“An otter,” Mr. Godwin said. “I understand that they are common here.”
“It did not seem to be an otter. It was too big. Too awkward.” I looked in the direction Bysshe was pointing, and I did indeed notice some perturbation on the surface of the river; it was as if something had gone down to the bottom leaving its wake behind. Mary took her hand out of the water.
Bysshe eased the boat forward with a barely perceptible movement of the oars; the river was muddied, and I could see where the bank had been eroded by more than usual motion. And then I felt the first drops of rain. The sky, so clear before, had suddenly become overcast. The water turned from a lucent green to slate grey, and a cold breeze brushed across us. Bysshe looked up at the sky and laughed. “You see, Mary, you are especially favoured. The river wishes you to see all of its moods.”
“It is only a light rain,” she said.
“We will recline beneath the willow boughs. Here is the spot.”
He manoeuvred the skiff beneath the trailing branches of a willow leaning over the water; it was a natural shelter, of a kind I would once have relished, and my companions seemed happy to remain secluded amid the gentle pattering of the rain around us. Then Miss Godwin spoke in a low voice. “What is that? Oh God, what is it?”
Her eyes were fixed upon a stretch of water just beyond the tree. There was a hand among the trailing weeds, apparently clutching at them; and then on a motion of the current a face broke the surface of the water. A few moments later the whole body emerged, with a white linen nightgown billowing around it. “God, God, God.” Miss Godwin chanted the word.
“What is this frightful thing?”
I do not know who spoke. The words might have come from my own mouth.
Bysshe leapt from the bench and quickly steered the skiff towards the body; then with the oars he managed to push it against the bank, where it was caught amid the roots and weeds. He jumped from the boat onto the bank, and managed to haul the corpse on shore before it floated further downstream. “It cannot be,” he said. “This is Martha.” He stepped back, and stood at a short distance from the body without saying anything further. Miss Godwin clung to her father, and pressed her head against his jacket.
“Whatever has happened?” Godwin seemed genuinely puzzled, as if he had come upon a calculation he could not settle. I clambered out of the boat onto the shore, and surveyed Martha. Her body had been pinched and bruised in death, no doubt by immersion in the water, but there were also livid marks around her neck and upper thorax. I had no doubt that she had been strangled before being consigned to the river; Harriet Westbrook had met approximately the same fate in the Serpentine.
“I saw her last night,” Bysshe said. “She was eating ham in the kitchen.”
“With Fred.”
“She was brimful of laughter, as usual. What is to be done, Victor? What are we to make of this fearful thing?”
“We will be steady, Bysshe. We will take the body back to Marlow, and alert the parish constables. We must leave the matter in their hands.”
“Why would she have wished to drown herself?”
“I do not know that she did.”
“Could she have fallen into the river in some terrible accident?”
“Do you see the marks upon her neck and body? She was held in a powerful grip.”
He looked at me in horror. “Is that possible? That she was destroyed by someone?”
“I believe so. Now is not the time to debate, Bysshe. We must act with urgency. Come. Help me with the body.”
“I cannot touch her, Victor. I cannot.”
Miss Godwin would not stay in the skiff with the corpse of Martha. But with the help of her father I managed to place the body in the boat. It was agreed that Bysshe and Mr. Godwin would take it back to Marlow, while Miss Godwin and I would walk back along the bank to the town. We watched as the skiff slowly made its way upstream with its unhappy burden. She was silent as we began our walk beside the bank. “I know it is wrong of me,” she said eventually, “but I cannot help thinking of Ophelia. There is a willow grows aslant a brook. You know it, Mr. Frankenstein?”
“Please call me Victor.”
“We have gone beyond ceremony, I think. You shall call me Mary.”
“Ophelia drowned herself, did she not?”
“Her garments, heavy with their drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death. Those are the words of the queen. Not mine.”
“I am afraid that Martha may not have been a suicide.”
She stopped, and was seized with a fit of coughing. It was as if she were trying to expel something from her body. After a few moments she recovered.
“You mean that someone has killed her?”
“I believe so. Yes.”
“I knew it. I knew it when I saw her in the weeds.”
“What made you suspect it?” I was eager to hear her account, touching, as it might, upon my own secret.
“The face at the window,” she replied. “It was no dream. No phantasm. I am sure of that now. I had tried to comfort myself, and you, with my explanation last night. But it was not a face I had ever seen before in my dreams.”
“Can you describe it, Mary?”
“It seemed crumpled, creased rather, like a sheet of paper hastily thrown away. The eyes were of such malevolence that even now I shudder.”
It was clear enough to me that she had seen the creature. He had come to the house at Marlow in pursuit of me and my friends, with the object of performing another act of vengeance. “You must tell the constables everything you saw,” I said. “There will be a search for this demon.” I had conceived the hope, only half-formed, that the creature might be taken and killed by the mob-or that in some other way he might be destroyed by the forces of the law.
“Demon? No. He was a man, I believe, but one of terrible appearance.”
“We must speak to the constables as quickly as possible. They may be able to capture this man before he can flee.”
“It is possible, Victor, that he wished to murder me. Only my scream prevented him. But then poor Martha-” She said no more. We walked the rest of the way in silence.
16
WHEN MARY AND I CAME BACK into Marlow, we saw the commotion by the side of the bridge. A small crowd had gathered on the path sloping down to the river. I could see Bysshe in animated conversation with an elderly gentleman in rusty black who, as I discovered later, was the watchman of the high street. As we came up to them I realised that the crowd had formed a circle around the body of Martha. Mr. Godwin and one of the parish constables, in tall hat and blue surtout, were standing beside the corpse and looking down upon it with scarcely concealed relish.
“Look into her eyes, Mr. Wilby,” one of the women in the crowd called out to the constable. “You will see the face of the murderer there.”
“You do it, Sarah,” he replied. “You are the wise woman. Not me.”
“These superstitions,” Mary whispered to me, “are very strong.”
Sarah had obliged the constable by coming forward and kneeling down beside the body. She peered into Martha’s open eyes, and then suddenly jerked her head back. “I see a fiend,” she said.
Mr. Godwin laughed. “If it is a fiend, Mr. Wilby, you will not be able to catch him.”
“We will have difficulty, sir. That is sure enough. Be good, Sarah. Stand up now.” The crowd were murmuring, unsure whether to accept or to ridicule the woman’s verdict. I decided now to act. I walked up to Mr. Godwin and the constable. “Miss Godwin,” I said, “has something very important to tell you. She saw the murderer last night. Outside her bedroom window.”
“What?” Mr. Godwin seemed offended. “Why did Mary not tell me of this?”
“Before we found Martha’s body, sir, there was no possible reason to alarm you. She thought it might have been a dream.”
“Where is this lady?” Mr. Wilby was very solemn.