Less a Poisoning, More a Plague (Part 2)
Typhoid Mary.
That was not her real name, of course. Her actual name was Mary Mallon. She was an Irish-American woman, and the era did not match in the slightest.
Aren’t we nearly a century apart?
I could not recall the exact dates, but by her time, mankind had, rather miraculously, discovered the existence of bacteria. Given the primitive state of nineteenth-century medicine, I often wondered what cataclysmic leap of progress had propelled humanity that far. In any case, even back when the concept of an asymptomatic carrier was utterly unheard of, the mere fact that science recognized microbes had allowed them to identify Mary Mallon.
Typhoid fever possessed an ancient pedigree. It had plagued humanity for thousands of years. Known colloquially back home as yeom-byeong, or the rotting sickness, contracting it meant an excruciating, wretched ordeal.
I need to verify if that’s truly what we’re dealing with here.
While I quietly gathered my thoughts, the conversation around the desk droned on. I doubted whether it was worth listening to. In fact, it almost certainly was not. Anyone capable of harboring the correct suspicion at this point in history would hardly be human. Honestly, the very fact that the Chief of Police sensed something amiss was already an absurdity bordering on the supernatural.
“Hmm… No matter how many times I review it, there isn’t a shred of criminal evidence. But this damned gut feeling of mine…”
Ah, intuition. A hunch.
It sounded thoroughly unscientific, but I was someone who firmly believed in gut feelings. Not just when diagnosing disease, but in daily life. There were moments when you laid eyes on a complete stranger and felt an immediate, icy prickle down your spine. Did such sensations arise for no reason? Was it not some ancient survival instinct deeply etched into human genetics? Those blessed with an exceptionally sharp instinct were simply people endowed with remarkable intuition.
“I don’t believe your suspicion is without merit, Chief.”
“Ah… Pyeong! Thank you. Hearing you back me up gives me real courage.”
I meant every word of my support, yet Liston and the detectives standing guard nearby cast strange glances in my direction. Their eyes practically accused me of shameless brown-nosing. The sheer injustice of it rankled, so I decided to offer a proper explanation.
“Allow me to speak from my authority as the central figure of the Paris cholera crisis.”
“Are you finally confessing? Admitting you were the one who unleashed it?”
“No, no! Not at all! I mean as the man who resolved it!”
“Well, I’ll grant you that Paris could stand to have its population pruned a bit. But it wasn’t me this time!”
“Right, right. Of course. That sort of modesty certainly aids a physician’s reputation, haha!”
The unfairness deepened. How on earth could I have manufactured cholera in the first place? But since I was not foolish enough to waste breath dispelling an impossible rumor, I chose to refocus on the matter at hand. Frankly speaking, even if I had killed a few Frenchmen, who in Great Britain would dare lodge a complaint? They would shower me with medals rather than condemnation.
“Now, cholera is a waterborne contagion. Some fools still deny it, but it is an indisputable fact. Yet look at these victims.”
I pointed toward the map the Chief had laid out across the desk. Three residences were marked upon the parchment, scattered haphazardly across town. Aside from all being situated in affluent neighborhoods, they were separated by substantial distances.
“They could hardly have drawn from the same water source, could they?”
“Indeed. Quite right. It makes no sense. What you suggested earlier… what was it again? Ah, yes. A serial murder? That seems entirely plausible.”
“The culprit—” a detective began.
“Hush! Hold your tongue and listen! Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the dread renown of Lord Pyeong?”
“A-Ah!”
The detective who had dared interrupt went pale as a sheet and scrambled backward. The two constables flanking him blanched just as dramatically. The bitter tragedy was that I knew precisely why they were trembling.
The Opium Fiend. The Plague-Bringer of Paris. The Feeder of Feces. The Pancreas Plunderer. The Heart Snatcher. Master of the Piss-Trough… Lord Pyeong.
Not long ago, a man on the street had shrieked in mortal terror and sprinted away at the mere sight of me. When I caught him to ask what on earth was wrong, he babble-recited that exact string of atrocious titles, and every bystander listening had solemnly nodded along in agreement.
“Therefore, we must consider another avenue,” I continued smoothly. “Not water, but something else. Is there not one striking element common to all three households?”
“You mean the cook mentioned earlier?”
“Precisely.”
“Yet the cook… I read the dossier. He hardly looks like a cutthroat.”
True enough. Calling him a criminal was technically unfair. The man himself likely had no idea. Or perhaps, deep down, he was beginning to wonder. As the old gamer’s proverb went: if every raid party you join descends into a fiery disaster three times in a row, it is high time to look in the mirror. Of course, without online gaming in the nineteenth century, he had probably never learned that valuable lesson.
“He may be an unwitting culprit.”
“An unwitting culprit…?”
“He might not be committing murder by design, but poisoning his dishes entirely without realizing it.”
“Does that… make any sense?”
“Good intentions do not always yield good outcomes, do they? After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“A fine turn of phrase, but…”
When you considered it, nineteenth-century medicine was the absolute epitome of that sentiment. A patient arrived with a laceration, and doctors poured boiling oil over it, smeared it with toxic verdigris, and encouraged it to fester into 'laudable pus.' They genuinely believed they were saving lives. And did the patients survive? No, they dropped dead like flies.
This won’t be enough to convince them.
If the Chief was merely lukewarm, that was one thing. I could shrug it off. But Liston was frowning dubiously as well, and I could not afford to lose his support.
Should I deploy the Divine Revelation angle?
No, my instincts warned against it. I had leaned on the shamanic possession routine far too often of late. Fortunately, I was not out of cards.
“Back in Joseon, you see…”
The Joseon card. Even I felt a twinge of shame pulling this trick again, but what choice did I have? In an era that had not even proven the existence of bacteria, how was I supposed to introduce the concept of an asymptomatic carrier? When all else failed, I had to sell the mystic Orient. Thankfully, I had peddled that narrative so thoroughly—and my terrifying reputation was so well-established—that everyone in the room leaned forward in rapt attention. If nothing else, sheer terror of being cursed into oblivion kept their mouths shut.
“There was once an affair where people perished whenever a generous grandee hosted a banquet. Not merely at one estate, but across several households in succession. And the common thread running through every kitchen was a single cook.”
“Good heavens! An exact mirror of our dilemma!”
“Indeed. A curious parallel… Almost as though the Good Lord prepared that ancient tragedy specifically to guide us through this very ordeal.”
“Hahaha! It very well could be!”
I would sell the Lord alongside Joseon. I would sell anything and everything if it saved human lives. Perhaps a novice would have felt pangs of conscience, but considering I had already forced patients to ingest feces and urine, spinning a harmless fabrication was trivial by comparison.
“At the time in Joseon, lacking a brilliant mind like yours, Chief, ten households were tragically wiped out. When the authorities finally apprehended the cook… though the exact reason remains shrouded in mystery to this day, anyone who consumed food prepared by his hands languished in agony before meeting their end.”
“By God! That settles it! Bring the cook in at once!”
“Excuse me, sir…”
“Silence! Do you not fear the wrath of Lord Pyeong?!”
“It isn’t that, sir!”
There was a reason they called me a master of deception. It had worked once more. The Chief was utterly convinced, and seeing Liston rise from his chair, my mentor had swallowed it whole as well. The only person standing in our way was one of the detectives—specifically, the man who had initially investigated the cook out of suspicion.
What is wrong with this fellow? He was the one who claimed the cook smelled fishy in the first place. Did he want me to lay an actual curse upon him?
“The cook is currently employed at the town residence of a Member of Parliament.”
“Eh? Whose? How could a cook from households where bodies piled up end up in an MP’s kitchen?”
“Word has it his culinary talents are nothing short of miraculous…”
“Who is this gentleman?”
“The Right Honourable Paul Capel… MP.”
“Paul Capel? The Earl of Essex?”
“Yes, sir. Dragging his domestic cook into custody without ironclad evidence… is simply out of the question.”
Paul Capel. Even I recognized that name. I was hardly an ordinary pauper scrounging through the gutters anymore. I was a West End celebrity who ran an independent clinic in Kensington and regularly received invitations to ducal galas. Naturally, I had crossed paths with numerous grandees, and the Earl of Essex was among them.
Wait, wasn’t he present at that war council regarding the Qing Empire?
‘Yes, exactly. That’s the fellow who opposed your title, Brother.’
‘Should we just let him die, then?’
‘Well… nothing is certain yet, is it?’
‘True enough. But he’s already been there two months. If we wait another month, we’ll know for sure, won’t we?’
‘Ah… no, three consecutive households could be chalked up to coincidence, but still… he is an influential peer. The detective speaks the truth.’
Plotting the grand maneuvers of the British Empire alongside Duke Jamie was proof enough of Capel’s titanic stature. Marching up to such a magnate’s doorstep and demanding to arrest his cook would invite an avalanche of political trouble.
“Then what are we to do?”
“If he commutes, we can simply snatch him in the alley tonight on his way home.”
Nineteenth-century police were officers in name only; in practice, they were glorified thugs. The solution offered by the very detective who had urged caution was delightfully brazen.
“Splendid.”
“I shall come along.”
“Pyeong, what about you?”
“I’m coming too, of course.”
I had no objections to the scheme. Dozens of kidnappings occurred across London every single day. One cook vanishing into thin air would barely elicit a raised eyebrow from the Earl. He would simply assume the man had bolted or met an unfortunate end in a ditch, and hire another.
“The sun has set…”
We traveled on foot without a carriage and staked out a narrow alleyway near the Earl’s townhouse. While Liston and I earned more than enough to afford idle evenings, and our official duties for the day were finished, I wondered whether these constables ought to be slacking off so shamelessly while on duty.
“Mmm, quite tasty.”
“Are you truly not having any?”
While loitering in the shadows, one of the detectives was happily shoveling down a bright green pudding he had extorted from a street vendor.
“No, I am quite alright…”
“I shall pass as well,” Liston grunted. “Did you not witness that woman dying of arsenic poisoning the other day?”
“Isn’t arsenic only dangerous when woven into ballgowns or plastered onto wallpaper? Eating it poses no harm, does it?”
The utter absurdity of his logic left me speechless. Right as I was about to deliver a lecture on the lethal properties of copper acetoarsenite, someone whispered sharply.
“Look there. Isn’t that him?”
A stout, robust man was emerging through the service entrance of the Earl’s manor. Every eye snapped toward the lead detective. Shoveling the last toxic spoonful of arsenic-laced green pudding into his mouth, the detective gave a firm nod.
The kidnapping—no, the investigation—had begun.