Among the Mad (21 page)

Darby looked at his hands. “Like you, I think he is at
the edge. We may have only hours before he strikes again. However . . .
however, he may now be exhausted. This outing may have worn him out, so he may
lie low, may sleep fitfully for some hours, especially if—as you have
suggested—he is poorly nourished. We may not hear from him for some time, but
again, we may hear tomorrow.”

The brakes screeched as the vehicle came to a halt
outside the Georgian terraced house on Gower Street, close to Bedford Square,
and MacFarlane barely waited for the motor car to stop before he swung the door
open and stepped onto the street and toward the front door. “Get these people
off the street, Constable.”

Stratton remained aboard, ready to go straight to
University College Hospital. Maisie spoke to him before joining MacFarlane.
“Inspector Stratton, it’s most important you ensure the housekeeper is kept in
isolation at the hospital, and that everyone who has had contact with her is
also quarantined. Talk to the doctors—they must know that they are likely
dealing with a very dangerous substance. There may be no cause for concern and
though I don’t want to cause panic, my instinct tells me to be careful.”

“I’ll send the driver back with the gowns and gloves,
and ensure the registrar is notified.”

Maisie and Darby stepped from the motor car, which
sped off along Gower Street with the bell ringing. They joined MacFarlane, who
was speaking to a constable. He pointed to a gathering on the other side of the
road.

“I want this road completely closed from Great Russell
Street all the way down to the Euston Road, and I want all streets blocked from
Tottenham Court Road across to Woburn Place. The only people on this
thoroughfare should be in uniform.”

“Not quite, Robbie.” Gerald Urquhart slipped past
another police constable and stood beside Maisie. “Nice to see you back in the
fold, Miss Dobbs.”

“Never mind the pleasantries, Gerry.” MacFarlane
turned to walk into the house.

“Wait!” Maisie reached for MacFarlane’s sleeve. “Chief
Superintendent, I cannot impress upon you the importance of delaying your
investigation of the premises until suitable covering has been procured.” She
turned to the constable. “Is anyone in there?”

“The photographer went in some time ago, and another
constable. Should have been out by now, I would have thought.”

“Blast!” Maisie opened her document case and removed
two linen masks. She handed one to Darby. “Come on, we’d better go in.” She
reached into her bag for a pair of rubber gloves, which she pulled onto her
hands, then turned to MacFarlane and Urquhart. “I’m sorry, I don’t carry
supplies for an army, just myself. I think it would be best if you waited—I am
sure the driver will be back soon. Is it all right if we continue, Chief
Superintendent? I thought it best to give the mask to Inspector Darby, given
his forensic knowledge.”

In truth, Maisie did not want to enter the property
without a witness and, given Urquhart’s earlier veiled insinuation that
MacFarlane may have designs on her, she did not want him to see her and the
Chief Superintendent crossing the threshold together.

“Go ahead—I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

Maisie and Darby stepped inside the house, closing the
door behind them. The hallway was typical of those found in terrace houses
built from Georgian times onward. It was long and narrow, with a staircase
ahead leading to the upper floors. A dado rail ran along the wall several feet
up from the skirting board, with dark green paint below the wooden rail, and
cream above. To the right, doors led to reception rooms, and if one continued
along the passage past the staircase, there would be stairs down to the
kitchen, and there would also be a means to enter a small walled garden,
possibly through French doors at the back of the property.

Maisie’s eyes began to water, and as she looked at
Darby, he was pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his eyes.

“Nasty stuff, whatever it is.”

Maisie nodded. “Hello! Anyone there?”

A groaning came from a room to the right of the
hallway.

Maisie and Darby ran toward the room, where they found
the photographer and the police constable slumped on the floor, and the body of
the junior minister partially covered in a white sheet.

“We need to get them out of here, now—look, the back
door. There’s a small garden at the back.” She looked around the room. “Cover
your hands with something before you touch them.” Darby opened doors until he
found a lavatory, and grabbed a cloth towel hanging next to a hand basin.
Together they dragged the two collapsed men out into the cold, diminishing
daylight of a winter afternoon, now silent, given the lack of traffic noise
from Gower Street.

“Close the door into the parlor, and if you can find a
bowl or bucket, bring me cold water to bathe their skin—and bathe your hands
and face too, anything exposed to air in the house.”

Though she was in the garden, Maisie heard the front
door slam in the distance.

“What the bloody hell’s going on?” MacFarlane shouted
as he entered the house with Urquhart at his heels, both wearing doctors’
gowns, surgical masks and rubber gloves.

“Exposure to the substance the visitor employed to
kill the junior minister,” said Maisie as the men came out into the garden.
“They’ll be all right, but we have to get them down to the hospital—and
quarantined, like the housekeeper.”

“The PM should be informed,” said Urquhart, his tone
dictatorial.

“Sod the PM for just a minute, will you, Gerry? I
swear, I will knock your block off one of these days, so I will.”

“Now then, Robbie, I don’t know who you think you are,
but—”

“Don’t you come the old ‘I don’t know who you think
you are’ with me, Mister Cambridge University. This is my murder, my case, and
I’m in charge until the Commissioner decides otherwise. Right then, now we’ve
got our matching frocks on, if you want to stay and observe, shut up and follow
me.”

Urquhart did not look at Maisie, who had exchanged
glances with Darby and both had raised their eyebrows. She came to her feet and
reached out for one of the white hospital gowns held by MacFarlane.

“Thank you, Chief Superintendent. I’ll show you where
the body is.” Maisie led the way into the parlor, cautioning the men first.
“Keep your masks on at all times, gentlemen, and do not under any circumstances
touch the body with your bare hands.”

“I think I’ve seen it all by now, lass, no need to
warn me, though Gerry here might faint.”

“Careful, Robbie.” Urquhart’s retort was bitter, his
face still flushed with embarrassment.

The junior minister had been a man of approximately
forty years of age, and was wearing a shirt, tie and woolen trousers when the
attacker had struck. His jacket had been placed on the back of a chair and
there was an open box with papers strewn across the table. The flesh of his
face appeared to be melting across his cheekbones, and the skin at his neck was
sunken, as if pulled in by the fight to breathe through what was left of his
nose, and the frothing mass that had once been his mouth. With her gloves on,
Maisie pressed against the back of the dead man’s hands, only to see the skin
concertina like the top of a custard when pulled away by a serving spoon. The
veins broke open, and blood oozed in small clotted lumps.

“I would say that he invited the attacker into the
house, brought him into the parlor.” Maisie pointed to the table. “The victim
reached for some papers—it’s possible he was looking for something to write
on—and when he turned around a substance was unleashed upon him with some sort
of pneumatic spray, perhaps, to have accomplished such coverage. Pain was
immediate, and he was blinded, falling backward. His tongue is doubtless little
more than liquid where he opened his mouth to scream, and you will see his
lungs have belched up froth as they have also liquefied. His hands took the
brunt when a second dose was administered.”

Urquhart began to cough, and left the room. He could
be heard retching in the garden as policemen in white overalls, masks and
gloves helped the photographer and constable to a waiting ambulance.

“Was it a gas, do you think?” MacFarlane spoke softly,
then began to rub his forehead.

“We should all leave this room now,” said Maisie. At
that point, the police pathologist and two assistants arrived, each of them
dressed as if to paint a room, rather than remove a body from the premises.

Within half an hour the house was evacuated of both
the living and the dead, and with the hospital gowns removed for incineration,
Maisie was on her way back to Scotland Yard with MacFarlane, Stratton and
Darby.

“So, what do you think, Miss Dobbs?” Once again,
MacFarlane singled out Maisie to answer a question.

“I think that, somewhere in London, there is a very
clever man who has been marginalized by society. He may just have invented a
new and very dangerous substance. At first blush, it could be taken for mustard
gas, but I’m convinced it’s something different—for a start, I don’t like the
look of this white powdery residue, but the laboratory people will no doubt get
to the bottom of its chemical structure.” She shook her head and looked around
the room. “What we have to assume is that a man who has the ability to kill one
person can use this same substance to kill many.”

“And the way he’s escalating his attacks, he could
kill and maim a whole street—or the whole of London—tomorrow,” added Stratton.

“Urquhart will have alerted the PM by now.” MacFarlane
looked out the window as he spoke.

“What does that mean for the investigation, sir?”
asked Stratton.

“It means it becomes a three-ring circus. The Funnies,
Special Branch, those boys at Mulberry Point, and not forgetting the mad
professors. That’s all I bloody well need—a cartload of boffins to deal with.”

Maisie said nothing as she reflected upon that
morning—was it just yesterday?—when she was about to board a train for Oxford,
and saw Anthony Lawrence at Paddington Station, waiting for the Penzance train.
A train that just happened to stop in Berkshire, close to the village of Little
Mulberry.

ELEVEN

December 30th, 1931

Sometimes it seems there is only sleep. There is
nothing to do, nowhere to go, and unless Croucher comes, there is no one to
speak to, no human sound other than the voice in my head. Ian was another
voice, but now he is gone. If only he had waited. If only he could have fought
through Christmas, we might have brought them to their knees, these men who sit
with their full bellies, by their warm fires, and wonder why we cannot work.

The man moved to the iron-framed bed and drew back a
mildewed blanket, damp to the touch, the wool like wire to his fingertips. He
curled under the threadbare cover and continued to write with a pencil.

I have taken a life. One more life. They should have
believed me, after the dogs, after the birds. I told them. And now they know. I
was discarded, not wanted, thrown aside. And soon someone, somewhere will
remember. They will remember me and they will know, when little men with their
little microscopes discover that what is in their little dish of flesh is
something they haven’t seen before. Then they will know what I have. Then our
situation will change. There will be something more for us, men who are still
waiting for their armistice.

As fatigue dragged on the man’s eyelids and cold
seeped through his skin, layer by layer, it seemed as if the very blood in his
veins were slowing to bring him to the edge of death, a place where he would
linger, in neither this world or the next, until his eyes opened once more,
still encrusted with sleep.

MAISIE HAD ALLOWED Billy time off to visit Doreen at
Wychett Hill, and was waiting for the clock on the mantelpiece to strike nine
so that she could telephone Dr. Anthony Lawrence. She was now officially part
of MacFarlane’s team again for the duration of the case, and there was much
work to be done.

Continuing with her notes, she was startled when a
bell sounded, indicating that someone was at the front door. She walked to the
window and looked down toward the door, but could see only the back of the
visitor’s coat as she waited for the door to open. Maisie glanced around the
square, and was about to turn away when she saw a flash of blue in the
distance—and the distinctive nose of a Bugatti parked on the far side of the
square where it met Conway Street.

“Priscilla?” Maisie whispered to herself as she ran to
the stairs and then downstairs.

“I thought you’d never get here!” Priscilla used her
thumbnail to eject a cigarette onto the flagstones before stepping across the
threshold when Maisie opened the door. She stopped briefly to kiss her on each
cheek, then held out her hand. “You’d better lead the way, Maisie—show me up to
your hive of industry.”