CHAPTER 7

Supper was an egalitarian affair; everyone sat together at the huge dining table upstairs. Cook was flustered by this notion but Lady Maud insisted.

“Just this once, Mrs Beddowes,” she stated. “It won’t signal a complete breakdown of society.”

Nevertheless, everyone unconsciously seated themselves in their own social group—Lady Maud, Mr Beech, Caroline, and Victoria together—Arthur, Billy, Mrs Beddowes, and Mary in their own foursome. Mary had laid the table and Mrs Beddowes carved the giant ham. Any awkwardness was dispelled by everyone watching in awe as Billy ate as fast as Mrs Beddowes could carve successive slices of ham.

“Somewhat like a combine harvester,” murmured Lady Maud.

Billy suddenly became aware that everyone was watching him and paused, ham on fork, raised toward his mouth, embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he mumbled awkwardly, “got used to eating fast in the army.”

“Gracious, my dear! It is we who should apologize,” offered Lady Maud, “for being so rude as to stare at such a healthy appetite in progress!”

“He’s a growing lad,” said Mrs Beddowes fondly, as she carved him another slice of ham. Mary, meanwhile, unable to take her eyes off Billy, ladled him another spoonful of chutney.

“I certainly hope not!” spluttered Lady Maud, “we have no more camp beds to put together!”

Following the ripple of laughter around the table, all awkwardness was dissipated and the company settled down to an agreeable supper full of conversation about Lady Maud’s “horrendous” journey into London.

“I shall be more than happy to wrap a little something up for you to take home to your daughters, Mr Tollman,” whispered Mrs Beddowes into Arthur’s ear.

“That’s most kind of you, Mrs Beddowes,” Arthur whispered back, “but young Billy, over there, may not leave much to wrap up.”

“Bless him,” she said, watching Billy resume his feast, albeit a little slower than before.

After supper, Mary and Mrs Beddowes cleared away and Lady Maud pronounced that she would go to bed, as it had been a long and tiring day.

“That will leave you and your team, Peter, to discuss your special work in private, in the library. Mary will bring you up a pot of coffee and you can beaver away.”

And so the team retired to their allotted work room and proceeded to inform each other of what nuggets of information had been picked up during the day.

Beech started.

“Rigsby and I went to see the forensic pathologist but I will spare you the details, for the sake of the ladies present …”

“Oh for goodness sake, Peter! I am a doctor!” protested Caroline.

“And I have spent the last few months working as a voluntary nurse!” added Victoria. “I’m sure that neither of us will be shocked by what you have to say.”

Beech shrugged. “Very well then.” He spoke matter-of-factly, looking directly at the two women, as if to challenge them. Billy, meanwhile, looked at the floor in embarrassment, as he knew what was coming. “Lord Murcheson was in extreme pain from either bullets or shrapnel that were located near to his spine, which the surgeons felt unable to remove. He was also, according to the pathologist, dying anyway from drug addiction, pneumonia, and … er … syphilis.”

Neither woman flinched but there was a small silence.

Caroline spoke first. “What did the pathologist note about the body, with regard to drug addiction?”

“Um … Rigsby took detailed notes. Rigsby?”

Billy stood up and retrieved a small notepad from his jacket pocket and read “Liver and kidneys were shot … White matter of the brain was degraded … signs of small strokes … signs of perpetual scratching himself … pneumonia caused by shallow breathing … inside of his nose was decayed …”

“Heroin,” both Caroline and Arthur spoke together and startled each other.

“How did you know that, Mr Tollman?”

“Oh, I’ve seen it before, doctor,” explained Arthur, “only in the last ten years, mind. This heroin stuff is fairly new. Some of the East London gangs sniff the powder and when they croak, the post mortem always describes this kind of damage to the body.”

“Yes, you’re right,” said Caroline, “I think heroin is going to become a grave problem in the coming years. It’s highly addictive but some doctors still, would you believe, give it to patients addicted to morphine as an alternative! And, of course, there are some patent medicines and ‘tonics’ on the shelves of pharmacies that contain the drug as well. Madness.”

“I am a little concerned about the syphilis …” Victoria said suddenly, and Billy looked at the floor again in embarrassment. “Could he have passed it on to Lady Harriet?”

“Oh God!” Caroline exclaimed. “As if that poor woman doesn’t have enough problems right now

“Although,” Victoria continued, “she did confess to me that her husband was impotent in the last couple of months.”

Billy was biting his lower lip by now, unsure of how to react to this clinical discussion between two ladies.

“Well, that’s another side effect of heroin, of course. Let us hope that it has proved her salvation. We have no way of knowing whether she is in the primary stage of syphilis until she displays the usual symptoms.”

Fearful that Caroline was about to list the symptoms, Billy suddenly blurted out, “I found out some useful information from the staff at the house!”

All eyes turned toward him.

“Yes, Rigsby,” said Beech, realizing Billy’s discomfiture, “time to move on to our other evidence I think. Tell us what you found out.”

“Right—” Billy relaxed a little “—well, there were four women present: the cook, Esme the lady’s maid, a parlormaid called Anne, and a laundry woman called Betsy, who comes in three times a week. The footman valet had gone off to war and the only man left was the butler, Mr Dodds. He, apparently, had also been acting as the master’s valet, so, if anyone knew what the state of Lord Murcheson was, it was Dodds. The women told me that there was usually a scullery maid called Polly, aged fifteen. She is an orphan, taken in a year ago by Lady Harriet from Barnardo’s Girls’ Village at Ilford in Essex. Polly was … is …, apparently, very close to Her Ladyship, who would give her regular Bible lessons every day, after afternoon tea. The cook was a bit huffy about that, ‘cos she wanted the girl to wash the tea things, but she said she wouldn’t hear a word said against Polly, who was a good and kind girl. Esme said the same but I got the feeling that she was keeping something back. The laundry woman didn’t really know Polly that well and the parlormaid was two bob short of a pound, if you don’t mind me saying, and I couldn’t get much out of her except giggling. The cook said Polly had disappeared without a trace, the night of the murder, and Esme said her bed hadn’t been slept in. None of them had much time for the butler. The cook even called him ‘a weasel.’ All of them were very fond of Lady Harriet, saying she was ‘a poor slip of a girl’ really, had led a very sheltered life, shouldn’t have been married off to Lord Murcheson, who was a bit of a lad before his marriage, and that Lady Harriet was very religious. That’s it.”

“Extraordinary—” Beech looked in admiration at Rigsby “—and you found all that out in half an hour?”

Billy grinned. “It wasn’t any hardship, sir.”

Arthur laughed. “I can see, Chief Inspector, that you have no experience of how a gaggle of women relish a good gossip—er, present company excepted, of course.”

Victoria chimed in. “Well, that pretty much squares with what I found out.” She decided to ignore Arthur’s misogynist comment. “Lady Harriet told me that she, too, was an orphan and was sent to live in an Anglican convent at the age of eleven until—and pardon my description but I can find no other way of putting it—the Church sold her into marriage with the son of one of their rich patrons.”

A collective utterance of dismay went around the room.

“Poor woman!” said Caroline with feeling. “That, I may say, explains a great deal.”

“Doesn’t it just?” said Tollman.

“Anyway,” Victoria continued, “she describes her husband as violating her, brutally, in the first couple of months after his return from France, but then not being able to remember anything about such acts the day after they occurred.”

“The heroin again,” muttered Caroline.

“And when she found herself pregnant and told him, he became violent, refusing to believe the child was his, and accusing her of having a lover.”

“So he obviously stamped on her abdomen in a deliberate attempt to kill the child,” stated Caroline. “It’s a pity he’s not still alive otherwise we could have him hung!”

“Then,” said Victoria firmly, overriding Caroline, “when I went to the house to carry out Lady Harriet’s request to have Esme send the vicar to the hospital, Esme burst into tears and said it was all her fault.”

“Eh?” Beech was startled.

“What she meant was that she hadn’t played her part in keeping His Lordship away from his wife. Apparently, the little scullery maid, Polly, used to sit on a chair outside her mistress’s door every night and, if His Lordship came a-knocking, would tell him that her mistress was ill and could not be disturbed.”

“That must have taken some courage on her part,” observed Arthur.

“Exactly, Mr Tollman. Courage that Esme lacked. Polly had asked her to take turns but she wouldn’t; she was too frightened. But she said that she used to cover for Polly, so that she could take naps during the day. She also expressed some scorn for the butler whom she felt should have protected Lady Harriet and the other females from the deranged husband.”

“So it looks more and more as though the vanished Polly may have been the one who stabbed His Lordship, to protect her mistress,” said Beech.

“It would seem so, Peter,” Victoria agreed, “but there is one more thing. While I was dealing with Esme, the butler put on his overcoat and rushed off down the street. I don’t know if that is relevant.”

“I think that butler’s a wrong ‘un,” chimed in Billy with a look of disgust on his face. “Man like that. He was probably pandering to his master. Maybe he was the one who got him the drugs and fixed him up with prossies.”

“Hold on, son, hold on,” counseled the wise Arthur. “Let’s let the evidence speak for us. Let’s not jump to conclusions just because we don’t like someone.”

“Right. Sorry. Got carried away,” Billy nodded apologetically.

“However,” said Beech, giving Billy a reassuring pat on the back, “it’s a theory worth bearing in mind when we question this Mr Dodds further.”

Arthur took a deep breath and said thoughtfully, “Here’s another theory we might contemplate, sir: whether this Polly did do the deed, to help her mistress, which seems to make sense. After all, Mrs E here told me that Doctor Allardyce is convinced that someone must have helped Her Ladyship dress and get down the stairs because she was so injured she would not have been able to do it herself …”

“That’s right,” said Caroline, “I remain convinced of that.”

“So,” continued Arthur, “what with these two, Polly and Her Ladyship being so close, might Her Ladyship not have sent Polly to her old convent—a place where she knew she would be safe?”

“I think you have something there, Tollman,” agreed Beech. He turned to Victoria. “Did she mention the name of the convent?”

Victoria shook her head. “And it wasn’t written in her bible, either. All I know is that it is an Anglican convent in London and a Sister Mary Francis lives there—or did, when Lady Harriet was there.”

“Tollman?” Beech looked hopefully at the Detective Sergeant.

“Yes, sir. First thing in the morning I shall take myself off to Lambeth Palace to review the records of the Anglican convents in London and their inhabitants. If a Sister Mary Francis is, or ever was, on the registers, I will find her.”

“Good man!” Beech then put the leather hatbox on the table and opened it up. “Now, Caroline, if you would like to cast your eye over this lot and tell me what they are, please.” He revealed at least twenty bottles, packets, and small boxes of various sizes and shapes.

“Good God!” Caroline came over to the table and began rifling through them and opening the various packets and boxes. “Well, these two are Forced March tablets, issued by the British Army and they contain a drug called cocaine …”

“Oh, I remember those!” exclaimed Billy. “They used to issue them before a battle and they’d fire you up so much you couldn’t go to sleep!”

“Exactly,” said Caroline firmly, “they suppress any hunger and give a man greater endurance—or so the manufacturers would have you believe. They are a mixture of stimulant with some pain relief but, ultimately they addle the brain and make reflexes slow, and I do wonder how many men have been killed or injured in battle due to these pills.”

She caught the look that passed between Beech and Billy and inwardly cursed herself for being so tactless, but the damage was done and she decided to press on. “These two brown bottles here, the ones issued by a doctor, are for Luminal, which is a sedative and hypnotic made from a relatively new drug called phenobarbitone. It has been used in my hospital to successfully control seizures in epileptics, and I’m not sure why our victim would have been prescribed this, unless the doctor mistook the muscle spasms caused by withdrawal from other drugs, as being some form of epilepsy. In which case he must be a very bad doctor and should be struck off!”

She looked at some of the other bottles and sighed. “These three here, as you can see, are clearly labeled ‘Heroin’ and are a German patent medicine for coughs, which was freely available, in this form, over the counter. I thought it had gone out of circulation in 1910, after the German company stopped making it, but, obviously, some pharmacist had some old supplies or knew a way to obtain it from somewhere. That other bottle, over there, is an opium-based patent medicine, usually given to infants with colic, and very often kills them, but you can buy it over any chemist’s counter.”

She opened a few of the packets, which contained powders. “These powders could be either heroin or cocaine but, given the personality traits of the husband, described by several of the household staff and by Lady Harriet, I suspect it’s probably heroin. That, I think you can buy from any chemist, again for coughs or blocked sinuses, and I think they recommend that you sniff it off the back of the hand like snuff.”

She opened the last two boxes. “These, I think, are opium pellets. Mr Tollman, what do you think?”

Arthur looked at them, picked one up in his hand, and rolled it between his fingers. “Yes, miss, I think you’re right. They’re waxy, like the sort of pellets pharmacists make by hand. ‘Mother’s Little Helpers,’ we used to call these back in the days when I was a beat bobby. Half the women in the East End were taking them just to get a decent night’s sleep.”

“So,” concluded Caroline, “we have a veritable chemist’s shop here of dangerous drugs that our victim was probably taking in great quantities, and I’m not surprised that he continually attacked his wife and then could remember nothing about it afterward. The Government really should do something about this uncontrolled trade. I have one wealthy woman in my hospital who was severely addicted to Vin Mariani—a red Bordeaux wine which included cocaine and was endorsed by many famous people, including the Pope, as a tonic which overcame fatigue. She stockpiled it in her wine cellar, then the Mariani company ceased to exist last year, and her stockpile ran out. Since January of this year she has been hospitalized with agonizing body pains, sweats, chills, and periodic vomiting. We don’t know how long it will take her to recover from the effects of this drug. She drank three glasses a day for five years.” Caroline threw the packet of opium pellets down on the table in disgust.

There was a momentary silence when no one could think of anything to say; then Beech spoke.

“Right. Well. Plan of action for tomorrow. Tollman, you will research the convent. Victoria, you will wait here for Mr Tollman to return with the necessary information and he will then accompany you to the convent, where you will ascertain if Polly the scullery maid is present and, if so, you will summon Mr Tollman to bring her in for questioning. Caroline, since you feel so strongly about the matter, you may, in any spare time you have tomorrow, scout around the pharmacies in Belgravia to see whether any of them sold these products and, if so, to whom. Was it Lord Murcheson who purchased them, which I doubt, or was it the butler? And, Caroline,” he warned, “I know you feel passionately about this but please, on this occasion employ some tact.”

“Yes of course,” she replied, suitably chastened.

“And while you are all employed with those tasks,” he said by way of conclusion, “Rigsby and I will interview the butler, formally. Perhaps with a little menace, eh, Rigsby? But nothing too drastic.”

Billy smiled. “Trust me, sir. I can put the frighteners on, without laying a finger on him.”

“Quite. Now Tollman, you and I must get off to our homes and the rest of the team must go to bed.”

*   *   *

As Billy lay in his makeshift bed at last, he congratulated himself on getting probably the best job he’d ever had in his life.

Good grub, he thought, nice surroundings, interesting work and, if the butler should happen to try and make a run for it tomorrow, I can give him a good thumping as well. Champion.