from his coat pocket and fitted one into a lock, struggling with it for a few moments before the gate creaked open. "In here," he said again, gesturing with the hand that held the keys.
Why was I going here? I asked myself. This man was neither friend nor patient. I knew almost nothing about him, except that he was peculiar, perhaps disturbed. I was about to enter a dark place full of his secrets. And why had he brought me here? Edwin Seale, I was sure, did not make a habit of inviting strangers into his home, if that's what this place was.
But we have something in common, Edwin Seale and I – an acquaintance, no, an intimacy – with death.
Passing through the gate, we entered a yard cramped between the wall and a narrow, two-story building, probably a warehouse. Seale led the way toward it, walking along a couple of boards laid on the muddy ground.
Duckboards and mud. Leading to blood?
Reaching into a niche next to the door, Seale produced a stub of candle in an old-fashioned candlestick. He lit it with a match and took out his keys again, seeking the correct one. In the candlelight, I noticed a rusty spade and a pick leaning against the wall. Gobs of wet clay clung to both implements.
"Up here," said Seale, having opened the door. "Come on up." A set of stairs led abruptly to the right. Beyond them, the ground floor was a dank-smelling black void.
"I say, Seale," I said, placing a foot on the lowest step, "what is this place? Do you live here?"
"Indeed I do. Home sweet home. Come along, Doctor. Don't worry, the stairs are solid enough for two."
We clumped up the stairs, twelve of them; I counted. At the top, Seale did more fumbling and key-clinking. I almost offered to hold the candlestick, but figured he must do this all the time, unaided. Finally, we entered his triply-guarded lair. Setting the candle down, he proceeded to light a kerosene lantern.
Its stronger light revealed a room furnished with all the comforts of home – or discomforts, rather. Everything – table, chairs, bed, chests and cupboards – appeared to have been salvaged from refuse heaps, but it was assembled and distributed precisely as if in a cozy bed-sitter. There was even 'wallpaper,' in the form of sheets of newspaper. Months of events, photographs, editorials and advertisements made a jumbled collage of the recent past. On shelves near a balding, seat-sprung armchair, books leaned against one another. A gentleman's room, assembled from refuse.
Rooms, rather. There was another door in the inner wall. Locked, I was sure.
Seale bustled about like any host, lighting a spirit lamp that stood on a packing-case sideboard, and filling a kettle from a bucket with a tap. While the water came to a boil, he regaled me with tales of how he had acquired this or that object to furnish his miserable abode.
'Miserable' is no exaggeration; in fact, it's an understatement. Not only because of the shabbiness, the unheated clamminess, the makeshift sparseness of the furnishings. The air was rust-laden and bitter. Despair dripped like a leak from a hostile firmament to stain the newspaper-covered walls. A dust of sorrow lay over everything.
The water boiled. Seale poured it with a hot gurgle into a dented tin teapot.
"How long have you lived here?" I asked.
"Long enough." At home, his face had lost all pub-induced vestiges of wholesomeness, assuming a creased pallor that matched his sad belongings. He picked up the teapot and speared a finger through the handles of a couple of enamelware mugs. "Sit down and I'll tell you."
I wondered again if his hospitality was a prelude to a request for a free medical consultation. Well, why not? If he had come to me at the Antonescu Clinic, I would have been obliged to serve him. For the past three years, I had put myself at the disposal of those in need.
We sat down at the table, one of whose legs had been replaced with a length of lead pipe, more or less the right length. I, as the honoured guest, occupied the only chair, while Seale made do with a wooden crate set on end. He poured out. The tea steamed, emitting its faint fragrance of conviviality.
"The Hospital fired me, six months ago," he said. "Then I got a job at the Kodak factory for a while, but when that ended, I gave up my room and came here to live. I already knew about this place. It's been empty for years."
"Why were you fired from the Hospital?" I brought the mug to my lips, but it was too hot. "I thought you said it was the right place for you."
"It was, at first." He paused, looking into his mug. "Life and death. But those dying ones…"
"I don't understand."
Seale looked up. "Patients that died. I was there. I visited them."
"Visited them?" I took a careful sip of tea, relishing its warmth despite an odd metallic taste.
"Yes – why not? I was there anyway, mopping the floor or whatever. I'd hear that breathing – you know, rattling. It means they're about to go."
"Stertorous respiration. Usually that's what it means." I watched him closely. "But not always."
Seale made a small dismissive gesture, set down his mug and leaned closer to me. I suppressed an impulse to draw back.
"I'd hear that noise, and I'd know it was time. So I stayed nearby, if it was late at night, with no one else around. Dark and quiet, except for that rattle. Calling me, it seemed. If I watched carefully, I'd see the ghost come out."
"Ghost?"
"The soul! What else could it be? You must have seen lots of them, being a doctor. Kind of a white mist, but only for a second or two."
"Not everyone agrees about that, Seale. Some doctors don't believe there's such a thing as a soul. Not as a physical entity, anyway."
"You're right about that." Seale took a gulp of tea. "That's what got me fired." Another gulp. "After I saw them a couple times, I thought I'd try to catch one."
"How did you do that?"
"In a jar, what else?" Seale's voice was husky. "I just held it up to their mouth, where that rattle was coming from. Catch the ghost, clap the lid on. That's all there was to it. No harm done. That's funny, isn't it – how could there be any harm, when the person was dead?"
The offense is called 'offering an indignity to a dead body.' But I didn't say it.
"I see." I set my half-empty mug on the table. The tea was cooling rapidly, a glassy scum floating on its surface. "And what did you do with the ghosts?"
"Brought them here. I told you I had something to show you, didn't I?" He stood up, nudging my shoulder with his hand. "Come on!"
He started toward the door on the far side of the room, looking back to make sure I was following. And sure enough, he got out yet another key. The conglomeration of metal to which it belonged must have been a heavy weight to carry around.
"In here," Seale said, holding open the door with an air of muted triumph. I hesitated. The room was dark.
"Wait a minute," Seale muttered, going back for the lantern. As I had suspected, visitors other than he were rare in this place, and my presence had disturbed his routines.
Carrying the lantern, Seale entered the room. He set the light down and fiddled with something overhead. A match flared, followed by the brilliant illumination of a gas lamp.
The room was smaller than the one Seale used as his living space, with a single uncurtained window high in the wall. A long metal table occupied the centre, with the gas lamp suspended above it. Nearby was a large packing-case, occupied by a second spirit lamp and a retort stand, along with beakers and other items of laboratory glass, as well as a gallon jug half full of a clear liquid. A vaguely chemical odour completed the picture.
Edwin Seale had a laboratory! Superficially, it reminded me of my setup in a remote hut at the military hospital complex near Étaples, France twenty years before. The same air of improvisation within a humble enclosure, but for what purpose? In one corner stood a bucket and mop, a pile of stained rags.
Intrigued, I began to examine the contents of a shelf above the packing-case turned lab bench. Seale stood near me, beaming like the proud parent of a prodigy.
A dozen or so glass jars were arrayed on the shelf. Originally, t
hey had perhaps contained jam, or pickled vegetables of some sort. Each retained its lid, but two wires about a foot long protruded from each one, through carefully punched holes. One wire of each pair was copper, the other a pale, dull grey, possibly zinc. The ends of the wires inside the jars were twisted together. Paper labels with dates written on them were affixed to the jars. The earliest was 1929 and the latest April 1936, only six months before.
"What are the wires for?"
"If I stick them in my ears, I can hear them talking."
"Really? What do they say?"
"They whisper." He made a sibilant sound through his teeth.
This was beyond bizarre, but I played along. "How did you get those wires in there like that without losing the ghosts? Wouldn't they hop out as soon as you took off the lid, and go on… to the afterlife?"
"No. They're still there. I can hear them talking, like I told you. I can't understand them, but maybe someday I will."
I turned away from Seale's soul menagerie. "You… captured these souls in the dying breaths of patients at the London Hospital?"
He nodded.
"And that's why you were dismissed from your job there?"
"Correct."
"And now?" I said. "Do you have another job?"
"I worked at the Kodak factory, on the Clerkenwell Road. Where they make film for cameras. Until last month."
"You quit?"
"No, I didn't quit."
I wondered what I could do for this man. Clearly, he was mad, and I thought I knew the reason for his madness. For I knew him. His unevenly