The Bird and The Buddha Read online

  They say that a new star shines its brightest, burning like a fiery cauldron, but eventually evaporates into space. They say that after eons, the core will cool and the star will vanish. I waited for that to happen to my feelings for Sherlock. I tried to recapture my life, my logic and objectivity, traits I had honed for years and upon which I prided myself. I thought the layers of time would help. I suppose I did not realize that an imploding star is a very dangerous place to be... and so, we continued our adventures.

  1

  18 August 1878

  I could not believe that I was about to witness another hanging.

  A few weeks after Oscar’s recital at Oxford, Sherlock invited me to watch an execution. The invitation shocked me. Since the recital, we had taken long walks, enjoyed a few lunches, and he’d visited my medical office once or twice to pick my brain about anatomical things in relation to his experiments at St. Bart’s. All very mundane and socially acceptable.

  I did not want to let myself become involved with Sherlock again. I certainly did not want to see another death sentence carried out.

  True, I had watched two other human beings swing from the rope: Margaret and Millicent Hardy. But I had attended the Hardy executions only because it was so personal. In 1874, Sherlock and I had worked together for months to find these baby farmers and have them arrested for willful murder. In the time that had passed since their executions, I had too often tossed and turned as I remembered their faces, remembered the sound of the trap falling.

  But Sherlock insisted that I see the fruits of our labour, the continuance of the fight to purge England of baby and child farmers who abused and murdered helpless children for profit. I had involved him in that mission shortly after we met and he continued on his own, though he had told me long ago that he was done with it.

  And so, there I was, looking up at a gallows again.

  The hanging was at Wandsworth Prison. Executions took place on the third Sunday after sentencing at precisely 9 a.m. in a shed constructed in one of the yards. They called it the Cold Meat Shed.

  The condemned man, Alan Horton, stood on the scaffold. He was a plump, middle-aged man with ruddy cheeks, a bulbous nose and flabby arms. The only witnesses present were Sherlock, a prosecutor, Under Sheriff Captain Colville, the prison governor, the prison doctor, two male warders, and two reporters. Actually, that would be three counting me, for Sherlock had lied about my profession, telling them I wrote for a women’s magazine, so that I would be permitted to attend.

  Horton drooped his head at first, but then he lifted it to stare with wide eyes at the sound of the rumbling laughter of the warders and the cheers of a small crowd of people that had gathered just outside the gates. The assembly would see and hear nothing, but apparently they could not help themselves.

  Alan Horton had been convicted of murdering dozens of children. He was a child-farmer, much like the baby farmers who Sherlock and I had investigated and brought to justice four years earlier. They profited by pretending to take in and care for illegitimate babies for a fee and then murdering them to make room for more. Now the time for Horton to meet his maker had come as well.

  At precisely 8.45 a.m., the prison bell began to toll. I shifted nervously and, knowing what was about to come to pass, I could not take my eyes off the gallows. I whispered to Sherlock, “I think I am going to leave.”

  “Why? You were with me at the Hardy executions.”

  “That was... different somehow. We worked on that case together and Millicent Hardy nearly killed me. And I have changed, Sherlock. I do not think I believe in the death sentence anymore.”

  “Not even for murder? Rubbish. This man murdered several hundred children over the years. I should think your love of children would make you glad he is to get the rope. Don’t you remember anything from your religious classes? ‘He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.’ Or Psalms, if you wish. ‘His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate,’” he added, touching his head.

  “I am glad for justice being done, yes,” I said. “But I don’t think I want to watch. I became a physician because I value life. All life. I don’t think it is up to us to take a life.”

  He took my hand and clenched it. Such a simple gesture, the warmth of his skin against mine, usually diminished any uneasiness I felt. I stayed, but I stepped behind Sherlock and fixed my eyes on the curly, dark hair at the nape of his neck. I felt myself perspiring. I meant what I said. I’d become a doctor because I wanted to save lives.

  At 9 a.m., when the doors to the shed were closed, I glanced up and stared at the white painted gallows, the rope dangling and the noose lying on the trapdoors. The executioner, William Marwood, stopped Horton at the chalk mark on the double trapdoors, placed a leather body belt round his waist, and secured his wrists while a warder encircled his ankles with leather straps. Horton’s knees buckled. The warders, who were standing on the planks next to the trap, supported him while Marwood placed the white hood over Horton’s head and adjusted the noose, leaving the free rope running down his back.

  I raised my eyes to the gallows and winced when he said, “Lord, have mercy upon me.”

  His last words were, “I helped those children. I helped them.”

  Marwood stepped to the side and pulled the lever. I dragged my gaze from the gallows and closed my eyes, but I heard Horton plummet down some eight feet into the brick-lined pit below. The whole process took less than two minutes, but his body would be left to hang for an hour before being taken down. When we exited the prison, we saw that a black flag had been hoisted on the flag pole above the main gate.

  Sherlock dragged me through the crowd in silence, keeping me close. It reminded me of when we’d gone looking for Oscar in an opium den near Limehouse Beach. He had said, “Do not leave my side. Do not speak to anyone. Keep hold of my hand.”

  And I had answered, “Yes. I will.” That was perhaps the first time - and one of the few - that I had obeyed him without question.

  When we reached Heathfield Road, Sherlock finally said, “His body will be buried in an unmarked grave in one of the exercise yards.”

  I did not respond.

  “I heard the Governor say that Marwood was compensated in the sum of twelve pounds. That’s more than any fee I pocket.”

  “Perhaps you should change your career path then. Become an executioner.”

  He did not reply.

  “Sherlock, what if an innocent person is condemned to death? What if you and the police are wrong and execute a-”

  “I never guess, Poppy,” he interrupted. “It flies in the face of logic to do so. Horton was guilty. You are succumbing to an emotional response. And you know that I believe emotions are antagonistic to clear thinking.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned against the building, feeling my heart sink further into the darkness. “I want to go to Victoria Park to feed the swans,” I blurted.

  His mouth pulled down, he grimaced. “Why?”

  “Because they are beautiful and I need something beautiful to erase the images in my mind.”

  He thought for a moment, as did I. Sherlock had mentioned something about accompanying him to St. Bart’s to discuss another murder case, so I used that as leverage. “I shall not go with you to the hospital if you do not take me to Victoria Park first.”

  I touched his hand, feeling the fire lick my skin as it always did when I touched him. “Will you do this for me, please?”

  He did not answer immediately, so I stared into his eyes, longing to see desire, longing for him to show the affection that I knew he felt for me. Longing to let the words spill out of my mouth, the ones I continued to hold back as I had for years, and desperate for him to remember what he had said to me once before:

  “P
oppy, my nerves are like fireflies. I cannot think because my feelings for you get in the way. It suddenly seems more logical to allow them to flourish and keep you close so that I can teach them to live side by side with logic and deduction.”

  In the short time since we had rekindled our still tenuous relationship, there had been a few occasions that, for one breathless moment, he seemed to teeter on the edge of something more. Sometimes I felt we were but a fraction of a second from fanning the dying embers. We would dance like two swans in a courting ritual. I attributed the demise of our prior romantic interlude during the summer of 1874 to Sherlock’s terrible guilt over betraying Victor Trevor, Sherlock’s only friend and the man who wanted to marry me, and to Sherlock’s need to immolate any emotional attachments in favour of his passion for objectivity and logic. Nevertheless, I kept the fires of hope burning. I was willing to be patient. I tried to comfort myself with an illusion; after all, the swans’ courtship ritual is relatively long and drawn out because the displays they make to each other are so significant in forging the special bond that exists between them, the kind I had once imagined Sherlock and I would have.

  But Sherlock was no swan. He dedicated every waking hour to being the detective who looks - and finds - that one thing that nobody else has found, and his froideur had grown exponentially. It was terrifying at times. Logic and deduction always seemed to trump fondness and love and physical intimacy.

  “Will you take me to Victoria Park or not?” I asked.

  Finally, Sherlock sighed and muttered, “Fair enough,” and hailed a hansom.

  2

  As we travelled to the park, I listened to the clip-clop of the carriage horses and watched Sherlock closely. I was still shaking and I tried desperately to banish the sights and sounds of Horton’s final moments from my mind. But Sherlock was calm, completely unruffled. No trace of regret or doubt or horror such that I was feeling was apparent on his countenance.

  And then I pondered how such a man could still have such a hold on me. I had managed to get along without him for several years while I finished medical school and opened my practice near the British Museum. I’d even travelled a bit. But, then when he abruptly came back into my life, once again it seemed so natural to walk with him or dine with him or talk about everything under the sun with him. When he’d sent the page to my office inviting me to join him at Horton’s private execution, I simply could not refuse him.

  “Sherlock, tell me more about the man who... about Mr. Horton. Why did you involve yourself? You told me that you were done with chasing down baby farmers.”

  “I was between cases and it was interesting. It served to distract me from the monochromatic tedium of life,” he added with a sigh.

  “From the beginning I was certain it was a copy-cat crime. A few months ago, I went to visit my brother Sherrinford. He urged me to come and take away some of the things I’d left at home when I went off to Oxford and had no room for them. Essentially, he advised that if I did not cart them away, he would discard them. And he gave me some of our father’s things, a lovely roll-top desk, for example.

  “At dinner one evening, Sherrinford said that he had an odd feeling about a neighbour, Mr. Horton. His farm was nearby and Sherrinford passed it almost daily. He noticed that there were usually children playing near the road, but it dawned on him one day that he hardly ever saw the same children. There always seemed to be new arrivals. As I’d told him about the Hardy case, Sherrinford was concerned that it was a similar child abduction scheme. I proceeded to check at the workhouse from which these children were taken. Hundreds had been placed with Horton. According to the employees at the workhouse, Horton’s arrangement seemed noble at first. For a fee, he agreed to take the children to his farm. He would teach the boys trades, and his wife would instruct the girls in needlework, laundry, washing, and general household work. The children ranged in age from ten to fourteen.

  “I also learned that authorities were planning to see the children to determine if they had been vaccinated. A wise decision, given that in London - the best-vaccinated city in England - some five to ten thousand people have died of smallpox in the last five years. So I accompanied the doctors to Horton’s farm. It turned out that he used the children as slaves. They plowed, they cleaned. He worked them to the bone.

  “When we started taking account of them,” he continued, “we realized that many of the children were missing. Some of the children had been there only a few months and they were but ten or twelve years of age. Of course, Horton argued that many had left on their own, but they were not there long enough to learn a trade or mature enough to go off on their own to make a living.”

  “You’re right. His scheme was similar to that of Margaret and Millicent Hardy.”

  He nodded. “We found hundreds of graves. It became quite clear that when Horton acquired too many to feed and when they became too ill and malnourished to work, he got rid of them. He simply made room for new ones.”

  I felt sick to my stomach.

  “You said you saw it as a copy-cat crime, Sherlock. What do you mean?”

  “I use the term to describe someone who imitates another person’s crime.”

  Almost twelve years later, I realized that perhaps Sherlock coined the term, for it was not until I purchased Sarah Orne Jewett’s novel, Betty Leicester: A Story for Girls, for my daughter that I saw the term ‘copy-cat’ in literature for the first time.

  “You, see, back in the late 1840’s,” he explained, “a man named Bartholomew Peter Drouet was tried for the murder of several children. He also was a child farmer who neglected and abused poor children he took from an overcrowded workhouse. But what Bartholomew Drouet had not counted on was an outbreak of cholera that brought doctors to his farm to treat the pauper children. Drouet’s immensely profitable business came quickly to a halt. Likewise, Horton had not counted on his farm being investigated as to whether the children had received smallpox vaccinations. So now his sordid business and greed and the deaths at his hand of these children led him to the Cold Meat Shed.”

  I simply nodded and turned my head to stare out the window, wondering how such cruelty and heartlessness could exist in the world. Yet I still questioned the right to execute anyone, even for such vile crimes as Horton committed.

  Clearly, Sherlock felt it was a suitable end. More than once he’d told me that when one commits a heinous crime, when one does something very bad, it needs must end on a gallows. Just now, all I wanted to do was banish the sights and sounds of Horton’s final moments out of my mind, but I could not.

  I was thankful that public hangings had finally ceased. For years, hangings were a public spectacle. In fact, the proceedings were so popular that not very long ago, twenty-eight people died in a crush after a crowd of up to twenty thousand would-be spectators rampaged out of control. Things had changed a little. Horsemonger Gaol and other prisons had closed. The death penalty was now reserved for heinous crimes like wilful murder, malicious assault, and treason. To hasten death and cause less pain, Executioner Marwood had made some improvements to the process of execution. He had introduced the ‘long drop’ method, designed to break the person’s neck and cause near-instantaneous unconsciousness.

  But efforts to repeal capital punishment altogether had failed. Charles Dickens opposed it vehemently and wrote many letters trying to stop executions, to no avail. He was appalled at the swelling crowds, the people clustered together to watch a hanging of a criminal, to applaud as his head dangled, to clap as the body was cut down.

  So was I.

  I had considered the moral arguments and come to the conclusion that though it might seem right to punish the vicious and reward the virtuous, such renderings were not up to us, to Man. Indeed, if there is an immortal soul, should not its Creator be the one who decides when the soul comes into the world and when it leaves it? I’d come to the conclusion that the death pena
lty should be abolished.

  Finally, I said to Sherlock, “It surprises me, Mr. Holmes, that you have become an avenging angel. And obviously because retribution for certain crimes is sanctioned, you have no problem with the death penalty.”

  He scoffed. “No, I do not. But you are mistaken if you think me an avenging angel. That, Dr. Stamford, is a moniker that you should wear. I do not make the laws nor do I enforce them. And if I am adept at capturing a very cruel person, it does not mean I am any kind of an angel, as you put it, and I leave dispensation of punishment to others. Working a case is simply a cathartic release, a way to defeat the mundane frustration of living.” Then he asked, “The hanging really bothered you, didn’t it?”

  I heaved a sigh and turned away. Then he turned to stare out the window.

  Cases were the nerve-centre of Sherlock’s existence, but I felt sad for the soul for whom crimes and misery brings a smile. His brain could readily shut out the noise in the wind tunnel at such an event, so how could I make him see that while everyday mishaps might generate a mere dust-up in my brain, witnessing a hanging invited a tornado?

  3

  When we arrived at Victoria Park, many children were gathered near the bank of the river to feed the swans. A crowd had also assembled nearby, on the big central lawn. It had become a tradition for political and social activists to gather there to preach their ideas and dispute everything from the value of slavery to atheism, euthanasia, Darwinism, socialism and the like. I’d heard that one man exalted his own ability to make prophecies, saying the Holy Ghost inspired him. He’d been locked up in an asylum. I was glad that my late, psychic friend Effie had never chosen to reveal her gift on this lawn.