Antidote To Murder (5 page)

The boy passed between them. Pike felt the quick press of a hand against his jacket pocket.

“Just a minute, Jack; it’s rude to interrupt,” the doctor said.

The boy stepped away, put his hands on his hips, and began tapping his bare foot on the path. What was this all about? Pike wondered. The boy could not possibly be Van Noort’s son. Did the doctor employ him to run errands—was he a courier of secrets?

Van Noort ignored the impudent child, saying to Pike, “I was in the army long enough, South Africa actually, to recognise a man of military bearing. It is not just your title that gives you away.”

Strange that Pike was finding out more about this man now when he had ceased to try—or was it, perhaps, the other way around? “Van Noort,” he pondered. “I thought your name was familiar.”

“Yes, Dutch name, British Army, Boer War. You are bound to remember.”

Pike paused for thought, wondering if perhaps they had even met. He felt a sudden burning sensation in his knee; saw the inside of a hospital tent pitched directly onto the veldt, the grass slick with gore. He closed his eyes briefly. If Van Noort had been a doctor in the war, this memory would be something they shared.

Van Noort frowned. “Captain, are you feeling all right?”

“Yes, fine, thank you.” Pike maintained a grip by focusing on his next course of action. He hurriedly bade the pair good afternoon, returned to the cool entrance of the hall, and patted down his pockets. As he had suspected, his wallet was gone, stolen by the urchin. Luckily his warrant card wasn’t in it. He noted the direction the oddly matched pair were going in the hall’s front mirror and took off at a fast pace, leaving the building through its back entrance and rejoining the street some way ahead.

He waited in a doorway as they approached, then stepped out directly in front of them. His sudden appearance startled the man and terrified the boy, bleaching his face of all colour.

Pike said nothing but pressed down on the boy’s shoulder with one hand, gesturing “give it over” with the other.

The boy swallowed and looked from Pike to Van Noort.

The doctor’s face grew stern. Pike wondered if Jack was in for a clip behind the ear and prepared to intervene. But the doctor’s lingering look of disappointment seemed to have more of an effect on the boy than any amount of cuffing. He turned down his mouth and dropped his head.

“Not again, Jack,” Van Noort said with a sigh.

The boy sniffed, reached into the pocket of his oversized breeches, and handed Pike back his wallet, his gaze remaining fixed on a pile of cigarette butts near the gutter.

“What do you say to the gentleman, Jack?” Van Noort prompted.

“Sorry, sir. It won’t ’appen again.”

As the boy continued to study the dirty pavement, Pike and Van Noort exchanged barely perceptible smiles. Van Noort said, “The boy cannot help how he was brought up. We are trying to change all that, aren’t we, Jack? The eighth commandment—remind me, please.”

“Thou shalt not steal,” Jack mumbled.

Pike wondered if he’d been set up; had the man, anxious to learn more about him, goaded the boy into stealing his wallet? Was the image of kindly guardian to troublesome waif an act? If it was, it was a very convincing one.

“Exactly, thou shall not steal,” Van Noort said to the boy. “Run along now and I’ll meet you at work. On your way call in at your mother’s and tell her where you are going so she won’t worry.” Both men watched Jack disappear into the crowd. “Though I very much doubt she will,” he added quietly.

A packed tram pulled up at the stop. “This is mine.” Pike grasped the bar and swung aboard. “I’ll see if I can arrange a meeting between you and Margaretha.”

“I would be most grateful, sir.” Van Noort paused. “Margaretha,” he said as if savouring the texture of her name on his tongue. “So beautiful—why must she go by that ugly stage name?”

Pike looked down at the tall man with the yellowed eyes. The tram’s bell rang. “Mata Hari?” Pike shrugged as the tram began to glide. “More exotic, I suppose.”

Chapter Five

MONDAY 14 AUGUST

D
ody left home earlier than usual and missed meeting up with Florence at the breakfast table. Although the sky hung pale and low and the temperatures remained sultry, she found that some of her languor had lifted. Tomorrow she was to present her research proposal to Spilsbury. It was not a genuine proposal per se; junior doctors such as herself and her colleague, Dr. Henry Everard, would never be given that kind of opportunity. But their mentor had thought it good practice for them to see what the groundwork of such work entailed; and if their proposals had merit, he’d said, he might hand them to a senior researcher for perusal.

Dody was cautiously optimistic that her paper would be well received. Spilsbury would not be as excited as she was—though with Spilsbury, one never quite knew—but she hoped it might raise her in his estimation and perhaps increase her responsibilities at the mortuary.

Even though the project would probably never happen, she could not help fantasising—seeing herself working in the famous laboratory at St. Mary’s, its modern equipment at her disposal, surrounded by cages of valuable Wistar rats.

But for peace of mind, she needed a second opinion, which was why she had telephoned her old friend and chemistry tutor, Vladimir Borislav, to ask if he would mind checking some of her chemical formulas before she handed the paper in.

Despite the prestigious girls’ boarding school Dody had attended, she had not been taught the required mathematics and science subjects for a medical degree, which meant extra swotting to pass her university entrance exams and some floundering during her first years of medicine. If not for Mr. Borislav’s extra tuition, she might never have passed her pharmacology subjects.

Borislav’s background as the son of Russian immigrants and her family’s connections to Moscow had given them reason enough to continue a distant but amiable acquaintance—and since the Women’s Clinic had opened down the road from his shop, she had been seeing more of the chemist recently than she had for several years.

Borislav must have heard the Benz idling in the street outside and opened the door of his ground-floor flat before she’d had the chance to raise the knocker.

He greeted her in European fashion with a kiss on each cheek.

“You’re looking very well, cool and well. Yellow is certainly your colour,” he said.

Dody wore a pale, buttery-hued cotton blouse with a stiff white collar. Her skirt was of a darker shade and a match for the ribbon she wore around her boater.

She smiled, thanked him for the compliment, turned back to the street, and waved at Fletcher to tell him she would not be long, then stepped through the door Borislav held open for her.

It had been a while since she had been inside her friend’s flat, and she found the place lighter and airier than she remembered, the nicotine-coloured walls now adorned with floral wallpaper and tiles in the entrance hall instead of uneven floorboards. The austere ancestors who had lined the wall were no longer in view, their space taken up by landscapes of fragile watercolours painted by Borislav’s late wife.

A multibranched electric chandelier of modern design added to the new-look hall. The ponderous morning meant it was left on, catching the bright hues of the leadlight front door and daubing the walls and floor with jewels of colour.

Borislav noticed her looking about and smiled. “The new electric system works wonders, yes?”

“It does indeed.”
His chemist shop must at last be going well,
Dody thought, happy for him. She knew all about the years of struggle he had endured since the death of his wife, his neglect of the business, and its near collapse.

“Yes, it’s taken a while, but I have at last lifted myself up by my bootstraps and given the shop and flat a revamp. You have not yet met my nephew, Joseph, have you? He is about your age and unmarried. I think you will like him.” The chemist’s eyes sparkled. Oh Lord, obviously it wasn’t only her mother who thought she’d been too long on the shelf.

When Dody replied that no, she had not met his nephew, Borislav indicated his green velvet smoking jacket and the jaunty red fez with the gold tassel perched on his head. “As you can see, I am in no hurry for work. Joseph’s a reliable lad with a bright head on his shoulders and the shop’s in good hands. But enough chitchat. I believe you have something to show me? And I am also anxious for you to see my new parlour,” he added with a chuckle.

Borislav’s housekeeper, who must have been warned of Dody’s arrival, appeared with a tea tray and led them to the parlour.

Dody gathered her notes together while Borislav poured the tea. After she had accepted a cup and declined the shortcake, she presented her paper to him.

He smiled, removed a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles from his top pocket, and began to flick through the pages.

“The pertinent part is towards the end, Mr. Borislav; I just need you to make sure I have the correct formulas.”

He frowned, turned to the back page, and nodded. “Yes, yes, very good,” he said, but with some reserve she noticed, puzzled.

Dody decided she wanted a biscuit after all. She glanced around the room while he read more of her paper, unable to keep her gaze on his deepening frown. She took in the ornate mantel clock, flanked on each side by Staffordshire figurines, the pile of pharmaceutical journals on an occasional table, and the upholstered chairs of red and white stripes. There was not much else to look at. Suddenly the small, newly decorated room felt stifling.

“So, Dorothy, you want to see if rats fed a certain diet will have a greater or lesser propensity to develop particular types of tumours?” he eventually asked.

“Indeed, but it is only the chemical formulas for the foodstuffs that I’d like you, please, to check. I did not expect you to have the time to read the whole thing.” After another nibble of her biscuit, Dody felt compelled to fill the silence that followed. “I am inspired by the work of Johannes Fibiger and his hypothesis that certain tumours are caused by external influences.”

Borislav said nothing for a moment. He handed Dody back her papers and removed his glasses. “A worthy cause, I’m sure.”

Dody attempted to allay her anxieties with a nervous laugh. “That’s all?”

“As you know, I am no research scientist, or even a doctor, just a humble chemist. I cannot give you any advice on the paper itself, only assure you that your chemical formulas are quite correct.”

A “but” seemed to hang in the air between them. Borislav was holding something back; she was sure of it. The ring of the telephone put an end to further conversation.

When he returned from taking the call, he told her his special cold mixture was out of stock and that Joseph needed him to fetch some from the warehouse and bring it to the shop immediately. Borislav removed his fez and smoking jacket and replaced them with an outdoor coat and bowler from a hat stand in the hall.

“I’m so sorry, Dorothy, but I really must go,” he said. “If there’s anything more you wish to discuss, you know where to find me.”

She barely had time to thank him as he hurried her to the door, pecked her on the cheek, and apologised again for his hasty departure.

Dody sank into the passenger seat of the Benz, her cautious optimism spoiled now by an undercurrent of unease. What was wrong with her paper? She and Borislav had known each other for ten years. He had never held back praise for her work—or criticism for that matter. She knew she could always count on him for an honest opinion. Why, then, was he holding back now?

She asked Fletcher to take her to the mortuary. Something told her this might not be such a good day after all.

* * *

D
ody stood the required three feet away from the autopsy table next to her fellow assistant, Henry Everard. Like hounds on the leash, they strained for a word from the Great Man, either a request for assistance or an interesting note to take. Only when invited could they step over the white line that Dr. Bernard Spilsbury had personally painted on the green-tiled floor.

The assistants’ struggle to view the proceedings was further hampered by the thick fug of smoke that almost engulfed their mentor. Dr. Everard’s role was to ensure that Spilsbury was never without one of his strong-smelling Turkish cigarettes. Dody’s part in the procedure was to act as secretary, translating Spilsbury’s mutterings onto small index cards in terms that could be understood by the legal profession should the case go to court. Lacking in experience and formal forensic qualifications other than a diploma in general autopsy, Dody was rarely permitted to perform medico-legal autopsies in her own right and then only with written permission from Spilsbury. On rarer occasions still, and much to his chagrin, the less experienced Everard was required to assist her.

The angles of Spilsbury’s face were classically handsome. Tall and slim, he was comparatively young for his senior position in the Home Office. His graceful movements over the bodies on the slab sometimes made Dody think of a conductor controlling a beautiful piece of music.

Spilsbury turned his head away from the body and allowed his cigarette end to fall to the floor. Everard crushed the butt into the tiles with the toe of his boot and fumbled in his pocket for a fresh one. Most women would say Everard was handsome, too, his dark good looks enhanced by a luxurious combination of trimmed side-whiskers and wavy, collar-length hair. Dody was not most women.

Everard inhaled. The cigarette paper crackled in the echoing stillness of the autopsy room.
Like resentment,
she thought.

He placed the cigarette between Spilsbury’s lips.

“The background, if you please, Dr. McCleland,” Spilsbury asked.

“This is Billy Kent, aged three, the third youngest of seven children belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Bert Kent of Whitechapel. Billy’s death was regarded as suspicious by the family’s panel doctor,” Dody said. A panel doctor was one supplied by the newly introduced Health Insurance Scheme and who provided medical access to those who could not otherwise afford it. “The doctor called me in to examine the corpse at the family’s tenement. He informed me that last year the couple lost another child to starvation and he was worried this death might be a case of insurance fraud.”

Everard flicked a recalcitrant lock of hair from his forehead and turned his eyes to the mortuary room ceiling. “Why in God’s name do these women continue to breed?”

Dody felt her spine stiffen. “The expense makes preventatives virtually unobtainable, Doctor. When you consider the appetites of their demanding husbands and that of a wife’s obligation to obey, these women have little choice.”

“Pregnancy is a natural state, Dr. McCleland,” Spilsbury said, “one that should not be interfered with.”

“But managed, surely, for the welfare of all.”

The corner of Everard’s mouth twitched. “You condone infanticide and abortion. Is that what you are saying, Doctor?”

Dody’s teeth bit into the stem of her pipe; despite its empty bowl, it helped her to concentrate. Dr. Spilsbury saw the habit as unladylike and she was the only doctor not permitted to smoke in the autopsy room. “I do not mean that, Dr. Everard; you know that I do not,” she said.

Everard’s eyes widened momentarily. In anyone else the expression might have indicated jest, but she’d had enough disagreements with Everard to know full well when he was not joking.

If Spilsbury sensed the antagonism between his assistants, he never showed any sign of it. He shot them both a basilisk-type stare. “The autopsy room is not the venue for debate. Nor is this an acceptable topic of discussion between males and females.”

How can conditions ever improve for the working classes without such discussion?
Dody wondered, looking from one man to the other, barely managing to keep the thought to herself. They might be united in their goal to put a stop to criminal abortion and infanticide, but their reasons for it were quite different.

“Pass me the bucket, please, Everard.” About to put out his hand, Spilsbury seemed to have second thoughts and shook off both his clumsy rubber gloves first. “Curse these wretched things, they mask all feeling,” he muttered. Quick, ambidextrous fingers snipped loose the stomach and poured the contents into the bucket.

“This child looks like it was well on the way to starvation, too,” Everard commented as he and Dody peered at the bucket’s slime green contents.

“There’s something in this.” Dody pointed with the nib of her pen to smears of white amongst the green. “Shall I prepare a slide, Doctor?”

She took Spilsbury’s grunt as a yes and moved to the instrument trolley for a spoon and a glass beaker.

“It’s obvious what it is, isn’t it?” Everard commented. “Flakes of lead paint—probably given to the child in some kind of drink—that’s how it’s usually done. And we’ve already ascertained that this corpse presents with all the signs of plumbism.”

Indeed, the blue line across the top of the child’s gums was identical to that of the girl Dody had recently seen in her clinic, Esther Craddock. “I don’t think it is quite the usual method, Doctor,” she said with the pleasure of proving him wrong. “The police found tablets in the parents’ room, tablets which Mr. and Mrs. Kent claimed they had never seen before.”

Spilsbury looked up. “Tablets? Where are they?”

“On the instrument trolley.”

“Show me.”

Dody took the box, tipped some of the tablets into her palm, and held them under the electric light for him to scrutinise. “They were found in a matchbox hidden under a pile of dirty clothes.”

“Interesting,” Spilsbury said. “They could indeed be lead. Lead oxide. And the smooth surface, other than those two small dents”—he pointed out some tiny marks on the surface of one of the tablets—“indicate that they have been professionally manufactured using a pill press and not hand-rolled as per usual. Send them to the lab, Dr. McCleland, and make sure they do indeed match the contents of the child’s stomach.”

As she stared back down at the pills in her hand, a connection began to form somewhere at the edge of her consciousness. “These tablets are familiar . . .” She racked her brains and spoke her thoughts aloud. “A girl at the Clinic had some very similar. Esther . . .” She hesitated. Even amongst colleagues, doctors were bound to respect their patients’ privacy. “A scullery maid, three months along. She had been taking lead for some time and wanted me to provide her with something more efficacious. I hope I have persuaded her away from that path.” Dody paused. “And I’m sure I’ve come across something like them in the Book of Lists. Tablets taken by a woman who had also undergone physical abortion.”