Page 58 of The Journal of a Thousand Years
Alex nudged her with his elbow.
I continued. “Stanley has vacated his flat and left no forwarding address. Do you know where he may have gone?”
“No.” Francis’s voice was small, thin.
He seemed to be trying to make sense of the situation but failing. Gabe had been a rock for Francis over many years. It had started when Gabe protected the weaker boy from school bullies. Recently, Gabe sheltered Francis from Thurlow when the bookmaker sought to employ him.
Gabe was a rock for many of us. It was only now that he was gone that I realized how easily I’d settled into London life thanks to him. I’d met new friends through him. I’d found my father and aunts because of his help. I’d emerged from my shell because his attentions made me feel beautiful, interesting, and worthy. He made me feel brave.
The tears that were never far away welled again. I looked down at the floor, not wanting to worry Francis.
Cyclops thanked Francis for his time. “If you think of anything, telephone or visit Gabe’s house. It’s acting as our hub for the time being.”
Francis stood and crossed the floor to the tightly packed bookshelves. He removed a folio-sized book from the bottom shelf and placed it on the table. It was a street atlas, I realized when he opened it. “If Stanley moved out of his flat specifically because he knew he was about to kidnap Gabe and he didn’t want to be discovered, he would have moved into a new place that met his specific purposes.”
Willie leaned both hands on the table beside the atlas. “I don’t understand. What purposes? To keep Gabe hidden while he performed his tests?”
Alex, Cyclops and I crowded around, too. Like Willie, I didn’t quite follow.
Francis scanned the double-page key map at the front of the book. “Yes, but also the nature of those tests is important.”
“We don’t know what tests he’ll perform,” Alex said.
“While I would never advocate guessing, we can make some valid assumptions based on what we know of Stanley.”
I tried to think of what we knew about our main suspect, but aside from picturing the nervous shell-shocked former soldier, I came up with nothing. Where my panic after learning Gabe’s fate had scattered my thoughts and made it difficult to concentrate, Francis had set aside his worry after the initial shock wore off. It was as if he’d made a conscious decision to place it in a box and deal with it another time when he wasn’t so busy. His practical brain got to work in a methodical manner, whereas mine was all over the place.
“What do you know about him?” Cyclops asked. “I don’t know him well myself.”
“He was a medical student before the war,” Francis said.
Willie looked up from the atlas. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“He never returned to his studies. His nerves were too wrecked, so he said, although he did plan to return one day when he was better.”
Something occurred to me. “Do you recall the Medici Manuscript? We all worked together to decipher its codes.”
Willie’s features set hard. “Stanleyhelpedus. Gabe trusted him enough to ask him to work alongside us to decipher the manuscript’s secrets. But that dog had already tried abducting Gabe at that point, and he continued trying after, too. Traitor.”
“He identified the medical symbols in the book,” I reminded them.
Alex rested a hand on my arm and looked at me as though I may have lost my mind entirely. “You can’t blame us for not anticipating that he was going to perform tests on Gabe. Not all the way back then.”
“That’s true,” I said, “but there was other evidence that he was interested in Gabe’s magic from a medical point of view. He was reading up on testing blood for diseases. I remember seeing a medical journal in his flat, opened to a page about blood carrying disease.”
“It’s an exciting field of study,” Francis said. “The war spurred major advancements in research into diseases transferred between men who received blood transfusions.” He seemed to cut himself short, perhaps realizing it was inappropriate to be so enthusiastic about scientific breakthroughs that only came about because of war.
“You reckon Stanley believes Gabe’s magic is blood-borne?” Willie asked.
“Given Sylvia saw him researching hematology, there’s a high probability he does.”
“But why would he want Gabe’s magic anyway? I don’t reckon he cares much about money, so he probably won’t sell his research if he could prove he’s right.”
“To cure his shell shock,” I said.
From the lack of surprise on Alex, Cyclops, and Francis’s faces, they’d already reached the same conclusion as me. It was the only conclusion that explained why a man would turn against his friend. Stanley probably didn’t want to harm Gabe, but he wanted so desperately to cure himself of his shell shock that he’d stooped to an unfathomable low.
Stanley, and other former soldiers whose nerves had been shredded by their wartime experiences, had found the worldunsympathetic when they returned. They were stigmatized, labeled pathetic, cowardly, and told to “just get on with it.” Following demobilization and a stint at Rosebank Gardens hospital, Stanley was deemed well enough to be discharged. Although the government funded hospitals to treat some patients, there was no financial assistance once they left. Few could find work, let alone keep a job for any length of time. Stanley had taken a position at a pharmacy, but we’d recently learned he’d resigned. He’d retreated from the world again. It was a warning sign that all was not well with him. We shouldn’t have ignored it.
