A Donation of Murder (7 page)

Dody pulled the plug and watched the whirlpool of water, listening to it scream as the plughole sucked it down. Surely her relationship with Margaret would fizzle out in the end?

Her toes curled. The tiles through the bathroom mat felt like ice. She wrapped herself in a towel, gazing out of the small window as she dried herself. Snowflakes spiralled from the inky sky. She shivered as she pulled her nightdress over her head, marvelling how Margaret had survived the night outside in weather such as this. Her mind travelled to the sick and homeless women who slept in the park. How would they be faring tonight? And what would happen to them when the clinic closed its doors? She prayed to the God she did not believe in that they could sweet-talk the landlord into letting it remain open at least until the spring, when the worst of the weather would be over.

The church clock chimed two. The copper warmer Annie had put in her bed would be cold by now.

But at least the fire was still in; she saw its gentle glow as she stepped from her bathroom. She didn't bother with the light, instead heaping the fire with coal before turning to her dressing table to pull the pins from her hair. Too tired to run her brush through it, she'd face the resultant bird's nest in the morning.

In the glow of the firelight, she made her way over to her large bed and slipped under the covers, bracing herself for the chill sheets as one might for a dip in the North Sea. The bed felt comforting and warm, as if a body had just rolled off it.

‘I kept your side warm for you,' said a sleepy voice. Pike pulled her into his arms, his warm legs twisting around her cold ones.

They were both too exhausted for passion, but to hold one another as close as this was, in its own way, as good.

They made up for it the next morning when the curtains seeped a grey, watery light. A second sense must have prevented Annie from delivering Dody her usual morning tea, which meant they had almost an hour alone together before breakfast. Pike gave her one last lingering kiss before rolling over to lie on his back. She gazed
into his face, his dark blue eyes glowing like coals in the soft firelight. He picked up her hand and absently kissed her fingertips.

‘What happened after we parted yesterday evening, Matthew?'

‘Shepherd told me to report to him when I was finished for the day, but when I got to his office, he'd gone home. There was a note on his desk telling me to call by his house.' He paused. ‘I did just that, but found all his house lights off. I look forward to seeing him this morning.'

Dody smiled. ‘Do I detect a certain irony in your tone?'

‘A smidgeon, perhaps.' Pike got up from the bed and began to dress, removing his folded clothes from Dody's Queen Anne chair.

‘Matthew, there's someone I'd like you to meet.'

He stepped into his trousers then turned to face her. ‘Ah, your mysterious houseguest — I'd forgotten about her.'

‘Perhaps we could breakfast together? You would have to leave and come back though, as if you were calling in to update me on a case. I'll ask Cook to delay breakfast if you like, to give you more time.' She went to the wardrobe to select her clothes for the day, pushing through Florence's coloured silks in search of her own conservative work clothing: a sensible sax-blue wool skirt, matching jacket, stiff collar and tie.

Pike rubbed his eyes. Was he as tired of the subterfuge as she was? ‘Tell me more about this lady and why you are so eager for us to meet.'

Dody told Pike the circumstances of Margaret's awakening on the slab.

‘My goodness,' he said, snapping his braces over yesterday's shirt. ‘And you say she lay in the alley all night, resplendent in jewels and furs?' He narrowed his eyes. ‘Describe the jewels to me.'

Dody raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Must you always be so suspicious?'

‘Inviting a stranger to stay in your house is not the wisest thing you've ever done. What if she's a thief?'

Dody folded her arms. She was not used to being chastised by Pike.

‘It's my job to be suspicious, you know that,' he said, softening his tone.

‘A beautiful ruby cross at least one and a half inches long, and spectacular dangling ruby earrings.'

‘She's a Papist?' Pike asked with a frown.

‘I expect so, she's of Irish extraction.'

The frown deepened. ‘It's best to remain cautious of the Irish right now. Their demand for Home Rule is reaching ridiculous proportions.'

A Fenian bomb had killed Pike's wife, the mother of his only child, Violet, and he sometimes had difficulty controlling his prejudice against the Irish. Adding to that, the fight for Irish Home Rule had recently escalated and violence had been predicted once more for the streets of London.

‘Please be friendly when you meet her, Matthew,' Dody pleaded, sitting on the edge of the bed and reaching for a buttonhook to fasten her boots. ‘She's had an awful time.'

‘Of course I'll be friendly.' He smiled and brushed his lips against her cheek. ‘Am I not always?'

‘Well . . .'

‘I'll pop out of the back door, get a shave at the barber's, and miraculously reappear for breakfast in about half an hour's time in the guise of your work colleague and nothing more.'

Dody put a hand to his cheek, savouring the roughness beneath her soft palm — Pike was not often dishevelled. ‘Shame,' she murmured to herself.

Once he had gone and Dody had finished her toilette, she tapped on her guest's door to see if Margaret was feeling strong enough to come down for breakfast. No answer. She tapped again and entered. The bed was neatly made. Folded on the pillow, she found the borrowed nightdress and a note addressed to her.

Dear Doctor McCleland (Dody!)

Thank you for everything. I will never forget what you did for me. I hope to see you again soon. God bless you.

Your loving friend,

Margaret.

The note was held in place on the pillow by Dody's locket. She'd forgotten about leaving it there last night.
I knew she was no thief.
Dody smiled as she secured the locket around her neck. It felt good to prove Pike wrong for a change.

Margaret Doyle rapped the dolphin knocker of her front door three times in quick succession, then twice more. A shadow moved behind the peephole, a bolt slid, one key turned, and then another. All were state of the art locks designed by Margaret herself.

‘Miss Doyle!' Chubby arms were flung around her. Squeezed so tight, Margaret had to fight for breath.

‘Enough, Nancy, enough.' Not that Margaret objected to such an outpouring of affection. She liked to think there was no toffee-nosed inhibition in her household. She felt a bit fragile still, that was all.

She threw her bag of clothing, including the fur, onto the hall seat. ‘Take care of these, will you, love? Unpick the pearl beads and toss the rest. The dress has had it, but the fox can probably be cleaned.'

‘We was all so worried,' the maid said as she scooped up the clothes. ‘Mr John 'as been pacing the floor like a caged tiger.'

Margaret's guts swilled. ‘Mr John? Is he still here?'

‘Popped out for a bit — searching for news of you, I fink. 'Ee's 'ad everyone combing the streets looking for you. Some of 'is blokes said you was at the Anchor and Whistle last night.'

‘Bit late for all that searching, I could have died and gone to Hell by now. And what would he care?' Margaret felt the tears begin to well. God, what she'd been through beggared belief. Would anyone believe her story? Could anyone other than the lady doctor vouch that it was true? John would think she was still attention-seeking, manipulating, like when she'd jumped from the moving carriage. By God, but she'd learned the error of her ways soon enough. What a fool she was!

‘He'll be ever so glad you're home safe.' The fat-faced maid paused, looked her mistress up and down from beneath eyebrows as unkempt as country hedgerows. ‘Where'd you get those ugly rags from, anyhow? I've got scouring cloths softer 'an them.'

Margaret roused herself from self-pity. ‘It's a long story. Run my bath, love, and pour me a gin — no, make that a hot buttered rum. I need to have my wits about me when Mr John calls back.'

‘Yes, miss. He was worried, miss, he truly was — tears in 'is eyes when he was on the telephone to Mr James, tellin' 'im what 'appened.'

Yes, and how disappointed Mr James will be when he hears about my resurrection.

‘Did anyone other than Mr John call while I was away?'

The maid stopped on the stairs and turned. ‘Mabel Watkins wanted to see you, something about 'er and Nellie needing to change their beat 'cos the rozzers are getting suspicious. And there's a pile of letters and notes what need answering, and a couple of packages waiting on your desk, too.'

Margaret Doyle nodded. She felt her renewed energy begin to ebb. She wondered, not for the first time, if being leader of the Whistlers — the most successful women's gang in London — was still worth all the effort.

*

Margaret moved to the sunken safe concealed under a bright Turkish rug in the middle of her boudoir.

She dropped to her knees — blimey they hurt, must have landed on them when she collapsed in the alley — and pushed the rug aside. Using her fingernails, she prised out several loose squares of cut floorboards to reveal the door of the safe. She clicked the combination on the dial. This was one of the most modern safes available and one that few thieves had the nous to crack. After her parents died, she'd kept accounts for a locksmith, Old Vic, and put the knowledge learned to good use.

She'd helped John install a similar safe at his place. His was bigger though, big enough to store the rifles he was at one time selling to the rebellious Irish. She'd encouraged him to get out of the gun trade — guns were such horrible things. Stick to your knitting, she'd said, and for once he'd listened to her.

With shaking fingers she removed the contents of an oilskin bag, divided the notes into piles, and then stacked the gold sovereigns. None missing, thank the Lord, and more than enough stashed to buy a decent house in Kent. She should be able to afford a few servants too, and a motor, with a tidy sum left over for investment.
Mary and all the Saints
, she rocked back on her haunches, she was richer than she'd ever dreamed.

Ledger lines and numbers danced around her head, a few of them red, but most of them black. Add a bit here, take a bit there, a bit of interest for this and that. Numbers were easy for Margaret. After expenses she'd have about eight hundred pounds to
spare — and that didn't include the value of the jewellery she'd stashed in the attic safe.

When her parents were alive, the Kent coast had been a distant holiday destination, quaint and foreign, fun to visit, but too far away from her beloved London to be a place she'd choose to live. Now she viewed the place in a different light. She'd been born in London and lived in the city all her life. Reluctant as she was to move, she knew it was the only way she could leave her old life behind.

As she re-stashed the money in the safe she wondered how her girls would react when she told them she was relocating, what they'd think about being swallowed up by John Giblett and the Anchor gang, which would inevitably happen. Everyone knew how ruthless he and Mr James were these days. They ruled their gang through fear as much as she ruled hers through kindness.

She should have enough left in the kitty, she calculated, to pay the girls off. Enough to encourage them to take up some kind of honest occupation, or give them the choice at least. This was an easy decision now — thanks to her ‘Road to Damascus' miracle performed by Doctor Dody — although she knew it would be harder for her girls. Many wouldn't take the opportunity of starting a new life even if was handed to them on a silver platter. Most would probably allow themselves to be absorbed by the Anchor Gang and relegated to menial jobs, such as driving the getaway motorcars or creating diversions. While the women did the grunt work, the men did the planning, got the excitement, the glory, and the majority of the takings.

Worse, the girls might be tempted into prostitution. If any of the Whistlers so much as dabbled in the oldest profession Margaret tossed them out. Prostitution was a demeaning, unhealthy way of making a living and something Margaret reviled. Sometimes she allowed her girls to use their bodies for purposes of blackmail, but that was different because they were volunteers. Then, whoring was a service provided for the whole gang and always above board, with the proceeds fairly distributed.

Women's brains were as good as men's, she'd always reasoned. This was a truth that few men could comprehend, and the reason the Whistlers had enjoyed one hundred and fifty years of success. Who the hell would suspect that a pretty, well-spoken young woman would have a petticoat full of concealed pockets packed with pilfered luxuries? Or be capable of lifting a wallet from a toff's briefcase with barely a touch of the clasp?

Margaret replaced the floorboards, pulled back the rugs and climbed stiffly to her feet.

She only chose educated girls, those who, with a few elocution lessons, could pass off as proper ladies. Their beat was the shops of the West End where accent, deportment and fine manners meant everything. They dressed in expensive, fashionable clothes and were rarely questioned or searched, even when they left the premises with their carpetbags, often carried by pretend footmen, bulging with stolen luxuries.

One of Margaret's greatest achievements — and what had drawn the serious attention of John Giblett — was an order of liquor and fine groceries from Fortnum and Mason, which she'd charged to the then Duke of York's account. She'd had the goods fetched by a young woman she'd disguised as a footman dressed in the royal livery. That was a once-in-a-lifetime fraud and one she would never be foolish enough to repeat. Margaret smiled at the memory. They'd dined like queens for a week after that.

She removed the old clothes and slipped into a fine silk gown, relishing the feel of the soft fabric against her skin. At her glass-topped dressing table she began to do her hair. The light from the fire made it shine like a glowing brazier. Combing her hair was something that usually gave her pleasure, but today her thoughts were on everything but the fine auburn curls she'd been blessed with. She put the comb down and picked up the jewelled crucifix dangling from her throat, and touched it to her lips.

She had been forgiven, she must have been. All those tedious trips to confession had been worthwhile. From now on, she resolved, there would be no more empty promises to a bored old priest behind a rusty confessional grille. It was time to clean the slate with a cloth of sincerity and start over again.

First she would repay the debt she owed to the Doctor. Dody McCleland had not only saved Margaret's body, she had saved her soul as well. That thought almost brought her to tears. She gulped down a knot in her throat. She'd not been able to get last night's conversation out of her mind. You could tell by just looking at the woman how heavy was the burden of anxiety she carried over her ‘young' man. Not so young really, she'd discovered after inspecting the picture in the locket once Dody had left the room.

Even though the portrait was small she could see that Dody's man was a looker — though maybe not in a conventional sense. His dark hair was greying at the temples, and his brow and eye-line, perhaps his best feature, appeared serious and intense, showing he was a thinker, like Dody. Dressed in a well-cut but dated suit, his posture appeared proud, but not unyielding.

Margaret took pride in her intuition, her ability to read a person's character just by looking at them. Body reading involved a similar set of honed skills to safe cracking: hearing, touch and sight, to name but a few. She credited her skills to her parents, a volatile couple whose moods rarely matched, veering from one extreme to the other as with the changing of the wind. The child Margaret had learned to read the language of the body long before she had learned her letters — she'd had to, for her safety's sake.

She closed her eyes. On the back of the photograph she'd found a few pencilled words. ‘
To Dody, my love always, M.P.'

Margaret picked up her silver and ivory hair comb and tapped on her dressing table, thinking back to her conversation with Dody. He was someone she worked with, Dody had said, but not a doctor. The cut of M.P's slightly outdated jacket, and his bearing, suggested he was a gentleman, though not necessarily a man of means. He could be an army officer, Margaret mused, though most of the army men she knew preferred to be photographed in their uniforms. And besides, why would an autopsy surgeon who worked for the Home Office work with a military man?

A coroner perhaps? Now Margaret felt she was getting warmer. Pillow talk between an autopsy surgeon and a coroner could amount to a legal midden. But why would Dody's radical parents object to her union with a coroner? It could be far worse — if he was a high-ranking copper, for example.

Margaret slammed her comb on the glass dressing-table top. Of course, that was it, that was the reason for their clandestine relationship, the message behind that look of hopelessness she'd seen in the doctor's eyes. And had Dody not been about to say the ‘P' word? That was it — her lover was a bleeding copper.

Margaret chastised herself for overlooking the obvious. She who could usually spot a plain clothes copper from one hundred yards must be loosing her knack. Just as well she was planning her retirement.

She stared through her reflection in the mirror. No wonder things were complicated for Dody. There had to be something Margaret could do to help her new friend, to repay the huge debt she owed.

She tapped the comb on the dressing table again, thinking, thinking . . .

Someone knocked on the door. Her heart leaped. Was John back already? No, she thought with relief, he couldn't be. He wouldn't knock, he'd just burst in.

The red crystal door handle turned slowly and her doughy-faced maid peered into the room. Poor Nancy, she'd never been able to pull off the appearance of a London socialite, whatever fine trappings she adorned herself in. After a string of near disasters Margaret had pulled her from the street and put her in the house. It had proved to be a wise move and one that Nancy had adapted to with no malice. The plain-featured girl had turned out to be one of the most loyal members of the gang.

‘Matilda wants to see you downstairs, miss. She says to tell you she's finished the job and is waiting for new orders,' Nancy said.

‘For goodness sake, tell her to come back tomorrow. Now's not the time, Nancy, I've got a lot on my mind and I'm bloody exhausted.'

‘She's brought all the stuff from Harrods with her, a whole suitcase full, had to get a boy to help carry it. It would be a terrible risk to send her orf with that. Anything could happen to it — you knows what the streets is like these days.'

‘Then tell her to leave it here if she's worried about its safety.' Margaret paused, her mind ticking. And then her business and her desire to repay her ‘debt' to the doctor merged into a sudden, startling epiphany. ‘No, on second thoughts, love, show her to the parlour and tell her I have a new job for her. I'll be down in a sec.'