Chapter 9 #2
Sister Dearden’s brow furrowed in thought. “I remember her. Her death rocked Dr. and Mrs. Iverson, but it wasn’t unexpected. Mrs. Hamlin came to us looking for a cure for a delicate constitution, but it turned out that her fragility was the result of an underlying disease.”
“Rose Bolton—the real name of the woman calling herself Mary Linton—blames Dr. Iverson for not detecting the disease.”
“There was nothing anyone could have done for her. As I recall, she was prescribed a tonic to keep her comfortable.”
“Nerve Elixir?” I asked. “It contains an addictive amount of cocaine.”
“Only those with a weak constitution become addicted,” Sister Dearden said. “Anyway, it was the disease that killed her. Let me look at her file.”
I bit my tongue to stop myself responding.
For now, we needed Sister Dearden and Miss Wainsmith to believe we were on Dr. Iverson’s side.
Accusing him of getting his patients addicted to the Nerve Elixir wouldn’t help us.
Besides, the nurse was right about one thing.
In Edith Hamlin’s case, the cancer had killed her.
While Sister Dearden searched through a drawer in the filing cabinet, I asked Miss Wainsmith about the note again. “Dr. Iverson told us that he received the note along with his other mail, but you said you don’t remember seeing it. Is that still the case?”
“I haven’t lied, Miss Fox,” she snapped. “I didn’t see the letter.”
Sister Dearden closed the filing drawer. “Here it is. Edith Hamlin.” She rejoined us at the desk and opened the file.
We all crowded around, even Miss Wainsmith.
Sister Dearden pointed to the two-word diagnosis: nervous condition.
Below that were a list of her symptoms, including anxiety, crying for no reason, and irregular womanly courses, which the doctor stated most likely led to her inability to conceive.
The final symptom of weight loss was underlined and repeated three more times at three different appointments, a month apart.
Her weight was recorded, as were other physical measurements.
Finally, the doctor listed his treatments.
They included sessions on the Electro Therapy Machine and doses of Nerve Elixir tonic as required. There was no mention of cancer.
Sister Dearden pointed to Edith Hamlin’s weight measurements. “You can see she got thinner and thinner.”
While the misdiagnosis was interesting, what interested me more was the penciled note scrawled on the first sheet of paper at an angle on the right-hand side. The handwriting was difficult to decipher at first, but when I did, I gasped. It said Edith Hamlin was recommended by Isabel Kempsey.
It was the connection we needed to the victim! The women knew each other.
Harry noticed the name, too. “Why is it written like that, off to the side?”
Miss Wainsmith also gasped as she read the note, and Sister Dearden pressed her fingertips to her lips. They, too, had realized the importance of it.
“It’s Dr. Iverson’s handwriting,” Sister Dearden murmured. “He must have jotted it down during one of Mrs. Hamlin’s appointments. It means Mrs. Kempsey recommended Dr. Iverson’s services to her.”
“He likes to know how the patients hear about him,” Miss Wainsmith added. “It helps to know who to thank if it was a personal recommendation. Good lord, does this mean Mrs. Hamlin’s sister killed Isabel Kempsey because she recommended Dr. Iverson, whom she blames for not curing her sister?”
It was possible either Rose Bolton or her brother-in-law, Duncan Hamlin, did blame Mrs. Kempsey. Both were still grieving over Edith Hamlin’s death, a year later.
A patient arrived and Miss Wainsmith and Sister Dearden set about convincing her to stay and be seen by the nurse instead of rescheduling her appointment.
Harry and I left, but we were silent for some time, each of us lost in our own thoughts.
It was Harry who finally spoke up when we reached the intersection.
“Do we confront Rose Bolton or Duncan Hamlin next about Edith Hamlin’s connection to the victim?”
“Neither,” I said. “I think we should speak to Isabel’s husband and sister. They might know about the connection.”
“In that case, we’ll call at the Kempsey residence. I’m sure we’ll find Miss Rowbottom there, too.”
I smirked. “She may have already moved in.”
Unlike previous occasions, Mr. Kempsey was pleased to see us today. Indeed, the fact he showed any emotion at all was rather surprising. So far he’d seemed indifferent to his wife’s death, but his eager greeting implied he’d been suppressing his emotions, after all.
“I’m glad you’re here, Armitage. I telephoned your office but there was no answer, so I presume you have your own reason for calling on me.” He invited us to sit on the sofa and was about to speak again when his sister-in-law appeared.
Miss Rowbottom stopped short upon seeing us. “I thought I heard voices, but I was expecting it to be acquaintances paying their respects. Mr. Armitage, I must protest most vehemently. Your timing is very insensitive. My brother-in-law is exhausted. You need to leave.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Kempsey said. “I’m not in the least tired.
Anyway, the timing is fortuitous. It saves me a visit to Soho.
As I was just telling Armitage, I tried telephoning his office, but no one answered.
Your assistant should stay there to answer it,” he added with a flick of his wrist in my direction.
“Miss Fox is my associate,” Harry said, yet again. “Why did you telephone me?”
Miss Rowbottom dismissed the hovering maid and sat in the chair closest to her brother-in-law. “Yes, Ian, why did you?”
Mr. Kempsey reached for a small leather-bound book on a side table.
It easily fit into his palm as he fished a pair of spectacles from his pocket.
“This is my wife’s diary. Not her regular diary with her appointments, mind, but a secret one.
At least, I don’t think it was intended for anyone else to see.
She jotted down her thoughts, some of them quite bleak and…
private.” He cleared his throat as he flipped through the pages.
Miss Rowbottom sat forward, craning her neck to see. “You didn’t tell me about it. When did you find it?”
“This morning.”
“Why were you looking through Isabel’s things?”
He peered over the spectacles at her. “She was my wife.”
Miss Rowbottom sat back. “Yes, of course. I merely meant it must be difficult for you to go through her things and read her secret thoughts. You should let me do it, so it’s one less bother for you.”
He stopped turning pages when he reached October.
“Here! Listen to this. A week before her death, she wrote: ‘Meet Will I. Tell him I know.’” Mr. Kempsey handed the diary to Harry.
“’Will I’ is Dr. Iverson. I don’t know what she was going to tell him, but I believe the code in the pages leading up to it might give a clue.
I can’t decipher the code, but perhaps you can. ”
Harry lowered the diary so we could both read it and flipped back through the pages.
Isabel Kempsey’s jottings consisted mostly of a series of times beside what I guessed to be locations.
Several were C Royal—Café Royal. It seemed likely she’d discovered the doctor frequented the venue.
Other locations appeared to be public spaces such as parks.
They were probably all places where she’d seen the doctor meet someone.
Given the Café Royal’s reputation, it was a reasonable assumption that she saw him meet men.
“There, you see,” Mr. Kempsey went on. “Isabel wasn’t having an affair with the doctor. She was gathering information about him, perhaps to blackmail him. I don’t know why she would do that—she didn’t need the money—but what other reason could there be?”
Jealousy sprang to mind, but I kept my opinion to myself.
His sister-in-law wasn’t so kind, however.
Miss Rowbottom reached across the gap and clasped his forearm.
“My dear Ian, she was having an affair with him. She told me to my face that she loved him. It’s most likely that when he broke it off with her, she was angry and sad, so she followed him around the city like a puppy.
She must have learned something about him while doing so, something he wouldn’t want made public. ”
Mr. Kempsey snatched his arm away. The familiar blank mask descended over his face, and he was once again the indifferent husband. Except now I realized it wasn’t indifference. It was a way of protecting himself from not just the loss of his wife, but the truth of her infidelity.
“The entry in the week before her death states she was going to tell Dr. Iverson she knew whatever it was she’d found out about him,” Miss Rowbottom went on.
“You’re right in that she probably wanted to blackmail him, but not for money.
For his affections. Either way, it’s a very good motive to kill her. ”
Mr. Kempsey indicated the diary in Harry’s hand. “You may keep that, Armitage. Take it to the police.”
Harry shook his head and held it out to him. “It must come from you, sir. But thank you for showing it to us. It’s enormously helpful.”
Mr. Kempsey accepted the diary. “You had some more questions for us, I presume?”
“Does the name Edith Hamlin mean anything to you?”
“No.”
Harry looked to Miss Rowbottom, but she also denied knowing Mrs. Hamlin. “Who is she?” she asked. “And how is she important to the investigation?”
“We can’t divulge that information.”
I watched Miss Rowbottom carefully. Out of the two of them, I suspected she knew Isabel the best. “Are you sure your sister never mentioned her? Could she be an old friend Isabel bumped into? Or a new acquaintance?”
Miss Rowbottom shook her head. “The name isn’t familiar to me, but I’ll go through Isabel’s secret diary to see if there’s any mention of an Edith Hamlin.” She reached for the small leather-bound book, but Mr. Kempsey kept it away from her.
“I’ll look through it,” he muttered.