“Have a look at this, Edwin ... It's the Hertfordshire Gazette ...”
She brought the paper over, and perched on the arm of my chair, to show me the article:
“'Hitchin Girl with Leukaemia Travels to Switzerland for Revolutionary Treatment ...' This is your little girl who was on our ward last month. Sister pointed it out to me this morning ...
'After an appeal which raised twenty thousand pounds, local girl Laura Parker, aged six, was taken by her parents to the Lausanne Clinic of Dr Hugo Robespierre, where his revolutionary treatment for acute leukaemia has already had almost miraculous results. Professor Robespierre uses a unique formulation, believed to contain both Queen Bee Jelly and Pregnant Mare Serum ... 'We had almost given up hope for Laura,' stated Mr Parker, 'after seeing the leading specialists in this country – until we heard of Dr Robespierre's treatment. Thanks to the kindness of the citizens of Hitchin, our little girl will be given another chance of life ...' ”
3
Tuesday, 9th November: I had brief glimpses of pubs and antique shops, as we threaded our way slowly through the centre of Royston; then we were navigating a large roundabout, crossing the A10 – the main London to Cambridge Road – before accelerating up the Newmarket Road. Within minutes we had passed through the grey streets with their grey terraces and their dim street lights, and were out into open countryside. Here it was pitch black, though only just gone seven o'clock.
Our headlights cut through the darkness. We overtook an occasional car, and encountered headlights from a few oncoming vehicles, but, as we progressed further, the traffic petered out, and we found ourselves alone. Paula Howard drove well; by now I had become accustomed to being a passenger, and was even beginning to enjoy it. The powerful Triumph TR2 sports car rushed through a succession of villages and small hamlets with the noise of an express train ...
We slowed on the crest of a hill: beneath us crouched a low sprawling building, lit up like a Christmas tree; Paula turned the steering wheel, and we coasted into a spacious floodlit car park. She switched off the ignition, and we sat for a few minutes, listening to the cooling engine ticking in the silence. We got out, and made our way to an entrance marked “Restaurant”.
The Ace of Spades was a well-known hostelry, to be found on the A505 shortly before it joined the main A11 trunk road to Newmarket. Its barn-like dining-room, the effect heightened by prominent oak beams, was half-empty, not too surprising for a cold November Tuesday. A clock was striking the half-hour (half-past seven), as a waiter helped us out of our coats, and showed us to a table by a blank black window. Paula's hair gleamed silver and her violet eyes sparkled mischievously, while she scanned the intimidating red and gold leather menu. The lighting was so subdued that I had to allow a few minutes for my eyes to accommodate before I could read mine.
“You choose for us both, Edwin ... But let's go Dutch.”
I agreed to attempt the daunting a la carte menu and wine list, but insisted on paying for us both:
“I'm old-fashioned about these things!”
In the end I ordered for us avocado pear with prawns, followed by Steak Diane; and a red Rhone wine – Chateauneuf du Pape – mainly because I knew how to pronounce it.
“So clever of you to chose all this, Edwin ...”
We started on our entrée. She was as breathtakingly beautiful as ever, as she leaned over the small table towards me, her breasts emphasised by the tight cream V-neck sweater and the pearl necklace nestling in the V. While we sipped our wine in silence, the waiter approached our table with a trolley; we watched as he poured brandy over the steaks and then ignited it with a match. The spectacle – observed by most of the diners – seemed to last for ages. Finally, the waiter cleared the utensils onto the trolley, and, with a muted “Bon apetit,” left us to our meal.
“Did you see that ... He almost singed my eyebrows,” murmured Paula.
“Well, tell me all about these mysterious deaths you've been having at St Peter's, Edwin. With your sleuthing skills I would expect you to have discovered the murderer by now, especially after your success with the Whitechapel Slasher ... Need I be scared – or will you protect me?”
We had dismantled and stowed away the soft top of the racing-green TR2; however the car's heater was efficient, and we were well muffled in our coats and scarves, so we didn't feel the cold. The speedometer needle touched eighty. The crisp chill air rushed past, as we shot down the empty road, heading back to Hitchin. After a bottle of wine between us and a large brandy, I felt mildly tipsy, yet elated. I leant back in my seat; I gazed up at the luminous blue-black sky, with a crescent moon and the Plough constellation wheeling around the Polar Star – the Northern Star. A quotation from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar came into my head: “But I am constant as the Northern Star.” Was this just before he was assassinated?
“What's that idiot doing?” Paula had been glancing regularly in her rear-view mirror for the last few minutes. “He's been trailing us for some time, hasn't overtaken when given the chance ...”
I turned around, and there, about twenty yards back, sat a high-powered motorbike. I could just make out the rider behind the powerful headlight beam, kitted out in goggles and helmet, enclosed entirely in black leather. I hadn't heard him because of the roar of our own engine and the rushing of the wind. Who would want to follow us on this road at this time of night?
“He's just playing silly devils. Well, we'll soon see about that ...”
We were now on a straight stretch of road, and she put down her foot on the accelerator; I felt the sports car surge forward as though it had previously been stationary. I watched, as the speedometer needle climbed to one hundred and ten. Behind us, the motorbike's headlight shrank to a distant glimmer, before disappearing behind the brow of a hill, never to reappear.
“That'll teach him ...”
She slowed marginally, and my pulse regained a more comfortable beat. I relaxed. We were again alone in the enormity of the universe. In a distant village, two street lamps cast a feeble glow. The road narrowed and curved; tall black hedges seemed to bear down on us. Paula double-declutched expertly, accelerating out of a bend; as she changed gear, her hand brushed my thigh ...
“This is very superior stuff – Remy Martin Cognac,” I murmured approvingly.
We were back in her room in the doctors' annexe. We cradled our brandy balloons while coffee percolated with a soothing sound on top of the chest of drawers. Paula's smart three-quarter length coat (totally unsuitable for driving a sports car) and my more pedestrian duffel-coat lay discarded on the floor.
“You'll never believe this, Edwin. The day after I started here, Russell Potter barged into my room at dead of night, without even a knock on the door, presumably with evil intent. I think he expected me to be pleased, to invite him in, to fall into his arms ... Of course I just told him to bugger off, and he slunk out with his tail between his legs. It was hilarious. I didn't know at the time that he had a wife ...” She smiled in reminiscence.
“What about Dan Ellington,” I enquired. “Has he tried it on with you?”
“No, not yet ... He's very attractive, though; but also quite creepy: Have you noticed those eyes?”
A gramophone played a nostalgic half-forgotten song softly in a corner, “Night and day, you are the one ...”
A solitary table lamp illuminated the room. We spoke softly so as not to disturb the occupants of the adjoining rooms, our speech punctuated by long pauses.
I heard the sound of a motorbike approaching the hospital. After a short while the engine cut out. Is that our phantom motorcyclist? I wondered. Does he live in the hospital? What took him so long to get back?
“Though near to me or far/ No matter darling where you are/ I think of you, Night and day ...”
The music faded into silence.
“I do like working here,” Paula whispered dreamily after a while. “It's such a lovely little hospital ... The only drawback is that you are leaving so soon ...”
&nbs
p; Her mood changed. She appeared to have come to a decision: she finished her brandy in a single swallow; then she was on her feet, swaying slightly. Paula pulled the jumper over her head in one deft movement; her hands went behind her back, her bra snapped open and joined the jumper on the floor. She took my hands and helped me out of my chair – then placed my hands on her breasts. (The memory of those perfect breasts, the look, the heft, would return unbidden many times thereafter, stopping me in my tracks – intruding even into my grief over Jill.)
I felt myself being expertly undressed; at the same time she was covering me with kisses, at first lazily, but later becoming increasingly urgent and passionate. The blankets were lifted, and I found myself in her bed, her warm body and delicious weight pressing me into the mattress. Another quote from Shakespeare – about alcohol – came unbidden to my mind: “It stimulates the desire but diminisheth the performance ...”
4
Wednesday, 10th November: It was just after midnight; I was taking a cup of cocoa with the night nurses on Ward Ten, having completed my customary round of the patients before retiring. The phone gave a muted ring, and was picked up deftly by Staff-Nurse Stoppard before it could be repeated.
“It's for you, Edwin ...”
I took the proffered handset with a feeling of resignation and minor irritation.
“Hello, Dr Scott ... I understand you are on duty ... Sorry to disturb you ... It's staff-nurse on Ward Two ... I gather you are covering us ... Could you come down and help with a drip ... it seems to have stopped running!”
Damn, I thought. They've probably taken too long to change the bottle ... Hope it hasn't all clotted ... Don't fancy having to put in a new cannula at this time of night.
However, all I said aloud was: “OK, I'll be right over.”
I replaced the receiver, finished my cocoa, thanked the nurses, and went.
Ward Two was one of the children's wards. A plump matronly student nurse of about twenty awaited me in the office, where she was busily writing reports, her glasses perched half-way down the bridge of her nose.
“It's Laura Parker ... little girl of six with acute lymphatic leukaemia. She was readmitted this afternoon – yesterday afternoon – only came back from Switzerland the day before ... She's very sick ...”
Her voice was hushed, but I thought I could detect a trace of outrage. She ushered me through the darkened ward to the far end, where the child was lying quietly. The bedside light was shaded, but I could see that her eyes were open. They seemed huge, and appeared to burn as she gazed intently at me.
“, Laura ... I've just come to look at this drip ... see if I can get it going again ... I promise I won't hurt you, sweetheart.”
The pint of blood was only about half-way through. While I watched, I saw a drip in the glass chamber – good, it hadn't stopped completely!
“Her haemoglobin was only forty percent on admission. She's been started on steroids. We were told to run the blood in very slowly ...”
“Have you got some heparin, Nurse?”
She held out the prepared syringe. I checked the cannula, to ensure that it was still in the vein, and not going into the tissues; then I disconnected the end of the tubing; I flushed the heparin solution through the cannula, relieved that it flowed easily, reconnected it, and turned the drip full on for a couple of minutes; finally, I adjusted the flow rate to ten drops a minute.
“Her skin seems cold – she's probably vasoconstricted,” I whispered to the nurse. “Have you a heat-pad or a hot-water bottle to warm up her arm? And best adjust the splint ... make her a bit more comfortable.”
I turned back to the patient.
“Nighty-night, Laura. Sweet dreams ...”
I gave her other hand a gentle squeeze and watched her eye-lids close, before leaving her bedside and following the night nurse quietly back to sister's office.
“Poor little soul,” she murmured. “She's just skin and bone ... Did you see that bruising ... She shouldn't have been subjected to all that upheaval ... Traipsing off to some charlatan in Switzerland ... I think it's cruel!”
In the dim light, tears sparkled in her eyes.
Next day the little girl was dead.
5
Friday, 12th November: We met up in the saloon bar of the Windmill Inn on the South Side of Clapham Common, not far from our old school. It was half-past seven, and the place was empty, save for the publican. He had changed somewhat since we had last been here – his paunch had expanded, his scalp was now almost completely bald, and he sported a florid ginger beard; his whole attention appeared to be focussed on the glasses which he was polishing energetically, though I was certain that he was doing his utmost to eavesdrop our conversation.
I had come to a reunion of the Four Musketeers – Johnny East, Colin Thomas, Brian Pitt and myself. We had been the sole members of the first biology set in the sixth form of nineteen-fifty-three to nineteen-fifty-five, when the biology laboratories had opened at Clapham Grammar School for Boys. I was the last to arrive, and joined my friends at a table in the bay window. “Pitty” wore a blue suit which appeared too tight for him; the rest of us were more casually dressed, all having abandoned our overcoats on a spare seat. The man behind the bar had interrupted his polishing, to take my order; now we all sipped our pints of best bitter contemplatively, each waiting for someone else to break the silence, each inhibited by the presence of the landlord in the silent room. A log fire crackled in the open hearth. The door pinged in the public bar next door, and our host drifted off reluctantly. We broke into conversation almost simultaneously, then stopped courteously, so that one of us could proceed unhampered.
Johnny was first; he started slowly, tentatively, but his voice gradually grew in strength and animation as he delivered his progress report. He still had his military bearing, but he had let his hair grow, and now looked quite trendy. Since we had last met, at Christmas time in nineteen-fifty-five, he had spent the whole of his National Service in the paratroops, which he loved; he had performed many “drops”, until these had become quite routine. His chief regret was that he had never seen active service.
“I applied to join the SAS, but they turned me down, because I wasn't fit enough!”
Ridiculous, I thought, outraged for him even now.
A rueful smile lit up his handsome face.
“I took up my teacher's training at Furzedown College – you know, just off Tooting Bec Common – when I was demobbed ... It was really good, surprising what I learned ... I've finished now ... Working at a Comprehensive School in Stockwell ... Some of those fifth formers are quite rough and tough – the girls almost worse than the boys! My para training has come in quite handy, the kids are impressed ... Helps to keep discipline in class ... I'm teaching Zoology and Physics – if Philphil and Old Hoffy could only see me now ... ”
Colin Thomas had put on weight; he looked content and prosperous, leaning back in his tapestry chair; he stubbed out his second cigarette in the ashtray by his tankard.
“Got a good two/two degree at the London School of Pharmacy three years ago ... Now a partner at a retail chemist's in Clapham South. Senior partner away much of the time ... Run the place on my own ... Probably earn as much as the three of you put together ... Thinking of settling down, buy a house, might even marry ...”
Whatever happened to the taciturn bruiser of my school-days? I wondered.
Pitty still had his army haircut and military bearing. He was more impressive than I remembered, and there was a vague air of mystery about him; he appeared to dominate the table, though he sat quietly, contemplatively, and puffed occasionally on a pipe; effortlessly, he took charge of the conversation. He had been commissioned, then rapidly promoted – now he was a major in Military Intelligence.
“Hope to transfer to Scotland Yard, when I'm demobbed in a couple of years' time ... I gather you know Charlie Butter at the Yard, Edwin ... Mate of mine ... been giving me inside information on the Hertfordshire murders ... Most interest
ing,” he mused. “What d'you know about them, lad? Seems to me the case has all the hall-marks of a thorough-going serial killer ...Reckon he must be an insider ... member of hospital staff ... Not you of course, Edwin ... Probably not the morphine addict, either ... But we'll find out for sure, if the killings continue, now that he's in custody ...”
I started on my prepared tale about qualifying from medical school and then life as a house physician at St Peter's Hospital; yet all any of them wanted was personal details of the Whitechapel Slasher and – now – the Hertfordshire Strangler ...
While we talked, the room had filled, had become crowded and hot. We finished our third pints of beer, each once again deep in his own thoughts; our conversation had petered out; now we were eager to depart to our various destinations.
“We must arrange to meet up again, soon, chaps ...” Pitty was suggesting as we rose to our feet, but I doubted whether I would see them again: we had drifted too far apart. We put on our overcoats, said our goodbyes and shuffled out into the cold damp air. The pangs of hunger were asserting themselves, and I was looking forward to my supper at home in Oban Road, on the other side of the common.
6
Saturday, 13th November: I woke late, drew the curtains, but crept back into bed again. Outside, the day was drizzly, overcast, misty; I still couldn't get used to the empty dog-kennel in the yard. The twin deaths of Jill and Lucky hung over me, oppressing me, suffocating me, leaving me with an aching void: I had known Jill since I was sixteen, and Lucky – as a little puppy – even longer ... A house-fly buzzed half-heartedly against the French window – How did that get in? I wondered dreamily. Well, I can't lie here all day, feeling sorry for myself ... Must get up.
Death on the House (Edwin Scott Crime Trilogy Book 2) Page 17