The Insanity of Murder

by Felicity Young

  ‘Beamish, what are you doing here?’ Eva spat.

  ‘I’m sorry sir, I couldn’t stop him,’ the constable said to Pike.

  ‘Well,’ Pike said to the young attendant, ‘explain yourself.’

  ‘I want to help. I had my suspicions he was up to something untoward. I’m sorry. I should have asked more questions. I know a way into the building.’

  ‘Shall I take him back, sir?’ the constable asked Pike.

  ‘No. Show us how to get into this building, Mr Beamish.’

  Beamish led them around the back of the building and pointed to a pair of black wooden doors, the kind that lead down to a coal cellar.

  ‘You should be able to get in through there,’ he said.

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ Pike muttered to himself. The doors were chained shut, but the wood was old and rotting and it did not take much to prise them apart. They threw them open, revealing a soot-blackened coal chute. Pike tore off his jacket and bowler and handed them to Dody. She unpinned her straw hat and added it to the bundle, which she in turn handed to Eva for safekeeping.

  Pike breathed out heavily. There was no time to argue with Dody now. Sliding on his rear, he followed the constable down the chute and into the maw, Dody’s feet hard against his back as she shot down behind him.

  They picked themselves up off the dirty floor, ankles turning on stray lumps of coal. The constable fumbled for his matches and illuminated a light switch. They found themselves in a coal cellar cum boiler room.

  Beamish joined them, materialising within a cloud of coal dust

  ‘Cor, what’s that smell, sir?’ the constable exclaimed.

  Pike sniffed the air, at first unable to distinguish anything but coal dust. The officer began prising off the lid of a large wooden barrel. As the lid was loosened, Pike caught the familiar aroma of preserving chemicals. That constable must have the nose of a bloodhound, he thought as the lid rolled along the floor and clattered to a rest.

  ‘Well done, son,’ he said as he peered into the open barrel. For the second time in just a few minutes his stomach flipped. A corpse was curled knees-up in the barrel, completely submerged in chemicals, on the surface of which floated a blanket of hair.

  Pike stepped aside so Dody could look. ‘It’s the body of a middle-aged woman in formalin,’ she said. Relief that this was not Florence was clearly evident in her voice. She pushed the hair aside and tilted the head, exposing the colourless facial features.

  Beamish took one look into the barrel and gasped. ‘Oh, God, that’s Mrs Laurentia O’Brien — she’s been missing for weeks.’

  ‘Come on, no time to spare,’ Pike said to his companions, praying to God they’d get to Florence before it was too late. Dody released the corpse’s hair and it dipped below the surface once more.

  Off the coal cellar they found a basic kitchen with stairs leading up to a ground floor containing multiple small rooms. Through the open doors, Pike glimpsed similar equipment to what he’d seen in Bethlem: a swinging chair, a room with several high, closed-in baths and some padded cells, all vacant.

  They came to a closed door with a red danger sign upon it. Pike and Dody exchanged glances.

  ‘In here?’ Pike asked Beamish.

  Beamish nodded.

  Pike signalled to Dody to stand back while he and the constable burst in.

  Inside a cage near the back wall of the room, Florence sat on a three-legged stool. Electrodes were clipped to her earlobes, fingers and bare toes.

  She smiled when she saw Dody. ‘Isn’t this wonderful, Dody. Doctor Fogarty is going to make me better.’

  Chapter Thirty

  Dody rushed towards her sister.

  ‘Stop, foolish woman!’ Fogarty barked, stepping in front of the cage

  ‘Dody, be careful,’ Pike warned, putting a hand on her arm.

  She counted to ten and took some deep breaths. She must not lose her head. ‘It’s all right, Pike,’ she said calmly. ‘I know all about this kind of instrumentation. It’s a Faraday cage, used for electrotherapy. Doctor Lamb told me all about it and various other electrotherapy treatments on the telephone yesterday.’

  She also noticed the polished box she had seen in Fogarty’s office. When she’d described it to Lamb he’d told her it was a Clerk’s machine, used to discharge low doses of electrical voltage directly into the human body.

  She tried to push past Fogarty to reach her sister, but he stopped her with raised hands. ‘No, I don’t think you do know all about it, Doctor McCleland. Not this one, anyway.’

  There was something about his tone that made Dody stop in her tracks. ‘According to Doctor Lamb this kind of contraption is harmless,’ she told Pike, her eyes never leaving Fogarty’s.

  ‘Doctor Lamb’s contraption might be harmless, but mine has been modified to administer a much higher voltage via the cage. The recommended voltage is next to useless, no more than a placebo offering the power of suggestion to troubled women. A higher voltage however—’

  ‘Is deadly,’ Dody cut in.

  ‘So that’s what you’ve been doing with it!’ Beamish said, aghast.

  ‘We saw evidence of the higher voltage in a barrel in your cellar,’ Pike said.

  ‘That O’Brien woman was beyond hope. It was worth a try.’

  ‘You bastard,’ Dody heard Beamish mutter, not quite under his breath.

  ‘And what of my sister?’ Dody demanded.

  ‘After years of trial and error …’ He glanced at the bandages on his fingers, ‘I’ve worked out the optimal voltage. I believe I have finally discovered a cure for certain types of melancholic hysteria, the type your sister has.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘You are a doctor, can’t you see the medical breakthrough in this?’

  Dody glanced at Pike and took in his clenched jaw, the almost imperceptible nod. He wanted her to keep Fogarty talking.

  She swallowed, desperate to release her sister, whose placidity suggested she had been drugged and was unlikely to leave the chair under her own power. Timing was crucial.

  She must fight the impulse to rush in.

  Fogarty stood right next to a mounted electrical switch. If the switch were flicked the cage — and possibly Florence too — would be set alive with electricity.

  ‘Haven’t you done enough experimenting, Doctor? We’ve already found the jars in your storeroom. We know all about your activities,’ Dody said.

  Fogarty smiled. ‘Those specimens belonged to my father, the founder of this place. He was an avid student of Baker Browne’s and disgraced at about the same time. Without men like them, however, men willing to risk a few to cure the many, we would never learn.’

  ‘Oopherectomies, clitoridectomies?’ Dody queried. ‘You don’t practise these kinds of operations here?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what of Mrs Cynthia Hislop?’

  ‘Mrs Hislop was one of my father’s last patients. Even he conceded that her mental state deteriorated after her operation. It was obvious to me, and even to Father towards the end of his life, that those kinds of gynaecological operations do not work unless for physical problems such as polycystic ovary disease.’ He paused, looked Dody up and down. ‘Have you ever been examined for this disease, Doctor?’

  Inside, Dody fumed. Fogarty might think he was more enlightened than his father, but his attitude was still the same. A woman who chose to work in a male-dominated profession had to have something wrong with her to succeed.

  ‘We’re not here to talk about me, Doctor,’ she said, trying to maintain a steady voice.

  ‘What I’m trying to say is that while Father and I remained convinced that the causes of insanity are physiological in nature, we knew an alternative approach to surgery was needed. Electricity, Doctor McCleland, electricity is the way of the future.’

  ‘Medical men have been experimenting with electricity for generations, Doctor Fogarty,’ Dody said.

  ‘And handicapped by the fear of causing death.’

  ‘But
you have no such scruples?’

  ‘Of course I have scruples; I am a doctor, my vocation is to heal. But you have to understand that some of the women here are beyond hope, incurably insane, living miserable, pointless lives. Why not put those lives to good use? Mrs O’Brien was my first failure in years. While I am as vigilant as possible, mistakes are sometimes made. She died for women like your sister, women who can be cured. Surely O’Brien’s miserable life was worth sacrificing for your sister’s energetic and vibrant one? Your sister can be cured, Doctor McCleland.’

  ‘I think it’s you should be in that cage, mate,’ said one of the constables.

  ‘I am willing to bet my reputation that this is the way we should be going,’ Fogarty went on. ‘I can almost guarantee that your sister will not be harmed by this current —’

  ‘Almost is not good enough, Doctor,’ Dody said, her panic rising. Fogarty lifted his hand towards the switch. ‘It will be the making of her!’ And then he shrugged. ‘Then again, if not I can learn from my mistake —’

  Dody lunged for the wires connecting the electrodes to Florence’s body and yanked. The electrodes fell against the cage and the air crackled.

  Simultaneously, Pike dived at Fogarty, shoving him against the cage.

  Dody heard herself scream, ‘Florence! Don’t touch the cage, stay clear of the cage!’

  There was a loud pop. A fizz. Electricity crackled and buzzed. An arcing blue light traced the outline of Fogarty’s spasming form, stuck like wallpaper to the electrified cage.

  Pike reached for the mains and turned the electricity off. Fogarty’s smoking body crumpled to the floor.

  Dody eased her sister up from the stool and guided her out of the cage. Florence began to shake as if recovering some of her senses, perhaps finally aware of what was going on. Dody pulled her into her arms and they swayed, drawing on one another’s strength. She’d faced danger and death before, but nothing equalled the sight of Florence like this, in a cage, facing imminent electrocution.

  ‘Dody, have a look at Fogarty, please,’ Pike said, reminding her that they weren’t finished yet.

  Dody guided her sister to the front door, drew the bolts and handed her into Eva’s comforting embrace.

  After a brief moment in the fresh hair outside, the fumes of cooked flesh and ozone back in the electrotherapy room almost made her choke. Fogarty’s feet, where the current had exited his body to return to ground, were little more than smoking stumps, but he was still breathing.

  Dody addressed the hovering constable. ‘Fogarty’s medical bag must be somewhere around here. See if you can find it. I want to give this man some analgesia.’

  ‘Let him suffer,’ Eva sobbed, ‘like he made us suffer.’

  Dody turned and frowned at her. She had told Eva and Mary to wait outside with Florence, but they were apparently unable to stay away.

  At once Fogarty’s back arched. His mouth opened in a noiseless scream. Then he fell still. Dody felt for his carotid pulse.

  Nothing. He was gone.

  A jubilant cry arose. Dody climbed up from her position at the dead man’s side to see Lady Mary and Mrs Eva Blackburn clasping each other, with Florence looking on, dazed.

  Pike instructed the constable to fetch more men. The site needed to be taped off and searched, and Fogarty’s body removed, as well as Mrs O’Brien’s from the barrel in the cellar. Dody could only pray they would find no more ‘scientific’ failures. Mary and Eva rushed to spread the news to the other inmates.

  When Dody, Florence and Pike exited the treatment building they found themselves blinking under bright sunshine. Dody put her arm around Florence’s tiny waist to support her. Florence looked terrible, her eyes like sunken bruises, her skin petal pale.

  ‘You’re going to be busy here for a while,’ Dody commented to Pike. ‘I’ll take Florence back to the hotel.’

  There was no objection from Florence. Lord, Dody thought, she’d certainly had a rough trot recently — the death of her fiancée, the force feeding, this. Just how much could one woman bear? She hoped that the sedative Fogarty had given her would leave her vague about the events surrounding the Faraday cage. Otherwise, if her sister didn’t have nervous problems before, she might well have them now.

  Pike glanced at a figure hovering several yards away from their group. Pike crooked a finger at him. ‘Mr Beamish, over here please.’

  Beamish dragged his feet over to their group.

  ‘You knew about the specimens in the storeroom?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Hands in pockets, Beamish stared down at his shiny shoes.

  ‘How were they obtained?’

  ‘Like the doctor said, they were collected by his father. We used to keep them on display in a small museum, but people were so repulsed Fogarty decided they needed to be kept out of sight.’

  ‘Why did he not just get rid of them?’

  ‘Sentimental reasons, I suppose – he worshipped his father.’

  Most would be satisfied with their father’s old pipe or hat, Dody thought wryly.

  ‘Did you ever suspect that Fogarty was performing surgical operations on his patients?’

  ‘No, sir, other than the occasional ingrown toenail or dodgy appendix.’ He paused. ‘Am I under arrest?’

  While Pike looked the young man up and down, Dody took in Beamish’s miserable expression, the way he kept on glancing at Florence from under his eyebrows.

  ‘No, but you are to make yourself available for questioning,’ Pike told him. ‘And on no account are you to leave the premises until we are satisfied you were not acting as an accessory to Fogarty. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Once you’ve settled Florence,’ Pike said to Dody as Beamish trudged off, ‘you can report to the coroner. I’ve already submitted a report surrounding the circumstances behind Mrs Hislop’s death. Coupled with what we have in the file — that Hislop paid Fogarty to keep his wife locked up — I’m sure he’ll agree to keep the case open.’ He slammed a fist into his palm. ‘If I could only find something substantial to link Hislop with her death, though.’

  ‘He’s not the only man to keep his wife locked up here, Pike,’ Florence managed, her voice slowly regaining some of its former strength. ‘It seems half the women in here were wrongly committed.’

  ‘He probably used the money to fund his experiments,’ Dody added.

  ‘I’ll see that the place is either totally reorganised or closed down,’ Pike said.

  ‘But what of the women — some have been here for years,’ Florence said, teary now.

  ‘I’ll make sure they are taken care of, given legal representation. Those whose sanity can be proved might gain considerable wealth out of this.’

  Florence shivered. ‘I can’t see how any amount of wealth can make up for what was done to so many here, first by Doctor Fogarty senior and then by his son.’

  ‘I think they’ll be much celebrating in this place tonight,’ he said.

  Dody agreed. ‘Bearing in mind there are still many in this establishment who will need continuing psychiatric care. They can’t all have been detained illegally.’

  ‘True, but this might well mark the beginning of the end of this kind of appalling treatment of women,’ he said.

  ‘Why, Mr Pike, I believe I might make a suffragist of you yet,’ Dody said.

  ‘You might well indeed, Doctor McCleland,’ he said, smiling wearily. He took out his handkerchief and wiped coal dust from her nose. It was an intimate act, and he didn’t seem to care how many people saw it.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The village hotel had probably never been stuffed to such capacity before, Dody reflected as she glanced around the dining room, three days after Fogarty’s death. Someone, at least, was profiting from the investigation into the Elysium Rest Home for Gentlewomen.

  Singh and Hensman had been sent from London to help the local police with staff interviews, the combing of files for criminal activity, and the tracing of patient�
��s relatives. Likewise, Dody and Doctor Lamb worked with local health officials to determine each patient’s health needs, and to arrange transfers or discharges where necessary. They also consulted with the board of directors over the reorganisation of the administration of the rest home. Doctor Lamb had been appointed temporary physician in charge.

  All this meant that Dody and Pike had to resume the charade of being nothing more than professional colleagues. Pike shared a room with Singh, and Dody roomed with Florence, making a romantic tryst impossible. They usually managed to sit at the same table for their evening meal, however, which produced an exquisite kind of torture — a lingering glance or the covert brush of a leg the most either could hope for.

  Over the last three days it had become their custom to hold an informal case meeting over dinner. Before one such meal, while they were waiting to be served, Dody made an announcement to the men of her table: Pike, Singh, Hensman and Doctor Lamb. Florence was absent, having opted to take her supper with the remaining patients at the home.

  ‘I received word from Doctor Spilsbury this afternoon, gentlemen,’ she said. ‘He’s completed the autopsy on Mrs Laurentia O’Brien and concluded that the lady died from a massive electric shock.’

  ‘As you suspected, Doctor McCleland. Do we have a time of death?’ Pike asked.

  ‘He thinks she’d been in the barrel from four to eight weeks.’

  ‘She’d been missing for nine weeks,’ Hensman remarked with smug satisfaction.

  It was obvious to Dody that he was the type of policeman who remained sceptical of forensic science, despite the milestones that had been reached over the last few years.

  ‘The body had been immersed in formalin, Sergeant,’ Dody said. ‘The exact time of death under those circumstances is impossible to ascertain. As it is, one has to take a large tissue sample, slice it, put it under the microscope, and estimate the degree of formalin penetration according to tissue colouring. The superficial tissue will be greyish-green, but the red brown of fresher flesh will be retained.’