Antidote To Murder

“Fans of Maureen Jennings’s Murdoch novels will welcome Australian author Young’s promising debut, inspired by an actual riot in 1910 London . . . [Young] delivers a truly surprising reveal of the murderer’s identity.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Beautifully written and edited, with the historical genre handled with care . . . It was a joy to read and one I am so glad I didn’t miss out on.”

—
Book Binge

“A fantastically well-written historical mystery with a unique protagonist and rich period details . . . The best historical mysteries are those that manage to transport the reader to the past, envelop them in the complexity of a good mystery, and make them feel as if they know the protagonists so well that they can peek over their shoulders while collecting clues along the way. Felicity Young achieves this kind of excellence in
The Anatomy of Death
.”

—
Night Owl Reviews

Berkley titles by Felicity Young

THE ANATOMY OF DEATH

ANTIDOTE TO MURDER

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia / New Zealand / India / South Africa / China

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

BERKLEY
^®is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Berkley trade paperback ISBN: 978-0-425-25354-0

An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley trade paperback edition / May 2013

ISBN: 978-1-101-62247-6

Cover art by Alan Ayers (Lott Reps).

Cover design by George Long.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you again to the usual suspects: Patricia O’Neil, Carole Sutton, and Christine Nagel. Also my talented editors, Janet Blagg, Deonie Fiford, Kate O’Donnell, and the gang from The Berkley Publishing Group. Thanks also go to my agents, Lisa Grubka and Sheila Drummond, for all of their support. The idea behind this novel may not have developed without the helpful staff at the Wellcome Library, London. Thank you, one and all!

When a doctor goes wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.

—SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Prologue

I
climb onto the bridge wall and sit just beyond the gaslight’s beam. The iron weight of the Thames below draws me with a magnetic pull as powerful as my own impulses. How easy to jump, to fracture the murk and sink into the river’s fetid embrace. Will I struggle? I like to think not, but who knows? Perhaps I will, when a reflex breath betrays me and invites the rushing waters in. I am unable to swim and the thrashing won’t last long. My body will sink and rise again with none of the beauty of resurrection. Black, eyeless, and bloated, I will finally show my true form.

Big Ben strikes. Seven, eight, nine, ten. The clatter of traffic across the bridge has eased, though the heat still presses through the dark like the stink of the river in my nostrils.

I straighten my seat on the warm stone ledge and press my heels into the wall. Mortar crumbles like stale bread. I brace myself and prepare for the Gates of Hell.

“Come on, mister—t’ain’t that bad.”

I gasp and turn to face the voice.

“Nothin’ a bit o’ comfort won’t fix, I reckon,” another female voice chimes in. What is it to them? Is it the expensive cut of my tailcoat draped across the parapet, the sheen of my top hat sitting next to it? The bridge light shines on their painted faces. Their garish dress makes them almost identical clowns.

I glimpse the waif Jack, hanging about in the shadows. I’d given the boy a penny and told him to go home. He must have guessed my intentions and enlisted the help of these streetwalkers.

“Go away. Leave me alone,” I cry, beads of sweat tickling beneath my shirt.

“Whatcha wanta do a fing like that for?” the larger whore persists, dropping a heavy hand onto my shoulder. I turn to shrug her off and find myself caught in the glare of the streetlamp.

The slighter one says, “Hey, Maisie, I know ’im—it’s the doc. The geezer I been tellin’ you about from the Satin Palace.” She turns to the boy and cuffs him over the head, knocking his hat to the ground. “Why didn’t you tell us that in the first place, you li’l rascal?” Then to her friend she says, “This is the gent what fixed me up when I worked there.”

I squint at her through the unnatural light; perhaps the pinched face does hold a vague familiarity.

“Blimey,” Maisie says. “We can’t let a talent like that go to the river.”

A shell bursts inside my head. I touch my temple and feel the throbbing scar, taste the cordite as it dissolves upon my tongue, and pray to keep the fit at bay. Please, God, not now.

“‘Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me,’”
I recite. I abhor what I do, but seem unable to stop it. I slide down from the wall and stand at the large whore’s side. The moment has passed.

Maisie looks puzzled; she does not know her Bible and that in itself grieves me.

A smile traces her lips. “Well, ’ooever does do it, we’re mighty grateful an’ all.” She links her arm through mine and I feel the heat of her flesh burning through my shirtsleeves.

The thin whore takes my other arm and with her free hand scoops up my hat and coat. “C’mon, Doc, there’s nuffink a good shot o’ gin and a bit o’ comfort won’t cure. We owe you that much at least. Get lost, scallywag.”

I hear Jack’s bare feet pattering into the darkness. Godforsaken boy.

“You don’t owe me anything,” I protest, but it is useless: the women will not take no for an answer. And neither will the Beast.

Chapter One

JUNE 1911

I
t was unlike Pike to be late. Dody McCleland pulled out her fob again and frowned. She scanned the rattling traffic and was treated to a mouthful of dust and petrol fumes. Hansom cab, motor taxi, omnibus—or would he choose to walk? Not the latter, she hoped—not with that knee. Perhaps he’d been unable to find transport at all. There always seemed to be someone on strike these days. She should have sent Fletcher to pick him up in the Benz.

Dody had never experienced such a heat wave. The sun, felt more than seen, pressed invisibly upon the London streets, and the low blanket of smoke and cloud ensured that its heat stayed there, steaming like clams any foolish enough to linger in it. A fool she was not. Dody clung to her boater and was about to dash through a gap in the traffic to the shady side of the road when a hansom slid to a halt alongside her and out stepped a trim, suited figure.

Pike. He held his cane and small suitcase awkwardly in one hand and tipped his bowler with the other. “Sorry I’m late; the traffic was terrible.” His northern accent, barely discernible for the most part, today sounded straight from Leeds. He turned to pay the driver.

Dody tried to hurry him up. “We’d better not dawdle. Surgeons don’t like to be kept waiting.”

He appeared not to have heard. For a moment he stood trancelike, watching the cab ease from the kerb to the jingle of harness and the clash of metal hooves on stone. She put a hand on his arm. “Matthew? It’s going to be all right, you know. Mr. Barker performs this type of surgery almost every day.”

“Of course it’s going to be all right.” He smiled, patted her hand, and pointed to the gate with his cane. “Shall we go in?”

They climbed the steps and passed into the hospital’s front entrance. It was slightly cooler inside. Pike removed his bowler. He’d been sweating. Dark hair plastered his scalp.

Dody checked with the clerk at the desk that all was in order, then pointed towards a sweeping stone staircase. “Your ward is on the third floor, but we can take the lift, if you like.”

“I can manage the stairs,” he said. “In fact, I’ll wager I reach the top before you.”

Dody laughed, picked up her skirts, and followed at a brisk pace, allowing him to beat her by a hair’s breadth.

“You held back,” he said, panting. She waited with him near the lifts while he got his breath back. The odour of carbolic reached them from the ward.

“I won’t be holding back for much longer. Once your knee is fixed, there’ll be no stopping you. Soon you’ll be leaving me for dead on that ridiculous bone-shaker of yours, or galloping off in a cloud of dust on a horse through the park—”

“I’d like to see you on a horse,” he interrupted.

And I you, Chief Inspector,
she thought, hoping the heat would mask her blush. How dashing he must have looked in his cavalry officer’s uniform. “Off it, more like, and facedown in a soggy field. I’m not much good at riding, I’m afraid. My family were never part of that set,” she said.

“I could teach you.”

“You could try.” She laughed. “That might be your greatest challenge yet.”

The lift jolted to a halt, the metal cage clanked, and out stepped a nurse pushing an old man in a wicker wheelchair. The man had clearly been a soldier: a row of medals was pinned to his dressing gown and both his legs were amputated above the knee. Dody said good morning and the man replied with a friendly smile and a wave as the nurse wheeled him into the ward.

Dody looked at Pike. How pale he had become—was he recalling the trauma of his injury? She was visited with a sudden image of her sister Florence, ashen-faced after being force-fed at Holloway Prison. Unlike Florence, though, Pike refused to talk about his terrible experiences. This was part of the problem, she felt, and so typical of men who, like him, had fought in the South African war. He had taken a long time to agree to the operation, but it was at least a step in the right direction.

“One of your ward mates, I suppose; seems like a nice chap,” she said, trying to jolly him along.

Pike said nothing.

The ward consisted of two rows of twenty beds with double doors at each end. After spending so much time at the Women’s Hospital and Clinic, Dody had almost forgotten the collective odour of sick men: tobacco, urine, sweat, and Macassar hair oil. But as she gazed down the wide aisle, she could see that the ward itself was clean and orderly. Some of the men were sitting up in bed reading, with bandaged limbs propped on pillows. Others slept despite the groans of a man near the door who thrashed about in a bed with raised sides.

They stopped at the desk, where Dody made the introductions to the sister in charge. The tall, redheaded Irish woman walked them briskly down the aisle to an empty bed and took Pike’s case from him. “You won’t be requiring that here, Mr. Pike,” she said. “Everything you need is in the locker next to the bed. Undress, change into the nightshirt, and then pass water into the bottle provided.” She whisked the curtains around the bed, giving him no time to reply, let alone protest.

The man in the bed next to Pike’s began to moan in his sleep. Across the aisle someone hawked and spat into the potted palm next to his bed. Pike’s curtains quivered.

“Mr. Stratton,” the sister admonished. “If you must expectorate, please use the cup provided.”

“Sorry, Sister,” the man said, wiping threads of tobacco from his pyjama jacket and lighting up a cigarette.

If Dody ever had a say in the running of a hospital, she would start with a no-smoking rule on the wards. She smiled wryly at her brief flight of fancy. What influence could she possibly have when most of the larger London hospitals wouldn’t even allow female doctors to practise within their hallowed halls?

The floorboards shook under the weight of several pairs of feet. She looked up to see Mr. Barker at the head of the ward with three younger men in his entourage. “I’ll be back in a moment, Matthew,” Dody said to the curtains and hurried to meet the surgeon before he began his rounds.

“Dr. McCleland,” Barker said as he took her hands in both of his and vigorously pumped.

Dody smiled warmly at him. Mr. Barker had offered his support when she applied for a bone surgery internship, and it was no fault of his that she had been rejected for the course.

He leaned closer to say softly, “I’m sorry things didn’t work out. I’m afraid there are too many old fuddy-duddies on the board who don’t like the idea of lady surgeons.”

Dody smiled again. “Thank you, but I have landed on my feet. I am working with the Home Office now as an assistant autopsy surgeon to Dr. Bernard Spilsbury.”

One of the medical students failed to hold back a snigger, and even Barker looked at Dody askance. Her smile became rigid. He might be open to the idea of a female surgeon, but a female autopsy surgeon—a student of the “Beastly Science”—that was something else again.

“It’s not full-time employment,” Dody added to forestall any unwelcome comment, “so it means that I can still give time to the Women’s Hospital and Clinic. But sir, I know you are busy, so I had better explain why I’m here. Last week you saw Chief Inspector Pike in your rooms and you booked him for a knee repair today.”

It annoyed her to give in so quickly, but she had achieved her purpose and Barker seemed relieved that she had changed the subject. “Yes, I remember the man: Boer War veteran turned policeman. X-rayed his knee and found shrapnel lodged under the patella. A straightforward operation, provided the anaesthetic agrees and there are no postoperative infections.”

Dody had lost count of the number of bodies she’d examined with death attributed to anaesthetic complications. It was one of the risks of the operation she had mentioned to Pike, though strangely the prospect of death by anaesthetic had not seemed to worry him. His fear seemed deeper than that. But how would she feel if something untoward happened as a result of the operation she had pushed him into having? A hollow ache formed in the pit of her stomach. Better to cast that thought to the back of her mind. Would she not advise a patient to whom she had no attachment a similar course of action? Of course she would.

“He is quite apprehensive,” she said to the surgeon. “I was hoping you might be able to spend a few minutes this morning explaining again what the operation entails and putting his mind at ease. I’m afraid I don’t seem to be making a very good job of it.”

“You are too close to him, that’s why. A no-nonsense approach is always best.”

“Please don’t get the wrong idea, sir. We are friends, nothing more.”

Mr. Barker looked at her over his half-rim glasses. Dody felt the heat rise in her face once more and cursed the ready blush that would only confirm the argument that women were too emotional to be doctors.

“Come on then, let’s go see this chap of yours,” Barker said, with a sigh of impatience.

Dody bit her tongue and led him down the long ward.

The curtains were still drawn around Pike’s bed. “Chief Inspector Pike, are you ready?” she called.

There was no answer.

The surgeon folded his arms.

Dody cautiously drew back the curtain’s edge before ripping it fully open. The bed was neatly made; the patient nowhere to be seen.