Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

The steward sneered. ‘So you’re a doctor, now, are you?’

‘As a matter of fact, I am,’ the woman said. ‘The name’s Dr Ellie Carr.’

There had been a Dr E. Carr on the passenger manifest, the steward remembered, but he had automatically assumed — who wouldn’t? — that the ‘E’ stood for something like Edward or Eustace.

There were women doctors, of course — the steward was not so far behind the times as not to know that — but he was still far from convinced that this woman was one of them.

‘So why are you travelling to New York, Doctor ?’ he asked, cunningly. ‘I’d have thought that there were probably more than enough physicians already in the new world.’

‘There probably are, in general terms,’ Ellie agreed. ‘But the very fact that I’m making this journey would suggest there’s a distinct lack of forensic pathologists, don’t you think?’

‘For. . forensic pathologists?’ the steward said, struggling with the words. ‘I’m not sure I know exactly what that means.’

‘And I’m sure you have absolutely no idea what it means,’ Ellie countered, ‘but the City Hospital and the New York Police Department obviously do, or they’d never have clubbed together to buy me my ticket, now would they?’

Her accent, which had started out as broad cockney, was growing more refined by the minute, the steward thought. And there was a real authority in her voice now — the sort of authority which he would expect in someone who actually was what she claimed. So maybe — and as incredible as it might seem — she really was the genuine article.

In which case, he thought, he was in big trouble, and his mind was filled with the nightmare image of him being pulled up in front of the captain for treating an eminent physician as if she were no more than a common washerwoman.

He cleared his throat. ‘Well, since we’re almost in New York, there’s not much more I can do for you on this trip, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Not much more?’ Ellie repeated quizzically. ‘Have you done anything at all for me?’

‘Well, no, ma’am,’ the steward admitted. ‘What with you attending to the sick and all, I haven’t really had the opportunity. But if there’s anything I can do before we land. .’

‘As a matter of the fact, there is,’ Ellie interrupted. ‘This lady next to me is Mrs Gruber. Would you like to say “hello” to her?’

The steward looked down at the woman. Her face was weather-beaten, and as he leaned closer to her his nostrils filled with the smell of boiled cabbage.

‘Hello, Mrs Gruber,’ he said, forcing himself to smile.

‘Hello,’ the woman replied, in a thick foreign accent.

‘Mrs Gruber’s been rather under the weather,’ Ellie Carr said, ‘which is why I’ve brought her up here from steerage for a breath of fresh air.’

‘I see,’ the steward said.

‘The fing is,’ Ellie continued, lapsing mockingly back into cockney, ‘it’s a bit of a strain for a bag o’ bones like me to keep ’olding her up, so I was wonderin’ if you wouldn’t mind walkin’ ’er around for a bit yerself.’

The steward swallowed. ‘I’d be delighted to,’ he said.

Ellie smiled. ‘Do you know,’ she replied, ‘I was almost certain you’d say that.’

With a poor attempt at graciousness, the steward offered the peasant woman his arm, and the two of them began to walk away along the deck.

Left alone, Ellie turned her gaze towards the skyscrapers, which were becoming commonplace in New York, but were still strangers to the London landscape.

‘Well, ’ooever would have thought it, Mum?’ she said softly to the woman who had been dead for ever ten years. ‘’Ooever would ’ave imagined that your little Ellie would end up travellin’ first class to America?’

She needed no ghost to respond, because she already knew the answer.

Nobody would have thought it. Nobody would ever have imagined that a snotty-nosed kid from the slums would end up not only being a doctor, but a doctor who the Yanks were eager to consult.

It was largely a matter of luck, she told herself. She was lucky she had been born with a good brain. She had been lucky that her own interest in forensic pathology had developed just before the science really started to get off the ground, and thus made her a pioneer almost by default.

‘But you’re right, Mum,’ she said into the wind. ‘It wasn’t just luck — I’ve worked damned hard for it as well.’

And paid the price, she thought — in all sorts of ways.

She was flattered the Americans had invited her to visit them. She was as excited as only a true evangelist — eager to impart her knowledge to the world — can be.

But she was nervous, too.

Not about defending her views and discoveries — she was on solid ground there.

Not about meeting new people and finding herself in new situations — you didn’t claw your way out of the East End unless you had the ability to take that kind of thing in your stride.

She was nervous because she knew that in New York was a man who she was desperate to see, and yet both afraid and embarrassed to meet; a man who sometimes seemed like the man her destiny had always intended for her, and at others seemed more like the instrument that fate had specifically designed to destroy the life she had worked so hard to build up.

‘Do you think we can we make it work this time, Sam?’ she asked.

Overhead, a seagull screeched loudly, then opened its bowels and deposited their load on the deck, only a few feet away from her.

She sighed. ‘You’re probably right, seagull,’ she said wistfully.

George Holt’s study was on the first floor of the house, and its corner location meant that it had views of both the sea and the woods.

The room had a far less businesslike atmosphere than his father’s office, Blackstone thought, looking around him. True, it contained a large, impressive desk and several tall filing cabinets, but there were personal touches, too — stuffed animal heads mounted on the wall and a billiard table in the corner.

Blackstone and Meade stood facing the brothers, across George’s desk. They had not been invited to sit down, so, in this way at least, the new world seemed very much like the old.

‘You told me that you had some questions you wanted to ask us,’ George said crisply.

‘I did,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘Am I correct in assuming that your father has been living in his underground suite for seven years?’

‘You are.’

‘And that, until last night, he hadn’t left it — not even for an hour?’

‘Not even for a moment ,’ George said.

‘So what happened to make him retreat to this place — to turn himself into a virtual prisoner?’

‘That’s an easy question to answer,’ said George, with a hint of contempt seeping into his voice. ‘He lost his nerve.’

‘What do you mean?’

George shook his head, wonderingly. ‘I’d have thought what I just said was straightforward enough for even a Limey to understand, but if you want me to repeat it, I will.’ He took a deeply theatrical breath, and then continued, ‘He. . lost. . his. . nerve.’

‘There was an attempt on his life,’ Harold said.

‘An attempt on his life!’ George repeated, with a snort of disgust. ‘Do you call what Edward Knox did an attempt on his life ?’

‘He fired a gun at Father,’ Harold said. ‘He shot him.’

‘It was no more than a flesh wound,’ George said dismissively.

‘That was just a matter of luck,’ Harold persisted.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ George countered. ‘Knox would never have had the nerve to actually kill him. It’s my belief that the pathetic wretch only intended to fire into the wall, and the fact that he hit Father at all is principally down to his incompetence.’