The Formula for Murder (13 page)

“Don’t worry, Miss Cochran, we have everything that is needed to make you well and a whole woman again. We have a facility that is perfect for you at this moment. It’s a place to relax in a pool of our mineral water, to wash away some of the tensions of life, something you desperately need.”

That, I couldn’t agree with her more. If I don’t release some tension soon, I will lose control of my hands and they will find their way to her neck and throttle her.

She proceeds to take me to a pump room, where the spring waters gurgle into a marble pool.

“Here the waters are divided, with some diverted for internal use and the rest for our bathing treatments.”

She gives me a sample of the mineral water, which tastes like it smells. I wrinkle my nose. “Why does medicine always have to taste awful to be good for you?”

“The water comes from the deep bowels of the earth, bringing forth the healing powers of Mother Nature herself. These are ancient waters—Celtic priests experienced the curative effects of the springs long before the Romans.”

She then takes me into a small room that is hot and wet and just plain stinks.

“Unlike most spas that crowd people into a single pool, we have a bath and pool for every guest.”

The “bath” is a pit of mud about the size of a bathtub and the “pool” is spring water in a basin about twice that big.

“Not mud,” she corrects me when I comment on how bad the bath smells, “this is peat moss from bogs in Dartmoor that are older than recorded history. It is one of the trade secrets that make Aqua Vitae the premier curative spa in the world.”

“The peat moss I’ve seen in bogs, marshes, and swamps don’t look very healthy to me. Or smell that way. What does peat moss do for you?”

“The substance we use is not what you see on the surface, but the decayed, organic sphagnum materials beneath. I’m sure you know that animals and humans who fell into peat bogs thousands of years ago have been recovered with flesh and bone perfectly preserved. Can you imagine that? Buried in a bog for thousands of years and their features unaltered!”

“Haraldskaer Woman,” I say, recalling a story a fellow reporter had done on the subject. “People believe she was a queen of the Danes who was killed over two thousand years ago. Murdered, buried naked, her clothes laid atop her.”

The “therapeutic consultant” appears a bit taken back at my connecting murder with curative waters.

I give her a smile. “And you’re right. She was well preserved.”

“Quite. Well, as I was saying, the fact that peat moss preserves flesh and bone in a natural state is one of the secrets discovered by our medical staff.”

“Was it Dr. Lacroix who made the discovery?”

“Oh, no, although Dr. Lacroix has greatly improved the process, he now takes a different approach. The curative and rejuvenation powers of peat moss were first discovered by Dr. Radic, the managing director of Aqua Vitae, when he was a physician in Romania.”

“What is Dr. Lacroix’s approach?”

“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you. Dr. Radic will examine you and set out a course of treatment to restore your damaged health before it is too late and your condition becomes irreversible.”

“My friend referred me to Dr. Lacroix. I’d prefer to see him.”

“As I said, Dr. Lacroix is not available.”

“When will he be available?”

“He—I don’t know, he’s vacationing—researching—on the continent. It’s time for you to see Dr. Radic.”

I hoped I hadn’t pushed her too far this time. She is really flustered and annoyed. Her pretense at friendliness has gone and her guard is up. I keep my mouth shut as I follow her into a sitting room.

“Please have a seat. Dr. Radic will be with you shortly,” she says curtly.

I take a seat next to the door she disappears through with my back to the wall. Antsy, I get up and pace the room back and forth. To my surprise I see, out the window, the lady in black getting into her carriage. I wonder what type of treatment she was in for, it couldn’t have been much of one. I also notice she is no longer carrying her chatelaine purse with her.

“That’s odd…”

“What’s odd?” Miss Carter startles me from behind.

“Ah … nothing.”

“The doctor will be with you shortly,” she politely tells me, but with a rigid body, then leaves for the main area.

The door into the doctor’s office has not quite clicked shut behind her. I hear voices and give a quick look around to make sure I am not being watched and then give the door a nudge so it opens a foot wider and bend my ear in the direction of the voices.

A woman is sobbing and speaks in a drunken slur. “I want to see my little Emma.”

“You know your child died from brain fever,” comes from a male voice, spoken in English with a heavy Balkan accent. Dr. Radic, I presume; the discoverer of the miracle peat moss treatment in Romania.

“But she was a healthy child,” the woman slurs.

“On the surface, but brain fever strikes fast.”

I have never understood what “brain fever” is. One hears it frequently as a cause of illness and death and I abide by my wise mother’s definition of the ailment, “It’s what people die of when the doctor can’t find the real reason.”

A VIEW OF BATH, ENGLAND

“Here, get some nourishment,” I hear the doctor say. I don’t know what he gave her, but from her mumbled thanks and the fact the woman sounds drunk, I suspect he’s giving her money that will be spent in a gin mill rather than at a grocer.

“Take her out the back way,” the Balkan voice says.

I lean back and freeze in place as the door opens and a tearful woman comes out with a man behind her.

“This way, Sarah.” The man grabs the woman by the elbow and diverts her to a door to my left, as he glances back at me.

Two things are obvious: Sarah is a gin hag and most likely a prostitute on her last days earning a living on her back before she gives up the ghost facedown in a gutter.

The man with her is a ruffian; the kind found hanging around saloons acting as bouncers when they’re not mugging drunks in an alley. He has an unusual item of dress for a Brit—pointed-toe cowboy boots.

Neither the woman nor the ruffian are the types one would expect to find at a health spa servicing the rich.

A tall, thin man with narrow, hawklike features and black, piercing eyes enters from the room I had been eavesdropping upon.

I stand up and offer him my hand to shake, an unexpected movement that almost always throws men off their guard.

“Elizabeth Cochran.”

“I’m going to have you arrested for trespassing,” he says.

22

“You have entered my premises under a fake name and false pretenses,” the man with the Balkan accent says, who I assume is Dr. Radic. “You will find to your regret that our premises are held in high regard by the local police.”

The saloon ruffian pops back in. “Need some help here, Dr. Radic?”

“Hold this woman for the police,” Dr. Radic says. He turns back to me. “You can explain your actions to the police.”

“I shall be happy to talk to the police, Dr. Radic. In fact, Inspector Abberline of Scotland Yard knows I am here and I’m meeting with Chief Inspector Bradley when I leave here.”

I look him squarely in the face. “As soon as I am through reporting the sexual activities taking place here to the police, I shall get out the story to every newspaper in Bath and London.”

“There are no sexual activities on the premises. What you observed are standard medical procedures.”

“What I observed was revolting sexual stimulation and tortures that when exposed will not only make you a laughingstock but prompt police action.” I lock eyes with him. “If you know my name, Doctor, you must know my success at exposing the dirty laundry of medical practitioners.”

I go around him, heading for the door when the thug starts toward me.

“
Stop!
” I snap.

He freezes.

“Come one step closer to me and I will give out the most horrendous bloodcurdling screams that you have ever heard. Would you like that, Dr. Radic? Perhaps some cries of rape and murder?”

Radic waves the man back. “It’s okay, Burke, I’ll take care of this.”

The man gives me a dirty look as he backs off and goes through the door that he had entered from.

Radic faces me. I can see from his expression that he isn’t intimidated by my threats. Rather, my impression is that of a man of expediency—battling me on his public premises just isn’t advantageous.

“Get out of my sight and don’t come back. Stick your nose in my business and I won’t be able to guarantee your safety.”

“Obviously, I wouldn’t be the first woman who came to a sudden end dealing with this place. Did Lady Winsworth cross you, too?”

I flee, taking my big mouth with me, running as fast as my short legs and small feet will take me. I had expected I might be caught and it wouldn’t be the first time I’d had a run-in with a charlatan like Dr. Radic, if he is in fact a doctor, but it isn’t often I find myself having to verbally fight my way out of an upper-class establishment with a threat from a saloon lout—after encountering a poor, bedeviled, street gin hag.

The Waters of Life have some strange bedfellows, that is for sure.

My feet are moving quickly, not only because I want to get far away before I end up preserved in peat moss, but because I want to have a talk with Sarah.

What in heaven’s name could the gin hag, her daughter, and Dr. Radic have to do with each other? The woman obviously couldn’t have hired Radic to treat her child, nor did Radic strike me as a charitable soul who would take in mudlarks and let them freely partake in the curative waters that the rich pay so dearly to quaff down.

My gut is screaming that something stinks in Denmark and it’s not just the smell of bog mud.

23

Herbert George Wells, Bertie to his family, H. G. to others, stands in the sheltered doorway of a closed shop and watches as the American newspaper reporter comes out of the spa. He finds it curious that she seems to be rushing out, instead of just walking at a normal pace.

He knows who she is, knew who she was when he stared at her on the train trying to dissect her and understand her with his probing blue eyes, almost succumbing to the temptation of stealing her valise. He would have stolen the valise if the nosey woman on the train had not scared him off.

She continues to walk fast, as if she is hurrying somewhere—no, he changes his mind as he watches her glance around: She’s looking for someone.

She goes up the street to the corner and disappears around it. He doesn’t know where she is heading, but he had already looked over that area and knows that there is a dead end alley there, a fact she will soon discover. He stays where he is because he doesn’t want her bumping into him when she is retreating.

Wells is impressed with many things about her, especially her vibrancy. He senses that like himself, Nellie Bly is not a particularly happy person. He finds that puzzling since the young woman has climbed to career heights in such a short time. There are not many men, and few if any women, who have succeeded like she has.

He himself viewed life as a challenge and attacked it as a mountain climber would a high peak. But the concentration, the battle to succeed, was a trying one for someone from the lower classes in a class-conscious society.

He knows that people close to him often call him an angry young man and they are right. Much of his distemper comes from the fact that he is not satisfied with the way his life has gone or is going, which is a terrible quality he acquired from his mother, Sarah. She has never been satisfied with her life and constantly says, “I dread my time so much…”

He knows his mother will die unhappy and fears he will, too. She has always desired desperately to rise above being a domestic servant. She despises that she is of the lower classes and calls it a curse. The last time he talked to her she told him she wishes God would soon release her.

The memories of much of his childhood are not of the wondrous things most children experience, but of discord. They were a poor family and often went hungry. “A miserable half living,” is what his mother called it. He was born in a house off High Street of Bromley, in Kent which is outside of London, and lived there with his three brothers until he was a teenager. Even though the home, which was also his parents’ shop, was called the “Atlas House,” it was an unpromising place to make a start in life, according to his mother. It had two tiny rooms, a front room and back room on each of its three floors. The only source of heat in the house was the kitchen stove located in the ill-lit basement.