A Problem at the Docks. Chapter Two.
Fully awake now and with everything that sergeant Peck had told me buzzing in my mind I found lying in bed doing nothing impossible.
I called a nurse in and asked for paper and a pencil, she bought back paper but one of those horrible wax pens that look like a child’s toy. I sent her off to find a proper pencil or a pen. How hard is it to fend a pencil in a hospital.
As it turned out fairly hard as it took her a good twenty minutes before she came back with half a pencil and one badly in need a sharpening at that.
So I sent her off to find a knife.
Five minutes later a doctor came in to ask me how I was and why I wanted something sharp. I quickly gained the impression he was concerned I wanted to kill myself or something equally ridiculous.
“Doctor, it’s this damn pencil, I need to sharpen it. You don’t happen to have a knife do you?”
“Oh, is that all.” He rummaged in the pockets of his white coat and pulled out a small pen knife
I set to sharpening the pencil then came across a new problem, what to do with the shavings. The young doctor solved that problem by reaching under the bed and lifting up a small bin which I tipped the shavings into.
“Thank you doctor, doctor?”
“Harper”
“Thank you doctor Harper”.
I started to write everything Peck had told me on one sheet of paper while scribbling the few details that I could remember from last night on another sheet.
The doctor turned to leave and a thought came to me.
“Doctor Harper, the city mortuary is still based here is it not?”
“Yes, right down the bottom, not that we talk about it though in case it upsets the patients. Why?”
“The body from the docks this morning would be down there would it not?”
“I suppose so, yes. Why?” The why was drawn out a little and had the first hints of suspicion in the voice.
“Good, I will want to have a look at it today if possible.”
Surprise, then shock then concern then determination chased each other across the doctor’s face.
“Out of the question! A knock on the head like that not to mention the knee, no, impossible. I will not have you trying to walk anywhere for at least a day or two.”
The doctor had that determined look on his face that told me he would have me tied to the bed if he thought it would help but I had to get out of the room and do something. Anything at all to give my mind focus!
Then an idea came to me.
“What about a wheel chair then, no walking involved and I’m not planning to leave the hospital, just downstairs.?”
We looked at each other. I was determined to leave; he was determined to prevent me.
We came to a compromise, a wheelchair and a nurse to push me around and stop me doing anything foolish.
After swinging my legs out of bed and getting into the wheelchair I was very glad of the nurse, just that movement left me feeling dizzy and bending my left knee to get into the chair had almost caused me to cry out in pain.
My coat was hanging by the door and I grabbed it and hung it about my shoulders as I was pushed out.
~
The mortuary was located in the deepest of the cellars under the hospital, a room naturally cool and made more so by the blocks of ice stacked in a pair of open topped chests at either end of the room.
As soon as I entered my breath began to mist in front of my face and I quickly pulled my thin leather gloves from a pocket and put them on. A little shuffling allowed me to drape my coat over my upper body but I could see my legs getting cold under the thin hospital robe.
There were three trolleys in the room, two covered with sheets, the third holding the body of a naked man, well most of the body given that it was missing an arm and half a leg on the side towards me.
An elderly man stood beside this body, bent over slightly and probing at the missing leg with a thin metal tool of some sort, the shock of white hair standing above his long white coat made him seem almost ghostly in the clouds of mist coming off the ice.
Professor Charles Alexander Carlyle. Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of anthropology, expert in birds, beasts and plants, acknowledged as one of the finest experts in the south west in many fields of biology.
Oh and for many years the family doctor for Colonel and Mrs Thorn and their two children Arthur and Alexandra.
I coughed politely. The old man stood up and turned his head.
“Arthur, my boy, good to see you. How’s the knee, I heard you were upstairs as a patient again. Fourth time in as many years. You’re not a youngster anymore, you should be more careful.”
I thought about explaining the circumstances behind my many visits to the hospital but decided not to. My old friend and family doctor also studied the nature of the mind and helped out at Charminster house, an asylum for the mentally deranged. A man of my status would never be sent to a common bedlam but I still had no desire to talk about some of the things I had seen over the years.
“Fine professor” I lied, “Just fine”.
He gave me a look that said all those years of treating me let him read me like a book.
“And the Knee”.
“Painful to bend, otherwise just an ache.”
Professor Carlyle put down the tool he had been holding and walked over to me, as he approached he glanced at the nurse still standing behind the wheelchair.
“Mary isn’t it? He will be fine here, go and have a cup of tea. I won’t let him escape.”
Once the nurse had left the room and the door had closed he bent down beside the wheelchair and prodded a bony finger into the side of my left knee.
I gasped as a shock of pain ran down to my toes and up to my waist.
“Just an ache you said”.
I gritted my teeth and said nothing.
He stood up again and walked across the room to another door, he opened this to reveal a walk in cupboard, both sides lined with shelves that were filled by a multitude of items.
He rummaged along several shelves for a minute then walked back toward me, something made of leather in one and a battered tin in the other.
The leather turned out to be a brace that strapped above and below my knee, it was tight and made it hard to bend my knee but it was much stronger that my injured knee alone.
“Be careful walking but that will help”
Professor Carlyle then handed me the tin, about the size of a sugar tin, remnants of bright paint patterns just about visible. I lifted the lid and looked inside; it was half full of a fine white power and had a small silver spoon sitting half buried in the powder.
“Mix one spoon of this with a good string whiskey morning and evening. It will help with the pain. Mind though one spoon only and twice a day.”
I looked at the powder. “What is it?”
Carlyle chuckled. “Just something from my private stock. One spoonful in whiskey and no more than twice a day.”
I nodded.
“Good”. He took the handles of the wheelchair and pushed me across the room to the uncovered body.
“You may want to stand to see this Arthur”.
I did so and found myself no more than a foot away from the remains of the body found that very morning.
The professor picked up the metal rod he had been using to probe the wounds when I entered and used it to point to the wounds on the upper legs.
“See here Arthur” he said and pointed to one end of the oval shaped wounds which seemed to be deeper. Oddly staring at a torn apart dead body wasn’t bothering me, I wasn’t sure why.
“Now see this one”, he pointed to another wound and then to the wounds on the other thigh.
“Do you see?”
I didn’t and said so.
“Here let me show you over here, this may be clearer.” He stepped away from the body to the bench that ran the length of the room and picked up a number of sheets of what looked like paper but were almost transparent.
He bought them to the trolley and put all but one down, this one he held next to one of the wounds and I could see charcoal marks on the paper matching the exact shape of the wound.
“The bite shape, a dog or cat would have extended canines to the side; these have extended incisors or at least the front pair. Much larger frontal incisors. Only one type of creature with a bite like this.”
He paused as if expecting me to have guessed what he was alluding to.
“Rattus norvegicus most likely, the common brown rat. Not at all uncommon along the docks.”
“Rats, these three were killed by rats?”
“Eaten by rats certainly, as to killed by them, well that is not so certain. None of them drowned, no water in the lungs. All three look more like industrial accidents to be honest. The missing limbs all look to have been torn off not cut or chewed.”
I looked at the body in front of us, both legs missing at the knee. “Industrial accident, he has no legs or right arm, what could have done that?”
The professor gave me the look I remembered so well as a young man. “That Arthur is your job to find out”
My knee was beginning to pain me from the standing and the cold so I settled back into the wheel chair.
The professor chuckled. “So not a monster at all. What! I hear the gossip even down here. Monster on the docks indeed.”
“Well thank you professor, I’m sure the city will be pleased to hear that. I’ll get some constables looking for this factory that is killing people. The rats, well we can trap or shoot a few and use them as evidence, it’s not hard to find a rat in this city.”
This case was looking to be concluded and I hadn’t left the hospital yet. A nice easy case for a change and nothing supernatural.
“Be careful with these rats, these men were not killed by them but I have no doubts they could kill a person .”
“Constabulary issue boots are quite stout professor and they cover the ankles, the men should be fine.”
“Arthur I would be more worried about my throat were I you, these things could easily jump that high.”
I was puzzled for a second, rat, small brown thing, a few inches long. I had the sudden image of a rat on springs and must have smiled.
“I’m not joking Arthur, these things are likely to be dangerous, going after them with a few terriers will not work, they would eat the terriers for one thing.”
“What, eat the terriers, just how big are these things?”
The professor picked up the pile of papers, each of which had a rubbing of a wound and the bite sized marked on it. This one is the smallest, a bit over two feet I would estimate. This one a bit bigger, maybe two and a half feet. This one, well judging by the bite size this one must be close to four feet.”
Four feet, things had been looking so simple for a minute. Four foot long rats. Oh the chief Inspector was going to love this one.
~
The professor had called an orderly to wheel me back to my room and I had arranged for a message to be sent to the station, then very tired I fell asleep quickly.
I was woken by someone talking next to me, the room was darker, by the sun it was late afternoon.
The voice was a nurse, no it was a matron and she did not look happy.
“Inspector, Inspector. Ah there you are, this man insisted he had to talk to you”. Peck stood in the doorway and she looked across at him as if he was making the room dirty.
I coughed to clear my throat. “That’s fine matron, police business I’m afraid”.
She harrumphed and marched out, “Five minutes, no more” floated back into the room from the corridor.
By the time the sergeant had entered the room and stood half way between the bed and the door I was fully awake.
“Anything to report sergeant?”
“Nothing found so far sir, I have constables all along the docks asking questions. Mostly when people find out what we are looking for they either think it’s a joke or they realise it’s to do with the monster case and get right scared.”
He pulled out his battered old notebook and flipped through the pages.
“Five constables questioning people on the docks, I’ll keep three on the docks tonight. Any ships tied up overnight will be told to keep an eye open. Extra patrol of two constables will cover the warehouses behind the docks down to market road and the canal. I spoke to the city rat catcher, he doesn’t have anything that would catch a four foot rat other than poison. He suggested shotguns.”
He put his note pad away.
“I’ll keep a close eye on things sir, you rest up. I’ll be round in the morning”.
He half turned toward the door then paused and looked back at me. “Anything else sir?”
“No sergeant, carry on.”
He walked to the door and stepped into the corridor outside but before he pulled the door shut he paused.
“Four foot long rats sir, this is another weird one isn’t it?”
I nodded and he closed the door.
I fell asleep quickly but slept fitfully, dreams of huge rats jumping around me filled my sleeping thoughts.
Fully awake now and with everything that sergeant Peck had told me buzzing in my mind I found lying in bed doing nothing impossible.
I called a nurse in and asked for paper and a pencil, she bought back paper but one of those horrible wax pens that look like a child’s toy. I sent her off to find a proper pencil or a pen. How hard is it to fend a pencil in a hospital.
As it turned out fairly hard as it took her a good twenty minutes before she came back with half a pencil and one badly in need a sharpening at that.
So I sent her off to find a knife.
Five minutes later a doctor came in to ask me how I was and why I wanted something sharp. I quickly gained the impression he was concerned I wanted to kill myself or something equally ridiculous.
“Doctor, it’s this damn pencil, I need to sharpen it. You don’t happen to have a knife do you?”
“Oh, is that all.” He rummaged in the pockets of his white coat and pulled out a small pen knife
I set to sharpening the pencil then came across a new problem, what to do with the shavings. The young doctor solved that problem by reaching under the bed and lifting up a small bin which I tipped the shavings into.
“Thank you doctor, doctor?”
“Harper”
“Thank you doctor Harper”.
I started to write everything Peck had told me on one sheet of paper while scribbling the few details that I could remember from last night on another sheet.
The doctor turned to leave and a thought came to me.
“Doctor Harper, the city mortuary is still based here is it not?”
“Yes, right down the bottom, not that we talk about it though in case it upsets the patients. Why?”
“The body from the docks this morning would be down there would it not?”
“I suppose so, yes. Why?” The why was drawn out a little and had the first hints of suspicion in the voice.
“Good, I will want to have a look at it today if possible.”
Surprise, then shock then concern then determination chased each other across the doctor’s face.
“Out of the question! A knock on the head like that not to mention the knee, no, impossible. I will not have you trying to walk anywhere for at least a day or two.”
The doctor had that determined look on his face that told me he would have me tied to the bed if he thought it would help but I had to get out of the room and do something. Anything at all to give my mind focus!
Then an idea came to me.
“What about a wheel chair then, no walking involved and I’m not planning to leave the hospital, just downstairs.?”
We looked at each other. I was determined to leave; he was determined to prevent me.
We came to a compromise, a wheelchair and a nurse to push me around and stop me doing anything foolish.
After swinging my legs out of bed and getting into the wheelchair I was very glad of the nurse, just that movement left me feeling dizzy and bending my left knee to get into the chair had almost caused me to cry out in pain.
My coat was hanging by the door and I grabbed it and hung it about my shoulders as I was pushed out.
~
The mortuary was located in the deepest of the cellars under the hospital, a room naturally cool and made more so by the blocks of ice stacked in a pair of open topped chests at either end of the room.
As soon as I entered my breath began to mist in front of my face and I quickly pulled my thin leather gloves from a pocket and put them on. A little shuffling allowed me to drape my coat over my upper body but I could see my legs getting cold under the thin hospital robe.
There were three trolleys in the room, two covered with sheets, the third holding the body of a naked man, well most of the body given that it was missing an arm and half a leg on the side towards me.
An elderly man stood beside this body, bent over slightly and probing at the missing leg with a thin metal tool of some sort, the shock of white hair standing above his long white coat made him seem almost ghostly in the clouds of mist coming off the ice.
Professor Charles Alexander Carlyle. Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of anthropology, expert in birds, beasts and plants, acknowledged as one of the finest experts in the south west in many fields of biology.
Oh and for many years the family doctor for Colonel and Mrs Thorn and their two children Arthur and Alexandra.
I coughed politely. The old man stood up and turned his head.
“Arthur, my boy, good to see you. How’s the knee, I heard you were upstairs as a patient again. Fourth time in as many years. You’re not a youngster anymore, you should be more careful.”
I thought about explaining the circumstances behind my many visits to the hospital but decided not to. My old friend and family doctor also studied the nature of the mind and helped out at Charminster house, an asylum for the mentally deranged. A man of my status would never be sent to a common bedlam but I still had no desire to talk about some of the things I had seen over the years.
“Fine professor” I lied, “Just fine”.
He gave me a look that said all those years of treating me let him read me like a book.
“And the Knee”.
“Painful to bend, otherwise just an ache.”
Professor Carlyle put down the tool he had been holding and walked over to me, as he approached he glanced at the nurse still standing behind the wheelchair.
“Mary isn’t it? He will be fine here, go and have a cup of tea. I won’t let him escape.”
Once the nurse had left the room and the door had closed he bent down beside the wheelchair and prodded a bony finger into the side of my left knee.
I gasped as a shock of pain ran down to my toes and up to my waist.
“Just an ache you said”.
I gritted my teeth and said nothing.
He stood up again and walked across the room to another door, he opened this to reveal a walk in cupboard, both sides lined with shelves that were filled by a multitude of items.
He rummaged along several shelves for a minute then walked back toward me, something made of leather in one and a battered tin in the other.
The leather turned out to be a brace that strapped above and below my knee, it was tight and made it hard to bend my knee but it was much stronger that my injured knee alone.
“Be careful walking but that will help”
Professor Carlyle then handed me the tin, about the size of a sugar tin, remnants of bright paint patterns just about visible. I lifted the lid and looked inside; it was half full of a fine white power and had a small silver spoon sitting half buried in the powder.
“Mix one spoon of this with a good string whiskey morning and evening. It will help with the pain. Mind though one spoon only and twice a day.”
I looked at the powder. “What is it?”
Carlyle chuckled. “Just something from my private stock. One spoonful in whiskey and no more than twice a day.”
I nodded.
“Good”. He took the handles of the wheelchair and pushed me across the room to the uncovered body.
“You may want to stand to see this Arthur”.
I did so and found myself no more than a foot away from the remains of the body found that very morning.
The professor picked up the metal rod he had been using to probe the wounds when I entered and used it to point to the wounds on the upper legs.
“See here Arthur” he said and pointed to one end of the oval shaped wounds which seemed to be deeper. Oddly staring at a torn apart dead body wasn’t bothering me, I wasn’t sure why.
“Now see this one”, he pointed to another wound and then to the wounds on the other thigh.
“Do you see?”
I didn’t and said so.
“Here let me show you over here, this may be clearer.” He stepped away from the body to the bench that ran the length of the room and picked up a number of sheets of what looked like paper but were almost transparent.
He bought them to the trolley and put all but one down, this one he held next to one of the wounds and I could see charcoal marks on the paper matching the exact shape of the wound.
“The bite shape, a dog or cat would have extended canines to the side; these have extended incisors or at least the front pair. Much larger frontal incisors. Only one type of creature with a bite like this.”
He paused as if expecting me to have guessed what he was alluding to.
“Rattus norvegicus most likely, the common brown rat. Not at all uncommon along the docks.”
“Rats, these three were killed by rats?”
“Eaten by rats certainly, as to killed by them, well that is not so certain. None of them drowned, no water in the lungs. All three look more like industrial accidents to be honest. The missing limbs all look to have been torn off not cut or chewed.”
I looked at the body in front of us, both legs missing at the knee. “Industrial accident, he has no legs or right arm, what could have done that?”
The professor gave me the look I remembered so well as a young man. “That Arthur is your job to find out”
My knee was beginning to pain me from the standing and the cold so I settled back into the wheel chair.
The professor chuckled. “So not a monster at all. What! I hear the gossip even down here. Monster on the docks indeed.”
“Well thank you professor, I’m sure the city will be pleased to hear that. I’ll get some constables looking for this factory that is killing people. The rats, well we can trap or shoot a few and use them as evidence, it’s not hard to find a rat in this city.”
This case was looking to be concluded and I hadn’t left the hospital yet. A nice easy case for a change and nothing supernatural.
“Be careful with these rats, these men were not killed by them but I have no doubts they could kill a person .”
“Constabulary issue boots are quite stout professor and they cover the ankles, the men should be fine.”
“Arthur I would be more worried about my throat were I you, these things could easily jump that high.”
I was puzzled for a second, rat, small brown thing, a few inches long. I had the sudden image of a rat on springs and must have smiled.
“I’m not joking Arthur, these things are likely to be dangerous, going after them with a few terriers will not work, they would eat the terriers for one thing.”
“What, eat the terriers, just how big are these things?”
The professor picked up the pile of papers, each of which had a rubbing of a wound and the bite sized marked on it. This one is the smallest, a bit over two feet I would estimate. This one a bit bigger, maybe two and a half feet. This one, well judging by the bite size this one must be close to four feet.”
Four feet, things had been looking so simple for a minute. Four foot long rats. Oh the chief Inspector was going to love this one.
~
The professor had called an orderly to wheel me back to my room and I had arranged for a message to be sent to the station, then very tired I fell asleep quickly.
I was woken by someone talking next to me, the room was darker, by the sun it was late afternoon.
The voice was a nurse, no it was a matron and she did not look happy.
“Inspector, Inspector. Ah there you are, this man insisted he had to talk to you”. Peck stood in the doorway and she looked across at him as if he was making the room dirty.
I coughed to clear my throat. “That’s fine matron, police business I’m afraid”.
She harrumphed and marched out, “Five minutes, no more” floated back into the room from the corridor.
By the time the sergeant had entered the room and stood half way between the bed and the door I was fully awake.
“Anything to report sergeant?”
“Nothing found so far sir, I have constables all along the docks asking questions. Mostly when people find out what we are looking for they either think it’s a joke or they realise it’s to do with the monster case and get right scared.”
He pulled out his battered old notebook and flipped through the pages.
“Five constables questioning people on the docks, I’ll keep three on the docks tonight. Any ships tied up overnight will be told to keep an eye open. Extra patrol of two constables will cover the warehouses behind the docks down to market road and the canal. I spoke to the city rat catcher, he doesn’t have anything that would catch a four foot rat other than poison. He suggested shotguns.”
He put his note pad away.
“I’ll keep a close eye on things sir, you rest up. I’ll be round in the morning”.
He half turned toward the door then paused and looked back at me. “Anything else sir?”
“No sergeant, carry on.”
He walked to the door and stepped into the corridor outside but before he pulled the door shut he paused.
“Four foot long rats sir, this is another weird one isn’t it?”
I nodded and he closed the door.
I fell asleep quickly but slept fitfully, dreams of huge rats jumping around me filled my sleeping thoughts.