Chapter Text
Prologue
“But I never cared for James. He was too like his mother and a nastier woman never drew breath.”
- Lady Violet Crawley, Season one, Episode one
1890
“I’m not going to murder an innocent child, Mr Crawley, and that is final.” Doctor David Wright brought his fist down on the well polished wood of his desk for emphasis. It was past midnight and the hospital was empty except for the doctor, his guest, two patients and, carefully scheduled so her shift coincided with this interview, his wife, Sophia, as the acting nurse. The two invalids were bed bound at the other end of the building, so there was no need for the doctor to keep his volume down or his tone properly deferential.
The man who sat across from him was his superior in all ways except possibly practical education and, if the current conversation were any indication, morality. The first cousin and heir presumptive of Lord Grantham, the Honourable James Crawley had been through the finest schools, although whether his prowess with finances and knowledge in classic literature was more useful than the ability to set a broken leg was up for debate. He dressed well, combed his hair respectably, and was generally seen by the world as a worthy successor to his cousin’s title. If the world could have seen him now, smiling a nasty, cutthroat smile at the man on the other side of the desk, they might well have changed their mind. “Don’t you think this is a rather inconvenient time to develop morals, Doctor?”
Dr Wright adjusted his spectacles and held his ground. “I have always had morals. Your accusations are groundless.”
“Are they though?” Mr Crawley countered. “After all, there was an investigation.”
“The investigation was not of me and came up with nothing. Really, this whole thing is absurd.” For the first time in his life, Dr Wright regretted attending the same school that had seen the Westport Murders, even if Robert Knox was no longer teaching there. “Burke was hanged nearly twenty years before I was born, and the Anatomy Act put into place a decade after that. Schools have no reason to obtain their specimens through low means anymore.”
“People thought the Murder Act meant the same thing,” the other man pointed out, all nonchalance. “But the executioners couldn’t keep up with the supply, could they? Tell me, Doctor, how many bodies are donated a year?”
“I’m a practising doctor, not a professor. I couldn’t tell you.”
Mr Crawley watched him with the lazy amusement of a cat playing with a dust mote in a sunbeam. “Neither could most people, Doctor. That’s why it was so concerning when those rumours started circulating about your friends, isn’t it? The police might have looked into it and decided that everything was above board, but the people of Edinburgh, they haven’t forgotten that the school once instructed over the murdered bodies of their loved ones and the contents of their robbed graves, have they? Trust, once lost, is very difficult to recapture.”
“It is,” Dr Wright allowed, “but the people of Downton have no reason to distrust me. I am not a murderer or a grave robber and neither were my fellow students. The rumours are just that.”
For a moment, the other man was silent. Then he switched tactics. “I don’t know why you’re being so difficult about this, Doctor. I’m not asking you to murder anyone, not really.” At the doctor’s scoff, he came over all innocence. “I’m not! All I’m asking is that you make certain Cousin Robert doesn’t have a son.”
“And how do you propose I manage that?” the doctor replied with an unimpressed expression. “There is no way of knowing a baby’s sex until it’s born and even if there were, what then? The best I could do would be to prescribe a medicine that caused Her Ladyship to lose the child, and that would be beyond unethical. It would be tantamount to murder and even if I were not hanged, I’d deserve to be.”
“Perhaps,” Mr Crawley rolled his shoulders in a languid shrug. “But that’s only a concern if she becomes pregnant in the first place. I should think there are ways to prevent that. Some of them might even be permanent, so you need never trouble yourself with these concerns again.”
Dr Wright gaped at him. “You can not mean for me to make Her Ladyship barren!”
Mr Crawley’s tone and manner shifted, taking on a dangerous undertone. “What I mean is to stay the heir to my cousin’s estate by any means possible, and unless you can prove your whereabouts on the night of the fifth of May, eighteen-sixty three, you are going to help me.” With this cryptic remark, he drew a folded piece of paper from the inside of his jacket and slid it across the table.
“What is that?” Dr Wright asked, eyeing the paper as if it might bite.
“Open it and find out.”
Reluctantly, the doctor unfolded the paper. To his surprise and dismay he found it was a letter, written in a mimicry of his own hand so close that even he couldn’t tell the difference. Dear Edward, it started. I have marked the site where our goal is buried. It is well off the main road, so there is no fear of being seen, and if we are diligent, our work should be a matter of half an hour, no more. The earth in that region is soft and easily turned… The letter fell from nerveless fingers. “Forgery,” Doctor Wright accused, although his voice shook. “Lies and blackmail.”
“Prove it.”
He couldn’t prove it. At the age of twenty he had been a dedicated student, spending most of his nights alone with his books. The friends he had made had fallen out of touch since then. In fact, if he remembered properly, Edward Lewis had died some years prior in a shooting accident. There was no one in the world to prove that the two of them had not been engaged in the activities outlined in the letter. Struggling to breathe and not to be ill, he looked from the man across the table to the letter and back. With a snarl of fevered desperation, he snatched the paper up and ripped it in half, then quarters, systematically reducing it to scraps. “There,” he snapped, throwing the remains of the letter defiantly back at its originator. He gestured to the scraps. “That is for your blackmail.”
Mr Crawley didn’t bat an eyelash. “Do you really think I’d bring the only copy?”
The defiance drained out of the doctor. He slumped backward in his chair and stared, cold and dumbstruck at the man across the table.
“I don’t care what you do, Doctor Wright,” Mr Crawley stood, still smiling. The other man made no motion to stop him. “But I will remain the heir to Downton Abbey, one way or another, or I will ruin you.” He crossed serenely to the coat rack, fetching his coat and hat off the hook, tipping the latter to his defeated opponent before turning and walking out of the room. Several minutes later, the door to the hospital closed in the distance.
There were hurried footsteps in the hallway and in short order Sophia entered the room. At thirty two, she was fifteen years her husband’s junior, and as she took in his deathly appearance, her eyes widened, making her look even younger. “David!” She ran across the room, rounding the table to kneel at his side as he continued to stare blankly across the room. “David, what’s happened? What is the matter?”
“He’s won, Sophie. No matter what I do, he’s won.”