by Tessa Harris
“He was a widower, sir,” recalled the woman, seated in her spotless parlor. “Lost his young wife in childbirth.” She had relented and let the notary into her home. She had even offered him tea, although he declined. “That was why ’twas such a shock when the constables knocked on my door one day and told me Mr. Crick was to be hanged at Tyburn the next day.” She slapped her palms on her skirts. “Near fainted away with the shock of it, I did,” she huffed.
The notary listened sympathetically. “I can imagine,” he said. Yet while he was grateful that she had recounted her own feelings of disbelief and outrage, the information that he really sought had not been forthcoming, so he tried a different tack.
“You said that Mr. Crick was a widower,” he began. “But did you ever see him with anyone else? A child, perhaps?”
The landlady’s face immediately creased into a frown. “Yes, indeed, sir,” she said, nodding her head. “His son looked just like him, he did. Came to visit with his nursemaid on the floor above for a few days. So clean they were.” She pointed upward with her plump finger.
The notary leaned forward, his eyes wide. “And do you know what happened to them?”
The landlady’s back stiffened. “I couldn’t have them staying here no more after that business.” She drew her finger across her throat to signify a noose. “I keep a clean house, I do.” She clasped her hands on her lap.
“Do you know where they went?” The notary tried to hide his disappointment.
The woman shook her head slowly, as if she was not entirely certain of her answer.
“There is no more you can tell me?” He knew he was onto something. Delving into his topcoat pocket, he produced his purse and laid it on the little side table next to him. The dame’s eyes darted to the bag.
“Mr. Crick did leave something in his room.” The landlady had suddenly remembered the small packet she had found in a drawer in the dead man’s desk. There had been a few guineas inside and she had taken the liberty of pocketing them, as down payment, or surety against future rent owed, she had told herself. There had been a short note, too. It mentioned words like “upkeep” and “provision” and “allowance,” but she had destroyed it, of course. She did not want to incriminate herself, did not want to be accused of pilfering from her lodger. So she put the money in the ginger jar in her parlor. After all, she knew there was no possibility of the young man’s return.
“I was checking that Maddie, she’s my maid, had cleaned the room to my standards,” she told him, “when I came across a paper packet Mr. Crick had left.” She rose slowly, her knees creaking as she did so, and walked over to the bureau in the corner of the room. “Here it is,” she said, handing it to the notary. On it were written the words: Miss Agnes Appleton, St. Giles, London. Inside it was empty.
The notary eyed her knowingly and saw that she seemed flustered as her gaze slid away. “This is most helpful, madam. Most helpful indeed,” he said.
Opening the drawstring bag he took out a guinea coin.
“For your pains,” he told her.
She thanked him and took it without hesitation. And as soon as he was gone she added it to Mr. Crick’s money in the ginger jar. With it, she told herself, she would buy a new copper and her linens would be the cleanest in all London town.
Back at home in her cottage, Susannah Kidd found herself alone with her memories and her guilt. The roses in the jug on the table were already wilted, their petals scattered on the table. The water was smelling rank. Amos had been a good husband. He had always provided for her; he had seldom raised a hand to her and never gone carousing in the alehouses in Brandwick. She had been a good enough wife, too. She had made his meals and kept a clean house, darned his clothes and submitted to his fancies in the marriage bed, but everything she did, she did out of duty, not out of love. And she had longed for more. There had been a few times when other men had paid her compliments and she had enjoyed the feeling that had given her. Sometimes she had even flirted with them, although she had never bedded another, not since her marriage at any rate.
The parcel lay on the table. She took out her scissors to cut the string. They reminded her of the knife-grinder, the handsome traveler who had told her she was the fairest woman in the county. She snipped the twine and unfolded the paper. Inside was Amos’s clean smock. It was the one he was wearing when he died. It had been spattered in blood. Mistress Firebrace had seen to it that it had been boiled in the copper and now it was without stain. She laid it on the table and touched the stitching, her own fine stitching, and she began to weep.
She was so lost in her own tears that she did not hear the latch lift and the cottage door open.
“Mistress Kidd,” called a voice.
She looked up to see the figure of the Reverend Lightfoot. Under his wide-brimmed hat, most of his face was swathed in a scarf.
Wiping away her tears with the back of her hand, she quickly composed herself. “Come in, please,” she said, walking over to greet him.
“I am come to offer my condolences,” he told her, unfurling his scarf. “And to talk of the funeral arrangements.”
The thought of Amos lying in the ground chilled her and she shivered, even though the air was warm. Nor was she used to company. Since her husband’s death she had not swept the floor or beaten the hearth rug, and a thin film of dust from outside had settled on what little furniture she had. She showed her visitor a chair by the cold hearth and watched him sit down.
“I’m afraid I . . .”
The vicar, his own face tired and drawn and his hair now turned almost completely silver, shook his head and waved his cane. “I need nothing, Mistress Kidd,” he assured her.
She settled herself opposite. “I am sorry for your loss, sir,” she told him, sitting stiff-backed.
“Thank you, but I share my grief with many others,” he told her brusquely. Without making eye contact, he took out a notebook and pencil from his pocket in a businesslike manner, as if he were a merchant doing a deal, or a notary taking a brief. “Will tomorrow be amenable to you?”
“Tomorrow?”
“For the burial. Bodies are turning fast in this heat. Joseph Makepeace is working flat out.”
She nodded. She had not given much thought to Amos’s interment. But there would be roses. She hoped that some of them may have survived the fog, although she could not be sure.
“Lady Lydia has kindly consented to your husband being buried on the estate, in the chapel graveyard,” he informed her. Still he did not look at her.
“That is kind.”
“Excellent. So, noon on the morrow?”
There was an awkward pause before the vicar closed his notebook with a finality that indicated his work was done. He was a busy man. He needed to move on.
Again Susannah nodded, but as she watched him gathering up his scarf and his silver-topped cane, she wondered at his manner. He rose and she followed suit, both making their way to the cottage door.
“Thank you for coming, sir,” she said. She was close to him now and could see the rims of his eyes were red. There was a vulnerability about him that stirred something inside her. He acknowledged her words with a nod, but still did not look at her directly. As she watched him wrap his scarf around his neck once more she felt compelled to ask him whether his wife’s ending had been as shocking as her husband’s. “Were you there?” she asked suddenly, the words gushing out uncontrollably. “Did you see?”
His silver head jerked up, as if surprised by her question, wondering at her forthrightness. She sensed his unease. “Forgive me, sir. I did not mean . . .”
“No one has asked me that,” he replied thoughtfully. He fumbled with his scarf, then, for the first time, he looked her directly in the eye. “Yes. Yes, I was there. I saw her pain; the fear on her face.” His voice cracked as he recalled the scene.
Susannah saw his own pain reemerge at the very thought of his wife’s death, as if she had put her hand in an open wound. His eyes became glazed. She fel
t her own tears well up again, too, followed by an overwhelming urge to reach out to someone who shared her sorrow. Stepping forward, she laid her head on the vicar’s chest and began to sob. Instead of a comforting arm, however, she felt the Reverend Lightfoot’s body stiffen awkwardly. He stepped back quickly as if he had just been landed a body blow. She pulled back, too, wiping her tears away with her hands. “I’m sorry. I . . .”
The vicar looked at her oddly; almost with suspicion. “We must find comfort in the Lord.” His tone was verging on a reprimand.
She lifted her head. “Yes, of course,” she replied. “Forgive me, sir,” she repeated, adding, “I have no one else to turn to.”
He nodded awkwardly and managed a flat smile, but his eyes remained cold. Picking up his hat and his cane from the table, he moved toward the door.
“Good day to you, Mistress Kidd,” he said. He walked out into the fog, leaving Susannah alone with her sadness and her memories once more.
Chapter 16
The body of Amos Kidd, draped in a sheet, lay on a marble slab in the game larder. He shared the cold, solid space with three brace of pheasant and a hare that had been shot before the fog. Not even the poachers were venturing out now. If they did, they did not need to waste their snares or their shot; the corpses of dead animals were littering the fields.
Thomas had promised that after his work was done, he would deliver the body for burial in the estate’s chapel grounds the following day. He had asked for lamps to be lit all around. This, together with the low temperature of the room, made his working conditions favorable. Yet there was a terrible irony in his surroundings. He did not feel comfortable performing a postmortem in a place that was traditionally the butcher’s domain. The cleaver and the saw that hung above his head were grim reminders of the fact. The metallic tang of blood was added to the sulfur in the air, and the sawdust on the floor was crawling with maggots.
Folding back the sheet, he studied Kidd’s face. It was calm. All the muscles were relaxed. It was a far cry from the contortions that his coughing had caused. Yet the burns were still evident around his eyes, nose, and mouth. The acid had eaten away at the skin, puckering it into low ridges and furrowing it into deep pits. Scabs had formed like snow-capped peaks on this new mountain landscape and pus had oozed in rivulets toward his chin. If the sulfur had done this to the epidermis, then no wonder ingestion into the trachea and lungs caused a hemorrhage, thought Thomas.
He looked at his instruments laid out neatly on a cloth beside the body and took a deep breath. Like a priest, he intoned a few words. They were not prayers; just a simple mantra to reaffirm his purpose and to remind himself that he was dealing with a human body that deserved to be accorded dignity in death. He was steady now; composed and ready to begin.
Bending low, he held Amos Kidd’s head in both hands and lifted up the chin, so that the neck was easily accessible. His long fingers took hold of the knife. He did not grasp the hilt, but held it lightly and, like an artist with his brush, he skimmed the canvas of the skin with a single decisive stroke that left a fine line of crimson in its wake. Next came a larger blade and more force was applied until the flesh fell away on either side of the incision to reveal the trachea.
Slicing through the muscular tube at the top half of the neck, Thomas could see that the acid had been at work here, too. It had bubbled and boiled and blistered and corroded away whole areas of soft tissue. And the further he ventured into the tangle of the respiratory system, the greater the carnage he could see. Worst of all was the damage done to the bronchi. The tracks and lanes and roads of this landscape, housed in the thoracic cavity, were almost unrecognizable. The gas had mixed with the moisture in the lungs, producing an acid that had washed away vessels and tubules and veins, as if some great tidal wave had inundated them, destroying everything in its path.
The damage was worse than he feared. Stitching up the great flap of skin to re-cover the chest, Thomas felt a terrible sense of dread. It appeared that both Kidd and Mistress Lightfoot had suffered particularly badly because they had been caught in a rain shower of acid. Yet every man, woman, and child in the area had been exposed to the sulfur particles in the air over the past few days, not to mention the livestock. The cumulative effect of such elements could be just as damaging as the rain. The longer the poisonous cloud remained overhead, the more likely it was that many more would die.
Thomas washed at the pump in the yard. He did not wish Lydia to see his bloodied hands and arms. His back ached from bending over the slab and he felt drained. All he wanted to do was rest, but he soon discovered it was not to be. Howard was waiting with a message for him as soon as he walked into the hallway.
“This was delivered not ten minutes ago, sir. The boy said it was urgent.”
Thomas was reading the note when Lydia emerged from the sewing room.
“What is it?” She frowned.
“It is from Fetcham Manor,” replied Thomas. “It says Lady Thorndike is ill and needs my immediate attention.”
Lydia’s back stiffened. “That woman does not deserve anyone’s attention,” she said sharply. Thomas secretly shared her cynicism, but knew it was his duty to attend her. “Why did she not call upon Dr. Fairweather?”
Thomas shared her suspicions, but he felt it was only fair to grant her request for a visit.
“You know I have to go,” he told her.
She nodded and shaped her mouth into a smile. “I do, and that is one of the reasons I love you,” she said.
Thomas decided to ride to Fetcham Manor. Even in the fog he estimated it would only take him twenty minutes at the most. The cloud was still hanging low and his visibility remained severely limited. All he could see as he rode along the lane toward Brandwick were the limp-leaved trees that stood eerily by the roadside and the blackened verges. He kept a steady pace and arrived at the grand mansion shortly, passing not a soul on his way.
The young doctor’s arrival was obviously eagerly awaited and he was shown straight up to Lady Thorndike’s bedchamber by her maid. He found his patient lying in bed, but her eyes were open. Her hair was loose on her pillow, red locks coiling like tendrils, and her lips were painted the same cherry red as he remembered on their first encounter. It was a relief to him to find that she was not coughing.
“Go now,” she ordered her maid, waving her hand dismissively.
The girl curtsied and closed the door behind her, leaving Thomas standing at the bedside.
“I believe you feel unwell, your ladyship,” he began, retrieving her note from his pocket and laying it on the bedside table. “What seems to ail you?”
She studied him for a moment; her eyes moving languidly up and down his body. “I have a terrible heaviness in my chest,” she replied, laying her palm flat against the slope of her bosoms.
Thomas frowned. “Are you able to sit up?”
“With your help I could.” She held out her hand.
Thomas clasped it, noting it felt warm and dry, not cold and clammy like Mistress Lightfoot’s or Amos Kidd’s. Gently, putting his other arm around her back, he eased her up. The exertion did not make her cough. This was a good sign, he thought. He felt her pulse. It was strong and steady. At the same time he could also feel her gaze on him, like a hungry bird on a worm. It made him feel uncomfortable.
“Have you been out in this fog, your ladyship?” he inquired, opening his bag and bringing out his listening tube.
She let out a short, sharp laugh. “I have not, Dr. Silkstone. No one in their right mind ventures out in this weather,” she snorted. She was wearing a thin chemise, laced at the neck, and as soon as she saw Thomas approach with his listening tube she began untying the ribbon.
“That will not be necessary, your ladyship,” said Thomas firmly, suddenly realizing the situation was becoming awkward. He had dealt with such harridans before, but they were usually much older and, he ventured, uglier. She had already loosened the ribbons and pulled down the shoulders of her nightgown, exposing
the top half of her breasts, by the time he was ready to examine her. There was no attempt whatsoever on her part to hide her desire.
“Come, Dr. Silkstone. I need a thorough examination,” she pouted.
Thomas refused to allow himself to be flustered. Leaning forward, he put the cone of his device to her chest to listen to her breathing. It was then that he felt her take his hand and cup it around her right breast. The listening tube clattered to the floor. Shocked, Thomas looked at her for a split second. It was then that she lunged at him, hooking her arm around his neck and finding his mouth. He grasped her hand as her lips planted themselves on his and prized it from his neck, but she resisted and brought her other arm up and clamped it around his head. At that moment the door was flung open and Sir Henry, accompanied by the Reverend Lightfoot, appeared on the threshold. They had evidently heard the horn clatter to the floor.
“Good God, Silkstone! What do you think you are doing?” boomed the horrified lord, advancing from the doorway.
At the sound of her husband’s voice, Lady Thorndike released her grip. “No, leave me. No!” she cried, like some violated heroine in a novel.
Thomas straightened himself and was left stunned at the bedside, his face covered in great smears of lipstick. Sir Henry marched over to the young doctor.
“What is the meaning of this, sir? I’ve a good mind to call the constables,” he panted.
Lady Thorndike intervened. She rearranged her chemise to cover her chest once more. “No, Henry, that will not be necessary. Just get him out of my sight,” she ordered.
Thomas, still reeling from the shock of the incident, reached for his bag. He walked toward the door, watched by the stony-faced vicar and Sir Henry. But before he reached the threshold, he paused to face his accusers.
“I can assure you, sir, the only ailment that plagues your wife is an excessive sexual appetite,” he told Sir Henry. And with an indignant tug of his waistcoat he took his leave.
