After she’d cleared the dishes, Ilsa went up to Jo’s office. Owen had made a hash of the staff bonuses, and now it fell on Ilsa to untangle it. To her surprise, he was already sitting behind Jo’s desk with a haphazard assortment of papers spread out in front of him.
“Just the lady I wanted to see,” he said. “Her accounting system’s got me baffled again.”
“It’s simple once you learn the general idea.” Ilsa walked over to stand at his shoulder and ran her finger down the long rows of numbers in the ledger book. “See? There’s the account for daily operations, then staff payroll, then the repairs fund, and then savings. You took the money out of payroll, but it should have come from the savings because it’s a bonus.”
“And that’s why nothing’s adding up now.” Owen’s publisher in Vancouver handled most of his royalties and Jo took care of their shared finances. “Am I right in thinking that we can move money back over from the savings to even it out?” Ilsa nodded. “So I rob Peter to pay Paul and then pray that things stop breaking for a while.” He paused. “Actually, maybe there’s more money in payroll than I think, since we haven’t had to pay Nils.” At his friend’s name, he turned to look out of the office’s window, as if expecting to see the big Dane trudging down the boardwalk.
“He’ll be back soon,” Ilsa said. “And I’m sure your math works out.”
“I hope so.” He rubbed his forehead. “Does that all make sense to you, with the accounts?”
“It makes perfect sense,” Ilsa admitted to her surprise. She had come up here expecting to clean up Owen’s mess, but he’d figured out the problem himself and was already putting it to rights.
“And I’ve made a start on scheduling some of the new clients. Does this look right?” Ilsa examined the schedule at Owen had made. He’d made allowances for seniority and time off, and even for the competitive squabbles that were sure to come up between a few of the girls. It was nearly flawless.
“I’d switch Annie and Elsie on the Thursday morning times, since Elsie doesn’t get along with Mrs. Pennington, but other than that, it looks perfect. You’re a natural.”
He shrugged. “It’s about time I started to pull my weight around here, eh?” Ilsa liked Owen, so it was uncomfortable to laugh at his joke when, secretly, she agreed. He was always writing or off somewhere talking politics or conservation, or tromping around the mountains with Nils, while Jo ran herself ragged keeping the bathhouse afloat.
“Well, thank you for stepping up and handling this,” she said.
“It’s not so much stepping up as sliding over. Sometimes I write the books and Jo takes care of everything. Sometimes my royalties keep us flush and she can take a break. Jo’s . . . having a rough few weeks, so it’s my turn to carry the load. With your help, of course.” He flashed the charming grin that had won him both Jo and the last election. “When she’s feeling more like herself again, she’ll probably tell me I’ve been doing everything all wrong and to get my nose out of her business.”
Jo had always been a perfectionist. Ilsa hadn’t really thought about the possibility that Jo might prefer it that Owen stayed well away from her account books. And his writing did pay a lot of the bills.
“You’re a good team.”
“We are now, I hope. I thought we’d drive each other insane when I first moved here, you know.” He smiled, an inward-turning private little smile. “I’d probably make more money if I still lived in Vancouver, and her life would probably be easier if I could repair stoves, but being together is more important than anything else. We made it work.”
Down the hall, the baby began crying again. Owen flinched. “Why don’t you go walk Sarah for awhile?” Ilsa suggested. “I’ll take care of the rest of this.”
Owen attempted a smile and hauled himself to the office door. “I don’t know what we’d do without you. Truly.”
She was beginning to hate those words, as well meaning as they were. Lately, it felt as if she was all that was holding Wilson’s Bathhouse together. She wasn’t bitter about it: no one had asked her to take on all of these extra tasks. She had simply seen what needed doing and made sure it’d gotten done. If—when—she left, someone else would step up. Owen, perhaps, or one of the other girls. Maybe whoever Jo hired on to replace her.
The revelation should have been liberating, but instead it stung. She might not be as irreplaceable as she thought.
Chapter 16
Theo arrived back in Fraser Springs a week early, unable to stomach the tension in the big West End house any longer. His mother was making a grand show of giving him the silent treatment, and, every time he was within earshot, complaining loudly about his ingratitude to her gaggle of friends in the parlour. Even though she had recovered from her illness quickly and without any complications, she’d taken to sitting in his old wheelchair with a blanket across her lap. Martha pushed her around the house.
“And then he poisoned me. My own son! I pay a king’s ransom for him to become a doctor, and how does he repay me? Not by healing the sick but by poisoning his own mother! And after I worked so hard to make him happy. You must see what I am working with. He doesn’t go to parties. He refuses to take any care with his appearance. Still—still—his dear mother finds a perfect wife for him. And even that is not good enough for him. I think the fever addled his brain when he was a child. I really do.”
Murmurs of encouragement came from her cronies.
“Oh, but you are such a devoted mother, Olivia. You simply cannot blame yourself.”
“Some people are simply beyond help. They’re born that way.”
Their strategies for dealing with the various scandals of Christmas dinner seemed to have been ripped from the plot of an opera or a stage play. Theo should be committed to a mental institution. He should spend a night in jail to straighten him out, and then he should give an interview to a respectable newspaper declaring that he had been temporarily deranged by passion for dear Emily.
“Perhaps we should carry on with the Morrisons, providing they are still amenable,” his mother suggested. “We might announce the engagement in the newspapers. Then we send Theodore off to Europe, but we put out that he’s gone missing. Foul play is suspected. Emily gives birth—no one minds a baby born during an engagement—and we give the dear little thing our last name. Emily will have dignity and financial security, we will have a grandson, and Theodore can stay in Europe. Or return in a few years claiming some manner of amnesia. Do people still get amnesia?”
His mother would never believe that her sickness had been Dr. Greyson’s fault. Or even that it had been a bout of the stomach flu. If he stuck around any longer, he was liable to end up chloroformed and dragged to the altar. At the first opportunity, he packed his bags and jumped ship while everyone in the household was out at Sunday services. On his way to the steamer docks, he had the cab take him to the jeweller’s. It was a whim he chose not to examine too closely. It never hurt to be prepared, after all.
As he disembarked the paddlewheeler in Fraser Springs that evening, Theo realized that he wasn’t even sure he still had a job at the St. Alice. His mother might easily have written Dr. Greyson. And who knew what Dr. Greyson might have told Morse. He wanted to see Ilsa again, but he wasn’t sure that she’d welcome his abrupt re-appearance after so many weeks of silence. For lack of a better idea, he dragged his baggage through the snow to Doc Stryker’s bar.
As he stepped inside, the patrons went silent. Then, to his consternation, they erupted in a cheer. Theo looked around to see what the celebration was about.
“Drink on the house for the fellow who delivered Jo’s baby!” exclaimed Doc.
“Hey! Happy New Year, Dr. Chicken Leg!” a few of the old-timers cried.
It was flattering, but he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the attention. He gave a short wave and made a beeline for the bar. Doc smiled and slid a glass of beer in his direction.
He recognized the man waving at him from a crowded corner as Walter from the
bathhouse. Theo made his way over and took a hastily vacated seat at a scarred wood table. The beer was strong and surprisingly good. He answered a few questions about his recent whereabouts with vague mentions of distant family, and then he settled back to listen as his tablemates drifted back to their earlier topic of conversation. They seemed to be talking about mining.
“I’m going back to logging,” one of the more grizzled-looking men was saying. “I hate to give up working so close to town, but them new chemicals make me dizzy. At least in the woods you get fresh air.”
“There’s an active mine near here?” Theo asked.
Everyone at the table looked at him like he was daft. The man gestured. “Sure. East of town, right up the hill.”
“What are they mining?”
“Cadmium, arsenic, lead, zinc, you name it,” another man said. “Doesn’t operate full time, though. Once a week, sometimes less. Seems they’re still trying to figure out the right process. So we’ll get eighteen hours of work one day, then nothing for a fortnight.”
This set the men off into a new round of grumbling.
“I don’t know what that Morse fellow is playing at. He goes on about how his fancy hotel has the purest, most high-falultin’ spring water in the world, and then he goes and pours a bunch of garbage into it. He’s a snake, that one.”
“Wait. They dump the mine tailings into the springs?” A few of the men nodded.
Theo leaned forwards. “So if you were to drink the hot springs water after they dump the tailings . . . ”
“Wouldn’t drink that stink water on a good day. On one of the bad days, you’d be liable to grow a tail. Nobody’s dumb enough for that. Just use a little common sense, that’s all.”
Everything slid into place. Theo had been looking for bacteria, so he hadn’t done a chemical assay. And even if he had, it might not have helped. The water bottled on the days when the mine dumped its tailings would be adulterated at higher concentrations than the days when they didn’t. So you either had to drink a lot of the water in a short period of time, as his mother had done, or get a bottle from a batch taken right after the tailings had been dumped. That explained why not everyone got sick. It explained why the illnesses happened in clusters. And it certainly explained why only patrons of the St. Alice were falling ill.
With any luck, he could get his gear from the office of the St. Alice and complete the assay without Dr. Greyson or Morse knowing.
Doc Stryker was happy to let him stash his baggage at the bar, and Theo headed out through the snow, picking his way along the dark boardwalk. The snow concealed sheets of ice; one slip and he could crack his skull.
When he finally arrived in the basement of the St. Alice, treatments were wrapping up. Only a few attendants remained, cleaning and replenishing the towels.
“Good evening,” he greeted them.
“Good evening, Dr. Whitacre,” they said in unison. A few faces betrayed surprise at his early return to the hotel, but they went back to their work immediately.
Theo strode as confidently as he could to the big storage room at the end of the row of the lockers where clients could keep their personal effects during their visit. He shut the door behind him and scanned the ceiling-high shelves of towels, soaps, liniments . . . There! Along the back wall were at least two dozen crates of Restorative Vitality Water. He retrieved three of the long green bottles, each from a different crate, and slipped out of the storage room and straight up the stairs. His luck held; he crossed the echoing lobby without encountering a soul. Even the ever-present concierge seemed to have temporarily abandoned his post near the foyer.
He shot the bolt on the door of his little office, set the bottles on the narrow workbench that served as his desk, and opened the mahogany case that contained his microscope. He worked quickly and methodically to lay out the rest of the equipment he’d need, trying not to clink glass together or set anything down too heavily. There wasn’t any good reason for anyone to be hanging around this part of the hotel at this hour, but he didn’t want to chance possible interruptions and awkward explanations.
Theo set up his Bunsen burner and lit it under the first flask of the decanted water. While it heated, he unpacked a ceramic mortar that was still in its original excelsior-packed shipping box. That would do nicely. When the water reached boiling, he added a small lozenge of zinc to the flask, then held the cold bowl up to the mouth of the flask to catch the smoke. It turned a silvery-black colour. Arsenic. He had his proof.
On his way to Mr. Morse’s suite, Theo was drawn up short by the foul odour that was now so familiar. He stopped and looked down the hallway just as a door opened and Dr. Greyson came out. The man looked as if he’d aged ten years since Theo had left. He stopped to blot the sweat from his forehead and sighed. Another outbreak must be keeping him busy. It didn’t seem possible, but perhaps Dr. Greyson’s Christmas had been as bad as his own.
He was halfway to the stairs before he noticed Theo. “A belated merry Christmas, dear boy,” he said in an exhausted imitation of joviality. “And congratulations on your engagement!”
Theo gave him a thin smile. “Happy New Year, sir. And I’m afraid I’m not engaged.”
“Then I must have misread your mother’s letter. We didn’t expect to see you back so soon.”
“When I discovered the source of the outbreak, I thought it best to return immediately.”
A flush of irritability overlaid Greyson’s exhaustion. “Well, well. The boy wonder thinks he’s cracked the case. If you came all the way up here to rant about cholera again, you’ve wasted a trip.”
“Is Mr. Morse in? He might be interested in my findings, at least.”
“You are not to bother Mr. Morse. He has enough to do without your pestering him.” But Theo was already on his way up the stairs. Dr. Greyson followed behind, spluttering objections. When Theo paused to knock on Morse’s door, Greyson grabbed the handle and pushed his way in.
As the two squabbling doctors burst into the room, two men jerked their bent heads up from a map spread out on a table: Mr. Morse and Owen Sterling.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Morse said sharply. “This is a private meeting.”
Greyson tried to compose himself by smoothing his vest over his stomach. “My apologies for the abrupt entrance. Teddy here was intent on barging in with more of his laboratory nonsense.”
Sterling straightened and held out his hand to Theo, who shook it. “I’m happy to listen to whatever nonsense Dr. Whitacre wants to tell us.” Theo glanced over for confirmation to Morse, who nodded.
“I’ve identified the source of the outbreak. We need to act immediately.”
Morse sighed. “Not this cholera nonsense again.”
Sterling looked startled but waited for Theo to go on.
“It’s not cholera. But it’s something just as dangerous.” Morse tried to object, but Theo ploughed on. “And I can prove it. I performed a Marsh test just now on a sample of your Restorative Vitality Water. You see that silver-black substance in the cup?” He handed the little ceramic bowl to Morse, who glanced down and handed it off to Sterling. “That’s a positive test for arsenic.”
“Poppycock!” Greyson said. “We boil that water.”
“Boiling doesn’t get rid of heavy metals. Mr. Morse, do you know what’s in the tailings from your mine?”
Theo watched Morse’s face as he put the pieces together. “Damn it,” he muttered. He slammed a hand on his desk, causing the papers and ink bottles on it to jump. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
Theo turned to Sterling. “Those tailings get into the hot springs. Water bottled on the days that the tailings are dumped will contain arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium—”
“Enough,” Morse said. “You’ve made your point.”
“We are profoundly lucky that no one died.”
“I drink that water myself!” Greyson seemed to have regained his powers of speech. “It’s perfectly safe.”
“You told me you’d t
ested it,” Morse said in a voice that sent a little chill down Theo’s back. It was the same alarmingly calm delivery that his mother sometimes used before she lost her temper spectacularly.
Morse and Greyson began talking over one another. Sterling held his hands up for silence.
“Everybody wait a damn minute! You were selling the hot springs water for drinking? That stuff tastes like turpentine even before you start putting arsenic in it.”
“It’s medicinal,” Greyson insisted. “No one expects medicine to taste pleasant.”
“We need to immediately recall all the water,” Theo said. “We need to tell people that—”
Mr. Morse, having regained his composure, cut him short with a wave of his hand. “Yes. Right. Very good, Dr. Whitacre. We’ll remove the water quietly. The influenza epidemic will remain an influenza epidemic, and the water will be bottled from a different source.”
“But that’s not good enough,” Theo said. “Some guests probably took bottles home with them. They need to be warned!”
Sterling and Morse exchanged meaningful glances. “What?” asked Theo.
“Sit down,” Sterling said. He looked to Morse. “Why don’t you tell him?”
Morse got up and went to the sideboard, where he poured four drinks. He passed them to each man without a word, and Theo took a polite sip of the burning liquid. Finally, Morse sat down in the remaining chair and stared contemplatively into his glass. “The St. Alice hasn’t been able to cover its expenses this past year. It barely broke even the year before that. I had hoped the revenue from the new mine would provide something of a buffer for the finances. But it’s been nothing but a money pit. And add in a slow season and this ‘flu’ business?” He took a long swallow and closed his eyes for a moment. “Mr. Sterling and I were trying to come to an agreement that would save the St. Alice, and with it, your jobs.”
No one in the room spoke. All of this pretentious opulence was nothing but a web of illusions and debt.
“It’s a difficult situation,” Sterling said quietly. “With the timber and the mines petering out, tourist dollars are the real lifeblood of Fraser Springs. And with the St. Alice on the edge already, any damage to its reputation could tip the whole town under.”
The Infamous Miss Ilsa Page 20
