Last Rights by Barbara Nadel

gets bored in my line of work.’
    Dr O’Grady laughed. Although he’s old now, he’s never lost his sense of humour. You need that in his business just like you
     need it in mine. Sometimes it’s the only way to get through the day. Not that I was too full of it myself on this occasion.
     The Duchess was bad, Nan was showing the strain of it and my head was still full of Kevin Dooley and what, for me, was building
     up into something of a mystery.
    Once Nan had been with the tea and gone, I asked him about what I had downstairs. Maybe as Aggie had suggested, when she’d
     first seen Kevin’s body, the doctor was the best person to ask about it. Dr O’Grady readily agreed to ‘give him a look’.
    ‘He’s starting to get a little bit ripe, if you don’t mind my saying so, Frank,’ the doctor said, as he lifted the lid of
     the shell and, wrinkling his nose a little, looked inside.
    ‘Yes. Sorry, Doctor.’
    In the normal course of events, when somebody dies I’ll go out to the house with a shell, a flimsy wooden coffin, and measure
     up the deceased for a proper box. On the day of the funeral my lads will slip the shell into the coffin and seal up. But Kevin
     Dooley was, as I explained now to the doctor, strictly Cox’s so I’d just put him in a shell for transportation.
    ‘So what is it you want me to look at, Frank?’ the doctor said.
    I pulled the deceased’s clothes aside and showed him the small raised pimple just below the ribs. ‘Do you think this could
     be a stab wound, Doctor?’ I said. ‘From something long and thin, like a pin or whatever.’
    Dr O’Grady looked down at the body for some time before he turned his gaze, squinting, to me. ‘By a pin, Frank, what do you—’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe a ladies’ hatpin or . . .’
    ‘Oh, well, now, there was a case many, many years ago,’ Dr O’Grady said. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he continued,
     ‘Not round here, but in London somewhere. Woman, prostitute, I think, stabbed a man with a hatpin, killed him.’
    This sounded like the crime Hannah had spoken about. Obviously quite a famous case. Not that it had had any effect on me.
     But, then, maybe if it had happened in the last lot or near it, the whole thing had simply passed me by.
    ‘What happened?’
    Dr O’Grady shook his head. ‘I can’t remember. Murder or manslaughter? No, it’s gone. I don’t know. I’ve a feeling the woman
     hanged but . . .’
    ‘So what do you think, Doctor? About this bloke and . . .’
    ‘I think he might possibly have been stabbed by something like a hatpin, yes,’ he said, ‘but I’d have to do a post-mortem
     examination to be sure, and as a family doctor I’m no expert.’ He looked up at me, frowning. ‘Frank, besides this mark, do
     you have any reason to suppose that this man might have been stabbed?’
    I told him about the night of the bare-knuckle fight and of my strange and frightening encounter with an apparently wounded
     Kevin Dooley. I also told him what Aggie had said about the girls down Rathbone and how they might sometimes protect themselves.
    ‘Well, I, personally, have never come across any of these so-called victims,’ Dr O’Grady said. But then he added, with a smile,
     ‘However, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Most men around here, Frank, as I’m sure you’ll agree, come to me only when
     all earthly hope is lost. A little stabbing, unless it involves a vital organ, is something of an occupational hazard.’
    ‘Yes.’ We both looked down at the corpse for a moment. ‘So, Doctor, what do you think I should do?’
    ‘Well, I wouldn’t do anything alone, Frank,’ he said. ‘Maybe speak to Albert Cox when he comes to collect him. But as for
     a post-mortem . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Without his family’s involvement you’d be hard pressed to get a coroner to
     take it on and I don’t suppose the police would be very interested, not if their doctor has already