Free Antidote To Murder by Felicity Young

laughed.
    “I am glad to see you cheered up. And now I have something that will really put a smile on your face.”
    He leaned across the counter and patted his top pocket mischievously. “Some weeks ago we had a conversation about the Ballets Russes . . .”
    She stared at him for a moment, placed her hand on her chest to calm the sudden racing of her heart. “You didn’t . . .”
    “Indeed I did.”
    “Tickets to the ballet?”
    “Due to cancellation; two tickets for tomorrow night, but only in the stalls, I’m afraid. Sorry about the short notice.” Borislav smiled. “I take it you are still interested?”
    “Oh yes, thank you. Of course I’m still interested!” Dody said, her thoughts hurrying over everything she had to get done. As for her paper, she could spend some time on it when she returned from the theatre. She must not let her concerns for that wretched assignment cast a shadow over the following evening: the Ballets Russes was the chance of a lifetime. “I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock and we can have supper after the performance,” Borislav said.

Chapter Seven
    H er excitement over the ballet was soon forgotten when she entered the Kents’ tenement building. So heavy was its press, Dody felt she could have pushed the stench away with her hands. It seeped through the tenement walls and floorboards like invisible fog, through window gaps and under doors. In the single-room dwelling belonging to the family, it gathered in greatest concentration in the vicinity of a dilapidated set of bureau drawers. Near these a red-faced Mrs. Kent dozed in a rocker, one breast drooping like an empty slipper from her open blouse.
    Dody slammed the basket of food on the table. The woman gasped and opened her eyes.
    “Blimey, Doctor, caught me napping.” Mrs. Kent shoved her breast back into her blouse and struggled to her feet. Taking a rag from a bucket of water on the table, she wrung it out and dabbed at her face, her movements slow and deliberate in the stultifying heat. Then she took a chipped cup and dipped it into the same water, looking over the rim at Dody with defiance as she gulped it down. Dody bit her tongue. These people were sick of personal hygiene lectures given by toffs who had no idea what life was like without indoor plumbing, at the mercy of a single, erratic standpipe in the street.
    The other occupant of the room, Mr. Kent, lay sprawled half naked and snoring across the sagging iron bed. “Where are the children?” Dody asked.
    “John’s at work and the others are playing in the street; it’s cooler there.” Mrs. Kent plopped the cup back into the water bucket and began to riffle through the basket’s contents.
    “John has a job?” That had to be something, Dody supposed.
    “A good one—our John’ll go far s’long as ’e watches that lip of ’is.”
    “And the baby.” Dody glanced around the room. “Where’s Molly?”
    Mrs. Kent, busy lifting the pie from the basket, failed to answer.
    With a spasm of dread, Dody moved towards the bureau. She didn’t need the scenting talents of a bloodhound to recognise the smell of English cholera. “I told you to take her to the London Hospital if she got any worse,” she said, stooping over the baby to feel her burning head.
    “Bert an’ me ’ave been sick an’ all,” Mrs. Kent said, spraying a mouthful of pie crumbs. “I mean look at ’im now”—she nodded to the sprawled lump on the bed—“’e can barely move.”
    Dody’s eyes rested on the empty bottle cradled in the man’s arms. Reading her expression, Mrs. Kent added, “For the pain, love.” She shot her husband a cautious glance, cut a generous piece of pie, and put it back in Dody’s basket. “Take that to my kids on yer way out, will you, miss? They won’t get nuffink if it stays in ’ere.”
    Dody said she would and closed the basket’s lid.
    Sifting through a pile of dirty linen on the floor, she picked up the cleanest of the items, a