Death on the Koh-i-Noor (Edwin Scott Crime Trilogy Book 3)

by Felix Bruckner

  “No thanks, Mr Parkin, bit early in the day for me ... Now, tell me the problem.”

  He picked up his own glass, took a sip of the colourless viscous liquid. Again that creepy high-pitched giggle; he was embarrassed: “I think I've got 'the crabs', doc.”

  I was disappointed. I had expected some mysterious pronouncement, something exciting or exotic to relieve the incipient boredom of the current phase of the voyage. Little did I know what the future held in store for me.

  “Right, well let's have a look ...”

  He lay back on the unmade bunk, undid his flies, and pulled his white uniform trousers and his pants down – rather further than was strictly necessary for my examination. Even from a cursory glance, I could see the scratch marks over his lower abdomen, pubic region and testicles, and the reddened areas of skin around them. Attached to the pubic hair were tiny greyish-white objects; from my Sherlock Holmes bag I took my magnifying glass: sure enough, he had indeed got pubic lice! As I watched, one of the parasites moved very slowly.

  “Terrible thing about the Chilly-Ho, nice girl, but not my type. ” Parkin muttered hoarsely after a lengthy silence. “Still, brand new car, inexperienced driver pissed as a newt, stupid place to park ... Just asking for trouble ... But you're the Sherlock Holmes character, doc. What d'you make of the whole sorry mess?”

  “Well ...” I paused judiciously. I had been giving this problem a lot of thought. “Suppose it wasn't an accident, suppose it was murder ... The murderer could have tampered with her mini,” I was now warming to my subject: “He could have put something in her drink at the party – a 'Mickey Finn', which would ...”

  I trailed off, suddenly realising the implications of what I had been saying. I had just accused some unknown person at Christopher McFee's party of killing Fiona Henderson Scott – to a virtual stranger! The effect on my patient was startling. The first radio officer turned deathly pale; his pupils dilated; he shivered. He seemed shattered by my casual comments. I was the first to recover, and, after a brief pause, continued as though I had noticed nothing:

  “I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty certain that you have indeed got 'the crabs', in other words 'pubic lice'. I'm not sure how to treat this; we'll try calamine lotion 'till you get home; then I suggest you see a proper skin doctor ... Now is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

  There was a prolonged silence; once or twice he seemed about to say something, but, in the end thought better of it.

  “No, but don't tell the pharmacist you've been here; don't tell anyone.”

  I promised to keep my visit a secret.

  A dim glow from the threatening skies showed in the port-holes. Though it was not yet mid-day, all lights were switched on, casting strange shadows into the recesses. The pharmacy was an elongated structure, with storage cupboards at two levels, shelves for jars and bottles, and two benches running the full length of the room; on these stood a series of measuring flasks, a mortar and pestle, and a gadget for counting tablets. A stainless steel sink was set into each work surface. The white walls were half-tiled; the floor was laid with large black and white lino squares in a chequer-board design. The whole place was immaculately tidy. It reminded me strongly of our biochemistry laboratory at medical school.

  Roy Slater, the pharmacist, was counting tablets from a large jar into a number of smaller containers when I entered his domain. He wore the full uniform of a petty officer, with crossed pestles on his lapels. His initial frown changed to a welcoming grin, creasing his leathery face into its habitual lines.

  “Welcome, Doctor Scott.” His cheery South London accent immediately made me feel at home. He finished labelling the bottles, stacked them neatly side by side on a shelf, before turning back to me. “Nah, what can I do for you?”

  “The sea seems to be building up, Mr Slater ... could you let me have some anti-emetic tablets – for myself – just in case?”

  “Sure, doc. We usually use hyoscine ... Trouble is, as you know, they makes you drowsy.”

  “I'd prefer Stemetil – prochlorperazine – if you have it.”

  “Well, I do 'ave a small supply, as it 'appens, mainly for me own use ... We'll let you 'ave a dozen ... That should do you ... But don't tell Dr 'Ardcastle. He wanted some, but I told 'im I didn't stock 'em ... While you're 'ere, I'll give you the guided tour if you like ...”

  He showed me his department with obvious pride – ampoules, intravenous solutions in a fridge or on racks, tablets, powders, liquid medicines. All was meticulously labelled and stacked in logical groupings. It was quite impressive, and I remarked on it. He was delighted – a smile hardly left his face during the whole of my visit. From his commentary as we wandered around I picked up that he was a widower with a grown-up daughter.

  “Oh, I saw her when I arrived at Southampton to start my duties,” I told him.

  His smile wavered momentarily and his brow creased while he tried to remember.

  “Yaas, that must've been 'er ... We're from Balham, Saath London. Know it, doc?”

  I confided that I came from nearby Clapham Common, and he positively beamed.

  “I'll try to remember where everything is kept,” I told him, when we had finished our tour.

  “No need, really ...” He handed me the small bottle of Stemetil tablets. “I'm usually 'ere during the day, and switchboard can always find us ... Always 'appy to 'elp ...”

  He ushered me into the corridor ...

  After the grizzly murder in the wireless cabin this afternoon, I couldn't get to sleep. I lay on my bunk with the light off, turning the events over in my mind, late into the night. Parkin had been creepy and had crab-lice; but that was not sufficient reason for someone to kill him. On the other hand, he had been scared when I had last seen him alive; he had known something – maybe that was why he died. But what was that something? Was it to do with the death of Fiona Henderson Scott? Was the knowledge a sufficient motive for murder? What about the killer: was he (or she) a passenger – or a member of the ship's crew? Had Parkin intended to tell me something, when he consulted me for his skin infestation (or did the killer believe that he had)?

  The message slip had read: “Undercover Agent On Board. Modern Day Sherlock Holmes. I Do Not Care About The Money. I Want Out.”

  This was presumably an automatic print-out of a transmission by Parkin himself. The radio officer must have been one member of a gang, the person who killed him, another, and he had been trying to contact a third member somewhere ashore. I wondered how extensive the organisation was.

  My mind whirled round and round:

  I had confided to Graham Parkin my theory that Fiona Henderson Scott, the children's hostess, might have been murdered. Perhaps she had been the undercover agent; and Parkin had suspected me of replacing her. But if neither Fiona nor I was the agent, who was? Or was it merely the gang's paranoia? Perhaps the beginning of the message had read: “New Undercover Agent On Board ...” Parkin was murdered because he had got cold feet, and had wanted to resign. From the lack of a struggle, it was obvious that he knew his killer. Presumably the confidential and secretive nature of his consultation with me had raised the murderer's suspicion that he was intent on confessing his part in the gang's activities: he had become a risk!

  I mused on the strange behaviour of Danny Stone and Charles Hardcastle in the wireless cabin ... Was either of these the killer? Why had I been unable to find the match-stick used to burn the message slip? Why had the killer taken it away, but not removed the message slip itself? Would the contents of the ash-tray have been too bulky; or too messy?

  What would Sherlock Holmes have concluded? I tried some of his aphorisms:

  “Always look at the shoes first ...” Irrelevant!

  “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  “Do not theorise in advance of the facts ...” Surely, further facts would present themselves.

  This last thought filled me with dread. I switc
hed on the bedside light, got out of bed, went to my Sherlock Holmes bag; I extracted the notes I had started after the death of Fiona Henderson Scott, took up my fountain-pen, sat in an armchair, and began to write ...

  Tuesday, 19th July: It was blowing a force ten gale. Heavy black clouds almost blotted out the daylight, and the empty decks ran with water from the teeming rain. Despite her stabilizers, the giant ship pitched and yawed in the storm, a sensation akin to a sudden descent in an express lift, regularly repeated. However, very little of this was evident in the operating theatre, which was ablaze with light. In order to get stable operating conditions, the captain had had to turn the ship around, and we were now steaming (at reduced speed) back towards Ceylon! We were scrubbed and ready to start.

  Minnie Applejack was six years old. She had developed abdominal pain when we were in Colombo, but her parents hadn't brought her to see Charlie Hardcastle until the next evening, assuming it was only the excitement of the Crossing the Line ceremony. Surprisingly (to me, anyway) he had made the correct diagnosis of acute appendicitis. The standard treatment on board ship was antibiotics and nil but water by mouth, in the hope that this would abort the attack or keep it in check until the patient could be transferred to a hospital ashore. After thirty-six hours, it was clear that the child was deteriorating. We were too far from land to transfer her to hospital in time, and the weather conditions precluded a helicopter rescue; so the only option left was to operate on board ship.

  I was back at the Hackney Children's Hospital. Mr Swale, our general surgeon, faced me across the operating table, his gloved hands lightly clasped to signify that he was ready. Whilst I watched, he had demonstrated an appendicectomy on two previous occasions, and now it was my turn to perform my first – with him assisting! The skin of the little boy's abdomen had been swabbed with iodine and draped with towels.

  “Now, Mr Scott, where will you make your incision?”

  “MacBurney's point, Sir ... right iliac fossa ...” I pointed with my scalpel.

  “Very well, go ahead.”

  I incised the skin, fascia, external oblique and internal oblique muscles (a grid-iron incision). At each layer, I dabbed at the bleeding points, the consultant clipped them with Spencer-Wells's forceps, and I tied the vessels and cut the ligatures.

  “Haemostasis as we go ...” he murmured approvingly. “Now what's this?”

  A glistening grey-blue membrane had appeared.

  “Peritoneum, Sir ...”

  “Off you go then ...”

  I incised the structure, and he inserted a retractor. Instantly the contents of the peritoneal cavity leapt into view – displayed just as in the text-books. In the upper cavity were the pinky-white coils of the small intestine, from behind which peeped the darker pink of the liver; the ascending loop of the large intestine framed the right side of the cavity, and the caecum was a pinky-white sac at the base of the ascending colon. The worm-like appendix, angry, red, inflamed, arose from the outer aspect of the caecum, in the seven o'clock position. I gazed at it for a few moments, gratified, mesmerised ... Then I double-clamped it, looped a catgut ligature around it, and formed a purse-string suture around the caecum, where the appendix emerged.

  His eyes twinkled beneath his bushy grey eyebrows, and a faint murmur of approval emerged from behind Mr Swale's surgical mask. I cut the appendix between the clamps, lifted it out of the abdominal cavity, and deposited the lot in the metal kidney dish supplied by the theatre sister.

  “Send it off to Pathology, please, Sister ...”

  I tied the stump of the appendix, invaginated it on the caecum, and sealed it by drawing tight the purse-string suture. Together we checked the abdominal cavity – no bleeding, no swabs or instruments left behind; the retractor came out. Sister did a swab-count:

  “All accounted for, Sir ...”

  We sewed up the wound in layers. It had taken forty-five minutes.

  Although there was no separate anaesthetic room, the theatre was spacious and well-equipped. We had been fortunate: in response to the urgent appeals through the public address system (Radio Koh-i-Noor), we had found Dr Watkins, a GP who was emigrating to Australia, and had just completed a course in anaesthetics. The senior ship's surgeon was in his habitual semi-inebriated state, so it was decided that, though I had last attempted an appendicectomy over four years ago, I would operate, and he would assist. Agatha Pitrose, our senior sister, was scrubbed. She had been on the Koh-i-Noor for two years; before that, she had worked as a theatre sister in the Queen Alexandra Royal Army Nursing Corps – so was eminently competent. Joanne Flinders, the junior sister, was our “runner”, and remained unscrubbed. Unfortunately, our second sister (Maureen Delaney) had been stricken with sea-sickness, and now lay heaving and retching in her cabin, totally helpless.

  Since the murder in the wireless room on the previous day, I had been experiencing a strange mixture of euphoria and nausea from my central involvement in the investigation. These sensations vanished completely once the operation commenced. At 1.30 pm, Dr Watkins started his anaesthetic – intra-venous Pentothal, supplemented with ether inhalation through a mask. As soon as the patient was asleep, I had inserted the IV canula into the tiny vein in her fore-arm for a saline drip; though I had had paediatric training, it had taken a full twenty minutes before the line was in place, and I was able to start the operation.

  With trepidation, I made my first incision over MacBurney's point in the right iliac fossa. Soon, I had dissected down through the layers until I reached a reddish-brown tube, about the thickness of a pencil. Strangely, the layout didn't resemble what I remembered from before. Apart from a bluish structure which I took to be the bladder, I didn't recognise any abdominal organs. Anyway, this must be the appendix. I was just about to clamp and incise the tube, when Charlie Hardcastle came out of his catatonic state. Throwing sterility to the winds, he grasped my wrist:

  “Don't cut it, Edwin ... I think it's pulsating!”

  I felt it with my index finger: sure enough, there was a strong arterial pulse.

  “It must be the common iliac artery ...”

  (Because of my relief at having narrowly avoided catastrophe, I paid no attention to it at the time, but later Dr Hardcastle's suddenly decisive action took on a new significance.)

  “The blue structure that you thought was the bladder ... I think it could be the peritoneum.”

  After a long vacillating pause, I slit this blue sac, and found that it was indeed the peritoneum. Now the viscera were clearly displayed before me. The long worm-like appendix, lying partly hidden behind the pink caecum, was grey and gangrenous – we had left it very late! I double-clamped the appendix, and cut between the clamps. I invaginated the tied stump of the appendix into the body of the caecum, and Charlie drew tight the purse-string suture around it. As I transferred it into a kidney dish, the appendix burst. We had been only just in time.

  Sister Pitrose checked the swabs and instruments.

  “All present and correct.”

  With my heart beating forcibly against my chest wall, I sewed up the abdomen ... At three-forty-five we lifted Minnie from the operating table onto the trolley.

  Radio Koh-i-Noor soon issued the news of our dramatic and successful operation; and for the succeeding days, Dr Hardcastle, Dr Watkins, the three nursing sisters and I were overwhelmed by offers of free drinks from both passengers and crew.

  However, for Joanne Flinders and me this was to be a pleasure postponed.

  The night before, I had placed the bottle of Stemetil on my bedside table, and this morning I took a tablet before I got out of bed, to prevent sea-sickness. Peristalsis propels food through the gut. Retrograde peristalsis in the stomach results in a sensation of nausea, whereas more forceful forward peristalsis merely evinces hunger. Thus, the chief effects on me of the yawing and pitching of the ship was an increased appetite and some muscle fatigue. Not everyone was so fortunate: a large number of the ship's inhabitants were prostrated with sea-sickness.
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br />   Once we had changed out of our theatre garb, and as soon as I had satisfied myself that little Minnie was recovering from her ordeal (with Dr Watkins and Sister Pitrose still in attendance), Joanne and I commenced a sea-sickness round of the entire ship.

  Joanne was a one-striper, a slim slight girl with fair hair and an aquiline nose. Like me, she had only recently started on the Koh-i-Noor; and, like me, she appeared immune to sea-sickness; she was brisk, friendly and efficient: now she carried the tray of syringes, hyoscine ampoules, swabs and spirit, better able than I to keep her balance against the constant pitching of the ship. For each stricken patient, I administered the drug intravenously, while she drew up the syringes, applied the tourniquet and supported the arm, all the while keeping up a line in cheerful chatter to maintain his or her morale.

  The first visit we made was to the captain. We were let in by his cabin steward, a grey-haired Indian gentleman, very upright, slim, dignified. We passed through a spacious day-room into the bedroom section, dominated by a picture window which took up most of one wall, and gave dramatic views of the storm raging outside. The cabin was lit by two brass chandeliers. The only furniture was the stately bed in the centre of the room, mahogany bedside tables on either side, and a green leather padded armchair against one wall. There was striped green and cream regency wall paper, and my feet sank into a deep cream carpet. On one wall hung a large portrait in a heavy gilded frame of Horatio, Lord Nelson, in full admiral's regalia; in the background was moored his ship, the Victory. The picture reminded me of my visit to Gieves and Hawkes, the military and naval tailors, in the City of London.

  I found Captain Butterworth lying helpless on the bed, propped up on four pillows, hardly able to move, clutching a punch-bowl containing a small quantity of vomit. He was dressed in elegant dark green pyjamas that matched the décor of the room, but his hair was awry, his skin was pasty, a dribble of saliva peeped from the corner of his mouth, and he was in obvious distress. A few beads of perspiration had gathered on his forehead and on his upper lip. I would hardly have recognised him as the imposing figure whom I had previously seen striding the decks, dominating the salons.