The Formula for Murder

by Carol McCleary

I give her a smile. “And you’re right. She was well preserved.”

  “Quite. Well, as I was saying, the fact that peat moss preserves flesh and bone in a natural state is one of the secrets discovered by our medical staff.”

  “Was it Dr. Lacroix who made the discovery?”

  “Oh, no, although Dr. Lacroix has greatly improved the process, he now takes a different approach. The curative and rejuvenation powers of peat moss were first discovered by Dr. Radic, the managing director of Aqua Vitae, when he was a physician in Romania.”

  “What is Dr. Lacroix’s approach?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss that with you. Dr. Radic will examine you and set out a course of treatment to restore your damaged health before it is too late and your condition becomes irreversible.”

  “My friend referred me to Dr. Lacroix. I’d prefer to see him.”

  “As I said, Dr. Lacroix is not available.”

  “When will he be available?”

  “He—I don’t know, he’s vacationing—researching—on the continent. It’s time for you to see Dr. Radic.”

  I hoped I hadn’t pushed her too far this time. She is really flustered and annoyed. Her pretense at friendliness has gone and her guard is up. I keep my mouth shut as I follow her into a sitting room.

  “Please have a seat. Dr. Radic will be with you shortly,” she says curtly.

  I take a seat next to the door she disappears through with my back to the wall. Antsy, I get up and pace the room back and forth. To my surprise I see, out the window, the lady in black getting into her carriage. I wonder what type of treatment she was in for, it couldn’t have been much of one. I also notice she is no longer carrying her chatelaine purse with her.

  “That’s odd…”

  “What’s odd?” Miss Carter startles me from behind.

  “Ah … nothing.”

  “The doctor will be with you shortly,” she politely tells me, but with a rigid body, then leaves for the main area.

  The door into the doctor’s office has not quite clicked shut behind her. I hear voices and give a quick look around to make sure I am not being watched and then give the door a nudge so it opens a foot wider and bend my ear in the direction of the voices.

  A woman is sobbing and speaks in a drunken slur. “I want to see my little Emma.”

  “You know your child died from brain fever,” comes from a male voice, spoken in English with a heavy Balkan accent. Dr. Radic, I presume; the discoverer of the miracle peat moss treatment in Romania.

  “But she was a healthy child,” the woman slurs.

  “On the surface, but brain fever strikes fast.”

  I have never understood what “brain fever” is. One hears it frequently as a cause of illness and death and I abide by my wise mother’s definition of the ailment, “It’s what people die of when the doctor can’t find the real reason.”

  A VIEW OF BATH, ENGLAND

  “Here, get some nourishment,” I hear the doctor say. I don’t know what he gave her, but from her mumbled thanks and the fact the woman sounds drunk, I suspect he’s giving her money that will be spent in a gin mill rather than at a grocer.

  “Take her out the back way,” the Balkan voice says.

  I lean back and freeze in place as the door opens and a tearful woman comes out with a man behind her.

  “This way, Sarah.” The man grabs the woman by the elbow and diverts her to a door to my left, as he glances back at me.

  Two things are obvious: Sarah is a gin hag and most likely a prostitute on her last days earning a living on her back before she gives up the ghost facedown in a gutter.

  The man with her is a ruffian; the kind found hanging around saloons acting as bouncers when they’re not mugging drunks in an alley. He has an unusual item of dress for a Brit—pointed-toe cowboy boots.

  Neither the woman nor the ruffian are the types one would expect to find at a health spa servicing the rich.

  A tall, thin man with narrow, hawklike features and black, piercing eyes enters from the room I had been eavesdropping upon.

  I stand up and offer him my hand to shake, an unexpected movement that almost always throws men off their guard.

  “Elizabeth Cochran.”

  “I’m going to have you arrested for trespassing,” he says.

  22

  “You have entered my premises under a fake name and false pretenses,” the man with the Balkan accent says, who I assume is Dr. Radic. “You will find to your regret that our premises are held in high regard by the local police.”

  The saloon ruffian pops back in. “Need some help here, Dr. Radic?”

  “Hold this woman for the police,” Dr. Radic says. He turns back to me. “You can explain your actions to the police.”

  “I shall be happy to talk to the police, Dr. Radic. In fact, Inspector Abberline of Scotland Yard knows I am here and I’m meeting with Chief Inspector Bradley when I leave here.”

  I look him squarely in the face. “As soon as I am through reporting the sexual activities taking place here to the police, I shall get out the story to every newspaper in Bath and London.”

  “There are no sexual activities on the premises. What you observed are standard medical procedures.”

  “What I observed was revolting sexual stimulation and tortures that when exposed will not only make you a laughingstock but prompt police action.” I lock eyes with him. “If you know my name, Doctor, you must know my success at exposing the dirty laundry of medical practitioners.”

  I go around him, heading for the door when the thug starts toward me.

  “Stop!” I snap.

  He freezes.

  “Come one step closer to me and I will give out the most horrendous bloodcurdling screams that you have ever heard. Would you like that, Dr. Radic? Perhaps some cries of rape and murder?”

  Radic waves the man back. “It’s okay, Burke, I’ll take care of this.”

  The man gives me a dirty look as he backs off and goes through the door that he had entered from.

  Radic faces me. I can see from his expression that he isn’t intimidated by my threats. Rather, my impression is that of a man of expediency—battling me on his public premises just isn’t advantageous.

  “Get out of my sight and don’t come back. Stick your nose in my business and I won’t be able to guarantee your safety.”

  “Obviously, I wouldn’t be the first woman who came to a sudden end dealing with this place. Did Lady Winsworth cross you, too?”

  I flee, taking my big mouth with me, running as fast as my short legs and small feet will take me. I had expected I might be caught and it wouldn’t be the first time I’d had a run-in with a charlatan like Dr. Radic, if he is in fact a doctor, but it isn’t often I find myself having to verbally fight my way out of an upper-class establishment with a threat from a saloon lout—after encountering a poor, bedeviled, street gin hag.

  The Waters of Life have some strange bedfellows, that is for sure.

  My feet are moving quickly, not only because I want to get far away before I end up preserved in peat moss, but because I want to have a talk with Sarah.

  What in heaven’s name could the gin hag, her daughter, and Dr. Radic have to do with each other? The woman obviously couldn’t have hired Radic to treat her child, nor did Radic strike me as a charitable soul who would take in mudlarks and let them freely partake in the curative waters that the rich pay so dearly to quaff down.

  My gut is screaming that something stinks in Denmark and it’s not just the smell of bog mud.

  The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every well-bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge.

  —H. G. WELLS, Ann Veronica

  23

  Herbert George Wells, Bertie to his family, H. G. to others, stands in the sheltered doorway of a closed shop and watches as the American newspaper reporter comes out of the spa. He finds it curious that she seems to be
rushing out, instead of just walking at a normal pace.

  He knows who she is, knew who she was when he stared at her on the train trying to dissect her and understand her with his probing blue eyes, almost succumbing to the temptation of stealing her valise. He would have stolen the valise if the nosey woman on the train had not scared him off.

  She continues to walk fast, as if she is hurrying somewhere—no, he changes his mind as he watches her glance around: She’s looking for someone.

  She goes up the street to the corner and disappears around it. He doesn’t know where she is heading, but he had already looked over that area and knows that there is a dead end alley there, a fact she will soon discover. He stays where he is because he doesn’t want her bumping into him when she is retreating.

  Wells is impressed with many things about her, especially her vibrancy. He senses that like himself, Nellie Bly is not a particularly happy person. He finds that puzzling since the young woman has climbed to career heights in such a short time. There are not many men, and few if any women, who have succeeded like she has.

  He himself viewed life as a challenge and attacked it as a mountain climber would a high peak. But the concentration, the battle to succeed, was a trying one for someone from the lower classes in a class-conscious society.

  He knows that people close to him often call him an angry young man and they are right. Much of his distemper comes from the fact that he is not satisfied with the way his life has gone or is going, which is a terrible quality he acquired from his mother, Sarah. She has never been satisfied with her life and constantly says, “I dread my time so much…”

  He knows his mother will die unhappy and fears he will, too. She has always desired desperately to rise above being a domestic servant. She despises that she is of the lower classes and calls it a curse. The last time he talked to her she told him she wishes God would soon release her.

  The memories of much of his childhood are not of the wondrous things most children experience, but of discord. They were a poor family and often went hungry. “A miserable half living,” is what his mother called it. He was born in a house off High Street of Bromley, in Kent which is outside of London, and lived there with his three brothers until he was a teenager. Even though the home, which was also his parents’ shop, was called the “Atlas House,” it was an unpromising place to make a start in life, according to his mother. It had two tiny rooms, a front room and back room on each of its three floors. The only source of heat in the house was the kitchen stove located in the ill-lit basement.

  His mother believes unconditionally in an all-powerful God, a simple God, which she continually tried to push upon her children when they were growing up. Religion has always been the dominant force in her life, rather than his father, Joseph. Religion was one of the wedges he believes tore them apart, besides his father’s lack of ambition.

  She constantly told Wells and his brothers that they must strive to be “Upstairs persons” instead of “Downstairs persons,” which she labels herself. “It is my awful fate in life to be in the servitude position of life, both in work and marriage.”

  Today, she is still a lady’s maid at Uppark, in a country house in Sussex.

  His father, who is an “outdoor person” in domestic parlance and a freethinker, remains a gardener and sometimes amateur cricket player who never fit in well in anywhere except in front of a pint of ale at the local pub. His mother will never forgive him for losing the small crockery shop they acquired after receiving a small inheritance. And now they are no longer one, but two people living apart separated by anger, frustration, disappointment, and lost dreams.

  Where is her simple God now? Wells wonders. As far as he is concerned, her God cannot be trusted. He’s “the old sneak.”

  Wells has to think hard to remember happy moments in his childhood. He believes the sadness that would come to affect him began two years before he was born. His parents lost their only daughter, Frances; she was nine years old and the pride of Sarah.

  From birth, his mother believed “little Bertie”—he hates that she calls him that even to this day—was born into “everlasting perdition” on account of their sins—the sins that took away their daughter.

  In time, his parents were no longer able to support the family financially and Sarah, the logical, staunch Protestant, sought to place her boys as apprentices, while his father continued floating through life.

  Being his mother’s wish, Wells was apprenticed to a drapery maker when he was thirteen—and again at fifteen—failing both times. The draper said he was a daydreamer, and he still is. The last time he arrived at Uppark, he announced to his mother that “the bad shilling’s back again!” She fears he will never amount to anything and be like his father, a failure and a freethinker.

  He finally got a scholarship to the Normal School—a place where teachers are trained—and he studied to be a teaching assistant, not a very prestigious or well-paying profession, but at least he didn’t spend his waking hours measuring, cutting, and sewing drapery materials; something his mother was very proud that her older sons accomplished.

  “They now have a place in life,” Sarah continually reminds him.

  Wells realizes that his calling to education and science resulted from a broken leg as a child that made him bed bound for a long period during which he read books that his father obtained from the library.

  Reading became his only solace. He’d read every book he could get his hands on so he could escape into a world of endless possibilities. The books had not just been an escape to magic lands for him—not seeing around him anyone he would want to emulate in life, he had found that the characters in books were people he could relate to and aspire to be like.

  Books shaped his aspirations to do something other than working with his hands, and his ideals about love and the pursuit of happiness. He dared to dream and it was his freethinking father who lugged the books back and forth from the library for him. His mother might have good reason to have lost love with his father, but for Wells, he will always remember him fondly for bringing the books.

  It is because of his ideals about “love” that Wells is now on the street in Bath following an American reporter, as she attempts to make sense out of the death of a friend.

  The woman comes out of the dead end alley and he follows behind as she keeps up a fast pace.

  He’s impressed. She has energy and determination, qualities he likes and admires in a woman. When she stared fearlessly back at him on the train, challenging him, he realized that she is not your everyday lady—things could get interesting.

  She pauses in front of a less than respectable pub, stares at the door for a moment, and then completely surprises him—she goes inside!

  This woman is bold or just plain stupid.

  A few minutes pass and he’s wondering if he shouldn’t go in and rescue her when she comes back outside steering a woman alongside her who is obviously a prostitute, to a bench.

  Wells is surprised, but not because he’s a moralist. To the contrary, he sees nothing wrong with prostitution. In fact, the profession should be regulated and controlled for the sake of both the prostitutes and the men they service, not to mention the poor wives who suffer medically from their indiscretions.

  But the unfortunate prostitute with the American reporter is not far from her last swig of the gin she drinks to kill the pain, and she’s probably no more than thirty, but looks like a badly used woman twice that age.

  They sit down and start talking.

  What in God’s name does a poor saturated gin creature have to tell Nellie Bly?

  24

  The woman comes out of the pub with me only because I showed her a quid, told her I needed to talk to her about little Emma, took her by the arm, and steered her out the door and into the sunlight.

  We face each other and I am saddened by what I see as I look into her eyes. The wrinkles on her young-old face are scars of life, her hair is dirty and straggly, her clothes
appear not just slept in but lived in, but it’s her glassy eyes that seem to come in and out of focus that tear at my heart. One moment her eyes clear to expose her damaged soul, the next they cloud over with gin. There is no fire in her, little remnant of the animal cunning that has kept her alive on the streets. Her life is quickly burning down, like a fire no longer fueled or stroked.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m from the Women’s Children’s Charity,” rolls off my liquid tongue. “We want to talk to you about Emma.”

  “Emma isn’t here right now.”

  She starts to tear up. I suspect that whatever terrible life this poor woman has had got worse when she lost her daughter. As horrible as a life on the streets would have been for the child, she probably was the one thing that kept her mother functioning. She appears completely lost now and hopefully will find eternal peace before she suffers too much more. She is so far gone, nothing can be done for her—even the money I am going to give her will only help lessen the pain while hastening the end. Giving more will most likely make her a victim of a robbery and a beating—or worse.

  “Emma passed away,” I whisper, as gently as I can.

  “Emma’s gone … she’s gone.”

  “What happened to Emma?”

  “Brain fever.”

  “Yes, Dr. Radic told me that. Emma was sick when you took her to him to be treated.”

  “Oh, no, Emma was never sick. She was amazing, even Dr. Radic said so. Other children got sick but not Emma. He said she was the healthiest child he’d ever seen.”

  “Then why was Dr. Radic treating her for brain fever?”

  “I don’t know, I just don’t know. She went to stay at the spa for a day and they paid me again and told me they were keeping her overnight. I came to pick her up the next day and they said she had to stay ’cause she had a fever.”

  “She had no fever before you took her over?”

  “Emma was never sick.”