Frankenstein's Monster

I

As I write, I find myself gravely concerned about the fate of my friend, the Englishman, Mr Hubert Crowe.

In the course of our acquaintanceship, I often thought him mad and sometimes a charlatan. What terrifies me now is the thought that he may indeed have been right all along and that, in consequence, his soul is in the worst kind of danger. I fear also that he has walked into a bear-trap, one designed with cunning for him and him alone, one which will show him no mercy and leave any who care for him entirely bereft.

But I ought to begin properly, I should lay things down in as orderly a way as I can manage. I should be plain, and I should tell you everything.

II

My own name is Jesse Malone. I am forty-two years old now and originally a native of New York City, though I have crossed the Atlantic but once, when I was three and twenty. Ever since, I have made my home in the venerable settlement of London, taking up a set of rooms in a crumbling tenement in the district of Clerkenwell.

I lost my parents at a young age: my mother to a peculiarly urban strain of fever when I was barely old enough to walk and my father to a hereditary insanity which saw him removed to an asylum when I was seventeen.

Such details are barely relevant to this account but let it suffice here to say that it was in part a desire to escape from the family taint which claimed my father that led me to flee our United States of America to seek solace and security in the old country. In this, I believe that I have been successful for I have noted in myself so far no signs of that which bedevilled so many of my ancestors.

England has kept me sane. Something about its great antiquity and the perspective on one's own existence that is granted by its constant reminder of age has allowed me for years now to live a life of quiet, rational sobriety.

At least, this had been the case until last year when I first encountered Mr Hubert Crowe.

III

If that persistent frailty in our mental faculties is the worst element of my inheritance, perhaps the best, or at least the most useful, is a private income which is permitted by that minor fortune which was amassed by my forebears in colonial days. It has allowed me to live as I wish to live and it has provided a welcome shield from the world.

My existence has always been a modest one, meaning that the money has lasted very much longer than it might have done in the hands of some more spendthrift fellow. I have spent a good deal of it not upon myself but in the pursuit of fairness and happiness in the lives of others, in discreet works of philanthropy.

Since 1835, I have contributed much to the poor of the city. I have wandered a great deal into the lowest alleys and the vilest rookeries (for such is the term here for their close-packed, almost inhumane settlements) and I have seen plentiful sights to chill the imagination and quicken the beating of the heart.

I have given away in small slices a goodly proportion of my personal wealth, both as one individual to another and, in recent years and with increasing frequency, as part of a greater organisation. You may have heard of it: The North American Assembly for the Improvement of the London Poor.

I am a founder member - one of six such gentlemen, all born in the land of the free and now resident here in the motherland - and I do believe that we have done much to alleviate the sufferings of so many unfortunate souls who have been lost to the reaches of the city.

In this capacity I have become, I dare say, as great an expert in the workings of London life as any who is not a native can be.

My position at the Assembly has also granted me access to a great number of institutions which do what they can to stem the rising tides of poverty and want: the prisons, the ragged schools and the workhouses. The Assembly is well known to the law and we are sometimes called upon to act as a "go-between" for the authorities and the everyday people, most of whom are suspicious and afraid of any who might wield power over them. It was as a direct result of my position at the Assembly, that I first met the man whose name hangs, heavy as a shroud, over this account.

IV

The date is graven on my memory: 2nd February, 1849.

I had slept poorly - unusual for me then, though now a commonplace thing - and I had risen later in the day than was good for me. I had that unpleasant sense of my time being half-wasted when, having eventually risen and washed, I saw through my window that we had no more than a few hours left of daylight.

The woman who takes care of my set of rooms and who keeps a good house for me (Mrs Armitage is her name) knows better than to disturb me so I knew the matter must be serious when, just after three o'clock, she knocked on my door and called out, her voice full of what to an American ear (however far from the motherland) still sounds full of misplaced consonants - "Mr Malone! Mr Malone, sir! Are you there? Are you well?"

I went at once to the door and flung it open to find the woman shivering on the threshold, her eyes speaking of recent tears, fretful and afraid. She was in general a stony one so I was much surprised to find her in so reduced a state.

"Mrs Armitage, whatever is the matter?"

I have been told that I have a calm manner as might befit a sawbones or a preacher, though on that long afternoon this did nothing at all to soothe her.

I am not a gentleman known to offer or to enjoy the touch of any other, preferring to keep myself separate and apart, yet I saw in that instant no alternative but to lean forwards, place my left hand on this lady's shoulder, squeeze once and murmur: "There, Mrs Armitage. You surely have to tell me what the matter is."

Her words came out in a rush. "Course, sir, the worst thing about it is that I knew him, sir. I knew him! I can just remember him. running happily. he had such a lovely laugh, sir. and two clear blue eyes just as pretty as a picture."

I asked the woman who she was talking about and why these memories (as they seemed to be) had plunged her into such distress. Yet she barely seemed able to hear me and simply went on.

"So difficult a life, sir. that little lad. his bonny little legs. and his smile, sir. such a smile as would lift up the hearts of angels."

"Mrs Armitage!" I could see no alternative course of action but to raise my voice to an uncharacteristic degree. "Come now. Calm yourself. And tell me - whatever has happened?"

She stopped, bit her lower lip and looked at me, chastened and almost shocked at my unexpected timbre.

"Please," I said, more gently this time. "Tell me."

V

The tale came out of her then in a great, unseemly rush, full of hesitations, euphemisms and garbled misunderstanding. I do not propose here to even attempt to write it down as it was spoken to me but instead to summarise it so that you can comprehend the nature of the thing.

A young boy had gone missing: a child by the name of Simon Olney.

His mother - a poor woman who dwelled in one of the most impoverished parts of the city - was known to us both, to me by way of my charitable endeavours, and to Mrs Armitage through some complicated lattice of cousins and relations by marriage which I could never seem to grasp in its entirety.

He was barely five years old, this Simon Olney, but more intelligent and lively than one had any right to expect given his rude start in life. I am not a gentleman who would ever seek or enjoy the company of the young but Olney was an exception, a singular child, unusually bright and perceptive. According to my housekeeper, he had not been seen then for two days and two nights, lost somewhere in the wilderness of London and his poor mother was beside herself with fear and worry.

Was there anything I could do to help that poor family, she wailed, was there anything at all?

In truth, I doubted that there was much which lay within my power, being neither a native nor the kind of man who possesses the necessary gifts of investigation. Yet there was something, something about that boy and his family which drove me to pledge to Mrs Armitage that I would go at once to the home of the Olneys and put myself entirely at their service in the search for their child.

In such moments of decision are whole chains of incident set in motion, in such sudden judgements are planted the seeds of tragedy.

VI

The next hour passed in a haze of activity and frustration.

I threw on a coat and boots and went out at speed into the thin grey rain of that February afternoon, for once barely conscious of the elements, with Mrs Armitage's entreaties still, as they say, "ringing in my ears".

Despite the rain, I found a cab that would take me as far as Spitalfields. From there I walked, as the rain worsened, to a street at the tip of Whitechapel where the Olneys resided in a state of poverty but a rung or two removed from utter indigence. The name of the street was Allan's Row and it was as mean a line of fever-haunted tenements as ever I saw in the worst stews of New York.

They lived halfway along this morose avenue and, as I passed the many heaps of rags which stirred when I went by, I felt the gaze upon me of sundry surly eyes, staring out from behind shattered glass. At the house of the Olneys there was no reply, nor any sign of life. I was, for a moment, quite lost until I heard the grind of an ancient windowpane, and a voice call out to me that if it were the Olneys I was wanting they were in the church to pray for...