London Calling Box Set

Chapter 6: The Hospital, 1920

Chapter 6: The Hospital, 1920Alec reluctantly walked up the steps of the Mile End Hospital for Servicemen. These places gave him the creeps now. He’d spent six weeks in one in 1915 after he’d been shot in the leg at Neuve Chapelle and he’d had his teeth gritted with frustration the whole time, initially at the pain and then with his determination to get back to the front. The smell of carbolic soap and misery dragged him back there. The long hallway was empty, but there was an office on the left of the main door and he knocked and opened it without waiting. “Good afternoon. My name is Carter. I spoke to the matron this morning and she asked me to call in. Is she about?”

The older woman behind the desk looked up. “Yes, if you’ll wait a moment, sir, I’ll tell her you’re here. Please, do sit down.” She tip-tapped out, heels clicking on the wooden floor. Carter sat. There were a couple of other women behind desks, with their heads bent over their work. Neither of them looked up. After a few minutes, the first woman returned. “This way, please, sir. Matron will see you in her room.”

They walked down the long corridor to the other end, steps echoing. He saw there were wards opening off the main area, in the usual fashion. They were sparsely populated. “Most chaps have gone home, have they?” he asked his companion.

“Yes, sir. We’re down to the last now, although it’s still nearly two hundred men. We had a thousand here at the height of it. Here’s Matron’s office.” She knocked and opened the door. “Matron, Detective Inspector Carter.”

He nodded his thanks and stepped past her into the room. It was severely furnished and still smelled of carbolic, much like its occupant, who rose to greet him. “Detective, thank you so much for coming. Miss Lyons, please could we have some tea?” She smiled as she dismissed her.

“Yes, Matron, of course.” She disappeared.

“Detective, please do sit down. Miss Lyons will sort us out a cup of tea.”

“Thank you.” He seated himself in one of the leather chairs opposite her desk and she came around from behind it to sit in the other. She was a relatively young woman, he thought, behind her severe dove grey uniform and spectacles. He had been expecting someone his mother’s age, but she was probably closer to his own, in her mid-thirties.

“How can I help you, ma’am? Your telephone message to the station was a little vague.” He didn’t add he deeply resented having to trail out here to see her when he should be following up his urgent cases. However. Here he was.

“Yes, it was. I’m sorry to be so wishy-washy on the telephone. I didn’t know what to say. However, being blunt, I am concerned. Too many of our patients are dying.”

There was a small pause.

“Dying?” Carter repeated, parrot-like.

“Yes, Detective.” Her tone was severe. She looked at him over her spectacles and it made him feel as if he was back in the school-room, despite their comparative ages. There was a rap on the door and the tea arrived. She stood to pour, still speaking. “We are left with mostly long-term patients now. The poor souls who will never fully recover. Even most of the severely wounded and the amputees have gone back to their families. The boys we have left are the ones who are never going to be able to live a normal life, or those who have no one to care for them as they convalesce. They are, in the main, stable. We are gradually turning into a long-term facility. There is some discussion as to whether the remaining patients should remain here or be transferred elsewhere, perhaps out of London, and we return to serving the local population, as we did before the war.” She passed him his tea. “However, that is beside the point. In the last three weeks, six patients have died. Five of them were men who should have lived a long, although constrained, life.” She sat again. “You can see why I am concerned.”

“You think you have a murderer in the hospital.”

She paused again. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

Well, that was direct. “How did they die?”

“In their beds, overnight. They went to sleep in the usual fashion and simply didn’t wake up. When my nurses went in to wake them, they were cold. Nothing out of the way at all—no blood, no bruising, no signs of a struggle, nothing. The night staff hadn’t heard anything or seen anything out of the way on their rounds.” She took a sip of her tea. “Before you ask, there were different staff on every night it happened. I have not been able to find an explicable solution. So, I telephoned and asked to speak to someone who could investigate.” She put her tea down on the desk and stood. “Here are the notes on the men who died.” She rested her hand on a pile of paperwork on the table. “They were all suffering from different conditions. Two cases of severe nervous exhaustion that also had head wounds. Three double amputees who were learning to walk again—one of those was hoping to go home next month—and one lad who was in a tank fire and lost his sight and most of his hearing, as well as an arm.” She sighed. “They were in two wards over to the back of the building—that’s the only similarity. The nervous exhaustion cases tend to do better in smaller rooms, so the two of them shared a small side ward—we have the space now. The others were in Rosewood, the larger back section the side ward is adjacent to.”

“That’s very thorough, Ma’am.” He was still a bit stuck for words. “What about gas leaks and similar?”

“I thought of that. I’ve had the maintenance men in to check all the vents and the heating—we have radiators rather than gas stoves, installed last year—and the boiler. The boiler room is directly below the ward and it’s in perfect condition.” Another pause. “I know you will want to investigate for yourself. But I thought it would be helpful to have all the information as somewhere to start.” She flashed him a slight, determined smile. “I dislike my patients dying, Detective. It reflects badly upon me.”

* * * *

He didn’t think he’d find anything in the wards, and he was right. He telephoned to the police mortuary and asked them to come and take away the man who had died the previous night. The body looked normal when he gave it a cursory inspection. Pale, cold, and missing its legs. He gently pulled the sheet back up over the boy’s face and stood a moment in silence.

As matron had told him, the boiler was new and in good condition. He gave it a short and ill-informed inspection, too, and then, in the spirit of a thorough investigation, decided to have a poke about in the other basement rooms. He thought it was probably some sort of sudden illness running through the hospital and eventually that would become clear. But he could see why the nurses found it worrying.

The basement wasn’t lit properly, and he had to use one of the lanterns they kept in the boiler room for that purpose. It threw haunting glimmers around the walls and at first, he thought the bundle of rags in the corner of one of the rooms was a tramp come inside out of the cold. However, when he got closer, he saw it was just that—a heap of rags. It looked like some sort of nest a tramp might sneak into at nightfall, though. He poked it thoughtfully with his toe and turned to leave. He would ask the staff if they had any trouble with tramping men. They’d been on the rise since the end of the war. Lots of displaced men coming back from France with nothing to come home to, or no desire to fit back into where they’d been before.

* * * *

The Lurker circled round behind Carter, unnoticed. It could taste him. He didn’t have power of the type the Lurker preferred…but even the powerless kind of human creatures had their own kind of energy. That was the whole reason he and his kind were always pushing and Pulling at the stuff of The Border, to try to get through. An all-you-can-absorb buffet waited for them on the other side.

Unfortunately for them, balancing that out was the need for much more energy once they had crossed The Border, just to stay alive. This Lurker was young. That was the reason it had been dragged through The Border, as the humans had passed it by. If it had been older, it would have simply followed the travellers through as they passed, eaten well, and then returned to its home in the Outlands. However, it had missed its chance. It had been dragged along unexpectedly by their passing and was confused and sick when it had first broken through. It had been weakened too much to get back.

It had hidden and bided its time, taking sustenance sparingly and observing this new world.

It had been disturbed by the strong Pull of a ritual, at edge of its senses. It had been sleeping, in the basement room of the old war hospital, mostly abandoned months before. It was cold and peaceful. It could occasionally wake and feed on the creatures in the hospital above…but they were becoming fewer and the remaining ones were feeble and not so sustaining. It had gradually fallen into an almost suspended state.

It had felt the Pull as a tingle, like an electric charge going past its body. It was as attractive as a warm fireside and it had left its safe haven to track down the source of the heat.

As Alec turned and began to make his way back to the boiler room, the Lurker jumped. Alec saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and didn’t have time to avoid it completely. However, he did have time to swing the lamp. The glass shattered as it hit its outstretched arm and the paraffin spilled over its chest. The flame followed. Screeching, the Lurker backed away, beating at itself with its clawed hands. Alec stepped back and tripped. As he fell, his head banged on the wall and a great wave of black overwhelmed him.

* * * *

He came back to consciousness to a dry voice saying, “Please help lift him, if you would, Mr. Bishop. He is quite a large young man and my nurses could do with a little help.” He opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor, surrounded by a concerned circle of eyes. Two nurses, very young. A caretaker of some kind. And the matron. She looked both disapproving and concerned. “Detective, what happened?”

It was a struggle to sit up, but he managed it and then got to standing. “Where’s my lamp?”

“Here, sir, on the floor. It looks like you tripped and smashed it.” One of the young nurses pointed, dove grey uniform and white headgear reflecting the light.

“No! There was a man here—he went for me and I struck out with the lamp…the last thing I remember is him beating the flames off himself!”

The nurse looked at him with solemn eyes. “There’s no one here, sir. But the lamp is broken.” She bent to pick up the pieces.

“Matron, I think there’s a tramp or vagrant sleeping down here—there’s a bundle of rags in the corner that’s obviously been used as a bed.” He gestured. “I disturbed him and he attacked me.” Carter turned to the caretaker. “Have you seen anyone about down here? Or outside? Who might be creeping into the warm to sleep?”

“No sir, not since last year—we had a young chap then who used to try the door sometimes. I always saw him off, sent him down the road to the Salvation Army.” He moved and considered the room Carter had gestured to. “I can see where you mean, though, sir. That’s definitely someone’s sleeping quarters.”

Matron sniffed. “Come along then. Let’s get you out of here Detective Inspector Carter. You need that head looking at for starters.” She led the way up the stairs to the light.

“How did you find me?”

“Mr. Bishop heard you shout—he was looking at his boiler.”

“Yes, sir. It needs stoking every few hours.”

Alec’s head was banging by now and he could have done with an alcoholic drink. He allowed himself to be washed and disinfected whilst waiting for Grant to come and collect him, at the matron’s insistence.

Grant brought one of the Model-Ts from the Wapping station garage. Alec sat in the passenger seat and worried about latent head wounds. “I’m sure that chap blackjacked me, Grant,” he said. “Why would someone be living in the bottom of a hospital and blackjack a police officer who was poking about?”

“P’raps he didn’t realize you were police,” Grant wondered, grinding the gears as they turned in to the yard of the Police Station.

“Maybe. Seems suspicious though. We need to get some uniforms out there searching for him. The chap must have had burned clothes from where the lamp hit him. The last thing I can remember is him beating out the flames with his hands. Peculiar hands. Curved fingers. Maybe rheumatism?”

“I’ll tell them to keep an eye out for anyone with burns or burned clothing and I’ll mention the hands. Are you feeling well enough to do this, sir? I can manage fine on my own.” Grant pulled the little car in to a parking space and slammed the door as he exited the vehicle.

Alec winced at the noise and followed him more slowly. He briefly retreated to the bathroom and applied a cold flannel to his head wound, thinking vicious thoughts about every aspect of his life. In the time it had taken them to get back to Wapping, the wound had bled a bit more and he was going to have to have his favorite hat cleaned.

That more or less put the tin lid on his day so far.

* * * *

He was sitting pondering yet another cup of tea with Grant, when DC Sedman finally poked a slightly nervous nose round the door to his cubbyhole.

“Morgue on the phone, sir. They’ve autopsied that body from Mile End. Dr. Max is excited. He said you would be, too, and you’d better get down there.” He smirked at Alec’s moue at the verbatim message. “And he says he’s off to the golf course in an hour and it’ll have to wait ‘til tomorrow if you can’t do it now.” He retreated like a supplicant in front of a pharaoh, without turning his back.

“That’s not good,” said Alec. “Come on.”

Alec hated the smell of the morgue. The clinical, chemical finality of it tended to lodge in his stomach and linger for hours. It made him feel unclean. Looking at the bodies as they lay in their naked state, draped without honor in sheets stamped “Property of Metropolitan Police” brought home all the worst aspects of his job.

Bodies that ended up here may not have had the best start in life, but they had definitely had the worst end. Wapping had its own morgue because they got most of the bodies fished out of the Thames. They’d all dealt with more than their fair share of “death by drowning.”

He and Augustus Maxim, the pathologist, went back a long way, back before everything changed with the war. Longer than Alec’s brief and disastrous marriage. Longer than his job, almost. They’d met whilst Alec was still in uniform and Max had first left medical school. They understood each other and had a cautious friendship that would tolerate the occasional after-work drink, or a lunch at a Lyons, but which hadn’t yet extended to an evening meal together, either out in a restaurant or at Max’s immaculately-kept home, presented by Max’s immaculately-kept wife.

Max was almost apoplectic when they arrived at the mortuary. He loathed not having answers. “I have no idea what is going on!” he started, as Alec preceded Grant into the chill of his dissection area. No greeting. “I know of no disease that could cause this, gentlemen. Look!” He proffered an enamel bowl with some slime in it at them and as one they reared back, before peering cautiously forward.

“That’s his brain?” Grant restrained his disgust and tried to look intelligently interested rather than as if he wanted to vomit.

“What’s left of it!” Max was taking this personally.

“So, what’s the cause of death?”

“I’m putting down that his brain dissolved! What do you think?!” He took a couple of breaths and lowered his voice. “I’ve got some enquiries out to colleagues at the School of Tropical Medicine. We’ll see what they say. It may be a new disease come in from the tropics. Unlikely, though, I should think. I’m foxed, old chap. Completely stumped.” He put the bowl he was still brandishing down on the steel table and waved his assistant forward to continue putting things in jars. “I’ve looked at it under the microscope. The cell walls just…just…dissolved. There’s no other word for it. All the structure of the organ turned to jelly. Mush.” He twisted his mouth in distaste. “I certainly won’t be having tongue for my lunch for a few days. Disturbingly similar.” He screwed up his nose, as well.

“Thank you, Max. That’s very helpful.” Alec stifled a bark of gruesome laughter. When you’d helped dig trenches through a recent graveyard, you developed a black sense of humor in order to cope. He suspected being a doctor, and more particularly a pathologist, was the same.

“Can you go back and ask Mile End if they’ve had anything similar?” Max asked. “You said this was the sixth one they had no explanation for. Did they autopsy any of the others?”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the matron would have mentioned it. She was very thorough. I’ll double check in a moment when we go back up. I can telephone.”

Matron regretted they hadn’t autopsied the other bodies. “Sometimes patients just die, Detective Inspector Carter. It would be undignified to autopsy them all.” She was distressed. “Would he have suffered? Does your doctor think it was quick?”

“Yes, ma’am, Dr. Max said he thought it was almost instantaneous. No pain or awareness.” Alec was a lousy liar. She might not believe him, she was too experienced a nurse for that, but it was all he could do for her. “Does he have family? Do you want us to return the body to you?”

“Yes please, Detective. If you could. There’s an elderly mother. I’ll send a telegram now.”