Fifteen minutes later they were hurtling past the blur of colours in the front window of Mr. Borislav’s chemist shop and lurching to a halt outside the fishmonger’s. The shop door was locked and hung with a CLOSED sign, and the marble slab in the front window was bare of fish.
“This shouldn’t be closed now,” Dody said, cupping her eyes against the glare and peering into the darkened interior. “Or is it because a procedure is being performed?” She caught a flicker of movement behind her and turned to see a figure scampering towards the back of the shop. “John Kent, is that you?” she called.
Pike looked perplexed. Dody did not have time to explain how she knew the boy.
John whirled around. “’E’s been too long up there, too long!” he shrieked, a red spot emblazoned on each pale cheek. “I gotta get in.”
“What’s going on here, Jack?” Pike asked.
“The doc went upstairs to ’elp, wouldn’t let me come. But ’e’s been too long and somefing bad’s ’appened—I know it.”
“Get in the taxi and wait for us there,” Pike ordered.
“But I got to ’elp!”
The boy was almost hysterical. Pike gave him a sharp slap to the face and told the taxi driver to hold him. Within seconds John was gripped by a pair of thickset arms and shoved onto the backseat of the cab. “Lock him in if you have to,” Pike said, “and wait here.”
Dody followed him to the back of the building, where the stink of rotting fish met them at the open back door.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Pike flung open a dented wooden door on the third floor of the upstairs landing. “Good God!” he exclaimed, feeling the colour drain from his face.
Van Noort looked up from a welter of gore. Blood seeped into the mattress, the source a pale female figure, partly clothed, stretched out and still across the bed.
“She was like this when I got here, I swear it; I was trying to revive her, trying to stem the bleeding,” Van Noort stuttered. “She had a faint pulse when I arrived, but now . . .” Van Noort stopped when he realised who he was talking to. “Captain? What are you doing here? I don’t understand.”
“Police. Move away from that bed.”
Dody kneeled down beside the filthy bed and felt for the girl’s pulse then pushed aside the girl’s clothing to examine the body.
“The girl might be all right,” she said. “The uterus has been packed, much of the blood flow is stemmed,” she said.
“Archibald Van Noort,” Pike said, “I am arresting you for suspected criminal abortion.”
Van Noort’s voice rose. “Jack brought me a note—that I would find an injured girl here, and if I moved quickly enough, I could save her life.” Van Noort gulped a breath.
Dody rearranged the girl’s clothing to cover her body. “We need an ambulance. Now.”
Pike caught the tremor in her voice. About to dash down the stairs to have the taxi driver fetch an ambulance, he turned to see Dody sway and turn the colour of the girl on the bed.
“Dody!” Pike caught her just before she collapsed to the ground.
“Sorry, Matthew,” she said weakly. “Can’t get up. My stomach—”
Pike was no newcomer to the paralysing grip of fear, but nothing in his experience had prepared him for this. The sight of Dody collapsed upon the floor, retching, her hands and clothing bloodied by her examination of the girl, was more than he could bear. What was wrong with her? Surely she had seen worse than this in the autopsy room?
Van Noort’s eyes vacillated from the stairs to Dody, from possible freedom to probable imprisonment.
“Damn it, man,” Pike cried. “Prove to me that you did not hurt that woman on the bed—stay here and help me with this one!” It was a calculated risk, but he was almost sure that Van Noort was not responsible for this abortion. The notes they had both received, the timing—someone wanted him blamed for the girl’s condition.
Dody was lying on her side with her knees drawn up to her abdomen, the remnants of her afternoon tea in a pool by her head.
Van Noort hesitated for only a moment. “First we have to move her away from this mess.”
Between them they dragged Dody to a cleaner patch of floor. Van Noort took a pillow from the bed and placed it gently under her head. He urged her to straighten her legs and asked her what she had eaten.
“The dog,” she muttered, “the dog . . .”
“What is she talking about?” Van Noort asked while he gently palpated Dody’s abdomen. “Surely she has not been eating dog?”
Pike tossed his bowler onto the floor and clawed his fingers through his hair. Then he remembered. “She mentioned a dead dog at the mortuary.” Why hadn’t he paid more attention? How was that tied in with this?
“We have to work out what she has eaten.” Van Noort examined Dody’s lower eyelids and peered into her mouth. “The mucosa has no colour at all. That makes me think she has been poisoned.”
“Then we must get her to a hospital,” Pike said.
“There may not be time. I want to make her expel as much poison as I can before any more is absorbed into her system.” Van Noort turned Dody’s head to the side and rammed his finger down her throat.
Pike closed his eyes but could not block out the sound of Dody’s agonised retching. Then it was over and Van Noort was gently wiping her face with a handkerchief. Dody was trying to talk. Pike dropped to his knees by her side and bent his ear to her lips.
“The marzipans sent to me at the mortuary.” She struggled. “Must have been poisoned. The dog ate them from the rubbish. Died.”
Pike stroked Dody’s clammy forehead. God, he had not seen a woman this ill since Bloemfontein. He closed his eyes against the memory and fought the panic as it rose in his throat.
“Did you eat any of the sweets?” Van Noort asked her.
“Just one. Threw the rest away.”
“But you were ill?”
Dody groaned.
“I suspect she has been taking the poison in other forms, too,” Van Noort said. “This is an acute attack. Take heart, Captain. In some ways acute is easier to treat than chronic.”
“I took some medicine before we left home . . . an extra dose . . . felt so dreadful . . .” Her voice faded to a whisper. Pike could barely hear her. She doubled up again and cried out in pain.
“It’s all right, my love, I am here.” Pike stroked the hair from her face. “Please tell me it is not strychnine—dear God, tell me that it is not,” he demanded of Van Noort in a harsh whisper.
“She’d be dead by now if it were strychnine. Strychnine is too obvious; that would be the choice of a desperate man. Arsenic poisoning is more subtle and easily mistaken for common infections of the gastrointestinal tract.”
In his head Pike told God he would do anything, anything in his power, to save this woman. What a priggish fool he had been not to take her love when it was offered. “Tell me what to do,” he said.
“If it is arsenic, there is an antidote. Pull yourself together, man—there is hope.” He reached into the pocket of his frock coat then wrote something down on a piece of notepaper he found there. The hand that held the note began to shake.
“Watch . . . watch out for the chemist . . .” Van Noort broke off and his eyes glazed.
Good God, Pike thought, he can’t be having a fit now. He grabbed the doctor by the shoulders and gave him a hard shake. “The chemist, what about the chemist?”
Van Noort passed a hand across his brow and became lucid again. “The chemist will know what all this means. Make sure the quantities are exactly as written—too much is as bad as too little. Now hurry, we have no time to spare. I’ll see if I can get her to expel more of the poison.”
“How can I trust you not to take off?”
Van Noort shrugged. “You can’t. Go.”
Pike had no choice. His crippled knee was forgotten; he could not remember when he had last run with such speed. He was at the pharmacy in moments, slamming his fist upon the counter bell.
The white-coated chemist appeared from the back room. “All right, all right, I’m coming, where’s the fire?”
“Police.” Pike’s breath left him in rasping gasps. “Urgent. I need you to make this up now.” He slid Van Noort’s note across the counter.
“Arsenic antidote, eh? What symptoms is she showing?” the chemist asked, noticeably paler than he had been.
Pike grabbed at his hair, tried to clear his muddled thoughts. “Um, stomach pain, vomiting . . .” Then his mind fired to life. He had not mentioned the sex of the victim—how did this man know it was a she? He said no more and forced his head to clear itself of panic. What had Van Noort been trying to tell him about the chemist?
Pike followed the chemist into the dispensing room, on his guard now. “Show me the ingredients before you mix them up,” he said.
The man waved him away, flustered. He took hold of a ceramic jug and poured the contents into a bottle. “Water,” he said.
“I can see that. Get on with it.”
The chemist collected an armful of bottles but, shaky with haste, dropped several of them as he lowered them to the counter. With cold realisation, Pike knew why.
He grabbed the chemist by the lapels. “God help me, it’s you!”
The man’s arm shot up with the bottle he was holding and Pike felt a shattering blow to the back of his head; he dropped to the floor amidst a spray of glass. Then he heard a grunt of pain, not his own, and felt a sudden, suffocating weight as the breath was knocked out of him. It took a moment for Pike to realise his assailant had been undone. He edged himself out from beneath the chemist’s body, spat blood, and squinted up at his rescuer.
Jack stared down at Pike, grinning from ear to ear. “Doc said you might need an ’and,” he said, and dropped a pestle the size of a police truncheon to the floor. He helped Pike to his feet. Together they ripped the braces from the chemist’s trousers and trussed him like a sheep, and then began a desperate search amongst the debris for Van Noort’s list.
It was not to be found. Pike desperately tried to remember the listed ingredients. “Magnesium, ferrous . . . ferrous what?” He threw up his arms. “For God’s sake, help me, Jack.”
“This it?” Jack pointed to one of the bottles the chemist had previously set out on the bench.
“Good lad. We’ll take them all for good measure. The doctor will have to concoct the antidote for himself.” As Jack placed the bottles in a metal pail he found under the sink, Pike inspected the label of the bottle the chemist had hit him with. The glue on its back was still attached to shards of broken glass, but the label was legible. He searched the shelves and found another bottle of magnesia. Then he picked up the jug of water.
The chemist began to moan—he was waking up.
Pike thrust the jug to Jack for him to carry. At the dispensary door they almost collided with another man in a white coat.
“Help me, Joseph!” the chemist called out from his position on the floor. “We are being robbed!”
Pike lowered the pail of bottles and braced himself for a fight. He need not have worried.
“In here, Inspector,” the younger white-coated man called dispiritedly over his shoulder.
Fisher entered the dispensary with two constables, one of them gripping Henry Everard by his jacket collar. Pike had never been so glad to see his inspector.
“Mr. Vladimir Borislav is our man, Chief Inspector.” Fisher paused, looking around him at the damage. “But I see you have met.”
“What brought you here?” Pike asked.
“Mr. Everard here led us to him,” Fisher said proudly. “Turns out he’s been blackmailing Mr. Borislav all along. This time he was intending to threaten Mr. Borislav with exposure unless he agreed to support Mrs. Everard financially while he was in prison. We were closing in when we met up with Mr. Champion outside the shop.”
Champion addressed his uncle. “I did not want to believe what they said. The abortions, the drugs—what would Aunt Gertrude think?”
Borislav turned quite puce and struggled against his bonds. “She’d be alive now if it wasn’t for a butchering doctor. And how many even poorer women are abandoned by this so-called profession? We were happy—we had everything.” Tears streamed down his face. “When the baby . . . the doctor . . . Incompetent, bloody drunk . . . couldn’t even get here on time.” He put his head up; pride and fear were at war in his eyes. “I may have made mistakes, but I was at least trying to make these women’s lives easier.” His tears redoubled. “I did not want them to die. That man”—he pointed waveringly at Everard—“knew everything. He calls himself a doctor, he’s too high and mighty to help women in trouble, but he blackmailed—”
Before Borislav could say more, Everard broke free of the constable, rushed over, and gave him a hefty kick. The constable pulled Everard away.
“You told those women you could help them and they died,” Joseph moaned.
“My success rate speaks for itself,” the winded Borislav gasped. “I provided a service those women needed.”
Pike could not afford to stop and hear what more there was to be said. He wanted answers, but they would have to wait. He moved over to Champion and showed him the pail of bottles. “Are these the correct ingredients for an arsenic antidote?”
Champion examined each bottle and took out two he said were unnecessary. “Magnesia, liquor ferri-persulphatus, and water—correct now.”
Borislav groaned. “Dorothy was not supposed to . . . Please, Joseph, give them a sedative for her, too. She should sleep while the antidote does its work.”
Pike felt something warm running down his cheeks. He swiped it off with his hand and realised it was blood—cuts from the broken glass.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“I’m fine,” he said to Fisher, “but Dr. McCleland is not. Send one of your men for a van and stand guard over these two. Jack, follow me to the fishmonger’s.”
* * *
Cool fingers on her neck brought Dody back to her senses. “Matthew?”
“He’s on his way, Dr. McCleland,” Van Noort said, “with the arsenic antidote.”
“And the girl on the bed?” she asked.
“Her pulse is getting stronger by the minute.”
Dody shivered violently. The disfigured face above her began to swim. Another spasm gripped her stomach. She cried out. If this was death, pray God for its sweet release.
Van Noort stroked her head. “Hush now. Listen. Help is at hand and I must leave you now. Good-bye and good luck, my dear.” Van Noort moved towards the window.
Thumping feet; Pike’s voice. “Stay where you are, for God’s sake, Van Noort.” In her weakened state on the floor, Dody could not see what was happening. She sensed a desperate urgency in Pike’s voice, but was beyond caring. “Jack, stay with him,” Pike instructed. “Sit on him if you have to.”
Pike’s hand gripped hers and pressed it to his trembling lips. “It’s all right, Dody, the good doctor is going nowhere.”
She heard the murmur of Pike’s voice as he spoke with Van Noort, the clunking of glass, and the pouring of liquid, and then her head and shoulders were cradled in Pike’s arms. “Drink this, my love, and try to keep it down,” Pike said.
The antidote tasted foul and she struggled to suppress her gag reflex.
“I’ve put the sedative in the mixture. She should sleep through the worst of it,” Van Noort said.
Pike gently lowered her head to the floor. The sounds in the room were distant, as if she were listening through water. The original taxi had long gone. John/Jack was sent to fetch another while Van Noort and Pike talked in subdued voices. They spoke of war, of constant fear, of revulsion for their own kind. The choke in their voices broke through the roar of the sea in her head.
And then there was a shout from Pike, and the shatter of breaking glass followed by a long and terrible silence.
Chapter Thirty-Three
FRIDAY 1 SEPTEMBER
Pike
’s eyes had always mesmerised Dody; now it was his lips she could not tear her gaze from. Not too thin and not too fat, well-defined, beautiful, kissable lips. His face began to waver. She lost focus and forced herself back with a jolt. “What was that about the fishmonger’s woman?”
Pike leaned across the bed and gently kissed her. “Too much talking—you can hardly keep your eyes open. Sleep now.”
“No, Matthew, please don’t go yet.” She seized his hand as he made to move. “I need to know everything. Don’t try to spare me. Anyway, I remember now. You said the woman at the fishmonger’s knew Borislav was doing abortions in her upstairs room, but was paid to turn a blind eye, or so she told you, but you suspect she was more involved. She’s in custody now and you hope to prove her active involvement. You see, I was listening. But I need to know more. I need to understand how Everard fitted into things.”
Pike smiled. “Very well, if you’re sure you’re all right.”
“Go on.”
“When Everard was in his fourth year at university, he was keeping company with a chorus girl. He got the girl pregnant and performed a successful abortion on her, which he boasted about to his friend Joseph Champion.”
“And Champion in turn told Borislav?”
“Indeed. Family circumstances meant that Champion was forced to withdraw from university and go to work with his uncle, Borislav. Borislav’s business was in bad shape, his wife had just died—were you aware of the details?”
Dody shook her head. “He never spoke about it.”
“She was some years younger than he was and pregnant with their first child. There were complications during the birth and the doctor arrived late, obviously intoxicated. Mistakes were made; the woman and child were lost. Borislav’s resentment of the medical profession increased; more so when his nephew was forced to withdraw from university. He gave up teaching medical students and decided to provide what he saw as vital services the medical profession wouldn’t touch. He began by supplying illegal drugs—opiates and poisons. He also tried to convince his East End customers to use contraception, and when that didn’t work, he graduated eventually to criminal abortions.”
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