David Dickinson: Death at the Jesus Hospital

The first to arrive was Dr Theophilus Ragg, medical adviser to the hospital. Dr Ragg, with his white hair and pronounced stoop, looked far older than his fifty-five years. The cynics among the silkmen said that he should be an inmate rather than their medical adviser. The doctor had originally come to Buckinghamshire as a contrast to his years in the slums of the East End of London where too much of his time was spent healing the wounds of street fighting and domestic violence. Buckinghamshire, he had told himself, would be different. Buckinghamshire was different. Dr Ragg was now as tired of the varicose veins and the neurotic headaches and the depressions and the inability to sleep of his wealthy patients as he had been with the very different characteristics of the poor of Shadwell. Murder — he resolved not to tell anybody this, not even his wife — murder was a welcome break from his normal fare. He inspected the dead body and resolved to make a closer examination when the corpse was in the morgue. It was, he reflected sadly, just like being back in the East End. Dr Ragg went to comfort the old men in the chapel while he waited for the officers of the law.

Thomas Monk had long prided himself on the old-fashioned nature of his neckwear. Not for him the prosaic necktie now worn by clerks and officials all over Britain. Monk sported a wide variety of cravats in the manner of Lord Byron. Blue cravats, red cravats, green cravats, multi-coloured cravats were all part of his flamboyant collection. This morning he switched to a black one, tied in sober fashion, and stood outside the hospital to wait for the police to arrive from Maidenhead, Marlow being too small and too law-abiding to merit a full station of its own. Attack, he reasoned, might prove to be the best form of defence.

It was not long before the local police Inspector arrived on his bicycle. Inspector Albert Fletcher, resident of Buckinghamshire for all the thirty-five years of his life, was widely tipped as a coming man, though his critics pointed out that there was little sign so far of Albert actually arriving anywhere. He had hoped for a transfer to a London station for many years but so far all his efforts had been in vain. The Inspector had one characteristic which was in itself commendable but led in certain quarters to doubts about his competence. From the days when he first talked, Albert Fletcher had always paused briefly before he spoke. There were usually slight gaps in the flow of conversation. Albert would have told his critics that he was weighing up his options, making sure that he did not commit himself or his force to the wrong response or the wrong course of action. But to those who did not know him, or those impatient to press on with the business in hand, it seemed as though he was slow or stupid or both.

‘Good morning, Inspector,’ said Monk, drawing him inside the gates of the Jesus Hospital as fast as he could. ‘This is a terrible business. I presume you will want to see the body first. The residents are at their prayers in the chapel. Heaven knows, we all need prayers at a time like this.’

Here came that tiny pause, just long enough to leave the other person wondering if the Inspector had heard properly, or was going deaf.

‘Yes,’ Inspector Fletcher said, ‘yes. I would like to see the body, if I may.’ There was another slight gap in the conversation. ‘Has the doctor come yet?’

‘He’s in the chapel with the rest of them.’

Inspector Fletcher peered at the corpse. He thought the man had died from a knife to his throat but he didn’t want to commit himself just yet. Better to let the doctor examine Abel Meredith and pronounce the official verdict.

‘Dreadful business,’ he said at last. ‘Quite dreadful. Some more of my officers are on their way with a wagon. They can take him off to the morgue for a full examination. I’d better start questioning the silkmen.’

For the next few hours a slow round of interviews began in Monk’s little office. Monk made himself available as helper and general adviser to the old men, thus keeping himself abreast of the police knowledge. Monk was not to know it but the veteran, the man with the deep knowledge of strange and sudden deaths, was the doctor. For the Inspector, although he did not say so, Abel Meredith was the only corpse he had seen on duty. This was his first murder investigation.

And it was the doctor who made the strange discovery about the death of Abel Meredith. As he examined the body in the Maidenhead Hospital he knew from long experience that rigor usually became apparent two to four hours after death and he therefore concluded that the murder must have been carried out earlier that morning. But it was not the time of day that struck him there in the morgue with the trolleys and the antiseptic smell and the green overalls and the blood on the floor. There was no doubt about what had caused the death: a knife or other sharp instrument drawn across the victim’s neck with great force. But he noticed a strange mark just above the dead man’s heart. It looked as if somebody had pressed a thistle hard into Abel Meredith’s flesh and the imprint of the spikes was there for all to see. But the thistle, the doctor thought, must have been made of wood or some other hard substance — an ordinary thistle picked up in a field would be incapable of leaving the deep imprint on the dead man’s skin.

Sergeant Donaldson arrived shortly after eleven o’clock as reinforcement for the Inspector. Fletcher asked Monk to show him the dead man’s quarters.

Once they were up the stairs and into the upper floor, it was clear where Abel Meredith had been killed. His bedroom was a charnel house. Thick seams of blood had run down from the pillow which had turned a dull, dark red, the colour of dried blood. There was little sign of a struggle.

‘My God, Inspector,’ said Thomas Monk, ‘do you think he was still asleep when he was killed?’

‘He might have been,’ said the Inspector finally, after an extra long pause. ‘The doctor should be able to tell us.’

Inspector Fletcher carried out a long and slow examination of the room but he found little to help him. There was a cupboard with Meredith’s clothes, and his best and only civilian suit was hanging on a hook at the back of the door. There was a reproduction of a painting of Queen Victoria on the wall, staring out at some bleak Scottish landscape with Balmoral in the background and a couple of distant stags. There was nothing luxurious about the little apartments inside the hospital.

‘We’ll take this stuff away later,’ Fletcher remarked, waving at the tiny desk and the few books on the shelf.

‘I know it looks bad,’ said the warden. ‘I mean, the men seem to have so few possessions. We insist on them bringing as little as possible when they come to us. It’s part of the arrangement.’

‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Fletcher absent-mindedly. ‘Tell me, if you would, Warden, what are the arrangements and the timings of the gates in the hospital? The murderer must have been in here by the early hours of the morning.’

‘The doors are closed at eleven fifteen every evening and opened at six thirty the following morning. Some of the old men wake up early and like to take a short walk.’

‘And who is responsible for the opening and closing?’

‘Usually it is the porter. Last night he was off duty so I did it at the usual times.’

‘And you saw nothing unusual on either occasion?’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Could the killer have come in yesterday evening,’ said Inspector Fletcher, ‘and spent the night in the hall or the chapel?’

‘Well, he could, but I don’t think we’d find any trace of him. The hall is locked overnight, the chapel left open in case religion overcomes the old men in the night. The chapel was cleaned early this morning at seven o’clock before the body was discovered. And the old men have been tramping all over both hall and chapel since then.’