chin. Charlotte whirled around and then scurried away, her long skirt fanning out behind her.
‘Good day, Madam,’ the man said in a heavy accented voice. Alice nodded and waited in the hall as the man traced Charlotte’s footsteps downstairs. The almoner’s expression was serious. As soon as she had crossed the threshold of the Redbourne’s home, something had struck a false note.
By the time she left, she later recorded in her case notes, it appeared as if something truly disturbing were about to unfold.
The out-patient department, which annually receives over 40,000 cases, is at present conducted in the basement, which is ill-lighted and insufficient in accommodation … The hospital is situated in one of the poorest and most crowded districts of London …
(The Illustrated London News, 1906)
It was still dark when Alice woke two days later, on Monday, 2 January. Three years into the future, in 1925, the live-in staff of the Royal Free would move to purpose-built accommodation on Cubitt Street. The bedrooms of the Alfred Langton Home for Nurses were clean and comfortable, according to the Nursing Mirror, each one having ‘a fitted-in wardrobe, dressing table and chest of drawers combined. Cold water laid on at the basin and a can for hot water, and a pretty rug by the bed … everything has been done for the convenience and comfort of the nurses’.
As things were, the nurses managed as best they could in the small draughty rooms of the Helena Building at the rear of the main hospital on Gray’s Inn Road, where the former barracks of the Light Horse Volunteers had once stood. Huddled beneath the bedclothes, they would summon up the willpower and then dash over to the sink, the flagstone floor chilling their feet.
Alice’s breath fogged the air as she dressed hurriedly in a high-necked white blouse, a grey woollen skirt that skimmed her ankles and a dark cloche hat pulled down low over her brow. After checking her appearance in the mirror she left her room and made for the main hospital, where the stairs leading to her basement office were located. Outside, a brisk wind propelled young nurses along as they ventured over to begin their shifts, their dresses billowing around their calves. The skirts of their predecessors a decade earlier, overlong on the orders of Matron so that ankles were not displayed when bending over to attend to patients, swept fallen leaves along the ground as they went.
Just before the heavy oak doors leading to the hospital, Alice turned at the sound of her name being called from further along the road, where a small gathering was beginning to disperse. In among the loosening clot of damp coats and umbrellas was hospital mortician Sidney Mullins. One of the tools of his trade – a sheet of thick white cotton – lay at his feet, a twisted leg creeping out at the side.
Sidney, a fifty-year-old Yorkshire man with a florid complexion and a bald crown, save for a few long hairs flapping across his forehead, often strayed to the almoners’ office for a sweet cup of tea and a reprieve from his uncommunicative companions in the mortuary. Standing outside a grand building of sandstone and arches of red brick, he beckoned Alice with a wave of his cap then stood back on the pavement, rubbing his chin and staring up at one of the towers looming above him.
Shouts of unseen children filled the air as Alice took slow steps towards her colleague. She dodged a teenager riding a bicycle at speed on the way, and a puddle thick with brown sludge. ‘What is it, Sidney?’ Her eyes fell to the bulky sheet between them, from which she kept a respectful distance away.
The mortician pulled a face. ‘Forty-summat gent fell from t’roof first thing this morning,’ he said, scratching his belly. A flock of black-gowned barristers swept past them, their destination perhaps their courtyard chambers, or one of the gentlemen’s clubs nearby that were popular retreats for upper-middle-class men.
‘Oh no, how terribly sad,’ Alice said.
‘A sorry situation, I’ll give you that,’ Sidney said in his broad country accent. He rubbed his pink head and frowned up at the building. ‘But I just can’t make head nor tail of it.’
Alice grimaced. ‘Desperate times for some, Sidney. It’s why we do what we do, isn’t it?’
The mortician pulled his cap back on and looked at her. ‘Aye, happen it is. But I still can’t work it out.’
‘What?’
‘Well, how can a person fall from all t’way up there and still manage to land in this sheet?’
Alice gave a slow blink and shook her head at him. ‘Sometimes, Sidney …’
He grinned. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that, lass. You’ve gotta laugh, or else t’pavements’d be full with all of us spread-eagled over them.’
Sidney recounted the exchange inside the basement half an hour later, Frank banging his barrelled chest and chuckling into his pipe nearby. The smell of smoke, damp wool and dusty shelves smouldered together in an atmosphere that would likely asphyxiate a twenty-first-century visitor, though none of its occupants seemed to mind the fug. ‘Never was a man more suited to his job than you, Sid,’ Frank said, gasping. ‘You were born for it, man. What do you say, Alex?’
Alexander Hargreaves, philanthropist, local magistrate and chief fundraiser for the hospital, was a tall, highly polished individual, from his Brilliantine-smoothed hair and immaculate tweed suit all the way down to his shiny shoes. A slim man in his late thirties, his well-groomed eyebrows arched over eyes of light grey. In the fashion of the day, an equally distinguished, narrow moustache framed his thin lips. There was a pause before he answered. ‘I prefer “Alexander”, as well you know, Frank,’ he said, without looking up from the file on his desk. ‘In point of fact,’ he added in a tone that was liquid and smooth after years of delivering speeches after dinner parties, ‘I don’t happen to think there’s anything remotely amusing about mocking the dead.’
The walls behind Alexander’s desk were lined with letters thanking him for his fundraising efforts, as well as certificates testifying to the considerable funds he had donated to various voluntary hospitals over the years. Framed monochrome photographs of himself posing beside the equipment he had managed to procure, developed in his own personal darkroom, were displayed alongside them.
Sidney’s podgy features crumpled in an expression of genuine hurt. Years in the mortuary had twisted his once gentle humour out of shape until it was dark, wry and, to some, wildly offensive, but his respect for the gate-keeping role he played between this life and the grave never wavered. ‘Right,’ he said a little forlornly, clapping his hands on his podgy knees. ‘I reckon I’d best get back to the knacker’s yard.’
Alexander’s nostrils flared. Frank arched his unkempt brows. ‘Come on, Alex, where’s your sense of humour?’
‘Lying dormant for the time being,’ came Alexander’s reply. ‘To re-emerge whenever someone manages to display some wit.’
Stocky office typist Winnie Bertram blew her nose into a hanky and tucked it back into the handbag that rarely left her lap. ‘God rest his soul,’ she said, her reedy, wavering voice momentarily cutting through the office banter.
Alexander glanced up from his work. ‘Are you coping, Winnie?’
Winnie adjusted the black silk shawl she was wearing around her shoulders, the one she had worn religiously since Queen Victoria had been interred
