The Insanity of Murder (2 page)

‘Wake up, Miss Dody, wake up.’ Annie’s voice invaded Dody’s dreams. She screwed up her eyes under the lemony flare of the electric light and focused on her bedside clock — ten past three — and moaned.

‘Telephone call for you, miss. The police want a word,’ her maid said.

At the mention of police, Dody flung back the bedclothes and allowed Annie to help her into her silk kimono and slippers.

‘Did the policeman give you his name?’

‘No, miss. But it weren’t Chief Inspector Pike if that’s what you were thinking.’

Annie never tired of showing her disapproval of Matthew Pike, a regular visitor to the house. In most households the maid would be disciplined for such impertinence, but in her own home Dody preferred to choose her battles. There were battles enough to cope with at the mortuary. She sighed, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and made her way down the three flights of stairs to the telephone in the hall.

Superintendent Shepherd’s fuss and bluster made his voice hard to hear above the static. She dug the telephone’s receiving device into her ear, only catching fragments of speech. ‘Necropolis Railway … explosion … bodies … Armageddon …’

‘You want me at the railway station now to help retrieve body parts?’ Dody translated.

The static on the line was swept away as if by a broom. ‘Miss, err, Doctor. Have you not listened to a word I’ve said?’

Battles, Dody reminded herself. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can, sir.’ She set the earpiece back on its hook and turned to Annie who was hovering on the stairs. ‘Wake Fletcher, please, and have him bring the car to the front of the house. And give Florence my apologies when she gets up — I assume she’s home now? I’ll probably miss her at breakfast.’

Annie glanced back up the stairs and opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, then changed her mind. Dody had no time for playing games with the maid. ‘Lay my work clothes out on the bed, please.’

‘Cape too, Miss Dody?’

‘No, I think my black velvet coat is more appropriate. I will need full use of my hands and the cape will get in the way.’

The black will also hide the stains, Dody thought as she steeled herself for whatever the night had in store for her.

Headlamps from half a dozen police vans and several fire engines shone on what was left of the station. Fletcher parked on the other side of Westminster Bridge Road and opened the passenger door for Dody. As soon as she stepped from the car a police sergeant scurried over to her.

‘You can’t park ’ere, ma’am, the ’ole place is out-a-bounds.’ Behind him other policemen were attempting to erect wooden barricades around the perimeter of the bombsite, their progress hampered by a crowd of spectators, many wearing overcoats over their night things, jostling for a closer look at the carnage.

‘Give us a look!’

‘What’s goin’ on ’ere?’

‘That racket near shook me out of bed!’

‘This road needs to be blocked off too,’ the sergeant shouted over his shoulder before returning his attention to Dody.

‘I’m Doctor McCleland, senior autopsy assistant to Doctor Bernard Spilsbury. Superintendent Shepherd has requested my presence at the scene.’ Dody had to shout above the din of police whistles, clanging bells, and the cries of the onlookers. She had no formal identification with her, but found a letterhead from the Paddington Mortuary in her pocket and handed it over.

The sergeant glanced at it and nodded his head. ‘That’ll do. Come with me then, ma’am, and watch your step.’

Dody told Fletcher not to wait, that she would find a telephone and call when she needed a lift home. She followed the sergeant, picking her way across rippled tarmacadam that could have been shaped by the sea. A fire engine chugged past, heading away from the Necropolis Station, firemen clinging to its sides. Dull light reflected through the soot on the men’s once dazzling brass helmets. Another engine near a cluster of police vans broke away, also heading for home. Perhaps the fire is under control now, Dody thought. She could see no flames from the ruined station and only the occasional thin plume of smoke.

She had never seen the aftermath of an explosion before and the first thing that assaulted her senses was the appalling smell. A projectile must have penetrated a sewerage pipe near a public convenience and raw sewage flooded the area, motorcar headlamps dancing upon pools of effluent. After carefully stepping around one such evil-smelling mire, she found herself confronted by a miasma of other odours: brick dust, industrial-smelling smoke, and a metallic tang she guessed might be gunpowder. No odour of recent death, thank goodness. Now
that
was a smell to which she was accustomed.

Before her, the Necropolis Station building revealed itself like an opened dolls’ house. A teetering desk hung over the edge of one of the exposed rooms, sheets of paper blowing about in a whirl and fluttering. One landed at Dody’s feet. She stooped to pick it up and found it to be an advertisement for a cherrywood coffin for the special price of twenty-one guineas — enough to feed several poor families for a year. She balled the paper and tossed it to the ground.

‘Wait there, please, ma’am, and I’ll see if the superintendent is ready for you,’ the sergeant said, as he walked off towards three non-uniformed men engrossed in conversation to the left of the ruined station entrance.

Dody continued her examination of the station building. Below the exposed offices yawned a deep dark hole. A group of cursing firemen struggled with wedging one of several props already rammed into place to stop the upper stories from collapsing into the chasm. The men dropped the prop and jumped back just as a ceiling beam gave way and crashed to the ground. Plaster rained down but the floor held. Dody stepped back further from the danger, unaware, until it was too late, of a spear of wood sticking out of a pile of rubble behind her. As she attempted to yank the wood free from her clothing it dug further into the fabric of her skirt and split the grey linen to her knee.

‘So much for practical work clothes,’ she grumbled aloud. Her coat was not long enough to hide the lower part of the tear and the white bloom of her petticoat drew the eye like bunting.

Tired of waiting for permission to speak, she approached the men. One was Superintendent Shepherd, the flapping bulk of his rubber Mackintosh making him unmistakable. Next to him — just as tall, though with a much prouder, upright frame — stood Pike’s turbaned assistant, Constable Singh. The slightly smaller man with the cane beside Singh was Pike himself, oblivious as always to the handsome figure he cut. Dody’s heart gave a jolt. Conflicting schedules prevented regular liaisons with her lover, so even these circumstances were better than nothing. The men had not noticed her so she took the opportunity to gather her composure. In public, Pike was just another policeman, and she was Doctor Dorothy McCleland, senior assistant — sole assistant, actually — to chief pathologist Bernard Spilsbury. Their paths occasionally crossed at the mortuary or at a crime scene, but their relationship had never been anything but professional. In this fictional world, she had no idea if he snored (he didn’t), whether he played the piano, (he did, beautifully) or where he was born (Yorkshire), or even that he was ex-military. He could be expected to know more about her, however. Her Fabian parents and suffragette sister meant that her family history was common knowledge to the police. But only Pike knew how much she hated Brussels sprouts. Or how the way he put his lips to her ear after he had pulled off her earrings, made her skin tingle …

While Dody paused in the shadows of the ruined building, she caught snatches of the men’s conversation.

‘Unions, y’think, Pike? I’m thinking about that American union, the one that recently blew up the
Los Angeles Times
building.’

‘Perhaps, sir,’ Pike answered neutrally.

‘Irish? Anarchists? Those mad bloody women? God knows our country has enough enemies these days. Could even be the Germans, what?’

‘No one has yet claimed responsibility,’ Pike said. ‘As for the “bloody mad women”, they pride themselves on not allowing their antics to endanger human life.’

Dody nodded in silent agreement. Still, she was relieved to know that Florence had been tucked up in bed at home all night.

‘Whoever did it is probably too ashamed to own up. I mean there’s destruction and destruction. This was certainly overkill,’ Shepherd said.

‘The firemen think the bomb was planted directly above a gas line.’ Pike paused. ‘It’s quite possible that this level of destruction was unintentional; it blew all the way to the viaduct and the station tracks. Even roused the lunatics at Bedlam, apparently.’

Bethlem
Hospital for the Insane. Dody silently chided Pike for referring to the asylum by its former, much maligned name.

‘And Waterloo Station proper?’ Shepherd asked.

‘Unscathed, thank God, but nearby shops have suffered some damage, broken windows mostly.’

Dody stepped out of the shadows and revealed herself to the policemen. ‘You sent for me, Superintendent.’

The sergeant who had escorted her onto the site gave her a black look — obviously she should have waited for him to announce her. He slapped his hands against his sides and left her to it, heading back to his roadblock on the main road.

Shepherd nodded absently. ‘Good evening, Doctor McCleland.’ He spotted the tear in her skirt and suddenly gave her his full attention. ‘Good God,’ she heard him mutter under his breath, ‘can’t you even dress like a decent woman?’

Dody ignored him.

‘Doctor.’ Pike and Singh spoke simultaneously, Pike lifting his bowler hat, Singh bowing so low he almost touched his knees with the tip of his bushy black beard.

Shepherd’s rubber-clad arm flapped in the direction of a cluster of ambulances. ‘Remains. Ambulance. If you would be so kind.’

‘Are there any survivors?’ Dody asked Pike.

‘Only one person has been found alive, the night watchman. He was flung away from the explosion and landed over there.’ Pike used his cane to point towards the public convenience on the other side of the station road. The building was missing several of its lamps and there were jagged gaps in its tiled roof. ‘He was taken to hospital but is not expected to survive. I plan on seeing him myself later today if he is still alive. If not …’ Pike shrugged, ‘it’ll be up to you to get some answers from the body parts. I have yet to contact the management of the surrounding offices to ascertain how many people had been working late. Several shopkeepers and their families were woken by the blast, but the damage south of the station, where it is more populous, is minimal, with only a few residences affected, thank God.’

A young policeman marched up to them and held out a large paper bag to Pike. ‘Excuse me, sir, the sergeant wanted you to have a look at this.’

Shepherd reached out for it.

‘Gloves, sir,’ Pike courteously reminded him.

Shepherd made a useless show of patting down his mac.

Pike removed some leather gloves from his coat pocket, slipped them on and took the bag. The young policeman shone his lamp into it as Pike removed the top quarter of a small attaché case, a leather handle and clasp barely clinging to some tattered shreds of charred leather.

‘Where was this found, officer?’ Pike asked as he carefully examined the object. ‘Shine the light on the handle, please.’

‘Just outside the big ’ole, sir. The firemen think it was blown clear from the ignition point.’

Pike pointed to some blackened threads of material tied around the handle of the case. Placing the remains of the case on the ground he squatted next to it and carefully untied what appeared to be the remnants of three ribbons. The constable shone his lamp on them. Underneath the charred knot the colours were clear. ‘Purple for dignity, green for hope, and white for purity,’ he murmured.

Dody drew a breath — the suffragette colours.

‘Those bloody women, I knew it!’ Shepherd bellowed. ‘Someone’s got to pay this time. Someone will hang!’

‘Not necessarily a suffragette, sir,’ Pike said calmly as he climbed to his feet. ‘Until we have all the facts, we cannot regard the ribbons as irrefutable evidence.’

Dody was well aware how much Pike hated jumping to conclusions. A scientific rationale vital to their respective specialties was one of the many things they had in common.

Shepherd’s jowly face reddened at Pike’s contradiction, even his fluffy mutton chop whiskers seemed to stiffen. But at least he had the presence of mind to bite back his words. Arguing with his chief inspector in front of the inferior ranks would be poor form indeed. Dody could not fathom how Pike put up with the idiot of a man. She could never have suffered such a fool.

Pike asked the constable to fetch the sergeant so they could put their investigation strategy into place. Dody left them to it and picked her way over the rubble to the ambulances. The lights from the headlamps were hazy with dust and lingering smoke. Several wooden barrels stood alongside a row of canvas body bags. Men milled around, getting on with their gruesome harvest. Behind an ambulance, someone gagged and retched.

‘Some of the bodies are more or less complete, Doctor,’ an ambulance attendant explained, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘We’ve put those straight under the blankets.’

Dody unbuttoned the top half of one of the canvas bags and found the body of a woman, her decapitated head resting on her breast. She asked the attendant if she could borrow his lantern and shone it into the bag.

‘Very little blood on the body or in the bag — a good sign.’

‘Why so, Doctor?’ the attendant asked.

‘It means this woman was already dead when she was decapitated.’ Dody gently removed the head from the bag, pulled back the cascade of grey hair and showed the man the almost bloodless neck wound.

The man turned away. ‘I wish I hadn’t asked,’ he muttered.

Dody replaced the head and closed the staring blue eyes. It was likely that the corpse had been waiting in one of the undertakers’ premises for transportation by rail to the cemetery. She climbed to her feet, moved over to one of the barrels and glimpsed a tangle of charred limbs. A severed hand reached out as if in supplication. Red nail varnish, the latest fashion foible, shone dully under the ambulance’s headlamps.