The Formula for Murder (14 page)

His mother believes unconditionally in an all-powerful God, a simple God, which she continually tried to push upon her children when they were growing up. Religion has always been the dominant force in her life, rather than his father, Joseph. Religion was one of the wedges he believes tore them apart, besides his father’s lack of ambition.

She constantly told Wells and his brothers that they must strive to be “Upstairs persons” instead of “Downstairs persons,” which she labels herself. “It is my awful fate in life to be in the servitude position of life, both in work and marriage.”

Today, she is still a lady’s maid at Uppark, in a country house in Sussex.

His father, who is an “outdoor person” in domestic parlance and a freethinker, remains a gardener and sometimes amateur cricket player who never fit in well in anywhere except in front of a pint of ale at the local pub. His mother will never forgive him for losing the small crockery shop they acquired after receiving a small inheritance. And now they are no longer one, but two people living apart separated by anger, frustration, disappointment, and lost dreams.

Where is her simple God now? Wells wonders. As far as he is concerned, her God cannot be trusted. He’s “the old sneak.”

Wells has to think hard to remember happy moments in his childhood. He believes the sadness that would come to affect him began two years before he was born. His parents lost their only daughter, Frances; she was nine years old and the pride of Sarah.

From birth, his mother believed “little Bertie”—he hates that she calls him that even to this day—was born into “everlasting perdition” on account of their sins—the sins that took away their daughter.

In time, his parents were no longer able to support the family financially and Sarah, the logical, staunch Protestant, sought to place her boys as apprentices, while his father continued floating through life.

Being his mother’s wish, Wells was apprenticed to a drapery maker when he was thirteen—and again at fifteen—failing both times. The draper said he was a daydreamer, and he still is. The last time he arrived at Uppark, he announced to his mother that “the bad shilling’s back again!” She fears he will never amount to anything and be like his father, a failure and a freethinker.

He finally got a scholarship to the Normal School—a place where teachers are trained—and he studied to be a teaching assistant, not a very prestigious or well-paying profession, but at least he didn’t spend his waking hours measuring, cutting, and sewing drapery materials; something his mother was very proud that her older sons accomplished.

“They now have a place in life,” Sarah continually reminds him.

Wells realizes that his calling to education and science resulted from a broken leg as a child that made him bed bound for a long period during which he read books that his father obtained from the library.

Reading became his only solace. He’d read every book he could get his hands on so he could escape into a world of endless possibilities. The books had not just been an escape to magic lands for him—not seeing around him anyone he would want to emulate in life, he had found that the characters in books were people he could relate to and aspire to be like.

Books shaped his aspirations to do something other than working with his hands, and his ideals about love and the pursuit of happiness. He dared to dream and it was his freethinking father who lugged the books back and forth from the library for him. His mother might have good reason to have lost love with his father, but for Wells, he will always remember him fondly for bringing the books.

It is because of his ideals about “love” that Wells is now on the street in Bath following an American reporter, as she attempts to make sense out of the death of a friend.

The woman comes out of the dead end alley and he follows behind as she keeps up a fast pace.

He’s impressed. She has energy and determination, qualities he likes and admires in a woman. When she stared fearlessly back at him on the train, challenging him, he realized that she is not your everyday lady—things could get interesting.

She pauses in front of a less than respectable pub, stares at the door for a moment, and then completely surprises him—she goes inside!

This woman is bold or just plain stupid.

A few minutes pass and he’s wondering if he shouldn’t go in and rescue her when she comes back outside steering a woman alongside her who is obviously a prostitute, to a bench.

Wells is surprised, but not because he’s a moralist. To the contrary, he sees nothing wrong with prostitution. In fact, the profession should be regulated and controlled for the sake of both the prostitutes and the men they service, not to mention the poor wives who suffer medically from their indiscretions.

But the unfortunate prostitute with the American reporter is not far from her last swig of the gin she drinks to kill the pain, and she’s probably no more than thirty, but looks like a badly used woman twice that age.

They sit down and start talking.

What in God’s name does a poor saturated gin creature have to tell Nellie Bly?

24

The woman comes out of the pub with me only because I showed her a quid, told her I needed to talk to her about little Emma, took her by the arm, and steered her out the door and into the sunlight.

We face each other and I am saddened by what I see as I look into her eyes. The wrinkles on her young-old face are scars of life, her hair is dirty and straggly, her clothes appear not just slept in but
lived in,
but it’s her glassy eyes that seem to come in and out of focus that tear at my heart. One moment her eyes clear to expose her damaged soul, the next they cloud over with gin. There is no fire in her, little remnant of the animal cunning that has kept her alive on the streets. Her life is quickly burning down, like a fire no longer fueled or stroked.

“What do you want?”

“I’m from the Women’s Children’s Charity,” rolls off my liquid tongue. “We want to talk to you about Emma.”

“Emma isn’t here right now.”

She starts to tear up. I suspect that whatever terrible life this poor woman has had got worse when she lost her daughter. As horrible as a life on the streets would have been for the child, she probably was the one thing that kept her mother functioning. She appears completely lost now and hopefully will find eternal peace before she suffers too much more. She is so far gone, nothing can be done for her—even the money I am going to give her will only help lessen the pain while hastening the end. Giving more will most likely make her a victim of a robbery and a beating—or worse.

“Emma passed away,” I whisper, as gently as I can.

“Emma’s gone … she’s gone.”

“What happened to Emma?”

“Brain fever.”

“Yes, Dr. Radic told me that. Emma was sick when you took her to him to be treated.”

“Oh, no, Emma was never sick. She was amazing, even Dr. Radic said so. Other children got sick but not Emma. He said she was the healthiest child he’d ever seen.”

“Then why was Dr. Radic treating her for brain fever?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t know. She went to stay at the spa for a day and they paid me again and told me they were keeping her overnight. I came to pick her up the next day and they said she had to stay ’cause she had a fever.”

“She had no fever before you took her over?”

“Emma was never sick.”

“How long did they keep her before she, uh, passed—”

“They told me that the brain fever had taken her the previous night when I came to pick her up. She was dead, my sweet baby was pale like a ghost, sleeping and I couldn’t wake her up.”

“Did they tell you what caused her condition?”

“They said children die all the time from fevers.”

That is true, but they usually don’t have an illness that goes from perfectly healthy to terminal overnight.

“If Emma wasn’t sick,” I ask, “when you took her to the spa, what was the reason for her being treated there?”

“My baby wasn’t being treated, she was helping others.”

“Come again?”

“The doctor said she was so young and healthy, that she could help sick old people get well.”

“How did she help sick people get well?”

“She was a good girl.”

“But what exactly did she do to help the sick?”

“She was healthy. The doctor said she was young and healthy and could help.”

“Was it Dr. Lacroix or Dr. Radic who told you Emma could help others?”

“The younger one. Dr. Lacroix.”

Her eyes are clouding over. She appears not to have any notion of what went on at the spa. And neither do I. A child goes in … for what? And is dead the next morning.

Could something macabre or satanic have occurred? Or is it a medical treatment that went radically wrong? Just as another one did.

“Have you ever heard of Lady Winsworth?” I ask Sarah.

She shakes her head.

“Did Lacroix say anything about little Emma helping a particular person?”

Another shake.

She looks as if she is having difficulty focusing and I am feeling a bit queasy myself. Talking to a street woman about the mysterious fate of a small child is getting me nauseated. I need to get away from her and try to make some sense of what she told me.

I pay her and flee as fast as my feet can take me, my head once again swirling with facts that don’t add up and information that I can’t digest.

What in God’s name could Dr. Lacroix and Dr. Radic and their snake oil salespeople have been doing at the fashionable spa with a small child? Did they have her sit next to old people in hopes that the sight of her would make them younger—a macabre thought no doubt generated in my head by Oscar’s tale of a painting that grew old while its subject stayed young?

Did they have her bathe in the spring waters so some youthful essence washed off her and into the waters others bathed in—or drank?

All the scenarios I could think of sound bizarre, but I remind myself that the health claims of the spa are pretty fantastic.

I wish Oscar was here to help me. He has an incredible mind and in matters of beauty and what people would do, well, he might have some ideas. Maybe I’ll telegram him my findings.

First I need to eat to help settle my stomach.

I find a pub that serves pasties, a favorite of mine—they’re meat and potato pies used by Cornish miners as a compact, handheld meal. The miners brought them to American mining towns. The pasty and hot tea work perfectly. The food not only settles my stomach, but the baked smell of the meat, potatoes, and dough brings nice memories that help wash away the pain in Sarah’s face.

Something my mother always says when she sees someone who has suffered the bad life of this world comes to mind: There, but for the grace of God, go any of us.

Checking back at my hotel, there are telegrams from both Chief Inspector Bradley and Lady Chilcott—both will see me.

Good. As Oscar’s friend Arthur Conan Doyle would say, “The game’s afoot.”

25

Chief Inspector Bradley is about forty, younger than Inspector Abberline; also thinner and taller, with bushy prematurely gray hair retreating from the front of his head. He has a solid, almost stern cast to his features while Abberline has a little room for humor in his.

Stiff upper lip type, that very British exercise of self-restraint in the expression of emotion, is how I peg him.

His office is small, not a cubbyhole because he is a chief inspector, but it shows few personal effects. His desk is a library table heaped high with stacks of papers with chairs drawn up to it.

I imagine his officers gather around his desk to discuss cases. There are ashtrays the size of plates scattered about and I would bet I’d spot a spittoon or two if I took a peek under the table.

“Have a good trip across the pond?” he asks as he leans back in his swivel chair and prepares a pipe.

From the look he is giving me I suspect that preparing a pipe helps him kill time as he sizes me up.

“Atlantic storm put me at the rail a good bit of the way. I love the sea but hate the way it bounces great ships around with me on them like they were toys.”

He chuckles and eyes me as he sends up a cloud of aromatic pipe tobacco smoke that has a hint of blackberry.

I know this will not be as comfortable as dealing with Inspector Abberline. The look I am getting from the chief inspector is one of caution. Bath is a small community compared to London and has an overabundance of the wealthy and titled, drawn here because of the spas. That no doubt draws considerably more attention on the police than in a large metropolitan area.

“Never cared for the sea myself.” Another cloud of smoke and then he moves his first piece in the game of policeman versus reporter. “Doing a story on the death of Lady Winsworth?” he asks.

“Actually, I’m doing a story on the spa and the marvelous cures they claim, but yes, it would be hard to do a story about the facility and not mention that someone died from the treatment.”

“Now, there’s no evidence of that. The coroner’s investigation is still open as to the cause of death. We still have other avenues to investigate before a verdict will be rendered.”

“I guess I was misinformed. My understanding is that her ladyship died after receiving treatment at the spa.”

“There’s no question she drank some of those concoctions they charge an arm and a leg for at the place, but so have hundreds of other people. And still do. First thing the medical examiner did was look for poison and he found none.”

“What did she die of?”

“Now, that’s a question that falls in the bailiwick of the medical examiner and his boss, the coroner. But I can tell you this—they just don’t know yet. Could be something she ate or drank, but as I said, she consumed what others did.”

“What does Dr. Lacroix say happened?”

“Now, Miss, you do know the questions to ask that I don’t have answers for. The doctor left for the continent soon after Lady Winsworth died and we haven’t been able to talk to him.”