No Cure for the Dead

by Christine Trent

  I removed the most insistent, shrill kettle from the heat, just as the cook walked back in, holding a bag.

  “Pardon, Miss Nightingale, I had to give the grocer’s boy a piece of my mind. He delivered the limpest runner beans I’ve ever seen. And them ripe right now! I’ve half a mind to start visiting that costermonger I’ve seen lately a few blocks from here. Her vegetables look better than these awful things.” She tipped the bag into a pot of boiling water and the green pods disappeared in a violent rumble and hiss.

  It gave me an idea. “I believe that is a splendid idea, Mrs. Roper. You’ll want to visit her before she sells her choicest items, won’t you?”

  “Well, yes,” she hesitated. “But I have all of my dishes going…”

  I felt deceitful but proceeded anyway. “You say she’s only a few blocks away; you couldn’t possibly be gone a half hour.”

  Mrs. Roper frowned. “True. I’ll be back quick as a wink, then.”

  She whisked off her apron and tossed it onto a hook screwed into the passageway between the kitchen and linen room and left through the back. Within a few moments, the laundress and her daughter had brought everything in, and it lay heaped upon the linen room table. I signed for the laundry delivery and told them that one of the nurses would take care of sorting it all. With everyone gone, I locked the rear door, although there was little I could do about anyone coming downstairs.

  I stood in the middle of the linen room. Where was the secret place John Wesley had found? The entire room was lined with shelving and cabinets. There was practically no wall whatsoever exposed. Had the boy been mistaken? Had the false wall been in another room?

  I walked back into the kitchen itself, blessedly quiet now that I had turned down the burners. I walked along what exposed walls there were but could find no evidence of a shifting wall. Perhaps the larder …

  I went in and out of each and every closet-sized space attached to the kitchen, each with its own function: storage of dry goods, storage of dishes, a place to wash pans, and so forth. Charlie Lewis’s tiny room was down here, too, furnished sparsely with a bed, a small chest of drawers, and a lamp. Tools covered the chest and much of the floor, and the room smelled of spilled lamp oil.

  Finding nothing obvious anywhere, I even got on my hands and knees in the kitchen rooms, thinking that perhaps Jasmine had unlatched the wall by hitting something along the floorboards. Then I did the same in the linen room, the laundry room, the scullery, and, of course, Charlie’s room.

  Nothing.

  I stood once more, wiping my hands against my skirt, thankful that I was in my usual gray garb. Surely the boy hadn’t made it up. John Wesley was a scamp, but he wasn’t a liar.

  I returned to the kitchen to begin my search again, feeling anxious because I knew Mrs. Roper would return soon.

  Where in the world could this secret room be?

  I walked to the end of the basement nearest the servants’ staircase and turned around to face the downstairs. If I stood just so, I could effectively see a straight line through the various doorways of the basement all the way to the rear door. Each section was separated from another by a small, coved passageway. The kitchen and linen room, though, had a much deeper passageway between—

  I practically ran to the place that separated the kitchen and linen room. Standing in the middle of the passageway, I pressed along the wall to one side, then dropped to my knees. I could find no way to spring open the wall. I rose once more and removed Mrs. Roper’s apron from its hook, tossing it onto the back of a chair. It was instantly obvious that this was the place. I had been looking for a long piece of flat wall inside a room, but the secret room was actually accessed from in between the rooms.

  I found an indentation along one of the outer corners of that side of the passageway that enabled me to get a firm hold and pull this section of wall away. It was on a very clever interior hinge, not visible from within the passageway itself. Inside the space, which was only about four feet wide but nearly twenty feet deep, were a couple of wood chairs, a narrow mattress on the floor made up with fresh linens, and a bench along the wall with some of life’s daily accoutrements: a comb, a washbasin, a teacup, a few chamber sticks with half-burned candles in them, a few open jars containing powders and creams, and a cracked handheld mirror.

  Far above me were small skylights that let in a little filtered light this far down, enough so that I did not require a lamp to be able to see.

  I took a deep breath. The air was mostly stale and dry, although there was just the faintest hint of floral perfume in the room, probably from the cosmetics jars.

  If they hadn’t gone out of fashion centuries before this home had been built, I would have thought this was a priest’s hole. What had the owner been thinking when he’d had this installed in his basement?

  The walls were actually papered in here. Because it had had little exposure to the elements over time, the old Georgian flocked pattern, imitating a damask fabric of robin’s-egg blue and cream, was perfectly intact. I stood there several more moments, deciding that it could be a lovers’ nest, for certain. Was it Nurse Bellamy’s? If so, with whom had she been sharing it?

  CHAPTER 13

  I quickly closed up the secret room, replaced Mrs. Roper’s apron, unlocked the rear door, and returned upstairs with a tray of tea and biscuits that I had quickly assembled. I hadn’t had anything to eat yet for the day, and I was famished. By this time, Mary had arrived at the Establishment and was waiting for me in the library. I sent her to the kitchens to get her own cup so that she could partake of the repast with me and instructed her to meet me back in my study for privacy, despite the fact that Miss Jarrett had not yet reported for work. Jarrett was one of few who did not live on the premises, and she clearly had difficulty meeting a scheduled arrival time.

  I shook my head. So many problems to work through, and I could accomplish so little until Nurse Bellamy’s death was solved.

  Over tea, gingersnap cookies, and almond macaroons, I confided to Mary the vision I had for a proper hospital, unlike any that England had ever seen.

  “You may not know, Goose, that I traveled to Egypt and throughout Europe before I came here. I toured hospitals to investigate their practices.”

  Mary’s cheeks pinked a little, my nickname for her apparently still pleasing her.

  “Of course, my parents believed me to be on a version of the Grand Tour with our family friends, Charles and Selina Bracebridge.”

  Mary nodded. “I remember Milo speaking of them. He told me that if you saw their carriage in the drive, not even chains could prevent you from leaping out of the schoolroom to go and greet them.”

  Ah, I remembered that well, also. The Bracebridges had always treated me as an adult, even when I was a young child, and had taken my desires and dreams seriously when my parents would not. So seriously had they taken me that they had been willing to engage me in a year-long “grand tour” of Egypt and Greece. The trip had enabled me to put thousands of miles between Richard and me.

  Licking one’s open and salted wounds is much more easily accomplished without others observing the messy process.

  The brilliant landscapes of the Nile and the Aegean had meant little to me, although I spent considerable time documenting everything I saw. My brightest moment had been when I stumbled upon a baby owl being taunted by some boys at the Parthenon. I rescued the owlet, named her Athena, and carried her about in my pocket, which she adored. I adored her right back, loving the trilling and hoo-hooing sounds she made when I dropped her into my pocket. I added a pair of tortoises, whom I named Mr. and Mrs. Hill, to my retinue, as well as a cicada I called Plato.

  Athena eventually ate Plato, which ended my animal collecting.

  However, none of it was enough to completely eradicate Richard from my mind.

  The Bracebridges had surprised me, though, by routing us back through Berlin so that I could visit a place called Kaiserswerther Diakonie, located along the Rhine.

  I
had read of Pastor Theodor Fliedner and was very interested in visiting his facility. It wasn’t exactly a medical school. He had instead designed a training center and hospital based on the early Christian diaconates, so that he focused on training young women to care for the needy sick. This training included both theology and nursing skills. I wholeheartedly agreed with his unique approach, since it was based in the Christian notion of charity.

  Early Christian women, who became known as deaconesses, had been encouraged to wander into the streets and find people who were sick, injured, or otherwise stricken. They would care for the needy and return to their own homes at night. Not only did this help a suffering society, but it gave many women purpose and meaning in a time when they had few opportunities.

  I empathized with those early church women, as my mother had been determined to see my mind—which men like my father and Milo Clarke had filled with knowledge and curiosity—emptied of all ambition. I needed purpose and meaning, and Pastor Fliedner had shown me how my passion could be molded into something valuable.

  Moreover, the pastor’s hospital had been clean and cheery, in direct contradiction to most British hospitals, which were full of filth, wretchedness, and squalor. There was even a phrase in the everyday British lexicon, “hospital smell,” which referred to the overpowering stink of hospital wards that usually led to nausea.

  My tour of Kaiserswerth had turned into a stay of two weeks. During that time, the Bracebridges and I sent letters back to my parents, extolling the wondrous beauty of Schloss Benrath’s gardens, the Rhine, and the Prussian marketplaces, so that they wouldn’t know what I was truly doing.

  I had returned home, brimming with hope and full of ideas. Mother was appalled, of course, but even worse was Parthenope. She had noticeably declined in health because of her anxiety over my absence, and all of a sudden I found myself needing to be in attendance on her at all hours, else she would mope and weep. I read with her, allowed her to sketch me, sang with her, and was generally inseparable from her for the next six months. My familial slavery quickly took its toll on me, and I sank into my own depression. If it was possible, I became even sicker and more depressed than Parthe.

  It had been my own serious decline that finally convinced Mother to let me return to Kaiserswerth and enter Pastor Fliedner’s complete training program. Thus far, it had been the most wondrous and extraordinary period of my entire life, other than my idyll with Richard.

  The diakonie had expanded into an orphan asylum, an infant school, and a school for training schoolmistresses. I had slept in the orphan asylum and worked both there and in the hospital for such rigorously long days that I had hardly taken out ten minutes for meals and to send my things to be washed. I had even been permitted to be present at operations, which I hadn’t dared report to my mother, lest she faint dead away at the indecency of it all.

  Upon my return to the family home, I had known I was close to freedom. I had blatantly made plans and sought out an opportunity to employ what I had learned from Fliedner. Parthe slid again, and this time was carted off to the queen’s physician, Dr. James Clark, who delivered the knife that finally cut the cord between my sister and me. He told her that the only effective cure would be for her to learn to live without me.

  I could have happily kissed Dr. Clark.

  On a trip out to Wilton House to visit Elizabeth Herbert, she had told me of the open supervisor’s position with the Establishment, a position that had reopened with the facility’s move from Cavendish Square to Harley Street.

  So here I was now, finally liberated to do the good works I had known I was meant for since my divine visit in 1837. Yet I was in thorough paralysis because of the murder that had occurred a week after I walked through the door.

  Well, it was time to work on both.

  “Yes,” I said to Mary. “The Bracebridges were instrumental in helping me realize my dream. I just hope it hasn’t turned into a permanent nightmare.”

  “Oh, no, Miss Florence, it won’t be. You will succeed in ways you can’t imagine, I’m sure of it. And one day your family will recognize your achievements.” She made a move as if to hug me, as if I were still a child, but hastily checked herself and sat back down.

  However, the encouragement warmed me. So few people were ever on my side. “Goose, you are a treasure.”

  She blushed again.

  “Now, let me tell you what I wish to implement,” I said. Mary opened her notebook and dipped her pen in the ink bottle that sat on a side table at her elbow. She looked up at me expectantly.

  “I want to create an instruction manual for nursing. There is simply nothing adequate in existence. We will start with the qualifications of a nurse. As it stands now, a nurse is qualified if she merely breathes, and even then that breath might be rank with spirits or poor hygiene. Not so here at the Establishment.”

  “But Nurse Frye…” Mary ventured.

  “Yes, and Nurse Wilmot, too,” I agreed. “Once I have developed my list of requirements, perhaps I can convince them to leave of their own accord, once they realize for themselves they are not fit for service. Let me see, I believe a nurse should generally be between thirty and fifty years of age.”

  Mary looked up in surprise. “You don’t prefer that it be a young, energetic woman?”

  I shook my head. “I want her to be old enough to have had a little experience, yet not too old or infirm so that she would be prevented from performing duties requiring strength. So she should be somewhere between my age and yours, Goose.”

  Mary bent her head down and wrote.

  “That is the age requirement. Now, as for temperament, the qualified nurse must have a kind and gentle disposition, for she will frequently have to endure the whims and caprices of the invalid.” I thought of Alice Drayton. Then I thought of Hester Moore and thought that perhaps I should add “the whims and caprices of the patient’s family” as well. However, I wouldn’t want that memorialized on paper.

  “The proper nurse must have the confidence to exert her authority when necessary, while reining in her temper so as not to create anxiety in those who are in her charge.” Hmm, perhaps my requirements would cause me personally to be disqualified.

  “Is that all?” Mary asked, dipping her pen into the ink.

  “No, there is one more quality for a proper nurse.” Here I thought of Nurse Harris, wondering if she were friend or foe. “She must be someone who strives to make herself indispensable to both patient and institution.”

  Mary obediently wrote it all down.

  “The good nurse will understand that sanitary conditions are of paramount importance, both in patients’ surroundings and for themselves personally. A clean uniform, clean skin and hair, and sweet breath will demonstrate for the patient that the nurse takes her role seriously. Diseases such as cholera are, I believe, spread through noxious air. Cleanliness helps prevent these miasmas from forming.”

  Mary looked up, confused. “M-y-e-a—”

  “M-i-a-s-m-a,” I said.

  She nodded and bent her head down once more.

  “Then there is the patient’s diet.” This was a topic upon which I could lecture for hours. For my notes, I would keep it simple and sermonize more on it when I had the nurses together and could address them directly. “The first rule in invalid cookery is that the food itself should do half the work of the patient’s weak digestion. The nurse should seek recipes for simply dressed fish, light soups, plain roasted meats and poultry, simple puddings, and so forth.”

  The scratching of Mary’s pen was soothing, and I leaned back to stare up at the ceiling as I thought more about everything I had learned.

  “Furthermore, a nurse should never put before a patient milk that is sour, meat that has turned, an egg that is bad, or vegetables that are undone. Any spoiled articles should not be handed off to the patient with the notion that he won’t notice, but the nurse should quickly whip up something else in a few minutes.”

  Mary looked up again. “But
you have a cook here.”

  “Indeed, and a luxury it is, since Mrs. Roper cooks exclusively for invalids and knows what to do. But many nurses work in private homes where the cook rules the kitchen with an iron skillet and will brook no suggested modifications to his cooking. In such case, the nurse must be resourceful—exerting authority while controlling her temper—and find a way to prepare appropriate foods for the patient.”

  Mary developed that dreamy expression again. “I, of course, had total control over dear Milo’s diet, although I suppose I might have had benefit of training. He didn’t always care for my soups and tended to wrinkle his sweet nose at them. I suppose it’s almost as if I was a nurse while Milo was so sick. He never complained, though. Such a darling man. I never had to exert authority over him. How I miss him.”

  I was on the verge of confessing how much I missed someone, too, but caught myself. There was no point in both of us mourning aloud. In any case, I wished to finish my dictation.

  “I’m sure Mr. Clarke appreciated all you did for him, especially since you took care of him until the very end, Goose.” I gave her an encouraging look. “But if we finish up the list of nurse requirements, which will be a small part of the nursing instruction manual, then one day any woman will know how to take care of her sick husband, child, or parent, right?”

  “Yes, you are right, Miss Florence. What else would you like to say about the requirements of a nurse?” Her pen was freshly dipped again and poised over the paper. A drop of ink splashed out of the nib and made an irregular blotch on the page. She frowned at it but moved down below the mark to continue writing.

  I finished up with my thoughts on a nurse’s duty to ensure that meal times are neat and tidy and that she not dribble tea into a saucer or soup down a shirt front. The utmost care was to be taken not to soil sheets, bedgowns, pillows, or any other piece of cloth the patient touched.