The House of the Weird Doctors (Set in London in the Royal Society of Medicine

in Wimpole Street!)

    (To be reprinted)

 

 

 

This time, Berry tackles a whodunit.

    The body of a hated genius scientist, mentally deranged by his raw Etonian

heritage, is found savagely butchered in the flash hallway of the most prestigious

medical institution in Britain - The Royal Society of Medicine.

    He knew something no-one else knew.

    He possessed a thing wanted by the entire world.

    The circumstances of and reasons for his murder are grippingly described with

a rare, sparkling and mischievous wit, only attributable to the nimble pen of

Eleanor Berry.

The date was 3 September. The time had just turned 9.00 a.m.

    On the floor of the majestic hallway in the Royal Society of Medicine in

Wimpole Street, London, a dead man lay, his skull brutally crushed and his

brains scattered on the polished marble floor.

    By his head, lay an imitation but lethal medieval mace, the kind used during

the Spanish Inquisition, a heavy, spiked metal ball on a chain.

    The Police arrived within twenty minutes. They were Detective Inspector

Massey, a robustly-built, rude, bald man, and his short, stout, squeamish

colleague whose title was Detective Constable Bush.

    Massey seized the Tannoy from Mrs Rose's desk and made an announcement

which reverberated round the building.

    `This is a police announcement. Will everyone in the building refrain from

leaving until further notice.'

    Detective Constable Bush was sick on seeing the dead man's body. A chalk

outline was drawn round the body which was finally put into a polythene bag

before being taken for detailed forensic examination, blood spillage analysis and a

survey of the belongings the dead man had on him.

    At 10.15, before the body was encased and removed, a police photographer

arrived on the scene accompanied by a forensic scientist who made a brief

preliminary examination.

    The photographer took pictures of the body from all angles while the forensic

scientist, a down-to-earth man called Dick Bullet, looked on.

    It had been established following a search of the possessions the dead man

carried, that his name was Frederick Ruttershields, a professor of medicine. It

was evident that he was a man of considerable wealth. He had on a neatly ironed

pin-striped suit, a nondescript black tie, shoes of original crocodile hide and

carried a gold cigarette case on which the words `To darling F from your faithful

T' were engraved.

    Detective Constable Bush examined the dead man's wallet for clues.

    At the bottom of Ruttershields's wallet, he found a picture of a young boy

with an earring through his right ear lobe and a tiger-patterned punk haircut.

    The boy bore no physical resemblance to the deceased and there were no

photographs of women or children either.

    Massey turned the photograph over and found an almost illegible message,

written in a hurry. The texture of the photograph suggested it had been taken

recently.

 

    Rutty, baby, who catches while I pitch (Sssh!) and for whom I ache as soon as

you can make it.

    Rutty, I'm psychic and I know they are after you because of the very thing

you possess. I'll refer to it as `The Thing'.

    Don't go home, tonight, Rutty-bear. They know your wife's address. Come to

me tonight. Come to my place. They won't find you there.

            I love you, baby - from Tiger.

 

Another note was found:

 

    Freddie, dear, please find some time to take off your precious work to come

and see me and the children.

    You go away for weeks at a time without coming to see us.

    Freddie, what's going on? I know you're hiding `You Know What' so

obsessively that I feel someone will come round to kill me and the children.

    Please tell us where you are, Freddie. We won't tell. Your loving Sheila.

Douglas Interkos was a mild-voiced man who lived over his shop in Hampstead

High Street. Massey and Bush were puzzled by the fact that he specialized in

funeral direction and not medicine.

    The time was 7. p.m. A sign in the shop window stated: Douglas Interkos -

Funeral Directors and Monumental Masons. Massey rang the bell. Within a

minute, a grotesquely fat, red-haired woman, with nothing to hide her nakedness

but a skimpy towel, appeared at the door.

    She spoke with a strong Yorkshire accent and had a trenchant, penetrating

voice.

    `Is one of the hearses parked on a double line?'

    `Don't mess about,' barked Massey. `We wish to speak to Mr Douglas

Ferdinand Interkos.'

    `He's having his rest at the moment. I don't want to wake him. He's had the

most ghastly day. The parson attending to one of his funerals gave himself a

heroin injection by the graveside and an incident like that is terrible for the firm.'

    `I'm not interested in these zany anecdotes!' rasped Massey. `We'd appreciate

it if you'd ask your husband to come down.'

    Mrs Interkos felt intimidated by Massey and wished he had come to make

arrangements for his own burial rather than rant at her when she hadn't broken

the law.

    Within ten minutes, Douglas Interkos shuffled downstairs in a quilted dressing

gown and carpet slippers.

    `Are you Douglas Intercourse?'

    Interkos was particularly abrupt because he had been roused prematurely from

sleep.

    `My name is Douglas Interkos, not Douglas Intercourse. I find you extremely

rude. You have no business speaking to my wife like that. We're not living under

a dictatorship.'

    `I don't recall suggesting we were,' said Massey. `We came here because we

took your name and address on the morning of Professor Frederick

Ruttershields's murder on 3 September at the Royal Society of Medicine.'

    Interkos looked baffled.

    `Why don't you come in? I don't want the neighbours to see the Police

standing on my doorstep, I've had a bad enough day already.'

    Massey failed yet again to contain his impatience. He wished the Police were

allowed to use truncheons as a matter of course, no matter how harmless the

people answering their questions were.

    `I don't care about your bloody day! We're coming in.'

    Interkos led them through a dour windowless chapel of rest and into yet

another windowless waiting room.

    `This is a pretty gloomy joint,' said Massey.

    `That's because we deal with the dead. We are not an upmarket travel

bureau,' replied Interkos.

    In the thin pinkish light of the waiting room, it first dawned on Massey what

Interkos looked like. Interkos was about six feet tall and grey-haired.

    `Do you mind if I ask you what you were doing at the Royal Society of

Medicine on 3 September? It's hardly a funeral director's beat,' asked Detective

Inspector Massey.

    Interkos, who was sitting on a hard-backed sofa by his wife's side, leant

forward and stroked his beard.

    `I'd been in the library the night before. I went to consult a book on forensic

medicine. The book was entitled Revolutionary Embalming Techniques, and

according to a review in the Lancet, which I subscribe to despite the fact that I

am not a doctor, there is a new embalming fluid which is said to be more long-

lasting than formaldehyde.'

    `Were you in the library all night?'

    `Yes, it was so hot in there that I fainted. I felt really shaken by it and

eventually I went into a lavatory and fell asleep.'

    Massey peered into Interkos's eyes but remained uncharacteristically

courteous.

    `Might I ask if your business is proceeding satisfactorily? Here we are, in the

heat of a recession, but your profits must be greater than most, since no recession

can stop people dying.'

    Interkos fidgeted in his chair and lit a king size cigarette.

    `Want one? It's good for business.'

    `No,' said Massey curtly. `I can't stand the smell of tobacco.'

    `You seem to think that people like us are wealthy just because people die. I

can't begin to tell you what a stupid and irresponsible remark you've just made.

Most people can't afford my funerals. They often bury their dead in their own

gardens.

    `Then there is the problem with cancer specialists and other specialists who

prolong life beyond its natural span. Those are the people who ruin my trade, not

to mention batty parsons who inject themselves with heroin by the graveside.'

    Massey sat forward in his chair.

    `You seem to have a grievance against parties who postpone death.'

    `What undertaker wouldn't?' asked Interkos, his voice raised in anger.

    `I'm afraid you will have to accompany us to the police station; we have

further enquiries to make.'

    Dexter found Interkos asleep in the corridor.

    `Hey, Doug.'

    Interkos was jerked into consciousness from an exhausted sleep.

    `What do you want, Dexter?'

    `Why are you lying in the corridor?'

    `Because they wouldn't give me a room. What do you want?'

    `Maybe I went over the top when I spoke to you before. I was under stress

and I didn't mean a word I said.'

    Interkos was still only half awake. Dexter was on his knees by his supine

body, making him look like a wounded soldier.

    `I didn't mean to say any of those offensive things, Doug. I'll do anything I

can to put things right between us.'

    Interkos suddenly sat upright, banging his head against the wall. Dexter had a

nervous giggling fit.

    Interkos stared distractedly into space, unable to think clearly due to lack of

sleep.

    `There is one thing you can do. Give my wife a face-lift.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dexter got blind drunk the night before doing Mrs Interkos's face lift. He didn't

really want to do it but did so out of fear that Interkos would turn him in.

    As Mrs Interkos's sedated mass of quivering blubber was wheeled into the

operating theatre, Dexter's hangover was so bad that he had to suppress the urge

to retch. He turned to the nurse.

    `Scalpel, sweetie.'

    His shaking, rubber-gloved hand cut an incision just above Mrs Interkos's

hairline. She had so much fat on the top few layers of her facial skin that Dexter

found it difficult to distinguish between fat and nerves.

    He stretched the skin the whole way down to her neck but in scraping the fat

off the skin, he inadvertently severed a vital nerve. Realizing his mistake, Dexter

decided that his only hope would be to leave the country as soon as possible.

    As he struggled to keep the bile from his mouth, he stitched the partially taut

skin back under the hairline and bandaged the woman's head.

 

                         *   *   *

 

The clinic rang Interkos to tell him that the bandages would be removed from his

wife's face that day. In his obsessive state, Interkos left a funeral prematurely and

drove the hearse to the clinic like a maniac, still wearing his funeral clothes. He

rammed the hearse onto a pavement in Harley Street, screeched it to a halt,

leaving it unlocked with the key in the ignition.

    His wife's bandages had already been removed. One side of her face sagged

even more than it had before. The other side made her look like an eighteen-year-

old girl. Her eye on the damaged part of her face looked like a dead fish on a

slab. The other eye was sparkling and full of girlish allure. She looked as if she

had suffered a massive stroke.

    Interkos fainted.

 

It took Interkos fifteen minutes to become orientated. When he did, he found his

way to Dexter's office.

    Dexter had the foresight to block the door, the lock of which was broken, and

clutched a golf club in his hand in case Interkos broke the door down. In the

meantime, a clanging stretcher was being wheeled past Dexter's office. Interkos

ignored it. For the first time in his life, he raised his gentle voice to a menacing

roar.

    `I know you're in there, Joss Dexter!'

    One of the porters wheeling the trolley thought he was hallucinating on seeing

this furious man in funereal attire, banging on Dexter's door in a rage.

    `Come out and face me, Joss Dexter, you sick bastard!'

    Dexter was silent.

    `If you don't answer. I'm breaking this bloody door down.'

    Both the porters were too stunned and in too much of a hurry to tell him to be

quiet and leave.

    Interkos heaved his weight against the door until it gave way. Dexter knocked

off his top hat and hit him repeatedly over the head with the golf club, killing

him outright. He was so stunned that he took several swigs from the whisky flask

he carried in his pocket.

    The door had been broken down and he couldn't lock it from the inside, so he

pushed over the heavy oak writing desk to prevent anyone coming in. Then he

dragged Interkos's body beneath his consulting couch and wiped away as much of

the blood as he could with paper and water from the sink. He sat for a while,

thinking.