Could It Be... [4]
“What is it?”
As Liston bore down on me, my mind went blanker by the second. It wasn't as though he would actually beat me at this point. Even if he did throw a punch, it would only be in jest. But still... that didn't mean a diminutive comedian wouldn't be terrified when cornered by a heavyweight champion. And this particular medieval knight standing before me kept a sharp blade at his hip at all times.
Knock, knock.
Just as terror was about to consume me whole, someone knocked on the door. I thought at first it might be the salesman who had just left, but an entirely unexpected voice filtered through the wood.
“Doctor, are you in?”
“The police?”
Liston had an uncanny knack for recognizing policemen, as though he were perpetually preparing to commit a felony—or had already committed a dozen. He sounded familiar to my ears as well, so it was almost certainly an officer of the law.
Back in modern Korea it was unwise enough, but in this era, keeping the police waiting was downright suicidal. Civic consciousness here hovered in the murky twilight between barbarism and civilization, and lawmen were no exception. They wouldn't dare lift a finger against Liston, but to the penniless and the powerless, a nineteenth-century constable was more terrifying than any street thug. Besides, we had no reason to antagonize them, and I was desperately looking for any excuse to escape Liston's interrogation. Seizing the blessed distraction, I yanked the door open.
“Ah, Dr. P-yeong. Perfect timing.”
It wasn't just any constable; this was an officer of considerable rank. I didn't know the exact hierarchy of the London Metropolitan Police, but I knew he was close with the commissioner. In fact, he was probably among the top three men in the entire division.
“Ah. Welcome,” Liston grunted.
Look at that. Liston actually rose from his chair and extended a hand for a handshake. Considering Liston usually ordered mounted patrolmen about with a mere flick of his chin, that alone spoke volumes about the clout this officer possessed.
“Yes, well. I've come to consult with you two doctors on a certain matter.”
The officer seated himself naturally. His eyes drifted down to the wallpaper samples still strewn across the table, and he gave a slight shrug.
“Do you fancy this one, Doctor?”
“Well... I find it rather striking,” Liston replied.
“Hmm. Perhaps not, then.”
It was a strangely loaded remark. Liston might not have thought twice about it, but having spent the last quarter of an hour agonizing over arsenic, I caught the subtle undercurrent in the inspector's tone.
Could it be...?
This man suspected that the wallpaper was dangerous.
“Did you by any chance come because of this wallpaper?” I blurted out.
The officer's face lit up with immediate relief.
“Ah, precisely! You're aware that the Harrison Hotel down the road recently finished renovations and reopened for business, aren't you?”
“Ah...”
“Never heard of it,” Liston muttered.
“I take it you don't frequent hotels, then. The fare there is actually quite respectable. In any case, because it's run by Sir Jamie, all manner of highborn gentlefolk gather there.”
“Sir Jamie, you say.”
“Mmm.”
If a man was that wealthy and well-connected... why on earth had he gone and had someone's testicles sliced off? Why resort to such barbaric, uneducated savagery? Because of that, poor Harry had ended up swinging from the gallows. That was the first thought that sprang to mind. Naturally, I kept my expression composed, so the officer simply continued his tale.
“Among the guests was a painter recently invited over from France. He wasn't a man of noble birth, of course, but given that Sir Jamie commissioned him personally, he must have made quite a name for himself...”
“What about him?”
“He died in his room.”
“Dead? Was he an old man?”
“No, barely past twenty. Dropped dead out of nowhere.”
The officer paused, parched from speaking, and reached for the carafe of water sitting on the table. Ever since 'that day,' Liston had adopted the sanitation trait, which meant the carafe contained nothing less than pure distilled water.
“Mmm? This water tastes remarkably clean.”
“If you value a long life, you'd do well to drink distilled,” Liston said.
“Why would that be? Sounds like a dreadful nuisance.”
“Because the—no, never mind. How did the man die?”
Liston started to explain the origins of waterborne disease, only to remember that the man sitting before him was an ordinary nineteenth-century gentleman, and abruptly changed the subject. If it had been a close acquaintance, Liston would have beaten proper hygiene into him, but pummeling a high-ranking police official was probably illegal—even for him. Well, normally assault was illegal across the board, but when Liston did the beating, the law tended to look the other way depending on who was at the receiving end. At any rate, the officer didn't particularly care about the water either, so the conversation smoothly pivoted back to the case.
“The truth is... it's utterly baffling. For now, the internal consensus is natural causes.”
“Natural causes. Well... I suppose it's possible.”
A healthy lad barely past twenty drops dead, and they chalk it up to natural causes. It was such a quintessential nineteenth-century conclusion that it almost took my breath away. Yes, indeed—you needed that kind of audacious nonchalance to survive in this era.
“Still, something struck me as odd,” the officer continued.
“Odd?”
“There were signs that he vomited violently before he passed...”
“Vomiting, you say?”
“Men who die of natural causes don't typically vomit their guts out beforehand, do they?”
“We'll have to see the body ourselves,” Liston decided.
“That's precisely why I came to you.”
“Very well. It's not as though we haven't received a corpse or two from your department. The least we can do is lend a hand.”
“I knew I could count on you, Dr. Liston.”
We rose to our feet.
A corpse or two? What an understatement. Nearly every cadaver currently resting in the London Hospital Anatomy Dissection Hall had been supplied by the police. They didn't just send executed felons; crime victims ended up there as well. The overwhelming majority, however, were the corpses of the destitute. The police rarely bothered to investigate the deaths of the poor regardless of circumstance; in fact, their standard protocol had simply been to dump them. So in truth, having us cart them away was a win for the constabulary.
Dumping corpses... just discarding them like trash.
I still regretted asking where the rest went. When they offered to show me, I had foolishly accepted. They had simply dug a trench and chucked the bodies in. And of all places, they were doing it right along the banks of the River Thames. When I asked why on earth they would bury them there, they cheerfully replied that the riverside mud was soft and easy to dig.
Madmen. Absolute lunatics.
That meant the Thames was laced with the rank runoff of rotting flesh.
It's distilled, so it's fine... It's fine...
Repeating that desperate hypnotic mantra to myself, I climbed into the carriage.
With mounted officers clearing the way ahead, our carriage rolled smoothly without a single hindrance. As we sped down the cobblestones, the inspector resumed his briefing.
“The perplexing part is that there are no signs of forced entry.”
“Could it be poison?”
“Poison... certainly a possibility. However, according to testimonies, he took dinner together with Sir Jamie and the other guests.”
“And the rest were unharmed?”
“Not a scratch on them.”
“Hrm...”
“Don't fret over it too much. We're only making this fuss on account of Sir Jamie anyway. The moment his lordship hires another painter, he won't spare this poor devil another thought.”
“I suppose that's true,” Liston muttered.
A man had died, and this was the conversation between an officer of the law and a physician. Heh. The terrifying part was that, before I even realized it, I had found myself nodding along in agreement. That was almost certainly how it would play out. What did the death of one Frenchman matter to high society? A skilled hand was a slight waste, perhaps, but replacements in Britain were a dime a—
Good heavens.
What was I thinking? A Frenchman was still a human being, for crying out loud!
“This way.”
By the time I shook myself from my reverie, the carriage had already pulled up to the hotel. Despite the boast of fresh renovations, the interior appointments weren't entirely new. The rate placard, however, was pristine, and one particular entry caught my eye:
The Green Room.
Well... perhaps it was intended to evoke a soothing pastoral retreat, but...
“Did the painter happen to stay in this Green Room?” I inquired.
“Oh! How on earth did you know?”
“Just a hunch.”
“As expected... the Shaman of Joseon.”
“No, I assure you, I am a Christian.”
“Haha! Quite so, quite so. Far safer to claim as much, isn't it? Fret not, my good doctor. I have heard plenty about your miraculous second sight.”
I had only asked out of a grim foreboding, and yet an absurd rumor came bouncing right back at me. I shot a questioning glare at Liston, demanding an explanation, but this bastard...
He averted his eyes.
For a man who looked like a fortress of granite, his mouth was surprisingly loose. Still... maybe we could call it even? Let's just say this makes up for my earlier insolence.
“Well, here we are.”
Muttering something more about shamans, the inspector pushed open the door to the Green Room.
“They only recently refurbished it, but isn't it lovely?”
The interior was an overwhelming sea of vivid green. It looked remarkably similar to what I had seen at Sir Jamie's townhouse, with one critical distinction: this room was entirely enveloped in green, and it was terribly cramped. They called it a hotel, but it was essentially a single bedchamber. It boasted an en-suite water closet, which marked it as luxurious for the times, and the furnishings were fairly upscale, but at the end of the day, it was still a tiny shoebox.
“Where is the body?”
“Ah, right over there.”
Lying on the bed was the deceased painter. His face was ghastly pale, frozen in an agonizing grimace. Just as the inspector had described, dried vomit stained the floor beside him. Some time had clearly elapsed.
He had vomited, and judging by the sodden state of his trousers, he had lost control of his bladder and bowels as well. By all rights, the stench of bodily waste should have been overpowering, but it wasn't. It wasn't that there was no smell—rather, an entirely different odor dominated the room.
“What is this... musty odor?” I asked.
“I haven't the foggiest. They claim the wallpaper is brand new, yet there's a damp, musty stench hanging in the air,” the inspector replied.
“Now that you mention it, quite so,” Liston agreed. “Is something rotting?”
They described it vaguely as 'musty' or 'mildewy,' but... I had definitely smelled this somewhere before.
Think, brain, think...! Ah... this is—!
My medical knowledge finally fished out the exact reference.
“The wallpaper!”
“I just told you, the paper was put up recently.”
“Take a whiff of it! No, wait, don't breathe in too deeply! It's dangerous!”
“What on earth are you on about? Ah, don't tell me... the spirits are speaking to you...?”
Liston hadn't been asserting himself since earlier, clearly walking on eggshells around me. Perfect. Seizing the momentum, I pressed on.
“Have you taken a whiff?”
“Well, indeed... there is a peculiar, garlicky, musty smell. How odd. They swore the paper was freshly hung.”
“I cannot pinpoint the exact chemical mechanism yet, but this wallpaper... this is arsenic wallpaper.”
“Arsenic wallpaper?”
“Yes! It's coated in arsenic! Arsenic is a lethal poison, isn't it? This painter was poisoned by the very walls around him!”
“Hrm.”
A flawless deduction, or so I thought. Surround a man with walls painted in arsenic, and of course he'd die! Every brush of a hand or gust of draft would shake arsenic dust into the air, wouldn't it?
Yet their reactions were lukewarm at best.
“If that were true,” the inspector countered mildly, “every wealthy gentleman who hangs paintings in his parlor would be dead by now.”
“Pardon?”
“How long do you suppose this green pigment has been in use?”
“Wait... people have used it that long?”
“Why, of course.”
“That's bizarre. That makes no sense...”
“Even divine foresight misses the mark upon occasion, it seems. In the end, one must rely solely upon the Lord. You ought to attend church more regularly, Doctor.”
“I told you, I am a Christian!”
Then it dawned on me.
Paintings...
Yes, artists had been painting canvases since the Middle Ages. Highborn Europeans in particular were obsessed with commissioning family portraits, hanging them throughout their estates to flaunt their noble pedigree. If those green pigments had always contained arsenic... then from their perspective, claiming that green wallpaper suddenly turned lethal did sound rather unconvincing. Granted, the sheer volume on the walls was incomparably greater, but... was arsenic more chemically stable than I assumed?
I had only ever read about Scheele's Green and Gosio gas in historical toxicology textbooks; I had never witnessed it firsthand. Pressed by their logic, my confidence wavered.
“Hold on,” Liston interjected.
His gaze remained fixed on the corpse.
“Why did you say you ruled out deliberate poisoning?”
“Because he ate the exact same meal as everyone else,” the inspector answered.
“That is merely the testimony of the living.”
“Quite so. But we hardly can ask the dead man what he—what are you doing?”
“We cannot ask him, but that does not mean we cannot find out.”
Drawing his surgical blade, Liston began to strip the clothes from the corpse.