Bitter Water

by Douglas Clark

  “Good idea. That’ll iron out even her bumps.”

  She sped after her mother and the bedraggled Carla.

  Maisie Firth came up to Hugh’s chair. “Don’t you dare go into that pool until it has been cleaned out, Mr. Carlyle. There could be broken glass in the bottom, so no early morning dip for you tomorrow.”

  “Not to worry, Maisie. I’ll ask Mrs. H. to get her old man onto it first thing in the morning. He won’t like doing an extra fill on a Sunday, particularly with a scrub out as well, but she’ll see he does it, never fear.”

  “It wasn’t her fault that trayful went into the water. I saw what happened. It was knocked out of her hand.”

  “I know that, Maisie, I saw it, too. So I shan’t suggest that her husband does the job just to clear up any mess Mrs. H. may have made. But what I didn’t really see was how the fracas actually boiled up to its finale.”

  “It was getting a bit boisterous long before that.”

  “Maybe, maybe, but I got an impression.”

  “What sort of an impression?”

  “That the final explosion, if I can call it such, was not an accident. It wasn’t natural. It seemed contrived, if you get my meaning.”

  “Stage-managed?”

  “That’s how it appeared to me.”

  “But just an impression, you say?”

  “I was very near. I was actually going to join that group to try to calm things down a bit, so I had my eye on them.”

  “So you saw who started the scrimmage.”

  “That’s my point, Maisie. I was aware somebody gave the initial nudge, but I’m damned if I know who it was. That’s why I say it was a deliberate move, stage-managed to use your own word.”

  “But who would want to push Carla Sanders into the water? Not one of those boys, surely.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said James Murray, who had been standing listening to the conversation. “Getting that blouse wet produced quite a show—a thought that could have occurred to more than one of those young men.”

  Maisie shook her head. “No. They knew that by ducking her they would be bringing to an abrupt end the interlude they were all enjoying so much. If you ask me, I’d say it was the jealous girlfriend of one of those young men who would want to drown Carla Sanders.”

  “That’s a thought,” said Murray. “Had that idea occurred to you, Hugh?”

  “I must confess it hadn’t,” replied Carlyle. “And I don’t think I saw a girl, other than Sanders, in that particular group.”

  3

  Carla Sanders died in the early hours of the following Tuesday morning, little more than forty-eight hours after her unintended dip in Carlyle’s swimming pool.

  She died in her own bed, the one she shared with her live-in lover, Howard Collier. The fact that she died in her own home was an indication of the surprise felt by her doctor. Had he had the slightest inkling that this notable nonentity among his patients was in any danger of losing her life, he would have had her taken to—probably—a private hospital for treatment.

  Not only was he surprised, he was unhappy. No medical man who is called to an otherwise healthy patient, suffering from the relatively minor troubles of a sprained ankle and less-than-serious leg abrasions, expects his patient to die some four days after the causative accident. Hence the surprise. The unhappiness and worry stemmed from the fact that not only had he been unable to make a firm diagnosis of any disease liable to carry her off during her last few days of life, he was equally unable to do so after being called in to find her dead. This meant he was unable to make an unambiguous statement as to the cause of death, as the law requires before a death certificate can be issued.

  Dr. Denyer was in no doubt as to the course he should pursue. The death had to be notified to the Coroner. He, himself, was not legally bound to pass the information direct. He could have left it to the Registrar to do this duty, but most doctors, in cases where death is due to unknown causes, prefer to do their Common Law duty—as being a person “about a body”—and to notify the Coroner of the circumstances which they know are likely to require the holding of an inquest.

  The Coroner, like many of those in the London area where Carla Sanders lived, was doubly qualified in medicine and law. He listened to what Denyer had to say, asked a few pertinent questions and decided, there and then, to enquire into the cause and circumstances of the death. He, accordingly, accompanied Denyer to the scene of the death, viewed the body in the bed, and then had his officer take a statement from Denyer while he, himself, rang the Professor of Pathology whom he and Scotland Yard often called upon in cases of suspicious death, and asked the eminent man to be so kind as to perform a full postmortem examination.

  The body was, as a result, delivered to the Professor, who reported to the Coroner two days later that though the cause of death could well be natural, it was of so uncommon a nature as to be rated as highly obscure and, therefore, merited investigation. He added that in his opinion the circumstances in which Carla Sanders had contracted the disease should be discovered as a matter of high priority lest others should be at risk from the same source and because the strain was so virulent. In Carla Sanders’ case the attack had been fulminating and encephalitic. So much so, in fact, that the Professor gave it as his opinion that there was a likelihood of the disease having been induced in the girl with criminal intent. He finished by saying that even if this were not so, the danger to public health demanded a full-scale enquiry.

  The Coroner read the Professor’s report and had no hesitation in calling for a police report much fuller than could be provided by his own Officer. He decided, therefore, and also in view of the fact that Carla Sanders was a well-known actress whose early death had already attracted a great deal of publicity, merely to open the inquest and then adjourn until the main police report should be ready.

  He had no desire to rouse public fears concerning obscure but fatal diseases, so he restricted the opening to determining who Carla Sanders was, identification, when and where she died, and to accepting from the Professor the cause of death as uraemia brought on by an acute infection. Reporters consulted their medical dictionaries and found that uraemia was totally unglamorous, being a condition which results from the failure of the renal function, and, therefore, not newsworthy. The retention in the blood of urinary constituents due to failure of the kidneys to excrete them and the constitutional failure resulting from this breakdown was considered slightly distasteful, particularly in connection with one so glossy and ornamental as the late but curvaceous Miss Sanders.

  Such was the state of play when Detective Chief Superintendent George Masters was summoned by the AC (Crime) and thereupon required to make the enquiry the Coroner had demanded.

  “It’s right up your alley, George,” said Anderson. “This pin-up girl caught this damned disease somehow, and I don’t reckon discovering how is our pigeon. But the Coroner, egged on by the pathologist, reckons there could have been foul play, and that is our business. Though I can’t for the life of me see how we’re going to go about tracking down somebody who fed a virulent bug to a gadabout like Carla Sanders. But, the Coroner has to be satisfied one way or the other so, in view of the medical connotations, you’re the one to see it off. Don’t be too long about it, there’s a good chap.”

  Masters grinned. “Unless I find the pathologist to be right, sir. Pathologists have a happy knack of being right.”

  “Of course they’re right. Sometimes, at least. So do what you have to do, George. It’s just that we could do without obscure infections to wrestle with.”

  “Even if they are instruments of crime, sir?”

  “Get out, George. There’s a file with bags of long-winded medical stuff to read. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. But you’ll have to, and I wish you joy.” As Masters rose to go, Anderson said: “Give my regards to Wanda.”

  “With pleasure, sir, but as you and Mrs. Anderson are dining with us this evening, you’ll be able to give them in person almo
st as soon as I will.”

  Anderson looked surprised. “Tonight? My missus didn’t remind me.” He consulted his desk diary. “Sorry, George, I thought it was tomorrow.”

  “That was yesterday, sir.”

  “What? Oh, yes. Got some of that upstage Langenbach chilled, I hope?”

  “We’re never without it.”

  “Good. See you this evening, then.”

  Though he was now sailing under the slightly false colours of SSCO which was, on paper at least, a civilian appointment, Green was still regarded as a Detective Chief Inspector and was treated and addressed as such by all except the members of Masters’ team who, while respecting his experience, expertise and age, were, nevertheless, on more intimate terms with him than the difference in ranks might normally demand.

  Green, with Detective Sergeants Berger and Irene Tippen—Tip to her friends—was waiting for Masters on his return from the AC’s office. Green, as Masters’ number two, had always been accustomed to giving a warning order to the other members of the firm whenever Masters was called in by Anderson, because this indicated more often than not that a case had come up which could involve them all.

  “Who, what, where, how?” began Green as Masters entered the office. “The mayor of Ashby-cum-Fenby? Ashby-de-la-Zouch? Ashby Folville? Ashby St. Ledgers?”

  “We know you’re a map buff,” said Berger, “but there’s no need to parade the fact that you know the Ordnance Survey Index off by heart.”

  “Just showing interest, lad.”

  “Showing off, you mean.”

  “Is it out of town, Chief?” asked Tip. “If so, I’d better ring through and ask for the car to be filled up.”

  “If you’ve been reading your papers this last few days, you’d know that the star of the new show, Round the Barley, appeared for one night only and has now died.”

  “The Sanders floozie?” asked Green. “What’s there to investigate about her? I know she’s snuffed it, of course. You couldn’t help seeing it in the papers, but it said she died naturally of some attack of the staggers.”

  “Staggers?” queried Tip.

  “Disease that knocks off cows,” supplied Green, airily. “And for the information of Sarn’t Berger, to stagger also means to arrange in such a way that some parts stick out further than others, and if you’ve ever seen that lass stripped for action you’d know what that can mean in the flesh. She’d have made a good ship’s figurehead, breasting the waves an’ all that.”

  “You’re running on a bit, aren’t you?” asked Berger. “What’s your beef about? We don’t even know what the job is yet.”

  “Forget it,” commanded Masters, sitting down at his desk and opening the file. He looked up. “Despite anything that may have been reported in whatever papers you read, Carla Sanders died of a really vicious attack of Weil’s disease.”

  “Viles?” asked Green. “Never heard of it.”

  “Weil’s. WEILS,” spelled Masters. “Or to give it the scientific name, leptospirosis. Fulminating and encephalitic leptospirosis.”

  “Fulminating meaning quick as lightning, Chief?” asked Tip.

  “More or less, and encephalitic means that it caused inflammation of the brain, as viral infections sometimes do. Encephalitis may occur as a complication of the more common infectious diseases but not all that often, perhaps. I think, for instance, that it only crops up in one out of a thousand cases of measles, so that will give you some idea of its prevalence.

  “Prevalence being important?” asked Green.

  “I think it has a bearing on why we have been given the case. Rarity perhaps rather than prevelance.”

  “I see. How do you catch this what’s-his-name? Leptospirosis?”

  Masters looked at him and said without any trace of humour: “From the urine of infected rats.”

  Green’s face set in a disbelieving mask.

  “Talking of urine, you’re not taking the mickey, are you, George?”

  “No. I’m not. It’s the truth, unpleasant as it may sound. And I’m not going into full details or we’ll really complicate things too much for our own understanding, but I’ll just tell you that leptospirae are a group, or genus, of spiral microorganisms normally found in rodents, in which they cause no harm. When transmitted to man by these animals, however, they give rise to very serious illnesses.”

  “It’s the plague all over again,” said Tip. “That came from rats.”

  “Bubonic, though, that time,” Berger reminded her.

  “I know that. It was just that the similarity struck me.”

  “Quite right, too,” approved Masters. “We’ve been asked to investigate the death just in case there could be the chance of a major outbreak.”

  Green scratched one ear. “That sounds as if we’ve been given the job of finding the infected rat that did it.”

  “In a nutshell, yes. And before you ask why anybody should tip onto our plates what sounds like a completely insoluble problem, I’ll tell you the two reasons given to me. Both were supplied by the pathologist.

  “First, he believes the attack was so vicious that the poison could have been deliberately fed to Carla Sanders or, second, that there is some source of infection of so virulent and fatal a nature that in the interest of public health it should be tracked down. And that is roughly the point Tip made and why I commended her for it.

  “But to continue. As Weil’s is not a notifiable disease—don’t ask me why—the health authorities are in no way bound to investigate, though they would obviously be called in to clear it up should we discover a plague spot.”

  Tip asked: “With all the marvellous drugs at their disposal, couldn’t the doctors have saved her?”

  “That is a reasonable question and one to which I have no answer,” confessed Masters. “I shall have to read it up and consult the medics.”

  “So where do we start?” asked Green.

  “First things first, I think, Bill. Investigate her recent comings and goings and—in case there are criminal connotations—try to pick up hints as to means, method, opportunity and motive for killing her. I know one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When Wanda and I saw her on stage about a week ago, at the first night of Round the Barley, she was very much alive and kicking.”

  “You saw her?” demanded Green, as though accusing Masters of holding back information.

  “Wanda had two tickets given to her to see the opening night. That was the only performance Carla Sanders appeared in. Wanda heard next day that she had fallen down a flight of steps between the stage and her dressing room and damaged an ankle badly enough to keep her out of the show for a few nights.”

  “When you say Wanda heard about it, where did she get that titbit from?”

  “From a friend she spoke to on the phone the next day.”

  “I see. Just checking,” grinned Green. “I’d not like to hear of Wanda consorting with any of these leptospirosis types. We want to steer her clear of anything like that.”

  Masters laughed. “She’ll be touched by your concern, Bill.”

  Green grunted and held his hand out for one of Berger’s cigarettes.

  “Motive will be important, Chief,” said Berger, putting his cigarette packet back in his pocket and ignoring Green’s outstretched hand. “They’re a matey lot on the surface, these theatrical types, calling each other darling all the time. But passions run high, don’t they, in that set? Envy of somebody else getting a coveted role, jealousy at somebody else’s success, anger at being upstaged or whatever?”

  “So we are led to believe,” murmured Masters.

  “That’s our starting point settled then, is it?” grunted Green, sarcastically.

  “It could be,” said Tip, “and don’t get all grumpy just because Sergeant Berger didn’t give you a cigarette. You’ve got plenty of your own. I bought you a new packet this morning.”

  “Did you, petal? Ah! So you did. They are here in my pocket. I’d for
gotten.”

  “Liar,” retorted Berger.

  “Watch it, lad.”

  Berger ignored him and turned to Masters, who was reading the file. “The Victory Theatre is pretty old, isn’t it, Chief?”

  Masters looked up. “I imagine so. It gives me the impression of being late Victorian, probably Edwardian. What’s your point?”

  “Old buildings—like old theatres, I mean, Chief—are bound to have rats running about. Under the stage and up in all that clobber above the stage.”

  “The flies?”

  “If that’s the name, yes, Chief. There’s all manner of food for them. Stagehands taking in sandwiches, actresses with boxes of chocolates in the dressing rooms, doormen brewing up in their bothies, and so on. Couldn’t she have picked something up at the Victory while she was rehearsing this new play? Say she’d eaten a chocolate or a biscuit that she didn’t notice had been nibbled. Couldn’t that have given her this Weil’s thing?”

  Masters sat back. “You may well have a point there, Sergeant. I think you should do something about it.”

  “Right, Chief. Tip and I will look into it.”

  “Go hunting for rats?” Tip shivered.

  “We’ll ask at the theatre if anybody has ever seen rats there, and we’ll get the theatre hands to set traps. Any rats we catch we give to forensic and ask them to tell us whether they are leptospirosis carriers.”

  “And if they are?”

  Berger shrugged. “We warn everybody and get them to delouse the joint over next weekend. End of case.”

  “It would certainly be the simplest solution,” agreed Masters, “and we shouldn’t overlook it. So I’d like you and Tip to undertake that chore straightaway.”

  “Now, Chief?”

  “I think so. It is Friday morning, so somebody at the theatre should be able to set traps today and, if they catch a rat, we could arrange for it to go to forensic for testing tomorrow. Tests would not take long, as the laboratory people would know what they were looking for and could go for it without any preliminaries. That would leave time for a battue against any further rats from after the show tomorrow night until curtain up on Monday.”