Interviewing the Dead

by David Field

  ‘And what do you think?’ Matthew asked eagerly.

  Carlyle smiled. ‘I am not Adelaide, clearly. But I may tell you that Adelaide’s father would be delighted if she chose to.’

  Any further discussion of the point was interrupted by a slight commotion in the doorway at the end of the cell corridor, down which Jennings walked swiftly, nodding to Mathew and Carlyle, then raising two eyebrows at the latter. ‘You asked to see me, Doctor?’

  ‘Yes — where’s the body of that man who Matthew here is alleged to have murdered?’

  ‘Still in the hand cart in the rear yard here,’ Jennings replied. ‘We’ve sent for Dr Plummer, who’s our new divisional police surgeon and we hope that he can tell us the cause of death. When he deigns to grace us with his presence, that is.’

  ‘About all he could do is confirm that the man’s dead,’ Carlyle snorted. ‘I had the misfortune to have him in one of my anatomy classes and he wasn’t the brightest lamp in the street. Have the body conveyed to the London Hospital, because I believe I’ve found our poisoner. If possible I’d like Matthew here released so that he can be there when I conduct the anatomisation.’

  ‘He’s free to go anyway,’ Jennings confirmed, ‘since the front desk’s been under siege from crowds of locals who witnessed what happened and are insisting that the dead man attacked “the preacher” first. Led, it would seem, by a lady on crutches who gave the name “Violet Cummins” and who assures us that “Father West” is God’s chosen representative here in the East End.’

  ‘A satisfied customer,’ Matthew grinned.

  ‘Whoever she is, and from what I heard from all the others, you were only defending yourself,’ Jennings grinned back. ‘So you’re free to go with Dr Carlyle if you wish, while I see to the transfer of the body.’

  13

  ‘Did God fight back while you were fighting the good fight?’ Adelaide asked mockingly as Matthew and Carlyle walked into the mortuary and she took in the state of Matthew’s face.

  Carlyle frowned at her and issued an instruction. ‘Sit him down and hold his hand while I remove a certain foreign substance from those wounds.’

  Despite the pleasure of having Adelaide’s cool hand in his, Matthew winced and cursed mildly as Carlyle set about the delicate task of extracting more pink vegetable material from Matthew’s facial scars. Eventually, having secured several visible pieces of what looked like well chewed jelly and laid them carefully into a glass dish at the side of him, Carlyle said, ‘That should be enough for analysis.’

  Adelaide let go of Matthew’s hand and walked to a side bench, where she lit a gas burner and picked up a flask, then looked back enquiringly at her father, who shook his head.

  ‘There’s only a small amount, so I’d better do it, if we’re to be certain that it’s Peyote. In any case, you have a more important job to do. Fetch the iodine.’

  Adelaide’s eyes opened wide and she shook her head. ‘Has he not suffered enough?’

  ‘Do you want him to acquire an infection?’ Carlyle demanded in a tone that brooked no argument.

  Adelaide asked, ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because in my experience a pretty nurse brings out the bravery in a man and he’s going to need it.’

  ‘What dilution level?’

  ‘Neat. That’s why he’s going to have to be brave. I can’t risk him going back out there with a single shred of Peyote in his system.’

  ‘Why are you talking about me as if I’m not here?’ Matthew asked.

  Adelaide replied, ‘That’s the role played by all patients. Now put your head back and be a brave boy.’

  While Matthew was staring steadfastly at the ceiling, Adelaide selected a large blue bottle from an upper shelf, uncorked it, reached for a clean cloth and grimaced as she poured an ominously purple liquid into it. Then she breezed over to Matthew and asked, ‘How did you come to have Peyote in your face anyway?’

  ‘It’s a long story and one that — OW!!’

  ‘This will hurt you more than it will me,’ Adelaide said as she doused the cloth with more purple torture and dabbed Matthew’s scars again. ‘Stop wriggling, for Heaven’s sake!’ she instructed him as he stamped his feet on the floor in an attempt to make the stinging pain go away. ‘Twice more, then I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ she promised.

  ‘Twice more and I’ll be too dead to drink it!’ Matthew protested as he flattened his back into the chair, as if seeking to distance himself from the next instalment.

  ‘Stop being such a baby,’ she ordered him. ‘This is doing you good.’

  ‘Really?’ Matthew demanded disbelievingly. ‘Remind me not to be around here when you decide to do me something bad.’

  ‘Shut up and take your medicine,’ she replied as she screwed up her face against the application of the final dose. ‘Do you want me to dress Mr West’s cuts, Father?’

  ‘No,’ Carlyle replied with his back to her as he warmed the pink contents of a flask over the naked flame. ‘I want the wounds to heal naturally by exposure to the air.’

  ‘Mr West would prefer to be called Matthew.’

  ‘Mr West is my patient and it would be unprofessional for a nurse to address a patient in any other way,’ Adelaide retorted.

  ‘Is it therefore entirely professional for a nurse to kiss her patient?’ Matthew asked.

  Adelaide tutted. ‘You must still be suffering the effects of Peyote if you thought I did that. And you haven’t answered my question as to how you came to be in this state in the first place.’

  ‘I think that your question is about to be answered,’ Carlyle replied as a heavy knock sounded on the door to the corridor. ‘See who that is, will you?’

  Adelaide opened the door to an eager looking Inspector Jennings, behind whom was a trolley containing a body wrapped carefully in a waterproof cover and two uniformed constables.

  ‘Wheel him in, then go back to your duties,’ Jennings instructed them. ‘And no chatting to the nurses on your way out.’ He turned back to Carlyle and asked, ‘Why has Matthew’s face gone all purple?’

  ‘Put the corpse where it rightly belongs,’ Carlyle instructed as he began to don a green overall. ‘As for Mr West, he’s just been sterilised.’

  A horrified Matthew grabbed a mirror from the side bench and stared at his reflection. ‘I look like a circus clown!’ he complained.

  Adelaide giggled. ‘Some might say it’s an improvement, but when Father said that you’d been sterilised, he didn’t mean that society will be deprived of more clowns in the future. More’s the pity, perhaps.’

  ‘Pay attention, you two,’ Carlyle instructed them. ‘Adelaide, get into your surgical clobber and get ready to assist me. Matthew, put that vanity device down and come and tell me what you observe of the man that you recently killed.’

  ‘Did you actually kill a man?’ Adelaide asked with a look of morbid surprise. ‘How exactly did you achieve that — bore him to death with a sermon?’

  ‘Very droll,’ Matthew replied with a pronounced lack of amusement. ‘It was a pure accident, I can assure you. He attacked me and I punched him just the once. He fell backwards and I can only assume that his head came off second best against the roadway.’

  ‘Why did he attack you?’

  ‘He found my sermon not to his taste, obviously. But at least he didn’t pour purple acid in my face.’

  ‘Iodine,’ Adelaide insisted, before Carlyle called a halt to the exchange.

  ‘Children, if you’d give me your attention for a moment? In due course I’ll save Matthew from the hangman by proving that the man suffered a fractured skull, although I think I’ll reserve the pleasure of exposing the back of his head to general view until our visitors have left. Adelaide, please hold the hand steady while I examine underneath the fingernails.’

  She did as requested and Matthew and Jennings looked on in slightly nauseous curiosity as Carlyle poked underneath each of the corpse’s fingernails with a long sharp implement. Then he gave a grunt of sati
sfaction as he straightened up with something pink and soggy on the end of it. ‘Regard, my friends. Peyote. Either that or the man was a keen gardener.’

  ‘What’s that gooey stuff it’s mixed up in?’ Matthew asked.

  ‘The rest of your face. We have what, I suspect, is Peyote in the dear departed’s fingernails. We have his fingernails making railway lines in Matthew’s face. We have Peyote in Matthew’s resulting scars. Conclusion?’

  ‘We’ve found the poisoner!’ Jennings exclaimed.

  Carlyle nodded. ‘Precisely. Assuming that the pink stuff in his fingernails is indeed Peyote.’

  ‘But how did it finish up in his fingernails?’ Matthew asked.

  Carlyle shook his head. ‘One minute you give me hope that you’ve learned something and the next you go back to the beginners’ class.’

  ‘He handled the Peyote?’ Jennings asked.

  Carlyle nodded again. ‘I believe that we had already concluded that whoever was lacing the beer was doing so by slipping Peyote into the pots of individual drinkers, rather than contaminating an entire batch of beer. The most obvious way of doing that is to drop a small handful in while the victim isn’t looking, or is too far gone in liquor to notice. Two questions, Inspector, if I may. First of all, are there any Bennings pubs in the immediate vicinity of where this man and Matthew had their little exchange of unpleasantries?’

  ‘Yes, as it happens,’ Bennings confirmed. ‘It’s called “The Ratcliffe Arms” and the two bobbies who were attracted to the fight had just called in at the place to sort out an incident in there.’

  ‘I think you just answered my second question,’ Carlyle responded gleefully. ‘Another poor unfortunate who had been seeing demons?’

  ‘More or less,’ Jennings confirmed. ‘Some bloke who reckoned that one of the barmaids was a witch who was giving him the Evil Eye. We let him off with a warning after the two officers were obliged to deal with a murder a few yards down the road.’

  ‘Sorry to have inconvenienced you,’ Matthew muttered.

  He was barely audible above Carlyle’s shout of triumph. ‘That confirms it all, does it not? This man — whoever he was — had been in the pub with a handful of Peyote and was on his way out of there before the fun started. On his way down the street he had occasion to pick a fight with Matthew and came second in the contest. Adelaide, search his jacket pockets very carefully and keep your gloves on while you do so.’

  ‘“Quod erat demonstrandum”, gentlemen,’ Carlyle said triumphantly as Adelaide removed her gloved hand from the pocket of the corpse, unclenched her fingers and revealed a minute quantity of pink vegetation.

  ‘So this fellow I killed was in the pub, putting Peyote in someone’s beer pot, just before I put him on the ground?’ Matthew observed, more by way of statement than question, but no-one was prepared to take the trouble to confirm the obvious.

  Jennings, however, had another point to raise. ‘At least it looks as if all the recent madness will stop, now that we’ve got the bloke who did it. But who is he?’

  ‘Matthew,’ said Carlyle, ‘perhaps, in return for all that first-class medical attention you recently received, you might assist me in the preliminary process of learning more about this man from what we can observe with our eyes. You first.’

  Matthew leaned over the corpse, then wrinkled his nose. ‘A bit of a conundrum,’ he announced. ‘He smells as if he hasn’t had a bath for an appreciable time and he’s certainly in need of a barber. Yet the suit he’s wearing is good quality, as are the boots, although they would benefit from a clean. I’d be very surprised to learn that this man is from the labouring classes, given the state of the inside of his hands. There are no calluses or blisters, and believe me I’m familiar with labouring hands. He reeks of alcohol, obviously, or is that more of your preserving fluid I can smell, or perhaps the purple paint you inflicted on me?’

  ‘So,’ Carlyle summarised, ‘a man not used to working with his hands, a man of moderate circumstances who for some reason or other has been living on the rough side of life recently. Ring any bells, Inspector?’

  When Jennings continued to look blank, Carlyle sighed, then prompted him. ‘Did you not advise me, when we were in the coach heading down to Leman Street, that you were still looking for the former Head Brewer from Bennings, who’d left home some weeks ago and was a likely candidate for having a grudge against his former employers?’

  ‘You mean this man’s Alfred Morrell?’

  ‘I don’t know for certain, do I, any more than you do? But didn’t you say that the man had a wife?’

  ‘Yes, he does — or is it “did”? Either way, she lives not far away, up the road in Hoxton.’

  ‘Then you might wish to invite her down here to identify our silent guest. Preferably before I peel the skin and hair from the back of his head. Widows can get very critical when you anatomise their late husbands, I find.’

  Jennings duly departed and Adelaide volunteered to make tea, while Carlyle walked over to the cloak stand in the corner and fiddled inside his inner jacket pocket, returning to where Matthew sat alongside the bench with a three page printed document. He handed it to Matthew and drew an inkpot towards him, along with a mother of pearl pen.

  ‘It’s fitting, I think, that you be the one to sign this,’ he told Matthew.

  ‘Sign what?’

  ‘Adelaide’s nomination form for a seat on the London County Council. The election isn’t until next June, so you have a little while in which to sign.’

  ‘Why me?’ Matthew asked.

  Adelaide turned back from the beaker in which she was boiling water for tea on a tripod above a gas jet. ‘It requires the nomination of two responsible citizens who aren’t related to me. Men, of course, it goes without saying.’

  ‘And you consider me to be responsible?’

  ‘You’re certainly responsible for me shooting my mouth off in front of those newspaper rats, so it’s the least you can do. I’m delighted to say that I don’t know any other responsible men well enough to ask them, so I may not be eligible after all.’

  ‘So if possible you intend to go through with it?’

  ‘I never turn my back on something that I’ve set my mind on, and women have been held back from political life for too long,’ Adelaide replied defiantly as she poured hot water into the teapot, adding, ‘I’m only doing this because you could read the newspaper through Father’s tea and we deserve a decent cup.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that women could stand for political office,’ Matthew offered gingerly, awaiting a predictable outburst in response. ‘Isn’t that what all those “Suffragist” women are complaining about?’

  ‘I’m not one of those,’ Adelaide snapped back. ‘But the previous attempt to get a woman elected was overruled by the courts and all those militant types made a big song and dance about it. It’s high time that someone had another go.’

  ‘Didn’t one of the women die early this year?’ Carlyle asked.

  Adelaide nodded, then turned to smile weakly at Matthew. ‘Just so that you fully appreciate the lost cause that you’re about to put your name to, you should be aware that the last woman who attempted to get elected to the LCC actually succeeded. Her name was Margaret Mansfield and she was also “Baroness Sandhurst”, since she was married to Baron Sandhurst, one of Queen Victoria’s administrators in India. You won’t fail to have noticed that she was only regarded as important because of who she’d married — typical! Anyway, she earned her credits by running a home for sick children in Marylebone and she was a leading light of the Women’s Liberal Association. But she was strongly opposed in the elections by the Conservative candidate and he made much of the fact that she was also a member of the Women’s Franchise League — regarded, inaccurately of course, as the same thing as the Suffragist movement.’

  ‘But you say that despite that she got elected?’

  ‘Yes, she did, to her considerable credit. But then the miserable poor loser of a Conservative candida
te petitioned against her election and the courts ruled in his favour.’

  ‘On what ground, pray?’ Matthew asked. ‘And if it was because she was a woman, why are you planning on battering your head against the same brick wall?’

  Adelaide grimaced. ‘That’s precisely why I’m planning on standing. The courts shrank from ruling against her on the grounds of her sex and instead came out with some mealy-mouthed excuse about irregularities during her original registration. That’s why I’ve got to get it absolutely right when I put up my hand this time. Hence the need to ensure that I have two “responsible” nominators — which means male, much though it pains me.’

  ‘We’re still scratching our heads regarding a second one,’ Carlyle told him. ‘I could ask one of my fellow surgeons here at the hospital, but we don’t want to risk a challenge later, should Adelaide be successful. You know — a suggestion that I bribed someone who was hoping to promote their career? The second person must be completely independent and preferably a man of commerce. What about your family members?’

  Matthew thought for a moment, then shook his head sadly. ‘My father would almost certainly refuse, on the ground that his business would suffer if he openly nominated a candidate. And in any case, wouldn’t it need to be someone from Adelaide’s constituency, or whatever they call them in local government? Which district are you contesting, anyway?’

  ‘My home one — Hackney,’ Adelaide replied. ‘It’s widely enough drawn to include Clerkenwell within its western boundary, although Father suggested that if absolutely necessary you could always move in with us for the month or so that would be necessary to give you “residency” status.’