A Case of Doubtful Death

by Linda Stratmann

The next morning the case against Darscot was heard at Marylebone magistrates’ court and he was committed for trial on the charge of murdering Henry Palmer. Alice Palmer and Walter Crowe were in attendance, and while the young woman still looked deathly pale, the resolution of the mystery and the care of her future husband, friends and family would, thought Frances, restore her health in time. Miss Finch was very solicitous of her dear friend, although she was enduring her grief with the support of a most attentive young man whom she favoured with her simpering smiles. Dr Bonner also appeared, a pitiable looking creature, claiming that Darscot had blackmailed him into transferring his interest in the Life House, but the fickle opinion of society had turned against him in the last few days. No one objected when he was committed to take his trial on a charge of murdering Dr Mackenzie and acting as an accessory to the murder of Henry Palmer. Neither prisoner was charged with the murder of Herbert Horton.

  Mr Fairbrother, while deeply grieved at the fate of his mentor, was thankful that the terrible business was almost at an end, especially since the magistrate had explicitly stated that his involvement was only as a pupil of Dr Bonner, and that he had acted under the senior man’s direction. Indeed, he had been praised for the clever observation that the body in the canal and Mrs Templeman were one and the same.

  ‘Will you be seeking another tutor in London?’ asked Frances.

  ‘No, my sojourn here is at an end in any case. I am anxious to study for my MD and have found a position in Edinburgh, which I will be taking up almost immediately.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Frances, ‘then it seems unlikely that our paths will cross again.’

  ‘Oh, one never knows,’ he said, blithely. ‘But it has been quite extraordinary to meet you, Miss Doughty. I must confess, I had my doubts about ladies studying to be doctors, but if they are all like you, they may well come to be ornaments to the profession – in certain limited spheres of work, of course.’

  Frances did not trouble herself to ask what he might consider those limits to be. On her way home she reflected that it was unlikely that anyone would ever know exactly what had transpired on the night of Henry Palmer’s death, but she felt it very probable that Bonner had injected Mackenzie when he had suggested abandoning the plan and running away. Palmer must have witnessed what he perceived to be the murder of Dr Mackenzie and had been struck down by Darscot to stop him going to the police.

  Tom came to see her, towing a boy of about his own age who needed some persuasion to accompany him. The boy was dressed in an odd assortment of clothing, none of which had been made for someone of his size, some of it too short in the body and some overly long. His face was a shade of mottled brown, which spoke either of some unknown illness, or being burnt by the sun, or, as was more probable, a long-standing unfamiliarity with soap and water. Sarah scowled at him, pushing up her sleeves as if about to test that conundrum.

  ‘This is Ratty!’ said Tom proudly. ‘’e’s my best man.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Ratty,’ said Frances. ‘Do you have any information for me?’

  Ratty explored his ear with a dirty fingernail.

  ‘He dint want to go ter the coppers, but I said ‘e oughter,’ said Tom.

  ‘Don’ like coppers,’ growled Ratty.

  ‘Then you can tell me whatever you have to say,’ said Frances kindly.

  ‘Go on!’ said Tom, giving Ratty a shove.

  Ratty wriggled uncomfortably in his clothes and capitulated, revealing a curious tendency to add extra syllables to any word he felt unsure of, as if by making it long enough he was sure to get all the necessary parts in. ‘It’s about that there Mr ‘orton. The one what was shoved into the area an’ bashed ‘is ‘ead in. I saw ‘im, dint I? Outside the Piccadillilly Club, walkin’ up ‘n down th’ Portichester Road, and cursin’ and swearin’ ‘n then this woman comes up an’ they ‘as a few words what I dint catch, but I thought she were a doxy, ‘cos they goes off arm-in-arm as friendly as anythin’, ‘n then not long after that, the Pounder, what does all the pugilistics, ‘e comes out and ‘e walks off on ‘is own, but goin’ the other way.’

  ‘Can you say when this happened?’ asked Frances, hopefully.

  ‘I don’ know the day, not like the day of the week or anythin’, or any of the numbers, like,’ said Ratty.

  Frances sighed. Horton had been a well-known figure outside the club for three days before he was killed.

  ‘All I do know is that it was the day after I saw ‘im when they found ‘im face down dead.’

  ‘The very next day? You’re quite sure?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well Ratty, that is a very important story, and I think you should go and tell the police at once.’

  ‘Don’ like coppers,’ repeated Ratty.

  ‘If you go and tell them what you know, then I will see that you have a fine dinner and new clothes and a shilling,’ said Frances.

  Sarah raised her eyebrows since she strongly suspected who was going to be serving the fine dinner.

  Ratty thought about it. ‘Two shillin’s,’ he said.

  ‘Done!’

  Tom grinned. ‘An’ finder’s commission!’

  Frances could hardly argue with that. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘that this means that Professor Pounder will be released. I shall hear soon enough if he is.’

  A few hours later, Joseph arrived with an invitation for Frances, Sarah, Tom and Ratty to enjoy a celebratory tea at Cedric’s lodgings the next day at which they might meet the legendary Professor Pounder, who wished to express his gratitude.

  Professor Pounder was a tall, broad man of about thirty-five, with an honest face, short, light brown curly hair and blue eyes. His clothes were worthy of the man, and although he might have felt more comfortable in the garb of an athlete, he wore them well, to do honour to the company. He was quietly spoken and very polite, a man who would not use two words when one would do.

  The company sat around an elegant table on which Joseph had arranged the thinnest sandwiches, the lightest cakes, the most delicate biscuits, and scones like tiny white pillows just waiting to be anointed with delicious spoonfuls of jam and cream. He hovered about them wielding the teapot with discreet bravura, and their teacups were never empty.

  Tom had been scrubbed and put in a suit and Ratty, whose screams had rung the length of Westbourne Park Road on being introduced to the concept of cleanliness by Sarah, was silent and shocked in his new clothes. Neither let their discomfort inhibit them from sampling every foodstuff in sight.

  ‘I thank you all most humbly,’ said Pounder, raising his cup to make a toast. ‘To you I owe my freedom, and my reputation.’

  ‘Inspector Gostelow said he was a model prisoner and they were sorry to see him go,’ said Cedric, ‘but even the force’s finest could not find a stain on his character. I am sure they would have him in uniform tomorrow if he would agree to it. Now that would be a sight to see!’

  Joseph looked wistful, but refrained from comment.

  ‘The Inspector has asked me if I might train his men to defend themselves against criminal types,’ said Pounder, ‘which I have agreed to do.’

  ‘The Professor,’ said Cedric, enthusiastically, ‘is the finest exponent of the noble art of boxing that has ever lived. He rivals the best athletes of the Greeks, and can be relied upon to perform a display with such taste and decorum that even ladies do not disdain to attend. Indeed, they are very partial to watching him. The most beautiful ladies in London simply swoon at his feet!’

  ‘That must be very awkward,’ said Frances, picturing how the Professor might appear in the roped ring. It was not an unpleasant portrait.

  Pounder nodded. ‘Some,’ he said, ‘but I don’t take no mind.’

  ‘Do you not admire beauty?’ asked Cedric, teasingly.

  ‘I do,’ said Pounder, and jabbed a thumb at his chest. ‘Beauty of the heart.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Cedric, ‘and I am happy to say that for beauty of character, of strength, and cleverness and loy
alty, of everything that truly counts in this world, we have at our table the finest two ladies in Bayswater! Miss Doughty has a mind that all men should regard with terror – it has killed several to my certain knowledge – and once you have seen Miss Smith crack walnuts with her bare hands you will avow that there is no finer sight that the capital has to offer.’

  ‘That’s Jeb Smith’s trick,’ said Pounder, ‘the Wapping Walloper. Best bare-knuckle man in England.’

  ‘’E’s my uncle!’ said Tom, ‘or cousin, I c’n never work out which. An’ it ain’t ‘is trick, ‘cos it was Sarah what taught it ‘im.’

  Pounder looked from Tom to Sarah and back again. ‘Ah,’ he said to Tom, ‘well, you be proud of him, lad, however he’s related.’

  Joseph replenished the teacups and brought fruit tarts.

  ‘I suppose the police have not found the murderer of Mr Horton?’ said Frances. ‘It may have been a drunken fight with the woman he was last seen with, a robbery, perhaps. You know that I was with his sister when his lodgings were searched and the poor woman was in great distress. I hope, for her sake, that the culprit is caught soon.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tom, eating three sandwiches at once, ‘she’s not as sorry as she makes out.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ asked Frances.

  Sarah took a napkin and applied it briskly to Tom’s mouth, and it was some moments before he could speak again.

  ‘Well, when I talked to the man at the last place where ‘Orton lived, ‘e said that when the sister came round she was asking about ‘er good-for-nothing waster of a brother what was going to break ‘er poor mother’s ‘eart.’

  ‘That was a little unkind,’ said Frances, ‘even if true.’

  ‘I bet it was true,’ said Sarah, grimly. ‘Every bit of it. A man who can’t respect his own mother can’t hardly respect anything else, least of all himself.’

  ‘Oh, how true that is,’ said Cedric.

  ‘We are usually more polite about a deceased person than one that lives,’ observed Frances. ‘We like to remember their strengths and forget their weaknesses. But perhaps they do things differently in Manchester.’

  ‘I don’t see how being dead makes a man’s life any better than it was,’ said Sarah. ‘If she said it plain, and meant it, then she was remembering him right. When my grandfather died we all sat down and said he was a mean old grizzler when sober and a worse one when drunk, and then we all cried our eyes out, because we knew it was true.’

  ‘But Miss ‘Orton said all that before ‘er brother was dead,’ said Tom.

  Frances stared at him. ‘Before? Surely not. Miss Horton came down to London after reading about her brother’s death in the newspapers. So, when she went to his lodgings she already knew he had died.’

  ‘Oh, well I dint know what she said to you. But the man said that she come to see ‘im askin’ about her brother on the Tuesday mornin’ and it was the next day when ‘e ‘eard about the body found in the area.’

  ‘And did he tell Miss Horton that her brother might be found at the Piccadilly Club?’

  ‘Well ‘e dint know as ‘ow ‘e was a member, but ‘e knew ‘e’d taken to walkin’ up and down an’ talkin’ to ‘imself outside the door, cos ‘e’d been up on the Monday an’ asked for ‘is rent and not got it.’

  ‘And Ratty here saw Horton with a woman that Tuesday night,’ said Sarah, ‘and they were affectionate and walking arm-in-arm.’

  ‘I have to confess,’ said Frances, ‘that when Miss Horton came to see me I did not question her story, but I will check to see when the identity of the dead man was first revealed in the newspapers and compare it with when she said she arrived in London.’ She turned to Cedric. ‘I don’t suppose you still have copies of last week’s newspapers?’

  Cedric raised his eyebrows in mock horror.

  ‘No, I rather thought not, but I do retain them for reference.’ Frances rose. ‘If what I suspect is right, then I must not waste any time, and Tom will have to take a message to Inspector Gostelow.’

  ‘You see, Pounder?’ said Cedric. ‘A visit from Miss Doughty is always attended by more drama than the popular theatre.’

  ‘So I see,’ answered the Professor.

  ‘And a visit from Miss Smith is often attended by severe discomfort if one is a criminal.’

  Pounder nodded thoughtfully, but said nothing.

  Later that day, Frances received a visit from Inspector Gostelow.

  ‘Well, I don’t know how you do it, Miss Doughty, but thanks to your quick thinking we managed to catch up with Miss Horton before she left London and I have never seen a woman more relieved to confess all. Seems like it was the old story – after their father died the son was the apple of his mother’s eye and everything went on his education, while the daughter stayed at home. He gets packed off to London to make his fortune, but they lose touch. When mother gets very ill she wants to see her boy again before she goes, but she tells the daughter that her life policy money will all go to the son and she is relying on him to look after his sister. So Miss Horton goes to her brother’s last address and the landlord says he doesn’t know where he lives, but he might be found near the Piccadilly Club. That’s where she sees him, walking up and down outside, off his head with drink. And probably off his head even without the drink. It soon becomes clear to her that her brother is a wastrel who would spend his inheritance as soon as he gets it. Then he tries to borrow money from her. Final straw is, he tells her he has pawned his late father’s gold watch and ring, which were family heirlooms entrusted to him by their mother, and when he staggers against the railing she loses her temper and pushes him over. Regrets it as soon as done, of course, but there you are.’

  ‘And of course, she wanted to find his rooms to look for the pawn tickets,’ said Frances. ‘But even if her brother had inherited, I am sure that given his unhappy state, Miss Horton could have got control of the legacy, and then she would have cared for him.’

  ‘Ah yes, but she hadn’t seen him in a year. He was a bit eccentric before, but his brain had got worse since then, and that night she thought he was just drunk.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Frances. ‘I do hope she won’t be hanged.’

  ‘Oh no, it won’t be hard to play on the tender hearts of the jurymen. She’ll plead the madness of a moment and get manslaughter. I’ve seen many a bad husband, or brother, or father sent off like that, and the woman reckoning that nine or ten years in prison was a fair exchange for their absence.’

  ‘But she can’t inherit from her mother now.’

  ‘No, but there’s a cousin who will, and he has said he is willing to give her a home when she comes out of prison, so I expect it will all turn out alright for her.’

  Later that day there was an unusual delivery; Joseph arrived with an envelope containing four tickets for a demonstration of the noble art and exact science of self-defence at Westbourne Hall by that unparalleled exponent, Professor Pounder.

  ‘The tickets are for yourself, of course, and young masters Thomas and Ratty, and the other is for Miss Smith,’ said Joseph, suppressing a smile. ‘The Professor was most particular about that.’

  ‘It seems,’ said Frances to Sarah, showing her the tickets, ‘that you have an admirer.’ She was a little cautious about mentioning this, since young men who had previously expressed a tender interest in Sarah’s substantial charms had quickly regretted it.

  ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Sarah, but, unusually, she did not seem displeased.

  ‘But we ought to go, it will be very interesting. I understand that the one minute challenge, which is open to all-comers, can be very entertaining and no real harm is done.’ Frances paused, struck by a worrying thought. ‘Sarah, I hope you won’t think of —’

  ‘Naw – he’s in no danger from me!’ Sarah stuffed her ticket into a pocket. ‘Now, as to admirers, well, I think you ought to look at this.’ She handed Frances a copy of Miss Dauntless in Danger.

  ‘Oh, are these continuing?’ sa
id Frances. She leafed through the pages, which revealed that Miss Dauntless and her companion Sally had moved to commodious apartments in the vicinity of Hyde Park. The enterprising lady detective was portrayed, she thought, in a spirit of rather too extravagant admiration. In one scene of high drama Miss Dauntless, having courageously pursued some criminals through the park, was attacked by a villainous character on the bridge over the Serpentine, and thrown into the water from which she was rescued by a mysterious stranger, who gathered her into his arms and planted a chaste kiss on her lips before disappearing into the night.

  ‘Well, it is only a story,’ Frances protested.

  ‘That ain’t no story,’ declared Sarah, ‘that’s a love letter!’

  Frances didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You’ve gone quite red in the face,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea.’

  END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The subject of this book was inspired by Buried Alive by Jan Bondeson, a fascinating account of the history of the fear of premature burial.

  The Reverend Walter Whiter’s A Dissertation on the Disorder of Death, published in 1819 (downloadable at www.archive.org) is well worth reading for his viewpoint on the signs of death.

  For the late nineteenth-century understanding of putrefaction and other signs of death I have turned to contemporary editions of The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence by Alfred Swaine Taylor, edited by Dr Thomas Stevenson.

  A detailed account of a visit to Kensal Green Cemetery is to be found in The Business of Pleasure by Edmund Yates, published in 1879, and downloadable at www.archive.org.

  Most of the people mentioned in this book are fictional. All the streets and public buildings mentioned by name are actual locations.

  The General Cemetery of All Souls Kensal Green conducted its first funeral in 1833 and still performs burials and cremations daily. It is open to visitors every day. For details of guided tours and the annual open day see www.kensalgreen.co.uk. A tour of the catacombs is highly recommended!