Die Laughing

by Carola Dunn

  “Because she spends every penny he earns,” Miss Hensted asserted.

  Hilda bridled. “Rubbish, it was her money in the first place, that he bought this practice with. And what’s he do but waste it on hiring a nurse, like he was already in a fancy practice in Harley Street.”

  Red in the face, Miss Hensted demanded, “Are you saying I don’t earn my wages?”

  “All I’m saying is you don’t need a Registered Nurse in an ordinary practice like here. People don’t expect it.” Hilda jumped as the kettle hissed and rattled its lid. Busy making the tea, she added, “He only married her for her money. She ought to of married Lord Henry, I always said, and I’ll stand by that to my dying day!”

  “Lord Henry?” Daisy queried.

  “Lord Henry Creighton, that was courting her before she met Mr. Talmadge. A proper gentleman, he was, treated her lovely. They were mad for each other. But her father wouldn’t hear of her marrying a man-about-town, a useless drone he called him, without two pennies to rub together if it wasn’t for an allowance from his father, and no more idea how to earn his living than a babe in arms.”

  Miss Hensted snorted. Daisy, who was slightly acquainted with Lord Henry, tried not to smile at this all-too-accurate description.

  “Miss Daphne’s father was a nerve specialist, see,” Hilda continued. “A consultant. He sent her to a fancy school, and she made friends with lots of toffs and got invited to parties. But he didn’t like the men she met. He was pleased when she took up with another medical man, even if he was only a dentist.”

  “But he couldn’t force her to marry him,” Daisy said.

  “He didn’t have to. Raymond Talmadge turned her head, didn’t he. There’s no denying he’s … he was a smasher. Poor Lord Henry couldn’t compete in that department, him having no chin to speak of. Always reminded me of a ferret, he did. But handsome is as handsome does, I say. He treated her right, and there’s no harm in it if she has lunch in town with him now and then and goes to a show.”

  “No harm!” Miss Hensted’s fist crashed on the table, rattling the cups and saucers. “She goes seeing another man behind his back, and you expect him to take it sitting down? No wonder he needed a bit of gas now and then to keep his spirits up!”

  “Gas wasn’t all he had,” said Hilda grimly, “and don’t tell me you didn’t know it. That’s what drove her to it, if you ask me. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!”

  With that triumphant, if somewhat confusing, statement, she poured the tea.

  4

  “I don’t believe it,” said Alec, narrowly missing the rear of an omnibus as he swung the Austin Seven around Marble Arch.

  Beside him, massive in maroon and bottle green checks, Tom Tring chuckled. The little car shook. “Don’t want to believe, more like, Chief.”

  “I ’spect Mrs. Fletcher’ll know who did it by the time we get there,” put in Detective Constable Ernie Piper from the back seat. “All we’ll have to do is pick him up. Though I can’t say I blame anyone that does in a dentist, do you, Sarge? Self-defence, I’d call it.”

  “That’s why they have those chest straps on the chairs, laddie,” Tom rumbled, “so’s the patients don’t throttle the dentist. Do we know how it was done, Chief?”

  “All Superintendent Crane could bring himself to tell me was that Daisy found her dentist dead and told the local man, a DS Mackinnon, that it’s murder. I dare say we’ll find it was a heart attack. Admittedly Talmadge was rather young to drop dead unexpectedly of natural causes, but it does happen.” Just my age, he thought.

  “If Mrs. Fletcher thinks it’s murder, Chief,” said Piper, whose faith in Daisy was unbounded, “then you can bet your boots that’s what it is.”

  “Knew him, did you, Chief?”

  “I met him now and then socially, and consulted him several times in his professional capacity.”

  “I reckon that makes you our first suspect, Chief,” said Piper.

  “You watch your cheek, my lad,” Tom reproved him. “You’re getting too big for your boots.”

  “Fortunately,” Alec said dryly, “I spent the morning and half the afternoon in the East End rounding up the last of the Newbolt gang, with several unimpeachable witnesses, including both of you. Here we are.”

  The ambulance was in the drive, so he left the Austin in the street. The local beat constable stood by the gate, surrounded by three uniformed nursemaids with perambulators.

  Getting out of the car, Alec heard PC Atkinson say benevolently, “No, nothing to see. Now you be off home to your tea.” He saluted Alec. “Glad to see you, sir.”

  “Not much of a crowd yet,” Alec said, chiefly to forestall any comment on Daisy’s involvement.

  “Not in a posh area like this, sir. The neighbours aren’t the sort to stand about in the street staring.”

  “True.” He glanced up and down the street. It was a cut above his own street of large but semi-detached houses. Half the inhabitants probably didn’t even know anything was going on, unable to see past the trees and shrubbery in their front gardens. Not much hope of anyone having spotted an intruder.

  “Dead-end street,” Tom commented, as usual in tune with Alec’s thoughts.

  So casual passers-by were unlikely, and even errand boys and delivery men would not cut through on their way elsewhere. Anyway, Alec needed more information before he sent a man door-to-door to question the neighbours, let alone started looking for nonresident witnesses.

  “Round the side, sir, the waiting room entrance,” Atkinson said as Alec started up the drive, followed by Tom and Ernie.

  Entering the dentist’s waiting room, he recognized the local police surgeon. He had worked with Dr. Ridgeway once or twice, as well as meeting him occasionally on the St. John’s Wood social circuit. Ridgeway was talking to a tall, lanky redhead, obviously a Scot, presumably DS Mackinnon.

  “You canna narrow it down a bit, Doctor?” he was pleading. “We already know it happened between quarter to one, when the nurse left, and ten past two, when he was found.”

  “That’s already a shorter period than I’d care to commit myself to. Hello, Fletcher. Come to bail out your wife?”

  Ridgeway was a bachelor. Gritting his teeth, Alec managed to smile. “I hope that won’t be necessary.”

  “Oh no, sir!” blurted the Scot, beetroot red, saluting. “Detective Sergeant Mackinnon, sir. Mrs. Fletcher’s been verra cooperative. I let her go home, sir.”

  “Good man!” Alec said with heartfelt relief. “I’ve brought Detective Sergeant Tring and Detective Constable Piper with me from the Yard, but I hope your super will let you assist with the case. Let me hear what Dr. Ridgeway has to say, then you can give me your report.”

  “You know Talmadge died in his dental chair?” said Ridgeway. “With the anaesthetic mask over his nose. He died laughing. I see nothing to contradict death by nitrous oxide poisoning, though asphyxiation probably played a part. The post mortem should be able to say for sure. Time of death: between noon and two P.M. The good sergeant can place it closer than I can.”

  “No sign of injury?”

  “Not exactly,” the doctor said cautiously. “He wasn’t hit on the head and stuffed into the chair. There are slight—very slight—indications of abrasion around the mouth, which will probably fade before the autopsy. On the other hand, without a microscope I won’t commit myself as to whether a few moustache hairs have been pulled out, as Sergeant Mackinnon wanted to know. But the pathologist may be able to tell you, though I rather doubt it.”

  From the corner of his eye, Alec saw Tom Tring’s luxuriant moustache twitch, usually a sign of amusement. A glance at Piper showed him industriously taking shorthand notes with one of his endless supply of newly sharpened pencils. His smirk said as clear as day, “Mrs. Fletcher’s right again!”

  “Perhaps Talmadge shaved with a blunt razor this morning,” Alec suggested.

  Ridgeway shook his head. “Not like that at all. Mackinnon also asked me to
look at the arms.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the sergeant broke in anxiously. “It meant disarranging his clothes, taking off his jacket, which you ought to’ve seen, but we got plenty of photographs. I was afraid any marks on the skin would be gone before you got here.”

  “Were there any?”

  “Too faint to be anything but corroborative evidence, but yes, I found traces of bruising just where the sergeant expected to see them.”

  “Thanks to Mrs.—”

  Alec glared him to silence. The less said about Daisy’s part in all this the happier he’d be—not that there was much hope of Ridgeway forgetting if not reminded. No doubt the entire neighbourhood would find out sooner or later, but the later the better.

  “That’s about it,” the doctor concluded. “You’ll get my report in the morning, Fletcher.”

  “Thank you. I won’t keep you any longer, then. See you at the inquest.”

  The doctor departed.

  “It was his sleeves, sir,” said Mackinnon. “That and the square around his mouth. Rectangle, rather. I don’t know that I’d’ve noticed anything amiss if it hadna been for … if it hadna been drawn to my attention.”

  “By Mrs. Fletcher,” Tom supplied, eyes twinkling below the vast, hairless dome of his head.

  “You can speak freely in front of DS Tring and DC Piper,” Alec said resignedly. “But while you talk, I want to look at what’s left of the scene of the crime.” He made for the connecting door to the surgery. “I take it you’ve fingerprinted the door handles?”

  “Yes, sir, and everything else in there. My photographer’s gone to develop the plates. But I took the dabs of the deceased and the nurse for comparison, and the only place there’s any others is on the arms of the chair, where you’d expect patients to put their hands.”

  “Pity.” Alec contemplated the limp body in the reclining chair. Unnatural death was always disturbing and he had known Talmadge—not well, and not to like him particularly, but for a good many years. Yet what made his gorge rise was the euphoric smile on the man’s face.

  That was no meaningless rictus of death. Talmadge had died happy. If this was murder, it was the most bizarre murder he had ever seen.

  Forcing his attention from the horrible grin, he scrutinized the area around the lips. The faint brownish patch would scarcely have been visible had not the skin paled to an ivory white as blood drained from the face.

  “It was pink, before,” said Mackinnon, who had moved to the opposite side of the chair. “Around the mouth, I mean. Pinkish brown. Mrs. Fletcher said it smelt of benzoin.”

  “Sticking plaster,” said Piper. “Tincture of benzoin and isinglass.” It was the sort of obscure detail he excelled in.

  Mackinnon nodded. “That’s what she said. The marks on the arms have pretty much faded too, sir. There wasna much to see in the first place. Here at the wrists, and just above the elbows.” He turned on the adjustable electric light poised over the chair.

  Talmadge was in his shirtsleeves, the sleeves rolled up well above the elbow. Alec inspected the areas of his arms indicated by Mackinnon. “Piper, your eyes are better than mine.”

  Piper bent low. “I’m not saying I can’t see nothing, Chief,” he said dubiously, straightening, “but nothing I’d swear to in court.”

  “What exactly is it you can’t see?”

  “It looks to me sort of like as if he might’ve been tied to the chair.”

  “That’s what Mrs. Fletcher thought!” Mackinnon said. “She noticed the creases in the sleeves of his jacket.”

  “Which you had to take off,” Alec sighed. “I realize it was necessary, but it’s a pity. Even if the photographs come out well, evidence will have been lost. Where is it?”

  Mackinnon pointed to a small table in one corner. On it lay a parcel, wrapped in brown paper but not tied. “I took a brush to the creases, sir, before we took it off, and put the dust in envelopes. If there’s any fibres to be found, we should’ve got them.”

  “Well done. Any idea what he might have been tied with?”

  “Bandages, maybe, sir, and that’s Mrs. Fletcher’s guess. I think they’re there in the waste bin, but when I heard you were coming, I thought I’d best leave ’em for you. That’s the ties for the wrists, ready to hand in the first-aid cupboard. The elbows … Mrs. Fletcher didna mention it, but I reckon the murderer would just use the chest strap. This here, that the dentist puts around you to keep you from trying to stop what he’s doing to you.”

  The broad canvas strap was neatly hooked in place at the back of the chair.

  “Wouldn’t that have been enough on its own?” Piper wondered. “I s’pose he might’ve managed to reach up and pull off the mask.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” said Tom, taking a pair of forceps from the rack of instruments. He delved into the waste bin and brought forth a wad of bandage. “Any more envelopes, Sergeant?”

  Mackinnon turned pink. “I took them from the desk in the waiting room,” he muttered. “I’ll get more.”

  Tom grinned at him. “They’re talking about giving us a ‘murder bag’ with everything we need for an investigation. I hope I’ll live to see the day. In the meantime, I didn’t bring any envelopes meself, and I had a better idea than you did that this might be murder.”

  “A nasty one,” Alec said soberly. “The poor chap must have been under the gas already, or he wouldn’t have sat still to be tied down. And then the murderer must have stayed to watch him die, so as to be there to untie him. What sort of cold-blooded bastard could stand there and watch a man die?”

  5

  The kitchen door opened. Daisy looked round in considerable relief, which redoubled when she saw Alec. She jumped up, and would have run to hug him except that one simply didn’t hug in public. Especially in someone else’s kitchen with servants looking on.

  “Darling!”

  “Daisy! I thought you’d gone home.”

  “Not quite,” said Daisy, hoping she didn’t look frightfully guilty. “Sergeant Mackinnon did say I could leave, but I absolutely had to speak to Mrs. Talmadge. She’s a neighbour and an acquaintance, after all. Besides,” she added, being now close enough to hiss in his ear, “I rather dreaded having to explain things to your mother. Hello, Mr. Tring.”

  Tom Tring grinned at her. Reminded of his presence, and Sergeant Mackinnon behind him, Alec closed his mouth on whatever expression of sympathy, or blistering reproof, he had been about to utter.

  “I see,” he said forebodingly, looking beyond her to the two women at the table.

  “Alec, these are Nurse Hensted and Miss Kidd, Mrs. Talmadge’s maid. I expect you both recognize my husband, Chief Inspector Fletcher. Miss Hensted was with me and Mrs. Talmadge when we discovered … him. Which of us do you want to talk to first?”

  “Mrs. Talmadge,” Alec said.

  “Oh, darling, I’m afraid you can’t. Dr. Curtis was here a moment ago. He’s given Mrs. Talmadge a sedative. Actually, he wants someone with her at all times. Miss Hensted and Hilda have been … discussing who should go up first.”

  The nurse stood up, tight-lipped. “I’m sure you’ll agree, sir, Mrs. Talmadge will obviously need more professional care during the day than at night, when she’s sleeping natural. She will do for the night watch, but I must go to her now. She needs someone competent.”

  “Don’t make me laugh!” cried Hilda Kidd. “Haven’t I looked after her through thick and thin since she was a tot? She don’t hardly know you, and you’re nothing but a fancy receptionist. Call yourself a nurse, ha-ha.”

  Miss Hensted’s fists clenched and she leant forward, red with fury. “Don’t you laugh at me, you sanctimonious old bitch! If my patient was to wake up and see your sour face—”

  “Enough!” Alec snapped. “Miss Kidd, you go up to your mistress now.” The nurse subsided, but Hilda’s triumph was short-lived. “Miss Hensted will take over from you when I’ve asked her a few questions. What other servants are there?”

&nbs
p; “There’s Gladys, the housemaid, sir. It’s Cook’s day off. Mrs. Thorpe, she is.”

  “Gardener? Chauffeur?”

  “Just a jobbing gardener comes twice a week. Not today.”

  “Thank you. Send the housemaid along, please, then you may go up to Mrs. Talmadge.”

  “And mind you observe Dr. Curtis’s directions,” said Miss Hensted. “I’ll be up to relieve you shortly.”

  With a glare at the nurse, Hilda took herself off.

  “Tom, you’ll see Gladys when she arrives,” Alec said. Tom, despite his devotion to his equally mountainous wife, had a way with female servants. “Not in here, I think. Take her somewhere else.” Daisy expected to be sent out also, but he ignored her and went on, “Mackinnon, take notes, please.”

  “Yes, sir.” Mackinnon already had his notebook in his hand—Daisy assumed he had just reported his findings so far to Alec—but he fumbled for a sharpened pencil. Where was Piper with his ever-ready supply? she wondered.

  “Miss Hensted, may I have your full name and address, please?”

  “Brenda Mabel Hensted. I have a room in Marylebone.” She gave the street and number. With Hilda’s departure, she had quite recovered her cool, professional demeanour.

  “And your position in the household? This is for official purposes, you understand.”

  “I’m not part of the household, not really, sir. I work … worked for Mr. Talmadge in his practice, as nurse and whatever else he needed. I’m a Registered Nurse, but I don’t care for hospital work, you see, having been in a military hospital all through the War. Though come to that, hospital’s a sight better than being at an invalid’s beck and call! Most dentists don’t employ a Registered Nurse, but Mr. Talmadge had a high-class practice—people like yourself and Mrs. Fletcher—and what with giving the patients gas and doing all the latest procedures—”

  “Yes, thank you. How long have you been here?”

  “Three years come the fifth of May.”

  “You liked the position, I assume. Nurses can always find a job.”

  “Oh yes, it was smashing. At least, it was till I realized Mr. Talmadge was …” She hesitated. “I realized he was using the nitrous oxide himself. It’s ever so dangerous, using it regularly, like he did. You can damage your brain, you know.”