An Oxford Scandal Read online

  ‘She was my friend, Inspector, my dear friend of many years. She had much to contend with, including cruel neglect by her husband. He had tired of her, you know, and was seeking his chances elsewhere.’

  That, thought Antrobus, is a bitter and irresponsible thing to say. But perhaps it was true. Miss Hillier was a good, loyal friend, thought Antrobus, but a dangerous woman, who had not learnt to hold her tongue. A confidante should be discreet.

  ‘Do you know why Mrs Jardine left her house yesterday evening, Miss Hillier? Did she, perhaps, tell you earlier where she was going?’

  ‘She told me nothing. It was Mrs Green who sent for me late last night. I walked up to Gloucester Green, and hired one of the night-cabs. I arrived at Culpeper Gardens just after midnight, and told the cabbie to wait. Mrs Green told me that Anthony – Mr Jardine – had left the house some time after seven, as far as she could recollect, hinting that he might be away all night. Dora, apparently, had been quite content for him to be away. I think she knew in her heart that he no longer loved her.’

  Oh, dangerous woman! thought Antrobus. You may be mature and independent, but you are still a child when it comes to the betraying of confidences.

  ‘What else did Mrs Green tell you?’

  ‘She said that at about nine o’clock Dora declared that she was going to visit a friend in town, and that she would be away for a couple of hours. Mrs Green was worried in case Dora went wandering off again, and when Dora had left the house, she told Betty, that’s the maid, to follow her and see where she went. Well, Dora apparently walked up to the cab rank in Woodstock Road, and Betty heard her tell the cabbie to take her to Park End Street.’

  ‘Park End Street? Why would she go there?’

  ‘I have no idea, Inspector. It’s a good way from the town centre, not the kind of area that someone like Dora would normally frequent. I stayed in the house until after one o’clock, and then I came back here. Today is one of my free days, so I stayed at home in case Mrs Green sent some news of Dora.’

  ‘Well, ma’am, this Betty is to be congratulated on her detective skills, but it still remains a mystery why Mrs Jardine should have gone there. She was found, not in a cab, but a tramcar, in the depot at Cowley, right across town. Now, Miss Hillier, are you composed enough to hear some facts about your friend’s demise?’

  ‘I am,’ said Jean. Antrobus saw that she was now fully mistress of herself.

  ‘The late unfortunate Mrs Jardine was stabbed in the left side with a long, pointed instrument, which pierced her heart; she would have died instantly.’

  Jean Hillier turned pale, but she remained in control of herself.

  ‘Stabbed! In God’s name, Inspector, who would want to do such a wicked thing? What harm had poor Dora ever done to anyone? Do you think he—’

  Jean broke off, and looked embarrassed. At last, thought Antrobus, she’s learning how to be discreet.

  ‘We have yet to establish the motive, Miss Hillier. But there is something else about Mrs Dora Jardine that you need to know. She was an advanced morphine addict.’

  ‘Oh! So that was it! I knew there was something gravely wrong with Dora, Inspector, but I had not thought of drugs. She had been moody and depressed for years, and had often seemed to be on the verge of confiding in me. But she never did. Drugs! I’m sure her doctor would never have pandered to an addiction of that sort.’

  ‘I believe that she obtained her supplies from a man called Bruce—’

  ‘So that was it!’ cried Jean. ‘And all the time I thought he was a clandestine lover! Poor, dear Dora! So that was why she went out on that cold, wet night, and lost herself in Burgess Mead. I’d seen her talking to that man before, you know, and so had Mrs Green. Of course, being a doctor at the Radcliffe Infirmary, he would have access to drugs.’

  ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ said Antrobus, ‘you have lost me here. Why should you think this man Bruce was a doctor?’

  ‘Because he is, Inspector! His name is Dr Bruce Preston-Jones.’ Jean gave the inspector an account of her successful attempt to find out the mysterious Bruce’s identity.

  ‘Well, miss,’ said Antrobus, ‘let me congratulate you on a piece of very clever detective work. I will go after this Dr Preston-Jones immediately. But do be careful, won’t you? It’s better to let the police act on your advice, rather than taking on the task yourself. What if this Bruce turns out to be the murderer?’

  Jean’s hand flew to her mouth.

  ‘Oh! Is that what you think, Mr Antrobus? He killed poor Dora because she was pestering him for drugs. The villain!’

  ‘It’s merely a suggestion, Miss Hillier. My purpose in making it was to warn you against undertaking any further detective work. It’s a dangerous trade, miss.’

  Inspector Antrobus began to cough, a harsh, rasping sound. He turned aside, and put a handkerchief to his mouth. When he removed it, Jean saw that it was stained with bright red blood. When the coughing subsided, he rose to his feet.

  ‘You were a dear friend to Mrs Jardine for many years, weren’t you, Miss Hillier?’ he asked. ‘Well, she’s gone now, and her husband is left desolate. Perhaps you will continue your visits to Culpeper Gardens?’

  ‘What a kind suggestion, Inspector! Yes, I will do as you suggest. Poor Anthony is no saint, but he and I have many wonderful memories of Dora to share.’

  *

  Inspector Antrobus looked at the well-set-up young man who had been summoned to his presence by the Principal Physician of the Radcliffe Infirmary. Dr Bruce Preston-Jones was in his late twenties. He had been brought straight from one of the wards, and was wearing a long white coat, spotted here and there with blood. He regarded Antrobus and Maxwell with what seemed like disdain, but behind that it was easy for both men to see a scarcely concealed fear and anguish. Antrobus decided on a frontal assault.

  ‘Bruce Preston-Jones,’ he said, ‘I have evidence to show that you supplied quantities of morphine, both in powdered and liquid form, to the late Mrs Dora Jardine, recently murdered. You must tell me first whether you stole that morphine from this hospital or from elsewhere.’

  ‘How dare you—’

  ‘It won’t do, young man! I have proof of your guilt. You were seen several times in private conversation with Mrs Jardine, and on one occasion you were heard by one of my officers telling her that you would no longer act as her supplier, and that she must look elsewhere to satisfy her craving for that drug. Did you steal it from here?’

  ‘Yes.’ The single word held all the wretchedness of despair.

  ‘Have you supplied drugs to other clients? Are you still doing so?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘When you refused to supply Mrs Jardine further, did you recommend another dealer, a man living in Cowley? Did you take her there to meet him?’

  Before Preston-Jones could reply, Sergeant Maxwell took up the interrogation. The young physician jumped with fright at the sergeant’s loud and threatening tones.

  ‘Or did you tell her that you would take her to see a man in Cowley, knowing that there was no such man? Did you conceal a knife about your person – one of the fearsome knives available to you here, in this hospital – with the purpose of ridding yourself of her? Because she was a threat to your career, wasn’t she? And so, on the night of the thirteenth, you arranged to meet her in Park End Street, where the two of you boarded a tramcar and, just before the vehicle reached The Plain, you stabbed her to death—’

  ‘No, no!’ The young man put his hands over his ears to shut out the terrible accusations. ‘I admit that I supplied that woman, and I will give you a list of others who paid me to obtain drugs for them. But I never killed her. Kill? I am a doctor.’

  ‘So was William Palmer, the Prince of Poisoners,’ said Antrobus. ‘Well, Dr Preston-Jones, I have furnished your superiors with full details of your defalcations, and it is
up to them to prefer charges of theft and malpractice against you. However, I am prepared to believe your assertion that you had no further commerce with Mrs Jardine after you broke away from her in the Trap Grounds on the night of 4 November. What drove you, a doctor, to this wicked course of action – to supply desperate people with drugs that could further undermine their health?’

  ‘I had amassed enormous gambling debts,’ said Preston-Jones. ‘I was desperate—’

  ‘I expect you were. Well, Doctor, you are a disgrace to your profession, and I think you will find the General Medical Council will agree with me. You must prepare yourself to be taken into custody if we find that your conduct indirectly contributed to Mrs Jardine’s death. Meanwhile, we will leave you to the mercy of your superiors here at the Radcliffe. Come, Sergeant. I can’t bear to stay in the same room as this fellow any longer.’

  *

  ‘I’ve been in service with Mr and Mrs Jardine since they came to live at Iffley, ma’am, in 1875. They were only young then, and Mrs Jardine was expecting her second child, Miss Lucy. Very happy they were, and so was I. I’d been widowed in ’73, and working for Mr Jardine and his wife was a godsend. And so I stayed.’

  Mrs Green had been wary of the impressive lady who had called to see her, but she had made herself very comfortable by the kitchen range, and seemed to have a similar fondness for cups of strong tea. Miss Jex-Blake also had a fund of thrilling anecdotes to recount: she was a doctor, believe it or not, and had performed all kinds of terrible operations.

  ‘What will you do now, Mrs Green? Will you stay on? Gentlemen of Mr Jardine’s sort are helpless without servants to look after them.’

  ‘Well, I’d never thought of that, miss. Of course, I’d want to stay. Master has always been good to Betty and me. He’s a strong man for the most part, though he suffers from dreadful headaches.’

  ‘And he sees things, doesn’t he Mrs Green?’ said Betty.

  ‘Sees things? What do you mean, you wicked girl. Everybody sees things. No, ma’am, he has these dreadful headaches. Dr Maitland recommended something for it, which he takes regular, though sometimes he’ll ask me to make him up a fresh garden mint compress, which soon puts him to rights.’

  ‘Did Mrs Jardine ever suffer from a bad illness when she lived at Iffley?’ asked Sophia. ‘I thought I heard from someone that she’d not always been very well.’

  ‘Now, it’s funny you should say that, miss,’ said Mrs Green. ‘Because in that very first year, while she was still carrying Miss Lucy, she began to suffer from an abscess on the spine. No, it wasn’t an abscess, it was a tumour. Oh! She was in such pain, and the baby on the way and all. So Mr Jardine took her up to London, and the tumour was removed.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ said Sophia Jex-Blake. ‘I suppose they gave her something to take the pain away? That tea was most refreshing, Mrs Green. Do you think we could have some more?’

  ‘Of course, ma’am. Betty, why are you just sitting there, you idle girl? Make us all a fresh brew. Yes, ma’am, she was in terrible pain for a long time. So they gave her some tincture of laudanum, but that didn’t do much good. And then another doctor came out from Oxford, and prescribed her some powder – morphium – some name like that. And that did the trick.’

  ‘And then didn’t she—’ Betty began, but was cut short by her superior.

  ‘Be quiet, girl! What do you mean? This lady doesn’t want to hear your wicked fibs. Well, she was never quite right after that, ma’am. Always ailing in different ways.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘But no one had any right to murder her, poor lady.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Green,’ said Sophia, ‘you are quite right about the morphine. And now I’m going to tell you something that I want you to keep to yourself. And you, Betty.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am?’ Mrs Green’s eyes now shone with excitement as well as tears.

  ‘Mrs Jardine had been a morphine addict ever since that doctor gave her the powdered morphine. She couldn’t live without it, Mrs Green, and she would have gone to any lengths to secure it.’

  ‘That man!’ cried Betty. ‘That Bruce who she met in the Trap Grounds. Maybe it was him what got her the stuff when she needed it, Miss Jessica—’

  ‘Jessica! Why, you foolish girl!’ Mrs Green seemed personally affronted. ‘This lady’s name is Miss Jex-Blake. See you address her as such.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Green, it’s an unusual name, so I’m not surprised Betty got it wrong.’

  It was simply an old medieval spelling of Jacques, the French form of James that had come into England with William the Conqueror. Still, there was no need to burden young Betty with all that.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right, Betty,’ she continued. ‘About that man called Bruce, I mean. Now you are the housemaid here, aren’t you? You make the beds and tidy all the rooms? Have you ever seen anything like this in Mrs Jardine’s room? Remember, I’m working with the police, so you need not worry about answering my questions.’

  She had brought her doctor’s bag with her. She opened it, and produced a hypodermic syringe.

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss, I saw one of those things. But it wasn’t in her bedroom. It was hidden behind some books in Mrs Jardine’s sitting room. What’s it for?’

  ‘It’s for injecting a solution of morphine into a vein. And that’s what your poor late mistress was doing. Had she gone on injecting herself in that way, I doubt if she would have lived more than another year.’

  Here, in Culpeper Gardens, was the concrete evidence to support her and Dr Grossmith’s findings at the post mortem. Dora Jardine had reached a stage in her addiction where she would have been quite desperate to find ways of feeding it, and would have gone to anyone who could assuage her craving. Perhaps it was one of her suppliers who, for some baleful reason of his own, had robbed Dora Jardine of her life.

  *

  Sergeant Joseph Maxwell, buttoned up to the neck, and with his black bowler hat pulled firmly over his forehead, stood at the cab rank in Woodstock Road, talking to three cabbies waiting for fares. They were standing beside their horses, smoking.

  ‘So what I’m asking is, gents,’ said Maxwell, ‘did any of you take a Mr Anthony Jardine, of St Gabriel’s College, out to Cowley on the night of the thirteenth?’

  ‘What if we did?’ said one of the men, speaking round his cigarette.

  ‘You know quite a few of the university gentlemen who live round here, don’t you? You pick them up regular, and convey them into town. So did any of you three take a Mr Anthony Jardine out to Cowley the other night? Bearing in mind that I’m a police detective, and concealing evidence in a murder investigation makes you an accessory.’

  Maxwell’s hectoring tone rose to something like a shriek. The men shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘It’s a cold day today, gents, and just down the road there is the Lamb and Flag. And here’s sixpence for whichever of you decides to answer a simple question.’

  ‘I took Mr Jardine out there on Wednesday night, guvnor,’ said one of the men. ‘Thanks very much for the sixpence. But if you think that gentleman’s a murderer, you’re mistaken. He’s pleasant in his ways, and a good tipper.’

  ‘Where did you drop him, cabbie?

  ‘Engineer Street, just beyond Rose Hill Lane. He’s innocent I tell you.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said Sergeant Maxwell. He turned his face towards Carfax, where he could board a tramcar to take him out to Cowley. He himself lived with his wife in Cowley Road; he took it as a personal affront that people should go and commit murders there. It wasn’t decent, to say the least.

  *

  ‘A spotless doorstep is the sign of a good housewife,’ said Sergeant Maxwell.

  He stood in a narrow street of workmen’s liver-coloured cottages, looking at a middle-aged woman who was kneeling down and scrubbing her doorstep with holy-stone. The street was enveloped in
a mist of chimney smoke blown down by a stiff wind.

  ‘Having said which, mum,’ said Maxwell, producing his warrant card, ‘I wonder if you’ve ever seen a gentleman, well set up, tallish, moustache, silk hat, or maybe a peaked cap, walking round these parts from time to time?’

  The woman pushed back a lock of grey hair from her forehead. She looked interested in what the sergeant was saying.

  ‘Not a working man?’

  ‘No, a gentleman. Maybe he comes out here to stay from time to time.’

  ‘Maybe he does.’ The woman laughed. ‘This is Engineer Street,’ she said. ‘You need to go round the corner into Rose Hill Lane. When he does come, he stays there, at number 6. There’s a lady comes to stay with him, and they call themselves Mr and Mrs Charles Jordan. Fred Lawrence in the oil shop told me that. That Mr Jordan’s the type of man that tips his hat to you if he passes you in the street. I’ve never seen her, though. But they’re not married, you know. Anyone can see that.’ The woman smiled again, a good-humoured smile. ‘You’ll never see her scrubbing her front door step, mister!’

  That, thought Maxwell, is the easiest bit of detection I’ve done for years. So now we know how our Mr Jardine spent his leisure hours. Gentleman, cad, and booby.

  *

  Inspector Antrobus and Sergeant Maxwell sat in the saloon of an uncoupled tramcar in the Cowley Road Depot, talking to Sam Harper and Bob Jones, the driver and conductor of the tram in which Dora Jardine had been found dead on the night of the thirteenth.

  ‘Yes, Inspector,’ said Sam, ‘this is the very same vehicle, Number 68. As you can see, it has two rows of separate wooden seats with their own backs, instead of long benches on either side of the saloon. Each seat sits two passengers. I wish I could tell you more about what happened, but in the nature of things I’m up at the front on the platform, looking into the road. Bob here can tell you more than I can.’