Beloved Poison Read Online Free PDF

‘It wasn’t my intention . . . Please, Dr Catchpole, think what you’re doing!’
    ‘Ha!’ cried Dr Catchpole. He pulled out his penis, and stabbed the blade bearing the syphilitic matter into the end of it. There was a gasp, as everyone in the room drew a sharp breath, and then complete silence. The students exchanged appalled glances. Dr Graves and Dr Magorian stared at Dr Catchpole in disbelief.
    Dr Catchpole flung down the knife and dabbed at his bloody genitals with his shirt tail. ‘I shall report my findings regularly to the society,’ he said. ‘And you’ll see that I’m right. The matter from the primary lesion will inoculate me from the disease.’
    In fact, as Dr Bain predicted, we saw no such thing. I did not attend subsequent meetings of the society, but Dr Bain informed me that a week later a large globular gumma had appeared at the site of infection. Some weeks after that, Dr Catchpole vanished from public view. He was attended by Dr Graves, I assumed to be dosed with mercury until his symptoms had abated.
    I told Will this as we slowly circled the exhibits in the anatomy museum. Will’s eyes were glazed, his face drained of colour, though whether it was from the tale I had told, or the sight of so many anatomical specimens, I had no idea. We walked over to the window and looked down at the courtyard, the statue of King Edward, and the grey walls of the ward building opposite. At first, Will said nothing. He opened the window and breathed in the cold damp air. Then, ‘This is a most peculiar place,’ he said. ‘And the people in it are driven by the most extraordinary motives to do the most deplorable things.’
    Later, when the storm was upon us, I had cause to remember his words. The time was soon to come when I would wish with all my heart that we might return to such innocent times.

     
    I took Will to the counting house, the governors’ hall and the out-patients’ waiting room. He wandered about, his hands in his pockets, clearly relieved to be away from the rows of pickled organs and bobbing chunks of diseased viscera. Occasionally, he ran a hand across the lime wash, or tapped and pulled at a section of wooden panelling. He poked at damp patches in the wall of out-patients with his pen knife and dug out a lump of plaster.
    ‘You can’t do that!’ I said, alarmed that the place appeared to have no more structural integrity than a piece of rotten cheese.
    ‘Damp,’ he replied. ‘And evil-smelling damp, at that. What runs beneath?’
    ‘A watercourse.’
    ‘A sewer, I should think. A brook once, but culverted, built upon, and now so full of effluent that it is fit to burst.’ He sniffed, and wrinkled his nose.
    Beside us, the patients waited, sitting side by side on long wooden benches. The air was warmed by the dismal smouldering of cheap coal in the grate, and by the great mass of people crowded together in so small a space. The place was so damp and vile it would have been impossible to detect the smell of bubbling sewage, even if it had risen up through the cracks in the floor boards and lapped about our toes. I sighed. I could remember when the air was sweeter, the roof tops that surrounded us were fewer and less ramshackle. Time brought change, and St Saviour’s had lurched along in the wake of progress like an old woman trying to pursue a wayward child. Her wards were filthy and crowded, out-patients packed to bursting, the mortuary, dissecting rooms, lecture theatre, all too small and cramped for the requirements of the times. Beside me, an old man coughed, and spat onto the floor. The phlegm quivered beside my boot like a great blob of raw egg.
    ‘For God’s sake, man.’ I pointed to a sign on the wall. ‘Can’t you read?’
    ‘No, sir,’ he said. He drew a hand across his glistening nostrils and sniffed.
    I could bear it no longer. ‘The chapel,’ I said to Will, ‘and the herb drying room will clear our heads.’
    I led him across the courtyard. ‘Five