David Dickinson: Death at the Jesus Hospital

Inspector Fletcher sighed. He couldn’t see how these transactions could lead to Abel Meredith having his throat cut. He returned to the more prosaic details of the murder. Had either Number Nine or Number Ten heard or seen anything unusual on the night of the death? No, they had not. Did Abel Meredith have any enemies, as far as they knew? There was a pause.

‘Yes,’ said Johnny Johnston, Number Nine, ‘yes, he did.’

‘He cheated,’ said Number Ten, ‘he cheated at cards and he cheated at shove ha’penny over at the Rose and Crown.’

Inspector Fletcher did not have the strength to ask how a man could cheat at shove ha’penny.

‘He was very unpopular,’ Peter Baker, Number Ten, added, ‘probably the most unpopular man in the hospital.’

‘Come, come now, ah, hm,’ said Johnny Johnston, Number Nine, ‘you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Somebody or something is meant to come and strike you down if you do.’

This may have been the Inspector’s first murder investigation but he did not lack imagination. His horizons had been broadened by regular readings of the many novels of E. Phillips Oppenheim. They kept the latest volume for him in the Maidenhead Public Library. He knew from experience how bitter relations could become in closed societies like police stations or almshouses. With little to occupy the inmates’ minds, cheating could be magnified out of all proportion. Could it, he wondered, be magnified enough to become a motive for murder? He wasn’t sure.

‘He was always borrowing money, that Meredith man,’ Number Nine went on.

‘And he never paid any of it back,’ added Number Ten. The corpse was beginning to assume pariah status in Inspector Fletcher’s mind. He paused for a moment.

‘Maybe he simply forgot,’ he said, ‘forgot to pay it back, I mean.’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Number Ten. ‘And there’s another thing. I don’t think he ever took a bath.’

‘For God’s sake,’ said his friend, ‘he wasn’t the only one in this place who never takes a bath.’

The Inspector had had enough. For once he managed not to pause, even for a second.

‘Thank you very much for your assistance, gentlemen. If you remember anything else that you think may be useful, please get in touch.’

He walked back to Monk’s office, thinking of a man with stinking clothes making his way to the Rose and Crown to cheat with borrowed money at the shove ha’penny table. But he couldn’t connect that figure with the corpse with its throat cut and a strange mark on its chest stretched out in the morgue at the Maidenhead Hospital.

Among his many responsibilities at the almshouse, Thomas Monk, still wearing his black cravat, was the custodian of the old gentlemen’s wills. They were stored in a little safe in the corner of his office. This practice was not included in the ordinances of the Silkworkers Company for the inhabitants of the Jesus Hospital. The custom had begun with Thomas’s reign as Warden and he had not bothered to tell any of his masters from the Silkworkers Hall in London about it. If the old men had not made a will — and Thomas was sure to discover this if they failed to hand it over on arrival — then he was prepared to help them for a small fee. He had, he assured the intestate newcomers, a draft will prepared by the finest solicitors in the capital which he could make available for them. Indeed he would help them fill it in. It just happened that the draft will ran to two pages. The second page merely repeated that this was the last will of the testator and left room for the signatures.

Since the murder Thomas had not had the time, or been alone in his office long enough, to check what the status of Abel Meredith’s will was. He suspected Meredith had had his will already prepared on arrival. He didn’t like to check in case Powerscourt or one of the policemen should barge into his office at the wrong time and start making inquiries.

The Inspector took Powerscourt for a walk down to the river on his return from the Maidenhead morgue. He felt there was a network of old men trying to listen in to any of his conversations in the hospital. He told Powerscourt about the possible changes at the almshouse and the unpopularity of the victim.

‘I’ll speak to my brother-in-law about the Silkworkers Company,’ Powerscourt said to the Inspector as they neared the bottom of Ferry Lane. ‘He knows about these things, or if he doesn’t, he knows people who do. What did you think of all the rest of it, the cheating at shove ha’penny and so on? I know these are old men and that feelings can run high in places like this, but they’re not going to lead to murder, are they?’

Inspector Fletcher agreed. ‘Damn it,’ he said, staring at a pair of swans making a regal progress down the Thames, ‘I knew there was something I forgot to ask the doctor. I’ll have to find him this evening.’

‘What was it that you forgot to ask?’

‘Well, it’s this, my lord. You just have to look at the old men walking out of the hall. Do any of them have the strength to commit the crime? It’s hard to imagine any of them being able to summon up enough force to draw a knife across the dead man’s throat like that.’

‘You could well be right,’ said Powerscourt thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if you could devise some sort of test to work out who would have had the strength to do it, like drawing the bow at the end of the Odyssey.’

There was a pause. A small flock of black river birds flew past, close to the water’s edge.

‘The killer, if the killer comes from inside, would surely fail any test to deflect suspicion,’ said the Inspector gloomily.

Half an hour later Powerscourt went to look at Abel Meredith’s room before the police took the contents away. He remembered suddenly the instructions given to new entrants to the Royal Hospital Chelsea, that men could bring precious little with them for there was precious little room in their quarters, and that earthly possessions were not needed whether they were going on to heaven or to hell. Here Powerscourt found the clothes, the few books Abel Meredith had brought with him to what he must have thought would be his last resting place on earth. The inhabitants of these almshouses came here to live out their last days and their hosts would not welcome the prospect of wading through a mountain of personal belongings when the residents went to the cemetery and the grave. One thing did strike him. Most people, he thought, would have brought some mementoes of their past life with them, family photographs if they had any, letters from relatives or from a workplace, some keepsake left them in a relative’s will. There was none of that. Abel Meredith had arrived with a few spare shirts and trousers and a jacket and a few books and personal knick-knacks, but nothing else. It was as if he had deliberately obliterated most of his sixty-four years on earth. Had he something to hide? There were no official documents of any kind. There was, he noticed, no will to be found among his few papers. He wondered again about the strange marks on the dead man’s chest. One of the doctors in the hospital had talked of witchcraft, of strange African practices come to an unsuspecting Buckinghamshire. Powerscourt didn’t think that could be true, Africa was too far away. But if they weren’t African, where in God’s name had they come from? The mountains of Peru? The Gobi desert? The high passes of the Hindu Kush? He was lost.

Inspector Fletcher came to join him, clutching a telegram. It was another missive from Sir Peregrine and told him of another murder at a property linked to the Silkworkers Company, in Norfolk this time, another murder marked by the mysterious imprint of the thistle deeply embossed on the dead man’s chest. Powerscourt was ordered to go to the scene as soon as possible.