Mrs. Van Noort covered her mouth. It took a moment for Dody to realise that rather than attempting to hide an exclamation of horror, the woman was in fact covering a sigh of relief.
“And you think my husband was somehow involved? Of all the crimes he could have committed, I assure you illegal abortion is the most preposterous. We were unable to have children; we see children as a precious blessing denied to us. My husband is also a deeply religious man and a dedicated doctor. He could no more take a life than you could.” Mrs. Van Noort paused and looked closely at Dody. “But of course I realise who you are now. I thought your name sounded familiar. You are the doctor at the centre of the inquest into the death of that scullery maid. The charges against you have been dropped, I believe.” She put down her cup, moved over to Dody, and took her hand. “You poor girl, how awful it must have been.”
Dody squeezed the hand that held her own. “Thank you,” she whispered, unable to trust her voice. After the events of the last few weeks, it took no more than a sympathetic tone to leave her on the verge of tears.
“I can see why you would want to find the true criminal, but I assure you that it is not my husband,” Mrs. Van Noort said, returning to her chair.
“I’m afraid I was unable to find his name listed with the Medical Licensing Board,” Dody said, pausing to allow the words to register. “Has your husband been practising without a licence? Is that why you have been expecting a visit from the police?”
“Your tea must be cold, let me refresh it.” Mrs. Van Noort made as if to move.
Dody held up a palm to stop her. “Mrs. Van Noort, the police will eventually discover whatever it is your husband has been up to. I’m afraid they can be quite relentless in their pursuit.” She took a stab in the dark. “Did his deregistration have anything to do with his epileptic seizures?” Mrs. Van Noort looked to the ceiling as if to prevent tears. Dody continued gently. “I know that nothing they could say or do to me was going to stop me practising my profession. Had my career been totally ruined, I still would have found somewhere to practise—behind prison bars if necessary.”
“Once a doctor always a doctor, I suppose. Archie can’t seem to help himself.”
Dody waited patiently for Mrs. Van Noort to continue.
“His physician said his problems were due to an injury sustained during the war.”
“Where exactly was this injury?”
Mrs. Van Noort indicated an area on the side of her head, the temporal area. Dody had not come across such a case since medical school, but as Mrs. Van Noort talked, the signs and symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy came back to her in almost textbook form.
“He is selective with his work, of course, performs no dangerous or complex medical procedures, and he knows what to look out for these days,” Mrs. Van Noort said. “His body gives him a warning—an odd feeling, a strange taste in his mouth—that a fit will soon be upon him. The seizures became so frequent he was forced to close down the practice. He had a turn in front of a patient. The lady was not injured, but she made a complaint, and the Board decided his illness compromised patient safety and struck him from the list. Funnily enough, we still have people making enquiries of the clinic. It was closed years ago, but my husband’s good reputation lingers on.”
The poor woman had to have something to cling to, Dody supposed. “But he continues to practise?”
Mrs. Van Noort shifted her gaze from Dody’s. “Yes.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Mrs. Van Noort looked pained, as if what she was about to say required great effort. “He treats harlots, Doctor. Women whom few doctors want to touch. He examines them for signs of . . . disease . . . and administers simple treatments. Drug therapies, mostly, I have taken care to discover. As I say, he came back from the war a damaged man . . .”
Her last sentence was left to hang in the air, as if Dody was expected to fill in the gaps herself. She was no mind-reader, but her knowledge of temporal lobe epilepsy was beginning to give her an idea as to what the woman was alluding to. No wonder she had not wanted Pike to hear any of this. His questions would have undoubtedly been too painful and embarrassing to answer.
“Pregnancy is an occupational hazard with the women your husband attends. How can you be so sure that he does not perform abortions on them, too?” Dody asked.
“In the course of your medical experience, Doctor, I am sure you have noticed that even the most unbalanced have certain parameters they will not cross—they will not step on the cracks in the footpath, they will not eat anything that is green—things that might not make sense to us, which do to them. My husband is not completely unbalanced. I know he would rather take his own life than that of another. The saddest thing about it is that he is sane enough to hate himself for the other . . . things . . . his condition compels him to do. He is a tormented man, Dr. McCleland.”
“I think I understand,” Dody said. But while understanding, she did not see how this torment made him any less capable of performing an abortion than any other doctor who had gone wrong. The woman’s love for her husband might well have blinded her to the truth. “But it is still important that we find him.”
“I’m afraid I have no idea where he is, my dear—in some house of ill repute as likely as not.”
“I appreciate your candour, Mrs. Van Noort.”
“I want you to help him.”
“I hope that we can.”
Pike returned to the room with a pill press tucked under his arm.
“I found this in your husband’s study, Mrs. Van Noort,” he said. “May I borrow it for a while? I’ll return it undamaged as soon as I have run some tests.”
The woman looked to Dody, who encouraged her cooperation with a nod.
“Very well, Chief Inspector; if you think it will clear my husband’s name.”
Pike bowed. “Thank you. We will do our best. In the meantime, when your husband returns, please urge him to come and see me.” He handed her his card.
“We need to find somewhere to talk, Matthew,” Dody said as they headed away from number seventy-seven Harley Street.
“We do indeed,” said Pike.
* * *
Archibald Van Noort paced the length of his parlour. “They suspect me of what, Matilda?” he asked again in disbelief.
“Criminal abortion, Archie; please tell me it isn’t true.”
“Surely you don’t think—”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. But I would never have let the policeman search the house if I had known you were home.”
“Sally saw me. I came in just before our visitors arrived. I was tired and went straight to bed in my dressing room. When I heard the voices on the stairs, I hid behind the curtains. But criminal abortion—that is preposterous!”
“They know you are practising without a licence. Your card was found in the pocket of a dead girl.”
“What girl?”
“I don’t know—they didn’t tell me her name. Can you remember handing anyone your card recently?”
Van Noort shook his head. “I see so many unfortunate girls.”
“Prostitutes,” Matilda clarified.
Van Noort pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Matilda knew everything, understood more than he deserved, and yet he could still not meet her eye for the shame of it. “No, no, prostitutes are not the only ones who get themselves into trouble—though they are, of course, the hardest to help. The most I can do for them is to warn them to keep away from backstreet operators—there’s a gang of ruffians out there who deliberately lure the girls into undertaking dangerous treatments. And, of course, I encourage them to change their ways. It’s not as useless as it sounds. I have had some successes.”
“But why give these girls your cards? You are no longer a registered doctor. It was only a matter of time before the police came calling.”
“My dear, I don’t need you to point that out. But my c
ard gives me more credibility. When the women and girls see Doctor before and the initials after my name, they trust me.”
“Well, I wish you had never done it. The police are sure to come back.”
There was a sudden banging at the door. “Back upstairs,” she whispered urgently.
He was halfway up the stairs when she called out in relief, “It’s all right, it’s only Jack.”
Only Jack, thank God. Not the police, or worse, those men from that filthy street gang. Only Jack.
“What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly. “Is something wrong?”
It took a lot more than a rough tone to hurt Jack’s feelings. “’Ello, Mrs. V, Doc,” the boy said in his usual cocky manner.
“Take your cap off inside, Jack,” Matilda said. He did as he was told and she hugged him. “Are you here to stay this time?”
“I want to, Mrs. V, you know I do, but it’s ’ard, see, wiv Dad now gone.”
Van Noort had not told Matilda where he had met Jack. She might not be so keen to have him in the house if she knew where he spent so much of his time.
“I understand.” Matilda bravely hid her disappointment. “Would you like some biscuits and lemonade?” she offered kindly.
“’S’aw right, Mrs. V, can’t stop now.” Jack turned to Van Noort. “Somefink terrible’s ’appening above the fish shop—’ere, read this.” The boy handed Van Noort a grubby piece of paper.
“What’s this? Did that rascal Dunn give it to you?” Was this a trap?
“Nah, word on the street’s Dunn’s gone to meet ’is maker. Though I reckon ’is maker will probably soon be frowing ’im back to where ’e come from.”
“Don’t make light of it, Jack. Judgement will eventually befall us all,” Van Noort said as he digested the note’s contents. “So, who did give you this?”
“Just some ol’ biddy from the fish shop. Said she thought there was somefink bad going on upstairs and knows you take an interest in this kinda fing.”
“You’ve read this?”
“Course.” Mee-Mee the whore had been teaching Jack his letters, and he was proving to be a quicker learner than any of them had expected.
“Should I call the police?” Matilda asked.
“No, but I will if I catch the blaggard at it.”
“At what?” She looked from one to the other, confused.
Jack twitched at Van Noort’s sleeve. “We gotta go now, Doc, before it’s too late.”
“I’ll explain later, my dear,” Van Noort said.
He retrieved his hat and jacket while Matilda headed for the kitchen, returning with a handful of biscuits. “Put these in your pocket, Jack, and be careful.”
Chapter Thirty
The sun blazed down on them as they walked, and Pike had no breath for talking. Sweat streamed down his face, and Dody had to slow her pace for him to keep up, his cane tap-tapping on the footpath. Feeling the heat herself, she suggested they stop at Debenham and Freebody off Cavendish Square, which like many of the larger draperies, had a luncheon room especially for ladies on serious shopping expeditions.
Pike excused himself to make a telephone call while Dody freshened up in the cloakroom. They met again at the restaurant’s entrance, and the waiter found them a table.
Dody was relieved to find the atmosphere between the two of them had returned to much as it had been before their disastrous evening together.
He placed the order: a dandelion and burdock drink for Dody, ale for himself, and a plate of sandwiches to share.
He took several swallows of ale and immediately looked the stronger for it, listening intently as she recounted her conversation with Mrs. Van Noort.
“Poor woman,” he said, drawing his brow. “But you think she was still keeping things from you?”
“She left so many gaps, which only my knowledge of her husband’s particular form of brain damage can begin to fill.”
“And that is?”
“I think he suffers from temporal lobe epilepsy due to damage to that part of the brain. Sufferers’ symptoms vary. Some exhibit sudden outbursts of unexpected aggression, agitation, and grand mal fits. But from what I gather of his wife’s descriptions and yours, Van Noort seems to experience aura-like phenomena accompanied by incomplete though violent seizures.”
Dody thought back to Spilsbury’s comments that certain topics should never be discussed openly between the sexes. Would Pike feel the same? Now was as good a time as any to find out.
“Patients with temporal lobe damage are often left with heightened libido and religious mania, the combination of which must result in terrifying internal battles.”
Pike made no reaction. The notion of “proper” conversation between males and females did not seem to enter his thinking. Their minds seemed to meet on so many levels, she hoped that somehow they would find a way to cast aside the barriers that separated them.
“He did strike me as a religious type, and his lust for Mata Hari seemed incongruous, to say the least,” Pike said.
“The man is also suffering from some kind of hysteria as a result of his war trauma.” Dody looked at Pike. The more she reflected on his behaviour at the hospital, the more she thought he might be suffering from a similar affliction.
He refused to meet her eye and helped himself to an egg and cress sandwich from the platter. “The head injury and peculiar behaviour I can believe. The hysteria, as I understand, is due to a lack of moral fibre.”
A common idea amongst men of Pike’s cloth, Dody mused, and a terrible misconception. It confounded her to think that he might see this in himself. She did not think she had met a more courageous or principled man. Unfortunately this was not the time or the place to take the matter further.
“As for his drastic change in sexual behaviour,” she continued, “he would hate himself for being unable to control his urges.”
“He is a rapist also?”
“No, I don’t think he is. It is a certain type of woman who would trigger his lust and the type of woman he seems to favour would be more than willing. As long as he could pay, there would be no need for force.”
“I’ve seen him on at least two occasions in the company of a young lad. You don’t think . . .”
Dody saved Pike the discomfort of continuing. “No, I don’t think so. He and his wife were devastated when they discovered they could not have children. He is possibly just exercising his paternal instincts.”
Pike shuddered. “I hope you’re right. Though it is possible his wife knows him less well than she thinks.”
“Yes, that is possible.” Dody took a sip of her cool drink. “And what of you—other than the pill press, did you discover anything else in the house?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Pike paused. His eyes shone; he was pleased with himself.
“Will I have to use torture to extract the information?”
“I will tell you gladly. You are proving most helpful—I am glad Spilsbury forced you to come along.” He smiled.
“Hardly forced, but go on.”
“He was in the bedroom, hiding. I sensed he was there and then I noticed the toes of his boots behind the curtains. He has a”—Pike waved a hand through the air as if trying to catch a word—“a peculiar presence about him. I acted as if I had not seen him, but telephoned the Yard as soon as we arrived here. I’ve asked Fisher to assign some men to follow him and I can only hope he doesn’t vanish before they get into position.”
“But what good will following him do?”
“If he is innocent, it will be for his own protection. If he is guilty, we might catch him in the act. Meanwhile, I’ll have the pill press tested and see if it produces the same kind of indentations as found on the illegal tablets.”
“Much as it pains me to say it, I don’t believe he is innocent.”
“The man is of unsound mind—any lawyer worth his salt will be able to prove that. If he is guilty, he will be prevented from committing such crimes again and he will be
helped. I guarantee he will not hang.”
Pike insisted Dody take the last sandwich from the plate. She was not hungry and still suffering from intermittent bouts of cholera, but she forced it down with the remainder of her drink. Dispiritedly she said, “And there’s still Borislav’s account of a doctor with a foreign name in his shop.”
Pike sighed. “Vague conjecture which we must not allow to blinker our investigation.” It was strange that they both wished Van Noort to be innocent. Perhaps, in different ways, they both had sometimes walked in his shoes.
They needed a change of topic; the case was making them melancholy. And there was still the other matter weighing on Dody’s mind. She might as well broach the subject; she had nothing more to lose now.
“At about the time of the inquest, I received flowers and a box of marzipans with a brief, unsigned note of apology.”
His eyebrows rose. “You have a secret admirer?”
“Is that such a surprise?” she asked with some pique.
“No, no, forgive me. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.”
“I have no idea who the gifts were from. I thought”—she paused for a breath of courage—“at the time the gifts must have been from you, but now I’m not so sure.”
“I assure you, Dody,” Pike said, covering her hand with his. “I have never kept my admiration of you secret.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The young lady from the river has been officially identified by her father as Elizabeth Strickland,” Fisher said to Pike as they bounced along in the dispatch van to Everard’s house. “I sent men to interview her work colleagues and it did not take long to find her young man. I interviewed him this morning, and he was distraught and quite cooperative after I told him he would not be charged with procuring abortifacients if he provided us with information.”
“Good. And?”
“He bought the tablets at the Crown and Anchor on Dorset Street. Naturally he was not given the seller’s name, but he described him as having an ugly mug—as if he’d been kicked by a horse, he said. I made further enquiries and believe the name of the man to be—”
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