It made for a horrible tale, but the mention of the French disease gave Lily reason to pause.
Syphilis was a terrible illness. She knew something about its progression. There had been an old stage mistress during her theatre years who had been in the late stages of the disease. She’d been prone to irrational fits of rage or would make explicit and forceful sexual advances on horrified members of the crew. She’d been no use for her job but the owners kept her on regardless. It had been a pension of sorts, Lily realized, a way to keep her from rotting in the street while the rest of the crew simply worked around her.
The disease could also cause lesions. If the East Wing had indeed been a ward for patients with advanced syphilis, it was possible that Berta’s ‘burns’ were sores and that the locked door was justified for the safety of the other patients.
There was also no cure for it. If the hospital were only accepting women with the most dire or advanced cases, it was entirely plausible the patients were only discharged when dead.
To a frightened woman in pain in a hospital bed, it might have looked like a nightmarish conspiracy, but to undertake to treat such lost causes at all—and on charity—may have in fact been an act of great mercy.
“What about the fire?” Lily asked.
“It started there.”
“In the East Wing?”
Berta lowered her voice.
“I heard it was a witch that done it. That they tried to lock her in so she turned herself into a witch-fire and burned the whole place up with her.”
It was a fantastical story, clearly a new myth the denizens of the old Mint had cooked together from bits of rumors and third-hand story. It unsettled her nonetheless.
She remembered her vision, the flames flickering eerily in the smoke-stained glass of the windows. Those belonged to another fire, she knew, not the one that had ravaged the place. Her sight was directed forward, not back in time. And yet she found herself wondering about the locked doors Berta described. If the fire had, in fact, started in that wing of the building, what had happened to the patients kept inside? Had they been rescued . . . or forgotten, trapped and left to burn to cinders?
None of this told her why the place had shown up so prominently in her dark glass. All Berta’s revelations pointed to past pain and suffering, not an imminent threat, and nothing in this linked the building to the dead mediums.
She thought of the scale of the building, how well-kept and well-funded it must have been.
“Berta . . . can you tell me anything about the doctor who treated you?”
“The lieutenant, you mean?”
“He was an officer?” Lily’s surprise raised her voice a notch and earned her quick looks from Art the publican and Frank the Spiv at the bar.
“Well, ‘lieutenant’ ain’t a Christian name, is it?”
“Were they all carrying rank?”
“No. Just him.”
“Describe him for me,” Lily demanded.
“I don’t know . . . he was an ordinary looking sort of bloke. Brown-haired with a mustache.”
Those were features that might apply to half the city’s bankers or grocers.
“You never caught his name?”
“He weren’t of much mind for chatter,” Berta retorted. “Just did what needed to be done. But . . .”
“Yes?” Lily prompted, after her voice unexpectedly trailed off. “What is it?”
“Nothing, really. Except . . . There was something off about him. You know how it is. You don’t make it long in our line of work unless you get a sense for it—those punters you’d best pass over even if there ain’t nothing off about the look of them. Something about them makes your skin go all cold. You ever feel that, you tell ‘em you’re booked through the next fortnight, no matter what dosh they offer.”
Lily understood exactly what the whore meant. The thought of it put in a chill in her even as she sat a few feet from the piping heat of the coal stove.
“He was like that, then? The lieutenant.”
“He was,” Berta answered. She took another draught from her glass. She had nearly finished her stout. “You see now why I told you, you didn’t want none of their help? Better ask a cure of a butcher than that lot. It was God’s own work that burned the place down, you ask me. God’s own work.”
“What about the supervising physician?” Lily asked quickly as Berta tossed back the last of her pint. “Surely someone must have mentioned him while you were there.”
“You mean the toff who ran the place? Sure, he had his name in brass by the front door, like they all do.”
“What was it?”
“Hartwell,” Bertha replied, setting down her empty glass. “Bloke’s name was Hartwell.”
Hartwell. The eminent physician and eugenicist had been running a charity clinic for whores in the shadow of the old Mint. Lily considered it as she strode through Southwark after taking her leave of Berta, her walking stick rapping against the pavement.
The eugenicists considered women like Berta degenerates, a condition they believed hereditary. They had advocated that such women be refused the right to breed. So why would Hartwell, their leader, offer his services to the very people he believed should be weeded out of the future of the human race?
There was one obvious possibility, of course. Hartwell’s clinic had been offering abortions. Lily found it hard to believe that the doctor did so out of sympathy for the plight of unfortunate women who lacked the means to support a child.
It fit too neatly into his scheme for that.
The thought made her sick.
But what about the syphilis patients? Providing free services to whores with an incurable illness didn’t fit so neatly into Hartwell’s philosophy.
She searched for a way to connect what she’d learned to the murders. Did any of the activities Berta had described at the clinic explain why a prominent physician would go about stealing the blood of mediums?
The answer was no.
It seemed more plausible that Lily’s vision had focused on Hartwell because of her dislike of the man.
Lily was still struggling with that when she became aware that someone was about to walk around the corner.
The knowledge was something more than an instinct, a spark of insight that rang with the same urgent tone as one of her visions.
The shock of it made her halt mid-step. Then she watched as a tall, thin figure emerged at the end of the lane and turned toward her.
It was the flash dresser from the bar, the one Berta had called Frank the Spiv, his gold waistcoat framed by a bright blue jacket.
It might have been a coincidence. Anyone leaving the Golden Fleece and heading for the market or the bridge would have walked the same way. Still, living as a single woman in London for years had ingrained a habit of caution in such matters.
Lily turned away from the busy traffic of Borough High Street, moving down one of Southwark’s quieter byway.
She walked past the long brick facades of warehouses to an empty lot ringed by a high iron fence. A few bright rags tied to the iron bars gave the place away. Lily had found her way to the old burying ground, the patch of earth that had served, for a century, as the unconsecrated grave of Southwark’s prostitutes, thieves and suicides.
There were no carriages here, no shoppers with baskets full of fish and bread. The street was broad but deserted.
Perfect.
Lily stopped in the center of the lane and waited.
A moment later, Frank the Spiv turned the corner.
Sunlight reflected off his polished brogues. One could almost make the mistake of assuming that a man with such well shined shoes would be hesitant to get his hands dirty.
Lily knew better.
“You’re a curious thing, aren’t you?” he said. He took a toothpick from his pocket and set it between his teeth. “Asking all sorts of questions.”
She felt her senses sharpen, her pulse kicking up. Her muscles wanted to tense. She didn’t let them.<
br />
It had been some time since she’d had to do this. The streets of Bloomsbury weren’t exactly rife with thugs looking to take advantage of a woman walking alone.
She hoped she still remembered how.
“What’s your interest in it?” she demanded.
“I’ve been asked to see that you’re discouraged from making further inquiries about goings-on in our little corner. Now that’s a simple enough thing, isn’t it?”
Was it simply a rote response to nosy newcomers in this corner of London? Lily dismissed the notion. This close to the market and the shops on Borough High Street, there would be new faces coming in and out of the area all the time.
This was something else.
Her thoughts flew back to the way the publican had glanced at her when he passed their table as Berta shared her tales of the hospital.
He had gone directly from there to the bar, where the man in front of her had been sitting . . . sitting without any glass in front of him, Lily realized as she recalled the scene. That meant he wasn’t at the pub as a patron but for some other business.
It had to be about the hospital. There were secrets there still worth protecting, even though there was nothing left of the place but a burnt-out shell.
I’ve been asked to see you’re discouraged.
It begged the question of who had done the asking.
Lily didn’t imagine Frank the Spiv would be forthcoming with that information.
“It’s rude to eavesdrop,” she retorted, shifting the brass knob of her walking stick from her right hand to her left.
“Pity. I hoped you’d be a quicker study. It would have made this a more pleasant exchange.”
“Is it to become unpleasant, then?”
“I need to give you a little scare, is all. Nothing too harsh. Just to be sure I’ve made my point.”
He moved in. He was quick, as Lily had expected he would be.
She flipped up the walking stick, catching the center of the solid length of it in her right hand. Then she snapped the wood at the arms reaching for her throat.
She felt the yew vibrate with the energy of the impact.
Her attacker pulled back, cursing, rubbing his forearm. A more violent light came into his eye.
Next would come a grab for her stick. She made a quick mental rehearsal.
Push with the right, pull with the left . . .
He snatched at it, hands closing around the far end, which Lily deliberately left closer to him. Before he could yank it from her grasp, she twisted the staff, forcing his arms into a cross, then levered it down until he released it.
Now, to put a point on the matter.
She snapped the end the staff against his nose.
Blood splattered across the shimmering gold of his waistcoat. He clutched at his face, spinning back. His gaze was murderous above his hands.
She saw the war in him, the ferocious desire to hurt her battling against the knowledge that for the moment, he was outmatched.
He had come alone and unarmed, expecting her to be an easy mark.
He lowered his hands. She could see the new bend to his nose and knew that she had broken it.
“You should take care of that,” Lily noted politely, the stick still posed and ready in her hands.
She waited for his answer, heart thudding.
He spat a mouthful of blood onto the pavement at her feet, following it with a curse vile enough to make a sailor blush.
Then he walked away.
TWENTY
THE OMNIBUS SWAYED AROUND a corner, Lily shifting her weight to keep from falling into the lap of a portly vicar.
The traffic was thicker than it ought to be at this time of day, the vehicle inching along through a snarl of restless horses and motorcars. It made the trip back from Southwark far longer than it should have been. And for what?
Nothing but more questions.
Those questions left her trapped in a different sort of snarl, a limbo of indecision. Should she keep pursuing the truth about Hartwell’s activities at the hospital, knowing there was a fair chance it was only a distraction from her more urgent purpose? What other course of action could she take, with no real leads on the table?
She still hadn’t settled on an answer when she exited the bus on Tottenham Court Road and made her way back to March Place.
The front hall smelled of beans. Lily had missed lunch. She didn’t mind that terribly. Frustration and exhaustion had sapped her appetite.
There was a card on the table by the door.
Lord Strangford, 14 Sussex Court
The top right corner had been turned down, indicating he had called in person.
Lily felt a quick jab of guilt. She had not contacted him since the night of their visit to Lord Deveral’s house—the night they had been caught in the rain and had ended up alone together in the warm darkness of Bramble’s kitchen.
Perhaps she should have called to update him on her progress. Then again, what progress had she made? It was all trial and conjecture, nothing of substance. Surely it was better that she didn’t disturb him if she had nothing of substance to report.
It was a fair enough excuse, though Lily knew she was really avoiding a visit to Bayswater for other reasons.
She was falling for him, and she knew it would lead to disaster.
Staying away was her only line of defense.
She plucked the card from the tray and buried it in her pocket.
In her distracted state as she climbed the stairs, she failed to think of the betraying creak of the boards outside Estelle’s door.
They squealed under her weight, announcing her presence to anyone within a quarter-mile.
The house remained silent, even though Estelle’s door hung slightly ajar.
That was odd.
The empty flat upstairs could wait, she supposed. Lily turned and pushed open the door.
“Estelle?” she called.
The drawing room was empty, the lamps unlit. The soft gray light through the windows made everything seem exceptionally still. The straw goat head and the ugly green urn with its squatting Shi Tzu—which Estelle had placed on an accent table by the hall—had the air of artifacts in some long-sealed tomb.
Lily felt a quick panic, an irrational fear that something terrible had happened. She knew it was not so. Though the day was sharply cold, it wasn’t snowing. The danger she horribly anticipated could not have come to pass—not yet—but Lily couldn’t resist the urge to check.
She stepped inside.
On the far side of the room, she could now see that a low but warmer light seeped through the crack under the door to Estelle’s séance chamber.
Lily walked over and knocked.
“Come in.”
Estelle sounded tired but very much alive.
“Shut the door again, would you?” the older woman asked as Lily entered the room.
Lily obeyed, then turned to find herself enveloped in another world.
The room was dark save for the flickering of a single candle on the great wooden table. Shadows lingered in the corners while threads of gold in the hangings that draped the walls and ceiling picked up the fragile light and shimmered, making Lily feel a bit as though she were enveloped in stars. It smelled of hot wax and just a hint of machine oil.
Estelle sat at the table. Her fine brown hair was uncovered, her eyes scrubbed free of cosmetics. She wore a simple pale blue robe, a garment far less exotic than her usual attire. It made her seem uncharacteristically ordinary, but in her unadorned state, the fine structure of her cheekbones and the elegant length of her neck were more apparent.
“Desdemona needs to be recalibrated,” she announced.
She flipped a switch under the table and the projection of the odalisque flared to life against the curtains. Then the dark fabric began to move, the veiled figure shimmering along its surface. Lily could hear the subtle hiss of the bellows and knew that Estelle must be working the wire under the table with her foot.<
br />
“Did the séance not go well last night?” she asked.
“Oh, it went well enough. There were several delightful shrieks when she made her appearance. It just seemed to me she was jiggling like a bowl of gelatin when she should be undulating. Of course, that bit of espionage might have thrown me off.”
“Espionage?”
“I had a competitor at my table last night.” Estelle’s tone dripped with disapproval.
“Someone you knew?”
“No. I had never met the fellow before.”
“So he just told you that he was a rival?”
“He wasn’t as brazen as that.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Darling, I’m well aware when I’m in the presence of another person who can see the dead.”
In the still, dark atmosphere of the séance room, Estelle’s words evoked more of a chill than they would over vermouth in the parlor. Lily told herself it was a testament to the effectiveness of the decor.
“His powers weren’t exceptionally strong,” Estelle continued. “He was aware of some of the spirits in the room. I specifically saw him react to one lady’s departed husband. But he seemed utterly oblivious to the ghost that was following him around all evening.”
“How do you know it was following him?”
“Because she was hovering at his left shoulder,” Estelle replied. “I could see her as clear as I’m looking at you now.”
Lily felt uncomfortably aware of the presence of the veiled figure projected onto the now-still curtains behind her.
The Fire in the Glass Page 29
