The Art of Murder jp-3

by Michael White

  ‘Inspector,’ said Colette Newman.

  ‘Interesting news, I hope, Doctor.’

  ‘There were literally dozens of prints in the ICU, and a fair bit of DNA. I managed to get several good, clear prints of Hickle’s as well as some skin flakes and hairs matching his DNA.’

  ‘Well, that’s all useful.’

  ‘I guess so, but you realise, of course, that it doesn’t mean that much. The doctor was often in the ICU. It would have been more unusual if there had been no trace of his DNA or prints there.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that, Dr Newman. But every bit of evidence helps. Thanks for processing things so fast.’

  There was a rap on the door. Pendragon could see Turner’s familiar outline and the door opened immediately. ‘Sergeant,’ Pendragon said. ‘You have a DVD in your hand.’

  Turner held it up and waved it in the air. ‘Took a lot of persuading, I can tell you.’

  Pendragon followed the sergeant into the corridor and through the third door on the left, the Media Room. Turner flicked on a few machines and pulled a chair close to a pair of monitors on the desk. Pendragon sat back a little, watching the computer boot up and the video analyser go through its litany of sounds as it analysed the DVD. Turner found the part of the film he was after. ‘I haven’t seen it myself yet,’ the sergeant began. ‘They have a master control centre for all the cameras — there’re seventeen of them inside the hospital and another fourteen on the outside of the building. The operator gave me all the films from nine until ten, along with the numbers of the cameras that we’d be interested in — three of them inside and one outside. I can programme the analyser to search just those films. Shall we start with the camera nearest the ICU, sir?’ he asked, swivelling in his chair.

  Pendragon nodded. ‘Probably best.’

  Turner’s fingers skittered over the control panel in front of the two flat-screen monitors and an image appeared on the left hand. It was a shot of the corridor leading from the main building into the area around the ICU administration desk. People passed in and out of shot. First, a nurse, then a pair of doctors. A patient using a Zimmer frame took several minutes to walk along the stretch of corridor covered by the camera. The clock in the corner of the screen clicked on. At 9.08 an orderly in a green hospital one-piece suit and tight-fitting cap appeared, head down, moving quickly along the corridor. As the orderly reached the edge of the camera’s field, they lifted a clipboard to obscure their face even more. Then they darted through a door.

  The clock ticked along. At 9.14 the orderly emerged from the room, clipboard again held in front of their face. They walked back along the corridor, and at that precise moment the improvised bomb went off. There was a dull thud through the speakers, and on the screen Pendragon and Turner could see smoke billowing out of the door the orderly had left ajar. Several members of staff ran quickly towards the source of the explosion. The only person moving in the opposite direction was the orderly. Glancing around furtively, they stepped into the ICU.

  The clock moved on. At 9.17, the figure emerged from the ICU, clipboard held in front of them. Turning right, they walked quickly along the corridor towards the camera, head down. It had been obvious from the moment the orderly had appeared that it was not Dr Geoff Hickle. The person on the screen was slightly built and at least six inches shorter than the man they had suspected.

  ‘Stop there, Turner,’ Pendragon said. ‘So this must be his accomplice.’

  ‘Reckon so, guv.’

  ‘I need some time to think. You must have some paperwork to be getting on with.’

  The sergeant nodded.

  ‘And, Turner, can you switch off the lights as you go out?’

  Chapter 51

  Bedlam Hospital for the Insane, St George’s Fields,

  Southwark, November 1888

  The hansom passed through the imposing gates of the Bethlehem Royal Hospital and Sonia Thomson heard the cabbie whip the horse to make it speed up. He had not really wanted to take her here in the first place. ‘Bedlam?’ he had said. ‘What d’ya wanna go there for?’ She had given him her chilliest look, prompting him to mumble an apology.

  The journey had passed in a blur. She was still numb — the result of reading the batch of letters she had received that morning. Arriving together from America on the post steamer, they constituted what was really a single, long missive. At times, it was rambling and muddled, but it had shocked her, terrified her, and, at some points, brought an inner fury bubbling to the surface. She had always loved her husband, always respected him, always considered him to be brilliant, determined, hardworking and dedicated, but she had also always known that, in other ways, he was weak. Weak like most men were. But the graphic way in which the author of the letters, a certain William Sandler, had described Archibald’s weaknesses, and had at the same time offered so much information about himself and his own evil-doing … Well, it had left her reeling.

  She had as yet barely had time to absorb the contents of the letters, but a part of her — the logical, well-educated part, for she came from a long line of successful academics — had already started to ask some difficult questions. Foremost among them: What could or should she do with the information in her possession? It was clearly some sort of crazed confession, but was it genuine? Was it really a letter from Jack the Ripper? How could she be sure? True, the Whitechapel murders seemed to have stopped with the demise of Mary Kelly. And what of the description of how Archibald had ended up in the sewer? If the toshers she had paid off had told the truth, then William Sandler’s version would have been entirely accurate. Even so, that did not mean Sandler — or Tumbril, as Archibald had known him — really was The Ripper. Those parts of the account could have been entirely fabricated.

  But it was not this that preyed the most on her mind. Her most pressing problem was not the matter of who the author of the letters might be, but rather what she should do with them. She could not make them public without ruining her husband’s name and reputation. Few people knew the truth of what had happened to Archibald. As far as the public were concerned, he was a kidnap victim abandoned and left for dead in a filthy sewer. The Clarion had gone to great lengths to report that their editor was recovering from the physical incapacity caused by his ordeal. She would do nothing to contradict that story. For what good would it do anyone to know that her husband had been so thoroughly duped by Jack the Ripper?

  The cab drew to a halt and Sonia climbed down on to the gravel driveway. Walking slowly around the back of the cab, she approached the steps and found Dr Irvin Braithwaite, standing with hand extended in welcome. He was a tall, thin man, not unattractive in a scholarly, distant way. He wore black and his greying mutton-chop whiskers gave him an added air of distinction. He was the Head Physician at the hospital and had been caring for her husband for over two months. In this task he had been nothing but patient and considerate.

  ‘Mrs Thomson,’ the doctor said, squeezing her hand and bowing very slightly. He was such an old-fashioned fellow, Sonia thought, nodding back. ‘Come, let us see your husband straight away.’

  They passed between the portico’s massive Neoclassical columns and moved on through the grand doorway and into an echoing entrance hall. Dr Braithwaite led them to the left, through some double doors and into a wide corridor.

  ‘How is my husband?’ Sonia asked.

  ‘We are optimistic,’ Braithwaite replied, guardedly.

  She gave him a doubting look, which he studiously ignored. ‘He has recovered well from the lobotomy and is responding to treatment with cocaine. He is much calmer now. I’m thinking of moving him on to a new drug, a substance called lithium carbonate. Some patients have shown great improvement with this. Ah, here we are.’

  They stopped outside a metal door. Braithwaite produced a key and turned it in the lock. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Thomson, I would like to go first.’ He opened the door slowly and peered in. Then he took two steps into the room and beckoned Sonia to follow him.

>   The room was small but looked surprisingly comfortable, with its barred window overlooking the manicured gardens to the front of the building. It was furnished with a bed, a side table and a couple of chairs. Archibald was sitting at the end of the bed, stiff-backed and staring straight ahead, his face utterly expressionless. He was wearing a dark brown dressing-gown over a crisp white nightshirt. His hair had been neatly combed. Sonia walked up to him and took his hand. It was icy cold, and he did not look up. She caught a whiff of carbolic.

  When he had first been admitted to the London Hospital on Mile End Road, Archibald had been barely conscious. Over the period of a week, he had begun to mend. In some ways he had been remarkably lucky. He had suffered rat bites to his legs, but had thankfully not contracted any deadly disease from them. He was malnourished and dehydrated, but the physical ills had been relatively easy to treat. The problems had started just as he was growing physically stronger and begining to remember what had happened to him. Seemingly overnight, he appeared to lose his senses. He began to rant and rave, to shout incoherently. It had been possible to grasp a few words here and there, but nothing comprehensible. He had become violent, uncontrollably so, and as his mental state deteriorated, it became impossible to treat him in the hospital. That was when the decision had been made to move him to Bedlam. For his own good.

  The doctors at the asylum had tried to calm Archibald. They had thrown him into a freezing cold bath, tied him to a bed and left him for twenty-four hours, and then tried spinning him at high speed in a chair for ten minutes. He had simply grown worse, ranting incoherently. Finally, with Sonia Thomson’s permission, they had conducted a lobotomy. That had shut him up. Indeed, Archibald had now been silent for five weeks. He had not moved a limb by his own volition. Everything had to be done for him.

  At the insistence of Dr Braithwaite, Sonia had stayed away until now. She received formal letters each week, detailing her husband’s progress, or lack thereof, and she had done as the doctor advised. Then, upon the prompting of an Oxford Professor of Medicine who had been a close friend of her father’s, she had written to Braithwaite telling him that she would be visiting Archibald in two days’ time. The doctor could do little other than comply with her wishes.

  ‘I’ll leave you alone together, Mrs Thomson,’ he said, and turned towards the door. ‘A nurse will be outside should you require anything. Please come and talk to me before you leave.’

  Sonia heard the door close behind him. She glanced at her husband. He stared back at her, unseeing. She gathered her thoughts. The friend of the family who had advised her to visit her husband had said she should simply talk to him as though nothing had changed. But at that moment, staring at Archibald’s marble-still face, she realised that it was no easy thing to do.

  ‘I thought you would like to know that everyone at the paper is thinking of you, my darling,’ she began, swallowing back tears. ‘They have been very kind. And …’ She could no longer stem the tears and started to weep into her hands. Archibald did not react. After a moment, Sonia was able to pull herself together. She cleared her throat and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Then she removed a bundle of letters from her bag.

  ‘I received some letters today, darling. The strangest letters from a man called William Sandler.’ She looked into her husband’s eyes to see if the name produced a reaction in him. ‘I think you knew him as Harry … Harry Tumbril. Does that mean anything to you?’

  Archibald stared at her. Silent.

  Sonia felt a stab of fury. ‘Archibald? Husband? Does this letter mean nothing at all to you?’ She waved it in front of his face. He did not react.

  She stood up and leaned over her husband. Grabbing him by the shoulders, she shook him hard. ‘Archibald!’ she shouted, and threw the letters on to the bed beside him. ‘Archie … Archie.’ She fell to her knees in front of him and started to sob again. Looking up, tears running down her cheeks, she grasped his chin in one hand and started to shake his head. ‘ARCHIE!’

  She heard a sound behind her. The door to the corridor had opened. A nurse was standing there.

  ‘Is everything …?’

  Sonia ignored him and slapped her husband’s face hard. His head rocked from the blow, but he simply stared straight ahead.

  ‘Mrs Thomson!’

  The nurse ran over and grabbed Sonia’s arm just as she was about to hit Archibald again. ‘Please, Mrs Thomson!’

  Another male nurse appeared in the doorway, then strode in. Between them they turned Sonia away from her husband’s blank stare, helping her to leave the room. They had almost reached the door when they heard a sound from behind.

  ‘Tumbril.’

  Sonia froze and the men tightened their grip.

  ‘No. Please!’ she cried. ‘Please stop! My husband spoke to me.’

  The nurses looked at each other.

  ‘Please? He said something.’ Sonia pulled away, turning back towards Archibald.

  ‘Tumbril,’ he said quietly. His lips moved, but his face remained frozen, staring straight ahead. The nurses took Sonia’s arms again, lightly now. They too seemed to be transfixed by the sight of the patient speaking.

  ‘Tumbril,’ Archibald repeated, his face a blank mask. ‘TUMBRIL!’ The sound reverberated about the walls of the room, a deafening roar now. The three onlookers stared, petrified and powerless, as Archibald fell forward on to the tiled floor, his forehead hitting the hard surface with a dull thud.

  Dr Braithwaite was yelling something incoherent as he ran into the room, a warder a step behind him. ‘Out of the way!’ he shouted, pushing them aside. He crouched down beside Archibald and, with the help of the warder, slowly turned him over on to his back. Sonia made a strange sound in her throat as though she were choking. The two nurses had let her go and taken a step back.

  Dr Braithwaite checked Archibald’s pulse and pulled up one eyelid. He let out a heavy sigh and his body seemed to sag. Standing, he walked over to Sonia. ‘I’m afraid your husband is dead.’

  ‘NO!’ she cried. ‘No!

  That’s not … NO!’ She threw herself to the floor huddled next to her husband’s body. Then she leaned back, pulling his bloodied head towards her breast and cradling it, sobbing and rocking. The others stood by in silence until Braithwaite crouched down, helped the widow gently to her feet and guided her from the room.

  Chapter 52

  Brick Lane, Stepney, Thursday 29 January, 2.05 p.m.

  Pendragon sat in the swivel chair at the back of the darkened Media Room, the monitor casting a pallid blue haze all around. Apart from a scattering of red power lights, this was the only illumination. He sat back, resting his head against the back of the leather chair, and for a few moments ran through in his mind the first section of The Inner Mounting Flame, one of his favourite pieces of music.

  An incongruous thought came to him. He was transported back twenty-six years into his rented flat in Oxford. He had graduated that summer. Now it was late autumn and he still had not decided what he was going to do with his life, but he had just suffered the greatest trauma he had yet known. He had discovered that Cheryl, his girlfriend of two years, had been sleeping with his best friend at college, Gareth.

  It was 7 a.m. when Cheryl turned up at the flat they had shared. He had been up half the night waiting for her. He had opened the front door, saying nothing. When she tried to speak, he put a finger to his lips and pointed to a chair in the living-room. Then, with his mind in a numb, nowhere land, he had paced over to the record player, put on The Inner Mounting Flame, sat in another chair directly facing Cheryl, and insisted they both stay and sit and listen to the whole side of the LP. The moment the last notes died away, he had stood up, put the record in its sleeve and ignored Cheryl when she called his name. Still silent, he had walked into the bedroom, placed the record in his case of albums and picked up his two bags. Reappearing in the lounge with the sum of his possessions, he walked past her, through the door and out on to the pavement.

  Now
he sat up, lifted his head and saw the light from the blue monitor dominating the room. A single word had popped into his head — Eberswalde. Eberswalde … the town a few miles from Berlin. He had heard that name years ago. Yes, it was all coming back. Eberswalde … His uncle Sid had been a corporal in the 1st Armoured Division. He had been stationed in Germany in the late 1950s. Uncle Sid was always regaling Jack with stories from his halcyon days in the army. One of his favourites had been about the time he almost went AWOL because of a debauched weekend spent in the town of Eberswalde. There was never an army base in Eberswalde.

  A cold chill ran down Pendragon’s spine. He jumped up from the chair, yanked open the door of the Media Room and dashed into the hall. He strode towards his office. He could see it was empty and ran on to the Briefing Room. That too was empty. Retracing his steps, he went over to the main desk where Rosalind Mackleby was on duty. ‘Sergeant, have you seen Turner?’

  ‘Here, sir.’

  Pendragon spun round to see Jez walking towards him munching a ham sandwich. ‘Spot of late lunch,’ he added, holding up the other half still in the packet.

  ‘Turner … the film from the party at Berrick and Price? Can you get it — right now?’

  ‘Sure. But …’

  ‘Now!’

  Pendragon was in one of the two chairs in front of the monitors in the Media Room staring anxiously at the machines when Turner came in with the DVD in his hand, his mouth crammed with bread and meat. He sat down and slid the disk into a slot in the front of one of the machines, on a rack perpendicular with the control desk. ‘Give us a sec,’ he said, and tapped at a couple of buttons. ‘So, what’s this about then, guv?’ he asked, swivelling round to face the monitors.

  ‘Take it to about ten minutes in,’ Pendragon replied, grim-faced.

  Turner touched the ‘Fast-forward’ button and the images on the monitor became a blur. He pushed ‘Stop’ then ‘Play’, and on the screen they could both see the gathering at the gallery over a week earlier, just before the first murder. The camera moved around the room.