Fell the Angels

by John Kerr

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The butler, clad in a dressing-gown, appeared from the pantry.

  ‘Has someone gone for Dr Harrison?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I sent MacDonald.’

  ‘We must get a doctor from Balham. Doctor Moore is only ten minutes away.’

  ‘I’ll get cracking.’

  It was well past midnight when the carriage bringing Dr Harrison from Streatham turned into The Priory drive. Taking his black bag, he hurried to the entrance, ablaze with lights, and up the staircase. Cecilia was sequestered in her bedroom with Mrs Clark, and Mary Ann was with Sawyers in the kitchen brewing coffee, leaving Dr Moore, a short, thin man with grey hair and a neatly trimmed beard, alone with Cranbrook, who lay motionless on the bed, wearing a clean nightshirt. Taking his stethoscope from the bag, Dr Harrison listened to Cranbrook’s weak heartbeat and then opened his eyes and peered at his dilated pupils.

  ‘Well,’ he said, turning to Dr Moore. ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘In my judgement,’ said Moore, ‘he’s been poisoned. According to the women who found him, he was craving water and vomiting violently before collapsing and losing consciousness.’

  ‘Poison,’ said Harrison, gazing down on Cranbrook’s spectral pallor, his skin cold and clammy to the touch.

  ‘One of the women insists he swallowed chloroform,’ said Moore, pointing to the almost empty bottle. ‘But I doubt it. No one could choke the stuff down.’

  ‘Unconscious,’ said Harrison, ‘violently ill, pulse weak but racing. I doubt he’ll live till morning.’ Summoning Cecilia, accompanied by Mrs Clark, to the sickroom, Dr Harrison asked if she could provide an explanation for her husband’s symptoms.

  ‘Why, I suppose,’ she said, ‘he’s suffered a heart attack. He went for a ride this afternoon, and his horse bolted. It left him weak and unwell. And Charles’s prone to fits of fainting, and was worried about stocks and shares.’

  ‘Your husband is gravely ill,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m afraid he’s dying, and not from consuming chloroform, nor a heart attack. The symptoms are those of an irritant poison, such as arsenic.’

  ‘Arsenic?’ said Cecilia, holding a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God.’ Taking Harrison’s arm, she said, ‘Charles’s cousin is Royes Bell, a Harley Street surgeon, whose partner is the eminent Dr Johnson. If Charles could be dying, I wish to send for them.’

  ‘Of course,’ said both doctors in unison.

  By the time Dr Johnson, a kindly looking older gentleman who served as Vice-President of the Royal College of Physicians, and his young colleague Dr Bell, entered the sickroom, the grandfather clock in the hall had struck three times. Cecilia sat on the bed beside the still form of her husband, stroking his damp hair; Mrs Clark occupied a chair in the corner, and the other servants were keeping a vigil in the kitchen. Doctor Johnson briefly examined Cranbrook and then conferred with his colleagues in the upstairs passageway. Returning to the room, he said to Cecilia, ‘I concur with Dr Moore’s diagnosis. Your husband has been poisoned and is unlikely to survive the night.’

  Cranbrook, hitherto silent, stirred and his eyelids fluttered open. Giving the physicians a wild, incoherent look, he struggled to get out of bed but was forcibly restrained. ‘Charles,’ said Dr Bell, hovering over him, ‘do you recognize me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Cranbrook in a barely audible voice. ‘It’s Royes.’

  ‘Charles,’ said Bell, ‘you’ve swallowed something. What did you take?’

  Looking dazed, Cranbrook blinked uncomprehendingly and then muttered, ‘Laudanum. I … rubbed it on my gums for toothache. I may have swallowed some.’

  ‘Laudanum won’t explain your symptoms,’ said Dr Johnson. ‘You must have taken something else.’ Cranbrook shook his head. ‘You’re in mortal peril,’ continued Johnson. ‘Good God, man, if you’ve taken poison you have a moral duty to tell us.’

  ‘No,’ said Cranbrook with a groan. ‘I’ve only taken laudanum.’ He winced in pain and doubled over.

  ‘Give him a grain of morphia by suppository,’ Johnson instructed Bell. ‘And an injection of brandy in his bloodstream for his heart.’

  ‘Doctor Johnson.’ Mrs Clark stood at his elbow. ‘May I have a private word with you?’ Stepping out into the passage, she leaned close to him and said, ‘I must tell you that Mr Cranbrook has poisoned himself. When I found him, he said, “I’ve taken poison – don’t tell Cecilia”, before he collapsed.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell someone sooner?’ asked Johnson angrily.

  ‘I told Dr Harrison,’ she replied calmly.

  Summoned to the passageway, Harrison hotly denied Mrs Clark’s assertion. ‘You merely stated he’d swallowed chloroform,’ he said, pointing an accusatory finger. ‘That you smelt it on his breath.’ The three returned to the bedroom, where Cranbrook had lapsed again into unconsciousness. He lay in his bed, groaning, with Cecilia sitting at his bedside, clutching her arms as the physicians retired downstairs for coffee, and Mrs Clark went to her room to snatch a few hours’ rest.

  Despite the direst predictions, Cranbrook survived the long night, though it was evident to Cecilia, studying his contorted features and the damp hair at his temples in the dim light of early morning that he had only hours to live unless other, drastic measures were taken. Summoning Mary Ann to sit with him, she went to the writing desk in her room and composed a brief note, an appeal to Sir William Gill, the personal physician to the queen and a close acquaintance of Cecilia’s father, to come at once to attend her husband, who is deathly ill.

  As it happened, the arrival of Dr Gill, the most eminent physician in the land, coincided with that of Sir Harry and Lady Cranbrook, summoned by Cecilia at first light. Quickly advised by Dr Johnson of the circumstances surrounding Cranbrook’s collapse and the conclusions drawn by the team of doctors, Gill proceeded to the sickroom. During the course of Gill’s examination, Cranbrook briefly regained consciousness, semi-delirious and complaining of excruciating abdominal pain.

  ‘This is not disease,’ said Gill, leaning down over Cranbrook. ‘You have been poisoned. Pray tell how it happened.’

  Sweating profusely, Cranbrook muttered weakly, ‘Laudanum.’

  ‘This is more than laudanum,’ said Gill. ‘If you reveal the name of the poison, we will try an antidote.’

  With a groan, Cranbrook closed his eyes and rolled on his side. Shaking their heads, the physicians withdrew and, notwithstanding the tears and fervent prayers of his wife and family, Cranbrook slipped deeper into unconsciousness, writhing in agony, until, at last, as the sun reached its zenith, he took a sharp breath, uttered a long, rasping gargle, shuddered, and was still. Wiping away a tear, Cecilia rose from her bedside chair and walked out into the passage, where Cranbrook’s parents were in hushed conversation with young Dr Bell. Cecilia approached Lady Cranbrook, who was weeping, took her hand, and simply said, ‘Charles is gone.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘ANTIMONY,’ SAID DUNCAN Cameron, seated in his study by a brightly burning fire with his friend and colleague, James Clifton. ‘A most unusual choice of poison.’

  ‘Antimony, you say,’ said Clifton, sipping his brandy. ‘Never heard of it. This was the stuff that killed Charles Cranbrook?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Cameron. ‘As a chemist, I’m well acquainted with it. A brittle, bluish-white metal, highly caustic. When you mix the metal’s oxide with cream of tartar, you produce tartar emetic, small, white crystals.’ He stroked Smith, the orange cat lying on the sofa beside him, eliciting a purr. ‘The autopsy performed on Cranbrook found traces of tartar emetic everywhere, in his mouth, throat, and stomach, but especially in the intestines.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ said Clifton, listening to the wind and rain outside the window. ‘What does the poison do?’

  ‘In extremely small doses,’ said Cameron, ‘say one or two grains, it has an emetic effect, inducing vomiting. Three grains can be used as a sedative, resulting in unconsciousness. Any larger dose is invariably fatal. A single grain a
dministered to Smith, for example,’ – he patted the cat on the head – ‘and he’d be as dead as a doornail.’ The cat leapt from the sofa, swishing its ringed tail in the face of the black Scottie dog curled at Cameron’s feet. ‘The doctor who conducted the autopsy,’ continued Cameron, ‘Joseph Payne, good man, concluded that Cranbrook ingested between thirty and forty grains, over ten times the lethal dose. It completely destroyed the poor fellow’s digestive tract, turning his bowels to shredded pulp.’

  ‘How ghastly.’ Clifton rose from his chair and walked to the trolley to pour an inch of brandy. ‘Do I presume,’ he said as he returned to his chair by the fire, ‘that the mother of the deceased has engaged your services in order to cast doubt on the finding that Cranbrook was murdered?’

  ‘Presume nothing,’ said Cameron. ‘Establish the facts and follow where they lead you.’

  ‘Yes, but according to the newspaper accounts, the inquest raised the possibility that Cranbrook took his own life. What, then, has the good lady hired you to do?’

  ‘To identify her son’s murderer,’ said Cameron. ‘The inquest chiefly concerned itself with the scandalous affair between Mrs Cranbrook and Dr Gully—’

  ‘Ah, yes. The well-known practitioner of hydrotherapy.’

  ‘And by all accounts rather carelessly reached the conclusion that Cranbrook was murdered, without identifying a suspect, and leaving open the possibility of suicide.’

  ‘But certainly suicide is a plausible explanation.’

  ‘While there are many men, Clifton,’ said Cameron, uncrossing his long legs and leaning forward in his chair, ‘who desire to end their lives, there are very few, if any, who desire to torture themselves in the process. I can assure you, my good fellow, that death by a massive dose of tartar emetic is torture of the most horrific kind, considering how many painless methods exist for self-annihilation.’

  ‘O-ho!’ said Clifton. ‘I take your point. This should prove a fascinating case. How may I assist?’

  ‘I intend to begin,’ said Cameron, ‘with a precise reconstruction of the twenty-four hours before Cranbrook’s collapse. Meanwhile, I should like you to interview the witnesses questioned by Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Clifton, tossing back the last of his brandy. ‘I shall start in the morning.’

  The following day, bright and sunny after the storms that had swept across southern England in the night, Duncan Cameron slipped on his bowler and departed from his flat on Beaufort Gardens in Knightsbridge. With his leather case under his arm, he walked to Pont Street and climbed aboard the omnibus for the short trip to Victoria Station. Seated in the swaying railway compartment, he reread his précis of the lengthy report of the coroner’s inquest conducted two months following Charles Cranbrook’s death, shaking his head at the coroner’s court’s obsessive preoccupation with the illicit love affair between Cecilia Cranbrook and Dr James Gully. Arriving at Balham Station, Cameron made his way to the Bedford Hotel, site of the inquest, and then walked to 21 Bedford Hill Road. ‘Orwell Lodge,’ he murmured as he studied the small house with its neatly tended flowerbeds and window-boxes. Noting the ‘To Let’ sign in the window, he slipped his watch from his fob pocket, checked the time, and began strolling at a leisurely pace in the direction of Tooting Bec Common, turning onto the gravel drive that led to a large, white, neo-gothic house, by far the most impressive in the vicinity. ‘Ah,’ he said aloud. ‘The Priory.’ Again consulting his watch, he noted the elapsed time, four minutes thirty-eight seconds, and walked around to the stables behind the house. Finding the stalls empty and neatly swept, and observing that the curtains were drawn in all of the windows of the house, he moved furtively to the kitchen door, removed a tool from his pocket that resembled a penknife and quickly picked the lock.

  The house was empty and dark, with slipcovers shrouding the furniture in the drawing-room. With his shoes creaking on the bare parquet, Cameron moved to the entrance hall and ascended the staircase. He turned the knob and peered into the oak-panelled bedroom on the left, devoid of furnishings, and then went to the small bedroom near the top of the stairs. Quietly opening the door, he found the room as its deceased former occupant had left it; a single bed against the wall by a window, a bedside table with a lamp, a dresser, and two straight-back chairs. According to the testimony of the upstairs maid at the inquest, Cranbrook had staggered from the room in his nightshirt at approximately half past nine and then gone back inside where, moments later she and Mrs Clark had found him leaning out the window, vomiting. Pushing back the curtains, Cameron gazed out of the window, which looked down on the slate roof of the floor below. Closing the curtains, he studied the bed where Cranbrook had died, wondering why he was sleeping there rather than with his wife in the master bedroom. And why the other woman, Mrs Clark, was with the deceased’s wife in the bedroom when Cranbrook fell ill. Though neither question had been answered during the inquest, he deduced that something was amiss between husband and wife.

  Exiting the mansion, Cameron walked the short distance into town and, as it was only noon, stopped in at the Wheatsheaf, a public house opposite the railway station. Taking a seat at the bar, he ordered a half pint of the local bitter and glanced around the dimly lit room the tables of which were occupied by local regulars. ‘I say,’ said Cameron to the barman as he paddled the foam from Cameron’s glass, ‘I don’t suppose any of your customers were employed by the late Mr Cranbrook at The Priory?’

  Sliding the glass across the scarred oak counter, the barman gave Cameron a curious look and said, ‘Well, there’s MacDonald.’ He nodded toward a table in the back where two men sat with their pints. ‘Looked after the old boy’s garden.’ Everyone in town, Cameron surmised, had paid rapt attention to the massive publicity surrounding the case and would assume he was merely another reporter. ‘Thanks,’ he said, taking a swallow of beer and leaving a shilling on the bar. Walking to the table in the back with his glass, he said, ‘It’s MacDonald, isn’t it?’

  The former gardener looked up at the stranger and said, ‘Why, yes.’

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ said Cameron pleasantly. ‘I’m doing a story….’

  ‘Quite all right,’ said MacDonald, sliding over his chair. ‘This here is my mate Willoughby.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Cameron. ‘I understand you were employed at The Priory?’

  ‘’At’s right. The gardener, until we was all let go. And looked after the stables.’

  ‘The stables?’ said Cameron. ‘I thought this fellow Griffiths—’

  ‘Griffiths was sacked,’ said MacDonald with a trace of anger. ‘By Mr Cranbrook, rest ’is soul.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Oh, a month or so before the … the, ah, incident.’

  ‘I see. Did you happen to see Mr Cranbrook on the day he fell ill?’

  ‘I did indeed.’ Pausing to take a swallow of beer, MacDonald said, ‘’E came home early and insisted I saddle Cremorne, one of the ’orses.’

  ‘Insisted?’

  ‘Well, I thought it was wrong, as I’d already exercised ’im. But I did as told, and the gelding run off with ’im. All the way to Mitcham Common.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘And when he got back, ’e’s as pale as a ghost and sweatin’. I supposed somethin’ was wrong with ’im, but what do I know? I’m just the gardener.’

  ‘He seemed unwell?’ said Cameron.

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. Sawyers told me ’e ’ad to carry ’im up the stairs.’

  ‘Sawyers?’

  ‘The butler.’

  Cranbrook appeared to be ill, considered Cameron, when he returned from his ride, so ill that he had to be helped upstairs by the butler. Was it possible he’d already been poisoned? ‘Well, thank you, my man,’ said Cameron, rising from his chair. ‘This has been quite useful.’ He hurried from the tavern into the bright sunshine, arriving at the station just in time to make the 1.20 to Victoria. Thence he proceeded by omnibus to 87 Theobald’s Road, the chambers at Gray’s Inn Cranbr
ook had shared with his law partner, Edward Hope. Admitted by a secretary, Cameron found Hope at his desk in a small, tidy office with a view of the Inn’s emerald courtyard. He was a pleasant-looking young man, with sandy blond hair, worn short in the current fashion, wearing a black frockcoat, polka-dot cravat, and dove-grey waistcoat.

  ‘How may I help you, sir,’ said Hope somewhat eagerly, as his law practice had flagged since the demise of his partner.

  ‘My name’s Cameron. Duncan Cameron. My card.’ He handed Hope an engraved calling card.

  ‘Consulting detective,’ said Hope as he studied the card.

  ‘Yes. My services have been engaged by Lady Cranbrook.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Hope with a startled expression. ‘Please sit down.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Cameron sat in an armchair. ‘Did you see Cranbrook,’ he began, ‘on the day preceding his death?’

  ‘Why, yes,’ said Hope. ‘We lunched together at Charles’s club. He came into the office that morning, complaining that he’d been ill.’

  ‘This would have been …’

  ‘Monday. He’d spent the previous night at his club. At Boodle’s.’

  ‘Where you had your luncheon?’

  ‘No. Our luncheon was at White’s.’

  ‘I find it curious,’ said Cameron, ‘that Cranbrook would have dined at Boodle’s.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because members are required to dress for dinner.’

  ‘Charlie kept evening wear at Boodle’s, as he often took a room there for the night.’

  ‘Was he at odds with any of the other members?’ asked Cameron. ‘Someone with a score to settle?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Hope with a dismissive gesture. ‘Charlie had no enemies. In any case, he mentioned that he’d been sick on his way to the office. But he was feeling better over our luncheon. In fact, I’d say he was fine.’

  ‘After your luncheon,’ said Cameron, ‘did he return to work?’