A Victorian Ghost Story

[anyanka_eg]

Title: A Victorian Ghost Story

Author: Anyanka_eg

Rating: 13 
Pairing: Implied McShep
Warnings: Bit of gore, nothing else

Summary: An odd little historical AU that popped into my head as I was driving to work on Halloween. It’s based on a real life Victorian murder here in Manchester and the associated ghost story is supposedly true too. The events described in New York are entirely fictitious, as are the involvement of our favorite characters..

Sir,

 

It has been brought to my attention by a certain gentleman, and I use that term advisedly, that I have failed to keep a promise that I made to you over two months ago. To that end I have finally set pen to paper and produced an account of those strange events that you found so fascinating when we last met. As you know I most certainly do not believe in the ‘Supernatural’ as I have heard some rather weak minded individuals call such experiences. However as I was witness to what can only be described as ‘an apparition’ on several occasions I must confess that my beliefs have been challenged, although I still contend there must be some other explanation for these events.

 

You know, of course, during the year 1880 I was resident in England, in the city of Manchester, where I was engaged as a visiting professor at the University. I had taken a house in the Harpurhey district of that town, where my neighbors were members of that ever growing merchant class that England’s industrial cities are so famous for.

 

One of the houses on this quiet street was occupied by a self-made business man who, despite being unable to read and write, had built a considerable fortune in the clothing trade. Mr. Landry and his wife, who confined herself to her bed with a ‘nervous’ disorder, lived a quiet life and, other than attending to his wife, he enjoyed nothing more than a game of chess with his friends. I have been told he was a player of considerable skill, although I believe he may have met his match had we ever had the pleasure of a game.

 

My companion tells me I am prevaricating.

 

The Landry’s did not employ a large staff. Their lone resident domestic was nominally a maid; however she performed many tasks that most households would consider above that of a simple housemaid. Sarah Jane Roberts was a pretty little thing, better educated than her master and eager to improve herself. I had little to do with any of my neighbors, being the only academic, but I have clear memories of passing her in the street and being nearly blinded by her smile.

 

Most of my knowledge of her comes from my housekeeper, Mrs. Weir who developed quite a fondness for the girl in whom she identified another woman wasted in domestic service. However such is the lot of the majority of the female gender in this unenlightened age. Sarah Jane read all her master’s correspondence for him, answered many of them and cared for his wife when he was away, as well as carrying out her normal duties.

 

I am being urged to hurry the story along and ‘get to the good bits’. I sometimes find myself contemplating my choice of friends, but I digress.

 

On the morning of the 23^rd of August Mr. Landry received a note inviting him to play chess with an acquaintance of one of his business partners at a public house some three miles distance. He was considering declining the offer but was persuaded to attend by his wife who was concerned he was letting her affliction dictate his social engagements. Mrs. Weir elicited this information, along with many more of the facts I shall set before you, without any of the parties realizing they were being investigated. A remarkable woman.

 

The weather being very fair, Mr. Landry decided to walk to The Bay Horse Inn, his love of vigorous outdoor exercise something I shall never understand, and he departed at two in the afternoon, informing Sarah Jane he would take his dinner at the Inn. I was not at home that afternoon and consequently can only report the following facts to you as they were laid before myself or Mrs. Weir.

 

At a quarter past four Mrs. Landry heard a scream from the lower part of the house but due to her condition was unable to investigate. Indeed the shock of the events so affected the lady that it was some days before she was able to give a coherent account of the little she knew of the afternoon. I am inclined to believe she thoroughly enjoyed the attention but my friend says that is unkind. More telling perhaps is Mrs. Weir’s refusal to involve herself in the discussion.

 

A much more informative witness was the cook from the neighboring house. Mrs. Ford was a formidable woman who had raised her own children and had then taken in her grandson when her own daughter had passed away. She also made the finest pastries in the whole of Christendom, surely the only reason most of the neighbors ever set foot in her exceptionally dull employer’s residence. She was preparing cakes for another of her fine afternoon teas when she heard a scream through the open kitchen door. She ran outside, thinking her grandson had injured himself but the child, a bright lad of ten, was unharmed and just as concerned by the noise.

 

They both saw a man run from the kitchen of their neighbor’s house and flee down the road away from the High Street. The younger Ford ran after the man, shouting for help as he ran and Mrs. Ford entered the kitchen of the Landry house.

 

The sight that greeted the woman must have been appalling. Sarah Jane had been bludgeoned repeatedly with the poker from the kitchen fire place and the whole room was spattered in blood. Mrs. Ford, showing stoicism that most women I’m afraid do not, checked if the girl was alive, of course she wasn’t, and then left the house to call for assistance from the local constable.

 

Young Aiden Ford returned as the policeman arrived and informed the now growing crowd that he had been unable to capture his quarry as the man had dived into the river. Aiden blamed himself because he could not swim, the fact that he was a boy of only ten years seemed to have escaped his notice. I later pointed out to the child that running would have been a more useful skill given the almost solid crust of human waste and industrial effluent that floated on the surface of the River Irwell. His bewildered expression indicated my attempt at humor had yet again passed well over the head of my audience.

 

 A number of the local men left to pursue the suspect, following the banks of the river both up and downstream, and I don’t think I will affect my narrative if I tell you now that he was never apprehended. Where he exited the river I do not know but how a dripping wet, almost certainly blood stained man evaded capture by the constabulary is a mystery that can perhaps only be explained by their subsequent ineptitude.

 

By the time I returned from the University that night the street was awash with policemen, angry residents and the press. Mrs. Weir, who was of course completely abreast of the situation, despite having carried out her daily routine and never having left my house, gave me the most salient facts.

 

Mr. Landry returned home not long after I had, to discover that his household was in uproar and he was a suspect in a murder. How the police came to this conclusion I do not know, other than that they seemed to assume a gentleman should not walk three miles for a game of chess. The situation was exacerbated by Mr. Landry who rather naively told the police that the man he was supposed to meet was not at the inn when he arrived, and indeed had failed to attend for the two hours he waited. Mr. Landry could not produce the note either, claiming he had thrown the paper in the fire.

 

The buffoon of a detective who was assigned to investigate the case was the worse sort of idiot. Bigoted, small minded and arrogant. He decided as soon as he set foot in the house that Mr. Landry was the guilty party and that his afternoon of thwarted chess was part of despicable plan to kill his maid. Mr. Landry, for reasons I can not to this day fathom, came to me for help. It was clear to me both he and his wife were very fond of Sarah Jane and they wanted her killer brought to justice, a task they did not think the police capable of. On the evidence I had I was inclined to agree.

 

I was happy to help of course, even though it interfered with my busy schedule of work. My companion, again reading over my shoulder, points out that Mrs. Weir believes she had to persuade me with the threat no more puddings. I sometimes wonder about the woman’s overly vivid imagination.

 

I immediately set out to prove that Mr. Landry did indeed go to the public house to play chess, even if his opponent had not attended him there. I hailed a carriage on the High Street and was taken forthwith to The Bay Horse. I questioned the owner and the rather diffident young woman behind the bar but neither remembered Mr. Landry, who I must admit is a visually unremarkable man.

 

I spent the next several days, ignoring my work and my students, in an attempt to find anyone who had seen Mr. Landry on his walk either to or from The Bay Horse. I placed an advertisement in both the Oldham Chronicle and in your estimable journal, The Manchester Guardian, for anyone who had seen the man but no one came forward, even with the offer of a reward of ten pounds.

 

Myself and Mrs. Weir spent several days in a gray funk when we could find no one to prove Mr. Landry’s alibi, no matter how much we searched. During this time the police could find no evidence that Mr. Landry had murdered his maid, nor indeed could they find any motive for such a thing but still they persisted in their belief in his guilt. It was only Mr. Landry’s good standing with his neighbors and their steadfast belief in his innocence that kept him out of the courts.

 

The discontent of the local residents over the conduct of the police grew as it became obvious that Mrs. Ford, her grandson and several other witnesses’ testimonies were being ignored. All agreed that the man they saw running from the Landry’s kitchen was certainly not a man in his fifties, as Mr. Landry was, and he was taller than that gentleman and dark in color. The detective, Caldwell I think was his name, even went as far as to suggest that the people in the street were inventing the story of the running man to protect Mr. Landry. An idea so frankly ludicrous that I can not believe even he was stupid enough to believe it.

 

On the 1^st of September there was finally some good news. An acquaintance of Mr. Landry’s, who had been away on business since the day after the murder, heard of the poor man’s predicament and provided him with his alibi. Mr. Grodin had been in his carriage when he passed Mr. Landry coming out of The Bay Horse at four o’clock on the afternoon of the 23^rd.

 

After this information came to light the pressure on the police became intolerable and the constabulary bowed to popular pressure and removed the dead girl’s eyes. I know, it’s barbaric but the old beliefs stick even in the supposedly educated middle classes, and with no clues to the identity of the killer the locals imagined that the last image Sarah Jane saw would be burned onto her retinas. Pure superstition of course but the police had their surgeon do it, and even displayed the girl’s eyeless corpse to prove so.

 

I have never seen such a gruesome sight as the lines of people from all over Manchester coming to view the open coffin of a nineteen year old woman with no eyes. I still shudder at the thought.

 

Having helped to some small degree to restore the good name of Mr. Landry I assumed my involvement in the case would now be over and I could go back to my work at the University. This however proved false and the strangest part of the tale really begins.

 

On the evening of the 2^nd of September I settled in my study to work on my notes for a forthcoming lecture at the Royal Society in London. My Labrador dog, Ronon, was settled in front of a fire that I’m sure Mrs. Weir lit entirely for his benefit as that September was unseasonably mild. I had been lost in my work for an hour or more when I realized the room had suddenly become chillingly cold. The fire still burned in the grate but my brave guard dog had woken from his slumber and was cowering under the fireside chair. The lamp on my desk suddenly guttered and flickered out and it was when I turned to retrieve the matches from my jacket pocket that I saw her.

 

Sarah Jane Roberts was standing in the corner of the room, her gaping eye sockets staring at me.

 

I was frozen to my chair with horror, unable to even call for help, every hair on my body standing on end with fright. The apparition moved slowly toward me, gliding over the carpet, holding out her right hand as though she wanted to show me something. I’m afraid to say all I wanted to do was close my eyes and pretend it wasn't happening.

 

My heart pounded in my chest and I thought I might die of fright but still she came closer.

 

Finally she stopped in front of me and held up her hand. In it there was a photograph. A grainy sepia image of a man with dark hair and pock marked cheeks. I had never seen the man before and yet I know I will never forget his face for as long as I live. I looked up at Sarah Jane’s face and her empty eye sockets were bleeding tears. It was then it all became too much for me.

 

The next thing I remember is the awful stench of smelling salts and Mrs. Weir standing over me. I had passed out (my ever annoying companion tells me the medical term is fainted) and she had found me on the floor of the study, alerted by Ronon’s pitiful howling. The doctor had already been sent for and when he arrived he fussed and prodded until he decided I was over worked and needed a holiday. Needless to say I did not mention my hallucination, or so I thought it at the time, for fear of being committed to Bedlam.

 

Mrs. Weir of course took this diagnosis to heart and before I really knew what was happening she had quietly contacted my old friend Dr. Zalenka in New York and arranged for me to take a sabbatical from my post at the University. Within a week we were packed and on a White Star liner crossing the Atlantic.

 

Feeling a little put out by being ‘taken in hand’, I was none too happy to find myself suddenly without work, in a city I had never visited before. But Zalenka and Weir, who are quite fearsome when they act in concert, arranged an apartment near ColumbiaUniversity and reading rights at the library. Within weeks I was as happy there as I had been in Manchester, albeit with a few alterations in my habits.

 

My daily routine was much the same. I attended the library, met with colleagues from the scientific community and had some interesting conversations, before returning home for dinner. My friend points out that conversations involve both parties rather than a single loud voice, but I find I am at a loss to understand his pathetic attempts at humor. After dinner I usually settled in my study to work on the book I had long intended to write but had never found the time for.

 

On the 15^th of November I was sat at my desk as usual, amending in my notes, when I noticed a horrible chill in the room. Ronon, proving his worth as a guard dog yet again, whimpered and tried to crawl under a chair, something that would have been amusing were it not for the terrible cold flooding the room and the creeping terror running up my limbs. With a dread of what I would see, I turned and behind me was the familiar eyeless figure Sarah Jane Roberts. She stared at me, her empty sockets fixed unerringly on my face, and her ghostly head wound bleeding onto her face, the blood dripping onto her gown. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity trapped in a pit of horror, she raised her hand and pointed at a map I had pinned to the wall to help me familiarize myself with the city.

 

I found myself standing, my body responding to commands not my own, and walking toward her. As I approached the map I could see she was pointing to Harlem, more specifically West 124^th Street. I tried to speak to her, to ask her what she wanted, to tell her to leave me alone but my mouth would not work. She turned her ghastly wrecked face towards me and raised her hand to my chest.

 

I have never felt such terrible cold as when she touched me and I’m sure my heart froze in my chest. My knees were suddenly incapable of supporting me and I welcomed the loss of consciousness because I no longer had to feel the horrible sense of loss that overwhelmed me on both occasions she had appeared to me.

 

I awoke with Mrs. Weir hovering over me and a stranger with a mop of unruly hair lurking in the background, an amused smirk playing about his mouth. After a restorative cup of coffee, a nip of medicinal brandy and a heated discussion about the unnecessary summoning of medical personnel, I discovered the stranger was my neighbor, a Mr. John Sheppard, a detective with the New York City Police department. He had answered Mrs. Weir’s summons for help and stayed to mock me.

 

Dr. Beckett arrived after I was fully recovered and, diagnosing lack of sleep, ordered me to take a constitutional walk after dinner every night to tire me out and ensure I slept well. It was a preposterous idea of course but Mrs. Weir hung on his every word and insisted I carry out the doctors orders.

 

Of course I refused, it was after all madness to wander the streets at ungodly hours of the night merely to satisfy the whims of a deranged doctor and an over zealous housekeeper. Obviously I hadn’t counted on my obsessive neighbor, who arrived after dinner the next night to accompany me on my walk. I argued naturally but I somehow still found myself dressed in my overcoat and hat, taking a walk along the freezing streets. Ronon of course was delighted with this turn of events, trotting at Sheppard’s heel like the world’s best trained dog, something which he is most certainly not.

 

This became a pattern over the following days and I grew quite fond of our evening walks, despite the biting cold wind that come off the Hudson River. We walked for an hour every night, come rain or shine, and I did indeed find that I sleep came more easily. But that was not the reason that I enjoyed my evening constitutionals so much. John Sheppard confounded my expectations at every turn.

 

He is brighter than many of my colleagues in the scientific community, as at ease in the company of thugs as he is with bishops, a natural athlete and a clever investigator. He is also remarkably irritating when intent on getting his own way and quite capable of pouting like an infant when he feels slighted.

 

We took to eating dinner together before our evening walks, our respective work permitting, and I eventually told him of the appearance of Sarah Jane Roberts in the form of some sort of ghostly apparition. I expected mockery but received only keen interest in the case and my subsequent haunting. That night we walked to West 124^th Street but there was nothing out of the ordinary and certainly nothing connected to Sarah Jane Roberts.

 

Between us we set about trying to fathom the motive for Sarah Jane’s murder, based on Sheppard’s experience in the police force and my own knowledge of the scene. Mrs. Weir may have contributed to some small extent, but we remained mystified as to both motive and suspects.

 

In the week before Christmas a spate of grisly murders stunned all of New York. Four young women were battered to death in their homes and the sense of panic in the city was palpable, increased by ever more lurid accounts of the case in the newspapers. The focus of much of the interest was the dashing lead detective on the case, Sheppard of course, and I barely saw him that week.

 

The murders of course made me think of Sarah Jane and I feared the return of her ghost, although I could see her pretty face in the pictures of each of the victims as they appeared with frightening regularity in the morning newspapers. I threw myself into my work and took longer walks than usual, Ronon trotting at my side, to ensure my eyes closed when my head hit the pillow.

 

On Christmas Eve there was no end to the murders in sight and I hadn’t seen Sheppard for two days. I was tense and preoccupied and that evening I walked almost in a daze, thinking about Sarah Jane and about the women dying in the city now. I only came back to myself when I realized I was on West 124^th Street.

 

In front of me there was a crowd of people gathered around some sort of commotion. Being an exceptionally curious person I could not but help pressing forward to discover the nature of the disturbance, Ronon proving a useful tool in parting the throng of people. At the center of the ring of bystanders were two figures. It took me a few moments to identify them.

 

A flushed and out of breath Sheppard, his gun drawn, stood over a man lying on the floor. The figure on the sidewalk was at the center of an expanding pool of blood, clearly close to death. He turned his bruised face toward me as I pushed through the crowd and my heart stuttered in my chest as I realized it was the man in the picture Sarah Jane’s ghost had shown me.

 

My gasp of surprise alerted Sheppard to my presence and he moved so quickly he caught me before I hit the floor. The stranger closed his eyes, his final breath rattling in his chest as more police officers arrived. I was frightened and elated at the same time. Here was the man whom I assumed had murdered Sarah Jane Roberts, at least her ghost had implied as much if an apparition can imply anything, and he was dead. I still didn’t know why Sheppard had shot the man but no one in the crowd seemed to have taken exception to his death so I assumed it was justified.

 

The surprise on Sheppard’s face when I told him in a rushed whisper that I’d seen the man before was tempered only by concern. He ordered me home, insisting he would talk to me after he had finished with his report. I was a little disappointed to be dismissed from the scene so quickly, but I also found myself overcome with a sense of relief so profound that it threatened to put me to sleep where I stood.

 

I was virtually dragged home by Ronon pulling at his lead and once there, wanted nothing more than to retire to my bed and sleep for a week. I was already in my night shirt when the room chilled suddenly and I knew that Sarah Jane would be behind me when I turned. I didn’t feel however any of the dread I had felt on the two previous occasions she had appeared to me.

 

I turned and looked at her and she looked happy, almost glowing. Her face was intact, her eyes dancing with happiness and I smiled at her. Her mouth curved into a dazzling smile as she threw back her head and laughed, before she slowly dissolved into a glowing swirl of white mist that floated away. I was certain I could still hear her laugh as I settled into my bed.

 

The next morning, Christmas Day, I was not even dressed when a disheveled but happy Sheppard appeared, eager to tell his tale and hear mine. I insisted he eat breakfast with me and that Mrs. Weir join us. It was over that meal that I heard the story of Acastus Kolya, his murderous week in New York and how it came to an end when he turned his attentions towards Miss Teyla Emmagan.

 

Sheppard told me how that amazing woman had fought off Kolya’s attack, setting about him with the very weapon he tried to use on her, the poker from her fire place, and chased him into the street. It was there that he ran into a very tired, homeward bound Sheppard who had given chase and eventually shot him. My friend was, I think, unsettled by having shot an unarmed man but understood that had he escaped, Kolya would have carried on killing.

 

I told Sheppard I was sure that this was the man who had killed Sarah Jane Roberts, even if we could never prove it, and told him about my latest, and I guessed last, encounter with her ghost. I think he was more than a little disappointed that he had missed her visit but accepted my conclusions about her killer. Mrs. Weir was furious at not being told of my ghostly visitations over the preceding months and was only placated with the beautifully bound set of the works of Ancient Greek philosophers, in their native language, that I had purchased for her Christmas present.

 

And that, Sir, is the fullest account of the events that I have given to anyone except my dear friend John Sheppard. I hope, should you choose to publish this account in your newspaper, that you will display your usual discretion in these matters and make it impossible for my colleagues, or Mr. Sheppard’s, to identify us. It would not benefit either of our reputations to be associated with such events, especially those of a supernatural nature.

 

 

Your servant, as ever

 

 

Dr. Rodney McKay