An Air That Kills (16 page)

Her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. She wanted to scream at these stupid men. Although she had known in advance that the briefing would cover the bones from the Rose in Hand, she had been wrong to assume that foreknowledge would rob the story of its power to disturb her.

‘I remember the Rose in Hand,' Mr Fuggle said dreamily. ‘There used to be fights there when I was a lad. Loose women, too, I shouldn't wonder.'

Jill noticed that the index finger of Thornhill's left hand was tapping on the file in front of him on the table. He darted a glance towards her.

‘In the circumstances, we've found it very difficult to date the bones with any degree of accuracy,' Williamson continued. ‘But the external evidence suggests they go back to the 1890s. We think the cesspit went out of use around the turn of the century.'

‘These bones,' said Mr Fuggle. ‘Did someone say something about a box?'

‘I was coming to that. We think the bones were originally in a home-made wooden box, though it's hard to be sure because the site had been disturbed.'

‘What was that?'

Superintendent Williamson raised his voice: ‘Been disturbed.'

‘By what?'

‘God knows – some sort of animal probably.'

Mr Fuggle clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, revealing the gleaming dentures within. ‘Any flesh left?'

‘No. Just a few bits of bone. Nothing very impressive, I'm afraid – like something the dog digs up in the garden. Now, as well as the box we found two other items which may be associated with the bones. One was a silver brooch in the form of a clove hitch. According to the hallmark, it was made in 1882 in Birmingham. The other item was a fragment of newspaper.' Williamson nodded at Philip. ‘Mr and Mrs Wemyss-Brown have very kindly identified this for us. It comes from the
Gazette
.'

‘To be honest,' Philip said, ‘one of our copy boys did all the hard work. He spent most of yesterday ploughing through the backfile.'

‘Be that as it may,' Williamson said, ‘the fragment of newspaper has been identified as belonging to the issue dated the eleventh of November, 1888.'

‘What was that?' Mr Fuggle asked.

‘The eleventh of November, 1888,' Williamson bellowed.

Mr Fuggle beamed round the table. ‘Remembrance Day.' He fingered the poppy in his buttonhole. ‘Except, of course, they didn't have Remembrance Day then, did they?'

Williamson scowled at him. ‘Thank you, Mr Fuggle.'

A man in his twenties held up his pencil. ‘Superintendent, are the police treating this as a crime?'

‘To be frank, at the beginning we weren't quite sure how to treat it. But the weight of evidence suggests that if there was a crime, it belongs so far in the past that it's nothing to do with us. It's a job for the historian. Which brings me to my next point. Now, what I'm going to tell you isn't fact or even official opinion: it's merely personal speculation albeit based on informed knowledge. Have any of you heard of Amelia Rushwick?'

No one had, though Mr Fuggle, once the name had been repeated to him twice, thought that it rang a bell.

‘She was a celebrated Victorian murderess who happened to grow up in Lydmouth. Her parents kept the Rose in Hand.' Williamson paused, deliberately building up the suspense once again. ‘She was born in about 1870, I understand, and moved to London in the late eighties. She made her living' – another pause, during which his eyes flicked towards Jill – ‘as a lady of the night. In 1895, she was put on trial for murdering her own twin children so that she could run off with her fancy man – some Italian, I gather. The jury found her guilty and she was hanged.' Williamson leant back in his chair. ‘In those days they had a pretty clear notion of what was right and what was wrong.'

Jill watched Thornhill's finger tapping the time away. His head moved slightly in what might have been a shake of disagreement.

‘The point is, gentlemen, here we have a woman, no better than she should be, who we know had a habit of getting rid of her unwanted children. Now we find bones belonging to a baby in the place where she grew up. The evidence seems to suggest, and I won't put it more strongly than that, that the baby was put in that cesspit around the time Amelia Rushwick was living at the Rose in Hand.'

‘Yes, but can you prove it?' asked the young reporter.

‘Of course we can't prove it,' Williamson said. ‘But there's no real reason why we should try, is there? Given the facts we've got, I don't think anyone will seriously suggest that this could be something worth wasting more police time on. Not to mention more ratepayers' money.'

‘Victorian murder case,' the young man muttered. ‘Crime of passion? Human tragedy?'

‘Tragedy?' Mr Fuggle said with sudden asperity. ‘That's a big claim for a few scraps of bone. The woman got what she deserved, and anyway, for all we know the baby at the Rose in Hand was stillborn.'

Williamson produced the rest of the information he had about Amelia Rushwick, including the reference to
Notable British Trials
.

‘Most impressive, Superintendent,' Mr Fuggle murmured. ‘Where did you get all this from? Or are
Notable British Trials
your usual bedtime reading?'

Williamson looked disconcerted as though reluctant to allow that anyone else had had a hand in amassing the information. ‘Inspector Thornhill here interviewed an old gentleman called Major Harcutt. Some of you may know him.'

‘Harcutt,' said Mr Fuggle, ‘and Son.'

‘Eh?'

‘They used to be coal merchants before the war. Big firm.'

‘Yes, well. I understand that this Harcutt, Major Harcutt, is something of an authority on Victorian Lydmouth.'

‘What was that?' Mr Fuggle asked, patting his jacket pockets.

‘I said, he's something of an authority on Victorian Lydmouth.'

‘Is, did you say?' said Mr Fuggle. ‘Or was? Ah, here it is.' He drew out a battered cigarette case.

Williamson frowned. ‘What do you mean?'

‘You haven't heard?'

Mr Fuggle selected a cigarette, tapped it on the case and put it in his mouth. There was a further delay as he tried to get his lighter to work. Two of his colleagues offered him a match.

‘As far as I'm aware, Major Harcutt is alive and well,' the superintendent said, allowing a note of sarcasm to creep into his voice.

Fuggle allowed himself a short burst of coughing before speaking. ‘It's only that there was some sort of an accident last night at Edge Hill. I heard them talking about it in the office just before I came here. A lorry, I think they said.' He coughed again. ‘Dear me, this weather does terrible things to the chest. Yes, a lorry knocked someone down, I understand. I think the name was Harcutt. It was certainly Major somebody.'

‘Thank you, Mr Fuggle. I expect my colleagues in Traffic can bring me up-to-date on this.'

Soon afterwards, the press briefing ended. As the reporters filed out of the Conference Room, Jill glanced at her watch: it was almost ten thirty. She hoped Philip wouldn't linger. He and Williamson were chatting by the window, which was streaked with rain. Outside in the High Street, drably dressed shoppers scurried from one shelter to another under a grey sky.

‘And how's Bunty?' Philip was asking Williamson, his face alive with sympathy. Philip had the knack of sounding concerned about other people's personal problems.

The only other person still in the room was Inspector Thornhill who was sitting at the table annotating a file and taking care to avoid meeting anyone's eyes. Jill pretended an intense interest in the portrait of a Victorian chief constable which hung above the chimneypiece. She was close enough to hear Thornhill's breathing. Suddenly it struck her as ridiculous and humiliating that she should have to pretend to do anything just to avoid talking to a man.

On impulse, she turned away from her contemplation of the portrait and said: ‘What will happen now?'

His head jerked up, and she saw the surprise in his eyes.

‘I mean, what happens in these cases? Who decides to close the investigation? And are the bones formally buried?'

‘I'm not really sure. This is the first time I've been involved in something like this. I imagine Mr Williamson will discuss it with the chief constable.'

‘The brooch makes it odd, doesn't it?' She was finding it hard to say what she meant this morning.

‘Yes, that occurred to me,' he said, and for an instant his face lost its closed and cautious expression. ‘It makes it hard to write off Amelia Rushwick simply as a monster.'

She blinked, unwilling to accept that he had followed her line of thought so closely. ‘If the baby and the brooch were hers, it's as if by burying them together she's burying the relationship too.'

He nodded. ‘Yes – the brooch must have had a cash value. Yet she threw it away as if she couldn't bear to keep it.'

Williamson glanced over his shoulder. ‘Ah. Sounds as if we have an amateur trick cyclist on the force.' Smiling broadly, he turned back to Philip. ‘They're everywhere, you know. We don't have original sin these days – we don't even have crime. All we have are unfortunate members of society whose mothers didn't cuddle them enough when they were babies. That's why they cosh old ladies and nick their handbags. Simple, isn't it? You wonder why no one ever noticed it before.'

With jovial efficiency, Superintendent Williamson herded them out of the Conference Room. Jill glanced back as she and Philip were walking down the steps from the front door. In the reception hall, Williamson was saying something in a rapid undertone to Thornhill, who had his back to the doorway. Williamson's face had lost its appearance of good humour.

In the High Street, she and Philip waited at the kerb to cross the road; the Rover was parked on the other side.

Philip threw the car keys into the air and caught them. ‘What did you think of Williamson?'

‘Formidable.'

‘He's a useful friend,' Philip said, ‘and a very bad enemy.'

Chapter Two

The Royal Air Force Hospital was in Chepstow Road on the outskirts of town. Shortly before eleven o'clock Dr Bayswater drove past the guardhouse and up the approach road at precisely three times the maximum speed laid down by the RAF's mandatory signs. In front of the main entrance a permanently grounded Spitfire pointed its nose in the general direction of Birmingham. Beside it stood a pole, at the top of which a bedraggled RAF flag snapped and cracked in the wind. The hospital was a long, low, brick building which had developed wings in unexpected places during the twelve years of its life. By arrangement with the Regional Hospital Board, civilian patients were treated there as well as service personnel.

A dwindling practice had its advantages: among them was the fact that it afforded Bayswater more leisure. By half past ten, he had seen all the patients waiting in his surgery. Since then he had taken care of his house calls – three in number that morning, and as usual conducted with speed as his priority rather than any desire to develop an unwanted reputation for having a good bedside manner. His last visit had been to a house in Chepstow Road itself, so it had not taken him long to reach the hospital.

He left the Wolseley in the area of the car park reserved for consultants. He had little time for medical men in the services, partly on the grounds that they typically gave themselves airs because they wore uniforms to which they were only nominally entitled. In Bayswater's view, they had a foot in two camps and belonged in neither: he expected them to be poor doctors and poor servicemen. He marched through the swing doors into the hospital. The man on reception duty looked up.

‘Where have they put that Meague woman?'

The clerk consulted his notes. ‘Ward Eight, Doctor. And we've got another of your patients here. A Major Harcutt.'

‘Who? Oh – I know. What's wrong with him?'

‘I believe he was involved in some sort of road accident. He's in Ward Eleven.'

Bayswater grunted, a sound that might have been meant to express gratitude or disapproval or irritation. He set off along the corridor to the right of the reception desk. The hospital was characterised by long, straight corridors with large, metal-framed windows which made them hot in summer and freezing in winter.

Ward Eight was reserved for women. Bayswater poked his head into the sister's office. He liked the look of her: she was a slim, pretty woman whose head was dwarfed by the absurd square headdress they made her wear.

‘Good morning. Dr Bayswater, isn't it?'

‘You've got Mrs Meague here, I believe. How is she this morning?'

‘Poorly, I'm afraid. We're treating it as acute bronchopneumonia, but the antibiotics haven't had time to take effect. She's there.' The sister nodded through the window of her office which looked out into the communal section of the ward – a long, high-ceilinged room with twenty beds. Margaret Meague was in the nearest bed, the top of which was shrouded in an oxygen tent.

Accompanied by the sister, Bayswater approached the bed. Mrs Meague was lying on her back, apparently asleep. Her breathing was like a dog's panting after exercise and her skin was still badly cyanosed despite the steady flow of oxygen.

Bayswater glanced at the notes at the foot of the bed. Her temperature had been 102 degrees earlier in the morning. They were giving her Aureomycin, but he knew as well as the sister that there was a significant chance that the antibiotics had come too late to help.

‘She was worried about her son during the night,' the sister said. ‘Apparently she tried to get up and cook him his tea. Actually got out of bed and collapsed on the floor.'