The Anatomy of Death Read online

  Pike believed him. If they’d wanted to kill him, they would have brought more than a set of brass knuckles. “The Chinese know just where to make the cuts for a man to bleed slowly to death. The last cut is to the throat, here.” Pike pressed harder. He sensed the outer layer of skin yield under his blade.

  Dykins yelped. “You’ve paid us back, me legs is shredded, Excel’s dead—what else do you want?”

  Pike released the pressure. “Excel’s not dead, he’s breathing. I want to know who put you up to the violence at the women’s march. I can’t believe so many of you would have risked your jobs for no reward.”

  “The sergeant took aside those of us ’e could trust,” Dykins said hastily. “Told us to put the women in their place. He said a bunch of roughs from the wharf ’ad been organised to cause trouble, too, and told us to turn a blind eye to ’em.”

  “Irish?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Organised by whom?”

  “Superintendent Shepherd, sir, acting on orders from the top, they say.”

  No surprises there, Pike thought. He had suspected Shepherd had conjured up the Irish to divert him from the truth, thinking that was Pike’s Achilles’ heel.

  “From the Home Office?” he asked. Since a militant suffragette had attacked Churchill, there had been no love lost between the Home Secretary and the “troublesome” women.

  Dykins shrugged. “We was given six pounds each, sir, told to keep schtum. The superintendent said ’ed make sure we didn’t lose our jobs, and if things got dodgy,’ed arrange transfers for us.”

  “He didn’t count on the photographic evidence,” Pike said with contempt. “Even Shepherd can’t get you out of that, you fool.”

  “Then ’es going to find us something else, security work, or the railways!”

  “Don’t count on it. And what about the death of Lady Catherine? Who was responsible for that?”

  “It’s what I told you in the office, sir, none of us done it, honest to God, I’d slit me own throat if I lied!”

  “Not if I get to it first.” Pike again tickled the man’s throat with the tip of his sword. Then he moved it down Dykins’s front, slicing the buttons off his coat. “You can swear to that, can you, Dykins? The surveillance photographs show you following your own agenda for most of the time.”

  “I ain’t got eyes at the back of me ’ead, ’ave I?”

  Pike sliced through the seam of the man’s coat sleeve for his impudence.

  “But if it was one of us what done it, I would have ’eard something about it after, I’m sure,” Dykins yelled.

  Pike cut through the thick belt at his waist and then his braces.

  “Oi, what you on about? I told you what I know!” With a loud sob, Dykins rolled onto his stomach and attempted to slither away, his trousers bunching around his knees.

  Pike’s blade returned to Dykins’s throat, prodding him to roll once more onto his back. “Your legs aren’t cut too badly,” he said, “and I can’t have you following me. Your choice: I cut further into your legs or I cut your clothes off.”

  “I’ll fuckin’ freeze!”

  “Head back towards the bridge and someone will find you.” Pike attempted to sever the man’s bootlaces, but he had trouble seeing in the dim light and sliced through boot leather as if it were tomato skin, nicking the side of Dykins’s foot in the process. “That one was for the girls and women you manhandled outside the House of Commons,” he said when Dykins screamed. He wanted to remove the man’s boots, but didn’t see how he could do so without falling down and staying down. Glancing at the unconscious Excel as he slipped the sword back into his cane, he said, “And don’t forget Sleeping Beauty here.”

  He was unable to put any weight on the leg Dykins had smashed, so he leaned into his cane and hopped away, hugging the shadowy course of the alley wall until he was out of Dykins’s sight. Then he stopped, leaned against the wall, closed his eyes against the pain and dizziness, and pondered his options.

  He could not stop himself from shaking. His knee felt as bad as the original injury all over again, but then at least his batman had been available to boost him onto his horse and lead him to safety. He was not far from home, but Mrs. Keating would doubtless send him to the hospital. And if Shepherd discovered the extent of his injury, it would be all the excuse he needed to pension him off. As a penniless civilian, there was little he could do about the corruption, incompetence, and callousness that had resulted in the deaths of three women and the emotional scarring of his daughter and her young friend. His only hope of ridding the force of scum like Shepherd was by remaining in it.

  He might be unable to change the past, but by bringing to justice those responsible for Lady Catherine’s death, he might help Violet come to terms with it—and perhaps restore some of her lost faith in him, too.

  There was only one thing for it. He took an agonising breath and began to hop towards the lights and cabs of Millbank Road.

  Chapter Twenty

  Dody lay in her bed, not quite awake, nor fully asleep. Disconnected images merged into one another in her mind: a swinging rope, a hockey match, a warm corpse with the face of her sister. Then it was she herself lying on the mortuary slab, manhandled by attendants, the powerful light blazing in her face …

  She gasped.

  “It’s all right, miss, it’s only me.” Annie stopped shaking her and stepped back from the bed.

  Dody pushed the hair from her eyes and squinted through the bright light at the parlour maid. “Annie! What is it?” It must be urgent for Annie to be waking her in the middle of the night. Then the memory of her dream caused her to sit bolt upright. “Florence, has something happened to Florence?”

  “No, miss. As far as I know, Miss Florence is safe at Miss Barndon-Brown’s flat. It’s a gentleman at the door, says he’s with the police.”

  Dody swung her legs over the side of the bed and pushed her feet into her slippers. “It has to be about Florence,” she said, unable to shift the grip of panic.

  “No, miss, that’s the first thing I asked. He said he needed to speak to you about something else.”

  “Did you ask him in?”

  Annie handed Dody her dressing gown. “No, I kept the chain on the door while I spoke to him and left him out on the doorstep. He’s dirty and dishevelled, and more than a smell of beer on his breath. More like a beggar than a policeman if you ask me—shall I wake Mr. Fletcher and have him seen off?”

  “Did he give you a name?”

  “He did, but I couldn’t tell you, miss, he was mumbling something chronic…Bike maybe.”

  Dody moved quickly to the door.

  “Shall I go get Fletcher?” Annie repeated.

  “No, first I want to see if it is who I think it is.”

  They approached the front door together. Dody drew the bolt with Annie twitching at the sleeve of her dressing gown. At first Dody saw no one. Then, illuminated by the porch light, she spotted a bent figure half-sitting half-lying on the lower step. “Chief Inspector, is that you?”

  “Dr. McCleland?”

  It was Pike, undoubtedly.

  Releasing the door chain and flinging the door wide, Dody rushed to his side and crouched on the step. “You are hurt?”

  “Sorry to disturb you at this time of night,” he said between the violent chattering of his teeth, “but I have much to report and nowhere else to go. I’m afraid I can’t stand. I’ll need some help, I have hurt my knee.”

  “Help me get him inside, Annie. I know him and he is a policeman.”

  They reached under Pike’s arms and heaved him into the hall, where they sat him down in a flimsy chair. He was hatless and muddy and his trousers were torn.

  Dody glanced up the long staircase leading from the hall. “He needs to be put to bed, but we’ll never get him up the stairs. The chaise in the morning room will have to do.”

  Dody couldn’t tell if Annie’s look of disgust was due to Pike’s filthy condition,
his occupation, or both. “But the chaise has only just been cleaned,” the maid said. Then she added eagerly, “I could call a cab and have him taken to the hospital.”

  Pike straightened as best he could. He was shaking violently. “No, please, Doctor, we must talk.”

  It must have something to do with Catherine’s case, Dody thought. His knowledge of her clandestine activities in the cadaver keep had made them allies of a sort, albeit cautious ones. Dody looked at his face, pale and taut with pain and desperation.

  “No, Annie, no hospital yet. I might be able to see to him here. Cover the chaise with a sheet. Then fetch me some towels and blankets, a bowl of hot water, and my medical bag.”

  While Annie set up an improvised hospital bed, Dody poured a glass of brandy and put it in Pike’s hand. The fiery liquor made him cough and he doubled over, clutching his side.

  Dody urged him to straighten, placed her hand inside his jacket, and felt along his ribs, provoking a gasp of pain. “I’m not yet sure what has happened to your knee, but you have at least one fractured rib,” she said. “Were you attacked?”

  Pike nodded, hugged himself, and rocked forward on the chair. “Cold,” he muttered.

  “We’ll soon warm you up.” She looked into the morning room. Annie had finished setting up and was stoking the fire.

  Dody observed Pike’s knee as they helped him from the hall. It showed little stability; he could hardly bear weight upon it, the slightest shift of angle causing it to twist unnaturally to the side. Not a ruptured cruciate ligament, she prayed, an irreparable condition that would leave him more crippled than before.

  They slipped off his sodden jacket, stretched him out on the chaise, and removed his boots. Using scissors from her bag, Dody cut through the seams of his torn trousers and long underwear, peeling back the layers of fabric to expose his leg from ankle to thigh. His knee was twice the size it should have been, a bluish ball of fluid streaked with blood from multiple grazes.

  “Get me some ice, Annie.”

  “There’s none, miss. Cook don’t stock it in winter.” Annie’s face was set in sullen disapproval.

  “Then scrape it from the street!” Dody snapped. Florence’s prejudice against the police had spread to the girl like a disease. “Find me some ice, and then go to bed,” Dody said more gently. Whatever Pike had to say, she decided, it would be safer heard alone.

  Returning her attention to Pike’s knee, she probed as gently as she could. Under the swelling, she could just make out the oval shape of the patella, lateral to where it should have been and moving like a living thing under her touch. He flinched and sucked in his breath.

  “Your kneecap is dislocated,” she said.

  “I thought as much,” he gasped. “It has happened before.”

  “What was the original injury?”

  “Shrapnel.”

  “It was removed?”

  Pike swallowed. “No, I…the hospital tent …” He broke off.

  Dody could see no point in questioning him further; her observations told her all she needed to know: the rapid beat of the pulse at his neck, the sweat popping on his brow despite the coolness of his skin, the dry lips. The prospect of surgery clearly terrified him.

  “I’m going to give you something to ease the pain, and then I will bind your ribs and reduce the dislocation of your knee. I will ice it, stabilise the joint as much as possible with strapping, and then splint it. You will not need surgery now, although I would advise it at a later date when the soft tissue damage has healed. The wear and tear of the shrapnel in the joint will only lead to more complications like this.”

  As she spoke, she checked the pulses in his leg. “Wriggle your toes, please. Good. I can see no evidence of nerve or vascular damage.”

  Dody pulled a bottle of laudanum from her bag. Pouring water into a sherry glass, she added the powerful analgesic with a pipette, carefully counting the drops. “Here, drink this,” she said when she had mixed the concoction.

  He hesitated, glass in hand, and inspected the contents with suspicion. “There are things we need to discuss. This will put me to sleep.”

  “It probably will, but there will be time to talk before it does. You do not want to be fully awake when I manipulate your knee, believe me.” Troubled eyes looked back into hers. She instinctively placed her hand upon his and gave it a squeeze. “You have to trust me. I will do nothing more than what I just explained.” She paused, wanted to ease some of his tension. “And who knows, sometime in the future, after surgery, you might even be able to ride that boneshaker bicycle of yours.”

  He looked at her for some seconds, then gave in with a sigh and raised the sherry glass.

  “Good health, Chief Inspector,” Dody said, allowing herself a small, self-congratulatory smile.

  She woke in the chair to the swishing of curtains and the turning of the room from black to grey. Annie switched on the standard lamp. “I think you’ll need the light, miss, it’s a grim old morning.”

  Dody yawned and turned her gaze up to the window. A brisk wind whipped the trees in the front garden and rattled at the windowpanes. A motorcar chugged past, headlights still blazing. She had kept the fire going for most of the night, but had slept soundly for the last two hours. Now only a few valiant embers still glowed. Annie prodded and poked at them, added kindling and fresh coal from the scuttle, and after a few puffs of the bellows, the fire was roaring again.

  Annie sank back on her haunches, wiped dirty hands on her apron, and glanced at the sleeping man. “How is he, miss?” she asked through pinched lips.

  “Really, Annie, one would think that you had hoped him to die in the night.”

  “No, of course not, Miss Dody, but I was worried Miss Florence might return and find him here. Then sparks would fly.” She rammed the poker into the coals to illustrate her point.

  “Well, Miss Florence didn’t return, did she?” Then, attempting to curb her impatience, Dody said in a more even tone, “He was quite restless earlier on, but sleeping soundly now by the look of things.”

  She got up from the chair and stretched. Moving over to where her patient lay, she took his pulse, finding it slow and steady. Although his skin appeared pale against the shadow of his stubble, the careworn look she associated with him had vanished, and he looked younger than she had originally thought, perhaps no more than forty. She marvelled at the restorative nature of sleep and wished she’d had more of it herself.

  “I’ll take my bath now before he wakes,” she told Annie. “Tell Cook to prepare a light breakfast for two to have in here in about half an hour.”

  “Half an hour, miss?” Annie said with incredulity. She had not yet come to terms with the fact that Dody was quite capable of getting dressed unaided in less than an hour.

  Pike was awake when she returned to the morning room, and she was just in time to stop him from climbing to his feet.

  “No, Chief Inspector, no,” she said gently, easing him back down.

  He rubbed his face and attempted to smooth his tousled hair. “Thank you, Doctor, but you’ve done enough.” He looked down and discovered he was dressed only in undershirt and drawers and hastily pulled the blanket up to his neck. “If you could just hand me my clothes, I will be off.” Now there was too much colour in the pale face.

  “I’m afraid it won’t be that simple. I had to cut your trousers to pieces to get at your leg last night. As for the rest of your things, Annie has taken them away for laundering, all but your jacket, and that is drying in the kitchen.”

  “Launder them? But I need—”

  “I will send my coachman to your lodgings for more clothes later. I can’t let you bear weight on that leg just yet, and when you do, it will have to be with a pair of crutches.” She poured him coffee from the breakfast tray Annie had brought in.

  “Crutches?” Pike said. “I can’t be seen with crutches. Didn’t I tell you last night that I could lose my job if Shepherd discovers my knee has worsened?”

 
“Then you must stay out of sight for a few days. If you think someone from the force might visit you at your lodgings, you are welcome to stay here until you can use your cane again.”

  Pike shook his head. “I appreciate your offer, but no. Not only does it show a singular lack of propriety”—at this Dody could not help smiling—“but it would be most unwise, politically speaking. Neither of us can afford to advertise our new, er, alliance.”

  For a moment she thought he had been going to say friendship. How would she feel if he had? Annoyed? Would she have thought him overly familiar or would she have been flattered? Whatever the case, she was glad he had not said it.

  “Only until this evening then, when we will devise a plan. Here, you must eat.” She handed him toast and marmalade and took some for herself. “Surely you would like to be close at hand to hear what I find out about the possibility of testing the truncheons for Lady Catherine’s blood group?”

  Pike placed his untouched toast on the table next to his coffee. With a sigh of defeat, he sank back against his pillow.

  Dody gulped down the last of her coffee, glancing at the mantelpiece clock as she did so. “It’s almost nine o’clock. If I don’t go now, I will be late for ward rounds. I’ll bring you back some crutches from the hospital, but it won’t be until late this afternoon. On no account are you to put weight on that leg, or remove the strapping from your ribs, or tamper with the splint—it must be firm to keep the patella in place. Annie will bring in your meals—and a chamber pot for your convenience.”

  He turned his head away. His hand went to his leg under the blanket. For the first time he seemed aware of the improvised contraption. “The splint…?”

  “I’ll show you.” Dody pulled back the blanket and revealed the cardboard splint put together from one of Florence’s newspaper boxes.

  His eyes widened in horror as he read the black print down the front of the device—VOTES FOR WOMEN!

  Dody smiled. That ought to keep him in his place.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The cab made swift progress along the macadam road to the New Women’s Hospital, and Dody had plenty to occupy her mind during the short journey. Pike had not been exaggerating when on the doorstep last night he’d said he had important things to report. He knew the truth now—that the police had attacked women at the riot, that Lady Catherine had been bludgeoned by a policeman, and that this had been suppressed. Surely it would have been in Pike’s best interest to bury his head in the sand, but he had given her his assurance that he would do everything in his power to get to the heart of the corruption, and expose it’s rotten core. But at what cost? He had already come close to losing his life at the hands of ruffians he had sacked, but what of the others, the men who had even more to lose? What steps might they take to silence him?