The Scent of Murder (28 page)

‘That’s what I told ’im, but Philips seems to expect Sir Desmond just to click his fingers and organise it,’ Weedon said, self-consciously closing the paper.

‘Why should Fitzgibbon want to do that when his supposedly beloved nephew was more than likely killed by that man?’

‘Maybe that’s not what the bollocking’s about then,’ Weedon ventured. ‘Maybe … maybe Philips did something to one of the horses.’

This idiot Weedon was being deliberately obtuse. Pike moved silently down the corridor, past a row of numbered doors, towards the cell occupied by Philips, hoping to glean something of value from the men’s argument. Weedon followed.

Fitzgibbon bellowed something that sounded like ‘Bloody nincompoop!’ Philips answered him with a high-edged shriek. It seemed as if the men were about to resort to blows — not that Pike was concerned about that.

Then at once, as if a dial had been turned, the din died down, to be replaced by a low murmuring in earnest tones.

What had Fitzgibbon said that had calmed the groom so suddenly? Pike wondered. Intrigued by the men’s about-face, he crept towards the cell and put his ear to the door.

‘The kettle’s hot. Can I get you a cup of tea, Chief Inspector Pike?’ Weedon all but shouted.

The murmuring from within the cell ceased. Pike rounded on the constable, barely resisting the urge to wring his scrawny neck. Weedon opened his hands with an insincere gesture of apology.

Pike glared at him. ‘You’ll keep.’

Someone thumped on the cell door. The constable dug into his pocket for the key, turned it in the lock and opened the heavy door. Fitzgibbon elbowed past the two policemen without a word of explanation, ignoring Pike’s request for him to wait in the duty room for a minute. Pike had no choice but to follow him out into the cold, damp street.

‘I want police bail for that man, Pike,’ Fitzgibbon said, skirting a puddle to untie his horse.

‘Impossible.’

Sir Desmond placed his left foot in the stirrup and sprang into the saddle, lightly for such a heavy man.

‘Why impossible?’ he demanded from his superior height.

Pike craned his neck to look Fitzgibbon in the eye. ‘As the senior officer in the case, I choose whether police bail is given. It would be remiss to do so when Philips has been charged with committing a serious crime, and presents a flight risk.’

‘Release him into my custody, then. Good grooms are dashed hard to come by.’

Pike took hold of the horse’s reins near the bit to prevent Sir Desmond from leaving. ‘Out of the question, I’m afraid, sir.’

‘Then I will see the magistrate about it and contact my lawyer.’

‘Why are you so interested in keeping Philips out of jail?’ Pike asked. ‘Is he holding something over you?’

‘What? A mere groom, holding something over me?’ Fitzgibbon roared. He lifted his crop as if to strike Pike, then, thinking better of it, viciously jerked his horse’s head to the side, ripping the reins from Pike’s hand. Pike leaped back, but not in time to avoid being splattered with mud as Sir Desmond galloped off.

Pike thoughtfully sucked on his sore hand and watched Sir Desmond pounding away down the High Street, barely dodging the traffic, and causing one street vendor to upset his handcart of vegetables. The man shook his fist at Fitzgibbon’s receding form.

Only when Fitzgibbon had disappeared around a bend in the road did Pike climb back up the station steps. He strode into the duty room, pulled the retrieved newspaper from under Weedon’s nose and tossed it to the floor.

‘Philips. Interview room. Now.’

‘What, sir? You want to talk to him again? Shouldn’t we wait for Sir Desmond’s lawyer?’

Pike wiped mud from his face with his handkerchief. ‘Did you not hear what I just said, Constable? Lock him in and leave him there on his own to stew for a while.’

Pike took his briefcase into the lavatories and cleaned himself up as best he could. He sponged the splatters of mud from his face and trousers and ran his still-stinging hand under the cold tap. Then, moving into a stall, he sat on the closed lid of the WC and spent some time riffling through the contents of his briefcase.

Almost an hour later he joined Philips in the interview room. By this time, as he had predicted, Philips had worked himself into quite a lather.

‘I ain’t talkin’ to you without Sir Desmond’s lawyer,’ the little man screeched.

Pike pulled up a chair and sat at the interview table opposite the groom. The table was pitted and gouged and carved with the initials of those who’d had the misfortune to sit waiting at it. From his briefcase Pike took a file he’d marked in bold capitals with Philips’s name. He’d put the file together while he was in the WC and filled it with an assortment of loose, type-written documents from his briefcase.

Unsure how well the man knew his letters, he held up the file for a moment to show Philips his name. When Philips saw it, he paled. He might know his own name, Pike thought, but it was doubtful Philips could read much more. Pike removed a document from his file about a corrupt police detective he’d sacked some months previously, and handed it to the groom.

‘What the ’ell’s this about?’ Philips demanded.

‘It’s part of a dossier put together on you, Mr Philips. It tells me all about you and everything you’ve ever done, the good and the bad. I was with Special Branch before taking my current position. In Special Branch we compile dossiers on anyone we consider to be a risk to the wider community.’ Pike paused and ran his thumb across the wad of documents. ‘The bad certainly outweighs the good, doesn’t it?’

Philips swallowed, his Adam’s apple running up and down his unshaven throat like a small, furry creature. ‘The stable boy?’

A good start, thought Pike — whatever he meant. ‘Among other incidents.’

‘Where’s the lawyer?’

‘You made Sir Desmond very angry in the cell, you know, Philips. You shouldn’t have said those things to him. It hasn’t endeared you to him. Or helped your case.’

‘’E said ’e’d send me ’is own lawyer, and pay ’im too.’

Pike said nothing; it wasn’t necessary. He fixed his gaze on the groom and stared until the man began to squirm.

At last Philips ventured, ‘What do ya mean, angry? I don’t under—’

‘I mean Sir Desmond has changed his mind about providing you with legal help.’

Philips jumped to his feet. ‘’E can’t do that! ’E said ’e’d do anything in ’is power!’

‘I’ve just returned from speaking to him at length. He’s angry that you killed his nephew.’

‘I killed—’ Philips stopped mid-sentence, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. ‘I know what yer doin’. Yer tryin’ to make me confess.’

‘I’m not trying to
make
you do anything. I just want you to understand the lie of the land. There’s no point protecting Sir Desmond, you know. We’ve had quite a chat, he and I. He says you’re scum, that you deserve everything the law can throw at you.’

‘I don’t believe you. I been very useful to ’im — loyal too.

‘’E can’t just chuck me away like a load o’ rubbish.’

‘I don’t think he sees it like that. You killed his nephew.’

Philips sat back down again. Chewed on a finger. ‘You’re makin’ this up as you go.’

Pike said nothing. He began to write on Philips’s file, paused and scratched his head. Now, how did the poem go?

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!’ he said:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

He’d reached the third verse when Philips asked, ‘What’s all that about?’

‘Instructions for the magistrate,’ Pike said, keeping his manner offhand.

Philips let out a sigh of relief and relaxed in his chair. ‘Mr Woking? Oh, that’s all right, then.’

Pike shook his head and tapped the ersatz file before him. ‘Is it? Where do you think most of this information came from? It seems that Mr Woking’s had enough of you too. Your only chance of a fair trial is in London, I’m afraid, Philips.’

‘Woking? What!’ Philips’s eyes filled with panic. ‘Take me to London, then!’

‘It’s complicated,’ Pike said, lowering his head to continue with Tennyson’s charge.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,

Flash’d as they turn’d in air,

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army …

‘The crime was committed in Piltdown — miles away from my patch. Strings will have to be pulled,’ he said.

‘Strings? You can pull strings?’

Pike looked up and regarded the groom levelly. ‘Only if I want to. You’ll have to give me some very good reasons for sticking my neck out for you, Mr Philips.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

It did not take long for Dody to discover there was no running water in the Dead House. Cautiously she unlocked the door and peered out. No sign of Matron, thank heavens, though Mr Clover was still standing like a lump of stone at his post.

‘Bring me three buckets of water please, Mr Clover,’ she asked, ‘and as many empty buckets and bowls as you can find.’

Mr Clover blew his nose on a dirty handkerchief and shuffled off. At least one staff member in this place seemed to genuinely care about the children, Dody thought.

While she was waiting, Dody unpacked her autopsy instruments from their leather box and laid them out on a spare table. She slipped out of her tweed coat and tied on an apron she had brought with her, then pushed her arms into some elbow-length nurse’s cuffs to protect the sleeves of her jacket. She was arranging some empty specimen jars on her improvised instrument trolley when Mr Clover banged on the door. She unlocked it for him and told him where to place the buckets and bowls. After helping her fill an enamel bowl with a diluted carbolic solution, he returned to his position outside.

The temperature felt close to freezing. Dody rubbed her hands together to encourage blood circulation and thrust them into an unwieldy pair of rubber gloves. The gloves even made the act of pulling back the sheet covering the body awkward, and she could have used an assistant.

Dody rarely performed autopsies on her own and she was always conscious that the men around her were assessing her competency with critical eyes. Women were supposed to be too highly strung and emotional to be doctors, let alone autopsy surgeons. Alone, there was no need for her to hide behind her mask of cool professionalism, and she gasped at the sight of the small, twisted form before her.

Usually the autopsy surgeon had the luxury of dictating notes to an assistant as he went — in Doctor Spilsbury’s case to Dody — but her only option now was to recite her findings aloud and hope she would be able to remember the details later.

‘Scoliosis, a severe deformity of the back that, if caught before puberty, can be halted and sometimes cured by the wearing of a back brace,’ she muttered. A back brace was expensive and would probably have been considered an indulgence for the likes of Bessie Teadle. Not to mention an ongoing medical concern that would need patience, care and money to maintain. She wondered about the medical officer’s competence. Perhaps, like everyone else in this place, he lived in the long shadow of fear cast by its officials.

Dody bowed her head over the small body. This pause in her work was part of her routine, a reminder to herself that the empty shell before her was as much an individual as its departed occupant had been, and deserved an equal amount of respect. In Edinburgh, while studying for her autopsy diploma, she had vowed she would never allow herself to become as callous and offhand as the majority of her lecturers (or the many autopsy surgeons she had met since).

‘Bessie Teadle,’ she said, rousing herself from her meditations, ‘a poorly nourished girl of …’ She turned towards the closed door and called out her question to Mr Clover. It took a while for him to reply and she wondered if he was counting the years on his fingers.

‘Um … thirteen years, miss,’ he said at last.

‘Thank you. With a pronounced scoliosis in the thoracic region,’ she added as she bent down to inspect the thin, empty face. Death had bleached the rash of its colour and she was obliged to shed a glove to feel it with her fingertips. The rash had the texture of sandpaper. Dody’s internal temperature almost dropped to that of the room. It must have looked as if the child, in life, had been slapped around the face. This rash was too severe for measles, surely.

She touched the skin on the dead child’s face once more, to make certain. This was definitely not measles. She spent a moment considering her options before moving to the Dead House door and summoning Mr Clover again. If the man’s face had been any longer, he’d have tripped over his chin.

‘I need some help, please, Mr Clover,’ Dody said.

He swung quickly on his heel. ‘Need some ’elp, Mr Clover. I’ll go ask Matron.’

She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder and gently encouraged him into the Dead House. ‘It’s you I need, not Matron.’

He swallowed, and kept his eyes glued to Dody’s. ‘I can’t look at our Bessie. And I won’t go choppin’ ’er up, neither. Need some ’elp.’

‘You don’t have to look at her. Wait there now, just a minute.’

Mr Clover reluctantly stayed where he was, keeping his head turned away from the corpse. Dody placed a finger and thumb on each side of the dead girl’s jaw and manipulated it. Rigor had set in, but was not quite complete, and the cervical lymph glands were significantly enlarged. It was imperative that she examine the lining of the child’s throat while the jaw and neck still offered some degree of flexibility.

Reluctant to take off the clumsy gloves only to have to put them on again, she asked Mr Clover to remove the hat from her head and replace it with the light reflector from her Gladstone bag. Having no understanding of how the contraption worked, he adjusted the mirror with some difficultly, at first putting it on back to front. It would have been easier to affix it herself, she realised, struggling to cling on to her patience. Still, better Mr Clover’s assistance than that witch of a Matron’s.