Of Night and Dark Obscurity

Felix shook his head as the man they thought might be Lyle Bowler opened the door to the room where he was staying at the boardinghouse.

“Detective Sergeant Felix of Metropolitan Police. Who might you be?”

“John Mitchell,” he replied in a heavy Scottish accent with a heavy salt and pepper beard.

“And your age?”

“Fifty-five,” he answered.

“Thank you for your time.” Felix said as the door closed.

“That was him I tell you,” the eager young Constable said excitedly.

Felix sighed. “Constable. The man we are looking for is young and not Scottish.”

“He could be faking the accent,” the eager constable said.

“And the lines on his face and his salt and pepper hair?”

“Theater makeup?” The constable responded.

“Come along,” Felix said as they left the boardinghouse.

???

Val used the key they had taken from Odean’s body to let himself into his practice. It was a small business with an office, a patient room and a small waiting room.

It was getting dark as the days were shorter now and he moved to the doctor’s desk and took out his matches. He lit the tall oil lamp that was on the desk and replaced the glass chimney back on top of it.

The soft light illuminated the rapidly darkening room as Val carried the lamp over to the place where he knew the doctor had kept his files. He flipped through the numerous files and then took a handful of them to the doctor’s desk.

He placed the lamp back on the desk and shook his head. It had never occurred to him that the link between all of the victims was already known to him. He had not realized it until now. If Irene Derry had been to the doctor and used her sister’s name, what if the other women had done the same and they had all been seeing the same doctor.

It was possible. He felt a thrill course through him. He pulled open the first file and looked down the sheet which held her statistics. She was fifty years old and suffering from heat flashes and weight gain. She was too old to be one of the four. He placed her aside.

The next woman was in her sixties and she was suffering from severe headaches. Val placed her on top of the woman in her fifties. He opened the next woman’s file and felt his heart beat faster. The woman was listed as twenty-two with yellow hair and only eight stone. That sounded like Effie Whitson.

He studied the woman’s file and continued reading through the diagnosis. The young woman had suffered from nervousness and mood swings and he had prescribed his tonic and rest. The young lady had been to see the doctor several times and he had also recommended pelvic massages for her.

The tonic recipe was noted in the doctor’s small penciled writing. It was listed as: one fluid ounce of 45 percent alcohol, 10.7 percent ether and Laudanum. The tonic basically had the same amount of alcohol, if not more, than a glass of whiskey. The tonic would render the patient drunk. Was that cured?

Val shook his head. The doctor had quite a racket. He placed the woman’s file aside and looked through several more files. Many of the women were older and didn’t fit the description of the victims. Some were too young and so they didn’t fit. Twice he went back to the filing cabinet only to return with more files to review.

From the windows behind him, he could see it was now dark. He wondered absently how Sergeant Felix had fared with the Lyle Bowler lead. He knew it was getting past dinner but he didn’t want to stop. This was the first new lead they had had in a long time that might link the women together and he was invigorated.

He pulled another file close to him and began to read the description of the woman. He felt his heart beat quicken. This woman sounded like Aida. Aida had visited a doctor? It couldn’t be. She had never mentioned it to him. The woman had been prescribed the tonic after she had complained about headaches. Odean had written that she had impure blood and depression.

On the next page he saw that this woman had also been prescribed pelvic massages. Val slammed his hand down on the table. No wonder Odean Barton was dead. One of these women had a man who found out the truth and killed him. They had discovered that he was no doctor but a charlatan peddling his potions and massages to unsuspecting women and plying his trade on them.

He tossed the woman into the smaller pile and then came upon Caroline Derry’s file. He didn’t need to open the file to know what was inside. A woman complaining of different ailments prescribed the doctor’s tonic and given massages. But this woman was pregnant and now she was dead.

He closed his eyes. It was getting late. He wanted to get through a few more files to see if he was onto something. Several more revealed one that sounded again like Effie, two that could be Bessie and another Aida.

The mantel desk clock struck the hour and it was eight in the evening. He looked up in surprise. Where had the time gone? He had been there for hours

poring over the files. He looked at the small stack that he had begun and sighed. It was a beginning. He could meet with the families of the women and see if they or the servants could agree with the dates they visited the doctor. If these women were the victims, they were tied together through Odean Barton.

But had Odean Barton been the killer of them all? He took the ten files under his arms and blew out the light. When he plunged the room in darkness, he heard a noise outside in the small waiting room. The light from the windows did not give much light from the lamp lights outside on the street.