“Which is where Everard came in?”
Pike nodded. “Borislav asked, hypothetically, how such surgery might be performed. Everard had already made contact with him regarding the drug business, finding out all about it from one of his private practice patients, a society matron who asked him for morphine. She had been a Borislav customer, but he had cut her off for nonpayment. The society matron led Everard to Dunn, whom she had met through Borislav, and Everard jumped at the opportunity to be a part of this undoubtedly prosperous venture.”
Dody shook her head in dismay. A doctor and a respected chemist, manipulating vulnerable people for profit. She could hardly credit it. “So they were in business together? Borislav had so little respect for Everard.”
“It’s pretty clear the good doctor left Borislav little choice but to cut him in—Everard could easily have turned the whole network over to the police. Borislav decided to pay him off and hoped he’d be satisfied with that. But Everard was not satisfied; he wanted more. When Esther’s body was discovered, he realised Borislav was behind it and used her death to simultaneously endanger you and blackmail Borislav. Borislav, to his credit, did try to get you out of the firing line and turn suspicion on Van Noort, though he was also happy to make you very ill rather than risk your continued investigations into the dented pills.”
“I thought my symptoms were the return of the cholera.”
“As he hoped you would. He kept your symptoms just uncomfortable enough to impede your work—the marzipans, the meat juice. He did not imagine you would drink so much more of the effervescent mixture than prescribed.”
Other than Poppa and now Pike, Borislav was one of the few men Dody had felt totally at ease with; he was her friend, or so she had thought. An educated woman like herself should have seen through him, seen the greed and anger beneath. Strange; throughout history, it seemed, women and men had been blinded by their own needs and duped by the opposite sex. No amount of equality could rectify that.
She bit her lip. Pike squeezed her hand as if he knew what she was thinking, as if to show that she could trust him.
Dody fought back tears. “Go on,” she urged him. “Borislav ran a gang? We were right about that?”
“We were. He ran a network of roughs, many of them morphinomaniacs, like Dunn, who, as well as the cheaper remedies favoured in Whitechapel, sold stolen drugs to a wealthy clientele in the West End. Nothing like a syringe of morphine to liven up a ladies’ tea party. Borislav and Everard staged the robbery at his own pharmacy to justify the missing drugs to Joseph.”
That explained the lack of defensive injuries on Borislav’s arms, Dody thought. She said, “I suppose the tighter pharmacy laws are better than the old days, when people got opiates as easily as ale. Now at least they have to get them through prescriptions. Though it has, it seems, created an underground market. Something new for criminals to do! Is that why Everard’s bag was stolen?”
“That was largely a clever ruse to hide the true intention of the visit, which was to steal the Book of Lists. It’s vanished by the way; probably at the bottom of the Thames by now. And Borislav did have a suspicious mark against his name, from a couple of years ago. Everard had seen it and organised the theft before you got the chance to look. Dunn was something of a double agent; he worked for Borislav—and was terrified of him—but he had been recruited by Everard as a source of information initially and then later to help bring you down. An addict belongs to anyone who’ll provide him with a dose.”
“Has Borislav said any more?”
“Not much more than what he told me originally in the back room of the chemist shop. He’s hardly said a word—though he seems genuinely remorseful on your account. Most of what I learned is from Everard and the thugs he was able to name.”
“Borislav didn’t . . .” Dody almost choked on the words. “He didn’t deliberately kill Esther to stop me talking to her again, did he?” When Pike failed to answer, she forced some strength into her voice. “Answer me, Matthew; I’m not a child.”
Pike got up from the bed and began to pace the small room.
“Please tell me,” she urged. “I asked you not to spare me.”
Pike sat back down and said gently, “We can only speculate that Esther’s death was deliberate. There was no reason for him to murder Elizabeth Strickland, however, and her death most probably was accidental. He knew we were getting close and I suppose he lost his nerve.”
“Can you prove that Borislav murdered Dunn?”
“It’s common knowledge amongst his gang that Dunn was murdered to stop him talking. Borislav’s lost control now and his thugs are willing to speak against him. He will hang on their testimony alone, I’m sure of it.”
Dody suppressed a shiver. “But Everard murdered no one.”
“He tried, may I point out, to murder you. Had you been convicted—and he genuinely thought you might be—you might have hanged. He still faces a prison sentence, but it will, I’m sad to say, be considerably reduced in the light of his cooperation. He will probably also gain the court’s favour by claiming he picked Dunn up in his car to save him from Borislav’s clutches—when, in fact, he was using Dunn to get to both you and Borislav.” Pike shrugged.
“His poor wife . . . is there anything you can do for her?”
Pike sighed. “Dody, I am police, not Salvation Army. She has supportive relatives. They will see to it that she does not starve.”
There was something else she needed to ask, but her eyelids were getting heavy and she was having trouble holding on to the threads of her thoughts. If she rested her eyes for just a minute, perhaps she could gather the tangles up again. “Van Noort . . .” she began.
“Hush now,” Pike said and placed his finger across her lips. “Sleep.”
And for once she obeyed his wishes without further question.
* * *
She was sleeping peacefully when Pike kissed her forehead, murmuring that he would soon return. Footsteps in the corridor caused him to straighten and retreat into the shadows of the room. A couple of late middle age, whom he recognised from photographs in the townhouse as Dody’s parents, hurried over to the bed with Florence in tow. They were too distracted to notice Pike inching towards the door; he had no wish to eavesdrop on an intimate family gathering.
Mr. McCleland went straight to Dody’s side.
“Hush, don’t wake her, Nial,” his wife admonished.
“She’s so pale,” he said as he bent over his daughter, his face almost hidden behind his shaggy beard.
“Don’t worry, Poppa,” Florence whispered. “The doctors are expecting a full recovery. She should be home within a few days.” And then she spied Pike. “Ah, Pike, stay where you are. I’d like you to meet our parents.”
“Not here, dear, we might wake Dody. Let’s step outside for a moment,” Louise McCleland whispered. Her hair was grey under her wide-brimmed hat, and she met Pike’s gaze with eyes the same violet hue as her younger daughter’s. But her mannerisms were all Dody, from the tilt of her mouth to her sensible, calming countenance.
They all stepped into the corridor, where Florence introduced them. “If not for Chief Inspector Pike, Dody might not be alive now,” Florence said.
Pike took Florence’s lead. He kept his manner stiff and formal. “I am more inclined, miss, to give the credit to the late Dr. Van Noort,” he said.
“The poor fellow who jumped to his death?” Mr. McCleland enquired.
Pike closed his eyes briefly. “The same, sir,” he said.
“He was of unsound mind, Poppa,” Florence said.
“But that does not make it any easier or right, does it, Chief Inspector?” Mrs. McCleland responded.
“No, indeed, ma’am, it does not. I was hoping he could have been helped. His only crime, after all, was practising medicine without a licence.”
“Such a shame. Thank you, Chief Inspector, for all you have done.” Mrs. McCleland put her hand out to him.
“Indeed. Plea
se don’t feel you have to stay, we don’t wish to hold you up,” her husband added. There was no hostility in his voice, but it was obvious that Mr. McCleland was keen to have his family to himself, and Pike could not blame him for that.
He bowed and bade them good day.
He was about to step out into the street when he heard hasty footsteps from behind. “Pike, wait,” Florence said, reaching for his arm. “I’ve said nothing to Mother and Poppa, but I can hardly bear the thought that so much of this is my fault.”
Pike had never seen Florence look quite so miserable. He took her by the arm and guided her to a wooden bench against the wall near the admissions counter.
“It’s my fault,” she said again, twisting her gloves in her hands. “It was my stupid idea to try and discover who had manufactured the tablets, and it was my actions that alerted Mr. Borislav and spurred him into laying the trap. I thought he would not know who I was.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Florence,” Pike said. “Many things have happened to get us to this point and yours was just a small part of it.” He could only hope that she had learned from her mistakes and would not take police matters into her own hands again.
“And Dr. Van Noort—I feel responsible for his death, too,” she said.
Pike rubbed his hand over his eyes and down his face. His skin still stung from the myriad tiny glass cuts. “The man had attempted suicide before,” he said tiredly. “If not now, he would have succeeded further down the track.”
Pike found himself unable to control the sudden shudder that wracked his body.
“Pike, are you all right?”
“I almost talked him out of it, you know. He was on the ledge about to jump when I returned to the room with Jack. I persuaded him to climb down. We gave Dody the antidote and I sent Jack to find a taxi. During that time we spoke about the war; I think it helped him to talk. And then suddenly, there he was, rushing for the window again before I could stop him. I only hope Dody was unaware of it. She’d drunk as much of the antidote as she could take and was, I think, unconscious by that time.”
Florence squeezed his arm. “You are a good friend, Pike, not only to poor Dr. Van Noort and to Dody, but to me, too.”
Tuesday 5 September
It was a still, overcast day and fitting for a funeral. Dody, who had only been out of hospital for a day, held on to Florence’s arm and looked across the grave to Mrs. Van Noort. The widow exhibited a combination of grief and relief, as a person helplessly watching a loved one slowly dying of an incurable disease might at the close. Mrs. Van Noort held baby Molly tightly as the vicar said his final words. John—or Jack, as Dody knew him now—stood pressed against her side, twisting his fingers through the folds of her black coat.
A police van pulled up outside the cemetery gate and out stepped Pike, hurrying over as fast as his limp would allow. He joined the small gathering just as the coffin was being lowered.
“Are you all right?” he whispered to Dody.
She nodded, wondering how he was faring. It couldn’t have been easy watching Archibald Van Noort dive from the third-floor window to his death. As she’d faded in and out of consciousness, she’d caught more of the men’s conversation than she would ever let Pike know.
The men had exchanged the most private of memories; memories even Mrs. Van Noort, she suspected, had not been privy to. Listening to them talk, Dody was no longer lying wracked with pain in a bloody room above the fishmonger’s, but transported to the war-torn conditions of the veldt, conditions which the newspapers at home had grossly underreported. Though she now knew something of Pike’s experience in that hospital tent, she hoped that one day he would be able to tell her the full story himself.
When the service was over and the minister had left, Mrs. Van Noort spoke to the small assembly. “Thank you all for coming. The vicar knew Archie well, knew that he was of unsound mind and how much he battled the Beast, and that was why he permitted him to be buried in consecrated ground.”
No one knew how to reply. Dody dropped her head. All was silent save for the thump of earth on wood as the gravediggers went about their business.
Pike held Mrs. Van Noort’s arm and escorted her towards the church hall, where they took tea. Jack grabbed a sticky bun in each hand and ran back to the graveyard to play.
“Go quietly now, Jack,” Mrs. Van Noort admonished. “Show some respect. He means well,” she said apologetically to Pike and Dody, “but how can he know what he has never been taught?”
Outside the open church door Jack handed a smaller boy, who had appeared from nowhere, one of the buns. A pal from the street, Dody supposed. She heard Jack shout, “I’ll be the German spy and you have to hunt me down!” The resilience of children.
“How are you getting on with the paperwork, ma’am?” Pike asked Mrs. Van Noort.
“Very well. It looks like there will be no obstacles to me adopting all the younger Kent children, including the toddler still with her mother. The two eldest children wish to remain in Whitechapel. One has obtained a job as a carpenter’s apprentice and things are at last looking up for the family. I can only thank you, Chief Inspector, for all your assistance in the matter.”
“Mrs. Kent was delighted when I told her that the legal process was under way for the adoptions—and the cash payment of course,” Pike said to Dody.
“Then seeing as you’re getting on with Mrs. Kent so well, Chief Inspector, you’d better send her to one of my classes at the Clinic so she can learn how not to have any more children,” Dody said.
“I can see you’re better,” Florence said with a frown.
“Much better, thank you.”
Florence urged Dody away from the group. “Did you finally bring yourself to read that note from Henry Everard?”
Dody smiled. “No need to look so worried—it wasn’t a poison pen letter.”
“Well, that’s a relief. I think you’ve had enough poison, don’t you? I was of two minds as to whether to give it to you or not.”
“I’m glad you did. Strangely enough, it was an apology of sorts. When he finishes his sentence, he plans on moving his family to Australia.”
“Good riddance. Did he admit to his plagiarism?”
“No, he didn’t mention it. I imagine he thought it was of little consequence compared with what followed—and in that he’d be correct, I suppose.”
“Wretched fool of a man,” Florence said, loud enough to attract the attention of Pike, who was still talking to Mrs. Van Noort. “Will you be all right on your own tonight?” Florence asked. “I have a meeting to attend.”
Dody caught Pike’s eye without meaning to, and self-consciously drew her gaze away from his. “Of course, Florence,” she said. “I am not an invalid.”
* * *
Dody heard the ring of the doorbell, the murmur of voices, and the familiar footsteps in the hall, and she realised then that she had been waiting for Pike since her return from the funeral. Annie showed the man she loved into the morning room.
Dody told Annie she could go to bed and felt suddenly nervous. She poured them both a sherry and downed hers in one swallow. Pike took hold of her hand as she reached again for the decanter, and shook his head.
“You don’t need that,” he said softly, and led her up the stairs to her bedroom.
Epilogue
Dody directed Annie and Fletcher as they turned the dining room into an operating theatre, her textbook on performing operations in the civilian home open in her hands. Carpets were rolled and removed along with framed pictures and upholstered chairs. Annie and Fletcher brushed the ceiling and walls down with a towel saturated in bichloride and then draped white sheets over the pieces of dining room furniture too heavy to be moved. The mahogany table was left in the centre of the room, sheeted and topped with a thin, rubber-clad mattress Dody had borrowed from the Clinic.
She scrubbed her hands and nails over a porcelain bowl of water sitting on their sheeted sideboard. Much had changed since the first
operation she had witnessed as a medical student, before antiseptic notions had been replaced by aseptic techniques. It was now not only a question of getting rid of any germs present; the aim of asepsis was to start off with fewer germs in the first place. Thus the sheets had been boiled, the instruments had been boiled, and Dody wore a sterilised gown over her apron.
Pike had agreed to the operation only on the condition that it not be performed in a hospital and that Dody would see to the procedure. It had taken all her powers of persuasion to convince him how unethical that would be now they were lovers.
Lovers.
The memory of their first and only lovemaking still left her with a honey-warm glow and a deep desire for more. But it was a desire that strengthened her rather than weakened her with pointless worry about the future. How they could carry off further trysts, she had no idea; all that mattered was the present and the love she had found in it. They would sort something out—they had to.
It had taken almost as much effort to persuade Pike to have the operation as it had Barker to perform it. At first the surgeon had refused—for reasons of professional pride, he announced. Whether by that he referred to the insult of Pike’s flight from the hospital or to distance himself from the scandal of Dody’s accusation of criminal abortion, she had no idea. Dody had cajoled and flattered, finally winning him over by saying what an interesting episode this procedure would make for his memoirs, given that home operations would surely soon be a thing of the past.
Nurse Daphne Hamilton helped Barker into his sterile gown, but the surgeon turned down her offer of rubber gloves. “Never used ’em before and don’t intend using ’em now,” he said curtly as he scrubbed his hands with carbolic soap.
Dody arranged the anaesthetic equipment on a card table that had been brought in from the drawing room. Bottles clinked as she removed their glass stoppers and prepared a mixture of ether alcohol, plain ether, and chloroform, then took the anaesthetic mask from its small wooden case. Now all they needed was their patient.
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