A Sudden, Fearful Death

by Anne Perry

  Hester drew in her breath to wither Mrs. Flaherty with what she considered to be obvious, then remembered her object in being here.

  “I thought it was the lesser evil,” she replied, not daring to meet Mrs. Flaherty’s icy blue eyes in case her anger showed. “I am afraid he is in some distress, and without my presence he might have torn his stitches if he were sick again. Added to which, I have only one pail, and better that than soiling the sheets.”

  Mrs. Flaherty gave a wintry smile. “A little common sense, I see. Far more practical use than all the education in the world. Perhaps we’ll make a good nurse of you yet, which is more than I can say for some of your kind.” And before Hester could retaliate, she hurried on. “Is he feverish? What is his pulse? Have you checked his wound? Is he bleeding?”

  Hester answered all those questions, and was about to ask if she could be relieved so she might eat something herself, since she had not had so much as a drink since Sir Herbert had first sent for her, but Mrs. Flaherty expressed her moderate satisfaction and whisked out, keys swinging, footsteps clicking down the corridor.

  Perhaps she was doing her an injustice, but Hester thought Mrs. Flaherty knew perfectly well how long she had been there without more than momentary relief, for the calls of nature, and took some satisfaction in it.

  Another junior nurse who had admired Prudence came in at about ten o’clock in the evening, when it was growing dark, a hot mug of tea in her hand and a thick mutton sandwich. She closed the door behind her swiftly and held them out.

  “You must be gasping for something,” she said, her eyes bright.

  “I’m ravenous,” Hester agreed gratefully. “Thank you very much.”

  “How is he?” the nurse asked. She was about twenty, brown-haired with an eager, gentle face.

  “In a lot of pain,” Hester answered, her mouth full. “But his pulse is still good, so I’m hoping he isn’t losing any blood.”

  “Poor soul. But Sir Herbert’s a marvelous surgeon, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Hester meant it. “Yes, he’s brilliant.” She took a long drink at the tea, even though it was too hot.

  “Were you in the Crimea too?” the nurse resumed, her face lit with enthusiasm. “Did you know poor Nurse Barrymore? Did you know Miss Nightingale?” Her voice dropped a fraction in awe at the great name.

  “Yes,” Hester said with very slight amusement. “I knew them both. And Mary Seacole.”

  The girl was mystified. “Who’s Mary Seacole?”

  “One of the finest women I ever met,” Hester replied, knowing her answer was borne of perversity as well as truth. Profound as was her admiration for Florence Nightingale, and for all the women who had served in the Crimea, she had heard so much praise for most of them but nothing for the black Jamaican woman who had served with equal selflessness and diligence, running a boardinghouse which was a refuge for the sick, injured, and terrified, administering her own fever cures, learned in the yellow fever areas of her native West Indies.

  The girl’s face quickened with curiosity. “Oh? I never heard mention of her. Why not? Why don’t people know?”

  “Probably because she is Jamaican,” Hester replied, sipping at the tea. “We are very parochial whom we honor.” She thought of the still rigidly absurd social hierarchy even among the ladies who picnicked on the heights overlooking the battle, or rode their fine horses on parade the mornings before—and after, and the tea parties amid the carnage. Then with a jolt she recalled herself to the present. “Yes, I knew Prudence. She was a brave and unselfish woman—then.”

  “Then!” The girl was horrified. “What do you mean? She was marvelous. She knew so much. Far more than some of the doctors, I used to think—Oh!” She clapped her hand to her mouth. “Don’t tell anyone I said that! Of course she was only a nurse …”

  “But she was very knowledgeable?” A new and ugly thought entered Hester’s mind, spoiling her pleasure in the sandwich, hurrying as she was.

  “Oh, yes!” the girl said vehemently. “I suppose it came with all her experience. Not that she talked about it very much. I used to wish she would say more…. It was wonderful to listen to her.” She smiled a little shyly. “I suppose you could tell the same sort of thing, seeing as you were there too?”

  “I could,” Hester agreed. “But sometimes it is hard to find words to convey something that is so dreadfully different. How can you describe the smell, and the taste of it, or being so tired—or feeling such horror and anger and pity? I wish I could make you see it through my eyes for a moment, but I can’t. And sometimes when you can’t do a thing properly, it is better not to belittle it by doing it badly.”

  “I understand.” Suddenly there was a new brightness in her eyes and a tiny smile as something unexplainable at last made sense.

  Hester took a deep breath, finished the tea, then asked the questions that crowded her mind. “Do you think Prudence knew enough that she might have been aware if someone else had made a mistake—a serious one?”

  “Oh …” The girl looked thoughtful, turning the possibility over in her mind. Then with a thrill of horror she realized what Hester meant. Her hand came up sharply, her eyes wide and dark. “Oh no! Oh dear Heaven! You mean did she see someone make a real mistake, a dreadful one, and he murdered her to keep her quiet? But who would do such a wicked thing?”

  “Someone who was frightened his reputation would be ruined,” Hester answered. “If the mistake was fatal …”

  “Oh—I see.” The girl continued to stare at her aghast.

  “Whom did she work with recently?” Hester pursued. She was aware that she was treading into a dangerous area, dangerous for herself if this innocent, almost naive-seeming girl were to repeat the conversation, but her curiosity overpowered her sense of self-preservation. The danger was only possible, and some time in the future. The knowledge was now. “Who had been caring for someone who died unexpectedly?”

  The girl’s eyes were fixed on Hester’s face. “She worked very close with Sir Herbert until just before she died. And she worked with Dr. Beck too.” Her voice dropped unhappily. “And Dr. Beck’s patient died that night—and that was unexpected. We all thought he’d live. And Prudence and him had a quarrel…. Everyone knows that, but I reckon as if he had done anything like that, she’d have told. She was as straight as they come. She wouldn’t’ve hidden it to save anyone. Not her.”

  “So if it were that, then it happened probably the day before she was killed, or even that night?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Dr. Beck’s patient died that night,” Hester pointed out.

  “Yes,” the girl conceded, the light brightening in her eyes again and her voice lifting.

  “So whom did she work with that night?” Hester asked. “Who was even here that night?”

  The girl hesitated for several moments, thinking so she remembered exactly. The patient in the bed turned restlessly, throwing the sheet off himself. Hester rearranged it more comfortably. There was little else she could do.

  “Well, Sir Herbert was here the day before,” the girl went on. “Naturally, but not through the night.” She looked at the ceiling, her vision inward. “He hardly ever stays all night. He’s married of course. Ever such a nice lady, his wife, so they say. And seven children. Of course he’s a real gentleman, not like Dr. Beck—he’s foreign, and that’s different isn’t it? Not that he isn’t very nice too, and always so polite. I never heard a wrong word from him. He quite often stops all night, if he’s got a really bad patient. That isn’t unusual.”

  “And other doctors?”

  “Dr. Chalmers wasn’t here. He usually only comes in the afternoon. He works somewhere else in the mornings. Dr. Didcot was away in Glasgow. And if you mean the students, they hardly ever come in before about nine o’clock.” She pulled a face. “If you ask them, they’ll say they were studying, or something of the sort, but I have my own ideas about that.” She let her breath out in a highly expressive little snort.

&nbs
p; “And nurses? I suppose nurses could make mistakes too,” Hester pursued it to the end. “What about Mrs. Flaherty?”

  “Mrs. Flaherty?” The girl’s eyebrows shot up with a mixture of alarm and amusement. “Oh my goodness! I never thought of her. Well—she and Prudence fairly disliked each other.” She gave a convulsive little shiver. “I suppose either would have been pleased enough to catch the other out. But Mrs. Flaherty is awful little. Prudence was tall, about two or three inches taller than you, I’d say, and six inches taller than Mrs. Flaherty.”

  Hester was vaguely disappointed. “Was she here?”

  “Yes … she was.” Her face lit up with a kind of glee and then she was instantly ashamed of it. “I remember clearly because I was with her.”

  “Where?”

  “In the nurses’ dormitory. She was telling them off to a standstill.” She looked at Hester to gauge how far she dare go with her honesty. She met Hester’s eyes, and threw caution to the winds. “Over an hour she was, inspecting everything in sight. I know she had a quarrel with Prudence, because I saw Prudence walk away, and Mrs. Flaherty went to take it out on the nurses in the dormitory. I think she must have got the worst of the argument.”

  “You saw Prudence that morning?” Hester tried to take the urgency out of her voice in case she precipitated the girl unwittingly into imagining rather than remembering.

  “Oh yes,” she said with certainty.

  “Do you know what time?”

  “About half past six.”

  “You must have been one of the last people to see her alive.” She saw the girl pale and a mixture of fear and sadness cross her young face. “Have the police asked you about it?”

  “Well—not really. They asked me if I saw Dr. Beck and Sir Herbert.”

  “Did you?”

  “I saw Dr. Beck going along the corridor toward the wards. They asked me what he was doing and how he looked. He was just walking, and he looked terrible tired, like ’e’d been up all night—which I suppose he had. He didn’t look furious or frightened like he’d just murdered someone, just sad.”

  “Who else did you see?”

  “Lots of people,” she said quickly. “There’s lots of people around, even at that hour. The chaplain, and Mr. Plumstead—he’s the treasurer. Don’t know what he was doing here then.” She shrugged. “And a gentleman I don’t know, but dressed smart, like, with brownish hair. He didn’t seem to know his way ’round. He walked into the linen room, then a second later came right out, looking awkward, like he knew he’d made a fool of himself. I reckon he wasn’t a doctor. We don’t get visiting doctors at that time. And he looked sort of angry, as if he’d been crossed in something. Not furious, just irritated.”

  She looked at Hester, her face troubled. “Do you think he could be the one? He didn’t look like a madman to me, in fact he looked rather nice. Like somebody’s brother, if you know what I mean? He probably came to visit a patient, and wasn’t allowed in. It happens sometimes, especially if people call at the wrong time.”

  “That may be what he was,” Hester agreed. “Was that before or after you saw Prudence?”

  “Before. But he could have waited around, couldn’t he?”

  “Yes—if he even knew her.”

  “Don’t seem very likely, does it,” the girl said unhappily. “I reckon it was more likely one of us here. She quarreled something fierce with Mrs. Flaherty. Only last week Mrs. Flaherty swore either Prudence would have to go or she would. I reckoned it was temper, but maybe she meant it.” She looked at Hester half hopefully.

  “But you said you saw Prudence after the quarrel, then Mrs. Flaherty went to the dormitory, where she stayed for at least an hour,” Hester pointed out.

  “Oh—yes, so I did. I suppose it can’t have been her.” She pulled a small face. “Not that I really thought it was, for all that she hated Prudence. Not that she was the only one.”

  The patient stirred again, and they both stopped and looked at him, but after a muffled groan he sank back into sleep.

  “Who else?” Hester prompted.

  “Really hated? Well, I suppose Dora Parsons. But she curses at a lot of people, and she’s certainly strong enough to have broken her back, never mind strangled her. Have you seen her arms?”

  “Yes,” Hester admitted with a shiver. But as much as she feared Dora Parsons herself, it was fear of being hurt, not killed. She found it hard to believe sheer ignorant dislike of a woman she believed to have ambitions that were arrogant and misplaced, and to imagine herself superior, was motive for a sane person to commit murder. And for all her coarseness, Dora Parsons was an adequate nurse, rough but not deliberately cruel, tireless and patient enough with the sick. The more Hester thought about it, the less did she think Dora would murder Prudence out of nothing more than hatred.

  “Yes, I am sure she has the strength,” she went on. “But no reason.”

  “No, I suppose.” She sounded reluctant, but she smiled as she said it. “And I’d better go before Mrs. Flaherty comes back and catches me. Shall I empty the slop pail for you? I’ll be quick.”

  “Yes please. And thank you for the sandwich and the tea.”

  The girl smiled with sudden brilliance, then blushed, took the pail, and disappeared.

  It was a long night, and Hester got little sleep. Her patient dozed fitfully, always aware of his pain, but when daylight came a little before four in the morning his pulse was still strong and he had only the barest flush of fever. Hester was weary but well satisfied, and when Sir Herbert called in at half past seven she told him the news with a sense of achievement.

  “Excellent, Miss Latterly.” He spoke succinctly, beyond Prendergast’s hearing, although he was barely half awake. “Quite excellent. But there is a long way to go yet.” He looked at him dubiously, pushing out his lip. “He may develop fever any time in the next seven or eight days, which could yet prove fatal. I wish you to remain with him each night. Mrs. Flaherty can see to his needs during the day.” He ignored her temporarily while he examined the patient, and she stepped back and waited. His concentration was total, his brows furrowed, eyes intent while his fingers moved dextrously, gently. He asked one or two questions, more for reassurance of his attention than from a need for information, and he was unconcerned when Prendergast gave few coherent replies, his eyes sunken with shock of the wound and the bleeding.

  “Very good,” Sir Herbert said at last, stepping back. “You are progressing very well, sir. I expect to see you in full health in a matter of weeks.”

  “Do you? Do you think so?” Prendergast smiled weakly. “I feel very ill now.”

  “Of course you do. But that will pass, I assure you. Now I must attend to my other patients. The nurses will care for you. Good day, sir.” And with no more than a passing nod to Hester he left, striding along the corridor, shoulders squared, head high.

  As soon as she was relieved, Hester also left. She was barely halfway along the corridor in the direction of the nurses’ dormitory when she encountered the imposing figure of Berenice Ross Gilbert. Although in any social circumstance she would have considered herself Lady Ross Gilbert’s equal, even if perhaps that opinion had not been shared, in her gray stuff nursing dress, and with her occupation known, she was at every kind of disadvantage, and she was uncomfortably aware of it.

  Berenice was dressed splendidly, as usual, her gown a mixture of rusts and golds with a touch of fuchsia pink, and cut to the minute of fashion. She smiled with casual charm, looking straight through Hester, and continued on her way. However, she had only gone a few steps when Sir Herbert came out of one of the doorways.

  “Ah!” he said quickly, his face lighting up. “I was just hoping to …”

  “Good morning, Sir Herbert,” Berenice cut across him, her voice brittle and a trifle loud. “Another very pleasant day. How is Mr. Prendergast? I hear you performed a brilliant operation. It is an excellent thing for the reputation of the hospital, and of course for English medicine in general. How did
he pass the night? Well?”

  Sir Herbert looked a little taken aback. He was facing Berenice with his profile to Hester, whom he had not noticed standing in the shadows a dozen yards away. She was a nurse, so to some extent invisible, like a good domestic servant.

  Sir Herbert’s eyebrows rose in obvious surprise.

  “Yes, he is doing very well so far,” he replied. “But it is too early yet for that to mean a great deal. I didn’t know you were acquainted with Mr. Prendergast.”

  “Ah no, my interest is not personal.”

  “I was going to say that I—” he began again.

  “And of course,” she cut across him again, “I am concerned with the hospital’s reputation and your enhancement of it, Sir Herbert.” She smiled fixedly. “Of course this whole wretched business of poor Nurse—whatever her name was.”

  “Barrymore? Really, Berenice …”

  “Yes, of course, Barrymore. And we have another Crimean nurse, so I hear—Miss—er …” She half turned toward Hester and indicated her.

  “Ah—yes.” Sir Herbert looked startled and slightly out of composure. “Yes—it seems like a fortunate acquisition—so far. A very competent young woman. Thank you for your kind words, Lady Ross Gilbert.” Unconsciously he pulled down the front of his jacket, straightening it a little. “Most generous of you. Now if you would excuse me, I have other patients I must attend. Charming to see you.”

  Berenice smiled bleakly. “Naturally. Good morning, Sir Herbert.”

  Hester moved at last toward the dormitory and the opportunity for an hour or two’s rest. She was tired enough to sleep even through the constant comings and goings, the chatter, the movement of others, even though she longed for privacy. The peace of her own small lodging room seemed a haven it never had previously, when she had compared it with her father’s home with its spaciousness, warmth, and familiar elegance.

  She did not sleep long and woke with a start, her mind frantically trying to recall some impression she had gained. It was important, it meant something, and she could not grasp it.