Fifth Member

by Claire Rayner

  The phone box was, to her huge relief, empty. It smeiled repulsively of old cigarette smoke, human sweat and urine, but she was too excited to care; she was just grateful that it took coins and not phone cards. She was trembling slightly as she put a pound coin in the slot and then dialled the incident room number.

  It was engaged. She swore under her breath and tried to remember another of the relevant numbers; they had several. After a moment she managed to pull one out of her head and dialled again. This time she got a police constable she didn’t know.

  ‘I have to speak to WPC Bentley,’ she almost shouted it. ‘It’s urgent!’

  ‘She’s on the phone,’ the young voice said, clearly unintimidated by her demand. ‘If you give me a number I’ll see if she’ll call you back.’

  ‘No,’ George shrieked. ‘It’s urgent, dreadfully urgent! It’s me she’s calling, probably. For God’s sake! Interrupt her and tell her it’s Dr Barnabas.’

  He tried to argue but she shrieked again and this time he obeyed. It seemed like hours later that at last Julie’s voice clattered in her ears again. ‘Dr B., whatever’s the matter! Davies said you swore at him.’

  ‘I probably did. Listen, Julie, did you get hold of Roop?’

  ‘I was trying to get you so I could tell you!’ Julie sounded aggrieved. ‘Only they said you’d gone out.’

  ‘I’m using a telephone box,’ she said. ‘Safer. Now, listen, please. I was wrong about who I thought was the criminal. It isn’t Jasper. He’s involved, of course, but he just does as he’s told. The murderer is someone else. I’m almost sure of it but I have to go and see someone to get another piece of information. And then I need you to do something. It’s really important, Julie, so do it. I want you to check trains and timetables and planes and passenger lists and all that sort of thing …’ She explained as fast as she could and when at last she hung up she stood trembling slightly. It was so tantalizingly close, the answer, and yet … and there was still Lord Scroop to wonder about …

  But right now she had other things to do. She pushed out of the phone box to take a deep breath of the cold clean air outside, and then ran across to the meter where she’d left her car. It had a ticket on it because she hadn’t stopped to put money in the slot when she’d left it there, forgetting she wasn’t with Gus, but she just pulled it off and dropped it in the road. She had more important things to worry about than that.

  She took the car out of the square at an amazing rate, squealing the brakes as she pulled sharply to the side to avoid a slow-moving van, but then she was on her way, heading for the hospital as fast as she could. She had to talk to Nanny Lyons and confirm what she suspected was the case. When she’d done that, and when Julie had done her checks and shown that he could have been there in every one of the places at the relevant time, as George was sure he had, the story would be complete. I’ll have cracked it, she thought jubilantly. And to hell with Rupert Dudley!

  The hospital car park was busy and she realized after a moment of frustrated rage that it must be visiting time; certainly there was a great deal of jockeying for positions going on. But again she was reckless, and just dumped her car where she could and got out and ran, ignoring the outraged cries from other frustrated parkers that followed her.

  She was almost at the hospital doors when she felt the hand on her shoulder, and whirled to find herself staring into the face of a police constable.

  ‘I want you, lady,’ he said firmly. ‘On account of several things. Like not paying at a meter, then throwing away a legal document, viz a parking ticket, and driving dangerously in the market square in the middle of the town, followed by exceeding the speed limit on the way here, and finally parking your car in a manner that makes it likely to cause an obstruction. These are criminal offences and I want you to come to the station to –’

  ‘Oh, you idiot!’ She almost howled it. ‘Can’t you see this is an emergency and that’s why I drove like that?’

  ‘There isn’t an emergency department at this hospital,’ the policeman said with sublime logic. ‘So it can’t be. Now, will you come along with me or do I have to arrest you?’

  ‘Oh, go to hell,’ George snapped. She tried to run away and up the steps, but he grabbed her.

  ‘I arrest you on a charge of resisting arrest,’ he said with relish. ‘You do not have to say anything, but anything you do …’

  They made her go back to the police station in the square under the windows of which she had been parked (which was why the police had had so clear a view of her various motoring offences) to show them her ID and make lengthy explanations before they at last agreed to let her go back to the hospital. By the time they did that she was almost frantic, convinced in the most absurd way that her quarry had somehow got wind of her activities and would either escape or do something dreadful. She was filled with foreboding and it took a great deal of conscious effort to convince herself that this was just the result of being kept from talking to Nanny Lyons, which was the thing she wanted to do most of all. But at last they said she could go, and that she’d be notified when she had to appear in court to answer the charges against her, and she fled into the square. It took her another ten minutes to get a taxi, for the small rank that stood there was quite empty, but at last she was moving through the streets, albeit at a maddeningly sober pace, on her way back to the hospital and Nanny Lyons.

  It was getting dark now, the short autumn afternoon dwindling into a surprisingly deep cobalt blue, and she felt anxiety seeping away a little. She was just getting over-excited, she told herself. It was no more than that; there was no reason to get so agitated.

  But when she got to the hospital, she found the bed in the side ward on Hainault Ward was empty, and Nanny Lyons and Dr Kelley were sitting there, the old lady in floods of tears, her eyes swollen so much she could barely see out of them.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ George said as she stood at the door and looked at the crumpled bed. ‘What happened? Where is she?’

  ‘Oh, doctor, doctor, I’m so sorry. But there was nothing I could do. He came in and said she was too ill to be in this stupid cottage hospital and that I was wicked to have let her be fetched here and I was sacked and never to let him set eyes on me again. And he took her away, he just picked her up and carried her off and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Oh, doctor, what shall I do? He said he never wants to see me again. My boy. My Edward, he sacked me, he hates me, he never wants to see me again. Oh, what shall I do?’

  35

  In the end they had to treat the old woman like a patient: admit her and put her to bed. She was in such paroxysms of misery that the only thing that could soothe her, said Dr Kelley, would be an injection of a tranquillizer.

  ‘She’s an old woman,’ she said briskly as she wrote up the dosage on the notes. ‘And she’ll work herself into heaven knows what if this goes on. Let me bring her down, see to it she gets a night’s sleep, and then, tomorrow, she’ll be fit to talk. But not right now.’

  ‘Please,’ George begged. ‘Please. There’s just one vital question I have to ask her. No one else will know the answer. I have to ask her. If I don’t, I’ll – well, I just have to know. There’s Marietta out there with him somewhere, and God knows where, and I’m not even sure I’m right about his motives. I could be wrong about what’s been going on, but I don’t think so. Please, Dr Kelley.’

  ‘What is it you need to know?’ Dr Kelley set her head on one side and looked at George with bird-bright eyes. ‘I have to believe it’s important – you look almost as desperate as poor Mrs Lyons.’

  George took a deep breath. There could be no harm in telling this person what it was; she was a doctor too, and would treat such matters confidentially. Wouldn’t she?

  George checked. ‘You won’t tell anyone I asked? In case I’m wrong?’

  ‘Not a word,’ said Dr Kelley solemnly and her eyes were even brighter. She hasn’t had as much fun as this for years, George found herself thinking. That’s why she�
�s so helpful. Suddenly she knew she could trust her. Her curiosity wasn’t based on anything at all threatening.

  ‘One of the victims of the Ripper killings was the Bishop of –’

  ‘Droitwich,’ Dr Kelley finished. ‘I know. I’ve read all about this case. Who hasn’t?’

  ‘Oh. Well, yes. But he wasn’t always a bishop, you see, or even a Churchman. And I think his previous occupation might be linked with his being a victim.’

  ‘He was a doctor.’ Dr Kelley smiled at her before turning to the bed to swab Mrs Lyons’ upper arm ready to give her the tranquillizer. ‘But that was general knowledge, wasn’t it? It certainly was in these parts.’

  ‘Perhaps it was. I wasn’t sure. And I need to ask Mrs Lyons if he – well, there’s just one thing she can tell me and only she can. So please.’

  ‘You’d better ask her fast,’ Dr Kelley said, looking down on Nanny Lyons, who was still rolling her head restlessly on her pillow as tears ran out from beneath her closed swollen eyelids. ‘This is intramuscular. It’ll hit her like a poleaxe any moment now.’

  George crouched beside the bed at once, setting her lips as near as she could to the old lady’s ear, holding her head still with one hand under her chin.

  ‘Nanny?’ she murmured. ‘Nanny Pushkin?’ as the pet name came back to her mind, and the old lady tried to open her eyes and seemed to stop weeping for a second as she let her lips curl in a travesty of a smile. ‘Dear Nanny Pushkin,’ George whispered, ‘do tell me. Who was the doctor who did the Caesar when the twins were born? Where did he come from? Do tell me, dearest Pushkin.’

  The jerky movements the old body had been making had slowed down and now almost stopped, and George was able to let go of the chin. The drug was working, and working fast as Dr Kelley had warned her.

  ‘Please tell me, Pushkin,’ George said a little more loudly, letting the desperation into her voice, and now the old eyes managed to open a little and stare into hers.

  ‘Doctor from Ardenford,’ she muttered. It was almost impossible to hear her. ‘Doctor …’ and then the eyes closed again and she was asleep, and no matter how often George murmured in her ear, it made no difference.

  ‘She’s away with the fairies,’ Dr Kelley remarked with satisfaction. ‘You’ll have to wait till tomorrow now.’

  ‘Oh, bell’ George scrambled to her feet. ‘Hell and damn and – and –’

  ‘That’s pretty mild,’ Dr Kelley said. ‘You should hear me when I get going. Was it Dr Lutter you were asking about? I couldn’t quite hear because you were whispering, but I did think, perhaps …’

  George, who had been brushing down her knees, straightened and stared at her. ‘You know – knew him?’

  ‘Knew him?’ Dr Kelley looked a little scornful. ‘He was a houseman of mine for a while. When this was a general hospital and I was still doing general surgery. Let’s see – that would have been about the middle fifties, give or take a year or two. Clever fella with his hands, I thought. It was a dreadful waste when he got religion and went off all evangelical, but there you go. He did all right for himself in the end.’ She seemed to sober then as she remembered. ‘Up to a point, that is. Short of being murdered, you understand.’

  George closed her eyes in a sort of giddy relief. ‘So he was capable of doing a Caesar in a private home?’

  ‘On the district, you mean?’ Dr Kelley nodded. ‘Lord, yes. We were doing tricky emergency deliveries anywhere back then – long before the maternity reforms, that was. I seem to remember a couple of emergency Caesars done out in the depths of the country in those bad old days, so called. Oh, yes indeed. He could have done one. He was a GP, of course, not hospital based, but he worked here on shifts as a houseman. It was common practice then.’ Dr Kelley looked wistful for a moment. ‘It was a great time, actually. Before all these bloody reforms and ECRs and block contracts and the rest of that crap.’

  George leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheeks. ‘Dr Kelley, you’re great, fantastic. Thank you. The last piece – but one – is in. I’ve got my case, near as dammit. Thank you. Take care of her, will you? I’ll be in touch again as soon as I can.’ And she turned and ran from the ward, leaving Dr Kelley staring after her.

  She waited for as long as she could for a positive outcome, sitting in the same police station where she’d been interrogated and charged about her motoring behaviour, but this time as a tolerated representative of another force – but only just tolerated. No one spoke to her as she sat in the radio room at the back of the small station, listening to the crackling voices of the officers out in cars looking for a black Rover, licence Charlie Alpha Bravo … The number was called over so often that it seemed to have burned itself into her brain. As did their failure to find it.

  ‘The house,’ she said aloud for the umpteenth time. ‘Why aren’t they searching the house?’

  ‘I did start to tell you, doctor,’ the detective sergeant who was in charge of the room spoke with a heavy courtesy. ‘One of the cars did go there, first call off, but there was total silence, no response. So –’

  ‘But he wouldn’t answer the door, for God’s sake!’ George almost wailed it. ‘Not if he’s hiding her there!’

  ‘We don’t have no warrant to search his house,’ the sergeant said. ‘And’ – his voice rose as she opened her mouth to interrupt him – ‘according to our Inspector Malvern, we’ve also got no call to apply for one. They’re only looking for the car because Dr Kelley at the hospital said the woman is ill and might need further care. But I have to tell you, there’s no law being broken here, as far as we can see.’

  ‘But I told you! He’s a suspect in the Ripper case!’

  ‘We haven’t been told that officially,’ the sergeant said, sounding wooden. He was clearly unimpressed by George. ‘And we haven’t been able to get hold of this Inspector Dudley you mentioned, and the people on duty at Ratcliffe Street said they know of no call out to bring Lord Durleigh in and so –’

  ‘But they wouldn’t know!’ George cried. ‘I’ve only just found out it’s him who is the killer! Once I get the chance to talk to Dudley it’ll be obvious to him and to you that –’

  ‘Well, doctor.’ He was even more stolid. ‘I’ll be delighted to talk to the Inspector, and so will our Inspector Malvern, but we haven’t been able to reach him, you see. I’m sorry.’

  She gave up. She’d promised herself she’d leave it to the police, that she wouldn’t meddle, that she would in fact keep her promise to Gus, but how could she leave things this way? That the search for Marietta being organized by this local force was perfunctory was obvious to her, and indeed the calls from the area cars were now becoming fewer and fewer. More of the calls were about pub brawls and domestic spats in remote villages than the search for the missing patient. So she got to her feet, tightened the belt around the waist of her coat, nodded icily at the sergeant and bade him a firm goodnight.

  ‘You’ll be leaving Durleighton then?’ he said with obvious relief.

  She stared coldly at him. ‘No, I shall not,’ she said. ‘I’m going to do some looking on my own account. If Inspector Dudley is tracked down, you can tell him that I had no choice because you wouldn’t – Well, tell him I had to. I’m using my car – you’ve got the number on file – so he can come and look for me. But I’ve wasted enough time here. Goodnight.’

  She collected her car, moving quickly, thinking perhaps that in spite of his clear unenthusiasm for her company the sergeant might still think it wiser to keep her beside him, but the square remained silent and still as she let in the clutch and moved the car out into the centre. As she headed for the road that led to the two houses where she had first found Marietta, her mobile rang, and she cursed as she tried to find where she had put it. It was under the dashboard, and she reached it and slammed down the receiver button, and almost shouted, ‘Hello,’ into it. ‘George Barnabas, here.’ But all she got was a metallic voice intoning, ‘You have messages. Call one two one.’

 
She parked the car neatly to take the messages. This was no time to get yet another ticket from these damned local police. She switched on the car’s internal light and peered at the phone and cursed again. It showed a low power level in her battery and she was even angrier with herself for forgetting either to take it with her in her pocket or to switch it off when she left it in the car.

  The battery only lasted long enough for her to get most of the first message, but it didn’t matter. The message drove everything else out of her mind.

  ‘Dr B.’ It was Julie’s voice, high with excitement. ‘I’ll try not to give anything away, since this is a mobile. Listen carefully. You were right. I’ve collected all the info on times and planes and tickets and yes, he did – he could have been there for every one of the events. Inspector Dudley had already thought of it – you see? He said you always have to think first of family – and that’s why I’ve got it so fast. The checks were already done. Oh, and Inspector Dudley is –’ Then the battery died. She tried to switch it on again to get the message back, but it refused to stay alive.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. She had what she wanted. The new Ripper had to be Edward Caspar-Wynette-Gondor, now Lord Durleigh (and even as she thought that, a memory again knocked at her awareness and then skittered away; but she ignored it). He had had the opportunity, according to Julie, and with the exception of just one case, that of Lord Scroop, he had a clear motive. And at the moment he also had Marietta. She clearly had knowledge that would incriminate him. Probably she had known, as a member of the family, the true facts about the twins’ birth and resulting seniority, and also that the three of them weren’t nearly as matey with each other in reality as they put on a show of being, and had told him that she knew or suspected that he was the criminal. But the risk was clear. He’d used Jasper to drug her – but why was Jasper so helpful? So many questions! She had to find Marietta somehow and get her out of danger. And she was sure that she was at the remote house at the end of the lane, no matter what the police sergeant had said.