The Coffin Lane Murders (17 page)

Chapter 18

The madwoman was dead.

Within hours of the discovery the newsboys were out on the High Street. Among the crowds at Duddingston Loch there had been present one lucky young journalist, an eyewitness to the sensational recovery of the woman's corpse. The headline ran, 'Gruesome Find. Suicide of Lady Killer.'

In Newington residents sighed and went about their Christmas preparations with a feeling that a load of terror had been lifted. No longer need servants or their mistresses feel afraid walking out at twilight to post a letter down the street or to buy a pound of sugar.

The screeching maniac who had descended out of nowhere with knife upraised, slashing, cutting, felling them to the ground and vanishing wraith-like into the night, was dead. And by her own hand.

The feeling of reprieve was like the end of an epidemic. Among the greatest to sigh with relief was Kate, marked down as the next victim.

'Celia must have pushed that warning note through the door just hours before she walked into the loch,' said Conan. Faro looked at him, was about to say something but changed his mind as Conan continued. 'Thank God it's all over, although I can't help feeling compassion for that poor tortured soul.'

'I don't feel anything but gratitude that she's gone,' said Kate. 'My heart almost stopped - I nearly died of fright.'

Conan was not to be placated. 'I shall always feel a measure of guilt about what happened. If only I could have found the means to deal with her mind, just as one would heal a sick body.'

'It will be interesting to know what the post mortem reveals. Conan is expecting some disease of the brain,' said Vince to Faro after the Pursleys had left. 'He is far too soft-hearted for a doctor,' he added. 'Such a profession is not for the faint-hearted.'

He was mistaken as Conan, somewhat white-faced it was true, insisted on being present when Vince and Faro visited the mortuary.

Dr Craig greeted them cordially. There was nothing of the sombre dealer with sudden death in his cheery face fringed with a Father Christmas beard, which always took Faro by surprise until he realised that the police surgeon was an older version of Angus Spens: a doctor who didn't allow his work to prey on his mind or suffer from excesses of imagination.

Angus Spens had beaten them to it. He was already there, chattering excitedly. In his opinion this was an occasion not to be missed. Both doctors, the young inexperienced tyro and the older man who saw dead bodies every day, were a contrast to the sombre Dr Pursley who was looking askance at the police surgeon. He appeared to be rubbing his hands exuberantly, but they had merely caught him in the act of drying them after an examination.

As Craig laid the towel aside, his expression indicated that even he was a little taken back by Dr Spens' enthusiasm and relish for post-mortem examinations.

At a safe distance, watching his stepfather's disgusted expression, Vince shook his head and whispered, 'You must admit young Angus has the better temperament for doctoring, just you wait and see. He'll be a splendid physician in another ten years or so. He is still in the textbook phase and when he sees corpses he thinks of them only as material for dismemberment. He cannot somehow identify them with living people.'

'Downright callous, if you ask me,' said Faro.

Dr Craig beckoned to them. 'Well now, gentlemen. If you would step this way.'

Vince and Faro exchanged glances. If the unpleasant chemical smells had been less evident his manner might suggest they were being received into a select gentleman's outfitters in Princes Street.

As he raised the cover on one of the white-sheeted bodies, something between a gasp and a groan escaped from Conan.

Craig turned to him quickly. 'This woman was one of your patients, sir? You can identify her?'

Conan's affirmative was scarcely above a whisper.

'Come a little closer, gentlemen, if you will.'

Angus sprang to the fore. As Vince and Faro approached Craig said, 'The body you see before you is apparently that of a woman who died by drowning. I expected a suicide but the post mortem has revealed some unusual aspects.' Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, he continued: 'As you will know from your textbooks, Dr Spens' - again in the limelight, Angus beamed delightedly - 'the cause of drowning is asphyxia. In other words-' he paused as if conducting an anatomy lecture, speaking slowly and particularly to Faro on the off chance that the Inspector might be completely ignorant of medical knowledge. 'In other words, the air is prevented from reaching the lungs, and the oxygen supply vital for survival is cut off.'

He sighed solemly, regarding the dead woman again. 'Of course, there is "dry drowning" in which the subject dies of cardiac arrest or laryngeal spasm caused by the shock of falling suddenly into water. Icy water would be particularly responsible for this effect.'

'Which could well be the cause in her case,' said Conan. 'We are aware that she plunged into the loch-'

'Yes, yes, Dr Pursley.' The police surgeon did not like this interruption. 'But as I told you there are other aspects which do not conform to that theory. The presence of foreign matter - the cadaveric spasm - in which weeds or similar material from the water are sucked into the lungs; even suicides, alas, cannot forgo this spasm. This last fight for breath is the body's automatic reaction-'

'What are you trying to tell us?' demanded Conan.

Dr Craig looked at them. 'We have every reason to believe, since her lungs were clear of any foreign matter, that life was already extinct before she had contact with the icy water.'

'How long has she been dead?' Faro put in quickly.

'From the bleached and wrinkled condition of her skin which you will observe, gentlemen, - see, in places it has become loose, almost detached from her body - I should say at least six days.'

'Six days,' Faro repeated thoughtfully. 'Are you surer'

Dr Craig gave him a supercilious smile. 'As sure as my years of dealing with drowned corpses can accurately assess, Inspector. Although it would be difficult to give an exact time since the icy water might have had a slightly delaying effect on these skin changes.'

There was a horrified gasp of disbelief from Conan.

'We have evidence that she was alive yesterday,' said Faro.

The doctor frowned. 'Then I am afraid, Inspector, that your evidence is unacceptable - for once.' He added a somewhat mocking bow, acknowledging Faro's superiority in such matters.

'The state of the body is indisputable. The corpse has without a shadow of doubt been in the water for six days at least.'

The post-mortem findings could hardly be questioned and as they left Conan was visibly shaken.

Faro was also perturbed. This was not at all what he had expected. If Celia had lain in the loch for more than one day, least of all several days, how could Kate have possibly seen her at the Tower? How to account for the warning note pushed through the door?

But if the face at the kitchen window and the note could be accepted as truth, and the evidence of the post mortem was indisputable, then the case of the Lady Killer was by no means solved. The existence of a second assassin had become a powerful possibility.

And as if interpreting his thoughts, Conan said, 'There is one explanation. Suppose Uncle Hedley wrote that note himself. ..'

'Wait a moment. You're surely not suggesting that he was trying to scare her?' asked Faro.

Conan thought for a moment, then shook his head. 'You know what he is like, eccentric, quite wild at times.'

'By wild, do you mean mad?' said Vince.

'Not at all. Not like - like-' Conan stopped. 'His wildness is of the harmless kind; it lies more in the region of practical jokes, of springing out at people, a schoolboy's pranks. Kate's mama said he was a terror for that sort of thing, frogs in the soup, dead mice in the bed - all the nastinesses small boys get up to-'

'Conan,' said Faro patiently, 'are you trying to say that he doesn't know the difference between childish but unpleasant practical jokes and murder?'

'No, sir, of course not. I'm just trying to find a reasonable explanation,' said Conan desperately. 'The note might have lain under the doormat for several days and he had just found it.'

The explanation seemed lame indeed and he was aware of their stern glances.

'As a matter of fact he had a difference of opinion with Kate, now I remember, earlier that day. Something about his precious cats, one of them stealing a pork chop off the kitchen table and being sick all over our best bedspread. Kate smacked the little beast.

'He doesn't seem to notice such things but Kate is a stickler for cleanliness. To put it mildly she's fed up with her uncle's cats; they have precedence over humans in the house. It's one of the reasons she is anxious to find another place to live.'

There was silence for a moment then Faro said, 'Are you suggesting that he took his revenge by putting on one of her bonnets-'

'Kate doesn't possess a poke bonnet, sir. That I do know.'

'Then doubtless there was one somewhere in the Tower. So you are saying he put it on and stared in at the kitchen window to scare her, and then he pushed a note under the door,' said Vince grimly.

Conan looked thoughtful. 'We know that he was called the Mad Bart, so I suppose anything is possible. Perhaps he wants to be rid of us.'

'But I understood that he was glad to have your company.'

'At first, yes. But you cannot imagine how secretive he is. I expect it's the result of a hermit-like existence all these years. Kate is very loyal but he has been very disagreeable lately, accusing us of spying on him and going into his beastly old charter room, as he calls it. Nothing but an empty chapel, but he insists that it is out of bounds.'

Faro, who knew considerably more about Solomon's Tower and its secrets than he was prepared to discuss, decided to have another meeting with Sir Hedley. The old man liked him; perhaps he could throw some light on the events of the night Kate had arrived in such a panic.

He was convinced that Sir Hedley was a harmless eccentric, and bearing in mind his hearty dislike of children and small boys in particular, Faro marvelled that he had made an exception in the case of young Jamie Laurie. Being the son of Vince, whom he idolised, had made the lad extra special and given him special privileges.

As Faro approached the house, his earnest hope was that he might get the old man to confess that he had been playing a practical joke on his niece, just to pay her back for chastising one of his beloved cats.

Otherwise - there was a situation developing too monstrous to bear serious contemplation.

Chapter 19

At Solomon's Tower, Kate opened the door to him, clad in a large apron and dusting flour off her hands.

Faro was surprised to have interrupted her obviously at work in the kitchen; most doctors' wives had servants; then he remembered that Sir Hedley had dismissed the maid for prying.

Interpreting his glance, Kate apologised and, untying her apron, led him into the now immaculate parlour with its new curtains, chair covers and the clean smell of polish.

He looked round approvingly. 'Is this all your own work, Kate?'

She sighed. 'Indeed it is. But not entirely out of choice. Uncle Hedley rates servants just one step above beggars and one below thieves. He has never had strangers in the house and tells us firmly that he is too old to start now.'

She shrugged. 'When we first arrived, I accepted it with good humour, believing that I could change his mind. True, he has relented and I can have a servant but I am to be responsible and so forth. Frankly, after the last fiasco I've decided having a maid is more trouble than it's worth until we find a permanent home.'

She paused and smiled at him. 'Is this a social call? Conan isn't here just now.'

'It was actually your uncle I wanted to see.'

'He's still abed. He hasn't been very well these last few days - or so he claims; one can never tell whether he just wants to be left undisturbed. I've been taking all his meals up to him - and I have to tell you, bringing back the tray untouched most of the time. Conan is anxious about him: he has a cough and we suspect that he may have the influenza, but he refuses to be examined, protests that it is only a sniffle.' She shook her head. 'What would you do? I am at my wit's end to know what to do next.'

'May I see him?'

'If you think it will do any good, Conan and I would both be much obliged to you.'

The answer to his tap on the bedroom door was an angry: 'What is it now? What do you want?'

When Faro answered, there was a distinct change of tone.

'Do come in, Inspector.'

And as Faro went into the darkened room, 'So glad to see you, dear fellow. Be so good as to open the curtains, will you?'

Having done so, Faro turned to face the figure in the bed. It was obvious that the old man was not at all well, although his reply to Faro's 'How are you today, sir?' was as vigorous as ever.

'Do sit down. Come for a chat, have you? Good to see you.'

After the polite preliminaries, and an enquiry after the health of young Dr Laurie and wee Jamie, Faro realised that any enquiries about practical joking must wait.