by Anne Perry
“It was like the worst kind of dream,” Hester said, staring at the poplars and the golden blue sky beyond. “I was aware what was going to happen before it did. And of course I knew every word she said was true, and yet I was helpless to do anything at all about it.” She turned to Callandra. “I suppose Sir Herbert is right, and it is a crime to abort, even when the child is a result of rape. It is not anything I have ever had to know. I have nursed entirely soldiers or people suffering from injury or fevers. I have no experience of midwifery at all. I have not even cared for a child, much less a mother and infant. It seems so wrong.”
She slapped her hand on the arm of the wicker garden chair. “I am seeing women suffer in a way I never knew before. I suppose I hadn’t thought about it. But do you know how many women have come into that hospital in even the few days I’ve been there, who are worn out and ill as a result of bearing child after child?” She leaned a little farther to face Callandra. “And how many are there we don’t see? How many just live lives in silent despair and terror of the next pregnancy?” She banged the chair arm again. “There’s such ignorance. Such blind tragic ignorance.”
“I am not sure what good knowledge would do,” Callandra replied, looking not at Hester but at the rose bed and a late butterfly drifting from one bloom to another. “Forms of prevention have been around since Roman days, but they are not available to most people.” She pulled a face. “And they are very often weird contraptions that the ordinary man would not use. A woman has no right in civil or religious law to deny her husband, and even if she had, common sense and the need to survive on something like equable terms would make it impractical.”
“At least knowledge would take away some of the shock,” Hester argued hotly. “We had one young woman in hospital who was so mortified when she discovered what marriage required of her she went into hysterics, and then tried to kill herself.” Her voice rose with outrage. “No one had given her the slightest idea, and she simply could not endure it. She had been brought up with the strictest teachings of purity and it overwhelmed her. She was married by her parents to a man thirty years older than herself and with little patience or gentleness. She came into the hospital with broken arms and legs and ribs where she had jumped out of a window in an attempt to kill herself.” She took a deep breath and made a vain attempt to lower her tone.
“Now, unless Dr. Beck can persuade the police and the Church that it was an accident, they will charge her with attempted suicide and either imprison her or hang her.” She banged her fist down on the chair arm yet again. “And that monumental fool, Jeavis, is trying to say Dr. Beck killed Prudence Barrymore.” She did not notice Callandra stiffen in her seat or her face grow paler. “That is because that would be the easy answer, and save him from having to question the other surgeons and the chaplain and the members of the Board of Governors.”
Callandra started to speak, and then stopped again.
“Is there nothing we can do to help Marianne Gillespie?” Hester persisted, her fists clenched, leaning forward in the chair. She glanced at the roses. “Is there nobody to which one could appeal? Do you know Sir Herbert said his own daughter had been assaulted and had become with child as a result?” She swung around to Callandra again. “And she went to a private abortionist in some back street who maimed her so badly she can now never marry, let alone bear children. And she is in constant pain. For Heaven’s sake, there must be something we can do!”
“If I knew of anything I should not be sitting her listening to you,” Callandra replied with a sad smile. “I should have told you what it was, and we should be on our way to do it. Please be careful, or you are going to put your arm right through my best garden chair.”
“Oh! I’m sorry. It’s just that I get so furious!”
Callandra smiled, and said nothing.
The following two days were hot and sultry. Tempers became short. Jeavis seemed to be everywhere in the hospital, getting in the way, asking questions which most people found irritating and pointless. The treasurer swore at him. A gentleman on the Board of Governors made a complaint to his member of Parliament. Mrs. Flaherty lectured him on abstinence, decorum, and probity, which was more than even he could take. After that he left her strictly alone.
But gradually the hospital was getting back to its normal routine and even in the laundry room they spoke less of the murder and more of their usual concerns: husbands, money, the latest music hall jokes, and general gossip.
Monk was concentrating his attention on learning the past and present circumstances of all the doctors, especially the students, and of the treasurer, chaplain, and various governors.
It was late in the evening and still oppressively warm when Callandra went to look for Kristian Beck. She had no real reason to speak to him; she had to manufacture one. What she wished was to see how he was bearing up under Jeavis’s interrogations and less-than-subtle implication that Beck had had some shameful secret which he had begged Prudence Barrymore not to reveal to the authorities.
She had still no firm idea what she was going to say as she walked along the corridor toward his room, her heart pounding, nervousness making her mouth dry. In the heat after the long afternoon sun on the windows and roof, the air smelled stale. She could almost distinguish the cloying smell of blood from bandages and the acridness of waste. Two flies buzzed and banged blindly against the glass of a window.
She could ask him if Monk had spoken to him, and yet again assure him of Monk’s brilliance and his past successes. It was not a good reason, but she could not bear the inaction any longer. She had to see him and do what she could to allay the fear he must feel. Over and over she had imagined his thoughts as Jeavis made his insinuations, as he saw Jeavis’s black eyes watching him. It was impossible to argue or defend oneself against prejudice, the irrational suspicion of anything or anyone who was different.
She was at his door. She knocked. There was a sound, a voice, but she could not distinguish the words. She turned the handle and pushed the door wide.
The scene that met her burned itself into her brain. The large table which served as his desk was in the center of the room and lying on it was a woman, part of her body covered with a white sheet, but her abdomen and upper thighs clearly exposed. There were swabs bright with blood, and a bloodstained towel. There was a bucket on the floor, but with a cloth over it so she could not see what it contained. She had seen enough operations before to recognize the tanks and flasks that held ether and the other materials used to anesthetize a patient.
Kristian had his back to her. She would recognize him anywhere, the line of his shoulder, the way his hair grew on his neck, the curve of his high cheekbone.
And she knew the woman also. Her hair was black with a deep widow’s peak. Her brows were dark and unusually clearly marked, and there was a small neat mole on her cheek level with the corner of her eye. Marianne Gillespie! There was only one conclusion: Sir Herbert had denied her—but Kristian had not. He was performing the illegal abortion.
For seconds Callandra stood frozen, her tongue stiff, her mouth dry. She did not even see the figure of the nurse beyond.
Kristian was concentrating so intently upon what he was doing, his hands moving quickly, delicately, his eyes checking again and again to see the color of Marianne’s face, to make sure she was breathing evenly. He had not heard Callandra’s voice, nor the door opening.
At last she moved. She backed out and pulled the door after her, closing it without sound. Her heart was beating so violently her body shook, and she could not catch her breath. For a moment she was afraid she was going to choke.
A nurse passed by, staggering a little from fatigue, and Callandra felt just as dizzy, just as incapable of balance. Hester’s words came back into her mind like hammer blows. Sir Herbert’s daughter had gone to a secret abortionist and he had maimed her, operated so clumsily she would never be a normal woman again, and never be free from pain.
Had Kristian done that too? Was he the on
e she had gone to? As Marianne had? Funny, gentle, wise Kristian, with whom she had shared so many moments of understanding, to whom she did not need to explain the pain or the laughter of thoughts—Kristian, whose face she could see every time she closed her eyes, whom she longed to touch, though she knew she must never yield to the temptation. It would break the delicate unspoken barrier between a love that was acceptable and one that was not. To bring shame to him would be unbearable.
Shame! Could the man she knew possibly be the same man who would do what she had seen? And perhaps worse—far worse? The thought was sickening, but she could not cast it out of her mind. The picture was there in front of her every time she closed her eyes.
And then a thought came which was immeasurably more hideous. Had Prudence Barrymore known? Was that what he had begged her not to tell the authorities? Not simply the Board of Governors of the hospital, but the police? And had he killed her to keep her silent?
She leaned against the wall, overwhelmed with misery. Her brain refused to work. There was no one she could turn to. She dared not even tell Monk. It was a burden she would have to carry silently, and alone. Without realizing the full enormity of it, she chose to bear his guilt with him.
6
HESTER FOUND hospital routine increasingly difficult. She obeyed Mrs. Flaherty because her survival depended upon it, but she found herself grinding her teeth to keep from answering back, and more than once she had to change a sentence midway through in order to make it innocuous. Only the thought of Prudence Barrymore made it possible. She had not known her well. The battlefield was too large, too filled with confusion, pain, and a violent, sickening urgency for people to know each other unless they had had occasion to work together. And chance had dictated that she had worked with Prudence only once, but that once was engraven on her memory indelibly. It was after the battle of Inkermann, in November of ’54. It was less than three weeks after the disaster of Balaclava and the massacre resulting from the Light Brigade’s suicidal charge against the Russian guns. It was bitterly cold, and relentless rain meant that men stood or marched in mud up to their knees. The tents were worn with holes and they slept wet and filthy. Their clothes were growing ragged and there was nothing with which to mend them. They were underfed because supplies were in desperate straits, and they were exhausted with constant labor and anxiety.
The siege of Sebastopol was achieving nothing. The Russians were dug in deeper and deeper, and the winter was fast approaching. Men and horses died of cold, hunger, injuries, and above all disease.
Then had come the battle of Inkermann. It had been going badly for the British troops to begin with, and when they finally sent for the French reinforcements, three battalions of Zouaves and Algerians coming in at a run, bugles blowing, drums beating and their general shouting encouragement in Arabic, it had become a rout. Of the forty thousand Russians, over a quarter were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. The British lost six hundred killed, the French a mere hundred and thirty. In each case three times as many were wounded. The whole battle was fought in shifting, swirling mists, and as often as not men stumbled on the enemy by chance, or were lost, and injured their own men in the confusion.
Hester could recall it vividly. Standing in the warm sunny London hospital ward, she did not even need to close her eyes to see it in her mind, or feel the cold, and hear the noise, the cries and groans, the voices thick with pain. Three days after the battle the burial parties were still working. She could see in her dreams their bent forms, huddled against the howling wind, shovels in their hands, heads down, shoulders hunched, trudging through the mud; or stopped to lift another corpse, often frozen in the violent positions of hand-to-hand fighting, faces disfigured with terror, and gored by terrible bayonet wounds. At least four thousand Russians were heaped in communal graves.
And the wounded were continually being discovered in the scrub and brushwood, screaming.
Hour after hour the surgeons had labored in the medical tents, striving to save lives, only to have men die on the long rough cart journeys to the ships, and then by sea to Scutari, where, if they survived that, they would die in the hospital of fevers or gangrene.
She could recall the smell and the exhaustion, the dim light of lanterns swaying, their yellow glare on the surgeon’s face as he worked, knife or saw in his hand, striving above all to be quick. Speed was everything. There was seldom time for such niceties as chloroform, even though it was available. And many preferred the “stimulant” of a well-used knife rather than the silent slipping away into death of anesthetics.
She could remember the numberless white faces of men, haggard, shocked with injury, the knowledge of mutilation, the scarlet, and the warm smell of blood, the neat pile of amputated limbs just outside the tent flap in the mud.
She could see Prudence Barrymore’s face, eyes intent, mouth drawn tight with emotion, smears of blood on her cheek and across her brow where she had pushed her hair out of her eyes. They had worked in silent unison, too weary to speak a word when a glance would serve. There was no need to express an emotion which was so completely shared. Their world was one of private horror, pity, need, and a kind of terrible victory. If one could survive this, then Hell itself could offer little worse.
It was not something you could call friendship; it was at once less and more. The sharing of such experiences created a bond and set them apart from all others. It was not something that could be told to another person. There were no words with a meaning both could understand which would impart the physical horror or the heights and depths of emotion.
It brought an extraordinary kind of loneliness that Prudence was gone, and a driving anger that it should be in this way.
On night duty—which Mrs. Flaherty gave her whenever she could; she disliked Crimean nurses and all the arrogance and the change they represented—Hester would walk around the wards by lamplight, and past memories crowded in on her. More than once she heard a dull thud and turned around with a shudder, expecting to see a rat stunned as it dropped off the wall, but there was nothing except a bundle of sheets and bandages and a slop pail.
Gradually she distinguished the other nurses and spoke to them when she had a natural opportunity. Very often she simply listened. They were frightened. Prudence’s name was mentioned often, to begin with, with fear. Why had she been murdered? Was there a madman loose in the hospital, and might any one of them be next? Inevitably there were stories of sinister shadows in empty corridors, sounds of muffled screams and then silence, and almost every male member of staff was the subject of speculation.
They were in the laundry room. The huge coppers were silent, no clanking of steam in the pipes, no hissing and bubbling. It was the end of the day. There was little left to do but fold and collect sheets.
“What was she like?” Hester asked with casual innocence.
“Bossy,” an elderly nurse replied, pulling a face. She was fat and tired, and her red-veined nose bore mute witness to her solace in the gin bottle. “Always telling other people what to do. Thought having been in the Crimea meant she knew everything. Even told the doctors sometimes.” She grinned toothlessly. “Made ’em mad, it did.”
There was laughter all around. Apparently, however unpopular Prudence might have been at times, the doctors were more so, and when she clashed with them, the women were amused and were on her side.
“Really?” Hester made her interest obvious. “Didn’t she get told off for it? She was lucky not to be dismissed.”
“Not her!” Another nurse laughed abruptly, pushing her hands into her pockets. “She was a bossy piece, all right, but she knew how to run a ward and care for the sick. Knew it better than Mrs. Flaherty, although if you say I said that, I’ll push your eyes out.” She put down the last sheet with a thump.
“Who is going to tell that vinegar bitch, you stupid cow?” the first woman said acidly. “But I don’t think she was that good. Thought she was, mind.”
“Yes she was!” Now the second woman was
getting angry. Her face was flushed. “She saved a lot of lives in this God-awful place. Even made it smell better.”
“Smell better!” There was a guffaw of laughter from a big red-haired woman. “Where d’ya think yer are, some gennelman’s ’ouse? Garn, ya fool! She thought she were a lady, not one o’ the likes of us. A sight too good to work with scrubwomen and domestics. Got ideas about being a doctor, she ’ad. Right fool, she was, poor cow. Should have heard what his lordship had to say about that.”
“ ’Oo? Sir ’Erbert?”
“ ’Course Sir ’Erbert. ’Oo else? Not old German George. ’E’s a foreigner and full o’ funny ideas anyway. Wouldn’t be surprised if it were ’im wot killed ’er. That’s what them rozzers are sayin’ anyway.”
“Are they?” Hester looked interested. “Why? I mean, couldn’t it just as easily have been anyone else?”
They all looked at her.
“Wot yer mean?” the red-haired one said with a frown.
Hester hitched herself onto the edge of the laundry basket. This was the sort of opportunity she had been angling for. “Well, who was here when she was killed?”
They looked at her, then at each other.
“Wot yer mean? Doctors, and the like?”
“ ’Course she means doctors and the like,” the fat woman said derisively. “She don’t think one of us did her in. If I were going to kill anyone, it’d be me ol’ man, not some jumped-up nurse wi’ ideas above ’erself. Wot do I care about ’er? I wouldn’t ’av seen ’er dead, poor cow, but I wouldn’t shed no tears either.”
“What about the treasurer and the chaplain?” Hester tried to sound casual. “Did they like her?”
