The nurses at the hospital don’t know where Doc McDonald is, but I know exactly where to look. I find him at Molly Pryor’s place. She’s his receptionist, but she also doubles as his companion.
You see, when the Doc isn’t drinking himself into a stupor, he likes to entertain himself with female company. No self-respecting woman would have anything to do with him, except that he comes from a wealthy family. I’ve heard he has a wife down south, but he gets around, as they say. Apparently, a few quid in the bank improves anyone’s looks and character.
Just ask Molly.
There’s a saying among the locals: Doc McDonald’s not a bad doctor when he’s sober. The last doctor, Doc Havelock, left a few years ago under a cloud, and we were stuck with McDonald. I heard McDonald was about to be deregistered because of his drinking problem when the Wangamba Hospital threw him a lifeline. Doctors aren’t easy to get out here. It was Wangamba or nothing for the Doc. A drunk doctor is better than none at all, I reckon.
The Doc isn’t too happy to see me; he doesn’t want to do any post mortems today. I remind him that the next time I catch him driving his black Packard whilst under the influence, I won’t be running him home, I’ll be running him in. Funny how he changes his mind pretty quickly.
No one likes attending post mortems. You’d have to be a sick sort of bastard to enjoy it. The morgue is small and stifling: it should be cooler, but you get what you’re given out here in the bush. In the big cities, it would be different. Townies don’t care a hoot about our facilities. And Doc McDonald doesn’t make post mortems any better. He’s a law unto himself.
The stone dissection table is in the middle of the morgue. The Doc wants to do the baby first. I pull it out of the icebox and place it on the table. It’s swamped by the vast flatness of the table: a tiny lump with a sheet over it. I say a prayer for the poor little bugger. I tell myself—as I always do—it’s just a body being dissected, a bit of flesh, that’s all. The soul is long gone.
The smell is stronger in a confined space. I’m having a bit of trouble with the odour today, but not the Doc. He isn’t daunted. Maybe all of the grog he’s drunk over the years has killed off his ability to smell. He pulls a bottle of whisky and a glass out of his doctor’s bag. His hands are shaking, but he still manages to fill the glass to the brim. He asks if I want one. He smiles when I shake my head, and tosses it back in one gulp.
The morgue doesn’t quite have the atmosphere I want when I’m having a drink.
The Doc’s shakes have settled. He slips on a pair of gloves and pulls his medical instruments out of his bag. The Doc is ready.
‘I’m glad you’re in attendance, Sergeant Furey,’ he says.
‘Why’s that, Doc?’ I reply.
‘Mahoney, that junior constable of yours that you sent here a while back to observe the PM of the foundling baby,’ he continues, ‘decided to become extremely unwell, but couldn’t quite manage get himself outside first. Most unpleasant.’
He laughs, but I don’t. We don’t share a sense of humour.
‘All right.’ He peels back the sheet slowly and peers at the body. He prods it with his finger, turning it over once, twice. He cuts open the ribs with a pair of scissors and pulls them apart. He takes a deep breath. ‘The body is in an advanced level of decomposition. The body is…’ He produces a tape measure. ‘Eleven inches long. That means it was in utero for around five months.’
I thought as much.
‘It’s too badly decomposed to determine what sex it is. Possibly male, but that’s only my assumption.’
‘What about its race?’
‘Again, can’t tell.’
I’m suspecting we’re not really getting anywhere with this.
‘How about the cause of death?’
‘Once again, difficult to tell. No indentations on the skull. There are two possibilities: a spontaneous miscarriage or an abortion, either by a backyard abortionist or by the mother herself. If the body was better preserved, I’d be able to determine if it was done by the mother.’
‘How?’
‘The baby’s neck would have multiple abrasions due to the mother extracting it from her womb.’
‘I see.’ I sigh with disappointment. ‘Not a very clear outcome.’
‘Yes, an indeterminate result,’ he replies as he drops his instruments, ‘but if the mother comes to me, I’ll know straight away if she’s recently been pregnant.’
‘Which may never happen,’ I reply.
‘You never know. Although, if she had developed an infection, she would have presented at the hospital by now.’
‘So it might be a backyard abortionist,’ I suggest, ‘one that’s skilled in their work?’
‘Possibly. That’s up to you to find out, Sergeant Furey,’ he replies. He chuckles and removes his gloves while I cover the body and return it to the icebox.
The Doc pours himself another whisky.
‘You know you’ve got another one,’ I say.
‘Of course I do. I’m feeling a little peckish,’ he says. ‘When you’re ready, can you go to the hospital kitchen and get me some morning tea? Get something for yourself, too.’
I shake my head. The Doc gave up his humanity long ago. I wonder if the transition happened when he was training to become a doctor. I suppose it’s possible that he was always the same. I’m searching for a glimpse of his soul, but it’s as absent as the corpse’s. Maybe he’s just as human as the rest of us, and it’s just the grog that helps him cope.
I head off to the kitchen and get back ten minutes later. The Doc has done me a good turn by getting Maurie Pilcher out of the fridge and putting him on the table.
‘Good,’ he says, ‘I’m ravenous.’ He bites into a sandwich.
I begin, ‘This man was stabbed in the chest when he was at home, in his kitchen. He was on leave from the army.’
‘Tsk,’ he says. ‘Don’t tell me another thing. I don’t want any preconceptions, you see. It may blind me to the obvious, and cloud my mind.’
And the whisky’s not already doing that?
‘Right,’ I say and keep quiet.
‘I’ve taken a look at him while you were off getting our morning tea. I don’t know if you noticed this too, but part of his right ear is missing. It’s an old cut, clean, done by something very sharp, possibly a razor.’
‘So, not done at the time of the murder.’
‘Oh no, it’s well healed. Done years ago.’ He continues, ‘He has some recent superficial cuts and bruising to his hands and to the back of the skull, and the latter’s probably as a result of falling backwards and striking the floor. Aside from that and the wound to the chest, there’s not a fresh scratch on the rest of him.’ The Doc bends over and stares at the chest wound. ‘See,’ he says, pointing with the crust of his sandwich at a gaping wound where the ribs meet the breastbone, ‘this was done by a large knife. Sharp, it was. No ripping of the flesh.’ He finishes chewing and measures the cut. Then he gloves up and picks up a scalpel. ‘Nicked the costal cartilage on the way through. Under and up. Probably would have sliced his heart right open, like a piece of fruit. Certainly didn’t do it to himself. The perpetrator didn’t try to pull the knife out.’ He makes some notes. ‘Can’t remember the last time we had a murdered cadaver in here, actually. Can you, Sergeant?’
It’s been a while. ‘So, he died instantly?’
‘I can’t say yet that that was definitely what killed him, but if you’re asking me if he knew what was happening, even with a cut to the heart, it can take a little while to lose consciousness. He’d certainly have known about it.’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s a shame the dead can’t talk and the best they’ve got is us. It makes you wonder, what’s happening to the place?’
‘Well, it was obviously the butcher’s knife to the heart that killed him,’ I continue, ‘that should be enough for the autopsy report, shouldn’t it? I mean, it’s obvious he died from the stab wound. You can sign off on that now, can’t you?’ At this point, I’m hoping Doc McDonald is eager to return to Molly’s warm embrace. I’m hoping that accepting my suggested cause of death will be as advantageous for the Doc as it is for me. One thing I don’t really like watching is when he has to cut open the skull and pull the brain out. Brains remind me a bit too much of scrambled egg.
Since the Great War ended, I’ve never eaten scrambled eggs.
The Doc picks up his saw. ‘No, I’ll have to give this poor chap the full beauty treatment.’
‘All right,’ I reply quietly and retreat to the corner of the room. ‘I guess you have to do it all properly.’
‘Help yourself to a sandwich,’ he offers, ‘there’s plenty there.’
I shudder as he starts to saw into the skull. ‘No thanks.’
An hour later and it’s done, thankfully. He concludes that the stab wound was indeed the cause of death. Maurie Pilcher’s a sorry sight, but I keep telling myself that his soul is elsewhere, and that’s the best thing I can say about that. The Doc finishes up by putting Maurie’s brains into his gut cavity, and then roughly stitching him up. He tells me he can’t put the brains back into the skull cavity as they’ve expanded too much.
He takes off his gloves and gown, scrubs his hands and returns to what’s left of his morning tea.
If their loved ones only knew.