Saturday 21st December 1929, York
Clara pulled up outside the York City police station on Clifford Street, overlooking the River Ouse, just before lunch. In the passenger seat of Andrew’s Austin 7 was Dr Charlie Malone, a man approaching forty who seemed older than his years. Charlie smiled at her. His kind eyes and gentle manner had a calming effect. She was glad he was with her, in more ways than one.
After receiving the phone call from York last night, and promising Mrs Morrison she’d come down in the morning and see what she could find out about Sybil’s death, she realised that she had no idea how she would be able to do this. She couldn’t just pitch up at the police station or mortuary and ask to see the body, could she? She remembered what the shipping clerk at the North Sea ferry had asked her: what’s your authority? Indeed, as a private detective she had no authority. She could not compel anyone to speak to her and unlike if she were a police detective, she could not demand access to venues or to see records.
In her last murder investigation, she had the help of the owner of the picture house that had burnt down, so was able to gain access that way. But in this case, she had nothing. Juju Levine, who had so far set up most of her interviews with the theatre folk, would not be any help at all with the York police.
Clara was just about to ring Mrs Morrison back to say she would not be coming after all when her eye was drawn to one of only a handful of Christmas cards on her mantelpiece. It was from Charlie Malone, whom she had consulted during the arson case and who was also the man responsible for helping her gain access to the university stores when investigating the bloody water at the Turkish baths. He had formerly been a GP but had recently given up his practice to lecture part time at the university as well as – and this was crucial to her current needs – to be the part-time pathologist for Newcastle City police. She took out her address book and gave him a ring.
‘Hullo? Newcastle six seven one.’
‘Charlie? It’s Clara, Clara Vale. I’m so sorry to bother you at this time of the evening. Are you busy?’
‘Not at all,’ said Charlie, ‘I’m just about to have supper, but it’s cold cuts – it can wait. What can I do for you, Clara?’
‘Well, I was wondering if I could impose upon you to make some introductions for me with the York police.’ Clara then went on to tell him about the case she was working on, the discovery of Sybil’s body and her frustration about her lack of official access. ‘So you see, I thought perhaps, as a police pathologist, you could help. Or is that too much to ask?’
‘Hmmm,’ said Charlie. ‘Of course it’s not too much to ask. Bob would want me to help you any way I can. I’m just not sure how. I work with the Newcastle police, not York; it’s a completely separate force. And I’m new on the job. But there must be a way … let me think …’
Clara held the receiver while he ruminated. Charlie was her late uncle’s doctor and closest friend. Well, he was more than that, but that wasn’t common knowledge. Although there had been twenty years between them, Charlie and Bob had been lovers. Clara had discovered this during her first investigation and had sworn to Charlie to keep their secret. Although Clara and Charlie had only known one another four months, they had bonded over their common loss.
Clara looked around at what used to be Uncle Bob’s drawing room. When she had first inherited the house it had been full to the gills with memorabilia, artefacts and bric-a-brac from Bob’s travels around the world, including an extensive collection of fossils and even a shrunken head! She had donated much of it to the local Hancock Museum and the bric-a-brac to the Salvation Army. The room now seemed empty of her dear uncle. And so did her life. Charlie was her only connection.
Oh, how she wished Bob were here to talk to now! Why, oh why had he thought she could seriously take over his detection business? And why hadn’t he trained her to do it when he was still alive? The only area she did feel equipped in was science, and that’s how she had managed to solve her previous two cases: the arson attack at the picture house and the bloody showers at the Turkish baths. But so far, neither of her current cases had required her scientific expertise. She felt completely out of her depth. She stared moodily into the fire and waited for Charlie to speak.
Eventually he did. ‘Not to worry, Clara, I have a plan. And I think Bob would approve.’
The next morning, Clara and Charlie walked into the Clifford Street police station. The ‘plan’ was to say that Clara was a science graduate hoping for some work experience before deciding on what jobs to apply for. Charlie had remembered that his anatomy professor at medical school was now the York pathologist, so he had put in a call to his old mentor and asked if he – accompanied by a student – could observe the York investigation to learn how someone more experienced would go about investigating a murder.
To Clara’s amusement, the York pathologist was called Dr Benjamin Bone. Dr Bone – a tall, slim, slightly stooped man, wearing a tweed three-piece suit and an unfashionable goatee beard – greeted his former student with a warm handshake and a resonant ‘Charlie, my boy!’ Charlie shook hands and introduced his mentor to Clara. ‘And this is Miss Vale. I’m sure you remember me talking about Bob Wallace, well, she is his niece. An Oxford graduette. Miss Vale is looking for some work experience in the scientific field,’ he explained, repeating the vague backstory he and Clara had agreed on. ‘So, if you don’t mind, Dr Bone, can she tag along? I’m new to the job myself, so I thought I’d give her a chance to learn from an old hand.’ He grinned at Bone.
Bone looked suitably flattered then gave Clara a curious look. ‘Not really a job for a lady,’ he said.
‘That’s what they told Marie Curie too,’ observed Clara.
Bone grunted but did not object. ‘Right you are, Doctor, Miss Vale, I’ll take you to where the body was found first.’ He looked pointedly out of the window: it was snowing again. ‘Before the scene degrades much further.’
Ten minutes later Clara, Charlie and Bone were huddled under the canopy of the small police launch, skippered by a sergeant who got the outboard motor going after a few juddering starts. He steered the vessel from its berth outside the Clifford Street police station, and then upriver with the old city of York on the right. With the passengers shivering and the skipper beating his arms to keep the blood flowing, they chugged under the Ouse Bridge, past the Mansion House and mediaeval Guildhall, under the railway bridge and then Scarborough Bridge and beyond. There was a floodplain on the left bank, where some hardy souls walked their dogs, and the playing fields of St Peter’s School on the other. Clara had walked along this very riverbank a few days ago on the way back from visiting Andrew at St Anne’s convalescent home.
The light snowfall continued but melted as it hit the black water. The river had not frozen over in Clara’s lifetime, but she recalled reading that it had done so a few years before she was born, and had seen photographs of the excited people of York attempting to skate and even cycle on the ice. Today, the murky river flowed choppy and fast, with ribbons of ice threaded along the banks, and no one fool enough to attempt any skating. Eventually they pulled up at a small jetty.
‘It’s a short walk from here,’ said Bone. The two doctors and the scientist disembarked while the policeman stayed on board, sipping from a flask that Clara hoped contained tea. Charlie offered Clara his hand, which she didn’t need but felt it would be rude to decline. She had had the foresight to wear trousers and boots and had been given a pair of police-issue galoshes before getting on the little boat. The three trudged down the slushy towpath until they came to the avenue of weeping willows that Clara had walked through last week. The branches, bare of leaves, dangled like the ribbons of a wintry maypole, skimming the half-frozen reed beds that marked the edge of the river.
Dr Bone led them to a trampled patch of reeds marked off by a white rope strung between two tree trunks. He pointed over the rope. ‘She was found there at two o’clock yesterday. A dog walker found her. He rushed to the station and reported it. I got here around half past three. It was me who identified her. I’d taken Mrs Bone to the theatre last Saturday night and saw Miss Langford then. I wasn’t completely sure it was her – her face was bloated, and she was completely naked – but her hair was splayed out like Ophelia in that Millais painting. That’s what made me think of Miss Langford. That and the willow trees. Mrs Bone and I saw Miss Langford in Hamlet years ago. I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘Naked?’ asked Clara. ‘Have her clothes been found?’
Bone nodded. ‘Yes. Just this morning. A vagrant who pitches his tent near here found her dress – the white, sparkly fairy godmother dress – about fifty yards upstream. It was hanging over a branch. It looked like it was taken off before she went into the water. The tramp had had it in his tent for a day or two – God knows what he planned to do with it and why he didn’t report it. The police found it when they went to speak to him. Naturally, he’s been taken in for questioning.’
‘And her underclothes? Have they been found?’ asked Clara.
‘Not yet,’ said Bone.
‘You say “taken off”,’ clarified Charlie. ‘Not found in the river and hung up to dry?’
Bone shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look like it. It doesn’t appear as though the garment was in the river. I haven’t examined it properly yet, but from what I can tell it was just damp and soiled from being snowed on but not from being submerged. Which is leading us to believe – along with some other factors that I’ll explain when we get to the mortuary – that it was suicide. She took off the dress, hung it over a branch and stepped into the river.’
‘With or without her underclothes and her shoes?’ asked Clara.
Bone frowned at Clara. ‘Without, it seems.’
‘But you haven’t found them yet?’
‘I said we haven’t.’
‘Don’t you think that’s strange? That she would take the trouble to hang the dress up but not the underclothes with it? Why would she do that?’
Bone threw his hands in the air. ‘I have no idea! I’m not a detective, Miss Vale, I’m just telling you what we found and how it pertains to the suspected cause of death. Which is what I’m employed to determine. Now if you’ll allow me to continue …’
Charlie gave Clara a warning look. Clara got the message. ‘My apologies, Dr Bone. Please continue.’
Bone grunted and turned his attention to Charlie Malone, deciding, it seemed, to address all future comments to him. ‘As I’ll show you when we get to the mortuary, Doctor, it appears that the cause of death was hypothermia, no doubt from exposure to the freezing water, causing her heart to stop. She did not drown. There was no water in her lungs. And there were no other obvious injuries that could have caused her death – no blows to the head, signs of strangulation or suffocation, nor indeed any wounds from a weapon – lacerations, bullet wounds, and so forth. Nothing. You will see only minor scratches and bruising, much of it post-mortem. Hence my initial belief that it was either suicide or death by misadventure.’
‘Have you examined her stomach contents? And performed a toxicology analysis of her blood and tissue?’ asked Clara.
Bone grunted again and addressed his reply to Charlie. ‘I’ll show you the body shortly.’
Charlie nodded and flashed another warning look at Clara. ‘Thank you. Have you any idea how long she was in the water?’
‘Two or three days. It’s hard to be more accurate than that. The stomach contents suggest she last ate late Wednesday or early Thursday. But the rate of putrescence—’ he glanced briefly at Clara ‘—that’s bodily decomposition for the non-medical among us, has been obfuscated by tissue hydropsy from the river water. Do you know what hydropsy is, Miss Vale?’
‘I do,’ said Clara brusquely, swallowing an urge to slap the good doctor over the head with her academic credentials.
Bone grunted, turned back to Charlie and continued. ‘So, whether she died on Wednesday or Thursday is hard to tell.’
‘I see,’ said Charlie. Bone and Charlie both put their hands in their pockets and rocked back on their heels, the younger imitating the older.
Clara, refusing to be ignored, looked at Bone directly and asked: ‘When did the vagrant find the dress?’ She remembered that she had walked along this very riverbank on Thursday, just before lunch, and was sure she would have noticed a fairy godmother dress hanging over a branch.
Bone looked at her for a moment in silence. Clara wondered if he would ignore her. But he didn’t. Eventually he replied: ‘He claims early Thursday morning. But it could have been there overnight.’
‘Thank you,’ said Clara, her mind ticking over the time frame she had already put together about Sybil Langford’s possible whereabouts after she was last seen at the theatre.
‘Right then,’ said Bone, pulling up his coat collar as the snow started to fall more heavily, ‘let’s get to the mortuary.’