Robin had been trained by Strike to organize her interviews and notes into the categories of people, places and things. She now asked both women,
“Were there any other patients you can ever remember giving cause for alarm at the practice, or perhaps having an unusual relationship with Marg—?”
“Well,” said Irene, “remember, Jan, there was that one with the beard down to here…” She placed her hand at waist level, “… remember? What was he called? Apton? Applethorpe? Jan, you remember. You do remember, Jan, he stank like a tramp and you had to go round his house once. He used to wander around near St. John’s. I think he lived on Clerkenwell Road. Sometimes he had his kid with him. Really funny-looking kid. Massive ears.”
“Oh, them,” said Janice, her frown disappearing. “But they weren’t Margot’s—”
“Well, he was stopping people on the street, afterward, telling them he’d killed Margot!” Irene told Strike excitedly. “Yeah! He was! He stopped Dorothy! Of course, Dorothy wasn’t going to tell the police, not Dorothy, she was all ‘load of stuff and nonsense,’ ‘he’s a lunatic,’ but I said to her, ‘What if he actually did do it, Dorothy, and you haven’t told anyone?’ Now, Applethorpe was a proper nutcase. He had a girl locked up—”
“She weren’t locked up, Irene,” said Janice, for the first time showing a trace of impatience. “Social work said she were agoraphobic, but she weren’t being kept there against ’er will—”
“She was peculiar,” said Irene stubbornly. “You told me she was. I think someone should’ve taken the kid away, personally. You said the flat was filthy—”
“You can’t take people’s children off them because they ’aven’t cleaned the ’ouse!” said Janice firmly. She turned back to Strike and Robin. “Yeah, I visited the Applethorpes, just the once, but I don’t fink they ever met Margot. See, it was diff’rent then: doctors ’ad their own lists, and the Applethorpes were registered with Brenner. ’E asked me to go round for ’im, check on the kid.”
“Do you remember the address? Street name?”
“Oh gawd,” said Janice, frowning. “Yeah, I think it was Clerkenwell Road. I think so. See, I only visited the once. The kid ’adn’t been well and Dr. Brenner wanted ’im checked and ’e’d never make an ’ouse call if ’e could avoid it. Anyway, the kid was on the mend, but I spotted right off the dad was—”
“Nutcase—” said Irene, nodding along.
“—jittery, bit out of it,” said Janice. “I went in the kitchen to wash my ’ands and there was a load of benzedrine lying in full view on the worktop. I warned both the parents, now the kid was walking, to put it away somewhere safe—”
“Really funny-looking kid,” interposed Irene.
“—and I went to Brenner after, an’ I said, ‘Dr. Brenner, that man’s abusing benzedrine.’ It was proper addictive, we all knew it by then, even in ’74. ’Course, Brenner thought I was being presumptuous, queryin’ ’is prescriptions. But I was worried, so I called social work wivout telling Brenner, and they were very good. They were already keeping a close eye on the family.”
“But the mother—” said Irene.
“You can’t decide for other people what makes ’em ’appy, Irene!” said Janice. “The mum loved that kid, even if the dad was—well, ’e was odd, poor sod,” Janice conceded. “’E thought ’e was a kind of—I don’t know what you’d call it—a guru, or a magic man. Thought ’e could put the evil eye on people. ’E told me that durin’ the ’ouse call. You do meet people wiv weird ideas, nursin’. I just used to say, ‘Really? ’Ow interesting.’ There’s no point challenging ’em. But Applethorpe thought he could ill-wish people—that’s what we used to call it, in the old days. ’E was worried ’is little boy ’ad got German measles because he’d got cross with ’im. ’E said ’e could do that to people… He died ’imself, poor sod. Year after Margot vanished.”
“Did he?” said Irene, with a trace of disappointment.
“Yeah. It would’ve been after you left, after you married Eddie. I remember, street cleaners found him early in the morning, curled up and dead under the Walter Street bridge. ’Eart attack. Keeled over and there was nobody there to ’elp him. Wasn’t that old, neither. I remember Dr. Brenner being a bit twitchy about it.”
“Why was that?” asked Strike.
“Well, ’e’d prescribed the Bennies the man was abusin’, ’adn’t ’e?”
To Robin’s surprise, a fleeting smile passed over Strike’s face.
“But it weren’t just Applethorpe,” Janice went on, who didn’t seem to have noticed anything odd in Strike’s response. “There was—”
“Oh, tons of people swore blind they’d heard something, or had a hunch, blah blah blah,” said Irene, rolling her eyes, “and there was us, you know, who were actually involved, it was terrible, just—excuse me,” she said, putting her hand on her stomach, “I must just nip to the—sorry.”
Irene left the room in something of a hurry. Janice looked after her, and it was hard, given her naturally smiley face, to tell whether she was more concerned or amused.
“She’ll be fine,” she told Strike and Robin quietly. “I ’ave told ’er the doc’s probably right tellin’ ’er to lay off the spicy food, but she wanted a curry last night… she gets lonely. Rings me up to come over. I stayed overnight. Eddie only died last year. Nearly ninety, bless ’im. ’E adored Irene and the girls. She misses ’im something rotten.”
“Were you about to tell us somebody else had claimed to know what happened to Margot?” Strike prompted her gently.
“What? Oh, yeah… Charlie Ramage. ’E ’ad an ’ot tub and sauna business. Wealfy man, so you’d think ’e ’ad better things to do with ’is time than make up stories, but there you go, people are funny.”
“What did
