Jack, Knave and Fool (20 page)

“Candle wax will do, will it not?”

“That will do quite well.”

Then out into the night. Dr. Diller left us on the walkway, suggesting we might easily find a hackney at the far end of the square, or certainly along Pall Mall; he himself dwelt in the other direction. He started off with an assurance to Sir John that he -would have a letter from him in the morning.

Sir John waited until the medico was past hearing, then muttered to Mr. Donnelly: “Letter? What sort of letter does he mean?”

“A letter to you supporting the need for an autopsy of Lady Laningham. That, together with my own to Mr. Trezavant, should give sufficient weight to the one you shall undoubtedly write in the morning requesting such an autopsy.”

We set out in the direction of Pall Mall. I noted that Sir John, whose hand clasped my arm at the elbow, was shaking a bit. Surely not from the cold; he wore his warm cape, and in general stood against the wind and chill better than most men. Then did I realize that he was laughing silently, chuckling to himself as if at a great joke.

The shaking ceased. “You’ve thought of everything, have you, Mr. Donnelly?” said he.

“I’ve tried to,” said the medico. “Your request for an autopsy of the late Lord Laningham went for naught. Mine, had you solicited one such from me, would have carried little weight. However, another in this instance from so eminent a physician as Isaac Diller could hardly be ignored.”

“Is he truly so eminent?”

“The fellow has treated members of the Royal Family, though not the King himself. His fees are so high that none less than the nobility can afford them. He lives, if you will, but a few houses up from the Laningham residence in St. James Square in a place nearly as grand.”

“Yet he believed the poor woman had died of acute indigestion.”

“No longer. In a spirit of great collegiality we compared our observations of the deaths of the Laninghams, man and wife, remarkable similarities, et cetera. I urged him toward the proper conclusions, and he drew them. I then timidly suggested that only an autopsy would reveal the truth, and he was for it absolutely. No doubt at this moment he believes the idea was his own.”

“And the letter?”

“My idea completely. I said that you would hope for one but were too shy to ask.”

“Shy? Hah! Thought him too great a blockhead —that would be closer to the mark. Acute indigestion indeed!”

“That, Dr. Diller said, was urged upon him by the present Lord Laningham. He insists he had his doubts —‘only a preliminary finding,’ said he.” Mr. Donnelly hesitated, then gathering his courage, proceeded: “You know, Sir John, you are sometimes a bit too gruff with such fellows as Diller. Blockheads they may be — and I have yet to meet a doctor in London who knew as much as a seasoned Navy surgeon — but they can be useful. As my dear old mother used to say, you can catch more flics with honey than you can with vinegar.”

Sir John snorted. “God help us—you Irish!’

Next morning the letter to Mr. Trezavant was written. It was much the same as the last letter to him, yet Sir John did not neglect to quote Lady Laningham’s declaration —“I have been poisoned’ —or to say specifically that he had been summoned by her, only to find her dead upon his arrival. He explained Mr. Donnelly’s presence at the scene, but noted that at the time of her death, “that esteemed physician, Dr. Isaac Diller, was in attendance. From him and from Mr. Donnelly many interesting questions arose, questions that can only be answered by a full and proper autopsy of the corpus.”

I put the letter before him, dipped the pen, and placed it in his hand in the

proper spot upon the page. He put upon it his uniquely impressive scrawl.

Jeremy,” said he, “I should like you to hasten to Mr. Donnelly’s

surgery and get from him the promised letter. I trust we shall not have to wait too long on Dr. Diller s missive.

Yet I lingered.

“What is it. lad?” he asked.

“Well, sir.” I asked a bit timidly, “if it would not be too forward to ask, I was wondering if I might know what it was the butler had to say to you.”

“You may know, yes. but I shall impart it first with a caution. It is this: Wlien we enter upon an investigation of this sort, we must always do so with an open mind. We are. at this point, only gathering facts. When we reach our conclusions too early then we are inclined to seize upon those facts which support our conclusions, and ignore, or even reject, those which do not. And you can see. I’m sure, the dangerous fallacy in proceeding in such a way as that.”

“Well, yes sir. I suppose I can.”

“That said, I’ll tell you now that the butler had placed himself in the alcove near the door in such a way that he heard near all that was said between Lord Laningham and his aunt during that fierce quarrel in the library. He merely confirmed what I had guessed from the maid’s information that my name was shouted out by her mistress. To wit that after hearing that she was no longer to have the run of the house that had been her home for thirty years or more, she informed him that I — Sir John Fielding, as she shouted it out —suspected poisoning in the death of the late Lord Laningham, that I had urged her earlier to allow an autopsy upon his body, and that now she intended to give it. This was the threat she had whispered to me that evening before at the Crown and Anchor. Now, you have heard thus far, and that is the crux of it. What say you to that?”

“Why.” said I passionately, “that in so saying, she offered to him her death warrant, that so frightened was he of what an autopsy might reveal that he prevented her from giving permission to dig up her husband by poisoning her. He had the opportunity with that visit to the kitchen.”

lat is what one might suppose, but let me offer some arguments against that conclusion. First of all, Mr. Poole admitted upon my questioning that Lord Laningham took her threat with equanimity, if not indifference. That may have been bravado on his part —or superior knowledge. It is doubtful that the body could have been exhumed without his permission when he passed from heir apparent and assumed the noble title —she had overestimated her strength in the matter. You speak readily of poisoning, Jeremy, yet so far it has not been proven. So tar it is merely my suspicion, my fancy. It’s true she said when taken ill, ‘I have been poisoned,’ but I put that thought in her mind, did I not? Of course I did, lor in her next breath she called for me. And finally, if poisoning it be in the case of the late Lord Laningham, as well, then how do you explain the fact —given separately from two sources — that Arthur Paltrow, while still the heir apparent, drank from the same bottle of wine as his uncle, and did so without ill effect? I should like to have an interview with him, but such would have to wait until poisoning be proven.”

“And that,” said I, “cannot be done without an autopsy.”

He nodded. “Thus we proceed one step at a time. Now off with you, Jeremy. We cannot take that next step until we have those letters in hand.”

Needing no further urging, I took my leave of him and made my way swiftly to Mr. Donnelly s surgery in Drury Lane. It was still quite early in the day —so early, in fact, that when the good doctor answered my insistent knock upon his door, he had lather upon his face and his razor in his hand. There were as yet, needless to say. no patients assembled in his waiting room. He led the way back to his quarters in the rear. He resumed his place before mirror and washbasin and lathered anew.

“The letter to Mr. Trezavant wants only a final paragraph and my signature,” said he. “You may read it if you like, Jeremy.”

I took the permission given as an invitation and picked it up from his writing desk. Mr. Donnelly wrote a rather florid hand, full of decorative curls and flourishes. The content of it, too, seemed rather florid. He stressed the fortunate coincidence which had brought him together with Dr. Isaac Diller at the unlortunate death of Lady Laningham. Describing how these two men of medicine had compared observations on the deaths, but eight days apart, ol Lord and Lady Laningham, he declared that they had discovered a number of startling similarities. Rather subtly, he gave all credit to the senior medico and suggested that the matters he had raised prompted him, Mr. Donnelly, to urge that an autopsy be performed upon the corpus of the late Lady Laningham. He knew it might indeed be considered an extreme request by Mr. Trezavant, yet since he had been led to it by so eminent a physician as Dr. Isaac Diller, he felt it only right to make it.

There the letter ended. I replaced it upon the writing desk. Mr. Donnelly noted my action in his mirror. He turned and gave me a sharp look.

“Well, then, Jeremy, what do you think of it?

“A good letter,” said I. “There is much honey in it. I believe you shall catch your fly.”

“What … I …” Then he laughed. “Ah yes, of course, honey and vinegar. Surprised you remembered that. But it’s true, don’t you think?”

“Mr. Donnelly, I’ve not had enough experience of the world to know.” He always seemed to overestimate me in such ways.

“Ah, well,” said he, “no matter. Do you believe it needs something more — a closing paragraph in summary or some such?”

“No, I believe it to be fine just as it is. You must have worked long and hard on it to create such phrases.”

“Not a bit of it. They come to me quite natural. The Irish call it ‘blarney,’ and I’ve a good store of it. In point of fact, Jeremy, I’ve been up for hours, even been to the chemist with those paltry samples of m’lady’s vomit. There, by the bye, I received a bit of a disappointment.”

“They were insufficient for any sort of test, as you assumed?” said I.

“Nay, more. I learned to my surprise that there is no known test for separating and identifying the poison I most strongly suspect was employed in both instances.”

“And what was that, sir?”

“Arsenic, Jeremy—common enough, has all manner of uses.”

“Among them,” said I, remembering what I had learned from Mr. Bilbo, “poisoning rats.”

“Ah! You know that, do you? Quite right you are —and with the right dosage it can be just as effective when used upon men and women.”

“Does that mean, sir, that an autopsy would be of no use?”

“Certainly not. Arsenic and other strong poisons, as well, leave their tracks in the body. It will be up to us to find them.”

That was said in such a way that it seemed to beg clarification.

“Uh, sir?” said I. “Will you require help?” I was eager to provide assistance if such be needed.

He had by then done with his shaving and was toweling patches of lather from his face. He looked at me sharply, as if he had perceived the purpose of my question. “Will I require help? No, let us say, rather, that I have had it thrust upon me. In winning the help of that fellow Diller, I left the way open for him to take part in the autopsy. He is eager for the chance.”

“Then he will no doubt do all he can to see that the autopsy takes place.”

“And I must do no less,” said Mr. Donnelly, going to his desk. “Here, I shall sign this thing so you may take it away.” He took up the quill, dipped it, then paused a moment in thought. “How does one end such a lickspittling letter as this one?”

‘ ‘Your humble and obedient servant,’ I suppose,” said I. It was the line chosen most often by Sir John to conclude his letters. “Such forms mean little.”

“Yes, that should do. Though in truth, as I glance now at some of the phrases, they seem more to have been authored by some educated slave, rather than a servant, much less a doctor of medicine,” said he. Then, with a sigh —“Ah, well” —he bent to his task, dashed off some phrase in conclusion, and signed his name. “All in a good cause.”

So it was that I took the letter sealed and addressed to Mr. Trezavant back to Number 4 Bow Street. There I discovered that in my absence the promised missive from Dr. Diller had arrived by messenger. I was instructed by Sir John to deliver all three letters to the coroner and wait for a reply.

Arthur, the respectful butler, greeted me at the door of the grand house in Little Jermyn Street, bade me wait just inside the door, then set off up the long hall to communicate my arrival to his master. It took no more than a pair of minutes for him to return and invite me to follow him. When ushered into that same room in which I had earlier met Mr. Trezavant, I found another man present, a gnarled, gnomish sort of old fellow. He was seated behind the large desk next Mr. Trezavant. The two men seemed to have been occupied in the examination of a great pile of ledgers. The old gentleman offered me an annoyed stare, no more. Mr. Trezavant, the very soul of formality, struggled out of his chair. Erect, he seemed near as wide as the desk.

“I presume you have a letter for me, young man.”

“In fact, sir, I have three.”

Having said that, I offered them to him. He took them and continued to hold them out, weighing them in his hand, more or less.

“Three, is it? And what do these letters concern? I take it you must know, since you took them in dictation.”

“Only one of them, sir, and that be the one from Sir John Fielding. The other two are from your medical advisor, Mr. Gabriel Donnelly, and Dr. Isaac Diller of St. James Square. I am certain that Sir John’s letter and Dr. Diller’s have to do with the death of Lady Laningham the evening past. As for Mr. Donnelly’s, I think it likely that that, too, is its subject.” Then said I, lying most glibly, “Of that, however, I cannot be sure, for it is addressed to you and sealed, and I did not see its contents.”

“I did not know Lady Laningham was ill,” said Mr. Trezavant.

“She died very suddenly, sir. There is some question as to what caused her death.”

“Is this, then, another request for an autopsy, so called?”

“It is, sir,” said I. “Sir John has instructed me to wait for a reply.”

“Well, in this instance, young man, I must disappoint you and your master. As you can see, I am deep in matters of business here. Sir John shall have his reply —written, if it must be so —before the end of the day. There are three letters to read, consideration to be given, and perhaps advice to be sought. Rest assured, however, that I shall not take lightly any cause to which Dr. Diller has lent his name and his energies.”