No Cure for the Dead

by Christine Trent

  I had attempted to rearrange my life after Richard stormed out the door that day. As if I hadn’t been heartbroken enough on my own, my mother compounded my misery by wailing like a banshee over my “stupid, insipid selfishness.” My sister took to coming to my bedchamber at all hours of the night to plead with me. With tears coursing down her face, she would beg me to reconsider Richard’s offer and thus save the Nightingales from penury.

  On two of Parthenope’s nightly visits, I tried to explain my reasoning and to make her see that I wanted to marry Richard even more than she and Mother wanted it. Unfortunately, as much as Richard himself might grant me absolute freedom, society itself would not be so open and easy about it. I also reiterated my firm belief that I had been called for a divine—if yet unidentified—purpose, in an attempt to appeal to her own deep religious sensibilities.

  Parthenope had looked at me blankly, then started weeping again.

  I stopped trying to make her understand and instead locked my door at night so that I could be alone with my own tears.

  At least there had been some relief in Papa’s indulgent shrug. “You know our girl, Fanny,” he reminded my mother. “She will have her own way in all matters. I won’t force her to marry where she does not wish.” Which only sent Mother into more grief-laced tirades.

  I believe he was secretly glad of my decision, because by remaining unmarried, I would be at his side longer. It was disloyal to my family to consider it, but I often thought that my life was frequently Mother and Parthenope pitted against Papa and me. My father and I had few victories in Mother’s march to secure the family’s salvation.

  Naturally, my mother had no sympathy for my own personal misery and seemed oblivious when I stopped eating and lost interest in my books and friends. I suspect she viewed my listlessness as just punishment. After a couple of months, when my already-spare frame had shed enough flesh that even Parthenope was becoming alarmed, I was startled one day to see Richard coming down the drive in his carriage.

  I had been sitting in a chair next to the window, wrapped in a blanket that was long past requiring a washing, when I had to blink several times to understand exactly what I was seeing. Once I realized that it truly was him and not a hallucination borne of food deprivation, I stood, letting the ratty blanket fall to the ground. Against my own better senses, I quickly washed up and changed, and decided that if he offered for me again, I would accept him. Oh, yes, I was certain that I would fling myself from a window for Richard, if only he would ask.

  He didn’t ask. Instead, Richard approached me like a man determined to break a wild filly: gentle, wary, appraising me. With his gentle handling of me, we soon picked up where we had left off, as though the disastrous proposal had never occurred. I gained my figure again as Richard and I resumed our courtship at full speed. Mother was so pleased.

  A year later, Richard gently suggested once more that I might want to reconsider marriage to him, this time offering a specific promise that if I wished to serve as a nurse in people’s homes or train other women in nursing work, he would stand behind me.

  How tempting it was. Thoroughly unable to either refuse or accept him, I temporized and said I would think about it. I still shake my head in wonder at Richard’s patience. Mother and Parthenope also tiptoed around me, alternately hopeful and despairing over what I might do.

  And so it went until our entire relationship had reached an extraordinary span of nine years. On a frigid January night, as we sat companionably next to each other before a crackling fire while snow began to gently drift outside, Richard turned my face to his.

  “My love,” he began seriously. “I hope I have convinced you of my true and honorable intentions toward you and of my hope that you have come to trust me.”

  I froze, feeling myself to be that unbroken horse of years ago, ready to bolt. He sensed it and exhaled loudly in exasperation as he dropped his hand from my face. I suppose he had had a much longer and prettier speech to offer me, but instead he drove straight to his point. “Flo, I can do no more to gain your confidence. You yourself admit that you are not flourishing here, living under your mother’s claw. I can offer you anything you could possibly want in life. Will you not become my wife?”

  This time, my tarrying did not work. Richard slapped his knees in frustration and rose. “Very well,” he said, seeming to accept the inevitable with a heavy sigh.

  Once more, he plucked his hat off the stand and left. This time it wasn’t as a roaring lion but as a gentle lamb resigned to his slaughter. I once more stood at the window and watched him in the exterior torch lights as he waited for his carriage to be brought around. The swirling snow dusted his hat and broad shoulders, but he seemed to pay it no mind as he leapt into his carriage and slammed the door without even a glance back toward the house.

  Even in that awful moment, I hadn’t yet realized that Richard had asked me to marry him for the final time. I foolishly held out some hope that he might change his mind and venture into my world again without asking for my hand. It was a stupid and irrational thought on my part, but when are affairs of the heart ever anything but nonsensical?

  Because I was more irrational than the first time Richard had left me, that foolish hope kept me buoyed for some weeks. Not even my mother’s carping penetrated my shield of confidence that he would return at least one more time.

  What bitter salt it was in my wound when Richard announced an engagement not three months later.

  Even worse, I learned of it when Mother read it aloud from a newspaper article at the dinner table. She slapped the paper down and stared at me belligerently, as though I had arranged for him to do it. Despite the fact that my ears were pounding at the rush of blood through my head, I swallowed and smiled as bravely as I could. “How very nice for him,” I managed.

  With all of Mother’s strangulated screeching and squeaking over the next few weeks, I was surprised she didn’t develop black wings so that she could begin hanging from the ceiling. I was miserable enough myself that I would have happily turned into a moth so she could simply swallow me whole and satisfy her ravenous hunger.

  I do credit Parthenope for recognizing how truly unhappy I was and making attempts to soothe me with little gifts and sweetmeats whenever Mother wasn’t around. Eventually my mother forgave me, as she had little choice. As for me, I learned how to live with a heart that leaked a bit of sorrow each day, like the tears that trickled from my eyes and wet my pillow each night.

  Now, two years later, I still think of Richard nearly every day, wondering about his health and happiness. He is at the top of my list of prayers each morning and night, and I will undoubtedly never get over him.

  I left Nurse Hughes’s room and closed the door behind me, wiping my hands against my skirts as if that would cleanse me of my foray into the past. Determined to focus strictly on the present, which was the only time period I could do anything about, I went to the rooms of Nurses Margery Frye and Clementina Harris.

  CHAPTER 8

  Nurse Frye and Nurse Harris may have been thrown together in close quarters only as part of their work, but they did seem to share much in common in terms of chaos. Upon opening their door, I felt as if I’d just walked into a Bethnal Green slum. My nerves thrummed as I took in the condition of the room, which was like the others except a little larger and with two painted, iron-posted bedsteads. Clothing and personal items were strewn all about, as if a violent storm had torn through the room. The room reeked to high heaven, almost as if there had been a corpse left to rot in it. Was there an old dish of food buried in here?

  How could the inmates expect their conditions to be clean and safe when the nurses themselves lived no better than a pair of muck-rolling old sows? Frye and Harris had just catapulted themselves to the top of my list for hospital improvements, if my temper did not cause me to fire them outright.

  Of course, I couldn’t do that, could I? If I did, I was potentially turning a murderess out into the street, unpunished. In fact, all
of my planned reforms would have to wait until the killer was brought to justice. The thought angered me even more.

  At least I had no cause for concern that I was disturbing the premises with my search. I went to work, searching for anything that would give me insight into who my nurses were. Secreted in the back of the armoire the two women shared were two identical bottles of clear fluid labeled “Booth’s Old Tom.” One was unopened and the other was half finished. I pulled the cork on the opened one and took a whiff. The telltale odor of licorice-laced liquor was overwhelming.

  I recorked it and set both bottles aside on their shared desk. So which of the two nurses was addicted to gin, the scourge of Great Britain? As with many medical practices, gin had been borne of the greatest of intentions and ended up ruining a large swath of London’s populace. The British Army had encouraged the drinking of gin with tonic to ward off malaria in our growing empire, as the quinine in tonic acted as an antimalarial agent. Then the Navy had supported the drinking of gin and bitters, since the bitters alleviated seasickness. The unintended result was the establishment of numerous gin distilleries clustered in Clerkenwell, each spewing out bottles of drunkenness and despair on London’s poor.

  And apparently upon at least one of my nurses.

  I put my sleeved arm over my nose and took a deep breath inside my elbow. The stench in here was awful. What was it? I tossed aside string-laced chemises, lurid penny dreadfuls, and broken hairpins as I searched for the source of the smell. How in heaven’s name did they sleep in here?

  I dropped to my knees to search under their beds. I saw a strange shadow beneath the bed that was next to the window. Rising up once again, I grabbed the round, paint-chipped posts at either end of the foot of the bed and dragged the end of the bed to one side to inspect what was beneath it.

  To my utter disgust, it was a dead rat. How had these two not been aware of a rotting rodent in their room? Clearly little Jasmine had not been doing her job very well either. Or maybe this was Jasmine’s gift to the nurses. I covered my mouth and nose with my hand and bent over to take a closer look at the odious creature. He wasn’t desiccated, so he hadn’t been here too long, but certainly long enough to become offensive. Had he—

  At that moment, one of the very nurses in question entered, grinning foolishly as she stared down at a piece of paper in her hand. That grin disappeared quickly when she saw me standing in the center of the room, my hands clasped primly in front of me. Her gaze darted over to where the one bed had been yanked away from the wall, and she looked back at me in silent confusion. I had not before paid much attention to Margery Frye’s appearance, but now I saw the pouchy abdomen and the tiny broken blood vessels in her cheeks. I knew she was around my age, but her frizzed hair and stout frame made her look two decades older.

  Frye’s appearance was emblematic of all that was wrong with nursing. No wonder the public considered nursing the profession of thieves and drunkards. That was mostly what they were. I was determined to change that.

  The nurse quickly folded her paper and shoved it deep into her dress pocket. “Something wrong, Miss?” she asked.

  I hardly knew where to begin with the many things that were wrong. “Yes. This room is appalling. You will take care of it immediately.”

  Frye’s mouth gaped, and I got a glimpse of a few rotting molars. “But, Miss Nightingale, this isn’t my mess. I’ve been trying to fix Clem’s grubby self. It don’t matter what I try, the room ends up like this.”

  I crooked my finger at her and led her to where the dead rat was. Pointing down, I said, “You hadn’t noticed this or tried to fix it?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I stayed over at a friend’s house the past couple of nights. Look at it all.” She swept a hand out. “I have to get out to keep from going dotty, don’t I? It must have happened while I was gone.”

  I grabbed the half-used liquor bottle and held it up, its clear contents splashing violently beneath the cork. “Does this also help you from going dotty?” I demanded.

  That silenced her momentarily, but she quickly regained her footing. “That’s awful, ma’am. I knew Clem had her secrets, but I didn’t know she had a taste for spirits. A shame.” Frye shook her head dolefully.

  Brash and insipid, just like Nurse Wilmot. I wanted terribly to dismiss her from her post in that moment, as I was constitutionally unable to trust a woman I suspected of being too fond of drink. Not only for the good of the Establishment, but to serve as an example to the other nurses. I simply couldn’t risk it, though, while I was seeking out a murderer in our midst.

  I might not be able to fire her yet, but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t know the rod of discipline. “Watch your tongue, my girl. I won’t tolerate a drunkard. And you will refer to her as Nurse Harris.”

  But almost as if she had insight into my very thoughts, Nurse Frye’s lips curved into a secretive smile as she removed the gin bottle from my hands and set it on the desk. “I’ll tell Clem you said so, Miss.”

  “You’ll keep that lesson for yourself, Nurse, lest you find yourself working in the laundry.” Perhaps I couldn’t let her go outright, but I could make her life uneasy. A nurse’s position in the Establishment was a comfortable one, much better than being locked away in the basement with one’s arms soaked in dirty water up to the elbows all day.

  She blinked several times and made a marginal step toward contrition. “You haven’t been here long, Miss Nightingale, so I’ve been waiting for you to get all settled in before telling you that Clem—Nurse Harris—is a problem around here.”

  I paused, instantly alert. “What do you mean she’s a problem?”

  Frye pushed away items on the second unmade bed and sat down. It was more egregious behavior in my presence, but I wanted to hear what she had to say. So rather than chastising her for sitting down without being invited to do so in the presence of her superior, I followed her lead and sat across from her on the bed next to the dead rat. I was actually becoming used to the stink, which was not unlike a wound I had once treated on a villager who had had his leg gashed by a wild fox. The man had waited weeks before seeking help, and I had been the one asked to tend to his festering flesh. I suppose rotting meat smells like rotting meat, whether it belongs to human or beast.

  “Nurse Harris isn’t who she says she is, Miss,” Nurse Frye began mysteriously, as if she were a medium about to summon a spirit into the room.

  “And who is Nurse Harris?” My patience was going to wear thin quickly if Nurse Frye was planning to shroud herself in dramatics.

  The woman looked around as if to check whether anyone might be listening. More mystery for my benefit. However, what dropped out of her mouth next was truly shocking.

  “She’s here working as a nurse to hide her past,” Frye said softly. “I think she killed her husband.”

  My mind warred with itself. It was difficult to believe this to be true, but it would not be the first unbelievable truth I had encountered over the past couple of days.

  “Why do you think she killed her husband?” I asked.

  “She has a mourning locket that she wears every day. She refuses to say who it’s for, but she also wears a mourning brooch. There’s hair done up to look like a basket’s weave in it. That’s for a man she lost. If she won’t say who it is, it’s probably because she feels guilt over it.” Frye nodded knowingly.

  Nurse Frye was proving to be very irritating. “How in heaven’s name does a mourning locket prove that Nurse Harris murdered her husband? Or that she even had a husband?” I snapped. “We have experienced a tragic death in the hospital, and you are rattling on about an idea that is an invention of your mind?”

  Frye was unperturbed. “Well, it’s not like I killed Nurse Bellamy, is it? I hardly knew her. She must have been caught doing something. That’s how most people meet bad ends, isn’t it?”

  I was not going to allow Frye to change the subject. “You haven’t answered my question. Why are you convinced that Nurse Harris killed her hus
band?”

  Frye knew I was a captive audience, though, and intended to torture me to the answer. “Because I’m a witness to things, aren’t I?”

  “What things?” I said in exasperation. “Speak plainly and quickly, Nurse Frye, or so help me, I’ll—”

  Frye held up a ragged-nailed hand. “You needn’t make a fuss with me, Miss Nightingale. I’ll tell you.”

  I felt my eyes narrowing at her insolence. She and Nurse Wilmot had a great deal to learn if they were going to remain here at the Establishment.

  How had the previous superintendent ever considered these two for employment at an institution started by the esteemed Lady Canning? A blot on the Establishment was a blot on Lady Canning’s reputation.

  “Let me show you,” Frye said, rising and digging around below the mattress beneath her. She withdrew a bone-handled carving knife with what appeared to be a rusted blade and held it up in the air. “Clem—Nurse Harris—doesn’t know that I know this is here. Most likely her weapon, right?”

  She lightly tapped the blade tip with her other hand. “This is blood, ma’am.”

  I had no choice but to agree with her assessment. But how did it follow that Harris had stabbed her husband with it, just because she had possession of it and she wore a mourning locket? I held out my hand, and Frye placed the knife handle in my palm. I curled my fingers around it in disbelief that I was potentially holding the weapon used in a murder associated with the Establishment. It simply could not be true.

  That Nurse Frye was lying to me at some level, I had no doubt. But was it possible that she was telling the truth when she accused Nurse Harris of misdeeds?

  As I took the gin bottles with me to dump into the sewer pipes, I realized that investigating the death of Nurse Bellamy permitted more probing questions of the staff than would normally be socially acceptable, with the side effect of a better opportunity for me to instill rigor and cleanliness in this place.