It was Mrs Maxwell, the manageress, who had recommended Mr Baranov when Alma had complained of toothache. There were several dentists in Richmond, but Mrs Maxwell was not able to recommend them with any confidence. Mrs Maxwell could not understand why so many modern girls were not more discriminating in their choice of dentists. If one pearl in a necklace were damaged, you wouldn't go to a jeweller in Richmond High Street to have it replaced. You would go to London, to Bond Street or Regent Street. How much more precious than pearls were one's own teeth?
Mr Baranov had made a strong impression on Alma from the beginning. He was totally unlike the young men who had always peopled her dreams. He was not a young man at all. The youngest she could make him was forty-five. His hair and moustache were flecked with silver. His eyelids had formed into folds where the skin overlapped. His joys and tribulations could be traced in the fine lines at the edges of his eyes and mouth. There glinted in his pale blue eyes a look of deep serenity. He was supremely happy in his work.
At that first appointment he had ushered Alma into one of the armchairs. With a few courteous questions he elicited her dental history. He spoke about his fees. She hardly listened. She was listening to the music of his voice. It was as slow and resonant as a prelude by Rachmaninov.
She was spellbound. She sat demurely with her white-gloved hands folded over her crocodile-skin handbag, imagining what might happen if she fainted with excitement when he asked her to stand up. Would he be quick enough to catch her? Would he grasp her in his arms and carry her to the settee? And as she lay swooning with her head against his chest, would she hear the pounding of his heart?
'Are you ready, Miss Webster?'
'Ready?'
'For the inspection. Of course, if you are feeling nervous, we can talk a little longer.'
'Oh, no. I'm quite ready, thank you.'
'Excellent. Let us see what there is to be done.'
On cue the crimson velvet curtain behind Mr Baranov's desk was drawn aside by the nurse, an oriental woman of uncertain age and unlovely features, immaculately groomed and wearing a pale blue uniform. From her solemn manner it appeared that she was neither wife nor mistress to Mr Baranov.
Behind the curtain was a dental chair on a square of black marble. Above and around it was an array of dental machinery and adjustable lights. There was a steel trolley covered with a pale blue cloth. Mr Baranov extended his hand towards the chair and gave a reassuring smile. The pale blue cloth was a cape that was put over Alma as she sat in the chair. The trolley of instruments was no longer in her view. Nor was the nurse. There was only Mr Baranov, now in a white linen jacket. He came close and stood looking at her face in an approving way. She returned his gaze without blushing. She was not embarrassed. She knew about sex. She had read Marie Stopes.
'If you please.'
Alma looked steadily into his eyes.
Mr Baranov pointed to her mouth.
'Oh, yes.'
As he inserted the probe with his left hand, something gleamed in the electric light. It was a gold wedding ring. Alma gave a jerk.
'That didn't hurt, I hope?'
'No.'
'You're quite all right?'
'Perfectly.'
In the movement he had rubbed some rouge from Alma's cheek. There was now a smear of pink on the knuckle above the ring.
She kept calm. Probably his wife was dead, gunned down by the Bolsheviks. Or perhaps her frail health had not been equal to the long journey into exile after the Revolution. Poor soul. And poor Mr Baranov, alone with his grief in a foreign land.
Alma knew about grief. She, too, had lived with it for years.
On Easter Monday, 1914, when she was twenty, she had gone with her best friend Eileen to walk among the daffodils in Kew Gardens. They wore white hats with huge soft brims that flounced as they moved. They ignored the rain clouds overhead. When the first heavy spots pierced their cotton frocks they were on the west side of the lake, far from the buildings and glasshouses. With mock shrieks of panic they ran through the downpour to the shelter of a yew-tree. They looked at each other and started giggling. Their new hats drooped like sou'westers.
Suddenly their laughter froze. Someone had politely cleared his throat. He was a young man in a flat cap and tweeds who had been standing on the other side of the tree. He was carrying a large umbrella. He was as handsome as the Prince of Wales. He raised his cap and said his name was Arthur. He offered to escort them to the gate if they did not object to squeezing together under his umbrella. Giggling again, each of them took one of his arms.
It was still raining when they reached the Victoria Gate. Arthur insisted on treating them to toasted teacakes at the Maids of Honour across the road. They sat in the window-seat while the rain streamed down the leaded panes outside. Arthur told them he was down from Peterhouse, Cambridge, for the Easter vacation. He was bored at home, so most afternoons he came to Kew. As he mentioned this, his hand touched Alma's. For a moment she felt the pressure of his fingers. Her pulse raced.
That night Alma hardly slept at all. In the morning she put on her pale pink suit and white silk stockings and took the bus to Kew. She stood under the yew tree. She waited there two hours. She searched the Gardens for Arthur until the bell rang. She was desolate. She went again on Friday. It rained, and he was not there. Her clothes were ruined. In the bus, she wept silently.
When she got home she took a bath. She lay in the warm water despairing of romance, convinced that she was singled out by fate to be deprived of the blissful companionship of young men. The water cooled and she got out and put on a dressing gown. The doorbell rang. It was her friend Eileen, to see if she was coming to choir practice. She said she was too tired from walking at Kew.
For self-esteem, and to gratify Eileen's curiosity, Alma invented a story. It owed a certain amount to Ethel M. Dell. She said Arthur had secretly engaged to meet her under the yew. When she had got there, he was nowhere in sight. Then she had heard him call her name, softly, above her head. He was sitting in the fork of the tree. He had jumped down without another word and snatched her into his arms and kissed her with savage passion. First she had frozen in his grasp, then her blood had quickened and she had summoned more strength than she knew she possessed and forced him away. She had not run away. She had faced him, her lips burning, her bosom heaving, and shamed him with her eyes. Hot-faced, he had told her that her beauty had overwhelmed him. He had never before committed such a lapse of decorum, and he apologised, but he could give no undertaking that it would not happen again, so uncontrollable was his passion for her. His honesty had surprised Alma. Behind the brute force of his action and the candour of his words she had felt the vitality of the man encompassing her. She had relented to the extent of allowing him to walk beside her to the teashop. There he had asked her to be his guest at the Cambridge May Ball. As if mesmerised by his smouldering eyes, she had agreed to go.
To give substance to the fantasy, she persuaded Eileen to go with her to Gosling's next afternoon to choose material for a ball gown. It relieved her despair unimaginably.
She kept up the pretence. At the end of May, she related her account of the Ball to Eileen. Arthur had behaved impeccably until the small hours on a punt below Magdalene Bridge when he had brushed her cheek with his lips and in a whisper asked her to marry him. Impulsively she had drawn him to her and given her tremulous lips to his. She had almost forgotten to say yes. It was to be a secret engagement until Christmas, when Arthur's parents would be back from the Amazon, where they were missionaries.
Alma surprised herself with her brilliance in fabricating the details. Already she had thought ahead to explain why there would be no engagement ring at Christmas. Arthur's parents would disappear in the jungle. Arthur would lead the rescue party, and be stricken by an incurable tropical disease. Or he might be felled by a poisoned arrow.
Real events provided Alma with a more enthralling plot. In August of that year, Germany invaded Belgium and the next day Britain entere
d the war. Across the country, thousands upon thousands of young men enlisted. Undergraduates at the universities abandoned their studies to fight for King and Country. There was no doubt in Alma's mind that Arthur was among them. In September she told Eileen she had received a letter from France. He had obtained a commission in the Royal Fusiliers. She realised that she could end the deception as soon as she liked by saying he was one of the fallen, but she was unwilling to do it. She wanted to be one of the brave women praying for their men to be spared. She was knitting balaclavas for the Red Cross Society and she told the local committee that she would be content if someone's husband or lover in the trenches was comforted. When one of them asked, she answered without hesitation that the man she had promised to marry was out there.
So as the war progressed, Arthur acquired a service record of distinction. He served in the trenches for two years. Alma awarded him the Military Cross for his gallantry at Neuve Chapelle. Towards the end of 1916 she attached him to the Royal Flying Corps. He was given a flight to command and he led scores of daring raids over Germany. One of the Red Cross ladies whose brother worked for Handley-Page asked which machine Arthur flew. Alma replied that he never mentioned such things in the letters. He wrote passionately about their few, precious days-together in England before the war. He thought only of coming home and getting married.
Alma looked forward to the Armistice as keenly as anyone, and when it came she realised that Arthur was still alive. Eileen was thrilled for them both. She wanted to know how soon they would name the day. Alma gave the matter some thought. She said there might be some delay. Arthur was in hospital. He had caught the influenza that had become an epidemic in Europe. In his letter he had described it as a mild case, but damnably inconvenient.
When Eileen saw Alma next, she was wearing black. She was incredibly brave.
She really mourned the loss of Arthur in a way no-one could understand. There was a void in her life. People were kind. They urged her to go out more. A new age had dawned. Pleasures were taken in public. Cinemas, dance halls and night clubs were opening everywhere. Alma was still young, but she felt as if she belonged in another era. She was not ready for the twenties. She was unimpressed by young men.
'A little wider, please,' said Mr Baranov. 'Tell me if this hurts.'
She was certain it would not. Mr Baranov was a marvellous dentist. He would be a marvellous lover.
'Some of my patients ask me to put them to sleep — with chloroform, you know — but I try to convince them that they will feel no pain this way.'
Mr Baranov belonged to the more dignified world of the prewar years. You would not see him at a public dance. His setting was the private dinner party, where his conversation must have sparkled like the cut glass. Everything he said seemed brilliant for being spoken by that sonorous voice. For a Russian, he had mastered the language amazingly well. You would not have known he was a foreigner. Alma supposed he had received the education of an aristocrat, probably from an English tutor.
'There's a dentist in the Strand,' said Mr Baranov. 'An American. He specialises in crown, bar and bridge work. He advertises every week in The Stage, the journal for theatrical performers. In his advertisement this fellow actually provides a list of his most illustrious patients, the actors and actresses who have passed through his surgery. Presumably he does it with their permission, so I don't object to that. I wouldn't do it myself, of course. 1 promise you that you won't find your name in the papers next week. What I do find objectionable in his advertisements — and others like them — is the slogan American Painless Dentistry, as if in some mysterious way the Americans are the only people capable of treating their patients without causing them pain. I'll tell you the secret of American Painless Dentistry. It's good, old-fashioned chloroform, Miss Webster. Personally, I use it only as a last resort. If you take care, you can operate without causing pain. Would you rinse your mouth, please?'
A tumbler of water was put into Alma's hand, and the nurse held out a porcelain bowl.
'Let's take another look,' said Mr Baranov.
She believed him. He was incapable of hurting her. She could feel the slight pressure of his thigh and stomach against her right arm as he leaned forward to examine her mouth. She tried not to tense the arm. But sooner or later she would have to find some way of signalling to him that he was the most adorable man she had ever met.
'Mind you, some of the things that are perpetrated in the name of dentistry are indefensible. I remember reading something before the war about that doctor in Holloway who murdered his wife. Crippen. I don't suppose you remember. You must have been in pigtails at the time. It created quite a sensation because when the police called at the house — there was a gossip among the neighbours, I think — Dr Crippen and his — if you'll pardon the expression — mistress took fright and booked a passage to Canada. The young lady, Ethel something or other, dressed up as a boy and Crippen shaved off his moustache and went without his glasses to pose as her father. The disguise couldn't have been too convincing, because the captain of the ship spotted who they were on the first day at sea. He sent back a message on the wireless and Scotland Yard sent a man on a faster ship to arrest them at the end of the voyage. Inspector Dew. Rinse out, please.'
Mr Baranov adjusted the light while the nurse mixed some paste for the filling. He came close again.
'Nearly done. I expect you are wondering what Dr Crippen has to do with the dental profession. Well, before the murder, he was in partnership with a young fellow-American. They called themselves the Yale Tooth Specialists. Crippen was a medical man if he was anything at all, so he looked after the business side of things and helped occasionally, and Ethel was the nurse. Now this is the point of the story. Ethel suffered from headaches. Neuralgia. They decided the pain was caused by her teeth, so they extracted them. Twenty-one teeth at one sitting. The poor girl was no older than you are now. Criminal. I wish I could remember the girl's surname. It was something rather exotic'
Alma tried to say "Le Neve" without moving her mouth.
'Yes, Miss Webster. I know it's a little uncomfortable. Just bear with me a few minutes more.'
She remembered the Crippen case. The papers had been full of it for weeks. It was in 1910, when she was seventeen, and reading Ethel M. Dell. She had been deeply affected by it. She had felt nothing but pity for the two fugitives pacing the deck of that poky little steamer in their pathetic disguises for ten days, while thanks to a sharp-eyed ship's captain and the miracle of wireless every Tom, Dick and Harry who could read a newspaper knew that Inspector Dew would be waiting with the handcuffs in Toronto. She had wept for them when the news of the arrest came through. She had tried to decide whether she, too, could have faced that moment with dignity. Love, and love alone, must have fortified them.
'There.' Mr Baranov removed the instruments from her mouth. 'Try not to use that side of your mouth this evening. Nurse will arrange the next appointment. Is there anything the matter?'
'I was going to say that the name of the woman was Le Neve, Ethel Le Neve.'
'So it was. You do have an excellent memory.'
'Here in England, it was in all the newspapers.'
'Oh, I remember that.'
'You were in England in 1910?'
'And all my life,' said Mr Baranov with a smile.
'But
'You thought I was Russian, did you? It's a reasonable assumption, and you aren't the first to make it. My father's name was Henry Brown. He worked the halls as a tight-rope walker.' He gave a rapid mime, with arms outstretched. 'The Great Baranov.'
Alma was stunned. 'So you are English?'
'I was christened Walter Brown. I say, you do look pale.'
'Your father called himself Baranov for the music halls?'
'And 1 adopted it for my signboard. In this work, it's no handicap to have a foreign-sounding name. The English don't believe they're getting a decent dentist if he has a name like Walter Brown.'
She was speechless.
>
'You're frowning,' he said. 'It's quite legal, you know. For my father it was simply a stage-name, but I decided to get it done by deed poll. I was about to get married, and my wife-to-be was strongly in favour, being on the stage herself. Lydia Baranov — not a bad name for an actress, is it? Perhaps you've heard of her. She's quite well known in the theatre.'
His wife was alive.
Alma swayed slightly. She had to get out of this place. She turned away from him and crossed the room. Tears were blurring her vision. The nurse held the door open and put an appointment card into Alma's hand.
Out in the street she tore it in half and dropped the pieces down the nearest drain.
2
Another young woman featured in the case. Her name was Poppy Duke.
Lord's Day Observance operated in reverse for Poppy. She rested for six days and worked on the Sabbath. Her place of work was the Petticoat Lane market. She was eighteen, bright-eyed, with a smile that teased and natural golden hair in tight, fine curls. She was a brilliant thief. She had slim hands with long fingers that could slip a wallet from its owner's pocket as she bumped against him and said, 'Do you mind?' She could unfasten a handbag and the purse inside and remove the paper money in one continuous movement imperceptible to the owner or the stallholder trying to extract it more legitimately. She was tolerated in the market because it was said that she was a sort of modern Robin Hood. She robbed only the visitors who came to look rather than to buy. And she employed up to half a dozen children as stalls and stickmen, and paid them generously.
This morning she had hardly started when she spotted a perfect quarry, a youngish man in a smart suit and a trilby, with an officer's trenchcoat draped round his shoulders like a cape. He had stopped at a stall selling tea and caused some annoyance by producing a pound note. He claimed he had no change.
The False Inspector Dew Page 2