A Donation of Murder Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  About the Author

  Also by Felicity Young

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Dody turned on the tap. Gradually, the water flowing over her hands diluted the blood from deep claret to the colour of rosé. She scrubbed the gore from her fingernails and inspected her skin for minute cuts that would require immediate attention. The department would be in serious trouble if she succumbed to the same suppurating sores as her superior, Doctor Bernard Spilsbury. Satisfied she was safe to move on to the next autopsy, she dried her hands on a scratchy towel passed to her by the young attendant, Mr Hutchinson. The tiles beneath her feet wobbled. She looked down to discover a large area of missing grout. Gaslights sputtered from iron brackets. Patches of rust ran bleeding down the damp plaster walls.

  Usually she worked from the modernised Paddington Mortuary, but because of Doctor Spilsbury’s festering hands, Dody had taken his place, travelling far and wide to those London mortuaries which did not engage their own permanent autopsy surgeons.

  Today she found herself in the Commercial Road Mortuary in East End Police District D, under the umbrella of Inspector Fisher, former assistant to Chief Inspector Pike. God, how she wished Pike was standing in Fisher’s place now.

  Inspector Fisher was having trouble getting into his gown.

  ‘Let me help you, Inspector,’ she said as she left the sink to relieve his fumbling fingers from the ties of his white gown. The cover-all barely reached around his massive girth, further padded by his heavy overcoat. Melted snow from his boots formed pools beneath his feet.

  ‘Is it still snowing outside, Inspector?’ Dody asked, securing the ties into loose bows.

  ‘It looks like a feather bed has burst out there, Doctor. It won’t be letting up for a while, I don’t think.’

  As she wrapped her gown around her own slight frame, Dody shivered. She wondered how she would get home that evening — she couldn’t expect Fletcher to bring the Benz out in this. Perhaps Pike would meet her here. They could take the underground railway together and find somewhere pleasant and warm to dine. As this mortuary had no telephone, she would have to write Pike a note and find a boy to take it through the snow to him at Scotland Yard.

  Some weeks ago, moments before he had fainted into her arms from blood loss, she had asked Pike to marry her. Her lighter side had speculated that his collapse was caused by the shock of her unconventional proposal, something they would one day laugh about. On the other hand, perhaps he hadn’t heard her at all. Her darker side suspected that he had chosen to ignore the proposition altogether.

  Dody had not raised the topic again.

  Why, she had anguished during the sleepless nights since then, had she turned him down all those years ago? They would be married by now, living off his salary in a middle-class area of London, a baby in the cradle with another on the way. And she would be happy, surely happier than she was at the moment. It was almost her birthday. Soon she would be in her mid thirties and fast approaching the prospect of a barren middle age. She had put her career above everything, including her love for Pike, and was now paying the price for it.

  ‘Doctor?’ Fisher broke into her thoughts. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Dody tightened the scarf around her thick mahogany hair and glanced at the covered body on the slab. ‘Whose acquaintance do I have the pleasure of making today?’

  Fisher’s massive shoulders shrugged. He hunched further into his gown-covered coat, his coarse features pulled down by gravity and discomfort. Not everyone was as used to dealing with the dead as Dody was, and it was obvious the man did not wish to be here. She wondered why he had not sent a constable in his stead.

  ‘No idea who she is, Doctor, and that’s my problem. She was found frozen to death down a back alley near the Anchor and Whistle on Hackney Road.’

  A vagrant then, Dody thought, but that did not mark the death as unusual, especially at this time of year.

  Dody’s lack of expression spurred the policeman on. ‘Have a look at the lady’s effects before you start, please, Doctor.’ Fisher opened a large brown paper parcel.

  ‘First, there’s this.’ He spread a vermillion silk gown across the trolley as if it were a tablecloth, wafting the smell of gin around the icy air of the mortuary room. Tiny pearls beaded the plunging neckline of the gown.

  Hutchinson drew a sharp breath.

  On top of the gown Fisher placed a fur coat. Dody ran her hand across the soggy grey fur, once lush and white.

  ‘Arctic fox?’ she queried.

  ‘Looks like it. And there’s more,’ Fisher said, clumsily picking items of jewellery from the crown of a flamboyant, lace-confectioned hat: a cross at least two inches long studded with blood red jewels — garnets or rubies, Dody couldn’t tell — and a pair of similar-stoned earrings so long they must have once dangled to the woman’s jaw.

  ‘Good Lord, Inspector.’

  ‘And fine silk underthings from Paris. The hat’s from Clarke’s in Regent Street and the kidskin boots and gloves are labelled Church’s, Northampton. Would you care to inspect them, Doctor?’

  ‘No, not yet.’ Dody spoke quickly as her mind tripped through a series of questions. ‘I want to know more about this woman. How long had she been in the alleyway next to the public house? Why was someone so well dressed found in such an underprivileged area? Why has the body not been stripped? She would have been easy pickings for the bone grubbers.’

  ‘Which is why I called you in, Doctor. Normally when we find a person dead from such obvious causes we would not bother the Home Office. But this one throws up more questions than it answers.’

  ‘It certainly does.’ Dody pushed a recalcitrant clump of hair back under her scarf. ‘I’ll get on with it then.’

  She pushed the trolley with the clothes out of her way and replaced it with the one holding her equipment. Unsure of the instruments the mortuary could provide, she’d brought several leather instrument boxes with her from home. It had turned out to be a wise move, most of her tools having already proved useful for the previous case. Many of her instruments had been crafted to fit her own small hands, some she had purchased, and some were gifts from a wealthy cousin, famous for having once worked with the Russian jeweller, Faberge. Dody’s knife set was the pride of her collection — wooden handled to prevent slippage, Russian steel blades honed and razor sharp. She was pleased to see the care with which Hutchinson had cleaned and polished the blades, laying them out on the trolley in order of length, from cartilage knives down to the small brain knife. She’d also brought with her a bespoke scissor collection given to her by her parents upon her graduation, and a chisel and several forceps.

  ‘Gloves, ma’am?’ Hutchinson offered.

  Dody hesitated. She regarded the bulky cow-udder-like things the attendant held out to her, her mind flashing to the purulent papules on Spilsbury’s hands. Hutchinson
seemed competent, but she still had no idea how well the gloves had been washed after their last use.

  She would not take the risk. ‘No, thank you, Mr Hutchinson,’ she said. Besides, she hated to lose the dexterity of her fingers and the sense of touch so vital in her profession.

  Bowls of water sat on another trolley, plus needles and thin twine. A Bunsen burner, scales, and some basic laboratory equipment stood on a bench near the sink. Hutchinson ensured that the drainage pipe at the base of the slab was connected, and turned the hose on.

  Water gushed forth; they were ready to go.

  Hutchinson pulled back the sheet and revealed the body of a deep-breasted woman with a head of well-coiffed auburn curls, a perfect colour match to the luxurious thatch between her legs. The colour of her hair was a startling contrast to her alabaster skin, touched about the arms and chest with freckles so pale the snow might have blown them there as it caressed her to death during the night.

  ‘Take my notes, please, Mr Hutchinson,’ Dody said.

  Hutchinson picked up a clipboard, pulled a pencil from behind his ear and licked the tip.

  ‘A well-nourished woman of approximately thirty to thirty-five years of age,’ Dody dictated, ‘with no sign of bruising or blemish on the anterior of the body. No entry or exit wounds.’ She prised the legs apart and glanced at the genitals. ‘And no obvious sign of indecent dealings. Help me turn her over, please, Mr Fisher.’

  When Fisher failed to move, Dody held back a sigh. Without being asked, Hutchinson handed the clipboard and pencil to the policeman and rolled the woman from a supine to a prone position.

  Dody examined the woman’s posterior and again found it without blemish or injury. The rectal temperature read 91 degrees. Better take a more accurate liver reading when she opened the abdomen. At Dody’s nod, Hutchinson rolled the body back again.

  ‘No sign of lividity or rigor mortis, Inspector,’ she said. ‘When was she found?’

  ‘At about six o’clock this morning.’

  Dody looked at the clock on the wall. It was just past ten.

  ‘She has not been dead long then, rigor has not yet commenced. I suggest she died not long before she was picked up, or at the police station even.’ As Fisher scribbled notes, she added, ‘Who pronounced her dead?’

  ‘The police surgeon, Doctor Mason,’ Fisher replied.

  Dody nodded. She knew the man by reputation as a competent physician.

  ‘Very well then. It is most likely, given the circumstances, that this woman died of hypothermia. The autopsy will proceed in order to rule out any other cause of death.’

  Dody scanned the contents of the instrument trolley and selected her medium-sized cartilage knife. She ran the inside of her thumb ninety degrees across the blade, satisfied with the feel of its scrape across the ridges of her skin.

  Hutchinson pulled the body into position so that the head hung over the end of the slab to stretch the skin of the neck. The woman’s hair cascaded to the floor like a torrent of flames.

  Dody moved to the right-hand side of the neck. Holding the knife between her thumb and middle finger and with her index finger on the back of the blade, she pressed into the skin at the angle of the jaw.

  At once, the incision beaded with blood.

  Two green eyes opened like snapped blinds.

  Dody stepped back with a gasp.

  The female corpse sat bolt upright and began to scream.

  Fisher keeled over like a felled tree.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, get off me!’ the woman shrieked, snatching at the white sheet and pulling it up to her neck. At once the edge of the sheet wicked red around the wound at her jawline.

  ‘I’m so sorry, this is all a terrible mistake,’ Dody stuttered, stepping over the prone form of Fisher to reach the woman.

  Hutchinson remained motionless, frozen as if into a block of ice.

  ‘Get the inspector out of here,’ Dody said through the side of her mouth, ‘and give him some smelling salts.’

  She reached out to calm the hysterical woman while Hutchinson began the laborious task of dragging Fisher across the mortuary room floor towards the swinging doors.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ the woman yelled as Dody attempted to staunch her bleeding neck with a piece of gauze. Still clutching at the sheet, the woman slipped off the slab, lost her balance and fell against the instrument trolley. Dody caught the toppling trolley and the screaming woman before they crashed to the floor, though she could not prevent the instruments from clattering to the tiles. The screaming woman, the noise combined into a nightmarish cacophony that threatened to drown out what little rational thought Dody had left in her head.

  ‘Try and calm down,’ she said to the woman as much as to herself. ‘No one is going to hurt you.’

  ‘Oh, no — only cut my throat!’

  ‘It was a mistake. Please, let me help you over to the bench and I’ll explain.’ With one hand resting on Dody’s elbow, the other pinching the sheet together to preserve the remnants of her modesty, the corpse — now patient — allowed Dody to guide her to a bench at the far end of the room, next to the dissection table. On the table sat a row of specimen jars containing pieces of cancerous lung tissue that Dody had excised from her previous case. She moved them out of sight to the shelf under the table.

  Dody knelt before the woman and held her freezing hands, rubbing them between her own.

  ‘A policeman found you in an alley near the Anchor and Whistle public house first thing this morning. You were pronounced dead.’

  ‘Dead! Who said I was dead?’

  ‘The police surgeon. The police brought you here for an autopsy because they wanted to find out how you died.’ Even to Dody’s ears the words sounded ridiculous. ‘Sometimes, the body systems all but shut down in extreme cold, making signs of life difficult to detect.’

  The woman paused as the information sank in. ‘And you brought me back from the dead? Like Lazarus?’ she whispered, tightening her icy grip on Dody’s hands.

  ‘Well, no, because you obviously weren’t really—’

  The door swung open. Hutchinson entered, followed by a sheepish looking Inspector Fisher. Hutchinson offered the woman a mug of steaming tea.

  ‘There you go, love, I’ve put lots of sugar in it.’

  The woman reached for the tea, but could not grip the handle on account of her trembling hands.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have anything stronger?’ she asked.

  Dody moved over to her Gladstone bag, removed a flask of medicinal brandy and poured a generous amount into the tea. ‘This should do.’

  With Dody’s help, the woman managed to take several reviving sips.

  ‘Where are my clothes?’ she asked.

  Dody pointed to the trolley. ‘Over there, but they’re soaked through and filthy. Mr Hutchinson, could you please find some spare clothes or a blanket — anything more substantial than the sheet for the lady?’

  Hutchinson nodded and left the room once more.

  ‘And my jewels!’ the woman exclaimed, clutching at her neck, attempting to rise from the bench.

  Dody stopped her with a raised hand. ‘It’s all right, we still have them. Pass them to her, please, Mr Fisher.’

  Dody helped the woman put on her cross and earrings.

  ‘Are you up to answering some questions, miss?’ Fisher asked, glancing at Dody as if he expected some kind of reprimand.

  The woman took a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. You can but try.’

  Her accent, Dody noticed, had the clipped edge and refined intonation of the educated middle class.

  ‘Let’s start with your name,’ Fisher said.

  ‘Margaret Doyle. Miss.

  ‘You are Irish?’

  ‘I was born here, but my parents were from Derry. They are both long gone.’

  Nothing wrong with Miss Doyle’s long-term memory, Dody thought. But what of her short-term memory? ‘Where do you live?’

&
nbsp; ‘Dalston, North London.’

  ‘And can you remember any of the events that led to you being found in that alley,’ Fisher asked.

  Margaret Doyle turned to Dody. Her eyes filled and her face all but dissolved. ‘Yes, I can, but the memory is a painful one.’ She slumped against Dody’s shoulder and began to sob. Dody stroked her unruly curls.

  At that moment Hutchinson reappeared with a ratty blanket. ‘This is all we’ve got, Doctor. The poor box is empty.’

  ‘Good enough for the moment, thank you,’ Dody said as she wrapped the woman in it. ‘Inspector Fisher, I’d like to take Miss Doyle to my clinic; it’s only a short taxi ride from here. She needs a different kind of medical attention to what the mortuary can provide, and some decent, warm clothes.’

  Fisher indicated that he wanted a private word. Dody left Hutchinson helping Margaret Doyle with the remainder of her tea and joined Fisher near the trough sink.

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t be welcome at my clinic, Inspector,’ Dody said, pre-empting him. ‘It is a female-only establishment. Exceptions are made, of course, though not for the police, due to the nature of many of the women’s occupations. It’s nothing personal, Inspector Fisher.’

  ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘but I was hoping you might be able to question her for me there — the atmosphere has to be more pleasant than it is here — and report back to me.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ Dody examined his battered face with concern. ‘Are you feeling better now? Did you hit your head when you fell?’

  Fisher coloured, and rubbed the back of his skull. ‘I’ve banged it a lot worse than that, Doctor. You won’t tell Chief Inspector Pike about my, err,’ he waved his hands around, ‘little turn, will you?’

  ‘No, of course not. Although Mr Pike would probably have reacted in exactly the same way. It was a terrible shock for all of us. Please think nothing of it, Inspector Fisher. And now, if you would be so kind as to flag down a taxi to take Miss Doyle and myself to the clinic?’

  *

  Daphne Hamilton, a great friend of Dody’s sister, Florence, greeted Dody from behind the tall desk to which patients reported on first entering the clinic.