A Sudden, Fearful Death

by Anne Perry

  “What is it?” She was so shaken already that the rules of etiquette were totally ignored. This was in a way worse than death. Death was expected, and there were procedures to follow; whatever the grief, one knew what to do. And death visited all households; there was no shame or peculiarity about it. “What has happened?”

  “It is not a simple thing to tell,” Callandra replied. “I should prefer to do so seated.” She was about to add that it would be easier, but the words were absurd. Nothing could make this easier.

  Philomena remained where she was. “Please tell me what has happened, Lady Callandra.”

  “Nothing new has happened. It is simply knowledge of old sins and sadness which must be known in order to prevent them happening again.”

  “To whom?”

  Callandra took a breath. This was every bit as painful as she had foreseen—perhaps even worse.

  “To your children, Lady Stanhope.”

  “My children?” There was no real alarm in her, only disbelief. “What have my children to do with this—this ordeal? And what can you possibly know about it?”

  “I am one of the governors of the Royal Free Hospital,” Callandra replied, sitting down, whether Philomena chose to or not. “Your daughter Victoria consulted a surgeon there some time ago, when she first knew she was with child.”

  Philomena was very pale, but she kept her composure and she did not sit down.

  “Indeed? I did not know that, but it does not seem to me to be of importance now. Unless—unless you are saying that it was he who marred her?”

  “No—it was not.” Thank God she could say that. “Her pregnancy was too far advanced. He refused to operate.”

  “Then I cannot see how raising the matter now can serve any purpose whatsoever, except to open old wounds.”

  “Lady Stanhope …” Callandra hated this. She could feel her stomach clenching so hard her whole body hurt. “Lady Stanhope—do you know who was the father of Victoria’s child?”

  Philomena’s voice was strangled. “That is hardly your concern, Lady Callandra.”

  “You do know!”

  “I do not. Nothing I could say would persuade her to tell me. The very fact that I pressed her seemed to drive her to such terror and despair I feared she would take her own life if I continued.”

  “Please sit down.”

  Philomena obeyed, not because Callandra asked her but because her legs threatened to give way if she did not. She stared at Callandra as at a snake about to strike.

  “She did tell the surgeon,” Callandra went on, hearing her own voice in the still room with its dead atmosphere and loathing it. “Because it was one of the circumstances in which he might have considered the operation, had he been consulted sooner.”

  “I don’t understand—Victoria was in excellent health—then …”

  “But the child was a result of incest. The father was her brother Arthur.”

  Philomena tried to speak. Her mouth opened, but no sound came. She was so pale Callandra was afraid she was going to faint, even sitting as she was.

  “I wish I could have spared you,” she said quietly. “But you have other daughters. For their sakes I had to inform you. I wish it were not so.”

  Still Philomena seemed paralyzed.

  Callandra leaned forward and took one of her hands. It was cold to the touch, and stiff. Then she rose and pulled the bell sharply and stood facing the door.

  As soon as a maid appeared she sent her for brandy and then a hot, sweet tisane.

  The maid hesitated.

  “Don’t stand there, girl,” Callandra said sharply. “Tell the butler to bring the brandy and then fetch the tisane. Hurry yourself!”

  “Arthur,” Philomena said suddenly in a harsh voice thick with anguish. “Dear God! If only I’d known! If she’d told me!” Slowly she bent forward, her body shuddering with terrible dry sobs and long cries, straining for breath.

  Callandra did not even look to see if the maid had gone or not. She knelt and put her arms around the agonized woman and held her close while she shook with a storm of weeping.

  The butler brought the brandy, stood helpless and anguished with uncertainty and embarrassment, then put the tray down and left.

  Eventually Philomena’s strength was spent and she clung to Callandra in motionless exhaustion.

  Gently Callandra eased her back into the chair and fetched the brandy, holding it to her lips.

  Philomena sipped it, choked, then drank the rest.

  “You don’t understand,” she said at last, her eyes red-rimmed, her face smeared with the signs of weeping. “I could have saved her. I knew where to find a woman who could have got her a proper abortion, a woman who knows where to find a real surgeon who would do it—for sufficient money. If she had felt she could trust me, I would have taken her to that man in time. When she got there herself—it was too late.”

  “You—” Callandra could hardly believe it. “You knew how to find such a woman?”

  Philomena misunderstood her emotion. She colored deeply. “I—I have seven children. I …”

  Callandra grasped her hand and held it. “I understand,” she said immediately.

  “I didn’t go.” Philomena’s eyes opened wide. “She would not refer me. She—she herself—gave me …” She faltered to a stop, unable to say the words.

  “But she knew how to find him?” Callandra pressed, the irony bitter inside her.

  “Yes.” Philomena sobbed again. “God forgive me—I could have helped Victoria. Why didn’t she trust me? Why? I loved her so much! I didn’t condemn her—what did I fail to do that she …” Again the tears filled her eyes and she looked at Callandra desperately, as if she could find some answer that somehow, anyhow, would take away the appalling pain that overwhelmed her.

  Callandra said the only thing that came into her mind.

  “Perhaps she was ashamed because it was Arthur. And you don’t know what he said to her. She may have felt she must defend him from anyone’s knowing, even you—or perhaps you most of all because of the distress it would cause you. One thing I am sure of: she would not wish you to bear the burden of guilt for it now. Has she ever reproached you?”

  “No.”

  “Then be assured she does not hold you responsible.”

  Philomena’s face filled with self-disgust. “Whether she does or not, I am to blame. I am her mother. I should have prevented it in the first place—and when it did happen, I should have helped her.”

  “Who would you have gone to?” She made it sound casual, almost unimportant, but her breath rasped in her throat as she waited for the answer.

  “Berenice Ross Gilbert,” Philomena replied. “She knows how to obtain safe abortions. She knows of a surgeon who will do it.”

  “Berenice Ross Gilbert. I see.” Callandra tried to hide her amazement and almost succeeded; there was only a lift at the end of her words, a half squeak.

  “It makes no difference now,” Philomena said immediately. “It is all done. Victoria is ruined—far worse than if she had had the child!”

  “Perhaps.” Callandra could not deny it. “You must send Arthur away to university, or military college, or anything to keep him from the house. Your other daughters must be protected. And you had better make sure none of them is—well, if they are, I will find you a surgeon who will perform the operation without charge, and immediately.”

  Philomena stared at her. There was nothing else to say. She was numb, wretched, weak with pain and bewilderment.

  There was a knock on the door and it opened a crack. The maid put her head around, eyes wide and filled with alarm.

  “Bring in the tisane,” Callandra ordered. “Put it down there and then leave Lady Stanhope for a while. There are to be no callers admitted.”

  “Yes ma’am. No ma’am.” She obeyed and withdrew.

  Callandra remained with Philomena Stanhope for a further half hour, until she was sure she was capable of retaining her composure and beginning to f
ace the dreadful task ahead of her, then she excused herself and left, going outside into the warm dusk to where her carriage still awaited her. She gave the coachman instructions to take her to Fitzroy Street, and Monk’s lodgings.

  Hester began immediately upon the same task of finding the link between Sir Herbert and his patients that Monk had done. For her it was far easier. She could deduce from Prudence’s notes which nurses had assisted him, and even though the notes went back to shortly after Prudence’s arrival at the hospital, most of the nurses were still here and not difficult to encounter.

  She met one rolling bandages, a second sweeping the floor, a third preparing poultices. The fourth she found carrying two heavy pails of slops.

  “Let me help you,” she offered uncharacteristically.

  “Why?” the woman said with suspicion. It was not a job people took up voluntarily.

  “Because I’d rather carry one for you than have to mop up behind you if you spill it,” Hester said with something less than the truth. The task would not have been hers.

  The woman was not going to argue herself out of help with a distasteful job. She passed over the heavier of the two pails immediately.

  By now Hester had worked out a plan of action. It was not likely to make her popular, and would almost certainly make working in the Royal Free Hospital impossible once the nurses spoke to each other and realized what she was doing, but she would worry about that after Sir Herbert was convicted. For now her anger overrode all such practical considerations.

  “Do you think he did it?” she said casually.

  “What?”

  “Do you think he did it?” she repeated, walking side by side down the corridor with the pails.

  “ ’Oo did wot?” the woman said irritably. “Are you talking about the treasurer groping after Mary Higgins again? ’Oo knows? And ’oo cares? She asked for it anyway—stupid cow!”

  “Actually I meant Sir Herbert,” Hester explained. “Do you think he killed Barrymore? The papers say the trial will end soon, then I suppose he’ll be back here. I wonder if he’ll have changed?”

  “Not ’im. Snooty sod. It’ll still be ‘Fetch this’—‘Gimme that’—‘Stand ’ere’—‘Stand there’—‘Empty this’—‘Roll up the bandages and pass me the knife.’ ”

  “You worked with him, didn’t you?”

  “Me? Gor! I just empty slops and sweep floors!” she said with disgust.

  “Yes, you did! You assisted him with an operation! I heard you did it very well! July last year—woman with a tumor in her stomach.”

  “Oh … yeah! An’ in October—but never again after that. Not good enough—me!” She hawked and spat viciously.

  “So who is good enough, then?” Hester said, investing her voice with a suitable contempt. “Doesn’t sound like anything very special to me.”

  “Dora Parsons,” the woman replied grudgingly. “Used ’er ’alf the time, ’e did. An’ yer right—it weren’t nothin’ special. Just ’anding ’im knives an’ towels an’ such. Any fool could’ve done it. Dunno why ’e picked Dora special. She didn’t know nothin’. No better than I am!”

  “And no prettier either,” Hester said with a smile.

  The woman stared at her, then suddenly burst into a loud, cackling laugh.

  “Yer a caution, you are! Never know what yer’ll say next! Don’t you never say that to ol’ Cod Face, or she’ll ’ave yer up before Lady Almighty for immorality. Although God knows if ’e fancied Dora Parsons ’e’d not be safe wi’ the pigs.” And she laughed even louder and longer, till the tears ran down her roughened cheeks. Hester emptied the pail and left her still chuckling to herself.

  Dora Parsons. That was what Hester had wanted, although she wished it had been anyone else. So Sir Herbert had still lied to Rathbone—he had used one nurse more than the others. Why? And why Dora? For more complicated operations, or ones performed later in the pregnancy, when it was more likely the nurse would know what the operation was? More important patients—perhaps ladies of good family, or maybe women who were terrified for their reputations? It looked as if he trusted Dora—and that raised more questions.

  The only way to answer them was to find Dora herself.

  That she accomplished after dark when she was so weary all she longed for was to sit down and relieve the ache in her back and her legs. She was carrying blood-soaked bandages down to the stove to bum them (they were beyond any laundress to reclaim), and she met Dora coming up the stairs, a pile of sheets on her arms. She carried the weight of them as if they were merely handkerchiefs.

  Hester could not afford to wait for a better time or to get up her courage and prepare. She stopped in the middle of the stairs, under the lamp, blocking Dora’s way, trying to look as if she had done it unintentionally.

  “I have a friend who is attending the trial,” she said, not as casually as she had wished.

  “Wot?”

  “Sir Herbert,” she replied. “It’s nearly over. They’ll probably bring in the verdict in the next day or two.”

  Dora’s face was guarded. “Oh yeah?”

  “At the moment it looks as if they’ll find him not guilty.” Hester watched her minutely.

  She was rewarded. An expression of relief lit Dora’s eyes and something inside her relaxed. “Oh yeah?” she said again.

  “The trouble is,” Hester went on, still blocking the way. “Nobody knows who did kill Prudence. So the case will still be open.”

  “So what if it is? It weren’t you an’ it weren’t me. An’ looks as if it weren’t Sir ’Erbert.”

  “Do you think it was?”

  “ ’O?—me? No, I don’t reckon as’t was.” There was a fierceness in her voice, as if she had suddenly forgotten to be so careful.

  Hester frowned. “Not even if she knew about the abortions? Which she did. She could have made things pretty hard for him if she threatened to go to the law.”

  Dora was tense again, her huge body balanced carefully as if to make some sudden move, if she could only decide what. She stared at Hester, hovering between confidence in her and total enmity.

  A prickle of sharp physical fear tightened Hester’s body, making her gulp for breath. They were alone on the steps, the only light the small oases of the gas lamps at top and bottom and the one under which they stood. The dark well of the stairs yawned below and the shadows of the landing above.

  She plunged on.

  “I don’t know what proof she had. I don’t know if she was even there—”

  “She weren’t.” Dora cut across her with finality.

  “Wasn’t she?”

  “No—’cos I know ’oo were. ’E wouldn’t be daft enough ter have ’er in. She knew too much.” Her big face puckered. “Damn near as good as a doctor ’erself, she were. Knew more than any of them student doctors. She’d never ’ave believed they was operations for tumors and the like.”

  “But you knew! Did the other nurses?”

  “No—wouldn’t know stones from a broken leg, most of ’em.” There was contempt in her tone as well as a mild tolerance.

  Hester forced herself to smile, although she felt it was a sickly gesture, more a baring of the teeth. She tried to invest her voice with respect.

  “Sir Herbert must have trusted you very deeply.”

  Pride lit Dora’s eyes. “Yeah—’e does. An’e’s right. I’d never betray ’im.”

  Hester stared at her. It was not only pride in her eyes, it was a burning idealism, a devotion and a passionate respect. It transformed her features from their habitual ugliness into something that had its own kind of beauty.

  “He must know how much you respect him for it,” Hester said chokingly. A flood of emotion shook her. She had wept more tears than she could remember over dead women who had not the strength left to fight disease and loss of blood because their bodies were exhausted with bearing child after child. She had seen the hopelessness in their eyes, the weariness, the fear for babies they knew they could not cherish. And sh
e had seen the tiny, starving creatures come into the world ill before they started, sprung from an exhausted womb.

  In the pool of light on the stairs Dora Parsons was waiting, watching her.

  And neither could Hester forget Prudence Barrymore, her eagerness and her passion to heal, her burning vitality.

  “You’re right,” she said aloud in the silence. “Some women need a far better help than the law lets us give them. You have to admire a man who risks his honor, and his freedom, to do something about it.”

  Dora relaxed, the ease washing through her visibly. Slowly she smiled.

  Hester clenched her fists in the folds of her skirts.

  “If only he did it for the poor, instead of rich women who have simply lost their virtue and didn’t want to face the shame and ruin of an illegitimate child.”

  Dora’s eyes were like black holes in her head.

  Hester felt the stab of fear again. Had she gone too far?

  “ ’E didn’t do that,” Dora said slowly. “ ’E did poor women, sick women … them as couldn’t take no more.”

  “He did rich women,” Hester repeated gravely, in little more than a whisper, her hand on the stair rail as if it were some kind of safety. “And he took a lot of money for it.” She did not know if that was true or not—but she had known Prudence. Prudence would not have betrayed him for doing what Dora believed. And Sir Herbert had killed her….

  “ ’E didn’t.” Dora’s voice was plaintive, her face beginning to crumple like a child’s. “ ’E didn’t take no money at all.” But already the doubt was there.

  “Yes he did,” Hester repeated. “That’s why Prudence threatened him.”

  “Yer lyin’,” Dora said simply and with total conviction. “I knew her too, an’ she’d never ’ave forced ’im into marryin’ ’er. That don’t make no sense at all. She never loved ’im. She’d no time for men. She wanted to be a doctor, Gawd ’elp ’er! She’d no chance—no woman ’as, ’owever good she is. If you’d really knew ’er, you’d never ’ave said anything so daft.”

  “I know she didn’t want to marry him,” Hester agreed. “She wanted him to help her get admittance to a medical school!”