Page 26 of Murder on Harley Street
I studiously avoided glancing at his jacket pocket where the packet of letters was safely hidden. “One of the letters was different to the others and appears to be written by someone else,” I said. “Do you know anything about it, Doctor? Could it have been from another of Mrs. Kempsey’s lovers?”
“There were no others,” he spluttered in his eagerness to deny my remark.
His wife rolled her eyes and sipped her tea.
“Perhaps Mrs. Kempsey had another loverafteryou,” I went on. “The letter was dated five days before she died and asked to meet her tonight on Regent Street.”
He frowned. “I’ve seen that letter, although I can’t recall which day exactly. Last week, I do know that much. It wasn’t Isabel’s, so I don’t know how it came to be in her possession.”
“Who was it addressed to?” Harry asked.
“No one. It came to the clinic. It was given to me along with some other mail. I threw it away since it made no sense to me. Isabel must have taken it out of the wastebasket and kept it, although I can’t think why. Perhaps she thought I was seeing someone else and was jealous, even though our relationship had ended.” He seemed quite surprised by the revelation.
“She was at the clinic the day you received it?” Harry asked.
“That day, and twice more last week. Her nerves required a great deal of treatment.”
Mrs. Iverson smiled tightly. “Many of the pretty patients have frayed nerves that require several appointments per week. More tea, Miss Fox?”
Once again, I was caught out by her sudden attention. Was she using me to score a point in the battle of wills with her husband? If so, I couldn’t quite work out what she was trying to achieve. Was she trying to draw the doctor’s attention to me? Encourage him to flirt with me and thereby catch him in the act and accuse him of being flirtatious with other women? If so, it was clumsily done.
Harry seemed quite oblivious to the strange exchange. He was still focused on the fifth letter, the one that was different to the others. “Why do you get the mail, Doctor? Isn’t it Miss Wainsmith’s job to go through it before passing on only what is relevant?”
Mrs. Iverson tutted. “That silly girl probably didn’t know what to do with it and simply handed it over along with the other correspondence.”
Dr. Iverson merely shrugged. “That must be it.”
“Speaking of Miss Wainsmith,” Harry went on. “Did she know about your affair with Isabel Kempsey? Did Sister Dearden?” He looked quite sincere, giving no sign that Miss Wainsmith had been the one to inform us.
Again, Dr. Iverson shrugged. “If they did, they didn’t mention it to me.”
“Mrs. Iverson?” Harry prompted. “Do you think either of them knew?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Armitage. You’d have to ask them.”
Harry moved on. “Doctor, can you say for certain that the cupboard where the Electro Therapy Machine is kept in your consulting suite was locked?”
“I can’t, no. I informed the police that I think I left it unlocked. Sometimes I am in a hurry and don’t get around to it.”
His wife tutted again and rolled her eyes for good measure.
Dr. Iverson stiffened. “The murderer still had to get into the building. The front door was locked, I’m very sure. He or she must have stolen the key.”
That led Harry to mention the woman calling herself Mary Linton, who’d returned to the clinic at the end of the day last Thursday in search of her glove, although it may have in fact been to return Sister Dearden’s key which had gone missing earlier that day. He explained how the address she’d given didn’t exist, and we believed she’d derived her false name from the two streets, Mary and Linton. “It’s possible she lives nearby and saw those streets regularly.” He removed his notebook from his inside jacket pocket and flipped to a blank page. “Can you remember what she looked like?”
Dr. Iverson settled back into the chair as he thought. “She wanted to use the machine, which I don’t ordinarily do during first appointments, but she insisted.”
“They want to know what she looked like,” his wife prompted.
“She was young. Younger than most of my patients. Quite attractive, too.”
“And confident?” I asked, recalling how Miss Wainsmith had described her.
“I thought so at first. But then when she lay down on the daybed to receive her treatment, her wig moved. Usually women wear wigs when they lose confidence in their appearance—when their hair falls out or it goes gray, that sort of thing. But the glimpse of her real hair that I saw was a glorious shade of red, and seemed quite thick, although I admit I only saw a little of it at her forehead.”
My experience of people wearing wigs was a little different to his. Usually they did it as part of a disguise. It was looking more and more likely that the woman calling herself Mary Linton had a reason for seeing Dr. Iverson that day that had nothing to do with her nerves.
Harry was busily writing in his notebook. Without looking up, he asked, “Aside from the red hair, was there anything else notable about her?”
