The Right Sort of Man

by Allison Montclair

  “Where is your doctor?”

  “On Harley Street.”

  “Of course. That’s not far from my flat. You could come by after for the post-mortem.”

  “I was going to come back to the office,” said Gwen. “There’s still time left in the day for me to get some work done. Or to stare out the window and scream at the walls. I can’t do that at home.”

  “I had no idea. Would you like me to go for a walk and let you get in some therapeutic howling now?”

  “Not today, thank you,” said Gwen. “I might take you up on that offer in the future.”

  “Well,” said Iris, glancing at her watch. “I have a rendezvous with some spivs.”

  “Be careful,” said Gwen. “If that Pilcher fellow is there, we don’t know how he’ll react to your return to the fray.”

  “It would be interesting to see his response,” said Iris.

  “Even though he’s no longer a suspect?”

  “He’s no longer CID’s suspect,” said Iris. “He’s still mine. What do you think about him, given his conduct last night?”

  “I was so wrapped up in not wanting to be on the wrong end of a knife that I hadn’t really thought about it,” said Gwen.

  “Think about it. Put his performance through your magnifying lens. Give me the morning-after impressions.”

  “Performance,” said Gwen thoughtfully.

  “What?”

  “It was a performance,” said Gwen. “Both times that we’ve seen him, he was putting on a show of some kind.”

  “Well, we know he wasn’t a dustman.”

  “Yes, and I had a nagging sense of that even then—remember my commenting on how nice he smelled? It didn’t seem important at the time. So many of our clients present themselves at the first interview as something better than they are.”

  “Which is only human.”

  “Of course. The interesting thing about last night was that he backed down so easily.”

  “Easily?” said Iris indignantly. “We had to resort to knives and whistles!”

  “Nevertheless, it was a show,” said Gwen. “He wanted to present himself as something worse than he was.”

  “Braggadocio? Talking big in front of the rest of the spivs?”

  “Men always carry on like baboons when they’re in groups,” said Gwen. “But our Mister Pilcher has something else which he is concealing with this display of masculine force.”

  “Maybe he’s a poet at heart,” suggested Sally, who was standing at the doorway.

  “Sneak!” exclaimed Iris. “How long were you listening?”

  “Just a minute or two,” said Sally, coming in. “I didn’t want to interrupt your analysis. Sounds like a fascinating afternoon the two of you had while I sat cajoling my Muse in this lonely office.”

  “We lived to tell the tale,” said Iris. “How goes the playwriting?”

  “I need more conflict,” he said. “Have you any to spare?”

  “More than you know,” said Gwen glumly.

  “In any case, I am the bearer of good news,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “More important, I am the bearer of cash.”

  He pulled out a handful of bills and coins and placed them triumphantly on Iris’s desk.

  “Forty pounds, less my commission,” he said. “The Cornwalls send their abject apologies and thank you for services on their behalves.”

  “No, they didn’t,” said Gwen.

  “No, they didn’t,” agreed Sally. “But they paid up, so I thought I’d sugarcoat the transaction for you.”

  “You must tell me all the lurid details when Gwen isn’t around to disapprove,” said Iris.

  “Sometimes I like lurid details,” said Gwen.

  “Nevertheless, we’ll postpone the telling until we have the chance to hear it properly with drinks,” said Iris, scooping up the money. “I’m going to deposit this straight away before I go shopping for stockings.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” asked Sally.

  “If I show up with a bodyguard, it would be extremely out of character,” said Iris, scribbling on her notepad. “Here’s the address. If I don’t telephone here by five, send in the cavalry.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, here. Could you fill in for one more day, please, dear Sally? My Bar-Let would be glad of the company.”

  “I’ll be back at some point midafternoon, so it needn’t be a full shift,” added Gwen.

  “Well, as it happens, I have my script in progress with me,” said Sally, patting a well-worn leather satchel at his side. “I shall put the time to good use. It’s quiet here.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Iris.

  * * *

  The waiting room at Doctor Milford’s office was thickly carpeted, as was the office itself. Gwen suspected it to be sound-proofing. That and the doubled doorway to the inner officer kept those outside from hearing any shouts, sobs, or curses. The patients went in and out, rarely making eye contact with the others waiting. Conversation among them never happened, other than the muttered “Good days” springing from habitual courtesy.

  There were more men waiting at this time of day, Gwen noticed. Young men, sitting rigidly upright staring into space rather than availing themselves of the magazines in the stand at the end of one of the leather-covered couches. Gwen picked up an old, well-thumbed issue of the Illustrated London News. It was their centenary issue from ’42, with a lovely full-page black and white photo of Princess Elizabeth in her ambulance driver gear, the cap tilted jauntily on her head, her curls slightly wind-blown. There was a colour spread of the Royal Family “at home,” as if being at home for them was a normal way of life for anyone else. The Queen and the two princesses wore matching light blue suits while the King was in military dress, of course. Yet it was the black and white photo of Elizabeth, the Heir Presumptive, that kept drawing Gwen back. She stared at it for a good long time, feeling inadequate.

  Even before Ronnie’s death, she had spent most of the war away from London. They had evacuated to the Bainbridge country estate south of Bolton, where the family owned two munitions factories. Bolton escaped the Blitz for the most part. One wayward bomb landed on an eating house near the station, killing two, but other than that, it was a peaceful existence. So peaceful that to wake up and hear nothing but birds and the distant lowing of cattle was positively surreal, knowing that the man she loved was risking life and limb in North Africa and Italy.

  They had taken in children from London at the house; later from Manchester and Liverpool. They had set up a temporary school in the ballroom, and Gwen taught them how to read and write and do sums while her son ran screaming with joy with the others too young for school yet, chasing chickens and gaping at the horses.

  She wondered how much he remembered his father. He had seen so little of him, but there was a trove of letters that came weeks late. Chatty, uninformative accounts meant to cheer them both up while appeasing the censors. I saw Bedouins riding camels! Just like in Boys’ Own, only the camels are very nasty fellows who do not like one to pet them. I learned this the hard way.

  Even now, Ronnie wanted that one read to him over and over while he gazed at the photograph by her bedside.

  Did he hear his father’s voice? Or had the voice of the letters become Gwen’s over time?

  She wished there was some recording that she could play. There was a brief bit of footage from their wedding, made by one of Ronnie’s friends who was an amateur movie enthusiast, but it was silent, and wearing out from repeat projections.

  Her appointment time came, and Doctor Milford’s secretary, Rita, showed her into his office. He sat behind his desk, studying a file, then looked up and motioned her to a seat.

  “And how are we today, Mrs. Bainbridge?” he asked.

  “Fine, thank you,” she said.

  “Let me get a few vitals, then we’ll get down to the clockworks,” he said, coming around the desk.

  He took her pulse and blood pressure, jotted the
m down, then sat in a chair across from hers.

  “Appetite good?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything else happening when it should?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s the old perkiness? Any unusual fatigue?”

  “I am working full-time and I am the mother of a six-year-old boy. Yes, there is fatigue, but nothing that I would describe as unusual.”

  “Mothers have more energy than all of us.”

  “Not true. We just need more.”

  He smiled at that, then continued.

  “Any unusual dreams?”

  There it is, she thought.

  “I had one about Ronnie again,” she said.

  “Just the one? None besides it since your last visit?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me.”

  She described it, the panic seeping into her voice as she did.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last Sunday night. Monday morning, more precisely. It was odd.”

  “How so?”

  “It felt like a warning. A premonition. Of course, that’s utter nonsense, I know it, but then—”

  She stopped.

  “But then?” he prompted her.

  “We came in to find that one of our clients had been murdered the night before.”

  “So I am given to understand. Did you feel that there was a connection between your dream and the murder?”

  “It was an odd coincidence.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Doctor Milford. “Let me ask—when did you first meet the poor girl?”

  “Let me think. It was Monday of the week before. We interviewed her, went through possible prospects, found one we thought suitable, and put them in contact with each other.”

  “That’s how you usually work, is it?”

  “Yes,” said Gwen.

  “Was there anything that struck you about the woman that caused you any unease?”

  “Well, I thought—in fact, we both thought that there was something shady about her. We were following up on it, but didn’t hear about anything before she was killed.”

  “And now, according to your mother-in-law, you have decided to investigate this matter.”

  “Yes,” said Gwen reluctantly. “That’s why she called you ahead of schedule.”

  “Oh, she’s called me about you many times,” said Doctor Milford, chuckling. “You’d be in here nonstop if I acted upon every one of them, or they’d need to reopen Bedlam with a special ward just for you in a straitjacket if she had her way. I might need another for myself if Lady Carolyne keeps calling.”

  “I had no idea,” said Gwen, the colour rising in her cheeks.

  “How does that make you feel?” asked Doctor Milford, watching her closely.

  “Furious,” said Gwen. “Quite livid, in fact.”

  “What do you intend to do about it?”

  “I’d like to—” Gwen started.

  Then she held herself back.

  “Go on,” urged Doctor Milford.

  “The problem is that I don’t know where you stand in all of this,” said Gwen.

  “Given that I was hired and continue to be paid by your husband’s family.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Gwen.

  “No, no, perfectly understandable,” said Doctor Milford. “I’d be the same if I were in your shoes. In fact, not only understandable, but in terms of self-preservation, an intelligent choice.”

  “Then what are we doing here?” asked Gwen.

  “Excellent question,” said Doctor Milford. “It is time to tell you my life story.”

  “Will it be very long?” asked Gwen. “You’ve lived a great deal longer than I have.”

  “Cut me to the quick, will you?” he growled in mock chagrin. “Well, let me sum up the important bits, and you can decide after whether or not you wish to continue with me.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  “I trained as a surgeon,” said Doctor Milford. “I was damned good at it, in fact. When the previous war broke out, I volunteered my services immediately. I spent the next four years at various field hospitals, so close to the front lines that we caught the occasional overshot artillery, not to mention the odd whiff of gas.”

  “How horrible it must have been,” said Gwen, shuddering.

  “It was, it was,” he said. “We started seeing more and more men suffering from what we were calling shell shock then and combat neurosis now. The prevailing wisdom at the time was to treat them and get them back to the front as quickly as possible. The top brass, none of whom had any background in psychiatry, saw these poor blighters as ignorant bumpkins trying to cry their way out of combat duty. They put a few of them in front of firing squads to make an example for the rest.”

  “How dreadful,” said Gwen.

  “I protested all that I could, but it was not a popular position,” continued Doctor Milford. “Nor did the prevailing wisdom change much when they looked at the question after the war. There was a report on shell shock in ’22 by the War Office that essentially repeated the views of the top brass. I was, quite frankly, outraged, but as a surgeon, I carried little influence. So, I went back to school and became a psychiatrist. Haven’t touched a scalpel in twenty years.”

  “My goodness,” said Gwen.

  “I devoted much of my practice to ex-soldiers trying to cope with civilian life,” he continued. “Saw more than my share of thousand-yard stares, I assure you. And then comes the new war, and it’s happened all over again. But what a few of us realized is that it isn’t only the soldiers who suffer from this. It can be anyone who undergoes a severe and sudden trauma.”

  “Like losing a husband,” she said softly.

  “Like losing a husband,” he agreed. “The more intense the love, the more catastrophic the loss.”

  “Yes.”

  “You loved him a great deal, Mrs. Bainbridge.”

  “I did,” she said. “I do.”

  “You would have saved him if you could.”

  “Yes. But I couldn’t.”

  “Is that why you are so set on saving this Trower chap?”

  He asked the question gently, but she jerked her head up as if she had been slapped.

  “Do you think that’s why I’m doing this?” she asked.

  “Do you?” he returned.

  “Doesn’t his innocence count for anything?”

  “It would if he were innocent,” said Doctor Milford. “He doesn’t appear to be innocent, however.”

  “Based upon what you’ve read in the newspapers.”

  “Yes,” he conceded. “But do you have any information that they do not?”

  “My knowledge of the man himself,” she said. “And there are circumstances—”

  “Such as?”

  She looked at him.

  “This remains confidential,” she said. “Not a hint to my mother-in-law.”

  “That is my professional duty,” he said. “Now, persuade me that this is not a fool’s mission.”

  “Very well,” she said.

  She summarized the events of the previous few days. By the end of her account, he was leaning forward in his chair. She finished, and looked at him expectantly.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Total conjecture and speculation,” he pronounced, then he held up his hand to forestall her burgeoning burst of rage. “Yet not without validity.”

  “And the premonition?”

  “If the dream was truly premonitory in nature, don’t you think that it should have come in time to warn that poor girl beforehand?”

  “I should have thought of that,” she said. “It’s blindingly obvious when you put it like that. So, what did that dream mean?”

  “Premonitory dreams are usually disguised anxieties,” he said. “Somewhere in the archives of your subconscious, your brain analyzed the visits of Miss La Salle and your devious dustman and came to the conc
lusion that something was wrong. It then gave you the message by means of a nightmare.”

  “I wish my subconscious could write things down instead,” she said ruefully. “Send them by pneumatic tube or winged cupids or something.”

  “That would be much more convenient,” he agreed. “On the bright side, you’re having these nightmares less frequently.”

  “Have I? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “But I have, Mrs. Bainbridge. I keep careful track of their occurrences, and they are clearly on the decline. Take that as progress.”

  “So, my wish to investigate Miss La Salle’s death doesn’t strike you as odd?”

  “No,” he said. “No, indeed. I have no interest whatsoever in the guilt or innocence of Mister Trower, mind you, other than the general well-meaning desire to see justice done, whatever that entails. My concern is whether or not what you are doing is based upon sense or nonsense.”

  “And your verdict?”

  “I don’t think that this is a symptom of any disease, Mrs. Bainbridge,” he said. “I shall assure your mother-in-law of that opinion.”

  “Then I am sane.”

  “Oh, my dear woman, far from it,” he said, smiling.

  She actually laughed at that, and it felt good.

  CHAPTER 11

  Iris took the Tube to Wapping Station, which put her on Wapping High Street. She walked quickly past Merle’s, keeping to the other side of the street, then took the dogleg on Gamet to Wapping Wall.

  The street was paved with cobblestones, with warehouses on both sides. Bridged walkways soared overhead, connecting the wharves to the buildings across the way.

  The area had been by and large missed by the Blitz despite the Germans’ concentration on the docks. With the exception of one that had been damaged heavily by an incendiary, the warehouses all stood tall, grey, and not overly busy despite the time of day. There weren’t enough ships coming in to unload to keep the area active.

  The third warehouse on the left past Monza Street was a four-storey affair, built of drab bricks whose original colour had long been lost to thick deposits of soot and grime. There was a loading bay for lorries which looked unwelcoming, and a wooden door to the right of it marked OFFICE which was locked when Iris tried it. She rang the bell and waited. A short time later, the door opened a crack and a coarse, unshaven man peered at her suspiciously.