The Scent of Murder (29 page)

Mr Clover somehow managed to hand her a wooden tongue depressor without mishap. Dody attempted to lever the jaw open, aiming her light reflector through the small emerging gap. The joint creaked; she must be careful not to dislocate it.

The tongue depressor snapped.

Mr Clover jumped back as if he’d been bitten.

‘It’s all right, Mr Clover,’ Dody said soothingly.

As she feared, the jaw was impossible to prise sufficiently wide without dislocation. A tiny incision would be more respectful.

Mr Clover was instructed to extend the girl’s neck. Given the strength of the stiffening muscles and his refusal to look at what he was doing, this was no easy task. Finally the throat was revealed sufficiently for Dody to use her smallest scalpel upon it. She sliced a vertical incision through the upper throat and ratcheted the wound open with surgical clamps. There was little blood, but the stench …

She glanced at her assistant, wondering how he was faring. He looked to be bearing up well, all things considered. Perhaps his adenoidal problems interfered with his sense of smell. Lucky Mr Clover. His eyes, no longer closed, seemed to be focusing on the dust motes tumbling through a beam of grey winter sunlight from the window above. Dody caught the light from the window in her reflector and directed it into the gaping wound. The light shone on membranes still the colour of ripe cherries. Suppurating ulcers the size of frogs’ eggs covered the back of the throat and extended over the tonsils.

There was no doubt in Dody’s mind now: this was not a case of measles. She swabbed exudate from one of the largest ulcers and placed it in a specimen jar to send to the London pathology laboratory. Though convinced herself of the Matron’s misdiagnosis, further proof of negligence would be required should the case go to court.

Even though the child’s body was cold to the touch, Dody knew that the liver would have retained some heat. After she had sewn up the throat wound, she took her specially adapted thermometer and pierced the child’s upper-right quadrant with it, holding it in situ for several minutes. While waiting for the liver temperature to register, she glanced at Mr Clover, surprised to see him at last looking directly at the body.

‘What yer doin’ that fer?’ he asked, with hesitant interest.

‘After death the liver temperature falls at about one and a half degrees per hour. I’m hoping to calculate the approximate time of the girl’s death by measuring her liver temperature. Doing this will also help me ascertain the severity of her fever at the time of her passing,’ Dody explained.

She withdrew the sharply pointed instrument and studied its reading. ‘Did you notice any stiffness when you transported the body to the Dead House?’ she asked.

‘Nah. She were all floppy. Like she were asleep.’

‘At this stage after death, then, in a patient with no fever, I would expect the liver temperature to be about eighty-seven degrees. The thermometer reads ninety-five degrees still. This means Bessie was suffering from an extremely high fever when she died,’ she told Mr Clover.

‘Poor little mite.’ Tears streamed down his simple face.

‘Please help me turn her over now, Mr Clover. Mr Clover?’

He gave a start, trumpeted his nose into his handkerchief, made a visible effort at pulling himself together, and the two of them rolled the body over.

Blood had pooled beneath the skin of the girl’s back, rendering the hump a ghastly grey–blue, though it was not that which made Dody gasp. What shocked her was the way the girl’s skin, from her buttocks to her ankles, was criss-crossed with a series of diagonal scars. The scars were patterned like Tristram’s, but, unlike Tristram’s, Bessie’s were not silvery white in colour but ranged from pale pink to vivid red — meaning they had been inflicted recently. Dody closed her eyes for a moment, conscious of the blood pumping through her veins. She took a deep breath to quell her rising emotion and forced herself to push her anger aside. Later she would allow herself to release it, use it in a constructive manner against those who deserved it.

While Bessie was lying prone, there was something else she still needed to do. Trying not to think about the scars, Dody made a small, deep incision in the girl’s lower back to the far right of her spinal column. Working her way through adipose tissue, muscle and membrane, she sliced finally through the kidney’s protective layer of fat.

‘Suet,’ Mr Clover muttered.

Dody nodded, surprised not only at the ebbing of the porter’s squeamishness, but at his insight too. She snipped away a portion of the glossy brown organ beneath the fat and placed it into a specimen jar. It would not surprise her to find that the laboratory detected early-stage nephritis — inflammation — in the sample. She sewed up the incision, asked Mr Clover to help her turn the body once more, and covered it with the sheet. She found herself unable to suppress her feelings any longer.

Clover had enough wits about him to correctly read the expression on Dody’s face, and he instinctively took a step away from her.

‘You knew about those scars, didn’t you, Mr Clover?’ Dody said. ‘You might not have been responsible for the barbarism in this place, but you knew about it.’ She pointed to the two other sheeted bodies. ‘What’s the betting I find similar marks on the backs of those children’s legs?’

Clover shuffled on his feet. ‘Umm, no, Doctor. Those little ’uns what still ’ave their mothers with ’em don’t get ’urt much.’

Meaning they still had someone to protect them. God help the children like Tristram or Bessie Teadle who had no adult to turn to for protection. She wondered if the little scullery maid was also marked in such a way.

The porter stuck his chest out. ‘Discipline,’ he said, deepening his voice. ‘It’s the only way the paupers learn. This is not a luxury hotel; we cannot have any Tom, Dick or Harry banging on our door for free bed and board. Succour here comes at a price.’

Dody frowned. This was not Mr Clover’s usual tone of voice, or choice of words, for that matter.

‘Who are you mimicking?’ she asked. The imitated voice had a disturbing edge of familiarity to it.

He shrugged. ‘No one, miss.’

‘Yes, you are. Do you even know what you are saying?’ He shrugged again.

‘Beating a defenceless child and drawing blood is not the way to enforce discipline. Can you not understand that?’

‘Discipline,’ Mr Clover said again, with even more conviction.

Dody took a step towards him. ‘Is the Master responsible for the beatings?’

The porter looked down at his huge feet.

‘Matron? The other porters? Or can anyone lay into these children if they feel like it? For God’s sake, Mr Clover, for the love of all things decent—’

Mr Clover bumped the instrument table, knocking several items to the floor before rushing to the door. He got nowhere; the door was still locked, the key in Dody’s pocket.

At once she felt ashamed for causing such panic in the simpleton; the man had probably lived with fear all of his life. His mimicry occurred when he was frightened, she noticed. She took a calming breath, moved over to him and put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

‘It’s all right, Mr Clover. I am not accusing you of anything. But I really do need to know who has been beating Bessie Teadle.’

‘W-w-witch Hounds.’

Dody paused, remembered Tristram’s story about the ghostly hounds chasing the witch, the haunted rectory, the old corpse way — and the black dog she had seen that night from the cart.

‘You’re not talking about that ridiculous superstition, are you? Besides, hounds can’t whip people,’ she said.

‘Sniff me out if I tell. Bite me, they will.’

‘But the Witch Hounds are not real, Mr Clover.’

Clover shook his shaggy head. ‘They real.’

There was no point pursuing the matter. This place would have to be thoroughly assessed and all the staff questioned. She would see Pike after she had reported to the board and he would go to the relevant authorities and initiate an investigation. God help anyone who knew about the abuse that went on here and kept their backs turned to it.

Dody shivered and glanced once more at the body of Bessie Teadle. Who were the perpetrators of this evil, the insidious powers who preyed upon these helpless children? Powers even greater than malnutrition, overwork and disease?

The other examinations were performed under a deafening veil of silence. Perhaps Mr Clover thought he would be in trouble. Either that, or he was quaking in his boots at the thought of being mauled by the phantom hounds. The cause of the small boy’s and girl’s death was the same as that of Bessie, though as Clover had suggested, there was no evidence of abuse on their tiny bodies.

Dody dismissed the porter and gathered up her instruments, wiping the scalpel and clamps, disinfecting them in carbolic and replacing them in their leather cases. The apron and cuffs she left behind, not wishing to take them with her. Their staining would forever be a reminder of the ghastly task she had just performed. She reminded herself, as she often did after a particularly depressing case, to reapply for the specialist positions she had previously been rejected for on account of her gender. She had always hoped to be a bone surgeon; she would never have chosen to work with the dead, though sometimes she felt it was the dead who had chosen her.

She finally left the Dead House for some much-needed air and found the Matron pacing up and down outside.

‘Are the committee members still in the boardroom?’ she asked, before the Matron’s colour had re-built to its full puce.

‘Yes, Doctor,’ Matron said through pursed lips. ‘They are waiting for your report. I have also informed them of your lack of co-operation and your inexcusable treatment of myself.’

‘I trust that the relevant wards have been put under quarantine?’ Dody continued coldly. ‘Including Bessie Teadle’s? The girls in her ward will have to be isolated and I will examine them myself. Volunteer nurses must be brought in from the village to help contain the outbreak.’

‘A lot of fuss, if you ask me. Just for a few deaths from the measles.’

Dody straightened her tie and spoke with as much calm as she could muster. ‘As I suspected, your diagnosis was incorrect. We are not dealing with measles. We are dealing with a far worse disease: scarlet fever, to be precise.’

The woman paled, opened her mouth and spent a moment struggling with her words before she spluttered out, ‘Scarlet fever? I would expect you to say that. I have warned the board about your pig-headedness: that you are not to be trusted, that you are likely to embroider the truth for your own glorification. We haven’t had a case of scarlet fever here for years.’

‘I find that highly unlikely in an institution of this kind. And while I’m at it, I will tell the board about the scarring on Bessie Teadle’s legs. I expect you and the Master can both look forward to an interview with the police. Thank you for your help, Matron.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The Board of Guardians reacted with genuine shock. The idea that young children had been systematically beaten, well beyond the parameters of acceptable discipline, was particularly disturbing to them; more worrying even, it seemed to Dody, than the outbreak of scarlet fever. They agreed that a letter would be sent to the Parish Council with a copy of Dody’s autopsy reports, as well as a request for a police investigation into the treatment of pauper children in the Uckfield Parish Workhouse.

‘I’m sorry, Doctor McCleland, but I can’t believe the Master knows anything about these goings on,’ said Mr Gardner, the whiskered gentleman she’d met earlier by the stairs. ‘He is a highly respected member of the community and involved in all kinds of charities and good works. And the things he has done for the workhouse — reduced hours in the quarry, extra meat in the inmates’ rations …’

Dody glanced at Lady Fitzgibbon. Her Ladyship remained impassive. The only woman on the board seemed accustomed to receiving no credit.

‘Not to mention outings and extra benefits for the staff,’ Mr Gardner added.

Keeping the staff happy so they would not consider lodging complaints. Clever, Dody thought.

‘And he has never shown anything but kindness to the children. No doubt he is being duped by Matron—’

‘I’ve been wanting her sacked for years!’ another gentleman interrupted Mr Gardner to murmurs of agreement. ‘But it’s just so deuced hard to get rid of her. Our only hope is that she is charged with a criminal offence by the police.’

‘Then I will see if I can speed up the process,’ Dody said. ‘My first concern, though, is for the diseased children.’ She turned to Lady Fitzgibbon, who sat next to her at the mahogany table. ‘I need nursing help from the women of the village — preferably older women who are more likely to be resistant to the disease — and better still if they have no children themselves. There are measures we can take to minimise their chances of contracting the disease—’

‘I will put myself on the top of the list, if I may, Doctor.’ Her Ladyship spoke quietly but firmly.

‘Certainly, Lady Fitzgibbon,’ Dody said with an appreciative smile.

‘How could Matron confuse the symptoms of scarlet fever with measles, Doctor?’ Mr Gardner asked.

‘The diseases do share some similarities, sir, and it is an easy mistake for a lay person to make, though inexcusable for a member of the medical profession,’ Dody explained. ‘The primary differentiating characteristic between the two is the increased likelihood of fatality in cases of scarlet fever.’

‘And the nursing care required?’ Lady Fitzgibbon asked.

‘Much depends on the severity of the symptoms. I will assess and prescribe treatment, case by case, as I come to each. All infectious patients must be isolated from the healthy and kept in the infirmary. Nurses who treat those in the infirmary must thoroughly wash themselves in carbolic and change their clothing before they leave the isolation area. All unnecessary furnishings must be removed from the infirmary. All the beds must be disinfected and sheets and clothing burned when the patient has finished with them. I can’t stress strongly enough how infectious this disease is among children.’