The Anatomy of Death (20 page)

He rubbed his face and attempted to smooth his tousled hair. “Thank you, Doctor, but you’ve done enough.” He looked down and discovered he was dressed only in undershirt and drawers and hastily pulled the blanket up to his neck. “If you could just hand me my clothes, I will be off.” Now there was too much colour in the pale face.

“I’m afraid it won’t be that simple. I had to cut your trousers to pieces to get at your leg last night. As for the rest of your things, Annie has taken them away for laundering, all but your jacket, and that is drying in the kitchen.”

“Launder them? But I need—”

“I will send my coachman to your lodgings for more clothes later. I can’t let you bear weight on that leg just yet, and when you do, it will have to be with a pair of crutches.” She poured him coffee from the breakfast tray Annie had brought in.

“Crutches?” Pike said. “I can’t be seen with crutches. Didn’t I tell you last night that I could lose my job if Shepherd discovers my knee has worsened?”

“Then you must stay out of sight for a few days. If you think someone from the force might visit you at your lodgings, you are welcome to stay here until you can use your cane again.”

Pike shook his head. “I appreciate your offer, but no. Not only does it show a singular lack of propriety”—at this Dody could not help smiling—“but it would be most unwise, politically speaking. Neither of us can afford to advertise our new, er, alliance.”

For a moment she thought he had been going to say friendship. How would she feel if he had? Annoyed? Would she have thought him overly familiar or would she have been flattered? Whatever the case, she was glad he had not said it.

“Only until this evening then, when we will devise a plan. Here, you must eat.” She handed him toast and marmalade and took some for herself. “Surely you would like to be close at hand to hear what I find out about the possibility of testing the truncheons for Lady Catherine’s blood group?”

Pike placed his untouched toast on the table next to his coffee. With a sigh of defeat, he sank back against his pillow.

Dody gulped down the last of her coffee, glancing at the mantelpiece clock as she did so. “It’s almost nine o’clock. If I don’t go now, I will be late for ward rounds. I’ll bring you back some crutches from the hospital, but it won’t be until
late this afternoon. On no account are you to put weight on that leg, or remove the strapping from your ribs, or tamper with the splint—it must be firm to keep the patella in place. Annie will bring in your meals—and a chamber pot for your convenience.”

He turned his head away. His hand went to his leg under the blanket. For the first time he seemed aware of the improvised contraption. “The splint…?”

“I’ll show you.” Dody pulled back the blanket and revealed the cardboard splint put together from one of Florence’s newspaper boxes.

His eyes widened in horror as he read the black print down the front of the device—
VOTES FOR
WOMEN!

Dody smiled.
That ought to keep him in his place.

T
he cab made swift progress along the macadam road to the New Women’s Hospital, and Dody had plenty to occupy her mind during the short journey. Pike had not been exaggerating when on the doorstep last night he’d said he had important things to report. He knew the truth now—that the police had attacked women at the riot, that Lady Catherine had been bludgeoned by a policeman, and that this had been suppressed. Surely it would have been in Pike’s best interest to bury his head in the sand, but he had given her his assurance that he would do everything in his power to get to the heart of the corruption, and expose it’s rotten core. But at what cost? He had already come close to losing his life at the hands of ruffians he had sacked, but what of the others, the men who had even more to lose? What steps might they take to silence him?

And then there was the astonishing fact that his daughter had actually witnessed the murder—if murder it was. Dody
had only found that out when Pike had woken in the night muttering Violet’s name. She had assumed he was referring to a wife, but after she had soothed him with more laudanum, he told her that his wife was dead and that Violet was his daughter. He made her swear, for both their sakes, that she would not make his daughter’s involvement in the riot public knowledge.

For a fleeting moment Dody forgot her cares and smiled as she watched the drizzly streetscape speed by. So, the staid, straightlaced chief inspector had a suffragette-in-the-making for a daughter! The irony was quite delicious; how she wished she could tell Florence.

Florence.

The smile faded from her face. Florence’s abrupt departure from the house had been worrying and hurtful, though in hindsight it was just as well, given Pike’s arrival. But Florence was sure to hear the news from Annie, and then what? A policeman was a policeman to Florence, no matter how hurt and helpless he was, and no matter how convinced Dody was that they could trust him. This would surely drive yet another wedge between them.

She forced herself to concentrate on the day ahead and put a stop to this useless fretting. How illogical, how unlike her it was to worry about something that might never happen. If only she’d had the time for a soothing morning pipe before she’d left home.

Stepping out of the cab, she paused outside the front of the hospital, one of the first built expressly for women. She gazed up at the building’s unusual façade, a sight that always invigorated her spirit. The windows were of all shapes and sizes: arched and circular and some were leadlight, with a quaint little wooden portico presiding over them. The unique features seemed to join voices and cry out,
Look at me, look at me, I have dared to be different, I have defied all odds and I have succeeded!
Medicine for women had
progressed a long way in thirty years, and Dody felt proud of her own small part in it. Without waiting for the hospital porter, she pushed open the heavy front door.

The ward rounds took up the better part of the day, and it was past teatime when she finally made her way to the pathology department of St. Mary’s Hospital. A tall white-coated figure was alone in the laboratory, stooped over a microscope at one of the benches. For a moment she thought it might have been Spilsbury himself. The door banged behind her and the man turned to look up. He pushed an untidy fringe of greying hair from his forehead and squinted across the laboratory through a pair of thick-lensed glasses.

“Dr. McCleland, isn’t it?” he asked. “Well, I’ll be—thought you were still in Edinburgh.”

Dody hurried over to where he sat and shook his hand, hiding her disappointment. Dr. Eccles was a fair man. He was one of the few who not did not discriminate between male and female doctors. “I’ve been back for just over a week, Dr. Eccles—though it feels far longer than that. Edinburgh seems a long way in the past now.”

“Fully qualified and raring to go, eh? I believe we’ll be seeing a bit more of you now you’re with the Home Office. Spilsbury spoke very highly of you when he returned from Scotland. I think you might even have changed his opinion about lady doctors—and that’s no mean feat, believe me.”

Did Spilsbury really say that? Dody felt her colour rise. She consoled herself that, even with his glasses on, Dr. Eccles would probably not notice. “I’m glad to hear it, sir.”

“I believe he will be seeking a personal assistant when he comes back from leave.” Eccles’s thick lenses glinted. “Perhaps you will apply.”

“Oh…perhaps.” There was nothing Dody would like more than to be Dr. Spilsbury’s assistant. But she would not want to reveal her interest now, had no wish to betray herself to Eccles. Hers was a silly girlish crush—she knew that and would never take it further, even if Spilsbury were to show more than professional interest in her. Still, there was no harm in dreaming—was there?

She made a play at examining the rows of specimen jars above Dr. Eccles’s head. “And how are things at St. Mary’s?”

“Can’t complain. The surgeons are at last taking our work seriously; sending pathological specimens to us is quite
de rigueur
these days.” He pointed to a box of slides before him. “Tumours mainly, for identification. The old sawbones are finally becoming aware that not everything can be infallibly identified with the naked eye alone.”

“But no talk yet of an exclusive police crime laboratory here as they are planning for Lyon?”

Eccles became wistful. “Ah, if only. We’ll just have to leave that to the French for the time being. At least we can learn from their mistakes.” He indicated a lab stool. “Sit down and tell me what I can do for you. If it’s purely my company you are after, may I suggest dinner at the Savoy Grill? The whitebait comes highly recommended.” His lips moved into a smile; he was a shameless flirt—and happily married with half a dozen children. Dody knew very well that if she were to accept the invitation, he would probably fall off his stool in shock.

“One day I might take you up on your invitation,” she replied graciously, arranging her skirts over the stool, “but tonight I’m afraid I’m otherwise engaged.” He looked relieved. “I was hoping you might shed some light on the latest blood analysis techniques for me.”

Eccles removed his glasses and leaned back against the bench. “What is it you wish to know?”

“A simple test that can be done quickly on a bloodstain to determine the owner’s blood group.”

“I believe research is being carried out, but the development of a simple test is some years away. The Frogs will probably get there first; they always do.”

“So there is no way I could test a weapon for a human blood group?”

“None, other than the presumptive test, which will only show you if the stain is, in fact, blood at all.”

Dody saw herself seated on a stool like this in the draughty Edinburgh laboratory as she performed the basic test for haemoglobin. Again she felt her elation when she saw the reactive fizz of the reagent when it reached the red blood cells. She had not even contemplated the possibility of working out the identity of the owner back then. Chief Inspector Pike seemed impressively ahead of the game.

“Blood alone won’t help you much,” Eccles said, “and it would be a rare truncheon indeed that would have no human bloodstains on it at all.”

Dody agreed, although she would not dream of saying such a thing to Pike. She was sorry, too, that the blood testing had turned out to be a dead end, for he would be disappointed. How strange, she thought, a week ago she would not have given tuppence for his feelings.

O
livia Barndon-Brown lived in a comfortable flat at the top of a dazzling white terraced house about a mile’s walk from the McClelands’ Bloomsbury residence. Dody
instructed the driver of the motor taxi to wait in the street for her until she had finished her business. She would have walked home from here, but for the borrowed crutches.

In the hall Dody waited for the doorman to climb the stairs and announce her arrival to Olivia. She pondered how she might make peace with her sister without actually encouraging her home immediately. Olivia, who appeared to be the peacemaker of the group, might help, though everyone’s nerves had been frayed since Lady Catherine’s death and even the affable Olivia had seemed unduly agitated, her smile not so ready of late.

She looked over her shoulder and up the stairs. They were taking a long time. It occurred to her that if Florence were to suggest that Dody was a threat to their pending operation, Olivia might very well instruct the doorman to say there was no one at home.

At last she heard someone descend the stairs. She turned, expecting to see the doorman, but it was the Irishman, Derwent O’Neill, a grin stretched across his unshaven cheeks.

“What are you doing here?” Dody asked, the shock of seeing him overriding any semblance of good manners.

O’Neill stopped on the last step and loomed over her. His eyes slid down her body and rested for a moment on her breasts. “I’m the advance party, sent to flag a cab for the ladies.” Lifting his gaze, he glimpsed her cab through the parlour window. His smile broadened. “Talk about the luck of the Irish—and motorised, too.”

“That is my taxicab,” Dody said stiffly. “You will have to find another.”

There was a flurry of footsteps down the stairs and Derwent stepped aside for Florence, Daisy Atkins, Olivia Barndon-Brown, and Jane Lithgow and her glassy-eyed fox to pass.

“I’m escorting the ladies to the Rose and Crown. Would you care to join us, Dr. McCleland?” O’Neill asked.

Florence fussed with her gloves and would not meet Dody’s gaze.

“Really, Mr. O’Neill,” Florence said, “my sister wouldn’t be seen dead in a public house.”

Derwent gripped Dody’s elbow and spoke in her ear, so only she could hear him. “Come on now, it does a woman good to loosen her stays every now and then.”

Dody shook him off and said loudly, “Florence, when can I expect you home?”

“I’m not sure yet. I need some more clothes. I’ll telephone Annie to bring some over.”

“Tell me what you need and I’ll organise it.”

“Why can’t we ’ave that taxi—we’d all fit into that,” Daisy said.

“Because it’s Dr. McCleland’s,” O’Neill said, mimicking Dody with an arch haughtiness.

“But what are them things jammed against the window?”

“Crutches for a patient, Daisy,” Dody said quickly. Florence lifted a sceptical eyebrow, which Dody’s conscience took to mean:
Since when has the delivering of medical supplies been one of your duties?
“And now I should go,” she added. “The patient has just been discharged from hospital and is quite immobile without them. Please telephone me, Florence, we need to talk.”

She hurried out of the front door, feeling several pairs of eyes on her back. Derwent O’Neill’s mocking laughter accompanied her in the taxi all the way home.

N
ellie Melba’s liquid soprano seeped through the closed door of the morning room and into the hall, where Dody stood removing her coat. “Si Mi Chiamano Mimi”—she had not listened to the aria since leaving for Scotland. She stood still for a moment and closed her eyes, letting the melody soothe her jangled nerves. But it was not to be for long.