood in London. He would be removing himself to America. He wished to create a distance and had obtained special permission to leave. As a Jew, he had never felt truly accepted into the heart of the circle. His work was commended, admired, and he
