Antidote to Murder Page 28

  “Look, the poor woman’s too upset for us to continue,” Pike said under his breath to Fisher. “Let’s leave them alone and maybe she’ll talk him out of this stubborn mind-set.” Louder, he said, “Mrs. Everard, if you or your husband have anything else to divulge, please contact me.” He handed her his card. To Everard he said, “A bailiff from the courts will be visiting you shortly to notify you of your appearance before the magistrate to face charges of libel and perverting the course of justice. I suspect a murder charge might also be pending. Good day to you both; we will see ourselves out.”

  On the front porch Fisher said to Pike, “Well, that was most unpleasant.”

  “Unpleasant indeed, but worth it; he admitted to the letters.”

  “But why did he write them?” Fisher asked.

  “Because someone pressured him into it, someone who might be using Mrs. Everard’s unfortunate situation to his advantage.” There were no boundaries to what a man would do for the woman he loved—Fisher would know that.

  “Is it worth keeping the men in position?” Fisher nodded to a man up the street, propped against a lamppost with an open newspaper.

  “Absolutely. They must follow him when he leaves the house.”

  “Do you expect him to leave, sir?”

  “I have no doubt about it. He is facing the prospect of prison and he will need to make provisions for his wife. His silence must be worth something to someone.”

  * * *

  A short nap had left Dody feeling refreshed and her stomach a little more settled, too. These continuing bouts of English cholera were debilitating, and puzzling—she should surely be immune to it by now. Some dry toast might help. She washed her face in her bathroom and redid her hair. She was losing weight, she noticed, as she tightened her belt another notch. Taking the new bottle of effervescent powder Borislav had made up for her from the medicine cupboard, she added three teaspoons to a glass of water and drank it down. It was a triple dose, but today she needed something stronger than the meat juice she had been relying on to keep herself going.

  Annie met her on the stairs. “Chief Inspector Pike is in the morning room, Miss Dody. Are you up to receiving visitors?”

  “Yes, thank you, Annie, I’m feeling much better. Please bring us some tea.”

  In the morning room, Pike rose from his chair. He put his hand out to take hers and held on to it. “You still don’t look well. You need to see a doctor.”

  “I am a doctor,” Dody scoffed with good humour.

  “And I am a policeman. Look at the mischief my daughter got up to last year under my very nose.”

  “All right, I see your point. Our professions sometimes blind us to things that others can easily see. There’s another doctor at the Clinic, Nancy Wainright. I will see her tomorrow—does that satisfy you?”

  “Yes,” Pike said, unable to keep from touching her arm. “I would hate for you to get worse. I don’t think I could bear it.”

  “I won’t get worse, but thank you, Matthew, I know you care and I am glad of it.”

  He smiled faintly then dropped her hand when Annie entered with the tea tray.

  Over tea, Pike told Dody how Henry Everard had admitted writing the letters, and about his dire domestic circumstances.

  “No wonder he was so driven,” Dody remarked. “His poor wife. I had no idea. I put so much of my energy into disliking him, I didn’t give much thought to his personal circumstances. I should have known better.”

  “You are an astonishing woman, Dody,” Pike said, shaking his head. “In your situation I would find it hard to be so understanding.”

  “It is over, that is enough. And I would prefer to think that no man is entirely bad—or entirely good.”

  “But it is as if the devil has him round the throat,” Pike continued, “and he won’t say a word to make things easier for himself. If I’m not careful, he’s likely to throw in the towel and confess to everything whether it be true or not.”

  Annie entered the room once more, this time with a note on a silver salver, which she presented to Pike.

  “I told my staff they could find me here—though why they did not telephone, I don’t know. I gave them your number.” Pike paused to read the note. “Good God,” he said, jumping to his feet. “Annie, who delivered this?”

  “A messenger boy on a bicycle, sir.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “Long gone, I ’spect.”

  “Go into the street and get me a cab immediately.”

  “No, Annie, tell Fletcher to bring the car around,” Dody said, anxious at the alarm on Pike’s face.

  “Fletcher’s out, miss; taken Miss Florence shopping,” Annie said.

  Pike handed Dody the note and rushed from the room. Dody followed him into the street. He turned as if to tell her to stay, then stopped himself with an exasperated sigh, knowing full well that he could not say or do anything that would stop her. While they waited, Dody read the note. If they wanted to catch their abortionist, the anonymous correspondent wrote, they would find him operating at this very moment in rooms above the fishmonger’s in Whitechapel Road. They must hurry before it was too late.

  “Fishmonger’s,” Dody said aloud as they hurried to the main road, where the chances of flagging down a cab would be greater. “I found a fish scale in Elizabeth Strickland’s clothing. We thought it must have come from a fish in the river.”

  “The river is too filthy for fish. I don’t know when one was last caught in the Temple Quay stretch of the Thames,” Pike said.

  Dody pressed her palm to her forehead, “Of course, how stupid I—” Her stomach contracted painfully and she gasped, doubling over.

  Pike took her arm. “Dody, what is it? Are you all right?”

  She straightened herself and smiled to put his mind at rest. “I am quite all right. I’m just annoyed with myself.”

  He looked at her doubtfully, but said only, “Even if you had known that, I doubt it would have led us to this particular fishmonger’s.”

  Fortunately a motor taxi was the first vehicle to stop. Pike flashed his warrant card at the driver and told him to make haste.

  “How long does such a procedure take?” Pike asked as they settled onto the vehicle’s dimpled backseat. Dody linked her arm through his and held on to him tightly. Her stomach was feeling most peculiar and the movement of the taxi threatened to unsettle it further. “Twenty minutes to an hour, depending on how developed the foetus is. God, I hope we’re not too late.”

  “But he does not deliberately kill them, does he, Dody?”

  “He would not be much of an abortionist if he did. I’m presuming Esther’s and Elizabeth’s deaths were accidental—but who can tell?”

  “Then I’m staking my hopes that she is alive and that he is still on the premises, cleaning up.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were hurtling past the blur of colours in the front window of Mr. Borislav’s chemist shop and lurching to a halt outside the fishmonger’s. The shop door was locked and hung with a CLOSED sign, and the marble slab in the front window was bare of fish.

  “This shouldn’t be closed now,” Dody said, cupping her eyes against the glare and peering into the darkened interior. “Or is it because a procedure is being performed?” She caught a flicker of movement behind her and turned to see a figure scampering towards the back of the shop. “John Kent, is that you?” she called.

  Pike looked perplexed. Dody did not have time to explain how she knew the boy.

  John whirled around. “’E’s been too long up there, too long!” he shrieked, a red spot emblazoned on each pale cheek. “I gotta get in.”

  “What’s going on here, Jack?” Pike asked.

  “The doc went upstairs to ’elp, wouldn’t let me come. But ’e’s been too long and somefing bad’s ’appened—I know it.”

  “Get in the
taxi and wait for us there,” Pike ordered.

  “But I got to ’elp!”

  The boy was almost hysterical. Pike gave him a sharp slap to the face and told the taxi driver to hold him. Within seconds John was gripped by a pair of thickset arms and shoved onto the backseat of the cab. “Lock him in if you have to,” Pike said, “and wait here.”

  Dody followed him to the back of the building, where the stink of rotting fish met them at the open back door.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Pike flung open a dented wooden door on the third floor of the upstairs landing. “Good God!” he exclaimed, feeling the colour drain from his face.

  Van Noort looked up from a welter of gore. Blood seeped into the mattress, the source a pale female figure, partly clothed, stretched out and still across the bed.

  “She was like this when I got here, I swear it; I was trying to revive her, trying to stem the bleeding,” Van Noort stuttered. “She had a faint pulse when I arrived, but now . . .” Van Noort stopped when he realised who he was talking to. “Captain? What are you doing here? I don’t understand.”

  “Police. Move away from that bed.”

  Dody kneeled down beside the filthy bed and felt for the girl’s pulse then pushed aside the girl’s clothing to examine the body.

  “The girl might be all right,” she said. “The uterus has been packed, much of the blood flow is stemmed,” she said.

  “Archibald Van Noort,” Pike said, “I am arresting you for suspected criminal abortion.”

  Van Noort’s voice rose. “Jack brought me a note—that I would find an injured girl here, and if I moved quickly enough, I could save her life.” Van Noort gulped a breath.

  Dody rearranged the girl’s clothing to cover her body. “We need an ambulance. Now.”

  Pike caught the tremor in her voice. About to dash down the stairs to have the taxi driver fetch an ambulance, he turned to see Dody sway and turn the colour of the girl on the bed.

  “Dody!” Pike caught her just before she collapsed to the ground.

  “Sorry, Matthew,” she said weakly. “Can’t get up. My stomach—”

  Pike was no newcomer to the paralysing grip of fear, but nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. The sight of Dody collapsed upon the floor, retching, her hands and clothing bloodied by her examination of the girl, was more than he could bear. What was wrong with her? Surely she had seen worse than this in the autopsy room?

  Van Noort’s eyes vacillated from the stairs to Dody, from possible freedom to probable imprisonment.

  “Damn it, man,” Pike cried. “Prove to me that you did not hurt that woman on the bed—stay here and help me with this one!” It was a calculated risk, but he was almost sure that Van Noort was not responsible for this abortion. The notes they had both received, the timing—someone wanted him blamed for the girl’s condition.

  Dody was lying on her side with her knees drawn up to her abdomen, the remnants of her afternoon tea in a pool by her head.

  Van Noort hesitated for only a moment. “First we have to move her away from this mess.”

  Between them they dragged Dody to a cleaner patch of floor. Van Noort took a pillow from the bed and placed it gently under her head. He urged her to straighten her legs and asked her what she had eaten.

  “The dog,” she muttered, “the dog . . .”

  “What is she talking about?” Van Noort asked while he gently palpated Dody’s abdomen. “Surely she has not been eating dog?”

  Pike tossed his bowler onto the floor and clawed his fingers through his hair. Then he remembered. “She mentioned a dead dog at the mortuary.” Why hadn’t he paid more attention? How was that tied in with this?

  “We have to work out what she has eaten.” Van Noort examined Dody’s lower eyelids and peered into her mouth. “The mucosa has no colour at all. That makes me think she has been poisoned.”

  “Then we must get her to a hospital,” Pike said.

  “There may not be time. I want to make her expel as much poison as I can before any more is absorbed into her system.” Van Noort turned Dody’s head to the side and rammed his finger down her throat.

  Pike closed his eyes but could not block out the sound of Dody’s agonised retching. Then it was over and Van Noort was gently wiping her face with a handkerchief. Dody was trying to talk. Pike dropped to his knees by her side and bent his ear to her lips.

  “The marzipans sent to me at the mortuary.” She struggled. “Must have been poisoned. The dog ate them from the rubbish. Died.”

  Pike stroked Dody’s clammy forehead. God, he had not seen a woman this ill since Bloemfontein. He closed his eyes against the memory and fought the panic as it rose in his throat.

  “Did you eat any of the sweets?” Van Noort asked her.

  “Just one. Threw the rest away.”

  “But you were ill?”

  Dody groaned.

  “I suspect she has been taking the poison in other forms, too,” Van Noort said. “This is an acute attack. Take heart, Captain. In some ways acute is easier to treat than chronic.”

  “I took some medicine before we left home . . . an extra dose . . . felt so dreadful . . .” Her voice faded to a whisper. Pike could barely hear her. She doubled up again and cried out in pain.

  “It’s all right, my love, I am here.” Pike stroked the hair from her face. “Please tell me it is not strychnine—dear God, tell me that it is not,” he demanded of Van Noort in a harsh whisper.

  “She’d be dead by now if it were strychnine. Strychnine is too obvious; that would be the choice of a desperate man. Arsenic poisoning is more subtle and easily mistaken for common infections of the gastrointestinal tract.”

  In his head Pike told God he would do anything, anything in his power, to save this woman. What a priggish fool he had been not to take her love when it was offered. “Tell me what to do,” he said.

  “If it is arsenic, there is an antidote. Pull yourself together, man—there is hope.” He reached into the pocket of his frock coat then wrote something down on a piece of notepaper he found there. The hand that held the note began to shake.

  “Watch . . . watch out for the chemist . . .” Van Noort broke off and his eyes glazed.

  Good God, Pike thought, he can’t be having a fit now. He grabbed the doctor by the shoulders and gave him a hard shake. “The chemist, what about the chemist?”

  Van Noort passed a hand across his brow and became lucid again. “The chemist will know what all this means. Make sure the quantities are exactly as written—too much is as bad as too little. Now hurry, we have no time to spare. I’ll see if I can get her to expel more of the poison.”

  “How can I trust you not to take off?”

  Van Noort shrugged. “You can’t. Go.”

  Pike had no choice. His crippled knee was forgotten; he could not remember when he had last run with such speed. He was at the pharmacy in moments, slamming his fist upon the counter bell.

  The white-coated chemist appeared from the back room. “All right, all right, I’m coming, where’s the fire?”

  “Police.” Pike’s breath left him in rasping gasps. “Urgent. I need you to make this up now.” He slid Van Noort’s note across the counter.

  “Arsenic antidote, eh? What symptoms is she showing?” the chemist asked, noticeably paler than he had been.

  Pike grabbed at his hair, tried to clear his muddled thoughts. “Um, stomach pain, vomiting . . .” Then his mind fired to life. He had not mentioned the sex of the victim—how did this man know it was a she? He said no more and forced his head to clear itself of panic. What had Van Noort been trying to tell him about the chemist?

  Pike followed the chemist into the dispensing room, on his guard now. “Show me the ingredients before you mix them up,” he said.

  The man waved him away, flustered. He took hold of
a ceramic jug and poured the contents into a bottle. “Water,” he said.

  “I can see that. Get on with it.”

  The chemist collected an armful of bottles but, shaky with haste, dropped several of them as he lowered them to the counter. With cold realisation, Pike knew why.

  He grabbed the chemist by the lapels. “God help me, it’s you!”

  The man’s arm shot up with the bottle he was holding and Pike felt a shattering blow to the back of his head; he dropped to the floor amidst a spray of glass. Then he heard a grunt of pain, not his own, and felt a sudden, suffocating weight as the breath was knocked out of him. It took a moment for Pike to realise his assailant had been undone. He edged himself out from beneath the chemist’s body, spat blood, and squinted up at his rescuer.

  Jack stared down at Pike, grinning from ear to ear. “Doc said you might need an ’and,” he said, and dropped a pestle the size of a police truncheon to the floor. He helped Pike to his feet. Together they ripped the braces from the chemist’s trousers and trussed him like a sheep, and then began a desperate search amongst the debris for Van Noort’s list.

  It was not to be found. Pike desperately tried to remember the listed ingredients. “Magnesium, ferrous . . . ferrous what?” He threw up his arms. “For God’s sake, help me, Jack.”

  “This it?” Jack pointed to one of the bottles the chemist had previously set out on the bench.

  “Good lad. We’ll take them all for good measure. The doctor will have to concoct the antidote for himself.” As Jack placed the bottles in a metal pail he found under the sink, Pike inspected the label of the bottle the chemist had hit him with. The glue on its back was still attached to shards of broken glass, but the label was legible. He searched the shelves and found another bottle of magnesia. Then he picked up the jug of water.

  The chemist began to moan—he was waking up.

  Pike thrust the jug to Jack for him to carry. At the dispensary door they almost collided with another man in a white coat.

  “Help me, Joseph!” the chemist called out from his position on the floor. “We are being robbed!”