Antidote To Murder (15 page)

* * *

T
he classic white front of the Queen’s Hotel stood out from the dark leviathan shapes of the buildings around it. Pike hesitated on the bottom step. Florence deserved to know what was going on, and in any case, there was nothing to lose now—he was certain the covert operation was ruined. His explanation to Margaretha in the hansom on their way to the Ritz had been weak, and in the flickering light of the cab’s lamp he’d read the suspicion in her eyes. She was sure to tell Gabriel Klassen about the scene outside the theatre, and her accomplice, too, if she had one. Perhaps that was not a bad thing; it might spur them to act. The admiral had been well briefed; he might be a buffoon, but he was still a patriot and more than happy with using his briefcase as bait, provided talk of his escapades did not reach his wife.

As Pike stood on the steps, he felt a great, cleansing wave of relief wash over him. He was free now to help Dody in any way he could if she would let him. He need not creep to her house under cover of darkness, worried someone might recognise the quiet police officer as Mata Hari’s conductor; he could visit her tomorrow, in respectable daylight.

Of course, there was still one other hurdle to overcome, and that was to convince Florence of his integrity. Despite their differences, the sisters were close. If he could win over Florence, he might have a chance at winning Dody over, too.

He mounted the steps with a new resolve, handed the doorman a penny, and entered the hotel’s plush interior. The Oyster Room stayed open late and was popular with theatregoers, offering light oyster suppers, clam chowder, and assorted specialities from the grill. The interior was dimly lit and smoky, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. He saw her, finally, at the far end of the room, wearing a dress of mauve brocade. She was sitting alone at a table next to a window facing the busy, flickering square. He handed the maître d’ his stained hat and made his way over to her past a table of boisterous young Guards officers. Florence refused to acknowledge his presence. Even when the maître d’ pulled out a chair for him, she would not turn her head from the view.

Pike cleared his throat. “May I order you something? I can recommend the oysters.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Pike beckoned to a waiter. “Two glasses of Krug, please, and a dozen oysters natural.”

“I told you I wasn’t hungry,” Florence said.

“I am.”

Pike did not have to wait long. The plate was soon in front of him. Florence looked from the oysters to him. “Rather expensive, I would imagine, for a policeman’s purse.”

“As you’ve probably gathered, I’ve been employed elsewhere recently.”

“Selling yourself, you mean?” she responded coolly. The oysters seemed to wriggle about on their beds of ice.

“I assure you, it’s nothing like that.”

“Then you’d better explain.”

Pike leaned across the table. “Firstly, I need to know how your sister is.”

“Good of you to ask.”

“Florence, please. I know about the inquest and have been worried sick.”

“You don’t seem unwell. If anything, I would say you are quite in the pink.”

Pike put his hand to the back of his head and probed the lump, testing her mood with a slight smile. “Actually, I’ve got a thumping headache.”

“Good, you deserve it.” She failed to smile back. “I don’t like the beard; it makes you look sinister. I think it illustrates your true nature. You probably never had any intention of helping my sister—how could you, when you’ve been so busy consorting with harlots?”

“Florence, I’ve been on special assignment, undercover, and that’s all I can tell you. You can believe it or not, the choice is yours.” He pushed his chair from the table to leave. His head hurt, he was tired, and he had lost his appetite. He did not have the time for this. Besides, if he had to explain his behaviour to anyone, he would rather it was to Dody.

The beaded trim of Florence’s dress danced in the lights of the candelabra and reflected in her eyes. “Spies?” she enquired in a stage whisper that had Pike looking around the restaurant in a panic. “If you don’t want the whole restaurant to hear me, you’d better sit back down, hadn’t you?”

Pike reluctantly sat. The waiter poured the champagne, and Pike took several swallows before the fizz settled.

Florence said, “I have read all about the German threat and I am full bottle on it.” Pike could almost see the thoughts chasing one another through her brain. “I take it you mean German spies? They say there are thousands of them in the country at any given time, disguised as butchers and bakers and businessmen even.”

“Yes, I’ve read that in the shilling shockers, too.”

“Must you be so obtuse? You know very well that what I am saying is not some kind of fiction.”

It was at times like this that the age difference between Dody and her sister became glaringly obvious. This was a game to Florence, much like the protests and stone-throwing she got up to with the suffragettes. Had she no idea of the real danger the German threat posed? “No, not fiction. German spies on our soil could indeed be the precursor of an invasion. The Kaiser’s jealousy of Britain is getting out of control—he’s building up his armaments, setting his neighbours’ teeth on edge, and demanding Germany’s ‘place in the sun,’” he said, endeavouring to get the seriousness of the situation across.

She clasped her hands and peered earnestly into his eyes. “It’s Mata Hari, isn’t it? She is Dutch and surely has German sympathies. It is no surprise to me that she’s one of them. They say she is dangerous, wanton, and promiscuous—she certainly seems to fit the bill . . .”

Alarmed at her enthusiasm, Pike furtively looked around the room and raised his hands for her to stop. “Slow down and please keep quiet. I can neither confirm nor deny what you’ve said. And don’t tell anyone about this conversation or your suspicions, despite the fact that the operation is almost certainly at an end now.”

Florence looked contrite. Her eyes dropped to the rising bubbles in her champagne glass. “Because of me? I am sorry, Pike.”

“Don’t be. Part of me is relieved.”

“You will visit Dody tomorrow morning and explain?”

“I’ll explain what I can. Yes.”

“And tell her why you reneged on your knee operation? I’m afraid she’s taken it very personally.”

Pike had no answer to that. He might be able to explain his extracurricular activities to Dody, but to explain the other issue was a matter easier said than done.

Chapter Seventeen

FRIDAY 25 AUGUST

H
e lay on a stretcher in the operating tent after a three-day journey across the veldt in an oxcart. The hospital tent he was carried into was so small they could barely fit the operating table between its two poles. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth; his body cried out for water. He stared longingly at the row of pannikins on the dressings stand, tried to reach out for one, and found he could barely lift his hand. Flies pattered across his face, and he did not have the strength to bat them away.

An orderly leaned over him, peeled the stinking dressing from his right knee, and called the doctor over.

“That left leg will have to come off,” the doctor said.

No, not the left, the right leg, Pike tried to say, but the words would not leave his mouth.

“There’s no anaesthetic,” the orderly said.

“Cowards don’t deserve anaesthetics.”

The remains of his ragged trousers were cut from his left leg. Above him the surgeon hefted a great axe. Then he realised this wasn’t the surgeon he’d seen earlier. This one had the face of Dody McCleland. She leaned over and kissed him long and deep, one moment looking like her sister, the next looking like herself. “It has to be done, Pike,” she said, resuming her position with the axe.

“No, no!” Pike cried mutely. He wriggled and strained and, just as the orderly moved to hold him down, fell with a crash from the operating table.

* * *

H
e awoke on the floor of his bedroom in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets. “Just a dream, just a dream,” he murmured to himself. It hadn’t been like that at all. But despite his reassurances, the dream had opened a curtain in his mind on events he had no desire to remember.

First there was the fighting that transformed the dusty veldt into a butcher’s shop, painting it red with the spilled blood of both sides. White stars of shrapnel smoke dotted the landscape; big guns boomed. Shredded eucalyptus leaves released their medicinal odour while imbecilic British commanders sent hundreds to their deaths. It was in one such skirmish where the British troops had been led into an ambush—boxed in on each side of a high ravine—that Pike had been hit. His batman had led his horse from the lines and taken him to a field dressing station. Indian stretcher-bearers had next loaded him onto a bullock cart and transported him to the field hospital. His companion in the cart was a sergeant with similar injuries to his. The stench from their legs grew with each hour they spent on the rutted dirt track. By the time they reached their destination, Pike could not say which of them reeked the most.

They were both feverish and in a dreadful state when they arrived at the village of tents that served as the field hospital. The sergeant was examined by the doctor, who, after waving the flies away, declared that he had no time for intricate surgery—the leg would have to come off.

Pike saw it all from where he lay on the stretcher waiting his turn.

He saw orderlies hold the sergeant down. He saw the young doctor under the watch of an older man—Van Noort—reach for his surgical saw and press it against the sergeant’s bone. The sergeant screamed; the doctor said, “God damn it—the bloody thing won’t cut!”

For a moment the young doctor had looked around the tent in a state of panic. Then his eyes fell on a big ripsaw which the women had been using to make splints. After washing the saw in a bucket of water, he cut through the bone as if it were butter. Fortunately by then the sergeant had lost consciousness.

The older doctor clapped the younger one on the back. “Well done, George. I’ll leave the other to you then,” he said and he exited through the tent flaps.

“Next!” the younger doctor ordered as the sergeant was carried away. It was then that Pike had drawn his pistol.

The medical staff had more than enough casualties to attend to and no time to argue with a belligerent lieutenant, even if he was the holder of the DCM, and took him to another tent to die.

But he hadn’t died. Having found him unfit for frontline duty, the military promoted him and sent him to help supervise the running of the internment camp at Bloemfontein, where Boer women and children were imprisoned to prevent them from providing succour and supplies to the guerrilla forces. It was then that his nightmares had really started: the waking nightmare of starving children, overcrowding, and pestilence and disease that left people dying like rats. The British authorities could barely see to the needs of their own forces, let alone those of enemy civilians.

Pike’s protests over conditions in the camp fell on deaf ears, and little fuss was made over his resignation. A crippled officer wasn’t good for the reputation of the regiment anyway, despite his chest full of medals. Joining the police had seemed a natural progression from the military.
Strange,
he thought,
after last year, I am now not only an embarrassment to the army, but to the police force, too.

He shook his head and hefted himself from the floor. He needed a bath, but the sounds of running water and singing from the bathroom at the end of the landing put paid to that notion. Moving over to the marble washstand, he poured cold water into the bowl from the jug, stripped off his nightshirt, and sluiced himself down. He inspected his face in the shaving mirror. Florence had said the beard made him look sinister. Dody would probably think the same, and he couldn’t afford that. After trimming his beard with scissors, he mixed up the shaving soap and applied a thick lather to his face, stropped his razor, and carefully removed the offending growth.

He dressed, adjusted his cravat in the wardrobe mirror, and slung his jacket over his shoulder. As he made his way downstairs, the savoury aroma of kedgeree grew stronger. In the dining room he piled up his plate, took a seat at the large polished table, and was about to take his first mouthful when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“There’s a telephone call for you, Mr. Pike.” Mrs. Keating looked annoyed. She hated the newly installed telephone with a passion—how it always rang at mealtimes and the space its closet took up in her fine front hall.

Pike excused himself from the other lodgers and retired to the telephone. “Pike,” said the crackling voice on the other end of the line. “It’s Callan. We have an emergency. Get to the Ritz immediately. The operation’s off.”

Chapter Eighteen

D
ody had slept badly. Her digestive condition continued to flare, necessitating several trips to the WC, and she’d been up since dawn with the first gatherings of the mob in the street outside her house.

It was mortifying that her parents had had to see this. They had departed early to attend to some urgent farm business, leaving for the station by the back door.

As they kissed her good-bye, they had promised to return as soon as possible to support her for the trial.

Dody tried to distract herself from the mob’s chanting by working on her paper, but found it impossible to concentrate. The paper was probably a complete waste of time now. She had been barred from the mortuary until the end of the trial and had no idea when she’d get the chance to hand it in—if at all. If convicted, she would surely never work as a doctor again.

Sensing the scrutiny of a pair of beady pink eyes, she looked up to see a whiskered nose twitching at her through the bars of a cage. Edward Rat had been confined to sturdier lodgings since he had been identified as the ringleader of the last escape. Now he resided on her desk, and his increased contact with her meant he was tamer than ever. Dody imagined herself in his place, looking out from the wrong side of the bars.

To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock . . .

A tremble surfaced from somewhere deep within her body. She shuddered and opened the cage door. Edward Rat would be allowed a short exploration of her desk.

Exercise period in C block.

She returned to the journal she was scanning for articles on TB research but instead came across a paper on surgical knee repair. Here at last was something that held her attention. It was impossible not to think of Pike as she studied the article with her head propped on her hand. The writer recommended a vertical incision to open the knee joint and then provided a step-by-step guide for the removal of shrapnel. This technique, Dody realised as she looked at the date of the paper, had been documented before the development of Röntgen’s X-ray machine. With the help of the X-ray, which Pike had already had, the operation would be even more straightforward.

Engrossed at last in her reading, she barely heard the quick, energetic footsteps on the landing and a knock on her study door. Not that Florence ever waited for permission to enter.

Dody hastily put the rat back in his cage and slipped it out of sight under her desk. “Good afternoon, Florence.” She never understood those who chose to miss the best part of the day by sleeping through it.

Florence must have detected the starchiness in Dody’s tone and said defensively, “I deserved a lie-in. I had a very late, but very successful night.” She dabbed the back of her hand on her forehead, careful not to disturb the meticulous pompadour that took Annie half an hour to arrange each morning. “Goodness, but it’s stuffy in here,” she added, apparently not noticing the ratty odour about the room. “Another overcast day, with not enough blue for a sailor’s suit—we might as well be living in equatorial Africa.”

“Since when have you been to equatorial Africa?”

“I’ve read enough about it in the
National Geographic
magazine to know that I never want to go there.” Florence moved to open the sash window. “Let us pray it rains again soon.”

“Don’t open it—I can’t bear the chanting.”

Florence peered down into the street at the crowd. “I know what you mean: loathsome reporters.”

“No, I don’t think they’re reporters. They look too rough. Paid troublemakers, I think.”

“Put up to it by reporters, then—do I look all right, by the way?” Florence turned from the window and twirled.

This morning she wore a striped batiste dress in blue and white, to which she would add a hat and matching parasol when she went out. Florence and her group of suffragettes always made a special effort with their dress to belie the dowdy spinster stereotype the antisuffragettes had concocted.

“Enchanting as always,” Dody said.

“Thank you.” Florence looked out of the window again to the jostling, pushing group of hooligans below. “I hope Pike has the common sense to use the mews entrance.”

Even the mob seemed to fall silent.

“Pike? Florence, what are you talking about?”

Florence flopped onto the Queen Anne chair opposite her sister. “I met him last night outside the theatre. You are never going to believe this, but he was conducting the orchestra for that dreadful Mata Hari creature, the woman we were protesting against. I barely recognised him.”

All Dody could do was cover her mouth with her hand and stare.

“At first I was furious, especially when he kissed me—”

“He what?”

“Don’t worry; it was just a pretend kiss. He explained it all to me later, in the Oyster Room. He’s coming to see you”—she glanced at her wristwatch—“any time now, to tell you everything he’s been up to. It’s all very hush-hush. He also wants to help you.”

Dody turned from her sister and faced the wall. The only thing that seemed to have registered with her was that Pike had kissed Florence. He was supposed to be helping his daughter Violet prepare for the start of the school term, filling tuck boxes and buying uniforms. Instead he was consorting with dubious women and kissing her sister. Did she really know this man? How could she when he appeared to lead such a secret life? And he expected her to accept his offer of help—who did he think he was?

“Did he seem well?” she could not help enquiring.

“He has grown an ugly beard, and it doesn’t suit him. It makes him appear villainous.”

“I mean his health, Florence.”

“Oh, that, well, yes. His limp is as bad as ever. He was a fool not to have the operation, and I imagine he regrets it now. There is also some grey at his temples—whether or not it was there before, I don’t know. You would probably be a better judge of that than me.”

“I don’t need Pike’s help. I’m going to help myself,” Dody said. “Last night the lawyer said the best way of having my case dismissed before trial was to find out who really did perform the abortion that killed Esther Craddock.”

“Yes, that is just what we, that is, Daphne and I, were saying.”

“Poppa’s lawyer wants to hire an agent of enquiry.”

Florence looked taken aback. “One of those sleazy fellows? I would have thought an officer of Special Branch would be more appropriate, and a lot more discreet.”

“Well, it looks like I have no choice: your Special Branch officer is not here, is he?” Dody heard the crack in her voice and hated herself for it. “What time did he say he’d be coming?”

“He said midmorning. Perhaps he was put off by the mob?”

“Or perhaps he never intended coming in the first place.” She put her hand out to her sister. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done, Florence—your support and your attempt to bring Pike in to help—but do you know, I really don’t think there is anyone, Pike, lawyers, police, or agents of enquiry, who can help me any better than I can help myself.”

“But how? What do you intend to do?”

“Before her abortion, Esther Craddock had been poisoning herself with professionally made lead tablets. When the tablets failed to work, it stands to reason that she went back to the supplier for something stronger. In all likelihood, the supplier was the one who referred her to the abortionist, or—”

“The supplier might be the abortionist as well. Yes, it makes sense, though that Fisher didn’t seem to think it worth following up,” Florence finished.

“It’s a long shot, but at the moment it’s all I have.” Dody left her chair, picked up her shopping basket, and moved to the door. “Supplier, abortionist, whoever it is, they are obviously worried enough about me to try and have me sent to prison, get me out of the way. I’m sure they stole the Book of Lists, too. Perhaps I have been asking the right questions after all.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to see someone who might be able to give me some more information about the tablets.”

“But what if Pike comes while you’re out?”

“I can’t wait in all day for something that may never happen.”

Florence rose to follow. “Then we’d better leave via the mews, and wear veils over our hats—the sun is hot enough to warrant them—so we are not recognised.”

“We?”

“Yes, Dody. I’m coming, too.”