Antidote To Murder (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

D
espite the suffocating humidity, Elizabeth Strickland shivered. She’d had to feign illness to get off work at the
Mail
’s typing pool and would have been almost home now if she’d caught her usual train. So far everything had gone to plan—Jimmy’s plan, scribbled in haste on a piece of printing paper in an alley behind the newspaper building: omnibus times, routes, and street names. It was too risky for her to go to her local chemist, so he’d suggested this place, Whitechapel, where his father had grown up. Whitechapel was miles from where she lived and, though geographically closer to work, felt another world away.

This chemist shop was even more lurid than the one they had at home in Lewisham. The window was filled with tall jars of all shapes and sizes holding coloured water of red, pink, emerald green, and blue. Gaudy as a gin palace, the shop was easily recognised by those who could not read. Elizabeth glanced down the street at the ragged children playing in piles of rotting rubbish. Groups of wan, grey people leaned in doorways; grimy lines of laundry stretched across the smaller streets and alleys. There would be no shortage of illiterates here.

She took a breath for courage and crossed the threshold, her arrival announced by a spring bell on the door. A long counter with a backdrop of well-stocked shelves stretched across the entire back wall. The shiny mahogany surface was jammed with commercial products, their garish signs advertising everything from custard powder, toiletries, and gripe-water to products guaranteed to “remove obstructions.” A brass cash register, a set of scales, a large marble mortar and pestle, and a brass bell dominated the counter.

Elizabeth pressed the bell and the white-coated chemist appeared within seconds.

“Good afternoon, miss, what can I do for you?” He smiled pleasantly.

Elizabeth felt herself flush. Glancing around the shop to ensure there was no one else about, she whispered, “I need something for my courses. They seem to have stopped.”

The chemist lost some of his friendly demeanour. “I’m sorry, but we don’t sell that sort of thing here.”

She hadn’t travelled all this way to give up so quickly. Her words left her in a rush. “I’ve tried Widow Welch’s—the whole packet—but they haven’t worked.” Jimmy had picked up the pills for her from the apothecary near the
Mail
’s office; they were the only things he could find purported to do the job.

“I see.” The chemist looked her up and down. Perhaps now he could see how serious she was. His passive face revealed little, and she wondered what he was thinking.

Before leaving work, she’d changed into her second-best dress: red and black with patterns of paisley swirls, so different to the drab grey she wore when working in the typing pool. The bright outfit was her attempt to make herself feel bright. So far the strategy had not worked. In her head she saw herself wearing it in a few months’ time with her pregnant belly straining its seams. When her parents found out, they would throw her into the street, telling their friends at church that she’d died from the diphtheria that had taken her little brother.

Before she knew it, she found herself grabbing hold of the chemist’s hand. “Please help me, sir,” she cried.

He extracted himself and frowned for a moment, then glanced as if in great thought down the shop’s aisle beyond the shelves and into the street. Elizabeth followed his gaze to a shadowy figure in a cloth cap peering in at the window display. Was the chemist’s resolve faltering? Elizabeth’s heart leaped with hope.

“I’m sorry, miss, there is nothing I can do for you.”

And plummeted. Her nose fizzed, her face crumpled. She pulled the handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed her eyes.

“Hush now; control yourself. Here comes a customer. Best make as if you are buying something.”

Elizabeth was used to doing as she was told. Without thinking, she reached for a bottle of shampoo from a display near the counter. “And I’ll have this, too, please, sir,” she said, doing her best to keep the tremble from her voice.

As she fumbled in her purse for the money, she heard the heavy tread of a man approaching from behind. Had he been in the shop all along? Had he overheard the conversation? She panicked and dropped her purse. Coins clattered and rolled. Bobbing down to retrieve her money, she glimpsed smart, cuffed trousers atop a pair of shiny boots.

“No hurry,” the chemist said as she scrambled for her coins. “Take your time and I’ll serve this gentleman first. “Have you come to pick up your order, Doctor?” he asked the new arrival.

A doctor, oh no!

“Yes I have, but let’s help this young lady first, shall we?” the doctor said, bending from a great height to help her retrieve her spilled coins. Elizabeth thanked him. He was tall and well dressed, but unfortunately featured with yellowed skin and eyes and an ugly scar on his temple. It took all her fortitude and good manners not to pull away. He dropped the last of the coins into her palm and she thanked him, insisting that he be served first. Elizabeth stepped back from the counter to rearrange her purse and gather together the money she owed for the shampoo.

The chemist ducked behind the counter and reappeared with a brown paper parcel.

Elizabeth watched the exchange. Impeded by shaking fingers, the doctor struggled with the knots. When he finally managed to unwrap the parcel, he took some time to inspect the contents, muttering like a wizard reciting a spell.

“Salves, salvarsan powder, cotton swabs, bottles of sterile saline, four brass syringes, and”—he counted out the remainder under his breath—“one dozen twenty-two-gauge needles. Where’s the bromide?” he asked suddenly, his voice louder.

The chemist inspected the supplies strewn across the counter and wrinkled his forehead. “My mistake,” he said, turning to the myriad bottles arranged on the shelves behind him. He selected a small brown one and placed it next to the doctor’s pile of goods. “There you are. Someone needs calming, do they?” he asked.

“Sick people always need calming.” The doctor turned to Elizabeth and smiled. She wanted to run away, but she had not yet paid for her shampoo and felt obliged to wait for him to finish his business.

“That’ll be fifteen shillings and eight pence, please,” the chemist said to the doctor.

Elizabeth could wait no longer. She extracted her money and clattered it on the counter, thanked the chemist, and hurried from the shop without waiting for her change. Outside she took some deep breaths. She must stop herself from crying—give the red a chance to leave her eyes before she got home. She dabbed her nose with her handkerchief and glanced at her reflection in the shop window. It would be no problem convincing Mother she’d been ill; the pale face and stooped shoulders said it all.

And then her attention was drawn from her own image to another on the rippling surface of one of the decorative jars. It was the reflection of the man she’d seen earlier, still loitering outside the shop. She turned and faced him.

The man gave her a little wave. He wore a dusty suit jacket with mismatched trousers. His cloth cap was pulled low over his face, but she glimpsed a pushed-in mouth and a flattened nose.

She nodded him a smile—because it was polite to do so, not because she felt like it—and prepared to cross the road.

“Oi, miss, wait.”

She turned back to see the man holding up her handkerchief. He didn’t hold the sodden fabric up by its corner as most would, but held it balled in his hand, as if he couldn’t care less what it had been used for.

“What’s wrong, love?” the man asked as he handed the hanky back.

“Thank you, sir, it’s nothing. I’m all right.”

The man had a weeping sore on the side of his face. “The chemist givin’ you an ’ard time?”

“No, no, not really.”

“Bloody toff, what would ’e know, eh?”

The shop bell rang; the doctor’s form loomed in the doorway. The little man quickly stepped away from Elizabeth.

“Hey, you!” The doctor pointed his finger at the man and bellowed as if to a scavenging dog. “I know what you get up to, you and your gang. Leave the young lady alone. I’ll be going to the authorities about you, mark my words.”

“And expose yerself in the process? I don’t fink so, Doc.” The smaller man shrugged and turned to Elizabeth. “I’ve done nuffin, ’ave I, miss?”

“Preying on the weak and needy,” the doctor harangued.

“You can talk an’ all,” the little man retorted.

Elizabeth looked desperately for a break in the traffic. She’d had enough of this place and needed to get away from these ghastly men.

As she was about to dash across the road, the doctor clutched at her arm. “What are you doing here? A nice girl like you shouldn’t be in this area alone,” he said.

She cricked her neck to look up at him. “Please let me go, sir, I have a train to catch.” Before she could wriggle free, he pressed a business card into her hand. “If you find yourself in trouble, come to me.”

“I’m no worse than you, mate,” the smaller man bravely shouted from a distance. “Oh, yeah, I know all about you—least I ain’t no
pre-vert
.” He paused, as if searching his mind for an even worse insult. “Nor no Kaiser-Bill spy, never!”

Elizabeth didn’t know what a pre-vert was, but she knew what a spy was. The strange doctor certainly behaved in a suspicious manner. Could this be true? Was he really a spy?

“Everything’s all right. Really,” she said through the thumping of her heart. She shrugged from the doctor’s grip and just missed being knocked down by a boy on a bicycle with a tray of fruit. Carts and delivery vans rattled by in a continuous stream, and crossing the road was now impossible. She joined in with a crowd of jostling people on the footpath, walking with them for some yards until she spied a gap in the traffic. Picking up her skirts, she slipped between a teetering furniture cart and a blistered old carriage and just missed having her shins rammed by a costermonger’s cart. What a disaster this had been. She was no closer to solving her problem than she was at the start of her miserable journey.

The thunder of the traffic masked the small man’s tread. She didn’t notice him until he was almost on top of her, pulling her around by the shoulder and shoving his pug-like face into hers.

“Horse Feathers most nights till late. Ask for Dan.”

* * *

V
an Noort caught the omnibus from Whitechapel and disembarked at St. James. His own pounding footsteps echoed the beating of his heart and kept time to the desperate rhythm of his prayers: prayers for the unfortunate girl in the chemist; prayers for her exploiters; prayers for his wife—dear Matilda; and for Jack and his family and all those who suffered. The prayers went on through the list until he reached the Beast. What prayer for the Beast? There was one, he was sure, but he could not recall it. All he could do was hope that it would come.

With his destination in sight, his pace increased. He barely noticed his surroundings and cursed his feet for leading him on in such furious haste. He passed the venerable gentlemen’s club, the hotel with the flags, dodged a pile of dog filth in the middle of the footpath, and strode by a building with window boxes of leggy geraniums, seeing them but not seeing them.

Instead he saw a line of verse unfurling in his mind and he clung to it like a falling man.

Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

He slowed down slightly. Of course, his prayer: The Beast’s prayer—that which absolves and justifies. He immediately felt the better for it. He mounted the steps of the Satin Palace with renewed vigour, his conscience clearer . . . at least for a while.

With its crystal chandelier winking through the glass above the door, this place could be mistaken for a respectable gentlemen’s club itself. Van Noort nodded to the uniformed doorman, who unlocked the door for him. In less than an hour’s time the door would be fixed open and the red lamp lit. Until then there was much work to be done.

Heading down the passage to the back of the building, he ran into Jack, barefooted as usual and wearing his trademark bargeman’s cap. Jack dumped the heavy basket of linen he was carrying and greeted Van Noort with a cheeky smile. The brothel generated more washing than the laundress—an old whore who was no longer suitable for the shop floor—could cope with, and Jack worked in the laundry room as her assistant several evenings a week.

“Jack,” Van Noort said as he reached into the store cupboard for his doctor’s bag. The boy’s smile faded when he heard the stern tone. “What are you still doing here?”

“A fella’s gotta feed ’is family, Doc.”

Van Noort opened his bag and began restocking the contents with supplies purchased from the chemist. “You are a child, Jack. This is no place for children. When we last talked, you promised you would find some other kind of employment.”

“There’s no jobs—what else can I do? Get a high hat and become a City tosser?”

Van Noort snapped his bag shut and endeavoured to keep a straight face. The boy had spunk, he had cheek—qualities that might just keep him alive. “You should be in school,” he said.

“Then I would never’ve met you, would I, or been learned to read with one teacher all to meself. Some fings is just meant to be, Doc. Funny old world, ain’t it?”

The brothel’s proprietor, Harold Trevelly, came up from behind and put an arm around the boy’s shoulder. The man dressed like a gentleman but spoke like a sewer rat.

“Are you lecturing my apprentice, Doctor?” he asked.

“Apprentice? What rot you talk, Trevelly. You’re leading him on and you know it.”

Jack broke in, “I don’t care, really I don’t, Doc. I like it ’ere and the ladies is real nice to me.”

“Your soul, Jack, think what this place is doing to your soul.”

“I ’ardly fink you’re one qualified to preach salvation. Bloody lunatic,” Trevelly added under his breath. To Jack he said: “And you watch yourself, son. Remember there’s some what come ’ere ’oo give it both ways. We could even send you on to number forty-seven. A fresh-arsed young’un like you would go down there a treat.”