The Scent of Murder (27 page)

They spent much of the morning in the coroner’s office — Mr Barnstaple making it clear he had sacrificed a morning’s fishing for ‘the gentleman from Scotland Yard’ — discussing Dody’s autopsy report and the suspicious nature of Tristram’s death. Pike gave the damaged girth to him and explained that further evidence from the police would be available once Philips had been re-interviewed.

Pike remained in Uckfield for the interview, but not before he had organised a lift for Dody back to the Green Witch with a farmer hauling a cartload of teetering turnips.

Dody’s heart dropped when she spied the familiar Silver Ghost parked outside the front entrance of the public house, the chauffeur leaning casually across the bonnet smoking a cigarette. He straightened with surprise when he saw Dody alight from the turnip cart, and ground out his cigarette with the toe of his boot.

‘Her Ladyship is waiting inside to see you, Doctor McCleland,’ he said.

Lady Airlie, not Sir Desmond, Dody thought with relief. Now, there’s a pleasant surprise.

She glimpsed Lady Fitzgibbon through the parlour window and hurried inside. Her Ladyship was pacing up and down the room, but stopped when Dody entered. She wore mourning black: a thick skirt and jacket with a fur trim and matching hat.

‘I need your help, Doctor,’ she said with no preamble, twisting her thin fingers. Dody brushed a fine layer of coal dust from the sofa and indicated for her to sit.

‘No time, thank you. No. I’ll get straight to the point. Fever has struck the workhouse and three children have died already.’ She paused to give Dody an uneasy look. ‘I beg you to return with me to the workhouse. We must save innocent lives.’

Dody did not hesitate. She wrote a quick note for Pike and left it with the publican, grabbed her Gladstone and followed Lady Fitzgibbon to the Silver Ghost.

Dody and Lady Fitzgibbon stood in the entrance hall of the workhouse, hovering near the dispensary door. The Matron did not invite them in. The stocky older woman practically blocked the doorway, making herself seem taller than she was by wearing a high white head covering similar to that of a nun. Her starched apron was pinched around her thickened mid-section by a black leather belt fastened with a silver buckle. Matching buckles adorned her patent-leather shoes. Over the woman’s shoulder, Dody glimpsed eye charts, scales, a measuring stick, shelves containing boxes of Brazilian Worm Cakes, ceramic inhalers, bottles of castor oil and medicines with names she had not come across since the old Queen’s reign.

The woman looked from Lady Fitzgibbon to Dody. ‘You want to examine the children’s bodies? Why? It’s quite obvious they died from the measles.’

‘If I am to help you contain the disease, Matron, I have to be certain that it really is measles we are dealing with,’ Dody said with as much patience as she could muster.

‘I expect I’ve seen more cases of measles than you’ve had hot dinners, young lady,’ Matron snapped.

The woman’s tone took Dody by surprise. The men of her profession tended to wrap their hostility in polite condescension, but this woman’s antagonism was overt. She obviously thought Dody’s presence at the workhouse was a threat to her authority.

‘If you have seen more cases of measles than I have had hot dinners, then you should be ashamed of yourself,’ Dody responded forcefully. ‘It means you have insufficient procedures in place to prevent the spread of the disease.’

Matron swung on Her Ladyship. ‘What’s this about, Lady Fitzgibbon? It’s not normal for guardians to meddle with the day-to-day running of the workhouse. You should leave that to us experts.’

At that moment a bewhiskered, well-dressed man entered the hallway and headed towards the stone stairs that led to the building’s upper levels. He greeted Lady Fitzgibbon by name and she introduced him to Dody as Mr Gardner, one of her fellow guardians. They had all been summoned to the boardroom for an emergency meeting. He bowed to the women, excused himself and ascended the stairs.

Dody sensed Lady Fitzgibbon’s relief at the brief interruption; it gave her time to harness her courage and formulate her response to the Matron. The quaver in her voice betrayed the effort it took. ‘I have suspected for some time now that children are being poorly—’

‘Nonsense. And I won’t tolerate no slander, neither,’ Matron cut in. ‘We’ll just have to see what the board has to say about this.’

Dody’s heart went out to the seemingly timid woman making a brave stand. Lady Fitzgibbon should not have to continue this fight on her own.

The Matron turned to leave.

‘Matron, before you go,’ Dody said, locking eyes with the woman, ‘I’d like you to tell me something of the dead children’s medical history. I would also like to look at their medical files.’

‘Not possible. Doctor Green took them with him when he went on leave,’ Matron said quickly — too quickly. She turned towards the stairs with the obvious intention of putting her complaints forcefully to the board.

Dody made a conscious effort not to speak through gritted teeth. Loudly enough for the Matron to hear her as the formidable woman stomped her way up the stairs, she said, ‘Lady Fitzgibbon, if you will be so kind as to take me to the Dead House?’

Matron stopped and turned.

‘Certainly, Doctor,’ Lady Fitzgibbon answered.

Matron stood on the stairs above them, poised, her winged headdress making her look like a bird of prey about to swoop. ‘The Master won’t like this interfering, not at all,’ she called down.

‘I will write him a note explaining my actions,’ Lady Fitzgibbon replied. ‘You can give it to him tonight when he returns from his business trip. Follow me, Doctor McCleland.’

‘Well, if you must go there I insist on accompanying you,’ Matron grumbled, rejoining them in the hall.

‘I’m sure we can manage on our own, Matron,’ said Dody.

‘What? A guardian taking a stranger to the Dead House, unaccompanied? Not likely!’

Matron pushed past the two women and led the way.

Lady Fitzgibbon met Dody’s eye and opened her hands as if to apologise; the dreadful woman was beyond her control.

Dody whispered to her as they followed the Matron, ‘I believe certain Caribbean peoples make wax images of those they dislike and stick them full of pins. Have you ever thought of adding that to your repertoire, Lady Fitzgibbon?’

Lady Fitzgibbon’s face flickered with humour. ‘What an exceedingly good idea, Doctor McCleland,’ she murmured.

They strode behind Matron through an ants’ nest of busy passageways, passing women and girls on hands and knees scrubbing floors, and activity rooms where inmates picked oakum, breathing into their lungs all manner of dangerous fibres. From the open door of the schoolroom Dody saw lines of knock-kneed children with prematurely aged faces, reciting Bible verses and standing as straight as their crooked bodies would allow.

When Dody commented on the relative lack of male inmates, Lady Fitzgibbon explained that most of the able-bodied men were breaking rocks at the local quarry to make road-surfacing materials.

They exited the main part of the building and took a cold, windy path through an unfenced cemetery filled with rows of unmarked graves.

The Dead House was conveniently located next to the cemetery, a government-ordered prerequisite for all workhouses. Here Lady Fitzgibbon introduced Dody to a lantern-jawed porter whose demeanour at once labelled him as a simpleton. A girl sat on the cold ground next to him, leaning with her back against the Dead House wall, head bowed, softly weeping.

‘On your feet, Edith Pratt!’ Matron commanded.

Dody instantly recognised the scullery maid from the Hall, took hold of her cold hands and helped her rise to her feet. ‘Is one of your friends in there, Edie?’ Dody asked with sympathy.

The girl nodded.

‘Bessie Teadle. They shared a bed,’ Matron snapped.

‘I’m sorry, Edie,’ Dody said, scrutinising the narrow face and reddened eyes. No obvious sign of fever yet, although the girl did have a runny nose. ‘Are you feeling unwell?’ she asked.

Edie shook her head and drew her sleeve across her face.

‘There’s a habit you’ll have to get out of if you want to stay at the Hall, my girl,’ Matron said angrily. ‘Run along now. I’m sure you have work to do.’

‘Poor, poor, Edie,’ the porter moaned, shaking his over-large head as they watched the girl dragging her feet towards the main building. ‘Bessie and ’er. Best friends.’

‘It’s remarkable that a child like Teadle lived even this long,’ Matron said, thrusting out her ample bosom aggressively. ‘Measles tends to fatally affect only the weaker children. As the Master so eloquently puts it, “We at the Uckfield Workhouse don’t need to read about Mr Darwin’s evolutionary theories; we need only look around us to see them in action.”’

Lady Fitzgibbon turned her eyes heavenward as if to seek spiritual guidance. ‘I must report to the board to discuss the epidemic and containment policies,’ she said, but made no move to return to the main building. Perhaps she was worried about leaving Dody and the Matron alone, lest there be bloodshed.

‘Tell the board I will report my findings once I have examined the children’s bodies,’ Dody said to the two women. ‘Yes, that will be all, Matron. You may go now.’

‘I am medically trained, Doctor. I will stay and assist you,’ the fearsome woman insisted.

‘No, you will not stay, Matron. You have work to do. You will immediately recall all the occupants of the girls’ and young children’s sections and confine them to their dormitories. They will not mix with any other workhouse members, nor work at their jobs in the wider community, until I am satisfied that whatever disease is present here has been contained. Later, I will physically examine each child myself. Confirmed cases of the contagious disease will be isolated in the infirmary. Do you understand, Matron?’

Matron snorted. ‘Over-reaction. Utter bunkum.’

Suddenly Dody gasped. She covered her mouth with her hand and pointed at something in the distance. ‘My goodness, what is going on over there?’ she cried. ‘Is it a fight?’

The others looked where her finger pointed.

Dody snatched the key from the porter’s hand before he understood what was happening. In the blink of an eye she had turned the key in the lock, entered the Dead House and locked the door behind her. As she leaned against the inside of the door, she allowed herself a small smile of victory, a slow sigh of relief.

Matron rattled the handle and bellowed at Dody to open up. Dody heard Lady Fitzgibbon attempting to calm the obstreperous woman with soothing tones. Her Ladyship told Matron she was heading for her board meeting, and gently advised her to carry out Dody’s instructions. The porter, Mr Clover, was asked to remain outside the door in case Dody required anything.

After more affronted protestation from the Matron, the hullabaloo began to subside. Finally the sound of footsteps on the gravel path told Dody that the women had departed together, and soon all she could hear from the other side of the door was the porter’s adenoidal breathing.

At last she began to relax. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she was able to make out her surroundings. Built of stone, the building in which she found herself was not much bigger than her parents’ garden shed. A narrow window traversed one wall. It was barred, but contained no glass, making the inside of the Dead House almost as cold and damp as the air outside.

Dody took her matches from her Gladstone bag and lit the gas sconces. Through the wavering light her gaze was drawn to three small, sheeted shapes resting on one long table. On the floor next to the table there lay a bunch of dead stinging nettles tied with twine.

‘What on earth —?’ Dody stopped herself mid-sentence. One of the first things she had learned about her job was that she must not allow herself to be distracted. Everything must be observed with detached objectivity, and she always prided herself upon her ability to focus on the job at hand. She forced her gaze back to the bodies on the table, making a mental note to enquire about the stinging nettles later.

Dody might not have been able to get the children’s medical records from Matron, but Lady Fitzgibbon had at least given her a reasonable summary of events as they had travelled to the workhouse together in the Rolls.

A young boy in the under-seven children’s division had been the first to die. He had been sickly for several days, developed a measles rash, suffered a fit, and fallen into a coma. He had been moved to the infirmary, where he had survived for only a few hours. A young girl, also from the children’s wing, had already been residing in the infirmary at the time. Her symptoms had manifested a few days earlier than the boy’s, and she had initially been considered a less acute case. But she, too, had developed a rash and died soon after the boy.

The last to die had been the eldest, Bessie Teadle, a ‘sickly, deformed child and a hypochondriac to boot’, or so Matron had described her to Lady Fitzgibbon. The disease had claimed her more quickly than the others, though Dody suspected it had probably been present days earlier, with the child’s complaints of illness ignored.

Dody looked again at the sheeted shapes. One was significantly bigger than the others and was probably the body of Bessie. Dody would start with her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The sound of raised male voices greeted Pike as he pushed open the swing door of the police station, walked past the front desk and entered the duty room. He’d already noticed a smart horse tied to the hitching rail outside and was able now to identify its owner by the bluster coming from the direction of the cells. Constable Weedon, slouched at one of the desks, seemed oblivious to the racket.

‘What’s Sir Desmond doing in Philips’s cell?’ Pike demanded.

The constable looked up from the newspaper he was reading and jumped to his feet. ‘Oh, Chief Inspector, sir, it’s you. Yes, Sir Desmond is visiting the groom, Philips. Philips was hoping Sir Desmond would put up his bail.’

‘But Philips has been refused police bail,’ Pike said, glancing down at Weedon’s newspaper. It was open at the sports section; moustaches, beards and blackened teeth were doodled over the faces of the sportsmen pictured.