No Cure for the Dead

by Christine Trent

  I edged around the body and set my lantern down on the table, the place where, by now, I should have had my nose happily buried in lists and graphs about malaria. Well, a superintendent should expect her days to go awry once in a while, I thought.

  One of my greatest interests lay in gathering figures and statistics and then using that information to establish patterns. What could I ascertain from what lay before me?

  I returned to the body. The woman’s feet were suspended at the height of my waist. She wore shabby, side-laced boots, the kind normally worn outdoors. Actually, she wore only one boot. That was curious. Had she been so distraught that she forgot to lace on both boots before climbing onto the table and—

  And why did she choose to do this in my favorite alcove?

  I shook my head in disgust at my own selfish, irrelevant thought and resumed my inspection. I bent down and looked at the bottom of the woman’s boot, which was worn. The insole of her stockinged foot was soiled.

  So she had walked in here with one boot missing? That didn’t seem right.

  I dragged the chair so that it was in front of the body and climbed onto the seat. I reached out both arms and put my hands on the woman’s waist to stop her drifting. Now my face was much closer to the dead woman’s. I considered who she might be. A nurse? A patient? A visitor?

  How was it going to look when I had to tell a constable that the superintendent had no idea who was hanging inside the library?

  However, the woman’s clothing offered clues. Her skirts were coarse—although not so lowly as homespun—and I noticed patched seams and worn places in the fabric. The stitching, though, was expertly done in an interesting zigzag pattern one would not normally see in utilitarian sewing. It was as though it had been performed not by the wearer but by a trade seamstress. I wouldn’t have said, though, that the needlework had the uniformity of one of Mr. Howe’s new machines.

  Her blouse had not been fashionable for a few years, but it had been well maintained. My gaze traveled down the length of one sleeve, startled by what I saw there.

  Seeping beneath the cuff was blood. I unbuttoned the cuff and rolled it up. The woman’s wrist was cut. By instinct I held up her other arm, no doubt looking as though I were attempting to dance with the corpse.

  Blood had seeped through the bottom of that sleeve, too, and a quick unfastening proved that the other wrist had also been slit.

  I frowned as I realized that the cutting had been performed after death. Although sloppily done across the artery instead of along the artery line to ensure a more forceful blood flow, the cuts had resulted in a dripping, oozing discharge that was dried and crusted on the woman’s hands but hadn’t pooled in any significant way on the wood floor below. If her wrists had been cut while she was alive, wouldn’t there be blood everywhere?

  This, of course, brought up the most obvious question. Had someone murdered this poor girl and tried to make it look like a suicide? But why employ two different methods of death? It only served to suggest that someone wanted to emphasize the suicidal nature of it. And I was supposed to believe that a young woman would cut her wrists and then jump off a table? Or put a rope around her neck and then attack her wrists with a knife while she dangled?

  It made me think that whoever had done this had very little medical training. Of course, that could be anyone in the building, other than Dr. Killigrew.

  I shuddered to think that such base perversity might be walking the halls of the Establishment right now in the guise of a friendly face or an obedient pair of hands.

  I was still consumed with cheerless contemplation, the woman’s lifeless hands in my own, when I heard the banging of truncheons at the outer library door. The loud thuds were accompanied by imperious, masculine shouts of, “Metropolitan Police! Open this door immediately!”

  The chattering behind the police indicated that, indeed, every nurse and ambulatory patient was crowded behind the officers, having listened to John Wesley’s passing gossip and wanting to know what required both the police and a locked door.

  I stepped down from the chair and returned it to its place, then calmly smoothed my skirts and schooled my features into neutrality before unlocking the library door. As the police burst in, I turned the switch on the wall that connected to the gas pipes, and in a few moments, hissing chandelier light filled the room.

  The officers were young and very handsome. The taller one—who introduced himself as Sergeant Warren Goodrick—had an expression that suggested he was far more aware of his magnetism than the shorter man, Constable Douglas Lyon, whose dark, curled hair and cleft chin reminded me of—it was of no matter anymore.

  “I am Miss Nightingale, the superintendent here,” I said firmly. “I called for you.”

  Without explaining why, I shut the door on the gawkers in the hallway and led the officers to where the poor woman hung. Their reaction was quite the opposite of my own, showing no shock or revulsion as they peered up speculatively at the body.

  “Suicide, eh?” Sergeant Goodrick said blandly. “Always a shame when a woman does it. Probably rejected by a suitor or some such thing.”

  “Don’t be daft,” I snapped without thinking as two pairs of startled eyes riveted their gazes upon me. “This girl no more committed suicide than I turned into an ostrich this morning.”

  They both shifted uncomfortably, and I immediately regretted my outburst. It made no sense to make an enemy of the police. I cleared my throat and spoke in a more conciliatory way. “If you’ll check her wrists, you’ll see that they were opened after death.”

  Goodrick examined the woman’s arm. “I suppose. If she’d been bleeding herself regularly, she might not have good circulation.”

  That made absolutely no sense. “You’re saying she drained herself of blood and then managed to hang herself?” I asked, feeling as incredulous as Mrs. Gilbert had been earlier that morning.

  “No, Miss Nightingale,” Goodrick replied patiently, as if I were a child. “A suicidal girl like this was probably getting bleeding treatments to cure her melancholy. She probably had very little blood circulating in her system when she died. Anyway, it’s best to get her down. Lyon?”

  Before I could argue against his foolish theory, he nodded at the other man, who looked so much like Richard that my heart began its familiar ache. The feeling was much like an old wound that has long healed, yet will sometimes throb with a faded, dull pain that doesn’t really hurt but simply serves as a reminder of the ancient injury.

  Lyon dragged the chair back while Goodrick righted the table, and together the two men worked to get the hanged girl down, laying her out gracelessly on the floor.

  “Mr. Swan, the coroner, should be summoned. See that she stays undisturbed until he arrives, do you hear?” Goodrick ordered.

  I nodded in deference to the constable’s demand. My specialty was caring for living bodies, not dead ones. However, to leave the girl here in the library, in this reading alcove, was a bit too, too—“I think it would be more dignified if she was removed to an empty inmate room.”

  Truth be told, I also didn’t particularly care to have a dead body confined in my reading alcove.

  Goodrick shrugged. “Very well.” He and Lyon lifted her, Lyon holding her half-shod feet at the ankles and Goodrick hoisting her under her arms. The noose was still around her neck, the length of rope trailing along the ground, and it was all vaguely disturbing to witness.

  Not nearly as disturbing as the scene that awaited us outside the library, though.

  CHAPTER 2

  Patients—recognizable by their middle-class garb, their walking sticks, and rolling chairs—as well as the more roughly clad members of the staff, were congregating anxiously outside the door as I pulled it open for the constables. The officers brought the body out and the group separated like broken carriage axles, murmuring like witnesses to an overturned coach in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.

  I had to maintain control of the situation. The first recognizable fa
ce was Miss Jarrett’s. I had to assume she had most reluctantly put down her fork when word spread that there was a dead body in the library she oversaw.

  “Miss Nightingale!” she gasped in horror. “What has happened?”

  I quickly pulled the librarian aside as the crowd made to follow the constables.

  “Who is that young woman?” I asked, nodding to the dead girl, who was being jostled around a corner by Goodrick and Lyon.

  Miss Jarrett frowned. “Why, that’s Nurse Caroline Bellamy. Don’t you know her?”

  Bellamy. Yes, I recalled something about Bellamy coming to the Establishment from … was it Mrs. Fry’s training school? Or a private posting? I would have to check my notes. However, I wasn’t about to admit to Miss Jarrett that I had had no idea who the poor girl was.

  “Right you are. I had forgotten her name.” I hurried away from the librarian to resume leading Nurse Bellamy to her temporary resting place, for the moment ignoring all the pressing questions in my mind. I also had to ignore all the chattering women behind us who were plaguing me with questions about the unfortunate victim.

  We passed the room vacated by Mrs. Moore, who had recently departed with an unresolved bout of melancholia, which I understood to be a regular occurrence for the lady. I felt a tug on my skirt. I paused at the doorway next to Mrs. Moore’s room, gestured toward the bed for the constables, then turned to see who was at my side. It was John Wesley again. The boy was an enigma to me. He had apparently appeared at the Cavendish Square location one day, seeking work, and had followed on to Harley Street. He did not speak of home or family, and he came and went as he pleased. No one knew where he slept or what he did when he wasn’t at the Establishment. Actually, no one even knew what his surname was. He was just John Wesley.

  “I fetched the constables, just like you said, Miss Nightingale,” he said, his brown eyes large as he studiously avoided looking into the room. Most children John Wesley’s age had experienced the death of at least one sibling or parent. I had noticed that young ones coped best with tragic events by stoically pretending they hadn’t occurred.

  “It seems you fetched most of the hospital while you were at it,” I replied sternly, but I reached into my pocket for a coin, placing it in his outstretched hand. “However, I need you to do something else.”

  John Wesley kissed the coin and bent down to tuck it into his shoe. The crown of his flaxen-haired head was littered with coal smuts. “Yes, maum,” he said, his expression registering his anticipation of another threepence.

  John Wesley’s actions instantly reminded me of Nurse Bellamy’s missing boot, but there would be time enough to dwell on it when I was through with what I was sure would be a very long afternoon and evening.

  “I want you to go to the coroner. His name is Mr. Swan. Do you know where he is?”

  John Wesley shook his head no. Quite frankly, I didn’t know where he was, either. I’d never had need of him, since I had never encountered a death that wasn’t due to illness, disease, or an obvious accident. I sighed. “Do you think you can manage to figure it out for yourself?”

  “Yes, maum,” he replied, and I watched as he cocked his ten-year-old head to one side, as if already calculating which street waif to ask.

  “After you see Mr. Swan, I want you to go to the undertaker. Ask Mr. Morgan to come in the morning.”

  John Wesley immediately scampered off as I informed the constables that the coroner would be coming presently.

  Satisfied that their work was done, Goodrick and Lyon took their leave, and I shut the door to Mrs. Moore’s room so that there would be no further gawping at poor Nurse Bellamy’s corpse.

  I may have literally shut the door on the horror of Nurse Bellamy’s death, but I still had at least a dozen faces staring at me in expectation, waiting for their superior to explain what had happened and to reassure them that it was all just some strange dream they were having.

  I smiled at the assembled group, knowing that my smile was tremulous but hoping they wouldn’t notice. I clapped my hands twice, speaking as loudly and firmly as my nerves would allow.

  “As you have already seen, there has been an unfortunate accident with Nurse Bellamy. We are all grieved, to be sure. But we won’t dishonor her by dwelling on it, or by grieving too harshly. We especially won’t be gossiping about her death, will we?”

  At that moment, I realized that the worst was yet to come. After I was finished dealing with the coroner and the undertaker, I would have to face the Establishment’s committee, who would be none too happy to learn that their new superintendent had permitted a woman to be murdered right under her nose. Yet another unpleasant thought to be shoved into the recesses of my mind until I was forced to deal with it.

  I stopped.

  Of course, if I chose to agree with Sergeant Goodrick’s assessment that it was merely a suicide, it might go more favorably for me with the committee.

  I actually considered this for several moments. I suppose it is a basic human instinct to shield and protect oneself.

  However, a desire for justice is another human instinct, one that I hoped would always devour the selfish desire to preserve the self.

  I sighed inwardly. No, I could not walk the easy path. I would have to do what I could for this poor woman.

  I returned my attention to the scene before me. I could see that there wasn’t a single woman standing before me who wouldn’t be dishonoring the victim with gossip the moment she left my presence.

  “Nurses, I’m sure you have bedridden patients who need attending. Those of you who are convalescing should continue to do so and not be worried about one poor girl’s unfortunate demise.”

  One of the more slovenly nurses, Miss Wilson—or was it Miss Williams?—spoke up, and the fumes from her noxious breath enveloped me from several feet away. “I didn’t do nuffin’, Miss Nightingale. I just been mindin’ me own business.”

  Where had the previous superintendent found this girl? Her speech was as appalling as her presentation. This was another aspect of the nurses that required attention.

  “Of course not,” I replied, holding a finger under my nose in a vain attempt to ward off the woman’s stink. I hoped I sounded sympathetic and not as if I would prefer to smack a sense of hygiene into her.

  The nurse wiped a sleeve across her snuffling nose.

  “You should never—” But I stopped and inwardly sighed. There would be time enough for comportment lessons later. “Nevertheless, some of you may have known Nurse Bellamy and her … state of mind, and I—the coroner—will wish to learn more about her.”

  Miss Wilson or Williams and the others shuffled away reluctantly. I made it down to my study just in time to receive the coroner, which turned out to be yet another unhelpful experience.

  * * *

  He introduced himself as Mr. Jasper Swan, and I invited him to sit down. He said he was a local towpath warden who worked on the Regent’s Canal. He smelled of the Thames, too, a combination of offal and damp that was peculiar to that body of water. It was a scent far more pleasant than Miss Wilson’s exhalations, though. I imagined he had the side business of coroner as a favor his family was owed by some local official. Coroners were appointed and might be judges, shopkeepers, bankers, or any manner of men. On occasion an undertaker or doctor might be appointed, but only rarely.

  It could have been worse, as he seemed a congenial enough fellow, with his balding head, wire-rimmed glasses, and ready smile. However, his nose was bulbous and pitted, and I was distracted by it despite his pleasant demeanor.

  “Your boy told me you had a suicide here?” Mr. Swan asked. “Not the first one I’ve seen, I’ll say. Poor souls without jobs or hope just give up sometimes.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Except that Caroline Bellamy was employed as my nurse here, so there was precious little reason for her to be ‘without hope.’”

  “I see. Perhaps she had been jilted by a lover?” He pinched his nostrils together as he echoed Sergeant Goodrick�
�s opinion. The gesture was probably a lifelong habit of his, but it flustered me.

  “I couldn’t possibly say,” I said, looking off at a framed picture on the wall. It was an old Cornwall seascape with a chipped and bedraggled frame surrounding it, no doubt left behind by the previous owner who had taken only his finest artwork with him. It was another reminder that there was much to clean up inside the Establishment.

  Willing myself back to the present subject, I realized that I should have spoken with my staff before summoning the coroner, but it was difficult to know what to do in such a situation. After all, I had never before encountered a body that hadn’t succumbed naturally to age, disease, or accident.

  “I should take you up to see Nurse Bellamy,” I said, standing. “It is my opinion that she did not commit suicide but that someone intentionally did away with her.”

  Mr. Swan began his nose-pinching again. I turned away and led him up to the next floor to see the body.

  I thought Mr. Swan’s assessment of Nurse Bellamy’s body was exactly what was to be expected of a towpath warden, which is to say that it was a poor one, borne of his ignorance of medical knowledge. I pointed out the woman’s cut wrists and the fact that surely they had been cut after death, but the man was insistent that she must have done herself in as the result of a broken heart. He advised me to simply see her sent off to her family as quickly as possible for burial, and stated that he saw no reason to suspect foul play. “Besides,” he added dismissively, “there aren’t really enough constables out there to look into such a thing. And if there’s no actual reason for her to have been murdered, then there’s no sense in looking for a particular quill in a goose pillow, now is there?”

  So there would be no satisfaction from that quarter.

  * * *

  After going through the Establishment’s records on Nurse Bellamy and learning that the woman had never admitted to having any family, I retired for the evening. My parents had insisted on my having separate lodgings nearby where I could retire more respectably than among the sick, but already I found that most nights I was too tired to trudge the several blocks there. It was just simpler for me to have rooms in the hospital. I had selected a connected bedchamber and study at the opposite end of the upstairs corridor from where the nurses slept.