A Case of Doubtful Death

by Linda Stratmann

  ‘I am baiting a line,’ said Frances.

  He put his cup aside, wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand, and stood up. ‘Well, you watch out for yourself, it’s deep waters for a young woman. I would hate to see any of my daughters in this kind of work. It isn’t right.’

  ‘You would not condone females in the police force?’

  ‘The very idea!’ he said with a laugh, although with a glance at Sarah which suggested that if women were ever to be admitted, she would be one of the first.

  The Inspector had scarcely departed when Frances received a rare visit from her landlady, Mrs Embleton, who did not as a rule intrude into the apartments of any of her tenants. Frances had a great deal of respect for Mrs Embleton, who ran the lodgings in a beautifully efficient way and was always a calm presence to whom any small difficulty could be addressed. That afternoon there was a hint of unease in the landlady’s manner, which did not bode well for what she was about to say and she was holding a recent copy of the Bayswater Chronicle.

  ‘Miss Doughty, I am sorry to approach you in this manner, but I feel I need to broach a difficult subject. It has been my observation that you receive a great many visitors, some of whom are persons of the male sex. The individual who has just departed is, so I have been given to understand, a policeman. His manners, if I might say so, left a very great deal to be desired. Not that I am suggesting even the slightest wrongdoing on your part and I assume that you do not receive these visitors while alone.’ She gave a polite nod of acknowledgement to Sarah. Frances did, while Sarah was on her own errands and enquiries, occasionally receive visitors, even male persons, alone, but had taken the view that if she wished to succeed in her new profession, there were risks she must take and niceties she must abandon.

  ‘I can assure you of the propriety of my behaviour at all times,’ said Frances.

  ‘Oh, I do not doubt it, and indeed any person of whom I did entertain doubts would not be within these walls. That is for the safety and peace of mind of all my ladies.’

  Mrs Embleton, although she was as entitled as anyone in the room to be seated as she pleased, nevertheless remained standing out of respect for the independence of her tenant. Frances offered her a seat and refreshments, but she took advantage only of the former.

  ‘Now, I am not one of those women who enjoy or even believe gossip,’ said Mrs Embleton, ‘and it has always been my view that stories printed in the newspapers are more in the way of entertainment for the idle rather than information for the educated, but it has been mentioned to me several times that you are – engaged in the occupation of private detective.’

  Frances’ heart sank. She had in the last few months grown accustomed to her new home and had even, albeit with a slight sense of guilt, come to enjoy its comforts, which were rather greater than those of the drab rooms above the chemist’s shop on Westbourne Grove that had been her home from birth. The apartments were so warm and comfortable that she had hardly dared to hope they might be hers for always, and now it seemed that her landlady was about to ask her to leave.

  ‘You are quite right, Mrs Embleton,’ she said. ‘And I can assure you that it is always my intention to act only for the most respectable persons. Some of the leading residents of Bayswater would be glad to advise you of my discretion and honesty and their satisfaction with my endeavours.’ Not all of them, she reflected, since her enquiries had consigned some leading residents to gaol, not to mention an appointment with the hangman.

  ‘Do not mistake me, I have no objection to your being engaged in that profession providing it is practiced with discretion and decorum,’ Mrs Embleton reassured her. ‘I myself was once obliged to engage a detective over a matter of some purloined jewellery and it struck me on that occasion that a respectable lady might bring something more delicate and seemly to what might otherwise, as conducted by a man, be a somewhat disagreeable proceeding. However, I must ask if you advertise this house as the one from which your business is conducted?’

  ‘I have a card,’ said Frances, ‘but that only supplies my name and address, and I am selective about who receives it and I have not found it necessary to take out advertisements in the newspapers. Should I ever do so, I would supply a box number and not an address. So far all my custom has been obtained by word of mouth from satisfied customers.’

  Mrs Embleton pondered this.

  ‘Do you wish to terminate our agreement?’ asked Frances. ‘I regret I do not yet have the resources to rent a private office at which I might receive clients. If you object to my business then I must seek other accommodation.’

  ‘It is not my objection, but the disquiet of the other ladies,’ said Mrs Embleton. ‘Mrs Allaby, on the ground floor, has been told some alarming stories by her maid, who has unfortunately been indulging in a very unsavoury variety of literature, one which purports to describe your adventures. She is afraid of being murdered in her bed by villains who come here to see you.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that the lady has been alarmed,’ said Frances, ‘and I was aware that some individual, whose identity I am unaware of, has been making up stories about a person who has some slight resemblance to me, but I do not see how I can bear any responsibility for that.’

  ‘I have been shown a halfpenny story paper that illustrates this very house.’

  ‘Oh dear!’

  ‘And Miss Parmiter on the second floor, who is the quietest soul in the world and thinks of nothing but her charity work, has been accosted in the street by a person who asked her to solve a murder. She was very upset as you can imagine.’

  ‘As would I be,’ said Frances. ‘I have never been asked outright to solve a murder and would not take such a commission.’

  ‘Miss Doughty, you have never given me personally the slightest cause for regret that I accepted you as a tenant, and I would be loath to ask you to leave for reasons which are, I agree, no fault of yours, but I do have my other tenants to think of and they have been here many years without a breath of scandal. I must ask you to discover who is publishing these stories and make them stop.’

  ‘They’re very popular,’ said Sarah.

  ‘So, I understand, is all cheap literature,’ said Mrs Embleton. She extracted a small booklet from the folds of her newspaper and handed it to Frances, who realised that her landlady had concealed the publication in the Chronicle in case she was seen carrying it. It was, she saw, published by the Bayswater Library of Romance. Entitled The Daring of Miss Dauntless, by W. Grove – undoubtedly a pseudonym – it was number eight in the series entitled The Lady Detective of Bayswater. There was only one illustration on the front cover. The caption was ‘A Mysterious Stranger Arrives,’ and it showed a muffled figure mounting the front steps of what looked strikingly like her apartment house down to the shape of the doorknocker and the house number.

  ‘I do not think there will be any difficulty in making my wishes known to the author,’ said Frances, noting that the item was printed locally, ‘and I will persuade him or her, with a letter from my solicitor if required, to turn their attention to other subjects. The content, I observe, is rather flattering, perhaps overly so.’

  ‘I have not read it,’ said Mrs Embleton, in a tone that implied that she did not wish to.

  There was a knock at the door of the apartment and the maid peeped in, clutching a card. ‘If you don’t mind, Miss, it’s a young gentleman, very respectable, who says he wants your help, and he hopes he is not intruding, a Mr Fairbrother.’

  Mrs Embleton’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.

  ‘Mr Fairbrother is a student of medicine who is studying with Dr Bonner of the Life House,’ said Frances. ‘If that is all, Mrs Embleton, I would like to admit him as this will be a professional consultation.’

  Mrs Embleton glanced at Sarah, who showed no sign of moving from her chair, and departed, leaving the little book behind her, which Frances swiftly pocketed. Moments later, Mr Fairbrother came hurrying up the stairs.

  She saw at once that
he was in a state of some anxiety and the polite formalities were dashed through in unusual haste.

  ‘Is Dr Bonner well?’ asked Frances. ‘It would be very unfortunate if he was indisposed and unable to attend the resumed inquest.’

  ‘Dr Bonner has gone to Brighton for a few days, where he hopes the sea air will do him good, but he will be back in London next week. I have been busy pursuing my studies in the meantime, since he has very kindly allowed me to consult his extensive medical library.’

  There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence. ‘Was there any particular subject that was commanding your attention?’ asked Frances. Fairbrother had that sickly look about the eyes that spoke of a sleepless night and he seemed all set to have another. He was very pale, and there were unmistakable signs that his hand had trembled during his morning shave.

  ‘Yes. I am sorry to say there was, and now I really do not know what to do!’ He wrung his hands, distractedly.

  ‘Is this a medical matter?’ asked Frances, puzzled at why he should have come to her if it was.

  ‘It is only partly medical – that is the origin of my dilemma. Oh, how I wish – ’ he uttered a groan of despair, ‘ – how I wish these thoughts had not come into my head, but now that they are, there is nothing I can do about them, and I am tormented with doubt!’

  Sarah raised her head to glance at the clock on the mantelshelf, then grunted and took up her knitting.

  ‘Please calm yourself, Mr Fairbrother,’ said Frances, ‘and tell me everything.’

  He nodded. ‘As you know, Miss Doughty, I have been in London attending lectures and taking further instruction from Dr Bonner in preparation for what I hope will be my final studies towards gaining my MD. He has very generously allowed me to lodge in his home and also to assist him in many ways that have added greatly to my medical knowledge. I am most grateful to him for all his kindness to me.’

  Fairbrother, Frances realised, had at last seen that his mentor was not entirely to be trusted. She said nothing. Although she could guess some of what was about to follow, she would not place the matter in doubt by putting words in his mouth. To fully understand it himself, he needed to say it for himself.

  ‘No man of course may be right about every matter all the time,’ he went on. ‘Even the very cleverest will make an honest mistake. The best of men, the most trustworthy, are those who make the fewest mistakes and then have the courage to admit it when they do. I had always believed Dr Bonner to be of their number. But now – I am sorry to say it – I am not so certain of him as I was.’

  There was a wasteland of near silence. Sarah was winding on wool and the click of her needles had ceased, leaving only the whisper of yarn as it flowed across her fingers.

  ‘You do not question me, Miss Doughty?’ said Fairbrother, as if hopeful of some reprieve.

  ‘No,’ said Frances, ‘that will come later.’

  He sighed regretfully. ‘As you know, earlier this month Dr Bonner performed a post-mortem examination at Kilburn mortuary on a young woman whose body had been recovered from the canal, and I assisted him. My duties were simply to observe and take notes. Of course, as the examination progressed many matters of interest arose and I questioned Dr Bonner in order to add to my knowledge. I had never previously attended an examination of the body of a drowned person, neither had I seen a corpse which had been long immersed in water, although I had done a little reading on the question and I knew, therefore, that a body which has lain in water will –’ he stopped. ‘If the subject distresses you, Miss Doughty, then perhaps I ought not —’

  ‘Please go on and be as comprehensive as possible,’ said Frances.

  ‘Very well. A body that has lain in water will present a very different appearance from one that has lain in air, or in the earth. To begin with the process of putrefaction will occur far more slowly, and it may be very difficult for the examiner to arrive at a date of death which could have occurred days or even weeks before, if the body has been kept very cold. A body may be brought out of the water after being a month or two submerged and be perfectly identifiable. Once the body is brought out into the air, changes will occur very quickly, such as a bloating and darkening of the features. It so happened that Dr Bonner was taking me on a tour of Kilburn mortuary at the time the body was brought in and I had the opportunity to view it very soon after it was taken from the water, and observe the changes which would result from its exposure to air. I was surprised to observe firstly that the body was rather more decomposed than I might have expected from one that had been immersed in water, and that there were no rapid changes. I mentioned this to Dr Bonner, and he assured me that he had seen many drowned bodies and because the conditions of the water varied so much, so did the post-mortem appearances, which could be very confusing. He thought it probable that the body had lain there for at least two weeks, perhaps more, trapped possibly by some obstruction and had only recently come to the surface.

  ‘I accepted his judgement, but I was obliged to mention that while the body was pliant and all rigidity had passed off, showing that death had taken place certainly at least a week earlier, there was very little sign of soaking and wrinkling of the skin, and none at all of loosening of the hair. That seemed to me to indicate that the body had not lain in the water for very long. Dr Bonner reassured me that the degree of such changes was variable and quite in keeping with his opinion.

  ‘We were both satisfied that this was not a violent death as there was no sign of any struggle. I was very surprised to find lividity – that is the staining due to blood ceasing to circulate and accumulating instead by gravity – on the back of the body and not the front, as I had always imagined that bodies in water adopted a prone position but Dr Bonner advised me, and I have since found that to be the case, that females may float face upwards. All the same, there was something about the pattern of the marks of lividity that troubled me, although I did not press it at the time.

  ‘We then proceeded to open the body.’ Fairbrother drew a deep breath, and glanced at both Frances and Sarah to see if there were signs that either woman might faint, and, seeing none, continued. ‘There was no water in the stomach, which surprised me, as I would have expected to find some in a drowned person, but Dr Bonner informed me that there are cases of rapid drowning in which that symptom is not present. The lungs undoubtedly showed all the symptoms of death by drowning and there was no difficulty in assigning that as the cause.’

  Fairbrother rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, then looked up at Frances with an expression of great unhappiness.

  ‘I have never before questioned any of the things Dr Bonner has said to me, but after the incidents at the Life House and your enquiries, my mind turned again to the post-mortem and it came to me just how many points of difficulty there were and how at each turn Dr Bonner was able to convince me, through his experience and the respect I held for him, that his view was correct.

  ‘In the last day or two, therefore, I have consulted his library and my further reading leads me to suppose that Dr Bonner has been in error over a number of things. Putrefaction in water, I have discovered, takes place in a different order to that in air. Discolouration of the skin commences in the face and neck and then passes down the body. If a corpse is exposed to air, then the first putrefactive discolouration appears in the region of the abdomen, and spreads from there to the upper and lower body. Miss Doughty – the body of the drowned woman showed that pattern, as if she had decomposed lying in air and not water.

  ‘And then there was the pattern of the lividity. The body would not have floated to the surface until made lighter by the gases of putrefaction, but even if it had been trapped underwater in a supine position and then floated up, the pattern of the lividity would have been different. The staining will not appear in those portions of the body that have been in contact with a firm surface where the blood vessels are compressed. If a body has lain in water the pattern will differ considerably from that in a body that has, for example, b
een laid out on a bed or the ground. I wondered about this at the time, and even made a sketch in my notes of the pattern.’

  ‘So let me understand this,’ said Frances. ‘The final conclusion of the post-mortem was that the woman had died from sudden drowning probably several weeks before, and that the body had lain trapped underwater before rising to the surface a short time before it was found?’

  ‘It was, but we could not determine whether she was a suicide or if the death was accidental. It was certainly not a case of murder.’

  Frances gazed at the unhappy young man before her, older than her by perhaps two years, yet despite all that he had seen in the purely medical sense, less knowledgeable of the world and also quite unused to solving the kind of dilemma with which he had suddenly been faced. Her only advice was for him to do what she herself did, clear away all the thoughts that confused him and start again.

  ‘So, although you were able to form opinions of your own at the examination, Dr Bonner was able to overcome your conclusions with convincing arguments. Arguments that seem less convincing now that you have had time to reflect.’

  ‘That is the case.’

  ‘Very well. What I would like you to do is try to put out of your mind everything that Dr Bonner told you. Think only of your own observations and the facts that you have accumulated through your reading. Now imagine that you are the senior man conducting the post-mortem examination of that body and that I am your student, and let me know what your conclusions are. Please take your time. Sarah, I believe Mr Fairbrother might benefit from some refreshment. Will you take tea?’

  ‘Oh no, I really cannot abide tea. A cup of coffee would be greatly appreciated.’

  Sarah was unable to conceal a smirk as she rose and went down to the kitchen.

  When they were settled comfortably with the coffee pot and some biscuits, Fairbrother, who was a little less distracted than earlier, spoke. ‘Based on what I observed, I think that the body was that of a young woman who had drowned quite suddenly, but had been extracted from the water soon afterwards and had then lain on her back on a firm surface in the air, for a week at the very least, and had then been placed in the water where she had been for no more than two days.’