A Donation of Murder Read online

‘Good morning, Doctor McCleland, you’re early — the other doctors and board members aren’t here yet.’

  Bother. Dody had forgotten all about the board meeting and the serious business that lay ahead on its agenda.

  ‘Hullo, who’s this?’ Daphne added, peering down at them.

  Dody tightened her grip around Miss Doyle’s shoulders. Before they’d left the mortuary Dody had wrapped her in her own fur-lined cape, though she still shivered under her touch. ‘Miss Margaret Doyle, a lady I’ve just met under some rather distressing circumstances. She has hypothermia and needs warming. Is there a cubicle free?’

  Daphne peered down at Margaret’s neck wound. ‘Number two’s empty. I’ll ask one of the nurses to send in a bowl of hot water for her feet, and set up a dressing trolley for you.’

  ‘And some clean warm clothes, please. Last time I looked there were plenty in the storeroom. Some tea and currant buns would go down well too, if you have any.’

  ‘Tea, yes, but no buns — they were the first things to be lopped from the budget.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the budget,’ Dody said in a tone of resignation. As soon as she’d settled Margaret, she’d pop into the street and find a vendor, a pie-man if possible. If she could not find a pie, then something else hot and stodgy, something to restore energy and warmth to the woman’s hypothermic blood.

  ‘Will you be needing any assistance, Doctor?’ Daphne asked.

  ‘No, thank you, I’ll manage, you are busy enough.’ Dody looked around the crowded waiting room. Gaunt women and children occupied the benches. Some of the babies were obviously ill, too listless to cry, or else intent on seeking comfort from long-empty breasts. A Christmas tree stood withering in the corner, denuded now of the candy canes that had once given the place a semblance of cheer.

  With an arm around the trembling woman’s shoulders, Dody escorted her to treatment cubicle number two, helped her onto the bed, and pulled the curtain screens around them.

  ‘What kind of place is this?’ Margaret Doyle asked between chattering teeth.

  The cold journey in the taxi had done her no good at all. Dody wondered if she’d moved her too soon. The problem was that the mortuary was no place to be performing an aseptic procedure. Dody would never forgive herself if the woman died from septicaemia. The clinic was the only choice she had.

  ‘It’s a women’s clinic, Miss Doyle, for the impoverished. The nurses and doctors are all volunteers, and we rely on charitable donations to continue our work.’

  ‘You are a saint then,’ Margaret Doyle whispered as if to herself. She picked up the cross from her neck and kissed it.

  Dody laughed. ‘Hardly.’

  Quick, efficient footsteps approached, the curtains rippled and a nurse pushed a dressing trolley into the cubicle and removed a large bowl of steaming water from the lower shelf.

  ‘Thank you, Nurse Little,’ Dody said to the departing breeze. ‘I’ll attend to your neck wound now, Miss Doyle. While I do that you can put your feet in the hot water — that should help warm you up.’ Dody would have preferred to put Margaret Doyle into a hot bath, but doubted the staff would be able to find one at such short notice.

  The wound was less than an inch long, but deep. Thank heavens Dody’s knife had missed the artery. Even though the gash had stopped bleeding, it was still necessary to squeeze the sides and tease out a few more drops of blood.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Doyle, I was just removing potential contaminants.’ Dody cleaned the wound and applied antiseptic. ‘I’m afraid it will need a couple of stitches. Can you cope with that, Miss Doyle?’

  ‘As long as you don’t squeeze, I’m so cold I doubt I’ll feel a thing.’

  Dody inserted five stitches to the gaping lips of the wound, leaving a neat surgical line. Miss Doyle, much to be admired, did not flinch.

  ‘Will I be left with a scar, Doctor?’ she asked, when Dody had finished.

  ‘A small one, but given the position under the jaw it will barely show.’

  ‘I can’t thank you enough. I owe you, Doctor McCleland.’

  ‘On the contrary, my medical colleague, the police and I are the ones who must apologise to you. It is abhorrent that you were left for dead like that.’

  ‘But maybe I was dead?’

  Dody humoured Margaret Doyle with a smile, though inside she wished that her patient would abandon the miracle insinuations. Nurse Little shoved the curtain aside again and brought in a tray of tea and biscuits, which she put on the dressing trolley.

  ‘You’re in luck, Doctor,’ she said. ‘Found some gingernuts in the kitchen brought in for the meeting.’

  ‘Oh, my — the meeting! How long have I got, Nurse Little?’

  ‘About half an hour,’ she said, leaving a bundle of clean clothes at the foot of the bed before bustling off once more.

  Half an hour should be enough time to have a good talk to Margaret Doyle, Dody decided. She reached into her bag and topped up the woman’s tea from her flask of medicinal brandy.

  ‘Please join me, Doctor. It’s a cold day after all, and I expect you’ve been traumatised almost as much as I have,’ Margaret Doyle said.

  Dody couldn’t argue with that. She’d heard about patients waking up on the slab but this was the first time such a thing had happened to her. If she’d been a praying person she’d have thanked God that Margaret Doyle had not been found in the Paddington area. If that was the case, she would have been put in one of their very efficient modern refrigeration compartments, which would certainly have finished off what the freezing night had already started.

  Dody shrugged and tipped a small measure of brandy into her tea. ‘If you insist.’

  Margaret Doyle smiled. ‘That’s better. Now, I suppose I have some explaining to do.’

  ‘Well, I admit to being curious about how you came to be found in that alleyway.’

  ‘I was on my way out with my young man. We were off to the opera together, travelling by carriage — he’s an old-fashioned gentleman. I was in a bit of a grim mood; I’d been hearing rumours that he had been,’ she hesitated, ‘unfaithful to me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Dody said.

  ‘Yes, well, that’s men for you, isn’t it? I’d planned on confronting him in the morning anyway, so I don’t know what possessed me to bring it up then when we were on our way out to the opera — I’d been so looking forward to the new production of The Pirates of Penzance. Have you seen it, Doctor?’

  ‘Not yet, but I intend to.’ Pike had suggested they go to the opera to celebrate her birthday.

  ‘They say it’s gloriously fun and colourful. But I am straying from the point. I brought up the subject of his infidelity as we rattled along in the carriage and he became defensive, gave me a litany of excuses, and then asked me to marry him — I mean, well, really. I think he just pulled the notion out of the air, hoping to appease me. As you can see, that didn’t work!’

  Dody began to appreciate that she was talking to a woman of the world.

  ‘He remained calm, too calm, saying nothing that I wished him to say,’ Miss Doyle continued, ‘while the anger inside me churned and churned. Finally, I could stand his company no longer. I discarded all rational thought, turned the handle of the carriage door and tumbled out into the slushy street.’

  ‘You were lucky to have been in a carriage and not a taxi. From a motorised taxi you might have sustained serious injury.’

  ‘Indeed. I picked myself up from the ground. The carriage stopped. The passenger door opened and out stepped John, calling to me, telling me to stop being so bloody stupid — excuse me, Doctor, but that’s what he said — and get back into the carriage. His words got me all the more fired up. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I made myself visible under a street lamp, and then, when I was sure he had seen me, I ran off in the direction we had just travelled, sure he would follow. I wanted him to worry, I wanted to give him a fright, make him realise how much he loved me . . .’ Margaret Doyle paused to
dash away angry tears with the back of her hand. ‘But he didn’t follow. He just left me there.’

  Dody rubbed her patient’s arm. ‘Miss Doyle, I’m so sorry. If you find this too distressing, you don’t have to tell me any more. The police and I only need to know if a crime has been committed.’ It depends on one’s definition of a crime, though, Dody thought to herself. Leaving a woman alone at night in the middle of a snowstorm was a crime in her book, but the legal system might not agree, especially if the abandonment had been initiated by the woman.

  Dody rose from the bed and began to inspect the bundle of clothes Nurse Little had found. Despite Fisher’s plea, and her own eagerness to hear the story, she did not wish to exert unnecessary pressure for fear of causing her patient a relapse. She busied herself with unfolding then shaking out a plain tweed skirt.

  ‘Will this do, Miss Doyle?’ Dody asked, holding the skirt up for inspection. The fabric was thinning, but clean.

  ‘Perfectly, thank you. It will do nicely until I get the chance to return to my own home.’ And then her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, God!’ The colour she had gained since ‘being brought back to life’ leached from her face.

  Dody put the clothes down and moved back to take her hand, worried the relapse she’d been concerned about was happening now.

  ‘Miss Doyle, what is it? Please, you can tell me.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘It’s John. He’ll probably be waiting for me there. He’ll be furious with me, he’ll probably . . .’ She was unable to finish.

  Dody pre-empted what Margaret Doyle was about to say. ‘Does he often strike you?’

  She nodded. ‘And for lesser things than this. You see, after I ran off, I stumbled about for a while, getting colder and colder until I came upon the Anchor and Whistle. It’s an awful place, but I had no choice, it was that or die. Some of the men there were acquaintances of John’s. They recognised me and bought me drinks — quite a few, I’m afraid. I think I might have said a few demeaning things about him, some not so complimentary things. He’ll be mad as a bull when he hears what I said, especially as it was me that ran out on him.’

  ‘Do you have any friends or family who can put you up for a few days while John calms down?

  ‘No.’

  ‘But if you came upon friendly company in the public house, how did they allow you to end up in that alley?’ Dody asked, not voicing her other query, that being why a woman of Margaret Doyle’s class was apparently so comfortable as to have more than a few drinks with the male patrons of a public house? Let alone one as notorious as the Anchor and Whistle. She could only surmise that John had dragged Miss Doyle down in society.

  ‘The men were generous with their drinks, as I said. After a while I needed some air. I stepped out into the snow, and that’s the last thing I remember. I don’t even remember getting lost. I suppose I must have collapsed. You know the rest of the story better than I do.’

  While one side of Dody’s brain had been listening to the conclusion of Margaret Doyle’s story, the other side of her brain whirled in all directions. Feeling a good deal responsible for the woman’s condition, she felt a pressing need to make things up to her. She wondered what Pike would say if she offered Miss Doyle a room in her house until it was safe for her to return to her own. He would be horrified at first, but she felt sure Margaret Doyle would win him over. There was something about the woman that Dody felt drawn to, a strength of character perhaps, and she was sure that Pike would feel it too. While jumping from a moving carriage on a snowy night was not the wisest move, it showed that the woman had pluck, that she would not let herself be walked over by a man. What a pity her suffragette sister Florence was absent from home. Dody could see Florence and Margaret Doyle getting on famously.

  Nurse Little pushed her head through the curtains, interrupting Dody’s focus. ‘Meeting’s about to start, Doctor,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you, Nurse.’ To her patient Dody said, ‘I won’t be long, I hope. Rest if you can, or change into those clothes. I think I know a safe place where you can temporarily stay.’

  ‘You are a saint, Doctor. Thank you so much.’

  ‘Please stop calling me that,’ Dody said, with an embarrassed smile. ‘I just want to make things up to you. I owe you that much at least.’

  ‘No,’ the flame-haired woman said in a barely audible whisper. ‘No, I assure you, Doctor, it is I who owe you.’

  Chapter Three

  Chief Inspector Pike held his breath and peered around the corner of a rough brick wall. A shot cracked and whisked the bowler from his head. He flattened himself against the wall, batting out his arm to Sergeant Singh to hold him back. A ripple of excitement passed from Singh to the man behind him, and so on down the line of policemen. All were armed, some with rifles, others with pistols.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Singh asked.

  Pike wiped brick dust from his face. That was his second ruined bowler in as many years, damn it. ‘Yes, thank you, Sergeant Singh,’ he said, a light fluttering of snow making his neck and the tips of his ears tingle. He adjusted his scarf, pulling it up to just below his mouth. He’d miss that bowler.

  ‘What now, sir?’ a man further down the line asked.

  ‘We wait for them to make the next move,’ Pike said.

  ‘Are they all still there, sir, or is it just the one shooter?’ the same man piped up again.

  ‘Not sure. No reports of anyone having escaped through the back.’ Pike had assigned the same number of men to the back of the tenement as he had the front.

  ‘Does this remind you of anything, Chief Inspector?’ his turbaned sergeant asked.

  Pike took his eyes off the Brushfield Street tenement, its sooty lines softened by the gently falling snow. ‘Yes it does, Singh,’ he replied. ‘Sydney Street, 1911. Anarchist police killers holed up in a tenement building after robbing a jeweller’s shop.’

  ‘Are these anarchists, sir?’ a man asked.

  ‘German spies?’ offered another. ‘Irish?’

  One of the men leaned away from the wall. ‘Suffragettes?’ he deadpanned, causing the men to guffaw.

  A shot rang out. The man who’d made the remark cursed.

  ‘You all right, mate?’

  ‘Bloody hell. Nicked me in the bloody arm.’

  ‘Take him to the hospital,’ Singh ordered. ‘And let that be a lesson, men. Don’t lose your focus, and stay as flat against the wall as you can.’

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant,’ the wounded officer muttered.

  ‘Thank you, Singh,’ Pike said, pleased to see that since his sergeant’s long overdue promotion he was at last commanding some respect from the men. It had been a weary climb for Singh, the turbaned foreigner with the bushy black beard, impeccable English and faultless manners. His acceptance by the men had been as difficult as Pike’s had been.

  A small orange flicker from one of the tenement’s windows caught Pike’s eye. ‘Good God, look at that,’ he exclaimed, dread causing his gut to clench. ‘They’re setting fire to the tenement.’

  This was Sydney Street all over again. But while anarchists, the Irish, and the suffragettes fought for causes they believed in, the men in the tenement were willing to fight and die for no greater cause than the feathering of their own nests. He had never before come across a more ruthless or well-organised band of jewel thieves.

  Pike looked to the furthest man down the line. ‘Tell the fire brigade to stand by, but for God’s sake, keep them out of the firing line. Then get one of the men to send this message to Superintendent Shepherd — there should be a telephone in the pub on the corner of the street.’

  Pike handed Singh his pistol. Holding his leather gloves between his teeth he removed his notebook and wrote to Shepherd.

  Situation escalated. One man wounded. Tenement burning. Request troops as marksmen and for crowd control.

  Pike thanked God that Churchill was no longer Home Secretary. With news like this, he’d have been down in a flash and getting in
everyone’s way, just as he had at Sydney Street.

  He handed the note to the police messenger then turned his attention back to the tenement. Until now, the thieves had been allowing residents to leave the building, but no one knew how many had been in it in the first place, so it was unclear if all had been evacuated. With the advent of the fire it was paramount that no innocents were left inside. During his earlier brief dialogue with the thieves there had been no mention of hostages, but who knew what was on the minds of these desperate men? They’d already murdered one shop girl and there was nothing to stop them from taking a few more lives. Any remaining people must be got out before the building went up in flames.

  The battered front door opened a peep and a small, tousled head peered around the gap. At the sound of gunfire it quickly withdrew.

  ‘God in heaven, there are still children in there, Singh.’

  ‘Probably on their own, sir, while their parents are at work, so terrified they did not know what to do when the evacuation call came.’

  Pike picked up the megaphone he’d been using for the earlier negotiations. From his heavy coat pocket he produced a white handkerchief.

  He stepped away from the wall and waved the handkerchief. A bullet sparked off the icy cobbles about six feet from where he stood. He remained frozen to the spot. A warning shot — at least he hoped that’s what it was.

  He lifted the megaphone to his mouth. ‘You in there, there are still children inside. Please allow the children to leave the building.’

  The thieves didn’t answer, but the building did. The window where Pike had first noticed the fire exploded. He dropped to the ground. Glass shards pelted his back. Flames flickered and licked from the broken top floor window, but he saw no desperate, gun-waving silhouettes.

  Some of the policemen were aiming shots at the flaming window. Pike would use that as a diversion and risk it.

  He picked himself up from the cobbles and charged to the front door and through it to the sound of more gunfire. Inside the building, he heard the low crackle of flames from above. A canopy of smoke hung like a shroud at the top of the stairs.