French doors open. He was lying stretched out on the carpet and according to the bobby as was called out, with a terrible look on his face.”
“Why were the police sent for?” Pitt asked. After all, it was ostensibly a family tragedy. Death was hardly a rarity.
Murdo did not need to glance at his notes. “Oh-because o’ the terrible look on his face, the French doors being open, and there was a great amount of money in the house, even twenty pounds in Treasury notes clutched in his hand, and they couldn’t unlock his fingers of it!” Murdo’s face was pink with triumph. He waited for Pitt’s reaction.
“How very curious.” Pitt gave it generously. “And it was Clemency Shaw who found him?”
“Yes sir!”
“Did anyone know whether any money was missing?”
“No sir, that’s what’s so peculiar. He had drawn out seven thousand, four hundred and eighty-three pounds from the bank.” Murdo’s face was pale again and a little pinched at the thought of such a fortune. It would have bought him a house and kept him in comfort till middle age if he never earned another penny. “It was all there! In Treasury notes, tied up in bundles in the desk drawer, which wasn’t even locked. It takes a lot of explaining, sir.”
“It does indeed,” Pitt said with feeling. “One can only presume he intended to make a very large purchase, in cash, or to pay a debt of extraordinary size, which he did not wish to do in a more usual manner with a draft. But why-I have no idea.”
“Do you suppose his daughter knew, sir-I mean, Mrs. Shaw?”
“Possibly,” Pitt conceded. “But didn’t Theophilus die at least two years ago?”
Murdo’s triumph faded. “Yes sir, two years and three months.”
“And what was the cause on the death certificate?”
“An apoplectic seizure, sir.”
“Who signed it?”
“Not Shaw.” Murdo shook his head fractionally. “He was the first on the scene, naturally, since Theophilus was his father-in-law, and it was his wife who found him. But just because of that, he called in someone else to confirm his opinion and sign the certificate.”
“Very circumspect,” Pitt agreed wryly. “There was a great deal of money in the estate, I believe. The amount withdrawn was only a small part of his total possessions. That’s another thing you might look into, the precise degree and disposition of the Worlingham fortune.”
“Yes sir, I will immediately.”
Pitt held up his hand. “What about these other cases Shaw was involved with? Do you know about any of them?”
“Only three firsthand, sir; and none of them is anything out of the way. One was old Mr. Freemantle, who got a bit tiddley at the mayor’s Christmas dinner party and got into a quarrel with Mr. Tiplady and pushed him down the steps of the Red Lion.” He tried to keep his expression respectful, and failed.
“Ah-” Pitt let out his breath in a sigh of satisfaction. “And Shaw was called to attend to the resulting injuries?”
“Yes sir. Mr. Freemantle fell over by hisself and had to be helped home. I reckon if he’d been a less important gentleman he’d ’ave cooled off the night in a cell! Mr. Tiplady had a few bruises and a nasty cut on his head, bled all over the place and gave them all a fright. Looked as white as a ghost, he did. Sobered him up better than a bucket of cold water!” His lips curled up in a smile of immeasurable satisfaction and his eyes danced. Then full memory returned and the light died. “Filthy temper the next day. Came in here shouting and carrying on, blamed Dr. Shaw for the headache he had, said he hadn’t been properly treated, but I reckon he was just furious ’cause we’d all seen him make a right fool of hisself on the town hall steps. Dr. Shaw told him to take more water with it next time, and go home till he’d slept it off.”
Pitt did not bother to pursue it. A man does not murder a doctor because the doctor speaks rather plainly about his debauchery and the consequent embarrassments.
“And the others?”
“Mr. Parkinson, Obadiah Parkinson, that is, got robbed up Swan’s Lane one evening. That’s up by the cemetery,” he added in case Pitt did not know. “He was hit rather hard and the bobby that found him called Dr. Shaw, but there’s nothing in that. He just took a good look at him, then said it was concussion and took him home in his own trap. Mr. Parkinson was very obliged.”
Pitt put the two files aside and picked up the third.
“Death of the Armitage boy,” Murdo said. “Very sad indeed, that. Dray horse took fright at something and bolted. Young Albert was killed instantly. Very sad. He was a good lad, and not more than fourteen.”
Pitt thanked him and dispatched him to go and pursue the Worlingham money, then he began to read the rest of the files on the desk in front of him. They were all similar cases, some tragic, some carrying an element of farce, pomposity exposed by the frailties of the flesh. Perhaps domestic tragedy lay behind some of the reports of bruising and broken bones, it was even possible that some of the autopsies which read as pneumonia or heart failure concealed a darker cause, an act of violence; but there was nothing in the notes here in front of him to indicate it. If Shaw had seen something he had not reported it in any official channel. There were seven deaths in all, and even on a second and third reading, Pitt could find nothing suspicious in any of them.
Finally he abandoned it, and after informing the desk sergeant of his intention, he stepped out into the rapidly chilling afternoon air and walked briskly to the St. Pancras Infirmary, glancing briefly across the road at the Smallpox Hospital, then climbed the steps to the wide front entrance. He was already inside when he remembered to straighten his jacket, polish his boots on the backs of his trouser legs, transfer half the collected string, wax, coins, folded pieces of paper and Emily’s silk handkerchief from one pocket to the other to balance the bulges a trifle, his fingers hesitating on the handkerchief’s exquisite texture just a second longer than necessary. Then he put his tie a little nearer center and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it conspicuously worse. Then he marched to the superintendent’s office and rapped sharply on the door.
It was opened by a young man with fair hair and a narrow, anxious face.
“Yes?” he said, peering at Pitt.
Pitt produced his card, an extravagance which always gave him a tingle of pleasure.
“Inspector Thomas Pitt, Bow Street Police,” the young man read aloud with alarm. “Good gracious. What can you possibly want here? There is nothing amiss, I assure you, nothing at all. Everything is in most excellent order.” He had no intention of allowing Pitt in. They remained standing in the doorway.
“I did not doubt it,” Pitt soothed him. “I have come to make some confidential inquiries about a doctor who I believe has worked here-”
“All our doctors are fine men.” The protest was instant. “If there has been any impropriety-”
“None that I know of,” Pitt interrupted. Drammond was right, it was going to be exceedingly difficult to elicit anything but panicky mutual defense. “There has been a most serious threat against his life.” That was true, in essence if not precisely the way he implied it. “You may be able to help us discover who is responsible.”
“Against his life? Oh, dear me, how monstrous. No one here would dream of such a thing. We save lives.” The young man picked nervously at his tie, which was apparently in danger of throttling him.
“You must occasionally have failures,” Pitt pointed out.
“Well-well, of course. We cannot work miracles. That would be quite unreasonable. But I assure you-”
“Yes-yes!” Pitt cut across him. “May I speak with the governor?”
The man bridled. “If you must! But I assure you we have no knowledge of such a threat, or we should have informed the police. The superintendent is a very busy man, very busy indeed.”
“I am impressed,” Pitt lied. “However if this person succeeds in carrying out his threat, and murders the doctor in question, as well as his current victim, then your superintendent will be even busier, because there will be fewer physicians to do the work …” He allowed the train of thought to tail off as the man in front of him was alternately pink with annoyance and then white with horror.
However, the harassed superintendent, a lugubrious man with long mustaches and receding hair, could tell Pitt nothing about Shaw that advanced his knowledge. He was far more agreeable than Pitt expected, having no sense of his own importance, only of the magnitude of the task before him in battling disease for which he knew no cure; ignorance that swamped the small inroads of literacy; and a perception of cleanliness where there was too
