Antidote To Murder (29 page)
No one knew how to reply. Dody dropped her head. All was silent save for the thump of earth on wood as the gravediggers went about their business.
Pike held Mrs. Van Noort’s arm and escorted her towards the church hall, where they took tea. Jack grabbed a sticky bun in each hand and ran back to the graveyard to play.
“Go quietly now, Jack,” Mrs. Van Noort admonished. “Show some respect. He means well,” she said apologetically to Pike and Dody, “but how can he know what he has never been taught?”
Outside the open church door Jack handed a smaller boy, who had appeared from nowhere, one of the buns. A pal from the street, Dody supposed. She heard Jack shout, “I’ll be the German spy and you have to hunt me down!” The resilience of children.
“How are you getting on with the paperwork, ma’am?” Pike asked Mrs. Van Noort.
“Very well. It looks like there will be no obstacles to me adopting all the younger Kent children, including the toddler still with her mother. The two eldest children wish to remain in Whitechapel. One has obtained a job as a carpenter’s apprentice and things are at last looking up for the family. I can only thank you, Chief Inspector, for all your assistance in the matter.”
“Mrs. Kent was delighted when I told her that the legal process was under way for the adoptions—and the cash payment of course,” Pike said to Dody.
“Then seeing as you’re getting on with Mrs. Kent so well, Chief Inspector, you’d better send her to one of my classes at the Clinic so she can learn how not to have any more children,” Dody said.
“I can see you’re better,” Florence said with a frown.
“Much better, thank you.”
Florence urged Dody away from the group. “Did you finally bring yourself to read that note from Henry Everard?”
Dody smiled. “No need to look so worried—it wasn’t a poison pen letter.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I think you’ve had enough poison, don’t you? I was of two minds as to whether to give it to you or not.”
“I’m glad you did. Strangely enough, it was an apology of sorts. When he finishes his sentence, he plans on moving his family to Australia.”
“Good riddance. Did he admit to his plagiarism?”
“No, he didn’t mention it. I imagine he thought it was of little consequence compared with what followed—and in that he’d be correct, I suppose.”
“Wretched fool of a man,” Florence said, loud enough to attract the attention of Pike, who was still talking to Mrs. Van Noort. “Will you be all right on your own tonight?” Florence asked. “I have a meeting to attend.”
Dody caught Pike’s eye without meaning to, and self-consciously drew her gaze away from his. “Of course, Florence,” she said. “I am not an invalid.”
* * *
D
ody heard the ring of the doorbell, the murmur of voices, and the familiar footsteps in the hall, and she realised then that she had been waiting for Pike since her return from the funeral. Annie showed the man she loved into the morning room.
Dody told Annie she could go to bed and felt suddenly nervous. She poured them both a sherry and downed hers in one swallow. Pike took hold of her hand as she reached again for the decanter, and shook his head.
“You don’t need that,” he said softly, and led her up the stairs to her bedroom.
D
ody directed Annie and Fletcher as they turned the dining room into an operating theatre, her textbook on performing operations in the civilian home open in her hands. Carpets were rolled and removed along with framed pictures and upholstered chairs. Annie and Fletcher brushed the ceiling and walls down with a towel saturated in bichloride and then draped white sheets over the pieces of dining room furniture too heavy to be moved. The mahogany table was left in the centre of the room, sheeted and topped with a thin, rubber-clad mattress Dody had borrowed from the Clinic.
She scrubbed her hands and nails over a porcelain bowl of water sitting on their sheeted sideboard. Much had changed since the first operation she had witnessed as a medical student, before antiseptic notions had been replaced by aseptic techniques. It was now not only a question of getting rid of any germs present; the aim of asepsis was to start off with fewer germs in the first place. Thus the sheets had been boiled, the instruments had been boiled, and Dody wore a sterilised gown over her apron.
Pike had agreed to the operation only on the condition that it not be performed in a hospital and that Dody would see to the procedure. It had taken all her powers of persuasion to convince him how unethical that would be now they were lovers.
Lovers.
The memory of their first and only lovemaking still left her with a honey-warm glow and a deep desire for more. But it was a desire that strengthened her rather than weakened her with pointless worry about the future. How they could carry off further trysts, she had no idea; all that mattered was the present and the love she had found in it. They would sort something out—they had to.
It had taken almost as much effort to persuade Pike to have the operation as it had Barker to perform it. At first the surgeon had refused—for reasons of professional pride, he announced. Whether by that he referred to the insult of Pike’s flight from the hospital or to distance himself from the scandal of Dody’s accusation of criminal abortion, she had no idea. Dody had cajoled and flattered, finally winning him over by saying what an interesting episode this procedure would make for his memoirs, given that home operations would surely soon be a thing of the past.
Nurse Daphne Hamilton helped Barker into his sterile gown, but the surgeon turned down her offer of rubber gloves. “Never used ’em before and don’t intend using ’em now,” he said curtly as he scrubbed his hands with carbolic soap.
Dody arranged the anaesthetic equipment on a card table that had been brought in from the drawing room. Bottles clinked as she removed their glass stoppers and prepared a mixture of ether alcohol, plain ether, and chloroform, then took the anaesthetic mask from its small wooden case. Now all they needed was their patient.
On cue, Florence tapped on the door and entered with Pike. They stood at the door without moving for a moment and stared open-mouthed at the shrouded dining room.
Florence gave Pike a nudge. “There you go, Pike, up you get,” she said with the enthusiasm of a jolly-hockey-sticks games mistress.
Pike looked anything but jolly as he shuffled over to the table, wearing a dressing gown over a striped nightshirt, and nodded to Barker. Florence relieved Pike of the gown, helped him onto the table, and then hurried from the room.
Daphne straightened the pillow under the patient’s head and moved to the carbolic spray machine positioned on a planter near the window. The steam-powered contraption chugged into action and soon the room’s occupants were covered in a fine mist of antiseptic spray.
“Are you ready, Chief Inspector?” Dody asked, mindful of what had happened the last time someone had attempted to operate on Pike’s knee. Fortunately, she could see no sign of a pistol tucked in the folds of his nightshirt.
Pike nodded, his body shivering uncontrollably despite her earlier administration of calming bromide. Dody’s hand lingered on his forehead as she remembered the stories she had heard above the fishmonger’s. Well, why wouldn’t he be anxious after what he had seen in that hospital tent? Van Noort had told him that if he had attended, he would not have amputated, but left his knee in a much better state than it was now. He had strongly advised Pike to have the operation that Barker was about to perform.
Dody smoothed away Pike’s hair and lowered the mask.
If only Van Noort’s own problems had been this easy to treat.
The inspiration behind this work of fiction was my examination of Dr. Bernard Spilsbury’s handwritten autopsy notes at the Wellcome Library, London. The poignancy of each death recorded solely on a single, yellowing palm card struck me deeply, with many attributed to causes rarely seen today, especially death by criminal abortion.
My Bernard Spilsbury was fictionalised, though his personality was gleaned from several biographies. I experienced his chain smoking for myself when I examined his palm cards. After all these years, they still reeked of cigarette smoke.
I have been unable to find evidence of a female autopsy surgeon as early as 1910, but Bernard Spilsbury did have a female assistant, Hilda Bainbridge, by 1920. I hope the reader can forgive this ten-year discrepancy.
Dody McCleland’s background is that of my grandmother, at the time one of only a handful of female graduates of Trinity College, Dublin. Much of the Fabian colour was inspired by her memoirs.
