The main hall had still been deserted when Andrew returned after seeing Amelia onto the ferry. He’d mounted the stairs to the second floor, halfway expecting to see a panicked scrum of people outside the main office. But there had been no one. Winslow had been curled like a comma and snoring peacefully behind the desk, precisely where they’d left him. Andrew had checked his pulse—strong and steady—and tried to decide how to handle the next bit. He’d settled on stepping into the hallway and shouting for help.
The nurse and a trio of orderlies who’d arrived moments later found Andrew kneeling beside the unconscious Winslow, slapping the young man’s cheeks and loosening his collar.
“He’s fainted.” Andrew hadn’t had to try to look anxious. “Help me get him up to the infirmary.”
By the time they’d hauled the young man to the infirmary and laid him on a cot, he’d begun to come around. Andrew had shooed the rest of the staff away in case the clerk began relating the story of the strange young man he’d accosted in the halls just before someone assaulted him. Fortunately, Winslow had seemed more drowsy and confused than anything else.
“I’m going to give you a small dose of chloral to help you rest,” Andrew had told him, squirting a pair of drops into a glass of water. That amount wouldn’t have any additional effect, but it would cover up the administration of the earlier dose and explain why the clerk was sleeping. “It might give you strange dreams,” he’d added. Hopefully, if Winslow remembered anything when he woke, he would put it down to the drug. Winslow had drunk the water without complaint and was asleep again before Andrew set down the empty glass.
Andrew had checked on him throughout the night, taking his pulse and avoiding the basilisk stare of Mrs. Brennan, who stood over a white-faced nurse as she counted bedpans.
Now, certain that Winslow would be fine, Andrew made his way back to his office, then closed the door behind him and sank into his chair. He massaged his face with his hands, still unable to quite believe what he’d done. He’d assaulted a colleague. Amelia was off the island without any plausible cover story. His own role in both incidents could be revealed at any moment.
He sat up straighter at the thought. He had work to do before that happened. He pushed himself to his feet, wrinkling his nose at the rank smell of dried fear-sweat wafting from his clothes. Andrew unbuttoned his shirt as he walked into the storage room and opened the drawer for a fresh one. Amelia’s asylum dress was wadded up inside, the rips and bloodstains visible. He’d have to get rid of it.
He slid his arms into the new shirt, wondering how Jonas was faring and regretting anew not being able to go with Amelia. He frowned, realizing he didn’t know where she was. The man who called him yesterday evening—had it been only yesterday?—had said someone would meet Amelia at the docks, but Andrew hadn’t thought to ask where Jonas was. He set the matter aside; she would send word eventually.
He pulled open the “deaths” drawer. The answers were here. He just had to find them. Now.
49
Amelia and Sidney maintained their unspoken détente throughout the morning. Along with lunch, the bellman brought a basket, which Sidney handed to Amelia. Inside was a complete change of women’s clothing, including shoes.
“I thought you might like to bathe and dress.” Sidney indicated the door to the suite’s bathroom.
Amelia was not certain which idea she disliked more—accepting the gift, or continuing to wear her grimy boy’s attire. “Thank you.”
Her qualms disappeared once she was in the bathroom, with its large enameled tub and hot water on tap. The shirt stuck to the clotted wounds on her back, and Amelia gingerly peeled it away with a series of little tearing sounds. She kicked the clothes into the corner, stepped into the tub, and sighed as she sank into the warm water. She scrubbed the remnants of the makeup from her face, then took a breath and submerged to wash her filthy hair.
Twenty minutes later, clean and dressed, she emerged from the bathroom feeling more like herself than she had in months, despite her fatigue and worry.
Amelia spent the rest of the day sitting beside Jonas as he slept. She was alert to every change in his breathing, every twitch of his face. He felt warm, but the doctor, when he came, said it was normal. To be expected.
“He’s not to the crisis yet. When he’s hot and dry to the touch. When his breathing goes shallow and fast, or he wakes up out of his head. When that happens—”
“You don’t know it will happen. It might not,” she insisted.
The doctor ignored the interruption. “Keep giving him water or broth as he’ll take it, and keep him still. Use the drops I left for him.” He paused. “And if you have other family, you should send for them.”
He said the last kindly. Amelia hated him for it.
Sidney dozed on the sofa. Asleep, he looked like a boy.
He woke when the bellman brought dinner, and, hungry and stiff, Amelia watched from the bedroom door as he sank into the chair beside the bed. Sidney leaned forward and stroked a lock of hair off Jonas’s still face. There was such tenderness in the touch. Amelia understood with a sudden, bittersweet clarity that Jonas—the only person who had ever been entirely hers—was no longer hers alone.
Sidney shook her awake sometime after midnight, his face white with terror. “He’s burning up.” He didn’t wait for her.
Amelia flung back the blanket and hurried after him.
One look at Jonas, and dread flooded through her. He looked ghastly. His dry lips were cracked. Heat radiated from him. She put her hand to his cheek, closed her eyes, and swallowed a sob. He mumbled and twitched. A damp cloth fell from his forehead. Sidney reached past her to pick it up. She watched, numb, as he dipped it into a basin, wrung it out, and replaced it. Jonas stilled for a moment before the muttering and tossing started again.
“I had them bring up some ice.” Sidney’s voice was listless. “I don’t think it’s helping.”
The doctor came after what seemed like hours. He took one look and sighed in resignation. He unwrapped the bandage on Jonas’s arm. The wound was angry and inflamed. Red streaks ran up toward the shoulder and down past the elbow.
He looked at Amelia. “That arm is poisoning him. I’d take it off, if I thought there was any chance he’d survive the surgery.” His gaze widened to take in Sidney, standing in the doorway, his face under rigid control. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“Can’t you clean it again? Do something to kill some of the infection?” Amelia heard the desperate note in her own voice.
“It’s in his blood. I’ve seen men survive blood poisoning, but…” He looked away. “The longer he holds on, the better his chances. I’ll come back this evening if— Well, you let me know. Watch the streaks,” he advised. “When they’ve grown past the shoulder, if you have much laudanum left, it might be kinder to give him all of it.”
The doctor showed himself out. Sidney and Amelia stared hollow-eyed at each other in the thunderous silence he left in his wake.
The hours passed. Jonas’s fever climbed. Sidney sent for more ice. They wrapped it in cloths and packed it beneath Jonas’s arms, behind his neck, in the hollows of his knees. They trickled cold water into his mouth.
Amelia sat with Jonas’s hand clasped in both of hers. Each time his chest fell, she willed it to rise again. She watched the red streaks on his arm and thought she could see them growing.
She and Sidney moved in concert and spoke to each other in quiet monosyllables, as if afraid their voices would draw the attention of the shadow hovering over them. When Jonas began to shudder with chills, they called for warming pans and piled the bed high with blankets. Still his teeth chattered and his body shook. They worried his thrashing would tire him further, worried it would tear open the wound and they would watch him bleed to death before the fever could kill him.
At some point during those several desperate, uncounted hours, Amelia’s bladder finally forced her from the room. She returned to find Sidney lying on the bed, aro
und Jonas and holding him still with one arm over his chest. Jonas quieted at the contact, and after that, they took turns, trading off an hour at a time in silent agreement, neither wishing to relinquish their place by Jonas’s side but each tacitly acknowledging the other’s right.
Jonas did not wake.
The sun sank low in the sky. Sunday dawned. Drew bright. Waned.
They kept their vigil. Amelia must have eaten, must have attended to her body’s needs, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered except trying not to drown in the swelling fear she felt at Jonas’s every rasping breath.
That night, his breathing grew shallow and fast, and Amelia’s terror began to slip free of its moorings. Neither she nor Sidney dared leave the room. While one huddled with Jonas on the bed, the other moved only as far as the chair beside it. Sidney sat with his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. When it was Amelia’s turn, she curled miserably with her feet tucked beneath her and her eyes fastened on Jonas’s face. They waited. It was the longest night of her life—longer than any she’d spent in the asylum, longer than any night on the streets after they’d left the Foundling.
The doctor came at dawn. He examined Jonas, then sat with his back to the window at the sitting room table, where Jonas’s things still lay scattered. Amelia toyed with the pencil stub, her fingers running over the divots Jonas’s teeth had made in the wood. She watched the doctor’s lips move, but the words didn’t seem to reach her until long after he’d spoken them. She understood well enough, nonetheless. He could offer them no hope. Sometime within the next few hours, the fever would burn away the last of Jonas’s strength, and his life would gutter out like a candle flame.
Amelia stayed where she was as Sidney showed the doctor out and went back to Jonas. The early-morning sun shone through the thin curtain, casting a ray of pale light across the table. Jonas would die. No matter how many times she repeated the words to herself, they refused to become real. Jonas would die. She would be alone. In the whole of her life, Amelia had never been alone. There had always been Jonas. She had never imagined there would not be Jonas.
She recalled Sidney’s accusations. That Jonas spent his life taking care of her. That he could have had more. That he had deserved more. It was all true. She was that selfish. She had let him spend his life—literally, now—taking care of her. It had never occurred to her that he would do—that he might even want to do—anything else. And now he would die. Because he’d been trying to help her.
And he had. Amelia made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob as this final irony struck her: Jonas had been trying to find a way to free her. He’d gotten shot, and now she was free.
All it had cost was his life.
It was far, far too much. She wasn’t worth it. Had never been, could never be, worth this sacrifice. She’d dragged him into helping her search for the murderer, believing his brilliance, his daring, were hers to use. And he’d agreed, for her. He’d made the plans, done the work, taken the risks, all for her. And he might have done it. He’d found the names, after all. That might have been enough to unravel the whole thing. And then he’d been shot and the list taken. Now even that accomplishment would be denied to him.
Amelia laid her head on the table, expecting the tears to come. But it was as though they’d frozen inside her chest.
Numb, she watched as the sliver of light coming through the window moved toward her. It fell across Jonas’s notepad, turning the impressions in the paper into swirling canyons.
Impressions in the paper.
Amelia blinked and dragged herself upright. Her hand trembled as she drew the pad nearer. She tilted it until the light skipped across it again, throwing the loops and lines into relief. Yes, those were letters.
She stared at the page, trying to render it readable, but the letters were too faint, too abstract. Amelia groped for the pencil. Carefully, so carefully, she scrubbed the side of the lead against the indentations.
These were names.
This was the list.
50
Andrew pushed back from his desk shortly before seven o’clock in the morning and kneaded at his eyes with his knuckles. After so many hours, the light from the lamp felt like sandpaper on his corneas. He hadn’t been this exhausted since medical school—and he’d been ten years younger then. There also hadn’t been a murderer treading on his heels.
He shook himself and went to the door, hoping to flag down a passing orderly to request more coffee. He had barely left the room in the past forty-eight hours. Aside from checking on Winslow and a few visits to the washroom, he’d spent every moment poring over files, making—and discarding—lists of possible victims. He ran a hand over his bristly cheeks and tried not to dwell on the fact that he hadn’t accomplished anything. There were still a few hours. The next file could be the one he needed.
There were no orderlies in the hallway, but to his surprise, Dr. Harcourt stepped out of his apartment. He was dressed but had the wan and befuddled look of a man who had been ill and was not yet quite mended. His gaze sharpened as he found Andrew, and Andrew was abruptly aware that the fresh shirt he’d put on two days earlier was no longer necessarily a better choice than the one he’d taken off.
“Here overnight, I take it?” Harcourt approached, holding a messy stack of loose papers in one hand.
“Ah, I’ve been working on a project,” Andrew said. “The time got away from me.” He paused. “If you don’t mind my saying, you don’t really seem well enough to be up and around yet.”
Harcourt shook his head. “I’m not. But I need to get these down to Winslow’s desk.”
“I’ll take them for you, if you like,” Andrew offered. “I was on my way down, and it will save you the stairs at least.”
Harcourt readily handed over the stack and disappeared back into his quarters.
Andrew turned for the stairs, glancing down at the papers as he did. Certificate of Discharge, read the bold print at the top. He slowed as he flipped through the sheaf. These were discharge orders, all of them. Harcourt had filled out the blanks on the preprinted forms with the patients’ names and dates of release, but his usually copperplate handwriting was shaky and spotted with inkblots. His signature was far less elaborate than usual.
Andrew slowed as a thought struck him. If he could get hold of a blank discharge form, with a little practice, he could replicate Harcourt’s signature. Carolina Casey could be recorded as having been discharged, and one threat would be neutralized. He’d never seen a blank form, but he’d never had any reason to go looking for one, either. Surely they were somewhere in the main office.
He picked up his pace.
Andrew rounded the corner into the main office and pulled up short. Winslow was at his desk.
“You’re here.” His tone was rather more dismayed than was appropriate, so he tried again. “I thought you were going to take another day off.”
“I was, but I felt perfectly well by last night,” the young man replied with a smile. “I don’t know what was wrong with me, but whatever it was, it’s gone now. I came in early to get started on the reconciliation.” He gestured to a neat stack of papers on the corner of the desk. The reconciliation list—all the current patients and the wards to which they’d most recently been assigned.
A weight appeared in Andrew’s gut. He had even less time than he’d thought. He resisted the impulse to snatch the list and run.
“I need… ah.” Winslow peered at the papers beneath Andrew’s arm. “Are those the week’s discharge forms?”
It would hardly be reasonable to say no. Or for him to refuse to hand them over.
“Yes,” Andrew said, after an instant’s hesitation.
“Excellent.” Winslow reached for them. “That’s the last thing I needed.” He took the stack from Andrew’s nerveless fingers and sat.
Andrew turned with a jerky movement and left the office. There had to be a way to delay the count. Perhaps if the list were lost. Or destroyed.
/> Andrew hurried down to the staff kitchen, his brain fizzing with fatigue and panic. He filled a pair of coffee cups to the brim with the asylum’s dark, bitter brew. It was only barely warm, but it would do for his purposes. He would tip one onto the forms when he set it down. Terribly sorry, how clumsy!
He carried the cups back up the stairs, walking slowly, trying not to spill their contents before he was ready. He took a breath and stepped into the office.
The stack was gone.
Andrew’s eyes darted around the room. There, on the counter beside Winslow, who’d bent and was now pulling open a drawer.
Andrew strode toward him, one hand already extending a cup, the trembling liquid held in check by its own surface tension.
The shrill clamor of the telephone’s bell split the air, and with a violent start of surprise, Andrew sloshed a good measure of lukewarm coffee from both cups. It soaked into his shirt cuffs and splashed the floor.
“Oh dear.” Winslow straightened. “Are you—”
“I’m fine,” Andrew snapped the telephone continued to shriek.
Winslow hurried past him to answer it while Andrew surveyed the wreck of his plan. He was tempted to dash the remnants in the cups over the papers just on principle, but as he surveyed the scene, the tabs in the drawer caught his eye.
He’d found the blank forms.
Andrew glanced back at Winslow, who was shouting into the telephone, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you, I’m afraid the connection is too poor!”
Andrew moved to set the cups down. Perhaps he could get one of the forms before— But no, Winslow had already disconnected and turned back to him.
The clerk brushed past him and reached into the drawer.
It was on the tip of Andrew’s tongue to ask for one of the discharge forms, to claim he’d just remembered Harcourt had asked him to bring up another. He managed to bite back the request. Winslow might remember it later, might mention it to Harcourt and set the man thinking. Better to come back for it later, now that he knew where they were.
A Deadly Fortune Page 26
