Antidote To Murder (9 page)

“As do you to your Coroner’s Court.”

“I feel I would be more use at the Clinic. I don’t really see how I can help the court get anywhere closer to finding the person responsible for Esther Craddock’s death.”

Earlier she had confided to him her feelings of frustration and sadness at the circumstances of Esther’s death, telling him how it made her even more determined to go ahead with her education classes at the Clinic.

“Were any clues found on the body?” he asked.

“I have no idea. The autopsy was performed by the police surgeon at Bishopsgate and I’ve not had access to the postmortem report.”

“They say that a criminal always leaves something of himself behind.”

In response to Dody’s look of surprise, he added, “I learned that from Joseph. He studied medicine for four years and was always attracted to the forensic side. Unfortunately my sister and her husband fell into financial hardship and he was forced to withdraw from university. At that time I was in no position to help him myself.”

“But you have made it up to him now.”

“I hope so. He seems to enjoy the job. It gives us both satisfaction.”

“As does my job, despite the fact that the conditions are not always ideal.”

“Surely you cannot complain about the excellent facilities at Paddington?” And then a look of understanding crossed his face. “Ah, I know what it is; in the company of friends you are permitted to say what you feel. It is not the magnificent modern facilities that you have a problem with, but those that reside within it—the living, I mean.”

Dody laughed. “Yes, sometimes they make it hard for me. Dr. Spilsbury is a genius, they say the rising star of the forensics profession. He is quite eccentric and cool towards everyone and I don’t think his treatment of me is because I am a woman. I’m sure he would never have employed me in the first place if he found that to be a problem.”

“I wish there were more female doctors. The world would be a much better place if it were so.”
What a nice thing to say,
Dody thought, raising her wine for a toast. “But on the whole,” Borislav added, “I have lost faith in the medical profession—present company excepted, of course—and that is the reason I decided to give up tutoring medical students.”

“And why this loss of faith?”

“The arrogance, I suppose, the kind of knowledge that makes men behave as if they are above God; men like Henry Everard, and with all due respect, my dear, the things I have also learned about Dr. Spilsbury. What a cold fish he seems.” There was a slight bitterness in his tone and a clouding of his face that Dody thought might be due to the abrupt ending of his nephew’s brief medical career.

He soon managed to rearrange his features into their usual amiability. “I might pop into Bishopsgate tomorrow if the shop is quiet and see how you are getting on at the enquiry,” he said.

“If you see me nodding off,” she said, “throw something at me.”

Chapter Ten

WEDNESDAY 16 AUGUST

T
he next morning Dody and Florence found themselves sitting on a hard bench in the improvised Bishopsgate courtroom—a school hall next door but one to the Bishopsgate Mortuary. It smelled of old flower water, dirty shoes, and mildew.

Florence put down her book and shifted on her seat. “I’m beginning to think this was a mistake,” she whispered behind her hand. “I would be less bored at home and certainly in more pleasant surroundings. This place needs windows and fresh air. This bench is as hard as the ones at St. Andrew’s in Moscow. Lord, remember those interminably long sermons?”

“Mother’s reason for dragging us off to St. Andrew’s was to keep in touch with the British community, which was a good idea in retrospect,” Dody said. “Without their contacts, she and Poppa would have had a much harder time settling back into English life.”

Florence huffed. “Well, I thought a Coroner’s Court was supposed to be more interesting than a regular court. Nothing about this place has impressed me so far.”

“Bishopsgate isn’t as grand as Paddington, but you’ll get an idea of how the system works—it can be quite exciting. Jurors are allowed to question witnesses and sometimes the spectators get rowdy, breaking into fights even. There’s no accused, per se, but I guarantee it’ll still be a lot more stimulating than the Magistrates’ Court.”

Florence exaggerated a shudder; she’d had plenty of experience with the magistrates.

On the bench opposite them a woman in a tattered bonnet wiped away tears with a greying handkerchief. An overweight lady in an elaborate hat flicked her way through a small diary, every now and then putting a pencil to her chin as if in deep thought. A gentleman, leaning over an opened newspaper, rustled and sighed and glanced at a gold watch dangling from a fine Albert chain. Dody recognised him as Dr. Burton, the police surgeon from the Whitechapel Division.

Dody pulled her gaze away from the other witnesses and gave her sister her full attention. “And if you think you are suffering now, Florence, spare a thought for the jury presently viewing the body.” Florence peered about the entrance expectantly. “Not here, ninny, down the street in the mortuary.”

“Why must they do that?”

“It’s supposed to guide them in their quest to discover the cause of death. Frankly, I believe the tradition causes nothing but distress to the jurors as well as exposing them to harmful pathogens. I only hope the body is in a glass-topped coffin, and not merely resting on a slab. Dr. Spilsbury is actively lobbying against the unhygienic practice and does not approve of it at all.”

“And therefore neither do you,” Florence teased.

“I am not his sycophant,” Dody said, thinking that once her sister might have been justified in calling her such, but not now. “Misreading, confusion, and inaccurate verdicts are inevitable when nonmedical people are forced to examine a corpse. It is common sense that the law must be changed.”

“So he is human after all, is he, this Dr. Spilsbury of yours?”

Dody smiled. “He walks erect and makes full use of his opposable thumb. Indeed, I have seen him bend to tie a loose shoelace and swallow when he sips from a teacup.”

A pale policeman swinging open the hall’s double doors interrupted the sisters’ conversation. Through the entrance stomped a dozen men of differing social classes, united by their unpleasant experience. Many held handkerchiefs to their noses, some still had their eyes half shut, and one portly gentleman clutched at his heart.

Dody rose to see if she could offer assistance, but was waved away by the constable. “He’s all right, miss, quite well enough to perform his civic duty.”

Dody exchanged glances with her sister and lowered herself back onto the seat. “Civic duty,” she muttered. “Ridiculous.”

The coroner, Mr. Carpenter, had a bulbous nose and a waxed moustache almost equal to the Kaiser’s in curl, and he presided at the head of a long, baize-covered table, flanked on one side by the members of the jury. Dody sat in front of him on a bench reserved for witnesses, some of whom she recognised from the wait in the entrance.

Mr. Carpenter cleared his throat to indicate the start of the procedure. His introductory address to the jury was curt. He named the deceased as nineteen-year-old scullery maid Esther Craddock, advising the jury that it was their duty to decide the cause of death: natural causes, suicide, accident, or murder; and if possible, the whys, whens, and hows. Then he called the first witness, Mrs. Godfrey Patel, the girl’s former employer, to step up to the table they were using in lieu of a witness box. Mrs. Patel was the middle-aged woman Dody had seen in the waiting room. She wore a dress of flowing sweet pea hues which disguised her bulky figure in the same way the
papier poudre
on her skin disguised the lines of her face—without success.

Mrs. Patel told the jury that Miss Craddock had been in her employ at Bedford Square for approximately eighteen months until her dismissal a week earlier.

“And what was the reason for her dismissal, Mrs. Patel?” the coroner asked.

“My cook had been complaining about her slovenly work habits. I spoke with Esther myself, and when I asked if she was ill, she denied it. I guessed the cause of her slovenliness was pregnancy when, a few days later, she asked my permission to see a doctor even though she had said before that she was not ill. I questioned her again when she returned and received a mouthful of cheek for my concern. She gave me no choice but to dismiss her.”

“Can you remember the date of her dismissal?”

Mrs. Patel took her time unfastening a small gold-mesh bag from around her wrist and consulting her miniature diary, holding it at arm’s length from her eyes. “Yes, sir, August the ninth.”

“And this was the same day that she went to the doctor?”

“It was.”

“Do you know which doctor Miss Craddock visited?”

“I believe she went to a women’s clinic, somewhere here in the East End. She never told me the doctor’s name and there was no call for me to ask.”

The coroner looked along the line of jurymen through his monocle. “Any questions for the witness, gentlemen?”

The portly juror, who seemed to have recovered from his earlier discomfort, raised his hand. He addressed the witness and identified himself as the jury foreman. “Madam, you have stated that Miss Craddock became slovenly whilst in your employ. Can you give us any other indication as to the young woman’s character—say from the moment she took up position as scullery maid in your house?”

Mrs. Patel drew a breath, as if the heavy strings of beads draped across her large bosom were impeding her respiration. “Cheeky and wilful, sir.”

At this there was a flurry of commotion from the witnesses bench. The thin woman in the tattered straw bonnet jumped to her feet and pointed her finger at Mrs. Patel. “Lying cow! My Esther weren’t like that—” Before she could say more, a police constable was at her side, urging her to sit down.

Mr. Carpenter slammed his fist on the table. “Silence or face ejection from the court! You will have your say in due time, Mrs. Craddock.” Mrs. Craddock folded her arms and sat back in her seat, legs extended, her loose-fitting bonnet teetering up and down like a seesaw. “It is important,” the coroner continued, calm again, “that we explore the deceased’s frame of mind before the unfortunate incident, and I’m afraid that not everyone”—he looked pointedly at Mrs. Craddock—“will like what they hear. It might be distressing, but I assure you, madam, this process is necessary to discover the truth.” He turned to the foreman. “Any further questions for Mrs. Patel?”

“Yes, sir, as I was about to say,” the juror again addressed the witness, “Mrs. Patel, was Miss Craddock’s condition the reason for her dismissal?”

The witness raised her chin. “Indeed. No matter her nature, even if she had been a pleasant, hard worker, I would have dismissed her for this breach of trust.”

Dody remembered a similar experience involving her mother. But while Mother had been disappointed with the behaviour of their Russian servant girl, she had still made certain financial provisions for her and her child. Louise was never one to follow society’s norms.

One of the other jurors was clearly thinking the same thing and asked her about it. “Financial provisions?” Mrs. Patel looked at him, surprised. “I knew the girl had a mother to return to. I did not see her future outside my house as any responsibility of mine.”

The jury seemed satisfied with this answer. The coroner glanced along the line of sombre men, and as no one offered any further questions, he dismissed the witness and called Esther’s mother, Mrs. Martha Craddock, to the table.

Mrs. Craddock clumped towards the witness table in worn boots. Once she had given her name and been sworn in, she told the jury that she was a widow, a barmaid at the Crown and Anchor on Dorset Street and that she was provided with a small room in the attic of that establishment. On the night of August the ninth, she returned to her room after work and found her daughter, Esther, asleep in her bed. She woke her up, and when she discovered the reason for her dismissal from service, they exchanged angry words. When she asked her daughter who the father was, Esther had shrugged, indicating that she did not know. Nor did she seem to particularly care. She went on to tell her mother that everything was going to be all right because the doctor had promised to help her out. At this, Mrs. Craddock had slapped her.

“I shouldn’t ’ave but I couldn’t ’elp meself,” Mrs. Craddock said. “That kind of ’elp is against the law, I told ’er, knowing what kind of ’elp she was on about. No doctor of good moral character would tell ’er that it wasn’t.”

“And you did everything in your power to dissuade her from returning to that doctor?” the coroner asked.

“I did, sir.” Mrs. Craddock began to weep. “But I wish to God I’d never slapped ’er.”

Dody stared at the pointed toe of her buttoned boot, only looking up when Mrs. Craddock gave the name of the doctor her daughter had visited: Dr. Dorothy McCleland of the High Street Women’s Clinic, Whitechapel. Mrs. Craddock shot Dody a look of loathing as she spoke, and for the first time that morning, Dody felt a flutter of anxiety.

“What did the doctor do for your daughter during that first visit?” the coroner asked.

“She gave ’er medicine. Two lots she gave direct, the other she ’ad to get made up by the chemist. She was told to take the medicine and then come back in a few days.”

Dody started in her chair. Two lots of medicine? That couldn’t be correct. All she’d given the girl in the surgery was bromide.

Mr. Carpenter continued to question Mrs. Craddock. “Do you know when exactly?”

“No. I don’t know when her second appointment was, but she was much ’appier over the next couple of days, when she was waiting to see Dr. McCleland again.”

“And then what?”

“On the Friday I came up to my room after work and . . .”

“Take your time.”

“And I found her in my bed—a terrible mess—blood everywhere . . .” Mrs. Craddock put a hand over her eyes and began to weep. “I called the police. I could see she were beyond the ’elp of any doctor.”

One of the jurymen trumpeted into his handkerchief and then asked, “Do you know the name of the medicine that the doctor gave your daughter?”

Mrs. Craddock shrugged. “Some were in a brown bottle, some were in a chemist’s bottle, and the other were tied in cloth.” She eyed the coroner. “The police took ’em all.”

Surely, Dody thought, the police did not think she had prescribed the muslin-wrapped tablets?

“We will discuss this with the police surgeon tomorrow when he gives his testimony. Thank you, Mrs. Craddock, you may step down, but please remain at hand for the rest of the afternoon in case you need to be recalled.”

As Mrs. Craddock retired, softly weeping, she was followed by looks of commiseration from several sympathetic jurymen. Dody turned to her sister. Florence met her eye with an air of unease that must have been a mirror image of her own.

“The court will now call Mr. Charles Robinson to the stand,” the coroner announced.

Dody glanced up as a small wiry man passed her on his way to the witness table, disturbing the air with a draught of unwashed clothes and stale hops. At the witness table he gave his name and stated his occupation as hawker and newspaper vendor. Upon the coroner’s questioning it was ascertained that Robinson had known the deceased since she was a child of about ten, though he had not seen her much over the last few years since she had entered service. His role in the hearing soon became clear.

“I was doing me job, selling the
Mail
down the High Street near the water pump as is my patch,” Robinson began his version of events, “when I saw Essie—beg pardon, m’lord; Essie is what I always called her—passing by on the uvver side of the street. I gives her a whistle and a wave, but she ’ardly gives me a second look. Bent over double she was, an’ looking miserable as sin. I crossed the road to say ’ello—it were the friendly thing to do, you see, yer honour—and she told me she was feeling right poorly. When I asked ’er what was wrong, she said she’d got some treatment at the Clinic and it weren’t agreeing with her. She said she was ’eaded for the Crown and Anchor where ’er muvver worked and would probably be better after a lie down. I told meself I’d call in when I’d sold me pile and see if she was better, but I never got to do that seeing as a mate called me over to ’elp with a loose wheel—”

“What day was this that you saw the deceased?” one of the jurors interrupted.

“It were Friday August the eleventh, sir. I always know me dates, from the papers, see.”

“What time?”

Robinson scratched his head, dropped his hand, and jigged from one foot to the other for a moment before answering. “About six o’clock or thereabouts, I fink.”

“You say you saw her coming from the direction of the pump, but you didn’t actually see her coming from the Clinic, did you? You just told us what she told you—is that so?”

“Well, yes, no. I saw ’er, too, yes.” Robinson swayed, became flustered, and tangled his words. Dody suspected he was drunk, drunk and unreliable—couldn’t the jury hear what she was hearing?