Dody McCleland 02 - Antidote to Murder Read online

  “Absolutely not.”

  The coroner glanced at Dr. Burton on the witness bench. Burton nodded his head.

  “And you did not see Miss Craddock subsequently?” the coroner enquired again of Dody.

  “I did not. Mr. Robinson was mistaken to think he saw Miss Craddock leaving the Women’s Clinic on August the eleventh. All our patients are recorded in a register and her name is not on it. The register was examined yesterday by the police and they can vouch for my words.”

  “At what time does the Clinic close?” the jury foreman asked.

  “Five o’clock, sir.”

  “The deceased was seen at six o’clock. Could she not have attended the Clinic after hours with her name therefore not recorded in the registry?”

  “She was not attended by me, I assure you.”

  “Can you account for your movements at this time?”

  “I was at home studying.”

  “Did anyone see you when you arrived home?” Mr. Carpenter asked.

  “I let myself in. It was my maid’s afternoon off. I did not see anyone until after seven when my sister returned home.”

  The coroner sighed and opened a folded piece of paper from the table in front of him. Dody found herself holding her breath. Someone must have tipped Mr. Carpenter off. How else could the proceedings have transpired with such precision, such speed?

  And then the coroner confirmed her suspicions. “I have received several letters since the death of Esther Craddock, all anonymous, unfortunately. I think you will see when you read them, why this line of enquiry was necessary. The letters are all along these lines: Sir, For the interest of morality and female safety you must investigate the practices of Dr. Dorothy McCleland.” He paused as if he had some difficulty reading the note. “Not only does she conduct classes amongst working-class girls in the area of pregnancy prevention, but she has also been performing criminal abortions in the Whitechapel Women’s Clinic. For the sake of the morality of our working classes, I urge you to act upon this information.”

  When he had finished reading the letter, he gathered together a bundle of similar papers and instructed the usher to hand them to the jurymen to read. From the spectator’s section of the hall, Florence cried out in protest. “Lies, those letters are lies! My sister would never do that!”

  Dody felt the hall spin. Through a veil of mist she saw the figure of her sister being led away from the court by a policeman. Her mother sat in stunned silence with her hand over her mouth, her husband gripping her arm.

  Once the contents of the notes had been digested, the coroner addressed the jury:

  “As you can see, gentlemen, the nature of these letters gave me no choice but to open this coronial enquiry. With a focus on the activities of Dr. McCleland.” He removed his monocle, briefly recapitulated the evidence, and then requested the jury to consider their verdict.

  Everard climbed to his feet. “I was summoned to this hearing, sir, but I have not yet been given a chance to speak.”

  The coroner looked surprised and shuffled through his notes in a slight state of confusion. “And you are?”

  “Dr. Henry Everard. I work at the Paddington Mortuary with Dr. Dorothy McCleland.”

  Mr. Carpenter pulled a sheet of paper from his pile. “Ah yes, so you do. What do you have to say? Be quick about it, sir.”

  “That I was asked by the Coroner’s Office to provide a character reference should any suspicion fall on Dr. McCleland, which does now appear to be the case.”

  “Feel free to do so, then.”

  Everard cleared his throat and addressed the jury. “I find it hard to believe the contents of those letters. The Dr. McCleland I have worked with for the past three months took the same Hippocratic Oath as all physicians. I feel absolutely confident in my assertion that, despite her feminist leanings, Dr. McCleland would refuse to perform an abortion under any circumstance other than to save the life of the mother—”

  “She believes in contraception, don’t she?” a man’s voice called from the public benches. Someone whose wife she had counselled at the Clinic, perhaps?

  “Contraception is not the same thing as abortion—” Everard started, before being shouted down.

  “Against the laws of nature!”

  Other men jeered their agreement; some even shouted, “Same difference!”

  “If she weren’t doing a man’s job, she wouldn’t ’ave got ’erself into this mess!”

  Everard’s done nothing to help my cause, Dody thought with increasing panic. Had he known it would be received this way?

  A shout from the back: “Baby killer!”

  “Silence!” Mr. Carpenter slammed the gavel down. “Please sit, Dr. Everard. You have said enough.”

  Dody dropped her head into her hands.

  Everard touched her on the elbow. “I’m sorry, I tried,” he whispered.

  “The jury will now consider their verdict,” Mr. Carpenter proclaimed after he had settled the crowd with threats of ejection.

  A solemn hush fell upon the court, broken only by the whispers of the jurymen as they consulted and, Dody was certain, by the agitated beating of her own heart. The spectators gazed in awed expectancy from Dody to the jury, who took but a short time to reach their conclusion. At the end of five minutes the foreman announced that they were agreed. In answer to the coroner’s formal enquiry, the foreman stood up and said, “We find that the deceased met her death by mismanaged criminal abortion, in all probability caused by the actions of Dr. Dorothy McCleland.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” the coroner replied. “The case will now be referred to the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THURSDAY 24 AUGUST

  Dody was charged before a justice of the peace and her case sped through the Magistrates’ Court the next day, leaving her legal advisors with plenty of time to prepare her defence for trial the following month. If she had been of a lower social class, she might have had to spend time in prison during this period, but bail was granted for thirty pounds and paid by her father. It wasn’t often the McCleland family were grateful for their country’s social inequalities.

  The following week, towards the end of a long day, she sat in the morning room with her mother and sister, Annie bustling around, gathering up dirty teacups and uneaten Dundee cake. The curtains were drawn and the room was in semidarkness. An oil lamp flickered from the writing desk. Flames from a pair of silver candelabra on the card table made the long shadows sway.

  In deference to the Fabian motto, “A simple way of life,” the sisters were obliged to regress to a lifestyle without electricity or modern conveniences when their father was in town. The Benz was kept out of sight in the mews, and Fletcher was forced to exchange his chauffeur’s uniform for his old coachman’s livery.

  Nial McCleland insisted on using a tin bath in front of his bedroom fireplace despite the modern bathroom on the second-floor landing and on more than one occasion had chastised Annie for using the portable dedusting pump instead of a feather duster. His opinions were progressive on so many topics, but he was adamant in his contention that on the domestic front the old ways were always the best ways.

  Louise McCleland was not as hardy as her husband. When she had dealings with the authors and artists of the Bloomsbury set—Nial had no time for them despite the fact that some of them were also Fabians—she visited her daughters without him. On these occasions she took every advantage of the modern facilities, thought the townhouse a tremendous treat, and was rarely seen without a smile on her face. Not so today, however.

  Louise picked up the dog-eared newspaper from the settee next to her and handed it to Annie to dispose of. HOME OFFICE DOCTOR TO STAND TRIAL FOR CRIMINAL ABORTION, the headline on page three proclaimed.

  “I don’t know what you two are still looking so gloomy about,” Florence said to her mother and sister when Annie had left the room with the laden tray and the newspaper tucked under her arm. “Dr. Spilsb
ury has returned to London to bat on Dody’s side and we all know he barely ever loses a case.”

  True, Dody thought. Upon his return to London, Spilsbury had been granted permission to perform another autopsy on Esther’s body and to review Dr. Burton’s findings. While he had agreed with the police surgeon that a person with basic medical knowledge had performed the procedure, he declared the accusation against Dody preposterous and circumstantial. He confirmed Dody’s diagnosis of Esther’s lead poisoning and guaranteed her his support, promising that he would stand by her as a character witness in the trial should the need arise. Without Spilsbury’s declaration of faith, Dody knew she might never have made it through the nightmare of the last few days.

  “What of Henry Everard?” Florence asked. “Will he also come forward in your defence again?”

  “I sincerely hope not,” Dody said. “He hardly helped me during the inquest, did he? I think Dr. Spilsbury must have forced him to testify.” She turned to Louise. “Everard resents me, Mother. He has no time for female doctors, let alone autopsy surgeons, and sees me as a threat.”

  And her heated debates with him about pregnancy prevention had done nothing but damage her cause. If only she’d kept her opinions to herself. On second thought, she doubted it would have made much difference. There was nothing she could do to change her gender and that was surely his biggest problem.

  “Dr. Everard stole Dody’s idea for a research paper, Mother,” Florence said.

  Louise looked with surprise from one to the other of her daughters.

  “Could he have done it, Dody—written the letters, I mean?” Florence added.

  “And risked his career? I don’t think so,” Dody said.

  “But perhaps some enquiries could be made anyway, dear?” Louise suggested. “I seem to remember one of you telling me about a policeman acquaintance who you thought a slight cut above the rest.”

  Florence broke in before Dody could reply. “Chief Inspector Pike is away on leave. When he read about Dody’s case in the newspaper, he phoned immediately, even offered to return to London to help, but Dody refused to talk with him.” At this she shot Dody a sharp look.

  He had also sent those flowers and sweets—sweets so disgusting she had taken one bite and dumped them in one of the mortuary dustbins. These had been followed a few days later by a detailed apology, though she had not confided this to Florence. He’d said he understood if she wished to put an end to their friendship, but would she at least consider admitting him to the house so they could discuss her case? He had signed his note “With affection,” and for the briefest of moments her heart had stopped.

  But still she had not replied.

  “Police involvement is for my legal advisors to organise, if they think it necessary,” she told her mother and sister. “Besides, Pike is the wrong kind of policeman; he does not deal in matters such as this.”

  Louise looked to Florence with a raised eyebrow, as if to ask her younger daughter if there was something else she should know about this man. Florence, to her credit, did not elaborate.

  Dody would not be drawn into any more discussion about Pike. Her mother would be horrified if she knew Dody had ever thought of him as much more than an acquaintance. Louise would probably have been less distressed to discover that Dody had been consorting with a Tory politician.

  “It must be a relief to Mrs. Craddock that her daughter’s body has at last been released for burial,” Louise McCleland said, thankfully leaving talk of Pike behind. Florence followed her mother’s lead in trying to buoy Dody’s spirits with positive news.

  “And Daphne told me that the Kent baby has been discharged from hospital, fully recovered. If not for you, she would have died. You see, Dody, the news is not all doom and gloom.”

  Dody left her chair and began to pace. “I know what you are both attempting, Florence, Mother, and I appreciate your trying to cheer me up. But I am a realist, and I know the Kent baby’s troubles are by no means over. What has she been discharged to? What are her chances of survival in a family of such poverty, with parents who have probably already yielded twice to the temptation of infanticide?” Dody stopped pacing and faced them. “If I do go to trial, I will at least be able to draw public attention to the appalling conditions of the working classes, largely brought about by their inability to control their pregnancies.”

  “Lord, Dody,” Florence said, “if you spout off like that, they really will think you are an abortionist.”

  “I am not alone in my opinion; there are many who feel the same. Only last month I met a woman called Marie Stopes at the Natural History Museum. She is a professor of palaeobotany at the University of Manchester and is all for birth control—she sees it as a form of women’s rights. I am aware that this is a divisive issue amongst the suffragettes, but Florence, you are an educated woman. You of all people should be able to understand the differences; birth control is not abortion.”

  Florence folded her arms. “Dody, I’ve told you this a hundred times. Birth control makes a mockery of marriage, makes it no more than legal prostitution, giving men even more reason to exploit their wives, put pleasure before responsibility—”

  “For someone who openly declares she will never marry, you suddenly seem to have a high opinion of the institution,” Dody said sharply.

  “Yes, there are those for whom I consider marriage to be perfectly acceptable; it is just not for me, that’s all. For me it would be a distraction from the Cause. Marriage is not something that should be taken lightly, and contraception only adds to its risk, making people care too much about lust and none of its consequences.”

  Dody clenched her fists; quite aside from the problems of the poor, how could Florence talk like this when only a few years earlier she had herself been involved in an affair with a married man? True, she had not known the man was married at the time and had fallen for his romantic looks, his poetry, and his lies. But imagine if she had become pregnant. She must have been very lucky, or practising some form of contraception. Now, as a result, she was off men entirely. With her own experience scrubbed from her mind, she seemed unable to understand how hard it was for others to fight the attraction of love. Even Dody, with her limited physical experience, could empathise; she yearned even for something that, at the age of thirty, had probably passed her by.

  The last line of Pike’s note slipped into her mind unbidden.

  She set her jaw. “There’s none more zealous than the newly converted.”

  “Dody, Florence.” Their mother held up a finger. “Enough of that. We all know how divisive this debate is. Personal attacks and splitting hairs will do nothing but harm. At least until the end of the trial, concentrate on what you do agree on and that is Dody’s innocence. This debate about contraception and marriage is getting us nowhere. Please, girls, kiss and make up.”

  Dody and Florence fell silent. Their mother was right, of course; she usually was. Florence sat with her head bowed and her hands twisted. Dody looked over to her sister. She could never cease to love and admire Florence, even though there were times when she felt like shaking her until the blinkers fell from her eyes. She must cease discussion of contraception, at least until the trial began. And then? Well, if she had to go down, she would not go down silently—she might as well be sent to prison for something she really was guilty of.

  Dody met her sister’s eyes. Florence offered a cautious smile and they opened their arms to one another.

  “That’s better, girls,” Louise said.

  They finished their embrace and settled back into their chairs. A short while later Nial McCleland strode into the room looking as if he had just come from the field—hair awry, spikes of untrimmed beard poking in all directions—oblivious to the uncomfortable silence he was breaking.

  “I’ve spoken to Sebastian Carmichael, my lawyer, you know, and he’s going to join us for dinner to discuss strategy.” He moved towards the drinks trolley and offered them all a sherry. Dody shook her head. Her stomac
h still felt fragile from her latest bout with the cholera. She’d sent to the chemist for more Valentine’s, and settled for a dose from a sherry glass.

  “I thought you were dining with the Thompsons tonight?” Florence asked her parents.

  Louise and Nial exchanged glances. “No dear, that engagement has been cancelled,” Louise said quietly.

  “Some problems at their country house, I believe. Had to leave the city in a hurry.” Their father’s tone was loud and stilted. He had never been a good liar. The “scandalous behaviour” of the McCleland girl was the reason the dinner party had been cancelled, Dody was sure of it. She wondered how many more of her parents’ friends would ostracise them.

  “Don’t worry, my dears,” Louise said to her daughters as she took a glass of sherry. “I have the utmost faith in Sebastian. He’s certainly got your father out of one or two scrapes in his time.”

  But did Dody really want a radical lawyer on her side, one who had defended anarchists and revolutionaries, suffragettes, unsuccessful suicides, and homosexuals? Oh, Lord. Her innocence seemed inconsequential with a man like that fighting her case. Her career was ruined regardless of whether she won or lost.

  “Bother,” Florence said as she looked to the mantel clock. “I shall miss him. The truce is over and we’re having a protest in Leicester Square tonight. I’ve helped organise it, so I have to be there.” Florence moved over to where Dody sat on the chaise. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to hear what Sebastian has to say, but I will be here with you in spirit.”

  “I’m almost tempted to go with you,” Dody said with a weak smile, even though she suspected she would not be well received by the righteous members of the Bloomsbury suffragettes. Since the coronial verdict, the hate letters had poured in from every social and political spectrum, including suffragettes, suffragists—those who supported female suffrage through peaceful, constitutional means—and of course, the antisuffragettes. Earlier that day, a small crowd had gathered for some hours outside her house, only giving up when the “baby killer” failed to appear. Dody was a prisoner in her own home.