Full-Fat Cream

Abstract

The thing inside the little Jiffy envelope, airmailed from New York, was cryptic: a slim, square-shaped bit of black plastic (which I, though I had never seen one before, assumed was a computer disk) with a label saying simply ‘CREAMANIA’ (which, not that I am good at guesswork but because I am a crime historian, I assumed meant that the disk had something to do with Thomas Neill Cream, the boss-eyed American doctor who, having come to London in the early 1890s, fatally poisoned a bevy of local prostitutes - two of whom, Matilda Clover and Emma Shrivell, come high on the roster of victims with fictive-sounding names). Wait a moment: I tell a lie - there was another word on the label: ‘complimentary’ (which didn't please me but at least prevented anger arising from the assumption that I would soon be getting an invoice for this thing that I hadn't ordered).