by Evelyn James
Clara winced at the description, in sympathy with the woman.
“How long would it have taken for her to die?” She asked.
“A main artery had been nicked, I doubt it was long. Maybe a few minutes?” Dr Deáth answered. “There is no exactness to it, but she would have been unconscious very quickly. Interestingly, if the knife had not been removed, she might have lasted longer, the blade acting as a sort of plug. Once the blade was withdrawn, she really had no hope.”
“Would she have been able to fight with her attacker after she was stabbed?” Clara continued.
Dr Deáth considered before he answered.
“Nothing is certain in these situations, people do remarkable things. But shock from the blow and the pain, not to mention the fast loss of blood would have made any lengthy struggle impossible. My guess would be she collapsed pretty quickly.”
Clara cast a look at the inspector, but he ignored her.
“What can you tell us about her lifestyle?” Park-Coombs asked. “Anything to suggest who she was would be useful.”
Dr Deáth munched on one of the biscuits from the rat poison tin.
“Going by my observations, I would say the woman had been a frequent victim of violence. There were marks and cuts that suggested old wounds that had healed, and I noticed a slight peculiarity with one eye that I thought might have been caused by a severe blow to the head. Of course, she might have been in a road accident or something else to explain it.
“As I said, her teeth were stained and she had lost a few. There was no scent of alcohol about the body and the liver looked healthy. The lungs, however, were blackened and slick with a sort of yellow sludge I would find it difficult to describe. There was obvious evidence for Tuberculosis, and I would say it was quite progressed, though not to the point where she was losing weight as a consequence. I would give a cautious prognosis of another five years or so before the disease concluded its deadly task, were I a doctor of the living.”
Dr Deáth finished his biscuit.
“There were also clear signs of venereal disease, sorry to be graphic Clara, but I know you don’t get upset by such talk.”
“You know it takes more than medical terms to shock me,” Clara assured him. “I assume you are saying the woman was a prostitute?”
“I am, though I can’t rule out that the condition might have been given to her via a legitimate lover. She had no wedding ring, so did not appear to be married. But she might have been living with someone,” Dr Deáth became thoughtful. “She had not been with a man that night, of that I am certain, but it would not surprise me if she was a good-time girl. Her hands were not those of someone who had done a lot of hard labour with them, like a servant or fisher-girl. She didn’t look like a shop girl, which leaves me wondering how she made a living, being unmarried, as I said.”
“This is not getting us closer to working out who she is,” Inspector Park-Coombs looked glum. “You have just described a number of women around Brighton, in very similar circumstances.”
“Oh, there was one thing,” Dr Deáth looked pleased as he remembered himself. “She had a tattoo on the inside of her thigh. It was the word or name Rose, with a ring of thorns around it.”
“Her name?” Park-Coombs frowned. “Why have your own name tattooed on your leg? To help you remember it?”
“What about the knife used to stab her?” Clara asked. “Was it the same as the one in Peterson’s back?”
“Ah, yes!” Dr Deáth disappeared from the room.
Clara glanced at the inspector who hefted his shoulders in a shrug. The coroner returned within a few moments holding a blade in his hands.
“Now this is a thing of beauty,” he told them with a sigh that expressed his awe at the object in his hands. He was like an art collector purring over an Old Master. “This is an 1855 hunting knife, made to be issued in Indian to officers in the British Army. It is ceremonial rather than functional, though as we have seen it can be quite vicious. This knife is based on similar ones used in the local region for dispatching hunted animals, and I have read about ones made of silver or gold and presented to local maharajahs as a gift. The blade is partially serrated, to enable it to be used for skinning carcasses. It also has an upward curving tip, reminiscent of the Persian scimitar.
“The handle is made of mahogany with insets of ivory. The blade is finely tempered British steel with the date of manufacture noted on it. Only fifty of these blades were ever made and were given to a select few officers who had been influential in quelling an Indian rebellion in 1855. I saw one of these come on the market a few years back. It sold for fifteen guineas.”
“I never knew you to be a connoisseur of knives,” Park-Coombs said with just a slight hint of concern for his coroner’s sudden fetish.
Dr Deáth was amused.
“You may have noticed I have an array of blades at my disposal for use during my work. I understand the intricacies of knives, their different functions and the way they are made. Not to mention, in my line of work it is helpful to know about different weapons that might be used against a person,” the coroner paused. “But this is extraordinary. This is not the sort of knife you see used in street crime. It is an heirloom, a collector’s piece. To find this in a man’s back simply beggar’s belief.”
“Why would you use such a costly knife, when you could buy a cheap switchblade,” Clara nodded.
“Exactly. This makes me think that the person who was carrying it was doing so for a reason. This is a knife to respect, to mark out a man. They were made for that very reason. Back in 1855, if you saw a British officer with one of these on his belt, you knew he had been involved in some pretty fierce fighting and had helped quell a rebellion,” Dr Deáth breathed in through his teeth, making a hissing sound. “Whatever your thoughts on such things, you can’t deny that this knife represents power – a power a person is happy to enforce violently.”
“Hmm,” Clara mused. “It seems to me Inspector, that the knife is going to be the key. Find out how that ended up in Brighton and we might be a step closer to discovering who wielded it and why.”
The inspector said nothing, he had cupped his chin in his hands as he looked at the knife.
“Inspector?”
“I was thinking, that’s not the sort of knife a working-class lass carries around with her,” Park-Coombs said solemnly. “How would she get hold of it? It’s not the sort of thing young Private Peterson would have access to either. Which makes me conclude that you are right Clara, someone else was in that alley, someone we have yet to find.”
Clara was delighted to hear him say that, it would be a huge relief to Captain O’Harris to know that Peterson was no longer the police’s prime suspect.
“You know, a thing like this you would not lose lightly,” Dr Deáth turned the blade before his face, letting it catch the light. “I imagine the owner did not intend to leave it in Private Peterson’s back. So why did they?”
“Something happened that caused them to run without reclaiming the knife,” Park-Coombs surmised. “They could have easily caught up with Peterson and pulled the blade out. Something must have prevented them from doing so.”
“Or someone,” Clara frowned. “There is definitely something happening in that neighbourhood. Something that has everyone on edge. Peterson was unlucky to find himself tangled up in it all.”
The inspector had not taken his eyes off the knife in the coroner’s hand. A determined look crept onto his face.
“I wonder how many former British army officers who served in Indian retired to Brighton?” He said.
“Now that,” Clara replied to him with a twinkle in her eye, “is just the sort of question I am very good at answering.”
Chapter Twelve
“Dr Ralph Finnigan,” the aged doctor held out his wizened hand. He could not unfurl his fingers, arthritis had crippled his joints, so Tommy clasped his crooked fist and shook it.
“Tommy Fitzgerald, thank you for speaking to
me.”
Dr Finnigan motioned for Tommy to take a seat, while his daughter-in-law departed to make them some tea.
“I would normally have refused, but when it comes to old Professor Lynch, I cannot resist,” Dr Finnigan sighed. With a shaking arm he lowered the newspaper he was reading to a table before him. He found it difficult to unclasp it from his fingers. “I have become a shadow of myself. My body has withered into this appalling husk. Truth is, I hate people seeing me this way. I hate to think of them feeling sorry for me.
“You know how often I have been into the homes of the sick and dying and expressed my sympathy? I hate to think of it now, knowing how it must have angered those people to hear this young, healthy doctor, who knew none of their real woes, giving his stock response of how sorry he felt for them. What nonsense it was. Had I my time over, I would never say such awful platitudes. People don’t want you feeling sorry for them, they just want their doctor to make them better, or at least ease their suffering. I sometimes wonder if there is an irony to all this.”
Dr Finnigan lifted his hands and stared at the useless fingers as they clawed in towards his palms.
“I was crippled after the war. I was confined to a wheelchair,” Tommy said. “I too despised it when people said how sorry they were for me. As if I did not have enough sense of my situation without someone else going on about how it made them feel bad. I was lucky, I recovered, but I still vividly remember.”
“I sensed a kindred spirit in you when you stood at the door,” Dr Finnigan grinned. “You didn’t have that sad look in your eyes when you saw me, like most do. You didn’t look at my sickness, you looked at me. That’s why you are sitting opposite me and not out on your ear on the street.”
Dr Finnigan chuckled.
“You know, it was my old friend Professor Lynch who said pity was the most merciless cruelty a man could inflict on another, when all it did was make him feel sorry for himself. I made a point of never pitying him, even as his final illness took its toll.”
“And you knew about the box?” Tommy said. “It hasn’t been made public knowledge as yet, so Professor Lynch told you about it?”
Dr Finnigan chuckled.
“He showed me it. Why, he would stagger from his death bed and make that thing. Piecing it together painstakingly. He told me he was going to have it put aside until twenty years after his death. Well, it has been twenty years, hasn’t it?”
“That it has,” Tommy nodded. “Did you know what it contained?”
“He never said,” Dr Finnigan shook his head. “I don’t think I ever really asked, either. I had this impression that it was a secret and it was not something he would talk about. In any case, I was usually busy attending to his needs. Towards the end, Professor Lynch required a vast amount of medicines and treatments to keep him in any sort of comfort.”
“What was he dying from?” Tommy asked. “If that is not too blunt to ask.”
“Blunt is preferable to me, and I am too old to worry about being sensitive about these things. Illness is not something we should avoid talking about from some false sense of tact and politeness. If we discussed these things more openly, I swear people would get treatment for things sooner and maybe they would survive an otherwise fatal disease. I may be optimistic with that, but how often did I see a patient whose symptoms indicated he had been ailing for months, but who had been too abashed to talk about his condition and had suffered in silence? Then, when he finally concluded he could suffer no more, he came to me and discovered he had left things too late,” Dr Finnigan sighed. “Being a doctor is not an easy profession. Not if you care about people. Not if your patients are also friends.”
Tommy had been nodding along to indicate his understanding. The doctor came to a pause and Tommy wondered if he needed to repeat his question, but Finnigan had not forgotten.
“Professor Lynch suffered from a digestive disorder most of his life,” the doctor explained. “It was not immediately life-threatening, but caused him a good deal of discomfort and embarrassment. He suffered terrible pains and all sorts of inconveniences caused by his body’s inability to process food. I suspected that some types of food were a trigger, but it was very difficult to narrow them down. I did end up devising a special diet for him, which alleviated some of the symptoms, but outside factors could start a relapse. I believed stress would trigger an episode, but at times he would have a flare-up and neither of us could determine what had been the spark. I was always impressed at how cheerful he remained, considering how debilitating the condition could be at times. He could spend weeks only going from his rooms at the Institute, to the lecture hall and back. He dreaded going further afield due to not knowing where a suitable bathroom might be found, and also from the general fatigue the chronic pain and nausea caused him.
“In the hotter summer months, dehydration presented a very real danger. Have you ever seen a man die of dysentery?”
“Unfortunately,” Tommy grimaced. “During the war we saw quite a few cases. At times we seemed to have more men on the casualty list from dysentery than anything caused by enemy action.”
“Then you can well understand how a man can fast deteriorate when his body is absorbing neither food nor water. I worried greatly about Lynch at times. At bad times he would drop considerable amounts of weight and be so weak as to barely be able to walk down the stairs.”
“Yet, he kept his condition secret from everyone at the Institute?” Tommy asked in amazement.
“As I said, people are too shy when it comes to discussing sickness, especially the sort of sickness Professor Lynch was suffering. I dare say he felt ashamed of his body. He told me once that sometimes he felt dirty and feared he smelt. He would take a bath three times a day to try and erase that feeling.”
“Poor man,” Tommy tutted sadly.
“He was very good at masking it all. He gave the impression of being a recluse, so people would not question why he was always so keen to go back to his rooms,” Dr Finnigan explained. “I don’t think he ever told a soul. I was his only confidant on the matter.”
“That seems somewhat sad, that he suffered so alone.”
“Maybe he preferred people not to feel sympathy for him,” Dr Finnigan suggested. “As I now know, pity can be wearying, it can make your ailments feel all the worse when someone else feels sorry for you. In any case, there were times when Professor Lynch was relatively healthy and could lead a normal life, for the most part. He lived for those times.”
“Then his condition worsened?” Tommy guessed.
“I suppose the constant strain of sickness began to wear his body down. In his last four years the disease never seemed to leave him, there were no more periods of respite. I began to think it had turned cancerous. I had read a lot of literature on the topic in my efforts to help Professor Lynch, and I had come across a reference more than once that such serious bowel conditions could eventually turn into cancer. I had no means of proving my theory, however, only my observations,” Dr Finnigan paused, his mind wandering back twenty years. “If another patient, with no prior history of bowel complaints, presented with Professor Lynch’s symptoms and over such a period of time, I would have diagnosed a cancer of the digestive system. I did not immediately think of this when Lynch was ill, because of his prior history. However, as the time dragged on, I came to the conclusion that it had to be that, as he was not able to recover. He had always recovered before, therefore something must have changed to prevent him recovering this time.
“I tried so many different things. Digestive powders, pain relief, a simplified diet of chicken and potatoes, followed by a different diet of fish and oats when the first did not work. I tried purges and emetics, in case we could flush the sickness from him, as awful as I felt about doing so. But you become desperate. We dabbled with laudanum, which in most people has the side-effect of making them constipated, to no effect in Professor Lynch. I even began to go for folk remedies, had him eat dried, powdered clay as a binding agent, or
concoctions of herbs. Simply nothing worked. He continued to fade away before my eyes, each day a little weaker, a little thinner, yet still with a warm smile on his face and an optimism to his voice I cannot describe. Sometimes, I wanted to sob at how bravely he bore it all.”
Dr Finnigan fell silent and his aged eyes had, indeed, become wet with tears.
“I wonder where that tea is?” He said gruffly, trying to brush off his obvious upset.
“My next question is not easy to ask,” Tommy admitted as gently as he could. “Did Professor Lynch’s illness cause him to become mentally disturbed?”
“Mentally disturbed?”
“I mean, did he show signs of senility?”
“No,” Dr Finnigan was aghast at the idea. “Who has suggested otherwise? Professor Lynch was as alert the day he died as he had been all his life. In fact, hours before he passed, we discussed a recent meteor shower that had fallen through the sky. Lynch had managed to observe it from his bed, peering out of the window with a small telescope.”
“It is because of the box,” Tommy said, seeing that he had disgruntled the doctor. “The contents, or rather the supposed contents, have caused quite a stir in the Institute. You see, when Professor Lynch left the box, he also left instructions stating that within it were contained various astrological prophecies concerning the future of the nation and a means for protecting England’s future. It’s all rather vague, but it has caused a rift at the Institute, between those who are inclined to think Professor Lynch had a knack for astrology and those who cannot believe a student of astronomy would dabble in such things.”
Dr Finnigan listened intently, a frown forming on his face.
“I was aware of Professor Lynch’s interest in astrology. We discussed it from time to time. I believe the charts he made gave him hope for the future. He did not believe in God, you see, but his illness made him desperate to see some sort of pattern in the way the world worked. I don’t know, call it fate or call it delusion, but he wanted there to be a reason, a logic, for what was happening to him. He couldn’t bear the thought that it was all for nothing, that it was a purely random fluke of existence that had caused him to be ill,” Dr Finnigan glanced at his clawed hands. “People need to see there is a reason for things, it makes them feel better. Sometimes I find myself thinking, the reason I became this shell was to better understand my patients and to share that understanding with my son. He is also a doctor. You see, I have fallen under the same spell. I want to believe that everything happens for a reason.”