No Cure for the Dead

by Christine Trent

  If I was not careful in this very moment, I might find a swell of support for sending me back to Embley Park to be replaced by someone more “suitable” for the position. After all, I had just replaced another lady superintendent myself.

  “Mr. Alban, I assure you that everything is well in hand.” I prayed God would not strike me dead where I stood for that colossal falsehood. I still barely knew who the dead woman was, much less had anything under control.

  “Ah,” he said, stroking his clean-shaven chin as though contemplating my assurances. “Then perhaps you can explain to me how it occurred,” he invited crisply, offering me no quarter whatsoever and appearing to desire nothing more than to watch me squirm. I couldn’t give him that satisfaction, not when I was trying so hard to build my authority at the Establishment.

  “At the moment, I obviously cannot, although I have started interviewing the staff here to figure out what anyone may have seen or heard prior to Nurse Bellamy’s death.” I squared my shoulders and stood at full height to bolster my next statement. “I am sure I can discover what happened, given a little time.”

  Alban shook his head in disbelief. “I am expected to believe that a wisp of a woman will ferret out who may have murdered a nurse?”

  I stilled. “I did not say that she was murdered, sir. And you yourself just said that she committed suicide. Who or what has led you to believe otherwise?”

  Alban’s self-assurance evaporated in that moment. “I, er, well, I’m sure that someone here told me. So many people are prattling about the situation that I cannot remember who specifically suggested she was murdered. It is quite beyond the point, of course. What is of utmost concern is your ability to manage this facility properly.”

  “Again, I assure you, Mr. Alban, that—” I began, but to no avail.

  “I’m going to see Lady Canning straightaway, and I can assure you, Miss Nightingale, that we shall see then what your future is to be.” Having regained his cold, elegant composure, Alban stalked out of the room haughtily without waiting for a response from me.

  I felt a moment of relief, not only for his departure, but also because I was sure Lady Canning would defend me for the time being. However, if I did not ascertain quickly who had killed Nurse Bellamy, I knew I would find my employment abruptly terminated. I heard the front door of the Establishment slam in the distance as Roderick Alban made his final statement on the matter known to everyone in the building.

  Everyone, that is, whom I needed to face with placid competence and confidence. I took a deep breath and determined that I would let no one—not even Roderick Alban—interfere with my resolution of Nurse Bellamy’s murder. In doing so, I would retain my position and continue unimpeded to improve conditions at the Establishment.

  What clue could her room provide me?

  I surveyed it once more. Most of the staff rooms on this floor were shared, but this one was particularly small, so Nurse Bellamy had it to herself. Most of the staff stayed on the premises, with the exception of our cook and Miss Jarrett, the librarian.

  Like all the rooms, this one was outfitted with an iron bedstead with white coverings, a small wood table with chair, and a locking wardrobe for clothing and other personal belongings. Her bed was made and the room was generally tidy, other than a sheaf of papers scattered on her table. I turned the key to her wardrobe and searched through it, but there was naught but clothing hanging on the hooks inside it. In the top drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe were old, worn underlinens, a few hair combs, a watch with a cracked face, and a broken fastening pin. I did not see a locket.

  In the drawer below this one were a couple of hairpins, a touring guide from the Museum of Manufacturers in Somerset House—which had just opened three years before to exhibit art and science collections—a box of lavender-scented pearl powder, and a jar of Crème Céleste.

  This was curious. How could Nurse Bellamy afford such an expensive cosmetic as Crème Céleste, or “Heavenly Cream,” as it was known? It was made of white wax—a substance from the sperm whale—sweet almond oil, and rosewater; my sister had a great affection for it, claiming that it hid blemishes and made her complexion light and smooth. I opened the jar and sniffed at it. It was fresh and had hardly been used. I closed it and returned it to the drawer. Regardless of how Caroline Bellamy had come to be in possession of a container of emollient, it wasn’t likely to have anything to do with her murder.

  Shutting the wardrobe, I turned my attention to the table and its untidy stack of papers. I sat down on the pale-green, painted cane chair, imagining myself to be the young woman I had so recently seen dangling from the ceiling. What had she known or done to get herself killed?

  Among the papers were several bills for dressmakers, which had recently been marked paid. That was odd. Nothing in her wardrobe matched the quality of the dresses described in the bills, what with their dropped shoulders, ruffled sleeves, and matching, ornamented bonnets. Where was this clothing and how had she gotten it? Perhaps she had obtained it for someone else, maybe another family member. But it was still inexplicable how she could have afforded such garments.

  I continued my search through Nurse Bellamy’s papers and came across a haphazardly folded letter, dated just a week before. I scanned the contents and knew with certainty that whoever had killed her had done so in a cold rage.

  CHAPTER 5

  I read the letter again, this time more slowly to absorb the contents, written in a ragged hand.

  I know What you have dun. Do not Think you are not GILTY, or that you will avoid PUNNISHMNT. The Book says the Wages of sin is DETH. You have Sinned but justis is at hand.

  —From the One who knows

  Was I holding a letter written by a killer? The thought chilled me. I didn’t mind vomit, blood, and sputum, but ultimately I came from a refined family of good breeding. Murder was as foreign to me as a Chinaman.

  Perhaps it would be best if this piece of paper was not left out. I folded it and placed it in my dress pocket, to lock away in my own room. On second thought, I decided I would remove the letter from the premises and store it in my lodgings a few blocks away.

  It occurred to me then that if the police and the coroner wouldn’t be helpful, I would seek advice elsewhere. And who best to confide in than my old friend, Elizabeth Herbert?

  * * *

  Before I could arrange a meeting with my friend, though, there was the matter of burying Nurse Bellamy, which the Morgans helped accomplish with a minimum of fuss the next morning. Most of the staff accompanied the simple funeral cortege on the three-mile walk to Kensal Green Cemetery, where the nurse was laid to rest in a discreet, out-of-the-way area of the Anglican section. Graham Morgan must have fixed things with the minister and the cemetery director for Bellamy not to be buried as an outcast.

  With that done, we all trudged back to Upper Harley Street to resume our daily lives, such as they had been before being shattered by Nurse Bellamy’s death. Of course, the nurses and other staff still chattered incessantly about it, and who could blame them? I almost wanted to know what their thoughts were, but couldn’t allow myself to be seen as flailing about in the matter. Once back inside the building, I offered a brusque little speech about doing one’s duty and avoiding the temptation of being a busybody. I’m sure no one paid any attention to my words as they returned to their assigned spaces.

  It flitted briefly through my mind that I had not agreed to pay for Nurse Bellamy’s funeral, but someone must have done so. I would have to ask Morgan about it next time I saw him.

  I then visited all the patients currently convalescing at the Establishment. The facility currently had just a handful of patients but could accommodate up to ten. We would eventually be able to house twenty, when the rear building was finished. Most of the inmates who had been brought over from the old location were no trouble, but there were a couple who were overrun with problems. Such a one was Alice Drayton, whose room I now entered, who would have tried the patience of Job, Abraham, and all
the Israelites who wandered in the desert for forty years. None of them had had to cope with poor old Miss Drayton, who was a medical muddle. She had been a governess for many years, never marrying because of her great devotion to the family she served. I believe she had reared almost three generations of children for them. But her declining health meant she could no longer chase after her wards, so the family had turned her out with the tiniest of pensions. She lived with her sister and her sister’s family somewhere but had come to the Establishment with a beastly case of thrush.

  The white ulcers all over her tongue and inside her mouth should have made it difficult for her to speak, but nothing stopped Miss Drayton. Her chattering wandered as much as her mind. She was seated in a chair next to her bed and perked up considerably upon seeing me. “Miss Nightingale!” she exclaimed. “Finally someone is here. I’ve been waiting for hours. Even a dying person would have been granted a glass of water or some sort of attention by now.”

  Miss Drayton’s sense of time was none too keen, so there was no point in arguing with her that the nurses visited each patient regularly to tend to their needs and that a carafe of water was kept full at each patient’s table.

  “How may I assist you?” I asked, surveying her room to ensure that the window was open and that her bed linens were fresh.

  “I wish to return to my bed.” She pointed at the bed, only three feet away, with the end of her walking stick.

  “Of course, madam,” I said, moving to assist her.

  I struggled with lifting her into an upright position, even though we had her walking stick and the back of the chair as tools to help us. Although Miss Drayton must undoubtedly have had plenty of exercise when she had been an active governess, the years since her retirement had clearly been spent in solitary eating, for she was quite rotund and unsteady on her feet. By the time I had her situated in bed, I was exhausted and sweating, as the woman outweighed me by at least eight or nine stone. She, too, was perspiring, her thinning gray-tinged hair damp at her neckline and her considerable bosom rising and falling heavily several times as she caught her breath from the exertion.

  “Now then,” she said brightly, her thick lips breaking into a wide smile as her personality changed mercurially, as it always did. “Let’s have a chat, shall we?” She still held her walking stick, and she now used it to tap the seat of the chair she had just vacated.

  I sat in resignation. It was not in dislike of the poor woman, who certainly was not in control of her current condition, but because my mind was elsewhere and Alice Drayton required considerable care. I attempted to focus as she launched into a speech that babbled like water flowing downhill. “I’ve noticed that the maids are using a new laundry soap on the bed linens. Don’t like it. Too much lye. That little imp John Wesley taught me to play backgammon yesterday. I do think he cheats, but I don’t know how he does it. I must say I am glad that that Nurse Bellamy is gone. Did you know she was trying to poison me? I received a letter from my sister this morning. She plans to visit me on—”

  I interrupted her rambling monologue. “Pardon me, Miss Drayton, what did you just say?” She had just completely shaken me out of complacence.

  She began to dutifully repeat, “I received a letter from my sister this—”

  “No, Miss Drayton, what you said before that. About Nurse Bellamy.” I found myself gripping the hard wood seat of the chair.

  The elderly woman paused and frowned, trying to reach back that far in her memory. “Oh, yes. That nurse was trying to murder me. With arsenic.”

  How had this gone unremarked upon till now? Had Miss Drayton told another nurse, who dismissed it as one of the patient’s frequent rambles? Or was Miss Drayton simply twisting around what she may have heard about Nurse Bellamy to thrust herself into the story? It was impossible to know.

  “Miss Drayton,” I said slowly. “Can you tell me how you knew Nurse Bellamy was trying to murder you?”

  She was only too happy to comply with the request. “Naturally I can. Because I witnessed her doing it. She sprinkled it into my morning tea before serving me.”

  CHAPTER 6

  I was speechless. My mind was racing furiously, though. How could I verify what this patient was telling me? Where had the arsenic come from? The better question was how Miss Drayton had even realized it was arsenic … and why she would agree to drink it. This was a potentially serious matter, but first there was the matter of Nurse Bellamy and—

  Miss Drayton interrupted my train of thought. “I’m glad you finally arrived, Miss Nightingale,” she declared, frowning. “I’ve been waiting for hours. Even a dying person would have been granted a glass of water or some sort of attention by now. I want to sit in my chair.”

  Poor Miss Drayton and her deteriorating mind. I was saved from moving her again by the arrival of Dr. Killigrew, the Establishment’s doctor. He entered with a hearty, “How are we today, dear lady?” directed at the patient as he placed his brown leather medicine bag, beaten and scratched from years of use, on her table.

  He was Lady Canning’s personal physician, and she had somehow convinced him to serve here one day each week as charity work, setting aside his customary guinea-per-visit fee. I think he was reluctant to do so, not because of the money, but because he worried that it wasn’t good for his reputation as a gentleman practitioner. After all, he had trained at Oxford and had been made a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, a prestigious appointment.

  However, he also did not want to say no to one of his patronesses, and so he had agreed to come to the Establishment every Tuesday afternoon. This was his second Tuesday since my own arrival here, and he had concluded his prior visit by meeting with me in my study to discuss the patients’ cases without condescension or pretension. I had to admit that he seemed to be a reasonably competent man in most cases.

  Alice Drayton proceeded to enumerate her difficulties. “Why, I was just telling Miss Nightingale that I’ve noticed the maids are using a new laundry soap on the bed linens. I don’t like it. I like John Wesley, though. Except he taught me to play backgammon yesterday and I think he cheated, but I don’t know how. I have also noticed that I’m not walking as well as I was just yesterday. Of course, they are practically starving me here. I cannot even obtain a glass of water. Even a dying person…” She continued into her litany of complaints while Dr. Killigrew listened patiently.

  The doctor had demonstrated an easy manner with the patients to which they all responded well, sometimes even tittering like young girls. The patients’ swooning reaction was surprising, given that Dr. Killigrew was shorter than I, was almost completely bald with mere tufts of dark hair above his ears, and suffered from a shortsightedness that he refused to recognize, leaving him with a perpetual squint. However, these shortcomings were overcome by a ready wit. Beneath Killigrew’s hairless pate was a mind that was a veritable arsenal of amusing jokes and stories.

  As Miss Drayton’s monologue ran its course and she began wandering into the past, Killigrew cut her off skillfully. “That reminds me. I have a puzzle I’ve been meaning to share with you. What is the difference between a watchmaker and a jailer?”

  Alice was stumped by the question. “A watchmaker and a jailer? Hmm … one is a criminal and one is not? One has rich customers and the other deals with thieves? I don’t know.”

  Killigrew held up a finger. “I shall tell you. The difference between a watchmaker and a jailer is that one sells watches, whereas the other watches cells.” He burst into laughter, and she followed suit, her own laughter more like a confused cackle.

  Admittedly, some of his jokes bordered on the ridiculous.

  Now, though, he turned serious. “I should like to try another treatment for your thrush, since the honey cure was not effective.”

  Alice nodded in childlike trust. “Yes, doctor. I was just telling Miss Nightingale that I’ve been getting poisoned here by one of the nurses.”

  I held my breath, waiting for Killigrew’s reaction, but he ju
st laughed gently. “I wouldn’t exactly refer to your honey elixir as poison, given how greedily you drank it, Miss Drayton. But I’ve been reading about a new cure that might work. I will need you to, er, evacuate your bladder. Can you do this?”

  Alice bobbed her head up and down, and reached out an arm to me. I helped her get up from the bed and escorted her to the toilet located behind a curtained screen in the corner of the room. While she relieved herself into the chamber pot, I waited on the other side of the screen with the doctor.

  “Miss Nightingale,” Killigrew said over the multitude of grunts, wheezes, and splattering sounds Alice Drayton was making behind the screen. “I should like a bit of sugar water in a cup, to help with the taste.”

  “Sir?” I said, blinking at the implication of his request.

  “One of my textbooks suggests the drinking of one’s own urine to cure ulcers in the mouth and throat. I think some flavoring will help it be more palatable for her. I shall have her drink it each afternoon for the next three days to see what happens.”

  Now, I am of the belief that nurses should take their cues from doctors, and that it is not our privilege to speak against them, no matter how much we might disagree with them. And indeed this was an instance in which I thoroughly disagreed with Dr. Killigrew. Although it is impossible to know exactly how diseases are spread, there are several theories that exist. In my own studies, I have become a firm believer in the miasma theory, which seems to be the only logical explanation, as it postulates that internal diseases are caused by noxious odors. Since I have already seen that making patient rooms as spotlessly clean as possible, and opening windows to let in as much fresh air as can be had, has restorative effects on patients, what other answer could possibly make sense?