Antidote to Murder

by Felicity Young

  Somehow, everything seemed too simple. Why should someone go to all this trouble to frame Dody, kill her even, to stop her from getting to the source of some illegally produced lead tablets? There was no doubt about it, abortion and abortifacients were handy earners—he’d dealt with enough cases during his time at the Yard to learn that—but compared to other moneymaking rackets, the proceeds of such sales would surely be small fry.

  His instincts told him they were up against something more powerful and more fearsome than Dody had imagined. Pills like those found in the admiral’s possession showed that the supplier covered a broad spectrum of problems and that he did not limit himself to the needs of the working classes. It was imperative to get some answers from Dunn.

  Florence and Annie returned to the room with the items Dody had requested. Dody dismissed them both, telling Pike when they’d left that neither girl had the stomach for medical emergencies.

  Pike watched, awed by her professional calm and wincing as, with steady hands, she used forceps to pull threads of burned fabric from the oozing wounds. She added several teaspoons of the bicarbonate to the water, swirled it around, and soaked as many rags as would fit in the bowl before applying them to the burned areas of Dunn’s arms and chest. Chalky water dripped all over the chaise.

  “Annie will be furious; she is constantly cleaning this chaise.” Her lips rose into a delightful smile. Despite his frustration, Pike could not help responding with a smile of his own. Before he had got to know them, he remembered what a colleague had said about the McCleland sisters, how he considered the younger to be the more attractive of the two. That was true to a degree; Florence was stunning and turned heads wherever she went, her allure only increased by her obvious lack of interest in men. But Dody was different again; hers was a quiet, thoughtful beauty, a natural beauty, and her indifference to it made it all the more radiant.

  He tore his eyes away from Dody’s face. Dunn seemed calmer now, more relaxed.

  “Feeling better?” Dody asked.

  Dunn nodded. “A bit. But I’ll ’ave more of that stuff now, if you please, Doc.”

  Dody hesitated, then glanced at Pike. He got the message and drew back. He’d failed to get the truth from Dunn his way—perhaps a softer method of interrogation was called for.

  “Mr. Dunn,” Dody said, “I’ll give you some more laudanum if you tell me who paid you to bomb my house.”

  “Gimme the stuff first.”

  “After you’ve told us who you are working for.”

  Dunn clamped his jaw and shook his head.

  “Things will be a lot easier for you if you cooperate,” Pike said.

  Dody picked up the laudanum bottle and poured a measure into the sherry glass. “Tell us first,” she said, holding the glass just out of Dunn’s reach. Caught by the light, the liquid in the glass released an inviting, reddish-brown glow.

  “I can’t, ’e’ll kill me!” With a cry of desperation, Dunn lunged for the glass and would have fallen from the chaise if Pike had not caught him.

  Dody slowly poured the powerful painkiller back into the bottle and pressed down the cork.

  The injured man closed his eyes and began to moan.

  Florence put her head around the door. The police were waiting to see them in the hall.

  * * *

  A sense of duty forced Pike to decline the invitation to dine with the McCleland sisters. His day was not over yet, and his conscience would not allow him to enjoy the evening with the death of the admiral weighing on his mind, not to mention the possibly wrongful incarceration of Margaretha. After Dody’s revelations about the strychnine tablets, he was beginning to believe the dancer might have been telling him the truth. Had the admiral’s death been caused by misadventure, and not murder at all? There was a certain cold comfort to that notion, even though it did not solve the mystery of the missing papers. There was still a spy in the midst of Margaretha’s dancing troop; of that he had no doubt.

  He yawned. It had been a long day. Had the admiral only died that morning? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  The hansom swayed. Pike put his work-related problems aside and relived the memory of that brief moment alone with Dody before the explosion. She had told him she would like to be more than friends. Or had she? The bomb came so soon after she had uttered the words that he might have misheard or even imagined them.

  The cool of the cells and the sight of a miserable Margaretha through the door’s grille drove thoughts of romance from his mind. She was still half-dressed as he had left her that morning and huddled beneath a ratty blanket on the plank bed. Dried tears had carved runnels through her face paint, and the skin beneath her eyes was stained as black as a panda bear’s. The sight triggered an idea; it was a wild one, but worth a try.

  He wrote down Gabriel Klassen’s name and the address of his hotel for the constable. “Get someone to contact this man and tell him to bring her in some clothes.” The constable said he would and ushered Pike into the cell.

  Margaretha sat bolt upright on the bed.

  “Leave the door unlocked and send some coffee in, too, please, Constable,” Pike said.

  “Are you sure, sir? She’s a wild one.”

  “I think she might want to listen to what I have to say.” He spoke to the constable, but looked at Margaretha. “She might be out of here by morning if she cooperates.”

  Margaretha pushed a clump of hair from her face and regarded him suspiciously.

  He pulled a chair out from the rough table and invited her to sit. She held the blanket tight around her chest. She had a look about her that Pike had seen more often than he cared to remember: the look of a woman who had been abused, intimidated, and exploited by men for most of her life.

  “We need to talk more about those tablets the admiral took,” he said.

  “I know nothing about those bloody tablets. I told you that.”

  “I have to find out where the admiral got them from.”

  “Achnier. How am I supposed to know?”

  “Do you realise just how close to a prison sentence you are? Tell me, Margaretha, tell me, please—where did he get those tablets from?”

  Her arms flailed. Desperately she looked around the cell as if the answers could be found inscribed on its dank grey walls. “He mentioned something about the East End. He said you could find anything in the East End if you were prepared to pay for it. I know he used to visit the area sometimes—he brought the smell back with him on his clothes.”

  Pike waited patiently for more, but nothing came.

  The fact that she did not attempt to pull names from a hat made Pike inclined to believe her. “Different tablets but with the same markings have been distributed around the East End and used to murder children,” he said.

  If he’d hoped the fact might stir some emotion in her, some empathy for someone other than herself, he was out of luck. She took the cigarette he offered her, leaned back in her chair again, and blew a smoke ring.

  “I can tell you nothing more,” she said, turning her head away from him.

  “But you are sure the admiral took them himself?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you—yes, yes, yes!”

  A constable appeared with a tin coffeepot and two mugs. For a moment Pike wondered if he could trust her not to throw the scalding coffee in his face. To his relief she circled cold hands around the mug and hunched into her blanket. He gave her a few moments to savour the drink before reaching into his pocket and putting one of the strychnine tablets on the table.

  “Had the admiral taken these kinds of tablets before?” he asked.

  “Yes, he usually takes one when he is with me.”

  “Only ever one?”

  “Until last night, yes.”

  “What made last night different?”

  “The hashish maybe; the distraction of that
odious little man perhaps. He had never tried my pipe before. I think it made him reckless, adventurous. The handcuffs . . .” Surely that was not the stain of a blush Pike saw creeping up Margaretha’s neck? “He had never required that sort of entertainment before either. And he kept gobbling down the pills—to savour the enjoyment, so he told me.”

  “You took them to be aphrodisiacs?”

  “If that is the English word for them, then yes.”

  It came to Pike then that if she had mentioned the word aphrodisiac initially, he might have been more inclined to believe her. He looked her in the eye and nodded and she relaxed into her chair.

  “I can still press the point that you were a willing participant in the theft of the briefcase’s contents. You could easily have opened the door to an accomplice,” he said, blowing a smoke ring himself. Manipulating the suspect’s mood was all a part of the interrogator’s technique. Give her hope for release and then take that hope back again. “I suppose you might eventually get used to this kind of place.”

  “Bastard!” she spat.

  Pike continued to question Margaretha for the best part of half an hour and a second pot of coffee, getting no further with the business of the stolen papers, until finally a constable put his head around the cell door. “Mr. Klassen is here, sir, come to deliver the lady some clothes. He’d like to see her, with your permission.”

  Pike climbed stiffly to his feet. He nodded as Margaretha’s manager entered the cell.

  Klassen gasped when he saw who was before him, almost dropping the bundle of clothes he was carrying. “Captain. What are you doing here?” The manager looked dishevelled, as if he’d dressed hastily in clothes left piled on the floor.

  “Detective Chief Inspector Pike to you, sir,” the constable said.

  Pike was too tired to offer Klassen any kind of explanation. “Margaretha can tell you all about it when you take her back to her hotel,” he said.

  “You are letting me go?” Margaretha asked.

  He nodded. “For the moment, and on the condition that you report back to me here at the Yard, at noon. See that she does, please. Klassen, I’m releasing her into your custody. A good sleep in a soft bed might be just the thing to jog her memory.”

  Klassen continued to look bewildered. “Margaretha, what have you done?”

  “I have done nothing, you stupid man!”

  Pike rubbed his eyes; he could not take much more of this. Klassen muttered some apologies and offered Pike his hand.

  Pike had already registered the incongruity of gloves on such a stuffy night and now he noticed a small spatter of black on Klassen’s shirt cuff. Perhaps his idea had not been so wild after all.

  Pike clamped hold of the man’s arm and ripped off the glove. The skin of Klassen’s hand was stained the same faded grey as his own, a souvenir from the leaking pen in the briefcase.

  It looked as if he had found his spy.

  * * *

  There were no crowds tonight and the hansom dropped Van Noort directly outside the theatre doors. That alone made him uneasy. He told the driver to wait while he read the sign on the door:

  DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, THE MANAGEMENT REGRETS TO ANNOUNCE THE CLOSURE OF MATA HARI AND THE DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS.

  His head buzzed. He hammered on the barred doors. A foul wave of sensation rolled up from his stomach and smeared his tongue. Exploding shells and the screams of ripped men shattered his skull. He leaned against the theatre wall and dropped his head. Not again.

  Finally the fit passed. Bitter disappointment took its place.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. “You all right, guv? Can I take you someplace else?” the cabby asked.

  Van Noort removed his top hat and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “Er . . . yes. The Satin Palace, St. James, please.” He took a step and would have fallen had the cabbie not caught him. “I’m afraid I will need some help.”

  The cabby took him by the arm, gave him a boost up the cab’s step, and closed the knee-door.

  Jack was acting as the Satin Palace’s doorman. Trevelly had acquired for him a ridiculously large braided green coat and a top hat that would have dropped over his face if not held up by the handles of his ears.

  The boy opened the doors with a flourish. “Welcome to the Satin Palace—oh, it’s you. ’Ello, Doc. I don’t fink we need you tonight, sir.”

  Van Noort did not have the energy to give lectures. “Is Mee-Mee free?”

  “I believe she is, sir. Would you care to partake in a drink and some merriment in the lounge first?”

  “For God’s sake, Jack, it’s me you’re talking to.”

  The boy shrugged. The big coat failed to move.

  Van Noort grasped the boy by the chin and tilted his face towards the light.

  “Have you been crying, son? Trevelly beaten you again?” He reached out his hand with the intention of gently probing the boy’s bruised cheekbone. Jack pulled back. “Better pay the cabby, sir.”

  Van Noort gave the kindly cab driver a generous tip then followed Jack up the marble steps and into the Palace. He must think of a way to get the child away from this evil place.

  But he had needs to satisfy, and the sin that beset him always came first.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  SATURDAY 26 AUGUST

  There was no sign of the mob the next day and Pike’s contemplative silence only seemed to intensify the eerie quiet of the morning room. He sat opposite Dody in the winged chair, his bad leg propped on a footstool, a cup of coffee growing cold on the table at his side. She moved over to where he sat, crouched, and took his hand.

  “You do not look to me like a man who has just captured a German spy. This is a win for you, surely, Matthew.”

  Pike squeezed her hand. “If only it were that simple. The case has left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Is . . . Margaretha . . . guilty, innocent, or merely a victim herself? Klassen maintains he worked alone; he said Margaretha never told him anything overt. He told us he subtly questioned the admiral himself and then transcribed what he gleaned in invisible ink onto musical scores, which he posted to Germany. The false papers from the briefcase were found in his room—he admitted breaking into the room when the couple were asleep. He was planning on condensing the papers and sending them to Germany the same way as before.”

  “And you find it hard to believe that Margaretha was not involved in any of this?”

  Pike pushed his hand through his hair; he seemed so tired, so defeated. Then again, staying up all night to interrogate Margaretha’s manager couldn’t have helped.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” he said. “With Klassen maintaining her innocence, we don’t have enough evidence to hold her. He is not so very different from other men after all, it seems. She still managed to cast a spell over him.”

  “Perhaps you will have to accept that her innocence—or guilt—is something you might never prove.”

  “She will be deported, never allowed to return to this country again.”

  “I’m sure Florence will be happy to hear that.”

  Pike smiled tiredly. Dody walked over to the newly repaired window, through which heat from the street seeped. Charred curtain fabric crumbled beneath her fingers and an acrid smell filled her nostrils.

  “And there’s still that.” Pike pointed to the window. “Do you realise how close you were to being killed?”

  “We were all in danger, Matthew.”

  “But it was you they were after. You are no longer just being framed. They want you out of the way permanently.”

  “I am aware of that.” Though Dody had not thought about her situation in quite such blunt terms. His words gave her a sudden chill.

  “Your parents are staying in Sussex?” Pike asked.

  Dody had telephoned them to say there was no need to hurry back to
the city. She had told them with an exaggerated optimism that the police were close to finding the man who had written the letters, and once they had discovered his identity and obvious calumny, charges against her would be dropped. She had not mentioned the attack or the damage to the house.

  But she could still see where Pike’s question was going. “If you expect me to go running off to the country and to the protection of my parents, you don’t know me as well as you think.”

  Pike climbed painfully to his feet and limped to her side by the window. He touched her shoulder lightly, briefly. “Did I say that? Would I dare to say that?”

  “Not if you know what’s good for you.”

  “I rest my case.”

  She looked into his troubled blue eyes. “What else is worrying you?”

  “I’ve had some enquiries made and discovered the approximate value of lead tablets sold on the street. They amount to little more than three shillings a dozen—slightly dearer than rubber preventatives.”

  Dody thought back to Esther Craddock’s horror at the price of French letters. “Expensive for a working-class girl,” she said.

  “Still, comparatively cheap, and not lucrative enough to kill for, surely. I need to speak to Inspector Fisher about this. I fear we might be up against something bigger than we thought, perhaps an organised gang with a speciality for things medically related.”

  “My friend Mr. Borislav, the Whitechapel chemist, has been robbed several times this year.”

  “Which supports my suspicions. Tell me, Dody, anything. Anything you might be privy to that might give the gang reason enough to first frame you and then attempt to kill you.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, the death of Billy Kent and the lead tablets are the only noteworthy case I have been involved in recently.”

  “Yesterday you mentioned someone at the mortuary called Everard.”

  As distasteful as it was, even she could no longer keep ignoring the obvious. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose his plagiarism has shown that he is quite capable of theft and trickery—but it does not necessarily connect him to this gang you’re talking about. His bag of drugs was stolen recently . . . Oh, surely he would not stoop so low?”