Murder on the Home Front (36 page)

“Does she mind postmortems? For it’s all postmortems. Close up,” I said hopelessly.

“Oh, she’d rather enjoy them, I think. Her father’s a vet, so she’s used to cuttings-up.”

I became much more interested. “Is she a brisk, nippy type? I mean, can she move fast? Can she run?”

“She’s very healthy and lively,” said the physiotherapist, looking a trifle surprised. “I daresay she could run quite fast if she had to.”

“That sounds marvelous.” I tried not to become too optimistic.

CKS was very charming and understanding about my leaving him and assured me, with a twinkle in his eye, that the first ten years of marriage were the worst.

On November 1 Miss X, whose real name was Jean Scott Dunn, came along to Harley Street for an interview. It all went swimmingly. At the end of November J. flew home from India, we got married, and Miss Dunn took over my job. Suffice to say she has proved to be a far more Perfect Secretary than I ever was, lightning quick, highly efficient, everything I had planned Miss X to be.

Apart from being a perfect secretary she is very charming, and I am happy to say we are excellent friends.

As for me, I soon discovered I had exchanged the comparative peace and quiet of the mortuaries for a life of nerve-racking hurly-burly.

From time to time I go back to Guy’s to visit my old friends, and occasionally then I get a peek into a mortuary. I have heard retired reporters remark upon the nostalgia which fills them when they return to their old office, see the familiar old typewriter standing on the familiar old desk. The same nostalgia grips me when I see a body lying on a p.m. table.

Yes, I still miss the job sadly. I miss the mortuaries, the murders, above all I miss all those very good friends I made. The coroners’ officers and mortuary keepers, the police officers and detectives I met, the eminent personalities I knew, and the more humble yet equally individual and interesting people who kept me so happy in their company…I miss them all. Those five years I spent as Dr. Keith Simpson’s secretary were five of the happiest and most absorbing years of my life.

This is not to say that I am not happily married, because, thank heaven, I am. But sometimes, at teatime, seated amidst the din and turmoil of nursery tea, I long suddenly for those afternoons in the Gordon Museum, eating anchovy toast and tranquilly describing carcinomas of the bowel and tumors of the breast. Or I think how nice and
quiet
the corpses were. How altogether better balanced my nerves were, in those days when I devoted myself to crime, to autopsies and violent deaths and gruesome murders. Motherhood and domesticity have undoubtedly undermined me. Nowadays I jump when doors slam, and wake up imagining burglars are moving around my kitchen in the small hours. The dear old public mortuaries, without exaggeration, were sanctuaries compared with my present existence. Murders are infinitely less exhausting than motherhood.

Which is not something I am saying merely for effect. Like everything else in this book it’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…

Photos

Dr. Keith Simpson

Harry West, the Southwark mortuary keeper

Mr. Ireland, assistant to the Gordon Museum, checking data with the aid of a skeleton.

Harry Dobkin
The Trial of Harry Dobkin
(Jarrolds)

The Baptist Chapel cellar where the body of Mrs. Dobkin was found. (The sticks arranged in front of the fireplace show where the body lay.)

The remains as they appeared on discovery, covered with dust and cobwebs.

The remains after they had been cleaned of debris. (Notice how the lower legs and forearms have been chopped and also the charred effects from burning.)

Joan Pearl Wolfe’s skull, as shown to the jury. (This was the first time the skull of
a murdered person had been produced in court.)

Section of the birch stake with the murdered girl’s hairs adhering to it.