The Doctor of Death Finds the Fox and the Hare

The fire had diminished by the time he awoke, but even its simmering remains had overstayed its welcome. It was morning, and the sun was slowly approaching its hallowed position in the cloudless sky. He was wrapped in Agatha’s cloak; his shirt having been discarded sometime the previous night and no longer being anywhere in sight.

In the distance he could see her, but she was not alone. The presence of the second individual jolted all vestiges of sleepiness from his eyes and he jumped to his feet.

“Let me talk to him, woman,” the stranger was growling. “I am his oldest friend in the realm, and only he can save me from my predicament. You’re cursed if you don’t let me see him,” he spoke eloquently enough but his eager tone hinted at desperation.

“Things weren't supposed to go like this. How could somebody like you show up? Everything was supposed to be fine,” Agatha was almost in tears; she clutched at her belly, as though she had a stomach-ache.

The stranger grabbed at her wrist, his long hair, even longer than Agatha’s, flailed in the wind – at this point, Saimon intervened, grabbing him by the collar and pushing him away, as he felt it was his duty to do. He unhanded her as he stumbled back, but the stranger did not fall, nor did he look angry.

“Saimon!” he cried joyously. “I heard from kindly Professor Agnew at the university that you had come up here for a retreat. I had to see you and spared no time or effort to get here as quickly as possible!”

“Honoured, but who the hell are you?”

Saimon observed the grizzled features of the man before him – his hair was long and untamed, the very picture of the wild man archetype from the stories, and any distinguishable facial features were hidden by unkempt facial hair. The eyes, perhaps, were somewhat familiar.

“He’s the Doctor of Death!” Agatha sulked unhappily. “Or, for all he represents to us, he may as well be the Grim Reaper.”

“You know this man?” Saimon asked quizzically.

Agatha nodded. “Every person in the realm who reads the papers knows this man’s face. He’s… he’s a heinous criminal, dearest, and he claims to be a friend of yours! Tell me it’s not true.”

“It’s… it’s true,” his jaw dropped, and he realised why those eyes were so familiar to him. “Walther, is that you?”

“I knew you wouldn’t forget me, friend,” the stranger, whose name was revealed to be Walther, grinned.

“If the authorities found you, they’d hang you,” Saimon spoke without emotion.

“Aye,” Walther agreed readily.

“You’d be deserving of it too.”

“Aye, that’s fair.”

“Then let’s tell the constable right now and have him arrested!” Agatha interjected herself into the ghoulish exchange. “This man is deranged, and no friend of ours, Saimon. He’s a murderer.”

“I’m a scientist,” Walther corrected. “I suppose in a legal sense I’m also a murderer, but scientist first and foremost, please.”

Saimon held the hand of Agatha to whom, as of the previous night, he was now betrothed. He shuffled so that he was slightly in front of her, an instinctive reaction so that he could shield her in case the infamous Doctor of Death suddenly attacked. According to The Times, he was highly unpredictable and as his friend and former colleague, Saimon could wholeheartedly vouch for that.

“You really did commit murder, so why shouldn't we turn you in?”

“Because I’m brilliant!” Walther responded passionately. “Yes, I should face the Queen’s justice and yes, I should burn in hell for what I did. But if I can’t finish my research, it’ll have been all for nothing. You understand, don’t you?”

“I understand you’ve gone mad, Walther,” Saimon replied derisively.

“Mad with grief,” he snapped back immediately, and then turned his attention to Agatha who shrunk back under the scrutiny of the madman’s gaze. “I hope, Saimon, you never have to feel the same way I did. Now, hide me quick!”

The young scholar paused. “I’ll have the truth from you, Walther, and then I’ll decide what to do.”

As the trio stalked back to the cottage, Agatha could be heard lamenting the foolishness of her beloved.

***

“I think quite highly of you, so it pains me when I see you looking at me like that.”

Dr. Walther Greaves, wanted throughout the realm for the crime of murder, sat on a lounge chair across from Saimon and Agatha in the former’s rented cottage. His legs were crossed, the spitting image of an exalted scholar, and he was taking periodic sips from a tumbler topped up with a generous helping of brandy.

“I don’t think you understand your situation,” Saimon began uncertainly, unnerved by the man’s extraordinary calmness.

“Or ours,” Agatha sighed, but her utterance fell on deaf ears.

“They’re going to hang you.”

“Let them!” Walther retorted, as though he were not in the slightest fazed by the prospect of facing the gallows. “I did kill him, you know, but I suppose it doesn’t diminish my crime in the slightest if I say that it was a consensual killing.”

“Not in the eyes of the law,” Saimon replied immediately with all the assurance of a man who had not studied the realm’s legal codes, but was absolutely sure that they conformed to common sense; or why call it the common law at all?

“Damn the law, and all the fiends who uphold it!” the would-be convict declared violently. “I’m talking about in your eyes, Saimon! They call me the Doctor of Death, as I’m sure you already know, but it’s an ironic moniker when you think about how many lives my research is going to save,” and then after a pause:

“…well, prolong. You’re a mortal man in the mortal realm, and there’s no cure for that, is there?”

“What kind of heinous research are you doing that it requires human sacrifices? The papers say you were summoning demons…” it was Agatha who spoke.

“Superstitious fearmongers!” it seemed as though the Doctor of Death had a poor word for all the professions. “The good work that could be done if one did not have to take into consideration what polite society calls ethics!”

Walther continued: “What’s one life lost compared to a thousand lives saved? Or even two lives? No? You never did have much time for utilitarianism, eh, Saimon? Well, I digress…” he stopped when he noted the disdainful looks etched onto the features of the two lovebirds sitting opposite him.

“Just tell us the story from the beginning, Walther.”

“Very well,” the wanted man cleared his throat. “You’ve a masterful literary mind, Saimon, but I hear that you could have been a first-rate scientist had you decided to go down that route. So, I’m sure you understand the idea that medication, in high enough doses, can be harmful, and that it logically follows that the inverse is true as well. A poison, diluted enough, can have restorative effects on the human constitution.”

A university education, or even a particularly rational mind was not necessary to extrapolate the rest of the tale from what had been revealed so far. Agatha and Saimon certainly seemed to grasp the intricacies at much around the same time and had shouted in unison: “so it was poison?!”

Walther slid down the lounge chair, and his body began to assume gangly proportions. He was twiddling his fingers, and seemed to be contemplating his answer.

“Essentially, yes,” he said eventually. “A human test subject was necessary, but the word you used earlier, ‘sacrifice’, is completely wrong. We were trying to create the perfectly balanced concoction, you see, a medication which utilised the root of the Dreamvine to the fullest, without harming the patient – a cure for Lambert’s fever.”

Saimon audibly groaned when he heard the name ‘Dreamvine’ and Agatha did likewise, but at the mention of Lambert’s fever.

“We were just slightly off in our calculations. Unfortunately for Downing, what he took contained a lethal amount of Dreamvine root, but not enough to kill instantly. Instead, he died slowly and in agonising pain,” he recounted this as though he were not involved.

“Downing had Lambert’s fever?” Saimon asked; in this day and age, it was well known by all that that diagnosis was almost always fatal. The disease’s only consolation was its rarity, and that was obviously little comfort for those who fell victim to it.

“Well, yes,” Walther replied. “He, out of his own volition, injected himself with the virus that causes Lambert’s fever for the sake of the experiment. As did I.”

Both Saimon and Agatha recoiled instinctively, but they quickly realised that their reaction was exaggerated. As dangerous as Lambert’s disease was, it wasn’t contagious, although there were still many people who would rather not take the chance of being too close to someone who has it.

“You’re mad,” Agatha whispered, reaching out her hand and finding Saimon’s.

“You need a bit of madness to do good work,” the Doctor of Death insisted, and then gesturing towards the young scholar. “He knows that almost as well as I do, did he tell – wait, do you hear that?”

Walther craned his neck towards the window, and the other two followed his lead.

“I didn’t hear anything. I don’t see anything either,” Saimon said.

“It might have been a fox,” Agatha suggested. “We get those around here.”

“Ah, delightful,” Walther relaxed again. “My apologies, I have not slept for a while. I almost forgot we were in a hamlet in some faraway county. In any case, look…” he reached into his coat pocket and extracted a single vial – carefully, he placed it on the walnut wood coffee table between them.

“Is that…?”

“My Dreamvine solution, yes,” Walther smiled. “It should be perfect. Now, look, I don’t need much from you two. If I survive, then please give me ink, paper and allow me the privilege of writing a letter to my associates and informing them of the completion of our work. They can do the rest in refining the concoction and getting it out in the markets, and I will turn myself in and accept whatever punishment Her Majesty’s cronies see fit to inflict.”

“And if you die?”

“Then please write the letter on my behalf to Molly Malone of Hailsham Seven. Tell her it didn’t work, and she’ll do all the rest. As for my body, you can drop it at the door of your local constable; I have little doubt that a countryman, more bumpkin than officer of the law, will have any interest in investigating the possibilities of foul play when the victim is a notorious criminal like myself," he smiled maliciously.

It was Agatha’s life dream to move out of East Meadow and start a new life in one of the big cities; even so, she found herself fuming at Walther’s derision of her fellow ‘countrymen’, and besides, Constable Lerner was always kind to her.

“There are procedures to follow, I’ll have you know,” she responded angrily. “A coroner’s report will be necessary, it’s not enough that you’re dead, they’ll want to know just exactly how you died.”

“Quite right,” Walther admitted, happily. “They will say the Doctor of Death found his conscience and administered poison to himself. And they’d be right, heh. Don’t forget that dreamvine is still considered a poisonous flower, and its medical properties haven’t been explored until now. Well, if you’d excuse me…”

He grabbed hold of the vial, uncorked the lid, and downed the concoction right in front of them. He allowed the vial to fall to the floor and sank even further down in his seat. Saimon stood up and walked over to the man’s side, but Agatha merely gazed aloofly at them.

“How do you feel?” Saimon asked, hovering over him.

“I think I’m about to die,” Walther replied through his parched lips, tinted vaguely blue.

“A failure then,” Agatha whispered softly, and then, so that no-one could hear: “Serves you right.”

“I said I haven’t slept in a while, heh? It’s the fatigue that’s going to kill me, not the fever. I was wrong, I miscalculated!” he grabbed hold of Saimon’s arm and began to shake it feebly. “The sweet girl was right! The coroner’s report, the coroner’s report! Make sure he assesses me for Lambert’s fever or deliver my corpse to Molly Malone. Ah! Ah! Why did God make the human condition so feeble?”

Even Agatha stood up in the face of this oration. Walther closed his eyes as she did so, and the young lovers were convinced that he had died. However, he was still breathing softly and began to address people who could not possibly have been in the room with them.

“Is that you, Elsa? I wish I could have saved you. Downing? Ah, ever the strapping young man, and your Annette is here too? Listen, I saw Saimon and…”

His words slowly became less and less audible, and eventually stopped; as did his breathing and life. However, before any one of them could say anything, the door of the cottage was flung open and the constable stood there, steam emanating from his nose. At his side was Mags, a forlorn figure herself, who was pointing a trembling finger at the man on the couch.

“That’s him there, Lerner! The Doctor of Death! I’ve seen his face in the papers!”