Rather Than Poison [1]
“Why the sudden twitch? Got something on your conscience?”
As it turned out, I was not a suspect.
Phew, thank good—
No, wait. Why was I relieved? It was only natural.
True, I had committed poisoning before, but that happened right inside a police station with their full knowledge and consent. It was a thoroughly sanctioned affair, thank you very much.
“At any rate... the lads downstairs want to sweep the whole business under the rug,” the London Police Chief continued, leaning back in his chair. “Only, looking at the papers myself, something smells foul.”
“Walk us through it, Chief,” Liston said.
“Yes, let’s hear it,” I chimed in.
The Chief had dropped by on what was otherwise a delightfully lazy afternoon. We had breezed through our diabetic patients in the morning, disinfected a certain Member of Parliament’s scalp, and sent him on his merry way. By rights, there was not a single chore left on our ledger. Strictly speaking, the Chief was an uninvited guest interrupting our well-deserved rest.
Then again, some guests carry more weight than others.
Between our lucrative arrangement involving back-alley syndicates and the steady supply of fresh dissection cadavers delivered straight from police holding, the Chief was the very definition of a patron we could not afford to offend. A veritable VIP among VIPs. And so, we received him with absolute courtesy, treating him to steaming cups of black tea poured by none other than Joseph, the reigning monarch of chemical disinfection.
Sip.
Savoring the aromatic brew, my mind wandered briefly to the Qing Empire. When you thought about it, wasn’t the entire Opium War plotted simply because the British ran a crushing trade deficit importing this very leaf? Now, I didn’t harbor any particular soft spot for the Qing dynasty, but looking at that war in isolation, Britain was unmistakably in the wrong. They had craved tea so desperately that they ran out of silver, and their brilliant solution had been to flood an empire with opium.
What struck me as even more absurd was that men like Sir Jamie and various Parliamentarians were acutely aware of the horrors of narcotics—and yet, right here in the heart of London, opium was peddled openly in broad daylight without a shred of shame.
“Take a close look at this,” the Chief said, sliding a ledger across the table. “A banker’s household. Out of ten residents, a whopping six met their maker.”
“Good lord...” Liston murmured. “Wait, they succumbed while suffering violent diarrhea?”
“Hmm... High fever and relentless diarrhea,” I noted, skimming the lines. “Going strictly by these symptoms, it sounds suspiciously like cholera.”
Even with my thoughts drifting halfway across the globe, I managed to keep pace with the discussion. Still, the more I heard, the more mundane it seemed, and my interest began to wane. All this sinister talk of poisoning, and it was just bloody cholera.
“Now, hold on,” the Chief interjected, furrowing his brow. “According to what you two have always preached, doesn’t cholera spread like wildfire through a neighborhood?”
“It does,” I answered. “Though proper hand-washing keeps it at bay.”
“Quite so. But look here. It wasn’t just the banker’s manor. This next file belongs to a wealthy merchant’s family. In this household, four out of eight souls perished.”
“And the neighboring houses?”
“Hardly a cough between them. Oh, save for one other estate down the avenue that suffered heavy losses.”
“Hmm...”
As I listened further, the hair on my neck began to prickle. Something was definitely off.
Cholera, like most infectious scourges of this era, was fundamentally a disease of destitution. It thrived in wretched slums, preying disproportionately on the socioeconomically vulnerable who drank from tainted pumps and lived wall-to-wall in filth. Yet our hospital hadn’t caught so much as a whisper of a cholera outbreak in the rookeries.
One might dismiss it as the typical barbarism of the nineteenth century, but our Hospital Director, despite his insatiable greed, had become remarkably enlightened regarding basic hygiene. More importantly, the people dropping dead right now were not destitute factory hands—they were London’s ruling elite.
“It certainly is bizarre,” I admitted.
“Aye, bizarre indeed,” the Chief agreed, tapping a thick finger against the desk. “They aren’t falling in waves. They’re dropping like isolated dots on a map.”
It hadn’t swept across adjacent tenements. A cluster died here, another far over there—sporadic, pinpoint strikes, exactly as the Chief described.
“Yet there isn’t a shred of physical evidence to substantiate poisoning,” the Chief added, sighing. “Zemel took a look and declared it nothing more than a vulgar bout of the summer runs.”
“Zemel?” Liston snapped, his face souring. “Whatever possessed you to summon that butcher?”
“I had no idea you two had relocated to this grand new establishment! When my men checked your old quarters and found them empty, I had them fetch the next most reputable practitioner in town.”
“Ah...”
Zemel.
The sovereign of venesection, a man who bled dying wretches dry and was hailed across London as a medical miracle worker. A truly dismal indictment of nineteenth-century medicine, to be sure. But setting that quack aside, the case itself was growing increasingly peculiar.
“Between Zemel’s dismissive diagnosis and my detectives coming up entirely empty-handed, morale down at the precinct is scraping the floorboards,” the Chief confessed. “What’s more...”
“What’s more?”
“Truth be told, the only reason I noticed anything amiss was because I clumsily dropped the case archives and had to gather them off the floor.”
“I see.”
“Look closely at the dates. These three incidents... they occurred roughly three months apart.”
“Oh? You’re right. Hmm... A serial killer?”
“A serial... what? Serial killer?” The Chief blinked, rolling the syllables around his tongue before his eyes lit up. “My word. That’s a term I’ve never heard before, but it has a remarkably convincing ring to it!”
“Ah, so it’s the first time you’ve heard it.”
“Never in all my years on the force.”
Right.
The mid-nineteenth century was an era where the term ‘serial killer’ had not yet been coined. Perhaps such monsters already prowled the gaslit fog, eluding capture because no one possessed the vocabulary to conceptualize them. Or perhaps the pathologies of industrial civilization had simply not yet curdled to such a monstrous extreme.
Before my reincarnation into this grim past, I might have indulged in romantic notions about history, imagining that an age lacking material comforts was somehow richer in spirit. But having lived it, I knew better. The reality was brutally simple: life here was far harsher, human nature far stingier, and survival far crueler. Every passing hour hammered home the timeless truth that generosity only flourishes when the granaries are full.
“Well, the terminology hardly matters,” Liston broke in, a spark in his eye. “The mystery itself is rather captivating.”
“And our schedule happens to be clear,” I added.
“Are you sure you aren’t too busy?” the Chief asked, glancing around our polished parlor. “Word on the street is that your clinic is doing roaring business.”
“The assistants handle the prep work anyway,” I said smoothly. “We have nothing pressing on our hands.”
“Splendid! Then you’ll ride with me?”
Liston and I rose from our chairs in unison. The Chief watched us with an immensely gratified grin, hauling his bulky frame up after us.
“Aye, say what they will, you two are real doctors. To tell you the truth, those dreadful rumors circulating about your butchery had me feeling a touch uneasy of late.”
I knew it. He hadn’t called Zemel because he lost track of our address; he had simply gotten squeamish after hearing our bloody reputation. As if any high-ranking London official could genuinely be ignorant of our hospital’s grand opening. Still, he had seen the error of his ways and returned to the true path, so I let it slide. I was, after all, a man of boundless magnanimity.
Clack, clack, clack.
We boarded the Chief’s private carriage and clattered through the cobblestone streets toward police headquarters. Along the way, pedestrian carriages pulled aside and passersby bowed their heads as our conveyance swept past. It was an undeniably intoxicating spectacle.
So this is status... This is raw authority.
‘Next time the Crown brings up titles, perhaps I ought to accept a knighthood after all.’
What was the point of enduring the nineteenth century if one couldn't relish a taste of aristocratic privilege? Not that I lacked influence entirely; whenever I strolled through the rookeries or passed the docks, cutthroats and street toughs bowed low enough to kiss my boots. But intimidation among ruffians was a dirty business. What I truly craved was the ability to inspire a mixture of awe and terror among polite society.
“Here we are,” the Chief announced, stepping down onto the pavement before squinting at me. “Why on earth are you smiling like that, Doctor Kim?”
“Pardon? Me?”
“Aye. Just now, you bore the spitting image of a scheming Frenchman.”
“Isn’t that a rather vicious insult, Chief?”
“Haha! A jest, purely a jest. You looked more like a German.”
“That’s...”
Isn’t that even worse? They weren’t even a century away from igniting a World War. Give them a few more decades after that, and they would orchestrate industrialized, mechanized slaughter on an unimaginable scale.
“Come along, gather round!” the Chief bellowed as we crossed the threshold.
We followed him inside to his personal office. In an era that lavishly rewarded state authority, the room was resplendent. A dedicated secretary attended the door, and the interior boasted expansive, pristine windows positioned so cunningly that bright sunlight flooded the chamber despite London’s perpetual coal smoke.
We were not alone. Several plainclothes constables and detectives who had handled the inquiries stood lined against the wall. They had assembled under orders, but their posture reeked of sullen reluctance. Every time the Chief looked away, they exchanged mutinous glances.
Not that their petty defiance amounted to anything.
“You,” the Chief barked, singling out the first constable. “You claim there’s no criminal suspicion whatsoever?”
“Th-that’s correct, sir,” the man stammered, straightening up. “We questioned every domestic servant and acquaintance who had access to the premises.”
“And what precisely did you investigate?”
“We focused primarily on anyone who came into direct contact with the deceased near the time of death, sir. There was no evidence of personal malice, no bitter disputes, and above all, not a single individual stood to gain financially from the deaths.”
“Aye, so your report claimed. What about you?”
Under the Chief’s piercing glare, the men had no choice but to lay out their findings. This was not a modern twenty-first-century precinct chief constrained by internal affairs; this was a nineteenth-century police commissioner—an autocrat of immense power. While these constables enjoyed enough petty authority on the streets to dine in ordinary taverns without ever paying a copper, petty tyrants were invariably the quickest to grovel before a superior power.
“Much the same on my end, sir,” the second officer answered briskly. “We did find a single associate who harbored a known grudge against the master, but the fellow was verified to be abroad in France at the time.”
“Could he not have hired an assassin?”
“We uncovered no suspicious transfers of funds, sir. Furthermore, the household staff attested that no unfamiliar faces came or went before the illness struck.”
“Could the cook have been bribed?”
“Out of the question, sir. The cook is quite renowned in service. Besides, once the master died, the cook was cast out on the street without employment. We confirmed that the poor wretch fell into dire financial straits shortly thereafter.”
“I see... And your case?”
Liston and I stood quietly, absorbing the detailed reports recited by each officer. Hearing the summaries laid out in sequence, it became obvious that these men had conducted surprisingly thorough legwork. Had these mysterious deaths occurred in the East End slums, the police wouldn’t have wasted an hour investigating. Investigation? Hardly—they would have had the corpses bundled onto carts and carted straight to our anatomy theater. But because the casualties belonged to high society, the precinct had actually exerted itself. The fatigue in their voices and the exhaustive logs proved their diligence.
“My findings mirror the others, sir,” the third officer reported. “For a factory owner, the deceased had an exceptionally stellar reputation. Even his mill hands spoke fondly of him.”
“So he wasn't particularly wealthy, then?”
“Oh, he was loaded, sir. Inherited a vast family fortune.”
“Ah. Quite.”
“There was, however, one peculiar detail... though it’s likely nothing at all,” the officer added, suddenly hedging.
Both Liston and I perked up, while the Chief’s brows knitted in immediate irritation.
“Out with it, man!”
“It truly seems inconsequential, sir...”
“If it were truly nothing, you wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. Speak!”
“Well, sir... It’s regarding the cook.”
“The cook?”
“Yes, sir. The cook employed in that household.”
“What about them? Are you saying the cook who worked for these dead families was the very same person?”
The constable nodded solemnly.
No way.
At that single revelation, a historical case flashed through my mind like a bolt of lightning. The memory was slightly fragmented, and I needed a few moments to assemble the pieces, so I held my tongue and listened.
“Did this cook bear a grudge?” the Chief pressed.
“N-no, sir. I found the coincidence odd myself, so I tailed the suspect relentlessly. But their circumstances never improved after changing employers, nor did their spending habits alter in the slightest.”
“Could the payments have been hidden?”
“Impossible, sir. Several months have elapsed since the tragedies. I shadowed the cook for nearly eight weeks, and right now, the poor creature is simply working as an ordinary cook in another kitchen, scraping by. In fact, every time a master perished, the cook’s livelihood took a catastrophic hit.”
“Hmm... An old resentment, perhaps? You can never truly peer into another soul’s heart.”
“Everyone in the neighborhood sings the cook’s praises, sir. Generous, kind-hearted... What’s more, whenever a member of the family died, the cook attended the funeral without fail and wept bitterly. It certainly didn’t look like an act.”
“A mere coincidence, then?”
“That was... my professional conclusion, yes, sir.”
Watching the constable nod with utter conviction, the puzzle pieces in my mind snapped cleanly into place.
Typhoid Mary...