No Cure for the Dead

by Christine Trent

  Mary stayed silent through my epic tale, the only signs of her distress the occasional hand-wringing, swallowing, and lips pursed into an O. She really was like a nervous little goose.

  I actually found myself amused by it.

  “The information I am missing is what happened with Nurse Frye when you retrieved all of her pharmaceuticals,” I said.

  “Well, I must say she was quite rude and stinks of gin,” Mary declared huffily.

  I smiled. “She is not as gently born as you. Few women who take up nursing are.”

  “Well,” Mary repeated, “she killed me many times over with the daggers stabbing out from her eyes. I had to say, ‘Is that all?’ at least four times in order for her to show me all of her hidey-holes. At least I think we got to them all. Her hiding places were behind furniture, under floorboards, and in cupboards. A dreadful woman, Miss Florence.” She made the pronouncement primly, and I smiled again.

  “Tell me what you wrote up while I interviewed Nurse Frye,” I said. I wanted to see if Mary’s note-taking was thorough.

  “Of course.” Mary brought the notebook to the top of the paper pile in her lap. I should have had Jarrett give me the map to add to the growing list of documents pertaining to the investigation. I made a mental note to ask her for it.

  “I don’t understand,” Mary said, frowning in puzzlement as she flipped back and forth between two pages. “Half of it is gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean?” I said in disbelief as I held out my hand for the journal, and she passed it over willingly. I examined the internal sew seam. Someone had carefully torn out one of the pages upon which Mary had taken notes about my interview with Frye. Just a tiny shred of paper remained inside the binding to show that it had been torn out.

  Someone had stolen the notebook to rip out this specific page. Was it Nurse Frye herself? Or could it have been Nurse Harris—which I could hardly countenance? Who else had an interest in that conversation?

  It seemed I never had time to address one event before another crisis arose to take its place.

  “Mary, we must think this through logically. To do so, we must add our new information to the list about Nurse Bellamy and my chart of people.”

  She nodded in agreement, and we spent an intense hour at it.

  By the end, we had added the Moores, Cyril Matthews, and Lady Canning to my chart, and notes about all of the conversations I had had since I had last written anything down.

  Although I typically found my medical graphs and charts a good method for thinking through the commonalities and causes of diseases, this was not the case here. I had to finally admit that with every update I made to my murder investigation charts, I was left more and more baffled.

  Mary broke into my brooding thoughts. “Miss Florence, I believe we know now the most important thing on which to focus.”

  “What is that?” I asked, willing to follow almost any rabbit trail.

  “We need to know right away who attempted to kill you. And I believe I know who it was.”

  “You do?” I was amazed. Our discussion hadn’t revealed any one suspect who stood out over another. Mostly it seemed as though nearly everyone could be guilty, while no one clearly was the perpetrator.

  Mary nodded, as confident as I was indecisive for once. “Without question it was Lillian Alban.”

  Because I was still completely unsure of things myself, I could neither support nor ridicule her assertion. “Why her?” I simply said.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ that Mr. Congreve said. Mrs. Alban has been cast aside by her husband and believes you to be the reason.” Mary pushed her glasses up her nose, presumably to better catch my reaction.

  I stubbornly shook my head. “But I am certain I convinced her that I have had no dealings with Mr. Alban.”

  Mary smiled as one having to instruct a child. “Miss Florence, you said yourself that you weren’t certain of the lady’s stability. I remember when my darling Milo was courting me. It was back in, oh, ’20 or ’22. His parents wanted him to marry Grace Saintjohn, but he had met me at a Christmas market in Matlock and we fell so deeply in love.”

  Mary sighed and gazed off in the distance.

  “Milo wanted to please his parents but was constantly slipping away to meet me at tearooms, parks, and fairs. Eventually, Grace found out about it and they had a terrible row. Determined to keep hold of Milo, she decided to wreak havoc in my life. She may not have pushed me down a staircase, but she sent me vile letters and showed up wherever I went. After Milo and I married, she did a spell in the Derby lunatic asylum. Her parents moved away with her a couple of years later.”

  A romantic tragedy to be sure, but I didn’t see how it was relevant to my own situation with the Albans. I said so, and then asked, “So what point are you making?”

  Another sigh.

  “You have so little experience in the matters of love, so you don’t know what women in competition for affection are capable of doing, Miss Florence. You may know you have no interest in her husband, but Lillian Alban isn’t necessarily convinced of that and might go to great lengths to eliminate a competitor.”

  The second part of what Mary said might be true, but she had not been witness to my agony with Richard. How easily I might have ended up as Grace Saintjohn, when Richard came to me to let me know in person that he had offered for the hand of Annabella Crewe. Only weeks had passed since my final rejection of him, making me wonder if he hadn’t already been eyeing the lovely Annabella when he proposed to me that last time. As if meeting with me was sort of a final confirmation that he was free to do as he pleased.

  Annabella was a brilliant match for Richard, even if her father, the Baron Crewe, was completely batty. He had contracted a second, bigamous marriage when Annabella and her siblings had been young children. It was an enormous scandal in Cheshire, but Annabella Crewe had not suffered socially for it.

  No doubt the palatial, Jacobean-era-built Crewe Hall, a sign of the Baron’s substantial wealth that had increased tenfold with the addition of his legal wife’s Barbados sugar plantations, curbed what might have been total social castigation.

  Certainly, the Crewes were better placed than the Nightingales, so how could I have complained, particularly since I was adamant about not entering a marriage contract myself?

  I will never forget Richard’s expression when he came to tell me. I knew in that moment that I merely needed to plead with him not to do it, not to abandon my distant affections, and he would return to me.

  But I couldn’t. I knew I had a solitary path to follow, one that didn’t include Richard, so I impaled myself on a sword honed and gleaming from years of self-denial. I smiled tremulously and congratulated him, wishing him many years of marital felicity and a bevy of children.

  The thought of Annabella Crewe bearing Richard’s children was completely revolting, but I slammed the door shut on the idea.

  I believe Richard died a little in that moment, much as I withered away myself. But he accepted it with a man’s intestinal fortitude, kissed my cheek, and left.

  That had been two years ago. I surreptitiously followed the society papers, and there had been no announcement yet of a child. In my darkest moments, I envisioned Richard and Annabella as estranged already. But it was as far as my imagination carried me. I would never intrude upon their marriage—nor impugn my own reputation—with silly threats or letters.

  I shook my head. Now who was the one wrapped up in far-off wistfulness?

  “Mary, I have experienced the mentally unstable and understand what you are trying to tell me. However, I don’t think that every woman who is scorned becomes a raving lunatic.”

  “As you wish, Miss Florence,” Mary said, bowing her head.

  I could see that I had hurt her feelings, as she had been proud of her theory. It was an enormous failing, this temper and sharp tongue of mine.

  I tried to rectify it. “However, I believe you are correct t
hat there is someone mentally unbalanced in the Establishment. We need to discover who it is.”

  Mary raised her head. “It is Lillian Alban,” she insisted.

  I had to give my companion credit for sticking to her theory. “Perhaps,” I said, noncommittally. “Let’s add that to the chart next to Mrs. Alban’s name.”

  I checked the watch pinned to my bodice. It was already nearly lunchtime and I hadn’t checked on a single inmate, or on what my nurses were doing, or …

  I was suddenly very tired and stifled a yawn.

  “Miss Florence?” Mary said, concerned. “I don’t think you are ready for this much strenuous activity. You need rest.” She rose and offered an arm to help me up. I accepted it gratefully, as my aches and sores reminded me of my recent tumble.

  As she escorted me to my own room for a nap, I mumbled, “You are such a silly goose, Mary, but perhaps you are laying golden eggs for me that I have not yet found.”

  “Yes, Miss Florence,” she replied patiently to my nattering.

  I was soon changed and under my bed coverings, drifting off into a long, dreamless sleep.

  I awoke in the early morning hours, sweating and shaking, to the sound of wounded-animal screaming.

  CHAPTER 12

  My body was still sore, but my mind was instantly alert as I listened to the scuffling and cries of pain below me. I rose as quickly as I could, one hand pressed to my temple to quell an oncoming headache. I dressed faster than I ever had in my life and hastened down the staircase.

  It seemed that everyone else was awake, too, and crowded around a prone figure in the entry hall. The dawning sun, uninhibited by yesterday’s clouds, which had dissipated, filtered through the windows and door transom and illuminated who lay there in an almost ethereal halo.

  John Wesley.

  “What has happened here?” I demanded.

  John Wesley turned to face me. He clutched one knee. “Miss Nightingale, I’m sorry to wake you. Please don’t send me away.”

  I moved toward the boy, and the others stepped back to give me room. I noticed Mary was part of the assembly. Why wasn’t she back at the lodgings?

  I knelt next to John Wesley and saw there was blood seeping through his fingers as he maintained a grip on his knee. The poor boy’s ashen face glistened with sweat.

  “No one is sending you away,” I said in a soothing tone. “We are going to help you.”

  I looked up. The nearest nurse to me was Nan Wilmot. “Make sure the inmate room I was just in is clean. Go now,” I snapped, when she continued to stare down dumbly at the injured boy.

  She certainly wasn’t my first choice for anything, but preparing a room wasn’t that difficult. Of course, for someone as sloppy as Wilmot, it might be. My regret doubled as I watched her saunter down the corridor of rooms with no urgency at all in her steps.

  I pointed to Charlie Lewis. “Go fetch Dr. Killigrew.”

  I turned my attention to Polly Roper. “A nice big bowl of bone broth right away, if you please.”

  To the other nurses I gave instruction to check in on the inmates to calm anyone who might be upset. If John Wesley’s pained yelling had awoken me with a start, I could only imagine how terrified the patients might be.

  Nurses Hughes, Frye, and Harris moved off to do my bidding, but on impulse I stopped Harris. “You will help me move John Wesley,” I instructed her.

  Harris nodded in that reserved way she had and wordlessly knelt to assist me with the boy. I couldn’t help but admire his courage, since it was obvious he was in great pain, and just as obvious that he didn’t want to cry out in front of me.

  Mary also remained in the entry hall, looking unsure of herself. Had she not ever gone to her bed, or had she returned here for some reason? Surely not—the streets of London were no place for a woman to traverse in the pre-dawn light.

  “Mary,” I said. “Get your notebook. You will need to record my questioning of John Wesley.” I figured anything unusual that happened inside the walls should be noted, even if it was as inconsequential as a boy banging up his knee. Secretly, though, I intended for her to take notes as I questioned Nurse Harris.

  That moved her to action, and within a few minutes, Harris and I somehow managed to transfer John Wesley to a sitting position in the bed while he grunted and clutched his knee. Mary sat in a corner with pen, ink, and notebook.

  It was then that I noticed how green she looked, like the sky before a turbulent storm. I hoped she did not intend to be sick, for I was dealing with quite enough at the moment and was not entirely well myself.

  With John Wesley lying atop the bed, I convinced him to let me examine his knee, which he did reluctantly. It was clearly fractured and devastatingly so. It was an open fracture, so there were bone fragments that had penetrated the skin. The area was a frightful wreckage of dirt, pulp, and sharp-edged cartilage.

  The child must have been in extraordinary pain.

  Moreover, I was gravely concerned about the fracture itself. With the skin broken, there was a very high risk for infection, both in the wound and of the bone itself.

  “John Wesley, how did this happen to you?” I asked. He had taken a much harder tumble than I had, and I had gone down the length of a winding staircase.

  He groaned again as an additional wave of pain passed over him. “Um, it was an accident.”

  “How was it an accident?” I asked patiently. “Where did it happen?”

  “The—the rear entrance,” he said. He bravely sniffed and blinked away tears.

  “You fell?” I said, holding my breath for his answer.

  “Um. Uh, yes, maum.” He rocked back and forth over his clutched knee.

  His answer was too hesitant. “John Wesley, I know how much it hurts, but you must look at me. Look me in the eye.”

  He lifted his gaze to mine. I hated to ask the next question. “Are you telling me you fell at the door … or on the steps?”

  The rear exterior stairs were old, unevenly set slate ledges, and so it was reasonable to think he might have tripped on them, particularly if he was moving about in the dark.

  His gaze slid away. “On the steps, maum. Please don’t send me away.”

  Send him away? To where? I didn’t even know where the boy was half the time. “You needn’t worry about that, John Wesley, I promise you.”

  He gave me a tremulous smile. “Thank you, Miss. I-I … this hurts terrible bad.”

  We needed a surgeon, not Dr. Killigrew, who would merely prescribe from afar for John Wesley. The boy needed someone who could mend bones. Did I dare work outside Killigrew’s authority?

  I instructed Nurse Harris to clean and then put a salve on the skin around the open wound. It would be utterly useless until the bone was repaired, but it would at least make John Wesley feel he was being cared for. I comforted him as best I could as Harris worked.

  As the nurse rubbed the ointment, whose pungent odor was not disguised by the addition of attar of roses, around the edges of the lacerated knee, I turned back to see what Mary was writing down. I saw her eyes grow large in horror at Harris’s ministrations. I suppose I no longer blocked her view of what was going on with John Wesley’s knee and she could now see for herself how mangled it was.

  To my own horror, though, Mary brought a hand to her mouth as she began to involuntarily heave. Her pen and notebook clattered to the floor as she jumped up and practically dove behind the screen that shielded the chamber pot from the rest of the room.

  She must have been disgorging everything she’d eaten over the past week based on the sound of the sickening spew erupting out of her. I could hear it spattering the pot and, I feared, everything else.

  John Wesley, though, seemed greatly cheered by it. “Is my knee making her do that, Miss Nightingale?” he asked almost gleefully.

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  “She’s very loud.” I saw a hint of a smile, even though shortly thereafter he winced as Harris pressed her cloth too close to the gash t
hrough which pulp and bone protruded.

  I wasn’t sure whether to see to Mary or to continue questioning John Wesley. I decided on a third route, which was to talk to Nurse Harris. I moved so that I would once more be blocking Mary’s view when she emerged from behind the curtain.

  “Let’s wrap it as best we can until the doctor gets here,” I said. Harris wordlessly capped the salve and left for the linen room. I soothed John Wesley as best I could as Mary exhausted herself behind the curtain and we waited for Harris to return.

  Perhaps bandages were an item that needed to be stored in every room. I made a mental note that the Establishment needed bigger wall cabinets to hold what should be a list of common supplies to be within reach for each inmate.

  Mary was in no condition to make a note about it. She groaned from behind the curtain and John Wesley responded with a grin that turned into a pained grimace.

  Nurse Harris reentered the room with a rolled length of muslin. She set to work tenderly wrapping John Wesley’s leg while I dislodged his hands from his knee, much to his great disapproval. I wasn’t sure how effective this gentle immobilization would be, but, like the salve, it was a small ministration we could offer our loyal servant in the moment.

  “Nurse,” I said, as I stroked the hair away from John Wesley’s sweat-beaded forehead. “I have had a disturbing report about you.”

  Harris didn’t pause in what she was doing. “Yes?”

  “You were overheard conniving with Mrs. Roper in a moneymaking scheme.”

  Now she stopped and looked me directly in the eye. “I believe I can guess with total accuracy that it was Mims Jarrett who spoke against me.” She said this flatly, as if she already knew I wouldn’t deny it.

  I didn’t.

  “What is this scheme, Nurse? I will not tolerate antics, but if you tell me what you have done and cease doing it immediately, I will have compassion on you and Polly Roper.” My tone was stern, but I held no advantage, for I still needed to keep everyone in place until I found Bellamy’s murderer.

  Harris sighed heavily. “Mims has never cared for me. She told the previous superintendent in Cavendish Square that I was stealing food from the kitchens and selling it to workhouses. I pay no attention to her, and your predecessor did not either.”