Page 70 of Troubled Blood

“Well, I don’t know if Steve was queer—” began Janice, but there was no stopping Irene.

“—man—woman—two and two makes five! My Eddie was exactly the same—Jan, bear me out, what was Eddie like?” she said, tapping Janice’s arm again. “Exactly the same, wasn’t he? I remember once, I said, ‘Eddie, you think if I so much look at a man—he can be queer, he can be Welsh—’ But after you told me, Jan, I thought, yeah, that Duckworth—Douth-thing —is a bit camp. When he came in the surgery afterward, I could see it. Good-looking, but a bit soft.”

“But I don’t know wevver ’e was queer, Irene, I didn’t know ’im well enough to—”

“He kept coming back to see you,” Irene chided her. “You told me he did. Kept coming back to your place for tea and sympathy and telling you all his problems.”

“It were only a couple of times,” said Janice. “We’d chat, passing on the stairs, and one time ’e ’elped me with my shopping and come in for a cup of tea.”

“But he asked you—” prompted Irene.

“I’m getting to that, dear,” said Janice, with what Strike thought was remarkable patience. “’E was getting ’eadaches,” she told Strike and Robin, “an’ I told ’im ’e needed to go and see a doctor for ’eadaches, I couldn’t diagnose ’im. I mean, I felt a bit sorry for ’im, but I didn’t want to get in the ’abit of ’olding out-of-hours clinics in me flat. I ’ad Kevin to look after.”

“So you think Douthwaite’s visits to Margot were because of his health?” asked Robin. “Not because he had a romantic interest in—?”

“He did send her chocolates one time,” said Irene, “but if you ask me, it was more like she was an agony aunt.”

“Well, ’e ’ad these ’ead pains and ’e was def’nitely nervous. Depressed, maybe,” said Janice. “Everyone ’ad blamed him for what happened to that poor girl ’oo killed ’erself, but I don’t know… and some of me ovver neighbors told me there were young men coming in and out of his flat—”

“There you are,” said Irene triumphantly. “Queer!”

“Might not’ve been that,” said Janice. “Coulda just been ’is mates, or drugs, or stuff falling off the back of a lorry… One fing I do know, ’cause people talked, locally: the ’usband of that girl who killed ’erself was knockin’ twelve bells out of ’er. Tragedy, really. But the papers pinned it all on Steve an’ ’e ran. Well, sex sells better’n domestic violence, doesn’t it? If you find Steve,” she added, “tell ’im I said ’ello. It wasn’t fair, what the papers did.”

Robin had been trained by Strike to organize her interviews and notes into the categories of people, places and things. She now asked both women,

“Were there any other patients you can ever remember giving cause for alarm at the practice, or perhaps having an unusual relationship with Marg—?”

“Well,” said Irene, “remember, Jan, there was that one with the beard down to here…” She placed her hand at waist level, “… remember? What was he called? Apton? Applethorpe? Jan, you remember. You do remember, Jan, he stank like a tramp and you had to go round his house once. He used to wander around near St. John’s. I think he lived on Clerkenwell Road. Sometimes he had his kid with him. Really funny-looking kid. Massive ears.”

“Oh, them,” said Janice, her frown disappearing. “But they weren’t Margot’s—”

“Well, he was stopping people on the street, afterward, telling them he’d killed Margot!” Irene told Strike excitedly. “Yeah! He was! He stopped Dorothy! Of course, Dorothy wasn’t going to tell the police, not Dorothy, she was all ‘load of stuff and nonsense,’ ‘he’s a lunatic,’ but I said to her, ‘What if he actually did do it, Dorothy, and you haven’t told anyone?’ Now, Applethorpe was a proper nutcase. He had a girl locked up—”

“She weren’t locked up, Irene,” said Janice, for the first time showing a trace of impatience. “Social work said she were agoraphobic, but she weren’t being kept there against ’er will—”

“She was peculiar,” said Irene stubbornly. “You told me she was. I think someone should’ve taken the kid away, personally. You said the flat was filthy—”

“You can’t take people’s children off them because they ’aven’t cleaned the ’ouse!” said Janice firmly. She turned back to Strike and Robin. “Yeah, I visited the Applethorpes, just the once, but I don’t fink they ever met Margot. See, it was diff’rent then: doctors ’ad their own lists, and the Applethorpes were registered with Brenner. ’E asked me to go round for ’im, check on the kid.”

“Do you remember the address? Street name?”

“Oh gawd,” said Janice, frowning. “Yeah, I think it was Clerkenwell Road. I think so. See, I only visited the once. The kid ’adn’t been well and Dr. Brenner wanted ’im checked and ’e’d never make an ’ouse call if ’e could avoid it. Anyway, the kid was on the mend, but I spotted right off the dad was—”

“Nutcase—” said Irene, nodding along.

“—jittery, bit out of it,” said Janice. “I went in the kitchen to wash my ’ands and there was a load of benzedrine lying in full view on the worktop. I warned both the parents, now the kid was walking, to put it away somewhere safe—”

“Really funny-looking kid,” interposed Irene.

“—and I went to Brenner after, an’ I said, ‘Dr. Brenner, that man’s abusing benzedrine.’ It was proper addictive, we all knew it by then, even in ’74. ’Course, Brenner thought I was being presumptuous, queryin’ ’is prescriptions. But I was worried, so I called social work wivout telling Brenner, and they were very good. They were already keeping a close eye on the family.”

“But the mother—” said Irene.

“You can’t decide for other people what makes ’em ’appy, Irene!” said Janice. “The mum loved that kid, even if the dad was—well, ’e was odd, poor sod,” Janice conceded. “’E thought ’e was a kind of—I don’t know what you’d call it—a guru, or a magic man. Thought ’e could put the evil eye on people. ’E told me that durin’ the ’ouse call. You do meet people wiv weird ideas, nursin’. I just used to say, ‘Really? ’Ow interesting.’ There’s no point challenging ’em. But Applethorpe thought he could ill-wish people—that’s what we used to call it, in the old days. ’E was worried ’is little boy ’ad got German measles because he’d got cross with ’im. ’E said ’e could do that to people… He died ’imself, poor sod. Year after Margot vanished.”

“Did he?” said Irene, with a trace of disappointment.

“Yeah. It would’ve been after you left, after you married Eddie. I remember, street cleaners found him early in the morning, curled up and dead under the Walter Street bridge. ’Eart attack. Keeled over and there was nobody there to ’elp him. Wasn’t that old, neither. I remember Dr. Brenner being a bit twitchy about it.”