Antidote to Murder Page 25

  Something cool and rubbery was placed over her nose and mouth, some kind of mask. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him reach for a bottle and slowly drip the contents over the mask. “Breathe deeply and tell me about yourself. What do you like doing best in the whole world?”

  Other than being with Jimmy? Well. “I like family sing-songs, sir.”

  Her voice sounded funny through the mask, like she was speaking from the depth of a cave.

  “Sing me one of your favourite songs.”

  Elizabeth liked the romantic songs best but she worried that the man would laugh at her. It was romance, after all, that got her into this mess in the first place.

  “Go on,” he urged.

  “All right then.” She began to sing in a high, quavering voice:

  Let me call you “Sweetheart,” I’m in love with you.

  Let me hear you whisper that you love me, too.

  The darkness began to crowd in on her. “Doctor,” she said, “will it hurt?” She felt muddled and light-headed. She wasn’t sure if she was thinking, saying, or singing, if he was a doctor, Jimmy, or the devil himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  WEDNESDAY 30 AUGUST

  Dody held the dripping red paisley dress over the mortuary sink to examine it. The dress was labelled SELFRIDGES; the material, while not overly expensive, was too fine for your typical East-Ender. A faded brown stain spread from the middle of the back and travelled to the hem. The garment had not been in the Thames long enough to disguise the stain’s true nature—blood.

  Dr. Spilsbury stooped over the girl’s body. He had been silent for some time now. The only sound in the echoing room was from his autopsy instruments: the brisk scraping of the bone saw, the snip of the rib-cutters, and the drip of watery blood into the drain beneath the slab.

  “Where was the body found, Inspector?” Dody addressed Fisher, who stood near the swinging mortuary door as far away from the slab as possible.

  The body was reasonably fresh and virtually odour-free save for the fetid smell of the river. Nevertheless, Fisher still answered through a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. “She was pulled out of the river last night by a lighterman near Temple Pier,” he said. Temple Pier, as the crow flies, was only about a mile away from the Clinic, Dody realised.

  “Why wasn’t the body taken to the Bishopsgate Mortuary?” she asked.

  “I sensed it would be of interest to you here, Doctor, and arranged for it to be delivered to Paddington.”

  “Thank you, that was very considerate.” He is still trying to make things up to me, she thought, touched.

  Spilsbury looked up from the body. “Had the corpse been weighted down or tied, Inspector?”

  “A rope, sir, attached to her ankle. You’ll find it in the sack of clothes that came with her.”

  Dody removed a coarse rope from the hessian bag and held it up.

  “The body was attached by that rope to a heavy metal wheel found resting on a sand bar,” Fisher went on. “Whoever put it there either did not know about the sand bar or misjudged how close to the surface it appears at low tide. The lighterman saw her hair just below the water and thought at first it was seaweed.”

  Our man’s making silly mistakes, Dody thought. Interesting. Back to the dress. Dody felt something at the bottom of one of the deep pockets, put in her hand, and removed a printed calling card. Dropping the dress back into the sink, she hurried over to Inspector Fisher with it.

  “Look, Inspector, a name.”

  Fisher held the soggy card at arm’s length. The name was easy to read; the card had not been in the river long enough to suffer much damage. “Dr. Archibald Van Noort. Number seventy-seven Harley Street.”

  “She probably intended on seeing this Harley Street specialist to correct damage done,” Spilsbury said, throwing his heavy gloves to the floor with a splat.

  Dody sensed the owner of this dress was not the type to visit a Harley Street specialist, but kept the thought to herself. That a Harley Street man might be responsible for the damage done was a notion Spilsbury would find hard to entertain. Not too different, she thought, from my own earlier difficulty in believing that Everard would stoop as low as he has.

  “Sew her up, Alfred,” Spilsbury said as he moved to join Dody and Fisher at the door.

  “What have you discovered, sir?” Fisher enquired.

  “She was dead before she was tossed into the river,” Spilsbury said. “The lack of water in her lungs tells me that she did not drown; this was no suicide. The cause of death was exsanguination. She bled out from a pierced uterine artery as a direct result of criminal abortion.” He turned to Dody. “This case bears striking similarities to the Esther Craddock case. There are still remnants of placental tissue adherent to the uterus wall, and the girl also shows signs of plumbism.”

  Dody’s heart leaped. “Then it might be the same person who operated on Esther.”

  “It might be.”

  “When did she die, Doctor?” Fisher asked.

  “Anytime between yesterday afternoon and late last night,” Spilsbury said.

  Fisher had told her earlier that Henry Everard had only just been released from jail that morning. He could not have done this. Dody felt light-headed with relief.

  “May I examine the body please, Doctor?” she asked.

  “If you wish, but I think you will find that I have not missed anything.”

  Heaven forbid. “I’m sure you haven’t, sir, but I would like to see it for my own experience.” Dody moved over to the body. Alfred abandoned his suturing and stepped aside to make way for her.

  She pulled back the girl’s lip and saw the telltale blue line on the gums. Then she cast her eyes along the pale, marbled corpse. This was not the body of a street woman or a servant: the hands were unblemished, the body well nourished.

  “Do we know her identity?” Spilsbury asked the inspector.

  “Her description matches that of a Miss Elizabeth Strickland from Lewisham, sir. Her parents reported her missing to their local police station at about six o’clock last night.”

  “How old was Miss Strickland?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You’d better see if the parents can identify the corpse. This may well be her.”

  “I’ll get on to it right away, sir. Good morning, Dr. McCleland.” Fisher put his shoulder to the swinging door.

  “Inspector, wait. There is more we need to discuss. We have ascertained that the girl was suffering from plumbism before her abortion, yes?” Dody queried.

  He turned and nodded.

  “The supplying of the lead then was the first action against the pregnancy. The remnants of lead in her stomach were too dense to suggest it had been ingested in anything but tablet form—a form that we have already ascertained is relatively unusual. When this did not rid her of her child, can we speculate that she opted for the same extreme measures as did Esther Craddock?”

  “I suppose so, but with all due respect, Doctor, speculation is the right word for it. We do not have the evidence to prove it.”

  “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of its absence,” Spilsbury said. “Dr. McCleland is saying that the two may be linked. Surely, as you have nothing else to go on, this connection is worth pursuing?” Dody could have hugged him. “Find the manufacturer of the tablets, Inspector, and you might find the abortionist.”

  “Which is what I decided to do when I was under investigation,” Dody said quickly. “I started making enquiries and discovered the tablets were being distributed in the public houses in or around Whitechapel. Someone must have purchased the tablets for this young lady.” She pointed to the body on the slab. “I can’t imagine her loitering about in a public house on her own. She probably asked her young man to get them for her. If you can find out the name of the father of her child, we might get some
answers.”

  Fisher gave a resigned sigh. “I’ll put some men onto it right away, Doctor.”

  “Will you also be visiting the man whose name is on the calling card?” Spilsbury asked.

  “My orders are to report to Chief Inspector Pike, sir.”

  “This Van Noort is a Harley Street specialist,” Spilsbury said. “I think it prudent that a doctor accompanies the police during the interview, to translate medical terms if necessary. You can do the honours, Dr. McCleland. Contact Chief Inspector Pike and arrange it with him. Give Dr. McCleland the card, Fisher. A gentleman from Harley Street is, of course, above suspicion, but he might still be able to shed light on the matter. I want this murdering abortionist stopped.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dody took the card from Fisher and put it in her apron pocket. The thought of being thrown back into Pike’s company after Monday’s uncomfortable meeting was mortifying, but she was going to have to bear it. Her feelings for Pike were not the issue here. Her purpose was to find the man responsible for the death of this poor girl and the murder of her unborn child, and to stop him from killing again.

  She said good-bye to Inspector Fisher, told Alfred he could continue with his suturing of the body, and returned to the clothes in the sink. She gleaned nothing of interest from the lace chemise other than the garment’s reasonable quality, which suggested Elizabeth Strickland was a member of the respectable lower middle class. Criminal abortion pervaded all classes, as should sensible birth control practices. Anyone could make a mistake, no matter what her level of income or education—as Dody had come perilously close to proving herself.

  Picking up the bloodstained drawers, she felt along the drawstring. Something at the eyelet jabbed into the skin of her thumb. A dot of blood appeared on her thumb and a small opaque protrusion—a sliver of glass perhaps. The last thing she needed was an infection. Taking a magnifying glass and some fine forceps from the shelf above, she extracted the object and examined it.

  It wasn’t glass.

  “Dr. Spilsbury, would you mind having a look at this, please?” Spilsbury joined her at the sink. “I have just pulled it from my thumb and I think it’s a fish scale. It was in the eyelet of her drawers.”

  “How odd,” he said, holding out a specimen jar for her. She tapped the scale on the lip of the jar to dislodge it from the forceps.

  “The girl’s dress would have billowed in the water and a fish could have brushed against her and lost a scale. Or maybe someone was cleaning fish nearby,” Dody said.

  “Send the scale to the lab for confirmation. They might be able to identify the fish.” He gave her one of his rare, chilly smiles. “Every little detail is worth noting. Good work, Dr. McCleland.”

  * * *

  Dody hurried home to bathe and change her clothes. She was in the hall, about to go upstairs, when the sounds of voices in the morning room caught her attention. She opened the door to find Florence engrossed in conversation with Daphne. They immediately stopped their chatter. Daphne climbed to her feet and smoothed her dress.

  “You can relax, Daphne,” Dody said with a smile. “You are not at work now.”

  Daphne sank back into the winged chair but continued to look ill at ease.

  “What are you doing home at this time of the day?” Florence asked.

  “Just home to bathe and change before going out again.”

  “Have you heard . . .” Florence hesitated. “Have you progressed any further with the case? Found the source of the lead tablets?”

  “Spoken to Mr. Borislav?” Daphne blurted out.

  “No, why should I?” Dody asked, perplexed. “A while ago I asked him about the tablets, but we have not spoken on the matter since.”

  Both women looked relieved. Dody did not have time to stop and talk, but made a mental note to ask Florence about it later. She pulled the bell and asked Annie to prepare a bath for her with plenty of lemon juice to help neutralise the odour of the mortuary.

  After her bath, she changed into her pale yellow outfit. Now that she was clean and fresh, she decided not to battle with the sweaty public transport system. She asked Fletcher to take her to the Medical Licensing Board so she could examine Archibald Van Noort’s credentials, and then on to Scotland Yard.

  She had not visited Pike since his move to the Special Branch section of the castle-like New Scotland Yard building. His office was small and poky, not much bigger than a water closet, with barely enough room for the boneshaker bicycle balanced across two filing cabinets. No matter how determined he was, without the operation she could no more see him riding that thing again than she could see herself behind the steering wheel (or was it a rudder?) of a flying machine.

  He stood when a constable showed her in, one hand on his desk for support. She suspected he was still feeling the effect of Dunn’s kick and hoped his knee had not suffered further damage. A few days earlier she would have offered to examine it for him, but sensed that any kind of advice from her now would be unwelcome.

  “Inspector Fisher told me you were handling the case,” Dody said, trying for a nonchalant tone. “With your Mata Hari assignment over, I thought you might be taking some leave.”

  “Yes, I should have. But this case is close to my heart.” The intensity of his gaze made her own heart lurch. “I have been given permission to pursue leads in the deaths of Craddock, Dunn, and now Elizabeth Strickland, with Fisher as my assistant.”

  “Just like old times.” She shot him a tentative smile.

  “Forgive me. I seem to have forgotten my manners. Please sit down.” He pulled out the visitor’s chair for her. Not wishing to waste time with idle talk, she waited for him to settle back behind his desk and then got straight to the point, producing Van Noort’s card from her reticule.

  Pike gave a pronounced start when he read the name aloud. “I know this man.”

  “You do? From where?”

  “He was obsessed with Mata Hari, always hanging about the stage door. He told me once that he was a doctor in the South African war. There was a time when I thought he might have been my spy.”

  “I’ve just come from the Medical Licensing Board. Van Noort was struck off the list over five years ago.”

  “But he has continued to practise?”

  “The card found in the girl’s pocket suggests it. A Whitechapel chemist recently complained to me about a doctor with a foreign name harassing his female customers.” Dody shrugged. “I can’t help but note that Whitechapel is where it all started.”

  “Van Noort introduced himself to me as a doctor,” Pike said.

  Dody paused. “You came to know him quite well?”

  “Well enough to know he is an odd fish—I saw him once having some kind of a fit.”

  “Can you describe the fit?”

  Pike opened his palms. “A dazed look, gnashing teeth, facial contortions, nonsensical mutterings—”

  “Did he fall to the ground?”

  “No, but the fit appeared to weaken him. He was forced to lean against a wall and took some time to recover from it.”

  “Did he remain continent?”

  “I believe so.”

  Dody thought she knew the type of fit Pike was describing, but would not jump to conclusions without a physical examination of the man. “I am anxious to meet him.”

  “As am I to renew our acquaintance,” Pike said, leaving his desk to assist Dody with her chair.

  “You think he might be our abortionist—even have something to do with the drug gang?” she asked.

  “I can’t say just yet.” The walls were close; they brushed against one another at the door. Pike’s face creased into a smile. “But let’s see what we can find out.” How she would grieve if she never saw that smile again.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dody was glad to see how focused Pike was on the job in hand. He was being professi
onal, though something in his manner still held remnants of Monday’s hurtful aloofness in the mortuary yard. Then she had yearned to hold him in her arms and share with him the joy of her exoneration. Now she wanted to take him in her arms and drive his pain away—their pain.

  Well, she would never know unless she tried. Instant rejection would surely hurt less than this lingering, painful distance. She slipped her hand through the crook of his arm as they walked towards the underground station, well prepared for him to cast it off. Instead he reached over with his other hand and gently squeezed her fingers. She felt the warmth of his touch through her glove. When he turned his head and met her eye, she wondered if he knew the smallest part of what she felt for him.

  They settled into their carriage and she looked around her. With a motorcar at her disposal, she had little call to use the underground.

  “How filthy and noisy it all is,” she said to Pike. “I hate to think what it was like when steam trains dominated.” As it was, the rumble of the electrical system, supposedly cleaner and quieter, still hampered conversation. She and Pike said little, but sat close. As she gazed about her, she marvelled at the diversity of the train’s occupants: from barrow boys to well-dressed women on shopping expeditions. Everyone paid the same fare and could sit where they wished. This was London’s first experiment with classless travel, and it seemed to have caught on.

  They came out at Oxford Circus, crossed Cavendish Square to the clatter of rising pigeons, and strolled in silence, arm in arm down Harley Street. The long, straight road was lined with Georgian buildings. Dutch elms stood outside each house, giving the street an air of cool and shady tranquillity. Brass specialists’ plates winked in the dappled sunlight.

  They climbed the steps of number seventy-seven. Screw holes visible below the number on the door showed where a brass plate had once been fixed. Pike paused halfway, closed his eyes, and drew a sudden breath.

  “Your knee is paining you?” Dody asked before she could stop herself.

  Pike flicked her a smile. He leaned on the railing and pointed with his cane to the plaque. “What would the plate have said?”