The Dr Benjamin Bones Omnibus

by Emma Jameson

  Given his preference, Ben would have sent Lady Juliet off with Mrs. Cobblepot for a spot of tea while he threw Freddy’s body over one shoulder, single-handedly carrying him into the office. But he couldn’t do that with a cane and stiff left leg. Truth be told, he never could have done it, except in his wildest dreams. Besides, Mrs. Cobblepot was going door to door with her brother, and as a free agent, Lady Juliet was typically headstrong. She laughed at the idea of making up her own guest room while Ben devised a makeshift stretcher to drag the corpse inside.

  “Don’t stand there scowling, the solution is simple. I’ll help you carry him in,” she announced. “I’ll take the head, you take the feet.”

  Once they had Freddy positioned on the table, Ben removed the sheet and switched on the overhead light. On a sheet of exam paper, blank except for Ben’s name, address, and a space for the date, he sketched the body in prone position. After noting a birth mark and a smallpox vaccination scar, he opened Freddy’s mouth and made a separate sketch of the missing teeth. Throughout this process, he waited for Lady Juliet to absent herself. Instead, she wandered from corner to corner, peering at bits of medical equipment in a way that grated on his nerves.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked suddenly as he struggled to reposition Freddy. “Oh, terribly sorry, let me help.” With her assistance, the corpse was rendered face-down, and she sniffed the air. “There it is again.”

  “I detect more than one odor,” Ben agreed, sketching another simplified human outline labeled, “Supine.”

  “Not Freddy. I hardly notice him now. It’s this room.” Closing her eyes, Lady Juliet drew in a deep breath and smiled. “Books. Stacks and stacks of old books Lucy collected. They’re all in the Birdswing lending library now, but when I shut my eyes, it’s like they’re still around me.”

  “I noticed that my first day.” Refocusing on the corpse, Ben noted another birthmark, as well as slim white scars stacked on Freddy’s upper thighs and buttocks. Although it was nothing Ben hadn’t seen before, the sight always sickened him. Clearly, Freddy’s parents hadn’t spared the rod. Then there were the missing teeth and ruptured ear drums. Ben’s groundswell of sympathy was so familiar and automatic, he’d finished his external notes before he remembered.

  This man was paid to kill Penny and put me through agony. I might not need the cane forever, but my leg will never be the same.

  It was true. Yet his sympathy did not wane. He could want justice for Penny, feel sad and angry as he recalled his weeks of pain, and still view Freddy as an object of pity; a man who’d aspired to only the bare bones of life and been denied them all the same. “I’m not even good enough to die for my country,” he’d said. Now here he was, naked under a harsh bulb, dependent on the man he’d almost killed to transcribe and disseminate his final testament, the tale only a dead man could tell. And although many emotions crowded inside Ben, he found he could contain them all without denying any. Maybe he’d never been the sort of musclebound specimen who could heft fourteen stone of dead weight over one shoulder. But he bore the psychological weight of Freddy Sparks all the same.

  As Ben gathered his instruments for the internal examination, including scale, scalpel, enterotome, rib cutters, and forceps, Lady Juliet still showed no signs of leaving. After arranging his tray, buttoning his lab coat, and donning rubber gloves, he cleared his throat. Twice.

  “Good gracious, doctor. Are you attempting to signal me?”

  “I thought you might like to brew us a spot of tea. I’ll join you in the kitchen once this is sorted.”

  “Tea? Tea is commonplace. Witnessing a post-mortem is extraordinary.” Lady Juliet’s brown eyes sparkled. “I have no intention of leaving this room.”

  He nearly groaned aloud. “Very well. But if you swoon, don’t expect me to catch you or drop what I’m doing to fetch the smelling salts.” Ignoring her protestations over the word “swoon,” which went on at some length, Ben repositioned Freddy, took up his scalpel, and made the Y-shaped chest incision he’d learned on his first day of medical school.

  As he completed the cut, he heard the door between office and living space close, and Lady Juliet called from the other side, “Putting the kettle on!”

  Smiling, Ben returned to his work.

  * * *

  It was past eleven when Ben entered the kitchen. He’d expected to find nothing but cold tea and perhaps a note from Lady Juliet, explaining that she’d located the guest room and put herself to bed. Instead, he discovered her sitting at the little table, watching a striped orange tabby lap milk from a bowl on the linoleum floor.

  “There you are!” She looked up and smiled. “Your rubbish bin was overflowing, so I unlatched the back door to carry it out, and Humphrey ran in. I haven’t seen him since Lucy died. Thought the old boy made off for greener pastures.”

  “He tripped me the other day. Then planted himself under my shrubbery.” Ben studied the cat, who spared him one supremely indifferent glance before re-immersing himself in the cream. “Do you suppose he’s back for good? As a boy, I had a dog, but I’ve never been master to a cat.”

  Lady Juliet laughed. “Obviously not, if you’d dare use the ‘m’ word so blithely around a member of the feline persuasion.” She gestured to the various crocks, boxes, and tins open atop the table. “A lifetime at the manor hasn’t rendered me much of a cook, I fear, so rather than desecrate precious foodstuffs in an attempt to make dinner, I raided the larder bachelor-style. We have Stilton, half a coffee cake, stale rolls I presume Mrs. Cobblepot was saving for a meatloaf, and a bit of cold chicken. Oh, and tea, of course. I kept the water simmering. No, no, sit down. You’ve exerted yourself quite enough tonight. I don’t mind serving you. This once. Dare I inquire if you uncovered any shocking revelations about Freddy’s demise?”

  “All I can say for certain is, I still don’t believe Freddy asphyxiated himself.” Pulling out a chair, Ben sank into it gratefully. It had been a long day. “Finding evidence of poisoning is feast or famine. Either it’s unmistakable due to signs like copious vomit and a chemically burned esophagus, or it’s so subtle as to be invisible. Fortunately, St. Barnabas has the resources to test Freddy’s blood, liver, and spleen. If a toxin killed him, we’ll know.”

  “So you’ll be taking him to the hospital tomorrow?”

  “Not all of him. Just his blood, liver, and spleen.”

  Lady Juliet made a little sound in her throat.

  “Isn’t that the very noise you’ve accused me of making?”

  “No. Yours is pained. Mine is merely contemplative.” She placed a cup and saucer before him, then returned to her seat. “When you reduced Freddy to his constituent parts, I’d like to say I wondered where he is at this moment—his essence, I mean. But the sad truth is, I care as little now as I did when he was alive. It’s Lucy I can’t stop thinking about. Would you believe me if I said I heard her voice earlier tonight?”

  “Tell me about it.” As Ben listened, he tried again to recall his dream, specific words, specific images. Why had Lucy spoken directly to Lady Juliet, yet given him the magpie lighter? If she could interact with the living so directly, why not both times?

  “Oh, my, now you sound like a scientist,” Lady Juliet laughed after hearing his questions. “This isn’t a laboratory, and if Lucy’s become supernatural, you’d do well to recall that word means ‘outside the natural.’ All over Cornwall, you’ll find stories of apparitions bearing messages but rarely do they pull up a spectral chair, as it were, and have a tête-à-tête with the poor soul who stumbled upon them. Usually the living are forced to work a good deal harder. No doubt Lucy could speak to me because I’m, well, exceptional.”

  Ben snorted.

  “A sensitive. A natural sensitive!” Lady Juliet retorted sharply enough to make Humphrey pause in cleaning his whiskers. “I’ve waited all my life for an encounter with the beyond!”

  As Ben fought to contain his mirth, she continued doggedly, “Permit me to educate you, doctor, on the
well-known behaviors of the ectoplasmic set. It just so happens that dreams are the most common method of communication. Even a rigid, narrow mind may expand sufficiently during sleep to permit contact. And moving objects is also perfectly typical. A possession disappears from one room and reappears in another, begging the question, what needs closer examination? The place? The item? Both together? If Lucy saw Freddy run you down, and then saw his lighter on the street, naturally she might choose to materialize the lighter in this house to lead you to him.”

  “Naturally.” As far as Ben was concerned, Lady Juliet hadn’t sufficiently answered any of his questions, but judging by her triumphant expression, she felt vindicated. “Tell me. Do you truly believe in all this?”

  “I heard her voice. And what she told me proved accurate,” Lady Juliet said. “Besides, if Dr. Carl Jung can believe in a collective unconscious, I can believe in ghosts.”

  “Fair enough. And I suppose you’re right—they do seem to move objects more than they speak. Do you think we should try to contact her? Now, I mean?”

  “What did you have in mind?” Lady Juliet collected Humphrey’s empty milk bowl, placing it in the sink as the orange cat ran a massive paw under the new stove. When a few swipes failed to produce whatever he sought, he began sniffing beneath the boiler, clearly on a mission.

  “My grandmother called this a talking board,” Ben said, limping to the living room. He hadn’t opened the steamer trunk since the night he’d first become aware of Lucy; perhaps it was time. Pulling out the Ouija board, he studied it more carefully than before. Made of walnut, it looked older than he remembered, and hand-carved: sun on the left, moon on the right, A-Z and 0-9 in the middle, HELLO at the top and GOOD-BYE at the bottom. Across its surface were scratches and deep gouges, as if a séance had gone awry.

  “There’s no planchette, but perhaps we can devise something. A pencil might work, to point at letters, or a—”

  Something skittered across the kitchen’s linoleum floor, coming to rest at his feet. He recognized the heart-shaped bit of wood on tiny brass casters at once. The missing planchette, retrieved by Lucy’s cat and batted at him right on cue.

  Ben stared at it wordlessly for several seconds. He’d only just gotten comfortable again, sleeping in Fenton House, and now this. Humphrey studied him, eyes slitted, feline face inscrutable.

  “I’m not too sure about this,” Ben admitted, placing the board on the table.

  “Neither am I.” Lady Juliet ran a finger over the board’s many scratches. “It was so strange, the gas leak that killed Lucy. Suppose…. I mean, I don’t want to sound hysterical, but perhaps using this board wouldn’t be like ringing up Lucy. Rather, suppose it’s akin to unlocking your front door and inviting the whole world inside?”

  Ben placed the planchette on the board. He preferred not to admit it aloud, but he’d temporarily misplaced his scientific skepticism, just as Lady Juliet seemed to have forgotten her lifelong desire to commune with spirits.

  “Before we resort to an actual séance, let’s try to solve this case through normal channels,” Ben said. “Penny made some notes in a book that need decoding. I thought I’d start at the village library.”

  “Oh, no, that will never do. The Birdswing lending library is hopeless for serious inquiry. I should know. I’m its patroness. We offer a wonderful collection of fiction, both classic and modern, but little else. If by research you mean encyclopedias, you’ll need to go to Plymouth. If you seek old newspapers on microfilm, scholarly journals, and so on and so forth, we’ll have to go to London.”

  Ben, who was wondering how much community ire he’d incur by closing his office for another day, almost missed the “we” in “we’ll.”

  “You’re coming?”

  “Naturally.” Lady Juliet smiled at Humphrey, who’d sprawled lengthwise beside the boiler as if he owned it. “You’ll require assistance with what I suspect may prove the very heart of detective work: perseverance in the face of tedium. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m exhausted.” As she left the kitchen, she called over her shoulder, “Goodnight! Don’t let the tomcat bite.”

  * * *

  Tedium wasn’t too strong a word, at least for the first half of the day. They drove to Plymouth shortly after first light and parked the Austin Ten-Four at the station, taking the train to London and arriving at the British Library on Euston Road around noon. Ben started with the only word in Penny’s book of sonnets that stood out to him: the name Mosley. That led to dozens of articles, eventually bringing to mind a certain photograph he’d glimpsed, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps crucially. Taken together, all of them led back to a word Penny had jotted on a different page: Olympia. As Ben looked into that, Lady Juliet discovered, with the help of a patient librarian, the origin of the quote in the front of Penny’s book:

  “The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.”

  “This is so exciting,” Lady Juliet confided to Ben over sandwiches at a nearby café.

  “You think?” He felt slightly dirtied by what they’d uncovered thus far, not to mention the larger implications.

  “The librarian was scandalized, absolutely appalled, when I said I needed to see the passage with my own eyes,” Lady Juliet continued. “She had the book behind the desk, under lock and key, so only appropriate patrons could get a peek. I asked her why the library didn’t just chuck it if they considered it so dangerous. She said a copy needed to be available for criticism from official channels.”

  “I suppose that means borrowing a copy is out of the question?”

  “Afraid so. Plymouth authorities will just have to take our word.”

  Ben wasn’t sure how well that would go, so he returned to his research all the more determined to find additional evidence. Another of Penny’s notes led him to microfilm records of the Daily Mail on 13 March 1937, when a letter to the editor had been published. The author, as he now expected, was G. Freeman.

  * * *

  “I simply cannot fathom it,” Lady Juliet said again. The fact that they were in a crowded station awaiting the train back to Plymouth didn’t deter her from speaking openly on the topic; indeed, she seemed unable to stop herself. “I’ve known Gerald for years. Known Margaret since I was a baby. We didn’t get on as children, but she improved a great deal with time, or so I believed.”

  “A year ago, if someone had suggested to me that Penny was a lifelong blackmailer, I would have denied it,” Ben said in a low voice, wishing she would follow his example. “We tend to assume the secret conduct of others mirrors our own. That can make us blind to possibilities we consider verboten.”

  “Apt word choice,” Lady Juliet said dryly. “But there’s another reason Margaret couldn’t be involved in Penny and Freddy’s murders. She was ill when you and Penny arrived in Birdswing. I’d invited her up to the manor to advise me on the roses—she’s a prize-winning gardener, you know—and she had to beg off on account of her skin. The affliction is wretched and quite real, I assure you. When the flare-ups come, she can’t bear sunlight and is embarrassed to be seen. She missed my bonfire gala for the same reason, the day Freddy was murdered.”

  “Speaking of Freddy, I really should ring the pathologist now, or it will have to wait till morning.” Ben made the call from a nearby public telephone. He expected a nurse or intern to read Freddy’s toxicology results to him. Instead, St. Barnabas’s chief pathologist himself came on the line with a pointed question: had Ben treated Freddy Sparks for hypertension or dropsy?

  “Neither,” Ben said. “I never examined him alive, but except for his childhood injuries, he seemed reasonably well.”

  “Our records indicate the same,” the pathologist said. “Yet he died from an overdose of digitalis.”

  Ben returned to Lady Juliet, seated on a red-lacquered bench and still visibly stewing over the Freemans, and said, “Freddy was poisoned. Perhaps by prescription medication, perhaps by a plant called foxglove. Tell me more
about this illness of Mrs. Freeman’s.”

  It was long past full dark when they arrived in Plymouth. Neither had expected to be in London so long—Lady Juliet had only her handbag, Ben his black doctor’s bag—yet circumstances demanded they rent rooms for the night. A policeman escorted them to the nearest hotel, which mercifully had not only vacancies but a restaurant. Over dinner, Ben outlined what he saw as the best way to proceed.

  “But I feel I should be there when you confront them!” Lady Juliet cried, once again louder than necessary. “I’m outraged by Gerald’s conduct, and Margaret’s beggars belief. I want to look her in the eye and hear what she has to say for herself.”

  “Do you expect to be swayed by it?” Ben asked. He’d ordered steak and kidney pie, but his stomach was so tense, each mouthful was a burden.

  “Of course not. I only plan on inviting her to explain so I can tell her how very wrong she is.” Lady Juliet pushed her fish aside. “I can’t swallow another bite. If it weren’t for the blackout, I’d march up to her door this instant.”

  “Then the blackout has finally done me a favor. Juliet,” Ben said, deliberately omitting the honorific to be sure he had her attention. “Beyond this point, you shouldn’t be involved. I understand you feel as if you know the Freemans, but if we’re correct, you never knew them at all. Beneath the surface, they’re dangerous people. Turning up at their house hurling accusations isn’t smart. Or safe. Tomorrow, I’ll go to Plymouth CID and tell them everything. True, there are a few missing pieces, but with any luck, they’ll listen anyway. If you ring the manor first thing tomorrow, Old Robbie can come collect you, and you’ll be safely back in Birdswing when the police apprehend the Freemans.”

  Lady Juliet said nothing.

  “Are we agreed?” Ben prodded.

  She took a deep breath. “Oh, very well. I suppose I’ll have one more bite of fish.”