Page 76 of Murder on Harley Street
Miss Wainsmith indicated the bed, pushed up against the wall. “I presume she conducts her work there.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought of sleeping in the same bed where medical procedures were conducted.
I quite agreed with her assessment. Perhaps Sister Dearden wasn’t as put off by it as we were, or she placed a cloth over the bedcovers to protect them. I wouldn’t condemn her based on the lack of an examination table.
I couldn’t find a cloth large enough for that purpose, however. Nor could I find the sorts of things I’d expect in a medical consulting suite that exclusively treated women, such as suturing threads, and equipment for either aborting or delivering babies. There were no bandages and nothing that could be used as an antiseptic to clean wounds, not even a bottle of spirits. Nurses may not have received the formal education of a doctor, but the role germs played in causing infection had been known for decades. Even I understood it, in theory.
Harry signaled for me to join him at the glass-fronted cabinet. Some curios were positioned on the shelves, alongside a photograph of four men. Harry wasn’t interested in them. “She has a number of medical texts, but this book caught my eye.” He showed me the one he’d removed.
It was a book explaining how electricity worked.
A small gasp behind us had us both turning toward Miss Wainsmith. She held a book, too. It had a cloth cover and was small enough to fit in her palm. “That anonymous letter the doctor received mentioned a rendezvous opposite the Café Royal, didn’t it?”
I accepted the book from her. It was an appointment diary with one week spread across two pages. Miss Wainsmith pointed to the entry for four days prior.
C. Royal 9.
It had a line through it, crossing it out.
“The Café Royal at nine PM,” I said, showing Harry. “Shewrote the note and added a reminder in here.”
“Why did she want to meet Dr. Iverson?” Miss Wainsmith asked.
“Not him.Mrs. Iverson.”
It was all beginning to make sense. Sister Dearden’s motive had nothing to do with patients and misdiagnoses. It was linked to her sapphic love for another woman—the doctor’s wife. After Dr. Iverson told us Sister Dearden had shown interest inhim, we’d believed she wasn’t sapphic, after all. His high opinion of his appeal to the opposite sex had led him, and us, to the wrong conclusion.
“Where did you find this?” Harry asked Miss Wainsmith.
“On the bedside table beside that spoon.”
I crossed back to the cabinet while Harry looked through the drawers. I bent to take a closer look at the photograph. It didn’t show fourmen. It was fourwomen, dressed as men. The one on the left was Sister Dearden. I didn’t recognize the others. It wasn’t definitive proof that she was sapphic, but it was a strong clue.
But why cross out the appointment in the diary?
I thought back through the previous days, and to that day in particular. If the note was intended for Mrs. Iverson, was the date significant? Four days ago, her husband had just been released from Scotland Yard, so Mrs. Iverson wouldn’t have been able to slip out of the house without him noticing. Was that why Sister Dearden knew the rendezvous couldn’t go ahead? But why make it that particular night in the first place? The note was written days before the murder. Was he due to be somewhere? Somewhere without his wife? A work appointment, perhaps…
Then I remembered. Mr. Lombardi entertained guests at the hotel that night. He’d invited his best customers from the medical profession to join him for dinner. Dr. Iverson was probably meant to attend, but having just been released, and with a cloud hanging over him, he’d canceled.
The day and reason didn’t really matter. What mattered was whether Mrs. Iverson was Sister Dearden’s co-conspirator, or an innocent bystander.
I studied the photograph again, but was quite sure none of the women dressed as men were Mrs. Iverson. I showed it to Miss Wainsmith. “Do you recognize any of the women with Sister Dearden in this?”
“Those aren’t women.” She went to hand it back, but I asked her to take another look. She did. “Oh! Well, that is curious. I’d never have noticed they were all women without a proper look. I do recognize one, as it happens.” She pointed to the figure next to Sister Dearden, dressed in loose fitting trousers and jacket, a bowler hat in her hand. “She’s one of Sister Dearden’s patients who comes here from time to time.” Miss Wainsmith handed the photograph back to me. “She’s not a patient, is she? She’s Sister Dearden’s lover. Good lord…allthose so-called patients who come here are her lovers, aren’t they?”
“Most likely.”
Harry had been on his hands and knees, looking under the bed. He now stood and inspected a crumpled piece of paper. I peered at it, too, and read.
It was addressed to ‘My Dearest Margaret’ and signed ‘Your lovingly enslaved Tuppence.’ Margaret was Mrs. Iverson’s name and Tuppence was Sister Dearden’s. In it, Sister Dearden called Margaret ‘an exceptionally rare jewel’ with ‘an ethereal quality’ who’d captured Sister Dearden’s heart so completely that she couldn’t eat or sleep. She finished by writing, ‘You must relieve me of this misery and consent to be mine or I’ll go mad with longing. If you don’t, I may do something even more drastic.’
More drastic than murder?
“She never sent it,” I said. “She had second thoughts and threw it away. She must have decided it was too much, or that Mrs. Iverson would never leave her husband.”
Harry removed a bottle from the bottom drawer of the bedside table. “Or she decided to speak to her in person.” He showed me the bottle label. Nerve Elixir. “The spoon on the bedside table is still wet. I think she just took a dose before she left. The cocaine in it would give her energy. And courage.”
We strode toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Miss Wainsmith called out.
