Chapter Notes: Alister Eads is one of the hardest characters I have ever written. I wrestled with him for days. There is a part of me that just did not want to go to that place. Well I went there for the sake of this story but I have to say up front...pay close attention:
ALISTER EADS IS A MADMAN, I DO NOT AGREE WITH ANYTHING HE SAYS...THESE ARE NOT MY OPINIONS!
I hope that warning is taken to heart. That being said Lestrade and Watson are really endearing themselves to me, and I discovered a character I never saw coming, but who really made this chapter worth writing.
Proceed with Caution!!! You have been warned.
Thanks for reading!
Bart
Doctor John Watson, Police Surgeon: Scotland Yard 4
The Frozen Image
Chapter Five
They made their way through the prison checkpoints, for a courtesy visit to the administrator, Alonzo Skinner.
While there, Lestrade heard a strange chattering noise. He realized it was Watson's teeth.
The man was obviously chilled, but refusing to draw attention to his discomfort.
Lestrade took off his over coat and offered it to him. "Take the damn coat, John; we won't be able to hear the interview over that incessant noise."
Agatha looked positively scandalized at his rudeness, while Mayweather looked amused.
Watson's cheeks flushed when he realized that someone noticed his condition. He took the over coat out of Lestrade's hands with more irritation than gratitude, and struggled into it with Mayweather's help.
"You are most welcome," Lestrade remarked in the face of his friend's impotent vehemence.
Lestrade leaned in to get out of Agatha's hearing. "I swear, John, if you don't start being more forthcoming and cooperative about your situation, friendship or not, case or no, we will reach an impasse. Do not force me to pull rank because I will not risk your health for any reason...Any... reason. Do we understand each other?"
Watson's shoulders slumped as he gave Lestrade a sheepish nod. Lestrade was happy to see the coat had diminished Watson's tremors noticeably.
Lestrade placed a hand on Watson's shoulder giving it a small squeeze; just enough to communicate that in spite of his necessary harsh words, he had his friend's best interest at heart.
"Chief Inspector Lestrade, and company, sorry I was delayed."
They looked up as the rotund Administrator strolled in. Lestrade had met the man four times before and was always curious about how a man so seemingly out of shape moved with such easy speed.
"That's okay, Lon, I know you are a busy man," Lestrade assured.
Lon shrugged, "It is hanging season after all, so many necks so little time," he lamented.
He held a hand out to Agatha, "Miss Weems, we are not due for another expose' on our mistreatment of the poor underprivileged criminals for a few months yet by my reckoning, to what do I owe this displeasure?"
She accepted the hand returning the warm smile that she was receiving. "I'm just here to observe today, Lon, if you would stop mistreating criminals you would never see me at all."
He acted thoughtful. "That is an attractive offer indeed; too bad we enjoy our abuses so much."
"Ah, Doctor Watson, good to see you, what has it been, four years?" he asked holding a hand out with only a slight wince to show he noted Watson's pallor. Watson shook the hand offered. "I trust Holmes's efforts on your behalf have not been in vain?"
Lon smiled. "No one has escaped since."
He turned back to Lestrade, "I am assuming you need to have a chat with our boy?"
Lestrade nodded. "Unfortunately."
"You seem to be well acquainted with him," Watson remarked wrapping Lestrade's coat more securely.
Lon sunk into his chair. "Oh yes, good Mister Eads, a fine addition to our family to say the least. We've kept him in a separate cell away from the population for the duration of his stay, and keep his guards rotated. That has been a challenge."
"Because of threats to his life?" Agatha asked.
Lon's smile faded, his eyes showing strain. "Oh no, would that were the problem, the reason for the extra measures, we feared he might develop a following."
---
He insisted on walking them down, talking to them about his "guest" as they walked through the many checkpoints. "Alister is one of the most singular examples of the criminal mind I have ever come across," he explained nodding to the two guards locking Lestrade and Watson's, pistols in a drawer, the latter which was handed over by Mayweather with no protest, which Lestrade found suspicious.
"How so?" Watson asked
Lon was silent as if clarifying his thinking in his own mind. "You will have to see for yourself, I doubt I can explain it properly.
They walked through a corridor; escorted by two large prison guards who would rake their truncheon across the bars of any resident who dared comment.
Through a thick iron door opened by one last burly was the prison's deathwatch wing.
Lon stopped. "I have other duties that require my attention," he sneered at Agatha, "civil rights to violate, you know how it is, but let me leave you with this. I know there is a movement to get Eads released, if you do not find a way to prevent this, there will be more blood spilled. I say that with all confidence."
He left them to follow a solemn security guard into the prison's dark heart.
They walked to a door in the interior. The guard gave it a bang with his baton.
"Yes?"
"Vistors."
"By all means, Ronald, bid them enter."
The voice was calm and pleasant, with a hint musicality that was hard to express.
The guard turned a large key and pulled the bolt back, indicating for them to go in.
The room, surprisingly well furnished with a bookshelf heavy with tomes, a desk by the window, and a tightly made bed off to the side, was actually cheery in its own way. It had a lived in feel that was dare Lestrade say, cosy.
Alister sat at the desk with his back to them, working at a task. He was a slight little man with coppery brown hair, the sunlight shone off of the lenses of his glasses as he turned a little to the side to call over his shoulder, "I'll be right with you, Chief Inspector," he remarked in that eminently even tone.
"How did you know it was me?" Lestrade inquired.
Alister's shrug was apparent from the back. "Whom else would it be? Miss Weems, I enjoyed your last Newgate expose, too bad I will not be around much longer. We might have collaborated. I'm sure Doctor Watson there is not happy to be in your presence after that series of articles about why this city does not need Sherlock Holmes, oh and that lovely article about his wife's passing."
He pointed a long slender finger to a thick volume he kept near his desk. "I have all the clippings saved. You are one of the few exceptions to the rule."
Agatha looked taken aback."What rule is that?"
He turned in his seat. He had a delicate little paper folded bird in his hands. He stood and placed it carefully with the menagerie of paper animals he kept on his window seal. He turned it so it could catch the best light.
The man was neat and fastidious to a fault, his hair carefully combed, his cheeks without even a hint of stubble.
"So, what shall we discuss?" he asked.
He was as always, reasonable, courteous and open. Lestrade once again found himself wanting to like the young man. That was the real struggle with Alister Eads.
With most criminals, there was an odious factor, some character flaw to alert you to the fact that this was not a person to trust, not so with Alister, Lestrade could not point out a way that the man was insane, which always made his skin crawl.
Here stood a man who, with those same neat hands, tightened the tourniquet around the necks of his victims watching their death throes, then prettied them up, dumped their bodies where they it would be found by a constable of the watch after dripping his own blood onto their cheek.
There was no need for speculation, he would gladly inform you of it, and all you had to do was ask. Somehow, even with the knowledge of his deeds, he remained likeable.
Should not someone you know to have committed evil deeds be a foaming at the mouth mad man? Did it defy some inherent law in the very fabric of things for a man to be a mass murderer, and still draw you in with a sweet nature? It was easy to say that any encounter with Alister left a man questioning the very nature of humanity, or evil itself.
Alister suddenly looked concerned; he slid his chair over to Doctor Watson. "Dear man, you look dreadful, please sit down before you faint."
Lestrade could tell that Watson wanted to turn down the offer, but Mayweather gently guided him to comply with a hand on his shoulder.
As he settled in, Eads turned to Lestrade. "Why would you let a man this ill leave his sickbed?" he demanded.
Lestrade started to explain the situation, but then caught himself, this man was a killer, and he did not deserve clarification. "The more cooperative you are in helping us catch your accomplice, Alister, the sooner he can return to Doctor's care."
Eads nodded, sitting on his bed. "By all means ask your questions; far be it from me to let a fellow man suffer long."
"You make a distinction?" Watson inquired his curiosity etched on his drained features.
Alister blinked. "What sort of distinction?"
"Between your victims suffering and my own," Watson explained.
Alister eyed him curiously. "Of course I do, they were female."
Agatha started, but Lestrade admired her instincts as she settled back into silent watchfulness with Mayweather against the wall. There were times to debate a point and others were you let the madness reveal itself.
Alister turned to Lestrade. "You never mentioned our conversations to him?"
Lestrade shrugged. "They were private as far as I was concerned."
Alister shook his head with disappointment, but his smile was fond, as if he were a schoolteacher with a particularly dense but promising student.
"Giles, I thought we had a breakthrough last time."
"Apparently not," Lestrade admitted.
"Please, I would like to understand," Watson cajoled his face earnest.
Alister looked as if he were heading down a well tread path in his mind.
"It is all so very simple, I was at a meeting of the friends, I'm a Quaker you know, others were testifying while I was studying my bible. I suddenly realized that I was spoken to in a voice that seemed audible to my ears but, it was a message for me alone, no one else heard it."
He paused for affect. "It showed me The Pattern. It started with Adam. Adam was weak so God as a punishment diminished him but removing a rib and placing a thorn in his side in it's place, he called her Eve."
Watson concealed his distaste and nudged. "And the pattern was?"
"Why the downfall and weakening of mankind every since," Alister put forth, his excitement palpable. "Eve was the true forbidden fruit. The pattern is, a man becomes great, a woman comes in, and that man fails. Women are the progenitors of the fall!"
He picked up his bible from his desk top.
"Adam and Eve, Noah and his wife, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebeckah, Jacob and Rachael, Samson, Delilah, David and Bathsheba, King Ahab and Jezebel...great men who were diminished by the taint of the feminine," he concluded with a flourish similar to a magician as he laid the book back down. "Do you want some recent examples? Louise xvi and Marie Antoinette, Napoleon and Josephine, and that's just from France!"
He showed all of the fervour of a minister as he finished. "The voice showed me the way, all I have done, is try to show that to others. I tried to show them the weakness and fragility of them, the disposable nature; they are just as pretty dead as they were alive. I have been preaching a sermon for the world to see through their useless bodies. I will continue until mankind gets the message that was revealed to me."
Watson looked even paler than before, but his jaw clenched in determination. "What does the red tear signify?"
Alister smiled. "Oh it is the detail that I leave open for interpretation, let all mankind debate it's meaning, which generates discussion, I'll take the truth of it to my grave."
Watson pulled himself to his feet. "I have learned all I need to learn from this vermin, I can stand his presence no longer."
Lestrade reached out a steadying hand, wondering where Mayweather had gotten.
Agatha was banging on the door, wanting to leave as soon as they could manage.
"Don't you want to hear about my accomplice?" Alister called as he stood with confusion tinting his voice.
"If it involves hearing more of your bile, frankly, no," Watson replied as he took Lestrade's arm.
"You of all people should understand, John," Alister replied, "you have been damaged by the feebleness of a female. You poured love into one who just could not last. It was a waste, admit it to yourself, eschew further contact with the feminine filth, and return to humanity."
Even though Watson was weak, Lestrade prepared to restrain him just the same.
Watson surprised the occupants of the room by suddenly breaking out into laughter.
Alister with his childlike enthusiasm chuckled along with him. "See how freeing it is?" he encouraged.
Watson leaned on Lestrade as he turned to Eads. "You fail to interpret my humour. I was led to believe that I was going to meet one of the great monsters humanity has produced; instead, I get a little runt of a misogynist that thinks that God deigned to talk to him to cover up the fact that he could not get a date with the opposite sex."
He made sure a confused Eads was meeting his gaze. "I refuse to explain my relationship with Mary to you; I am certainly not going to defend it to a lowly little toad who took lives because he lacked the courage to live one of his own."
He turned away from Eads in a dismissive manner, and said to Lestrade, "Please get me out of this dank little room, before I am subjected to more of his drivel."
Agatha let out a little scream, and then Lestrade heard a thump on the floor. He turned reaching for his missing service revolver that was in custody elsewhere.
Alister was on the floor, his face red, holding a hand. In the back of that hand, was a tiny little needle like dart with a gray feather on the end.
He glanced up as Mayweather strode past hastily reassembling what looked to be a fountain pen, he reached down and plucked out the dart, and slipped it into the seam of his right sleeve.
Alister was weeping in his pain. "He shot me! Damn you to hell, you woman loving whore!"
Agatha spoke up. "Eads was reaching for Doctor Watson. That man shot his hand from across the room; I have never seen anything like it.
The guards suddenly flung the bolt back and came pouring into the cell, truncheons at the ready.
"What happened, guv?" one of them demanded from Lestrade.
"He shot me you fool, with his pen!" Alister bellowed, indicating Mayweather while rolling on the floor in pain.
Mayweather shrugged, and wrote on a piece of paper to demonstrate that it was not a weapon.
Lestrade came up with a cover story. "I thought I saw a bee in here earlier."
The guard glanced at the crying man on the floor, and raised an eyebrow.
Lestrade shrugged. "It was a very large bee."
Watson held out his fingers to demonstrate just how massive the bee was.
The guard nodded toward the door they started to leave, when a pain filled voice from the floor spoke up.
"You'll never find him in time, you just cannot see the whole picture," Alister remarked, then spat in the direction of Watson's shoes.
"Your associate is young, impressionable, an artist of some stripe who taught you some of what he knows about angle of light and presentation, but you could never cure him of his love of women, especially one girl in particular. All I need to do to find him, is scrub away your hatred and filth, and I will see the key," Watson informed, his tone devoid of all warmth.
Lestrade could see the truth in Alister's shocked, teary eyes.
"I see well enough to make sure you hang, Mister Eads, you have my word on it." Watson finished, he nudged Lestrade to help him to the door.
Outside the door, Lestrade had to ask, "How did you figure all of that out, John?" as he helped Watson to the first checkpoint.
"Actually, I did not know for sure, until just then, I suspected. It's an old trick of Holmes. He called it fishing. You take what you deduced, tell the person you believe has the knowledge you seek enough salient details to provoke a confession, or they will reveal the truth through some non-verbal clue."
He gave Lestrade that classic lopsided grin, "Besides, it really makes the person you are pursuing, ultimately Alister in this case, paranoid."
"All those times, Holmes was faking?" Lestrade asked, incredulous.
Watson smirked. "Not always, but sometimes."
Lestrade gave him suspicious eyes; "you deliberately provoked Eads, didn't you. You knew Mayweather had that dart gun."
Watson looked guilty. "Do you think less of me, Giles?"
Lestrade chuckled, "In all of the interviews, hundreds of interrogations and consultations, no one has ever gotten Alister to show that much of his violent self, and yet in less than twenty minutes of first meeting the man, you had him foaming at the mouth? I still have no idea how you accomplished it."
Watson stared a head for a moment; a wistful smile touched his lips. "I guess you could say that I was taught by a master."
"Holmes?"
Watson shot Lestrade an annoyed look. "Have you already forgotten James?"
Lestrade felt like an idiot. "Oh...of course."
He heard Agatha ahead of them attempting to coax information out of Mayweather, but the reticent Zealander was holding his own with his evasions.
They finally passed through the last checkpoint, receiving the weapons back, which now felt anti-climatic, and made their way to the outside, which somehow seemed brighter and wide open compared to the cramped gaol they had been in for the last hour.
Lestrade tapped Mayweather carefully on his shoulder, trying not to lose a hand, indicating for him to support Watson for a bit. The younger man tipped his hat and helped Watson toward the street, leaving Lestrade and Weems behind.
"You were right, no man deserves to swing more, than Alister Eads," Agatha concluded.
She reached into her purse, and pulled out a pad writing information as she talked. "Your mystery group is led by the Second son of the Duke of Grafton, his brother the Earl of Euston is not a well man and has no sons, so this man may very well become the Duke someday, he throws his weight around like it is already assured. If it all happens, as he believes it will, this man Alfred William Maitland FitzRoy, will be high in the House of Nobles within the next decade."
Lestrade whistled, his consternation growing. "Why does a man in line for Dukedom want Eads released?"
Agatha suddenly looked as if she had a good long taste of something horrid.
"He is part of a group that called themselves, Psychopathia Criminale , after a work in progress of a man whose work they followed, they believed him on the verge of unlocking the secrets of the criminal mind. Since that man died recently, they have changed the name to The Bedlow Group in his memory. They are trying to finish his work; Alister Eads was to be the centrepiece. So they want to release him to a Sanatorium for further study."
Lestrade could only gape at her. "Doctor Gustav Bedlow? The Greater London Sanatorium at Carfax?"
"You knew him?" Agatha inquired; she had that sharp perceptive glint in her eyes.
"Never met the man," Lestrade replied, attempting to keep the shock out of his voice, "but I am starting to feel as though I have."
Story Notes: I am not hating on Quakers. There is a very dear family friend of ours who is a Quaker. However, that particular denomination has a freewheeling, you are your own minister, philosophy that fit Alister's madness. I needed him to believe that he was a true prophet of God, and this group would have been well established in England at this time.
About the Bedlow Group:
There really was a Alfred William Maitland FitzRoy, and he really did become the Duke of Grafton, so if anyone is wondering...there you go.
Psychology was really in it's early stages in the Victorian Era, and there were many things done in the name of it during that time that were just as crazy as the maladies that they were supposedly trying to cure. Having a true Psychopath in custody, willing to talk, would have been the Holy Grail for a fledgling science.
Nobles were often the benefactors and champions for these early sciences, so I hope this does not all seem too far fetched.
Thanks for reading!
Bart