A Death by Wounds: The first Lambert and Strange mystery

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘There’s something in here.’ She extracted a soggy envelope.

  The Canon’s hangdog expression was transformed by a broad smile. ‘Open it then.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for the police?’

  ‘No need.’

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Yes,’ his voice held a note of irritation, ‘no time like the present.’

  There were two folded sheets of paper inside. She peeled them apart eagerly and held the first up to the light. The writing had dissolved into feathery streaks.

  ‘Never mind.’ Strange stretched out a surprisingly burly hand. ‘Give the letter to me. I’ll dry it out at home. Something may be salvageable…Ah, the paper is unusually thick. Well, thank you Miss Lambert. I won’t detain you further.’

  ‘Oh…’ It suddenly hit her that all she had to return to was the over-heated Sick House and her whining school boys with their invented maladies. All but one, that was. And with no-one but the boys to keep her company, she would only have Edward’s death to occupy her thoughts. ‘What happens now?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘The process of law and order will grind into action.’ Strange widened his eyes mischievously. ‘I’ve worked with the police once or twice in the past, so they might ask me to look into it.’ He paused. ‘I wasn’t always a clergyman,’ he added.

  She would have given a good deal at that moment not just to be Nurse Lambert from College Sick House. ‘I would be happy to assist you Canon,’ she blurted out, ‘if they were to ask you to investigate that is. I could keep the records and you may need a medical opinion…’ She tailed off. She sounded ridiculous; what could she offer this man?

  Strange pursed his lips. ‘It would be rather irregular,’ he murmured.

  Why had she expected the Canon to be different to all the others? ‘I understand,’ she said.

  His brown eyes regarded her searchingly; it was not an unkind stare.

  ‘I’ll consider it,’ he said. ‘Will you be at Chapel tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I’m taking the service. Let’s talk again afterwards. Goodbye for now Nurse Lambert.’

  As Philippa walked away, she noticed the Canon pick up the great coat and gently replace it over the body, tucking it around the fingertips and shoes.

  When Philippa reached College, she called in at the porters’ lodge beneath Outer Gate. The smell of furniture wax and burning coal wafted through the open door. Inside, it still felt bone- numbingly chilly despite the fire. She leaned over the counter and checked her pigeon hole: empty, as usual. Frank, the head porter, was seated by the stove reading the Daily Mirror. He smiled, deep wrinkles extending from the corners of his eyes like the rays on a childish drawing of the sun. ‘No news is good news, I always say Miss.’

  ‘I suppose so. How are things?’

  ‘Can’t complain.’

  ‘Boys behaving themselves?’

  Frank chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly but nothing that can’t be handled. I had some junior Collegeman in ‘ere earlier, saying how it was so cold in his dorm that he could build a snowman on his bed. If there’d bin any snow.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘What I say every year – I told him he’d soon get used to it and that Collegemen should be grateful for having hot water.’ Frank clambered to his feet, blowing on his finger ends. ‘You keeping warm enough in your rooms Miss? You just say, and I’ll get you some more logs.’

  ‘Thank you Frank.’

  He patted her hand in a fatherly way and then picked up his cloth. It was well known that Frank would spend hours polishing the wooden counter until it shone like marble. Woe betide any grubby-fingered pupil who dared come near, although Frank seemed happy for her to lean upon it. Philippa was continually grateful to have been accepted into this insular masculine community with its peculiar centuries-old traditions. The pupils had their own language, called notions, which were studiously written down in a book given to every new boy at the start of the school year. She had been baffled at first when sick boys wanted to go to ‘fo’ (from the Latin for lavatory, foricas), or asked when they could return to ‘div’ (class). On her first day, she committed a grievous error by using ‘the’ in front of building names. She worked in Sick House, she had been told in a most serious manner by one of the youngest boys, not ‘the’ Sick House. Now institutional words and phrases came naturally to her, if not quite unconsciously. She felt as if she had found a place where her skills as a would-be medic were valued, though she knew she was living on borrowed time. The men were returning to their pre-War jobs. Every day, she expected to be told that a new doctor had been appointed, and to be relegated to dishing out tonic and tucking the boys into bed.

  ‘You know, they found a body by the Cathedral,’ she continued. ‘I think it was someone who worked here. One of the secretaries called Grace?’

  Frank stopped polishing and then folded up his cloth. ‘Mrs Mundy, you must mean. Nice lady. How did she die? An accident?’

  ‘No, it was murder for sure. I saw the injuries.’

  ‘Dear, dear.’ Frank shook his head and sucked on his teeth. ‘How distressing. I’ll inform the Bursar immediately. There’ll be affairs to attend to, no doubt. And it must have been very upsetting for you Miss.’

  ‘It was a bit of a shock, but I’m fine now Frank, thank you.’

  Philippa left the lodge, turning right into the court outside Lodgings, a house sandwiched between College’s outer and inner walls. It stood unoccupied for most of the year, awaiting the termly visit of the Warden and the Governors. She noticed a tall Don walking away from her and recognised the Russian Master’s pinched features. Mr Tokarev entered the stable yard and disappeared from view. Suddenly, from behind the gateway wall, a woman backed into her path. She was muttering to herself, guttural, hissing sounds almost like a foreign language. The woman knocked against Philippa’s arm, stumbled and fell back against the wall.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Philippa began automatically and then recognizing the Bursar’s wife, ‘Oh, Mrs Urchfont, are you hurt?’

  Teresa Urchfont examined her stockings and then looked up with a cool smile. ‘No harm done. Entirely my fault, my dear. Tell me, has my husband ordered that new medicine cabinet you wanted?’

  ‘Oh, I, er…’ It was a disconcerting change of topic. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Leave it with me.’ Teresa Urchfont took Philippa’s arm and squeezed it between slender fingers. Her grey-blonde hair smelt of honeysuckle. ‘I’ll have a word. Can I walk your way?’

  Mrs Urchfont expertly side-stepped puddles and piles of leaves, moving as if to conserve energy, her elegantly-heeled shoes appearing to hardly leave the ground. She was one of those women who seemed swathed in a haze of elegance - her outfits chosen to accentuate her long limbs, conversation a string of charming enquiries and anecdotes, her head held unnaturally high. In stout boots and hard-wearing skirt, Philippa felt a frump next to her. She ought to despise the woman’s decorative sophistication; instead, she found herself wishing to be more like her. Mrs Urchfont insisted on coming all the way to the Sick House door before releasing her grip on Philippa’s arm.

  ‘It’s such a lovely building isn’t it? You’re so lucky to work here. Well, good day.’ She clicked away.

  Philippa had never thought of Sick House as “lovely”. The Cromwellian brick house always struck her as subdued and sombre, its mullioned windows suggesting prison bars. There were two inscriptions written in Latin on either side of the doorway. One read, I pray that Jehovah, the only author of health, may avert and drive away from you all things harmful. The other inscription talked of the last bed of sickness which she thought rather insensitive.

  She entered the ward to discover three of her charges sitting cross-legged on the bed of the fourth. They glanced around in alarm, fans of playing cards suspended in mid-air.

  ‘Feeling better I see.’

  ‘No, Miss Lambert,’ Digby, the oldest, said. ‘Pr
entis was bored. We were just trying to cheer him up. We’ve signed his cast and…’

  ‘Back to your beds. Now.’

  Digby uncrossed his legs reluctantly and jumped down from Prentis’s iron-framed bed. The other two followed, shuffling on heel-trodden slippers and flopping dramatically onto rumpled sheets.

  ‘I’ll be along shortly to check on each of you.’

  The boys immediately began a chorus of coughing and sniffing. She ignored them and made for the far end of the ward where a low fire glowed in the grate. She threw on a couple of logs and then, with her back to the beds, removed the crumpled newspaper page from her bag and re-read the announcement. It still did not seem quite real. ‘Well-loved brother’ George had written. It hadn’t been like that when Edward was alive. They had constantly been at each other’s throats about money, regularly resorting to heated words and sometimes to blows. Edward often grumbled to Philippa that George was cheating him out of his birthright; he didn’t know exactly how but he was certain that George was taking more than his fair share. Why should George get to live in the Hall when he had to put up with a hovel on Cooks Lane? His suspicions and resentment almost seemed to devour him.

  A low moan came from the boy in the bed closest to the fire. On impulse, she tossed the newspaper into the fire, and immediately regretted it. She delved the tongs into the rejuvenated flames but the paper had already been consumed. Swallowing down an unaccountable feeling of panic, she reluctantly turned her attention to her fifth patient.

  Christopher Steele moaned again as a shaft of sunlight illuminated his sleeping face. His fair-haired head was twisted so that he lay on his left cheek, his hand tucked beneath it. His eyelids twitched and every few seconds, his nose wrinkled as if encountering a bad smell. His dreams were troubled every night but when she asked about them, he always claimed that he could not remember.

  She pulled back the tent of bed-sheets that she had erected over the entire right-side of the boy’s body. The bandages on his arm and chest were dry. That was encouraging. Christopher, a College Scholar, had been returned to the school from military hospital in August. His parents were dead and College was as much a home for him as anywhere else. It is our duty to care for him, the Warden had said. For weeks after his return, Christopher’s bandages would become soaked with yellowy-white puss within a few hours of being replaced. To an untrained eye, his skin seemed normal, exceptionally soft and pasty perhaps, but undamaged. In fact his skin had been boiled by a mortar’s hot blast.

  ‘God knows what’s happened to his insides,’ his Captain had said to her. ‘He nearly copped it when gangrene set in but they managed to stop it by using a saline drip, thank goodness. The doc’s advice was to keep him warm, well-fed and infection free. The rest will be up to nature.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, but why was he allowed to sign-up? He was only 15 then and still at school.’

  ‘He told the recruiting sergeant he was 19.’

  Anyone who had seen Christopher’s soft features, narrow shoulders and pigeon chest would have known that to be a lie.

  She gently unwrapped the bandages covering the stump that ended just below Christopher’s right knee. The military surgeons had done a neat job. The skin had begun to fuse around the end, reshaping the birth mark that used to run from his lower thigh to upper calf. Even so, when she bathed him, Christopher still had to grip the sides of the bed, his mouth set in a tight line. Sometimes, when the pain got too much, his mood turned angry and he would shout at the nearest boy, accusing him of being a skiver and a bloody conchie. He always apologised afterwards.

  Suddenly Christopher let out a sharp cry, a cry of dreaming terror, and then was still. The other boys had fallen silent and were staring at him with frightened curiosity.

  ‘Will Steele be alright, Miss Lambert?’ Digby whispered, a question that she was asked at least once every day. She found it rather touching. The boys’ natural bravado and rivalry always fell away when faced with a sick friend.

  ‘Of course he will.’ Philippa replaced Christopher’s bandages and then walked over to the younger boy. ‘Now, let’s take a look at your throat. Say “ah.” Wider. Much better. Back to lessons tomorrow I think.’

  ‘Oh. But Miss…’

  The door to the ward opened, interrupting Digby’s protests. Councillor Dorothy Wing-Smyth – severe in charcoal-grey coat and wide black hat - strode purposively towards Christopher’s bed, swinging her umbrella like a cane. She walked with a distinctive rolling gait, most likely due to her bones being afflicted by rickets at a young age Philippa had concluded. The Councillor stretched out a gloved hand.

  ‘Philippa, I was passing…how’s the brave boy today?’

  ‘There’s been some improvement since last week.’ Philippa led the way back to Christopher’s bed. ‘He’s asleep at the moment.’

  ‘I won’t disturb then. Just a quick glance. My fellow Councillors do like to know how he’s getting on.’

  And visiting a young war hero would certainly not do Dorothy Wing-Smyth’s election prospects any harm - her ambition to become a Member of Parliament was well-known - but Philippa had come to realise that beneath Dorothy’s opinionated manner was genuine compassion. A delegation of Councillors visited the ward a few days after Christopher’s return had been reported in a local newspaper, but Dorothy was the only one who had kept on coming. It was not only Christopher who seemed to interest her; Philippa had also been taken under Dorothy’s wing.

  ‘Has he had any other visitors today?’ Dorothy said.

  ‘His sister Bella came earlier this morning. She brought one of the new puppies to see him.’

  ‘How nice. If you don’t mind my saying dear,’ Dorothy glanced up from Christopher’s face, ‘you’re looking rather out of sorts. Very pale.’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ Philippa tried to smile. ‘I’ve just come from the Cathedral. They found… It’s perhaps better if we talk by the fireplace, out of earshot. They found a body in a trench. I had to examine it. I suppose it was a bit of a shock.’

  ‘A body? Who was it?’

  ‘A woman. I recognised her. She was one of the secretaries here.’

  ‘How distressing. Was it an accident?’

  Philippa lowered her voice. ‘She’d been stabbed. Many times. Someone must have really wanted to kill her.’

  ‘There’s so much violence around these days,’ Dorothy said, scrunching up her shoulders and poking out her neck, something she always did when she was making a point. ‘Our young men have been infected by the terrible things they’ve had to endure. Some of them have returned home to find that there’s no work or someone’s taken their place. Our Government appears incapable of acknowledging that the devil makes work for idle hands. No wonder…’ She paused and smiled. ‘Apologies, I’m preaching again! I was going to ask if you’d heard from the teaching hospitals.’

  Philippa squirmed in the heat of the fire. Her quest to qualify as a doctor was a subject that she had tried to put to the back of her mind. ‘All of my applications refused, I’m afraid,’ she said, deliberately keeping her voice bright.

  ‘All of them?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even Addenbrooke’s, where you trained?’

  ‘Even them.’

  ‘What reasons did they give?’

  ‘A few mentioned the money; I had to pay everything at once, I couldn’t pay over time. Others sent a couple of lines with a barely polite “thank you but no thank you”.’

  Dorothy frowned and banged the tip of her umbrella on the floorboards. ‘It’s high time things changed. We know the real reason why they refused you, despite everything you did during the War.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ Philippa said, rather embarrassed by Dorothy’s vehemence. ‘I’ll apply to be a registered nurse once the new law goes through. And Canon Strange said that he’ll consider letting me help him with the investigation.’

  ‘What investigation’s that?’

  ‘Into the murder.’

  �
��Why in heaven’s name would Canon Strange be involved?’

  ‘Oh, yes I forgot to tell you. He was there with the body too. Investigating….’ It sounded rather ludicrous now. ‘He said that he sometimes helps the police out with such things.’

  ‘Does he? How odd.’ Dorothy paused and then continued thoughtfully. ‘I knew his wife; so sad when she died. He was inconsolable. I suppose the police must be short-handed - which they wouldn’t be if the Head Constable would engage a female officer or two.’ Dorothy glanced around at the boys in their beds as if seeking an audience. ‘When I’m returned to Westminster, I’ll fight to make every job and profession truly open to women. I trust I can count on your support?’

  ‘Of course,’ Philippa smiled. Last year, at 29, she had still been too young to vote.

  ‘Well, best be off,’ Dorothy said. ‘By the way, what was the name of the murder victim?’

  ‘Grace Mundy.’

  Dorothy nodded slowly, her mouth tight. ‘I know the name,’ she murmured.

  2

  Tuesday 11th November, Afternoon

  Seated with his back to the choir screen, Creswell Strange let his gaze wander, first to the roof vaulting, as delicate as spokes on a parasol, and then down to the gloom-grey stone of the triforium. Edges and shapes were indistinct, distorted by dust and candle smoke. Iron staples, a supposed temporary fix for gaping cracks, glinted like stars seen through a lens. The more he looked, the more he became aware that no vertical line was parallel to the next, a consequence of the Cathedral’s insubstantial foundations. It generated a feeling akin to seasickness. The wooden carvings above the Canons’ choir stalls had been thrown into sharp relief by the candlelight. From his place he could see a monkey clambering among foliage; writhing sinuous dragons; fearsome wild boars and gambling unicorns. The rest of the seats were barely half full - he had expected a larger congregation for Evensong on this day especially. It was a contrast to earlier when people surged into the Cathedral expecting a service after the silence. Finding themselves disappointed, they had burst into spontaneous hymn-singing.