A Better Quality of Murder: (Inspector Ben Ross 3) Page 5

  ‘You’ll have come to view our newest arrival,’ Scully went on in his soft voice. ‘Perhaps you’d care to follow me?’

  ‘Is Dr Carmichael here?’

  Scully paused on his way to a door on the further side of the room and turned his head. ‘I expect him very shortly, Inspector Ross.’

  ‘Has he . . . ?’

  ‘We haven’t begun yet, sir.’

  Thank goodness for that. I wanted to see Allegra Benedict while she was still in one piece.

  I followed Scully into the further room. As I neared the door I was surprised to hear a hissing noise, and a pungent smell of carbolic filled my nostrils. To my great astonishment the air, when I entered, was full of falling drops of moisture. I felt I had stepped outside again into a rain shower. But this shower was certainly indoors; and originated with a contraption pumping away to spill fine droplets in an endless stream over a table on which lay the marble-white body of a young woman. The corpse’s skin glistened from the drenching it was receiving and the tarry smell was even worse. I was getting wet, too, and probably I’d smell of carbolic until I got home that evening.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ I demanded, pointing at the water-dispensing monster chugging away in the corner. With my other hand I was trying to shield my face.

  ‘I’ll switch it off, sir!’ called Scully, raising his voice above the hiss and growl of the infernal machine.

  He turned a tap; the hissing stopped and, thank goodness, so did the deluge, reduced to a few obstinate drips.

  ‘The machine’s only just been installed,’ said Scully proudly. ‘It dispenses a carbolic spray as you saw, and it’s reckoned to reduce the risk of infection. We’re giving it a trial run.’

  ‘Infection? That poor woman’s not going to catch anything!’ I said indignantly, wiping my hands over my hair.

  ‘It protects Dr Carmichael and myself, sir, not the unfortunate deceased.’

  I still couldn’t quite see why an old-fashioned professional like Carmichael would want to experiment with the thing, or what benefit it could have. Fortunately Carmichael himself appeared, dapper in his black frock coat, silk top hat in hand.

  He shook me warmly by the hand. ‘I thought you’d be down, Inspector, or one of your colleagues, and I waited a little before examining the deceased internally.’

  ‘Scully here,’ I said, ‘has been explaining your use of the carbolic spray.’

  ‘I am willing to be persuaded as to its efficacy,’ Carmichael nodded judiciously towards the silent machine. ‘We must not have closed minds, Inspector. I have been reading articles by Dr Lister in The Lancet and elsewhere. He has used it to great success in Glasgow in his operating theatre. So I thought I would conduct a few experiments of my own here. You will, no doubt, wonder at it, since I am not conducting operations upon the living. But I’ll explain my interest.

  ‘I well remember when I was a medical student, Ross. I had a very good friend and fellow student. His name was Robert Parkinson. He was a jolly fellow, always good company and given to fooling about, as young fellows will, medical students probably more than most.

  ‘We had attended a dissection and Robert and I between us sewed up the cadaver afterwards. I put the needle I had used away carefully but Robert, in his heedless way, stuck his in the lapel of his jacket. A little later, while engaged in some tomfoolery or other, he scraped his hand against his coat and the point caught it. It ripped a great tear across his palm and wrist. We all knew what it meant, of course, and I shall never forget the look on the unfortunate fellow’s face. I remember how we all fell silent. Everything possible was done to get the wound to heal and not turn septic. But, well, when you have been sewing up a corpse amid a miasma of putrefaction . . . Blood poisoning took poor Robert off within days.’

  Carmichael finished his dreadful tale with a shake of his head. With Scully’s assiduous help he divested himself of the smart frock coat, which was hung in a cupboard. To replace it, Scully brought out Carmichael’s ‘dissecting coat’ with its stains of dried blood and worse, and helped the doctor into it.

  ‘Now, then, Inspector,’ said Carmichael briskly, ‘enough of wandering down memory’s lane. Let us take a look at the poor young woman. Take care not to slip. The tiles are wet underfoot.’

  We approached the naked body on the table. I heard my own intake of breath. She was, or had been, beautiful. Death had drained away expression, her face was blotched and eyes glazed and bloodshot, but you could still see the fine-looking woman she must have been. Her spray-dampened hair was long and thick and jet black. It was swept back and disordered around her head. Her parted lips revealed perfect teeth.

  ‘How old?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Her husband has informed us she is twenty-seven. You will have noticed the neck, Inspector?’

  Carmichael’s tone was testy. I fancy he thought I was gawping. I leaned towards the corpse and for a second time, heard my own sharply drawn breath.

  This was not a manual strangulation, a throttling. This was true strangulation using a ligature. No wonder Dunn had sounded so certain about the cause of death. Round the woman’s neck, cutting cruelly into the white flesh, was a thin cord.

  ‘How is it secured?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Knotted at the back of the neck.’

  ‘Can you remove it without damaging the knot?’

  ‘Scully!’ ordered Carmichael briskly. ‘The scissors, if you please!’

  Scully came up with the scissors and Carmichael carefully snipped the cord. Scully raised the dead woman’s head awkwardly. A trace of rigor was still present. Carmichael drew the cord free, revealing a scarlet imprint on the neck where it had been, and handed it to me. I found myself holding a length of fine cord of the sort used to pull window blinds. For that purpose it usually has a tassel or wooden toggle on the end. This just had a knot in the middle.

  ‘It’s a double knot,’ I said with a frown.

  ‘It suggests to me,’ Carmichael offered, ‘that he meant there to be no chance she would survive. I would guess he tied it once to form a loose loop, slipped it over her head, pulled it tight and, when she collapsed, tied it again before abandoning his victim. He may have heard tales of strangled victims coming back to life.’

  That certainly had occurred before. On rare occasions it had even been known for a body hanged on the gallows to be revived. That was in days gone by, of course. Now we are much more scientific in matters of execution.

  ‘In due course,’ Carmichael went on, ‘I shall expect to find the hyoid bone fractured, possibly the larynx. There should be some internal bruising. If so, it will confirm my first diagnosis.’

  ‘He went out intending and equipped to kill,’ I murmured, more to myself than to Carmichael.

  Yet Daisy said the Wraith had his hands on her throat. There had been no mention in all her tale of a cord. But Daisy had escaped him. Perhaps the Wraith didn’t mean to give the next woman the chance. He had the cord ready this time.

  ‘He came across that woman alone, lost, and wandering in the fog, frightened. Did he offer to help, guide her, lure her in that way into the park?’ I mused aloud.

  ‘My skills lie in the medical examinations of cadavers, Inspector, I leave the detection of crimes to you,’ was all Carmichael replied.

  ‘Then can you tell me how long you think she has been dead? When she died?’ This was important. A park is a public place. The fog would have emptied it in late afternoon, of course.

  He pursed his lips. ‘That is not an exact business, Inspector Ross, as you will know. I’m informed she was found early on Sunday morning. I would say she died in the late afternoon or early evening of Saturday. Let us say, between four and six o’clock.’

  That certainly put the time of death within the period of the fog.

  ‘There is just one more thing I need to ask you, Doctor,’ I said. ‘Were you present when Mr Benedict saw the body?’

  ‘No,’ replied Carmichael, his attention now turned to a tray of
instruments. ‘But Scully was.’

  So I had to talk to Scully again and retreated to the outer room to find him.

  ‘Oh, yes, Inspector Ross, sir, I remember Mr Benedict very well. I conducted the gentleman to the body.’ Scully smiled unpleasantly and rubbed his hands together.

  I felt my nerves twitch. There is an expression ‘to make the skin crawl’ and that was exactly the effect Scully had on me. How could Carmichael work almost daily with the wretch? But Carmichael would be absorbed in his dissections.

  ‘I hope,’ I couldn’t help saying, ‘you didn’t have that wretched spray going when you took him in.’

  ‘No, sir, I had laid out the lady nicely, covered with a sheet except for the face. I didn’t want to distress him more than necessary.’ Scully had replaced his ghoulish grimace with an expression of suitable gravity.

  ‘Distress him more . . .? Good heavens, man, you were showing him the body of his wife!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed, but I wanted him to see we were treating it with respect.’ Scully’s tone became reproachful. I had questioned his professional competence.

  ‘All right, yes, of course, but he was very distressed, anyway, wasn’t he? I understand he collapsed.’

  ‘He fainted away,’ said Scully with a shrug. ‘Straight out, went down like a skittle, flat out on the floor. I brought him round with some smelling salts. I keep a little bottle ready. Relatives have been known to pass out, but usually it’s the ladies. I bring ’em round and say a few words to console them.’ He gave me a coy smile.

  I struggled again to conceal just how repulsive I found this fellow. ‘How was the gentleman when he came round?’

  ‘Confused, well, he would be, finding himself sitting on the floor. They always are. Like most of them he asked what had happened, and I told him he’d passed out.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  Scully screwed up his unlovely features and gave his answer some thought. ‘He mumbled a bit,’ he went on at last, ‘but he was still very confused. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.’

  ‘All right, so it didn’t make much sense, but tell me anyway, exactly if you can, what he said!’ I urged.

  ‘He said that death had galloped past the old again and was chasing the young. He said that they wanted to shut the gates but it would do no good.’

  ‘Gates, what gates? The park gates?’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Scully retorted defensively. ‘I’m just telling you what he said to me. I warned you it didn’t make any sense. That’s not my fault,’ he added, aggrieved.

  I apologised. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Scully. It is very important for the investigation that we know the first reactions of the bereaved spouse.’

  ‘Think he done it?’ asked Scully with a gleam of interest in his normally lacklustre gaze. ‘Think the husband croaked her? What would he do it in the middle of a park for? He could strangle her at home.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting he did it,’ I snapped.

  ‘Oh,’ said Scully, clearly disappointed.

  ‘Are those her clothes?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Mr Ross.’ Scully led me to a table on which the dead woman’s garments lay in a neat row.

  ‘Bit torn,’ offered Scully, picking up the skirt. ‘Here, see?’ He pointed to an area halfway between waist and hem.

  The skirt was of a brown woollen cloth and it was certainly torn. I spread the length out flat and it revealed a jagged hole about three inches long and a little over an inch across.

  ‘Tell you anything?’ asked Scully, his pale eyes fixed on my face.

  ‘It may do,’ I replied. ‘If I can find the missing piece. Where is the jewellery?’

  I was handed a battered card box. I opened it and saw the items Dunn had listed lying in a forlorn little heap.

  ‘I’ll take these with me; wait, I’ll sign a receipt for you.’ I scribbled out that I had taken charge of two rings, one yellow metal, one silver metal with a white stone, and one pair of yellow metal and pearly earrings. It is as well to be prudent in describing such items. Paste jewels and rolled gold can be very convincing to a layman’s eye. Besides, I did not want Benedict claiming we had substituted valuable jewels with lesser ones. ‘Thank you, Scully.’

  He recognised dismissal, and tucked the receipt into his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Oh, well, if I’ve helped you all I can, Inspector, I’d better get along and help Dr Carmichael now, hadn’t I?’

  As arranged, I went next to the Green Park where I found Morris waiting for me with PC Wootton, and the discoverer of the body, Park Constable William Hopkins. We also had with us an inspector of the Park Police whose name was Pickles. It was a pity he had that surname as he had a remarkably sour expression and looked very much as if he might suffer from indigestion. Even his wispy moustache drooped in a dispirited way. In contrast, there was a look of the retired military man about Park Constable Hopkins. He stood very straight, as if on parade, and his luxurious waxed moustache put Inspector Pickles’s meagre growth of upper-lip hair to shame.

  The Green Park is an area of open lawns, avenues of trees and broad walks. A little over a hundred years before, when still quite a rural spot, it had been notorious for footpads and even highwaymen. But now it was a quiet retreat, a place of leisure, with its own constables to keep it in order, and not a place to expect murder. The more I looked around me, the more extraordinary it seemed. How on earth had Allegra Benedict come to be here? I could understand her walking in the park in sunshine. I couldn’t explain satisfactorily what could have lured her into it on such a bad evening. The obvious explanation was, of course, that she was lost. After all, it was adjacent to Piccadilly. But still . . .

  We had gathered at the place where Hopkins had made his gruesome discovery. It lay on the far edge of the park and its appearance was a little less orderly than that of the main area. There were some bushes growing here. Nearby a huge old oak tree spread its venerable branches over us. Morris was staring up into its tangle of limbs.

  ‘Very fine tree, this,’ he observed.

  ‘That tree,’ Constable Hopkins informed him proudly, ‘was planted here in King Charles the Second’s day. He took a great interest in the park, did King Charles. He would come here, with his lords and ladies in attendance, and walk around, talking to the common people. That was after his Restoration to the throne, of course. Long before that, in the time of the Civil War, gentlemen, when the king was fleeing his enemies, he hid in an oak tree. The Roundhead soldiers hunting him searched all round but never looked up. Very likely, the king was very fond of oak trees after that and may have ordered that one be planted to commemorate his blessed escape.’

  I had heard the story that the fugitive young king had escaped detection by hiding in an oak tree. But I had never heard that he went around for the rest of his life ordering the planting of oak trees in memory. I suspected Hopkins told this story to impressionable visitors to the park; they probably thanked him for the information and pressed shilling coins into his hand.

  ‘All right, Hopkins!’ ordered Inspector Pickles, annoyed at his underling’s garrulity.

  However, Morris and I looked properly impressed and turned our attention to the disturbed bushes. A rope cordon had been set up and an improvised wooden notice hammered into the turf, reading, ‘Keep Off’.

  I told Inspector Pickles I was pleased to see the scene so well secured.

  Pickles looked, if anything, even more out of sorts. ‘We did everything necessary. I had a couple of fellows get over here straight away and make sure the public knew to stay clear.’

  ‘Yessir, absolutely, sir!’ the park constable supported him.

  His importance as finder of the body had given Hopkins the urge to communicate with us, risking Inspector Pickles’s displeasure, and he chose, unwisely, to elaborate on his superior’s words.

  ‘Once the news gets round – and get round it will, you mark my words – that a body has been found in the
m very bushes, well, half the world and his wife will be trampling over the place, keen to see the very spot. They’ll do even more damage to the grass,’ he went on wrathfully, ‘probably go carving their names on that very oak tree that was a sapling in good King Charles’s day, because they’ve got no respect. We had to cordon it off and put that notice there. Not that it will do much good,’ he concluded in a resigned voice.

  ‘All right, Hopkins!’ said Pickles testily.

  I thanked them both again, although it wasn’t clear whether their priority had been to preserve the scene of the crime, or protect the damaged greenery. I didn’t doubt Hopkins was correct about the visitors who would come to the spot, and wondered briefly at the public’s morbid interest. But Hopkins was only saying much what Dunn had said earlier. The press would seize on this story avidly.