A Case of Doubtful Death Read Online Free Page A

thought that if Henry was not found soon, there might be no wedding, but a funeral. Walter gently took Alice’s thin white hand and stroked it as if it was a piece of bone china that might break. He looked appealingly at Frances. ‘Do you think you can help us?’
    ‘I will make some preliminary enquiries,’ said Frances, ‘and if I feel there is nothing I can do, there will be no charge.’
    ‘And you’re to eat something,’ growled Sarah, looming over Alice, ‘because you’re no good to your brother like that!’
    Alice crammed a piece of cake into her mouth and burst into tears.
    Once the clients had departed Frances gave careful thought to all the many possible reasons for Henry Palmer’s disappearance. The two most important factors, she believed, were the character of the man, and the death of Dr Mackenzie. Everything that she had been told about Palmer suggested that he was most unlikely either to have turned to drink or gone insane. Even the possibility that the mortuary might close down following Dr Mackenzie’s death, a matter that cannot in any case have been determined that same night, would not have been enough to provoke any unexpected behaviour. Palmer was a young man of proven ability who might easily have found another post on the recommendation of Doctors Bonner and Warrinder, and he had calmly and resolutely seen his family through far worse crises than this. It followed that he had been overtaken by some unforeseen catastrophe, which had occurred somewhere between Dr Mackenzie’s home on Ladbroke Grove Road and his own in Golborne Road. If he had been taken ill, or met with an accident, and was lying insensible in a hospital or had lost his memory, or had died and was in a mortuary, the efforts of his family would surely by now have alerted an attendant to his identity. It was, thought Frances, far more likely that during his ten-minute walk under the concealing cloak of foggy darkness he had become a victim of foul play, which explained why those in the vicinity had seen, or professed to have seen, nothing. His body might in the course of time make itself known by foul odours emanating from a cellar or a drain. If Dr Mackenzie’s death had had anything to do with Palmer’s fate, it might only be that it had resulted in the young orderly having had the misfortune to be in a place where he would not otherwise have been at that time.
    Frances, however, could not help wondering if Dr Mackenzie’s death, even though due to natural causes, had been brought on by some external factor as yet unknown, something that might have resulted in Henry Palmer’s disappearance. The last people who had seen Palmer alive were Dr Bonner and Mrs Georgeson. She composed notes to them saying that she would be calling for an interview, and ordered a cab.

C HAPTER T WO
    L ogic dictated that Frances should attempt to recreate Henry Palmer’s last known journey, but the night was closing in and she did not feel bold enough to retrace his steps on foot in the dark and the fog, while a possible murderer roamed at large. That would have to wait until daylight, when she might at least, weather permitting, be able to look about her.
    Before setting out on her first call, Frances asked Sarah to take a message to two friends of hers who were always happy, in return for a small consideration and sometimes gratis, to supply information about Bayswater trade, often of a nature that was not publicly known.
    Charles Knight and Sebastian Taylor, usually known as ‘Chas’ and ‘Barstie’, were two enterprising and energetic individuals, men of business whose fortunes appeared to ebb and flow with the tides. Since the summer they had been enjoying a period of comparative calm and, for them, stability. Their nemesis, a loathsome young man carrying a sharp knife, who was known only as the ‘Filleter’ and often lurked about Paddington exuding a noxious air of menace, had not been seen for some weeks, and while they anxiously